Cameroon

Lachenal, Guillaume. The Doctor Who Would Be King. Transl. [from French] by Cheryl Smeall. [A Theory in Forms.] Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2022 (2017). x, 298 pp. Ill. Maps. $104.95. (Paper: $27.95.)

Dr Jean Joseph David was a French colonial army doctor who governed an entire region of French Cameroon during World War II. Dr David – called “emperor” by locals – dreamed of establishing a medical utopia. Through unchecked power, he imagined realizing the colonialist fantasy of emancipating colonized subjects from misery, ignorance, and sickness. Drawing on archives, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork, Professor Lachenal traces David's earlier attempts at a similar project on a Polynesian island and the ongoing legacies of his failed experiment in Cameroon. Exploring the memories and remnants of David's rule, the author reveals a global history of violence, desire, and failure, in which hope for the future was lost in the tragic comedy of power.

Guinea

Martino, Enrique. Touts. Recruiting Indentured Labor in the Gulf of Guinea. [Work in Global and Historical Perspective, Vol. 14.] De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin [etc.] 2022. xiii, 271 pp. Ill. Maps. € 84.95. (E-book: € 84.95.)

This book is set on West Africa's largest island, Fernando Po or Bioko, in today's Equatorial Guinea, 100 kilometres off the coast of Nigeria. The Spanish ruled this island from the mid-nineteenth century until 1968. The thriving plantation economy led several hundred thousand West African – principally Nigerian – contract workers to arrive, travelling on steamships and in canoes. Tracing the confusing transition from slavery to other labour regimes, paying particular attention to the labour brokers and their financial, logistic, and clandestine techniques for bringing workers to the island, Dr Martino examines how commercial labour relations could develop, shift, and collapse through the recruiters’ own techniques, such as large wage advances and elaborate deceptions.

Nigeria

Alao, Abiodun. Rage and Carnage in the Name of God. Religious Violence in Nigeria. [Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People.] Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2022. xiii, 298 pp. Maps. $104.95. (Paper: $27.95.)

Of all the issues that have been at the centre of controversy in Nigeria, religion is one of the most prominent. In this book, Professor Alao examines the culture of religious violence in post-independence Nigeria, where Christianity, Islam, and traditional religions have all been associated with violence. Investigating the root causes and historical evolution, he locates it in the forced convergence of disparate ethnic groups under colonial rule and discusses the histories of different religions in the territory that became Nigeria, as he examines the effects of colonization on the role of religion, the rise of Islamic radicalization and its relation to Christian violence, the activities of Boko Haram, and how religious violence interacts with politics and governance.

Smith, Daniel Jordan. Every Household Is Its Own Local Government. Infrastructural Deficiency, State Complicity, and Citizenship in Nigeria. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2022. ix, 216 pp. Ill. $75.00; £58.00. (Paper: $26.95; £20.00.)

When Nigerians say that every household is its own local government, they mean that the politicians and state cannot be trusted to ensure even the most basic infrastructural needs. Professor Smith traces how innovative entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens in Nigeria have forged their own systems. Drawing on three decades of experience in Nigeria, the author examines the versatility of Nigerians in developing technologies, businesses, social networks, political strategies, and everyday routines to cope with the failure of government infrastructure. On the surface, their self-reliance and sheer hustle may appear to render the state irrelevant. In reality, the state is not so much absent as complicit, and private efforts require regular engagement with government officials.

South Africa

Paret, Marcel. Fractured Militancy. Precarious Resistance in South Africa after Racial Inclusion. ILR Press, An Imprint of Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2022. xx, 210 pp. $125.00. (Paper: $29.95; E-book: $19.99.)

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with activists, Professor Paret tells the story of post-apartheid South Africa from the perspective of Johannesburg's impoverished urban Black neighbourhoods. Tracing rising protests back to the process of democratization and racial inclusion, this process augured the possibility of change but preserved racial inequality and economic insecurity, prompting residents to use militant protests to express their deep sense of betrayal and demand recognition and community development. Rather than unified resistance, however, class struggles within the process of racial inclusion produced a fractured militancy. Revealing the complicated truth behind South African democratization, the author uncovers a society divided by wealth, urban geography, nationality, employment, and political views.

Van Zyl-Hermann, Danelle. Privileged Precariat. White Workers and South Africa's Long Transition to Majority Rule. [The International African Library, Vol. 63.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xvi, 338 pp. Ill. £90.00. (E-book: $96.00.)

White workers occupied a unique social position in apartheid-era South Africa. Shielded from black labour competition in exchange for support for the white minority regime, their race-based status effectively concealed their class-based vulnerability. Centred on this entanglement of race and class, Dr Van Zyl-Hermann examines how South Africa's white workers experienced the dismantling of the racial state and the establishment of black majority rule. From the 1970s, apartheid reforms constituted the withdrawal of state support for working-class whiteness, leading workers to search for new ways to safeguard their interests. The author tracks the shifting strategies of the blue-collar Mineworkers’ Union, culminating in its reinvention by the 2010s as the Solidarity Movement, a social movement appealing to cultural nationalism.

Argentina

Candioti, Magdalena. Una historia de la emancipación negra. Esclavitud y abolición en la Argentina. Siglo veintiuno editores, Buenos Aires 2021. 272 pp. Arg. $2,630.

This book explores the place of slaves of African origin in the Argentine identity narrative. Based on judicial, police, and parish archives, Professor Candioti reconstructs the dimensions of the abolition process in the Río de la Plata, from 1813 until 1853–1860. In those years, children were not immediately born free but remained under the patronage of their mothers’ masters in a vulnerable condition very close to servitude. The author recovers their stories and describes how they conquered their freedom or had to buy it with money, free work, or military service. At the same time, she analyses the role of racial markings in opportunities for integration, political participation, and social mobility after the revolution. See also Felipe Azevedo e Souza's review in this volume, pp. 569–572.

Yarfitz, Mir. Impure Migration. Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina. [Jewish Cultures of the World.] Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (NJ) [etc.] 2019. xi, 207 pp. Ill. $59.95. (E-book: $59.95).

This book analyses the causes and implications of the central position occupied by East European Jews in Argentina in the period from the 1890s until the 1930s. It provides an international discussion of sex trafficking and compares the behaviour of sex workers with that of their coreligionists and other immigrants. For Jewish women, participation in prostitution was one of the few ways they could escape the pogroms in their home countries. Jewish men facilitated their transit and the organization of their work and social lives. The Buenos Aires-based Varsovia Society was the most highly organized and powerful hub of informal international sex work networks. Professor Yarfitz elaborates on sex work in relation to the history of migration, labour, race, and sexuality.

