Equatorial Guinea

Appel, Hannah. The Licit Life of Capitalism. US Oil in Equatorial Guinea. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2019. xi, 332 pp. Ill. $104.95. (Paper: $28.95.)

This book offers an ethnographic account of the daily life of capitalism. It is both an account of a specific capitalist project, US oil companies working off the coast of Equatorial Guinea, and an exploration of more general forms and processes that facilitate diverse capitalist projects around the world. Professor Appel draws on extensive fieldwork, exploring the relationship between the liberal modernity claimed by US oil companies and the racial global inequality that radically delimits the ways in which Equatorial Guinea and other postcolonial African countries might engage with multinational oil companies, arguing that market practices do not merely exacerbate inequality, they are made by it.

Namibia

Pauli, Julia. The Decline of Marriage in Namibia. Kinship and Social Class in a Rural Community. [Culture and Social Practice.] Transcript, Bielefeld2019. xiii, 296 pp. Ill. € 44.99.

Marriage was once widespread and common in Southern Africa; however, in recent decades marriage rates have declined significantly. The aim of this book is to describe and explain the changes in marriage rates, but also political, material, and ideational transformations. Dr Pauli explores the meaning of marriage when only a few marry. Although marriage rates have dropped sharply, the value of weddings and marriages has not. To marry has become an indicator of upper-class status that less affluent people aspire to. Using the appropriation of marriage by a rural Namibian elite as a case study, the book tells the entwined stories of class formation and marriage decline in post-apartheid Namibia.

Van der Hoog, Tycho. Breweries, Politics and Identity. The History behind Namibia's Beer. Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Basel2019. ix, 118 pp. Ill. Maps. CHF 25.00. (E-book: CHF 15.00.)

Namibian beer is celebrated as an inextricable part of Namibian nationalism, both within its domestic borders and across global markets. But for decades, the same brew was not available to the black population as a consequence of colonial politics. This book explains how a European-style beer has been transformed from a white settlers’ drink during colonial politics into a symbol of the independent Namibian nation. The focus on beer offers insight into the role companies play in identity formation and thus highlights business–state relations. The two appendices offer a list of breweries in Namibia and five traditional brewing recipes.

Sierra Leone

Anderson, Richard Peter. Abolition in Sierra Leone. Re-Building Lives and Identities in Nineteenth-Century West Africa. [African Identities: Past and Present.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2020. xiv, 293 pp. Ill. Maps. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)

This book explores the origins, experiences, and identities of 100,000 Africans released as former slaves by the British Navy in Sierra Leone, and how they were able to rebuild new lives, communities, and collective identities. Their experience illuminates both African and African diaspora history by tracing the evolution of communities forged in the context of forced migration and the missionary encounter in a prototypical post-slavery colonial society. Dr Anderson explores the connections that the colony-born offspring of the Liberated Africans felt towards their parents’ societies of birth, their forms of communal association, and their cultural and religious practices. He has discovered that certain customs and forms of communal identification survived the Westernization of colonial life.

South Africa

Addison, Lincoln. Chiefs of the Plantation. Authority and Contestation on the South Africa-Zimbabwe Border. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal [etc.] 2019. xiv, 196 pp. Ill. Maps. Can.$110.00. (Paper: Can.$32.95.)

South African agriculture is characterized by growing labour unrest. In this book, Professor Addison examines how labour conflict is fuelled by changing management practices and how workers respond and resist across spatial, sexual, and spiritual domains. The author describes how agriculture has been restructured in the post-apartheid era. He explains that while this labour regime enables the profitability of plantations, it gives rise to a fragile moral economy in which perceptions of what is tolerable and what is exploitation frequently clash. Meanwhile, plantations project an image of benevolent paternalism. This book reveals how both the plantation and the compound where the workers live serve as sites for the negotiation of labour relations.

Kreienbaum, Jonas. A Sad Fiasco. Colonial Concentration Camps in Southern Africa, 1900–1908. Transl. from the German by Janik, Elizabeth. [War and Genocide, Vol. 29.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2019 (2015). viii, 281 pp. Ill. Maps. $135.00; £99.00. (E-book: $34.95.)

This study elaborates on what characterized the colonial concentration camps and concentration zones in South Africa. Focusing on the British camps in South Africa and the German camps in former South West Africa, Dr Kreienbaum examines the perspectives of the colonial powers on the purpose of the camps, how they functioned, and how the masses of deaths should be explained. Based on a broad spectrum of primary and secondary sources, the author considers the extent to which the mass mortality in and around camps was intentional, or which parts might be attributed to logistical problems, indifference, or ignorance. One option posited is that the camps were intended for forced migrant labour.

Tanzania

Lindström, Jan. Muted Memories. Heritage-Making, Bagamoyo, and the East African Caravan Trade. Berghahn Books, New York2019. vi, 388 pp. Ill. Maps. $135.00; £99.00. (E-book: $34.95.)

In the late nineteenth century, tens of thousands of porters carried ivory every year from the African interior to Bagamoyo, a port town at the Indian Ocean. In the opposite direction, they carried millions of metres of cloth, manufactured in the US, Europe, and India. Dr Lindström examines the centrality of the caravan trade, both culturally and economically, to Bagamoyo's development and cosmopolitan character. She also explores how this history was silenced when Bagamoyo was branded a slave-route town in 2006 in an attempt to qualify it for the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Togo

Writing the New Nation in a West African Borderland. Ablode Safui (the Key to Freedom) by Holiday Komedja. Ed. and Transl. by Kate Skinner and Wilson Yayoh. [Fontes Historiae Africanae, New Series Sources of African History, No. 16.] Oxford University Press, Oxford 2019. cv, 243 p. Ill. £70.00.

