Colonial Life Research Articles

Walk this way: modeling foraging ant dynamics in multiple food source environments

Foraging for resources is an essential process for the daily life of an ant colony. What makes this process so fascinating is the self-organization of ants into trails using chemical pheromone in the absence of direct communication. Here we present a stochastic lattice model that captures essential features of foraging ant dynamics inspired by recent agent-based models while forgoing more detailed interactions that may not be essential to trail formation. Nevertheless, our model’s results coincide with those presented in more sophisticated theoretical models and experiments. Furthermore, it captures the phenomenon of multiple trail formation in environments with multiple food sources. This latter phenomenon is not described well by other more detailed models. We complement the stochastic lattice model by describing a macroscopic PDE which captures the basic structure of lattice model. The PDE provides a continuum framework for the first-principle interactions described in the stochastic lattice model and is amenable to analysis. Linear stability analysis of this PDE facilitates a computational study of the impact various parameters impart on trail formation. We also highlight universal features of the modeling framework that may allow this simple formation to be used to study complex systems beyond ants.

Remembering Colonial Algeria’s Desert in the “Grand Sud”

While the majority of French colonists in Algeria lived on the Mediterranean coast in cities such as Algiers and Oran, or in not-too-distant inland towns like Constantine, those who settled further afield in communities bordering or in the Sahara Desert, like Aflou, Batna, Biskra, or Khenchela, had a vastly different experience of colonial life. These settlers were often isolated outsiders, subdued by the remote terrain. In French Algerian memorial books destined to fulfill French colonial nostalgia, repeated iconic images of recognizable destinations and events overlap and solidify in the memory of Algeria’s former French inhabitants, the Pieds-Noirs. Within these same memorial texts, the desert, which occupies 80% of Africa’s largest country, has always been present. Photographs from the 1850s onward, attempting to capture the country for its French occupiers, depict the desert as a peaceful and quiet landscape with exotic indigenous figures, traditional houses, and little evidence of Europeans in the frame. Locations are hard to pinpoint, outside of the occasional oasis, and the sand dune landscapes would have been shifting. This article examines how colonial photographs and sparsely written textual souvenirs of the desert provide a contrapuntal image of colonial Algeria as a place of the unknown. Using Dylan Trigg’s work on place and memory, I explore the juxtaposition of the predominant nostalgic vision of European settlement and images of the desert that highlight what the French Empire never possessed.

An Afro-cosmological Approach to Marechera’s The House of Hunger (1978)

Abstract Marechera and his literary texts do not fit easily into Africanist categories of reading, principally due to his vitriolic invocation of the ‘f-word’ when asked if he was an African writer. Despite this iconoclasm, Afro-cosmic creeds undeniably inform aspects of his novella. An Afro-cosmological approach acknowledges non-empirical influences for certain behavioural traits portrayed by various characters in the novella which Marechera utilises and assails to address a ‘diseased’ colonial life. Using Falola’s Ritual Archives (2017), we approach this novella as a repository of Shona social ideation and cultural mythologies of haunting, and the Isisism trope of putting material remains back together. Numerous invocations of Shona cosmologies demonstrate Marechera’s socialisation into an African cosmology which manifests itself in his writing and life in unlimited ways. In sum, we interrogate the author’s use of culture codes to relocate him within an African rationale, thus, unmooring him from the Western-centric frameworks emphasised by Veit-Wild’s memoir (2020). We offer insights into the spirituality surrounding Marechera, his vagabondage and his seemingly self-sabotaging behaviour succinctly summarised by Veit-Wild as ‘biting every hand that fed you.’ Flora Veit-Wild, using the logic of a European, fails to appreciate this aspect of his life. In this article we recentre an African cosmology through the topos of being haunted to conceptualise Marechera’s writing and life to account for non-Western occurrences and modes of psychic distress which find no diagnosis in Western psychiatry.