Brazil

The Boundaries of Freedom. Slavery, Abolition, and the Making of Modern Brazil. Ed. by Brodwyn Fischer and Keila Grinberg. [Afro-Latin Studies.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2022. xii, 491 pp. Ill. £105.00. (E-book: $108.00.)

Slavery is integral to every aspect of Brazil's colonial and national history, transcending temporal and geographical boundaries. Divided into four parts, this book demonstrates a paradigm-shifting renaissance in Brazilian scholarship, upending long-standing assumptions on slavery's relation to law, property, sexuality, and family, reconceiving understandings of slave economies and engaging with issues of agency, autonomy, and freedom. Part One contains five contributions on law, precarity, and affective economies during Brazil's slave empire, while the three essays in Part Two are on the theme of bounded emancipation. The four articles in Part Three are on racial silence and black intellectual subjectivities, and the three essays in Part Four examine the afterlives of slavery following abolition.

Bowen, Merle L. For Land and Liberty. Black Struggles in Rural Brazil. [Cambridge Studies on the African Diaspora.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xxi, 248 pp. Ill. Maps. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)

Black rural communities across Brazil are seeking legal rights to land they have inhabited for generations. Professor Bowen studies these Brazilian quilombos (African-descent rural communities) and their inhabitants, the quilombolas. She examines the disposition of quilombola claims to land as a site of contestation over citizenship and its meanings for Afro-descendants and relates them to the broader struggle against racism. Contrary to the narrative that quilombola identity is a recent invention, the author argues that quilombola claims are historically and locally rooted. Examining the ways in which state actors have colluded with large landholders and modernization schemes to appropriate quilombo land, she contends that, even when granted land titles, quilombolas face systemic racism.

Campbell, Courtney J. Region Out of Place. The Brazilian Northeast and the World, 1924–1968. [Pitt Latin American Series.] University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh (PA) 2022. ix, 301 pp. Ill. Maps. $60.00.

The Brazilian Northeast has long been a marginalized region with a complex relationship to national identity and is often portrayed as impoverished, backward, and rebellious, yet traditional and culturally authentic. In this book, Professor Campbell examines how groups within the region have asserted their identity, relevance, and uniqueness through interactions that transcend national borders. From migration to labour mobilization, from wartime dating to beauty pageants, from literacy movements to representations of banditry in film, the author explores how the development of regional culture figures in a region-based nationalism that reflects conflicting desires for modernity, progress, and cultural authenticity instigated in the twentieth century.

Precarious Democracy. Ethnographies of Hope, Despair, and Resistance in Brazil. Ed. By Benjamin Junge et al. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (NJ) [etc.] 2021. x, 245 pp. Ill. $130.00. (Paper, E-book: $39.95.)

Brazil has changed drastically in recent decades. This volume shows how these transformations were made and experienced by Brazilians far from the halls of power. The sixteen contributions are organized in four subsections. The first subsection describes the gendered, classed, and racialized shifts occurring within intimate spheres, such as the family. The second section explores the ways in which criminality within and outside the government destabilized trust in government. The third section is centred on populations that once directly benefited from government programmes but have become disillusioned and instead place their hope in Bolsonaro. The final section chronicles forms of resistance emerging in response to the rise of far-right politics across Brazil, particularly among Afro-Brazilians, LGBTQ+ and student activists.

Chile

Hutchison, Elizabeth Quay. Workers Like All the Rest of Them. Domestic Service and the Rights of Labor in Twentieth-Century Chile. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2021. xviii, 206 pp. Ill. $99.00. (Paper: $25.95.)

For most of the twentieth century, domestic service remained one of the underdeveloped sectors in Chile's modernizing economy. Tracing the legal and social history of domestic workers and their rights, Professor Hutchison argues that the predominance of women in that underpaid, under-regulated labour sector provides the key to persistent gender and class inequality. Through archival research and interviews with veteran activists, the author reveals how they mobilized for change, forging alliances with everyone from Catholic Church leaders and legislators to feminists and political party leaders. This book provides a lens for understanding how the changing structure of domestic work and worker activism has both perpetuated and challenged forms of ethnic, gender, and social inequality.

Mexico

McKenzie, Rob with Dunne, Patrick. El Golpe. US Labor, the CIA, and the Coup at Ford in Mexico. [Wildcat: Workers’ Movements and Global Capitalism.] Pluto Press, London 2022. xviii, 252 pp. Ill. £14.99. (E-book: £9.99.)

In 1990, in a violent confrontation at the Mexican Ford Assembly plant nine employees were shot in an act of political repression. Investigating the story behind this news, McKenzie and Dunne discovered that while President Salinas feared further industrial action would scare off foreign capital, he turned to the United States for help. The American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) worked hand-in-glove with US intelligence services to fight communism in foreign trade unions. The book reveals the link between AIFLD and the events at Cuautitlán, by establishing AIFLD's history as an arm of US foreign policy, which infiltrated and worked with foreign labour leaders to disrupt, crush, and sabotage democratic trade unionism.

Puerto Rico

Meléndez-Badillo, Jorell A. The Lettered Barriada. Workers, Archival Power, and the Politics of Knowledge in Puerto Rico. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2021. xiii, 261 pp. $99.95. (Paper: $26.95.)

In this book, Professor Meléndez-Badillo tells the story of how a cluster of self-educated workers burst into Puerto Rico's world of letters and navigated the colonial polity that emerged from the 1898 US occupation. Ignored by most of Puerto Rico's intellectual elite, these workers entered the world of politics by forming the Socialist Party, becoming an electoral force in the first half of the twentieth century. Showing how these workers produced, negotiated and deployed powerful discourses, the author follows these ragtag intellectuals on their path to becoming politicians and statesmen, demonstrating how they engaged in racial and gender silencing, epistemic violence, and historical erasures in the fringes of society.

United States of America

Alba, Richard. The Great Demographic Illusion. Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2020. xiii, 312 pp. $29.95; £25.00.

Americans hear a polarizing story about their country's future, which contends that demographic changes will bring about a society with a majority composed of minorities. Professor Alba reveals a more transformative development: the rising numbers of young Americans from ethno-racially mixed families. Assembling a vast body of evidence, the author explores where individuals of mixed parentage fit in American society. Most participate in and reshape the mainstream, as seen in their high levels of integration into social milieus that were previously white dominated. With racism evident in the experiences of individuals with black-white heritage, Alba's portrait squares, in key ways, the history of immigrant-group assimilation and indicates that mainstream American society is expanding and becoming more inclusive.

Berman, Elizabeth Popp. Thinking Like an Economist. How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2022. 329 pp. Ill. $35.00; £28.00.

