April 15, 2024: What We’re Reading
Matilde Cazzola, Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory.
In this recent essay, Gad Heuman surveys the extensively studied history of the apprenticeship system in the British West Indies (namely, the four years during which, after having been emancipated from chattelization, the formerly enslaved were still forced to work for white planters), but he does so from an original perspective by focusing on the ways in which this period of servitude was experienced by the apprenticed labourers themselves. The voices of the formerly enslaved are often silenced in the sources and therefore extremely difficult to retrieve. Nonetheless, by treating them as the protagonists of emancipation rather than its objects, Heuman manages to extract the social and legal views that the apprentices articulated as they resisted their exploitation.
In his first book, Matteo Lazzari builds on a hitherto unexplored corpus of legal sources from the archives of the Mexican Inquisition to reconstruct the ways in which the inquisitorial system of New Spain crucially contributed to the process of racialization of Mexicans of African descent. After independence, Afro-Mexicans were erased from the mainstream narrative of national identity. By adopting the methodological approach of micro-history, the author demonstrates that this erasure conceals the key social and legal role that they played in the history of early colonial Mexico. This book will appeal to historians of colonial Spanish America as well as, more broadly, to scholars of social and legal histories.
Tomaso Montanari, Le statue giuste. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2024:
The latest book by art historian, public intellectual, and rector of Siena’s University for Foreigners, Tomaso Montanari, is part of the “Fact-checking: History when put to the test” book series published by Laterza. Reckoning that history has recently turned into a veritable battlefield, being constantly instrumentalized and weaponized by journalists and politicians, the series editor has created a space where professional historians can confront and engage with fake news and half-truths, putting their craft (comprising method and sources) at the service of a wider public. Montanari’s book delves into the recent, heated debate surrounding monuments to interrogate the difference between knowing history and celebrating its figures, and to stress the importance of distinguishing between “just” and “unjust” statues once they are located in the public space.
Asensio Robles López, EUI, History Department.Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
It is never a bad time to revisit classic books, especially when their reception today is not the same as it was when they were first published. Huntington's The Third Wave is an excellent case in point. Published two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and as Eastern Europe was undergoing an intense period of democratization, Huntington's book was hailed for its ambitious scope and depth of vision. Beginning with Portugal's Carnation Revolution and moving through Eastern Europe, Latin America, and East Asia, The Third Wave sought to explain why and how an unprecedented number of countries around the world had embraced democracy in just fifteen years. Huntington's reasons are many, but two elements stand out: the individual agency of political elites and the structural pressures that economic modernization brought to bear on these countries.
Three decades separate our times from those that shaped Huntington's writing, and arguably many arguments have been made to point out some of the limitations that The Third Wave seems to run into. An overemphasis on modernization theory runs the risk of downplaying the central role that exogenous factors (such as a country's fit into the global economy or international system) play in the evolution of political regimes. Huntington's impressive bird's-eye view is also problematic when it comes to comparing the different types of democracies that emerged. The democratizations of Portugal, Argentina, Hungary, and the Philippines may have taken place around the same time, but the trajectories they followed were by no means the same. Halfway between history and political science, the book has also been criticized for sounding superficial to historians and overly narrative to political scientists. Other critics have found in some of its conclusions and overall tone a kind of 1990s triumphalism similar to Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" theory.
In essence, much has been written about Huntington's theory of a "third wave" of democratization. But perhaps it is time to recapture some of the enthusiasm that this work received in the early 1990s. Not because democracies around the world are in better shape than they were thirty years ago - an argument that few observers would make today - but rather because of the book's interdisciplinarity and ambitious scope. In today's turbulent global age, The Third Wave is a stimulating work for further reflection on the origins and limits of democracies - and how fragile they can be.
Tiger Zhifu Li, University of Sydney.
Sarah Rainsford, in Kharkiv, and Paul Kirby, "War a real threat and Europe not ready, warns Poland's Tusk", BBC News, 30th March 2024.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently has delivered a blunt warning that Europe has entered a "pre-war era" and if Ukraine is defeated by Russia, nobody in Europe will be able to feel safe. Tusk warns of a 'pre-war era' and speaks of the most critical moment since World War Two.
Laurence Darmiento, "California's home insurance crisis: what went wrong, how it can be fixed and what owners can do", Los Angeles Times, March 29, 2024, 1:08 PM PT,
Major insurers have pulled back from California's homeowners market, citing wildfires, inflation and other challenges. However, there are steps at-risk homeowners can take now to secure coverage and at lower prices.
Simon Evans and Michael Smith, "China removes punishing tariffs on Australian wine trade", Financial Review, Mar 28, 2024 – 6.46pm.
Beijing says the restrictions, which had devastated local Australian winemakers, will be removed on Friday, and big producers have applauded the change.