Au-delà de la traversée : The Transatlantic Slave Trade within Prerevolutionary Saint Domingue

Abstract: Prior to the 1791 revolution, three-quarters of a million captive Africans were dragged to Saint Domingue through the transatlantic slave trade. Re-creating these Africans' pathways of forced migration after their arrival in the island reveals the existence of a large, sophisticated, and well-organized intracolonial slave trade on Saint Domingue that has largely escaped the attention of historians. Slave ship captains steered their vessels to different locations within the colony depending on the age, health, ethnicity, and gender of their captives, determining where in the island enslaved people would likely spend the remainder of their lives. Colonial slave traders then organized sales that were designed to sort physically diverse captives and distribute them to socially and racially diverse colonial buyers. Africans moved away from such sales to remarkably varied fates: many were marched to sugar, coffee, indigo or cotton plantations; others were forced to work as servants or apprentices in port cities; and still more were held in urban barracoons and later resold, sometimes hundreds of miles away. Enslaved people were thus forced through an intracolonial slave trade that powerfully determined their often-divergent fates and began to acclimatize them to the brutalities of colonial life.

The Union of Russian Emigrants in Paris: Adaptation and Pro-Russian Activities (with Reference to the Sûreté Générale)

This article presents the results of the examination of the activities of the Union of Russian Workers of France / Union of Soviet Citizens in France in Paris which existed from 1925 to 1929 and acted as one of the most numerous unions of Russian emigrants. Drawing on materials from the archive of the Historical Service of the French Ministry of Defence, prepared by Sûreté Générale in the name of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, the author of the article identifies the purpose of creation and the tasks that the participants of the associations set themselves. The microhistorical approach and the study of the everyday life of Russian emigrants demonstrates that the primary goal was to help compatriots in adapting their life in exile. An analysis of the activities of the members of the union to improve the lives of compatriots made it possible to identify a number of successful examples of the help of the members of the union in solving urgent problems of emigrants. Additionally, the article demonstrates various ways of providing material assistance to those in need, as well as attempts to develop the intellectual culture of Russian emigrants and increase their competitiveness for employment in France. The measures taken by the members of the unions were aimed, among other things, at encouraging Russian emigrants to return to Russia. According to the author, such actions were soft cultural propaganda in favour of the Soviet Union, and these attempts to return emigrants to their homeland yielded results. The article also presents examples of the activities of the members of the union that did not contribute to the successful stay of Russian emigrants in France. The paper presents an example of the activity of the members of the union in appropriating the property of St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, inciting emigrants to rebellion and organising demonstrations demanding the transfer of the church to the USSR Embassy. The result of this activity was a more thorough supervision of the activities of the organisation by the employees of the Sûreté Générale and the repatriation of a few active members of the union. It is concluded that this activity hindered the life of the Russian colony in Paris and did not contribute to its security in France.

MODELING THE ACTIVITY OF THE HONEY BEE FAMILY UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF DISEASES AND PESTS, TAKING INTO ACCOUNT AGE AND SEX CHARACTERISTICS

On the basis of a mathematical model of the impact of infectious diseases and pests on the development of bee colony individuals, a computer model of the activity of a bee colony has been developed – a tool for research, management and forecasting, which is based on a computer program created in the object-oriented programming language C ++ Builder XE7. With the help of a computer model, the values ​​of the variables of the system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations with initial conditions were calculated by the Runge-Kutt method of the fourth order. Identification and verification of the value of the coefficients of the computer model were carried out according to the experimental data of 2017, which were obtained when testing bee colonies of the Carpathian and Buckfast breeds in different regions of northern Tajikistan. Comparison of experimental and model results in order to verify the correctness and stability of the developed program showed that the computer model can correctly reflect the dynamics of the number of individuals of each stage of the life of a bee colony according to the distribution of bees by sex and the impact of infectious diseases and pests.

«Из-Ындеи в Астрахань, в Казань, на Москву»: из истории культурных, торговых и дипломатических связей России и Индии в XVII в.

The “turn to the East” in politics and science formed in recent years attention to the study of the exclusively Chi-nese model of civilizational development. At the same time, research on India, whose human and cultural po-tential is comparable to China's, were forced out to the periphery. Nowadays, India is increasingly mentioned as Russia's leading strategic partner. The historical context of relations between the two countries is becoming the basis on which the current configuration of ties is built. The notion of the origins of these relations, their quality, and stylistics makes research on this topic relevant. The article touches upon the issue of Russian-Indian trade, cultural and diplomatic ties during the XVII century. During this period, a colony of Indian merchants on the territory of Astrakhan was established, and four embassies to India were organized. This period was of great importance in the formation and development of ties between the two states, laid the foundations of friendly perception of the peoples by each other. The au-thors have attracted and quoted documents (orders of the Ambassadorial Prikaz, reports of ambassadors, doc-uments reflecting the life of the merchant colony in Astrakhan), as their style reflects the quality of the emerging relations between Russia and India.

