bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Comparative Economic Progress A Review Article
Authors: Cameron Rondo E.
Published: June 2009

The study of economic growth would seem to offer unusual opportunities for the application of the comparative method. The number of cases is large, from the Egypt of the Pharoahs to the Egypt of Nasser, from the civilizations of the Indus, of Babylon, and the Mayas to the latest development programs of Pakistan, Iraq, and Guatamala. The practical significance of increased understanding of the process of growth could be great indeed. And economic growth theorists, after plunging ahead in the eary postwar years with unlimited confidence in the tools of their trade, have more recently issued open invitations to historians, anthropologists, and other scholars who deal with whole societies to assist in the formulation of hypotheses explanatory of economic growth. Recent textbooks and surveys of the field now include as a matter of course a section devoted to “the lessons of history”. More specialized works frequently include a chapter on the historical background of their subjects or numerous historical or comparative analogies. As yet, however, the actual contributions of comparative history to an understanding of the process of economic development have been limited, not to say negligible. Historical events and episodes have been used to illustrate this or that theory of development, but historical experience en grand has not yet been used satisfactorily to generate a theory of its own; nor have economic historians, the scholars indicated by training and professional orientation to bridge the gap between economic theory and historical experience, shown any great enthusiasm for the task. A prize competition recently opened by the Council (formerly Committee) on Research in Economic History for studies in comparative economic history failed to attract a single suitable entry.
The Pasts of an Indian Village
Authors: Cohn Bernard S.
Published: June 2009

Events of the last two hundred years have led many scholars to divide the societies of the world into contrasting pairs, such as developed—under-developed, advanced—backward, traditional—modern. Central to these concepts are not only ideas about the level of technological development, but the very character of the societies and cultures which are compared and contrasted as well. Professor Edward Shils has recently remarked that the traditional society is one in which, among other things, there is a strong attachment to the past, by which behavior is determined and validated. Solutions to problems old and new are determined by the past of the society, and modernization quickens when ties to the past begin to be cut and new criteria for determining and validating behavior are invoked.
Some Notes on an Early Phase in the Modernization of Communications in Turkey
Authors: Mardin Serif
Published: June 2009

One of the recent attempts to formulate a general theory of nationalism has been Deutsch's approach to the question. This aims to show that a correlation exists between changes in the process of social communications and the rise of national consciousness. A considerable number of studies based on this approach to nationalism will have to be carried out before its contribution to the identification of the elusive “essence” of nationalism can be evaluated with any amount of fairness. In the meantime one tentative procedure which might be used to assess its usefulness is to try to fit this model to the evolution of social communications in a number of countries which the author has not included among his illustrations.
Comment
Authors: Spencer Robert F.
Published: June 2009

An interesting question raised by the foregoing study is the extent to which pre-Kemalist Turkey offered a status quo. Did the Ottoman dynasty and its associated bureaucracy seek to maintain a stasis throughout its domains and to resist the inroads of change from without? If so, there is then the contrast, following the suggestions made by Deutsch, with the Kemalist revolution where an avid quest for innovation became the keynote. It is of course true that one tends to be so impressed by the social revolution engineered by Kemal Atatiirk, one of the most dramatic figures of modern political history, that the antecedents of the radical changes in Turkey following World War I are all but forgotten. Clearly, if Atatiirk was successful in changing the face of Turkey, it was on the basis of what had gone before.
The Emergence and Social Function of Chinese Religious Associations in Singapore
Authors: Topley Marjorie
Published: June 2009

The majority of Singapore Chinese originate from the rural areas of Kwangtung and Fukien provinces. They had already started to immigrate in relatively large numbers by the late nineteenth century, that is before the traditional society of the countryside had been greatly disturbed by new political events and ideas. The social systems Chinese developed in Singapore therefore have been considerably influenced by those existing in “traditional” times in the homeland. Yet they have also been very much modified by the new social environment of Singapore. Overseas Chinese have been free to associate according to a number of principles not open to them in their home villages. New alignments have resulted from the immigration of a body of people of diverse origins and from the heterogenous structure of urban occupations. They become manifest in organisations set up for a number of different kinds of activity.
Note Sur “Culture” Et “Civilisation”
Authors: De Dampierre E.
Published: June 2009

Le même mouvement de la pensée scientifique qui rattachait définitivement l'homme à l'échelle des titres et l'intégrait parmi les phénomènes de la nature n'a pas manqué d'apporter une attention plus objective et plus systématique que jadis aux manifestations de la vie sociale. L'enfantement des sciences sociales en cours sous nos yeux ne se fait pas pour autant sans peine et it semble qu'on y puisse trouver une raison, si discrète soit-elle, dans la difficulté de constituer un vocabulaire apte à traduire des concepts définis et vérifiés. La remarque de Descartes n'y est pas moins vraie que dans les sciences de la nature: “Si de verborum significatione inter Philosophos semper conveniret, fere omnes illorum controversiae tollerentur.”
Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism
Authors: Keddie Nikki R.
Published: June 2009

