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Africa in Europe: Studies in Transnational Practice in the Long Twentieth Century

Eve Rosenhaft and Robbie Aitken (eds)

The essays in this volume explore the lives and activities of people of African descent – both black and white - in Europe between the 1880s and the beginning of the twenty-first century. They go ... More

The essays in this volume explore the lives and activities of people of African descent – both black and white - in Europe between the 1880s and the beginning of the twenty-first century. They go beyond the still-dominant Anglo-American or transatlantic emphasis of Black Studies, examining the experiences of Africans, Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans in Germany, France, Portugal, Italy and the Soviet Union, as well as in Britain. Their subjects include people moving between European states and state jurisdictions or from the former colony of one state to another place in Europe, African-born colonial settlers returning to the metropolis, migrants conversing across ethnic and cultural boundaries among ‘Africans’, and visitors for whom the face-to-face encounter with European society involves working across the ‘colour line’ and testing the limits of solidarity. The authors focus on the ways in which their subjects have used the skills and resources they brought with them and the ones they found in each place of arrival to construct themselves and their families as subjects of their own lives, and also what new visions of self and community (or politics) have been enabled by the crossing of borders. The volume is multidisciplinary, and the contributors include a novelist and a filmmaker who reflect on their own experiences of these complex histories and the challenges of narrating them.Less

Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism: 1988-2015

Patrick Crowley (ed.)

Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism 1988–2015 offers new insights into contemporary Algeria. Drawing on a range of different approaches to the idea of Algeria and to its contemporary ... More

Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism 1988–2015 offers new insights into contemporary Algeria. Drawing on a range of different approaches to the idea of Algeria and to its contemporary realities, the chapters in this volume serve to open up any discourse that would tie ‘Algeria’ to a fixed meaning or construct it in ways that neglect the weft and warp of everyday cultural production and political action. The configuration of these essays invites us to read contemporary cultural production in Algeria not as determined indices of a specific place and time (1988–2015) but as interrogations and explorations of that period and of the relationship between nation and culture. The intention of this volume is to offer historical moments, multiple contexts, hybrid forms, voices and experiences of the everyday that will prompt nuance in how we move between frames of enquiry. These chapters — written by specialists in Algerian history, politics, music, sport, youth cultures, literature, cultural associations and art — offer the granularity of microhistories, fieldwork interviews and studies of the marginal in order to break up a synthetic overview and offer keener insights into the ways in which the complexity of Algerian nation-building are culturally negotiated, public spaces are reclaimed, and Algeria reimagined through practices that draw upon the country’s past and its transnational present.Less

American Travellers in Liverpool

David Seed (ed.)

Liverpool was one of the first consulates to be established by the USA. It was also the first port of call for most American travellers throughout the nineteenth century. Many of these visitors left ... More

Liverpool was one of the first consulates to be established by the USA. It was also the first port of call for most American travellers throughout the nineteenth century. Many of these visitors left accounts of their experiences in the city. Some are detailed, like Herman Melville’s description of the docks; others give briefer impressions. These selections demonstrate the rich variety of cultural contacts between Britain and the USA throughout the nineteenth century.Less

'An Alien Ideology': Cold War Perceptions of the Irish Republican Left

John Mulqueen

This book focuses on the strand of the Irish republican left which followed the ‘alien ideology’ of Soviet-inspired Marxism. Moscow-led communism had few adherents in Ireland, but Irish and British ... More

This book focuses on the strand of the Irish republican left which followed the ‘alien ideology’ of Soviet-inspired Marxism. Moscow-led communism had few adherents in Ireland, but Irish and British officials were concerned about the possibility that communists could infiltrate the republican movement, the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Another concern arose for British and American observers from 1969: would the Soviets resist the temptation to meddle during the Northern Ireland Troubles and cause trouble for Britain as a geo-political crisis unfolded? The book considers questions arising from the involvement of left-wing republicans, and what became the Official republican movement, in events before and during the early years of the Troubles. Could Ireland’s communists and left-wing republicans be viewed as strategic allies of Moscow who might create an ‘Irish Cuba’? The book examines another question: could a Marxist party with a parliamentary presence in the militarily-neutral Irish state – the Workers’ Party (WP) – be useful to the Soviets during the 1980s? This book, based on original sources rather than interviews, is significant in that it analyses the perspectives of the various governments concerned with subversion in Ireland. This is a study of perceptions. The book concludes that the Soviet Union had been happy to exploit the Troubles in its Cold War propaganda, but, excepting supplying arms to the Official IRA, it did not seek to maximise difficulties whenever it could in Ireland, north or south.Less