Eurocentrism in “The Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad”

This research addresses to analyze Eurocentrism in “Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The type of this research is descriptive qualitative. Data were classified into primary and supporting data. The primary data were mainly from the Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The supporting data were from books, articles, and journals related to colonialism perspective. The design of this research focuses in revealing the colonial life in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness through Eurocentrism perspective. The result of this research is this colonization actually begun not only by economy factor but also it is empowered by creating discourse about such colonized country. Colonial discourse means how the west, colonizer or conquer create opinion to legitimate their conquest. This discourse also explains how the Europe (colonizer) constructs their identity and their colonized. This constructing creates binary-opposition judgment where in this novel through Marlow (as main character) depict that Europe’s colonization is based on their negative stereotyping. It is stated that the native Congo is wilder, cannibal, uncivilized and so on. So, at Marlow’s spirit in early they (colonizer) desire to civilize them (the native).

Nordic Connectors: The Gallen-Kallela Family and Colonial Lives in East Africa and New Mexico

ABSTRACT This article tracks the movements of Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela and his family across transimperial terrain in the early twentieth century in British East Africa and New Mexico in the United States. It shows that Nordic peoples, even from countries without colonies of their own, acted as mobile transmitters of knowledge in the world of empires, as respectable bourgeois connectors absorbing local white cultural habits and living a typical colonial life of the time, while also being at times critical of their surroundings. The Gallen-Kallela family accessed different cultural spaces, and they were welcomed into colonial communities. They observed, experienced, partook in, and wrote on inter-imperial themes of racial difference, hunting, and collecting of artefacts. They, somewhat paradoxically, embraced and took advantage of colonial networks and white privilege, while also seeking to escape them and find something authentic, unspoiled by empires. The Gallen-Kallelas encountered different kinds of colonial social settings and they were entrenched in these cultures and played a role in producing and maintaining them. As Finns they were free agents, but still colonial agents, who answered to nobody.

Engendering Islands: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Violence in the Early French Caribbean by Ashley Williard

Reviewed by: Engendering Islands: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Violence in the Early French Caribbean by Ashley Williard Virginie Ems-Bléneau Williard, Ashley. Engendering Islands: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Violence in the Early French Caribbean. UP of Nebraska, 2021. ISBN 978-1-4962-2024-0. Pp. 294. France's national narrative has denied, or at the very least downplayed, its active participation in the slave trade and slavery for centuries. Today, public discourse still tends to point the finger to England or the United States for ruthlessly displacing and exploiting Africans in the pursuit of wealth and glory. "There were no slaves in France," a phrase repeated in many classrooms to highlight France's intellectual and ideological superiority following the Enlightenment. Engendering Islands will serve as an astute reminder that France, too, owes its current influence and wealth to the enslavement of Black bodies. The title's reference to gender illustrates Williard's approach: she shows how France constructed gender and race to meet the needs of the plantation economy in the French Caribbean of the seventeenth century. European binary definitions of gender (male vs. female) and race (European vs. non-European) evolved to take into account the new realities of colonial life. If masculinity for European men had signified courage and agency, this interpretation could no longer be applied to non-European men whose basic rights were systematically denied. Colonial society therefore deployed new racially-informed definitions of masculinity. Colonial publications discursively constructed the masculinity of African men as dangerous and violent to justify literal and symbolic emasculation. Furthermore, colonial narratives also reinvented femininity along racial lines. While planters were happily marrying Creole women due to the scarcity of European girls on the islands at the beginning of the period regardless of their skin tone, concerns over blood purity and morality engendered a shift in what would be considered desirable in a bride. Whiteness and religious education thus became the standards by which all women would be judged. In the context of colonial expansion, one might be lured into thinking that women and non-Whites were the primary targets of colonial control. The section on pirates and buccaneers shows, on the contrary, that any digression from the newly established gender norms proved threatening to the power structure. Pirates operated outside of the rules of society on several levels, including in their refusal to bind themselves to plantation society through a wife and a plot of land. Indeed, crew members formed homosocial partnerships called matelotage, which replaced patrilineal inheritance and ensured the wellbeing of wounded freebooters. These non-normative unions threatened colonial order so much that the Crown attempted to sever these bonds by using land, slaves, and women to entice sailors to settle down. While Williard reports that these tactics were ultimately unsuccessful, an analysis of the long-term consequences of such resistance would have been extremely interesting, and could be the object of further research. Although the overall scope of the book is not particularly [End Page 222] novel, this volume is well-written and thoroughly documented, making it a useful reference book for the study of race and gender in the early modern French Caribbean. [End Page 223] Virginie Ems-Bléneau Georgia Southern University Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

