GENERAL ISSUES
SOCIAL THEORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
Bai, Tongdong. Against Political Equality. The Confucian Case. [The Princeton – China Series.] Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2020. xxiv, 315 pp. $39.95; £34.00.
Is there a viable political alternative to liberal democracy? In this book, Professor Tongdong Bai argues that domestic governance influenced by Confucianism can embrace the liberal aspects of democracy along with democratic ideas of equal opportunities and government accountability. While most democratic thinkers focus on strengthening equality, Confucianism attributes greater political decision-making power to those with the moral, practical, and intellectual abilities to care for the people. The author applies his views to the international realm by supporting a hierarchical order based on how humanely each state treats its own and other peoples and on the principle of international interventions, with humane responsibilities prevailing over sovereignty.
Carver, Terrell. Engels before Marx. [Marx, Engels, and Marxisms.] Palgrave Macmillan, Cham 2020. xiii, 111 pp. € 54.49. (E-book: € 42.79.)
This book examines the life and works of Friedrich Engels during the decade before he entered a political partnership with Karl Marx. Professor Carver reveals the multifaceted and ambitious character of young Friedrich's achievements. At the time that he accepted Marx's invitation to co-author a short political satire, Engels was better known and more accomplished, having published many articles on different subjects in both German and English. He had written a critique of political economy and published a pioneering and substantial study of working-class conditions in an industrializing economy. The author discloses Engels as a key voice in the liberal-democratic, constitutional, and nation-building revolutionism of the 1830s and 1840s.
History after Hobsbawm. Writing the Past for the Twenty-First Century. Ed. by Arnold, John H., Hilton, Matthew and Rüger, Jan. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2018. xi, 332 pp. Ill. Maps. £79.00.
This volume brings together historians from across the globe to ask what being an historian should mean in their respective fields of study. Historians in general have a desire to entertain and to inform, but how should the study of history contribute to the wider debate? The seventeen chapters in this volume assess the state of the field in areas that broadly represent Hobsbawm's interests. They are overviews, mixed with primary research, of some of the recent historiographical developments that aim to understand the past within the present. They cover three areas that highlight Hobsbawm's lasting influence: the history of nations and empires, the history of economies, and the history of popular politics.
Lenoir, Hugues. Éducateurs libertaires et socialistes. Convergence des pédagogies libertaires avec les courants de l'éducationnisme socialiste. Atelier de création libertaire, Lyon 2020. 274 pp. € 14.00.
This portrait gallery is centred around the influence of libertarian pedagogy and convergences with other currents of socialist educationalism on ideas in anarchism on education. The author aims to discover the place of the educational question in the discussions and theories of progressives, socialists, and libertarians. The book is divided into three parts. The first, “Les précurseurs”, highlights four pioneers of libertarian education. Part Two is about five anarchist educationists and libertarian pedagogy, and in Part Three Sorel and Jaures, educationists and socialists, are covered. Lenoir concludes that children's freedom and education appears to be one of the levers in all left theories, with nuances in variation, for the realization of a better society.
Löwy, Michael. Rosa Luxemburg. Der zündende Funke der Revolution. (Transl. from French by Münster, Arno.) VSA, Hamburg 2020 (2018). 142 pp. € 14.80.
This book brings together previously published essays highlighting several aspects of the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg. Dr Löwy, who makes no secret of his personal sympathy and commitment to these ideas, has compiled articles that examine the philosophical dimension of her writings. He refers in particular to her writings on socialism, democracy, imperialism, colonial peoples, branches of history, dialectics of theory and practice, and of science and social engagement. He presents her work as a contribution to the renewal of Marxism while elaborating on how she has enriched philosophy of history, politics, and Marxist epistemology.
Özkazanç-Pan, Banu. Transnational Migration and the New Subjects of Work. Transmigrants, Hybrids and Cosmopolitans. Bristol University Press, Bristol 2019. vi, 167 pp. £75.00. (Paper, E-book: £26.99.)
In an increasingly globalized world, mobility is a new defining feature of our lives and work experiences. Global migration trends, both historic and contemporary, have raised questions about how societies should function, and what the ethical concerns and considerations should be in relation to society, when nations have come about through battles, guided by particular narratives of history and myths of homogeneity. Many questions remain about how mobility impacts the very institutions of society, as well as its impact on organizations and people. Bringing together insights from the fields of transmigration studies and organization studies, Professor Özkazanç-Pan offers new frameworks for studying people on-the-move while considering the growing inequality associated with work in changing societies.
Paisley, Fiona and Scully, Pamela. Writing Transnational History. [Writing History.] Bloomsbury Academic, London 2019. 245 pp. £45.50. (Paper: £13.99; E-book: £9.89.)
Over the past two decades, transnational history has become an established term to describe approaches to writing world or global history that emphasize movement, dynamism, and diversity. The authors investigate the emergence of the “transnational” approach as well as its parameters and limitations, focusing in particular on the contributions of postcolonial and feminist studies in reformulating transnational historiography as a move beyond the national to one addressing the movement of people and the contributions of the margins. The book ends with a consideration of developing approaches such as translocalism, contemplating the new kinds of history that need to be written now that the transnational perspective has become widespread.
Somin, Ilya. Free to Move. Foot Voting and Political Freedom. Oxford University Press, New York [etc.] 2020. xi, 249 pp. £39.99.
People can vote with their feet by making decisions about whether to migrate, where to live, and what to purchase or support in the private sector. Professor Somin explains how these decisions have important virtues in common and can be mutually reinforcing. He addresses a variety of common objections to expanded migration rights, including claims that the “self-determination” of natives requires giving them the power to exclude migrants, and argues that migration is likely to have harmful side effects, demonstrating how consistent commitment to such theories would also justify severe restrictions on domestic freedom of movement. That implication is an additional reason to be sceptical of these rationales for exclusion.
Swain, Dan. None So Fit to Break the Chains. Marx's Ethics of Self-Emancipation. [Historical Materialism Book Series, Vol. 194.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2019. vii, 224 pp. € 110.00. (E-book: € 110.00.)
In this book, Dr Swain stresses the principles of self-emancipation, using them as a guiding thread to interpret a number of different aspects in Marx's ethical thought. After offering an interpretation of Marx's conception of freedom, and why capitalism fails to live up to it, the author addresses self-emancipation, tracing the origins of this idea in Marx's thought. He considers the various ways in which Marx conceived of the political sphere, and why he believed that such engagement was essential for emancipation movements. Highlighting self-emancipation offers new perspectives on existing debates in the interpretation of Marx, such as the meanings of alienation, exploitation, and utopianism.
Towards a Spatial Social Policy. Bridging the Gap between Geography and Social Policy. Ed. by Whitworth, Adam. Policy Press, Bristol 2019. viii, 218 pp. Maps. £75.00. (Paper, E-book: £24.99.)
Bringing together experts from social policy and human geography, this collection of ten essays illuminates the myriad of ways that human geography offers rich conceptual, empirical, and methodological insight into the spatialities of policy scholarship, practice, and experience. The book has three sections. Section One is focused on drawing out alternative theoretical ideas within human geography. Section Two highlights the relevance of exploring the interface between geography and policy scholarship across mainstream policy debates. In Section Three, the focus shifts to the value that the spatial dimension adds to social policy scholarship and practice, as well as to the use of spatial methodological perspectives and techniques in human geography.
HISTORY
Besky, Sarah. Tasting Qualities. The Past and Future of Tea. [Ethnographic Inquiry in the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 5.] University of California Press, Oakland (CA) 2020. xi, 236 pp. Ill. $85.00; £70.00. (Paper, E-book: $29.95; £25.00.)
What is the role of quality in contemporary capitalism? How can a product as ordinary as a teabag be judged for its quality? In this book, Professor Besky addresses these questions by discussing spatial arrangements, moving outward in space and time. Pairing rich historical data with ethnographic research among agronomists, she begins in an Indian tea house (where experts taste and appraise mass-market black tea) and broadens her research to traders, tea plantation workers, the laboratory, and the auction. The author shows how the meaning of quality has been subject to almost continuous experimentation and debate throughout the history of the tea industry.
