“Better to kill them off at once”: race,violence, and human rights in antebellum western state constitutional conventions

My paper argues that delegates to antebellum western state constitutional conventions, in both slave and free states, expressed violent, even homicidal ideas about free black people. They predicted and described mass exterminations, lynching, and even a race war. These delegates sought to enshrine coercive measures in their state constitutions, including re-enslavement and forcible removals, and they employed ferocious language to support their arguments. My paper explores the delegates’ efforts to mount legal and constitutional justifications for violence toward free black people. I compare the language in antebellum western conventions to coeval debates in other regions. Although no state legitimized lynching, let alone genocide, these debates provide a useful window into the delegates’ efforts to find constitutional justifications for the removal – or even extermination – of free black people from the new western states.     

Gender trouble: Women and the making of Italy's ‘active population’, 1861‐1936

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the complex sociocultural and ideological reasons that lay behind the well‐known fall in the number of women workers in the Italian population censuses from the post‐Unification period to Fascism. This was a time when the statisticians of the whole ‘civilized’ world were engaged in the definition of the modern statistical notion of ‘active population’. Through an examination of material published by Italian as well as non‐Italian statistical institutions and of the debates on women's work at the turn of the century, the article shows how the statisticians sought to make their data comparable to those of other, more modem countries and argues that an important turning point in the changing statistical representations of women's work in Italy occurred with the census of 1901. This coincided with growing interest in the question of women's work and the campaign for the introduction of legislation ‘protecting’ women workers. As state constructions, the censuses clearly contributed to the production of a more masculinized image of the labor force, an image which, however, eventually became too distant from reality even for the statisticians themselves.     

A Round Table discussion of The Risorgimento Revisited. Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth Century Italy (edited by Silvana Patriarca and Lucy Riall)

Based on the Round Table discussion held at the Remarque Institute, New York University, in November 2012, this paper consists of comments on the volume of essays The Risorgimento Revisited. Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth Century Italy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), edited by Silvana Patriarca and Lucy Riall, followed by the editors' responses.     

Isotopic evidence for the trade and production of exotic marine mammal bone artifacts at Chavín de Huántar,Peru

This study uses stable isotope analysis to identify the possible origin and taxon of unusually large worked bone artifacts recovered from the site of Chavín de Huántar in the central highland of Peru (3200–2200 BP). The site was traditionally considered to be an ideal trading point halfway between the Pacific coast and the Amazon jungle. The archaeological specimens were discovered in a workshop area located in the La Banda sector across from the main temple, and they were analyzed for the stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and oxygen. Results indicate that the worked bone artifacts are marine in origin and are likely from a cetacean or large pinniped. Their exotic origin and elaborate work have implications about ancient production practices and exchange, and they provide benchmark data and a comparative approach for future analysis of exotic bone artifacts.     

A case of Madelung's deformity in a skeleton from Nuragic Sardinia

The case reported here refers to the skeletal remains of a mature adult male found in a collective grave known as ‘Giant's tomb’ located near Donori (Sardinia) and dating to the end of the Bronze Age. The skeleton showed bilateral shortening of the forearm associated to radial bowing, marked deformations at the radio‐ulnar distal joints and subsequent posterior dislocation of both ulnae. The whole alterations fit well with a diagnosis of Madelung's deformity, a rare form of mesomelic dysplasia. At present, this case is the most ancient evidence of Madelung's deformity. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Italian neopatriotism: Debating national identity in the 1990s

This article discusses some of the distinguishing features of the debate over national identity that took place in Italy in the 1990s. Reacting against the threats of the Lega Nord and in response to the new ideological and political landscape of the post-Cold War order, a number of Italian intellectuals rediscovered the value of patriotism. Searching for the origins of the Italians' allegedly weak sense of national identity, some questioned the Resistance and the party system that originated from it. While this historical revisionism has been the object of well-deserved criticism, there is another type of thematization of identity which has received less attention: it deploys the old notion of an 'Italian character', which appears frequently in the press and the media. The article shows that this discourse, too, is a way of articulating patriotism, and then reflects on the meaning that this reconfiguration of ideologies and identities acquires in the new context, both domestic and international.     

’Refined,highfalutin’ principles’: The northern public,the constitution,and slavery, 1861–62

Early in the Civil War an anticonstitutional rhetoric arose on the Northern home front in response to military delays and defeats as well as congressional debates over the constitutionality of punitive actions against rebel citizens. This critique was based in part on the Constitution's protections of rebel citizens’ rights, especially their disputed right to hold human property. Impatient Northerners also perceived the political compromises with slavery throughout the sectional conflict as based on constitutional principles. As a result, some Northerners began to equate the Constitution with slavery, and began to demand that the document be revised or even rewritten. This essay argues, however, that in spite of their critique of the Constitution's perceived protections of slavery, war‐minded Northern citizens did not advocate immediate or widespread emancipation.