Justene Hill Edwards, Unfree Markets: The Slaves Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021).
-What a phenomenal book. I’ve been anxiously awaiting it for some time since Professor Edwards was kind enough to share some research and ideas about the inner workings of the South Carolina legislature some years ago. But I learned an incredible amount from this, and I feel like I gained a great deal more clarity about several complicated questions, such as slavery/capitalism (or perhaps slavery + capitalism), enslavement/autonomy, and the ‘shape’ of the enslavers commercial marketplace. This last point is perhaps the most interesting for me at the moment, since the legal boundaries of the market ended up being far less significant than enslavers commercial practices.
Sara T. Damiano, To Her Credit: Women, Finance, and the Law in Eighteenth-Century New England Cities (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021).
-If you are a professor and you want to show graduate students a monument to both historical research and historiographical understanding, you’ve found your book. Seriously. Of course there is a long and distinguished literature on debt as a social relationship, but I don’t think any single scholar has managed to come close to Damiano’s appreciation of context and complexity. She is rethinking the commercial geography of the New England town; studying legal practice from within the courtroom and in non-public venues, and as we see in the final chapters, redefining commercial activity. I am not scheduled to teach a legal history seminar any time soon but after reading this book I want to just so I can teach this book.
UPDATE: I am now teaching a legal history seminar in spring 2022!
Orlando Patterson, The Confounding Island: Jamaica and the Postcolonial Predicament (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019).
-This book is fascinating if bizarre. But I’m thrilled I gave it a chance. Patterson offers a sociological history of postcolonial Jamaica that seeks to explain the central crises that plague the nation, while also clearly enamored with parts of the cultural life. The two chapters that will forever stick in my brain are: the explanation of cricket riots as enactments of postcolonial political strife; and the brief memoir of Patterson’s break with Michael Manley. Riveting.
Joan Wallach Scott, On the Judgment of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020).
-Joan Scott ruminating on what the point of it all is. Need I say more? I added this to my Historian’s Craft syllabus, which I’ll be sharing soon.
Destin Jenkins, The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021).
-I’ve been really interested in the recent urban histories of modern American cities that focus in on political economy without losing sight of questions of class and power. Methodologically speaking, these works—I count Kim Phillips-Fein’s Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics (2017) as a key example—are so important because they identify policies ‘in action’ and ‘in practice’ as terrains of struggle as opposed to simple points in a chronology. Jenkins history of San Francisco is the most recent and among the most sophisticated of these works, at least to someone who spends most of their time in the 17th-19th centuries. I also just liked the way he writes! Angry San Franciscans “weren’t having it.” (171) “Bondholder power was of greater concern to municipal officials than the outrage of ordinary residents.” (196) Yes there’s numbers and fiscal stuff involved but Jenkins writes with verve. Loved this book and look forward to teaching it!
Social Theory for Historians
Having spent my entire higher educational life as a student at the University of Chicago, I am of course a bit of a theory-head. When I was dissertating, I followed the advice of mentors to ‘let the evidence do the talking’ and to emphasize empirical argument over theoretical argument. But since my work is chiefly about “the state,” I was always engaged with theory, even if quietly. Recently, I’ve gotten back into it a bit more self-consciously, in part because of a short-lived but outstanding set of conversations with my buddy Nathan Hensley (who is a genius). So when American University graduate student extraordinaire Reza Akbari approached me about doing an independent study around the theme of 'Social Theory for Historians,’ I jumped at it. And I’ve really enjoyed all of our conversations. So much so, in fact, that I want to develop a course on the topic. Probably a tough sell for undergrads, but perhaps those interested in American Studies might find it useful? We’ll see. But here are some of the readings Reza and I discussed this summer.
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Max Weber, “On Bureaucracy”
Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice
Michel Foucault, “On Governmentality”
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe
Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow, Contentious Politics
The Book Project About Slavery And Law
The kids were almost kind of, sort of back to school. The spring semester winding down. It should have been a prime opportunity to jump back into book stuff. It was decidedly not. The main problem is that I find myself in an organizational fog. I’ve hired some researchers to find material for me at Duke and Mississippi State (and if anyone needs help with archival work at these places, I’m happy to pass on the names of these wonderfully talented graduate students). I’ve got lots of secondary sources that I’ve pulled together over the years. And lots more that I’ve gotten into recently. But all of that adds up to a ton of material. Yet rather than feeling like I’ve got all this good stuff, I instead feel quite afraid that I’ll never actually understand the American Civil War. Part of the issue is that the recent literature on the Civil War—and big time shout out to the Journal of the Civil War Era—is so good that we can see older paradigms giving way in real time. So I’m trying to learn the new literature while trying to interpret the new evidence and it is definitely a big ask.
