Fear in early modern society

Sample

Ann Laura Stoler

"A milestone in U.S. historiography, Haunted by Empire brings postcolonial critiques to bear on North American history and draws on that history to question the analytic conventions of postcolonial studies. The contributors to this innovative collection examine the critical role of "domains of the intimate" in the consolidation of colonial power. They demonstrate how the categories of difference underlying colonialism -- the distinctions advanced as the justification for the colonizer's rule of the colonized -- were enacted and reinforced in intimate realms from the bedroom to the classroom to the medical examining room. Together the essays focus attention on the politics of comparison -- on how colonizers differentiated one group or set of behaviors from another -- and on the circulation of knowledge and ideologies within and between imperial projects. Ultimately, this collection forces a rethinking of what historians choose to compare and of the epistemological grounds on which those choices are based. Haunted by Empire includes Ann Laura Stoler's seminal essay "Tense and Tender Ties" as well as her bold introduction, which carves out the exciting new analytic and methodological ground animated by this comparative venture. The contributors engage in a lively cross-disciplinary conversation, drawing on history, anthropology, literature, philosophy, and public health. They address such topics as the regulation of Hindu marriages and gay sexuality in the early-twentieth-century United States; the framing of multiple-choice intelligence tests; the deeply entangled histories of Asian, African, and native peoples in the Americas; the racial categorizations used in the 1890 U.S. census; and the politics of race and space in French colonial New Orleans. Linda Gordon, Catherine Hall, and Nancy F. Cott each provide a concluding essay reflecting on the innovations and implications of the arguments advanced in Haunted by Empire."--Page 4 of cover.

Sample

Patrick Joyce

This history is the story of two men, and of the stories they and others told in order that it might be known who they were. It is a history of identity, 'the self' and social identity, and the realm of 'the social' itself in which identity is located. It explores critically the nature of class identity by looking at the formation and influence of two men who might be taken as representative of what 'working class' and 'middle class' meant in England in the nineteenth century. Class is seen to have been less significant than the various shapes of demos, and the two studies of individuals are complemented by a further study on narrative in pointing to the great importance of the collective subjects upon which democracy rested. The book indicates the way forward to a new history of democracy as an imagined entity. It represents a deepening of Patrick Joyce's engagement with 'post-modernist' theory, seeking the relevance of this theory for the writing of history, and in the process offering a critique of the conservatism of much academic history, particularly in Britain.

Sample

Philip T. Hoffman

Making a strong case for the use of economic analysis in studying history and culture, Philip Hoffman shatters the widespread myth that traditional agricultural societies in early modern Europe were socially and economically stagnant - and ultimately depended on wide-scale political revolution for their growth. Through a richly detailed historical investigation of the peasant agriculture of ancien-regime France, the author uncovers evidence that requires a new understanding of what constituted economic growth in such societies. His arguments rest on a measurement of long-term growth that enables him to analyze the economic, institutional, and political factors that explain its forms and rhythms. . In comparing France with England and Germany, Hoffman arrives at fresh answers to some classic questions: Did French agriculture lag behind farming in other countries? If so, did the obstacles in French agriculture lurk within peasant society itself, in the peasants' culture, in their communal property rights, or in the small scale of their farms? Or did the obstacles hide elsewhere, in politics, in the tax system, or in meager opportunities for trade? The author discovers that growth cannot be explained by culture, property rights, or farm size, and argues that the real causes of growth derived from politics and gains from trade. By challenging other widely held beliefs, such as the nature of the commons and the workings of the rural economy, Hoffman offers a new analysis of peasant society and culture, one based on microeconomics and game theory and intended for a wide range of social scientists.

Sample

Wolfgang Schivelbusch

"History may be written by the victors, Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues in his new book, but the losers often have the final word. Focusing on three seminal cases of defeat - the South after the Civil War, France in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, and Germany following World War I - Schivelbusch reveals the complex psychological and cultural responses of vanquished nations to the experience of military defeat.". "Drawing on reaction from every level of society, Schivelbusch investigates the sixty-year period in which the world moved from regional to global conflagration, and from gentlemanly conduct of war to total mutual destruction. He shows how conquered societies question the foundations of their identities and strive to emulate the victors: the South to become a "better North," the French to militarize their schools on the Prussian model, the Germans to adopt all things American. He charts the losers' paradoxical equation of military failure with cultural superiority as they generate myths to glorify their pasts and explain their losses: the nostalgic "plantation legend" after the collapse of the Confederacy, the new cult of Joan of Arc in vanquished France, the fiction of the stab in the back by "foreign" elements in postwar Germany. From cathartic epidemics of "dance-madness" to the revolutions that so often follow battlefield humiliation, Schivelbusch finds remarkable similarities across cultures."--BOOK JACKET.