Between East and South. Spaces of Interaction in the Globalizing Economy of the Cold War. Ed. by Calori, Anna et al. [Dialectics of the Global, Vol. 3.] De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2019. x, 243 pp. € 81.95. (E-book: € 81.95.)
During the Cold War, alternative globalization projects emerged. Socialist Eastern Europe and left-leaning countries in the Global South maintained close economic relations. The two worlds traded and exchanged know-how and technology. This book focuses on the question of whether East–South interactions constituted a genuine socialist globalization or were part of one (dominantly capitalist) globalization process. Specific spaces of interaction were taken as starting points to approach globalizing projects of socialist countries. The nine contributions discuss the rationales of the protagonists oscillating between internationalist socialist solidarity and economic profitability in the terms of capitalist globalization.
Boris, Eileen. Making the Woman Worker. Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919–2019. Oxford University Press, New York [etc.] 2019. xx, 344 pp. Ill. £22.99.
Founded in 1919, the International Labour Organization (ILO) establishes labour standards and produces knowledge about the world of work. In this book, Professor Boris analyses three ways in which the ILO has classified the division of labour: between women and men from 1919 to 1958; between women in the Global South and the West from 1955 to 1996; and between the earnings and care needs of all workers from the 1990s to the present. As the author shows, the ILO's treatment of women is a window into the modern history of labour. The historic relegation of feminized labour to the part-time, short-term, and low-waged prefigured the future organization of work. See also Sibylle Marti's review in this volume, pp. 527–530.
Brunton, Finn. Digital Cash. The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2019. 255 pp. $26.95; £22.00. (Paper: $17.95; £14.99.)
Bitcoin may appear to be a revolutionary form of digital cash. In fact, it is the best-known recent experiment in a long line of similar efforts dating back to the 1970s. In this book, Professor Brunton reveals how technological utopians and political radicals created experimental money to bring about their visions of the future, such as protecting privacy or bringing down governments, preparing for the apocalypse, or launching a civilization of innovation and abundance. The author explores the challenges these innovators faced, such as creating an apparently trivial object that is easy to transact over networked computers but impossible to forge or duplicate.
Evans, Richard J. Eric Hobsbawm. A Life in History. Oxford University Press, New York [etc.] 2019. xiii, 785 pp. Ill. $39.95.
In this extensive biography of Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012), Professor Evans aims to offer a comprehensive overview of his life and work and his extraordinary influence on the practice of social history and historiography and on the political debates of his time. Based on the available, unpublished material from Hobsbawm's estate, the author places Hobsbawm's writings not only in their political and historiographical context, analysing how his lifelong adherence to Marxism and communism was fundamental to his work, but also focuses on the materiality of his subject's life. See also David Mayer's book review in this volume, pp. 530–533.
Lemire, Beverly. Global Trade and the Transformation of Consumer Cultures. The Material World Remade, c. 1500–1820. [New Approaches to Economic and Social History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2018. xviii, 352 pp. Ill. Maps. £69.99. (Paper: £22.99; E-book: $24.00.)
The oceanic explorations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries led to changing consumer culture globally, as demonstrated by new types of consumables, new life rituals, and material cosmopolitanism. As the connections were extended and colonial systems were established, the world's indigenes and colonized were enmeshed in new geopolitical structures embedded in global networks. Professor Lemire explores the rise of key commodities (e.g. cloth and clothing, fur and tobacco) that reshaped people's habits, social practices and material expectations in different parts of the world. The author uncovers social, economic, and cultural forces shaping consumer behaviour, as well as the ways in which consumer goods shaped and defined empires and communities.
Trecker, Max. Red Money for the Global South. East–South Economic Relations in the Cold War. [Routledge Studies in Modern History.] Routledge, London 2020. x, 243 pp. £120.00. (E-book: £33.29.)
In this book, the relationship of the East with the South after decolonization is focused, in particular, on the economic motives of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). During the Cold War, the CMEA served as a forum for discussions on common policy initiatives inside the “Eastern Bloc” and for international interactions. Dr Trecker analyses the economic relationship of the East with the “new” South by examining the frequently intertwined economic and political motives of the concerned parties for cooperating. The files from CMEA negotiations visualize the web of intrabloc relations and reveal how mutual cooperation between East and South evolved over time.
Transatlantic Trade and Global Cultural Transfers since 1492. More than Commodities. Ed. by Kaller, Martina and Jacob, Frank. [Routledge Studies in Modern History.] Routledge, London 2020. viii, 218 pp. Ill. £96.00. (E-book: £35.99.)
Access to new plants and consumer goods such as sugar, tobacco, and chocolate, changed the way people lived from the beginning of the sixteenth century onwards. The nine contributions in this volume highlight the social and cultural impact of the New World on Europe and vice versa, revealing the interrelationship between the two continents, and how new consumer habits were instigated by people around the Atlantic. Sections One and Two deal with the changes in food and consumer habits in Europe as a consequence of the import of commodities from the New World. Section Three is about transfer of knowledge and representation of status through displays of plants from the New World in European gardens.
COMPARATIVE HISTORY
Alternative Globalizations. Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World. Ed. by Mark, James, Kalinovsky, Artemy M., and Marung, Steffi. Indiana University Press, Bloomington (IN) 2020. vii, 341 pp. $100.00. (Paper: $48.00; E-book: $24.99.)
The focus on the West with respect to globalization overlooks the wide variety of globalizing projects that emerged in the socialist world as a consequence of the end of the European empires. In this collection of fourteen essays, alternative forms of globalization are explored across the socialist world during the Cold War. Gathering the work of scholars of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China, this volume addresses new relationships and interconnections in the economic, political, developmental, and cultural field arising between a decolonizing world in the post-war period and an increasingly internationalist eastern bloc after the death of Stalin. In many cases, the legacies of these former globalizing impulses from the socialist world still exist today.
Apprenticeship in Early Modern Europe. Ed. by Prak, Maarten and Wallis, Patrick. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2020. xii, 322 pp. Ill. Maps. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)
Apprenticeship was a key ingredient in two major developments that altered Europe during the three centuries before industrialization. The first was economic, as European crafts were transforming the quality and quantity of their output; the second was population growth, especially in the towns, where apprenticeships emerged as one of the main gateways into urban privileges and duties. The ten contributions here, covering Spain, Italy, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, England, and France, draw on major new datasets. Identifying the presence or absence of regional or national differences and distinctive elements of the structures of local or national apprenticeship, they provide input for debates about the role of training in economic development and economic divergence.
An Economic History of Famine Resilience. Ed. by Dijkman, Jessica and van Leeuwen, Bas. [Routledge Explorations in Economic History, 84.] Routledge, New York 2020. xi, 276 pp. Ill. Maps. £120.00. (E-book: £44.99.)
Food crises have always tested societies. This volume discusses societal resilience to food crises, examining the responses and strategies deployed to cope with reductions in food supply in various parts of the world over the past two millennia. Societal resilience to food shortages is unravelled from the angle of the three main coordination mechanisms that allowed people to allocate or share resources: the state; the market; and civil society. The thirteen contributions show that it was often a combined effort, and that variations between regions and periods were significant. The long-term, comparative perspective of the volume highlights and explains these variations and discusses their effects on societal resilience. See also Matteo Di Tullio's review in this volume, pp. 533–535.
The Global Bourgeoisie. The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire. Ed. by Dejung, Christof, Motahedel, David and Osterhammel, Jurgen. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2019. xv, 375 pp. Ill. $99.95; £82.00. (Paper: $29.95; £25.00.)
This book provides a comparative view of middle-class and bourgeois cultures that emerged across the globe during the age of empire. The sixteen contributions demonstrate that the making of the middle classes across the world can be explained only by considering the increasing worldwide circulation of people, ideas, and goods. Grouped into six thematic sections, the essays cover the political history of middle-class formation, the impact of imperial rule on the colonial middle class, the role of capitalism, the influence of religion, the obstacles to the middle class beyond the Western and colonial world, and reflections on the formation of bourgeois cultures and global social history.
Kingston-Mann, Esther. Women, Land Rights, and Rural Development. How Much Land Does a Woman Need? [Routledge Research in Gender and History, Vol. 30.] Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York [etc.] 2018. xii, 174 pp. Maps. £100.00. (Paper, E-book: £29.59.)
