ETC (Enhancements, Training and Content)

In addition, as part of the ETC program we feature regularly scheduled training sessions that are highly valued by many of our customers. These online sessions provide guidance and suggestions for making the most of your Readex collections. Faculty and students are welcome to attend, and ample time is provided for questions.

Our spring 2012 training schedule is now available. Register for one or more of the sessions today!

Dr. Julie Voss

Recent discussion on EARAM-L, the listserv of the Society of Early Americanists, centered on the shortcomings of anthologies for teaching early American literature to undergraduates. Julie R. Voss, assistant professor of English and coordinator of the American Studies Program at Lenoir-Rhyne University, wrote:

I teach at a small school with no rare books collections; however, we do have access to the online Early American Imprints collection. This semester, my students in Colonial American Literature are working with primary texts from this archive, after studying several works available in modern editions. (This course is intended to “expose” students to colonial lit, not “cover” the period, so I don’t fly through an anthology.) They seem to be enjoying the experience, and they are learning a great deal about early literature and culture, as well as about research and editing.

Prof. Voss has now written an article about her class’s experience – “Accomplishing Something: Using Early American Imprints to Introduce Students to the Era and to the Field” – for publication in the fall 2012 issue of The Readex Report. To subscribe to this quarterly Readex e-publication, please use this form.

By Ian Olivo Read, Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies, Soka University of America

Published by Stanford University Press on January 25, 2012

On October 18, 1899, Brazilian health officials declared that bubonic plague had arrived. Bacteriologists identified the bacteria in samples taken from sick patients in Santos, a port city that had grown rapidly due to Brazil’s coffee boom. For much of history, people reacted to the news of plague with panic, flight and violence. When plague struck Santos, however, the town did not empty of its residents, international ships were not quarantined outside the port, and authorities or militias did not form “rifle cordons” at roads leading out of town. In fact, according to one report, “the news that bubonic plague had broken out in Santos seems to have made an impression everywhere but here. Santistas are, as a rule, of a somewhat skeptic frame of mind and reports about sickness and epidemics do not frighten them unduly.”

Source: Latin American Newspapers, 1805-1922

This was Brazil’s first recorded outbreak of plague, but it was only one of a chain of epidemics that had occurred since 1894 when plague had escaped from its natural reservoirs among rodents in the Himalayas. The Yersinias pestis pathogen spread eastward, facilitated by busy colonial networks and the quickening pace of globalization. For the next 50 years it struck various port cities and coastal areas of nearly every continent. When the third bubonic plague pandemic crossed the Atlantic to reach South America in 1899, its victims suffered no differently than elsewhere. In its first stages, the infected developed painful and swollen lymph glands, fever and aches. As bacteria overwhelmed the immune system, fever turned to shock, organ failure and, for about 50 percent of those who contracted the disease, death. Not only did the third pandemic spread plague among humans throughout the world, it also introduced the Yersinias pestis to other species of rodents on multiple continents, where the bacteria persist today in these relatively new natural reservoirs.

Bubonic plague has long been a fearsome disease, and is described as such in biblical writings. This was its first appearance in a deeply Catholic country, where many more people understood its propagation divinely rather than pathogenically. Yet why did Santos residents react with nonchalance? First, plague in this locality, or any other for that matter, cannot be understood without the larger epidemiological context. By the end of the nineteenth century, Santos had developed an international reputation as a dirty and dangerous place due to its unshakable pestilence. American mariners called Santos the “cemetery to the world.” For John Masefield, the English poet, “it’s a cruel port is Santos, and a hungry land.” Of biggest blame was yellow fever, a virus that had seen very little place in Brazil before 1849, but developed as fierce epidemics with nearly annual appearances in the 1850s, 1870s and 1890s. So many foreign mariners died, in fact, that even when the city built a large new cemetery in 1854, bones had to be dug up and the holes filled with fresh corpses less than every two years. After decades of attempts to eliminate “effluvia,” drain swamps and initiate sweeping public health reforms, many Santistas saw epidemics as an intractable part of their daily life and town character.

