This is an extraordinary book with a wide-ranging exploration of the concept of fair play in Britain going back to the eighth century and Beowulf. It also perceptively considers the role of ancient Greece and Rome in forming the idea of fair play. There is a rich discussion of the idea in works by authors such as William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Walter Scott, and others.The very title of the book, however, raises a problem. Although there are perceptive discussions of fair play in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and extensive consideration of the use of the term in England, most of the text considers Britain as a whole. Perhaps the book would have been more accurately entitled A British Tradition? The answer is eventually yes, as the idea has been much more emphasized in Britain than elsewhere in the world. This is made plain in brief discussions of the concept in France, Germany, Spain, and Japan, with some references to other nations.One has the feeling that the author has tracked down, although it cannot quite be true, every reference to fair play in British texts. And he is richly aware of the powerful ambiguities of the concept as it played out in Britain. Fair play would claim to be an idea that is uniformly applied. There is an effective discussion of its role in English law in connection to Magna Carta. A jury of one’s peers, the assumption of innocence, and various other stipulations are designed to assure a fair trial. Nonetheless, it is somewhat hard to square these assurances of fairness with the historical brutality of British law enforcement. Were individuals of all classes treated the same? It was very likely that someone from the working class accused of a minor theft might be hanged.The British have often been accused of hypocrisy in their claim of fair play, a topic Duke-Evans does not discuss. He argues powerfully and effectively that the British assert their commitment to fair play with the implication that it is more true in Britain than elsewhere. But one cannot help but consider whether this assertion might be something of a cover-up for just the opposite, obscuring the reality that individuals are treated quite differently depending on their social status. For example, the right to be tried by one’s peers means that if a member of the House of Lords is accused of a crime, the person is to be tried by the House of Lords itself!The idea of fair play is most firmly associated in more modern times with sport, most notably with cricket, but also in tennis, boxing, and football. Cricket has provided the most common expression for the concept; “It’s not cricket” is a universal statement signifying a violation of fair play. And yet, until recently, cricket has been the most class conscious of British sports, with a stark division that could potentially undercut fair play. Duke-Evans discusses these paradoxes but does not consider their possible ironies and contradictions. Might it be a violation of fair play that,
{"title":"<i>An English Tradition? The History and Significance of Fair Play</i> by Jonathan Duke-Evans","authors":"Peter Stansky","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01987","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01987","url":null,"abstract":"This is an extraordinary book with a wide-ranging exploration of the concept of fair play in Britain going back to the eighth century and Beowulf. It also perceptively considers the role of ancient Greece and Rome in forming the idea of fair play. There is a rich discussion of the idea in works by authors such as William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Walter Scott, and others.The very title of the book, however, raises a problem. Although there are perceptive discussions of fair play in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and extensive consideration of the use of the term in England, most of the text considers Britain as a whole. Perhaps the book would have been more accurately entitled A British Tradition? The answer is eventually yes, as the idea has been much more emphasized in Britain than elsewhere in the world. This is made plain in brief discussions of the concept in France, Germany, Spain, and Japan, with some references to other nations.One has the feeling that the author has tracked down, although it cannot quite be true, every reference to fair play in British texts. And he is richly aware of the powerful ambiguities of the concept as it played out in Britain. Fair play would claim to be an idea that is uniformly applied. There is an effective discussion of its role in English law in connection to Magna Carta. A jury of one’s peers, the assumption of innocence, and various other stipulations are designed to assure a fair trial. Nonetheless, it is somewhat hard to square these assurances of fairness with the historical brutality of British law enforcement. Were individuals of all classes treated the same? It was very likely that someone from the working class accused of a minor theft might be hanged.The British have often been accused of hypocrisy in their claim of fair play, a topic Duke-Evans does not discuss. He argues powerfully and effectively that the British assert their commitment to fair play with the implication that it is more true in Britain than elsewhere. But one cannot help but consider whether this assertion might be something of a cover-up for just the opposite, obscuring the reality that individuals are treated quite differently depending on their social status. For example, the right to be tried by one’s peers means that if a member of the House of Lords is accused of a crime, the person is to be tried by the House of Lords itself!The idea of fair play is most firmly associated in more modern times with sport, most notably with cricket, but also in tennis, boxing, and football. Cricket has provided the most common expression for the concept; “It’s not cricket” is a universal statement signifying a violation of fair play. And yet, until recently, cricket has been the most class conscious of British sports, with a stark division that could potentially undercut fair play. Duke-Evans discusses these paradoxes but does not consider their possible ironies and contradictions. Might it be a violation of fair play that,","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134981577","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 Ancient Egypt plays a crucial role in the history of infectious disease. An intersection for communication and commerce, Egypt linked disparate civilizations and ecologies, allowing the spread of local epidemics and Mediterranean-wide pandemics. The region south of Egypt developed a pestilential reputation, due in part to Thucydides’ account of the Plague of Athens, which traced the disease’s origins to that area. Later records are modeled on Thucydides’ account, muddling the true origins and scope of later outbreaks. Critical reading of ancient literature and documents—particularly papyri—supplemented with archeological and palaeoscientific evidence, significantly improves our understanding of how Egypt facilitated the circulation of pathogens between the western Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.
