John Majewski, an associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been awarded a $20,000 fellowship by the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation to continue research on the reasons the southern states seceded from the Union, touching off the American Civil War.
Majewski was among 13 scholars to be chosen by the Foundation, based at Brown University, from a field of 164 applicants.
He will use the grant, and additional funds provided by UCSB's College of Letters and Science, to spend academic year 2003-2004 on sabbatical.
"Many historians interpret the Confederacy as an attempt to preserve agrarian values fundamentally hostile to industrialization, modernization, and centralization," Majewski said. "My proposed book argues that an important strain in secessionist thought conceived of a strong Confederate state as a vehicle for promoting the economic modernization of their new nation.
"I find, for example, that many Confederate writers actively promoted a tariff that would keep out Northern goods to help bolster manufacturing."
Majewski has a Ph.D. from UCLA in American History.
He joined the UCSB faculty in 1995.
The Howard Foundation awards a limited number of fellowships each year for independent mid-career projects in fields selected on a rotational basis. The field for 2003-2004 was history. Ten fellowships will be offered for 2004-2005 to support projects in creative writing.
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