https://www.cpusa.org/article/how-the-taliban-came-to-power-again/

From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-review@...>
Date: October 16, 2021 at 8:44:42 AM EDT
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Subject: H-Net Review [H-Diplo]:  Monteith on Walker, 'Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain's Atlantic Empire'
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Christine Walker.  Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the
Creation of Britain's Atlantic Empire.  Williamsburg  Omohundro
Institute of Early American History and Culture and Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2020.  336 pp.  $22.95 (paper),
ISBN 978-1-4696-5879-7; $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4696-5526-0.

Reviewed by Kathleen E.A. Monteith (University of the West Indies)
Published on H-Diplo (October, 2021)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach

_Jamaica Ladies_ explores the roles of free and freed women--white
and those of mixed African and European/British ancestry--as both
colonizers and slaveholders in Jamaica in the period from the second
half of the seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century. Mining a
variety of sources, Christine Walker argues quite convincingly that
women were an integral part of the creation of a society and economy
based on enslavement. Indeed, as stated by Walker, "if merchants and
sailors oversaw the purchase and transportation of captive Africans,
then free and freed women acted as the handmaidens of empire, weaving
these captives into the warp and weft of colonial societies" (p. 5).
Walker extricates women's lives, thoughts, and actions by craftily
and deftly employing a "gendered-eye" analysis of information
contained in letters, business accounts, wills, parish registers,
inventories, maps, and plans to provide deeper understanding of
Jamaica's early society and economy. In so doing, Walker challenges
previous interpretations of the lives of free and freed women in
early British colonial Jamaica, providing compelling evidence and
nuanced analyses of their economic role and lives in this period.
Walker convincingly shows colonial free and freed women to have been
"powerful agents of enslavement and colonialism," far from being
marginalized and exploited within a dominant male society. Indeed,
she shows that "female slaveholders wielded novel and significant
legal, social and economic and cultural autonomy, which they enacted
wisely and outside the household" (p. 9). Walker argues that they
were able to do this because the normative European/British gender
ideologies and proscriptions of women's roles never took root in
societies such as Jamaica's, which were dominated by black African
enslavement. Hence the understanding of what a "lady" was, in the
European/British context, was not replicated in the colonial slave
context.

_Jamaica Ladies _consists of an introduction and six simply titled
chapters, followed by a conclusion. Chapters 1 and 2, titled "Port
Royal" and "Kingston" respectively, establish the presence of more
free women than free men, in relatively significant numbers, than
were previously thought to have existed. Walker notes that in "Port
Royal" during the second half of the seventeenth century, free women
and children made up one-half of the permanent population; free men,
35 percent; and enslaved people, 16 percent (p. 42). For Kingston, in
1731, the ratio was more balanced, with 516 white women and 607 white
men being recorded (p. 72). Within these bustling urban commercial
centers, while others lived on the margins, impoverished or just
scraping by, some free (both white and women of color) or freed women
were active participants in the burgeoning slave economy,
participating in the transatlantic trading system, running successful
businesses, not only taverns and lodging houses, but also retail
textile establishments, providing credit to others, and specializing
in the importation of manufactures from Europe, the Middle East and
Asia (p. 44).

By providing granular detail on their economic activities, Walker
craftily and deftly challenges the stereotypical view of the role of
women in late seventeenth- and mid-eighteenth-century colonial
Jamaica, when the plantation economy and society was being
established and during which time a significant amount of wealth was
being generated, in which businesswomen were active participants.
That women, including married women, operated on their own account is
established, with Walker illustrating that some decidedly avoided
coverture to operate as independent agents or "femes sole." This
might very well have been for practical purposes given the high
mortality rates of the period, but it also demonstrates their agency
in managing their business affairs, forming partnerships with men and
other women, and advancing credit to others.

