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ISSN 1749-8155

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Review Date: 
30 May 2019

It is hard to tell a non-deterministic story about the shift from early modern to modern economic practices: the terms we use (‘modernity’, ‘capitalism’, ‘economic’), the questions we ask, and the conclusions we draw are all inevitably weighed down by what we think or know about economic life today.

Review Date: 
30 May 2019

The title of A History of Borno, Trans-Saharan African Empire to Failing Nigerian State has two ambiguities. Situated in the Sahel, Borno did not span the Sahara. It was Trans-Saharan by being linked culturally and economically to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, rather than to the Atlantic. Whether the failing state is Nigeria or Borno is also unclear.

Review Date: 
16 May 2019

In Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and San Francisco Bay Area, historian Peter Cole compares the union histories of two port cities, the militant struggles of dockworkers against racial discrimination, their response to technology (in the form of containerisation),

Review Date: 
2 May 2019

In Colonial Al-Andalus, Professor Eric Calderwood explores the origin of a claim widely promoted in Moroccan tourism, arts, and literature and finds its roots in Spain’s colonial rhetoric.

Review Date: 
11 Apr 2019

Thomas Paine, the most widely read political thinker in the late 18th century, played a notable role in the American Revolution, in the development of popular radicalism in Britain, and in the French Revolution.

Review Date: 
11 Apr 2019

A recent addition to the Early American Places series, Adam Costanzo’s George Washington’s Washington: Visions for the National Capital in the Early American Republic provides an overview of the development of and visions for Washington, DC, from 1790 to the late 1830s and, thus, spans the administrations of the first seven American presidents: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jef

Review Date: 
14 Mar 2019

It is an ambitious book that would try to cover the Conquest of Mexico, the rise and fall of the country’s hacienda system, the emergence of the Virgen de Guadalupe, the intricacies of Emiliano Zapata’s role in the Mexican Revolution, and the exodus of women from rural regions in the mid-1960s to look for work as ‘household help’ in the nation’s fast-growing capital city.

Review Date: 
14 Feb 2019

The architect, like other professions in the modern world distinguished by specialist training (doctors, engineers, etc.), cannot be conceived easily without some notion of ‘expertise’.

Review Date: 
31 Jan 2019

In popular and academic discourse, the American Civil War has never really ended in the United States.

Review Date: 
31 Jan 2019

Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury (1120–70) is one of the iconic figures in British history – a man who most people have not only heard of, but also have an opinion on. Yet, despite the brutality of his murder, such opinions are not always positive. In fact, this medieval archbishop is an unusually divisive figure, and always has been.

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