History and Anthropology

Commissioned by Bryan Rindfleisch (Marquette University) Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=54963 Ireland, Slavery, and Empire: Michael Keane, the Caribbean, and the Irish Atlantic When protesters in Bristol decided to remove the statue of Edward Colston from its plinth in June 2020 and symbolically sunk it into the harbor, they reignited the issue and the discussions about slavery in the Caribbean. The act dramatically highlighted how the plantations had brought great wealth to the city that was once one of the main ports of the slave trade in the sugar islands. In fact, Bristol also maintained a close commercial relationship with Ireland in the eighteenth century, where much of the bulk supplies for the West Indies originated. In return, an increasing supply of sugar arrived at the quays of Dublin, Belfast, and Cork, all of which was facilitated by the labor of enslaved peoples. And as evidenced by Irish plantation owners in the West Indies, such as Michael Keane, resident on the island of St. Vincent, these individuals built an elaborate network of mercantile connections that spanned throughout the British Empire. While Keane still described himself as "wholly Irish" and retained strong family links and professional relationships with Ireland, he was deeply embedded within transatlantic trade and slavery that emanated out of and into the West Indies. This is what makes the publication of Keane's late eighteenth-century letter book of such importance, as it places him at the heart of the intersections of eighteenth-century Ireland, transatlantic commerce and slavery, and the British Empire. Keane's letter book-which consists of his correspondence with individuals in England, Ireland, and the other English-speaking islands in the Caribbean between 1787 and 1790-is an archival manuscript from the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond (VA) and has been edited by Mark S. Quintanilla. In his introductory essay, it is evident that Quintanilla has studied Keane's letters in great detail and researched the mercantile links that Keane maintained throughout the Atlantic world thoroughly. He demonstrates that Keane maintained an intimate commercial network that stretched from Barbados and Grenada to the Dutch islands of St. Eustatius and St. Martin, as well as Ireland and England. The essay also describes Keane's involvement in Caribbean slavery and the slave trade while providing a glimpse into the lives of the enslaved peoples who lived on his plantation and those who were shipped to and from the West Indies. Quintanilla further situates Keane's correspondence in the larger body of scholarly literature related to transatlantic merchants and trade-specifically, a

""The making of the Irish poor law, 1815-43 examines the debates preceding and surrounding the 1838 act on the nature of Irish poverty and the responsibilities of society towards it. It traces the various campaigns for a poor law from the later eighteenth century. The nature and internal frictions of the great Irish poor inquiry of 1833-36 are analysed, along with the policy recommendations made by its chair, Archbishop Whately. It considers the aims and limitations of the government’s measure and the public reaction to it in Ireland and Britain. Finally, it describes the implementation of the Poor Law between 1838 and 1843 under the controversial direction of George Nicholls.

It will be of particular importance to those with a serious interest in the history of social welfare, of Irish social thought and politics, and of British governance in Ireland in the early nineteenth century.""

For over 300 years the government of Ireland was headed by the lord lieutenant, a peer who combined the 'efficient' direction of the Irish executive on behalf of the British crown with the 'decorative' role of viceroy or surrogate of the crown at the centre of the Irish court at Dublin Castle. In this volume a number of leading historians explore the multiple dimensions of the Irish lord lieutenancy as an institution - political, social and cultural - between its gradual emergence in the wake of the Tudor proclamation of the 'Kingdom of Ireland' in 1541, and the office's abolition in the context of revolution, independence and partition in 1922. They build on recent research into the complex historical relationship between the British monarchy and Ireland in evaluating the often contradictory roles played by viceroys in British-Irish relations. While the contributors assess the relationship between the lord lieutenancy and the varied and often contested state-building and nation-building activities of the British state in Ireland, they also illuminate the range of personalities of the peers who held the office, and the contribution these incumbents made to defining in practice a role that was always constitutionally opaque. Over the course of more than three centuries, lords lieutenant were at different times military strongmen, quasi-regal Irish magnates, absentee courtiers, activist chief executives and powerless figureheads. Long before the extinction of the office many in both Ireland and Britain had come to question its purpose and efficacy, yet it endured until British rule ended with the establishment of the Irish Free State. This volume sets out to explain the longevity of this governing institution, and unravel both what it symbolised and what it amounted to in substance.

