BIBLIOGRAPHY

General Issues

SOCIAL THEORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

Anarchist, Artist, Sufi. The Politics, Painting, and Esotericism of Ivan Aguéli. Ed. by Sedgwick, Mark J.. [Islam of the Global West.] Bloomsbury Academic, London [etc.] 2021. xi, 304 pp. £85.00. (E-book: £76.50.)

This book follows the life of Ivan Aguéli, artist, anarchist, esotericist, and one of the earliest Western intellectuals to convert to Islam and explore Sufism. Examining different aspects of his life and activities, revealing each facet of Aguéli's complex personality in its own right, the authors show how esotericist art and anarchism ultimately found fulfilment in Sufi Islam. Moreover, they analyse how Aguéli's life and conversion demonstrate that Islam has been more central in modern European intellectual history than is generally realized. This volume is conducive to understanding how he came to Islam, the values and influences that informed his life, and his role in modern Western reception of Islam.

Bernabe, Rafael. Walt Whitman and His Caribbean Interlocutors. Martí, José, James, C.L.R., and Mir, Pedro. Song and Countersong. [Historical Materialism Book Series, Vol. 230.] Brill, Leiden 2021. 293 pp. Ill. € 165.00; $198.00. (E-book: € 165.00; $198.00.)

In this book, Professor Bernabe explores the writings of Walt Whitman (1819–1892) and of three Caribbean authors who engaged with them: the Cuban poet, essayist, and revolutionary José Martí (1853–1895); the Trinidadian activist, historian, and cultural critic C.L.R. James (1901–1989); and the Dominican poet Pedro Mir (1913–2000). Whitman and his Caribbean interlocutors are discussed against the background of the contradictions of capitalist modernity, as exemplified by the United States between the 1840s and the 1940s. Marx's exploration of the liberating and oppressive dimensions of capitalist expansion frames the discussion of each author and of Martí's, James's, and Mir's responses to Whitman and, more generally, to North American capitalist and industrial civilization and its imperial projections.

Bordiga, Amadeo. The Science and Passion of Communism. Selected Writings of Amadeo Bordiga (1912–1965). Ed. by Basso, Pietro. Transl. [from Italian] by Donis, Giacomo and Camiller, Patrick. [Historical Materialism Book Series, Vol. 209.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2020. xi, 515 pp. Ill. € 175.00; $210.00. (E-book: € 175.00; $210.00.)

In this book, the struggles by the Italian communist Amadeo Bordiga in the revolutionary cycle of the post-World War I period are showcased through his writings against reformism and war, for Soviet power and internationalism, and then against fascism. Equally important were his sharp critique of triumphant US capitalism post-World War II and his re-presentation of Marxist critique of political economy, which includes the capital–nature and capital–species relationships and the programme of social transformations for the revolution to come. Part One of this book is on the Italian Left in the Great Revolutionary Struggle (1912–1926), and Part Two comprises five sections on the struggle for the rebirth of revolutionary communism.

Campbell, John L. and Hall, John A.. What Capitalism Needs. Forgotten Lessons of Great Economists. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2021. xii, 299 pp. £20.00.

Starting from the proposition that capitalism seems incapable of solving the immanent global problems, North American sociologists Professors Campbell and Hall argue in this study that contemporary economists fail to take into account the political and social dimensions of capitalism. Exploring the insights of great economists from the past, ranging from Adam Smith to Keynes, Schumpeter and Alfred Hischmann, who did include these elements of capitalism in their analysis, the authors trace capitalism's development over the last 120 years and conclude that capitalism needs strong nation states, social cohesion in societies, and a stable international system to be successful. See also Peer Vries's review in this volume, pp. @@@–@@@.

Cohn, Samuel. All Societies Die. How to Keep Hope Alive. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) [etc.] 2021. x, 254 pp. Maps. $26.95. (E-book: $12.99.)

The message of this book is to prepare for the inevitable. Our society is going to die, but there is still reason for hope. In this book, Professor Cohn considers what makes societies collapse, pointing out the historical examples of the Byzantine Empire, the collapse of Somalia, the rise of Middle Eastern terrorism, the emergence of drug cartels in Latin America, and the French Revolution. With a broad panorama of bloody stories, unexpected historical riches, crime waves, corruption, and disasters, the reader is shown that, although our society will die at some point, much can be done to postpone this fate. The book concludes with a strategy of preserving and rebuilding, showing that much can still be done to make it better.

De Dijn, Annelien, Freedom. An Unruly History. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) 2020. 426 pp. Ill. $35.00; £28.95; € 31.50.

The conception of freedom most prevalent today (i.e. that it depends on the limiting of state power) is a dramatic break with long-established ways of thinking about liberty. For centuries, people in the West identified freedom with the ability to exercise control over the way in which they were governed, best described as a democratic conception of liberty. The long history of freedom underscores how, recently, it has come to be identified with limited government. Professor De Dijn argues that the shift to a new understanding of liberty was the outcome of a prolonged political struggle triggered by the Atlantic Revolutions of the late eighteenth century, albeit not by the revolutionaries but by their critics and opponents. See also Rachel Hammersley's review in this volume, pp. @@@–@@@.

Deppe, Frank. Sozialismus. Geburt und Aufschwung – Widersprüche und Niedergang – Perspektiven. VSA, Hamburg 2021. 363 pp. € 29.80.

In this book, Professor Deppe examines the possible revival of socialism. First, he reflects on the modern concept of socialism since the declaration of human rights in the nineteenth century, second at the relationship between class, party, and state – especially in the real socialism of the twentieth century – and, finally, at socialism as a perspective in a “world of turmoil”. In his view, the decisive question is whether the path “class – party – state” (which is objectively predetermined by the structure of capitalist society and its political system) ends in a historical dead end or contributes to conditions in which democratic rights and freedoms involving social justice, protection of the environment, and forms of self-government are connected.

McCabe, Helen. John Stuart Mill. Socialist. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal [etc.] 2021. viii, 359 pp. CAN $130.00. (Paper: CAN $39.95.)

Best known as the author of On Liberty, John Stuart Mill remains a canonical figure in liberalism today. Yet according to his autobiography, by the mid-1840s he called himself a socialist. Professor McCabe reinterprets his work in this light and explores his core commitments to egalitarianism, social justice, social harmony, and a socialist utopia of cooperation, fairness, and human flourishing. Uncovering Mill's changing relationship with the radicalism of his youth and his excitement about the revolutionary events of 1848, the author argues that he saw liberal reforms as solutions to contemporary problems, while socialism was the path to a better future. In so doing, she casts new light on Mill's political theory, including his theory of social progress.

Perlin, Frank. City Intelligible. A Philosophical and Historical Anthropology of Global Commoditisation before Industrialisation. [Studies in Global Social History, Vol. 38.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2020. lvi, 630 pp. Ill. € 147.00; $177.00. (E-book: € 147.00; $177.00.)

This book integrates a transcendental philosophical anthropology of commoditization before industrialization with a social–cultural, empirical anthropology of global and intercultural commodity production and exchange. Professor Perlin treats commodification as a singular and privileged evidence of the universal status of human reasoning, one that grounds the translational character of human exchange and yet simultaneously founds ubiquitous cultural differentiation, treating the factors of economic history as forms of cultural expression, though determined by a continuum of complex societal formation from the beginnings of agricultural and social settlement. The author seeks evidence for the universal foundations of human reasoning by analysing the culture of commoditization in combination with Kantian analysis and historical evidence.

Sotiris, Panagiotis. A Philosophy for Communism. Rethinking Althusser. [Historical Materialism Book Series, Vol. 211.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2020. viii, 558 pp. € 165.00; $198.00. (E-book: € 165.00; $198.00.)

In this book, Dr Sotiris attempts a reading of the work of the French philosopher centred upon his deeply political conception of philosophy. The central point is that, in his trajectory, from the crucial interventions of the 1960s to the texts on aleatory materialism, Althusser remained a communist in philosophy. The book is divided into three parts. Part One is organized around three concepts that define the contours of Althusser's confrontation with the (im)possibility of a Marxist dialectic: structure; conjuncture; encounter. Part Two is about the philosophical work of Althusser that confronts questions surrounding the theoretical status as well as the social effectivity of philosophy. Part Three attempts to answer the question of whether there is an Althusserian politics.

HISTORY

Arabindan-Kesson, Anna. Black Bodies, White Gold. Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic world. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2021. xviii, 300 pp. Ill. $104.95. (Paper: $27.95.)

Using cotton as a commodity central to the slave trade and colonialism, Professor Arabindan-Kesson examines how art, commerce, and colonialism were intertwined in the nineteenth-century Atlantic. Modelling an art-history approach that makes the histories of the black diaspora central to nineteenth-century cultural production, she traces the rise of a speculative vision that informs perceptions of blackness, in which artistic renderings of cotton – as both a commodity and a material – became inexorably tied to the monetary value of black bodies. In addition to investigating the work of nineteenth-century artists, she engages with contemporary artists such as Hank Willis Thomas, Lubaina Himid, and Yinka Shonibare.

Eckert, Andreas. Geschichte der Sklaverei. Von der Antike bis ins 21. Jahrhundert. [Wissen.] Beck, Munich 2021. 128 pp. € 9.95. (E-book: € 7.49.)

An estimated 40 million people still live in “modern slavery” today. In this volume, Professor Eckert traces the history of an institution that has surfaced in different forms in all regions of the world since Antiquity, investigating the scope of action by slave traders, slave owners, and the enslaved and the causes of the gradual transition of slavery from an accepted evil to an outlawed abomination. In chapters on slavery in ancient Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages, the African slave trade, plantation slavery in the Atlantic area, abolition and emancipation, and slavery today the author explores what motivated slave traders and slave owners, and what leeway enslaved people had to fight for freedom.

Franc, Andrea. Von der Makroökonomie zum Kleinbauern. Die Wandlung der Idee eines gerechten Nord-Süd-Handels in der schweizerischen Dritte-Welt-Bewegung (1964–1984). De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2020. xv, 274 pp. Ill. € 49.95. (Open Access.)

