Was there an Amerindian Atlantic? Reflections on the limits of a historiographical concept

Proponents of the increasingly prominent “Atlantic history” paradigm argue that ocean-centered, transnational perspectives shed crucial light on connections which tied together Europe, Africa and the Americas in the early modern period, and which older forms of national and imperial histories obscured. In spite of these scholars’ calls for the construction of a truly inclusive history of the Atlantic basin and all its inhabitants, Amerindian peoples have received relatively little attention in the work of Atlantic historians. This article examines the place Amerindians have held in scholarship on the early modern Atlantic. It argues that it is precisely because Atlantic history has been constructed from fundamentally Eurocentric categories like transatlantic empire and commerce that it has accorded little space to Amerindians. It points to this absence as an important shortcoming of such approaches, and suggests that Atlantic history will have to be reconceptualized in fundamental ways in order to bring Amerindians fully into the picture as historical actors.     

Small but powerful: networking strategies and the trade business of Habsburg-Italian merchants in Cadiz in the second half of the eighteenth century

Abstract

Lombardian merchants played an important role in long-distance trade between the Italian and the Iberian Peninsulas since the Middle Ages, in contrast to widely held beliefs and historiographical neglect. The eighteenth century witnessed the intensification of this role. Instead of being worse off after Lombardy passed from Spanish sovereignty to being ruled from Vienna, the Lombardian mercantile community in Cadiz made use of the institutional framework offered by the imperial maritime policy of the Habsburgs, which compensated for a lack of their own commercial institutional framework. Making use of different social strategies, which combined kinship, cultural and transnational co-operation, Lombardian merchants skilfully connected Spanish America with Habsburg Central Europe through the Mediterranean, despite the fact that their degree of formal integration into the Spanish trading system was limited. This occurred in the episode of growth that followed the Bourbon reforms in Spain after the 1760s. Although their business networks reached a wide geographical area, Lombardian merchants also acted as intermediaries for the incorporation of the Triestinian traders into long-distance maritime trade networks, and therefore contributed to linking both ends of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.     

State Discourses of Indigenous “Inclusion”: Identity and Representation in the Arctic

Arctic decision‐making processes are often praised for including Indigenous peoples. Yet, state practices of “inclusion” may also inadvertently delimit what can be meaningfully said from a stage already set for a highly specific role as “Arctic voices”. This paper draws on reflections offered by Norwegian and Icelandic state personnel on the meanings of Arctic statehood and identity, showing how often well‐meaning attempts to “include” may serve the includer more than the included—indeed, may serve to uphold the same power structures they seemingly seek to improve. In so doing, the paper contributes both to understandings of Arctic statecraft and to work seeking the “peopling” of geopolitical concepts such as the state. By focusing on the operation of dominant discourses, the paper argues that current prescribed performances of “inclusion” are not enough in a region marked by histories of dispossession, assimilation, and colonisation.     

Contemporary French philosophy

Scholarship on the French Atlantic empire traditionally and uniquely focuses upon Africa as a source of slave labour for the American colonies. However, this article explores how, in the second half of the eighteenth century, Africa emerged as a viable alternative for colonial expansion. Uncertainties about a colonial future in the New World directed French expansionist attention away from the Americas and towards the African continent, expanding its role beyond a source of labour. The intellectual underpinnings for a transfer of empire first surfaced within the Physiocratic School of political economy. The article examines the emergence of such ideas and their reception within the colonial administration of the Ancien Régime. It also shows how expansion into Africa became central to the imperial agenda of the first French Republic. Exploring Africa as a substitute to colonial America helps expand the lens through which Africa is examined as part of the Atlantic World. It also reveals continuities between Ancien Régime colonialism and later French republican imperialism.     

Some Nahua concepts in postconquest guise

Merchant activity was a central element in the networks and webs of relationship over the Atlantic in the eighteenth century. When closely analyzed, however, daily merchant practice does not fit easily into regional categories, whether Atlantic or imperial. Merchant life was heavily dependent on the building of chains of trusted correspondents, who would both be able to guarantee adequate quality and satisfactory pricing upon acquisition or sale of the goods traded, and willing to extend credit in a trading world in which all operations included long time lags before final payment. For each trading center, the addition of such chains of correspondents constituted networks both supra-regional, covering the entire world, and sub-regional, specializing in some areas more than others according to prevalent political-imperial pressures. It is argued that the common element in all these networks, i.e. merchant development, is best identified as a worldwide, but Europe-dominated social process underpinning much of what is usually meant by “Atlantic” history.     