The period 1905–1912 saw a number of nearly simultaneous revolutions or mass movements in Asian countries, which may be considered as the first wave of a revolutionary movement which continues to rock Asia. The Chinese overthrow of the Manchu dynasty, the Young Turk victory, and the Indian mass movement of 1905–1909 are probably the best-known in a series of events which also embraced smaller Asian countries and groups. The main reasons for their simultaneity were probably: the electric effect of the Russo-Japanese War, a startling Asian victory over a Western Power; the Russian Revolution of 1905, an inspiring anti-autocratic struggle which temporarily took Russia away as a bulwark for conservative governments in Asia; the intensification of imperialist pressures on Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which brought Asian economic and political reactions; and, possibly, the beginnings of economic crisis, which were reflected in Asia. Among these the Russo-Japanese War perhaps deserves to be singled out as the immediate spark, igniting highly inflammatory material in Asia as it did in Russia itself. Not only was Asian pride, hitherto battered by a continuous stream of Western conquests, bolstered by this victory, but the fact that the only Asian constitutional power defeated the only major Western non-constitutional power strengthened the fight for constitutional government as the panacea for internal ills and the “secret” of Western strength.
Peasantry, Land Use, and Change: A Review Article
Authors: Dovring Folke
Published: June 2009

The accelerated tempo of change since the Industrial Revolution has naturally focussed interest on those phases of development that lead from preindustrial to industrial types of society. Economists discussing development problems, and especially those concentrating on the so-called “take-off” phase, thereby bluntly assume that the pre-industrial, “traditional” or “handicraft” types of society were static, as they easily appear when compared to the dynamic tempo of change experienced — and required — in the modern epoch.
Russian History and the Soviet Union
Authors: Smith Robert E. F.
Published: June 2009

The problem I wish to discuss is how Russian history has differed from that of Western Europe and whether the reasons for these differences continue to be relevant and deep-seated enough to make it seem likely that they will continue in the future.
Moslem-Christian Understanding in Mediaeval Times: A Review Article
Authors: Kritzeck J.
Published: June 2009

During the thirteen centuries of their particular co-existence, Islam and Christianity have shown astonishingly little intellectual curiosity about one another. Through the contacts history has afforded them, contacts marked to be sure by other intellectual achievements, a general state of mutual understanding seldom better than elementary has persisted. Perhaps no Christian any longer believes that Mohammed was a renegade cardinal of the Colonna family and few if any Moslems believe that the Virgin Mary is a Person of the Christian Trinity; but they have continued to accuse one another of polytheism, the very last thing of which either is guilty, down to the present time. Today the Christian living outside the Isamic world who can distinguish Sunnite from Shiite is as rare as the Moslem who can distinguish among Protestant sects (many of them can distinguish Catholic and Orthodox from Protestant Christianity).
Do Cities ‘Modernize’ the Developing Countries? An Examination of the South Asian Experience
Authors: Qadeer M. A.
Published: June 2009

The City is a civilizing influence. This is one of the enduring themes of western thought. The crowding, filth, and exploitation of the industrial city in nineteenth-century Europe could not dampen the enthusiasm of urbanists such as Weber, Ruskin, or Spengler; nor is there any dearth of eulogizers of today‘s sprawling megalopolis. This mode of thought has also found its way into the poor countries of the third world, where the overwhelming majority lives in isolated villages. The current message for them is to seek urbanization if they want to be prosperous. This is the essence of a now familiar proposition that cities are necessary for economic development.
The Patron-Client Concept and Macro-Politics: Prospects and Problems
Authors: Kaufman Robert R.
Published: June 2009

In order to make sense of the endless complexities of social life, social scientists conceptualize the empirical world in terms of interlocking systems and subsystems of roles and behavior, holding some of these spheres constant so that others can be studied and understood. This is a necessary and desirable aspect of social scientific enterprise. It may well be, however, that too many aspects of human interaction are held constant by the conventional ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ distinctions that dominate the study of developing nations. Although we have a growing body of data about the attitudes, values, and behaviors of the individuals who comprise the mass publics of such nations, we have relatively little systematic information about how this micro-level analysis feeds into and affects the processes and actors that are visible at the national level of political life. Most countrycentered macro-studies, in turn, make few, if any, systematic references to variables extending beyond national boundaries into the international environment. Such criticism seems to call for a more extensive analysis across systems—analysis which not only takes into account the attributes of individuals and of national institutions, but which also links these units to one another and to a variety of other sub- and supra-national structures and processes as well.
‘Herrenvolk’ Democracy and Egalitarianism in South Africa and the U.S. South
Authors: Vickery Kenneth P.
Published: June 2009

