Pub Date : 2022-02-10DOI: 10.1017/S1740022821000425
K. Frederick, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
Abstract This article analyses the resilience of domestic textile production in Java and sub-Saharan Africa to uncover how local industries coped with the effects of broader global and colonial forces in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. We demonstrate that many domestic handicraft manufacturers managed to survive due to specific competitive advantages. Strategies of product differentiation, responsiveness to shifting consumer needs, and flexibility in manufacturing methods enabled local producers to remain competitive in confrontation with mounting imports from early factories, typically constituting cheap, but lower quality and less unique products. Some local manufacturers could even compete based on price given the very low labour costs associated with seasonally-oriented handicraft production, which raises questions about the extent of the comparative advantage enjoyed by early-industrializing nations in the Global North. The capacity of domestic textile producers to remain competitive amid colonial policies aimed at capturing local markets – and raw cotton sources – highlights not only the importance of product differentiation and the specificity of local demand, but also the agency exercised by both producers and consumers under colonial rule.
{"title":"Local advantage in a global context. Competition, adaptation and resilience in textile manufacturing in the ‘periphery’, 1860–1960","authors":"K. Frederick, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk","doi":"10.1017/S1740022821000425","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022821000425","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyses the resilience of domestic textile production in Java and sub-Saharan Africa to uncover how local industries coped with the effects of broader global and colonial forces in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. We demonstrate that many domestic handicraft manufacturers managed to survive due to specific competitive advantages. Strategies of product differentiation, responsiveness to shifting consumer needs, and flexibility in manufacturing methods enabled local producers to remain competitive in confrontation with mounting imports from early factories, typically constituting cheap, but lower quality and less unique products. Some local manufacturers could even compete based on price given the very low labour costs associated with seasonally-oriented handicraft production, which raises questions about the extent of the comparative advantage enjoyed by early-industrializing nations in the Global North. The capacity of domestic textile producers to remain competitive amid colonial policies aimed at capturing local markets – and raw cotton sources – highlights not only the importance of product differentiation and the specificity of local demand, but also the agency exercised by both producers and consumers under colonial rule.","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43514428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-07DOI: 10.1017/S1740022821000437
J. Straussberger
Abstract Following independence in 1958, hundreds of Guinean soldiers, students, and politicians fled their home country in order to build an opposition to President Sékou Touré in exile. This article examines how these exiles built regional and global networks in order to effect political change. In turn, West African states sought to manage exiles in order to apply political pressure on regional rivals. Despite their liminality in a region increasingly dominated by national politics and international organizations, exiles were at the centre of political contestations surrounding citizenship, sovereignty, and human rights that emerged in the three decades following decolonization. Their history underscores the importance of regional frameworks in shaping the post-colonial order in West Africa.
{"title":"Entangled political histories of twentieth-century West Africa: The case of Guinean exile networks","authors":"J. Straussberger","doi":"10.1017/S1740022821000437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022821000437","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Following independence in 1958, hundreds of Guinean soldiers, students, and politicians fled their home country in order to build an opposition to President Sékou Touré in exile. This article examines how these exiles built regional and global networks in order to effect political change. In turn, West African states sought to manage exiles in order to apply political pressure on regional rivals. Despite their liminality in a region increasingly dominated by national politics and international organizations, exiles were at the centre of political contestations surrounding citizenship, sovereignty, and human rights that emerged in the three decades following decolonization. Their history underscores the importance of regional frameworks in shaping the post-colonial order in West Africa.","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46675499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-10DOI: 10.1017/S1740022821000401
Matthew Unangst
Abstract This article traces the history of one geographical concept, hinterland, through changing political contexts from the 1880s through the 1970s. Hinterland proved a valuable tool for states attempting to challenge the global territorial order in both the Scramble for Africa and the postwar world of nation-states. In the context of German territorial demands in East Africa, colonial propagandists used hinterland to knit together the first longue-durée histories of the Indian Ocean to cast Zanzibar as a failed colonial power and win control of the coast. In the 1940s, Indian nationalists revived hinterland as a concept for writing about the Indian Ocean, utilizing the concept to link areas far from the ocean to an informal Indian empire that could be rebuilt to its premodern glory through naval expansion. In both contexts, hinterland provided a geographical framework to challenge British dominance on the Indian Ocean. The shifting meaning and usage of the term indicates continuities in territoriality between the Scramble for Africa and postwar internationalism.
