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Showing papers on "Empire published in 2018"


Book
16 Mar 2018
TL;DR: Slobodian as mentioned in this paper traces back to Karl Polanyi's account of The Great Transformation and shows that the Geneva School neoliberals shared a vision of reembedding global capitalism itself in the International Trade Organization.
Abstract: Among academics who have not yet taken to ignoring, obscuring, or naturalizing neoliberalism, there remain three main analytical traditions for studying it. First there are the macrohistoric materialist approaches that seek to historicize its emergence as a particular post-1970s period of business class resurgence in the ongoing uneven development of global capitalism. Second there are the more micro-Foucauldian approaches that focus on the entrepreneurial remaking of subjectivity in a world in which market rule increasingly eclipses democracy and economizes social life. And third there are the approaches of intellectual history that explore the development of neoliberal orthodoxy by its main proponents. Quinn Slobodian’s approach in Globalists comes out of this third intellectual history tradition, but, like the best contributors to the other traditions, he is able to bridge between all three approaches, thereby making fascinating connections both to the historic contexts in which the original neoliberal thinkers promulgated their ideas and to the ways in which they thereby reimagined global social relations in terms of an idealized competitive order mediated by capitalist market forces. Slobodian’s particular focus is on a subset of intellectuals who emerged out of the early twentieth-century ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire to regroup in (or at least move through) Geneva. Both Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises are reexamined thus as representatives of a so-called Geneva School of neoliberalism, along with a cast of lesser-known members of their neoliberal thought collective, including Michael Heilperin, Willhelm Röpke, and Gottfried Haberler, as well as yet others, such as Jan Tumlir and Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, who went on to expand the institutional influence of the group’s ideas about constitutionalizing market rule through the Geneva offices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and, ultimately, the World Trade Organization. The signature lesson of this Geneva School, according to Slobodian, was the school’s enduring emphasis on legally enforcing, expanding, and insulating market rules from democratic disruption and social discontents more generally. In turn, the most important lessons about neoliberalism that emerge from the book are about how the leading neoliberals of the twentieth century saw a strong role for the state and especially for the rule of law in safeguarding the market mechanisms of capitalism from political interference. These are in many ways corrective lessons insofar as they help us to complicate and nuance a number of simple sound bites about neoliberalism that have elsewhere been spread by both its popularizers and opponents alike. Slobodian shows us that neoliberalism was never imagined by its intellectual instigators in Geneva as a laissez-faire initiative; nor was it a narrowly economistic agenda; and still less was it predicated on a vision of fashioning a flat world in which global capitalism might be finally freed from all legal, political, and social structures. Instead of interpreting neoliberalism as a disembedding of market forces—an interpretative approach that Slobodian traces back to Karl Polanyi’s account of The Great Transformation—Globalists makes clear that the Geneva School neoliberals shared a vision of reembedding global capitalism itself 312 BO O K R EV EW

491 citations



BookDOI
01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: Clay et al. as discussed by the authors investigated the role of religious conversion in the long history of Russian state building and found that Russian Orthodoxy remained inseparable from the identity of the Russian empire-state, which at different times launched conversion campaigns not only to save the souls of animists and bring deviant Orthodox groups into the mainstream, but also to convert the empire's numerous Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Catholics, and Uniates.
Abstract: Russia's ever-expanding imperial boundaries encompassed diverse peoples and religions. Yet Russian Orthodoxy remained inseparable from the identity of the Russian empire-state, which at different times launched conversion campaigns not only to "save the souls" of animists and bring deviant Orthodox groups into the mainstream, but also to convert the empire's numerous Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Catholics, and Uniates. This book is the first to investigate the role of religious conversion in the long history of Russian state building. How successful were the Church and the state in proselytizing among religious minorities? How were the concepts of Orthodoxy and Russian nationality shaped by the religious diversity of the empire? What was the impact of Orthodox missionary efforts on the non-Russian peoples, and how did these peoples react to religious pressure? In chapters that explore these and other questions, this book provides geographical coverage from Poland and European Russia to the Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia, and Alaska.The editors' introduction and conclusion place the twelve original essays in broad historical context and suggest patterns in Russian attitudes toward religion that range from attempts to forge a homogeneous identity to tolerance of complexity and diversity. Contributors: Eugene Clay, Arizona State University; Robert P. Geraci, University of Virginia; Sergei Kan, Dartmouth College; Agnes Kefeli, Arizona State University; Shoshana Keller, Colgate University; Michael Khodarkovsky, Loyola University, Chicago; John D. Klier, University College, London; Georg Michels, University of California, Riverside; Firouzeh Mostashari, Regis College; Dittmar Schorkowitz, Free University, Berlin; Theodore Weeks, Southern Illinois University; Paul W. Werth, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