The Fairtrade label today refers to smallholders and their limited basket of tropical raw materials. This book shows how the idea of just North–South trade became the opposite in the Third World movement. In the 1960s, activists demanded that Western markets open up for all products from the South. From the mid-1970s onwards, criticism of growth brought about a reversal of demands, and local small-scale agriculture came to be seen as an alternative to unlimited economic growth. Focusing on the role played by the Western third-world movement in the 1970s and 1980s, Dr Franc examines why instead of promoting trade, the Western World preferred to donate foreign aid.

Oakley, Ann. Forgotten Wives. How Women Get Written Out of History. Policy Press, Bristol 2021. xiii, 242 pp. Ill. £80.00. (Paper, E-book: £19.99.)

Throughout history, records of women's work have been lost through the pervasive assumption of male dominance. Wives disappeared as supporters of their husbands’ work, as unpaid and unacknowledged secretaries and research assistants, and as managers of men's domestic domains. Professor Oakley examines the ways in which the institution and status of marriage has contributed to active “disremembering” of women's achievements. Drawing on archives, biographies, autobiographies, and historical accounts, the author examines conventions of history-and biography writing, based on case studies of four women married to well-known men (Charlotte Shaw, Mary Booth, Jeannette Tawney, and Janet Beveridge), asking discerning questions about the mechanisms that maintain gender inequality despite thriving feminist and other equal rights movements.

Press, Steven. Blood and Diamonds. Germany's Imperial Ambitions in Africa. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 2021. 336 pp. Ill. $35.00; £28.95; € 31.50.

In this book, Professor Press traces the interaction between the mass-market diamond and German colonial domination in Africa. Since the 1880s, Germans hunted for diamonds in Southwest Africa. Following the trail of diamonds, from the sands of the Namib Desert to government ministries and corporate boardrooms in Berlin and London and on to the retail counters of New York and Chicago, the author demonstrates that, as Africans worked in horrific conditions to extract unprecedented supplies of diamonds, European cartels maintained the illusion that the stones were scarce, propelling the US market for diamond engagement rings. Convinced by advertisers that diamonds were both valuable and romantic, American buyers funded German imperial ambitions into the era of the World Wars.

Reis, João José, Dos Santos Gomes, Flávio, and De Carvalho, Marcus J.M.. The Story of Rufino. Slavery, Freedom, and Islam in the Black Atlantic. Transl. [from Portuguese] by Sabrina Gledhill, H.. Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2020 (2010). ix, 307 pp. Ill. Maps. £25.49.

Rufino or Abuncare, a Yoruba Muslim from the Kingdom of Oyo in present-day Nigeria, was enslaved as an adolescent, captured by slave traders, and taken to Brazil. In 1835, Rufino bought his freedom and became a petty slave trader himself. In 1853, he was arrested due to rumours of an imminent African slave revolt. The police used the large number of Arabic manuscripts in his possession as evidence for his arrest – the same kind of material the police had found with Muslim rebels in Bahia thirty years earlier. During his interrogation, Rufino told his life story, and these police records are used to reconstruct the world in which he lived under slavery and in freedom.

The Routledge Companion to the Makers of Global Business. Ed. by Da Silva Lopes, Teresa, Lubinski, Christina, and Tworek, Heidi J.S.. [Routledge Companions in Business, Management and Accounting.] Routledge, Abingdon [etc.] 2020. xviii, 613 pp. £190.00. (E-book: £44.99.)

This book brings together a wide array of state-of-the-art research on multinational enterprises and aims to deepen historical understanding of how firms and entrepreneurs contributed to transformative processes of globalization. Exploring how global business facilitated the mechanisms of cross-border interactions that affected individuals, organizations, industries, national economies, and international relations, the thirty-seven chapters span the Middle Ages to the present day. Contributors examine business as a central actor in globalization, covering myriad entrepreneurs, organizational forms, and key industrial sectors. The authors explore dynamic change, as well as lasting continuities, both of which often become visible and can be fully understood only when analysed over the long term.

Scarcity in the Modern World. History, Politics, Society and Sustainability, 1800–2075. Ed. by Jonsson, Fredrik Albritton et al. Bloomsbury Academic, London [etc.] 2019. xiv, 294 pp. Ill. $120.00. (Paper: $39.95; E-book: $35.95.)

The sixteen contributions in this edited volume examine how concerns about the scarcity of environmental resources such as water, food, energy, and materials have developed and have subsequently been managed, from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. These multi-disciplinary contributions situate contemporary concerns about scarcity within their longer history and address recent forecasts and debates surrounding the future scarcity of fossil fuels, renewable energy, and water up to 2075. In doing so, the authors acknowledge that this challenge is complex and cannot be addressed by a single discipline, but rather requires a concerted effort to consider its political and social, as well as its technical and economic dimensions.

Schlögel, Karl. The Scent of Empire. Chanel No. 5 and Red Moscow. Transl. [from German] by Spengler, Jessica. Polity Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. x, 208 pp. Ill. £20.00 € 22.60. (E-book: £13.99; € 18.99.)

In tsarist Russia, two French perfumers, Ernest Beaux and Auguste Michel, developed related fragrances as a tribute to Catherine the Great for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. During the Russian Revolution, Beaux took the formula for his perfume with him to France, where he presented Coco Chanel with a series of fragrance samples in his laboratory: she selected number five. Meanwhile, as the perfume industry was being revived in Soviet Russia, Michel used his original fragrance to create Red Moscow for the tenth anniversary of the Revolution. Piecing together the intertwined histories of these two famous perfumes, which shared a common origin, Professor Schlögel presents a unique perspective on the turbulent events of the twentieth century.

Wilson, Lee B. Bonds of Empire. The English Origins of Slave Law in South Carolina and British Plantation America, 1660–1783. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xiv, 274 pp. € 47.99. (E-book: $48.00.)

This book presents an account of English slave law that contributed to the longevity of plantation slavery. Emphasizing practice rather than proscription, Professor Wilson follows South Carolina colonists, who used English law to maximize the value of the people they treated as property, and reveals that most daily legal practices surrounding slave ownership derived from English law: colonists categorized enslaved people as property using English legal terms; they bought and sold them with printed English legal forms; and they followed English legal procedures during court litigations over enslaved people. The author shows that plantation slavery and the laws governing it were not beyond the pale of English imperial legal history.

COMPARATIVE HISTORY

Challenging Women's Agency and Activism in Early Modernity. Ed. by Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E.. [Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World.] Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2021. 312 pp. Ill. $136.00; £99.00. (E-book: € 108.90.)

Examining women's agency in the past has taken on new urgency in the current moment of resurgent patriarchy, Women's Marches, and the global #MeToo movement. The thirteen essays in this collection consider women's agency in the Renaissance and early modern period, an era in which patriarchal constraints increased, and new forms of women's actions and activism arose. They address a capacious set of questions about how women, from their teenage years through older adulthood, asserted agency through social practices, speech acts, legal disputes, writing, viewing and exchanging images, travel, and community building. Despite family and social pressures, the actions of girls and women could shape their lives and challenge male-dominated institutions.

Gendered Temporalities in the Early Modern World. Ed. by Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E.. [Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World]. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2021. 285 pp. Ill. € 115.00.

This collection of essays examines gendered and embodied temporalities, and how time structured early modern lives and the textual and material commemorations of those lives. The ten contributions examine aspects of gendered temporality in England, Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Aceh, and Virginia, thereby facilitating transregional and transnational comparisons. The collection is divided into three parts: temporality and materiality, frameworks and taxonomies of time, and embodied time. Drawing on a broad array of textual and material primary sources, such as letters, medicinal recipes, almanacs, poems, plays, court testimonies, petitions, financial records, sculpture, and household objects, the authors of the essays in the book analyse how material objects express, shape, complicate, and extend human concepts of time.

Global Commodity Chains and Labor Relations. Ed. by Komlosy, Andrea and Musić, Goran. [Studies in Global Social History, Vol. 42.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2021. xv, 392 pp. Maps. € 126.00; $152.00. (E-book: € 126.00; $152.00.)

Increasing linkage of global production sites has rendered the concept of commodity chains indispensable in investigations of production at a global scale. Labour figures at the centre of analysis in the fifteen historical and contemporary commodity chain studies in this edited volume examining workers, work processes, and working conditions. The book is divided into five parts. Part One theorizes commodity chains, labour relations, and upgrading, while Part Two looks at commodity chains and proto-industrialization in early modern Central Europe, Part Three at commodity chains in (post)colonial settings, Part Four at production chains in (post)socialist Eastern Europe, and Part Five at trade union networks, NGO campaigns, and workers’ agency.

Les mondes de l'esclavage. Une histoire comparée. Sous la dir. de Paulin Ismard, coord. Rossi, Benedetta et Vidal, Cecile. Seuil, Paris 2021. 1154 pp. € 29.90.

This volume offers a comparative history of slavery across the world. Bringing together contributions from fifty historians of fifteen nationalities, the book sheds light on the practices of human enslavement by others, from the Neolithic to the present day. Showing how slavery has conditioned social organizations and imaginaries throughout history, and how this past remains at the root of the inequalities and injustices that persist in our present, this book aims to place the history of slavery at the heart of the traditional conception of European and extra-European history. The authors reveal the various forms of slavery, which have specific rules and unfold in different ways over time and space.

Revolutionary World. Global Upheaval in the Modern Age. Ed. by Motadel, David. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xi, 280 pp. Ill. £59.99. (Paper: £19.99; E-book: $21.46.)

Throughout the modern age, revolutions have spread across state borders, engulfing entire regions, continents and, at times, the globe. Examining the spread of upheavals during major revolutionary moments (the Atlantic Revolutions, Europe's 1848 revolts, the commune movement of the 1870s, the 1905–1915 upheavals in Asia, the communist revolutions around 1917, the Third World revolutions, the Islamic revolt of 1978–1979, the events of 1989, and the Arab Spring), the ten chapters in this book address the nature of these revolutionary waves, tracing the exchange of radical ideas and the movements of revolutionaries around the world, and show that the major revolutions of the modern age were almost never contained within state borders and were usually part of broader revolutionary moments.

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES

Corona and Work around the Globe. Ed. by Eckert, Andreas and Hentschke, Felicitas. [Work in Global and Historical Perspective, Vol. 11.] De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin [etc.] 2021. xxi, 255 pp. Ill. € 24.95. (E-book: € 24.95.)