{"title":"Hinterland: The political history of a geographic category from the scramble for Africa to Afro-Asian solidarity","authors":"Matthew Unangst","doi":"10.1017/S1740022821000401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022821000401","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article traces the history of one geographical concept, hinterland, through changing political contexts from the 1880s through the 1970s. Hinterland proved a valuable tool for states attempting to challenge the global territorial order in both the Scramble for Africa and the postwar world of nation-states. In the context of German territorial demands in East Africa, colonial propagandists used hinterland to knit together the first longue-durée histories of the Indian Ocean to cast Zanzibar as a failed colonial power and win control of the coast. In the 1940s, Indian nationalists revived hinterland as a concept for writing about the Indian Ocean, utilizing the concept to link areas far from the ocean to an informal Indian empire that could be rebuilt to its premodern glory through naval expansion. In both contexts, hinterland provided a geographical framework to challenge British dominance on the Indian Ocean. The shifting meaning and usage of the term indicates continuities in territoriality between the Scramble for Africa and postwar internationalism.","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49072264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-22DOI: 10.1017/S1740022821000127
P. O’brien
Past and recent representations of the first industrial revolution As long ago as 1967, Marshal Hodgson recognized that the rise of Western economies could only be properly analysed and understood in a global context.1 Alas, the recommendation by this eminent scholar of Islam and the Islamicate world to re-conceptualize Britain’s Industrial Revolution within the wider spaces, longer chronologies and cultural frameworks of the long and interconnected history of Afro-Eurasia was not taken forward until Eric Jones published the first edition of the European Miracle in 1981.2 Since then, slowly but surely, books, articles and debates relocating and reconfiguring the industrialization of Britain and the West as another cycle in global economic history have proliferated and the subject has matured into a field that has revitalized scholarly interest in very long run structural developments on a global scale. So it is now timely to follow Hodgson’s advice and, by way of a critical survey of recent historiography, endeavour to ascertain in this essay whether Britain’s Industrial Revolution can continue to be represented as a ‘conjuncture’ in global economic history when prospects for accelerated and sustained growth changed fundamentally. Industrialization is a highly significant historical process. It displays common features on local, regional, national, continental and global scales. These are now understood to include social, cultural, political and geopolitical as well as economic forces. Nevertheless, industrialization can be parsimoniously encapsulated and graphically illustrated in statistical form as a conjuncture of accelerated economic transformation from an agrarian or organic to an industrial economy. Thus, following Kuznets, what the most recent wave of interpretations have observed and quantified is ‘structural change’ proceeding more or less rapidly until majorities of national workforces cease to be closely linked to, and dependent upon, primary production. More and more labour becomes employed either directly or indirectly through linked activities – such as trade, transportation, finance, information, consultancy, protection and welfare – in the servicing of manufactured goods. Comparable trends have also been measured, albeit with far greater difficulty, in
{"title":"Was the British industrial revolution a conjuncture in global economic history?","authors":"P. O’brien","doi":"10.1017/S1740022821000127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022821000127","url":null,"abstract":"Past and recent representations of the first industrial revolution As long ago as 1967, Marshal Hodgson recognized that the rise of Western economies could only be properly analysed and understood in a global context.1 Alas, the recommendation by this eminent scholar of Islam and the Islamicate world to re-conceptualize Britain’s Industrial Revolution within the wider spaces, longer chronologies and cultural frameworks of the long and interconnected history of Afro-Eurasia was not taken forward until Eric Jones published the first edition of the European Miracle in 1981.2 Since then, slowly but surely, books, articles and debates relocating and reconfiguring the industrialization of Britain and the West as another cycle in global economic history have proliferated and the subject has matured into a field that has revitalized scholarly interest in very long run structural developments on a global scale. So it is now timely to follow Hodgson’s advice and, by way of a critical survey of recent historiography, endeavour to ascertain in this essay whether Britain’s Industrial Revolution can continue to be