For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious change. In this book, Professor Berman tells the story of how the “economic style of reasoning” became dominant in Washington between the 1960s and the 1980s, and how it continues to confine public policy debates today. This way of thinking was grounded in economics, but also transformed law and policy. By the time of the Carter administration, economic reasoning had spread throughout government policy and laws affecting poverty, healthcare, antitrust, transportation, and the environment. Fearing waste and overspending, liberals reined in their ambitions for decades to come.

Bly, Antonio T. Escaping Slavery. A Documentary History of Native American Runaways in British North America. Lexington Books, Lanham (MD) [etc.] 2022. xxxix, 203 pp. Ill. $105.00; £81.00 (E-book: $45.00; £35.00.)

This documentary history of Native Americans in British North America studies indigenous peoples, capturing the lives of numerous individuals who refused to sacrifice their humanity in the face of the violent, changing landscapes of early America. This collection of sources includes an introduction featuring the example of Julian, an adopted Native American. The author documents his life through notices, advertisements, court records, and printed stories, but also reprints advertisements from newspapers on runaways. Appendices are published on mustees, court records, and broadsides ephemera memorializing Julian's story, as well as advertisements for the sale of Native Americans.

Cobble, Dorothy Sue. For the Many. American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality. [America in the World.] Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2021. x, 572 pp. Ill. $35.00; £28.00.

Reclaiming social democracy as one of the central threads of American feminism, Professor Cobble rewrites twentieth-century feminist history and documents how forces, peoples, and ideas worldwide shaped American politics. Tracing egalitarian women's activism from the explosion of democracy movements before World War I to the reassertion of conservatism and the revival of female-led movements today, the author brings to life the women who crossed borders of class, race, and nation to build grassroots campaigns, found international institutions, and enact policies dedicated to raising living standards for everyone and demonstrates how multiple generations partnered to expand social and economic rights, and that, despite setbacks, the fight for the masses persists, as twenty-first-century activists demand a more caring, inclusive world. See also the Review Dossier in this volume, pp. 513–518.

Histories of Racial Capitalism. Ed. by Destin Jenkins and Justin Leroy. [Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism.] Columbia University Press, New York 2021. xx, 266 pp. $124.00; £94.00. (Paper, E-book: $30.00; £25.00.)

Since the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade and the colonization of the Americas, capitalism has been racial, deriving social and economic value from racial classification and stratification. This volume brings together nine contributions to consider the utility of the concept across historical settings, offering dynamic accounts of the interplay between social relations of exploitation and the racial terms through which they were organized, justified, and contested. Their works range from indigenous mortgage foreclosures to the legacies of Atlantic-world maroons, from imperial expansion in the continental United States and beyond to the racial politics of municipal debt in the New South, from the ethical complexities of Latino banking to the postcolonial dilemmas of extraction in the Caribbean.

Horne, Gerald. The Dawning of the Apocalypse. The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century. Monthly Review Press, New York, 2020. 303 pp. $95.00. (Paper: $27.50; E-book: $19.00.)

In the 1520s, the Spanish brought enslaved Africans to what was to become South Carolina. In this book, Professor Horne argues that the “long sixteenth century,” from 1492 until the arrival of settlers in Virginia in 1607, paved the way for colonists from the British Isles in the early seventeenth century. During this period, the author contends, “whiteness” morphed into “white supremacy” and allowed England and its European allies to forge a powerful bloc that was needed to confront Indigenes and Africans. Resistance by Africans and their Indigenous allies had weakened Spain and enabled England to dispatch settlers to Virginia in 1607, establishing the foundations for the British Empire and the United States of America.

Jacoby, Sanford M. Labor in the Age of Finance. Pensions, Politics, and Corporations from Deindustrialization to Dodd-Frank. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2021. x, 354 pp. $35.00; £28.00.

Since the 1970s, American unions have shrunk dramatically in both membership and economic leverage. This book traces the search for new sources of power, showing how unions turned financialization to their advantage. Professor Jacoby catalogues the array of allies and finance-based tactics labour deployed to stanch membership losses in the private sector. By leveraging pension capital, unions restructured corporate governance around issues such as executive pay and accountability. In Congress, they drew on their political influence to press for corporate reforms in the wake of business scandals and the financial crisis. The effort restrained CEOs but could not bridge the divide between workers and owners. Wages lagged behind investor returns, feeding the inequality identified by Occupy Wall Street.

Jung, Moon-Ho. Menace to Empire. Anticolonial Solidarities and the Transpacific Origins of the US Security State. [American Crossroads, Vol. 63.] University of California Press, Oakland (CA) 2022. xiv, 348 pp. Ill. Maps. $29.95; £24.00. (E-book: $29.95; £24.00.)

In this book, Professor Jung traces both the colonial violence and the anticolonial rage that the United States disseminated throughout the Pacific between the Philippine-American War and World War II, arguing that the US national security state was born out of repressing and silencing anti-colonial subjects, from the Philippines and Hawaii to California and beyond. The author examines how various revolutionary movements spanning the Pacific confronted the US empire, and how, in response, the US state monitored and suppressed those movements, exaggerating fears of pan-Asian solidarities and sowing anti-Asian racism. Radicalized by their opposition to the US empire and racialized as threats to US security, peoples in and from Asia pursued a revolutionary politics that engendered the national security state.

Lawson, James M. Revolutionary Nonviolence. Organizing for Freedom. With Honey, Michael K. and Forew, Kent Wong. by Davis, Angela. University of California Press, Oakland (CA) 2022. xiii, 140 pp. Ill. $19.95; £15.99. (E-book: $19.95; £15.99.)

Rev. Lawson's work as a theologian, pastor, and social-change activist has inspired people for more than sixty years. To hear and see him speak is to experience the power of the African American and social gospel. This book is an introduction to the history of non-violent philosophy through the teachings of Rev. James M. Lawson Jr. Michael K. Honey and Kent Wong reflect on Rev. Lawson's talks and dialogues, from his speeches at the Nashville sit-in movement in 1960 to his lectures in the current UCLA curriculum, and show how his ongoing work can overcome violence and oppression through organized direct action, presenting a powerful roadmap for a new generation of activists.

Marcus, Alan I. Land of Milk and Money. The Creation of the Southern Dairy Industry. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge (LA) 2021. x, 317 pp. $50.00.

This book examines the establishment of the dairy industry in the United States South during the 1920s. Looking specifically at the internal history of the Borden Company, the world's largest dairy firm, as well as at small-town efforts to lure industry and manufacturing to the South, Professor Marcus suggests that the rise of the modern dairy business resulted from debates and redefinitions that occurred in both the northern industrial sector and in southern towns. Local officials throughout the South urged farmers, including Black sharecroppers and tenants, to add dairying to their operations to make their locales more attractive to northern interests. The presence of local dairying operations afforded small towns a measure of independence and stability, allowing them to diversify their economies.