This book rethinks the history of decolonization and new nationhood in the Ghana-Togo borderlands, and speaks to the debate on the production of knowledge about Africa through the translation and analysis of a primary source, a newspaper entitled Ablɔɖe (meaning “the Key to Freedom”). Ablɔɖe was initiated by a shoemaker named Holiday V.K. Komedja and written almost entirely in his mother-tongue, Eʋe. Over the six years for which copies were available, Komedja covered an array of local, national, and international issues and events, following the story of decolonization into the era of new nationhood. The editors demonstrate how intensive interdisciplinary engagement with specific African-language texts can challenge existing scholarly accounts.

Tunisia

Mastrangelo, Simon. Emigrer en quête de dignité. Tunisiens entre désillusions et espoirs. [Collection Migrations.] Presses Universitaires François Rabelais, Tours2019. 301 pp. Ill. € 25.00.

After the disillusion that followed the failure of the Arab Spring, many young Tunisians see exile as a means of combatting suffering and social inequalities. Dr Mastrangelo follows the journey of Tunisians who moved to Europe without papers. He combines ethnographic observations in the field and on social media to reflect on dynamics, such as the feeling of exclusion and the radicalization of their worldviews. The author demonstrates that the migrants play an active role in their migratory project. They give meaning to their journey by imbuing it with a heroic tone or religious meaning, and they claim their right to exile and to be part of the European continent.

Brazil

Blanc, Jacob. Before the Flood. The Itaipu Dam and the Visibility of Rural Brazil. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2019. xvi, 296 pp. Ill. Maps. $104.94. (Paper: $27.95.)

The Itaipu Dam was an arena of social conflict as much as it was an energy source and a geopolitical monument. In this book, Dr Blanc traces the protest movements of rural Brazilians living in the shadow of the Itaipu Dam in the 1970s and 1980s. The book has two primary goals: firstly, to show how the dictatorship was experienced in the countryside; and secondly, to look within the grass-roots movement to reveal the shifting meanings of land and legitimacy. Farmers of European descent, racially diverse landless peasants, and the Avá-Guarani Indians not only confronted the military regime, but also defended their own conception of land and their goals for a future society.

The Brazilian Left in the 21st Century. Conflict and Conciliation in Peripheral Capitalism. Ed. by Vladimir Puzone and Luis Felipe Miguel. [Marx, Engels, and Marxisms.] Palgrave Macmillan, Cham 2019. xxv, 298 pp. Ill. € 108.99. (E-book: € 85.59.)

This book aims to reconstruct the role played by left movements and organizations in Brazil from their process of renewal in the 1980s, as they fought against the civil-military dictatorship, through the Workers’ Party governments in the 2000s, until the Party's dramatic defeat following a parliamentary coup in 2016. Subsequently, there have been attacks on social and political rights that severely affect the lower classes and that have reversed progressive policies on various issues. Through a historical reconstruction, the twelve contributions in this volume analyse how different left movements and organizations contributed to the democratization of Brazilian society, and how their contradictions have contributed to the current conservative turn.

Millar, Kathleen M.Reclaiming the Discarded. Life and Labor on Rio's Garbage Dump. Duke University Press, Durham (NC)2018. xii, 236 pp. Ill. Maps. $99.95. (Paper: $25.95.)

In this book, Professor Millar offers an ethnography of Jardim Gramacho, a garbage dump on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, where roughly two thousand self-employed workers, known as catadores, collect recyclable materials. The author shows how the work of reclaiming recyclables is more than a survival strategy or an informal labour practice. Rather, the stories of catadores show how this work is inseparable from conceptions of the good life and from human struggles to realize these visions within precarious conditions of urban poverty. By approaching the work of catadores as highly generative, Millar calls into question the category of informality, common conceptions of garbage, and the continued normativity of wage labour.

Valladares, Licia do Prado. The Invention of the Favela. Transl. [from Portuguese] by Anderson, Robert N.. [Latin America in Translation/en Traducción/em Traducao.] The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC)2019 (2005). xxxii, 252 pp. Ill. $90.00. (Paper: $32.50; E-book: $25.99.)

The favela has become an internationally established, attractive representation of poverty. It exposes otherness (poverty, Brazil) in a pleasant and exotic setting (weather, landscape), with a tinge of danger and adventure (violence, drugs), but with positivity and creativity (music, community). Professor Valladares demonstrates that this stereotype does not reflect the social reality, but rather is the outcome of a long process of representations of the favelas by the media, policymakers, and social scientists. She shows how the construction of the social representations occurred historically and in order to treat the discoveries of the favela by diverse social actors.

Cuba

Hynson, Rachel. Laboring for the State. Women, Family, and Work in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959–1971. [Cambridge Latin American Studies, Vol. 117.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2019. xvii, 314 pp. Ill. £29.99. (E-book: $32.00.)

When Cuba moved from democracy towards an authoritarian government, it attempted to monopolize definitions of morality by redefining the nuclear family and organizing citizens to serve the state. Drawing on Cuban newspapers and periodicals, government documents and speeches, and oral histories, Dr Hynson reveals that, by 1961, and increasingly throughout this decade, revolutionary citizenship was earned through labour. The author examines four campaigns; the projects to: control women's reproduction; promote marriage; end prostitution; and compel men into state-sanctioned employment. She shows both the state's progression towards authoritarianism and its attendant monopolizing of morality, and the resistance and counter-narratives by citizens who opposed the mandates of these campaigns.

Lambe, Ariel Mae. No Barrier Can Contain It. Cuban Antifascism and the Spanish Civil War. [Envisioning Cuba.] University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC)2019. xvi, 310 pp. $90.00. (Paper: $34.95; E-book: $26.99.)

Cubans from diverse backgrounds and political stances self-identified as antifascists and moved across borders cultivating networks and building solidarity for a New Spain and a New Cuba. Believing they would achieve economic and social progress through these foreign fights, Cuban antifascism became a strong movement. Professor Lambe examines Cuban politics in the 1930s, when many Cuban activists began to see their fight against neocolonial rule at home as part of the international antifascism movement that exploded with the Spanish Civil War. The strength of the movement resulted in the progressive turn taken by Batista and the Cuban government at the end of the decade, including the establishment of a new constitution and presidential elections.