古埃及在传染病史上起着至关重要的作用。作为通讯和商业的交汇点，埃及将不同的文明和生态联系在一起，使当地和地中海范围内的流行病得以传播。埃及南部地区以瘟疫著称，部分原因是修昔底德(Thucydides)对雅典瘟疫(Plague of Athens)的描述，将疾病的起源追溯到该地区。后来的记录以修昔底德的描述为模型，混淆了后来爆发的真正起源和范围。对古代文献和文件的批判性阅读——尤其是纸莎草纸——加上考古和古科学证据，大大提高了我们对埃及如何促进病原体在西印度洋和地中海之间传播的理解。
{"title":"Egypt as a Gateway for the Passage of Pathogens into the Ancient Mediterranean","authors":"Sabine R. Huebner, Brandon T. McDonald","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_01977","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_01977","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Ancient Egypt plays a crucial role in the history of infectious disease. An intersection for communication and commerce, Egypt linked disparate civilizations and ecologies, allowing the spread of local epidemics and Mediterranean-wide pandemics. The region south of Egypt developed a pestilential reputation, due in part to Thucydides’ account of the Plague of Athens, which traced the disease’s origins to that area. Later records are modeled on Thucydides’ account, muddling the true origins and scope of later outbreaks. Critical reading of ancient literature and documents—particularly papyri—supplemented with archeological and palaeoscientific evidence, significantly improves our understanding of how Egypt facilitated the circulation of pathogens between the western Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134981411","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}
Renaissance and early modern antiquarians, such as the baroque polymath Athenaeus Kircher, the figure with which this eloquent book opens, would today be deemed highly interdisciplinary in their approaches. They studied texts, including manuscripts, printed books, and inscriptions. They scrutinized images as well as all kinds of objects from carvings to altarpieces. They examined bones, skulls, and other human remains, and investigated ancient buildings, both intact and ruined. They carried out excavations and experiments. Early antiquarianism was “not a profession but a pursuit” that required knowledge and practices from multiple disciplines (11).This book investigates antiquarian exploration through a series of case studies, most from around 1500. Each begins with digging into the ground or opening a concealed container. These near-contemporary but sometimes geographically distant studies allow consideration of the techniques, practices, and assumptions of early modern antiquarians. Schwab and Grafton cogently argue the interconnectedness of the study of secular antiquities to the study and veneration of ancient relics, both of which “shared focus on tangible objects” and were similar in their methodologies and many of their assumptions (27).This is a book full of bones and corpses. One of the most notable was the uncorrupted body of a young girl exhumed from its resting place on the Appian Way in March 1485 c.e. and then displayed on the Capitoline Hill where throngs of Romans lined up to see it. The problem was that uncorrupted bodies were associated with sainthood, and this ancient corpse clearly was taken from an ancient—pagan—Roman gravesite. Schwab and Grafton’s discussion centers on contemporary deliberations on her possible identity, including the analysis of both inscriptions and classical Latin literature for clues. The crux of the matter is that her identity posed methodological as well as factual problems—how to “set standards for the valid assessment and use of evidence” (101).This concern for the ways in which sixteenth-century antiquarians and scholars struggled to evaluate textual and physical evidence is one of the book’s leitmotifs. One case study concerns the titulus, the inscribed wooden panel attached to the cross on which Jesus died declaring him king of the Jews—a relic preserved in a chest behind a wall in the Roman church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Another case study focuses on the famous statue dug up from a garden in January 1506 known as the Laocoon, now in the Vatican Museum, depicting a father’s anguished struggle to save himself and his sons from an attack by serpents. Debates arose concerning its origin, creation, and resemblance to the statue described by Pliny.Other controversies developed over fragments and wall paintings like those discovered in the underground Domus Aurea, Nero’s palace, explored from the 1470s. How were their colors produced and were such images, called “grotesques,” appropriate as mode
{"title":"<i>The Art of Discovery: Digging into the Past in Renaissance Europe</i> by Maren Elisabeth Schwab and Anthony Grafton","authors":"Pamela O. Long","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01990","url":null,"abstract":"Renaissance and early modern antiquarians, such as the baroque polymath Athenaeus Kircher, the figure with which this eloquent book opens, would today be deemed highly interdisciplinary in their approaches. They studied texts, including manuscripts, printed books, and inscriptions. They scrutinized images as well as all kinds of objects from carvings to altarpieces. They examined bones, skulls, and other human remains, and investigated ancient buildings, both intact and ruined. They carried out excavations and experiments. Early antiquarianism was “not a profession but a pursuit” that required knowledge and practices from multiple disciplines (11).This book investigates antiquarian exploration through a series of case studies, most from around 1500. Each begins with digging into the ground or opening a concealed container. These near-contemporary but sometimes geographically distant studies allow consideration of the techniques, practices, and assumptions of early modern antiquarians. Schwab and Grafton cogently argue the interconnectedness of the study of secular antiquities to the study and veneration of ancient relics, both of which “shared focus on tangible objects” and were similar in their methodologies and many of their assumptions (27).This is a book full of bones and corpses. One of the most notable was the uncorrupted body of a young girl exhumed from its resting place on the Appian Way in March 1485 c.e. and then displayed on the Capitoline Hill where throngs of Romans lined up to see it. The problem was that uncorrupted bodies were associated with sainthood, and this ancient corpse clearly was taken from an ancient—pagan—Roman gravesite. Schwab and Grafton’s discussion centers on contemporary deliberations on her possible identity, including the analysis of both inscriptions and classical Latin literature for clues. The crux of the matter is that her identity posed methodological as well as factual problems—how to “set standards for the valid assessment and use of evidence” (101).This concern for the ways in which sixteenth-century antiquarians and scholars struggled to evaluate textual and physical evidence is one of the book’s leitmotifs. One case study concerns the titulus, the inscribed wooden panel attached to the cross on which Jesus died declaring him king of the Jews—a relic preserved in a chest behind a wall in the Roman church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Another case study focuses on the famous statue dug up from a garden in January 1506 known as the Laocoon, now in the Vatican Museum, depicting a father’s anguished struggle to save himself and his sons from an attack by serpents. Debates arose concerning its origin, creation, and resemblance to the statue described by Pliny.Other controversies developed over fragments and wall paintings like those discovered in the underground Domus Aurea, Nero’s palace, explored from the 1470s. How were their colors produced and were such images, called “grotesques,” appropriate as mode","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134981602","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}
