Unlike most city histories, this book focuses exclusively on the city’s connections with colonialism and slavery. Rotterdam, the second-largest Dutch city, is one of Europe’s leading ports. Its... Show moreUnlike most city histories, this book focuses exclusively on the city’s connections with colonialism and slavery. Rotterdam, the second-largest Dutch city, is one of Europe’s leading ports. Its maritime expansion was intrinsically linked to Dutch colonialism, including slave trading and colonial slavery in the Americas, Africa and Asia. This painful history sits uneasily with the city’s modern cosmopolitan image and its large population of ‘new Rotterdammers’ with colonial roots. The present volume provides a summary of the research that has documented this history, with chapters on the contribution of colonial trade to economic development; the city’s involvement in slavery; the role of the urban political elites; the impact on urban development and architecture; the ‘ethical impulse’; colonial art and ethnographic collections; colonial and postcolonial migration; and finally the resonance of this history in postcolonial Rotterdam. Show less
This book showcases new research by emerging and established scholars on white workers and the white poor in Southern Africa. Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa challenges the... Show moreThis book showcases new research by emerging and established scholars on white workers and the white poor in Southern Africa. Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa challenges the geographical and chronological limitations of existing scholarship by presenting case studies from Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe that track the fortunes of nonhegemonic whites during the era of white minority rule. Arguing against prevalent understandings of white society as uniformly wealthy or culturally homogeneous during this period, it demonstrates that social class remained a salient element throughout the twentieth century, how Southern Africa’s white societies were often divided and riven with tension and how the resulting social, political and economic complexities animated white minority regimes in the region. Addressing themes such as the class-based disruption of racial norms and practices, state surveillance and interventions – and their failures – towards nonhegemonic whites, and the opportunities and limitations of physical and social mobility, the book mounts a forceful argument for the regional consideration of white societies in this historical context. Centrally, it extends the path-breaking insights emanating from scholarship on racialized class identities from North America to the African context to argue that race and class cannot be considered independently in Southern Africa. Show less
This dissertation investigates the life of Judean deportees in Babylonia in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. The results from the study of Judeans are placed in the wider context of... Show moreThis dissertation investigates the life of Judean deportees in Babylonia in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. The results from the study of Judeans are placed in the wider context of Babylonian society and are evaluated by using a group of Neirabian deportees as a point of comparison. The sources of this study consist of 289 clay tablets written in Akkadian cuneiform, such as promissory notes, leases, receipts, and lists. The dissertation shows that there was considerable diversity in the deportees’ socio-economic status and integration into Babylonian society. The majority of deportees were settled in the countryside and integrated into the land-for-service system, which was aimed at increasing agricultural output and providing the state with labour, soldiers, and tax income. In addition, foreign professionals were employed in cities, and the worlds of commerce and royal administration were open to some deportees. A relatively small number of deportees were donated to Babylonian temples. The Babylonian practice of settling deportees in ethnically homogenous rural communities supported the survival of their culture and traditions in the countryside. Adoption of Babylonian names and culture was faster among those Judeans who lived in cities and were in regular contact with the native population. Show less
Oil is mostly seen as a natural resource and not as a commodity, the production of which involves organisation of social relations of production. This study maps this tightly woven relations... Show moreOil is mostly seen as a natural resource and not as a commodity, the production of which involves organisation of social relations of production. This study maps this tightly woven relations between the workers, the oil company(ies) and the state in the Iranian oil industry focusing on the period between 1951 and 1973, when the management of oil was completely transferred to the National Iranian Oil Company. Through an archival study, the 1951 nationalisation of oil, the organization of labour relations in the industry, the working and living conditions of the workers, and labour activism in the period is scrutinized. The various social class positions oil employees occupied and the specific relation the industry had with the state and thus embeddedness of the economy in social relations is discussed. Show less