137 citations


Book
04 Sep 2018
TL;DR: The American West and the World as mentioned in this paper provides a synthetic introduction to the transnational history of the American West, discussing exploration, expansion, migration, violence, intimacies, and ideas.
Abstract: The American West and the World provides a synthetic introduction to the transnational history of the American West. Drawing from the insights of recent scholarship, Janne Lahti recenters the history of the U.S. West in the global contexts of empires and settler colonialism, discussing exploration, expansion, migration, violence, intimacies, and ideas. Lahti examines established subfields of Western scholarship, such as borderlands studies and transnational histories of empire, as well as relatively unexplored connections between the West and geographically nonadjacent spaces. Lucid and incisive, The American West and the World firmly situates the historical West in its proper global context.

112 citations


Book
13 Dec 2018
TL;DR: In The Corporation as a Protagonist in Global History as discussed by the authors, Pettigrew and Veevers reinterpret the role of Europe's overseas corporations in early modern global history, uncovering their unique global sociology in the years 1550 to 1750.
Abstract: In The Corporation as a Protagonist in Global History, William A. Pettigrew and David Veevers reinterpret the role of Europe’s overseas corporations in early modern global history, uncovering their unique global sociology in the years 1550 to 1750. Readership: Academics and students interested in the history of trading corporations, European overseas enterprises, early modern global history, empire, trade and commerce, and business and economic historians.

108 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Max Deardorff1
01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: The authors examines a con�ict over indigenous inheritance law in one small corner of the 16th-century Spanish Empire (the northern Andes) in order to open a window onto legal traditions in the wider Hispanic world.
Abstract: This article examines a conflict over indigenous inheritance law in one small corner of the 16th-century Spanish Empire – the northern Andes – in order to open a window onto legal traditions in the wider Hispanic world. A specific emphasis is devoted to the mechanisms that placed custom (unwritten norms) at the center of early modern Spanish legal theory, making the Spanish monarchy one especially adapted to incorporating diverse social elements. By focusing on the late-medieval / early modern conception of »republics« – cultural communities oriented toward cohesive action preserving their common good – as the basic unit of study, and on custom as the basic guarantor of their continuing self-determination, I suggest ways to think about the legacy of Iberian convivencia both within and outside of its traditional medieval frame.

78 citations


Book
12 Mar 2018

76 citations


Dissertation
01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the Author's Declaration of Independence and Author's Note IX of the Declaration of State of Israel (SSA) and the Author’s Note IX.
Abstract: II Acknowledgements III Author’s Declaration V Author’s Note IX

74 citations


Book
26 Feb 2018
TL;DR: The authors investigates the long-term continuity of large-scale states and empires, and its effect on the Near East's social fabric, including the fundamental changes that occurred to major social institutions.
Abstract: Mark Altaweel Andrea Squitieri R E V O LU T IO N IZ IN G A W O R L D M rk A taw el nd A nrea Sqitieri This book investigates the long-term continuity of large-scale states and empires, and its effect on the Near East’s social fabric, including the fundamental changes that occurred to major social institutions. Its geographical coverage spans, from east to west, modernday Libya and Egypt to Central Asia, and from north to south, Anatolia to southern Arabia, incorporating modern-day Oman and Yemen. Its temporal coverage spans from the late eighth century BCE to the seventh century CE during the rise of Islam and collapse of the Sasanian Empire.

66 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper used a natural experiment to assess whether temporary protection from trade with industrial leaders can foster development of infant industries in follower countries, and found that temporary protection had long-term effects.
Abstract: This paper uses a natural experiment to assess whether temporary protection from trade with industrial leaders can foster development of infant industries in follower countries. Using a new dataset compiled from primary sources, I find that in the short-run regions (departements) in the French Empire which became better protected from trade with the British for exogenous reasons during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-15) increased capacity in a new technology, mechanised cotton spinning, to a larger extent than regions which remained more exposed to trade. Temporary protection had long term effects. In particular, by exploiting the fact that the post-war location of the cotton industry was determined to a large extent by the historical accident of the wars, I first show that the location of cotton spinning within France was persistent, and firms located in regions with higher post-war spinning capacity were more productive 30 years later. Second, I find that after the restoration of peace, exports of cotton goods from France increased substantially, consistent with evolving comparative advantage in cottons. Third, I show that as late as 1850, France and Belgium - both part of the French Empire prior to 1815 - had larger cotton spinning industries than other Continental European countries which were not protected from British trade during the wars; this suggests that adoption of the new technology was far from inevitable.

