Themes In Historiography Research Articles

Both Sides Now: Writing the Edges of the American West by Sheila McManus

Reviewed by: Both Sides Now: Writing the Edges of the American West by Sheila McManus David C. Beyreis Both Sides Now: Writing the Edges of the American West. By Sheila McManus. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2022. Pp. 204. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) Borderlands are complicated. Rather than places where a country's power to regulate commerce and dictate national loyalties are ascendant, these territories are often sites of political contestation, economic integration, and grass-roots identity formation. Sheila McManus calls on historians to develop a more nuanced comparative framework for borderlands studies. Part of this task involves rectifying an imbalance in historiography prioritizing the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. Another element of the author's call to action is to search for patterns and dissimilarities in the processes of borderlands formation—what is true for the southern border is not necessarily true for the northern border and vice versa. In laying out a clear set of themes for investigation, pointing out analytical shortcomings, and providing commentary on underdeveloped topics, the author has produced an extraordinarily useful primer for students of borderlands history. To bring clarity to this complex topic, McManus identifies five themes that unite borderlands literature. First, she addresses borderlands as Indigenous spaces, particularly as sites of Native political dominance, trade, and diplomacy. McManus stresses the role of women as laborers and kinfolk and calls for increased attention to their roles as diplomats and peacemakers. Second, borderlands are places where nation-states attempt to create static identities for their citizens. Although governments often view borders as places where national identities are clear and unchanging, the reality is far more complex. The author points out that borderlanders themselves often make choices about loyalty and identity at a grassroots level, in decisions that challenge national, exclusivist binaries. Third, borderlands are often violent places where national law enforcement agencies and military forces attempt to "secure" the region by restricting and regulating the movement of people and goods. Fourth, the author contends that borderlands are capitalist landscapes whose function is often at odds with the nation-states' attempts to make borders hard dividing lines. [End Page 584] Mining, ranching, manufacturing, and farming have traditionally relied on the easy cross-border movement of capital and labor. In this sense, capitalism works at cross purposes with the forces seeking to stabilize borderland regions. Finally, borderlands are places where people engage in grassroots processes of identify formation, like blending, choosing, and becoming, that often challenge state directives and aspirations. McManus also points out notable gaps and disparities in borderlands literature. The author laments a historiographical imbalance between the massive list of works on the U.S.–Mexico borderlands and the much smaller body of literature on the U.S.–Canada borderlands. The robust literature of the Texas–Mexico borderlands contributes to this disparity. That said, works on Texas by historians like Juliana Barr, George T. Díaz, Monica Perales, Raúl A. Ramos, and Andrés Reséndez provide model studies of the region. Another gap McManus identifies is a relative paucity of gender history. Women are often overlooked and under analyzed. Curiously, the author largely overlooks environmental history as another avenue of comparative analysis. Sheila McManus has done a marvelous job pulling together, analyzing, and comparing a vast range of secondary borderlands material. Her clarity in identifying historiographical themes brings order from chaos. Her call to action, for more work on gender and the U.S.–Canada borderlands, could stimulate work in these fields and bring more regional parity. Both Sides Now should be required reading in graduate seminars and will undoubtedly become a standard reference work in North American borderlands studies. This book is a superb introduction to an endlessly fascinating, complex, and important topic. David C. Beyreis Saint Mary's School (Raleigh, North Carolina) Copyright © 2022 The Texas State Historical Association

Home ownership at the origins of contemporary Italy. Politics and legislation (1945-1950)

Although mass access to private home ownership deeply marked the history of contemporary Italy, it remains one of the least studied topics in historiography. This article wishes to help fill this gap by analysing the origins of a process that made Italy one of the countries with the highest rate of home owners in Western Europe. Housing and construction policies aimed at encouraging and supporting small home ownership played a decisive role in this process. From a political and legislative perspective, the post-war years were fundamental: some of the main pieces that would make up the mosaic of a country of private home owners were laid down precisely in those years. In the article, I will examine the programmatic positions of parties as well as the political exchange that occurred in the Constituent Assembly and during parliamentary discussions on fundamental measures such as the Ina Casa plan and the Tupini and Aldisio laws on real estate development.

