Christy Lobo is the archivist at the Archives of the Jesuit Madurai Province in Shembaganur, Tamil Nadu. Technically skilled with an M.Sc. in Computer Science and a passion for the history of Jesuits in India, Mr. Lobo is keen on using the latest technologies in maintaining the Shembaganur archives and enhancing its online presence. In this brief interview, Jesuit studies scholar and Toynbee Prize Foundation Editor-at-Large Joseph Satish V talks to Christy Lobo about his work as an archivist and his enthusiasm for all things Jesuit.

Toynbee Prize Foundation President Glenda Sluga gathers scholars to discuss the importance of the concept of ‘planetary’ as a framing for environmental and political questions in the second half of the twentieth century (in the main).

In this monograph Dr José Lingna Nafafé of the University of Bristol uses the figure of Lourenço da Silva Mendonça, a member of the Ndongo royal family, as a means of disrupting the history of slavery abolition. Exiled from his homeland in Angola in December 1671, Mendonça was sent to Brazil and then Portugal, before finally heading to the Italian Peninsula in 1684, via Spain, to present his case against the trans-Atlantic trade of enslaved people. And this court case, in which Mendonça called for the abolition of slavery, is the central focus of the text, what Lingna Nafafé sees as the culmination of the seventeenth century ‘Black Atlantic Abolition Movement.’ A book review by Editor-at-Large Michael Aidan Pope.

Life in Moscow has changed dramatically since the beginning of the "special military operation" in Ukraine, with history lessons to be found everywhere. The omnipresence of history in the ordinary life of its citizens did not exist prior to this tragic event. The patriotic re-write of the past is a key tool for the Russian government in justifying its current agenda. A recently opened exhibition The Grand Duchy. The Treasures of Vladimir-Suzdal lands at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow stands out as a prime example. This new development uses art history to re-write the emergence of Russian statehood. It has an unprecedented scale, ambition, and aesthetic appeal in doing so. It serves as a response to the Ukrainian historians' claim that the legacy of Kyivan Rus belongs to Ukraine, and not to Russia.

Allan E. S. Lumba and Jamie Martin review one another's related, recently published books, Monetary Authorities: Capitalism and Decolonization in the American Colonial Philippines and The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance (both 2022), with an eye to how they may be read together or against one another.

World economies are facing a troika of challenges in the form of war (in Ukraine), disease (COVID19) and return of inflation, all of which have led to dampened growth globally. This invites us to ask how new these challenges, individually and as a combination, are, and what lessons we can draw from history? To answer these questions, we take a long-run view from more than 100 years of history to discuss the implications of war, disease, and inflation on our economies. Dr. Natacha Postel-Vinay an expert on the economic history of the Great Depression. Her research focuses on public finance, private finance, and welfare. More specifically, her research looks at the connections between bank risk-taking, banking crises, banking crisis resolution, public debt, and moral hazard, all from a historical perspective.

Total wars do not just affect the belligerent societies. The two global conflicts of the first half of the twentieth century had repercussions in neutral countries and colonial territories that could not escape of their economic and political impact. This was certainly most evident for the European diasporas in the South American region. How did overseas Europeans participate in the war effort? What were the tensions surrounding the mobilization? What were the effects on the relationship with the adoption countries? These are some of the questions that the authors of Transatlantic Battles. European Immigrant Communities in South America and the World Wars (Brill, 2022) address.

Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper jointly win the 2023 Toynbee Prize.

The recently published work Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955–1968 (Cornell University Press, 2022) explores the Soviet Union’s economic partnership with three newly-independent countries in West Africa during the Nikita Khrushchev era. The Toynbee Prize Foundation interviewed the author, Alessandro Iandolo, on the story and the main arguments of his book. Alongside discussing the emergence of the Soviet Union as an international development actor and the challenges it encountered in post-colonial Africa, Iandolo explained the characteristics of the Soviet development model, its similarities and differences to the Western alternatives, and why the Soviet development assistance in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali was not primarily oriented around spreading the communist ideology.

The House of Barings was established in 1762 and started out by trading on its own account, and on joint account with other merchants, buying and selling commodities and other goods in British and overseas markets. They also acted as London agents for overseas merchants, arranging shipping and insurance, making and collecting payments. Over time, Barings reduced their stakes in commodity trading due to its speculative and risky nature, and heavily ventured into the work of issuing securities for governments and businesses, especially railway companies. Barings also acted as paying agents, being particularly associated with Argentine, United States, Canadian and Russian governments.

Ganadora 2022: Ana María Otero-Cleves (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)

Comentaristas del manuscrito: Toynbee Trustee Jeremy Adelman (Princeton University); Jeremy Prestholdt (University of California, San Diego); Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck, University of London)

Título del manuscrito: Cherished Consumers: Global Connections, Local Consumption, and Foreign Commodities in Nineteenth-Century Colombia