59 citations


Book
31 May 2018
TL;DR: Freed slaves and Roman Imperial Culture examines the ways in which members of the elite appropriated strategies from freed slaves to negotiate their relationship to the princeps and to redefine measures of individual progress as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: During the transition from Republic to Empire, the Roman aristocracy adapted traditional values to accommodate the advent of monarchy. Freed Slaves and Roman Imperial Culture examines the ways in which members of the elite appropriated strategies from freed slaves to negotiate their relationship to the princeps and to redefine measures of individual progress. Primarily through the medium of inscribed burial monuments, Roman freedmen entered a broader conversation about power, honor, virtue, memory, and the nature of the human life course. Through this process, former slaves exerted a profound influence on the transformation of aristocratic values at a critical moment in Roman history.

Journal ArticleDOI
Julian Go1
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider what postcolonial theory has to contribute to the sociology of race, and show that post-colonial theory and race are not reducible to each other.
Abstract: The author considers what postcolonial theory has to contribute to the sociology of race. Although there are overlaps, postcolonial theory and the sociology of race are not reducible to each other....


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that civilizational progress and settler colonialism are structured according to the opposition between politics governed by reason or faith and the figure of the child as sinful or bestial, and that it is not contingent, but rather necessary that justificatory frameworks of European empire and colonialism depict Indigenous peoples as children.
Abstract: Settler colonialism is structured in part according to the principle of civilizational progress yet the roots of this doctrine are not well understood. Disparate ideas of progress and practices related to colonial dispossession and domination can be traced back to the Enlightenment, and as far back as ancient Greece, but there remain unexplored logics and continuities. I argue that civilizational progress and settler colonialism are structured according to the opposition between politics governed by reason or faith and the figure of the child as sinful or bestial. Thus, it is not contingent, but rather necessary that justificatory frameworks of European empire and colonialism depict Indigenous peoples as children. To illustrate how the theoretical link between Indigenous peoples and children emerges not as a simple analogy, but rather, as the source of the premodern/modern and savage/civilized binaries, I trace the various historical iterations of the political/childhood opposition through the cla...

Book
04 Jun 2018
TL;DR: The New Peasantries as discussed by the authors is a popular text for postgraduate courses and has been used to simplify the structure of the book and make it more accessible as a textbook for students.
Abstract: When first published in 2008, The New Peasantries revolutionized our ways of thinking of what constitutes the peasantry and repeasantization. It showed how a new era of empire and globalization was creating new forms of peasantry. This new edition is thoroughly revised, with a reorganization of chapters and several new chapters added. It includes a new chapter on China, based on the author's extensive fieldwork there, and much more information on Brazil. It integrates and critically reviews the many publications on peasants, peasantries and peasant modes of agricultural production published in recent years. The theoretical discussion is enriched with more attention to the seminal work of Chayanov. Greater attention is also paid to the construction of new markets – a theme that will remain a major issue in the coming decade. It combines and integrates different bodies of literature: the rich traditions of peasant studies, development and rural sociology, neo-institutional economics and debates on empire and globalization. The original book has been used in several international postgraduate courses. The experience and feedback thus obtained has been used to simplify the structure of the book and make it more accessible as a textbook for students.

Book
22 Feb 2018
TL;DR: Abrahamson as discussed by the authors explores the relationship between various Ukrainian governments and the communal violence, focusing especially on the role of Symon Petliura, the Ukrainian leader later assassinated by a Jew claiming revenge for the pogroms.
Abstract: After the fall of the Russian Empire, Jewish and Ukrainian activists worked to overcome previous mutual antagonism by creating a Ministry of Jewish Affairs within the new Ukrainian state, and taking other measures to satisfy the national aspirations of Jews and other non-Ukrainians. This experiement ended in failure as anarchic violence swept the countryside amidst civil war and foreign intervention. Pogrombist attacks resulted in the worst massacres of Jews in Europe for almost 300 years. Some 40 per cent of these pogroms were perpetrated by troops ostensibly loyal to the very government that was simultaneously extending unprecedented civil rights to the Jewish population. Henry Abramson explores this paradox and sheds new light on the relationship between the various Ukrainian governments and the communal violence, focusing especially on the role of Symon Petliura, the Ukrainian leader later assassinated by a Jew claiming revenge for the pogroms.

