Episodes

  • Julian Hanna, "Island" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

    Julian Hanna, "Island" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
    Nov 21 2024
    Darwin called the Galápagos archipelago “a little world within itself,” unaffected by humans and set on its own evolutionary path – strange, diverse, and unique. Islands are repositories of unique cultures and ways of living, seed banks built up in relative isolation. Island is an archipelago of ideas, drawing from research and first-hand experience living, working, and travelling to islands as far afield as Madeira and Cape Verde, Orkney and Svalbard, the Aran Islands and the Gulf Islands, Hong Kong and Manhattan. Islands have long been viewed as both paradise and prison – we project onto them our deepest desires for freedom and escape, but also our greatest fears of forced isolation. This book asks: what can islands teach us about living sustainably, being alone or coexisting with others, coping with uncertainty, and making do? Island (Bloomsbury, 2024) by Dr. Julian Hanna, part of the Object Lessons series, explores these and other questions and ideas, but is constructed above all from the stories and experiences gathered during a lifetime of island hopping. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    31 mins
  • Juan José Rivas Moreno, "The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

    Juan José Rivas Moreno, "The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
    Oct 7 2024
    Economic history has always emphasized the importance of long-distance trade in the emergence of modern financial markets, yet almost nothing is known about the Manila trade. The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) offers the first reconstruction of the capital market of Manila using new archival sources that have never been used in the economic history of Pacific trade. The book explains how trade between Asia and Spanish America across the Pacific, which lasted for 250 years (1571 – 1815) was financed from the city of Manila.The book analyses the political economy and institutional structures of the Manila capital market in the context of the global silver trade, as well as addressing key similarities and differences with European trade routes and differing approaches to colonialism and commerce in Asian waters. It traces how the Manila capital market emerged in a bottom-up process with a redistributive aspect that tied the interests of citizens with the fortunes of trade, using institutions familiar to the public like legacy funds, brotherhoods and lay religious orders to pool liquidity, originate working capital, and internalise the risk of loss at sea. It challenges the notion that there is a normative model for the development of capital markets and introduces an industrial organisation analysis to the broader structure of Early Modern trade in the Spanish Empire. Sitting at the intersection of economic and financial history, global history, imperial history and political economy, this book will be a cutting-edge and valuable resource for a broad range of scholars: This book is based on the dissertation entitled: AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL FOR EARLY MODERN LONG-DISTANCE TRADE FINANCE: THE CAPITAL MARKETS OF MANILA, 1680-1838, London School of Economics, University of London, 2023. Winner of the Coleman Prize, 2024. Juan Jose Rivas Moreno is currently a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. He has previously held an Economic History Society Fellowship affiliated with University College London (UCL), and was the recipient of a short-term fellowship at the Newberry Library of Chicago to conduct archival research during his PhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    53 mins
  • Sarah Miller-Davenport, "Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire" (Princeton UP, 2019)

    Sarah Miller-Davenport, "Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire" (Princeton UP, 2019)
    Sep 1 2024
    One of my talking points when hanging out with my fellow diplomatic historians is the painful absence of scholarship on Hawaii. Too many political histories treat Hawaii’s statehood as a kind of historical inevitability, an event that was bound to pass the moment the kingdom was annexed. As I would frequently pontificate, “nobody has unpacked the imperial history of the islands in sufficient detail, nor the fact that their political fate diverged sharply from a number of other possessions.” For better and for worse, Sarah Miller-Davenport has robbed me of this particular talking point by writing a new book on the process of Hawaiian statehood, American imperialism and its relationship to mainland politics and society shortly after statehood. Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire (Princeton University Press, 2019) takes a close look at some of the narratives that have grown up around the islands and unpacks them. She notes that the process of becoming a state was not a foregone conclusion and was in many ways predicated on Hawaii acting as a gatekeeper to Asia. She also notes that while the island’s racism was less fixed in certain ways than mainland racial norms, racism persisted in more subtle forms on the island. What emerges is a close look at how multiculturalism in service of egalitarianism can nevertheless be adapted to imperial norms. Zeb Larson is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a PhD in History. His research deals with the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    59 mins
  • The Dragon and the Nguzunguzu