Sonenscher has written a short (174 pages of text), dense, and provocative book on the history of capitalism, or, more precisely, the idea of capitalism. Positioned as an intellectual historian, the author seeks to define capitalism, or to elucidate “the story behind the word,” as his subtitle puts it. He traces the word’s origins and its evolution into its widely accepted meaning in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He contextualizes it within related concepts, discusses what he sees as the problem of capitalism—inequality—and assesses the contributions of period thinkers to an understanding of capitalism and to a solution to the problem of inequality.Sonenscher begins by showing that before the term capitalism was first used in the mid-nineteenth century, the French term capitaliste had a history going back well into the eighteenth century when it referred to those who financed wars by lending to the states that fought them. Capitalism acquired its “apocalyptic aura” when it was associated with the concepts of “commercial society” and the “division of labor” (xv). The book is devoted to explicating these terms, how they are problematic, and how various thinkers sought to solve the resulting problems.The book is divided into two parts, “Problems” and “Solutions.” The first describes the development of the idea of capitalism and relates it to other political concepts. Sonenscher distinguishes between capitalism on the one hand and commercial society and the division of labor on the other. His analysis is political, and he regards these institutions as problematic because they lead to inequality. Capitalism is a system of property ownership, and arrangements other than private ownership of capital are readily conceivable. Commercial society, on the other hand, arises from humans’ propensity to exchange, and it is hard to imagine a world without that and its concomitant, the division of labor. The potential for commercial society or capitalism to act as economic engines producing growth is not discussed.1Subsequently, the book navigates the course of capitalism’s evolution during the early nineteenth century. This transformation by continental thinkers developed capitalism from an idea mostly involving international economics based on war and debt into a national one. In the years leading up to the Revolution of 1848, Alphonse de Lamartine and Louis Blanc clarified the debate over capitalism by revealing that there were really two problems, which required two solutions: “the problem of … the ownership of capital” and “the problem of the division of labour and markets” (73).In the second part, Sonenscher discusses the solutions to the problem of inequality. Karl Marx’s communism, a “synthesis of French legal thought and German theology,” was based on a “negative community of goods” in which property could be used but not individually appropriated (78, 87). The many followers of Adam Smith struggled to reconcile the sympathy or virtue of
索南舍尔写了一本篇幅短小(174页)、内容密集、颇具煽动性的关于资本主义历史的书，或者更准确地说，是关于资本主义思想的书。作为一名知识分子历史学家，作者试图定义资本主义，或者像副标题所说的那样，阐明“这个词背后的故事”。他追溯了这个词的起源，以及它在18世纪和19世纪初被广泛接受的意义的演变。他将其置于相关概念的背景中，讨论了他所认为的资本主义问题——不平等——并评估了时代思想家对理解资本主义和解决不平等问题的贡献。索南舍尔首先指出，在19世纪中叶资本主义一词首次被使用之前，法语中资本主义一词的历史可以追溯到18世纪，当时它指的是那些通过向参战国提供贷款来资助战争的人。当资本主义与“商业社会”和“劳动分工”的概念联系在一起时，它获得了“世界末日的光环”(xv)。这本书致力于解释这些术语，它们是如何产生问题的，以及不同的思想家如何寻求解决由此产生的问题。这本书分为“问题”和“解决方案”两部分。第一部分描述了资本主义思想的发展，并将其与其他政治概念联系起来。Sonenscher区分了资本主义和商业社会以及劳动分工。他的分析是政治性的，他认为这些制度是有问题的，因为它们导致了不平等。资本主义是一种财产所有权制度，除了资本私有制之外的其他安排是很容易想象的。另一方面，商业社会产生于人类对交换的倾向，很难想象一个没有交换及其伴生的劳动分工的世界。没有讨论商业社会或资本主义作为经济引擎产生增长的潜力。随后，本书引导了资本主义在19世纪早期的演变过程。欧洲大陆思想家的这种转变，将资本主义从一种主要涉及基于战争和债务的国际经济的观念，发展成了一种国家经济的观念。在1848年革命之前的几年里，Alphonse de Lamartine和Louis Blanc澄清了关于资本主义的争论，他们揭示了实际上存在两个问题，需要两个解决方案:“资本所有权的问题”和“劳动和市场分工的问题”(73)。在第二部分中，Sonenscher讨论了解决不平等问题的方法。卡尔·马克思的共产主义是“法国法律思想和德国神学的综合”，它建立在“消极的财产共同体”的基础上，其中财产可以被使用，但不能被个人占有(78,87)。亚当·斯密(Adam Smith)的许多追随者努力调和他的道德哲学的同情或美德与他的经济学的自利或权宜之计。其他哲学家则设想了国家在不废除资本主义的情况下减轻资本主义不平等的作用。例如，乔治·威廉·弗里德里希·黑格尔认为公共行政可以作为“公民社会和国家之间的桥梁和缓冲”(140)。大卫·李嘉图的比较优势理论不仅带来了利益，还导致了不同生产者的不平等回报，并使生产基本产品的生产者处于不利地位。然而，由此产生的不平等可以通过娴熟的货币和财政政策得到缓解。最后，法学家洛伦兹·冯·斯坦(Lorenz von Stein)找到了一个解决方案，其中将管理原则应用于群体可以促进“真正的社会凝聚力”(157)。在考察了这些18世纪末和19世纪初思想家思想中的二元性之后，索南舍尔回到了资本主义和商业社会之间的区别。他鼓励关注后者，因为它的复杂性和“个人从根本上相互依赖”的信念，为社会的发展开辟了许多可能性(169)。
{"title":"<i>Capitalism: The Story Behind the Word</i> by Michael Sonenscher","authors":"Jonathan J. Liebowitz","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01989","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01989","url":null,"abstract":"Sonenscher has written a short (174 pages of text), dense, and provocative book on the history of capitalism, or, more precisely, the idea of capitalism. Positioned as an intellectual historian, the author seeks to define capitalism, or to elucidate “the story behind the word,” as his subtitle puts it. He traces the word’s origins and its evolution into its widely accepted meaning in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He contextualizes it within related concepts, discusses what he sees as the problem of capitalism—inequality—and assesses the contributions of period thinkers to an understanding of capitalism and to a solution to the problem of inequality.Sonenscher begins by showing that before the term capitalism was first used in the mid-nineteenth century, the French term capitaliste had a history going back well into the eighteenth century when it referred to those who financed wars by lending to the states that fought them. Capitalism acquired its “apocalyptic aura” when it was associated with the concepts of “commercial society” and the “division of labor” (xv). The book is devoted to explicating these terms, how they are problematic, and how various thinkers sought to solve the resulting problems.The book is divided into two parts, “Problems” and “Solutions.” The first describes the development of the idea of capitalism and relates it to other political concepts. Sonenscher distinguishes between capitalism on the one hand and commercial society and the division of labor on the other. His analysis is political, and he regards these institutions as problematic because they lead to inequality. Capitalism is a system of property ownership, and arrangements other than private ownership of capital are readily conceivable. Commercial society, on the other hand, arises from