Metzgar, Jack. Bridging the Divide. Working-Class Culture in a Middle-Class Society. ILR Press, an Imprint of Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 2021. x, 229 pp. $43.95. (E-book: $28.99.)

In this book, Professor Metzgar attempts to capture the differences between working-class and middle-class cultures in the United States. Drawing on multidisciplinary sources and set in a historical framework that reflects on how both class cultures developed, adapted, and survived through decades of historical circumstances, the author challenges professional middle-class views of both the working-class and themselves. In the end, he advocates forming a cross-class coalition of what he calls “standard-issue professionals” with both hard-living and settled-living working people and outlines policies that could be conducive to such a unification, if the two groups had a better understanding of their differences and of how to use those differences to their advantage.

China

The Chinese Communist Party. A Century in Ten Lives. Ed. by Timothy Cheek, Klaus Mühlhahn and Hans van de Ven. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xxi, 282 pp. Ill. Maps. $79.99. (Paper: $24.99; E-book: $20.00.)

The ten chapters in this volume offer micro-histories of the lives of ten people who led or engaged with the Chinese Communist Party, one for each of the ten decades of its existence since it was officially founded in 1921. The selection includes, for example, Dutch Comintern representative for the Far East Henk Sneevliet for the 1920s (Tony Saich), Peruvian Shining Path leader Abimeal Guzmán as the notorious representative of global Maoism for the 1970s (Julai Lovell), and party leader Zhao Ziyang, who was removed after his support for the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests for the 1980s (Klaus Mühlhahn).

Esherick, Joseph W. Accidental Holy Land. The Communist Revolution in Northwest China. University of California Press, Oakland (CA) 2022. xxvii, 314 pp. Ill. Maps. $34.95; £27.00. (Open Access.)

Yan'an is China's “revolutionary holy land”, the heart of Mao Zedong's Communist movement from 1937 to 1947. Based on archival and documentary research and field trips to the region, Professor Esherick examines the origins of the Communist revolution in Northwest China, from the political, social, and demographic changes of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) to the intellectual ferment of the early Republic, the guerrilla movement of the 1930s, and the replacement of the local revolutionary leadership after Mao and the Centre arrived in 1935. The author considers the Chinese Revolution not as an inevitable peasant response to poverty and oppression but as the contingent product of local, national, and international events in a constantly changing milieu.

Guo, Qitao. Huizhou. Local Identity and Mercantile Lineage Culture in Ming China. University of California Press, Oakland (CA) 2022. x, 251 pp. Ill. Maps. $34.95; £27.00. (Open Access.)

This book studies the construction of local identity through kinship in the prefecture of Huizhou, one of the merchant strongholds of Ming China. Employing an array of genealogies and other sources, Professor Guo explores how developments in the sociocultural, religious, and gender realms from the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries intertwined to shape Huizhou identity as a land of “prominent lineages”. This gentrified self-image both sheltered and guided the development of mercantile lineages, which were further bolstered by the gender regime and local religious order. The more active the economy became, the more those central to its commercialization embraced conservative sociocultural norms. The end result was a gentrified mercantile lineage culture with Chinese – or Huizhou – characteristics.

Hellman, Lisa. This House Is Not a Home. European Everyday Life in Canton and Macao 1730-1830. [Studies in Global Social History, Vol. 34.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2019. xviii, 316 pp. Ill. € 115.00; $138.00. (E-book: € 118.00; $142.00.)

During the early modern era, several multi-ethnic ports in Asia had a flourishing international trade and functioned as gateways for globalization. Daily life in the foreign quarters was imbued by constant tension between what foreigners wanted to do, and what the Chinese authorities allowed. In this book, Dr Hellman examines how foreigners lived, communicated, and moved around in Canton and Macao. Europeans sometimes adapted to and at other times subverted Chinese rules. Focusing on this conditional domesticity, the author shows the importance of gender relations, especially the construction of masculinity. Using the Swedish East India Company as a point of entry, she highlights the multiplicity of actors taking part in local negotiations of power.

Von Brescius, Meike. Private Enterprise and the China Trade. Merchants and Markets in Europe, 1700–1750. [Library of Economic History, Vol. 16.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2022. xiii, 261 pp. Ill. € 110.00; $132.00. (Open Access.)

This book examines the European commercial landscape of the early China trade, c. 1700–1750, looking at the foundational period of Sino-European commerce and exploring a world of private enterprise besides the official East India Company structures. Using rich private trade records, Dr Von Brescius analyses the making of pan-European markets, distribution networks, and patterns of investment that together reveal a new geography of a trading system. By considering the interloping activities of British-born merchants working for the smaller East India Companies, the author uncovers the commercial practices and cross-Company collaborations (both legal and illicit) that sustained the growth of the China trade: smuggling; wholesale trading; private commissions; and manipulation of Company auctions.

Zanasi, Margherita. Economic Thought in Modern China, Market and Consumption, c. 1500–1937. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2020. xiv, 239 pp. Maps. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)

This book explores the evolution of Chinese economic thought from the late Ming and Qing periods (1500s–1911) through the first two decades of the Republic (1912–1930s). Professor Zanasi challenges the Eurocentric theories that European Enlightenment thought was unique in producing innovative economic ideas and examines the expansion of pro-market trends and the rise of pro-luxury consumption ideas in response to the emerging industrial economy, the return of the notion of limited resources, and the decline of market-based luxury consumption in the early nineteenth century. She illustrates the impact of these trends on economic and political ideas in the 1920s and 30s and describes how they led to economic solutions that tended to marginalize the market.

India

Bauer, Rolf. The Peasant Production of Opium in Nineteenth-Century India. [ Library of Economic History, Vol. 12.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2019. xv, 220 pp. Ill. € 116.00; $139.00. (E-book: € 119.00; $143.00.)

The peasant production of opium in British India exemplifies the agricultural commercialization that many rural zones in the Global South underwent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Reconstructing the economic conditions of poppy cultivation, showing that peasants cultivated poppies at a substantial loss, Dr Bauer also examines the mechanics of coercion in India's opium industry. The author dissects economic and social power relations at the local level to explain how a triangle of debt, the colonial state's power and social dependencies in the village formed the coercive mechanisms that transformed peasants into opium producers.

Radhakrishnan, Smitha. Making Women Pay. Microfinance in Urban India. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2022. xiv, 255 pp. Ill.