Finding a New Illinois History: Connecting with the Revival of Midwestern Regional History

Finding a New Illinois History: Connecting with the Revival of Midwestern Regional History

International development in Africa: Historiographical themes and new perspectives

AbstractThis article explores scholarship on the history of international development in Africa and highlights promising new perspectives. The literature review reveals common themes in writing on the history of development—neocolonialism, knowledge production, and statecraft—but also shows that scholars have given too much power to development paradigms and policies. While the scholarship has demonstrated the rhetorical significance of development and the importance of developmentalist states, historians have paid less attention to institutional cleavages, material outcomes, and the complexity of development intervention on the ground. New work draws on oral histories to center local communities, while also examining national and transnational actors and contexts. Examining how development was executed on the ground, and how local communities experienced and reconfigured development, has the potential to help scholars completely rethink these histories. Recent scholarship demonstrates the long‐term continuities of development; the disjunctures between economic theory and development practice; the particular forms of power and modalities of governance that have emerged in different settings; and the social, political, and material implications for local communities targeted by the international development apparatus.

Il controllo delle acque fluviali nell’Italia settentrionale (IV-VIII secolo). Spunti di riflessione, tra fonti scritte e documentazione archeological

Control of the fluvial waters in Northern Italy (4th-8th c.). Some insights, from written sources to archaeological documentation One of the most recurrent topics in historiography regarding landscape transformations in Late Antiquity is related to flooding and loss of control over rivers, essentially attributed to two factors: 1/ the increase in rainfall and decrease in temperature, as part of the so-called Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA), on which paleoclimatological studies have focused in particular; 2/ the loss of control over water courses, that took place in the Roman period, mainly related to depopulation that would have prevented the extensive maintenance works on the banks and canalisations. In this context, particularly with regard to northern Italy, which is the subject of this contribution, some passages of the Dialogi of Gregory the Great and Paul the Deacon (notably the famous mention of the diluvium in 589) are often evoked, recalling miraculous interventions of saints who stopped floods or diverted the rivers, thus saving cities and countryside. The paper aims to discuss and argue these perspectives, examining the context and the purposes of the cited texts, actually written with a moralistic-eschatological intention, but also widening the glance to other types of sources, literary, juridical as well as the Corpus agrimensorum, from which it clearly appears that the theme of floods was already well present in the imperial age. The archaeological record is also examined, providing useful information to more precisely discuss the chronology and the real extent of the floods, showing a very diverse and complex reality. [Author]

El elefante en las acuñaciones hispanocartaginesas

Uno de los temas más discutidos por la historiografía del mundo antiguo, tanto pasada como presente, es la influencia helenística en la ciudad norteafricana de Cartago. En particular, se ha generado un intenso debate en torno a la numismática de la familia Bárquida como una evidencia de que sus políticas eran una imitación de los reinos griegos del Mediterráneo oriental, entre otros aspectos por la inclusión del elefante en sus reversos. Por nuestra parte, a través de un análisis iconográfico del elefante en la numismática helenística valoraremos los elementos de continuidad y ruptura en el caso Bárquida, para matizar los prejuicios y mitos surgidos a partir de las corrientes historiográficas. Basándonos en ello, podemos hablar de una adaptación de la ideología del poder griega a los modelos púnicos de Occidente. One of the most discussed topics in historiography of the ancient world, both past and present, is the Hellenistic influence in the North African city of Carthage. In particular, an intense debate has arisen around the numismatics of the Barcid family as evidence that their policies were an imitation of the Greek kingdoms of the Eastern Mediterranean, among other things because of the inclusion of the elephant in their reverses. For our part, through an iconographic analysis of the elephant in Hellenistic numismatics, we will assess the elements of continuity and rupture in the Barcid case to qualify the prejudices and myths that emerged from historiographic trends. Based on this, we can speak of an adaptation of the Greek ideology of power to the Punic models of the West.

