For more than 500 years, the Portuguese built or adapted fortifications along the coasts of Africa, Asia and South America. At a macro scale, mapping this network of power reveals a gigantic territorial and colonial project. Forts articulated the colonial and the metropolitan, and functioned as nodes in a mercantile empire, shaping early forms of capitalism, transforming the global political economy, and generating a flood of images and ideas on an unprecedented scale. Today, they can be understood as active material legacies of empire that represent promises, dangers and possibilities. Forts are marks and wounds of the history of human violence, but also timely reminders that buildings never last forever, testimonies of the fluidity of the material world. Illustrated by case studies in Morocco, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe and Kenya, this book examines how this global but chameleonic network of forts can offer valuable insights into both the geopolitics of Empire and their postcolonial legacies, and into the intersection of colonialism, memory, power and space in the postcolonial Lusophone world and beyond.
For more than 500 years, the Portuguese built or adapted fortifications along the coasts of Africa, Asia and South America. At a macro scale, mapping this network of power reveals a gigantic territorial and colonial project. Forts articulated the colonial and the metropolitan, and functioned as nodes in a mercantile empire, shaping early forms of capitalism, transforming the global political economy, and generating a flood of images and ideas on an unprecedented scale. Today, they can be understood as active material legacies of empire that represent promises, dangers and possibilities. Forts are marks and wounds of the history of human violence, but also timely reminders that buildings never last forever, testimonies of the fluidity of the material world. Illustrated by case studies in Morocco, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe and Kenya, this book examines how this global but chameleonic network of forts can offer valuable insights into both the geopolitics of Empire and their postcolonial legacies, and into the intersection of colonialism, memory, power and space in the postcolonial Lusophone world and beyond.
Reveals how the expanding world-system entangled the non-Western world in global economies, yet did so in ways that were locally articulated, varied, and, often, non-European in their expression. This interdisciplinary volume brings together a richly substantive collection of case studies that examine European-indigene interactions, economic relations, and their materialities in the formation of the modern world. Research has demonstrated the extent and complexity of the varied local economic and political systems, and diverse social formations that predated European contact. These preexisting systems articulated with the expanding European economy and, in doing so, shaped its emergence. Moving beyond the confines of national or Atlantic histories to examine regional systems and their historical trajectories on a global scale, the studies within this volume draw examples from the Caribbean, Mesoamerica, North America, South America, Africa, and South Asia. While the contributions are rooted in substantive studies from different world areas, their overarching aim is to negotiate between global and local frames, revealing how the expanding world-system entangled the non-Western world in global economies, yet did so in ways that were locally articulated, varied and, often, non-European in their expression.
This book explores the relationship between imperial formations and individual encounters at African tourist sites – spaces of leisure, healing and work. It examines how encounters between tourists and hosts tend to be constructed along colonial thought lines and considers how players in the hospitality industry do not interact as coeval participants, but are racialised, scripted and positioned according to colonially-established order. The authors focus on the language of these encounters, not only speech, performance and response, but also silence, resonance, emptiness, noise – objectified, materialised, evasive and confusing. Through its exploration of language in these encounters, the volume shows that ruination is the one feature that is omnipresent in the multiple and diverse tourist settings of the postcolonial world. This book is open access under a CC BY ND licence.
Bridging environmental and Indigenous studies and drawing on critical geography, spatial theory, new materialist theory, and decolonizing theory, this dynamic volume examines the sometimes overlooked significance of place in social science research. There are often important divergences and even competing logics at work in these areas of research, some which may indeed be incommensurable. This volume explores how researchers around the globe are coming to terms - both theoretically and practically - with place in the context of settler colonialism, globalization, and environmental degradation. Tuck and McKenzie outline a trajectory of critical place inquiry that not only furthers empirical knowledge, but ethically imagines new possibilities for collaboration and action. Critical place inquiry can involve a range of research methodologies; this volume argues that what matters is how the chosen methodology engages conceptually with place in order to mobilize methods that enable data collection and analyses that address place explicitly and politically. Unlike other approaches that attempt to superficially tag on Indigenous concerns, decolonizing conceptualizations of land and place and Indigenous methods are central, not peripheral, to practices of critical place inquiry.