This book focuses on female economic agency in rural development and presents in reciprocal comparison the cases of seventeenth-century England, twentieth-century Russia and the Soviet Union, and twentieth-century Kenya, as their top-down modernization projects were implemented in similar fashions, particularly with respect to women. In this study, women's labour and land claims are the lens through which both female agency and delegitimization of women's land claims become more visible. Introducing rural women and their innovations into male-centred narratives of economic history, Professor Kingston-Mann lays the foundation for a more demographically balanced and realistic understanding of rural behaviour and rural development.
The Rise of Food Charity in Europe. Ed. by Lambie-Mumford, Hannah and Silvasti, Tiina. Policy Press, Bristol [etc.] 2020. xviii, 252 pp. £75.00. (E-book: £26.99.)
As the demand for food banks and other emergency food charities continues to rise across Europe, this volume explores the roots and consequences of this phenomenon. The eight contributions provide case studies from the United Kingdom, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain, each considering the history and driving political and social forces behind the rise of food charity and the influence of changing welfare states. Based on empirical evidence, the authors relate the rise of food charity to welfare state traditions, examining where responsibilities for ensuring adequate access to food lie, and the impact of changing social policies on recent growth in the modern manifestation of food charity.
Women Warriors and National Heroes. Global Histories. Ed. by Cothran, Boyd, Judge, Joan, and Shubert, Adrian. Bloomsbury Academic, London [etc.] 2020. xi, 260 pp. Ill. £76.50. (E-book: £61.20.)
This volume presents women warriors and hero cults from various cultures since the early modern period. Exploring issues of violence, gender fluidity, memory, and nation-building, the authors discuss how these real or imagined female figures were constructed and deployed in different national and transnational contexts, describing how women warriors and their stories came about, considering the issue of the violent woman, exploring how these female figures were gendered, and highlighting the fate of women warriors who survive. The twelve chapters illustrate the ways in which female fighters have figured in nation-building stories and in ordering or re-ordering gender politics, and give the history of women fighters a critical edge.
CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
Autoritärer Populismus. Hrsg. von Carina Book [et al.]. Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 2020. 189 pp. € 22.00.
The transformation of liberal-democratic states into authoritarian ones is advancing worldwide. Drawing on the theoretical concept of authoritarian populism, the twelve contributions in this volume show the causes, backgrounds, and consequences of this development. The empirical case studies on Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Brazil, and Germany focus on the areas of democracy, gender relations, and class, demonstrating that the goals of authoritarian populism include (re-)establishment of a hierarchical and discriminatory society (e.g. normalization of racism, re-masculinization of politics), opposition of education and democratic compromises (e.g. by actively promoting resentments and fears), and aiming for one authoritarian state, undermining the foundations of liberal democracy and replacing them with plebiscitary authoritarianism.
Penser les migrations pour repenser la société. Sous la dir. Lacroix, de Thomas et al. [Collection Migrations.] Presses Universitaires Français Rabelais, Tours 2020 316 pp. Ill. Maps. € 25.00.
International migration contributes to a definition of state and forms of citizenship. From the definition of citizenship to artistic expressions, from university recruitment channels to relations between workers, from management of public spaces and housing to market practices in large cities, this collection of works shows that there is no dimension of social life that does not interact with migratory phenomena. Conversely, the practices of migrants are dependent on the constraints and opportunities they encounter in the spaces they cross. The sixteen contributions in this book illustrate how migratory studies shed light on contemporary societies, from their political construction to daily social practices, initiating dialogue between specialists in migration and social sciences.
CONTINENTS AND COUNTRIES
AFRICA
Mozambique
Guthrie, Zachary Kagan. Bound for Work. Labor, Mobility, and Colonial Rule in Central Mozambique, 1940–1965. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville (VA) [etc.] 2018. xi, 225 pp. Ill. Maps. $45.00. (E-book: $45.00.)
This book examines Mozambican workers during the 1940s and 1950s, as they moved between different types of labour across Mozambique, Rhodesia, and South Africa. Professor Guthrie looks at the forms of migrant labour that individuals engaged in under more or less coercive circumstances over the course of their lives. The author highlights the importance of workers’ choices, explaining why people moved in the ways they did, how they calculated the benefits of one destination over another, and how they decided when circumstances necessitated another move. His attention to mobility gives a clear view of the power mechanisms available to colonial authorities, as well as limitations on their effectiveness. See also Filipa Ribeiro da Silva's review in this volume, pp. 536–537.
Namibia
Muschalek, Marie. Violence as Usual. Policing and the Colonial State in German Southwest Africa. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2019. xi, 255 pp. Ill. $49.95. (E-book: $24.99.)
Violence was a quotidian part of life in German Southwest Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. This book, replete with anecdotes of everyday experiences of both policemen and colonized people and settlers, uncovers the workings of a powerful state built thanks to improvisation by low-level state representatives. Dr Muschalek portrays the daily deeds of African and German men who were members of the colonial police force, demonstrating how this practice of violent improvisation was used to regulate the labour market. The state, represented by its policemen, was crucial in fine-tuning labour coercion by establishing a moral economy of normalized violence that was economically viable. See also Reinhart Kössler's review in this volume, pp. 537–540.
Sierra Leone
Munro, Paul. Colonial Seeds in African Soil. A Critical History of Forest Conservation in Sierra Leone. [The Environment in History. International Perspectives, Vol. 18.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2020. ix, 201 pp. Ill. Maps. $120.00; £89.00. (E-book: $29.95.)
Empire forestry, the forest management practice that emerged in the nineteenth century, reshaped the landscapes of colonies around the world. In this book, the complex forest conservation history of Sierra Leone is unravelled. Dr Munro brings together two threads. The first is the notion that colonial foresters were early environmentalists, establishing institutions, laws, and philosophies that would become a critical foundation for the environmental movement emerging in the latter part of the twentieth century. The second thread portrays colonial foresters as a far more destructive force, arguing that they misunderstood and misread local landscapes, dismissed existing knowledge systems as ignorant, and devised policies that negatively impacted local populations and environments.
South Africa
Heer, Barbara. Cities of Entanglements. Social Life in Johannesburg and Maputo through Ethnographic Comparison. Transcript, Bielefeld 2019. 337 pp. Ill. € 44.99. (Open Access.)
This comparative ethnography of two African cities, Maputo and Johannesburg, presents a narrative about social life in cities often described as sharply divided. Based on studies of the daily lives in a township and a suburb of Johannesburg, and in a barrio and an elite neighbourhood in Maputo, this dissertation analyses the relations between domestic workers and their employers, failed attempts by urban elites to close off their neighbourhoods, and entanglements emerging in religious spaces and in shopping malls. By exploring diverse spaces of encounter, Dr Heer produces a coherent account of the processes that constitute and transform these urban spaces.
Marx, Christoph. Trennung und Angst. Hendrik Verwoerd und die Gedankenwelt der Apartheid. [Studien zur Internationalen Geschichte, Bd. 50.] De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin [etc.] 2020. ix, 615 pp. € 69.95.
South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd (1958–1966) is considered to be an architect of Apartheid. In reality, his strength was primarily bringing the ideas of others about racial segregation into an apparently coherent and logical system. In this study, Verwoerd's academic career (including a doctorate in psychology) is linked to his political career, visualizing the continuities in his ideas. Based on extensive archival research, Professor Marx focuses on the political ideas of Verwoerd in his attempts to develop South Africa into a major regional power and on the progressive international political isolation of South Africa, which resulted from the repression of political opponents and the black majority of the population.
AMERICA
Bigelow, Allison Margaret. Mining Language. Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World. Omohundro Institute of Early American History Culture, Williamsburg (VA) 2020. xix, 354 pp. Ill. Maps. $39.95. (E-book: $29.99.)