United States of America

Crossing Empires. Taking US History into Transimperial Terrain. Ed. by Kristin Hoganson and Jay Sexton. [American Encounters/Global Interactions.] Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2020. x, 349 pp. Ill. $104.95. (Paper: $28.95.)

Weaving US history into the larger fabric of world history, the thirteen contributors to this volume position the American empire in a global transimperial context. Drawing attention to the breadth of US entanglements with other empires, the authors illuminate the scope and nature of American global power, with case studies ranging from the 1830s to the late twentieth century. The contributors address topics including diplomacy, governance, anti-colonialism, labour, immigration, medicine, religion, and race. Their transimperial approach is exemplified in cases such as US steel corporations partnering with British imperialists to build the Ugandan railway, or the US reliance on other empires in its governance of the Philippines, and transcends histories of interimperial rivalries and conflicts.

Felber, Garrett. Those Who Know Don't Say. The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State. [Justice, Power, and Politics.] University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC)2020. 259 pp. Ill. $90.00. (Paper: $22.95; E-book: $12.99.)

In this book, Professor Felber uses the Nation of Islam (NOI) as a vehicle to explore forgotten sites and forms of Black struggle that confronted the carceral state during the mid-twentieth century. He reveals a multifaceted freedom struggle that focused as much on policing and prisons as on school desegregation and voting rights. The chapters that unfold are as much about the coalitions and opposition that formed around the NOI as the organization itself. The author expands the boundaries of Black liberation struggles by revealing a more dynamic freedom movement. He captures both famous and unknown political theorists and agents of change, and expands the spatial lens to include prison yards and courtrooms as sites of activism.

Forret, Jeff. Williams’ Gang. A Notorious Slave Trader and His Cargo of Black Convicts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2020. xii, 470 pp. Ill. £22.00. (E-book: $24.00.)

William H. Williams operated a slave pen in Washington, D.C. during the late 1820s to 1850. His slave trading activities took an extraordinary turn in 1840 when he purchased twenty-seven enslaved convicts from the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond with the understanding that he could sell them outside of the United States. In New Orleans, his violation of an 1817 Louisiana statute against the importation of enslaved convicts triggered a legal battle that lasted for almost three decades. Based on primary sources such as court records, newspapers, governors’ files, slave narratives, and penitentiary data, Professor Forret chronicles not only the story of the slave trader, but also of his enslaved cargo.

Hong, Jane H.Opening the Gates to Asia. A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC)2019. xii, 264 pp. Ill. $90.00. (Paper: $32.95; E-book: $25.99.)

Over the course of less than a century, the United States transformed from a nation that excluded Asians from citizenship to one that receives more immigrants from Asia than from anywhere else in the world. In this study, Professor Hong unearths the transpacific movement that successfully ended restrictions on Asian immigration. She shows that the era of decolonization created new opportunities for advocates from both the US and Asia to lobby the US Congress for repeal. Drawing from sources in the US, India, and the Philippines, this book covers the repeal movement chronologically, each of the five chapters focusing on a different campaign behind the passage of the four major laws that, together, formally repealed Asian exclusion.

Huffard, R. Scott Jr.Engines of Redemption. Railroads and the Reconstruction of Capitalism in the New South. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC)2019. xv, 305 pp. Ill. $90.00. (Paper: $32.50; E-book: $25.99.)

After the upheavals of the Civil War and Reconstruction shattered the plantation economy of the Old South, white southerners turned to the railroad to reconstruct capitalism in the region. Professor Huffard Jr. demonstrates how economic and political elites used the symbolic power of the railroad to proclaim a New South had risen. However, as the railroad spread across the region, it brought with it new dangers and anxieties, such as an upending of the racial order, yellow fever epidemics, train wrecks, violent robberies, and domination by corporate monopolies. To complete the reconstruction of capitalism, railroad corporations and their allies had to sever the negative aspects of railroading from capitalism's powers.

McCurry, Stephanie. Women's War. Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA)2019. xii, 297 pp. Ill. $26.95; £21.95; € 24.50.

When the Civil War broke out, Union soldiers assumed Confederate women would be innocent noncombatants. Experience soon challenged this simplistic belief. Professor McCurry offers three examples of the role of women's war in defining the stakes of the American Civil War. The first looks at the Union Army's encounters with enemy women. The second examines the challenges that black women fugitives posed to a Union emancipation policy aimed only at enslaved men. The third focuses on one former Confederate woman's efforts to reconstruct a life amid the ruins of the slave South, a process that marks Reconstruction as a fundamental break with the prewar slaveholding past. See also Lorien Foote's review in this volume, pp. 348–350.

Miller, Wilbur R.A History of Private Policing in the United States. [History of Crime, Deviance and Punishment.] Bloomsbury, London [etc.] 2019. ix, 235 pp. Ill. £81.00. (Paper: £26.09; E-book: £77.76.)

Private law enforcement and order maintenance have usually been seen as working against or outside of state authority. Professor Miller surveys private policing from the 1850s to date, arguing that private agencies frequently served as a major component of authority in America as an auxiliary of the state. Seeking to locate it in the context of the structure and ideology of the American state, the author broadly defines private policing to include self-defense, stand-your-ground laws, and vigilantism, as well as private detectives, security guards, and patrols from gated community security to the Guardian Angels. He also examines the role of detective agencies in controlling labour organizing through spies, guards, and strikebreakers.

Rutenberg, Amy J.Rough Draft. Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY)2019. xiv, 259 pp. Ill. $95.00. (Paper: $27.95; E-book: $13.99.)