Andean Truths: Transitional Justice, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production in Post-Shining Path Peru

Anne Lambright

Andean Truths: Transitional Justice, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production in Post-Shining Path Peru studies how literature, drama, film, and the visual arts contest the dominant narrative of national ... More

Andean Truths: Transitional Justice, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production in Post-Shining Path Peru studies how literature, drama, film, and the visual arts contest the dominant narrative of national peace and reconciliation, as constructed by Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Established in 2001, the Commission aimed to ‘investigate and make public the truth’ of the country’s twenty-year civil war, drawing upon homologous predecessors that provided a highly scripted model of truth-gathering and national healing. In this model, a predetermined collective mourning, catharsis, and reconciliation would move the nation forward in a consensually-determined fashion. Andean Truths shows that the Peruvian case proves internationally-endorsed models insufficient for arriving at the ‘truth’ of a national trauma that primarily affected disenfranchised ethnic groups, namely, the Andean Quechua speaking populations that accounted for the overwhelming majority of victims of the violence. Even as scholars recognize the importance of bringing multiple voices to the table in discussing post-Shining Path Peru, the question remains of what a more Andean-oriented transitional justice process might entail. Drawing on theories of decoloniality, intercultural communication and epistemological diversity (following scholars such as Enrique Dussel, Aníbal Quijano and Boaventura de Sousa Santos), this book analyzes cultural products, from the theater of Yuyachkani to the narrative of Oscar Colchado Lucio, the art of Edilberto Jiménez, and other popular artistic responses, that highlight Andean understandings of the conflict and its aftermath. These cultural products challenge dominant understandings of the conflict and question Peru’s ability to overcome its collective trauma without seriously reconsidering prevailing cultural paradigms.Less

Argentina's Partisan Past: Nationalism and the Politics of History

Michael Goebel

This book is a challenging new study about the production, spread, and use of understandings of national history and identity for political purposes in twentieth-century Argentina. Based on extensive ... More

This book is a challenging new study about the production, spread, and use of understandings of national history and identity for political purposes in twentieth-century Argentina. Based on extensive research of primary and published sources, it analyses how nationalist views about what it meant to be Argentine were built into the country's long-drawn-out crisis of liberal democracy from the 1930s to the 1980s. Eschewing the notion of any straightforward relationship between cultural customs, ideas, and political practices, the study seeks to provide a more nuanced framework for understanding the interplay between popular culture, intellectuals, and the state in the promotion, co-option, and repression of conflicting narratives about the nation's history. Particular attention is given to the conditions for the production and political use of cultural goods, especially the writings of historians. The intimate linkage between history and politics, it is argued, helped Argentina's partisan past of the period following independence to cast its shadow onto the middle decades of the twentieth century. This process is scrutinized within the framework of recent approaches to the study of nationalism, in an attempt to communicate the major scholarly debates of this field with the case of Argentina.Less

Armies, Politics and Revolution: Chile, 1808-1826

Juan Luis Ossa Santa Cruz

This book studies the political role of the Chilean military during the years 1808–1826. Beginning with the fall of the Spanish monarchy to Napoleon in 1808 and ending immediately after the last ... More

This book studies the political role of the Chilean military during the years 1808–1826. Beginning with the fall of the Spanish monarchy to Napoleon in 1808 and ending immediately after the last royalist contingents were expelled from the island of Chiloé, it does not seek to give a full picture of the participation of military men on the battlefield but rather to interpret their involvement in local politics. The main categories deployed in this study are 1) armies, 2) politics and 3) revolution, and the three are presented with the purpose of demonstrating that, as Peggy K. Liss has claimed, after 1810 Spanish American public life ‘became militarized; and the military, privileged’. I argue that the Chilean military became privileged because the demise of the Spanish monarchy in 1808 made them protagonists of the decision-making process. In so doing, this book aims to make a contribution to the understanding of Chile’s revolution of independence, as well as to discuss some of the most recent historiographical contributions on the role of the military in the creation of the Chilean republic. Although the focus has been placed on the career and participation of Chilean revolutionary officers, this book also provides an overview of both the role of royalist armies and the influence of international events in Chile.Less

Art and the Nation State: The Reception of Modern Art in Ireland

Róisín Kennedy

Art and the Nation State is a wide-ranging study of the reception and critical debate on modernist art in Ireland from the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 to the end of the modernist era ... More