There is little doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally disrupted the world of work and has revealed the vulnerability of millions of workers and self-employed individuals. This book provides a global perspective on the transformations in the world of work caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The protagonists of the twenty-four essays range from informal workers and industrial workers to artists, employees in public offices, and universities and unemployed people. Amid the diversity, two main themes emerge: inequality, and contestations of democratic principles and parliamentarianism. The book also includes visual contributions. The collection of essays breaks down the general statistics and trends into glimpses of concrete experiences of workers during the pandemic.

Representing Poverty in the Anglophone Postcolonial World. Ed. by Jain-Warden, Verena and Schmidt-Haberkamp, Barbara. [Representations & Reflections. Studies in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Vol. 12.] V&R Unipress [etc.], Göttingen 2021. 262 pp. Ill. € 45.00. (E-book: € 37.99.)

Poverty has emerged as a significant thematic focus and analytical tool in literary and cultural studies in the last two decades. The new poverty studies are dedicated to analysing representations of poverty and the poor in literature and visual arts, in the news media, and in social practices. The thirteen contributions to this volume aim to explore the frameworks of representation that impact the affective and ethical responses of audiences to disenfranchised groups such as the poor, focusing on representations of poverty in the Anglophone postcolonial world, exploring, for example, contemporary discourses on poverty in the United Kingdom, filmic representations of Nairobi slums, or the agency of the poor in literature from India.

Continents and Countries

AFRICA

General Labour History of Africa. Workers, Employers and Governments, 20th–21st Centuries. Ed. by Bellucci, Stefano and Eckert, Andreas. Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge 2019. xx, 761 pp. Maps. £95.00. (Paper: £30.00.)

Co-published with the International Labour Organization, this volume analyses key developments in the general labour history of Africa, such as the emergence of wage labour, transformations in labour relations, the role of capital and employers, labour movements, the diversity of formal and informal labour, and the impact of gender and age on the workplace. The twenty-two contributors examine issues such as mobility, migration, forced labour, security, the rise of entrepreneurial labour, the informal sector and self-employment, and the impact of trade unionism, welfare, and state relations, discussing sectors such as mining, agriculture, industry, transport, domestic work and sports, tourism and entertainment, as well as the international dimension, and the history and impact of the International Labour Organization itself. See also Duncan Money's review in this volume, pp. @@@–@@@.

Liebst, Michelle. Labour and Christianity in the Mission. African Workers in Tanganyika and Zanzibar, 1864–1926. [Religion in Transforming Africa.] Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge 2021. xiv, 224 pp. Ill. £65.00; $99.00. (E-book: £19.99; $24.99.)

Missionaries in East Africa, in the mid- to late nineteenth century, demanded a range of skilled and unskilled workers, not always voluntarily, including builders, cooks, servants, etc. This setting was ideal for their core aims: the conversion of souls and the establishment of an African ministry. Focusing on the Anglican Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) in Tanganyika and Zanzibar, Dr Liebst shows how missionaries both supported and undermined the livelihood trajectories of Africans. Revealing the changing nature of relations over time between missionaries – who referred to themselves as “workers” – and the African mission workers – whom missionaries referred to as “helpers” – reflected broader political transformations, adding a critical dimension to their function and socio-economic impact.

Kenya

Barnett, Donald L. and Njama, Karari. Mau Mau from Within. The Story of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. Daraja Press, Ottawa 2021. xl, 370 pp. Ill. CAN $45.00. (E-book: CAN $12.00.)

The inside story of the struggles of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army was referred to by British colonialism as the Mau Mau rebellion. The autobiographical material written by Karari Njama was first published by the Monthly Review Press in 1966. The story is told by Karari Njama, a schoolteacher directly involved in the struggles for freedom from colonial rule, to anthropologist Donald L. Barnett. Njama represented the idealistic young rebels of his era, educated, imaginative, and a strategist diplomat. The book describes how the Mau Mau leadership navigated after the sudden declaration of a state of emergency by the British in 1952 and the imprisonment of 200 leading Mau Mau. This expanded edition includes new commentary by Karari Njama.

Liberia

Pailey, Robtel Neajai. Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa. The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia. [African Studies Series, Vol. 153.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2021. xi, 276 pp. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)

Drawing on oral histories from over 200 in-depth interviews in West Africa, Europe, and North America, Professor Pailey examines socio-economic change in Liberia, Africa's first black republic, through the prism of citizenship. Pailey marks how historical policy changes on citizenship and contemporary public discourse on dual citizenship have impacted development policy and practice. She reveals that, as Liberia transformed from a country of immigration to one of emigration, so, too, did the nature of citizenship, thus influencing claims for and against dual citizenship. Based on this, the author devises a new model for conceptualizing citizenship within the context of crisis-affected states.

Senegal

Sprute, Sebastian-Manès. Weltzeit im Kolonialstaat. Kolonialismus, Globalisierung und die Implementierung der europäischen Zeitkultur in Senegal, 1880–1920. [Global- und Kolonialgeschichte, Bd. 1.] Transcript, Bielefeld 2020. 394 pp. Ill. Maps. € 58.00. (E-book: € 57.99.)

Colonialism did not lead to global homogenization of world time but was implemented fragmentarily. Dr Sprute examines the socio-cultural effects of the implementation of standardized world time in colonial Senegal. He discusses the transfer of time norms in a complex arrangement of temporal regulatory policies, synchronization and standardization efforts that have become effective at all levels of social and state organization. The author deals with the importance of temporal orders in globalization processes and contributes to the hitherto little-researched phenomenon of globalization of the Western time order, relating the topic to central debates in colonial history, especially to the study of French colonialism.

AMERICA

Fútbol y sociedad en América Latina. Futebol e sociedade na América Latina. Ed. by Thomas Fischer, Romy Köhler, and Stefan Reith. [Colección Americana Eystettensia, 27.] Iberoamericana [etc.], Madrid [etc.] 2021. 506 pp. Ill. € 44.00.

Adopting the premise that there is no such thing as “Latin American soccer”, the thirty contributions in this volume explore the cultural relevance of this sport in Latin America over time, at both the communal level and the institutional, national and global levels. From different transdisciplinary perspectives, the authors describe (re)constructions of belonging and exclusion in changing formations of community identity based on gender, ethnic, or style distinctions. The three main axes of analysis are the permanent struggle for political power in and on the field and its main actors, the (accelerated) migration processes, and the role of the media, cinema, literature, and visual representations.

Argentina

Muir, Sarah. Routine Crisis. An Ethnography of Disillusion. [Chicago Studies in the Practices of Meaning.] The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (IL) [etc.] 2021. 181 pp. $95.00. (Paper: $27.50; E-book: $26.99.)

Argentina has a long history of economic volatility. In 2001–2002, a financial crisis led to its worst economic collapse, precipitating dramatic currency devaluation, the largest sovereign default in world history, and the flight of foreign capital. Protests and street blockades punctuated profound political uncertainty. Since then, Argentina has fought economic fires on every front, from inflation to the cost of utilities and depressed industrial output. Professor Muir elaborates on the limits of critique at this historical moment, drawing on deep experience in Argentina but reflecting on a truly global condition, concluding that efforts to build solidarity gave rise to new versions of the inequalities that they were intended to overcome.

Bolivia

Lane, Kris. Potosi. The Silver City that Changed the World. [The California World History Library, Vol. 27.] California University Press, Oakland (CA) 2019. xviii, 148 pp. Ill. Maps. $32.95; £26.00. (Paper: $26.95; £21.00, E-book: $32.95; £26.00.)

In 1545, a native Andean prospector hit pay dirt on a desolate red mountain in highland Bolivia. There followed the world's greatest silver bonanza, instantly turning the “Rich Hill” and the Imperial Villa of Potosí into legends. From Potosí's startling emergence in the sixteenth century to its collapse in the nineteenth, Professor Lane tells the story of global economic transformation and the environmental and social impact of rampant colonial exploitation. Based on archival sources, his narrative offers rare details of this thriving city and its promise of prosperity. The author aims to balance the local and the global by treating the city, mountain, mines, and countryside of Potosí as an example of early modern global urbanism and extraction in action.

Soliz, Carmen. Fields of Revolution. Agrarian Reform and Rural State Formation in Bolivia, 1935–1964. [Pitt Latin American Series.] University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh (PA) 2021. xiv, 266 pp. Ill. Maps. $50.00.

This book examines the second-largest case of peasant land redistribution in Latin America and agrarian reform. Competing understandings of agrarian reform shaped ideas of property, productivity, welfare, and justice. Peasants embraced the nationalist slogan of “land for those who work it” and rehabilitated national union structures. Indigenous communities proclaimed instead “land to its original owners” and sought to relate the ruling party discourse on nationalism to their own long-standing demands for restitution. Landowners, in turn, adopted the principle of “land for those who improve it” to protect at least portions of their former properties from expropriation. Professor Soliz combines analysis of governmental policies and national discourse with everyday local actors’ struggles and interactions with the state. See also Fernando Teixeira da Silva's review in this volume, pp. @@@–@@@.

Brazil

Schneider, Ann M. Amnesty in Brazil. Recompense After Repression, 1895–2010. [Pitt Latin American Series.] University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh (PA) 2021. xiv, 289 pp. Ill. $55.00.

In 1895, forty-seven rebel military officers contested the terms of a law that granted them amnesty but blocked their immediate return to the armed forces. During the century that followed, numerous other Brazilians similarly facing repercussions subsequently claimed forms of recompense through amnesty. Dr Schneider examines the evolution of amnesty in Brazil and describes when and how it functioned as an institution synonymous with restitution. Arguing that the adjudication of entitlements granted in amnesty laws marked points of intersection between prevailing and profoundly conservative politics with moments and trends that galvanized demand for and expansion of rights, she shows that amnesty in Brazil has been both surprisingly democratizing and yet stubbornly undemocratic.

Canada

Boudreau, Michael and Huskins, Bonnie. Just the Usual Work. The Social Worlds of Ida Martin, Working-Class Diarist. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal [etc.] 2021. xii, 176 pp. Ill. CAN $120.00. (Paper: CAN $34.95.)