Mineral wealth from the Americas underwrote and undergirded European colonization of the New World; American gold and silver enriched Spain, funded the slave trade, and spurred Spain's northern European competitors to become Atlantic powers. In this study of the technical and scientific vocabularies that miners developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as they engaged with metallic materials, Professor Bigelow documents the intellectual contributions by Indigenous and African miners to the engine of European colonialism. By carefully parsing writings of well-known and lesser-known writers, she uncovers the ways in which Indigenous and African metallurgists aided or resisted imperial mining endeavours, shaped critical scientific practices, and offered imaginative visions of metalwork.
Food, texts, and cultures in Latin America and Spain. Ed. by Climent-Espino, Rafael and Gómez-Bravo, Ana M.. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville (TN) 2020. 372 pp. $34.95.
The fourteen essays in this volume showcase the potential of a food lens within colonial studies, ethnic and racial studies, as well as studies on gender and sexuality, nationalisms and nation-building, and identity. The contributions span from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. Besides chapters exploring the importance of cookbooks as texts and as reflections of material culture, topics discussed in the volume include food hierarchies and their relations to New World and Old World taxonomies, the cultural, symbolic, and economic significance of key foods such as maize, hunger and excesses, and food as an important factor in nation-building, while emphasizing the positive or negative valuation of foods associated with racialized minorities.
Latin America and the Global Cold War. Ed. by Field, Thomas C. Jr., Krepp, Stella, and Pettinà, Vanni. [The New Cold War History.] University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC) 2020. xii, 422 pp. Ill. Maps. $39.95. (E-book: $29.99.)
Through fourteen chapters, based on newly available sources, this book analyses Latin America's encounters with Africa, Asia, and the Communist world by placing the region in meaningful dialogue with the wider Global South, articulating their essentially anti-imperialist alternatives to globalization. Part One (Third World Nationalism) offers e.g. an analysis of early Cold War relations between Brazil and India, revealing the proscribed political possibilities of moderate Third World nationalism while touching on concepts of race, South–South ties, and contested claims to Third World modernity. One of the essays in Part Two (Third World Internationalism) analyses how race and language both offered opportunities and created obstacles for transnational anti-imperialist solidarity in the interwar Caribbean.
Offner, Amy C. Sorting Out the Mixed Economy. The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas. [Histories of Economic Life.] Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) 2019. xv, 381 pp. Ill. Maps. $39.95; £34.00.
In the years after 1945, US advisors swept into Latin America with dreams of building a new economic order and lifting the Third World out of poverty. In Colombia, Latin American and US advisors decentralized the state, privatized public functions, and launched austere social welfare programmes. By the 1960s, they had remade the country's housing project, river valleys, and universities. When the Johnson administration launched the War on Poverty, the United States had multiplied the uses of austerity and for-profit contracting within their own welfare state. In this book, Professor Offner shows the entanglement of American societies and the contradictory promises of mid-century state building, offering a new account of the origins of neoliberalism.
Brazil
Grinberg, Keila. A Black Jurist in a Slave Society. Antonio Pereira Rebouças and the Trials of Brazilian Citizenship. Transl. [from Portuguese] by Kirstin M. McGuire. Forew. by Barbara Weinstein. [Latin America in Translation /en Traducción/em Tradução.] University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC) 2019 (2002). xxii, 201 pp. $90.00. (Paper: $29.95; E-book: $22.99.)
Antonio Pereira Rebouças (1798–1880), an Afro-Brazilian specialist in civil law, played a key role in the Brazilian struggle to define citizenship. He explained why blacks fought stridently for their own inclusion in society, but also implicitly embraced an ethic of silence on race more broadly. Professor Grinberg argues that while this silence was crucial for defining spaces of social mobility and respectability, it was also stifling and, as such, was significant in quelling political mobilization based on racial identity. Rebouças's commitment to liberal ideals also exemplifies this contradiction: though he rejected movements that were grounded in racial political mobilization, he was consistently treated as potentially dangerous, because he was of African origin.
Klein, Herbert S. and Luna, Francisco Vidal. Modern Brazil. A Social History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2020. xv, 419 pp. £79.99. (Paper: £26.99; E-book: $28.00.)
This book presents a narrative of social change in Brazil, documenting its transition from a predominantly rural and illiterate society in 1950 to an urban, modern, literate society in the twenty-first century. Tracing this radical evolution reveals how industrialization brought about a new labour force, how demographic shifts reorganized the family and social attitudes, and how urban life emerged. Professors Klein and Vidal Luna also examine changes in social stratification and mobility, the decline of regional disparities, education, social welfare, race, and gender. Drawing on extensive quantitative research and providing a comprehensive survey of the secondary literature, this book is a modern social history that offers a macro perspective on societal changes.
Miñana, Rogelio. Living Quixote. Performative Activism in Contemporary Brazil and the Americas. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville (TN) 2020. ix, 250 pp. Ill. $34.95.
The 400th anniversary of Cervantes's book Don Quixote gave rise to worldwide celebrations that highlighted its ongoing cultural and ideological relevance. Professor Miñana examines Quixote-inspired activist efforts at the ground level in political and social justice movements in Brazil. Part One of his book provides the historical and cultural context to contemporary Brazilian appropriations of Cervantes's novel, while in Part Two Brazilian stage adaptations of Don Quixote are the main focus. Part Three probes the cultural strategies deployed by Quixote-inspired NGOs against the marginalization of children and youth. The main objectives of the author are to add an American interpretation of Don Quixote and to recast the concepts of performative activism, closely aligned with the grand Latin American national narratives and mass public protests.
Chile
Harmer, Tanya. Beatriz Allende. A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC) 2020. Ill. Maps. $34.95. (E-book: $26.99.)
This biography portrays Beatriz Allende (1942–1977), revolutionary doctor and daughter of Chile's socialist president Salvador Allende. Inspired by the Cuban Revolution, Allende and her generation drove political campaigns, university reform, public health programmes, internationalist guerrilla insurgencies, and government strategies. Drawing on private papers as well as interviews, Professor Harmer connects the private with the political as she reveals the human dimensions of radical upheaval. Exiled to Havana after Chile's right-wing military coup, Allende worked to oppose dictatorship back home. The interviews illustrate the consequences of the coup for the Chilean Left, the realities of everyday life in Havana, and the unceasing demands of solidarity work for Allende and her generation.
Hurtado-Torres, Sebastián. The Gathering Storm. Eduardo Frei's Revolution in Liberty and Chile's Cold War. [The United States in the World.] Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) [etc.] 2020. xiv, 253 pp. Ill. $49.95. (E-book: $24.95.)
In this book, Professor Hurtado-Torres examines the involvement of the United States in Chile during the Eduardo Frei administration (1964–1970) and shows how the engagement between the two nations deepened political polarization in Chile. The author portrays the diplomatic and economic relationship between Chile and the United States, departing from the most militant and conservative interpretations of US foreign policy towards Latin America. Describing the partnership between Frei's government and that of Lyndon B. Johnson, he demonstrates that the US Embassy in Santiago was recognized by all parties to be the centre of the modernizing agenda and the practical work of the Alliance for Progress.
Rodríguez, Juan Pablo. Resisting Neoliberal Capitalism in Chile. The Possibility of Social Critique. [Marx, Engels, and Marxisms.] Palgrave Macmillan, Cham 2020. xv, 214 pp. € 76.29. (E-book: € 58.84.)
This book explores the relationship between recent theoretical debates around the fate of critique of neo-liberal capitalism and critical theory on the one hand, and the critical theories generated in and by social movements in Chile on the other hand. By taking the idea of social critique as a field that encompasses both critical social theories and the practices of social criticism by social movements, Dr Rodríguez explores how the student and Pobladores movements map, resist, and contest neo-liberal capitalism in commodified areas such as education and housing in Chile, one of the first “neo-liberal experiments” in Latin America and the world.
Peru
Drinot, Paolo. The Sexual Question. A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s–1950s. [Cambridge Latin American Studies, 119.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2020. xv, 313 pp. Ill. Maps. £74.99. (Paper: £23.99; E-book: $26.00.)
The opening of Lima's red-light district in 1928 marked the culmination of regulations to control the spread of venereal disease through medical policing of female prostitutes. Closing the district in 1956 was arguably the peak of abolitionism, a transnational movement originating in the 1860s, which advocated that regulation was not only ineffective, but also immoral. Professor Drinot charts this process of regulation and abolition, uncovering the ideas, policies, and actors shaping debates on prostitution in Lima and beyond. Drinot shows how the history of prostitution sheds light on the interplay of gender and sexuality, medicine and public health, and nation-building and state formation in Peru.