The second reason why Santos residents reacted so coolly was that many did not think it would become a serious problem. Literate Brazilians had tracked the disease through newspaper reports from its first Asian outbreaks in 1894 to its movement to the Middle East and Europe in 1899. Early epidemics, such as those in Hong Kong and Bombay, prompted concern because of high death tolls. But these were distant lands, with little connection to South America. Furthermore, few believed it could spread beyond Asia. They were proven wrong, of course, as the disease leapt continents over the next five years. Geographically it broadened in scope, but in virulence it appeared to diminish. Brazilian newspapers reported that after its arrival to Egypt and Portugal bubonic plague did not develop into frightening proportions. These reports also lent confidence to exciting new developments in bacteriology that allowed doctors to identify Yersinias pestis in a microscope. Additionally, the millenniums-old mystery on why swarms of dead rats foretold outbreaks of plague was explained by a communicable germ. In 1895, Alexandre Yersin at the Pasteur Institute in France developed the first anti-plague serum, but Brazilian newspapers of the day spent more time discussing how local health authorities could acquire or manufacture the serum than how trials of Yersin’s serum in Canton and Bombay had largely failed.

In sum, it was a combination of fatalism among some, and overconfidence in medicine’s ability to limit the epidemic’s effects among others that allowed the town to largely escape panic when a new deadly disease knocked on its backdoor. Nonchalance was not shared nationally, nor did it diminish a serious public health reaction. Soon after, federal and state governments created institutions that eventually acquired world renown, such as the Butantan and Oswaldo Cruz Institutes. These organizations helped fight plague, which took root and slowly persisted in Brazil, but never became epidemic. Finally, bubonic plague arrived at the end of a five-decade period of unusual epidemiological activity that had profound, yet still unknown, consequences on the country’s society and economy.

In the detailed account of the outbreak of plague in Santos, or the larger story of the changing epidemiological environment and its consequences in Brazil, there are new digital history tools at our disposal, including Latin American Newspapers, 1805-1922. In the last decade historians have witnessed a revolution in digitizing and OCR technology. This has allowed millions of pages of old newspapers to be digitized, converted to machine readable text, placed within database programs and made accessible on the Internet. As a result, the proverbial needle in the haystack can be now found by typing “needle” into a search bar. In many respects these tools are still too new to have all their problems solved. Digitized newspaper quality is sometimes subpar, humans still do much better than OCR programs in deciphering low quality text, and the website interfaces that direct searches to information can be cumbersome or slow. Despite these limitations, these new tools give historians much more power in separating the informational wheat from what was previously an overwhelming amount of chaff.

For more information on this research, please visit http://eraofepidemics.squarespace.com/

About the Author

Ian Olivo Read, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies at Soka University of America, in southern Orange County, California. Read previously taught at Stanford University, University of Puget Sound and the University of California, Berkeley. He has written on the history of the United Fruit Company, elite networks in Brazil and Mexico, and the health and medical treatment of Brazilian slaves. His new book, The Hierarchies of Slavery in Santos, Brazil, 1822-1888, was published by Stanford University Press on January 25, 2012. Linda Lewin, University of California, Berkeley, says Read’s book “offers the most comprehensive view of a discrete, urban Brazilian slave population yet to be produced and is a very important contribution to the history of slavery, not only in Brazil but also in comparative perspective.” The article above first appeared in the April 2011 issue of The Readex Report.

Sources

Myron J. Echenberg, “Pestis Redux: The Initial Years of the Third Bubonic Plague Pandemic, 1894-1901,” Journal of World History, Vol. 13, No. 2, Fall 2002, 429-449; Myron J. Echenberg, Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubon Plague, 1894-1901, New York: New York University Press, 2007; Jornal do Commercio¸ (Rio de Janeiro), 1894-99; O Estado do São Paulo (São Paulo), 1894-99; and Brazilian Review (Rio de Janeiro), 1899.