    The Dragon and the Nguzunguzu
    Aug 19 2024
    Nguzunguzu is the traditional figurehead which was formerly affixed to canoes in the Solomon Islands. In this episode, Julie Yu-Wen Chen talks to Rodolfo Maggio, a senior researcher at the University of Helsinki about his book project on the dragon and the nguzunguzu, namely the relationship between China and the Soloman Islands. The dragon and the nguzunguzu are taken as symbols of, respectively, Chinese and Solomon Islands identity. This essentializing maneuver is complicated by the appreciation of the two faces of both the dragon and the nguzunguzu. Nguzunguzu are traditionally used to adorn canoes: they can be either belligerent or peaceful, depending on the relationship between those who paddle and those who see them coming. Similarly, in Chinese folklore, dragons can bring prosperity or destruction, depending on their relationships with the humans who encounter them. Nguzunguzu and dragons are thus similar as symbols of supernatural forces whose potential can concretize as either propitious or nefarious, depending on their relationships with humans. Maggio encountered a dragon-nguzunguzu hybrid during his fieldwork in 2024. As explicitly phrased by the carver, the hybrid represents his attempt to localize China. This inspires Maggio’s book project, encouraging him to use this hybrid figure as an entry point to offer a grassroot perspective on the interactions between Chinese and Solomon Islanders. Rodolfo Maggio is a social anthropologist of moral and economic values in the Asia-Pacific region. At the University of Helsinki, he is working on an ERC-funded project “properties of units and standards”. Previously, Maggio had an episode on Kiribati in the Chinese Pacific and an episode on Sino-Pacific Relations with Nordic Asia Podcast that might interest listeners. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland) and visiting professor at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia at Mahidol University (Thailand). Since 2023, she has been involved in the EUVIP: The EU in the Volatile Indo-Pacific Region, a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe coordination and support action 10107906 (HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-03). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    20 mins
  • Mavis Kerinaiua and Laura Rademaker, "Tiwi Story: Turning History Downside Up" (NewSouth, 2023)

    Mavis Kerinaiua and Laura Rademaker, "Tiwi Story: Turning History Downside Up" (NewSouth, 2023)
    Aug 18 2024
    The Tiwi people have more than their fair share of stories that turn ideas of Australian history upside down. The Tiwi claim the honour of defeating a global superpower. When the world’s most powerful navy invaded and attempted to settle the Tiwi Islands in 1824, Tiwi warriors fought the British and won. The Tiwi remember the fight, and oral histories reveal their tactical brilliance. Later, in 1911, Catholic priest Francis Xavier Gsell decided to ‘purchase’ Tiwi women and ‘free’ them from traditional marriage, so girls would grow up into devoted Catholics. But Tiwi women had more power in marriage negotiations than missionaries realised. They worked out how to be both Tiwi and Catholic. And it was the missionaries who came around to Tiwi thinking. Then there are stories of the Tiwi people’s ‘number one religion’: Aussie Rules; Calista Kantilla remembers her time growing up in the mission dormitory; and Teddy Portaminni explains the importance of Tiwi history and culture as something precious, owned by Tiwi and the source of Tiwi strength. In Tiwi Story: Turning History Downside Up (NewSouth, 2023), Mavis Kerinaiua, Laura Rademaker and Tiwi historians showcase stories of resilience, creativity and survival. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    48 mins
  • Roger Crowley, "Spice: The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World" (Yale UP, 2024)