Comedias Parte XVI by Lope de Vega

Reviewed by: Comedias Parte XVI by Lope de Vega Anthony J. Grubbs Lope de Vega. Comedias Parte XVI. Edición crítica de Prolope, coordinada por Florence d’Artois y Luigi Giuliani.GREDOS, 2017, 2 VOLS. 1006 PP. (VOL. 1) Y 978 PP. (VOL. 2). PROLOPE HAS CONSISTENTLY OFFERED exemplary critical editions of Lope de Vega’s Partes and this one, the sixteenth volume, is no exception. In this collection, the primary editors Florence d’Artois and Luigi Giuliani include twelve comedias in two volumes. The individual dramas are prepared by the following editors: Florence d’Artois and Héctor Ruiz (El premio de la hermosura), Mercedes Blanco and Felipe Joannon (Adonis y Venus), Victoria Pineda (Los prados de León), Enrico Di Pastena (Mirad a quién alabáis), Guillermo Gómez Sánchez-Ferrer and Óscar García Fernández (Las mujeres sin hombres), Roland Béhar (La fábula de Perseo), Sònia Boadas (El laberinto de Creta), Eugenio Maggi (La serrana de Tormes), Anne-Marie Lievens (Las grandezas de Alejandro), Florence d’Artois (La Felisarda), Alejandro García-Reidy (La inocente Laura), and Luigi Giuliani (Lo fingido verdadero). The introduction to the collection offers information about the unique publication history of Parte XVI and examines the idiosyncrasies of this compilation of plays. The editors distinguish Parte XVI from its predecessors as the most cohesive and coherent collection. D’Artois and Giuliani mention several formal and thematic connections between the works, suggesting a deliberate process on the part of Lope for selecting the dramas. They argue that the inclusion of different genres—tragedia, tragicomedia, and comedia—added a degree of refinement that would have appealed to the courtly public. Furthermore, the inclusion of mythological, chivalric, hagiographic, or historiographic themes held great appeal. As Lope struggled with personal and professional attacks as well as the changes in the royal court, the editors suggest that he felt compelled to further establish himself as the predominant poet in Spain. But d’Artois and Giuliani propose that Lope’s aspiration to fill the vacancy as court chronicler in 1620 served as the greatest motivator for the organization [End Page 183] and contents of the collection, which was first published on 9 September 1621, albeit with a publication license dating from 24 September 1620. His strategies included addressing carefully composed dedications to all the power brokers in the Court at a time of transition from the reign of Philip II to that of Philip IV and including mythological and chivalric topics in the plays that were meant to both entertain and celebrate the Crown. The comedia editions have been carefully researched and prepared. Each is preceded by a critical introduction, a summary of the piece, details of the versification, and Lope’s dedicatoria. All of the plays are followed by a nota onomástica and in two cases, Mirad a quién alabáis and La fábula de Perseo, an additional appendix of variantes lingüísticas. The works benefit from ample footnotes that provide explanations of the cultural allusions and the rhetorical strategies present in the play. In addition to noting variants in the texts, the editors make definitive corrections to clarify ambiguities. For example, Luigi Giuliani’s edition of Lo fingido verdadero is a much-needed addition to early modern Spanish theater studies. Indeed, Lope’s dramatic version of the conversion and martyrdom of St. Genesius has a long history of highquality scholarly analysis, and the recent edition by Maria Teresa Cattaneo and translation into English by Michael McGaha provide general information and analysis in their introductions, but Giuliani’s version demonstrates a philological rigor that will prove even more useful to experts in the field. His corrections to the text result from a careful comparison of previous versions. As expected, the abundant footnotes guide the reader by offering context and information about references in the play. The supplementary information is comprehensive and addresses such topics as the omission of certain characters in the preliminary listing, allusions to obscure coplas, and erudite explications of intercalated sonnets, to name a few. Similarly, Mercedes Blanco’s and Felipe Joannon’s preparation of the first critical edition of Adonis y Venus is meticulous...

FORMAT HISTORIOGRAFI ISLAM NUSANTARA

The problem in this paper is how the historiography format of the Nusantara Islam. Whereas the focus of his study of the traditional historiography of Nusantara Islam, the historiography of the archipelago's Islam and the historiographic themes of the archipelago's Islam. The approach used in this study is the historiography and analytical descriptive approach. Islamic historiography of the archipelago can be divided into two. First, the traditional historiography of the Islamic archipelago. Second, the modern historiography of Islamic Nusantara. The Islamic historiography of the archipelago can be grouped into five. First, saga. Second, khabar. Third, Tambo. Fourth, story. Fifth, genealogy. The historiographic themes of Nusantara Islam can be divided into five. First, the theme revolves around the work of local history writing. Second, the theme revolves around the work of general history writing. Third, the theme revolves around the work of writing military history. Fourth, the theme revolves around the work of biographical writing. Fifth, the theme revolves around the work of historical novels.