humans’ propensity to exchange, and it is hard to imagine a world without that and its concomitant, the division of labor. The potential for commercial society or capitalism to act as economic engines producing growth is not discussed.1Subsequently, the book navigates the course of capitalism’s evolution during the early nineteenth century. This transformation by continental thinkers developed capitalism from an idea mostly involving international economics based on war and debt into a national one. In the years leading up to the Revolution of 1848, Alphonse de Lamartine and Louis Blanc clarified the debate over capitalism by revealing that there were really two problems, which required two solutions: “the problem of … the ownership of capital” and “the problem of the division of labour and markets” (73).In the second part, Sonenscher discusses the solutions to the problem of inequality. Karl Marx’s communism, a “synthesis of French legal thought and German theology,” was based on a “negative community of goods” in which property could be used but not individually appropriated (78, 87). The many followers of Adam Smith struggled to reconcile the sympathy or virtue of","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134981414","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 Lviv, a mid-sized city in the eastern borderlands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, numbered approximately 10,000 inhabitants in the second half of the seventeenth century. Its wealth, strategic location, and role as a trade center with the East contributed to significant ethno-religious diversity, with influential communities of Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Armenians, and Jews, alongside the Catholic majority. Detailed analysis of the 1662 Lviv poll tax register and other sources reveals the social composition and size of individual households, as well as their location in the city, houses’ construction material, and plot sizes. The results reveal diverse domestic arrangements influenced not only by individual socio-economic factors but also by the structural and cultural characteristics of the urban space.
{"title":"Household Cohabitation Patterns in Multiethnic Seventeenth-Century Lviv","authors":"Jakub Wysmułek","doi":"10.1162/jinh_a_01976","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_01976","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Lviv, a mid-sized city in the eastern borderlands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, numbered approximately 10,000 inhabitants in the second half of the seventeenth century. Its wealth, strategic location, and role as a trade center with the East contributed to significant ethno-religious diversity, with influential communities of Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Armenians, and Jews, alongside the Catholic majority. Detailed analysis of the 1662 Lviv poll tax register and other sources reveals the social composition and size of individual households, as well as their location in the city, houses’ construction material, and plot sizes. The results reveal diverse domestic arrangements influenced not only by individual socio-economic factors but also by the structural and cultural characteristics of the urban space.","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134981415","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}
The socioeconomic evolution of the Netherlands from 1000 to 1800 is of unique intellectual significance for scholars of capitalism. The Dutch economy was the “first modern economy” to achieve self-sustaining growth since the mid-medieval period.1 The causal mechanisms behind this groundbreaking path urge social scientists to explore the preconditions that made such growth possible. As New Institutional Economics argues that inclusive institutions and secure property rights contribute to initial economic development, for example, the study of capitalistic institutions’ emergence in the Netherlands becomes particularly consequential.2Additionally, the Netherlands’ socioeconomic transformation as one of the pioneers of capitalism is related to the transition between feudalism and capitalism. Did the country undergo a transition in line with Marxism, which claims that “primitive capital accumulation,” the commercialization of labor, and the rise of the bourgeoisie are necessary conditions for capitalism? Prak and van Zanden’s book introduces the eight centuries of social and economic history in the Netherlands, offering enlightening lessons from these two perspectives.The authors have focused on the Netherlands’ socioeconomic transformation for decades, believing that it offers a valuable opportunity to test hypotheses of different schools. The authors explore Marxism, New Institutional Economics, and Braudel’s definition of capitalism in the first chapter. The exceptionality of the Netherlands lies not just in being one of the first capitalistic market economies but also in its ability to sustain stable economic growth for over eight centuries. In chapter 2, economic measures show that not only gdp and gdp per capita but also other sorts of well-being, such as the literacy rate, rose remarkably and consistently in that time. Progress was not based on the feudalistic economy but on its absence; chapter 3 reveals how the socio-political structure allowed citizens and civic organizations to play a greater role, fostering a relatively benevolent institutional environment. Chapter 4 address the significant structural changes that followed two exogenous shocks in the mid-1300s—the Black Death, which led to large-scale labor shortage (and thus widespread wage increases), and the environmental crisis, which dramatically decreased agricultural production, and increased urbanization, commercialization, and marketization.Nonetheless, economic adaptation alone did not complete the transformation. The Dutch Revolt (1566–1609, covered in chapter 5) acted as an external catalyst, politically and financially integrating Dutch local powers into one unit, marking the formal rise of the bourgeoisie. The rest of the book deals with the following centuries, when the Dutch economy continued to expand globally and enjoyed domestic prosperity, with civil society playing a vital role as the Netherlands embraced republicanism. Yet, in the eighteenth century, economic inequal
