Review of <i>Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood: Europe-Russia- Canada, 1525-1980</i> By James Urry
Bibliographic record
Abstract
For much of their history, Mennonites have tended to think of themselves as apolitical, quietistic folk-"the quiet in the land"-who eschew involvement in worldly affairs, especially those involving the use of any kind of "force," whether it be political, military, or even that of labor unions (such as strikes). Mennonite identity has been wrapped up in a biblical pacifism or "nonresistance" that goes back to the sixteenth century, and this has resulted in an often tense and ambiguous relationship with governments, as James Urry documents in Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood. The book is a deeply researched and sprawling account of the Dutch/North German stream of Mennonites' political identity and involvement as they migrated from Holland to Prussia and on to Imperial Russia before coming to North America (Urry focuses on those who settled in Manitoba). Part 1 is devoted to Mennonite political involvement in early modern Europe, which tended to take the form of seeking special privileges that allowed Mennonites to live in a relatively undisturbed fashion, yet without many rights. The narrative is full of historical detail and at times reads like a general history of European politics, as Urry strives to place Mennonites into their historical context. He documents Mennonites' evolving stance on government and their involvement in Dutch and German politics, including the Dutch "Patriot Movement" and the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848. Yet as Urry himself notes, "For 300 years or more, many Mennonite communities in Europe lived on the fringes of legality, outside the political system, and beyond the limited jural protections provided to the confessional subjects of early modern states."
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.022 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".