Social vulnerability, social structures and household grain shortages in sixteenth-century inland Flanders

Abstract‘Vulnerability’ and ‘resilience’ have recently become hot topics in historiography. The main focus is on systemic vulnerability: the reasons why certain societies were better able to overcome crisis. In this article I want to address another type of vulnerability – inspired by the insights of Wisner and Blaikie: social vulnerability, and the differentiated impact of crisis on different social groups. Based on a unique corpus of sources – the grain censuses drafted during the grain crisis of 1556/57 – and a reconstruction of household budgets, I will reconstruct vulnerable groups, the root causes behind their vulnerability, and their coping mechanisms. By doing this I will show how systemic resilience could go hand-in-hand with vulnerable people, thus adding more depth to a growing research strand.

Esther Clark Wright and Recent Themes in Historiography

Esther Clark Wright and Recent Themes in Historiography

From Colonial Silences to Republican Publicities: Medicine, Women’s Bodies, and the Modern State in Nora Jaffary’s Reproduction and Its Discontents

Nora Jaffary’s Reproduction and Its Discontents surveys reproduction in Mexico between 1750 and 1905, proceeding through a systematic reconstruction of varied topics: perceptions of virginity; pregnancy, conception, and birth attendance; contraception and abortion; infanticide; monstrous births; and finally, the emergence of obstetrics and gynecology. Jaffary deftly synthesizes these themes to advance a clear and compelling argument: that in Mexico, scrutiny, surveillance, and control of women’s reproductive bodies increased apace with scientific modernity; and that modernity was marked by a conflation of reproduction with national identity and destiny. This article reviews the work’s contributions and engages with several methodological and historiographical themes: the way in which Jaffary interprets documentary silences and absences; the role of the nineteenth-century church and its apparent withdrawal from public debate on matters of reproduction; and publicity and the agency of the public in shaping new attitudes toward reproduction. Jaffary’s book makes significant contributions to the growing literature on gender, the public sphere, and the state in nineteenth-century Latin America. Reproduction and Its Discontents immeasurably enhances our understanding of modernizing Mexico and contributes to our knowledge of the particularly Latin American tropes of modernity.

Rappresentare le guerre al museo

In a museum the legitimacy of the representation of historical facts is socially, culturally and politically relevant. The museum, as the “guardian” of knowledge, has the commitment to communicate with its instruments the making of researches related to heritage on which discordant interpretations are confronted. The essay examines some war and conflict museums and their most important historiographic themes. Architecture and museography have the task of contributing to the elaboration of these themes.

Policing Marriage under the ‘Tree of Despotism’: The Struggle over Marital, Civic and Police-Judicial Relations in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh

In 1850 an attempt by the Conservative MP for Bute, James Wortley, to legalise marriage with a deceased wife's sister kick-started an unprecedented and remarkable chain of events in Edinburgh. Over a few short weeks, Scotland's capital became embroiled in a power struggle that would bring Presbyterian churchmen together in a manner that few issues had done since the Disruption, involve the city's religious, civic and judicial elites in a high-profile disturbance and trial, and lay the foundations for a landmark judicial ruling. Although touching upon a number of important historiographical themes relating to marriage, religion, Scottish national identity, and church-state relations, what binds the story together was not only the personalities involved, the events that unfolded, or the perceived conceptual links between them, but male anxieties over control, governance, and masculine honour. In reconstructing this narrative, the essay argues that this was a controversy not just about marriage law, or the perceived abuse of police and judicial power, but of male authority—within the household, the church, and municipal office. It sheds new light on the important role that Scottish values, beliefs, and traditions played in the marriage with a deceased wife's sister debate, and furthers historiographical understanding on police-judicial relations by exploring the intricacies of mid-nineteenth-century Scottish governance.