Book
08 Nov 2018
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a comparative history of tax regimes in the Roman Republic of Inka, Byzantine Empire, and early modern Japan, from Qin/Han through Tang.
Abstract: Introduction 1. Studying fiscal regimes Andrew Monson and Walter Scheidel Part I. Diversity and Commonalities in Early Extraction Regimes: 2. The Inka empire Terence N. D'Altroy 3. The Aztec empire Michael E. Smith 4. The Ancient Near East and Egypt Michael Jursa and Juan Carlos Morena Garcia Part II. Determinants of Intensification and Abatement: 5. Hellenistic empires Andrew Monson 6. The Roman republic James Tan 7. The early Roman monarchy Walter Scheidel 8. The later Roman empire Gilles Bransbourg 9. Early imperial China, from Qin/Han through Tang Mark E. Lewis 10. Imperial China under the Song and late Qing Kent Gang Deng Part III. Divergent Trends among Established Regimes: 11. Late Rome, Byzantium and early medieval western Europe John Haldon 12. The Middle East in Islamic late antiquity Hugh Kennedy 13. The Ottoman empire Metin M. Cosgel 14. Early modern Japan Philip C. Brown Part IV. Fragmented Political Ecologies and Institutional Innovation: 15. The Greek polis and koinon Emily Mackil 16. Classical Athens Josiah Ober 17. Why did public debt originate in Europe? David Stasavage Part V. Comparative Perspectives and New Frontiers: 18. Tributary empires and the New Fiscal Sociology: some comparative reflections Peter F. Bang 19. Interpreting the comparative history of fiscal regimes Edgar Kiser and Margaret Levi.

Book
Hugh Cagle1
06 Sep 2018
TL;DR: The Tropics are defined by prodigious nature and debilitating illness from popular fiction to modern biomedicine as mentioned in this paper. But the Tropics were not always defined by nature and disease.
Abstract: From popular fiction to modern biomedicine, the tropics are defined by two essential features: prodigious nature and debilitating illness. That was not always so. In this engaging and imaginative study, Hugh Cagle shows how such a vision was created. Along the way, he challenges conventional accounts of the Scientific Revolution. The history of 'the tropics' is the story of science in Europe's first global empire. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, Portugal established colonies from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia and South America, enabling the earliest comparisons of nature and disease across the tropical world. Assembling the Tropics shows how the proliferation of colonial approaches to medicine and natural history led to the assemblage of 'the tropics' as a single, coherent, and internally consistent global region. This is a story about how places acquire medical meaning, about how nature and disease become objects of scientific inquiry, and about what is at stake when that happens.

Book
Suman Seth1
07 Jun 2018
TL;DR: Suman Seth explores forms of eighteenth-century medical knowledge, including conceptions of seasoning, showing how geographical location was essential to this knowledge and helped to define relationships between Britain and her far-flung colonies.
Abstract: Before the nineteenth century, travellers who left Britain for the Americas, West Africa, India and elsewhere encountered a medical conundrum: why did they fall ill when they arrived, and why - if they recovered - did they never become so ill again? The widely accepted answer was that the newcomers needed to become 'seasoned to the climate'. Suman Seth explores forms of eighteenth-century medical knowledge, including conceptions of seasoning, showing how geographical location was essential to this knowledge and helped to define relationships between Britain and her far-flung colonies. In this period, debates raged between medical practitioners over whether diseases changed in different climes. Different diseases were deemed characteristic of different races and genders, and medical practitioners were thus deeply involved in contestations over race and the legitimacy of the abolitionist cause. In this innovative and engaging history, Seth offers dramatically new ways to understand the mutual shaping of medicine, race, and empire.

