The development and completion of The Year of the Lash has been a shared journey. This project would not have come to fruition without the initial support of several faculty at the University of Texas at Austin. I owe a special thanks to Aline Helg and Toyin Falola, who shepherded the dissertation phase of this study and continued to make suggestions as I converted the work into a book manuscript. I would also like to thank Jonathan Brown, Ginny Burnett, Susan Deans-Smith, Myron Gutmann, James Sidbury, and Pauline Strong for their guidance and support.