Wage System Given By Plantation Lords to Contract Coolie Workers In East Sumatra

This study tries to find out the wage system that coolies obey in tobacco plantations in Deli, East Sumatra, the methods used by the authorities to punish coolies there, and the influence of the wage system on the colonial life of coolies in tobacco plantations in Deli. East Sumatra. using research techniques and libraries to obtain the necessary facts (library research). The research findings indicate that Development has emerged as a key attraction for other parties wishing to make financial investments in Deli. The gardeners' piece rate scheme is used only for their benefit. The coolies actually suffered a lot under this regime because their 35 cents per hour work was too little to meet their needs. Another problem is if the garden owner withholds wages when the employees are disciplined and pays for tools that the employees will use at work according to the wage system. The porter was responsible for paying for everything in bulk. This causes the life of the coolies to become even more difficult, because for their daily needs they have to toil with lives that are threatened.

Fearful Vassals: Urban Elite Loyalty in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, 1776–1810 by Peter Blanchard

Reviewed by: Fearful Vassals: Urban Elite Loyalty in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, 1776–1810 by Peter Blanchard Evan C. Rothera Blanchard, Peter. Fearful Vassals: Urban Elite Loyalty in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, 1776–1810. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020. Fearful Vassals examines loyalty in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata by focusing on elites in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Córdoba who "played a vital role in the viceroyalty's affairs, getting involved in local decision-making to ensure that their interests and their goals were protected" (4). Rather than mouthing sentiments about independence and revolution, elites demonstrated "a firm commitment to the Spanish king and to Spanish rule" (4). Elite loyalty to Spain and the king was rooted in their fears about perceived threats to their wealth and lifestyles. Over the course of nine chapters, Peter Blanchard, currently [End Page 227] professor emeritus of history at the University of Toronto, develops his fascinating analysis. The creation of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata offered elites "opportunities that helped develop a growing sense of commitment to the region" (15) and Spanish officials formed strategic alliances with elites. Far from undermining urban elite loyalty, the Bourbon Reforms "created a distinct new homeland with opportunities for the urban elites who were determined to take advantage of them" (42). Elites strictly controlled entry into their ranks and frequently turned to Spain "in the belief that Spain would provide support for the standards they had set and that it would act to reaffirm their privileged position in the viceroyalty" (44). Indeed, the king became an essential mediator in disputes among members of the elite who, in turn, had a vested interest in retaining the king as the ultimate distant authority. Perceived threats from the population of African descent and the local indigenous population also worried elites. These fears gave them additional reasons to support continued ties with Spain. Like other places in the Americas, many people saw slaves as a threat, but they did not want to end the slave trade or slavery itself. Loyalty to Spain thus seemed necessary to protect and expand slavery, especially because many considered slavery essential to the economic growth of the viceroyalty. Without Spain, "this essential aspect of colonial life and the associated economic returns would be seriously compromised" (132). Indigenous people also worried the elite. Again, unsurprisingly, they looked to Spain for military support. People of African descent and indigenous people represented, to members of the elite, threats as well as arguments in favor of maintaining ties with Spain. Urban elites also worried about the actions of foreign nations and foreign nationals and looked to Spain for assistance and protection. In sum, challenges and uncertainties strengthened, rather than undermined, ties with Spain to the point that many people in the viceroyalty saw Spain "as the only possible protector" (164). The British invasions were a major milestone on the road to separation. People's reactions revealed "the depths of loyalty of the viceroyalty's population" (169), and even groups that the elites feared, such as people of African descent and indigenous people, "provided support or showed a willingness to fight to maintain Spanish rule" (169). That said, despite the outpouring of loyalty among all sectors of the viceroyalty's population, the aftermath of the British invasions foreshadowed important transformations. As Blanchard notes, "The status of the viceroy was substantially weakened and along with it royal authority and [End Page 228] all the intricate mechanisms for ensuring elite control" (193). Still, the British invasions had nevertheless stimulated loyalty to the king and to Spain even though Spain provided very little assistance against the British. What caused elite loyalty, which derived much of its strength from being anchored in fears, to eventually crumble? Most notably, Napoleon's invasion of Spain forced elites "to confront new and even greater questions of how to maintain their control, now without any real possibility of aid from Spain" (195). Some people had tumbled onto the idea, after the British invasions, that residents of the viceroyalty could manage their own affairs. Napoleon's invasion only reinforced this notion and helped undermine...

