Blessed be Discord, 1910: Ricardo Flores Magón's Manifesto Mode

This article explores how Ricardo Flores Magón used images to transpose the graphic tradition of nineteenth-century Mexican political journalism into prose by deploying montage to craft both allegorical and prismatic images: while certain images are divorced from their original context and take on a new life, others, analogically related to a single idea, appear prismatically in fragments on the page. The affinities Flores Magón's writing shared with modernismo and the historical avant garde – as intensification of the former and precursor of the latter – have been a blind spot for literary history, to which this article attempts to restore the importance of his writing.     

Europeans of the Peruvian Andes: A Family History, 1860s–1940s

Liberal elites in nineteenth-century Peru were eager to attract European immigrants to help modernise their country. The majority arrived independently bringing commercial skills, while a minority, contracted as colonists, settled in the tropical lowlands. This article focuses on two European communities established in the central Andean region, where immigrants from northern Italy excelled as merchants and families from the Austrian Tyrol became smallholders. Through a reconstruction of one family's history, which draws on personal letters and a photograph, the article explores the experiences, character and socio-economic transformation of these communities and the significance given to European-ness and whiteness.     

“De-skilling” the 1891 Censuses in New South Wales and Tasmania

The 1891 censuses taken in New South Wales and Tasmania abandoned the long-established practice of grouping working-class occupations into “skilled” and “unskilled” categories. Instead, they were grouped into “Industrial” categories that did not differentiate between grades or degrees of skill. In this paper the sudden disruption to the preceding practice is explained as an effect of the intersection of two histories: the changing meaning of skill, and the history of scientific method. The paper traces the transformations in meanings of skill from an “artisanal” to an “industrial” form and examines how the two central figures in the construction of the 1891 census — the statisticians T.A Coghlan and R.M Johnston — were enmeshed in that history. Coghlan is usually given the more prominent role in accounts of late nineteenth-century statistics, but in this case Johnston's expertise in using scientific method was instrumental in the “deskilling” of the census.     

Institutional exclusion as a destabilizing factor: the mass unrest of 1 July 2008 in Mongolia

The paper discusses the 1 July 2008 mass protest in Mongolia. This event has no precedent in Mongolian history and represents a challenge for the social sciences as neither scholars nor political leaders predicted or even admitted its eventuality. Several forms of exclusion – economic, social and institutional – are considered as its potential source. It is argued that the theory of institutional exclusion allows making better sense of the situation. Institutional exclusion means the alienation of ordinary people from government and their inability to rely on the law and official procedures when being engaged in everyday activities. Two sources of primary data inform the analysis: a series of structured interviews with the protesters (N?=?20) and a collection of visual records made during the unrest (N?=?244). The data were processed using methods of both qualitative and quantitative content analysis.     

History,Religion and Progress: The View of the ‘Modernity’ of the American Protestant Missionaries in Late Ottoman Syria

The Syrian Protestant College in Beirut is commonly considered very important to the transmission of western ideas in nineteenth-century Syria. What has not been sufficiently investigated until now is the nature of those ideas, which are generally defined as ‘liberal’ and ‘modern’ without further specification. This article investigates the American missionaries’ main ideas concerning history, progress and religion, or, more generally, their concept of ‘modernity’. Finally, after having identified these ideas, the article considers their possible affinity with the ideas of the German philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel.     

How the Sino-Russian boundary conflict was finally settled

ABSTRACT

A territorial dispute deriving from nineteenth-century treaties imposed on China by an ascendant Russia became an integral element of the falling-out between the two great communist powers, the USSR and the People's Republic of China, in the second half of the twentieth century. That dispute, which came to be concentrated on the issue of the exact boundary alignment within the Amur and Ussuri Rivers, was made more intractable by the ideological estrangement between Moscow and Beijing. The dispute, in turn, fed back to embitter that estrangement. Contradictory interpretations of the nineteenth-century treaties taken by the two sides were compounded by their different approaches to the problem of boundary settlement: Beijing sought settlement on the basis of compromise, but insisted that could be achieved only through full renegotiation. Moscow read into Beijing's approach covert irredentism, refused to negotiate, and exerted military force to impose its own interpretation of the treaties. China resisted, meeting force with force, and in the 1969 clashes on the Ussuri River prevailed, bringing the conflict to the brink of all-out war. In 1986 Moscow broke a protracted deadlock by reversing its approach and agreeing to negotiate. By 2005 the full extent of the Sino-Russian boundary had been agreed and legitimized in new treaties.     

