Volume 57 part 1 (December 2011)

Summaries

Susan Hinely. Charlotte Wilson, the "Woman Question," and the Meanings of Anarchist Socialism in Late Victorian Radicalism.
Recent literature on radical movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has re-cast this period as a key stage of contemporary globalization, one in which ideological formulations and radical alliances were fluid and did not fall neatly into the categories traditionally assigned by political history. The following analysis of Charlotte Wilson's anarchist political ideas and activism in late Victorian Britain is an intervention in this new historiography that both supports the thesis of global ideological heterogeneity and supplements it by revealing the challenge to sexual hierarchy that coursed through many of these radical cross-currents. The unexpected alliances Wilson formed in pursuit of her understanding of anarchist socialism underscore the protean nature of radical politics but also show an over-arching consensus that united these disparate groups, a common vision of the socialist future in which the fundamental but oppositional values of self and society would merge. This consensus arguably allowed Wilson's gendered definition of anarchism to adapt to new terms as she and other socialist women pursued their radical vision as activists in the pre-war women's movement.

Genís Barnosell. God and Freedom: Radical Liberalism, Republicanism, and Religion in Spain, 1808-1847.
This article analyses the religious aspects of Spanish republicanism of the 1830s and 1840s. From the case of Catalonia, the most industrialized region of Spain, it is concluded that radical liberalism elaborated a synthesis of freedom and religion that was presented as an alternative to traditional religiosity. Re-elaborating old myths popular during the War of Independence of 1808–1814, in addition some liberals and republicans presented their political project in millenarianist terms. This millenarianism was due to the radicalism with which they interpreted the confrontation with political opponents, one of whom was the established Church. It follows that the religiosity and millenarianism exhibited by these republicans also involved a strong anti-clericalism. At the same time, in the political and cultural context of Spain, these proposals were not seen by their followers as a negation of divinity but as its truest expression.

Mischa Suter. A Thorn in the Side of Social History: Jacques Rancière and 'Les Révoltes logiques'.
The article explores the intersection of history and politics in the works of French philosopher Jacques Rancière, by focusing on the collectively edited journal Les Révoltes logiques (1975–1985). It argues that the historiographic project of Les Révoltes logiques took up specific forms of counter-knowledge that were embedded in radical left-wing politics of their day. It further traces both the engagement with historiography and the role of history in Rancière's later work after the dissolution of the journal. Its conclusion looks at certain shared interests between some of Rancière's themes and some recent writing of social history.

Michael Zeuske. Historiography and Research Problems of Slavery and the Slave Trade in a Global-Historical Perspective.
This article takes a global-historical perspective on all slaveries and slave trades (and contraband trading of human bodies) in relation to today's state of capitalist accumulation. It follows the different “national” schools of slavery research in different imperial traditions, as well as the sections of historical thinking stimulated through slavery research. Although legal ownership over humans does not exist any more, more women and men are in conditions of slavery today than in any other period of history since 1200. Against this background, the article criticizes the concentration in historiography on “hegemonic” slaveries (antique, Islamic, and American plantation slaveries) and proposes a focus on smaller “slaveries” all over the world (first of all of women and children), and on the agency of slaves and slave women, rather than on “great” slavery in a tradition of "Roman Law".