In the past few decades, India's microfinance industry has come to saturate the everyday lives of women in the name of state-led efforts to promote financial inclusion and women's empowerment. Despite this favourable language, Professor Radhakrishnan argues that microfinance in India does not provide a market-oriented development intervention, even though it may appear to help women borrowers. Rather, this commercial industry seeks to extract the maximum value from its customers through exploitative relationships that benefit especially class-privileged men. Through ethnography, interviews, and historical analysis, the author demonstrates how the unpaid and underpaid labour of marginalized women borrowers ensures both profitability and symbolic legitimacy for microfinance institutions, their employees, and their leaders.

Wage Earners in India, 1500–1900. Regional Approaches in an International Context. Ed. by Jan Lucassen and Radhika Seshan. [Politics and Society in India and the Global South.] Sage, New Delhi 2022. 332 pp. $41.68. (Open Access.)

In eight chapters covering various regions in India and periods between 1500 and 1900, the contributions to this volume bring together new research on wage data on the Indian subcontinent, offering new perspectives on the daily lives of the working people and their standards of living. The editors argue in the Introduction that this research can help address questions of larger global economic developments and unequal power relationships in a region that is central role to the debates around global labour relations and global divergences. See also Pim de Zwart's review in this volume, pp. 572–574.

Iran

Cronin, Stephanie. Social Histories of Iran. Modernism and Marginality in the Middle East. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. vi, 309 pp. £74.99. (Paper: £22.99; E-book: $24.00.)

Histories of Iran have been dominated by the twin narratives of top-down modernization and methodological nationalism. In this book, Dr Cronin takes issue with both, focusing on subaltern social groups: the “dangerous classes” and their constructed contrast with the new and avowedly modern bourgeois elite created by the incipient Pahlavi state; the hungry poor pitted against the deregulation and globalization of the late-nineteenth century Iranian economy; rural criminals of every variety, bandits, smugglers, and pirates and the profoundly ambiguous attitudes towards them. In foregrounding these groups, the author transcends a restrictive national context, demonstrating the explanatory power of global, transnational, and comparative approaches to the study of the social history of the Middle East.

Japan

Schaal, Sandra. Discovering Women's Voices. The Lives of Modern Japanese Silk Mill Workers in Their Own Words. Transl. [from Japanese] by Jim Smith and Sandra Schaal. [The Intimate and the Public in Asian and Global Perspectives, Vol. 14.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2022 (2020). xiv, 457 pp. Ill. € 155.00; $186.00. (E-book: € 155.00; $186.00.)

This book offers a vivid account of the lives of women who formed modern Japan's labour reserve for textile mills. By analysing songs and oral testimonies of former silk-reeling operatives about their lives in the factory and in their native countryside, Professor Schaal shows that factory life could appear as a window of opportunity or at least a lesser evil to workers born in rural underprivileged families. The book is divided into three parts. Part One presents an overview of the development of Japan's silk industry. Part Two addresses the content of the mill workers’ songs from the late Meiji period through the Taisho period. Part Three relates the results of an extensive interview survey.

Middle East

Käser, Isabel. The Kurdish Women's Freedom Movement. Gender, Body Politics and Militant Femininities. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xvi, 240 pp. Ill. Maps. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)

Amidst ongoing wars and insecurities, female fighters, politicians, and activists of the Kurdish Freedom Movement are building a new political system that centres gender equality. Going beyond Orientalist tropes of the female freedom fighter and the movement's own narrative of the “free woman”, Dr Käser considers personal trajectories and everyday processes of becoming a militant in this movement. Based on in-depth ethnographic research in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, examining women politicians, martyr mothers, and female fighters, the author examines how norms around gender and sexuality have been rewritten and new meanings and practices assigned to women in the quest for Kurdish self-determination. See also Joost Jongerden's review in this volume, pp. 574–578.

Philippines

Lumba, Allan E.S., Monetary Authorities. Capitalism and Decolonization in the American Colonial Philippines. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2022. 215 pp. $99.95. (Paper: $25.95.)

In this book, Professor Lumba explores how the United States used monetary policy and banking systems to justify racial hierarchies, enforce capitalist exploitation, and counter movements for decolonization in the American colonial Philippines. Colonial economic experts justified American imperial authority by claiming that Filipinos did not possess the racial capacities to manage money properly. Financial independence became a key metric of racial capitalism by which Filipinos had to prove their ability to self-govern. At the same time, the colonial state used its monetary authority to police the economic activities of colonized subjects and to curb decolonization movements, later offering a conditional form of decolonization that left the Philippines reliant on US financial institutions.

Turkey

Avcı, Akif. Unravelling the Social Formation. Free Trade, the State and Business Associations in Turkey. [Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Vol. 218; New Scholarship in Political Economy, Vol. 18.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2022. xi, 195 pp. € 125.00; $151.00. (E-book: € 125.00; $151.00.)

In this book, Dr Avci demonstrates that the uneven integration of Turkey in global free trade has increased the asymmetrical effects of the global free trade system on the Turkish social formation since 2002. Constructing a three-level analysis based on the social relations of production, forms of state and world order, the author explores the class characteristics of the business associations and the role of the Turkish state in the integration into global capitalism, arguing that enhanced integration into transnational circuits after the 2001 banking crisis, resulted in the IMF intervention in the Turkish social formation, which involved implementing market-friendly and anti-labour policies, thereby increasing privatization in Turkey.

Hafez, Melis. Inventing Laziness. The Culture of Productivity in Late Ottoman Society. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xiv, 304 pp. Ill. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)

In the nineteenth century, as the imperial ideology of Ottomanism and modern discourses of citizenship spread, so did understanding of laziness as a social disease that the “Ottoman nation” needed to eradicate. Looking into the contested and shifting boundaries of the laziness–productivity binary, Professor Hafez explores how “laziness” can be used to understand emerging civic culture and its exclusionary practices in the Ottoman Empire. Polyphonic involvement of moralists, intellectuals, polemicists, bureaucrats, and the public reveals the complexities and ambiguities of this multifaceted cultural transformation. Using a variety of sources, the author explores the sustained anxiety about productivity that generated numerous reforms, as well as new understandings of morality, subjectivity, citizenship, and nationhood among the Ottomans.

Metinsoy, Murat. The Power of the People. Everyday Resistance and Dissent in the Making of Modern Turkey, 1923–38. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xi, 405 pp. Ill. Maps. £29.99. (E-book: $32.00.)