A New Language of Equality: Jews and the State in Nineteenth-Century Morocco

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, the Moroccan government’s concern for its image abroad ushered in a new approach to understanding Jews’ rights. Although the sultans never abandoned the dhimma contract in favour of religious egalitarianism, government officials increasingly adopted a new language of equality to describe how Jewish subjects should be treated. This language of equality borrowed vocabulary from Western notions of tolerance, but did not fundamentally conflict with Islamic ideals of justice. Mawlāy ?asan (reigned 1873–1894) refused to declare that Jews and Muslims were equal, but he increasingly insisted that Jews and Muslims must be treated equally before the law. Jews trod a similarly fine line, between pushing the envelope of their legal rights as dhimmīs and affirming their status as the personal protégés of the sultan. Through an examination of correspondence among Moroccan government officials, Jews and foreign diplomats, this article locates the shifting relationship between the state and its Jewish subjects in the language which the Makhzan used to define justice.     

Measuring Skulls: Race and Science in Vicente Riva Palacio's México a través de los siglos

This article discusses the use of the term 'race' as a corpus of racial theories sustained by scientific knowledge of biological human evolution in late nineteenth-century Mexico. It also explores how scientific and political discourses have constructed equivalent notions of race and national subjects, and how racial thought is imbedded in nation-building processes within the context of knowledge and social differentials in Mexico's national history. This is carried out through an examination of the second chapter of the second volume of Mexico a través de los siglos (Mexico Throughout the Centuries), by Mexican historian Vicente Riva Palacio (1832–1896), seen through the perspective of cultural history.     

Imagining modernity: the language and genealogy of modernity in nineteenth-century Arabic

This article employs the methodology of conceptual history to contest two of the most common theoretical approaches dominating our understanding of modernity in the field of Middle Eastern studies. The first approach relies on the assumption of incompatibility between modernity and Islam and captures Arab modernity using concepts such as ‘adoption’. The second understands Arab modernity through concepts such as ‘imitation’, contending that it is a legacy of Western imperialism. This article challenges both theories by examining the genealogy of tamaddun (civilization, being civilized), a pivotal concept used in nineteenth-century Arabic to imagine modernity. The genealogy of tamaddun elucidates that medieval paradigms derived from the concept of madina (polity) were rediscovered, reimagined, and reused in the context of the rise of the nation-state and the challenge of Western imperialism. The article suggests understanding Arab modernity and its critique from within, rather than outside of, the temporality of the historical condition.     

Social Protest and Nationalism in Western Sahara: Struggles around Fisheries and Housing in El Ayun and Dakhla

The Gdeim Izik protest emerged in response to Moroccan public policy (the distribution of land for construction) and adopted a nationalist line during the course of the action, provoking a heavy-handed response from Moroccan state security forces. This paper analyses the process and places it in the broader context of protest movements that emerge in situations of occupation and authoritarian rule. To that end, the study addresses the reconfiguration of the protest camp in Western Sahara during the 2000s, including protests that were not explicitly pro-independence struggles, to examine how Sahrawi protest actors perceived and assessed this context and how this assessment influenced their individual and collective action strategies.     

Power of the law or power of the sword: the conflictive relationship between the executive and the legislative in nineteenth-century Peru

ABSTRACT

The Peruvian parliament was a central institution in the early republic, but so far very little has been written on its history. This is due to the fact that military leaders took control of power for most of the nineteenth century. This article reflects on three main questions: what was the role of the legislative in nineteenth-century Peru? What was its relationship with the executive power? And what part did conflict play in these relationships? Most initial congresses were tasked with writing up constitutions, because institutions had to be created, and there was a strong belief that having a written charter mattered. The strongmen who took power felt the need to obtain legitimacy from both constitutions, and elections, but often did not see eye to eye with congress. This led congress to be closed, particularly when legislators refused to bow down to presidential power.     