This book focuses on the large number of men, who sought legal means to avoid military service between World War II and the Vietnam War. Professor Rutenberg moves chronologically through the postwar debates about military training, the development of manpower channelling, and attempts to yoke the War on Poverty to military service. Federal officials believed that college-educated men best protected the nation as civilians, while officials used the War on Poverty to target poorer and racialized men for conscription, hoping that military service would offer them skills they could use in civilian life. Thus, while some men resisted military service for reasons of political conscience, most did so because manpower policies made it possible.

Wang, Jessica. Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers. Rabies, Medicine, and Society in an American Metropolis, 1840–1920. [Animals, History, Culture.] Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore (MD)2019. xix, 322 pp. Ill. $54.95. (E-book: $54.95.)

Rabies enjoys a fearsome and lurid reputation. Focusing on a transformative era in medicine, politics, and urban society, Professor Wang uses rabies to survey urban social geography, the place of domesticated animals in the nineteenth-century city, and the world of American medicine. Rabies, she demonstrates, provides an ideal vehicle for exploring physicians’ ideas about therapeutics, disease pathology, and the body as well as the global flows of knowledge and therapeutics. Starting with the history of New York and the public discourses about rabies and death, the middle part of the book delves into the history of medicine. The last two chapters move to the domain of institutions and politics.

Women in the American Revolution. Gender, Politics, and the Domestic World. Ed. by Barbara B. Oberg. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville (VA) [etc.] 2019. xi, 264 pp. $39.50. (E-book: $39.50.)

This volume reflects on the lives of women in the era of the American Revolution. The thirteen contributions examine how, mostly white elite women dealt with years of armed conflict and carried on their daily lives, exploring factors such as age, race, educational background, marital status, social class, and region. Part One reveals how the revolutionary crisis both tore apart women's economic lives, and enabled women to shape their own economic prospects. The essays in Part Two explore the precise ways in which individual women were related to political figures. Part Three contains essays on the aspects of marriage and family life.

China

Huang, Erin, Y.Neoliberal Post-Socialism and the Limits of Visibility. [Sinotheory.] Duke University Press, Durham (NC)2020. xii, 271 pp. Ill. $99.95; £86.00. (Paper, E-book: $26.95; £21.99.)

Drawing on Marxist phenomenology, geography, and aesthetics from Engels, Merleau-Ponty, Lefebvre, and Rancière, Professor Huang traces the emergence and mediation of what she calls urban horror – a sociopolitical public affect that exceeds comprehension and provides the grounds for possible future revolutionary dissent. She shows how documentaries, blockbuster feature films, and video art from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, made between the 1990s and the present, rehearse and communicate urban horror. According to the author, the cinematic image and the aesthetics of urban horror in neoliberal post-socialist China lay the groundwork for the future to such an extent that the seeds of dissent at the heart of urban horror make it possible to imagine new forms of resistance.

Wang, Jing. The Other Digital China. Nonconfrontational Activism on the Social Web. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA)2019. 312 pp. Ill. $39.95; £31.95; € 36.00.

Whereas Westerners tend to equate action with open criticism and street revolutions, Chinese activists are building an invisible and quiet coalition to bring incremental progress to their society. Many Chinese changemakers practice nonconfrontational activism. They prefer to walk around obstacles rather than break through them, tactfully navigating between what is lawful and what is illegitimate. Professor Jing Wang describes this grey zone where NGOs, digital entrepreneurs, university students, IT companies like Tencent and Sina, and tech communities operate. They study the policy winds in Beijing, devising ways to press their case without antagonizing the regime. What emerges is an expanding networked activism on a grand scale.

India

Engerman, David C.Price of Aid. The Economic Cold War in India. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 2018. vii, 501 pp. Ill. Maps. $35.00; £28.95; € 31.50. (Paper: $27.95.)

Reflecting on the origins and evolution of foreign aid, Professor Engerman focuses upon American and Soviet aid to India, arguing that superpowers turned to foreign aid as a tool of the Cold War, and India, the largest of the ex-colonies, stood at the centre of American and Soviet aid competition. Both superpowers saw development aid as an instrument for pursuing geopolitics through economic means, while India sought superpower aid to advance its own economic visions, thus bringing external resources into domestic debates about India's economic future. Drawing on an expansive set of documents, the author shows that the crystallization of the networks of support in the 1960s complicated Indian policymaking.

Landscape, Culture, and Belonging. Writing the History of Northeast India. Ed. by Neeladri Bhattacharya and Joy L.K. Pachuau. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2019. viii, 343 pp. Ill. Maps. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)

Till the 1870s, the Northeast of India was an unbounded space. Since then, several acts have been passed that have re-spatialized the region. Moving away from an exclusive dependence on colonial ethnographies, the authors of this collection of thirteen essays build their arguments on a varied range of sources. They question the categories through which the region is usually described and explore the historical processes whereby the region was surveyed, mapped, understood, represented, politically governed, economically refigured, and historically constituted during the colonial period. While recovering the specific history of the region, this volume reflects on wider conceptual issues that are raised by studies of borders and frontiers. See also Gunnel Cederlöf's review in this volume, pp. 351–354.

Maruschke, Megan. Portals of Globalization. Repositioning Mumbai's Ports and Zones, 1833–2014. [Dialectics of the Global, Vol. 2.] De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin2019. xii, 253 pp. € 68.95; $79.99; £62.50. (E-book: € 68.95; $79.99; £62.50.)

Special economic zones and past free ports are often portrayed as threats to national sovereignty. This dissertation explores the history of planning Mumbai's ports and free zones during periods of global and regional transition from the British Raj, to national independence, and economic liberalization. The book opens with an unsuccessful plan hatched by merchants in 1833 to make Bombay a free port to deal with an emerging British India and the advent of free trade. Dr Maruschke demonstrates how India's current special economic zones and emphasis on port expansion are part of broader goals to reposition India in transregional Asian trade and to connect Mumbai with northern India.