Addressing the pipework in South Africa’s oldest playable organ: a materialist-political history

A domestic organ built by William Hill between 1832 and 1837, currently housed at Wesley Methodist Chapel in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown), is amongst the oldest pipe organs in South Africa. It is thought to have belonged to Lt Gen. Sir Henry Somerset and his wife Frances, who were tied to the British settlement of the Eastern Cape in 1820. The organ’s age, in relation to this history of settlement, has allowed it to generate interest as an artefact of early colonial life in Makhanda. Several authors have written about the Hill organ, among whom Percival Kirby and Albert Troskie have been keen to stress the instrument’s unchanged nature. However, the idea that the organ has remained unchanged is not reflected in the material and archival history of the instrument. The pipework and a documented history of regular repairs suggest that the Hill organ has been significantly changed at least once since its initial construction. In addressing these omissions, I hope to destabilise existing narratives and perceptions of the instrument. By focusing on its ‘unchanged’ nature as a point of merit, authors such as Kirby and Troskie have hindered a nuanced understanding of the organ’s societal context and impeded an appraisal of its legacy as a settler colonial artefact.

Lifestyle Ambiguity: The Visuals of Cigarette Advertisements in the Dutch East Indes Era

The focuses of this research are the visual style reconstruction of cigarette advertisements published in magazines during the colonial era of the Dutch East Indies and the expressions of lifestyle recorded in them. This study examines the visualization and visual style of cigarette advertisements published in magazines in Indonesia from 1925 to 2000. This study also aims to reconstruct the lifestyle in the visual representation of cigarette advertisements as a reflection of the process of social change in Indonesian society during the colonial to the post-colonial period (1925 - 2000). This research employed descriptive analytical methodology, with the main theory of the social history of Art and David Chaney’s lifestyle theory. The visual style of Oriental Modern Eclecticism captures the Indies’ hybrid lifestyle expression, namely: a pseudo-modernity lifestyle as a result of the integration among the colonized communities which were spread across the Dutch East Indies (1925-1942). The cigarette advertisements of that era presented an imaginary world that depicted the harmonious social interactions of various social layers which is contrary to the social reality of the segregated colonial life.

THE COLONIZED EAST-AFRICA: A POSTCOLONIAL ANALYSIS OF ABDULRAZAK GURNAH’S AFTERLIVES IN LIGHT OF FRANTZ FANON

As of now German colonial presence on the African continent and East-Africa’s campaign during WWI and WWII is little presented in history as well as in literature particularly novels. This present study aims to fill this gap by examining Abdul Razak Gurnah’s historical novel Afterlives (2020) in the light of Postcolonial critic Frantz Fanon’s The Wretch of the Earth (1961). Through textual analysis, the qualitative study intends to seek the ways colonialism (both German and British) influence East-Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the perspective of WWI and WWII and aftermath of its destruction. Moreover, the study attempts to examine how Gurnah’s novel presents psychological effects of colonization on indigenous people who witnessed it and how violence and war contributed in the process of decolonization. The findings of the research shows that colonization as well as decolonization is a violentphenomenon in which both colonizers and colonized use violence as a tool to maintain or gain power. The native people, as described in aforementioned novel, strive to survive in inter and aftermath of war although their constant encounter with violence and identity crisis (degradation) led them towards severe psychological disturbance. The novel also presents the native people responses to such destruction and war through interconnected lives of its major characters Ilyas, Hamza and Afiya who represented pro and anti-German views of colonization and of war. The study concludes that determination of native African to survive through love and kindness are key factors which help them to retrieve their lost souls after cruel circumstances of colonial life, war and ruin. Keywords:Colonialization, Decolonization, Aftermath, Violence, WWI & II, Identity Crisis

:The Colonial Life of Pharmaceuticals: Medicines and Modernity in Vietnam

:<i>The Colonial Life of Pharmaceuticals: Medicines and Modernity in Vietnam</i>

Eco-evolutionary dynamics of clonal multicellular life cycles.

