{"title":"Citizens’ Sentiments or Governmental Rationales? Post-War Reconstruction of Bombed Cities in the Netherlands","authors":"Wim van Meurs, Laura Brinkhorst, Marieke Oprel","doi":"10.1163/22130624-20230014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22130624-20230014","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000After large-scale destruction by acts of war or natural disasters, reconstruction of housing and infrastructure is up to the state. Typically, reconstruction is preceded by expropriation of real estate ‘in the public interest’. Because of the bombing of Dutch cities and the demolition of entire districts for the Atlantikwall, the Dutch government deployed this instrument after liberation. Thanks to the institution of the Ledger for Reconstruction, cities like Rotterdam and Arnhem were rebuilt. Yet, the Ledger was not invented in 1945 or in London, but in 1940 under German occupation, for Rotterdam. Given the large number of expropriated Dutch citizens and the huge sums involved, historians’ attention for these expropriations has been remarkably scarce. Mostly, they focus on reconstruction as net result and convey a message of national unity, progress and hope – the very message that was conveyed during those post-war years. This contribution therefore brings to the fore resistance and resentment as responses to the government’s heavy-handed policies of expropriation and reconstruction. And questions whether adopting an institution from the occupation period went uncontested after liberation.","PeriodicalId":227091,"journal":{"name":"International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity","volume":" 23","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140692657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Black (and White) Dynamite Critical Photobooks of the Depression Era","authors":"Ya’ara Gil-Glazer","doi":"10.1163/22130624-20230015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22130624-20230015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Inspired by the documentary black and white photographs of the New Deal’s Resettlement/ Farm Security Administration (ra/fsa), the critical photobooks of the Depression era provided a radical view of contemporary and historical United States of America. Anchored by words, the images in these books were highly critical of the agricultural economy and American capitalism in general. In addition, they criticized Black people’s exclusion and discrimination. The present article discusses this genre by comparing Archibald MacLeish’s Land of the Free (1937) and Dorothea Lange and Paul Tailor’s American Exodus (1939) with Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam’s Twelve Million Black Voices (1941). While the first two radicalized the ra/fsa’s reformist criticism, Wright and Rosskam’s book went further by subverting the very roots of the American dream, exposing it as an ongoing historical depression for Black people.","PeriodicalId":227091,"journal":{"name":"International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity","volume":" 23","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140691429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Historical Consciousness and the Uses of the Past: The Nineteenth-Century Parthenon Replicas","authors":"K. Tuori","doi":"10.1163/22130624-20230013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22130624-20230013","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The idea of making a replica of an ancient building such as the Parthenon involves a complex set of emotions, historical thought processes and usages of memory. This article explores the historical process and the politics of memory involved in building replicas of the Parthenon through a set of nineteenth-century examples that illustrate crucial changes in the approaches to history. These processes are juxtaposed and compared with the restoration works on the original Parthenon itself. In doing so, it maintains that the aspects of historical consciousness that the reconstructions both relied upon and sought to manipulate should be seen through the lens of the uses of the past. Arguing against a simplistic notion of the replicas of Parthenon being simply manifestations of the nationalism and classicism of the day, it maintains that they should be seen as works of historical self-definition and the generation of meanings through historical identification.","PeriodicalId":227091,"journal":{"name":"International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity","volume":"51 51","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140701163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Historical Time and Acceleration. A Constitutive Bond","authors":"Felipe Torres","doi":"10.1163/22130624-20230012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22130624-20230012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This manuscript addresses the link between the concept of ‘historical time’ and the thesis of the acceleration of history and society in constitutive terms. ‘Historical time’ is used as concept mainly from the eighteenth century and corresponds to a way of understanding the contemporary world as a moment in which a ‘chronology’ of time and, along with it, the appearance of a temporalized history itself, take place. Different temporal schemes support this transition: a pass from synchronicity to diachrony, the transition from iteration to the ‘event’, circularity to the linearity. In what follows, I propose to observe some implications and articulations of the ‘historical time’ and ‘social acceleration’ theses, advancing the hypothesis that they are both connected and mutual dependent.","PeriodicalId":227091,"journal":{"name":"International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity","volume":"79 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140742572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Visual Narratives of Boxer-era China: Two German Photo Albums of the Early 1900s","authors":"Thoralf Klein","doi":"10.1163/22130624-20230010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22130624-20230010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In this article, I examine two ‘semi-public’ German photo albums composed in the immediate aftermath of the international military intervention in China in 1900–01 known as the Boxer War. One was compiled by two members of the German East Asian Expeditionary Corps, Dr Wang and Lieutenant Freiherr von Meerscheidt-Hüllessem, the other by the incoming German minister to Beijing, Alfred von Mumm. I will begin by developing a narrative theory of the photo album. I will use this to demonstrate how the two albums visually (re-)construct a multifaceted journey through space and time in which political and military themes blend with a cultural gaze on China’s architecture as well as its