A critique of postcolonial reason: Toward a history of the vanishing present

(1999) ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age History: Reviews of New Books: Vol 27, No 2, pp 90-90

ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age

\"malaria as a disease\" in the pre-DDT era must not be forgotten, for, as he states, \"it is of great importance to keep alive the excitement of the malaria story, an aim to which this publication is dedicated\". The author successfully meets this aim. The design of the book itself is simple and attractive and immediately offers both the specialist and non-specialist reader a fascinating insight into the debates as well as the problems and politics that have thwarted attempts over the centuries to eradicate and control malaria. The book is divided into three parts: 'The yesterday of malaria', 'The today of malaria', and 'The tomorrow of malaria'. In the historical part, the ancient history of the disease receives a brief mention and it is the history of its control in different parts of the world during the twentieth century, following the discoveries by Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, Patrick Manson, Ronald Ross, Giovanni Grassi and others of the plasmodium parasites and the mosquito cycle, that dominates this section. Litsios's fascinating accounts of the researches, ideas, disputes and frustrations of five key malariologists, Paul Russell, Louis Hackett, C Percy James, Sir Malcolm Watson and Nicholas Swellengrebel, are especially illuminating. The second section explores the DDT era of malaria control and eradication. Revealing comments are taken from official reports as well as from the unpublished diaries of a number of leading players in the main malaria conferences and debates, allowing the reader to be drawn into the realities and complexities of malaria control efforts in the 1950s and 1960s. The final part of the book offers a valuable opportunity to understand how and why global politics have shaped the present and future malaria situation. It also includes a short discussion of the various strategies and scientific tools which are currently being adopted or developed in the hope of controlling the global threat of malaria. The book ends on a note of caution. Malaria is interwoven into the fabric of life in a complex way and, as Litsios demonstrates, there will be no easy answers to solving the very critical issue of the \"tomorrow of malaria\". The book is published at a time when we shall shortly be \"celebrating\" the centenary of the discovery of the mosquito transmission of malaria and the golden jubilee of the World Health Organisation's attempts at global eradication of the disease. It is a timely reminder that, in spite of important scientific discoveries and global campaigns, human endeavours have not solved the tomorrow of malaria. This is an excellent introductory text and highly recommended for all those who are concerned with the past, present and future of malaria and its wider implications.

/pdf/the-origins-of-nazi-genocide-from-euthanasia-to-the-final-44fzur2r58.pdf

The origins of Nazi genocide: from euthanasia to the final solution.

A recent paper by Jones et al. (Food globalization in prehistory, World Archaeology, 2011, 43(4), 665–75) explores a prehistoric ‘Trans-Eurasian’ episode of food globalization characterized by the long-distance exchange of starch crops. Drawing upon a comparison to the Columbian Exchange, they emphasize the role of fast-growing crops in optimizing productivity, giving minimal consideration to other drivers. Here we re-evaluate the sequence and timing of the Trans-Eurasian exchange and give greater consideration to the social dimensions of plant translocation. We outline a model for thinking about plant translocations that highlights the way the conceptualization and use of introduced plants changes through time, with social factors frequently dominating in the early stages.

/pdf/old-world-globalization-and-the-columbian-exchange-7vm6a0l1xx.pdf

Old World globalization and the Columbian exchange: comparison and contrast

A Letter to J. A.

In conquering Egypt, the Roman Empire secured direct access to the centuries-old Indian Ocean trade network that in Roman times brought together China, India, Southeast Asia, Parthia, Arabia, and Africa as well as the Roman Mediterranean. Far from being a product of Schumpeterian objectless expansion, Rome's conquest of Egypt fit into a broader strategic logic that sought to extend Roman control over eastern entrepots. Despite its centrality to the Mediterranean wing of the world economy and its ability to extract surplus from its own provinces, the hub of this global economy remained India, whose linchpin emporia were able to extract surplus from the Roman Empire.

