The Political Consecration of Community in Mauritius, 1948–68

The paper is concerned with the problem, amelioration and contestation of a ‘majority community’ in a decolonising political culture. The late-colonial administration in Mauritius employed repeated and increasingly elaborate constitutional innovation to counter-balance the perceived inability of Mauritians to distinguish between political preference and community affiliation. These measures raised the constitutional profile of the ‘community’, ostensibly in order to offset it politically. The colonial state's determination to derive community definitions from census data was soon frustrated by the calculated identification and sensitisation of corporate identities by political entrepreneurs. The definition and defence of community became a compelling preoccupation of post-war political campaigns on the island. However, this communalism – misunderstood and condemned by Imperial social science as apolitical or even antithetical to politics – concealed a political culture of considerable flexibility and pragmatism. At no point did the colonial administration address the fact that the locus for the generation of communalised political propaganda lay in a political rivalry for leadership of one community – that of the Hindu Indo-Mauritians.     

I hear dead people: science,technology and a resonant universe

In recent years the simplistic categorization of Victorian practices and beliefs as either ‘occult’ or ‘scientific’ has been undercut by a series of revisionist analyses that point to an over-arching concern with influence and effect, a concern that was manifest across the sciences and humanities and beyond into popular culture. This paper sets out to further problematize such a distinction via an exploration of twentieth-century research into electronic voice phenomena (EVP), celebrated by its adherents as proof of a spiritual plane of existence beyond the readily observable or audible. In doing so, I focus on the work of one of the most active EVP researchers, Konstantin Raudive, as well as the web pages of the World Instrumental Transcommunication organization, drawing out the pivotal role of technology in the construction of this form of knowledge and some of its associated imaginative geographies. In and of itself, EVP research tells us much about the authoritative status of cause and effect explanatory frameworks, as well as the innocence accorded technological apparatus. An examination of how EVP has been received within academia, however, also reveals how, in our ‘post’-positivist academic environment, efforts are still being made to locate explanation within the human subject, as the charge is made that EVP researchers suffer from a logocentrism or are witness to Freud's doppelgänger. In response to these critiques, I pose the question: can the willingness of EVP researchers to abandon such human-centered certainties resonate with emergent ‘post-human’ ideas on the nature of explanation itself?     

Gender,Generation, and Race in American Shipyards in the Second World War

Stephen Peter Rosen. War and Human Nature. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 3005. Pp. 211. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by John A. Lynn

Marshall Sahlins. Apologies to Thucydides: Understanding History as Culture and Vice Versa. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Pp. xii, 334. $30.00 (US). Reviewed by K. R. Howe

Joachim Latacz. Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery, trans. Kevin Windle and Rosh Ireland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp.xvii, 342. $96.00 (CDN). Reviewed by Anthony Snodgrass

Angelos Chaniotis. War in the Hellenistic World: A Social and Cultural History.Oxford and Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Pp. xxiii, 308. $27.95 (US). Reviewed by Stanley M. Burstein

S. A. M. Adshead. Tang China: The Rise of the East in World History. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Pp. xvii, 233. $24.95 (US)i paper. Reviewed by Richard von Glahn

Nancy Bisaha.Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004; dist. Toronto: Scholarly Book Services. Pp. 309. $59.95 (US). Reviewed by Jerry Brotton

Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan, eds. Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005; dist. Toronto: Scholarly Book Services. Pp. vi, 346. $55.00 (US); Londa Schiebinger. Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2004. Pp. x, 306. $39–95 (US). Reviewed by John Gascoigne

Paul Douglas Lockhart. Frederik II and the Protestant Cause: Denmark's Role in the Wars of Religion, 1559–1596. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Pp. xxii, 350. €99.00. Reviewed by Robert I. Frost

Ulinka Rublack. Reformation Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xiv, 208. $2.99 (US), paper. Reviewed by R. Po-Chia Hsia

Daniel V. Botsman. Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005. Pp. xiv, 319. $35.00 (US). Reviewed by F. G. Notehelfer

Matthew Glozier. Marshal Schomberg, 1615–1690: “The Ablest Soldier of His Age”. International Soldiering and the Formation of State Armies in Seventeenth-Century Europe. Brighton and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2005. Pp. xxiv, 250. $35.00 (US), paper. Reviewed by David Parrott

Carla Gardina Pestana. The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640–1661. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2004. Pp. xi, 342. $49.95 (US). Reviewed by Luca Codignola

Peter C. Perdue. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005. Pp. xx, 725. $35.00 (US). Reviewed by John W. Dardess

Kathleen Wilson, ed. A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660-1840. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xv, 385. $34-99 (US), paper. Reviewed by J. C. D. Clark

Liam C. Kelley. Beyond the Bronze Pillars: Envoy Poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship. Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and University of Hawaii Press, 2005. Pp. xiii, 267. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by Nola Cooke