Indonesia

Activists in Transition. Progressive Politics in Democratic Indonesia. Ed. by Thushara Dibley and Michele Ford. [Southeast Asia Program Publications.] Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2019. xvii, 215 pp. $115.00. (Paper: $24.95; E-book: $11.99.)

This book assesses the contribution that nine progressive social movements have made to the democratization of Indonesia since the late 1980s, and how, in turn, each of those movements has been influenced by democratization. Their individual strategies and tactics have been different, some playing a decisive role in the destabilization of the regime, others serving as bellwethers of the advancement. Progressive social movements, such as the students movement, the women's movement, the urban poor activists, the labour movement, and the movement for land rights, have played a critical role in ensuring that different groups of citizens can engage directly in the political process in a way that was not possible under authoritarianism.

Vietnam

Aso, Michitake. Rubber and the Making of Vietnam. An Ecological History, 1897–1975. [Flows, Migrations, and Exchanges.] University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill (NC)2018. xvii, 405 pp. Ill. Maps. $90.00. (Paper: $32.95; E-book: $23.99.)

Since the arrival of the latex-producing tree in Southeast Asia in the late nineteenth century, rubber has been a key global commodity. Synthesizing archival material, such as government reports, planter's correspondence, medical and agricultural journals, and visual materials, Professor Aso uses rubber plantations, as they emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, as a lens through which to examine the entanglements of nature, culture, and politics. The colonial administrative policy promoted migration to meet plantations’ demands for labour. Malaria, beriberi, and terrible living conditions resulted in illness and the deaths of thousands of planation workers. As rubber cultivation funded infrastructural improvements and the creation of a skilled labour force, plantations became landscapes of oppression, resistance, and modernity. See also Robert Keenan's review in this volume, pp. 354–356.

Austria

Belndorfer, Helene. Wegwerfen ist eine Sünde. Österreichische Konsumgeschichten aus beinahe hundert Jahren. Böhlau, Wien [etc.], 2019. 262 pp. Ill. € 28.00.

In this book, people from different generations, born between 1919 and 1958, originating from town and countryside, were interviewed to share their personal consumption stories. They report about consumption and renunciation in times of war, between war, and postwar, about the rise on the consumption ladder during the golden years, and about the different consumer roles of the sexes and generations. There are particular reminiscences about consumption highlights such as Christmas and the brand names of everyday consumer objects. Dr Belndorfer embeds the personal memories in a coherent presentation and offers additional background information on the consumer history of the twentieth century. Many photos as well as contemporary advertisements and advertising posters supplement the memories.

Eastern Europe

Toshkov, Alex. Agrarianism as Modernity in 20th-Century Europe. The Golden Age of the Peasantry. Bloomsbury Academic, London2019. viii, 231 pp. $103.50. (E-book: $82.80.)

In this comparative study, Dr Toshkov uncovers the history of agrarianism after World War I and explores its place as an alternative modernity to liberal democracy and capitalism. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, the thematic chapters in this book explore the transnational connections between the paradigmatic cases of Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, as well as the International Agrarian Bureau in Prague, teasing out contradictions, hidden records, and silenced interpretations of agrarianism. In addition, it uses a micro-historical approach to present an innovative theoretical framework that adds to our understanding of nationalism, political corruption, and alterity and the subaltern. See also Wim van Meurs's review in this volume, pp. 356–359.

France

Beaumont, Thomas. Fellow Travellers. Communist Trade Unionism and Industrial Relations on the French Railways, 1914–1939. [Studies in Labour History, Vol. 13.] Liverpool University Press, Liverpool2019. x, 271 pp. £24.99.

This book examines the practices and strategies adopted by Communist militants as they sought to build and maintain support on the railways. While the Communist Party struggled to establish a foothold in many French workplaces, activists on the railways established deep and lasting roots of support. They maintained this support even through the sectarian period of the Comintern's shift to class against class, deepening their participation within railway industrial relations, and gaining the experience of engagement with managers and state officials. In the years of the Popular Front, France's railway employees joined their fellow workers in shaping a new social contract for workers, extending the principle of democratic representation into the workplace.

Monnet, Eric. Controlling Credit. Central Banking and the Planned Economy in Postwar France, 1948–1973. [Studies in Macroeconomic History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2018. xxii, 327 pp. £85.00. (Paper: £29.99; E-book: $36.00.)

The focus of this study is the credit policy of the Banque de France, and the effect of the Banque's decisions on the domestic economy. Professor Monnet shows that the Banque was at the heart of the postwar financial system and economic planning, and that it contributed to economic growth in France by stabilizing inflation and fostering direct lending to priority economic activities. Credit was institutionalized as a social and economic objective. Monetary policy and credit controls were conflated. The author broadens his analysis to other European countries and sheds light on the evolution of central banks and credit policy before the European Monetary Union.

Pagis, Julie. May ’68. Shaping Political Generations. [Protest and Social Movements.] Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam2018. 320 pp. Ill. € 105.00.

Much as in other locations around the world, civil uprising, particularly that rooted in the activism of young people and students, strikes and occupations, paralyzed France during May 1968. Dr Pagis studies the life trajectories of many ordinary protestors during the period, using statistics and personal narratives to analyse how this activism arose, its impact on people's personal and professional lives, and its transmission through familial generations. The author uses the sociology of and relations between generations to reflect on the encounters between individual trajectories and political events, and the impact of participating in the events of May ’68 on two generations within a family. See also Michael Seidman's review in this volume, pp. 359–361.

Toth, Stephen A.Mettray. A History of France's Most Venerated Carceral Institution. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) [etc.] 2019. xii, 263 pp. Ill. $43.95. (E-book: $21.99.)

The Mettray Penal Colony was a private reformatory without walls, established in France in 1840 for the rehabilitation of young male delinquents. More than 17,000 young men passed through the reformatory before its closure. Professor Toth shows how the institution legitimized France's repression of criminal youth, struggling with changing conceptions of childhood and adolescence in modern France. Based on archival material, he explores the inmates’ experiences, the living conditions, discipline, labour, sex, and violence, and demonstrates that the colony was an ill-conceived project marked by internal contradictions. Its social order was one of subjection and subversion, as officials struggled for order and inmates struggled for autonomy. See also Jean-Lucien Sanchez's review in this volume, pp. 361–363.