Even a casual survey of recent history reveals that a society's devotion to democratic or egalitarian principles hardly rules out blatant racial oppression. Indeed, the two positions have often been deemed compatible. The democratic ideology professed by Europeans (or those of European descent settled elsewhere) has been drawn from the egalitarian thought of the Enlightenment. As Louis Hartz has indicated, Enlightenment thought on this matter can be interpreted either inclusively or exclusively—equality can be granted to all men, or only to certain categories of men. The seeming paradox of egalitarian rhetoric combined with obvious inequities is often resolved through defining members of some groups as outsiders—not a part of the ‘Herrenvolk’ or the ‘people’—or even as subhuman.
Minority Situation and Religious Acculturation: a Comparative Analysis of Jewish Communities
Authors: Sharot Stephen
Published: June 2009

The need for comparative studies of Jewish communities has occasionally been argued, but apart from largely typological comparisons of Jewish polities, there have been few, if any, attempts at a sociological comparative study of Jewish communities. Nearly all the sociological studies of Judaism have restricted their analysis to the Jewish community in the United States, and it is possible that their findings possess little generality beyond that society.
‘Structural Substantivism’: A Critical Review of Marshall Sahlins’ Stone Age Economics
Authors: Cook Scott
Published: June 2009

Stone Age Economics is the most important book in the field of economic anthropology produced by an American cultural anthropologist since M. J. Herskovits published The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples in 1940. Its theoretical and analytical superiority to that earlier book should cheer those of us who feel depressed because of the slow and tortuous course of progress in this sub-field of anthropological inquiry. While Sahlins’ book is original and provocative, however, it is not likely to revolutionize thinking in the field as much as the recent work by Godelier (1967). Even though it lacks the theoretical scope and scholarly judiciousness of the latter work, it should nevertheless become a minor classic in the literature dealing with ‘primitive’ (or tribal) economic life.
The Art of Memory: Islamic Education and its Social Reproduction
Authors: Eickelman Dale F.
Published: June 2009

The study of education can be to complex societies what the study of religion has been to societies variously characterized by anthropologists as ‘simple,’ ‘cold’ or ‘elementary.’ Recognizing this potential, sociologists and social anthropologists have recently indicated a renewed interest in the study of how schooling, especially higher education, implicitly defines and transmits a culturally valued cognitive style, ‘a set of basic, deeply interiorized master-patterns’ of language and thought on the basis of which other patterns are subsequently acquired (Bourdieu 1967: 343; see also Cole, Gay, Glick and Sharp 1971).
Civilization and Barbarism: Cattle Frontiers in Latin America
Authors: Baretta Silvio R. Duncan , Markoff John
Published: June 2009

INTRODUCTION

In looking at yesterday's frontiers (or at today's industrialized world), social analysts tend to see violence as a straightforward and uncomplicated phenomenon: when openly used, it is a direct way of settling disputes; when it is not used but available, it is a necessary—and, at least in the short run, sufficient—condition of domination. As a background condition violence is readily forgotten. Such is the case even in the study of the various affronts to authority that are lumped under the rubric of‘collective behavior.’ One speaks of violent ‘episodes’ arising from the ‘breakdown’ of various routine social mechanisms. By the same token, all the interesting problems in political theory seem to lie in the area of how to control people in every other conceivable manner: through the establishment of a normative consensus, through ideologies, through the creation of common interests, or through bargains and deals. Sufficient consideration is not usually given to the varied and subtle effects of these ways in which the capacity for violence is structured in social life. But consequences follow for any society from the presence or absence of full-time military specialists, from the forms of their organization, from the regional distribution of control of organized violence, from the advantages and disadvantages associated with the use of force, and from the norms associated with such use.
Nineteenth-Century Asante Medical Practices
Authors: Maier D.
Published: June 2009

Most of the literature concerning traditional African medical practice has dealt with aspects often deemed ‘irrational,’ such as the role of priests, shrines, magic and religious ritual. M. J. Field's work demonstrates convincingly that these aspects of medical treatment in Ghana are essential in mitigating and curing psychosomatic illnesses as well as controlling neuroses. The emphasis on religious and psychological methods of treatment, however, can often lead to less perceptive conclusions, such as those of U.S. doctors visiting Ghana in 1960 who stated flatly that traditional medical practices there consist solely of ‘ignorance and superstition’ and that ‘witchdoctor … medicine man and native doctor are synonymous terms.
On Separatism and Ethnicity: A Response to Sloan's ‘Ethnicity or Imperialism?’
Authors: Hechter Michael
Published: June 2009