people. The albums are thus situated at the intersection between imperialist intervention, cultural ethnography and modern (foreign) tourism in China. And they reflect various power differentials: not just the one between imperialist agents and victims but equally that between ethnographers and the people they study, as well as the one that characterises modern tourism.","PeriodicalId":227091,"journal":{"name":"International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity","volume":"52 22","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138591938","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jean Eïd (1819–1878): From Levantine Dragoman to Godfather of a Belgian-Egyptian Dynasty","authors":"Gert Huskens","doi":"10.1163/22130624-20230003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22130624-20230003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000As a young, but ambitious state that aspired to acquire a respected position in the nineteenth-century European concert, one of the institutions Belgium relied on was its diplomatic corps. Whereas the capitals of Europe quickly became the new home of career diplomats, Belgium gradually developed a consular apparatus that was staffed by locally recruited agents in more faraway areas. In the Eastern Mediterranean, the position of dragoman, who served as translator to the diplomatic representatives, was especially relevant in a setting where language barriers hindered the expansion of Belgium’s diplomatic and commercial interests. This essay unravels the history of the Belgian dragomanate in Egypt and focusses on one dragoman in particular: Jean Eïd. Addressing his term in Belgian service from the perspective of subalternity, I will demonstrate how the social, professional and legal status of these actors who roamed the increasingly entangled Levantine sphere in this period, is particularly challenging to grasp, while also recognizing the potential his position had for the next generations that succeeded him.","PeriodicalId":227091,"journal":{"name":"International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity","volume":"2017 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127547160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Speech of the Subaltern Transcribed: Quoting Practices and Language ‘Errors’ in Colonial Travel Writing","authors":"","doi":"10.1163/22130624-20230005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22130624-20230005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article analyzes the use of quoted speech in nineteenth-century European travel writing from around the Indian Ocean. A careful analysis of when speech was quoted directly, and how its phonetic characteristics were transcribed into printed form, elucidates the power dynamics embedded in the spoken word in colonial contexts while also opening up new perspectives on the rhetorical strategies of imperialism. Of particular interest here is the notion of erroneous speech: colonial travelogues regularly employed direct quotes to highlight what were construed as ‘mispronunciations’ or ‘grammar mistakes’ by indigenous and/or non-European-coded speakers of the language of the colonizer. Such a framing of differing language habits served to inscribe a cultural hierarchy and power differential into moments of interpersonal encounter. Moreover, in the firmly middle-class genre of travel writing, the speech of working-class Europeans was subjected to similar treatment, pointing to the diversity of different ‘subaltern’ positions within the colonial hierarchy.","PeriodicalId":227091,"journal":{"name":"International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134133413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Approaches to Subalternity: an Introduction","authors":"","doi":"10.1163/22130624-20230004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22130624-20230004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":227091,"journal":{"name":"International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121511798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Vocalizing a Eurasian Otherness: Antony Firingi and a Creole Bengali Subalternity","authors":"Esha Sil","doi":"10.1163/22130624-20230006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22130624-20230006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper examines the alternative articulations of the nineteenth-century Eurasian ‘other’ along the vocal axis of a ‘creole Bengali subalternity’. It predicates its contextual premise upon the transcultural encounters of Bengal’s mofussil enclaves by the Hooghly River. These enclaves developed rapidly into Portuguese, Dutch, French and Danish settlements between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, before being overtaken by the metropolitan colonial modernity of British Calcutta. My analysis of the creole Bengali space-times constituting such entangled histories and their interstitial legacies, revolves around the Eurasian life-world of Antony Firingi (c. 1786–1836), a Portuguese-Bengali kobi singer, viz. kobiyal, from the French comptoir, Chandernagore. Mobilizing the sonic scope of the rasa modality in Indic aesthetics, I close-read a key passage from Firingi’s kobigaan, or ‘musical verse’, duel with his rival, Bhola Moira, to decode the subaltern agency of the ‘creole Bengali rasa’ inflecting the vocal poetics of his liminal identity-narrative as a Eurasian kobiyal.","PeriodicalId":227091,"journal":{"name":"International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126920322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Slavery, Testimony, Archives (or, Should We Listen When the Subaltern Speak?)","authors":"Sophie White","doi":"10.1163/22130624-20230002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22130624-20230002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In eighteenth-century New Orleans, the legal testimony of some 150 enslaved women and men was meticulously recorded and preserved, down to the inclusion of dialogue, of turns of speech, of metaphors, sometimes even passages in Creole. Interrogated in criminal trials as defendants, victims, and witnesses, they moved beyond the questions posed and answered instead with stories about themselves, their words creating riveting narratives that constitute a precious repository of voices of enslaved individuals in colonial America. Though this archive is problematic, their testimony was anchored in the deponents’ own experiences and ways of knowing, prompting the question of whether we can use this material, and most importantly: if and when they did speak in court, should we listen?","PeriodicalId":227091,"journal":{"name":"International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity","volume":"85 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132271302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}