Readex to Launch Digital Edition of the Library Company of Philadelphia’s Unparalleled Collection of Afro-Americana

More than 12,000 searchable books, pamphlets, and broadsides will stimulate new research on centuries of African American history, literature, and life 

Source: Library Company of Philadelphia/Afro-Americana Collection

January 16, 2012 (NAPLES, FL) – A digital edition of Afro-Americana, 1535-1922: From the Library Company of Philadelphia will be introduced in late Spring 2012 by Readex, a division of NewsBank. Created from the Library Company’s acclaimed collection—an accumulation that began with Benjamin Franklin and has steadily increased throughout its entire history—this unique new online resource will provide researchers with more than 12,000 wide-ranging printed works about African American history. Critically important subjects covered include the West’s discovery and exploitation of Africa; the rise of slavery in the New World along with the growth and success of abolitionist movements; the development of racial thought and racism; descriptions of African American life—slave and free—throughout the Americas; and slavery and race in fiction and drama. Also featured are printed works of African American individuals and organizations.

“The Library Company’s Afro-Americana Collection is one of the most comprehensive and valuable archives of printed material by and about people of African descent anywhere in the world,” says Professor Richard Newman of the Rochester Institute of Technology. “From early descriptions of African society and culture to the black struggle for justice in the Americas during the 19th century, it remains a touchstone for scholars and students alike. To have it available online and at your fingertips in a searchable format will be a dream come true.”

Source: Library Company of Philadelphia/Afro-Americana Collection

The works in this collection, many of which are quite rare, span nearly 400 years, from the early 16th to the early 20th century. Examples include David Walker’s 1829 Appeal . . . to the Colored Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly to Those of the United States of America, a militant attack on both southern slavery and efforts to colonize free blacks; Lydia Maria Child’s 1833 essay, An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans; William Still’s The Underground Rail Road: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, &c., Narrating the Hardships, Hair-breadth Escapes, and Death Struggles of the Slaves in Their Efforts for Freedom (1872); William J. Simmons’ Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising (1887); and Booker T. Washington’s The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery, published in 1909.

Source: Library Company of Philadelphia/Afro-Americana Collection

Also included are such important but lesser-known works as Joseph Sidney, An Oration, Commemorative of the Abolition of the Slave Trade (New York, 1809) and Russell Parrott, An Oration on the Abolition of the Slave Trade . . . First of January, 1814 (Philadelphia, 1814), two works by African American authors celebrating January 1 anniversaries of the end of the slave trade; Grand Bobalition of Slavery! (Boston, 1820), a satire of such celebrations, one example of a long-overlooked genre; Robert B. Lewis, Light and Truth (Portland, Maine, 1836), which champions the central role of black Africans in laying the basis for ancient civilization; William Wells Brown, The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (an 1865 republication in newly-liberated Savannah of an 1863 collective biography of prominent blacks, many still alive, and most, like the author, former slaves); Martin R. Delany, Principia of Ethnology: The Origins of Race and Color, with an Archeological Compendium of Ethiopian and Egyptian Civilization (Philadelphia, 1879), a work by an African American analyzing the origins of color and race and championing black creativity; Charles Carroll, “The Negro a Beast” or “In the Image of God” (St. Louis, 1900), one of many savage works by whites denying the humanity of blacks; and three works by the preeminent African American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois: The Atlanta Conferences (Atlanta, 1902); Some Efforts of American Negroes for Their Own Social Betterment (Atlanta, 1898); and A Select Bibliography of the Negro American (Atlanta, 1905).

Source: Library Company of Philadelphia/Afro-Americana Collection

The Library Company’s Afro-Americana Collection began to gain international renown for its size, range, and significance in the late 1960s as scholars, influenced by civil rights activism, initiated fresh studies of slavery’s part in the American story. “As researchers rediscovered the importance of the long-neglected writings of African Americans, they told us that our collection was vital to new scholarship in African American studies,” says Librarian James N. Green. The Library Company mounted the path-breaking exhibition “Negro History, 1553-1903” in 1969, and followed that with the publication in 1973 of the magisterial bibliography Afro-Americana 1553-1906: A Catalog of the Holdings of the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Since then, Afro-Americana has been a priority of the Library Company, and the collection has grown with each year. A second edition of the Catalog, including 2,500 works acquired since 1973, was published in 2008, preserving and extending the legacy of this landmark work and now providing the bibliographic control for Readex’s online edition. Afro-Americana, 1535-1922 will be fully integrated into America’s Historical Imprints for seamless searching with Early American Imprints, Series I and II: Evans and Shaw-Shoemaker, 1639-1819 and the recent Supplements from the Library Company of Philadelphia, which have added nearly 2,000 newly discovered items. In addition, Afro-Americana, 1535-1922 will be cross-searchable with all Archive of Americana collections, including African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 and African American Periodicals, 1825-1995.