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the Republic in 1923, Turkey embarked on extensive social, economic, cultural, and administrative modernization programmes. This book shows that ordinary people shaped social and political change in Turkey as much as Atatürk's powerful modernization drive. Focusing on daily interactions between the state and society, Professor Metinsoy reveals how rural and urban people coped with the state policies, local oppression, exploitation, and adverse conditions wrought by the Great Depression. Showing how people's daily practices and beliefs survived and prevailed over the modernizing elite's projects, the author shares new insights into the social and historical origins of Turkey's backslide into conservative and Islamist politics. See also Alper Kara's review in this volume, pp. 578–580.

O'Connor, Francis. Understanding Insurgency. Popular Support for The PKK in Turkey. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xv, 280 pp. Maps. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)

No insurgent movement can survive without some degree of popular support, but what does it mean to support an armed group? Focusing on the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), Dr O'Connor explores the first three decades of the PKK insurgency in Turkey. Conceptualizing the relationship between armed groups and their supporters, its spatial variations, and the role of violence in their interactions, he draws on Civil War, Social Movements, and Rebel Governance literatures to outline how the PKK survived a military coup in 1980 and slowly won popular support through incipient forms of rebel governance, targeted use of violence, and a nuanced projection of its ideology and objectives. See also Martin Bruinessen's review in this volume, pp. 581–584.

Austria

Vom Kommen und Gehen Burgenland. Betrachtungen von Zu- und Weggereisten. Hrsg. von Peter Menasse und Wolfgang Wagner. Böhlau, Vienna 2021. 228 pp. Ill. € 28.00.

The 100th birthday of Austria's youngest federal state is the occasion for this book. Around twenty authors, who feel connected to Burgenland, convey social and cultural change in the country and its identity. Burgenland was long a land of “going”. Economic hardship caused people to emigrate or commute to work abroad. Quality of life improved decisively upon accession to the EU at the latest. Today, “going” and “coming” are balanced. The essays address issues such as: Is there a Burgenland awareness? Were the EU grants a blessing or a curse? How harmonious is coexistence between ethnic groups? And what traces remain of the centuries-long affiliation with Hungary?

Finland

Turunen, Risto. Shades of Red. Evolution of the Political Language of Finnish Socialism from the 19th Century until the Civil War of 1918. [The Finnish Society for Labour History.] Hansaprint, Turenki 2021. 523 pp. € 25.00.

This dissertation examines how socialism changes over time, what the ideological similarities and differences were between the higher and lower echelons of the labour movement, and how socialism related to other political languages in Finland. Dr Turunen reads handwritten and printed newspapers manually and digitally and introduces computational tools from corpus linguistics (word frequencies over time, collocations, and keyword analysis). Showing that the macro-narrative of socialism remained relatively stable, whereas its conceptual profile evolved considerably, the author demonstrates that diachronic evolution was not as clear at the grassroots of the labour movement, and that ideological disputes considered important by the top of the labour movement had little relevance.

France

Brucker, Jérémie. Avoir l'étoffe. Une histoire du vêtement professionnel en France des années 1880 à nos jours. Préf. d'Isabelle Lespinet-Moret. [Histoire des mondes du travail.] Arbre bleu, Nancy 2021. 406 pp. Ill. € 32.00.

Clothing worn on the job is often a combination of a uniform required by the employer and attire left to the choice of the worker. Simplified, standardized, or even eliminated, work clothing results from intervention, manipulation, and observation by a multitude of actors, such as company directors, clothing manufacturers, workers, or users and clients. Considering clothing from all perspectives, Professor Brucker analyses changes in occupational attire since the nineteenth century, particularly at La Poste and at the SNCF. He also examines the role of work clothing in constructing personal and professional gender identities to assess the power of appearance in French professional circles from the 1880s to the present day. See also Martin Bruegel's review in this volume, pp. 584–586.

Gossard, Julia M. Young Subjects. Children, State-building, and Social Reform in the Eighteenth-Century French World. [States, People, and the History of Social Change, Vol. 3.] McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal [etc.] 2021. xiv, 256 pp. Ill. Cad. $80.00.

Across the metropole, the colonies, and the wider eighteenth-century world, French children participated in state-building initiatives, social reform programmes, and imperial expansion efforts. Through regional case studies, Professor Gossard demonstrates how thousands of children and youth were engaged in the service of the state. In Lyon, charity schools cultivated children as agents of moral and social reform. In Paris, orphaned and imprisoned youth were trained in skilled trades or prepared for military service, while others were sent to the French colonies in North America as filles du roi and sturdy labourers. Young people from merchant families were recruited to serve as cultural brokers and translators on behalf of French commercial interests in the Ottoman Empire and Siam.

Manfredonia, Gaetano. Anarchisme et changement social. Insurrectionnalisme, syndicalisme, éducationnisme-réalisateur. Nouvelle edition augmentée. Atelier de création libertaire, Lyon 2021 (2007). 433 pp. € 18.00.

Interest in anarchism raises question about whether the ideas that anarchists have had so far about revolution are viable. Unlike other radical currents that have marked the history of social movements since the beginning of the twentieth century, anarchism has the advantage of not being restricted to a single conception of social change. Gaetano Manfredonia shows in his in-depth essay that different currents in anarchism have been challenged constantly by others, and that they are sometimes based on the autonomous action of the working class (syndicalist vision) and, at other times, on that of the individual (educationist-realizing vision). Suggesting that we study militant practices, he invites us to revisit the history of this current.

Prakash, Amit. Empire on the Seine. The Policing of North Africans in Paris, 1925–1975. [Oxford Studies in Modern European History.] Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2022. xiv, 267 pp. Ill. £75.00.

Relations between minorities and the police in France are often fraught. Locating the origins of contemporary conflicts in race and empire in France's history, Dr Prakash argues that the métropole and the colony dynamically co-developed a policing regime over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to manage colonial and racial difference. With the North African community emerging as a sizable and enduring presence in Paris after World War I, this policing became a key state practice in imagining and administering the immigrant population. Using records from police archives, reports from colonial officials, and studies on urban planning and housing, the author shows that colonial racism was integrated into the policing of Paris.

Rétat, Claude. L'anarchie au prétoire. Vienne, 1er mai 1890. Une insurrection et ses juges. Bleu autour, Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule 2022. 387 pp. Ill. € 29.00.

The first celebration of May Day in France, in 1890, took place under tight police surveillance. In the small town of Vienne (Isère) things got out of control, and anarchy ensued. The day before, two renowned speakers, Louise Michel and Alexandre Tennevin, had come to kindle the public sentiment. Tennevin was sentenced to prison. Michel, who was dismissed from the trial, declared insane, and threatened with internment, later conveyed her thoughts in speech and in writing (conferences, memoirs, novels, poetry, etc.). Claude Rétat complements this story with appendices of texts and testimonies (anarchist brochure on the 1890 trial, press, court record, and other archives, including police reports on Louise Michel's conferences) and a rich iconography.