United States of America
Balay, Anne. Semi Queer, Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Drivers, Black Truck. University of North Carolina Press (NC), 2018. 214 pp. Ill. $27.95. (Paper: $24.95; E-book: $19.99.)
Long-haul trucking is linked to almost every industry in America. Dr Balay sheds light on the gritty, inspiring, and often devastating oral histories of gay, transsexual, and minority truck drivers. A licenced truck driver herself, Balay discovers that for people subjected to prejudice, hatred, and violence, trucking can provide an opportunity for safety, welcome isolation, and a chance to be themselves. In the book, she traces an imaginary truck run, alternating between driving and stopping. Chapters about truck stops, customers, and accidents alternate with chapters about severe weather conditions, excessive regulations, and racism. The narratives of minority and queer truckers underscore the working-class struggle to earn a living while preserving safety, dignity, and selfhood.
Chase, Robert T. We Are Not Slaves. State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC) 2020. xii, 525 pp. Ill. Maps. $37.50. (E-book: $26.99.)
In the 1940s, Texas announced reforms to the southern prisons, where conditions were deplorable and prisoners were “slaves of the state”. Presented as modern, efficient, and disciplined, inside prisons, however, reformers’ efforts had only made things worse. Drawing from three decades of legal documents compiled by prisoners, Professor Chase narrates the struggle to change prison from within. A prisoner coalition of Chicano Movement and Black Power organizations forged an alliance with the NAACP to contest the constitutionality of Texas prisons. These insurgents won legal victories, but their movement was overwhelmed by the increasing militarization of the prison system and empowerment of white supremacist gangs that, together, declared war on prison organizers.
Churchill, Robert H. The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2020. xiii, 256 pp. Maps. £74.99. (Paper: £19.99; E-book: $24.00.)
The arrival of fugitives and slave catchers in the North instigated violent confrontations that left participants and local residents enraged and embittered. Professor Churchill places the Underground Railroad in the context of a shifting landscape, where clashing norms of violence shaped the activities of slave catchers and of the fugitives and abolitionists who defied them. The author maps four distinct cultures of violence: one that prevailed in the South and three that were more common in separate regions of the North. Slave catchers brought with them a Southern culture of violence that sanctioned white brutality as a means of enforcing racial hierarchy, but their arrival triggered vastly different violent reactions in the three regions of the North.
Goldfield, Michael. The Southern Key. Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s. Oxford University Press, New York [etc.] 2020. ix, 416 pp. £32.99.
The key to understanding the last seventy-five years of American political development lies in the contests between labour and capital in the American South during the 1930s and 1940s. Drawing on archival material, Professor Goldfield charts labour activism in four major industries (textiles, timber, coal mining, and steel) and then examines struggles by labour organizations in the region. The author shows how the broad-based failure to organize the South during this period not only contributed to the exploitation of race and right-wing demagoguery in the South, but also led to a decline in unionization, growing economic inequality, and an inability to confront and dismantle white supremacy throughout the United States.
La Chapelle, Peter. I'd Fight the World. A Political History of Old-time, Hillbilly, and Country Music. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (IL) [etc.] 2019. 346 pp. Ill. $60.00. (Paper: $20.00; E-book: $18.00.)
In the twentieth century, country music was not just a campaign tool but a valuable political asset and, at times, a central component of a politician's image and identity. In this book, Professor La Chapelle traces the deep bonds between country music and politics. Some performers and politicians advocated for the poor and dispossessed, while others voiced religious and racial anger. All shared a belief that stylistic choices in music could be used to establish authenticity. Politicians who used fiddlers and cowboy and hillbilly bands to attract crowds signalled that they were themselves political outsiders and thus well equipped to understand the problems of common people.
Lipotkin, Lazar. The Russian Anarchist Movement in North America. Transl. and Ed. by Malcolm Archibald. The Black Cat Press, Edmonton 2019. xi, 292 pp. Ill. $24.95.
The failed Russian Revolution of 1905–1906 instigated a wave of emigration from the Russian Empire to North America. Entranced by the prospects of revolution in their homeland, many of these immigrants embraced ideas of anarchism and formed anarchist groups with fellow Russian expatriates. These groups continued to grow after the Revolution of 1917. In the so-called Palmer reaction of 1919–1920, most of these groups were destroyed by the US and Canadian governments, with activists experiencing arrests and deportations. The surviving movement went underground and emerged only later in the form of educational, cultural, and mutual aid societies. Lipotkin, a long-time activist of the movement, describes its rise, fall, and long afterlife. See also Kenyon Zimmer's review in this volume, pp. 540–542.
Mandell, Daniel R. The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America, 1600–1870. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore (MD) 2020. xii, 314 pp. Ill. $49.95.
Although modern-day Americans believe that their country was founded on a person's right to acquire and control property, Professor Mandell argues that the United States was originally deeply influenced by the belief that maintaining relative equality of wealth is essential for cultivating a successful republican government. Exploring the origins and evolution of this ideal, the author shows how, during the Revolutionary War, concerns about economic equality helped drive wage and price controls, while afterwards Americans sought ways to maintain equality against the danger of individuals amassing excessive wealth. Mandell examines how, after 1800, this tradition was increasingly marginalized by the rise of the liberal ideal of individual property ownership without limits.
Martinez, Isabel. Becoming Transnational Youth Workers. Independent Mexican Teenage Migrants and Pathways of Survival and Social Mobility. [Latinidad. Transnational Cultures in the United States.] Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (NJ) 2019. 253 pp. $120.00. (Paper, E-book: $30.95.)
This book examines a group of unaccompanied Mexican teenagers who immigrated to New York City in the early 2000s. Leaving their families and schools in Mexico, and financially supporting themselves and their families back home, these youths are independent teenage migrants who wish to assume or resume autonomy and agency rather than dependence. Exploring community and family understandings about survival, and social mobility in an era of extreme global economic inequality, Professor Martinez draws upon social reproduction theory, transnational theory, and life course theory to reveal how these Mexican youths obtained the interdependent status they hold in New York City as minors, including teenage migrants, household benefactors, undocumented workers, school leavers, and “adults”.
Phillips-Cunningham, Danielle. Putting Their Hands on Race. The Irish Immigrant and Southern Black Domestic Workers, 1850–1940. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (NJ) [etc.] 2019. vii, 252 pp. Ill. $138.00. (Paper: $39.95.)
This interracial and interethnic social history examines how Irish immigrant and southern black women were racialized and gendered by the manual labours they performed in their homes of employment in the northeast of the US in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on archival sources, Professor Phillips-Cunningham explores how these women were significant to the racial labour and citizenship politics of their time. On the racially fractious terrain of labour, black women and Irish immigrant women wrote letters and speeches, marched, protested, engaged in personal acts of resistance in the workplace, and established women's institutions and organizations to assert the right of domestic workers to living wages and protection.
Reidy, Joseph P. Illusions of Emancipation. The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery. [The Littlefield History of the Civil War Era.] University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC) 2019. 506 pp. Ill. $39.95. (Paper: $27.95; E-book: $19.99.)
Emancipation was not merely a product of Lincoln's proclamation or of Confederate defeat in April 1865. This complex and unevenly unfolding process required more than legal or military action. In this book, Professor Reidy employs the lenses of time, space and individual sense of personal and social belonging to understand how participants and witnesses coped with drastic change, its erratic pace, and its unforeseeable consequences. Emancipation disrupted everyday habits, causing disorientation that, at times, intensified and, in some cases, muddled the experience of reality. While these illusions of emancipation often mixed disappointment with hope, through periods of intense frustration they sustained the promise that the struggle for freedom would result in victory.
Roll, Jarod. Poor Man's Fortune. White Working-Class Conservatism in American Metal Mining, 1850–1950. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC) 2020. 344 pp. Ill. Maps. $99.00. (Paper: $29.95; E-book: $22.99.)