{"title":"<i>Pioneers of Capitalism: The Netherlands 1000–1800</i> by Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden","authors":"George Hong Jiang","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01985","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01985","url":null,"abstract":"The socioeconomic evolution of the Netherlands from 1000 to 1800 is of unique intellectual significance for scholars of capitalism. The Dutch economy was the “first modern economy” to achieve self-sustaining growth since the mid-medieval period.1 The causal mechanisms behind this groundbreaking path urge social scientists to explore the preconditions that made such growth possible. As New Institutional Economics argues that inclusive institutions and secure property rights contribute to initial economic development, for example, the study of capitalistic institutions’ emergence in the Netherlands becomes particularly consequential.2Additionally, the Netherlands’ socioeconomic transformation as one of the pioneers of capitalism is related to the transition between feudalism and capitalism. Did the country undergo a transition in line with Marxism, which claims that “primitive capital accumulation,” the commercialization of labor, and the rise of the bourgeoisie are necessary conditions for capitalism? Prak and van Zanden’s book introduces the eight centuries of social and economic history in the Netherlands, offering enlightening lessons from these two perspectives.The authors have focused on the Netherlands’ socioeconomic transformation for decades, believing that it offers a valuable opportunity to test hypotheses of different schools. The authors explore Marxism, New Institutional Economics, and Braudel’s definition of capitalism in the first chapter. The exceptionality of the Netherlands lies not just in being one of the first capitalistic market economies but also in its ability to sustain stable economic growth for over eight centuries. In chapter 2, economic measures show that not only gdp and gdp per capita but also other sorts of well-being, such as the literacy rate, rose remarkably and consistently in that time. Progress was not based on the feudalistic economy but on its absence; chapter 3 reveals how the socio-political structure allowed citizens and civic organizations to play a greater role, fostering a relatively benevolent institutional environment. Chapter 4 address the significant structural changes that followed two exogenous shocks in the mid-1300s—the Black Death, which led to large-scale labor shortage (and thus widespread wage increases), and the environmental crisis, which dramatically decreased agricultural production, and increased urbanization, commercialization, and marketization.Nonetheless, economic adaptation alone did not complete the transformation. The Dutch Revolt (1566–1609, covered in chapter 5) acted as an external catalyst, politically and financially integrating Dutch local powers into one unit, marking the formal rise of the bourgeoisie. The rest of the book deals with the following centuries, when the Dutch economy continued to expand globally and enjoyed domestic prosperity, with civil society playing a vital role as the Netherlands embraced republicanism. Yet, in the eighteenth century, economic inequal","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134981406","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}
As humanity confronts the climate crisis, it has become increasingly clear that science alone cannot save us. Official reports based on the natural sciences “fail to analyze critically the value systems, power relationships, and institutional processes that have resulted in climate change.”1 If we are to meet the moment and create a truly sustainable society, it is imperative that the humanities and social sciences join the conversation. Therein lies the importance of this book, which argues that utopian thought can help humanity envision the transformations necessary to construct a sustainable world.The bulk of this lengthy tome traces the history of utopian ideas though four ages: the early modern period, during which spatial concepts, particularly the idea of the Americas, occupied humanists’ minds; the late eighteenth to late nineteenth century, when writers turned their attention to the future; the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, the age of the Soviet experiment and other attempts to realize utopias; and, finally, the turn of the twenty-first century, when critics claimed that the victory of capitalism and liberalism over communism spelled the “‘end of history’ and ‘end of utopia’—proposals which now look downright ridiculous” (17). Rather than merely surveying utopian thought, however, Claeys focuses on two intellectual threads running through its history, the critique of luxury and the valorization of sociability.The longstanding critique of luxury is critical to Claeys’ argument. Early modern thinkers drew on ancient Greek and Christian traditions as they blamed luxury for corrupting morals and eroding civic virtue. French Revolutionaries repudiated aristocratic ostentation in favor of Spartan simplicity, and early nineteenth-century utopian socialists banished luxury from their visions of egalitarian society. It was not until the late nineteenth century that the appeal of ancient austerity began to wane as socialists sought a higher standard of living for working people. Claeys urges contemporary activists to reclaim past critiques of luxury and demand the end of excessive consumption. But because he does not expect the rich (which he defines as the wealthiest 15 percent of humanity) to heed readily such a call, he introduces the second key theme of utopian discourse: sociability. Enhanced sociability, he claims, will compensate the rich for the material sacrifices they will have to make. Here, too, the utopian tradition serves as a wellspring of ideas; thinkers from Thomas More to the hippies of the 1960s extolled the virtues of public sociability, which cultivates a sense of belonging and, according to current psychological research, generates human happiness.Claeys’ analysis of the rhetoric of luxury and sociability sets up his final chapter, which adds a third theme—sustainability—and lays out a plan for a twenty-first-century utopia. He proposes a radical Green New Deal to be implemented by an international body inves
{"title":"<i>Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism</i> by Gregory Claeys","authors":"Michael Kwass","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01988","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01988","url":null,"abstract":"As humanity confronts the climate crisis, it has become increasingly clear that science alone cannot save us. Official reports based on the natural sciences “fail to analyze critically the value systems, power relationships, and institutional processes that have resulted in climate change.”1 If we are to meet the moment and create a truly sustainable society, it is imperative that the humanities and social sciences join the conversation. Therein lies the importance of this book, which argues that utopian thought can help humanity envision the transformations necessary to construct a sustainable world.The bulk of this lengthy tome traces the history of utopian ideas though four ages: the early modern period, during which spatial concepts, particularly the idea of the Americas, occupied humanists’ minds; the late eighteenth to late nineteenth century, when writers turned their attention to the future; the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, the age of the Soviet experiment and other attempts to realize utopias; and, finally, the turn of the twenty-first century, when critics claimed that the victory of capitalism