Abstract Money, a ubiquitous yet enigmatic concept, defies clear definition despite its long historical use. Naismith’s Making Money in the Early Middle Ages reveals the complexity of early medieval monetary systems, identifying three important developments in their history (the decline of Roman imperial money, the shift from gold currency in favor of silver, and the gradual rise in coin usage over the long Middle Ages). In exploring money’s symbolic and practical characteristics, the book illustrates money’s impact on social relations and hierarchies, opening the door for the human questions that carry implications for justice. By integrating distinct methodologies, the author presents a nuanced understanding of money’s significance in shaping medieval societies, offering an exemplary model for interdisciplinary scholarship.
{"title":"Money for Everyone","authors":"Anne E. C. McCants","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_02008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_02008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Money, a ubiquitous yet enigmatic concept, defies clear definition despite its long historical use. Naismith’s Making Money in the Early Middle Ages reveals the complexity of early medieval monetary systems, identifying three important developments in their history (the decline of Roman imperial money, the shift from gold currency in favor of silver, and the gradual rise in coin usage over the long Middle Ages). In exploring money’s symbolic and practical characteristics, the book illustrates money’s impact on social relations and hierarchies, opening the door for the human questions that carry implications for justice. By integrating distinct methodologies, the author presents a nuanced understanding of money’s significance in shaping medieval societies, offering an exemplary model for interdisciplinary scholarship.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141340499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Because of the scale at which the key socio-cultural variables involved in climate-society interactions operate, analysis of such interactions benefits from a regional approach. Like all mountain regions, the western Alps possess a complex mosaic of topographically varied climates, or “topoclimates,” that can generate an array of damaging weather-based disasters, which impact residents at different scales. Cultural practices employed by Alpine farming communities in the latter period of the Little Ice Age (1650–1850) increased their vulnerability to such events, and their long-term stability relied on successful mitigation and coping strategies.
{"title":"Weather-Based Disasters and Farming Communities in the Western Alps, 1650–1850","authors":"Robert Dodgshon","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_02005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_02005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Because of the scale at which the key socio-cultural variables involved in climate-society interactions operate, analysis of such interactions benefits from a regional approach. Like all mountain regions, the western Alps possess a complex mosaic of topographically varied climates, or “topoclimates,” that can generate an array of damaging weather-based disasters, which impact residents at different scales. Cultural practices employed by Alpine farming communities in the latter period of the Little Ice Age (1650–1850) increased their vulnerability to such events, and their long-term stability relied on successful mitigation and coping strategies.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141339688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Between 1644 and 1672, England halted the production of its lowest denomination coins, prompting ordinary individuals and communities to create coins to address the shortage of small change. A large twentieth-century collection that includes over 13,000 such surviving tokens has largely been overlooked by historians and economists, despite the tokens’ significance. In this source and others are a total of over 9,000 types of tokens, originating mainly from the City of London, thirty-seven English counties, and the Irish Pale. Catalogued in an eight-volume Sylloge, published over thirty years, the tokens offer valuable insights into England’s history and societal dynamics during a tumultuous period that included two major regime changes, plague, and London’s Great Fire.
{"title":"English Private Money, 1648–1672","authors":"William Monter","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_02007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_02007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Between 1644 and 1672, England halted the production of its lowest denomination coins, prompting ordinary individuals and communities to create coins to address the shortage of small change. A large twentieth-century collection that includes over 13,000 such surviving tokens has largely been overlooked by historians and economists, despite the tokens’ significance. In this source and others are a total of over 9,000 types of tokens, originating mainly from the City of London, thirty-seven English counties, and the Irish Pale. Catalogued in an eight-volume Sylloge, published over thirty years, the tokens offer valuable insights into England’s history and societal dynamics during a tumultuous period that included two major regime changes, plague, and London’s Great Fire.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141342854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Justin Roberts, Philip D. Morgan, Rasmus Christensen
Abstract In 1792, the Danish government announced the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and granted St. Croix planters a grace period to import slaves before the cessation. Despite hopes for improved conditions for the enslaved after the abolition, surging sugar prices prompted planters to increase imports of enslaved Africans. Census data, slave trade records, and land tax registers illustrate how St. Croix planters, in the face of impending abolition, exacerbated mortality rates among the enslaved and hindered efforts to create a naturally reproducing enslaved population. The short-term acceleration of slave importation after the Danish decision to end the slave trade increased the total mortality rates of Africans throughout the Atlantic region.