The perception of Ireland and India as ‘zones of famine’ led many nineteenth-century observers to draw analogies between these two troublesome parts of the British empire. This article investigates this parallel through the career of James Caird (1816–92), and specifically his interventions in the latter stages of both the Great Irish Famine of 1845–50, and the Indian famines of 1876–9. Caird is best remembered as the joint author of the controversial dissenting minute in the Indian famine commission report of 1880; this article locates the roots of his stance in his previous engagements with Irish policy. Caird's interventions are used to track the trajectory of an evolving ‘Peelite’ position on famine relief, agricultural reconstruction, and land reform between the 1840s and 1880s. Despite some divergences, strong continuities exist between the two interventions – not least concern for the promotion of agricultural entrepreneurship, for actively assisting economic development ...

This article look at Islam and politics in Mozambique. Islam has experienced there an exemplary turnabout since the late 1980s. It has been transformed from a marginalised, and at time oppressed, religion into a socially and publicly important faith. What have been the consequences of this transformation? How did Muslims make use of their progress? And what was the reaction of those in political power? Did Muslims integrate into the elite in power, and can one consequently identify a reconfiguration of the national hegemonic bloc? The article demonstrates that while Muslims were integrated in various political institutions after 1994, the party in power evicted all militant religious men from its party and from political positions after the year 2000. It only retained secular Muslims in its ranks. The text evaluates the impact of this change and raises the hypothesis of a consequent secularization of politics.

Il y a plus de dix ans, un débat faisait fureur parmi les africanistes (et autres intéressés) à propos de l'avenir du continent noir. Le débat portait sur une conception négative du futur de l'Afrique qui commençait à prédominer, ce que l'on appela alors l'« afro-pessimisme ». Selon certains, l'Afrique était en passe de devenir « hors jeu », socialement et économiquement, toujours plus marginalisée par la globalisation et l'ouverture des frontières et des marchés économiques dont elle n'arrivait pas bénéficier. De nombreux chercheurs s'opposaient à une telle vision qu'ils qualifièrent de misérabiliste, d'a-historique et d'ethnocentrique. Selon eux, les critères de jugement étaient définis selon des modèles historiques et théoriques occidentaux. Alors, pour répondre à l'afro-pessimisme, plusieurs auteurs cherchèrent à montrer l'historicité (propre) des États africains, la ré-appropriation des structures administratives imposées par le colonialisme, la modernisation de nombreuses pratiques dites traditionnelles, sans oublier l'intégration de l'Afrique dans l'économie mondialefût-ce par le bas. 1 Après une décennie, ce débat s'est largement éteint dans les sciences sociales, mais la conception négative du présent et de l'avenir de l'Afrique perdure. On parle avec toujours plus d'aisance, dans les médias, au sein des gouvernements occidentaux, voire à l'ONU, d'États « ratés » (les failed states), on affirme toujours plus souvent que les structures administratives sur le continent ne fonctionnent pas et que les infrastructures sociales s'écroulent sous la pauvreté extrême et les maladies -en particulier le SIDA. On pense même de manière croissante, et à haute voix, en termes d'intervention sur le continent, y compris d'intervention militaire, et on discute sans gêne, du dehors, de la manière de « reconstruire » les États qui sont jugés « ratés », notamment la Sierra Leone, le Congo et le Libéria. Au niveau religieux, les courants qui ont le vent en poupe aujourd'hui sont les mouvements évangéliques et pentecôtistes qui tiennent, en général, un discours manichéen et qui, en ce qui concerne l'Afrique, affirment ni plus ni moins vouloir « rétablir la lumière » sur le dark continent.

This book brings together new research on the subject of nations and nationalisms in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. It explores the history and politics of diverse nationalist discourses and ideologies, and it revisits the formation and contemporary developments of national imagined communities in Portuguese-speaking Africa. It does so by drawing on several disciplines and by exploring themes as diverse as Frelimo’s liberation literature, UNITA’s moral economy and the disaggregation of Guinea-Bissau. The authors provide novel insights in the hope of contributing to the academic and public debate on the subject, not least in those countries where, in the face of liberalisation, ruling parties and their opponents have been arguing intensively over, and have sometime struggled to re-invent, a sense of national community. Through their engagement with the subject, authors also make a contribution to the general discussion of the concepts of nations and nationalism