The geographical distribution of separatist movements in the world today is, and always has been, highly skewed. At any point in history such movements arise only in particular states, and—within these states—only in particular regions. One task of a general theory of separatism is to account for this skewed geographical distribution. Mr. Sloan seems to think that the answer to this problem is ‘imperialism’, tout court. He apparently believes that any region subject to dependent development is likely to spawn separatist movements (hence his discussion of Vermont). According to Mr. Sloan ethnicity has no causal status in a theory of separatism. Thus, to pay it heed is to mistake an effect for a cause.
Comment
Authors: Sloan William N.
Published: June 2009

Michael Hechter does not respond to the basic issue of whether or not a social scientist, in seeking to demonstrate that ethnic rebellion in an internal periphery of an industrialized nation can be explained only in terms of ‘internal colonialism,’ ought first of all to equip himself with some adequate and explicit theory of imperialism itself. Rather than deal directly with the specific criticisms which follow from his neglect of such an approach, Hechter contents himself with the dismissal of a proposition—attributed in his first paragraph, without citation, to me—the simplistically fallacious character of which I never doubted or denied.
State versus Merchant: Commerce in the Countryside in the Early People's Republic of China
Authors: Solinger Dorothy J.
Published: June 2009

There is an uncanny similarity between regulations on merchant activity in various medieval Western European countries, on the one hand, and, on the other, those in the People's Republic of China (PRC) just after its institution (see Appendix). My discovery of this resemblance informed the research on which this paper is based and directed my attention to some crucial relationships in the interaction between commerce and state at a certain level of economic development. The presence of similar regulations in these societies had to point to (1) like activities going on in them all, along with (2) governmental disapproval of these activities. Thus, a preliminary look at materials on Europe led to new insights into the Chinese situation.
Skeins, Scales, Discounts, Steam, and other Objects of Crowd Justice in Early French Textile Mills
Authors: Reddy William M.
Published: June 2009

At 7:00 a.m. on 16 July 1833, M. Minder, owner of a cotton mill at Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, a small textile center in Alsace, announced to his spinners that he would henceforth be charging them 1 franc 20 centimes per week for dévidage, that is for the reeling and unreeling of roving or finished thread—a task accomplished by women in a separate workroom. In response, his spinners walked out of the mill. A local arbitration board (the Conseil des Prudhommes) would later rule that M. Minder had broken the work contract (the contrat du travail) since he had not given proper advanced notice to his laborers of the new charge for dévidage. In other words, the board ruled that the laborers had in fact become legally free to leave work by virtue of Minder's improper announcement. Even though all ninety-five of them walked out en masse, they did not thereby constitute an illegal coalition since their unwritten contract with M. Minder as denned by law had been broken first by Minder's failure to give notice. The laborers' subsequent actions, however, did constitute a coalition; and ten of them were later prosecuted under the anti-coalition statutes. They marched directly to several neighboring mills and tried to induce their fellow spin- ners to join them in the streets. Everyone in town knew that M. Minder had not acted alone, that most local mill owners planned to institute a charge for dévidage.
Solidarity and Symbolism among Journeymen Artisans: The Case of Compagnonnage
Authors: Truant Cynthia M.
Published: June 2009

The very complexity of compagnonnage has always served to protect and foster the well being of its members despite the prohibitions issued against this workingmen's association by French authorities from the seventeenth century until 1848 when such bans were briefly lifted. However, the same secrecy and intricacy that enabled compagnonnage to evade official attacks has frequently shielded it from historical investigation. Thus, although there have been studies of compagnonnage, none has really attempted to explain the relationship between the association's rituals and mythology and its more apparent labor activities such as ‘fixing the price of work’ and ‘ruining the masters.’
Family Clusters: Generational Nucleation in Nineteenth-Century Argentina and Chile
Authors: Balmori Diana , Oppenheimer Robert
Published: June 2009

This paper is derived from the authors' detailed studies of two groups of nineteenth-century families—eighteen families in Argentina and twenty-four in Chile. The studies revealed such remarkable similarities in the evolution of the two groups that it is possible to propose a broad generalization in respect to the social organization and national formation of both countries: there was, in each country, a three-generation sequence during which a number of families came together to form clusters that became the controlling entities of a region. Their base for political and economic control was either the existing capital city or a city that had been designated as the capital by these families.
“The Socialist Nation of the German Democratic Republic” or The Asymmetry in Nation and Ideology between the Two Germanies
Authors: Pletsch Carl
Published: June 2009