and liberalism over communism spelled the “‘end of history’ and ‘end of utopia’—proposals which now look downright ridiculous” (17). Rather than merely surveying utopian thought, however, Claeys focuses on two intellectual threads running through its history, the critique of luxury and the valorization of sociability.The longstanding critique of luxury is critical to Claeys’ argument. Early modern thinkers drew on ancient Greek and Christian traditions as they blamed luxury for corrupting morals and eroding civic virtue. French Revolutionaries repudiated aristocratic ostentation in favor of Spartan simplicity, and early nineteenth-century utopian socialists banished luxury from their visions of egalitarian society. It was not until the late nineteenth century that the appeal of ancient austerity began to wane as socialists sought a higher standard of living for working people. Claeys urges contemporary activists to reclaim past critiques of luxury and demand the end of excessive consumption. But because he does not expect the rich (which he defines as the wealthiest 15 percent of humanity) to heed readily such a call, he introduces the second key theme of utopian discourse: sociability. Enhanced sociability, he claims, will compensate the rich for the material sacrifices they will have to make. Here, too, the utopian tradition serves as a wellspring of ideas; thinkers from Thomas More to the hippies of the 1960s extolled the virtues of public sociability, which cultivates a sense of belonging and, according to current psychological research, generates human happiness.Claeys’ analysis of the rhetoric of luxury and sociability sets up his final chapter, which adds a third theme—sustainability—and lays out a plan for a twenty-first-century utopia. He proposes a radical Green New Deal to be implemented by an international body inves","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134981569","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}
Backhouse has crafted an outstanding book that is, on one level, a micro-analysis of how one run-of-the-mill interaction between a youth and a police officer metamorphosized into one of the most significant legal cases in Canadian history. On another level, it is a macro-analysis of how the Canadian legal system and Canadian society in general is saturated by, and at the same time struggles with, anti-Black racism.On October 17, 1993, Rodney Darren Small, a fifteen-year-old Black youth, found himself in an altercation with a white police officer in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Subsequently, the prosecutor brought three charges against Small. During the trial, youth court Judge Corrine Sparks, the first Black female judge appointed in Canada, acquitted the youth, noting in part that “sometimes white police officers overreact.” This led to a successful appeal by the Crown on the basis of actual bias by the judge against the police officer. In the ensuing three years, a series of additional appeals culminated in a deeply divided and somewhat confusing Supreme Court of Canada decision that upheld Small’s acquittal and affirmed Judge Sparks’ decision.In both style and substance, the book is a page turner, crisply written and driven by a sense of anticipation as to what might happen next. In addition to many of the tools used by legal historians (archives, newspapers, online sources, legal texts—legal decisions, facta (briefs submitted to the court by the lawyers before a hearing), oral arguments—obituaries, and so on), the richness and nuance of the analysis derives from two main sources. The first are Backhouse’s ninety-nine interviews with a vast array of people—the accused, some of the lawyers, some of the judges, community activists, academics—which is a remarkable feat of research. The second is the author’s adoption of an intersectional analysis guided by critical race theory, feminist theory, and, on occasion, critical disability theory. In deploying these tools, Backhouse provides fundamental insights into the individuals, institutions, ideas, ideals, ideologies, and identities that both constituted and reverberate from the RDS case.The book touches on two further points of interest beyond the specifics of the RDS case. First, Backhouse confronts head-on the issue of the legitimacy of a white person engaging in research on what is the leading case addressing anti-Black racism in Canada. Acknowledging the dangers of such a project, Backhouse diligently incorporates as many Black voices in their own words as possible. Recognizing that this is still a partial and racially situated interpretation, Backhouse uses the book to communicate such perspectives as best as she is able within the confines of the project. Second, in the conclusion, although careful not to claim that history can predict the future, Backhouse identifies a plethora of unanswered questions about racism in the Canadian legal system that are highlighted by the RDS case. Some of these que
{"title":"<i>Reckoning with Racism: Police, Judges and the RDS Case</i> by Constance Backhouse","authors":"Richard Devlin","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01994","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01994","url":null,"abstract":"Backhouse has crafted an outstanding book that is, on one level, a micro-analysis of how one run-of-the-mill interaction between a youth and a police officer metamorphosized into one of the most significant legal cases in Canadian history. On another level, it is a macro-analysis of how the Canadian legal system and Canadian society in general is saturated by, and at the same time struggles with, anti-Black racism.On October 17, 1993, Rodney Darren Small, a fifteen-year-old Black youth, found himself in an altercation with a white police officer in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Subsequently, the prosecutor brought three charges against Small. During the trial, youth court Judge Corrine Sparks, the first Black female judge appointed in Canada, acquitted the youth, noting in part that “sometimes white police officers overreact.” This led to a successful appeal by the Crown on the basis of actual bias by the judge against the police officer. In the ensuing three years, a series of additional appeals culminated in a deeply divided and somewhat confusing Supreme Court of Canada decision that upheld Small’s acquittal and affirmed Judge Sparks’ decision.In both style and substance, the book is a page turner, crisply written and driven by a sense of anticipation as to what might happen next. In addition to many of the tools used by legal historians (archives, newspapers, online sources, legal texts—legal decisions, facta (briefs submitted to the court by the lawyers before a hearing), oral arguments—obituaries, and so on), the richness and nuance of the analysis derives from two main sources. The first are Backhouse’s ninety-nine interviews with a vast array of people—the accused, some of the lawyers, some of the judges, community activists, academics—which is a remarkable feat of research. The second