Labour Demands,Regime Concessions: Moroccan Unions and the Arab Uprising

This article investigates how public employee unions mobilised to take advantage of Morocco's Arab uprising. Leveraging their positions as operators of public institutions, these unionists exploited the unrest to strategically advance their interests. Two points emerge from this account of state—labour relations in Morocco. First, a spike in labour contestation began in early 2010, presaging the unrest that rocked Moroccan cities in 2011. Second, the unions secured their demands through traditional tactics of labour mobilisation—joining street protests, exaggerating material demands, and threatening negotiation walkouts. This strategy, however, became more efficacious during the Arab uprising. Fearing urban riots that had historically grown from labour protests since the 1980s, regime elites conceded to union demands, many of which they had previously rejected in the 2000s.     

Abstention and politicisation in nineteenth-century Spain: the Catalan case

This paper analyses the phenomenon of abstention in nineteenth-century Spanish politics, where the government had great influence over the electoral results and liberty of opinion was not entirely guaranteed. It focuses in particular on the Catalan case. The paper aims to show that the electorate was not, in fact, apathetic or indifferent, but rather self-aware and politically mobilised. Questioning the dominance of patronage over elections, it contributes to the recent studies that have revised the interpretations of nineteenth-century politicisation by exploring the different ways of participating in the political sphere. By looking at abstention as an example of voters’ political expression, it argues that this phenomenon should be seen as evidence of political mobilisation and social and political engagement.     

Engagement with empire as norm and in practice in Kazakh nomadic political culture (1820s–1830s)

This article offers an analysis of the Kazakh nomadic political culture of the 1820s–30s with focus on two issues: (1) service and loyalty as elements of Kazakh engagement with the Russian Empire; and (2) the place in local political practice of the regional administrative offices (diwans) created for Middle Horde Kazakh nomads in 1822. While Russia’s goal was ‘bureaucratization’ and creation of ‘order’ in the steppe, in part through directing nomads to engage with the diwan and its elected Kazakh officials, Kazakh political actors variously embraced and rejected formal structures, and continued to define relevant norms and practices of governance. The analysis challenges both statist and nationalist narratives of nineteenth-century Kazakh steppe history by acknowledging the complexities of the Kazakh nomadic experience of empire-building. The ultimate purpose is to suggest new approaches for interpreting historical change throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.     

Yubbi Yarning Circle Model: Collective Narratives and Cultural Expression in the Journey of Trauma

This article describes a “working model” that started as a culturally appropriate workshop created by students and staff involved in the Certificate III in Visual Arts at Goulburn Ovens Institute of TAFE, Shepparton Campus, Victoria in 2018. The Yubbi Yarning Circle Model (YYCM) sees First Nations Artists, as both Facilitators and Storytellers, expressing the ongoing effects of Aboriginal Exemption using visual storytelling. We explore how the model of a visual narrative can be utilised in further cultural activities planned for research into Aboriginal Exemption and how this art resource may effectively be disseminated to Storytellers who not only have a history of Aboriginal Exemption, but also more broadly in the wider community. The YYCM approach is multi-disciplinary and combines the cultural healing practices of the Yarning Circle, the Mariku knowledge of symbology, participatory action research using decolonised methodologies and findings on behavioral research from Northern Ireland about how the narrative can heal trauma.     