This paper is a semiological attempt to derive meaning from the recent reconceptualization of the German nation: the thesis of the separate socialist nation as advanced by the Socialist Unity Party (SED) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Before entering upon the question of how the-socialist nation of the GDR is defined and what this definition means in contrast to the definition of the nation current in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), we may well ask whether it makes any difference. In spite of the furor aroused by this idea in the West German press, non-Germans may legitimately wonder whether it is not silly to quibble over whether to the GDR a separate state or a separate nation.
Regional Associations and the Chinese City: A Comparative Perspective
Authors: Hamilton Gary G.
Published: June 2009

This essay outlines research that has occupied much of my time for the past several years. It concerns regional associations in traditional China, or what is known ashui-kuanortung-hsiang-hui. When I began this research, inspired in part by Ho Ping-ti's masterful survey (1966), I believed, as did Ho, that most of the stones on this particular field of knowledge had been turned.What remained to be done, it seemed to me, was to record the vicissitudes of these traditional associations in the modernizing atmosphere of early twentieth-century China. But the more I began to look into these associations—into the way they operated, what they implied about Chinese society, and how they seemed to put the countryside into the city—the less I felt I knew and the less I was satisfied with previous generalizations made about them.
Technology as a Subject of Comparative Studies: The Case of Photography
Authors: De Haas W. G. L.
Published: June 2009

Western sociology, which mirrors the dynamic development of modern industrialised and urbanised society, has not escaped the need for radical division of work; and many of the social institutions of Western society have been made subjects of sociological specialisation. These treat various kinds of human activity as fixed behaviour patterns which, up to a point, exist in their own right but cannot be divorced from their social background. A society cannot be understood without examining its specific institutions; conversely, these can be understood only in the context of that society.
The Political Economy ofGutswirtschaft: A Comparative Analysis of East Elbian Germany, Egypt, and Chile
Authors: Richards Alan
Published: June 2009

In many otherwise diverse societies, owners of large agricultural estates have paid their year-round workers with the use of a piece of land on which to produce their own subsistence crops. In a “preliminary report” Magnus Morner cited some eleven examples of this system in Europe, Latin America, and Africa. Although Mörner mentions different influences, he does not advance an argument to explain these systems. This essay seeks to contribute to our understanding of the political economy of these “labor rent” or “estate labor” systems. The paper is exploratory: previous approaches are considered, a theoretical framework is proposed, and some tentative hypotheses are presented. My evidence comes from three examples: the Insten system of East Elbian Germany from ca. 1750 to ca. 1860; the ‘izbahsystem of the Egyptian Delta from ca. 1850 to ca. 1940; and the pre-1930inquilinajesystem of Central Chile.
Ethnicity, Secret Societies, and Associations: the Japanese in Brazil
Authors: Maeyama Takashi
Published: June 2009

The Japanese in Brazil may be called “an associational people in an unorganizational society.” More than fifty years ago, Oliveira Vianna, a pioneer in Brazilian social sciences, remarked: “The institutions of social solidarity are extremely scanty among our people. Here men live, as a rule, isolated either within the large estates or within their family circles. … The non-solidarity is complete. We cannot discover any trace of association among the neighbors for the sake of common utility” (Vianna 1920: 169–70).
Patterns of Ethnic Separatism
Authors: Horowitz Donald L.
Published: June 2009

In the analysis of ethnic separatism and secession, two approaches can be distinguished. One is to ask what forces are responsbile for the general upsurge in secessionist movements, from Burma te-Biafra and Bangladesh, from Corsica to Quebec, and from Eritrea to the Southern Philippines. Another approach is to ask what moves certain territorially discrete ethnic groups to attempt to leave the states of which they are a part (or at least to secure substantial territorial autonomy), whereas other groups, also regionally concentrated, make no such attempts. The first question calls for a general explanation of aggregate trends; it aims to compare the present with some period in the past. The second calls for an explanation that can discriminate among classes of cases; it entails comparison not across time, but across space.
Social Change and Ethnic Nationalism: An Historical Analysis of the Separatist Movement in Quebec
Authors: Fenwick Rudy
Published: June 2009

Linguistic conflict between French and English-speaking Canadians has been an enduring feature of Canadian society since the British conquest of New France (Quebec) in 1759. This conflict has taken a variety of forms and revolved around a number of issues in the past two hundred years, ranging from the question of religious and linguistic civil rights to economic inequality and economic dominance. The latest and most significant manifestation of English-French conflict has been the emergence in the mid-1960s of a viable movement for political independence for the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec.
From Avoidance to Confrontation: Peasant Protest in Precolonial and Colonial Southeast Asia
Authors: Adas Michael
Published: June 2009