Born in 1907, Ida Martin spent most of her life in Saint John, New Brunswick. She married a longshoreman in 1932 and had one daughter. From 1945 to 1992, Ida found time to keep a diary. Bonnie Huskins is Ida Martin's granddaughter. In this book, she and Michael Boudreau draw on Ida's diaries, family memories, and the history of Atlantic Canada to shed light on the everyday life of a working-class housewife during a period of significant social and political change, based, for example, on Ida's observations about the struggles to make ends meet on a longshoreman's salary and the labour confrontations at the Port of Saint John.

Chile

Vergara, Ángela. Fighting Unemployment in Twentieth-Century Chile. [Pitt Latin American Series.] University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh (PA) 2021. x, 245 pp. Maps. $50.00.

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, labour rights expanded in Chile, transforming the workplace in society, although, Chile's system of modern labour relations was highly problematic. In this book, Professor Vergara examines the working lives of industrial and mine workers, peasants, and day labourers through periods of economic, political, and social instability. Influenced by global and regional debates, the state put modern agencies in place to assist the poor and expand their social and economic rights. Weaving together bottom-up and transnational approaches, the author underscores the limits of these policies and demonstrates how the benefits and protection of wage labour became central to people's lives, and how global economic recessions, political oppression, and abusive employers threatened their working-class culture.

Costa Rica

Gudmundson, Lowell, Costa Rica After Coffee. The Co-op Era in History and Memory. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge (LA) 2021. xxii, 141 pp. Ill. $50.00. (Paper: $28.00.)

This book explores the political, social, and economic role of the coffee industry in contemporary Costa Rican history. Based on archival sources, alongside individual histories of key coffee-growing families, Professor Gudmundson examines the development of the co-op movement, the rise of the gourmet coffee market, and the societal transformations that Costa Rica has undergone. While Costa Rican coffee farmers and co-ops experienced a heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, the emergence and expansion of a gourmet coffee market in the 1990s drastically reduced harvest volumes. Meanwhile, urbanization and improved education among the Costa Rican population threatened the continuity of family-run coffee farms because of the lack of both farmland and a successor generation of farmers.

Ecuador

Riofrancos, Thea. Resource Radicals. From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador. [Radical Américas .] Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2020. xi, 252 pp. Ill. $99.95. (Paper: $26.95.)

In 2007, the left came to power in Ecuador. Over the years that followed, the socialist government and a coalition of grassroots activists argued about extraction of natural resources, each side declaring the other a perversion of leftism. On the one hand, the administration's resource nationalism focused on economic development; on the other, the anti-extractivism of grassroots activists condemned the government's disregard for nature and indigenous communities. Based on archival material, Professor Riofrancos demonstrates how Ecuador's commodity-dependent economy and history of indigenous uprisings offer a unique opportunity to understand development, democracy, and the ecological foundations of global capitalism.

Haiti

Sheller, Mimi. Island Futures. Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2020. xxx, 226 pp. Ill. Maps. $94.95. (Paper: $24.95.)

Natural disasters strike at mobility systems, cutting off railways, electricity, food access, and communication networks, deepening already existing uneven spatialities and exacerbating mobility injustice. In this book, Professor Sheller examines ecological crises and reconstruction challenges affecting the entire Caribbean region. Drawing on fieldwork on post-earthquake reconstruction in Haiti, flooding on the Haitian–Dominican border, and recent hurricanes, she shows the ecological vulnerability in the Caribbean. Foreigners seeking to help, but often ignorant of Haiti's political, cultural, and economic contexts (especially the historical role of the United States), often deepen inequities. Caribbean survival under ever-worsening environmental and political conditions demands, according to the author, radical alternatives to the pervasive neocolonialism, racial capitalism, and US military domination.

Jamaica

Dunkley, D.A. Women and Resistance in the Early Rastafari Movement. Louisiana State University Press. Baton Rouge (LA) 2021. xiv, 193 pp. Ill. $45.00.

This book is a study of women's resistance in the emergent Rastafari movement in colonial Jamaica. As Professor Dunkley demonstrates, Rastafari women had to contend not only with the various attempts made by the government and non-members to suppress the movement, but also with oppression and silencing from among their own ranks. In thematically organized chapters addressing early women's thoughts and acts of resistance, the author examines the lives and experiences of a group of Rastafari women between the movement's inception in the 1930s and Jamaica's independence from Britain in the 1960s, revealing their sense of agency and resistance to both male domination and societal opposition to their Rastafari identity.

Mexico

Thornton, Christy. Revolution in Development. Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy. University of California Press, Oakland (CA) 2021. 301 pp. $85.00; £66.00. (Paper, E-book: $29.95; £24.00.)

Governing the global economy is believed to be a privilege for rich countries initially, followed by the weaker ones. This book uncovers the surprising influence of post-revolutionary Mexico on the twentieth century's most important international economic institutions. Drawing on archival research in Mexico, the United States, and Great Britain, Professor Thornton traces how Mexican officials repeatedly rallied Third World leaders to campaign for representation in global organizations and redistribution through multilateral institutions. Mexican economists, diplomats, and politicians fought for over five decades to reform the rules and institutions of the global capitalist economy. In so doing, they shaped not only their own domestic economic prospects, but also the contours of the project of international development.

United States of America

Appleby, John C. Fur, Fashion and Transatlantic Trade During the Seventeenth Century. Chesapeake Bay Native Hunters, Colonial Rivalries and London Merchants. Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2021. x, 294 pp. Maps. $115.00; £75.00. (E-book: $24.99; £19.95.)

In this book, Dr Appleby explores the development of the fur trade in Chesapeake Bay during the seventeenth century and the wide-ranging links formed in a new and extensive transatlantic chain of supply and consumption. Considering changing fashion in England and growing demand for fur, the author examines native North Americans and their trading and other exchanges with colonists and the nature of colonial society, including the commercial ambitions of a varied range of investors, while outlining the intense rivalry between different colonies and colonial interests. He then demonstrates that the Chesapeake fur trade exemplifies how different elements in transatlantic enterprises fit together and had a profound impact on each other.

Darryl, Barthé Jr.. Becoming American in Creole New Orleans, 1896–1949. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge (LA) 2021. x, 217 pp. $45.00. (E-book: $34.27.)

Documenting the process of “becoming American” through Creole encounters with Anglo-Americans, Dr Barthé reveals this ethnic transformation by tracing New Orleans's voluntary associations and social sodalities, as well as its public and parochial schools. Despite ethnic repression, the transition from Creole to American identity was largely voluntary, as Creoles embraced the economic opportunities made available to them by learning English. Navigating that caste system was tricky for Creoles, who had existed between French and Spanish colour lines that recognized them as a group separate from Europeans, Africans, and Amerindians. Creoles responded to the American caste system by passing as white people (completely or situationally) or, more often, redefining themselves as blacks.

Blum, Lawrence and Burkholder, Zoë. Integrations. The Struggle for Racial Equality and Civic Renewal in Public Education. [The History and Philosophy of Education Series.] The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (IL) 2021. 268 pp. Ill. $95.00. (Paper: $27.50; E-book: $26.99.)

Free, high-quality public education would guarantee every child a chance to pursue the American dream, but the widely segregated schools mean that many children of colour lack access to educational opportunities equal to those of their white peers. In this book, professors Blum and Burkholder investigate how the long history of educational segregation has affected achieving just and equitable educational opportunities in the United States. Focusing on multiple marginalized groups in American schooling (African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans), the authors argue that until the larger structures of race and class injustice are dismantled, the goals of educational equality and civic equality will be impossible to attain.

Goodman, Adam. The Deportation Machine. America's Long History of Expelling Immigrants. [Politics and Society in Modern America.] Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) [etc.] 2020. ix, 322 pp. Ill. $29.95; £25.00. (Paper: $19.95; £14.99.)

Headlines about deportations, detention camps, and border walls drive recent debates about US immigration. This book traces the history of the US government's systematic efforts to terrorize and expel immigrants over the past 140 years. Professor Goodman examines how federal, state, and local officials have targeted various groups for expulsion, from Chinese and Europeans at the turn of the twentieth century to Central Americans and Muslims today. He reveals how authorities have singled out Mexicans and removed most of them not at the orders of immigration judges but through coercive administrative procedures and calculated fear campaigns. Exposing the pervasive roots of anti-immigrant sentiment, the author introduces politicians and ordinary citizens who have pushed for and profited from expulsion.

Miyamoto, Nobuko. Not Yo’ Butterfly. My Long Song of Relocation, Race, Love, and Revolution. Ed. by Wong, Deborah. [American Crossroads.] University of California Press, Oakland (CA) 2021. x, 329 pp. Ill. $85.00; £66.00. (Paper, E-book: $29.95; £24.00.)

This book is the life story of Nobuko Miyamoto, artist, activist, and mother. Beginning with her life as a Japanese American child, Miyamoto vividly describes her early years in the racialized atmosphere of Hollywood musicals and her turn towards activism as an Asian American troubadour. Her narrative intersects with the stories of Yuri Kochiyama and Grace Lee Boggs, influential in both Asian and black liberation movements. She describes how her experience of motherhood with an Afro-Asian son, as well as a marriage that intertwined black and Japanese families and communities, placed her at the nexus of the 1992 Rodney King riots, and how she used art to create interracial solidarity and conciliation.

Seeley, Samantha. Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain. Migration and the Making of the United States. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture [etc.], Williamsburg (VA) 2021. xi, 354 pp. Ill. Maps. $34.95. (E-book: $29.99.)

In the nation's founding decades, federal and state politicians in the United States of America debated which categories of people could remain, and which should be subject to removal. The result was a white Republic, but removal, like the right to remain, was a battle fought on multiple fronts, encompassing the determination of tribal chiefs to expel white settlers from Native lands and the legal manoeuvres of free African Americans both to remain within the states that sought to drive them out and to carve out new lives in the West. Never losing sight of the national implications of regional conflicts, Professor Seeley brings to the front the position of the middle states poised between the edges of slavery and freedom.

Sine, Elizabeth E. Rebel Imaginaries. Labor, Culture, and Politics in Depression-Era California. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) 2021. xx, 295 pp. Ill. $104.95. (Paper: $27.95.)