The type of wealth and fortune that some were able to amass is
illustrated with reference to Anna Hassall. Walker opens her second
chapter with a fascinating description of the extravagant and
self-orchestrated burial of Anna Hassall, who died at age
thirty-seven in 1750, in London's Westminster Abbey. Having taken
control of her husband's mercantile business following his death in
1748, Hassall continued the business with skill and acumen,
demonstrating knowledge and understanding of the markets for the
goods she traded in. Walker suggests that Hassall, who was raised in
Kingston, learned the craft of business from her mother, Sarah
Shanks, who herself ran a successful business enterprise which among
other activities included investments in privateering activity and
money-lending to affluent sugar estate owners. Hassall's wealth and
fortune, like that of her white male counterparts, afforded her the
ability to become an absentee owner with her relocation to England,
from where she continued to manage her Jamaican business affairs
until her death.

In "Plantations," the third chapter, Walker demonstrates that free
women in the early eighteenth century were also more involved in the
daily management of not just small-scale, non-agricultural
enterprises but also of medium-sized sugar estates, such as Spring
and Barbican in St. Andrew parish. This was previously overlooked,
Walker points out, perhaps because of the way in which information
was recorded at the time, leading to an obfuscation of the presence
of women as owners, part owners with relatives, and managers. A
closer reading of manuscript surveys, maps, and plans reveals that
plantation agricultural enterprise in this period was not the sole
preserve of men, and that women were far from being "weak and
ineffective victims" (p. 128). Indeed, as demonstrated by Walker,
their management ethos concerning enslaved labor was no different
from that of their male counterparts. Walker concludes that women
like Mary Elbridge, part owner with relatives of Spring sugar estate;
Priscilla Guy of Guy's Plantation; and Sarah Williams of Williams
Plantation help lay "the groundwork for what was to become the most
profitable and most exploitative agricultural economy in the British
empire in the eighteenth century" (p. 119).

In the fourth chapter, "Inheritance Bequests," Walker gleans
information from censuses and wills written by women that reveals
their wishes and instructions concerning the disposal of their
property, thereby elucidating societal dynamics among the inhabitants
of Jamaica during the period 1665-1761. They also reveal colonial
women's use of British laws and precepts to avoid coverture, which
married women were subject to, thus making sure they maintained
control over their property. In so doing, colonial women evidently
challenged the legal definition of marriage whereby the wife was
subsumed under the husband's identity.

In chapter 5, "Nonmarital Intimacies," Walker illustrates the
accepted norm of sexual permissiveness which resulted in a high
proportion of children born to single women, white and free and freed
women of color. She notes the importance of baptism in ensuring
freedom for a child, as well as conferring "legitimacy" and
"respectability" within this context. "Manumission," the final
chapter, illustrates through an examination of women's wills the
reasons for manumission. Walker concludes that manumission
"transitioned people from positions of marginality to greater
belonging and incorporation" in Jamaican society (p. 264). In so
doing, it may very well have assisted in maintaining the status quo,
while ultimately serving to undermine it in the long run.

Overall, this is a rich and compellingly well-researched book that
builds on excellent work in the field and makes a major contribution
to scholarship on women in the early colonial slave context. It
elucidates just how complex slave societies were, and how free and
freed women contributed to the creation of that complexity. In that
regard, it underscores the contribution women made to the
creolization process in Jamaican society. _Jamaica Ladies_ is an
essential study of the gender, social, and economic history of the
island and region as a whole.

_Kathleen E. A. Monteith is professor of Caribbean history at the
University of the West Indies, Mona. Her most recent publication is
_Plantation Coffee in Jamaica, 1790-1840_ (2019). Her other
publications include _West Indian Business History: Enterprise and
Entrepreneurship_ (2010); _Depression to Decolonization: Barclays
Bank (DCO) in the West Indies, 1926-1962_ (2008); and _Jamaica in
Slavery and Freedom: History, Heritage and Culture _(2002)._

Citation: Kathleen E.A. Monteith. Review of Walker, Christine,
_Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain's
Atlantic Empire_. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. October, 2021.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=56373

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.