Between Regionalization and Centralization: The Creation of the Musée Léopold II in Elisabethville (Musée national de Lubumbashi), Belgian Congo (1931–1961)

Since “museumland” was revisited in the 1980s, different authors have studied the history of colonial museums in Europe within a broader discussion on colonial bias, the creation of traditions and the theory of representation. It has become clear, for example, how African utensils were exported to Europe, where they were exhibited as curiosa, ethnographical objects or art. But what happened when the very notion of the museum was exported back to Africa? Who created these institutes and in what context? Was the relationship between colonizers and colonized altered? Did the “social life” of the objects on show change? And what was the relationship between the “old” museums in Europe and the “new” ones created in the colony? These questions have rarely been studied. In this article, the creation of the Musée Léopold II will be used as a basis to offer insight into the links between colonial “science” and “policy”, which proved not to be as monolithic as often portrayed, but rather were complex amalgamations of different opinions and even conflicting interests.     

“Playing the away game”: AFRICOM in the Sahara-Sahel

This article presents evidence to revise hypotheses of how biopolitical strategies are deployed in contemporary global security regimes, and with what effects. It is based on research into the US military's Africa Command (AFRICOM). Elaborating on two concepts that Michel Foucault hypothesized in his Security, Territory, Population lectures –the “people” and the “milieu” –I argue that AFRICOM's strategy is informed by biopolitical rationalities, but that this does not necessarily situate African populations as either part of a population to secure or as a threat to that population. Instead, I suggest that (unlike in the urban and national contexts that Foucault analyzed) biopolitical security strategies at the global scale are characterized by varying degrees of distance between the way(s) of life they aim to defend and what Foucault termed the “field of intervention” or “milieu” that they target. This hypothesis, and its elaboration through the case of AFRICOM, contributes to efforts to historicize and spatialize accounts of contemporary biopolitics. Specifically, it suggests that we can better understand the production of very uneven geographies of security and insecurity by attending to the relationships between the ways of life being secured and the (potentially distant) material contexts situated as relevant “fields of intervention”.     

POLICY ISSUES IN AMERICAN SECURITY POLICY AND POLICY-MAKING USING AND CONTROLLING NEW WEAPONS

NATO may be confronting a crisis over the cruise missiles. Some allies may seek longer-range, nuclear-armed missile which could enable them to strike at Soviet MR/IRBMs and at other targets inside the USSR; others (along with many Americans) aim at restricting both the range and the missions of cruise missiles. The first option could jeopardize detente, inhibit further progress in SALT and conceivably weaken American control over the uses of nuclear weapons in time of war. The second could cause strains between the United States and its European allies. The best policy would seem to be to (1) delay any decision on cruise missile development and deployment in Europe; (2) seek a two-year freeze on all deployment of new nuclear delivery vehicles in Central Europe and of additional Soviet SS-20 IRBMs; (3) use this “breathing space” to seek agreement on the limitation of cruise missiles, MR/IRBMs and other “gray area” weapons in the region “from the Atlantic to the Urals.”     

Gaming on the edge: Mobile labour and global talent in Atlantic Canada's video game industry

Diminishing returns and advances in telecommunications have prompted large video game firms to seek new locations, outsource production, and develop niche studios, including on Canada's East Coast. In this paper, we examine emerging occupational cultures and trace the origins and evolution of video game production in Canada's Atlantic provinces—a critical yet peripheral space economy in the gaming sector. Our findings are drawn from 30 interviews with gameworkers, studio managers, government officials, and other industry experts. We find this industry to be driven by the confluence of three major factors: (i) provincial governments have supported video game development as a strategic industry via financial incentives; (ii) firms are benefiting from a return migration effect and are repatriating Atlantic Canadian talent from media hubs by selling “home,” work‐life balance, and an alternative to the punishing gamework culture associated with Silicon Valley; and (iii) post‐secondary institutions in the region have improved their talent pipelines through computer science, digital media, and video game development programs.     

Reflections of the “Roving Britishers”: British Travel Writing on Canada 1900–1915

This article analyzes a selection of travel accounts by nine British authors who journeyed across Canada between 1900 and 1914. The monographs, all published in London, purported to present authentic and up-to-date observations of Canada, the eldest Dominion in the Imperial “family,” to British and Canadian audiences. Additional goals of their narratives, and less clearly acknowledged, were to convince English Canadians of the value of strengthening a British–Canadian identity and remaining within the British Empire. To that end, the narratives explore strikingly similar themes, including anxieties surrounding immigration and the United States threat to Canada, while reinforcing notions of Empire as an indissoluble family. The article illustrates how travel narratives reflect psychological as well as physical journeys and are thus valuable windows on complex cultural encounters among the British and Canadians in this period.     