represented as a ‘conjuncture’ in global economic history when prospects for accelerated and sustained growth changed fundamentally. Industrialization is a highly significant historical process. It displays common features on local, regional, national, continental and global scales. These are now understood to include social, cultural, political and geopolitical as well as economic forces. Nevertheless, industrialization can be parsimoniously encapsulated and graphically illustrated in statistical form as a conjuncture of accelerated economic transformation from an agrarian or organic to an industrial economy. Thus, following Kuznets, what the most recent wave of interpretations have observed and quantified is ‘structural change’ proceeding more or less rapidly until majorities of national workforces cease to be closely linked to, and dependent upon, primary production. More and more labour becomes employed either directly or indirectly through linked activities – such as trade, transportation, finance, information, consultancy, protection and welfare – in the servicing of manufactured goods. Comparable trends have also been measured, albeit with far greater difficulty, in","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44663189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-19DOI: 10.1017/S1740022821000188
Peer Vries
Abstract Patrick O’Brien has dedicated most of his career to studying British economic history, focusing on the Industrial Revolution, its antecedents, characteristics and consequences. He has always paid attention to long-term developments and never confined himself to strictly economic aspects. From the late 1990s onward, he increasingly turned ‘global’. His importance for global history cannot be overstated. His essay in this issue presents the outcome of his long intellectual journey. I will in this rejoinder try to assess his approach and his findings and comment on Patrick as a scholar and as a person. As we are close friends I will be critical.
{"title":"Patrick O’Brien on industrialization, little Britain and the wider world","authors":"Peer Vries","doi":"10.1017/S1740022821000188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022821000188","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Patrick O’Brien has dedicated most of his career to studying British economic history, focusing on the Industrial Revolution, its antecedents, characteristics and consequences. He has always paid attention to long-term developments and never confined himself to strictly economic aspects. From the late 1990s onward, he increasingly turned ‘global’. His importance for global history cannot be overstated. His essay in this issue presents the outcome of his long intellectual journey. I will in this rejoinder try to assess his approach and his findings and comment on Patrick as a scholar and as a person. As we are close friends I will be critical.","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45541740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-19DOI: 10.1017/S1740022821000371
Leandro Prados de la Escosura
Patrick O’Brien’s take on the industrial revolution In his new and ambitious essay, ‘Was the British Industrial Revolution a Conjuncture in Global Economic History?’, Patrick O’Brien proposes a deeply revisionist interpretation of the Industrial Revolution. He examines three major ideas deeply rooted in the views of the Industrial Revolution: that it was a significant discontinuity in British economic history, that it represented a defining conjuncture in global economic history after which growth accelerated in a sustained fashion, and that it provided a paradigm of modern economic growth, namely a sustained increase in output per head and per worker accompanied by population growth and structural transformation (Kuznets, 1966). For Patrick O’Brien, the industrialization of a ‘small island located off the coast of western Eurasia’ was neither a discontinuity nor a global conjuncture that deserve to be considered a paradigm model of ‘liberal and neoliberal’ economic development, but largely an unintended consequence of self-defence plus the predation of natural resources and sheer luck. Let us examine firstly the notion of diffusion. The British industrialization was elevated to a paradigm for modern economic growth by authors who saw the diffusion of its best practice techniques of production and institutions as the yardstick for the assessment of the success or failure of subsequent national development (Landes, 1969) and of those who promoted the industrial Revolution as a model of take-off into self-sustained growth (Rostow, 1960). O’Brien rejects the diffusion model categorically as unsuitable ‘for comprehending the industrialization of mainland Europe, the United States and East Asia, let alone as a basis for policy recommendations to countries still struggling to industrialize’. This rejection is rooted in his seminal contribution Economic Growth in Britain and France, 1780–1914: Two Paths to the Twentieth Century (O’Brien and Keyder, 1978), which represented a departure from a long-standing tradition going back to post-Second World War development economists