Cold War Dixie: Militarization and Modernization in the American South by Kari Frederickson (review)

Reviewed by: Cold War Dixie: Militarization and Modernization in the American South by Kari Frederickson Andrew H. Myers (bio) Cold War Dixie: Militarization and Modernization in the American South. By Kari Frederickson. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013. Pp. xii, 226. $69.95 cloth; $24.95 paper) From 1953 until 1988, the Savannah River Plant (SRP) manufactured thirty-six metric tons of plutonium for America’s nuclear arsenal. It also produced tritium for hydrogen bombs. The SRP consisted of five reactors and related facilities for refinement and waste disposal. Thousands of people worked there. The site remains under the control of the federal government but has since been diverted to other uses. It spreads over 310 square miles bordering on Georgia and covering parts of three South Carolina counties. As Kari Frederickson makes clear through her admirably researched and gracefully written book, the SRP encompasses a similarly broad swath of historiographical themes. Other sites like Hanford and Los Alamos have received attention in studies about national defense. Although scholars of the South acknowledge the importance of defense spending and have examined military installations, they have overlooked places such as the SRP and Oak Ridge. Frederickson positions her study within the framework of this literature. In addition, she demonstrates how the SRP shaped the labor movement, the growth of the middle class, the evolution of corporate culture, the increased authority of scientific experts, the rise of the consumer economy, the decline of the Democratic Party in the South, and the end of Jim Crow segregation. Frederickson organizes her book chronologically with each chapter addressing a larger theme. She starts with the 1949 detonation of a fission bomb by the Soviets, which spurred the Truman administration to pursue thermonuclear technology and led to a November 1950 announcement that the DuPont Corporation would build the SRP. She also discusses how the Korean War lent urgency to the effort and how politicians such as James Byrnes, Strom Thurmond, and Mendel Rivers worked to locate the plant in South Carolina. She provides an overview of the area the SRP would affect while [End Page 541] making the case that Aiken County could serve as a lens for examining the entire South. Cotton cultivation dominated the economy. The town of Hamburg was an important railroad terminus during the nineteenth century. Nearby, the textile factory at Graniteville had been a pioneer in mill village paternalism. These also made Aiken County a target during the Civil War and the site of an 1865 battle. Some of the worst racial violence of Reconstruction took place in Hamburg and Ellenton. Despite such incidents, the county served as a tourist destination for affluent “winter colonists.” Other newcomers included Strom Thurmond, who practiced law in Aiken after stepping down as governor. The book’s most poetic chapter is about the removal of eight-thousand people who lived on the site and the destruction of entire towns, including Ellenton. Frederickson writes a compelling analysis of the differing ways in which inhabitants and appraisers conceptualized the value of land. She emphasizes how both viewed their actions in terms of patriotism. She tells how some residents uprooted tombstones to prevent exhumation of their loved ones. She reminds readers that many of the dispossessed were sharecroppers who received no compensation for losing their homes. Construction of the primary SRP facilities occurred between 1951 and 1956, which coincided with campaigns to eliminate racial segregation and give workers the right to organize unions. Although the federal government was ostensibly committed to these twin goals, Frederickson demonstrates that they were overshadowed by Cold War imperatives, DuPont’s corporate culture, local resistance, and the technical requirements of jobs. Unlike Hanford or Oak Ridge, the SRP did not provide employee housing. That experience raised concerns about the governmental control that came with such amenities, so nuclear workers in South Carolina relied upon existing communities. Frederickson explains how this free-market solution overwhelmed the infrastructure and the ability of local officials to manage growth. Subsequently, she describes how the SRP fostered greater social mobility and increased participation by residents of Aiken County in the consumer economy. Part [End Page 542] of this change came through DuPont’s efforts to downplay its role...