White working-class conservatives have played a decisive role in American history, in their opposition to social justice movements, critiques of capitalism, and government help for the poor and sick. Professor Roll follows five generations of metal miners in the Tri-State district of Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma from the Civil War to World War II. The miners developed a powerful animus against the idea of class-based solidarity, particularly as practised by unions, working repeatedly and willingly as strike breakers. The author shows how their choices reflected a deep-seated belief that hard-working American white men could prosper under capitalism, and exposes the grim costs of this view for these men and their communities.
Rubio, Philip F. Undelivered. From the Great Postal Strike of 1970 to the Manufactured Crisis of the U.S. Postal Service. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC) 2020. xii, 290 pp. Ill. $90.00. (Paper: $29.95; E-book: $22.99.)
For eight days in March 1970, over 200,000 postal workers staged an illegal “wildcat” strike for better wages and working conditions. Strikers defied court injunctions, threats of termination, and their own union leaders. Using archives, periodicals, and oral histories, Professor Rubio shows how this strike, born of frustration and rising expectations, emerging as part of a larger 1960s–1970s labour upsurge, transformed the post office and postal unions. It also led to years of clashes between postal unions and management over wages, speed-up, privatization, automation, and service. Reviving the 1970 strike, the author connects it to today's postal financial crisis that threatens the future of a 245-year-old public communications institution and its labour unions.
Struthers, David M. The World in a City. Multiethnic Radicalism in Early Twentieth-century Los Angeles. [The Working Class in American History.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana (IL) [etc.] 2019. x, 290 pp. Ill. Maps. $99.00. (Paper: $28.00; E-book: $19.95.)
Massive population growth in the first decades of the twentieth century, both through Americans from across the country and unprecedented transnational migration bringing people from Asia, Europe, and Mexico, transformed Los Angeles. Uneven economic development gave rise to precarious employment and living conditions for labourers. Dr Struthers draws on the anarchist concept of affinity to explore the radicalism of the interracial working class in Los Angeles from 1900 to 1930. As the author demonstrates, affinity helps us understand how individual cooperative actions shaped and reshaped, constantly reconfiguring solidarities in a multiracial city. What emerges is a history of Los Angeles and a revolutionary movement that, through myriad successes and failures, produced compelling examples of racial cooperation.
Tarter, Brent. Gerrymanders. How Redistricting Has Protected Slavery, White Supremacy, and Partisan Minorities in Virginia. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville (VA) 2019. vii, 130 pp. Ill. Maps. $19.95. (E-book: $19.95.)
In this book, Dr Tarter focuses on Virginia's long history of gerrymandering to uncover its immense influence on state politics and to place the impact of the practice on national politics in perspective. Exposing practices dating back to the nineteenth century and colonial times, the author explains how they protected the interests of landowners and slave owners. The consequences of redistricting and reapportionment in modern Virginia effectively gave a partisan minority the upper hand in all public policy decisions. Where the discussion of gerrymandering has typically emphasized the control of Congress by political parties, Tarter focuses on the state legislatures that determine congressional district lines and, in most states, even those of their own districts.
ASIA
Barker, Hannah. That Most Precious Merchandise. The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260–1500. [The Middle Ages Series.] University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (PA) 2019. vii, 392 pp. Maps. $79.95; £64.00.
The history of the Black Sea as a source of Mediterranean slaves extends from ancient Greek colonies to human trafficking networks in the present day. In this book, Dr Barker examines the trade system that carried slaves from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Black Sea slaves were sold to the military, as workers and as domestic servants. Arabic and Latin sources, such as notarial archives, tax records, and merchant accounts, show that the Genoese, Venetian, and Mamluk slave trades were deeply intertwined and an important element in their broader rivalry for commercial dominance of the Mediterranean.
Harris, Ron. Going the Distance. Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400–1700. [The Princeton Economic History of the Western World.] Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) 2020. xi, 465 pp. Maps. £34.00; $39.95.
Before the seventeenth century, trade across Eurasia was mostly conducted in short segments along the Silk Route and Indian Ocean. Business was organized in family firms, merchant networks, and state-owned enterprises and was dominated by Chinese, Indian, and Arab traders. Professor Harris shows that, by 1700, the scene and methods for global trade had dramatically changed: Dutch and English merchants shepherded goods directly from China and India to northwest Europe. The author compares the organizational forms used in four major regions and demonstrates that the English and Dutch, who were the last to engage in Eurasian trade, had to innovate in order to compete, which they did by raising capital from passive investors through impersonal stock markets.
Armenia
Antaramiam, Richard E. Brokers of Faith, Brokers of Empire. Armenians and the Politics of Reform in the Ottoman Empire. Stanford University Press, Stanford (CA) 2020. viii, 211 pp. Maps. $85.00. (Paper: $25.00.)
This book captures the participation of the Armenian community of the Ottoman Empire and its institutions in imperial governance during the reform period in the nineteenth century. Armenian elites, both the clergy and the laity, became powerful brokers between factions in Ottoman politics, until the politics of nineteenth-century reform changed these relationships. Dr Antaramian argues that the ecclesiastical reorganization of the Armenian Apostolic Church during this period had far-reaching consequences. The introduction of the millet system rearranged intercommunal networks and afforded Armenians the opportunity to recast themselves as partners of the state, rather than as brokers among factions. And, in the course of pursuing such programmes, they transformed the community's role in imperial society.
China
Fuller, Pierre. Famine Relief in Warlord China. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 2019. xiv, 348 pp. Ill. Maps. $65.00; £52.95; € 58.50.
This book is a re-examination of disaster responses during the famine in China in 1920–1921. Although the relief effort has long been credited to international intervention, Dr Fuller shows that it actually began from within Chinese social circles. Using district gazetteers, stele inscriptions, and the Chinese press, Fuller reveals how military authorities working with the public mobilized aid and coordinated migrant movement within stricken communities. The book is divided into two parts. Part One focuses on disaster governance and the media and charitable activity in the capital. Part Two considers the various levels of disaster relief in the hardest-hit province, Zhili, along with the relief role of communities in neighbouring Manchuria, to which many people fled.
Meyskens, Covell F. Mao's Third Front. The Militarization of Cold War China. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2020. xii, 281 pp. Ill. Maps. £29.99. (E-book: $32.00.)
In response to rising tensions with the United States and Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made a momentous policy decision to build a massive military industrial complex in the mountains of inland China in 1964. Mao named this the Third Front and donated more government investment to it than to any other developmental initiative of the Mao era. Over fifteen million people were mobilized to work in this huge industrial war machine. Drawing on archival documents, memoirs, and oral interviews, Professor Meyskens provides the history of the Third Front campaign, merging global geopolitics with local change by showing how the militarization of Chinese industrialization linked millions of everyday lives.
Zhou, Taomo. Migration in the Time of Revolution. China, Indonesia, and the Cold War. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2019. xiii, 301 pp. Ill. $43.95. (E-book: $21.99.)
At the transnational level, the presence of 2.5 million ethnic Chinese in Indonesia gave rise to a porous social frontier. In this book, Professor Zhou interweaves the evolution of diplomatic relations with the socio-political lives of the Chinese in Indonesia between 1945 and 1967, when the concept of citizenship was contested and political loyalty questioned. Based on government records, newspapers, archival material, and interviews, the author argues that migration and political activism of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia were important historical forces in the establishment of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Jakarta. Ethnic Chinese migrants and settlers were actively responding to the developing events of the Cold War, thereby shaping the trajectory of bilateral diplomacy.
India
Raza, Ali. Revolutionary Pasts. Communist Internationalism in Colonial India. Cambridge University Press, New York [etc.] 2020. xv, 280 pp. Ill. £75.00.
Driven by utopian visions of Communist Internationalism, Indian revolutionaries yearned and struggled for a global upheaval that would overthrow European imperialisms and radically transform India and the world. In an age marked by political upheavals, intellectual ferment, collapsing empires, and global conflicts, Indian revolutionaries stood alongside countless others in the colonized world in their desire to usher in a future liberated from colonialism and capitalism. Drawing from a wealth of archival materials, Professor Raza reveals the lives, geographies, and anti-colonial struggles of Indian revolutionaries. He charts the entanglement of local, regional, and global politics in the Indian independence movement to demonstrate how Communist Internationalism was a crucial project in the struggle for national liberation.