This interdisciplinary volume is a new introduction to area studies in the framework of whole-world thinking. Emerging in the United States after World War II, area studies have proven indispensable to American integration in the world. They serve two main purposes: to equip future experts with rich cultural-historical and political-economic knowledge of a world area in its global context and advanced foreign language proficiency, and to provide interested readers with well-founded analyses of a vast array of the world's communities. Area Studies in the Global Age examines the interrelation between three constructions central to any culture—community, place, and identity—and builds on research by scholars specializing in diverse world areas, including Africa; Central, East, and North Asia; Eastern and East Central Europe; and Latin America. In contrast to sometimes oversimplified, globalized thinking, the studies featured here argue for the importance of understanding particular human experience and the actual effects of global changes on real people's lives. The rituals, narratives, symbols, and archetypes that define a community, as well as the spaces to which communities attach meaning, are crucial to members' self-perception and sense of agency. Editors Edith W. Clowes and Shelly Jarrett Bromberg have put into practice the original mission of US area studies, which were intended to employ both social science and humanities research methods. This important study presents and applies a variety of methodologies, including interviews and surveys; the construction of databases; the analysis of public rituals and symbols; the examination of archival documents as well as contemporary public commentary; and the close reading and interpretation of fiction, art, buildings, cities, and other creatively produced works in their social contexts. Designed for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in allied disciplines, Clowes and Bromberg's volume will also appeal to readers interested in internationally focused humanities and social sciences.
Based on an ethnography of Fort St. George Museum in Chennai (formerly Madras), India, Remembering Empire explores the public and private politics of preserving the memory of the British period in the former seat of the British East India Company. K. E. Supriya shows how the preservation of artifacts and paintings from the British period has become a means through which the imperialist politics of empire are reworked in the cultural memory of the South Indian people. Fieldwork in the museum and extensive interviews across three generations show how Indians reconcile with the Britishness of Indian identity. Woven throughout is the author's probing commentary on the significance of affirmative conversations about racialized pasts in the United States. Remembering Empire is essential reading for anyone interested in postcolonial India and the politics of cultural memory.
Portuguese Tangier (1471-1662) is a fundamental new contribution to the history of Tangier, a dynamically expanding Moroccan port on the south shore of the Strait of Gibraltar. The book offers a “virtual archaeology” of the Portuguese urban fabric heritage--both vanished and preserved--in Tangier's médina, the walled Old Town. Solidly grounded in archival sources and profoundly revisionist, Portuguese Tangier alters our image of the médina to an unexpected extent. Yet it makes no claim to being "definitive" in any sense -- on the contrary, it is no more than a starting point. The volume stands at a critical intersection of well-known documents, recently located sources, and those that have been heavily underused (military engineering plans -- Portuguese as well as English, Portuguese building estimates and construction proposals). It plays a critical searchlight over discrepancies that become evident once spatio-temporal GIS modelling is deployed to re-examine the sources and the existing literature. The book challenges a rainbow of standard interpretations and entrenched Tangerois urban legends. It ranges widely, from recent hypotheses to newly confirmed toponyms, contentious architectural details, and the design and construction of the fortifications. The scope extends to historic environmental factors affecting the Old Port (studied through a new 3D bathymetric model of the historic anchorage -- the only such model available for now). The well-known "Tangier" series of drawings and etchings by the Bohemian artist Wenceslas (Václav) Hollar (1607-1677) comes into its own here, in a fresh, analytical, modelling-oriented context that interlinks Portuguese and English data tightly. The Portuguese period (1471-1662) is set in a frame that encompasses both the pre-1471 Muslim port and various 1662-1684 English components of the urban fabric—genuine as well as spurious. The book targets mainly a specialist audience (historians, conservationists, heritage planners, urban archaeologists, itinerary and exhibit designers dealing with Tangier), but will also reward the patient casual reader genuinely interested in the fortified médina and its history. In stock. Purchase