Source: Library Company of Philadelphia/Afro-Americana Collection

Researchers around the world have praised advance word of the partnership between Readex and the Library Company to digitize this landmark collection. UCLA Emeritus Professor Gary Nash writes, “The benefits to scholarship and teaching that will come when the Library Company’s Afro-Americana Collection is made into a digital database are virtually immeasurable. This will be a major step in infusing American history in general with its vitally important African American component. Teachers at all levels will find this a gold mine.”

And University of Michigan Professor Martha S. Jones says, “Today, early African American studies is a global enterprise that includes researchers throughout the United States as well as Europe, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. This collaboration between the Library Company and Readex will bring new resources into reach and enrich this still expanding field of research and study.”

About the Library Company of Philadelphia

The Library Company is an independent research library specializing in American history and culture from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, the Library Company is America’s first successful lending library and oldest cultural institution. Free and open to the public, the Library Company houses an extensive non-circulating collection of rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera, prints, photographs, and works of art. The mission of the Library Company is to preserve, interpret, make available, and augment the valuable materials within its care. It serves a diverse constituency throughout Philadelphia and the nation, offering comprehensive reader services, an internationally renowned fellowship program, online catalogs, and regular exhibitions and public programs.

With the creation of the Program in African American History in 2007 (currently directed by Erica Armstrong Dunbar, an associate professor of history at the University of Delaware), the Library Company has expanded fellowships, conferences, exhibitions, publications, public programming, teacher training, and acquisitions to help achieve the full potential represented by its holdings in this area. For more information about this Program, see http://www.librarycompany.org/paah/

About Readex, a division of NewsBank

For more than sixty years, the Readex name has been synonymous with research in historical materials and government documents. Recognized by librarians, students, and scholars for its efforts to transform academic scholarship, Readex offers a wealth of Web-based collections in the humanities and social sciences, including the Archive of Americana, a family of historical collections featuring searchable books, pamphlets, newspapers, and government documents printed in America over three centuries, and the World Newspaper Archive, created in partnership with the Center for Research Libraries. Also available are the Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports and the Joint Publications Research Service Reports, two of the U.S. government’s fundamental sources of political, historical and scientific open source intelligence during the second half of the 20th century.

# # #

For more information, contact Readex Marketing Director David Loiterstein by calling 1.800.762.8182 or emailing dloiterstein@readex.com.

Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) Reports, 1957-1994

This authoritative digital edition is an important supplement to FBIS Daily Reports, 1941-1996. With emphasis on communist and developing countries, JPRS Reports is a uniquely valuable resource for researching socioeconomic, political, environmental, military, religious, and scientific issues and trends. (Request Trial)

African American Periodicals, 1825-1995

Drawn from holdings of the Wisconsin Historical Society, African American Periodicals ranges over more than 150 years of American life, from slavery during the Antebellum Period to the struggles and triumphs of the modern era. Like African American Newspapers, 1827-1998, this new collection is based on James Danky’s monumental bibliography. (Request Trial)

Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection, 1799-1971

In partnership with a leading ethnic research center, this collection presents new opportunities to explore the American immigrant experience of many of the most influential ethnic groups in U.S. history. (Request Trial)

American Newspaper Archives

Digitized editions of dozens of historical American newspapers from more than 40 states can now be acquired individually. Major titles include the Baton Rouge Advocate, Boston Herald, Dallas Morning News, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Omaha World-Herald, Richmond Times-Dispatch, San Diego Union-Tribune, Tampa Tribune and others from every region of the U.S. (Request Trial)

Latin America Newspapers, Series 2, 1822-1922

Created in partnership with the Center for Research Libraries, this second series of digitized Latin American Newspapers dramatically expands the number of searchable titles available from this important region. (Request Trial)

Or stop by NewsBank booth 1311 just to say hello. David Braden, Erin Luckett and Georgia Frederick will be representing Readex on site.