Although there has been a dramatic broadening of the definition of social protest in recent years to include collective behavior that was once dismissed as criminal, irrational, or insignificant, our attention has continued to be focused on movements involving direct, often violent, confrontations between the wielders of power and dissident groups. Avoidance protest, by which dissatisfied groups seek to attenuate their hardships and express their discontent through flight, sectarian withdrawal, or other activities that minimize challenges to or clashes with those whom they view as their oppressors, has at best remained a secondary concern of students of social protest. Although specific forms of avoidance protest, such as the flight of slaves in the plantation zones of the Americas or the migration or serfs to the towns of medieval Europe and peasants to the frontiers of Tsarist Russia, have merited a prominent place in the historical literature on some societies and time periods, avoidance protest has rarely been systematically analyzed as a phenomenon in itself. There have been few detailed studies of the diverse forms which avoidance protest may take and the ways in which these are shaped by the sociopolitical contexts in which they develop. This neglect is serious because in many societies and time periods (perhaps in most in the preindustrial era), modes of protest oriented to avoidance rather than confrontation have been the preferred and most frequently adopted means of resisting oppression and expressing dissatisfaction.
On Rural Politics in Nineteenth-Century France: The Example of Rodès, 1789–1851
Authors: McPhee Peter
Published: June 2009

TheRoute nationale116 runs west from Perpignan, away from the Mediterranean and up the valley of the Tet River towards the heights of the Pyrenees. For about thirty kilometres, the road follows the river through a district known as the Riberal, a densely populated area of substantial villages andbourgssurrounded by river flats which for centuries have nourished up to six crops of vegetables annually. Just past the peach-growing town of Ille-sur-Têt, the valley narrows to no more than a gorge, and the road has to diverge to skirt a rugged granite bluff and cross over a pass called the Col de Ternère. As the road swings back around the other side of the bluff to rejoin the river and begin its steep climb through theconflentto the highlands, it passes a large cluster of ochre and white houses, with their characteristically southern orange-brown tiles, clinging to the lower part of the hill.
A Case of Attempted Segmental Modernization: Rampur State, 1930–1939
Authors: Brennan Lance
Published: June 2009

The last major bastions of dynastic rule exist among the Muslim states of the Middle East. In the last thirty years, as they have emerged from under the “protective” umbrella of European domination, the rulers of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States have attempted to maintain their personal control while coping with problems, on the one hand of unstable external conditions, and on the other of the pursuit of economic and administrative modernization. Their successes and, more recently, their failures, have held the attention of the world. In some ways their predicament represents a more acute aspect of the problem confronting some of the Indian princes in the 1930s when, as British dominance in the subcontinent was increasingly challenged by the Indian National Congress, they attempted to lead their states on the first halting steps towards modernity.
The Periodical Press in Eighteenth-Century English and French Society: A Cross-Cultural Approach
Authors: Botein Stephen , Censer Jack R. , Ritvo Harriet
Published: June 2009

Historians have long recognized that the large body of periodical literature surviving from the eighteenth century, along with the smaller amount preserved from the seventeenth century, is an important source of insight into the early development of modern society in the West. Newspapers and other periodicals—magazines, reviews, and a miscellany of other publications difficult to characterize precisely—provided eighteenth-century readers with fundamental information about their world and with news of the ways in which it was changing. It is not surprising that this voluminous printed record also yields evidence to those seeking to understand that world from the vantage point of a subsequent era.
Assimilating New Worlds in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Authors: Ryan Michael T.
Published: June 2009

In Carlos Fuentes's recent novel,Terra Nostra, El Señor, an autistic Spanish king who bears a conspicuous resemblance to Philip II, is told of the existence of new worlds across the seas. In outrage and disbelief, he denies that such a thing was possible, for he, El Señor, had decreed that the only world which existed was to be found within the walls of his newly constructed palace. Royal monk that he was, he had ordered the world built for him and so forbade the existence of other worlds.
Systems of Domination after Slavery: The Control of Land and Labor in the British West Indies after 1838
Authors: Bolland O. Nigel
Published: June 2009

Four years after their “emancipation” in 1838, the former slaves of British Guiana protested against their conditions and their unfair treatment by the planters who sought to bind them to labor on the estates. When the planters introduced certain rules and regulations, which were intended to regulate the quality and quantity of work, and to reduce labor costs by lowering wages and abolishing customary allowances of free medical attention, housing, and provision grounds, the workers complained to the stipendiary magistrates and stopped work.
Slavery and Economic Development: Brazil and the United States South in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Graham Richard
Published: June 2009

All history is comparative. The judgments historians make are derived from some explicit or implicit standard of comparison. Thus, when historians describe the antebellum South in the United States as technically backward, rural, nonindustrial, socially retrograde, and paternalistic, they mean to say that it was so in comparison with the North. When historians of nineteenthcentury Brazil describe it in the same terms, they compare it either to the hegemonic capitalist areas of that period, including the United States North, or to Brazil itself at later periods in its history.
Factory Politics in Britain and the United States: Engineers and Machinists, 1914–1919
Authors: Haydu Jeffrey
Published: June 2009