The evolution of multicellular life cycles is a central process in the course of the emergence of multicellularity. The simplest multicellular life cycle is comprised of the growth of the propagule into a colony and its fragmentation to give rise to new propagules. The majority of theoretical models assume selection among life cycles to be driven by internal properties of multicellular groups, resulting in growth competition. At the same time, the influence of interactions between groups on the evolution of life cycles is rarely even considered. Here, we present a model of colonial life cycle evolution taking into account group interactions. Our work shows that the outcome of evolution could be coexistence between multiple life cycles or that the outcome may depend on the initial state of the population - scenarios impossible without group interactions. At the same time, we found that some results of these simpler models remain relevant: evolutionary stable strategies in our model are restricted to binary fragmentation - the same class of life cycles that contains all evolutionarily optimal life cycles in the model without interactions. Our results demonstrate that while models neglecting interactions can capture short-term dynamics, they fall short in predicting the population-scale picture of evolution.

A Debate about the Genre and Authorship of an Eighteenth-Century Document

A Debate about the Genre and Authorship of an Eighteenth-Century Document Julie L. Holcomb (bio) The Quaker and Special Collections at Haverford College holds in its collections a 44-page document whose genre and authorship have been the subject of debate in the pages of Quaker History. The Haverford catalog record ascribes to the document the title "Abner Woolman's Journal" and lists Abner Woolman as the creator and John Woolman as contributor. The document is described as: "Manuscript bound together made up of two smaller manuscripts loosely sewn together. Much of the document is in John Woolman's hand, and some is in his brother Abner's. The document is Abner Woolman's diary which John Woolman finished after Abner's death. It also has information about Woolman submitting work to the Committee for approval before publication in August 1772."1 In 1968, Quaker historian Henry J. Cadbury, having found the Woolman manuscript "among the boxes of loose papers preserved by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting pertaining to its Meeting for Sufferings," wrote about the discovery in the "Notes & Documents" section of Quaker History.2 Woolman biographers Thomas P. Slaughter and Geoffrey Plank reference the document in their respective books: The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition and John Woolman's Path to the Peaceable Kingdom: A Quaker in the British Empire.3 In 2010, James Proud, a retired lawyer and clergyman, included a full transcription of the Woolman [End Page 25] Click for larger view View full resolution Page 1 of "Abner Woolman's Journal," courtesy of the Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, PA. Here and throughout this series of articles, image captions will use the title given to the document by the Haverford archivist. [End Page 26] document in his book, John Woolman and the Affairs of Truth.4 In 2018, Quaker History published the article "Abner Woolman's Colonial World: Quaker Politics and Literature Before the American Revolution," written by Daniel Gorman, Jr., who was at the time a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Rochester. In his article, Gorman noted how little attention Abner Woolman had received from scholars despite his relationship with his well-known brother John. Engaging with the work of Cadbury, Proud, Slaughter, and Plank, Gorman argues, alongside Slaughter and Plank, that "Abner Woolman's Journal" was authored by Abner. As such, Gorman notes, the journal "should be studied on its own merits." The journal, according to Gorman, revealed how "an ordinary Quaker from New Jersey, applied his interpretation of the divine to daily colonial life."5 In 2019, Quaker History published "Abner Woolman's Written 'Legacy' to His Children: A Reply to Daniel Gorman Jr.'s 'Abner Woolman's Colonial World,'" written by James Proud in response to Gorman's article. Proud identified two key points of disagreement between the two scholars: the literary category or genre of the document and its authorship. In his article, Proud reiterated the argument he first made in John Woolman and the Affairs of Truth that the document was "a private communication at death to Abner's children which John, as he says in his letter to the Meeting for Sufferings, 'collected the substance of sundry short chapters, part from a stitched book [of Abner's], and part from loose papers I found in such book,' and then applied, to an unknown extent, his editorial hand to Abner's material, thus fulfilling Abner's expressed intention or desire for the creation of a memorial gift or 'legacy' to his children."6 What are we to make of this debate between Gorman and Proud? Historian Sarah Maza describes historical debate "as the motor that drives research and interpretation." As she explains, "the ambition of every scholar, undergraduate to emeritus, is to enter the conversation by saying something new. In most cases, the questions historians ask drive the search for sources (rather than the source creating the project)." In the case of the Woolman document, it is the source—its form and its authorship—that has created the project. "History toggles between description and explanation, the latter often shaped by debate," Maza writes. Historical writing, even popular historical writing, she continues...