We hope to see you in Dallas!

American Red Star poster. Credit: www.usmilitariaforum.com

Between 1914 and 1918, the United States sent almost one million horses to the European forces, particularly the British. When America entered the war, another 182,000 horses were taken overseas by the American Expeditionary Forces. Only 200 horses returned to the U.S., and 60,000 were killed outright.¹ As the nation’s equine population and trained cavalry mounts became seriously depleted, many wild horses, including American Mustangs, were utilized. Supplying war horses was considered a patriotic act, and Americans were proud of their contribution.

In 1916 the Idaho Daily Statesmen declared about the Mustang: “The little western pony may not be up to cavalry standards, but he is a good little Ford, and will get you there and be up and about the next morning, and if cactus is the only food, he will take it and smile, leaving the regulation Packard waiting for the oats to catch up.”² The quality of Allied war horses was seen as a key differentiator in the war. As the Duluth News Tribune asserted in 1918: “When the enemy finally begins its big retreat, it is the Allies’ horses that will keep the Germans on the run.”³

Horses were mainly used for transport, not only of solders but also for hauling artillery, ambulances and supply wagons. They were better suited than vehicles to traveling through deep mud and over rough terrain. They were also helpful in raising soldier morale. The bond between soldier and horse was well documented in the newspapers at the time.

In a feature on how farm horses were trained to become war horses, a Kansas City Star reporter wrote in 1917: “A private will tell how some particular horse will follow him about the lot. ‘Somebody’s pet,’ he explains. ‘I’ve taken a fancy to the darn little cuss.”⁴ 

All the men feel that way about horses, explained the Star’s reporter: “A young lieutenant has a pony with a coffee pot brand on him. He calls him ‘Coffee’ and talk to him as if he were a human.”⁵

News reports of horses’ heroism, loyalty to their soldiers, and grief when they were lost were common. Typical headlines read: “Charger stood beside Dead Master between Firing Lines for Two Days” and “Faithful Horse Returns to Master.” The Kansas City Star published the photograph above in 1916 with the headine “Faithful Horse Awaits Master in Vain.”⁶

Not surprisingly, individual horses also became heroes during World War I. One example was Kidron, the war horse ridden by General John J. (“Black Jack”) Pershing, leader of the American Expeditionary Forces. A striking dark bay horse with two white hind socks, Kidron captured the imagination of the American people because he was often used by Pershing in victory parades and seen in ceremonial photos. He became a symbol of all that was noble about the war, despite huge losses of equine and human alike. The news of Kidron’s release from quarantine and his safe entry into the United States in 1920 made headlines across the country.

Unfortunately, most horses did not make it back. They were killed by artillery fire, suffered from skin disorders and disease, and were injured by poison gas. An article published in the Aberdeen Daily News in 1915 estimated that twenty days was the war horse’s average existence at the front.⁷

Moved to action by the plight of war horses, Americans appealed to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker to help equines overseas. On May 22, 1916, Baker asked the American Humane Association to establish a welfare service for horses and mules in the U.S. Army. This organization became the American Red Star Relief, which still exists today as part of the American Humane Association’s emergency services.

After the war, relief societies sprung up across the U.S. to help bring the horses home and to provide care for them after the war. On October 15, 1921, a plaque commissioned by the American Red Star was unveiled in the War Department in memory of the equine suffering during World War I. It reads:

This tablet commemorates the service and sufferings of the 243,135 mules and horses employed by the American Expeditionary Forces overseas during the Great World War, which terminated November 11, 1918, and which resulted in the death of 68,682 of those animals. What they suffered is beyond words to describe. A fitting tribute to their important services has been given by the commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Forces, General John J. Pershing, who has written: “The army horses and mules proved of inestimable value in prosecuting the war to a successful conclusion. They were found in all the theaters of preparation and operation doing their silent but faithful work without the faculty for hoping for any reward or compensation.”⁸

For more remarkable stories in America’s Historical Newspapers, search “war horse,” “war horse relief,” “American Red Star” or “American Red Star Animal Relief.”