Taking a series of popular jokes about fictitious “anti-societies” as its point of departure, this article explores the responses to the transformation of reform in the decade between 1825 and 1835... Show moreTaking a series of popular jokes about fictitious “anti-societies” as its point of departure, this article explores the responses to the transformation of reform in the decade between 1825 and 1835 and places them in the context of social and political change brought about by Jacksonian democracy. Rooted in the tradition of the moral reform society, through specialization of its aims, the anti-society seemed to become a democratic pendant of older reform societies and was thought to play a more divisive role in local communities. Critics denounced the new societies for their prescriptive character, the prominent role women played, and the “spirit of opposition” they triggered. Contemporaries increasingly understood the evolution of reform culture from the relatively harmonious religious and moral reform societies of the Benevolent Empire of the first quarter of the 19th century to the oppositional and highly contested organizations of radical antislavery and temperance of the 1830s as a serious threat to the social order and the future of the United States. Using the Benign Violation Theory of Humor, this article argues that the American reaction to anti-societies suggests that while they were broadly perceived as a threat to the social order from the late 1820s on, this threat was at first understood to be benign, and thus could be laughed off, while from 1833 on, anti-societies were increasingly regarded as a destructive force, and provoked substantial fears that could justify violent responses as an alternative way to reinforce the “normal” order of things. Show less
The formation of the wage laboring class in the Iranian oil industry during the first decades of the 20th century is studied as a tangled global-local social history. The analysis seeks to... Show moreThe formation of the wage laboring class in the Iranian oil industry during the first decades of the 20th century is studied as a tangled global-local social history. The analysis seeks to situate the oil complex in Iran within the interlinked contexts of the global transformations of World War One, the social and political-economic tumults of the interwar period, the changing geopolitics of the Persian Gulf and Anglo Iranian relations, the consequences of the 1921 coup d’état in Iran, the local transformations of the oil rich province of Khuzestan, and the urban histories of the oil mining town of Masjed Soleyman and especially the refinery and port city of Abadan. As petroleum was becoming the primary raw material of Fordism and the second industrial revolution the accumulation of capital in oil required the dismantling of existing social structures and the reassembly of resources, technical expertise, and populations in modern built environments designed for oil capitalism. The urban social history of these oil cities shed light on the contentious processes that led to the making of an industrial oil working class, as well as the formation of modern state institutions in Iran, and the Anglo Persian Oil Company Show less
This thesis studies the relationship of the town al-Fusṭāṭ, located at the southern end of the Nile delta in Egypt, and its hinterland in the period between the town’s foundation in A.D. 641 and... Show moreThis thesis studies the relationship of the town al-Fusṭāṭ, located at the southern end of the Nile delta in Egypt, and its hinterland in the period between the town’s foundation in A.D. 641 and the arrival of the Abbasids in 750. Non-literary sources such as papyri and inscriptions (Arabic, Coptic, and Greek) and archaeology form the main source material of this thesis. Some topics, however, cannot be addressed but via medieval historical sources. The thesis presents four case studies: on (1) the administrative relationship between al-Fusṭāṭ and Alexandria, (2) the economic development of Alexandria after the foundation of al-Fusṭāṭ, (3) al-Fusṭāṭ’s role in the military administration of Upper Egypt, and (4) al-Fusṭāṭ and the legal administration of Upper Egypt. This thesis’s main findings are that the relationship between al-Fusṭāṭ and the rest of Egypt before 750 developed in three main steps: (1) c. 641 until c. 661, a period in which fiscal and military aspects dominated this relationship; (2) c. 661 until c. 700, a first period of centralization (civil, military, and legal administration) coinciding with the Sufyanids’ come to power; and (3) 700 until 750, a second period of centralization (civil, legal, and economic) coinciding with the Marwanid reforms.Egypt, al-Fustat, Alexandria, capital, military, economy, law, papyrology, early Islam Show less
This dissertation is predicated upon the hypothesis that the agency of the non-whites in 18th century Curaçao in realising their freedom and bringing about the improvement of their economic and... Show moreThis dissertation is predicated upon the hypothesis that the agency of the non-whites in 18th century Curaçao in realising their freedom and bringing about the improvement of their economic and social situation is largely underestimated in the historiography. The specific nature of the colony’s economic orientation, centred on commerce and shipping, offered opportunities for both slaves and free non-whites. Discussed are manumission, the judicial position of free non-whites, their social-economic development, their military role and the development of their political awareness during the revolutionary years at the end of the 18th century. Possibilities to earn an income gave enslaved Curaçaoans opportunities to buy their freedom. The majority of the manumissions was made possible by the free non-white population itself. Free non-whites were not treated as equal to whites judicially, but they had access to all legal instruments. There were no judicial barriers preventing free non-whites from engaging in economic activities. Free non-whites were active in most branches of the economy and ownership of real estate and slaves was not uncommon. They played a crucial role in the defence of the colony and in maintaining law and order. There is evidence for a development of political awareness, be it largely circumstantial. Show less