Provincializing Rome: The Indian Ocean Trade Network and Roman Imperialism

In chapter eleven of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, having constructed aneal type “culture-bearing” Aryan race,1 came to elucidate his views on the history of Jews within Germany. Until the time of Frederick the Great, he argued, “it still entered no one's head to regard the Jews as anything else but a ‘foreign’ people.”2 Thereafter, he asserted, came a period of transition wherein Jews had “the effrontery to turn Germanic.”3 The rest of the chapter, for Hitler, was an attempt to reverse this putative historical mistake, and presents the reader with a vitriolic casting out of Jews, described as “parasites” and a “noxious bacillus,” from the German body politic.4 The aim of this textual expulsion, Hitler explained, was to ensure that the Germans would not be destroyed from within, as had “all great cultures of the past.”5 To Hitler, Jews were what Julia Kristeva has called “the abject”6—that which is simultaneously part of the self but radically rejected by the self. In seeking to expel the “Germanic Jews” from the Volkskorper, Hitler sought to expel that part of the German self that, in his view, was a source of weakness and taint.7

The pre-history of the Holocaust? The Sonderweg and Historikerstreit debates and the abject colonial past

List of Abbreviations Preface Introduction PART I: A LIBERAL EMPIRE FOR A LIBERAL NATION Chapter 1. National Unification and Overseas Expansion at the Frankfurt National Assembly, 1848 - 1849 Chapter 2. Mythopoesis -Imperialism as Nationalism PART II: RECONFIGURING EMPIRE IN THE 'POST-LIBERAL' ERA Chapter 3. Informal Empire and Private Sector Imperialism, 1849-1884 Chapter 4. Burgerlich Agency and the World of the Verein Chapter 5. Bismarck and the Socio-Political Context of the Colonial Umschwung PART III: THE TEXTS OF IMPERIALISM Chapter 6. Expansionist Agitation after 1849 Chapter 7. Geography and Anthropology in the Service of Imperialism Chapter 8. Popular Culture and the Transmission of Imperialist Values Conclusion Bibliography Index

Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848-1884

Particular or Universal?: Historicising Liberal Approaches to Empire in Europe. Matthew P. Fitzpatrick Imperialism after the Great Wave: The Dutch Case in the Netherlands East Indies, 1860-1914-Elsbeth Locher-Scholten Italy, Liberalism and the Age of Empire-Giuseppi Finaldi Russian Liberalism and the Problem of Imperial Diversity-Alexander Semyonov Liberty, Equality and Nationality: National Liberalism, Modernization and Empire in Hungary in the 19th Century-Laszlo Kurti From Independence to Trialism: The Croatian Party of Right and the Project for a Liberal 'Greater Croatia' within the Habsburg Empire, 1861-1914-Nevenko Bartulin Between Voelkisch and Universal Visions of Empire: Liberal Imperialism in Mitteleuropa 1890-1918-Eric Kurlander An Empire of Scientific Experts: Polish Physicians and the Medicalization of the German Borderlands, 1880-1914-Lenny A. Urena Valerio The Ottoman Empire's Negotiation of Western Liberal Imperialism-Fatma Muge-Goecek and Murat OEzyuksel British and Greek Liberalism and Imperialism in the Long Nineteenth Century-Andrekos Varnava

Liberal imperialism in Europe

In 1852, the naturalist and writer Louisa Meredith observed in her book My Home in Tasmania: “I know of no place where greater order and decorum is observed by the motley crowds assembled on any public occasion than in this most shamefully slandered country: not even in an English country village can a lady walk alone with less fear of harm or insult than in this capital of Van Diemen's Land, commonly believed at home to be a pest-house, where every crime that can disgrace and degrade humanity stalks abroad with unblushing front.”Meredith's paean to life in the notorious Australian penal colony of Hobart was in stark contrast to her earlier, highly unfavourable account of colonial Sydney. It papered over the years of personal hardship she had endured in Australia, as well as avoiding mention of the racial warfare against Tasmania's Aborigines that had afforded her such a genteel European existence.Such intra-Australian complexities, however, were lost when Meredith's account was superimposed onto German debates about the desirability of penal colonies for Germany. Instead, Meredith's portrait of a cultivated city emerging from the most notorious penal colony in Australia was presented as proof that the deportation of criminals was an important dimension of the civilising mission of Europe in the extra-European world. It was also presented as a vindication of those in Germany who wished to rid Germany of its lumpen criminal class through deportation. The exact paragraph of Meredith's account cited above was quoted in German debates on deportation for almost half a century; first in 1859 by the jurist Franz von Holtzendorff, and thereafter by Friedrich Freund when advocating the establishment of a penal colony in the Preusische Jahrbucher in September 1895.

Matthew P. Fitzpatrick

Papers

Provincializing Rome: The Indian Ocean Trade Network and Roman Imperialism

The pre-history of the Holocaust? The Sonderweg and Historikerstreit debates and the abject colonial past

Liberal Imperialism in Germany: Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848-1884

Liberal imperialism in Europe

New South Wales in Africa? The convict colonialism debate in imperial Germany