Notes

¹ International Museum of the Horse (The Horse in Transition: The Horse in World War I, 1914-1918). Retrieved 1-3-2012).

² “American War Horse,” Idaho Daily Statesman, June 21, 1916, p. 4).

³ “War Horse Gets Full Education,” Duluth News Tribune, (Aug. 30, 1918, p. 2).

⁴ “When the Plough Horse Changes to a War Horse,” Kansas City Star (Nov. 25, 1917, p. 1).

⁵ Ibid

⁶ “Faithful Horse Awaits Master in Vain,” Kansas City Star, (Dec. 28, 1916, p. 4).

⁷ “War Horses’ Brief Life,” Aberdeen Daily News (Feb. 4, 1915, p. 3).

⁸ Spielberg’s War Horse: Animal Heroes of the Great War (Part 1).   Accessed  Jan 3, 2012.

ETC (Enhancements, Training and Content)

Just as Readex is committed to providing its customers with the highest level of ongoing support and maintenance, it is also committed to ensuring that its definitive and comprehensive digital collections continue to grow through the addition of highly relevant new content and features. The ETC program enables you to be certain that you are providing your users and patrons with the most complete and robust digital edition of every Readex collection available at your institution. Through ETC, new content that brings significant enrichment and up-to-date interface functionalities and features will be added periodically. In this manner, ETC will continuously enrich your Readex collections by providing added value and content for your users and patrons for years to come.

The ETC releases for September through December 2011 were completed and included:

• Early American Newspapers: up to 245 additional issues in seven series
• U.S. Congressional Serial Set: House and Senate Journals from 1971, 92nd Congress, 1st session; House and Senate Journals from 1972, 92nd Congress, 2nd session
• FBIS Reports. Central Eurasia, 1993 (September, October, November, December ):  53 issues, 4937 pages, 9261 articles.

Releases will continue throughout 2012 on a monthly basis, including additional content for Early American Newspapers, U.S. Congressional Serial Set and Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports.

Questions or comments? Please feel free to post them here or email me directly at bkolcun@readex.com.

During the upcoming ALA Midwinter Conference, a special breakfast session—hosted by NewsBank and Readex—will focus on the evolution of news. This Sunday morning event will include the following presentations and a question session with the speakers:

The Research Power of Digitized Historical Newspapers

Michelle Harper, Senior Director, Product Management, Historical Newspapers and Periodicals, NewsBank

American newspapers have preserved essential records and detailed accounts of nearly every facet of local, regional and national life. Now searchable online, these diverse archives span centuries of social, cultural, political and local history. This presentation will explore how public and academic library patrons can benefit from a multitude of newly available newspaper archives for wide-ranging research.

The Future of Online Newspapers

Chuck Palsho, President, Media Services Division, NewsBank

What does the future of newspapers mean for libraries that provide access to news today? How will evolving trends in news production, publishing and consumption as well as new patterns in information economics impact news research? This presentation will cover the changes taking place in today’s newspaper industry.

To request an invitation to this breakfast event, which will run from 8:00 to 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 22, please contact your account representative or readexmarketing@readex.com.

February 27, 1923. Miss Alice Reighly, Anti-Flirt Club president, Wash., D.C.

1. Preserving the Library in the Digital Age

2. In Praise of Librarians and Archivists

3. Researching Nat Turner’s Slave Revolt in American (and African American) Newspapers

4. 100 Years Ago: A Look Back at 1911

5. Anti-Flirtation: There Ought to Be a Law

6. The Bomarc Missile Plutonium Spill Crisis: Exercises in Propaganda and Containment in 1960 and Beyond

7. “Information Wanted” Advertisements: Searching for African American Family Members

8. Law & Disorder: Urbana University Students Bring an 1857 Court Case to Life

9. Civil War Imagery on Clipper Ship Sailing Cards

10. Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire on its 100th Anniversary

Thank you for reading the Readex Blog. We want to hear from our readers. To leave comments, or to propose a topic for a future blog post, please use the space below or write to dloiterstein@readex.com.  To subscribe to the Readex Blog, please use our RSS feed. We’ll see you back here in 2012. Happy New Year!