direct from Baywolf Press / Éditions Baywolf & Portuguese Studies Review. Portuguese Tangier (1471-1662) est une nouvelle contribution à l'histoire du port de Tanger, la cheville maritime du nord marocain saisie à présent dans un tourbillon de développement. Le livre offre une "virtual archaeology" du patrimoine portugais dans la vieille médina de Tanger - d'une part un patrimoine disparu (et par conséquent "virtuel") mais aussi, d'autre part, étrangement préservé, bien que souvent inconnu, méconnu, ou ignoré. Solidement ancré dans les fonds d'archives et profondément révisionniste sans aucune prétention d'être "definitif", Portuguese Tangier change notre compréhension de la médina. L'ouvrage se situe au carrefour critique des sources -- documents classiques ainsi que des pièces nouvellement découvertes ou redécouvertes (plans de génie militaire -- portugais aussi bien qu'anglais, des devis estimatifs portugais et des travaux d'étude). L'auteur met en évidence les disjonctions fondamentales qui surgissent du moment que les ouvrages de recherche disponibles à présent s'affrontent aux documents dans un cadre de modélisation SIG spatio-temporel. Le livre met en question une panoplie d'interprétations et de "légendes urbaines" Tangéroises bien établies. Portuguese Tangier fournit une fusion d'hypothèses récentes, de toponymes nouvellement confirmés, de détails architecturaux à débat, et d'une exploration en détail des fortifications. L'enquête s'étend aux facteurs environnementaux dans le Vieux Port (étudiés au moyen d'un nouveau modèle bathymétrique de l'ancrage -- le seul modèle du fond de l'ancrage historique, en trame 3D, disponible pour le moment). La série "Tanger" de Wenceslas (Václav) Hollar (1607-1677) (dessins et gravures) se situe ici dans un contexte d'analyse et de modélisation qui fusionne les sources portugaises et anglaises. La discussion de l'architecture portugaise (1471-1662) s'encadre entre des vignettes du port marocain d'avant-1471 et d'éléments anglais du tissu urbain -- éléments véridiques aussi bien qu'imaginaires. L'ouvrage s'adresse principalement aux spécialistes (historiens, professionnels du patrimoine, archéologues, et concepteurs d'itinéraires et d'expositions) mais offre néanmoins de quoi bien contenter tous les amateurs de la médina et de son histoire.
African Islands provides the first geographically and chronologically comprehensive overview of the archaeology of African islands. This book draws archaeologically informed histories of African islands into a single synthesis, focused on multiple issues of common interest, among them human impacts on previously uninhabited ecologies, the role of islands in the growth of long-distance maritime trade networks, and the functioning of plantation economies based on the exploitation of unfree labour. Addressing and repairing the longstanding neglect of Africa in general studies of island colonization, settlement, and connectivity, it makes a distinctively African contribution to studies of island archaeology. The availability of this much-needed synthesis also opens up a better understanding of the significance of African islands in the continent's past as a whole. After contextualizing chapters on island archaeology as a field and an introduction to the variety of Africa’s islands and the archaeological research undertaken on them, the book focuses on four themes: arriving, altering, being, and colonizing and resisting. An interdisciplinary approach is taken to these themes, drawing on a broad range of evidence that goes beyond material remains to include genetics, comparative studies of the languages, textual evidence and oral histories, island ecologies, and more. African Islands provides an up-to-date synthesis and account of all aspects of archaeological research on Africa’s islands for students and academics alike.
This book proposes new ways of looking at the built environment in archaeology, specifically through postcolonial perspectives. It brings together scholars and professionals from the fields of archaeology, urban studies, architectural history, and heritage in order to offer fresh perspectives on extracting and interpreting social and cultural information from architecture and monuments. The goal is to show how on-going critical engagement with the postcolonial critique can help archaeologists pursue more inclusive, sensitive, and nuanced interpretations of the built environment of the past and contribute to heritage discussions in the present. The chapters present case studies from Africa, Greece, Belgium, Australia, Syria, Kuala Lumpur, South Africa, and Chile, covering a wide range of chronological periods and settings. Through these diverse case studies, this volume encourages the reader to rethink the analytical frameworks and methods traditionally employed in the investigation of built spaces of the past. To the extent that these built spaces continue to shape identities and social relationships today, the book also encourages the reader to reflect critically on archaeologists’ ability to impact stakeholder communities and shape public perceptions of the past.
