Comercio y comerciantes en América Latina colonial: Reflexión historiográfíca

Tráfico de Indias y política oceánica. By Fernando Bordejé Y Morencos. Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992. Pp. 341.

Relaciones económicas entre España y América hasta la independencia. By John R. Fisher. Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992. Pp. 280.

Las comunicaciones en América. By Secundino‐José Gutiérrez Alvarez. Madrid: MAPFRE, 1993. Pp. 424.

Piratas, bucaneros, filibusteros y corsarios en América. Perros, mendigos y otros malditos del mar. By Manuel Lucena Salmoral. Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992. Pp. 306.

El dinero americano y la política del imperio. By María Emelina Martín Acosta. Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992. Pp. 333.

Cargadores a Indias. By Julian B. Ruiz Rivera and Manuela Cristina García Bernal. Madrid: Mapfre, 1992. Pp. 395.     

Middle Bronze Age Arsenical Copper Alloys in Southern Portugal

In the Iberian Peninsula, the copper metallurgy from the Chalcolithic to the Middle Bronze Age (MBA) was mostly characterized by low arsenic contents. A collection of 53 MBA artefacts from southern Portugal was analysed by micro‐EDXRF, optical microscopy, SEM–EDS and Vickers to investigate the metal composition and manufacture. No technological distinction was found between artefacts from domestic and funerary contexts, which were radiocarbon‐dated to 2000–1500 cal bc . The arsenic contents of almost 100 MBA artefacts from this region, including the above‐mentioned set, have a Gaussian distribution with a high average (3.9 wt% As). Possible explanations are discussed for this distinctive metallurgy at the south‐western end of the Iberian Peninsula.     

Decolonizing travesti space in Buenos Aires: race,sexuality, and sideways relationality

Scholars of space usually neglect the history of travesti populations in Latin America. It is misrepresented not only by disciplinary blind spots but also by global narratives concerned with rehabilitating queer subjects within homonormative projects. Analyzing neoliberal narratives that delink conflicts about racialization and sexuality in Argentina, this article makes room to decolonize the study of travesti experience and embodiment in Buenos Aires's red zone. It examines a network of racialized travestis and their spatial practices, including their migration from the Andean northwest to the sex-work circuits of Buenos Aires. Finally, this article introduces the notion of sideways relationality to account for the cultural and spatial labor that racialized travestis perform at the oppositional margins of homonormative reflexivity.     

The Model Arctic Council: Simulated Negotiations as Pedagogy and Embodied Diplomacy

This article draws on the perspectives of students and organizers involved in recent iterations of the Model Arctic Council (MAC), an experiential learning simulation designed to expand students’ knowledge and understanding of the Arctic and its governance. While much of the discourse related to simulations such as the MAC emphasizes its pedagogical and networking benefits, this article leverages participant-based ethnography to argue that the MAC also affects multi-track diplomatic outcomes in addition to serving as a site for diplomatic engagement. Applying an interpretive approach driven by the onset of practice-tracing in international relations, we demonstrate that the MAC both produces and constitutes diplomacy. Such a reimagination elevates the diplomacy of non-state actors and exposes false binaries between state diplomacy and non-state diplomacy.     

From toys to automobiles: foreign investment,firm heterogeneity and intermediaries in a Portuguese industry

In the literature on territorial innovation systems there is a constant tension between the effect of endogenous and exogenous factors and their relative importance. In order to address this tension several approaches have sought to conceptualize the relational and multi-scalar dimension of innovation and to explain how external knowledge and economic flows in conjunction with regional contexts combine to produce regional growth, stagnation or decline. This paper will contribute to this debate, while also highlighting that even at the local level there is substantial heterogeneity between firms. It will also shed light on the role of intermediary organizations that can help address information and power asymmetries between multinational corporations and less competitive local firms. Empirically it will draw on the case study of the Portuguese moulds industry, which has successfully adapted to shifts in the global economy by drawing on local resources while also remaining integrated into global value chains.     

Saved by the Civil War: African ‘Loyalists’ in the Portuguese Armed Forces and Angola's Transition to Independence

ABSTRACT

The article examines the trajectories of ‘loyal’ African troops in Angola before and after the demise of Portugal's authoritarian regime in 1974. It starts by placing the ‘Africanisation’ drive of the Portuguese counterinsurgency campaign in a historical perspective; it then explores the rocky transition from colonial rule to independence in the territory between April 1974 and November 1975, describing the course of action taken by the Portuguese authorities vis-à-vis their former collaborators in the security forces. A concluding section draws a comparison between the fate of Portugal's loyalists in Angola and the one experienced by similar groups in other ex-Portuguese colonies. The choice of Angola has the advantage of allowing us to look into a complex scenario in which the competition amongst rival nationalist groups, and a number of external factors, helped to produce a more ambiguous outcome for some of the empire's local collaborators than what might have been otherwise expected.