Priyanath Mukhopadhyay (also referred to as PM subsequently) enjoyed an extraordinary career in the colonial police force in Calcutta, where he served as a detective from 1878 to 1911. In his later life, he wrote as a bhadralok and a detective—both important parts of his fashioned self-identity—using narratives of crime to showcase his rare professional expertise and his responsibilities as a cultured upholder of the law. Through an examination of Priyanath’s serialized police tales, it is possible to see how crime writing forged the values of respectability and civic sensibilities, and shaped the moral fiber of an urban society that appeared to be falling apart at its seams. Examining criminal activities in colonial Calcutta as recoverable from PM’s writings affords glimpses of a city being reordered by its material wealth, social aspirations, and moral attitudes. PM’s tales attempt to face this challenge by forging a moral authority in the finely calibrated colonial order. His readers too were evidently invested in it as they endorsed this stand with their purse, leading to soaring circulation figures. The middle classes of Calcutta emerge in these tales as part and parcel of Priyanath’s policing, providing neighborhood and community surveillance networks and backing up the efforts of their detective hero. PM wrote very much as a social commentator as well as a police officer, reaffirming traditional social and domestic values, and frowning upon transgression of class and gender boundaries. What also comes alive is the city itself—the spaces laid bare or concealed by crime—the writing providing access to different topographies of urban knowledge and information networks.
{"title":"The Making of a Gentleman and a Detective: Tales of Crime, Respectability, and Surveillance from a Colonial Metropolis","authors":"Anindita Ghosh","doi":"10.1093/jsh/shad035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shad035","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Priyanath Mukhopadhyay (also referred to as PM subsequently) enjoyed an extraordinary career in the colonial police force in Calcutta, where he served as a detective from 1878 to 1911. In his later life, he wrote as a bhadralok and a detective—both important parts of his fashioned self-identity—using narratives of crime to showcase his rare professional expertise and his responsibilities as a cultured upholder of the law. Through an examination of Priyanath’s serialized police tales, it is possible to see how crime writing forged the values of respectability and civic sensibilities, and shaped the moral fiber of an urban society that appeared to be falling apart at its seams. Examining criminal activities in colonial Calcutta as recoverable from PM’s writings affords glimpses of a city being reordered by its material wealth, social aspirations, and moral attitudes. PM’s tales attempt to face this challenge by forging a moral authority in the finely calibrated colonial order. His readers too were evidently invested in it as they endorsed this stand with their purse, leading to soaring circulation figures. The middle classes of Calcutta emerge in these tales as part and parcel of Priyanath’s policing, providing neighborhood and community surveillance networks and backing up the efforts of their detective hero. PM wrote very much as a social commentator as well as a police officer, reaffirming traditional social and domestic values, and frowning upon transgression of class and gender boundaries. What also comes alive is the city itself—the spaces laid bare or concealed by crime—the writing providing access to different topographies of urban knowledge and information networks.","PeriodicalId":47169,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46771254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the 1980s, East Germany granted gay people extraordinary new rights in an attempt to neutralize them as a threat to the communist regime. Within this context of change, though, the East Berlin municipal government refused gay activists permission to form a state-sanctioned club for homosexuals. Speaking to the place of civic life in the country and the history of everyday life of East German lesbians and gay men, this article has two goals. First, it builds on existing historiography by illustrating the precise dynamics of the interactions between gay activists and East German authorities, revealing a familiar modern bureaucratic landscape. Second, this article seeks to explain why municipal officials who demonstrated sympathy toward these activists nevertheless denied this group the right to form a club. This analysis argues that the denial of a club was ironically driven by authorities’ conviction that gay East Germans indeed faced discrimination. Officials believed discrimination in the German Democratic Republic had isolated its gay citizens, rendering them targets of Western enemies of the state and potential fifth columnists as the West could galvanize their resentment into antistate action. To officials, the activists’ attempts to overcome such isolation via a state-sanctioned club actually promised to reinforce isolation and make Western infiltration and subversion more likely.
{"title":"Not Special People: Lesbian and Gay Men’s Encounters with the East Berlin Government, 1983–90","authors":"Jason Johnson","doi":"10.1093/jsh/shad038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shad038","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the 1980s, East Germany granted gay people extraordinary new rights in an attempt to neutralize them as a threat to the communist regime. Within this context of change, though, the East Berlin municipal government refused gay activists permission to form a state-sanctioned club for homosexuals. Speaking to the place of civic life in the country and the history of everyday life of East German lesbians and gay men, this article has two goals. First, it builds on existing historiography by illustrating the precise dynamics of the interactions between gay activists and East German authorities, revealing a familiar modern bureaucratic landscape. Second, this article seeks to explain why municipal officials who demonstrated sympathy toward these activists nevertheless denied this group the right to form a club. This analysis argues that the denial of a club was ironically driven by authorities’ conviction that gay East Germans indeed faced discrimination. Officials believed discrimination in the German Democratic Republic had isolated its gay citizens, rendering them targets of Western enemies of the state and potential fifth columnists as the West could galvanize their resentment into antistate action. To officials, the activists’ attempts to overcome such isolation via a state-sanctioned club actually promised to reinforce isolation and make Western infiltration and subversion more likely.","PeriodicalId":47169,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46202613","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Yerba Mate: The Drink that Shaped a Nation. By Julia J.S. Sarreal Guaraná: How Brazil Embraced the World's Most Caffeine-Rich Plant. By Seth Garfield","authors":"Ana María Otero-Cleves","doi":"10.1093/jsh/shad048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shad048","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47169,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43439286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism. By Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way","authors":"W. Booth","doi":"10.1093/jsh/shad047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shad047","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47169,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46761075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Strength from the Waters. A History of Indigenous Mobilization in Northwest Mexico. By James V. Mestaz The Three Deaths of Cerro de San Pedro. Four Centuries of Extractivism in a Small Mexican Mining Town. By Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert","authors":"C. Radding","doi":"10.1093/jsh/shad043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shad043","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47169,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44231691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Imperial Gridiron: Manhood, Civilization, and Football at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. By Matthew Bentley and John Bloom","authors":"W. Bauer","doi":"10.1093/jsh/shad036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shad036","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47169,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46038073","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century. By Chad E. Pearson","authors":"A. Malka","doi":"10.1093/jsh/shad044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shad044","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47169,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44826488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Convening Black Intimacy: Christianity, Gender, and Tradition in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa. By Natasha Erlank","authors":"S. Duff","doi":"10.1093/jsh/shad046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shad046","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47169,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41691812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Catholic Women and Mexican Politics, 1750-1940. By Margaret Chowning","authors":"Kristina A Boylan","doi":"10.1093/jsh/shad042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shad042","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47169,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49641563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dangerous Ground: Squatters, Statesmen, and the Antebellum Rupture of American Democracy. By John Suval","authors":"Ariel Ron","doi":"10.1093/jsh/shad037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shad037","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47169,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social History","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44988782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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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