The Morning Oregonian (Aug. 23, 1908)

It was 100 years ago this month that Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, reached the South Pole. For the first time, two expeditions were making attempts to get there in the same summer season. Amundsen had been a member of an earlier expedition to Antarctica and had led expeditions in the Arctic. Robert F. Scott had led an earlier British expedition to Antarctica, and he was back to make another attempt to reach the pole. Their expeditions and their leadership styles continue to fascinate us.

Here’s how a new business book excerpted by Fortune Magazine (Oct. 17, 2011), Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen, compares them:

Cleveland Plain Dealer (June 2, 1901)

“It’s a near-perfect matched pair. Here we have two expedition leaders—Roald Amundsen, the winner, and Robert Falcon Scott, the loser—of similar ages (39 and 43) and with comparable experience. Amundsen and Scott started their respective journeys for the Pole within days of each other, both facing a roundtrip of more than 1,400 miles into an uncertain and unforgiving environment, where temperatures could easily reach 20° below zero even during the summer, made worse by gale-force winds. And keep in mind, this was 1911. They had no means of modern communication to call back to base camp—no radio, no cellphones, no satellite links—and a rescue would have been highly improbable at the South Pole if they screwed up. One leader led his team to victory and safety. The other led his team to defeat and death.”

Macon Telegraph (July 14, 1903)

Here are some other differences: Amundsen had raised all his money and obtained his ship, the Fram, by saying he was going to the North Pole. Competing claims by two Americans to have reached the North Pole first changed his mind. Scott had publicized his expedition to the South in advance. Amundsen stopped along the way to send a brief telegraph to Scott, telling him that he too was heading south. This was seen as bad sportsmanship by many—it being Scott’s turn on the ice. Scott had been angry when a former subordinate, Ernest Shackleton, had started an expedition from a part of Antarctica that Scott considered “his.” Amundsen was also starting from that region.

Dallas Morning News (Oct. 3, 1910)

Amundsen had no scientists with him. Scott had a party of 38 men, many doing research. Amundsen barely took any photographs of his expedition. Scott had along a professional photographer. Amundsen had a single goal and achieved it. Scott’s group had many goals and succeeded in many of them. He only failed at the biggest one, as viewed at that time.

Yes, Amundsen took the Pole. Scott’s body wouldn’t be found until the following spring. Discovered with his remains were his diary and other final writings, which upon publication would move the English-speaking world. More importantly, found with his body was a fossil Scott had collected on his failed return from the Pole. This ancient specimen demonstrated that Antarctica had been part of a supercontinent, as comparable fossils were found in South America and Africa. Who can call that a failure?

Fort Worth Star-Telegram (May 7, 1911)

Grand Rapids Evening Press (Feb. 2, 1913)

It’s not surprising that students of leadership would try to glean lessons from these two expeditions, for all the reasons Collins and Hansen list. It is also not surprising that the reputations of each have ebbed and flowed over time. Ernest Shackleton, who launched an expedition in 1914 to cross Antarctica, is another explorer whose leadership skills are examined. Shackleton’s boat got trapped in the ice and was eventually crushed. He and the ship’s captain were able to get all the men to Elephant Island in small boats; then, with a smaller crew, sailed to South Georgia Island, landed on the uninhabited side and pioneered a new route across the mountain chain that formed the island’s spine. They were able to rescue all they had left behind.

Ernest Shackleton died at the beginning of a post-war return to Antarctica. He is buried on South Georgia Island. Roald Amundsen was on an airship lost during a rescue attempt in the North Polar region, and his body never found. It was estimated in 2001 that Robert Scott and his companion’s bodies now lie under 75 feet of ice.