Is State Gambling Policy “Morality Policy”? Framing Debates Over State Lotteries

The politics of so‐called “morality policies” including same‐sex marriage, abortion, gun control, and gambling have captured the attention of both the public and political scientists in recent years. Many studies have argued that morality policy constitutes a category of public policy that has distinctive characteristics (such as technical simplicity and less amenability to compromise) compared with non‐morality policy. However, in a recent contribution Mucciaroni argues that morality “policy” should instead be viewed primarily as a strategy for framing issues. Drawing on examples from the debate over gay rights, Mucciaroni finds that opponents focus on rational‐instrumental or procedural frames more so than engaging in “morality talk.” In this study, I seek to extend Mucciaroni's analysis to the issue of lottery gambling in the United States. Drawing on data from legislative records in four states, I find that lottery critics mostly avoid private behavior‐based morality arguments. Instead, they criticize government's role in sanctioning lotteries and denounce the negative consequences of gambling. Supporters, meanwhile, emphasize the potential benefits of lottery creation and the importance of allowing the state public a voice on the issue. The results indicate that rational‐instrumental arguments coexist alongside morality talk in state lottery debates, and that private behavior morality frames are on the decline while governmental morality frames are on the rise.     

商帮史研究中商人身份的判定问题——以徽商研究为例

准确判定商人身份,是商帮史研究立论的前提和基础。在以往的徽商研究中,对徽商身份的判定存在三个值得注意的普遍性问题:一是将"徽商之子"视作"徽商",其结果是对明清士商关系和商人社会地位变化的讨论失去了应有的意义;二是"徽商"概念扩大化,即将历史上的宁国商人等其他地域商人纳入徽商研究范畴,或将非徽商资料误为徽商资料,从而模糊了徽商研究的学术边界;三是将"徽商"与"徽州籍商人"等同起来,从而忽视了商人的自我认同,或将"徽商"概念推及长期与徽州几无联系的徽商后裔,从而无助于揭示徽商问题的本质。在今后的商帮史研究中,研究者应高度重视对商人身份的判定,严格恪守史学的求真原则和历史原则,同时也应注意制度与"人"的结合。     

Le postmoderne expliqué aux enfants. Correspondance 1982–85

In the early modern period, the European concept of “nobility” was rarely used to describe the upper classes of the societies born in the British or in the French Americas. The presence of French nobles in New France or in the French West Indies and the emergence of the native gentry in parts of the British Empire have been much studied. But the social impact of elites has not been fully recognized by Atlantic historians—due, perhaps, to a bias towards “authentically” New World systems of social recognition based upon wealth, emphasizing supposedly greater possibilities of social mobility. This paper takes a comparative perspective to the social meanings of being a noble or being a gentleman in both empires. It concludes that there were few substantive differences between French nobles living in the metropolis and in the colonies because legal definitions of the French noblesse were strictly determined by the Crown. The essence of the French nobility was, in theory, the same in Versailles, in a remote rural parish of France or in Quebec. The story was very different for British colonial gentlemen who encountered countless difficulties to be socially accepted by their metropolitan counterparts. The paper explores the consequences of the chasm between British metropolitan and colonial upper classes and assesses solutions taken by colonial gentlemen to be fully integrated in the gentry of Great Britain.     

Creating Colonial Christian Cultures in Canterbury: St. Augustine's Missionary College*

Throughout the nineteenth century, religion and Empire became increasingly fused in the Victorian imagination through a lens of providentialism that saw Empire as an instrument for worldwide Christianisation. This article uses the case of St. Augustine's Missionary College to explore the creation of a distinctly colonial Christian culture in Canterbury. This culture was both created and curated through networks and connections made between Canterbury and colonial dioceses, the imagined world of letters fostered by the College, and the presence in Canterbury of “foreign students” whose apparently exemplary lives brought the Empire home to the “garden of England.” Reinforcing the important point that Britain was part of a mutually-constituted Empire, this article demonstrates how colonial cultures in Britain could be sustained through various means–cultural, social, and here institutional. It moreover uses the case of St. Augustine's to showcase the increasingly self-conscious links between religion and Empire within Established Anglicanism as colonisation forged the city of Canterbury into the head of a colonial and global Anglican Communion.     