Sewell, William H. Jr. Capitalism and the Emergence of Civic Equality in Eighteenth-Century France. [Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning.] The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (IL) [etc.] 2021. 412 pp. Ill. $105.00. (Paper: $35.00; E-book: $34.99.)

The French Revolution of 1789 changed the course of Western history, but why did the idea of civic equality find such fertile ground in France? Professor Sewell Jr. argues that the flourishing of commercial capitalism in eighteenth-century France introduced new independence, flexibility, and anonymity in French social life. By entering the interstices of this otherwise rigidly hierarchical society, expanded commodity exchange coloured everyday experience in ways that made civic equality conceivable, even desirable, when the crisis of the French Revolution arrived. The author ties together analyses of the rise of commerce, the emergence of urban publics, the careers of the philosophes, commercial publishing, patronage, political economy, trade, and state finance. See also Charles Walton's review in this volume, pp. 587–590.

Germany

Fleischman, Thomas. Communist Pigs. An Animal History of East Germany's Rise and Fall. University of Washington Press, Seattle (WA) 2020. xviii, 268 pp. Ill. $40.00.

The pig played a fundamental role in the German Democratic Republic's attempts to create and sustain a modern, industrial food system based on communist principles. By the mid-1980s, East Germany produced more pork per capita than West Germany and the United Kingdom, while also suffering myriad unintended consequences, such as manure pollution, animal disease, and rolling food shortages. Professor Fleischman chronicles East Germany's journey from family farms to factory farms, explaining how communist principles shaped the adoption of industrial agricultural practices. Arguing that the pork industry illustrates that agriculture under communism came to reflect standard practices of capitalist agriculture, his analysis sheds light on the causes of the country's environmental and political collapse in 1989.

Kümin, Beat. Imperial Villages. Cultures of Political Freedom in the German Lands c. 1300–1800. [Studies in Central European Histories, Vol. 65.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2019. xv, 275 pp. Ill. € 121.00; $146.00. (E-book: € 125.00; $150.00.)

Hundreds of rural communities tasted political freedom in the Holy Roman Empire. In some periods, villagers managed local affairs without being accountable to territorial overlords. In this study of self-government in the pre-modern periphery, Professor Kümin focuses on the five case studies of Gochsheim and Sennfeld (in present-day Bavaria), Sulzbach and Soden (Hesse), and Gersau (Switzerland). Adopting a comparative perspective across the late medieval and early modern periods, the analysis of multiple sources reveals distinct extents of rural self-government, the forging of communalized confessions, and an enduring commitment to the empire. Negotiating inner tensions as well as mounting centralization pressures, Reichsdörfer provide privileged insights into rural micro-political cultures.

Rudorff, Andrea. Katzbach – das KZ in der Stadt. Zwangsarbeit in den Adlerwerken Frankfurt am Main 1944/45. [Studien zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Holocaust, Bd. 5.] Wallstein, Göttingen 2021. 368 pp. Ill. € 39.10. (E-book: € 29.99.)

Like numerous German companies, the Frankfurter Adlerwerke employed concentration camp inmates in armaments production from the summer of 1944 and set up a satellite concentration camp on their company premises to house them. A total of 1,616 prisoners, most from Poland but some from the Soviet Union, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, France, and Czechoslovakia, were used there as forced labour under harsh conditions. Dr Rudorff sheds light on the construction of the camp and its integration into the concentration camp system, the persecution stories of the prisoners and their living conditions in the camp, and the roles of company employees and neighbourhood and city authorities, who were aware of the conditions in the camp.

Streiten und Gestalten. Die IG Metall Hannover von 1945 bis 2010. Hrsg. von IG Metall Hannover. VSA, Hamburg 2021. 358 pp. Ill. Maps. € 19.80.

Hanover was and is one of the centres of IG Metall. This book describes the development of the IG Metall in Hanover, its members, its councils, and the metal companies in seven time periods, from after 1945 to the conflicts in the financial and economic crisis of 2008. Trade union struggles in Hanover's companies, collective bargaining, and social conflicts are presented in the context of the political and economic situation of the respective time periods. More than fifty contemporary witnesses are portrayed and provide a detailed impression of the working and living conditions of those employed in the metal industry.

Great Britain

Bowlby, Rachel. Back to the Shops. The High Street in History and the Future. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2022. viii, 276 pp. Ill. £14.99.

Over the past decade, news of the failure of the high street has become part of a sad new shopping normality; the rise of online retail is said to augur the end of shopping in shops. Professor Bowlby outlines the long-term contours of shopping history in five stages: pedlars; markets and fairs; small shops; chains and some very large shops; self-service and supermarkets and online shopping. This book offers a set of short chapters, each one a window onto a different shop type or mode of sale, designed to highlight connections and contrasts between different times and types of shopping and shops and their effect on both sides of the counter.

Maguire, Richard C. Africans in East Anglia, 1467–1833.[Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History, Vol. 41.] The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2021. x, 285 pp. £65.00; $99.00. (E-book: £19.99; $24.99.)

This book examines the population of Africans in Norfolk and Suffolk in the early modern period. Uncovering the complex historical experience of these Africans and considering the interaction of local custom, class structure, tradition, memory, and the gradual impact of the Atlantic slaving economy, Dr Maguire proposes that the initial regional response to arriving Africans was not defined exclusively by ideas relating to skin colour, but rather by local understandings of religious status, class position, ideas about freedom and bondage, and immediate local circumstances. Africans were able to join the region's working population through baptism, marriage, and work. This manner of response to Africans was challenged, as local merchants and gentry began doing business with the slaving economy.

Migrants in Medieval England c. 500–c. 1500. Ed. by W. Mark Ormrod, Joanna Story, and Elizabeth M. Tyler. [Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 229.] Oxford University Press, Oxford 2020. xvi, 333 pp. Ill. Maps. £80.00.

This book provides an in-depth analysis and discussion of the phenomenon of migration in and to England over the medieval millennium. Themes involving the movement of people and the social and cultural effects of migration resonate with current global debates. Focusing on the regions of lowland Britain, the eleven contributions demonstrate that migration and mobility have been a constant influence on the peopling of Britain, the development of the kingdom of England, and the concept of Englishness. In addition to written sources, the authors examine archaeological, linguistic, artistic, literary, and biological evidence, revealing not only the movement of people, but also the ways in which groups and individuals remembered, borrowed, and invented stories of ancestral migration and mobility.

Suranyi, Anna. Indentured Servitude. Unfree Labour and Citizenship in the British Colonies. [States, People, and the History of Social Change, Vol. 4.] McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal [etc.] 2021. xiv, 278 pp. Ill. Cad. $130.00. (Paper: Cad. $37.95.)