Photography in New Caledonia: Constructed and Casual Views of Colonial Life

ABSTRACT The history of late 19th- and early 20th-century photography in New Caledonia is presented here by comparing loose, unorganized collections against curated bound albums from the Archives of New Caledonia. The comparative framework situates Charles Mitride and Maxime Meyer's amateur photography of domestic space and family life alongside Allan Hughan's government-funded or privately commissioned photographs constructed to record colonial progress. A third dimension offers a longitudinal historical analysis of the motivations and uses of photography from the 1870s to the 1930s, an era of conflict, change, and colonial reshaping of New Caledonia.

Colonial Debts: The Case of Puerto Rico by Rocío Zambrana

Reviewed by: Colonial Debts: The Case of Puerto Rico by Rocío Zambrana Joaquín Villanueva Rocío Zambrana Colonial Debts: The Case of Puerto Rico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2021. Pp. i-xii; 1-264. $24.95 paperback (ISBN: 9781478011835); $94.95 hardcover (ISBN: 978148010722); $00.00 ebook (ISBN: 9781478013198). In the social sciences, puerto rico has traditionally been treated as a case study, a place for data extraction, not theory-making. Researchers come with ready-made theoretical frameworks, often drawn from European and North American intellectual traditions, to collect data on people, institutions, and sites across Puerto Rico in order to prove what they already knew. Puerto Rico is often thought about, yet researchers seldom think with Puerto Rico and its people. Rocío Zambrana breaks with that academic colonial tradition, embracing instead the motto of the Caribbean Philosophical Association: “shifting the geography of reason”. In Colonial Debts, Zambrana theorizes with Puerto Rico and the diaspora to account for the ways in which debt actualizes colonial violences and to help us locate the sites of resistances to the coloniality of debt. Zambrana engages with Puerto Rican thought to argue that “[d]ebt functions as a form of coloniality” (p. 10). In Puerto Rico, the actualization of coloniality through debt “posits the colony anew” (p. 14). In other words, the case of Puerto Rico demonstrates how coloniality operates in post-colonial and colonial contexts through the re-inscription of race/gender/class hierarchies “posited by the history of colonial violence that produced the modern capitalist world” (p. 11). The verb actualize does a lot of work for the author throughout the book, as Zambrana takes recourse on it to suggest how the original colonial violence that inaugurated modernity in the Caribbean is still present today, working through debt to reproduce the colony and its economy, one based on the extraction of wealth through life. That colonial violence, however, adapts to changing conditions and circumstances, responding to “capital’s changing needs” (p. 24). The violence of conquest and colonization remains operational across time and space, working its way through a system of race/gender/class hierarchies that is “ongoingly” updated and actualized to serve the needs of capital and its agents (p. 37–38). Coloniality is the reproduction (i.e. actualization) of that classifica-tory system that enables the re-articulation of colonial violence. Debt is therefore a form of colonial violence that works through and updates race/gender/class hierarchies, seeping through colonial life in order to “capture” [End Page 222] the last bit of wealth left even after centuries of continual squeezing (p. 22). To me, this section is the book’s main contribution to the now vast literature on debt. This book is organized thematically around key debates on debt. In the first chapter, Zambrana reads Maurizio Lazzarato’s theorizations on the “making of the indebted man” and puts it to the test against Puerto Rican legal scholar and activist, Ariadna Godreau-Aubert’s “pedagogy of the indebted woman”, setting the tone for the rest of the book which seeks to theorize from/with Puerto Rico. The second chapter revolves around a critique of Puerto Rican sociologist José Atiles’ important theorizations on the state of exception. In contrast to Atiles, Zambrana argues that a focus on sovereign decisions and declarations of emergency, a defining feature of present-day Puerto Rico, occludes the far longer temporality upon which those decisions are based. A declaration of emergency, Zambrana argues, is “already too late” (p. 81). The temporal critique segues into the third chapter, where Zambrana sketches the most consequential argument of the book, that “financial debt indexes historical debts” (p. 84). Indebtedness, Zambrana argues, “opens up a space and time of reckoning” (p. 97), by allowing those in debt to question and interrupt the historical geographies of violence, dispossession, and abjection that make debt (an apparatus of capture) possible. The fourth chapter engages with the various forms of “subversive interruption” – such as vagancia queer (queer laziness) and perreo intenso (intense dance)– that have been given life in Puerto Rico by indebted subjects intent on halting the cycle of violence that debt seeks to actualize. The conclusion of...