    Roger Crowley, "Spice: The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World" (Yale UP, 2024)
    Aug 1 2024
    The spice islands: Specks of land in the Indonesian archipelago that were the exclusive home of cloves, commodities once worth their weight in gold. The Portuguese got there first, persuading the Spanish to fund expeditions trying to go the other direction, sailing westward across the Atlantic. Roger Crowley, in his new book Spice: The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World (Yale University Press: 2024) covers six decades of exploration, conflict and conquest, starting from the Portuguese capture of Malacca in 1511 to the Spanish founding of Manila and the start of the galleon trade in 1571. Roger Crowley is a narrative historian of the early modern period. He is the author of five celebrated books, including City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire (Faber & Faber: 2011) and Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire (Random House: 2015). You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Spice. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    55 mins
  • Michael J. Sheridan, "Roots of Power: The Political Ecology of Boundary Plants" (Routledge, 2023)

    Michael J. Sheridan, "Roots of Power: The Political Ecology of Boundary Plants" (Routledge, 2023)
    Jul 31 2024
    Roots of Power: The Political Ecology of Boundary Plants (Routledge, 2023) tells five stories of plants, people, property, politics, peace, and protection in tropical societies. In Cameroon, French Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, St. Vincent, and Tanzania, dracaena and cordyline plants are simultaneously property rights institutions, markers of social organization, and expressions of life-force and vitality. In addition to their localized roles in forming landscapes and societies, these plants mark multiple boundaries and demonstrate deep historical connections across much of the planet’s tropics. These plants’ deep roots in society and culture have made them the routes through which postcolonial agrarian societies have negotiated both social and cultural continuity and change. This book is a multi-sited ethnographic political ecology of ethnobotanical institutions. It uses five parallel case studies to investigate the central phenomenon of "boundary plants" and establish the linkages among the case studies via both ancient and relatively recent demographic transformations such as the Bantu expansion across tropical Africa, the Austronesian expansion into the Pacific, and the colonial system of plantation slavery in the Black Atlantic. Each case study is a social-ecological system with distinctive characteristics stemming from the ways that power is organized by kinship and gender, social ranking, or racialized capitalism. This book contributes to the literature on property rights institutions and land management by arguing that tropical boundary plants’ social entanglements and cultural legitimacy make them effective foundations for development policy. Formal recognition of these institutions could reduce contradiction, conflict, and ambiguity between resource managers and states in postcolonial societies and contribute to sustainable livelihoods and landscapes. This book will appeal to scholars and students of environmental anthropology, political ecology, ethnobotany, landscape studies, colonial history, and development studies, and readers will benefit from its demonstration of the comparative method. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • Kristie Flannery, "Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

    Kristie Flannery, "Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
    Jul 28 2024
    Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) offers a new interpretation of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippine islands. Drawing on the rich archives of Spain’s Asian empire, Dr. Kristie Patricia Flannery reveals that Spanish colonial officials and Catholic missionaries forged alliances with Indigenous Filipinos and Chinese migrant settlers in the Southeast Asian archipelago to wage war against waves of pirates, including massive Chinese pirate fleets, Muslim pirates from the Sulu Zone, and even the British fleet that attacked at the height of the Seven Years’ War. Anti-piracy alliances made Spanish colonial rule resilient to both external shocks and internal revolts that shook the colony to its core. This revisionist study complicates the assumption that empire was imposed on Filipinos with brute force alone. Rather, anti-piracy also shaped the politics of belonging in the colonial Philippines. Real and imagined pirate threats especially influenced the fate and fortunes of Chinese migrants in the islands. They triggered genocidal massacres of the Chinese at some junctures, and at others facilitated Chinese integration into the Catholic nation as loyal vassals. Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World demonstrates that piracy is key to explaining the surprising longevity of Spain’s Asian empire, which, unlike Spanish colonial rule in the Americas, survived the Age of Revolutions and endured almost to the end of the nineteenth century. Moreover, it offers important new insight into piracy’s impact on the trajectory of globalisation and European imperial expansion in maritime Asia. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    59 mins