Andrew Porter.Religion Versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700-1914. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2004; dist. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Pp. viii, 373- $29–95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Terence Ranger

P. J. MARSHALL. The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and America, c.1750–1783. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. vi, 398. $90.00 (CDN); Steven Sarson.British America, 1500–1800: Creating Colonies, Imagining an Empire. London: Hodder Arnold, 2005; dist. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. xix, 332. $45.50 (CDN), paper. Reviewed by Trevor Burnard

C. A. Bayly.The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons. Maiden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. Pp. xxiv, 540. $34.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Kenneth Pomeranz

Robert Galois, ed. A Voyage to the North West Side of America: The Journals of James Colnett, 1786–89. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004. Pp. xiii, 441. $95.00 (CDN). Reviewed by Ken S. Coates

Bernard Porter.The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xxii, 475. $71.50 (CDN). Reviewed by H. V. Bowen

Stuart Semmel.Napoleon and the British. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004. Pp. xii, 354. $40.00 (US). Reviewed by Neville Thompson

Bruce Mazlish and Akira Iriye, eds. The Global History Reader. London and New York: Roudedge, 2005. Pp. x, 302. $17.99 (US) paper; Geoffrey Jones. Multinationals and Global Capitalism: From the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xi, 340. $195.00 (CDN), paper. Reviewed by Alfred E. Eckes

Zachary Lockman. Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xxi, 308. $30–95 (US), paper. Reviewed by James Jankowski

Gerard Moran. Sending out Ireland's Poor: Assisted Emigration to North America in the Nineteenth Century. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004; dist. Portland, OR: ISBS. Pp. 252. $55.00 (US). Reviewed by Tyler Anbinder

Erik Gilbert.Dhows and the Colonial Economy of Zanzibar, 1860–1970. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004. Pp. xiii, 176. $44.95 (US). Reviewed by Laura Fair

Michael R. Auslin. Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2004. Pp. viii, 263. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by Michael A. Barnhart

Frank J. Merli. The Alabama, British Neutrality, and the American Civil War, ed. David M. Fahey. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004. Pp. xx, 223. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by Brian Holden Reid

Robert T. Foley. German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870–1916. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. x, 301. $70.00 (US). Reviewed by Holger H. Herwig

Roger Owen. Lord Cromer: Victorian Imperialist, Edwardian Proconsul. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xxi, 436. $75.00 (CDN), cloth; $45.00 (CDN), paper. Reviewed by Saul Kelly

Theodore Huters. Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005. Pp. ix, 370. $55.00 (US). Reviewed by Edward Rhoads

Stephen G. Craft. V. K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Pp. xii, 330. $40.00 (US). Reviewed by Stephen R. Mackinnon

Noenoe K. Silva. Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 3004. Pp. x, 260. $21.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by William E. H. Tagupa

Anne Perez Hattori. Colonial Dis-ease: US Navy Health Policies and the Chamorros of Guam, 1898–1941. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004. Pp. xiv, 239. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by Roger Dingman

Patricia E. Roy. The Oriental Question: Consolidating a White Man'lar;85.00 (CDN), cloth; $29.95 (CDNK paper. Reviewed by Hilary K. Blair

Maureen Healy. Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xv, 333. $75.00 (US). Reviewed by C. M. Peniston-Bird

Mona L. Siegel. The Moral Disarmament of France: Education, Pacifism, and Patriotism, 1914–1940. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xiv, 317. $75.00 (US). Reviewed by Robert J. Young

Thomas Boghardt. Spies of the Kaiser: German Covert Operations in Great Britain during the First World War Era. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Pp. xiv, 224. $69.95 (US)- Reviewed by David Stevenson

Ben Shepherd. War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2004. Pp. vi, 300. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by Mark von Hagen

Yasir Suleiman. A War of Words: Language and Conflict in the Middle East. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xiii, 270. $70.00 (US), cloth; $27.00 (US), paper. Reviewed by Eliezer Ben-Rafael

Seth Jacobs. America's Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and US Intervention in Southeast Asia, 1950–1957. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2004. Pp. x, 381. $22.95 (US)i paper. Reviewed by Andrew Preston

Wilson P. Dizard, Jr. Inventing Public Diplomacy: The Story of the US Information Agency. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 2004. Pp. xv, 255. $49–95 (US). Reviewed by Scott Lucas

Gunnar Skogmar. The United States and the Nuclear Dimension of European Integration. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Pp. xi, 331. $65.00 (US). Reviewed by Mervyn O'Driscoll

Philippe Roger. The American Enemy: A Story of French Anti-Americanism, trans. Sharon Bowman. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Pp. xviii, 518. $.35.00 (US). Reviewed by Donald Reid

Christopher Endy. Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004; dist. Toronto: SBS. Pp. xii, 286. $32.95 (CDN). Reviewed by Frank Costigliola