and economic historians. O’Brien’s core argument is that being the first to experience modern economic growth does not necessarily imply the achievement of the ‘best practice’ and that no optimal path for growth can be identified with Britain’s pioneering path and pattern of industrialization. Furthermore, he questions the idea of industrialized Britain’s superiority above other regions of Europe based on more efficient institutions, cultural values, and economic performance. In fact, O’Brien strongly rejects what he labels the Whiggish view, which claims that modern economic growth took place in Britain due to its specific institutions and the set of incentives they provided. In his view, they were not that different from those of its European rivals. O’Brien (2010: 508) had already dismissed Mokyr (2009) and Allen’s (2009a) interpretations of the origins of the Industrial Revolution
{"title":"The industrial revolution, an unintended consequence of self-defence?","authors":"Leandro Prados de la Escosura","doi":"10.1017/S1740022821000371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022821000371","url":null,"abstract":"Patrick O’Brien’s take on the industrial revolution In his new and ambitious essay, ‘Was the British Industrial Revolution a Conjuncture in Global Economic History?’, Patrick O’Brien proposes a deeply revisionist interpretation of the Industrial Revolution. He examines three major ideas deeply rooted in the views of the Industrial Revolution: that it was a significant discontinuity in British economic history, that it represented a defining conjuncture in global economic history after which growth accelerated in a sustained fashion, and that it provided a paradigm of modern economic growth, namely a sustained increase in output per head and per worker accompanied by population growth and structural transformation (Kuznets, 1966). For Patrick O’Brien, the industrialization of a ‘small island located off the coast of western Eurasia’ was neither a discontinuity nor a global conjuncture that deserve to be considered a paradigm model of ‘liberal and neoliberal’ economic development, but largely an unintended consequence of self-defence plus the predation of natural resources and sheer luck. Let us examine firstly the notion of diffusion. The British industrialization was elevated to a paradigm for modern economic growth by authors who saw the diffusion of its best practice techniques of production and institutions as the yardstick for the assessment of the success or failure of subsequent national development (Landes, 1969) and of those who promoted the industrial Revolution as a model of take-off into self-sustained growth (Rostow, 1960). O’Brien rejects the diffusion model categorically as unsuitable ‘for comprehending the industrialization of mainland Europe, the United States and East Asia, let alone as a basis for policy recommendations to countries still struggling to industrialize’. This rejection is rooted in his seminal contribution Economic Growth in Britain and France, 1780–1914: Two Paths to the Twentieth Century (O’Brien and Keyder, 1978), which represented a departure from a long-standing tradition going back to post-Second World War development economists and economic historians. O’Brien’s core argument is that being the first to experience modern economic growth does not necessarily imply the achievement of the ‘best practice’ and that no optimal path for growth can be identified with Britain’s pioneering path and pattern of industrialization. Furthermore, he questions the idea of industrialized Britain’s superiority above other regions of Europe based on more efficient institutions, cultural values, and economic performance. In fact, O’Brien strongly rejects what he labels the Whiggish view, which claims that modern economic growth took place in Britain due to its specific institutions and the set of incentives they provided. In his view, they were not that different from those of its European rivals. O’Brien (2010: 508) had already dismissed Mokyr (2009) and Allen’s (2009a) interpretations of the origins of the Industrial Revolution","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45295290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-19DOI: 10.1017/S174002282100036X
J. Inikori
The sheer volume of Patrick O’Brien’s writings on the Industrial Revolution, the geographical stretch of the comparative mode of analysis employed, and the unusual effective combination of detailed political history and economic history (which his current essay exemplifies1) all these make for an intimidating proposition to discuss.2 The defining features of O’Brien’s writings on the Industrial Revolution include the role of the state, particularly, in its strong fiscal form, the political capacity of the state to collect taxes to pay for public goods.3 The Royal Navy, imperialism and mercantilism are embodied in this feature. The other is the feature of globalization centering on the history of the hierarchical structuring of the global economy, in which the Industrial Revolution was a critical factor in the ‘long nineteenth century’. Rather than discuss O’Brien’s voluminous