The priorities of British and American trade unions center predominantly on the economic rewards received by union members. Collective bargaining and strikes typically focus on how much employers must pay for labor (in wages, pensions, and other benefits) rather than on how the labor, once purchased, may be used. Basic decisions regarding the organization of production are not considered by most unionists as legitimate issues for negotiation. Disputes over working conditions do arise, of course, but rarely concern securing for labor the rights of management. They involve instead efforts to protect jobs and work practices from encroachment by employers or poaching by other unions. In short, labor's goals are largely economistic, defensive, and sectional.
Bureaucrats versus the State in Capitalist and Socialist Regimes
Authors: Kraus Richard , Vanneman Reeve D.
Published: June 2009

Resurgent scholarly interest in the state has focused attention on the growth and decline of state power: Samuel Huntington's emphasis on the importance of state making and state decay, James O'Connor's anticipation of the financial crises of large states, Immanuel Wallerstein's identification of strong states with core areas of the world economy, Charles Tilly's accounts of European efforts to create more powerful states, and Theda Skocpol's analysis of revolutions as attempts to restore the strength of weakened central regimes.
An Approach to Modern Labor: Worker Peasantries in Historic Saxony and the Friuli Region over Three Centuries
Authors: Holmes Douglas R. , Quataert Jean H.
Published: June 2009

The spread of manufacture in the European countryside initiated the formation of vital and complex rural laboring groups that defy neat classification. The nature of livelihood in these rural settings furthered an integration of diverse productive involvements rather than the creation of narrow occupational niches. In the course of their labor careers, men and women moved between agrarian and industrial pursuits—weaving linen cloth, spinning silk, raising livestock, digging potatoes, tending vineyards, making bricks, mining coal, casting iron, and forging steel. In this context, livelihood was not merely an individual concern; rather, it was part of a broader household strategy, rooted in a family-based agrarian holding. The maintenance of bonds to peasant agriculture fostered familial solidarity over working-class identity. These laborers saw their destinies in the immediacy of flesh-and-blood relationships among family and kin and not in more abstract social and political identifications.
The New Proletarians: Third World Reality and First World Categories
Authors: Rothstein Frances
Published: June 2009

Although wage work has been present in the third world for some time, more people in that world are selling more of their labor today than ever before. Anthropologists and other social scientists have dealt with this increase in the amount of wage labor by using a variety of concepts, including urbanization, migration, and proletarianization. Recently, the concept of the peasant-wor-ker has appeared in the literature with greater frequency and a new meaning. This study examines one current use and discusses some of the problems associated with it.
Dualism in German Agrarian Historiography
Authors: Perkins J. A.
Published: June 2009

The historiography of agrarian Germany before 1914 is fundamentally based upon two moments (in the Weberian sense): one of a structural and the other of an institutional nature. The structural moment comprises an emphasis upon the existence and role of agrarian dualism, that is, upon a sharp contrast, emerging from the later Middle Ages onwards, in the agrarian systems found east and west of the River Elbe and its tributary the Saale, which together formed a line bisecting Germany from Hamburg to the modern Czechoslavakian frontier. The institutional moment consists of the shift from a free-trade to a protectionist policy in respect of cereals after 1879. In the words of a leading West German agrarian historian, “On 1 January 1880 … a new epoch commenced for German agricultural policy.” In addition, the adoption of a grain tariff from 1879 is generally assumed to have had a determining influence upon the subsequent development of German agriculture and, for that matter, is thought by some writers to have exerted a considerable influence upon the entire course of modern German history.
From Little King to Landlord: Property, Law, and the Gift under the Madras Permanent Settlement
Authors: Dirks Nicholas B.
Published: June 2009

In the last few years, modern historians of India have pushed the historical frontier of their field backwards in time. Colonialism is no longer considered the great watershed it once was thought to be. Historians who concern themselves with economic processes such as protoindustrialization tend in particular to minimize the impact of the consolidation of colonial rule in the late eighteenth century. Changes viewed as significant by these historians usually begin with the introduction of capitalism and the early encroachment of a world system, both of which predate the full political realization of colonialism. Historians who concern themselves with political changes tend in the other direction, although increasingly they have proposed major continuities between theancien régimeand the early colonial state. Historians concerned with social change view colonialism as significant but invoke various new forms of dualism to account for the limited effects of colonialism on local social forms. Whatever their differences, all of these historians agree that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are crucial for viewing later changes in economy, polity, and society, and, from their varying theoretical and ideological perspectives, delight in excoriating traditional views of India as static and “traditional” before the arrival of the British.
Kinship Structure and Political Authority: The Middle East and Central Asia
Authors: Lindholm Charles
Published: June 2009