{"title":"The Paradox of Abolition: Sugar Production and Slave Demography in Danish St. Croix, 1792–1804","authors":"Justin Roberts, Philip D. Morgan, Rasmus Christensen","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_02006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_02006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In 1792, the Danish government announced the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and granted St. Croix planters a grace period to import slaves before the cessation. Despite hopes for improved conditions for the enslaved after the abolition, surging sugar prices prompted planters to increase imports of enslaved Africans. Census data, slave trade records, and land tax registers illustrate how St. Croix planters, in the face of impending abolition, exacerbated mortality rates among the enslaved and hindered efforts to create a naturally reproducing enslaved population. The short-term acceleration of slave importation after the Danish decision to end the slave trade increased the total mortality rates of Africans throughout the Atlantic region.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141340126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In the twentieth century, plant explorers in many countries were enlisted in the assembly of seed and plant collections that brought together hundreds and sometimes thousands of varieties of the same crop species. These collections were, and are, understood chiefly as the foundations for effective plant breeding. Crop seed collections, like other biological collections, were also essential tools of taxonomy; their study was both conditioned by and productive of evolutionary narratives about plant cultures and human natures. A search for Zea mays (maize or corn) and its wild relatives in South America in the 1940s revealed that developing taxonomies of cultivated plant species, especially accounting for distinct local forms of these crop plants, was a profoundly interdisciplinary enterprise. It was also a project conditioned by researchers’ expectations of the places, peoples, and plants that they would encounter. The taxonomy of maize, like other taxonomic enterprises, emerged as a mirror of those who taxonomized.
{"title":"Stalking Wild Maize: Taxonomy, Plant Exploration, and the Search for Corn’s Origins in South America","authors":"H. Curry","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_02001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_02001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the twentieth century, plant explorers in many countries were enlisted in the assembly of seed and plant collections that brought together hundreds and sometimes thousands of varieties of the same crop species. These collections were, and are, understood chiefly as the foundations for effective plant breeding. Crop seed collections, like other biological collections, were also essential tools of taxonomy; their study was both conditioned by and productive of evolutionary narratives about plant cultures and human natures. A search for Zea mays (maize or corn) and its wild relatives in South America in the 1940s revealed that developing taxonomies of cultivated plant species, especially accounting for distinct local forms of these crop plants, was a profoundly interdisciplinary enterprise. It was also a project conditioned by researchers’ expectations of the places, peoples, and plants that they would encounter. The taxonomy of maize, like other taxonomic enterprises, emerged as a mirror of those who taxonomized.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140777931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Had the first prime minister of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo lived, he might have led the Congolese people to a unified and prosperous nation post-independence. But Patrice Lumumba’s aspirations were cut short by his brutal assassination in late 1960, just months after Congo gained independence from Belgian rule. His death and the enduring impact of it on the Congo’s trajectory are the focus of Reid’s compelling The Lumumba Plot, which exposesthe many egregious errors and sinister efforts of the cia to eliminate Lumumba.
{"title":"The Lumumba Legacy and the Enduring Tragedy of the Congo","authors":"Robert I. Rotberg","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_02004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_02004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Had the first prime minister of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo lived, he might have led the Congolese people to a unified and prosperous nation post-independence. But Patrice Lumumba’s aspirations were cut short by his brutal assassination in late 1960, just months after Congo gained independence from Belgian rule. His death and the enduring impact of it on the Congo’s trajectory are the focus of Reid’s compelling The Lumumba Plot, which exposesthe many egregious errors and sinister efforts of the cia to eliminate Lumumba.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140766695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract How and why has invertebrate sentience come to be debated by lawmakers, and what does this development tell us about the relationship between scientific knowledge, animal ethics, and the law? This preliminary analysis of this puzzle examines milestones in the production of knowledges about cephalopods (squids, cuttlefish, nautilus, and octopuses) starting in the 1830s and traces the role this knowledge played in the ideas and debates that led to the inclusion of cephalopods in U.K. animal welfare law. New ideas about mind and consciousness emerged from the interplay between interspecies encounters among people and cephalopods and the gradual revision of ethical obligations toward nonhuman animals more generally.