African women and the wars of resistance and dispossession in the Cape Colony and Xhosaland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

ABSTRACT

The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colonial wars in the Cape Colony and trans-Keian territories in South Africa are usually represented as conflicts primarily involving male antagonists. The roles and experiences of indigenous women are usually overlooked or, at best, mentioned in passing. Closer examination of the wars that took place in what is now the Eastern Cape province of South Africa suggests that women were deeply affected by the various wars in a multitude of ways. They experienced first-hand death, disruption of their families and society, destruction of their homesteads and crops, and the looting of their livestock and other resources and were seized for forced labor. In the midst of the conflict, they developed different strategies to mitigate the effects of the wars and to survive, playing an active role in the wars as leaders, emissaries, and war doctors and in providing intelligence and commissariat support.     

Mi¯kha¯ 'i¯l Misha¯ qa - The First Historian of Modern Syria

This article enlarges on the life and ideas of Mi¯kha¯ 'i¯l Misha¯ qa, a nineteenth-century 'Syrian' Christian intellectual, author of the much-quoted book al-Jawa¯ b 'ala¯ Iqtira¯ h al-Ahba¯ b . It further interprets his book and discusses its importance to Syrian historiography, showing that Misha¯ qa was perhaps one of the first historians to write the nineteenth-century history of Syria within which Mount Lebanon is seen as an integral region - i.e. he identifies the region of Syria as a single territorial entity. As for Misha¯ qa's style of writing, I shall show that his book is not a chronicle, as were those of earlier and contemporary writers, but that it is written as a 'proper history'. The last part of the article offers the thesis that Mi¯kha¯ 'i¯l Dimashqi¯, an unknown 'historian' of the same decade, who wrote the book, Ta'ri¯kh Hawa¯ dith Jarat bi'l Sha¯ m wa-Sawa¯ hil Barr al-Sha¯ m wa'l-Jabal , was probably Mi¯kha¯ 'i¯l Misha¯ qa.     

Of diet and profit: on the question of subsistence crises in nineteenth-century Iran

This article enquires into the socioeconomic causes of recurrent food scarcity in the nineteenth-century Middle East. Focusing on Iran as a case study, the paper shows that certain categories involved in the production and distribution of grain engaged in profiteering schemes and thereby contributed to the making of food shortage in urban settings. The most important of these groups were the government officials, the landed classes, and the grain merchants. The local bakers were also involved, but they did not have as decisive a role as the other groups. In showing how these categories engaged in market manipulation, the paper contends that food scarcity cannot be explained without a proper understanding of the commercialization of grain and the economic integration of the Middle East in the nineteenth century.     

Regimes of truth: Australian combat photography in the Second World War

This paper examines the policies and directions framing the professional practice of Australian combat photographers in the Second World War. It argues that while their endeavours to offer an account of the nation at war were constrained by predictable considerations of politics and censorship, their commitment to truth was also framed and constricted by an array of cultural considerations. The nation’s ongoing engagement with the history of the First World War, the contrasting organisational cultures of the bureaucracies that the photographers served, and Australian culture’s visual inarticulacy concerning death on the battlefield played key roles both individually and collectively in shaping the photographers’ practices and outputs. The paper will trace the operations of these influences and contend that, as a result, the photographers’ visual record of the Second World War, particularly as it related to the death of Australian servicemen, served to conceal rather than reveal the ultimate truth about the Australian experience of the war.     

Argentine Nacionalismo before Perón: The Case of the Alianza de la Juventud Nacionalista, 1937–c. 1943

As the 1930s moved towards their close, a new generation of young men began to dominate the political wing of a generally more radical and assertive Argentine Nacionalismo, replacing the old guard that had found its inspiration in General José F. Uriburu and the regime he had led between September 1930 and February 1932. The Alianza de la Juventud Nacionalista, set up in September 1937, was the most important nacionalista faction of the period. It shared with other nacionalista factions the rejection of liberalism, parliamentary democracy and communism, but in contrast to the elitist and anti-popular orientation of earlier organisations, it aggressively tried to enlist popular support by portraying itself as a group genuinely concerned about the needs of the masses. The Alianza also distanced itself from the glorification of nineteenth-century Argentina, another hallmark of previous groups. Although it failed in its efforts to build up a significant following, the analysis nevertheless demonstrates that the organisation can be described as a genuinely fascist movement.