Srivastava, Priyanka. The Well-Being of the Labor Force in Colonial Bombay. Discourses and Practices. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2018. xvii, 283 pp. Ill. $99.99; € 93.59. (E-book: $79.99; € 74.96.)
Focusing on the cotton millworkers in Bombay in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the author of this dissertation examines the complex ways in which broader colonial society considered the subject of worker well-being. Extensive archival research shows how real and imagined threats of epidemics compelled the colonial government and Indian mill owners to address industrial housing and health problems, with nationalists and social reformers expanding these initiatives during the interwar period. Dr Srivastava demonstrates how the urban environment, colonial local governance, public health policies, and deeply gendered local and transnational voluntary reform programmes affected worker well-being and shaped working-class lives.
Iran
Dabashi, Hamid. Reversing the Colonial Gaze. Persian Travelers Abroad. [The Global Middle East, 10.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2020. xix, 390 pp. Ill. £29.99. (E-book: £32.00.)
Exploring the furthest reaches of the globe, Persian travellers from Iran and India journeyed across Russian and Ottoman territories to Asia, Africa, North and South America, Europe, and beyond. Remapping the world through their travelogues, this book offers a comprehensive and transformative analysis of the journeys by over a dozen of these nineteenth-century Persian travellers. By moving beyond the dominant Eurocentric perspectives on travel narratives, Professor Dabashi works to reverse the colonial gaze cast upon these travelogues to date, demonstrating that the assumption that the authors were merely travelling from East to West both simplifies and distorts the multilayered worlds they encountered and recorded in their narratives.
South Korea
Kwon, O. Yul. Social Trust and Economic Development. The Case of South Korea. Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham [etc.] 2019. xii, 354 pp. £100.00. (E-book: £25.00.)
In just one generation, South Korea has transformed from a recipient of foreign aid to a member of the G20. In this book, South Korea is used as a case through which to explore and illustrate specific issues arising from the complex relationships between the nation's economic development and society. Dr Kwon presents an in-depth analysis from macro perspectives in addition to examining micro-level relationships between economic development and social trust in the recent past. Grounded in empirical research of South Korean society and economy, this book offers practical suggestions for achieving sustainable and equitable development in South Korea.
Ukraine
Solonari, Vladimir. A Satellite Empire. Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) etc. 2019. xiv, 308 pp. Ill. Maps. $55.00. (E-book: $26.99.)
This book investigates the political and social history of Transnistria, the area in southwestern Ukraine under Romanian occupation during World War II. Based on archival material, Professor Solonari focuses on how Romania sought to benefit from the conquest. In the first section, he analyses Romanian policy aims and participation in the invasion of the USSR. The author then traces how Romanian administrators attempted to make Transnistria “Romanian” and “civilized” while simultaneously using it to dump Jews and Roma, and shows that the imperatives of total war eventually prioritized economic operation of the region over any other aims. In the final section, he reveals local responses in terms of collaboration and resistance.
AUSTRALIA AND OCEANIA
Australia
Humphrys, Elizabeth. How Labour Built Neoliberalism. Australia's Accord, the Labour Movement and the Neoliberal Project. [Studies in Critical and Social Sciences.] Haymarket Books, Chicago (IL) 2019. xii, 268 pp. $28.00.
In this book, Dr Humphrys examines the role of the Labour Party and trade unions in constructing neoliberalism in Australia and its implications for understanding neoliberalism's global advance. She focuses her analysis on the 1983–1996 social contract known as the “Accord”, signed between the Australian Labour Party and the Australian Council of Trade Unions. The implication of the agreement simultaneously deepened Australia's existing corporatism and advanced neoliberalism within a highly structured economic framework. Moreover, as a partner in a social contract, organized labour actively constructed and contributed to the formation of hegemonic neoliberalism and was thus more than simply a victim of neo-liberal change.
EUROPE
Berkovich, Ilya. Motivation in War. The Experience of Common Soldiers in Old-Regime Europe. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (NY) 2017. xii, 280 pp. Ill. $69.99. (Paper: $22.99; E-book: $24.00.)
In this book, Dr Berkovich reveals that soldiers did not regard military discipline as illegitimate or cruel, nor did they perceive themselves as submissive military automatons. He shows how these men embraced a unique corporate identity based on military professionalism, masculinity, and hostility toward civilians. These values fostered the notion of individual and collective soldierly honour, which was conducive with the bonding that increased cohesion in combat. The author utilizes research on military psychology and combat theory, using the letters, diaries, and memoirs of around 250 private soldiers and non-commissioned officers from over a dozen different European armies.
The Comforts of Home in Western Europe, 1700–1900. Ed. by Stobart, Jon. Bloomsbury Academic, London [etc.] 2020. xiv, 268 pp. Ill. $80.50. (E-book: $56.92.)
Comfort, both physical and affective, is a key aspect in our conceptualization of the home. In the two sections in this volume, Part One is about architectural ideas and practicalities, while Part Two covers homemaking, objects, and emotions. The case studies included draw on specific examples, such as water closets in Georgian Dublin and wallpaper in nineteenth-century Cambridge, illustrating people making use of and responding to the technological improvements to and emotional assemblage of objects. In addition, the role of memory and memorialization in the domestic space is explored, as well as the extent to which home comforts could be practised by travellers or reproduced in places far removed from the home.
Ogilvie, Sheilagh. The European Guilds. An Economic Analysis. [The Princeton History of the Western World.] Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2019. xvi, 645 pp. Ill. $39.95; £34.00.
Guilds ruled many crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution and have always instigated debate and controversy. They were widespread, because they benefited two powerful groups: guild members and political elites. Based on several case studies and databases, Professor Ogilvie investigates the advantages of guilds as efficient institutions that guaranteed quality and skills while also revealing their dark sides of excluding competitors, manipulating markets, and blocking innovations. The chapters focus on seven guild activities that affected key parts of the economy: doing deals with governments; limiting entry; manipulating markets; restricting women; supervising quality; regulating training; and controlling innovation. See also Ruben Schalk's review in this volume, pp. 543–545.
Rosa Luxemburg: Spurensuche. Dokumente und Zeugnisse einer jüdischen Familie. Hrsg. von Krzysztof Pilawski und Holger Politt. VSA, Hamburg 2020. 148 pp. Ill. € 19.80.
Using a large number of documents and other testimonies in archives and in the public space in Poland and neighbouring countries, the editors have traced the family in which Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) grew up and with which she sought to maintain close contact throughout her life. Apart from this family history, the story highlights differences in the reception of Rosa Luxemburg around the world. The Polish sections of Luxemburg's work are not covered as extensively as the German ones, due in part to limited access. Nationalist circles in Poland claimed that she had a deep dislike for the Polish and are presently exploiting such allegations to banish memories of Rosa Luxemburg from public life in their country.
France
Figarol, Thomas. Les diamants de Saint-Claude. Un district industriel à l'âge de la première mondialisation, 1870–1914. Préf. de Jean-Claude Daumas. [Collection Perspectives Historiques.] Presses universitaires François Rabelais, Tours 2020. 379 pp. Ill. Maps. € 24.00.
From the end of the 1870s, the diamond industry developed in the Haut-Jura, providing jobs for several hundred workers. Dr Figarol explores how this industry developed in this region where diamonds were previously unknown. Between 1870 and World War I, the diamonds fashioned in the Haut-Jura were mined mainly in South Africa and marketed mostly in Birmingham, where the jewellery industry thrived. The diamond companies of the Haut-Jura were subcontractors of trading houses in London, Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Paris. The author thus demonstrates how industrial development at a regional scale can be part of a global process and globalization of the economy.
Guillemin, Jean. Le Crédit agricole en Bourgogne. Une mutuelle paysanne, 1896–1975. [Perspectives historiques.] Presses universitaires François Rabelais, Tours 2019. 545 pp. Maps. € 24.00.