Art and the Nation State is a wide-ranging study of the reception and critical debate on modernist art in Ireland from the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 to the end of the modernist era in the 1970s. Drawing on media coverage, reviews, writings and the private papers of key Irish and international artists, critics and commentators, the study explores the significant contribution of Irish modern art to post-independence cultural debate and diverging notions of Irish national identity. Through an analysis of significant controversies and debates on modern art, the book examines how the reputations of major Irish artists was moulded by the prevailing demands of national identity, modernization and the dynamics of the international art world. Disputes about the relevance of the work of leading international modernists such as the Irish-American sculptor, Andrew O’Connor; the French expressionist painter, Georges Rouault; the British sculptor Henry Moore and the Irish born, but ostensibly, British artist, Francis Bacon to Irish cultural life is also analysed, as is the equally problematic positioning of Northern Irish artists.Less

The Battle for the Migrants: Introduction of Steamshipping on the North Atlantic and Its Impact on the European Exodus

Torsten Feys

This book approaches the well-documented study of European mass migration to the United States of America from the viewpoint of mass migration as a business venture. The overall purpose is to ... More

This book approaches the well-documented study of European mass migration to the United States of America from the viewpoint of mass migration as a business venture. The overall purpose is to demonstrate that maritime and migration histories are interlinked and dependent on a deeper understanding of the social, economic, and political factors at work in the nineteenth century Atlantic community. It centres on both the evolution of the port of Rotterdam as a migration gateway, and the crucial role of the Holland-America line as a regulator of the North American passenger trade. The first part of the book explores the simultaneous rise of transatlantic mass migration and long-distance steamshipping between 1830 to 1870. The second part, divided into five chapters, explores how mass migration became a big business between 1870 and 1914, and scrutinises how steamship companies organised and provided initiatives for transoceanic migration, plus the role of shipping agents and agent-networks, and how passenger services were constructed within transatlantic networks. Over the course of the text it becomes increasingly clear that by approaching mass migration as a trade issue, the role of steamship companies in the facilitation of transatlantic migration is rendered both intrinsic and pivotal. It consists of an introduction containing contextual information, two sections providing historical overviews, five chapters exploring different aspects of the shipping industry’s response to mass migration, conclusion, bibliography, and six appendices of passenger, destination, agent, and advertising statistics.Less

Before the War, and After the Union: An Autobiography by Sam Aleckson (Samuel Williams)

Samuel "Aleckson" Williams

Susanna Ashton (ed.)

Sam Aleckson was the pen name for Samuel Williams, a man born into slavery in Charleston, South Carolina, who wrote a memoir about his life and the world around him during and after his bondage. It ... More

Sam Aleckson was the pen name for Samuel Williams, a man born into slavery in Charleston, South Carolina, who wrote a memoir about his life and the world around him during and after his bondage. It is published here for the first time under his own name and with biographical and interpretive context. Published privately by his family, Before the War and After the Union traces Williams’s life from his earliest memories of being enslaved and forced to serve Confederate soliders in army camps, through the post–Civil War years as his family struggled to reconnect and build a new life during Reconstruction. It the ends with tales about his life as the head of a Southern Black family newly relocated to Vermont at the turn-of-the-century. When he wrote his memoir nearly sixty years after emancipation, Williams was an elderly man, far from the site of his childhood in South Carolina, but his memories and analysis were keen and veer from occasional fraught nostalgia to sharply bitter analysis, creating a fascinating American story of suffering and transcendence.Less

Before the Windrush: Race Relations in 20th-Century Liverpool

John Belchem

Based on extensive primary sources, this study brings historical perspective and context to debate about race and immigration in Britain. The focus is on Liverpool and its pioneer but problematic ... More

Based on extensive primary sources, this study brings historical perspective and context to debate about race and immigration in Britain. The focus is on Liverpool and its pioneer but problematic race relations as the once proud Edwardian cosmopolitan ‘second city of empire’ transmogrified into the shock city of post-colonial, post-industrial Britain. As the gateway of empire, the great seaport of Liverpool attracted significant numbers of ‘coloured’ colonials long before the arrival of West Indian migrants on the ‘Empire Windrush’ in 1948. Their legal status as British subjects in the ‘motherland’ notwithstanding, Liverpool's ‘coloured’ community of transients, sojourners and settlers were the first to discover that ‘There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack’. Their struggle against prejudice and discrimination serves as foundation narrative in the making of the black British, an identity obscured and misunderstood by conventional concentration on recent immigration. The warnings emanating from Liverpool's troubled pattern of race relations went unheeded in Britain's uneasy transition to a multi-cultural society, as the empire ‘came home’ following decolonisation. Instead of serving as object lesson, Liverpool was by this time marginalised and denigrated, condemned as an internal ‘other’ at odds with positive developments elsewhere in enterprise Britain. For agencies seeking to regenerate and rehabilitate the city, measures to address racial discrimination and disadvantage were seldom a priority (or even included) in a succession of ill-fated projects to tackle multiple deprivation. In the aftermath of the Toxteth riots of 1981, once proud ‘cosmopolitan’ Liverpool stood condemned for its ‘uniquely horrific’ racism.Less