Germany

Freiwilligenarbeit und gemeinnützige Organisationen im Wandel. Neue Perspektiven auf das 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Hrsg. von Nicole Kramer [und] Christine G. Krüger. [Historische Zeitschrift, Beiheft 76.] Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin [etc.] 2019. 334 pp. € 99.95; $114.99; £91.00. (E-book: € 99;95; $114.99; £91.00.)

In English historiography, in contrast to Germany, volunteering is a separate field of research and systematic debate. This Beiheft brings together current studies on the subject of voluntary work. It builds a bridge between Anglo-Saxon volunteer action history on the one hand and more recent research on volunteering and the non-profit sector in Germany and other European countries on the other. The ten contributions demonstrate the range of different approaches to the topic and discuss several concepts. Particular attention is paid to the change in the meaning of voluntary engagement, its relationship to the state and the market, and its transnational dimension.

Kufferath, Philipp [und] Mittag, Jürgen. Geschichte der Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO). Dietz, Bonn2019. 464 pp. Ill. € 26.00.

The workers’ welfare organization founded in December 1919 reflects on more than 100 years of history. As the umbrella organization for free welfare, it is a key player in social policy in Germany, involved in the areas of children, senior citizens, health, and care. In addition to the chronological presentation, the authors also provide an overview of central topics, such as organization and cooperation with other associations, social policy guidelines, and the changing tasks and conflict areas of social work. In addition to structures and activities, the people and places that play a central role in the history of workers’ welfare are considered.

Schmidt, Jürgen. August Bebel. Social Democracy and the Founding of the Labour Movement. Transl. [from German] by Brocks, Christine. I.B. Tauris, London [etc.] 2019 [2013.]. xi, 225 pp. Ill. £85.00. [Paper: £26.09; E-book: £73.44.)

August Bebel (1840–1913) was a towering figure of late-nineteenth-century European socialism and a leading figure of the German labour movement from the 1860s until his death in 1913. Bebel not only founded the Social Democratic Workers Party of Germany (SDAP), a political movement that became the largest socialist party in nineteenth-century Europe, he was also a powerful orator and leading member of the German parliament. In this biography, Dr. Schmidt situates Bebel's life and career in the political, social, and cultural history of modern Europe. He also provides an overview of the growth of the labour movement and working-class political activism in late-nineteenth-century Germany.

Vergangene Zukünfte von Arbeit. Aussichten, Ängste und Aneignungen im 20. Jahrhundert. Hrsg. von Franziska Rehlinghaus [und] Ulf Teichmann. [Archiv der sozialen Demokratie der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Reihe: Politik- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Bd. 108.] Dietz, Bonn 2019. 256 pp. Ill. € 32.00.

What work of the future will look like, and whether work has a future at all were pervasive questions in the twentieth century. The ten contributions to this volume focus on central debates on the relationship between work and its future in various industries and social systems. There is analysis of case studies such as the rationalization in the German metal industry of the 1920s, the future of orchestral musicians in the early Federal Republic, and the working from home since the 1980s. The authors shed light on ways of dealing with political and ideological guidelines, technological change, and educational concepts. The approaches of New Labor History are methodically combined with theory of historical future research.

Great Britain

Carlin, Norah. Regicide or Revolution? What Petitioners Wanted, September 1648–January 1649. Breviary Stuff Publications, London2020. x, 348 pp. £18.50.

The dozens of petitions addressed to Parliament and the army included in this study and presented with original spelling and punctuation, were composed and subscribed over a period of five months, between the opening of Parliament's negotiations with the king in September 1648, and his execution on 30 January 1649. Dr Carlin presents the petitions with as much information as could be gathered about the background and context of each document. The petitions were a response to events as they occurred; however, none of them called openly for the king's death, many express concern for the common people's rights and liberties, and a substantial minority call for a radical redefinition of the English constitution.

Chick, Martin. Changing Times. Economics, Policies, and Resource Allocation in Britain since 1951. [Economic and Social History of Britain.] Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2019. xiii, 440 pp. £70.00. (Paper: £29.99.)

This is a study of how, and why, the British economy has changed since 1951. Professor Chick's primary concern is with the economic development of Britain, with an interest in how the benefits of economic growth were distributed. Specific aspects are identified and assigned individual chapters: public expenditure and the role of the state; labour markets and industrial policy; poverty and inequality; health and education; the privatization of nationalized industries and public housing; environmental policy; trade and exchange rates; and the financial crash of 2008. As well as an interest in economic growth and distribution, the author is also concerned with how and why government economic policy changed from 1951.

Faubert, Michelle. Granville Sharp's Uncovered Letter and the Zong Massacre. Palgrave Macmillan, London [etc.] 2018. xvi, 166 pp. Ill. € 59.94. (Paper: € 59.94; E-book: € 44.02.)

This book delineates the discovery of a previously unknown manuscript of a letter from Granville Sharp, the first British abolitionist, to the “Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty”. In the letter, Sharp demands that the Admiralty bring murder charges against the crew of the Zong for forcing 132 enslaved Africans overboard to their deaths. Uncovered by Professor Faubert at the British Library in 2015, the letter is reproduced in this book, accompanied by her examination of its provenance and significance for the history of slavery and abolition. As Faubert argues, the British Library manuscript is the only intact copy of Sharp's letter, and extraordinary evidence of Sharp's role in the abolition of slavery.

Moss, Jonathan. Women, Workplace Protest, and Political Identity in England, 1968–85. [Gender in History.] Manchester University Press, Manchester2019. ix, 197 pp. £80.00; $120.00.