The politics of the Balfour Declaration: Nationalism,imperialism and the limits of Zionist-British cooperation

This article proposes a new perspective on the much debated question of why the British government published the Balfour Declaration? It argues that the Declaration was published as part of the struggle that took place in the course of the First World War between two rival factions in the British government on the question of the future of the Ottoman Empire: the “radical” faction that strove to partition the Ottoman Empire as a means to extend the British imperial hold on the Middle East, and the “reformist” faction that opposed this. By promising to turn Palestine into “a national home for the Jewish people” the Declaration advanced the radical agenda of dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and expansion of British imperialism in the Middle East.     

From the “Cleavage” of Central Asia to Greater Khurasan: History and Historiography of Late Antique East Iran

The history of Central Asia is normally considered peripheral to those of the civilizations that surrounded it—Marshal Hodgson termed it a civilizational “cleavage.” However, in the early Islamic period this region, particularly its southern and western parts, emerges as the dominant entity of Greater Khurasan to play a central role in the affairs of the Islamic Caliphate. This paper considers the history of the region, dubbed East Iran, before this rise to importance and proposes a different historiographical approach focusing on the developments in East Iran during the period of late antiquity and in interaction with the Sasanian Empire. It is proposed that the Greater Khurasan emerged as the result of the merging of the socio-cultural worlds of East Iran and that of the Sasanian Empire.     

Arcangelo Ghisleri and the “Right to Barbarity”: Geography and Anti‐colonialism in Italy in the Age of Empire (1875–1914)

This paper addresses the work of early critics of colonialism and Eurocentrism within Italian geography in the Age of Empire. At that time, a minority but rather influential group of Italian scholars, influenced by the international debates promoted by the anarchist geographers Reclus, Kropotkin and Me?nikov, fumed publicly at Italy's colonial ambitions in Africa. Their positions assumed, at least in the case of Arcangelo Ghisleri, the character of a radical critique of both political and cultural European hegemony. These approaches were linked to a similar critique of “internal colonialism”, both Austrian in the Italian‐speaking regions of Trento and Trieste, and Piedmontese in southern Italy. Based on primary sources, and drawing on the international literature on imperial geography and colonial and postcolonial sciences, this paper conjures up the Italian example to discuss how some European geographers of the Age of Empire were also early critics of racism, colonialism and chauvinism, and how these historical experiences can serve current debates on critical, radical and anarchist geographies.     

Imagining an Imperial Modernity: Universities and the West African Roots of Colonial Development

This article takes the formation and work of the ‘Elliot’ Commission on Higher Education in West Africa (1943–45) to reconsider the roots of British colonial development. Late colonial universities were major development projects, although they have rarely been considered as such. Focusing particularly on the Nigerian experience and the controversy over Yaba Higher College (founded 1934), the article contends that late colonial plans for universities were not produced in Britain and then exported to West African colonies. Rather, they were formed through interactions between agendas and ideas with roots in West Africa, Britain and elsewhere. These debates exhibited asymmetries of power but produced some consensus about university development. African and British actors conceptualised modern education by combining their local concerns with a variety of supra-local geographical frames for development, which included the British Empire and the individual colony. The British Empire did not in this case forestall development, but shaped the ways in which development was conceived.     

Empire Day in Africa: Patriotic Colonial Childhood,Imperial Spectacle and Nationalism in Nigeria, 1905–60

Anyone born or raised in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, after 1960 would remember Children’s Day, observed every 27 May. However, few knew that it started as Empire Day in the first decade of the twentieth century—fewer are aware that it was a significant symbol of imperial domination, decolonised from the late 1950s to align with postcolonial ideals of self-determination and nation-building. African historical research has examined the sites and symbols (such as western biomedicine and education, police and prison, and indirect rule) through which British imperialism established and maintained itself in Africa. However, little is known about Empire Day, an invented tradition of ritualistic yearly veneration of the glory of the British Empire, which was first celebrated in Britain in 1904 and was immediately introduced to the African colonies. In this article, I examine the story of Empire Day as a significant colonial spectacle and performance of imperial authority in Nigeria, and how it assumed new meanings and functions among diverse groups of Nigerian children and adults. Empire Day, more than any other commemoration, placed children at the centre of imperialism and recognised them as a vital element in the sustenance of an imagined citizenship of the British Empire.