In any case, here are the notables:
Matthew E. Mason, “Slavery Overshadowed: Congress Debates Prohibiting the Atlantic Slae Trade to the United States, 1806-1807,” Journal of the Early Republic, Spring, 2000, vol. 20, no. 1 (Spring, 2000), 59-81.
Ian Beamish, “A ‘Complicated Humbug’: Slavery, Capitalism, and Accounts in the Cotton South,” Agricultural History 95, no. 1 (Winter, 2021), 36-68.
Craig Robertson, “Documents, Empire, and Capitalism in Capitalism in the Nineteenth Century,” in Information: A Historical Companion, ed. Ann Blair et al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), 152-173.
“Attempts to establish the reliable participation of officials from the imperial power or local community became a critical part of administrative practices. The role of local information and colonial intermediaries emphasizes that the colony and the “metro- pole” need to be considered together, not isolated as two discrete entities. Increasingly historians have come to view empires as structures always in process, not static units. From this perspective, whether subordinate agents actually ran the show, or whether the pervasiveness of “investigative modalities” limited the role of local workers, is a subject of debate among historians. Aspects of that debate are evident in the following discussion. However, the focus remains on the changing role and status of information in the administration of empires (and reflecting the historiographical bias toward the dominant empire of the period, it centers on the British Empire). To look at imperial documents from this point of view is to recognize their role in a system of control, not simply as a means to transmit information; it emphasizes the centrality of information to the maintenance of imperial rule in colonies. However, while it is important to rec- ognize that empire was conceived through a desire for order, this aspiration did not result in total control; failure and improvisation marked the administration of empire.” (me emphasis, 160)
Stanley Harrold, Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828-1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003).
Robert D. Carlson, “Breach of Faith: Conscription in Confederate Georgia,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Emory University, 2009.
Harvey Wish, “The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1856,” Journal of Southern History 5 (1939), 206-22.
“The deep-seated feeling of insecurity characterizing the slaveholder's society evoked such mob reactions as those noted in the accounts of insurrections, imaginary and otherwise, upon any suspicion of Negro insubordination.” (222)
George C. Rable, Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
Kelly Birch, “Slavery and the Origins of Louisiana’s Prison Industry, 1803-1861,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Adelaide, 2017.
***Very noteworthy is Appendix 2: “Captured Runaway Slaves in the Depot of Baton Rouge, 1858-1862.” (pp. 324-330)
“Loosely influenced by the Foucauldian concept of the ‘carceral archipelago’ this thesis joins Louisiana’s rural jails, police lockups and city workhouses, together with the state’s penitentiary in the same analytic frame to reveal an uneven but highly flexible and diverse carceral network which linked agrarian and urban slave economies. “ (9)
“…the prison served as a conventional instrument, mandated by law to reinforce chattel slavery. Inside Louisiana’s different kinds of penal institutions, which were examined together in chapter 1, enslaved people were incarcerated, and in some prisons, they comprised the largest percentage of inmates detained. Drawing on a varied source base, including legal digests, court transcripts, prison records, federal census returns, and first-hand accounts of confinement produced by formerly enslaved women and men, this chapter will bring Louisiana’s slave imprisonment practises into sharper [end 73] focus. It will consider them as part of a continuum of overlapping formal and informal processes that reinforced the business of enslaving across the state’s rural and urban worlds.” (emphasis mine, 74)
“Louisiana’s introduction of black convict labour to levee and railroad building projects foreshadowed the brutality that would eventually punctuate life and death on the postbellum chain gang. During this earlier era, penal labour experiments of this kind were overseen by the Board of Public Works, a state agency established in March 1833 that was funded by both the proceeds of federal swampland sales and interest yielded on Bank of Louisiana stock. Under the auspices of the Board of Public Works, plans for a series of road, rail and river improvement projects were quickly drawn up by its superintending State Engineer. “ (167)
Darla Jean Thompson, “Circuits of Containment: Iron Collars, Incarceration, and the Infrastructure of Slavery,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Cornell University, 2014.