Jackson’s Sword: The Army Officer Corps on the American Frontier, 1810–1821 by Samuel J. Watson, and: Peacekeepers and Conquerors: The Army Officer Corps on the American Frontier, 1821–1846 by Samuel J. Watson (review)

Jackson's Sword: The Army Officer Corps on the American Frontier, 1810-1821. By Samuel J. Watson. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012. Pp. 460. Cloth, $39.95.)Peacekeepers and Conquerors: The Army Officer Corps on the American Frontier, 1821-1846. By Samuel J. Watson. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2013. Pp. 636. Cloth, $49.95.)Reviewed by Wayne Wei-siang HsiehHistorians of the antebellum United States Army have long been aware of Samuel J. Watson's voluminous Rice University dissertation, the origins of both Jackson's Sword and Peacekeepers and Conquerors, for its prodigious archival base and thoroughness. It is thus gratifying to see Watson's scholarship now receive a wider audience with the publication of that work in a magisterial two-volume history of the U.S. Army's officer corps between 1810 and 1846, which now replaces William Skelton's well-regarded study as the standard work on the United States Army in that time period.1Although the volumes are published separately, readers should see them as a single unified work, and only then can readers fully comprehend Watson's historiographical contributions. Furthermore, both volumes refer to each other to such a degree that their division feels unnatural at times-although the combined length by itself provides ample justification for the separation into two volumes. Regardless, this combined work surpasses the already impressive archival base of Watson's dissertation, and engages a current and diverse range of historiographical themes involving empire, borderlands, American state formation, and the agency of non-state factors. It also solidifies and expands previous work in older and existing literatures on professionalization, American diplomatic and military history, and the history of the American West.This first volume focuses on the Army officer corps pre-professional years, when Andrew commanded the Division of the South and defied his civilian superiors in the service of sectional interests-namely expansion of the southern slave frontier into Florida, even at the cost of risking war with both Spain and Great Britain. Watson highlights Jackson's dominating personality, aggressiveness, and ruthless desire to assert American domination over both Indian tribes and rival European powers. While and other like-minded officers proved indifferent to constitutional provisions of civilian control, his ferocious advocacy of expansion had a powerful political constituency. As Watson puts it, Jackson was the ultimate political general: the erstwhile Tennessee politician saw the white settlers of the Southwest as his true constituency, regardless of national elections, the national legislature, or the national constitution {Jackson's Sword, 186).Indeed, Jackson's appeal went beyond the frontier regions, as seen in his later political success. Even as he clashed with national authorities such as Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, those same leaders were able to use Jackson's violent methods as a lever of coercion to establish American sovereignty in contested frontier regions such as Florida. Yet the acquisition of Florida, domestic sectional controversies over slavery extension, and a less adversarial relationship with Great Britain stabilized the American frontier. The American republic then sought a professionalized officer corps to manage relations along its national borders, as opposed to aggressive, impetuous, and even insubordinate commanders such as Jackson. The end of Jackson's Sword lays the groundwork of volume two of Watson's study, which chronicles the activities and significance of an officer corps with greater professional commitment, experience (as much political and diplomatic as military) developed during extended careers, and accountability to civilian authority, tempered in the forge of frustrating, politically complex constabulary operations along the nation's frontiers {Jackson's Sword, vii). …

Senzala Insurgente: Malungos, Parentes E Rebeldes Nas Fazendas de Campinas (1832)