From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-review@...>
Date: October 15, 2021 at 6:14:09 PM EDT
To: h-review@...
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Subject: H-Net Review [H-SHERA]:  Boivin on Fenghi, 'It Will Be Fun and Terrifying: Nationalism and Protest in Post-Soviet Russia'
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Fabrizio Fenghi.  It Will Be Fun and Terrifying: Nationalism and
Protest in Post-Soviet Russia.  Madison  University of Wisconsin
Press, 2020.  Illustrations. 312 pp.  $79.95 (cloth), ISBN
978-0-299-32440-7.

Reviewed by Jennifer Boivin (University of Alberta)
Published on H-SHERA (October, 2021)
Commissioned by Hanna Chuchvaha

In the fall of 2013, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych (b. 1950)
rejected a deal for greater economic integration of Ukraine into the
European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia. In the Ukrainian
capital city of Kyiv, violent riots involving police, unknown
shooters, and protesters known as the Euromaidan or the Revolution of
Dignity (2013-14) culminated in the president fleeing the country and
the overthrow of the government. Following Russia's annexation of
Crimea, the world witnessed the beginning of a major civil war in
Donbas (eastern Ukraine) where pro-Russian separatist troops fought
the Ukrainian army, with soldiers coming from all over the Russian
Federation, European countries, the United States, and South America.
Many of these pro-Russian groups displayed the Ribbon of Saint
George, Russian flags and coat of arms, and communist, Soviet, and
fascist symbols. At the time, I did not understand how these
different ideological symbols fit with these events.

My recent reading of Fabrizio Fenghi's book, _It Will Be Fun and
Terrifying: Nationalism and Protest in Post-Soviet Russia_, has
brought light on and a new understanding of the events of 2013-14. In
this volume, the author examines how the aesthetics and culture of
radical countercultural movements influenced the development of
Russian protest culture and the formation of state ideology during
the Vladimir Putin era. More specifically, Fenghi focuses on two
far-right groups inspired by revolutionary aesthetics and
performance, which played a role in the 2014 Donbas war: the National
Bolshevik Party (NBP) and the Eurasia Movement. Both groups reject
mainstream culture and Western ideology and perceive Russia as the
only site where a new society can be created.

The NBP was founded by Eduard Limonov (1943-2020), an underground
poet in the Soviet Union, emigré writer, and political activist.
Many of Limonov's novels are semi-biographical, and the author
skillfully crosses the blurry line that lays between his fictional
and real life events. Like Limonov, his characters live at the
margins of society and threaten the social order by use of violence,
sexuality, and crude language. Thus, performativity plays a crucial
role in Limonov's novels, politics, literature, and public persona
(chapter 1). In both his writings and actions, the poet challenges
established values and hierarchies and longs for an alternative
imagined community influenced by the Western punk movement, a style
and spirit known for "its aggressive stance and radical rejection of
bourgeois and mainstream values" (p. 35). More specifically, the
NBP's aesthetics were influenced by the art of punk musician Yegor
Letov (1964-2008) and experimental composer and performer Sergey
Kuryokhin (1954-96). Limonov's political action was at first mostly
artistic performances (real and fictional), influenced by the
aesthetics of constructivism, the Russian and the Soviet avant-garde,
and revolutionary culture, as seen in the radical aesthetics and
content in the party's publication, _Limonka_ (chapter 2). He
believed that only through radical performance and revolutionary art
a new liberal opposition and social order can be created.

The creation of the NBP in the mid-1990s marked the first post-Soviet
counter-public activity. It was among the most vocal opponents of
Putin's government and supported human rights activism. Its
activities later influenced other performance groups, such as the
Voina (War) art collective and Pussy Riot (chapter 3). However,
throughout the years, the NBP's countercultural principles and
protest against the status quo changed to display a strong
anti-Western and anti-capitalist sentiment, a rejection of modernism,
a military aesthetics, and radical conservative thinking. In
Limonov's thought, war is perceived as a beautiful and formative
experience and Russia is the last possible site for an alternative
modernity and utopian society. By 2014, his activities, which first
focused on human rights and dissident movement, converted toward
clear support of the Donbas war and Putin's annexation of Crimea.