Between 1968 and 1985, thousands of female workers engaged in workplace protest in various sectors across England. The wave of activism occurred in a period with heightened tension in both gender and class relations. Dr Moss focuses on the voices and experiences of women who fought for equal pay, skill recognition, and the right to work, and explores why working-class women engaged in such actions, and analyses the impact of workplace protest on women's political identity. A combination of oral history and written sources are used to illuminate how everyday experiences of gender and class antagonism shaped working-class women's political identity and participation.

Poole, Robert. Peterloo. The English Uprising. Oxford University Press, Oxford2019. xxiii, 453 pages. Ill. Maps. £25.00.

On 16 August 1819, at St Peter's Field in Manchester, armed cavalry attacked a peaceful rally of some 50,000 pro-democracy reformers, who claimed political citizenship. Under the eyes of the national press, eighteen people were killed and some 700 injured, many of them women and children. It marked the rise of English radical populism, as the British state, recently victorious at Waterloo, was challenged by a pro-democracy movement centred on the industrial North. Besides writing the definitive history of the Peterloo Massacre, Professor Poole revises parts of E.P. Thompson's classic Making of the English Working Class, demonstrating that if Thompson had included Manchester in his book, the outcome would have been different.

Rioux, Sébastien. The Social Cost of Cheap Food. Labour and the Political Economy of Food Distribution in Britain, 1830–1914. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal [etc.] 2019. xi, 240 pp. Can.$110.00. (Paper: Can.$34.95.)

In the midst of rapid urbanization, retail competition intensified and the channels by which food made it to the market became vital to the country's economic success. Illustrating the importance of food distribution in Britain between 1830 and 1914, Dr Rioux argues that labour exploitation in the distribution system was the key to cheap food. Analysing labour dynamics and institutional changes in the distributive sector, the author demonstrates that economic development and the rising living standards of the working class were premised upon the growing insecurity and chronic poverty of street sellers and small shopkeepers. Rioux reveals that, as an active sphere of economic activity, food distribution provided a dynamic space for the reduction of food prices.

Stevenson, George. The Women's Liberation Movement and the Politics of Class in Britain. Bloomsbury Academic, London2019. xi, 270 pp. Ill. £59.50. (E-book: £55.08.)

This book focuses on the feminist voices, activism, and experiences of working-class women involved in the Women's Movement and class politics and the Women's Liberation Movement engagement with them between 1968 and 1979. Dr Stevenson explores the meaning of class to women's liberationists’ identities and activism, both nationally and regionally, using a feminist cluster in north-east England as a case study. He demonstrates that British feminism was fundamentally shaped by its relationship to and rejection of class politics. Through these processes, feminists recognized how postwar changes in the economy and gender roles were reshaping class, and the Women's Liberation Movement attempted to remake class politics in response.

Portugal

O Activismo Estudantil no IST (1945–1980). Luísa Tiago de Oliveira (Org.). Fenix, Lisboa 2019. 829 pp. Ill. € 30.00.

This book focuses on student activism at the Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST) between World War II and the late 1970s. Part One deals with student struggles, the context of youth activism, the Students Association of the Higher Technical Institute (AEIST), and student cultures. Part Two is a chronology of reference elements concerning the situation from 1945 till 1980. Part Three is a list of students and engineers arrested by the police. Part Four includes nineteen interviews with student leaders from this period who bravely engaged in politics, thus contributing to the end of the Estado Novo, the Colonial War and, after 25 April, the building of the Portuguese New State.

Romania

Grama, Emauela. Socialist Heritage. The Politics of Past and Place in Romania. [New Anthropologies of Europe.] Indiana University Press, Bloomington (IN)2019. xv, 247 pp. Ill. $60.00. (Paper: $30.00; E-book: $29.99.)

Focusing on Romania from 1945 to 2016, this book explores the socialist state's attempt to create its own heritage. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research on Bucharest's Old Town, Professor Grama argues that heritage making functions as a form of governance. She examines how, at different political junctures, politicians, urban planners, historic preservation experts, and state tenants have negotiated power by imbuing or denying old buildings and their remnants with cultural or historical value: From the socially and ethnically diverse place that Old Town was in the early twentieth century, to a city that emphasized Romania's past and erased its ethnically diverse history, to the highly contested cultural and economic value of the Old Town today.

Massino, Jill M.Ambiguous Transitions. Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania. Berghahn, New York [etc.] 2019. xii, 453 pp. Ill. $135.00; £99.00. (E-book: $39.95.)

Focusing on youth, family, work, and consumption, Professor Massino analyses the interplay between gender and citizenship in postwar Romania. By juxtaposing official sources with oral histories and socialist policies with everyday practices, the author illuminates the gendered dimensions of socialist modernization and its complex effects on women's roles, relationships, and identities. Analysing women as subjects and agents, she examines how they negotiated the challenges that arose as Romanian society modernized, even as it clung to traditional ideas about gender. The book sheds light on these complexities, contradictions, and ambiguities through an analysis of socialist politics, media representations, and women's life stories in Romania from the advent of socialist rule to the present.

Miszczynski, Milosz. The Dialectical Meaning of Offshored Work. Neoliberal Desires and Labour Arbitrage in Post-socialist Romania. [Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Vol. 146.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2019. vii, 191 pp. € 115.00; $139.00. (E-book: € 115.00; $139.00.)

This book analyses how offshore investments function as a platform for intercultural encounters among corporate actors and local populations of hosting communities. Professor Miszczynski presents different aspects of global engagement and the various stages of offshore investments. The key focus is presenting the emergence of locally generated dependencies, how they grow, and what happens to these resources once an investor leaves. The author argues that offshore investments in middle-income economies such as Romania, support the desire for modernization and Western-style livelihoods. On the other hand, they expose local populations to tensions caused by global labour arbitrage based on global cost-competition, cost-cutting, and the progressive degradation of employment.

Russia

McGeever, Brendan. Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge2019. 247 pp. £75.00.