“I shift the perspective to the uses of iron collars riveted or padlocked to the bodies of enslaved people, with or without prongs, horns, branches, and bells that made it possible to simultaneously torture and keep slaves productive. Labor in fields, building levees, digging ditches, in swamps, on plantations, or city streets would have been torturous alone, but the deliberate, extended use of iron collars, certainly did not separate work from torture, nor did it make it necessary to use additional tools to beat slaves. By thinking about the use of iron collars as technologies within a rationalized system of labor and punishment, the distinctions between individual cruelty and societal brutality collapse.” (25)
“I propose that the use of iron collars was produced within a political field of the body that encompassed all of these factors. Rather than a clear distinction between calculated, thoughtful, organized punishment, or direct force on the body, precisely because there was a systemic nature to the sociotechnological control of slaves, a system of “negro management” was focused on shaping the body, mind, and morals [end 27] while simultaneously maintaining subjective, submissive productivity.” (emphasis mine, 28)
“…I show how the old and the new – iron collars, jails, chain gangs, forced public works labor, and penitentiaries were used to “improve” enslaved people to make them productive and profitable.” (29)
“Iron collars intervened upon, modified, and altered bodies in slavery. When an iron collar was padlocked or riveted to the body, it became an extension of self. Rather than the liberated cyborg, this was a material obstruction, a projection, a “thing” that became part of slaves’ negotiation and movement through space.” (84)
The West Wing Book (The West Wing as History)
It lives. Like a late round Rocky Balboa recovery, I’ve adopted the strategy of leaning into every haymaker directed at my face, and I yell at the world, ‘Ain’t so bad, you ain’t nuthin’ while getting the piss punched out of me. But then, after several months of this process (I’m actually trying to describe writing), a chapter came into existence. It is called, “Chapter 5: The Backlash Against Feminism Goes Primetime,” and it is about how the show’s depiction of feminism is actually nothing other than a rehashing of several strands of the conservative critique of feminism. So all the chatter about feminism on the show are actually antifeminist points masquerading as contemplative discussion, e.g. Ainsley Hayes particularly stupid soliloquy: “The point is that sexual revolution tends to get in the way of actual revolution. Nonsense issues distract attention from real ones: pay equity, child care, honest-to-god sexual harassment and in this case, a speech in front of the U.N. General Assembly.” What garbage. No wonder it didn’t work out at the Hoover Institute, Ainsley. Anyway, here are some of the works that I found extremely useful for this chapter. The ones at the end were not so useful and in fact made me want to abandon this project. I won’t but…I mean, you try reading Joe Lieberman op eds and see where your mental health ends up. (Don’t actually do this!)
(Ainsley Hayes Saying Something Stupid on Capitol Beat)
Lisa Levenstein, They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties (New York: Basic Books, 2020).
***Found Levenstein’s book to be extremely helpful to think about the moving beyond the ‘backlash’ interpretation of contemporary feminism, especially since the ‘backlash’ is so dominant on all 7 seasons of The West Wing.
Alison Lefkovitz, Strange Bedfellows: Marriage in the Age of Women’s Liberation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).
Patrick Webster, Windows into The West Wing: Theoretical Approaches to an Ideal Presidency (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2020).
“We celebrate its naivete; we rejoice in its innocence, its credulity and even its gullibility….and a cynical, skeptical, disparaging, and even world-weary audience still cares and still remains emotionally and intellectually involved.” (4)
“A further range of structuralist readings could be made of the series; for example, there were a number of subtextual tropes within the show’s run that may not have been wholly apparent outside of a semiotic reading. One apt example was CJ Cregg’s goldfish; the fish (and its bowl) appeared in the ninth episode of the first season and remained a subtle presence for much of the show’s remaining run.” (65)
Janet McCabe, The West Wing (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013).
Maryann Barakso, Governing Now: Grassroots Activism in the National Organization for Women (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).
Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).
Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Random House, 1991).