{"title":"“Sentient Beings”: Cephalopods’ Minds and U.K. Law","authors":"Shira Shmuely","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_02003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_02003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract How and why has invertebrate sentience come to be debated by lawmakers, and what does this development tell us about the relationship between scientific knowledge, animal ethics, and the law? This preliminary analysis of this puzzle examines milestones in the production of knowledges about cephalopods (squids, cuttlefish, nautilus, and octopuses) starting in the 1830s and traces the role this knowledge played in the ideas and debates that led to the inclusion of cephalopods in U.K. animal welfare law. New ideas about mind and consciousness emerged from the interplay between interspecies encounters among people and cephalopods and the gradual revision of ethical obligations toward nonhuman animals more generally.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140793741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Domestication is a set of processes that requires active reconfigurations of interspecies relations, environments, and technologies. In this view, both ethnographic and historical sources help us track the exact ways that domestication as a practice actively reveals and conceals relations of power among people and between people and other animals. Two pertinent cases—training rats in Tanzania to detect landmines and releasing mosquitoes to deter the transmission of pathogenic viruses in Brazil—take place in contexts where animals are being modified to achieve certain developmental, medical, or humanitarian goals. These animals, like any in the history of domestication, breach boundaries, crossing wild and domestic categories, in these cases at the moment and experience of being bitten. These moments draw our attention to the stakes involved in thinking about domestication.
{"title":"Bites, Blood, Boundaries: Rats, Mosquitoes, and Domestication across Disciplines","authors":"Luisa Reis-Castro, Jia Hui Lee","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_02002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_02002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Domestication is a set of processes that requires active reconfigurations of interspecies relations, environments, and technologies. In this view, both ethnographic and historical sources help us track the exact ways that domestication as a practice actively reveals and conceals relations of power among people and between people and other animals. Two pertinent cases—training rats in Tanzania to detect landmines and releasing mosquitoes to deter the transmission of pathogenic viruses in Brazil—take place in contexts where animals are being modified to achieve certain developmental, medical, or humanitarian goals. These animals, like any in the history of domestication, breach boundaries, crossing wild and domestic categories, in these cases at the moment and experience of being bitten. These moments draw our attention to the stakes involved in thinking about domestication.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140791053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The intertwined narratives of realistic fiction and the laws of thermodynamics parallel one another in their shaping of anthropocentric perspectives. The novel, with its human-centered storytelling, forward trajectory, concern with the details of daily life, and satisfyingly closed endings, has powerfully influenced our expectations for narratives in both fiction and non-fiction alike. Examining two ecologically problematic aspects of the novel—its anthropocentrism and its apparent closure—in relation to the science of energy, this study suggests that understanding the biases within novelistic storytelling can shed light on inherent biases in scientific narratives, encouraging a reevaluation of energy discourse to foster alternative perspectives and ecologically conscious worldviews.
{"title":"Reflections on the Novel, Ecology, and the Laws of Thermodynamics","authors":"Barri J. Gold","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_01999","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_01999","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The intertwined narratives of realistic fiction and the laws of thermodynamics parallel one another in their shaping of anthropocentric perspectives. The novel, with its human-centered storytelling, forward trajectory, concern with the details of daily life, and satisfyingly closed endings, has powerfully influenced our expectations for narratives in both fiction and non-fiction alike. Examining two ecologically problematic aspects of the novel—its anthropocentrism and its apparent closure—in relation to the science of energy, this study suggests that understanding the biases within novelistic storytelling can shed light on inherent biases in scientific narratives, encouraging a reevaluation of energy discourse to foster alternative perspectives and ecologically conscious worldviews.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140777494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The concept of nonhuman agency is a contentious issue in historical discourse, provoking disagreement due to its loose definition. The lack of a consistent definition for the term has led to varied and contradictory interpretations, sometimes rendering it counterproductive. Diverse theoretical models across disciplines engage questions of nonhuman agency, spanning Indigenous methodologies, actor-network theory, and new materialisms. Exploration of early modern scientific study of animals reveals the importance of rooting theories of nonhuman influence in concrete historical processes rather than abstractions and within the context of period actors’ categories. Challenging the centrality of nonhuman agency in historical discussions prompts a deliberate consideration of its role for historians, suggesting alternative ways of valuing and analyzing past human entanglements with nonhumans, and questioning whether agency must remain so central to discussions of the more-than-human.
{"title":"On Nonhuman Agency","authors":"Whitney Barlow Robles","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_02000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_02000","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The concept of nonhuman agency is a contentious issue in historical discourse, provoking disagreement due to its loose definition. The lack of a consistent definition for the term has led to varied and contradictory interpretations, sometimes rendering it counterproductive. Diverse theoretical models across disciplines engage questions of nonhuman agency, spanning Indigenous methodologies, actor-network theory, and new materialisms. Exploration of early modern scientific study of animals reveals the importance of rooting theories of nonhuman influence in concrete historical processes rather than abstractions and within the context of period actors’ categories. Challenging the centrality of nonhuman agency in historical discussions prompts a deliberate consideration of its role for historians, suggesting alternative ways of valuing and analyzing past human entanglements with nonhumans, and questioning whether agency must remain so central to discussions of the more-than-human.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140784451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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