Conquest,pestilence and demographic collapse in the early Spanish Philippines

Documentary evidence for the demographic impact of Spanish conquest and colonial rule in the Philippines suggests that the pre-Spanish population was about 1.5 million. This is higher than previous estimates and implies that the decline in the early colonial period was greater than often supposed. However, the decline was lower than that associated with Spanish conquest in the Americas. The more moderate impact of Old World diseases in the Philippines cannot be attributed to immunity that Filipinos had acquired through contacts with Asia in pre-Spanish times, but to the low population density and difficult communications between and within the islands that impeded their spread. Despite new colonial policies aimed at the more peaceful acquisition of new territories, conquest in the Philippines was accompanied by considerable bloodshed. However, in the longer term the impact of colonial rule was moderated by the limited Spanish presence that resulted from the remoteness of the islands from Spain and the limited opportunities there for wealth creation, notably in the form of precious minerals.     

Active citizenship and the governmentality of local lesbian and gay politics

This paper explores the relationship between new forms of speakability and continuing unthinkability in the context of British local government lesbian and gay work, particularly post-1997. The paper argues new municipal speech acts ushered in progressive modes of sexual citizenship; at the same time, local government's refusal to think hard, deeply or critically, limited the modes of active citizenship made possible. The paper addresses the easing out of active citizenship through an analysis of local government's self-care and its intensification of firewalls – firewalls which restricted the possibility of certain non-state forces guiding from ‘a distance’.     

Travel Writing,Ethnography, and the Colony-Centric Voyage of the Jesuit Relations from New France

This article argues that the Jesuit Relations, commonly read as the accounts of daring French travelers to the New World in the seventeenth century, must also be understood in light of the colony-centric circulation of the texts. In a step that has never before been considered part of the process through which the Relations collected and circulated information, some—and perhaps all—of the texts were sent back to Canada after being edited and published in Paris, giving Jesuits in the colony an opportunity to consult the published texts to see how they had been changed in France. This article focuses on two related areas of scholarship on the Relations that need re-evaluation in light of the colony-centric circulation of the texts: the status of the texts as travel writing, and as the premiere source of ethnographic data on the Amerindian groups that the missionaries encountered in Eastern Canada.     

Fuelwood collection as daily practice: a wood charcoal study for the colonial period North Carolina Piedmont

ABSTRACT

European colonization brought innumerable changes and choices to Native groups across the Southeast. Scholars continue to examine the various ways communities navigated these disruptions. Studying the remains of daily practice offers a window into how communities negotiated continuity and change. Wood charcoal, representing the remains of daily fires, provides an important, but underutilized, method for examining people’s daily routines and interactions with their surrounding landscapes. This paper examines wood charcoal assemblages from several sites in the North Carolina Piedmont that span the precontact to early colonial periods (AD 1400–1705). Fuelwood collection models are used to consider the environments, practices, and preferences that influenced the composition of wood charcoal assemblages. Comparison of these datasets shows a consistent significant pattern of high-quality fuelwood selection with additional patterns potentially related to long-term use of the same environment and factors related to colonialism. Altogether, these patterns suggest continuity of some daily practices despite disruptions to other aspects of life.     

Universal,colonial, or Indonesian heritage? A multi-scalar approach to the historical representations and management of colonial heritage in the Old Town of Jakarta (Kota Tua) during its bid for World Heritage nomination in 2015–2018

ABSTRACT

Between 2015 and 2018 the Indonesian government unsuccessfully applied for World Heritage status for the old Dutch colonial neighborhood of Kota Tua in Jakarta. As this article aims to show, analyzing the process of writing a nomination dossier, especially in the case of a failed nomination, can be revealing in unraveling the inner workings of heritage conservation efforts and the many actors that are involved on different ‘scales’ and levels surrounding the heritage. As the project of writing the nomination dossier was delegated to a consortium of private actors from the elite circles of Jakarta, this article will finally address both the difficulties and advantages of involving the private sector in such nomination processes.     

Women beneath the Surface: Coal and the Colonial State in India during the Second World War

In British India in 1943, a rapidly escalating Allied coal crisis resulted in the lifting of a six-year-old ban on women’s employment underground. Over 70,000 low-caste and adivasi (indigenous) women, battling the war-induced Bengal Famine, sustained production levels and prevented the monthly loss of 385,000 tons of coal between August 1943 and February 1946. Their employment sparked unprecedented outrage among the public, in the press, and in parliaments, generating a transnational discourse on Indian women workers for the very first time. Meanwhile the desperate colonial government disciplined miners through the threat of starvation, information that has so far remained concealed.