During the Great Depression, California became a wellspring for some of the era's most inventive and imaginative political movements. In this book, Dr Sine reveals how aggrieved Californians asserted political visions that embraced difference, fostered a sense of shared vulnerability, and underscored interconnectedness and interdependence. From the Imperial Valley's agricultural fields to Hollywood, seemingly disparate communities of African American, Native American, Mexican, Filipino, Asian, and white working-class people were linked by their myriad struggles against Depression-era capitalism. In tracing the diverse coalition of those involved in labour strikes, citizenship, and immigration reform, and articulating and imagining freedom through artistic practice, the author demonstrates that the era's social movements were heterogeneous, multivalent, and contested. See also Peter Cole's review in this volume, pp. @@@–@@@.

Summers, Martin. Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions. A History of Race and Mental Illness in the Nation's Capital. Oxford University Press, New York [etc.] 2019. xiii, 390 pp. Ill. £28.99.

From the mid-nineteenth to the late-twentieth century, Saint Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, DC was one of the most important institutions in the United States for care and treatment of the mentally ill, admitting both white and black patients. Drawing on archival sources, including patient case files, Professor Summers demonstrates how race was central to every aspect of the hospital's existence, from the ways in which psychiatrists understood mental illness and employed therapies to treat it to how black patients experienced their institutionalization. Assumptions about the existence of distinctive black and white psyches shaped the therapeutic and diagnostic regimes in the hospital, leaving a legacy of poor treatment of African American patients.

ASIA

China

Brown, Jeremy. June Fourth. The Tiananmen Protests and Beijing Massacre of 1989. [New Approaches to Asian History, Vol. 22.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2021. xxvi, 266 pp. Ill. Maps. £59.99. (Paper: £22.99; E-book: $24.00.)

The Tiananmen protests and Beijing massacre of 1989 were a major turning point in recent Chinese history. In this analysis of 1989, Professor Brown tells the vivid stories of participants and victims, exploring the nationwide scope of the democracy movement and the brutal crackdown that crushed it. Demonstrating that, at each critical juncture in the spring of 1989, both demonstrators and decision-makers agonized over difficult choices, the author concludes every chapter by tracing alternative paths and momentous turning points that Chinese people in China discussed during or after 1989. Using a wide range of previously untapped sources, this social history examines how ordinary citizens throughout China experienced the events. See also Tony Saich's review in this volume, pp. @@@–@@@.

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

This edited volume presents a mosaic of snapshots to reflect how different the Chinese Communist Party was in different decades. Ten personal histories introduce the reader to what living in and with the most powerful political machine ever created was like. Detailing the lives of ten people who led or engaged with the Chinese Communist Party, these essays reflect on the Party's relentless pursuit of power and extraordinary adaptability through the transformative decades since 1921. Demonstrating that the history of the Chinese Communist Party is not one story but many stories, the authors talk about paths not taken, the role of chance, ideas and persons silenced, hopes both lost and fulfilled.

Coderre, Laurence. Newborn Socialist Things. Materiality in Maoist China. Duke University Press, Durham (NC) [etc.] 2021. xi, 246 pp. Ill. $99.95. (Paper: $26.95.)

Contemporary China is seen as a place of widespread commodification and consumerism, while the preceding Maoist Cultural Revolution is understood as a time of scarcity. In this book, Professor Coderre explores the material culture of the Cultural Revolution to show how it paved the way for commodification in contemporary China. Examining objects ranging from retail counters and porcelain statuettes to textbooks and vanity mirrors, the author shows how the project of building socialism in China has always been closely intertwined with consumption. By focusing on these objects, along with the Cultural Revolution's media and environment, discourses of materiality and political economy, she reconfigures understanding of the origins of present-day China.

Miles, Steven B. Opportunity in Crisis. Cantonese Migrants and the State in Late Qing China. [Harvard East Asian Monographs, Vol. 441.] Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge (MA) 2021. xv, 358 pp. Maps. $65.00; £52.95; € 58.50.

This book explores the history of late Qing Cantonese migration along the West River basin and the impact on the relationship between state and local elites on the Guangxi frontier.

Opening with the violence by a geographically mobile Cantonese underclass, targeting Cantonese riverine commerce, Professor Miles narrates the ensuing history of a Cantonese rebel regime established in Guangxi in the wake of the Taiping uprising. With the reassertion of Qing control, Cantonese commercial networks in Guangxi expanded dramatically and became an increasingly important source of state revenue. By situating Cantonese upriver and overseas migration within the same framework, the author reconceives the late Qing as an age of Cantonese diasporic expansion rather than one of state decline.

Rathjen, Helga. Tsingtau. Eine deutsche Kolonialstadt in China (1897–1914). [Ethnographie des Alltags, Bd. 8.] Böhlau, Vienna 2021. 324 pp. Ill. € 45.00. (E-book: € 37.99.)

To this day, German-style half-timbered houses can be found in the historic city centre of the German colonial city of Tsingtau (1897–1914), demonstrating the German self-representation in the mirror of a racist construction of the Chinese other. The tale of the “cleanest and healthiest city on the entire East Asian coast” not only underpinned national and bourgeois self-representation, but also provided justification for racist exclusion and discipline of the Chinese population. Dr Rathjen shows how marginalization and repression of the majority population and retreating into a gated community brought about impressions of a state of siege by “the hostile others” based on colonial interpretations of the world, the self, and the alien.

Saich, Tony. Finding Allies and Making Revolution. The Early Years of the Chinese Communist Party. Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2020. xiv, 224 pp. € 132.00; $159.00. (E-book: € 132.00; $159.00.)

How did a Dutchman figure in the rise of the Chinese Communist Party? In this book, Professor Saich reveals how Henk Sneevliet, arriving as Lenin's choice for China work, provided the communists with two of their most enduring legacies: the idea of a Leninist party and the tactic of the united front. Sneevliet aimed to instil discipline and structure for the left-leaning intellectuals seeking to a solution to China's humiliation. Based on Sneevliet's diaries and reports, together with contemporary materials from key Chinese figures and important documents held in the Comintern's China archive, this analysis demonstrates that he was not easy to work with and clashed with Chinese comrades and those to whom he reported in Moscow.

India

Das, Raju J. Critical Reflections on Economy and Politics in India. A Class Theory Perspective. [Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Vol. 151.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2020. xiv, 658 pp. Ill. Maps. € 230.00; $276.00. (E-book: € 230.00; $276.00.)

In this book, Dr Das presents a class-based perspective on the economic and political situation in contemporary India in a globalizing world. Dealing with the specificities of India's capitalism and neoliberalism, as well as inequality, geographically uneven development, and export-oriented, nature-dependent production, the author also pays attention to left-led struggles such as the Naxalite–Maoist movement and trade-union strikes. Presenting a non-sectarian left critique of the left, he also discusses the politics of the Right expressed as fascist tendencies. The book applies abstract theoretical ideas to the concrete situation in India, showing the relevance of class theory that takes seriously the matter of oppression/domination of religious minorities and lower castes.

Rethinking Markets in Modern India. Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction. Ed. by Gandhi, Ajay et al. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2020. xii, 372 pp. Ill. £85.00. (E-book: $88.00.)

From the outside, markets in India appear as demarcated arenas of exchange bound by state-imposed rules. As historical and social realities, however, markets are dynamic, adaptive, and ambiguous spaces. This book delves into this intricate context, exploring Indian markets through the competition and collaboration of those who frame and participate in markets. Anchored in thirteen case studies, from colonial property and advertising milieus to today's bazaar and criminal economies, this volume underlines the friction and interdependence between commerce, society, and state. Contributors from history, anthropology, political economy, and development studies synthesize existing scholarly approaches, adding new perspectives on Indian capitalism's evolution and revealing the transactional specificities that underlie the real-world functioning of markets.

Singha, Radhika. The Coolie's Great War. Indian Labour in a Global Conflict, 1914–1921. Hurst & Company, London [etc.] 2020. xxi, 372 pp. Ill. £45.00.

Though largely invisible in histories of World War I, over 550,000 men in the ranks of the Indian Army were followers or non-combatants. Professor Singha draws upon their story to give the sub-continent a place in this worldwide conflict. The labour regimes built on the backs of these “coolies” had long sustained imperial militarism. This was particularly visible in the border infrastructures put in place by combinations of waged work, corvée, and tributary labour. Manpower hunger unsettled the institutional divide between Indian combatants and non-combatants. The “higher” followers benefited, less so the “menial” followers, whose position recalled the dependency of domestic service, and who included in their ranks the “untouchables” consigned to stigmatized work. See also Touraj Atabaki's review in this volume, pp. @@@–@@@.

Iran

Iranian Romance in the Digital Age. From Arranged Marriage to White Marriage. Ed. by Afary, Janet and Faust, Jesilyn. [Sex, Family and Culture in the Middle East Series.] I.B. Tauris, London [etc.] 2021. ix, 249 pp. Ill. £85.00. (E-book: £76.50.)

Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, there was a dramatic reversal of women's rights, and the state revived many premodern social conventions through modern means and institutions. At the same time, new social and economic programmes benefited the urban and rural poor, especially women, and had a direct impact on gender relations and the institution of marriage. The ten contributions in this volume examine how the institution of marriage transformed in Iran. Part One examines changes in urban marriages to new forms of cohabitation. In Part Two, the authors explore the way technology and social media have impacted and altered the institution of family. Part Three looks at marital changes in the rural and tribal sectors of society.

Mapping the Role of Intellectuals in Iranian Modern and Contemporary History. Ed. by Jahanbegloo, Ramin. Lexington Books, Lanham (MD) [etc.] 2020. xiii, 332 pp. $120.00; £92.00. (E-book: $45.00; £35.00.)

In this book, the authors examine the role of Iranian intellectuals in the history of Iranian modernity. They trace the contributions of intellectuals in the construction of national identity and the Iranian democratic debate, analysing how intellectuals balanced indebtedness to the West with the issue of national identity in Iran. Most of the fifteen essays presented in this volume examine how modern Iranian intellectualism was born out of Iran's encounters with the West, while embracing modernity and visualizing their identity and Iran's destiny in terms of multiple engagements with Iranian traditions, European modernity, religion, and science. The contributions concentrate primarily on Iranian intellectual debates on nation-building, democracy making, women's emancipation, radical thinking, and religious reformism.