The Bolshevist Revolution of 1917 raised the question how the new revolutionary regime would position itself in relation to the strong antisemitism that was part of Russian society and culture. In this study, Dr McGeever offers a close analysis of the Bolshevik response to antisemitism, revealing the regime's campaign against antisemitism to have been led not by the Party leadership, but by a group of radicals who mobilized around a Jewish political subjectivity. At the same time, the author shows the explosive overlap between revolutionary politics and antisemitism and the capacity for class to become racialized in a moment of crisis. See also Mario Kessler's review in this volume, pp. 363–366.

Martin, Barbara. Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union. From De-Stalinization to Perestroika. [Library of Modern Russia.] Bloomsbury Academic, London2019. xv, 293 pp. Ill. £85.00. (E-book: £73.44.)

How could one be a historian in the Soviet Union, under strict state control and without access to archives? Dr. Martin tracks the careers of four important dissidents: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; Roy Medvedev; Aleksandr Nekrich; and Anton Antonov-Ovseenko. Based on archival research and interviews, the result is a nuanced history of Soviet dissident history writing, from the relative liberalization of de-Stalinization through increasing repression and persecution in the Brezhnev era, to liberalization once more during perestroika. In the process, the author sheds light on late Soviet society and its relationship with the state, as well as the ways in which this dissidence participated in weakening the Soviet regime during Perestroika. See also Nanci Adler's review in this volume, pp. 366–368.

Spain

Huelga General 14–D. 30 años después 1988–2018. Fundación Fransicso Largo Caballero. UGT, Madrid 2018. 168 pp. Ill. € 25.00.

On 14 December 1988, labourers in Spain demonstrated in a general strike against the policies of cuts and austerity put in place by the socialist government. The government had to withdraw the most harmful measures and, after thirty years, the conclusion can be drawn that the consequences of these strikes laid the foundations of the current welfare state. This publication commemorates the strikes with a photo gallery, supplemented with an appendix including internal documents from the Unión General de Trabajadores and a review from the former General Secretary of UGT, Nicolás Redondo, who follows up on the impact of the strike on the history of democracy, and the first jointly convened by UGT and Comiciones Obreras (CCOO).

El impacto de la guerra civil española en el sector terciario, Coord. par Mercedes Fernández-Paradas, Carlos Larrinaga. Editorial Comares, Granada 2019. ix, 172 pp. Ill. Maps. € 18.00.

This work deals with the impact that the Civil War had on the tertiary sector. During the first third of the twentieth century, a process took place as a result of which the third sector experienced tremendous growth and accounted for an increasingly high percentage of Spain's GDP. The authors in this book cover various subsectors, such as the gas sector, the electrical industry, Spain's local credit banks, the insurance sector, the transport sector, and the tourist sector. They demonstrate the influence of these tertiary sectors on Spanish society and the urban environment.

Salanova, Santiago de Miguel. Madrid, un laboratorio de socialismo municipal 1900–1936. Catarata, Madrid2019. 171 pp. Ill. Maps. € 15.50.

The years between 1900 and 1936 played a decisive role in the social and economic modernization of Madrid. The Spanish capital's leap forward in this period led to new ways of thinking and governing the city, based on political approaches that tried to break with the nineteenth-century, state-controlled municipalism that had been defined by government interference. During this period, the Socialist Party inaugurated an innovative concept of municipal government, in line with that of other European countries and matched with the interests and needs of the population. Dr Salanova explores the active role of the representatives of the Socialist Party in the Madrid City Council.

Women Warriors in Early Modern Spain. A Tribute to Bárbara Mujica. Ed. by Susan L. Fischer and Frederick A. De Armas. [The Early Modern Exchange.] University of Delaware Press, Newark (DE) 2019. viii, 296 pp. $75.00. (Paper: $37.50; E-book: $75.00.)

The history and fiction of early modern Spain are filled with examples of women who defended their right to define their own identities. The sixteen contributions in this volume demonstrate how women battled the status quo, defended certain causes, challenged authority, and broke barriers. Such women did not necessarily engage in masculine pursuits, but often used cultural production and engaged in social subversion to exercise resistance in the home, in the convent, on stage, or at their writing desks. The essays reveal nuanced studies of women as dramatic subjects, as actors, producers of theatre, or as writers. Each author gives a nod to Bárbara Mujica and her indelible contribution to the field.

Turkey

Keysan, Asuman Özgür. Activism and Women's NGOs in Turkey. Civil Society, Feminism, and Politics. I.B. Tauris, London [etc.] 2019. x, 214 pp. $103.50. (E-book: $103.50.)

Civil society in Turkey is often seen as male, structured in a way that excludes women from public and political life. Consequently, much feminist scholarship sees civil society and feminism as incompatible. Dr Keysan examines the debate on the relationship between civil society and feminism and aims to identify the extent to which and in what ways voices of women activists contribute to the meaning of civil society and produce alternative understandings. The book is based on the empirical cases of ten women's organizations in Turkey and discusses how women activists from these groups approach the concepts and practices of civil society.

Ukraine

Shkandrij, Myroslav. Revolutionary Ukraine, 1917–2017. History's Flashpoints and Today's Memory Wars. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, New York [etc.] 2020. ix, 205 pp. Ill. £96.00. (E-book: £29.24.)

This book examines four revolutionary periods that have shaped Ukrainian history over the last century. The story is told from the perspective of “insiders”, the Bolshevik historians who first described the 1917–1921 revolution in Ukraine, citizens who were accused of nationalist conspiracies by Stalin, the Galician press that covered the 1933–1934 famine, nationalists who fomented revolution in the 1940s, and participants in the Euromaidan protests and Revolution of 2013–2014. The narrative in each case reflects discussions in the current “memory wars” over these flashpoints in history. Professor Shkandrij introduces recent research findings and new archival materials, and provides a guide to the heated controversies on the issues of nationalism and Russian-Ukrainian relations.