The history of Brazil has been shaped by a slave system fed by the massive importation of Africans. Over the last several decades, the study of slavery in Brazil has exploded. In Senzala insurgente, Ricardo Figueiredo Pirola has added to that body of knowledge, providing a detailed and important examination of slavery in an emerging sugar zone.The heart of the book is a slave revolt planned in Campinas in 1832 that was discovered before it could be implemented. The resulting criminal investigation, combined with provincial censuses, inventories, and parish registers, provides the documentary base for this book. Pirola effectively weaves these together to provide the reader with an in- depth view of the inner dynamics of the slave community and its relationship to the slaveholding class. At the same time, Pirola connects this slave community with their home in West Central Africa.In meticulously unraveling this slave plot, Pirola places it within the context of broader historiographical issues. He argues for the combined centrality of class and religion — two main historiographical themes often considered separately — to the revolt. In addition, he argues for the significance of Bantu- led plots in southeastern Brazil, a point that allows him to show how slaves were aware of broader movements in Brazil during the turbulent decades around independence.The scene of the projected revolt, Campinas, underwent rapid transformation from a subsistence economy to one dominated by sugar exports in the first three decades of the nineteenth century. This brought tremendous demographic changes: by 1832 the enslaved population had surpassed the free population; a balanced creole/African population had become heavily African; a reasonably balanced community in terms of gender had become male dominated; the slave community had become younger; and slave ownership had become increasingly concentrated (the majority owned in units of 50 or more). Almost all the identified participants in the plot lived on 15 fazendas, whose 11 heads were themselves frequently connected by family ties. We get to see two communities internally linked.There were 32 active participants in the plot (plus 1 ex- slave), only 3 of whom were born in the area. Twenty- five were Africans, 80 percent of whom were from the northern Congo region (identified as Congo, Monjolo, and Cabinda). This region produced 90 percent of the key plotters, with 6 of the 11 described as Monjolos. The plotters were individuals enslaved for a decade in Campinas, time enough to establish social connections with other slaves. These ladino slaves were mature in age and experience. They also had, Pirola argues, the strongest links to the slaveholding class due to their work as craftsmen, domestic slaves, and skilled workers.This foiled revolt allows the author to provide a valuable insight into important elements of Brazilian society. Senzala insurgente is a good example of “thick description,” as Pirola reconstructs the social links that wove together the sugar elite and the slave community. He documents the formation of a sugar elite in Campinas in the period after 1792, confirming much known about this process. More novel and important is his exploration of the construction of the slave community and the role of community ties in the projected revolt. Importantly, Pirola reconstructs the family ties built around marriage and godparentage that linked together slaves on a number of sugar properties. Godparentage was particularly useful for allowing slaves to connect to the free population as well as for cementing ties within the slave community. Through these ties Pirola explores the process of creating in Brazil a West Central African identity transcending ethnic differences, analyzing the nature of West Central African societies and cultures and relating those characteristics and values to those that evolved in Brazil.The author also adds to our knowledge of individual slaves when he examines the lives of two key plotters, Diogo Rebolo and the ex- slave João Barbeiro. Pirola’s reading of the spiritual world of the slave community is particularly deft: Diogo Rebolo is presented as a spiritual leader connecting the religious culture to the plot itself.Pirola connects this failed plot to a large number of important issues. He demonstrates an understanding of the historiography of slavery and places his views within that context. Given the paucity of key sources of information, Pirola mixes speculation into his analysis, but these forays are clearly identified and generally flow from the discussion. Finally, Pirola provides a transcription of the criminal investigation that served as the starting point for this study.Senzala insurgente demonstrates what can be gained by closely reading local sources and placing that analysis into the context of broader issues and situations. It is a very good example of microhistory, providing rich insights into a wide range of issues of historiographical importance.

Eastern Europe Abroad: Exploring Actor-Networks in Transnational Movements and Migration History, The Case of the Bund

SummaryThe “transnational turn” is one of the most discussed topics in historiography, yet it has inspired more theoretical tension than empirically saturated studies. This article combines both aspects by examining the transnational network formation of one of the most important social movements in late imperial Russia, the Jewish Labour Bund. It furthermore introduces into historiography one of the most fruitful theories in recent social sciences, “actor-network theory”. This opens the view on the steady recreation of a social movement and reveals how closely the history of the Bund in eastern Europe was interwoven with large socialist organizations in the New World. Based on a large number of sources, this contribution to migration and movement history captures the creation and the limits of global socialist networks. As a result, it shows that globalization did not only create economic or political networks but that it impacted the everyday lives of authors and journalists as well as those of tailors and shoemakers.

Asa Briggs and the Emergence of Labour History in Post-War Britain

Now in his 90s, Asa Briggs can look back on a life rich in labour and achievement. A practising historian for more than seven decades, he has made important contributions not only to the discipline and its popularisation but to intellectual life more generally, and the development of Britain’s universities more particularly. He has not finished yet. Sixty-nine years after his first book appeared he is about to publish a third volume of memoirs.1 Introducing the essays presented to Asa on his seventieth birthday, Derek Fraser emphasised four historiographical themes which categorised his achievement. Most scholars will recognise his significance in the evolution of the fields of social history, urban history and the study of broadcasting and communications from the 1940s.2 Younger historians may be less familiar with his engagement with labour history, given that subject’s marginality in both universities and popular discourse since the 1990s and the dominant role typically accorded to Marxist historians when it was in vogue between the late 1950s and the early 1980s. Yet it was a feature of his career from 1945 to the 1970s. The substantial and sometimes overlooked part he took in its take-off after 1960 was propelled by an enduring interest rooted in his background, his intellectual development, his times and the challenges that they presented to the expansion, modernisation and maturation of the discipline.3

Marius Turda, Modernism and Eugenics, Modernism and… (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. xv + 189, £16.99, paperback, ISBN: 978-0-230-23085-5.