is the author’s adoption of an intersectional analysis guided by critical race theory, feminist theory, and, on occasion, critical disability theory. In deploying these tools, Backhouse provides fundamental insights into the individuals, institutions, ideas, ideals, ideologies, and identities that both constituted and reverberate from the RDS case.The book touches on two further points of interest beyond the specifics of the RDS case. First, Backhouse confronts head-on the issue of the legitimacy of a white person engaging in research on what is the leading case addressing anti-Black racism in Canada. Acknowledging the dangers of such a project, Backhouse diligently incorporates as many Black voices in their own words as possible. Recognizing that this is still a partial and racially situated interpretation, Backhouse uses the book to communicate such perspectives as best as she is able within the confines of the project. Second, in the conclusion, although careful not to claim that history can predict the future, Backhouse identifies a plethora of unanswered questions about racism in the Canadian legal system that are highlighted by the RDS case. Some of these que","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134981570","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}
Based on extensive research in British and French archives as well as substantial relevant literature, Howard’s book examines the efforts primarily of France and Britain to observe and understand the purpose of Germany’s secret violations of the 1919 peace treaty and extensive rearmament in the 1930s. The Soviet Union and the United States are generally omitted, and there is no bibliography.The book opens with a good review of British and French espionage in Germany in the 1920s, which is followed by an account of both governments’ watching the rise of Adolf Hitler in German politics. The author repeatedly and quite fairly presents the substantial differences and the varying levels of cooperation between the two governments and their operations in the field. There were many instances of specific espionage successes and failures, and the author provides interesting and detailed accounts of numerous examples of both.Howard correctly emphasizes both London’s and Paris’ interest in the attitudes of the German public toward rearmament. But the public in England, France, and most other countries on earth was strongly affected by the great human and material costs of the Great War, and the author should have paid more attention to the impact of Hitler’s advocating for more wars and drawing millions of votes in free elections by 1930. On the technical side, the book pays attention to French and British interactions with the intelligence services of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Regarding the latter, an early mention in the text and a subsequent more extensive discussion of the importance of Polish success in breaking the German Enigma code system are still not adequate in this reviewer’s opinion in view of the enormous importance of this Polish contribution to Allied victory in World War II.Readers will appreciate Howard’s proper emphasis on the financial constraints on British and French intelligence operations, an issue that was certainly not easily resolved as the Great Depression strained government revenues. Ironically, some help by Major Truman Smith in the American Embassy in Berlin proved a limited offset to that problem. The text appropriately devotes a separate chapter (chap. 11) to the secret development of a new German navy, highlighting British interest in the construction of submarines. Special attention to the German effort in this regard in the Netherlands would have been as helpful as the included review of the German secret warplane development by Fokker in that country.London, Paris, Prague, and Warsaw were alarmed by the clear signs of further rearmament in the 1930s. The author’s review of the limited reaction to Germany’s annexation of Austria (chap. 16) is supported by his repeated emphasis on the British and French quite excessive estimates of German strength. Readers will find the account of the crisis about Czechoslovakia and its temporary settlement in the Munich Agreement of considerable interest, but the author has neglected and
{"title":"<i>Spying on the Reich: The Cold War against Hitler</i> by Roger T. Howard","authors":"Gerhard L. Weinberg","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01991","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01991","url":null,"abstract":"Based on extensive research in British and French archives as well as substantial relevant literature, Howard’s book examines the efforts primarily of France and Britain to observe and understand the purpose of Germany’s secret violations of the 1919 peace treaty and extensive rearmament in the 1930s. The Soviet Union and the United States are generally omitted, and there is no bibliography.The book opens with a good review of British and French espionage in Germany in the 1920s, which is followed by an account of both governments’ watching the rise of Adolf Hitler in German politics. The author repeatedly and quite fairly presents the substantial differences and the varying levels of cooperation between the two governments and their operations in the field. There were many instances of specific espionage successes and failures, and the author provides interesting and detailed accounts of numerous examples of both.Howard correctly emphasizes both London’s and Paris’ interest in the attitudes of the German public toward rearmament. But the public in England, France, and most other countries on earth was strongly affected by the great human and material costs of the Great War, and the author should have paid more attention to the impact of Hitler’s advocating for more wars and drawing millions of votes in free elections by 1930. On the technical side, the book pays attention to French and British interactions with the intelligence services of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Regarding the latter, an early mention in the text and a subsequent more extensive discussion of the importance of Polish success in breaking the German Enigma code system are still not adequate in this reviewer’s opinion in view of the enormous importance of this Polish contribution to Allied victory in World War II.Readers will appreciate Howard’s proper emphasis on the financial constraints on British and French intelligence operations, an issue that was certainly not easily resolved as the Great Depression strained government revenues. Ironically, some help by Major Truman Smith in the American Embassy in Berlin proved a limited offset to that problem. The text appropriately devotes a separate chapter (chap. 11) to the secret development of a new German navy, highlighting British interest in the construction of submarines. Special attention to the German effort in this regard in the Netherlands would have been as helpful as the included review of the German secret warplane development by Fokker in that country.London, Paris, Prague, and Warsaw were alarmed by the clear signs of further rearmament in the 1930s. The author’s review of the limited reaction to Germany’s annexation of Austria (chap. 16) is supported by his repeated emphasis on the British and French quite excessive estimates of German strength. Readers will find the account of the crisis about Czechoslovakia and its temporary settlement in the Munich Agreement of considerable interest, but the author has neglected and","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134981572","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}