Dissertation
13 May 2018
Abstract: The phenomenon of decolonization profoundly reshaped the twentieth century. Within the span of three decades following the Second World War, the majority of countries formerly colonized by European powers became independent nations. But this history, so often told from the abstract perspective of high-level diplomacy, tells us little about how decolonization was actually experienced on the ground. This dissertation examines the cultural and social dimensions of decolonization in French Algeria to understand how transfers of power operate and postcolonial sovereignty is constructed on a local level. In short, it asks: how does one decolonize a colony? “Colonial Remainders” argues that the messy logistics of colonial divorce in Algeria fostered an unexpected culture of cooperation between French officials and Algerian nationalists that allowed for precarious but pragmatic moments of collaboration in the years surrounding Algeria’s independence. This dynamic permitted a relatively successful transfer of power following a conflict better known for terror, torture, and terre brûlée. Based on two years of archival fieldwork and interviews conducted in France and Algeria, this project uncovered the experiences of people, the fate of institutions, and the circulation of objects that were caught up in the dynamics of decolonization but whose stories fit neither within the borders of newly emergent states nor the temporal dichotomy of a “before” and “after.” This dissertation re-evaluates the history of decolonization by examining such stories as the fate of a contested collection of French impressionist artwork, a group of wary French and

Book
21 Mar 2018
TL;DR: Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic as discussed by the authors introduces Shakespeare as a historian of ancient Rome alongside figures such as Sallust, Cicero, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Gibbon, Hegel, and Nietzsche.
Abstract: Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic introduces Shakespeare as a historian of ancient Rome alongside figures such as Sallust, Cicero, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Gibbon, Hegel, and Nietzsche. In Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare shows Rome’s transition from Republic to Empire. Why did Rome degenerate into an autocracy? Alternating between ruthless competition, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and self-indulgent fantasies, Rome as Shakespeare sees it is inevitably bound for civil war. Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic considers Shakespeare’s place in the history of concepts of selfhood and reflects on his sympathy for Christianity, in light of his reception of medieval Biblical drama, as well as his allusions to the New Testament. Shakespeare’s critique of Romanitas anticipates concerns about secularization, individualism, and liberalism shared by philosophers such as Hannah Arendt, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, and Patrick Deneen.

Dissertation
18 May 2018
TL;DR: The authors examined key themes of the Roman historian Tacitus through analysis of its accounts of northern barbarians, that is, how they are connected to the structure of the books in which they appear and of the Annales as a whole.
Abstract: The Roman historian Tacitus is not only our most important source for the Early Roman Empire, but also a literary artist second to none. His fragmentarily preserved Annales deals with the imperial rule established by the first emperor Augustus, the Julio-Claudian dynasty (AD 14 – 68). Through his scathing analyses of the consequences of autocratic government, Tacitus has established himself as an eternal enemy of tyrants. However, while Tacitus’ gaze is at times firmly set on Rome, the senate, and the imperial palace, his explorations of the possibilities of freedom and glory, valour and remembrance, bring him from the Italian peninsula in the West to the desert tribes of the South, from the age-old monarchies of the East to the wild nations of the frozen North. Indeed, extended passages of the work deal with events on and beyond the borders of the Empire. This study examines key themes of the Annales through analysis of its accounts of northern barbarians, that is, how they are connected to the structure of the books in which they appear and of the Annales as a whole. It is argued throughout that accounts of northern barbarians form a key part of Tacitus’ narrative of the Julio-Claudian dynasty: they allow Tacitus to explore alternative historical paths, reflect on the efficacy of past models of behaviour in a changed world, discuss sensitive political topics without attracting the ire and censorship of an autocratic regime, and play with key moments of the Roman past within a fertile interpretive framework. (Less)

Book
Emma Dench1
09 Aug 2018
TL;DR: The authors evaluates a hundred years of scholarship on how empire transformed the Roman world, and advances a new theory of how the empire worked and was experienced, and highlights the political, social, religious and cultural consequences of an imperial system within which functions of state were substantially delegated to, or more often simply assumed by, local agencies and institutions.
Abstract: This book evaluates a hundred years of scholarship on how empire transformed the Roman world, and advances a new theory of how the empire worked and was experienced. It engages extensively with Rome's Republican empire as well as the 'Empire of the Caesars', examines a broad range of ancient evidence (material, documentary, and literary) that illuminates multiple perspectives, and emphasizes the much longer history of imperial rule within which the Roman Empire emerged. Steering a course between overemphasis on resistance and overemphasis on consensus, it highlights the political, social, religious and cultural consequences of an imperial system within which functions of state were substantially delegated to, or more often simply assumed by, local agencies and institutions. The book is accessible and of value to a wide range of undergraduate and graduate students as well as of interest to all scholars concerned with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the epistemological and political contours of evidence are discussed, and key shifts in the contemporary politics of knowledge and the collectivity of knowledge are discussed. But the focus is on evidence.
Abstract: What are the epistemological and political contours of evidence today? This introduction to the special issue lays out key shifts in the contemporary politics of knowledge and describes the collect...