Hundreds of thousands of British and Irish men, women, and children crossed the Atlantic as indentured servants during the seventeenth century. In this book, Professor Suranyi argues that the British government profited by supplying labour for the colonies, removing unwanted populations, and reducing incarceration costs. Capitalist entrepreneurs made their fortunes from Atlantic trade in goods, indentured servants, and slaves, whose participation in the servant trade was conducive to the commercialization of criminal justice. Once in the colonies, indentured servants adapted resourcefully to their circumstances and rebelled against unfair conditions and abuse. Emerging ideas about race and citizenship led to vehement public debate, prompting legislation that aimed to curb the excesses, while slavery continued to expand unchecked. See also Elisabeth Ceppi's review in this volume, pp. 590–593.

Italy

Cohn, Samuel K Jr. Popular Protest and Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy. Oxford University Press, 2022. xx, 260 pp. Ill. Maps. £75.00.

This study analyses popular protest across the Italian peninsula and the Venetian colonies during the early modern period (1494–1559). Drawing on archival material including over one hundred contemporary chronicles and diaries, Professor Cohn, Jr. explores new developments, such as the increase of women rebels and mutinies of soldiers, and new revolt tactics, such as shop closures, peaceful demonstrations of strength, and use of religious processions for discussions of tactics and strategies to obtain a logistic advantage. At the same time, these protests reflect convergences with the medieval Italian past, with leaders coming almost exclusively from the ranks of non-elites, religious ideology playing a surprisingly minor role, and the majority of revolts centring in towns and cities.

Hom, Stephanie Malia. Empire's Mobius Strip. Historical Echoes in Italy's Crisis of Migration and Detention. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) [etc.] 2019. viii, 255 pp. Ill. Maps. $115.00. (Paper: $24.95; E-book: $11.99.)

Italy's current crisis of Mediterranean migration and detention derives from early twentieth-century imperial ambitions, particularly in Libya. The book consists of three essays. Essay One, “The Island”, illustrates how the current spaces of migration and detention on the island of Lampedusa intersect with those of Italy's carceral archipelago in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Essay Two, “The Camp”, links the concentration camps of Italian colonial Libya (1929–1933) to the migration detention centre outside Rome. Essay Three, “The Village”, compares the equipped villages constructed for Roma today with the mass creation of agricultural villages for Italian farmers in Libya in the late 1930s.

The Netherlands

Bek, Patrick. No Bicycle, No Bus, No Job. The Making of Workers’ Mobility in The Netherlands, 1920–1990. [Studies in History, Technology and Society. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2022. 211 pp. Ill. Maps. € 95.00. (Open Access.)

The time and cost of getting to work is a crucial aspect of daily life for working people. In the twentieth century, travel opportunities increased, although not for everyone. The absence of affordable housing near job locations combined with the lack of safe, efficient, and affordable mobility options aggravated social exclusion for some. Dr Bek details how power relations have historically enabled or restricted workers’ mobility in twentieth-century Netherlands. Blue-collar workers, industrial employers, and the state shaped the daily commute of workers in a changing context of uneven power relations that shifted from paternalism to neoliberalism.

Schrauwers, Albert. Merchant Kings. Corporate Governmentality in the Dutch Colonial Empire, 1815–1870. Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2021. 268 pp. Ill. $145.00; £107.00. (E-book: $34.95.)

In the nineteenth century, industrialization increased dramatically in the Netherlands and its colonial holdings in Java. Led by a group of “merchant kings”, who exemplified gentlemanly capitalism, this ambitious trading project transformed the small, economically moribund Netherlands into a global power. Professor Schrauwers offers an interdisciplinary exploration of this episode and reveals the distinctive nature of the Dutch state and also the surprising extent to which its nascent corporate innovations were rooted in early welfare initiatives. By capturing colony and metropole in a single analytical frame, this book offers a new approach to understanding the development of modern corporations.

Poland

Reassessing Communism. Concepts, Culture, and Society in Poland, 1944–1989. Ed. by Katarzyna Chmielewska, Agnieszka Mrozik and Grzegorz Wolowiec. Central European University Press, Budapest [etc.] 2021. vii, 431 pp. $105.00; € 88.00; £75.00.

Approaching communist ideas and practices, programmes and their implementation as an indivisible unit, the thirteen authors in this volume examine the issues of emancipation, upward social mobility, and changes in the cultural canon. Refusing to treat communism in Poland in simplistic categories of totalitarianism and Soviet colonization and similarly refusing to equate communism and fascism, these essays show that beyond oppression and bad governance, communism was a regime in which people pursued a variety of goals and sincerely attempted to build a better world for themselves. The book is divided into three parts: Part One critiques the dominant narrative; Part Two gives new analyses of communism; and Part Three elaborates on new analyses of anti-communism.

Russia

Baiburin, Albert. The Soviet Passport. The History, Nature and Uses of the Internal Passport in the USSR. Transl. [from Russian] by Dalziel, Stephen. Polity, Cambridge 2021 (2017). xvii, 451 pp. Ill. £35.00; € 39.60. (E-book: £31.99; € 35.99.)

First introduced in 1932, the Soviet passport served a range of purposes, extending beyond regulation of movement and control of migrancy to include the constitution of subjectivity and social hierarchies based on place of residence, family background, and ethnic origin. In this book, Professor Baiburin examines the development and uses of the passport in the former Soviet Union in depth. While the basic role of the Soviet passport was to certify a person's identity, its significance was far broader. Obtaining employment or performing everyday activities, marrying, and even being declared officially dead were impossible without a passport. Not having a passport literally meant “disappearing” from society.

Spain

Jiménez Montes, Germán. A Dissimulated Trade. Northern European Timber Merchants in Seville (1574–1598). [The Atlantic World. Europe, Africa and the Americas, 1500–1830, Vol. 40.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2022. xiii, 260 pp. Ill. Maps. € 108.00; $129.00. (E-book: € 108.00; $129.00.)

Making use of the vast collection of notarial deeds, Dr Jiménez Montes examines how a group of Dutch, Flemish, and German merchants came to dominate the supply of timber in Seville. In this microhistory, the author offers a new account of trade between Andalusia and Northern Europe at the end of the sixteenth century, focusing on a resource that was essential for Seville's economy and Spain's imperial aspirations. He examines what motivated Seville to attract and protect foreign merchants, and how this group generated social capital to prompt cooperation and avoid external competition, analysing the business organization of the merchants and the intertwinement of family and commercial strategies, which culminated in partnerships and cooperation networks.