Crédit Agricole is a powerful banking organization that united credit mutuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at the level of the commune, the canton, and the department. Bringing together farmers, they started financing agricultural activities, gradually extending their fields of interest. Dr Guillemin traces the evolution of these local and regional funds by studying those of the Côte d'Or, from their creation until 1975, when they achieved a dominant share in banking. The large size and gradual opening to all professions conflicted with the original approach. The author demonstrates the choices made between loyalty to the profession and necessary opening to the general public.
Germany
Kessler, Mario. Westemigranten. Deutsche Kommunisten zwischen USA-Exil und DDR. [Zeithistorische Studien, Bd. 60.] Böhlau, Vienna [etc.] 2019. 576 pp. € 65.00. (E-book: € 54.99.)
In this book, Professor Kessler examines the traces of German communist exiles in the United States who returned to the GDR after the end of the Nazi regime, describing both their experiences in exile in the US and their living conditions in eastern Germany after 1945. On the political level, the author examines the plans for post-war Germany developed by the German communists in exile and which hopes were or were not fulfilled. In intellectual history he looks at the ties between the different actors and the communist party or its environment, while in cultural history he explores questions about the “cultural baggage” that the returnees brought with them from the United States. See also Ursula Langkau-Alex's review in this volume, pp. 545–547.
Müller, Stefan. Die Ostkontakte der westdeutschen Gewerkschaften. Entspannungspolitik zwischen Zivilgesellschaft und internationaler Politik 1969 bis 1989. Dietz, Bonn 2020. 427 pp. € 32.00.
In the 1970s and 80s, the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) maintained intensive contacts with the communist state unions in Eastern Europe. Studying the history of trade unions, Dr Müller examines these transnational encounters in the East–West conflict. Until the late 1970s, the contacts were primarily between the DGB and unions in the Soviet Union and Poland. In the 1980s, the contacts became more political and concerned rapprochement. The most far-reaching contacts were with the Polish Solidarność. The book sheds light on relations between unions and West German foreign policy, as the unions both supported Brandt's policy on the East and cooperated with Kohl after 1982.
Demokratisch, Säkular Sozial. Ein Plädoyer für die Trennung von Religion und Politik. Hrsg. von Lale Akgün, Adrian Gillmann [und] Norbert Reitz. Dietz, Bonn 2019. 152 pp. € 16.90.
The German Constitution prohibits both preferential treatment and discrimination against individual citizens or groups. Elaborating on everyday violations of this law in the relationship between churches and the state, the book's authors, all committed to social democracy and the secular roots of the party, call for stricter separation of religion and politics but simultaneously appeal for respect and tolerance towards people of different faiths and people without religious affiliation. The different contributions reflect problems that have persisted since the imperial era due to the special role of religious communities in Germany and will worsen with the addition of new religious groups.
Great Britain
Hannah, Simon. Can't Pay, Won't Pay. The Fight to Stop the Poll Tax. Pluto Press, London 2020. ix, 172 pp. £75.00. (Paper: £16.99; E-book: £9.99.)
For the thirtieth anniversary of the Poll Tax rebellion, Simon Hannah looks back on the tumultuous days of resistance. The book starts from the view that the mass movement against the Poll Tax was a decisive factor in ending the policy. Examining the role of the campaign in the political backlash that led to Thatcher's resignation in November 1990, the author brings together policy analysis, arguments around the role of the official labour movement, critical appraisals of political tendencies like militant, the anarchists and the rest of the far left, as well as the day to day work of campaigners, whether on protests or in the courtroom.
Schwartz, Laura. Feminism and the Servant Problem. Class and Domestic Labour in the Women's Suffrage Movement. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2019. ix, 235 pp. Ill. £75.00. (Paper: £22.99; E-book: $80.00.)
In the early twentieth century, women struggled for the right to be employed as professionals and obtain political influence outside the home. If, however, liberation from household drudgery meant employing another woman to perform these chores, where did this leave domestic servants? Both inspired and frustrated by the growing feminist movement, servants began forming their own trade unions, demanding better conditions and rights at work. Exploring servant militancy in general and the Domestic Workers’ Union in particular, Professor Schwartz focuses on how the suffrage movement responded to a perceived shortage of reliable and obedient domestic workers, examining class relations, and class clashes between women in the home.
Italy
Tronti, Mario. Workers and Capital. Transl. [from Italian] by David Broder. Verso Books, London [etc.] 2019 (1971). xxxv, 364 pp. £70.00. (Paper: £19.99; E-book: £16.99.)
Five decades since it was first published, Operai e capitale, universally recognized as an important work that revolutionized the institutional and extra-parliamentary Left in Italy and beyond, now appears in English translation for the first time. In the decade after the initial publication, debates about Workers and Capital gave rise to new methods of analysis and a new vocabulary for thousands of militants, helping to inform the new forms of workplace, youth, and community struggle. Concepts such as “neocapitalism”, “class composition”, “mass-worker”, “the plan of capital”, “workers’ inquiry”, and “co-research” permanently entered the political lexicon of the Italian Left. See also Matteo Mandarini's review in this volume, pp. 547–550.
The Netherlands
Sanders, Huub. Het virus der betrokkenheid. Het Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1935–1989. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2019. 520 pp. Ill. € 64.95. (Open Access.)
The International Institute of Social History (IISH) is one of the world's leading research institutes in the field of social history, both in scholarship and in collecting of archives. Dr Sanders examines the history of the Institute from 1935 to 1989. Focusing on the professionalization of the Institute and without losing sight of its original raison d’être, this dissertation tells the story of committed historians and activists, who aimed to safeguard the heritage of the workers’ movement and other emancipatory movements and to make them available to the public. After World War II, the IISH was included in the academic infrastructure, and, after the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, the Institute evolved into a centre of professional scholarship in the 1980s.
Romania
Michelbacher, Dallas. Jewish Forced Labor in Romania, 1940–1944. Indiana University Press, Bloomington (IN) 2020. ix, 167 pp. Ill. $75.00. (Paper: $36.00; E-book: $18.99.)
Between Romania's entry into World War II in 1941 and the ousting of dictator Antonescu three years later, over 105,000 Jews were forced to work in labour camps, battalions, institutions, and industry. Despite the extraordinary physical and psychological suffering that characterized this period, most Jewish labourers survived. Exploring the ideological and legal background, its purpose and evolution and based on official documents and testimonies from survivors, Dr Michelbacher examines the relationship between the system of forced labour and the Romanian government's plans for the “solution to the Jewish question”, demonstrating how the Antonescu regime balanced its ideological imperative for anti-Semitic persecution with a state engaged in total war, in which the economy depended heavily on the skills of its Jewish population.
Spain
Herschenzon, Daniel. The Captive Sea. Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (PA) 2018. vii, 289 pp. Ill. Maps. $55.00; £44.00.
In this book, Dr Hershenzon explores the entangled histories of Muslim and Christian captives of the Spanish Empire, Ottoman Algiers, and Morocco in the seventeenth century, arguing that piracy, captivity, and redemption helped shape the Mediterranean as an integrated region at social, political, and economic levels. Offering both a comprehensive analysis of competing projects for maritime dominance and a granular investigation of how individual lives were tragically upended by these agendas, the author examines the circulation of bodies, currency, and information in the contested Mediterranean and concludes that the practice of ransoming captives, a procedure meant to separate Christians from Muslims, had the unintended consequence of tightly binding Iberia to the Maghrib.
La primera internacional y la alianza en España. Colección de documentos inéditos o raros. Ed. de Wolfgang Eckhardt, anotada. Trad. de Felipe Orobón Martínez. Epílogo de Juan Pablo Calero Delso. [Colección Investigación, 2.] Fundación de Estudios Libertarios Anselmo Lorenzo, Madrid 2017. 343 pp. Ill. € 14.00.
This book contains fifty-six unpublished or rare documents related to the First International in Spain in the years 1869–1872, extracted mainly from Muscovite archives, where they ended up after various historical vicissitudes. The documents are grouped into five sections, each one prefaced by a detailed preliminary study and presented in the original language, accompanied by Spanish translation in cases where said language is different from Spanish and contextualized with specific comments. The set heralds the first fracture of the nascent European labour movement between instrumentalization or autonomy, centralism or federalism, parliamentarianism or extra-parliamentarianism, a classification that continues to mark the history of social movements.