David Easter. Britain and the Confrontation with Indonesia, 1960–1966. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004. Pp. ix, 257. $65.00 (US). Reviewed by Howard Dick

Richard K. Herrmann and Richard Ned Lebow, eds. Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International Relations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Pp. viii, 248. $24.95 (US)? paper. Reviewed by William D.Jackson

James Barber. Mandela's World: The International Dimension of South Africa's Political Revolution, 1990–99. Athens: Ohio University Press and Oxford: James Currey, 2004. Pp. ix, 214. $24.95 (US) paper. Reviewed by Jeremy Seekings

Anthony James Joes. Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Pp. 351. $35.00 (US). Reviewed by Ian F. W. Beckett

Anne-Marie Slaughter. New World Order. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004. Pp. xviii, 341. $29.95 (US). Reviewed by Tim Dunne

Ian Clark. Legitimacy in International Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. viii, 278. $90.00 (CDN). Reviewed by Ian Hurd

Frederick Cooper. Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005. Pp. xii, 327. $19.95 (US) paper. Reviewed by Dane Kennedy

Jack Goody. Capitalism and Modernity: The Great Debate. Cambridge and Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, Polity Press, 2004. Pp. vii, 200. $21.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Thomas D. Hall

David L. Rousseau. Democracy and War: Institutions, Norms, and the Evolution of International Conflict. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. Pp. xv, 384. $65.00 (US). Reviewed by Miriam Fendius Elman

Michael Mann. The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. x, 580. $24.00 (US), paper. Reviewed by Milton J. Esman     

The juridification of nightlife and alternative culture: two UK case studies

Nightlife, the night‐time economy and ‘alternative’ culture have been a source of academic contestation over recent years, with differing views as to the direction and meaning of the contemporary drift of law and policy that serve to regulate this area of social and cultural life. Further, there have so far been few attempts to theorise the nature of change. This article aims to highlight some key theoretical underpinnings that can facilitate an understanding of the kinds of regulatory innovation that pervade nightlife and alternative cultural forms. Using two case studies – free or alternative festivals and Form 696 – it specifically draws on the concepts of disciplinary power and juridification as a way of theorising both the acceleration of regulatory forms and its impact on the production of alternative culture.     

Towards an ‘optics of power’: technologies of surveillance and discipline and case-loading midwifery practice in New Zealand

Midwives in New Zealand achieved professional autonomy in 1990 with an amendment to the Nurses Act 1977. Predicated on a natural approach to childbirth it was envisaged that midwifery would counter the trend of increasing medicalisation of childbirth. Some 20 years later, we continue to be concerned by increasing rates of intervention in childbirth including caesarean section operations. Midwifery practice is no longer supervised in a hierarchical arrangement with the obstetrician at its peak, however, we suggest that new and more subtle disciplinary mechanisms have come to the fore post-1990. Drawing on Foucault's concepts of the ‘medical gaze’ and the ‘panopticon’ we describe the ways in which midwifery practice (and through them the bodies of childbearing women) continues to be disciplined to conform to obstetric norms.     

Merchants,Malaria and Manliness: A Patient’s Experience of Tropical Disease

From 1862 until 1874, John Holt lived on the island of Bioko (Fernando Pó), laying the groundwork for a company that would become one of the most influential trading houses in western Africa. During his time on the coast, Holt was almost continually ill with malaria and other tropical diseases, and his illnesses had a major impact on how he experienced and interpreted his life and work in Africa. This paper draws on Holt’s private papers, as well as merchant memoirs and the historiographies of medicine, hydrotherapy and masculinity to explore merchants’ views of illness and how they were deeply embedded in broader assumptions about manliness during a time of rapid imperial expansion.     

Lucrecia Martel’s Nueva Argirópolis: Rivers,Rumours and Resistance

This article analyses Lucrecia Martel’s 2010 short film Nueva Argirópolis, which was commissioned by the Argentine Ministry of Culture as part of the Bicentennial celebrations. It explains how the film both inhabits yet contests the discourses of the modern nation state underpinning those celebrations, in particular through its representation of conflict between the state and indigenous groups. Its representation draws on images proposed by an earlier work, Sarmiento’s utopian tract of 1850, Argirópolis, images including the river and the island which in Martel’s film undergo a resignification, which overturns Sarmiento’s understanding of relationships between geography, capital, nation and ethnicity. Political and cultural debates of particular relevance to indigenous communities, such as access to land, as well as the way the indigenous are represented in state discourses, surface obliquely in this short film, which both represents diegetically the circulation and relay of rumours of indigenous resistance, as well as suggesting these formally through a soundtrack suffused with murmurs and barely audible sounds. The unsubtitled words of indigenous actors, as well as the authorities’ attempts at investigation of indigenous political activity through staging encounters of (failed) interpretation, and the subversive mimicry by indigenous activists of hegemonic ideas of national foundation are themselves muted, rumoured suggestions of a resistance which always lies just outside this short film’s visual grasp.