Marius Turda’s Modernism and Eugenics is a significant addition to an ever-expanding and evolving eugenics historiography. Turda, who is Deputy Director of the Centre for Health, Medicine and Society at Oxford Brookes University, seeks to enrich our understanding of eugenics by exploring its relationship to modernism in various European countries between 1870 and 1940. Modernism and Eugenics is the first volume of the series Modernism and…, edited by Roger Griffin, and an insightful contribution to Turda’s extensive body of work on nationalism, race and eugenics in central and southeastern Europe. Turda significantly enhances and complicates the history of eugenics by advancing several compelling claims that engage with central historiographical themes. First, he argues that eugenics needs to be conceptualised ‘not only as a scientistic narrative of biological, social and cultural renewal, but also as the emblematic expression of programmatic modernism’ (p. 2). Second, Turda suggests that eugenics was not simply a sideline to European cultures or a momentary extremist episode, but rather a central component of European modernity. He elaborates these arguments by carefully analysing the ways in which eugenics and modernist ideologies dovetailed in visions of national regeneration, and how European citizens became both perpetrators and targets of scientific regulation that blurred distinctions between the individual and collective body, and the private and public sphere. Third, he demonstrates the value of studying national eugenics within a comparative, international framework by emphasising the interplay between universal philosophies and local applications of eugenics. His multidisciplinary study, which draws on conceptual intellectual history, works to redress the historiographical neglect of eugenics in southeastern and central Europe. It also contributes to the history of science by challenging the ‘mythology of the autonomy of science’ through an exploration of modernism and eugenics that stresses the interconnectedness of science, politics, and social practices (p. 119). Modernism and Eugenics is comprised of four thematicallyorganised chapters that chart the convergence of eugenics and programmatic modernism, from the development of the scientific ethos of eugenics, to the establishment of the bio-political state. Eugenics emerged in the latenineteenth century as both a critique of, and solution to, the ‘anomie of modernity’ by refiguring the individual and national body within a biological discourse (p. 7). Turda emphasises that although eugenics was taken up by European countries in various ways (in France through puericulture, in Germany as racial hygiene), all eugenic programmes were based on the ‘politicisation of science’, a belief in the importance of heredity to one’s physical state, and the overlapping of medicine, biology and national health (p. 7). Turda chronicles how eugenics became increasingly integral to modernist re-imaginings of the nation, particularly after WWI through what he calls ‘the biologisation of national belonging’ whereby the individual and the nation were conceptualised as biological entities whose regulation would create social cohesion and bring about national palingenesis (pp. 6–7). He sees eugenics and modernist visions culminating in the bio-political states that emerged in the 1930s and 40s in fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, but also in Romania, Hungary and many other European countries. Turda’s comparative analysis, which is based on such sources as national and international conference proceedings and specialised journals, is quite impressive as he illuminates points of convergence and divergence in the eugenics movements of countries as diverse as France, Romania, Britain, Hungary, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Greece. However, since Turda touches briefly on eugenics in many different national contexts without sketching a rich outline of the movement in any one country, some prior knowledge of the history of eugenics is advised in order to fully appreciate the intricacy and sophistication of his arguments. As Turda notes in his introduction, this study is a contribution to a eugenics historiography that is mature enough to embrace a trans-disciplinary, comparative approach that engages with the topic of modernism. Modernism and Eugenics would therefore be best appreciated by historians of eugenics, science and medicine, with a working historical knowledge of European eugenics.

A primeira fase da historiografia latino-americana e a construção da identidade das novas nações

O objetivo deste artigo é examinar as propostas e afirmações a respeito da identidade nacional na historiografia latino-americana a partir do movimento da independência no começo do século XIX e no período imediatamente pós-emancipação. No artigo discutiu-se a temática da identidade nacional, da nossa especificidade, das dificuldades de ordenamento de identidades consideradas como originárias; temas constantes na historiografia e nas discussões políticas latino-americanas nesse período.