writings on the Industrial Revolution, what this essay proposes to do in the limited space allotted is to expand upon some of the major issues raised in O’Brien’s writings that are not fully developed and whose implications for the significance of the Industrial Revolution for the nineteenth-century global economy are not sufficiently explored. These issues are O’Brien’s emphasis on the role of the Royal Navy, imperialism and mercantilism (that does not explicitly elaborate the central place of the Atlantic economy which can be demonstrated using comparative history of the economies of England’s major counties); the history of the Navy after the Civil War (showing the role of British merchants in the Atlantic world which O’Brien’s narrative does not include); mischaracterization of the Industrial Revolution relative to more recent industrializations in the so-called periphery, especially Asia, by ‘liberal’ economic historians (high wages as prime mover, labour-intensive versus capital-intensive industrialization processes, possibly
{"title":"The Industrial Revolution and globalization: A discussion of Patrick O’Brien’s contribution","authors":"J. Inikori","doi":"10.1017/S174002282100036X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S174002282100036X","url":null,"abstract":"The sheer volume of Patrick O’Brien’s writings on the Industrial Revolution, the geographical stretch of the comparative mode of analysis employed, and the unusual effective combination of detailed political history and economic history (which his current essay exemplifies1) all these make for an intimidating proposition to discuss.2 The defining features of O’Brien’s writings on the Industrial Revolution include the role of the state, particularly, in its strong fiscal form, the political capacity of the state to collect taxes to pay for public goods.3 The Royal Navy, imperialism and mercantilism are embodied in this feature. The other is the feature of globalization centering on the history of the hierarchical structuring of the global economy, in which the Industrial Revolution was a critical factor in the ‘long nineteenth century’. Rather than discuss O’Brien’s voluminous writings on the Industrial Revolution, what this essay proposes to do in the limited space allotted is to expand upon some of the major issues raised in O’Brien’s writings that are not fully developed and whose implications for the significance of the Industrial Revolution for the nineteenth-century global economy are not sufficiently explored. These issues are O’Brien’s emphasis on the role of the Royal Navy, imperialism and mercantilism (that does not explicitly elaborate the central place of the Atlantic economy which can be demonstrated using comparative history of the economies of England’s major counties); the history of the Navy after the Civil War (showing the role of British merchants in the Atlantic world which O’Brien’s narrative does not include); mischaracterization of the Industrial Revolution relative to more recent industrializations in the so-called periphery, especially Asia, by ‘liberal’ economic historians (high wages as prime mover, labour-intensive versus capital-intensive industrialization processes, possibly","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42640566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-15DOI: 10.1017/S1740022821000309
N. Bourbonnais
This article moves past high politics and the most prominent activists to explore the daily, intimate practice of international movement building by mid-level fieldworkers within the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) during its first decade of existence (1952–62). It illustrates how fieldworkers and the IPPF’s practitioner-oriented newsletter Around the World attempted to bridge the ideological and geographic diversity of the family planning movement and connect with advocates around the world through an emotive narrative of suffering, love, and global humanity, reinforced by affective bonds and women’s volunteerism. The story of global family planning must thus be seen not only as part of the history of eugenics, population control, and feminism, but also as part of the longer trajectory of maternalist humanitarianism. This mid-twentieth century version of maternalist humanitarianism built on earlier traditions but also incorporated concepts of human rights, critiques of dominant gender and sexual norms, and an official commitment to local self-determination in the context of decolonization movements. Still, the organization was plagued by the problems that shape humanitarianism more broadly, including the difficulty of moving past colonialist discourses, deeply rooted feelings of racial superiority, and the contradictions inherent in attempts to impose an impossible ideal of political neutrality in a politically complex world. Looking at the history of global family planning from this perspective thus helps us understand how the different traditions, intimate relationships, and practical experiences mid-level actors bring to their work shape the broader process of international movement building, beyond high-level political and ideological activism.