Between Resistance and Adaptation: Indigenous Peoples and the Colonisation of the Chocó, 1510–1753

Caroline A. Williams

This is a study of the interactions between Indians and Spaniards in the Chocó throughout much of the colonial period, revealing the complexity of inter-ethnic relations in frontier regions. The book ... More

This is a study of the interactions between Indians and Spaniards in the Chocó throughout much of the colonial period, revealing the complexity of inter-ethnic relations in frontier regions. The book considers the changing relationships not only between Spaniards and Indians but also between factions of both groups, showing how Spaniards and Indians sometimes allied with each other against other ethnically mixed groups with different agendas.Less

Beyond the Slave Narrative: Politics, Sex, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution

Deborah Jenson

The Haitian Revolution has generated responses from commentators in fields ranging from philosophy to historiography to twentieth-century literary and artistic studies. But what about the written ... More

The Haitian Revolution has generated responses from commentators in fields ranging from philosophy to historiography to twentieth-century literary and artistic studies. But what about the written work produced at the time, by Haitians? This book presents an account of a specifically Haitian literary tradition in the Revolutionary era. It shows the emergence of two strands of textual innovation, both evolving from the new revolutionary consciousness: the political texts produced by Haitian revolutionary leaders Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines; and popular Creole poetry from anonymous courtesans in Saint-Domingue's libertine culture. These textual forms, though they differ from each other, demonstrate both the increasing cultural autonomy and the literary voice of non-white populations in the colony at the time of revolution. Unschooled generals and courtesans, long presented as voiceless, are revealed to be legitimate speakers and authors. These Haitian French and Creole texts have been neglected as a foundation of Afro-diasporic literature by former slaves in the Atlantic world for two reasons: they do not fit the generic criteria of the slave narrative (which is rooted in the autobiographical experience of enslavement); and they are mediated texts, relayed to the print-cultural Atlantic domain not by the speakers themselves, but by secretaries or refugee colonists. These texts challenge how we think about authorial voice, writing, print culture, and cultural autonomy in the context of the formerly enslaved, and demand that we reassess our historical understanding of the Haitian Independence and its relationship to an international world of contemporary readers.Less

Black 1919: Riots, Racism and Resistance in Imperial Britain

Jacqueline Jenkinson

The riots that broke out in various British port cities in 1919 were a dramatic manifestation of a wave of global unrest that affected Britain, parts of its empire, continental Europe and North ... More

The riots that broke out in various British port cities in 1919 were a dramatic manifestation of a wave of global unrest that affected Britain, parts of its empire, continental Europe and North America during and in the wake of the First World War. During the riots, crowds of white working-class people targeted black workers, their families, and black-owned businesses and property. One of the chief sources of violent confrontation in the run-down port areas was the ‘colour’ bar implemented by the sailors' trades unions campaigning to keep black, Arab and Asian sailors off British ships in a time of increasing job competition. The book sets out the economic and social causes of the riots and their impact on Britain's relationship with its empire and its colonial subjects. The riots are also considered within the wider context of rioting elsewhere on the fringes of the Atlantic world as black people came in increased numbers into urban and metropolitan settings where they competed with working-class white people for jobs and housing during and after the First World War. The book details the events of the port riots in Britain, with chapters devoted to assessing the motivations and make-up of the rioting crowds, examining police procedures during the riots, considering the court cases that followed, and looking at the longer-term consequences for black British workers and their families. It examines the violent racist conflict that emerged after the First World War and the shockwaves which reverberated around the Empire.Less

Black German: An Afro-German Life in the Twentieth Century By Theodor Michael

Theodor Michael

This is the first English translation of an important document in the history of the black presence in Germany and Europe: the autobiography of Theodor Michael. Theodor Michael is the last surviving ... More