Phyllis Schlafly, “What’s Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?” The Phyllis Schlafly Report, vol. 5, no. 7 (Feb., 1972).
***And now for the ‘what-am-I-doing-with-my-life’ primary sources I had to slog through for this chapter…***
Ann Coulter, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (New York: Crown Publishing, 2002).
Joseph I. Lieberman, “Welfare as We Know It,” New York Times, July 25, 1996, A23.
Honestly not sure if this project is worth it if it means I have to keep reading drivel of this exquisite quality.
Food Writing You Should Read
Meher Varma, “The Dal Directory,” Vittles, August 9, 2021.
“The Matchday Ritual,” Vittles, August 2, 2021.
“My mother’s was in Sheffield, but it was our cousin’s Liverpool chippy in the shadow of Anfield that stood out for its busyness and for the strong scouser affinity with Chinese food.”
-Joanna Luck, “Anfield—Chinese Chippy Tea”
“At Pittodrie Stadium, I always order the baked macaroni pie and truly enjoy it maybe one trip out of four. It’s a real gamble on whether it’ll be soft and comforting or burnt-to-fuck. Given that no-one ever complains about the varying quality control, this is unlikely to ever change.”
-Richard Scott, “Pittodrie Stadium—Macaroni Pie”
Michelle Kuo and Albert Wu, “These Losers are Going Places,” A Broad and Ample Road, May 9, 2021.
Tim Marchman, “Chasing the Dragon: High-end mussels and low-end mackerel come under consideration,” Popping Tins, May 31, 2021.
Priya Krishna, Indian(-ish): Recipes and Antics from A Modern American Family (Mariner Books, 2019).
-It is certainly interesting and provocative, even if I found the flavoring to be underwhelming. So I’d suggest quadrupling all of the spices in every recipe. But some cool ideas and lots of plant-based stuff.
Esther Tseng, “The Oaxacan Traditions of Guelaguetza, As Seen Through Five Dishes,” June 29, 2021.
Football Writing You Should Read
Lee Scott, King Klopp: Rebuilding the Liverpool Dynasty (London: Pitch Publishing, 2020).
-the single best tactical breakdown of Klopp’s Liverpool. I spend way, way too much time reading tactics discussions and I still learned a ton from this. Highly recommended.
Melissa Reddy, Believe Us: The Inside Story of Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool (New York: HarperCollins, 2021).
-Melissa Reddy is probably the best reporter who regularly covers Liverpool and her close ties to staff members and players means that her account of the Reds revival is better than anyone else’s.
Ryan Baldi, The Next Big Thing: How Football’s Wonderkids Lose their Way (London: Pitch, 2019)
-A sobering but compelling look at the stories of immense footballing talents whose careers were cut short by injuries or other unfortunate circumstances. Gives a great sense of the life of players that we don’t often see on the usual coverage by Sky, etc.
Recipe: Curried Roast Cauliflower
This is a barely altered recipe from Melissa Clark’s “Cumin Seed Roasted Cauliflower” in Cook This Now: 120 Easy and Delectable Dishes You Can’t Wait to Make (New York: Hyperion, 2011), 294-5. I’ve added flavor and added a few little quirks. Super versatile! The kids love it as is, but I also break it down and saute with peppers and ground meat for a version of kibbeh (you can take that to the next level by grinding it into a meal, shaping into balls, and frying). Clark’s version is served over salted yogurt with pomegranate seeds. Another serving suggestion would be in a taco, with crispy potatoes topped with chili peppers, cilantro, and chaat spice. Also great in a quesadilla with sharp cheddar and poblanos.
1 head cauliflower
1 tbsp salt
4 tbsp canola oil
3 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp (or, you know, a lot more) chili powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tbsp garam masala
optional: handful of curry leaves
Method:
Preheat oven to 400
Break down cauliflower into florets by hand. This can be annoying. But it is well worth it to get a roughly even size for the florets, the smaller the better. Add florets to a large bowl.
Add salt, spices and oil to cauliflower and mix until nicely coated.
Line roasting pan with parchment paper and distribute cauliflower in even layer.
Cook 15 minutes. Turn cauliflower florets to ensure they brown on all sides. Cook another 5-10 minutes, or until golden brown and crispy.