{"title":"The intimate labour of internationalism: maternalist humanitarians and the mid-twentieth century family planning movement","authors":"N. Bourbonnais","doi":"10.1017/S1740022821000309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022821000309","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article moves past high politics and the most prominent activists to explore the daily, intimate practice of international movement building by mid-level fieldworkers within the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) during its first decade of existence (1952–62). It illustrates how fieldworkers and the IPPF’s practitioner-oriented newsletter Around the World attempted to bridge the ideological and geographic diversity of the family planning movement and connect with advocates around the world through an emotive narrative of suffering, love, and global humanity, reinforced by affective bonds and women’s volunteerism. The story of global family planning must thus be seen not only as part of the history of eugenics, population control, and feminism, but also as part of the longer trajectory of maternalist humanitarianism. This mid-twentieth century version of maternalist humanitarianism built on earlier traditions but also incorporated concepts of human rights, critiques of dominant gender and sexual norms, and an official commitment to local self-determination in the context of decolonization movements. Still, the organization was plagued by the problems that shape humanitarianism more broadly, including the difficulty of moving past colonialist discourses, deeply rooted feelings of racial superiority, and the contradictions inherent in attempts to impose an impossible ideal of political neutrality in a politically complex world. Looking at the history of global family planning from this perspective thus helps us understand how the different traditions, intimate relationships, and practical experiences mid-level actors bring to their work shape the broader process of international movement building, beyond high-level political and ideological activism.","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43795343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-03DOI: 10.1017/S1740022821000383
J. Sand
Abstract This essay traces the diffusion of pigs and the introduction of new practices of pig husbandry in East Asia and the Pacific, with particular attention to the cases of Hawaii, Okinawa, and Japan. Countering the trend in animal history to emphasize environmental and genetic factors, it demonstrates that discourses of property, sovereignty, freedom, and slavery, brought to the region with modern imperialism, played a decisive role in shaping relationships between people and domesticated animals. The essay concludes that global diffusion of capitalist forms of animal husbandry depended on a process of disembedding animals from earlier social roles. This process took different forms in different places. It was in part ecological and in part economic, but must be understood first in the context of the movement of political ideas.
{"title":"People, animals, and island encounters: A pig’s history of the Pacific","authors":"J. Sand","doi":"10.1017/S1740022821000383","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022821000383","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay traces the diffusion of pigs and the introduction of new practices of pig husbandry in East Asia and the Pacific, with particular attention to the cases of Hawaii, Okinawa, and Japan. Countering the trend in animal history to emphasize environmental and genetic factors, it demonstrates that discourses of property, sovereignty, freedom, and slavery, brought to the region with modern imperialism, played a decisive role in shaping relationships between people and domesticated animals. The essay concludes that global diffusion of capitalist forms of animal husbandry depended on a process of disembedding animals from earlier social roles. This process took different forms in different places. It was in part ecological and in part economic, but must be understood first in the context of the movement of political ideas.","PeriodicalId":46192,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Global History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2021-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43068188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-02DOI: 10.1017/S1740022821000322
James Loeffler
The twin birth of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Genocide Convention in 1948 have received enormous scholarly attention in recent years. Yet historians have largely ignored how these legal projects intersected with that year’s war in Israel/Palestine. In this article, I push these two stories back into a single frame by examining the year-long efforts of one early human rights organization, the World Jewish Congress, to advance rights-claims on behalf of Middle Eastern Jewish communities imperiled by the regional repercussions of the war. The WJC’s record of activities affords us a direct window into contemporaneous activist understandings of the ties between the Holocaust and the Nakba, human rights and genocide, and international law and politics. More broadly, it reveals the intrinsic limits of early human rights advocacy in an emerging global system exclusively structured around nation states.
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