Book
13 Dec 2018
TL;DR: Erman's Almost Citizens as discussed by the authors describes the tragic story of how the United States denied Puerto Ricans full citizenship following annexation of the island in 1898, and shows how, in the wake of the Spanish-American War, administrators, lawmakers, and presidents together with judges deployed creativity and ambiguity to transform constitutional meaning for a quarter-century.
Abstract: Almost Citizens lays out the tragic story of how the United States denied Puerto Ricans full citizenship following annexation of the island in 1898. As America became an overseas empire, a handful of remarkable Puerto Ricans debated with US legislators, presidents, judges, and others over who was a citizen and what citizenship meant. This struggle caused a fundamental shift in constitution law: away from the post-Civil War regime of citizenship, rights, and statehood, and toward doctrines that accommodated racist imperial governance. Erman's gripping account shows how, in the wake of the Spanish-American War, administrators, lawmakers, and presidents together with judges deployed creativity and ambiguity to transform constitutional meaning for a quarter of a century. The result is a history in which the United States and Latin America, Reconstruction and empire, and law and bureaucracy intertwine.

DOI
01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: This article studied the material and spatial aspects of everyday life on the social, geographic, and economic margins of the British Empire between 1717 and 1845 and found that colonial processes are frequently tied to the economic use of the land; while at the regional scale, archaeological evidence highlights the range experiences within the British Caribbean.
Abstract: The present study of Guana Island in the British Virgin Islands draws upon archaeological, archival, and architectural evidence to examine the material and spatial aspects of everyday life on the social, geographic, and economic margins of the British Empire between 1717 and 1845. Guana’s settlers were yeoman farmers, formerly indentured laborers, and fishermen displaced from other parts of the Caribbean who came to the Virgin Islands for the opportunity to seek their own fortunes in the small island territories initially forsaken by sugar planters as ill-suited for large scale sugar cultivation. Arriving with them, and with increasing frequency over time, were enslaved Africans forced into laboring in the cotton and sugar fields, on fishing boats, and as domestic servants. The present study seeks to better understand how the experience of eighteenth-century Virgin Islanders, both free and enslaved, compared to their counterparts in larger and wealthier Caribbean sugar colonies through a detailed study of households on Guana Island through time. Between the early eighteenth and mid nineteenth centuries, Guana’s households underwent substantial transformations in response to the expansion, contraction, and variation of the Virgin Islands’ plantation-based economy. Those transformations included measurable changes in settlement patterns, household composition, built environment, and household industry. At the local scale, the archaeological evidence illustrates how colonial processes are frequently tied to the economic use of the land; while at the regional scale, the archaeological evidence highlights the range experiences within the British Caribbean. The evidence presented herein also complicates long-held assumption that Guana’s colonial history was limited to the island’s occupation by Quakers. Indeed, Guana’s eighteenth century settlement occurred earlier, lasted longer, and included a greater number, and wider variety, of people than previously understood.


Book
07 Feb 2018
TL;DR: This article explored the nature and development of colonial governance, and the ways in which Malayan residents experienced British rule in towns and plantations, shedding new light on the shifting nature of colonial subjecthood and identity, as well as the memory and afterlife of empire.
Abstract: Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects examines the stories of ordinary people to explore the internal workings of colonial rule. Chinese, Indians, and Malays learned about being British through the plantations, towns, schools, and newspapers of a modernizing colony. Yet they got mixed messages from the harsh, racial hierarchies of sugar and rubber estates, and cosmopolitan urban societies. Empire meant mobility, fluidity, and hybridity, as well as the enactment of racial privilege and rigid ethnic differences. Using sources ranging from administrative files, court transcripts and oral interviews to periodicals and material culture, Professor Lees explores the nature and development of colonial governance, and the ways in which Malayan residents experienced British rule in towns and plantations. This is an innovative study demonstrating how empire brought with it both oppression and economic opportunity, shedding new light on the shifting nature of colonial subjecthood and identity, as well as the memory and afterlife of empire.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a new book, "Predator Empire: Drone Warfare and Full Spectrum Dominance", by Ian G.R. Shaw, published by University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and published in 2016.