What is better than May showers? Five more reviews, of course. This productive month brings you another set of fine discussions of books. In addition to works concerned with Mexico and Argentina, these reviews involve the topics of the Atlantic slave trade, the literature of the early modern Atlantic, and the Haitian Revolution. We are proud to include a review in Spanish and reviewers from various disciplines. We hope you will find them interesting and useful.
Chris Bongie (Queen's University) does more than write a good book review. He takes Jeremy D. Popkins latest book as a prism to offer a glimpse of developments in Haitian Revolutionary Studies. That he begins with an otherwise inconspicuous source should show the reader that this essay delves into deep waters. Popkins’ book, Bongie tells us, does the necessary task of highlighting the importance of the year 1793 and the burning of Cap Français, then the most energetic city of the Caribbean. The book is a model of well-written scholarship; it did not earn the Pinkney Prize for nothing. But with his signature style, Bongie brings out the political in the writing of this book, which seems to deliberately lack such a dimension—a lack that Bongie claims is itself political. Both, the book and the review are must-reads for those interested in the history of the Haitian Revolution.
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31431
Stephen Allen (Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey) reviews Kevin B. Witherspoon’s book at a time when scores of people around the world are feeling nostalgic and even drawing parallels between today and the year 1968. In _Before the Eyes of the World_ Witherspoon explains how the 1968 Summer Olympics coincided with several interests and currents that helped produced the sensational events characteristic of that fateful year. It is a history of sports, politics, race and international diplomacy. To a certain extent, this book is a welcome study of the Cold War and the 1960s radicalism outside of the United States— far too many scholars see this period only through U.S. centric lenses, ignoring Bogota (Congreso Eucarístico), Mexico City (Olympics), and the 5 countries that declared independence from colonial powers that same year. Yet, as Allen tells us, despite its value, Witherspoon fails to make this study truly comparative or shared history; his accent stays in the U.S. rather than on Mexico.
Srividhya Swaminathan (Long Island University) takes on the delicate task of reviewing the reissue of Seymour Drescher’s _Econocide_. There is no more striking question in the study of the Atlantic slave trade than the one posted by Eric Williams. Williams studied the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade through the eyes of an economist. His answer, first published in his doctoral thesis (1938) and in a 1940 article (_ The Journal of Negro History__), rocked the establishment. Ever since, all significant work on abolitionism has wrestled with Williams’ “Decline Thesis.” Drescher comes to the picture in 1977 as the champion of the idea that the British were well-intended, and that in pursuing abolitionism they actually committed economic suicide, hence the term “Econocide.” An interesting point of the republication of this work is that David Brion Davis, a long-time warden of Williams’ thesis, opens the book with a story of Drescher’s contribution to the debate. Swaminathan, however, tells in this review that Williams’ thesis cannot be entirely dismissed. She also tells us how Drescher contributed to complicate the picture and bring Latin American History into the discussion.
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31617
Luis A. Intersimone (Texas State University at San Marcos) considers Raanan Rein’s _In The Shadow of Perón_. How can you explain the broad and steady political support for populists like Juan Perón? Some readers may refer to the leader’s charisma and the cultural legacy of caudillismo as explanations of Latin American populism. The implication, which many early U.S. writers proposed, was that the emotional masses had little judgment when following such leaders (basis to which they assigned their supposedly lack of democratic abilities). But Rein, Intersimone tells us, explains that that is not the case; that masses are not irrational after all; that there is more to them than meets the eye. Rein takes the case of Perón’s leadership to demonstrate his point. But the focus is on those leaders that connected Perón to the masses. Rein does not diminish Perón’s charisma, however. Instead, he raises the importance of those on whom Perón relied, and shows, in splendid details, how Peronism’s personality cult actually worked to defeat its politics.
Amanda Clark (Virginia Tech) examines a book about accounts of Whites taken captives by non-Europeans: Lisa Voigt’s _Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic_. The book is about literature and history. The narratives that Voigt inspects here range from those that are widely known, as el Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and John Smith’s Pocahontas, to less known ones like Francisco Nuñes de Pineda’s “Cautiverio Feliz,” and José de Santa Rita Durão’s “Caramurú.” Clark tells us that one of Voigt’s contributions is her emphasis on Ibero-American literature. This is a welcome feature because English sources have dominated early modern Atlantic studies for many years. Voigt’s main argument is that despite the authors’ bravery and apparent challenge to imperialism, all of these narratives worked to sustain the imperial project. By offering to the Western World narratives that described how was being a captive among barbarians these ex-captives not only reinforced the non-Western “Otherness,” but also justified their colonialism. Clark, however, goes even further by making the case that these sources were less effective than what Voigt suggests and that the empires’ control over the production of knowledge was more effective than assumed here.
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=32970
We are grateful to these excellent reviewers who contribute with their
time and expertise. I also want to thank the team of editors who help
me behind the scenes to keep the H-LatAm review project running.
Sincerely yours,
Dennis R. Hidalgo
H-LatAm
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