Korea

Park, Yung Chul, Kim, Joon-Kyung and Park, Hail. Financial Liberalization and Economic Development in Korea, 1980–2020. [Harvard East Asian Monographs, Vol. 440.] Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 2021. xix, 315 pp. $49.95; £39.95; € 45.00.

Since the early 1980s, Korea's financial development has been a tale of liberalization and opening. After the 1997 financial crisis, great strides were made in building a market-oriented financial system. However, the new system did not prevent a credit card boom and bust in 2003, a liquidity crisis in 2008, and a run on its savings banks in 2011. In this study, the structural changes in Korea's financial system are analysed since the early 1980s and the empirical results presented of the effects of financial development on economic growth, stability, and distribution of income. The authors find that financial liberalization has done little to foster the growth and stability of the Korean economy and has exacerbated income distribution problems.

Middle East

Allen, Lori. A History of False Hope. Investigative Commissions in Palestine. Stanford University Press, Stanford (CA) 2021. xx, 408 pp. $90.00. (Paper: $30.00.)

This book offers a story of Palestinian political history through an examination of the international commissions that have investigated political violence and human rights violations. While over twenty inquiry commissions have been convened over the last century, no significant change has resulted. Drawing on debates in the press, UN reports, historical archives, and ethnographic research, Dr Allen explores six key investigative commissions over the last century, highlighting how persistent demands from Palestinians for independence have been routinely translated into the numb language of reports and resolutions. These commissions, Allen argues, operating as technologies of liberal global governance, yield no justice and merely perpetuate the oppressive status quo.

Israel–Palestine Lands and People. Ed. by Barton, Omer. Berghahn, New York [etc.] 2021. xi, 442 pp. Ill. Maps. $150.00; £111.00. (E-book: $45.00.)

The conflict between Israel and Palestine has raised a plethora of unanswered questions about historical narratives and ownership rights of possession, the morality of return, and the injustice of displacement. The twenty chapters in this volume provide new research on larger themes and deeper questions related to the lives of Jews and Palestinians in the lands of Israel–Palestine from the nineteenth century to the present. In sections on trauma and displacement, redrawing space, education and ideology, nationalism, settler colonialism and decolonization, as well as future scenarios, this volume seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the links between the region and its peoples, both those that live there and those who relate to it.

Savelsberg, Joachim J. Knowing about Genocide. Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles. University of California Press, Oakland (CA) 2021. xv, 244 pp. Ill. Maps. $34.95; ؔ£27.00. (Open Access.)

How do victims and perpetrators generate conflicting knowledge about genocide? Using a sociology of knowledge approach, Professor Savelsberg answers this question for the Armenian genocide committed in the context of World War I. Focusing on Armenians and Turks, he examines strategies of silencing, denial and acknowledgment in everyday interaction, public rituals, law, and politics. Drawing on interviews, ethnographic accounts, documents, and eyewitness testimony, the author illuminates the social processes that drive duelling versions of history, revealing counterproductive consequences of denial in an age of human rights hegemony, with implications for populist disinformation campaigns against overwhelming evidence.

Papua New Guinea

Skrzypek, Emilia E. Revealing the Invisible Mine. Social Complexities of an Undeveloped Mining Project. [Pacific Perspectives, Vol. 8.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2021. xiii, 237 pp. Ill. Maps. $135.00; £99.00. (E-book: $34.95.)

Exploring the social complexities of the Frieda River Project in Papua New Guinea, this book tells the story of local stakeholder strategies on the eve of industrial development, largely from the perspective of the Paiyamo, one of the project's “impact communities”. Based on fieldwork, Dr Skrzypek explores how the Paiyamo see the mine as a concept and its place in ancient stories, and how this affects the development process. Engaging ideas of knowledge, belief, and personhood, she explains how fifty years of encounters with exploration companies shaped the Paiyamo's aspirations, leading them to revisit and re-examine their past and develop new strategies to move towards a better, more prosperous future.

Turkey

Karatepe, Ismail Doga. The Cultural Political Economy of the Construction Industry in Turkey. The Case of Public Housing. [International Comparative Social Studies, Vol. 48.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2020. xiv, 252 pp. € 143.00; $172.00. (Paper: € 43.00; $52.00; E-book: € 143.00; $172.00.)

Skyscrapers, gigantic shopping malls, and high-rise apartment blocks have drastically changed the urban landscape of modern Turkey in the last decade. Dr Karatepe analyses the increased popularity of the “Justice and Development Party” (official acronym AKP) of Turkey's President Erdogan from the perspective of the construction sector. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of the question of hegemony and the electoral success of the AKP, despite frequent economic downturns and ferocious political conflicts, including a coup d’état attempt. In this book, the author examines the AKP's ability to satisfy the needs and wishes of different social classes and groups, as illustrated by the construction sector in the context of the changing urban landscape in Turkey.

Uzbekistan

Petrova, Mariya. Nah am Boden. Privater Hausbau zwischen Wohnungsnot und Landkonflikt im Samarkand der 50er- und 60er-Jahre. [ANOR, Bd. 21.] De Gruyter, Berlin [etc.] 2021. 109 pp. Ill. Maps. € 29.95. (Open Access.)

This study examines private homebuilding as a specific form of urbanization in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Based on documents from the department of the city executive committee and the associated building and architecture authorities from the regional archive of Samarkand and on interviews and conversations with contemporary witnesses and with architects and former city planning officials, Dr Petrova investigates the interaction of the historical, political, bureaucratic, and social processes that have contributed to the development of the urban structure of Samarkand, focusing primarily on urban districts built during the Soviet era and especially after World War II and on private buildings and their position in the city as a whole.

EUROPE

Brown, Timothy Scott. Sixties Europe. [New Approaches to European History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2020. ix, 241 pp. Ill. £59.99. (Paper: £19.99; E-book: $21.00.)

Placing European border-crossing uprisings of the 1960s within a global context formed by Third World liberation struggles and Cold War geopolitics, Professor Brown highlights the importance of transnational exchanges across the Cold War divide. New Left ideas and cultural practices easily crossed bloc boundaries, but the author demonstrates that the 1960s in Europe did not simply unfold according to a normative western model. Innovations in the arts and popular culture synergized radical politics, as advocates of labour democracy emerged to pursue longstanding demands predating the Cold War divide. Examining the rise of political movements on both sides, the author shows how youth and student rebellion intersected with powerful impulses for labour democracy with deep historical roots.

Moll, Nicolas. Solidarity Is More Than a Slogan. International Workers Aid During and After the 1992–1995 War in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Brussels Office, Brussels 2021. 259 pp. Ill. € 0.00. (Open Access.)

During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, many individuals in countries across Europe were determined to help. They aimed to assist refugees, to bring humanitarian and material aid to the affected populations, to support the democratic and anti-nationalist forces, and to protest the attitudes of passivity or duplicity of their own governments. International Workers Aid (IWA) was one of the initiatives that emerged from these civil society mobilizations. The book, based on archival documents produced within the IWA, is divided into two parts. Part One is a chronological history of the IWA from 1993–2000. Part Two is a selection of transcribed original documents with short contextualizing comments, structured around different topics.

Belgium

Van Ginderachter, Maarten. The Everyday Nationalism of Workers. A Social History of Modern Belgium. Stanford University Press, Oakland (CA) 2019. viii, 265 pp. Ill. Maps. $90.00. (Paper: $30.00.)

In this book, Professor Van Ginderachter examines how European nationalism is lived and experienced by ordinary people, drawing on sources from the major working-class centres of Belgium and revealing the everyday nationalism of the rank and file of the socialist Belgian Workers Party between 1880 and World War I. Based on rich and diverse sources, the author conveys the limits of nation-building from above and the potential of agency from below, showing the complexity of socialist workers’ ambivalent engagement with nationhood, patriotism, ethnicity, and language. By comparing the Belgian case with the rise of nationalism across Europe, he sheds new light on how multilingual societies fared in the age of mass politics and ethnic nationalism.

Czech Republic

Bryant, Chad. Prague. Belonging in the Modern City. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) [etc.] 2021. 332 pp. Ill. Maps. $29.95; £23.95; € 27.00.

For many of Prague's inhabitants, belonging has been linked to the nation, embodied in the capital city. Professor Bryant tells the stories of five individuals who, over the last two centuries, forged their own notions of belonging. An aspiring guidebook writer, a German-speaking newspaperman, a Bolshevik carpenter, an actress of mixed heritage who came of age during the Communist terror, and a Czech-speaking Vietnamese blogger. They relate tensions between exclusionary nationalism and on-the-ground diversity. In their struggles against alienation and dislocation, they forged alternative communities in cafes, workplaces, and online. While strolling along park paths, joining political marches, or writing about their lives, these outsiders came to embody a city that, on the surface, was built for others.

Denmark

Christensen, Lars K. Between Denmark and Detroit. Ford Motor Company A/S and the Transformation of Fordism 1919–1966. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus 2021. 377 pp. Ill. Dkr. 399.95. (E-book: Dkr. 249.95.)

In 1919, the Ford Motor Company made Denmark its bridgehead to continental Europe. During the 1920s, Ford's iconic Model T was assembled in Copenhagen, with large quantities exported from there to northeast Europe. The Danish Ford Motor Company successfully continued production until its closure in 1966. Ford's pioneering principles of mass production transcended mere technology. Large-scale serial manufacturing of uniform products also helped realize his vision of an affluent consumer society. But as Fordism was relocated across the Atlantic, the rigorous discipline and fast-paced work routines applied in Detroit were challenged by local traditions, shifting market conditions, and, most notably, a labour movement that was far more powerful than its American counterpart.

Eire – Ireland

Duffy, Damien. Aristocratic Women in Ireland, 1450–1660. The Ormond Family, Power and Politics. [Irish Historical Monograph Series.] The Boydell Press, 2021. xv, 276 pp. £75.00; $120.00. (E-book: £19.99; $24.99.)

This book examines the lives of aristocratic Anglo-Irish women in late medieval and early modern Ireland as illustrated by a cross-generational analysis of women who were born or married into the prominent Ormond family. Outlining and assessing their individual and collective significance in negotiating the preservation and advancement of the family's political, landed, economic, social, and confessional interests, from the instability of the Wars of the Roses, through the vicissitudes of the Tudor, Stuart, Commonwealth, and Restoration eras, Dr Duffy considers the relative significance of the Ormond women's experiences and contributions, exploring their roles in both private dynastic and wider public circles within the broader context of aristocratic families elsewhere in Ireland, England, and continental Europe.