This is the first English translation of an important document in the history of the black presence in Germany and Europe: the autobiography of Theodor Michael. Theodor Michael is the last surviving member of the first generation of ‘Afro-Germans’: Born in Germany in 1925 to a Cameroonian father and a German mother, he grew up in Berlin in the last days of the Weimar Republic. As a child and teenager he worked in circuses and films and experienced the tightening knot of racial discrimination under the Nazis in the years before the Second World War. He survived the war as a forced labourer, founding a family and making a career as a journalist and actor in post-war West Germany. Since the 1980s he has become an important spokesman for the black German consciousness movement, acting as a human link between the first black German community of the inter-war period, the pan-Africanism of the 1950s and 1960s, and new generations of Germans of African descent. His life story is a classic account of coming to consciousness of a man who understands himself as both black and German; accordingly, it illuminates key aspects of modern German social history as well as of the post-war history of the African diaspora.Less

The Black Legend of Prince Rupert's Dog: Witchcraft and Propaganda during the English Civil War

Mark Stoyle

One of the more bizarre consequences of the English Civil War of 1642-46 was the elevation to celebrity status of a ‘dog-witch’ named Boy. The loyal companion of King Charles I's nephew, Prince ... More

One of the more bizarre consequences of the English Civil War of 1642-46 was the elevation to celebrity status of a ‘dog-witch’ named Boy. The loyal companion of King Charles I's nephew, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Boy, like his master, was held to possess supernatural powers and was frequently portrayed in the popular literature of the day as a ‘devil’, as a witch or as a witch's familiar spirit. Some measure of the interest which Boy aroused among contemporaries may be gleaned from the fact that no fewer than five separate images of him were produced for public consumption between 1643 and 1644. Many previous scholars have remarked upon the fantastical rumours which circulated about Prince Rupert and his dog, but no one has ever investigated the origins of these rumours or explored how the supernatural elements of the prince's public image developed over time. This book sets out to uncover the true story of Boy – and in the process to shed new light on the fascinating series of collisions and interactions which took place between traditional witch-belief and Royalist and Parliamentarian polemic during the troubled 1640s. [190 words]Less

Black Poor and White Philanthropists: London's Blacks and the Foundation of the Sierra Leone Settlement 1786–1791

Stephen J. Braidwood

This book examines the events surrounding the establishment of a settlement in West Africa in 1787 that was later to become Freetown, the present-day capital of Sierra Leone. It outlines the range of ... More

This book examines the events surrounding the establishment of a settlement in West Africa in 1787 that was later to become Freetown, the present-day capital of Sierra Leone. It outlines the range of ideas and attitudes to Africa that underlay the foundation of the settlement, and the part played by the black settlers themselves, London's ‘Black Poor’. Was the settlement based on a racist deportation designed to keep Britain white (as some accounts claim), or a voluntary emigration in which blacks themselves played a part? Once in West Africa, the settlers faced a struggle to survive against often harsh conditions, a struggle that included conflict with slave traders and neighbouring Africans. The settlement's ‘failure’ is perhaps less surprising than its subsequent re-establishment. The last part of the book looks at the nature of the Sierra Leone Company through the debate over its formation.Less

Black Salt: Seafarers of African Descent on British Ships

Ray Costello

During the Age of Sail, black seamen could be found in many shipboard roles in the Royal Navy, such as gunners, deck-hands and ‘top men’, working at heights in the rigging. In the later Age of Steam, ... More

During the Age of Sail, black seamen could be found in many shipboard roles in the Royal Navy, such as gunners, deck-hands and ‘top men’, working at heights in the rigging. In the later Age of Steam, black seamen were more likely to be found on merchantmen below deck; as cooks, stewards and stokers. The navy was possibly a unique institution in that black and white could work alongside each other more than in any other occupation. This book examines the work and experience of seamen of African descent in Britain's navy, from impressed slaves to free Africans, British West Indians, and British-born Black sailors. Seamen from the Caribbean and directly from Africa have contributed to both the British Royal Navy and Merchant Marine from at least the Tudor period and by the end of the period of the British Slave Trade at least 3% of all crewmen were black mariners. Black sailors signed off in British ports helped the growth of a black population. In spite of racial prejudice in port, relationships were forged between sailors of different races that frequently ignored expected norms when working and living together in the isolated world of the ship. Black seamen on British ships were not only to be found working in both the foreground and background of naval engagements throughout their long history, but helping to ensure the supply of foodstuffs and the necessities of life to Britain. Their experiences span the gamut of sorrow and tragedy, heroism, victory and triumph.Less