Exploring the lives of multiple members of a single unusual family, this book illuminates new and intriguing facets of the histories of slavery, freedom, and racism in the nineteenth-century United States. When the wealthy Samuel Townsend died in Alabama in the mid-1850s, his will named nine of his own enslaved children by at least seven different mothers, along with two enslaved children of a brother. Altogether, the will emancipated forty-five people, including the children, their mothers, and other children the women had borne with enslaved fathers. All, as required by state law, departed Alabama. Much of the book traces their journeys to Ohio, Kansas, Colorado Territory, and even back to Alabama.This monograph’s structure and evocative writing turn the story into something of a mystery: What would be the ultimate fates of the various protagonists? (The only previous study of this family is a 1940 master’s thesis whose author concluded that the manumitted Townsends would have been better off remaining enslaved.)Some of the Townsends held themselves apart from other free people of African descent, even from abolitionists and fugitive slaves, sharing classism and colorism. Others became leaders of local Black communities, yet spouted racism against Chinese immigrants or Native Americans. Some joined the Union Army, some farmed, some purchased property. They worked as domestic servants, clerks, teachers, barbers, teamsters, waiters, and janitors. One drank and gambled; others imbibed ideologies of racial uplift. Some of the women married white men. One man became a lawyer and civil rights leader (white people burned down his Kansas home). One returned to Alabama to establish a school for Black children and hold local office. It took more than thirty years to settle the estate, a process tainted by the racism of the white executor, and none of the Black Townsends ever inherited the full amount stipulated in Samuel’s will.Morales shares her research methods with readers, highlighting both the centrality and the challenges of the executor’s voluminous archive. Notably, letters from the manumitted Townsends prove to be “stiff, terse, and designed to flatter the attorney’s ego,” devoid of personal reflections, and “crafted for the eyes of a powerful white southerner” (11). An in-depth “Note on Methodology” offers further and welcome detail. To give just one example: With the women’s voices particularly elusive, Morales plied a slave inventory to “reverse-engineer a timeline of Samuel Townsend’s sexual history,” using his children’s ages and birth years to determine the points at which each of their mothers became the target of his exploitation (192).The book’s endnotes, too, are a goldmine, not only for their impressive compendium of secondary sources, but also for the array of primary sources on display, including letters, depositions, deeds, inventories, and census records, of course, but also farming records, school yearbooks, local newspapers, tra
{"title":"<i>Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom</i> by R. Isabela Morales","authors":"Martha Hodes","doi":"10.1162/jinh_r_01984","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_r_01984","url":null,"abstract":"Exploring the lives of multiple members of a single unusual family, this book illuminates new and intriguing facets of the histories of slavery, freedom, and racism in the nineteenth-century United States. When the wealthy Samuel Townsend died in Alabama in the mid-1850s, his will named nine of his own enslaved children by at least seven different mothers, along with two enslaved children of a brother. Altogether, the will emancipated forty-five people, including the children, their mothers, and other children the women had borne with enslaved fathers. All, as required by state law, departed Alabama. Much of the book traces their journeys to Ohio, Kansas, Colorado Territory, and even back to Alabama.This monograph’s structure and evocative writing turn the story into something of a mystery: What would be the ultimate fates of the various protagonists? (The only previous study of this family is a 1940 master’s thesis whose author concluded that the manumitted Townsends would have been better off remaining enslaved.)Some of the Townsends held themselves apart from other free people of African descent, even from abolitionists and fugitive slaves, sharing classism and colorism. Others became leaders of local Black communities, yet spouted racism against Chinese immigrants or Native Americans. Some joined the Union Army, some farmed, some purchased property. They worked as domestic servants, clerks, teachers, barbers, teamsters, waiters, and janitors. One drank and gambled; others imbibed ideologies of racial uplift. Some of the women married white men. One man became a lawyer and civil rights leader (white people burned down his Kansas home). One returned to Alabama to establish a school for Black children and hold local office. It took more than thirty years to settle the estate, a process tainted by the racism of the white executor, and none of the Black Townsends ever inherited the full amount stipulated in Samuel’s will.Morales shares her research methods with readers, highlighting both the centrality and the challenges of the executor’s voluminous archive. Notably, letters from the manumitted Townsends prove to be “stiff, terse, and designed to flatter the attorney’s ego,” devoid of personal reflections, and “crafted for the eyes of a powerful white southerner” (11). An in-depth “Note on Methodology” offers further and welcome detail. To give just one example: With the women’s voices particularly elusive, Morales plied a slave inventory to “reverse-engineer a timeline of Samuel Townsend’s sexual history,” using his children’s ages and birth years to determine the points at which each of their mothers became the target of his exploitation (192).The book’s endnotes, too, are a goldmine, not only for their impressive compendium of secondary sources, but also for the array of primary sources on display, including letters, depositions, deeds, inventories, and census records, of course, but also farming records, school yearbooks, local newspapers, tra","PeriodicalId":46755,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History","volume":"364 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134981582","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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