Kinship studies have traditionally been the core of the anthropological enterprise, but the knowledge gained in studies of indigenous kinship systems has not generally been of interest to other disciplines. This essay intends to draw attention to some of the political and social implications of patterns of kinship relations by comparing two large historical culture areas, that of the frontier region of Inner Asia, and that of the peripheral tribes of the Middle East.
History and Society in a Popular Rebellion: Mewat, 1920–1933
Authors: Siddiqi Majid Hayat
Published: June 2009

In late 1932 and early 1933 a popular rising occurred in the region of Mewat in northern central India. Although this rebellion broke out in opposition to the political power of the princely states of Alwar and Bharatpur, as a peasant rebellion it spread over and was supported from areas of British India. It was not, pace Harold Laski, merely an instance of peasant rebellion in an area of indirect British rule. Popular protest in Mewat arose within the totality of an historical context made up as much of developments in British India as of features that were specific to areas of indirect rule. The ideological and social world of the rebellion was also constituted of elements common to British and princely India and to the local histories of the peasant community of the Meos who rose in rebellion. The context that we write about, therefore, is one of a multiplicity of different, yet interlocking, histories—legendary, secular, reformist, sectarian, legitimist, nationalist, rebellious, nativistic—all of which end, as it were, in a final denouement in the rising of 1933.
The Impact of the Cuban Revolution: A Comparative Perspective
Authors: Eckstein Susan
Published: June 2009

Nearly a quarter of a century has elapsed since the revolution in Cuba. Yet there is little consensus about its accomplishments. Evaluations of the effect of the sociopolitical transformation range from uncritical admiration to passionate criticism. It is surprising that no study has compared developments in postrevolutionary Cuba with developments during the same time period in the rest of Latin America, even though such a comparison would contribute to a better understanding of the extent to which the disruption has altered Cuban prospects for development.
Continuity and Change in the Urban House: Developments in Domestic Space Organisation in Seventeenth-Century London
Authors: Brown Frank E.
Published: June 2009

The object of this article is to present the main findings of a study of the functional organisation of the house in postmedieval London. It will also discuss a formal approach to plan analysis that is considered to have wide application in the comparative study of domestic space.
The Dynamics of Rural Accumulation in South Africa: Comparative and Historical Perspectives
Authors: Keegan Timothy
Published: June 2009

The view that the opening up of Africa by metropolitan capitalism, particularly during the period of direct colonial rule, was bound to lead through evolutionary stages to economic development and modernisation has long since fallen into scholarly disrepute. In the atmosphere of radical pessimism that has pervaded academic perspectives on Africa since independence, an altogether more sceptical view of the beneficence of Africa's integration into imperial economies has prevailed. But as is often the case in scholarly debate, thesis and antithesis occupy the same battleground, and both tend to view the world through similar lenses. What modernisation and underdevelopment theories have in common is the assumption of a single universal dynamic in the making of the modern world; exposure to market forces is thus apparently destined either to reshape third world societies in the image of industrial Europe, or to “underdevelop” them in the interests of capital accumulation in the metropoles.
Cattle Ranching in the Venezuelan Llanos and the Florida Flatwoods: A Problem in Comparative History
Authors: Otto J. S. , Anderson N. E.
Published: June 2009

By 1860, Cuba had become Spain's leading plantation colony in the New World, producing cash crops such as sugar, coffee, and tobacco for export. Cuba devoted so much effort to cash crops that the colony found it necessary to import foodstuffs to feed its slave and free populations. Among the essential foodstuffs that Cuba imported were dried beef from Venezuela and beef cattle from Florida. Venezuela, a Spanish colony that achieved its independence in 1821, and Florida, a Spanish colony acquired by the United States in 1821, had become Cuba's leading beef suppliers by the mid-nineteenth century.
“A Modified Form of Slavery”: The Credit and Truck Systems in the Bahamas in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Authors: Johnson Howard
Published: June 2009

In historical writing on the British West Indies, discussion of the transition from slavery to other forms of labour control after emancipation has been largely confined to the plantation colonies. It is usually argued that planters were most successful in controlling former slaves in colonies where they were able to limit the freedman's access to land and thus create a dependent wage-earning proletariat. Such an analysis cannot, however, be readily applied to the Bahamas, where the plantation system based on cotton production had collapsed before emancipation and where the sea provided an important source of subsistence and employment. This article examines the control mechanisms which enabled a white mercantile minority to consolidate its position as a ruling elite in the postemancipation period. Rather than a monopoly of land, the important elements in this elite's economic and social control were a monopoly of the credit available to the majority of the population and the operation of a system of payment in truck. The credit and truck systems frequently left the lower classes in debt and, as a governor of the colony in the late nineteenth century remarked, in a position of “practical slavery. ”