France

Figarol, Thomas. Les diamants de Saint-Claude. Un district industriel à l'âge de la première mondialisation, 1870–1914. Préf. de Jean-Claude Daumas. [Collection Perspectives Historiques, Enterprises.] Presses Universitaires François Rabelais, Tours 2020. 379 pp. Ill. Maps. € 24.00.

From the end of the 1870s, the diamond industry developed in the Upper Jura, providing work for several hundred workers. Dr Figarol explores how this industry developed in this region, where diamonds were previously unknown. Between 1870 and World War I, the diamonds fashioned in the Upper Jura were mined mainly in South Africa and marketed mostly in Birmingham, where the jewellery industry was booming. The diamond companies of the Upper Jura were subcontractors of trading houses in London, Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Paris. The author thus demonstrates how industrial development at a regional scale can figure in a global process and in economic globalization. See also Janiv Stamberger's review in this volume, pp. @@@–@@@.

Nantes révolutionnaire. Ruptures et continuités (1770–1830). Sous la dir. de Yann Lignereux et Hélène Rousteau-Chambon. [Collection Art & Société.] Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Rennes 2021. 175 pp. Ill. Maps. € 22.00.

While the French Revolution is often considered to be a period of radical rupture, strong continuity existed in many ways from the 1770s to the 1830s. The twelve contributions, focusing on different groups, reveal that Nantes is a social, artistic, and cultural example of such continuity. Chapters on trade, religion and secularization, emigration, architecture and engineering, and art and theatre show changes and continuity over time. The book is divided into three parts, each with specific examples of the (lack of) caesuras taking place in Nantes before and after the Revolution.

Steinberg, Ronen. The Afterlives of the Terror. Facing the Legacies of Mass Violence in Postrevolutionary France. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) [etc.] 2019. xiii, 222 pp. Ill. $22.95. (Open Access.)

The Reign of Terror was an episode of state-sanctioned violence in the middle of the revolutionary decade in France. This book explores how those who experienced the mass violence of the French Revolution struggled to come to terms with it. Focusing on the Reign of Terror, Professor Steinberg challenges the presumption that its aftermath was characterized by silence and enforced collective amnesia. Instead, he shows that there were painful, complex, and sometimes surprisingly honest debates about how to deal with its legacies. Drawing on the concept of transitional justice and scholarship on the major traumas of the twentieth century, the author explores how the French tried but ultimately failed to put this difficult past behind them.

Tarrade, Françoise. Léo, André. Une femme entre deux luttes, socialisme et féminisme. Ressouvenances, Coeuvres-et-Valsery 2020. 255 pp. Ill. € 24.99.

Novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and journalist, André Léo (1824–1900) was rediscovered only in the 1970s and 1980s. Born in Lusignan, as Léodile Béra, she first adhered to the ideas advocated by Pierre Leroux, who was among the originators of republican socialism. Her novels became popular during the Second Empire, dealing with themes questioning the codes and conventions of relations between men and women, especially the dominant teaching by the Church. She advocated secular education for children and equality between girls and boys at school and considered socio-political emancipation to be contingent on education. After participating in the Paris Commune, she spent extended periods in exile. This fictionalized biography follows the life of André Léo step by step.

Germany

Bonnell, Andrew. Red Banners, Books and Beer Mugs. The Mental World of German Social Democrats, 1863–1914. [Historical Materialism Book Series, Vol. 220.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2020. viii, 225 pp. € 135,00; $163.00. (E-book: € 135.00; $163.00.)

The German Social Democratic Party was the world's first million-strong political party and was the main force pushing for democratization of Imperial Germany before World War I. This book examines the themes around which the party organized its mainly working-class membership and analyses the experiences and outlook of rank-and-file party members, as well as the party's press and publications. Key themes include the Lassalle cult and leadership, nationalism and internationalism, attitudes to work, the politics of subsistence, the effects of military service, reading, and the diffusion of Marx's ideas, cultural organizations, and socialism and republicanism under the Imperial German state. Before 1914, the party succeeded in addressing workers’ everyday concerns while simultaneously offering the prospect of a better future. See also Anna-Marie Strommenger's review in this volume, pp. @@@–@@@.

Dörre, Klaus. Unter Mitarbeit von Livia Schubert. In der Warteschlange. Arbeiter*innen und die radikale Rechte. Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 2020. 355 pp. € 30.00.

Surveys show that male workers are far above average among those who sympathize with right-wing extremist parties and movements. The causes are a heated debate in the social sciences as well as in the political public. In this book, Professor Dörre presents empirical research, documented from over four decades in – partly union-related – working-class milieus. The author shows that there is no rigid opposition between socio-economic and cultural causes to adopt right-wing views in working-class life. Sympathy for the radical right arises because significant sections of the workforce feel invisible and abandoned by the centre-left parties. A demobilized class society forms the breeding ground that the radical right uses to redefine socio-economic and cultural divisions.

Frölich, Paul. In the Radical Camp. A Political Autobiography 1890–1921. Ed. and with an Introd. by Tosstorff, Reiner, Transl. [from German] by Fernbach, David. [Historical Materialism, Vol. 208.] Brill, Leiden [etc.] 2020 (2013). vi, 263 pp. € 130.00; $157.00. (E-book: € 130.00; $157.00.)

Paul Frölich was a key figure in the formative years of German Communism. From a working-class family, he was active in the Social Democratic Party from the late 1890s, a left radical opposed to World War I, and a founding member of the KPD. His previously unpublished memoir casts valuable new light on a key period, particularly the Comintern intervention that led to the disastrous “March action” of 1921. Describing Frölich's own actions and intentions, this autobiographical manuscript extends from sketches of his childhood and youth, through the formation of the emerging left in the prewar SPD to the first three years of the KPD and demonstrates his influence on situations in his day.

Gorleben-Treck, Der 1979. Anti-Atom-Protest als soziale Bewegung und demokratischer Lernprozess. Hrsg. von Detlef Schmiechen-Ackermann et al. [Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Niedersachsen und Bremen, Bd. 309; Schriften zur Didaktik der Demokratie, Bd. 5.] Wallstein, Göttingen 2020. 366 pp. Ill. € 29.90.

On 31 March 1979, a crowd of 100,000 people gathered in Hanover to protest nuclear power and the construction of the planned nuclear waste disposal site in Gorleben. The rally, which was the culmination of the so-called Gorleben Trek, which had started a few days earlier in Wendland, was also the initial spark for the anti-nuclear protest as a social movement. The 40th anniversary of this event was celebrated in 2019. The eighteen contributions in this volume are divided into three parts. Part One chronicles the protest march from Wendland to Hanover, Part Two is on the anti-nuclear protest as a social movement in European comparison, and Part Three elaborates on how this protest is remembered in media, memories and didactics.

Neubauer, Jan. Arbeiten für den Nationalsozialismus. Die Stadt München und ihr Personal im “Dritten Reich”. [München im Nationalsozialismus. Kommunalverwaltung und Stadtsgesellschaft, Bd. 6.] Wallstein, Göttingen 2020. 452 pp. Ill. € 43.20.

Several thousand workers, employees, and civil servants worked for the city of Munich in the “Third Reich”, helping to implement National Socialist policies on the ground and keep the regime functional until its last days. Not all these employees were convinced National Socialists. In this book, Dr Neubauer examines how the Nazi leadership managed to align the city administration and local authorities with their goals, while showing how the interplay of city personnel policy and a spectrum of self-motivation among the employees, in combination with offers, opportunities, and coercion, mobilized and directed the workforce. Their inclusion in the operating community coincided with exclusion of political opponents.

Rürup, Reinhard. Revolution und Demokratiegründung. Studien zur deutschen Geschichte 1918/19. Hrsg. und mit einem Nachwort von Peter Brandt und Detlef Lehnert. Wallstein, Göttingen 2020. 247 pp. € 25.60. (E-book: € 19.99.)

The November Revolution of 1918/19 led to the overthrow of the monarchy and paved the way for the Weimar Republic. Berlin historian Reinhard Rürup dealt intensively with the issues and results of revolutionary research and the ensuing critical and often polemic discussions. The research he conducted over the course of five decades is now presented in this volume, discussing some of the major issues in the history of the revolution. Examining the basic problems of the revolutionary history in Germany, Rürup addresses contributions on the peasant war, on World War I as a “primal catastrophe” in German history in the twentieth century, and, finally, on the peaceful revolution in the GDR.

Rüther, Daniela. Der “Fall Nährwert”. Ein Wirtschaftskrimi aus der Zeit des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Wallstein, Göttingen 2020. 228 pp. Ill. € 25.60.

The purpose of the Society for the Preservation of Nutritional Values, founded in 1939, was to provide the Wehrmacht with food. The Society was a public-private partnership project of the Army Administration Office with leading German food companies, such as Dr. Oetker, Wilh. Schmitz-Scholl/Tengelmann, and Knorr, and was very lucrative, as sales figures soared shortly after the Society was founded. Based on rich archival material, Dr Rüther demonstrates that protagonists were not just the entrepreneurs and members of the Army High Command, as representatives of the SS rivalling the Wehrmacht also sought to infiltrate the Society in the struggle for the market for canned food in the “Third Reich”.

Schule, Stadt macht. Schulentwicklungen im “Soziallabor” der Bundes-republik, 1945 bis 1980. Hrsg. von Alexander Kraus und Sabine Reh. [Stadt Zeit Geschichte, Bd. 4.] Wallstein, Göttingen 2020. 284 pp. Ill. € 24.70.

Wolfsburg, once planned as a model Nazi city, soon became known among sociologists and urban researchers as the “social laboratory” of the Federal Republic. In recent years, contemporary historical considerations of different aspects of the city's history has been a growing focus. In contrast to other cities and regions, the rapid and continuous population growth prompted the city of Wolfsburg to elaborate the school system. The eight contributions in this volume examine the effects of the specific conditions in Wolfsburg on schools, teachers, and students and bring the interactions between education and urban development into focus in the decades after the Federal Republic of Germany was founded.