The second important figure in this Russian countercultural movement
is Aleksandr Dugin (b. 1962), an underground mystical artist
philosopher from the writing circle of nonconformist author Yuri
Mamin (b. 1946). Dugin was fascinated by cultural and political
fascism and had the idea to create a red-brown coalition that
combined radically different ideologies of the right and left wings,
including leftist radical Stalinism, anarchism, classicism, and youth
countercultures and subcultures (radical artists, skinheads, punks,
etc.). This ideology emerged in force after the fall of the Soviet
Union as a reaction to its unsuccessful transition to democracy and
capitalism. In the NBP, Dugin endorsed the role of theoretician and
ideologue while Limonov played the man of action. They eventually
split and became political adversaries in 2005, as Dugin's newly
founded Eurasia Movement actively promoted repressive measures
against any liberal opposition.

The Eurasia Movement is also resistant to mainstream culture and is
defined by a cult of the late Soviet underground, paradoxical and
esoteric thinking, bohemianism, and the cult of death and the
apocalypse. It assimilated radical political strategies, imperial
aesthetics, and the concept of "otherness," as seen in the work of
artists Aleksey Beliaev-Gintovt (b. 1965), Georgy Gurianov
(1961-2013), and Timur Novikov (1958-2002) (chapter 5). Like the
extremist youth group Nashi (Ours), the Eurasia Movement was created
in 2005 to counteract a possible emergence of an "orange" wave of
liberalism, as seen in Ukraine in 2004. Unlike the NBP though, the
Eurasia Movement is by and large a virtual entity that is trying to
colonize and recolonize Russian cultural and political space against
Western agents by producing preconditions for violence and conflict
through their influence of mainstream media. The Eurasia Movement has
struggled against capitalism and Western liberalism and has supported
Putin's government through political technology and pro-government
grassroots organizations. Dugin's theoretical vision included forms
of postmodern performance, philosophical ideals, street politics,
counterculture, media manipulation, trolling, and political violence
(chapter 4).

In this well-balanced book, Fenghi reveals the complex
interconnections existing between the art world and the political
sphere in contemporary Russia as art appears to be the main channel
for political dissent. The ways the author merges art, performances,
queer representation, and revolutionary culture as a new post-Soviet
performative mode of political dissent is absolutely fascinating. He
certainly shows how the creation of a new form of political dissent
produced alternative forms of cultural production and lifestyles.
Indeed, both Limonov and Dugin reimagined post-Soviet society and
managed to create a sort of _gesamtkunstwer_k community where
political radicalism becomes the center of their social organization,
language, material culture, and rituals. In this book, Fenghi
presents these communities without any prejudice that Western values
often create. In that sense, _It Will Be Fun and Terrifying_ reassess
how to address Soviet and post-Soviet culture outside of the scope of
the status quo norms and stands as a true revolutionary book.

Fenghi's study of pioneering radical political communities is based
on archival and ethnographic research (interviews and participant
observation) he conducted in Moscow in 2015. The book is enriched by
many fascinating testimonies of former and actual members of both
groups. The author uses a wide range of media, such as novels, art
exhibitions, paintings, performances, punk rock concerts, and protest
actions, to support his argument. With the exception of a challenging
introduction where all of Fenghi's concepts are presented, the book
is quite accessible to nonspecialists. The author's argument is easy
to understand and is well supported by many examples, making the book
a valuable contribution to the classroom. Furthermore, as I mentioned
at the beginning of this review, studying the right-wing political
performance protest in Russia will resonate with many other
contemporary events, such as the Euromaidan in Ukraine or the 2021
attacks on the US Capitol. Therefore, the book will be of interest to
Slavicists but also to anyone interested in art history, politics, or
sociology.

Citation: Jennifer Boivin. Review of Fenghi, Fabrizio, _It Will Be
Fun and Terrifying: Nationalism and Protest in Post-Soviet Russia_.
H-SHERA, H-Net Reviews. October, 2021.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55833

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.