Great Britain

Carter, Laura. Histories of Everyday Life. The Making of Popular Social History in Britain, 1918–1979. [Past and Present Book Series.] Oxford University Press, Oxford 2021. xiv, 274 pp. Ill. £75.00.

This study of the production and consumption of popular social history in mid-twentieth century Britain explores how non-academic historians developed a new breed of social history, identified as “history of everyday life”. Being a pedagogical construct based on the perceived educational needs of the new, mass democracy that emerged after 1918, it was popularized to ordinary people in educational settings, through books, in classrooms and museums, and on BBC radio. After tracing its development and dissemination between the 1920s and the 1960s, Dr Carter argues that “history of everyday life” declined in the 1970s, because bottom-up social change rendered this form of popular social history untenable in the changing context of mass education.

Casson, Catherine et al. Compassionate Capitalism. Business and Community in Medieval England. Bristol University Press, Bristol 2020. xvii, 382 pp. Ill. Maps. £30.00. (E-book: £19.99.)

Businesses have been practising compassionate capitalism for nearly a thousand years. Based on historical documents on Cambridge's sophisticated urban property market during the Commercial Revolution in the thirteenth century, the authors examine the role of the family as a business unit in medieval communities, and the extent to which involvement in the property market was connected to other strands of commercial or professional activity. Property acquisition had the potential to instigate wider social tensions, with some growing rich through capital accumulation, while others became poor. In this book, the contributors examine whether successful entrepreneurs and families directed income from property towards local philanthropy to maintain local services and enhance existing infrastructure for the wider community.

Galt, Frances C. Women's Activism Behind the Screens. Trade Unions and Gender Inequality in the British Film and Television Industries. Bristol University Press, Bristol 2021. viii, 241 pp. Ill. £75.00. (E-book: £26.99.)

This book explores the role of trade unions and women's activism in the British film and television industries. Tracing the influence of the union for technicians and other behind-the-camera workers, and examining the relationship between gender and class in the labour movement, Dr Galt draws on archival material and oral history interviews with activists in chronologically ordered chapters, each focusing on a distinct period, to cast new light on women's experiences with union participation and feminism over nine decades. As concerns about the gender pay gap, women's rights, and harassment continue, the author assesses historical progress and points the way to further change in film and TV.

Gopal, Priyamvada. Insurgent Empire. Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent. Verso, London [etc.] 2019. xiii, 607 pp. £25.00. (Paper, E-book: £14.99.)

This book shows how Britain's enslaved and colonial subjects were active agents in their own liberation, shaping British ideas of freedom and emancipation back in the United Kingdom. Dr Gopal examines a century of dissent on the question of empire and shows how British critics of empire were influenced by rebellions and resistance in the colonies. The book is divided into two sections. In Section One, the author discusses two exemplary nineteenth-century crises of rule, in which insurgencies of “sepoys” and freed blacks impacted British oppositional tendencies in different ways. In Section Two, the energizing presence of black and Asian anticolonial campaigners and intellectuals in London as part of a tripartite dynamic are considered.

Philp, Mark. Radical Conduct. Politics, Sociability and Equality in London, 1789–1815. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2020. xi, 273 pp. £75.00. (E-book: $80.00.)

While the French Revolution raised great interest in French radicals and their ideas, London was an important centre of radical intellectual culture as well. Professor Philp sheds new light on major figures of English radicalism and feminism, questioning common assumptions about the literary and political worlds of the 1790s, and revealing a series of tensions between deliberative practices and aspirations of many radicals and the conventions and practices in which their behaviour remained embedded. Exploring these relationships and pressures, he discloses the fractured world of London society and politics and illuminates the tensions between the world that the radicals imagined and sought to bring about, as well as the social conventions and norms of their time that undercut their ambitions. See also Gregory Claeys's review in this volume, pp. @@@–@@@.

Pizzoni, Giada. British Catholic Merchants in the Commercial Age, 1670–1714. [Studies in the Eighteenth Century.] The Boydell Press [etc.], Woodbridge [etc.] 2020. xvi, 214 pp. Maps. $70.00; £120.00. (E-book: $19.99; £24.99.)

British Catholic merchants in the long eighteenth century were seen, on the one hand, as marginal figures in a nation increasingly defining itself by its Protestantism. On the other hand, their Catholicism afforded them access to markets and contacts overseas that their Protestant competitors found increasingly difficult to access. Drawing on the business papers of one prominent Catholic merchant family, Dr Pizzoni maps a complex network of merchants emanating from trading houses in London, Cadiz, and St Malo and linking Britain and Ireland, continental Europe, the Levant, and colonial America. She reveals the high level of cooperation between these Catholic houses and their Protestant trading partners and the growing role of smuggling and privateering.

Social Divisions. Inequality and Diversity in Britain. Fourth Edition. Ed. by Payne, Geoff and Harrison, Eric. Policy Press, Bristol [etc.] 2020. xiv, 428 pp. £29.99. (E-book: £29.99.)

Revised, restructured, and updated to reflect the latest data and debates, this new edition offers an accessible account of the major social divisions that structure social life. The eighteen contributions in this book are divided into four parts: the persistence of social divisions; social structures and inequalities; social divisions; and the body and inclusion, exclusion and inequality. Social divisions place us in groups with others like ourselves and differentiate us from groups of people unlike us in terms of class, gender, ethnicity, and age, forming an interrelated structure of social inequality and diversity. As such, the perspective of social divisions provides a powerful framework and focus for understanding Britain today.

Italy

Cerotto, Marco. Raniero Panzieri e i “Quaderni rossi”. Alle radici del neomarxismo italiano. Derive Approdi, Rome 2021. 138 pp. € 10.00.

Raniero Panzieri is one of the main intellectuals and cultural organizers of the post-World War II Italian labour movement. In the 1950s, he was a leader of the Socialist Party and director of “World workers”, a proponent of a rereading of Marx, of whose work he translated the second volume of Capital. Moving to Turin, he teamed up with the Einaudi publishing house to launch the magazine Quaderni rossi, which brought forth the New Left and Italian political workerism. Panzieri's rejection of “objectivist” ideologies, or the exaltation of machines and technologies conceived as neutral tools, reveals the need to analyse the development of capitalist relations of production in the light of workers’ struggles during the era of the “economic miracle”.

Facing the Crisis. Ethnographies of Work in Italian Industrial Capitalism. Ed. by D'Aloisio, Fulvia and Ghezzi, Simone. [Dislocations.] Berghahn Books, New York [etc.] 2020. 211 pp. Ill. $135.00; £99.00. (E-book: $29.95.)

Among the European Union, Italy has experienced the most devastating effects of the 2008 economic crisis. Exploring how and why this happened, this volume brings together ethnographic material from anthropological research projects conducted in various Italian industrial locations. The seven contributions in this volume analyse enterprises and work processes, considering local contexts, conflicts, and institutional synergies, and the social relations that the actors build inside and outside the companies. Highlighting problematic aspects such as the disappearance of tasks and competences, redefinition of roles, and new job duties, they also analyse practices of transformation and adjustment, and systems of relationships and values put in place by male and female workers.

Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Suny, Ronald Grigor. Stalin. Passage to Revolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) 2020. xix, 857 pp. Ill. Maps. $39.95: £35.00. (Paper: $29.95; £25.00.)

This biography of Joseph Stalin, from his birth to the October Revolution of 1917, is an account of how a young man from the provinces of tsarist Russia was transformed into a cunning outlaw who would become one of the most ruthless dictators. Drawing on new archival evidence from Stalin's early years in the Caucasus, Professor Suny charts the metamorphosis from his boyhood as a Georgian nationalist and romantic poet, through his harsh years of schooling, to his commitment to violent tactics in the underground movement to topple the tsarist autocracy. Stalin emerges as an ambitious climber within the Bolshevik ranks, a resourceful leader, and a writer and thinker who was deeply engaged in some of the most incendiary debates of his time.

Spain

Evans, Danny. Revolution and the State. Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War 1936–1939. AK Press, Chico (CA) [etc.] 2020. xi, 267 pp. Ill. $20.00.

In this book, the processes of revolution and state reconstruction that took place in the Republican zone during the Spanish Civil War are analysed, focusing on the radical anarchists who sought to advance the revolutionary agenda, conflicting with the leaders of their own organizations, who had joined the coalition government to reconstruct the state following its near collapse in July 1936. This process implied participation in the organs of governance as well as in the ideological reconstitution of the Republic. Using original sources, Dr Evans shows that opposition to this process was broader and more ideologically consistent than has hitherto been assumed, and that, despite its heterogeneity, it was united around a common revolutionary programme.

Faber, Sebastiaan. Exhuming Franco. Spain's Second Transition. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville (TN) 2021. 276 pp. $14.95. (E-book: $9.99.)

In October 2019, the remains of military dictator Franco were removed from the national monument in which they had been buried. Some regarded the exhumation as confirmation that Spain has long been a modern, consolidated democracy. In this book, Professor Faber covers all major facets of the Francoist legacy today, combining research and analysis with reporting and interviews. Though critical of Spanish democracy, he makes clear that Spain is one of many countries facing difficult questions about a conflictive past, while the rise of a new, right-wing nationalist revisionism across the West threatens to undo much of the progress made in the past couple of decades, when it comes to issues of historical justice.

Money, Politics and Corruption in Modern Spain. Ed. by de Riquer, Borja, Toledano, Lluís Ferran, and Rubí, Gemma. [The Cañada Blanch/Sussex Academic Studies on Contemporary Spain.] Sussex Academic Press, Eastbourne 2021. xvii, 201 pp. £70.00; $84.95.

This book examines political corruption in contemporary Spain and its former colonies. Key to the investigation are the interrelations established between political powers and different economic interest groups. Frequent corrupt practices are bribery, favouritism, tax fraud, embezzlement of public funds, and electoral corruption. These behaviours exist historically both in continental Europe and in Great Britain but with notable differences regarding the impunity of crimes. In nine contributions, the authors explain the impact and circumstances of corruption in business, the economy and national and local administrations, covering a broad historical spectrum, including the imperial penetration of corruption in Restoration Bourbon Spain, hunger and bribery under the Franco regime, and the consequences of the financial crisis of 2008.