Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast

In his new book Enterprising Empires: Russia and Britain in Eighteenth-Century Eurasia (Cambridge University Press), Matthew Romaniello examines the workings of the British Russia Company and the commercial entanglements of the British and Russian empires in the long eighteenth century.This innovative and highly readable monograph challenges the long-held views of Russian economic backwardness in the early modern period and stresses the importance of personal histories and individual agency in global economic dynamics. By focusing on diplomatic and commercial careers of a fascinating set of characters, Romaniello charts vibrant knowledge and information-sharing networks that were essential for the success of both empires in the Eurasian economic and geopolitical arenas.A non-conventional economic history, Enterprising Empires traverses the micro-historical and the macro-economic to reevaluate Russian commercial prowess before 1800 and illuminate an overlooked area of Anglo-Russian cooperation and rivalry.Matthew Romaniello is an Associate Professor of History at Weber State University and a historian of the Russian empire, commodities, and medicine. He is currently the editor of The Journal of World History and the former editor of Sibirica: Interdisciplinary Journal of Siberian Studies.Vladislav Lilić is a doctoral candidate in Modern European History at Vanderbilt University. His research focuses on the place and persistence of quasi-sovereignty in late Ottoman and post-Ottoman Southeastern Europe. Vladislav’s other fields of interest include the socio-legal history of empire, global history of statehood, and the history of international thought. You can reach him at vladislav.lilic@vanderbilt.edu.

Beginning in the 1870s, migrant groups from Russia's steppes settled in the similar environment of the Great Plains. Many were Mennonites. They brought plants, in particular grain and fodder crops, trees and shrubs, as well as weeds. Following their example, and drawing on the expertise of émigré Russian-Jewish scientists, the US Department of Agriculture introduced more plants, agricultural sciences, especially soil science; and methods of planting trees to shelter the land from the wind. By the 1930s, many of the grain varieties in the Great Plains had been imported from the steppes. The fertile soil was classified using the Russian term 'chernozem'. The US Forest Service was planting shelterbelts using techniques pioneered in the steppes. And, tumbling across the plains was an invasive weed from the steppes: tumbleweed. Based on archival research in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, this book explores the unexpected Russian roots of Great Plains agriculture.David Moon is a history professor at the University of York in the UK and holds an honorary professorship at University College London. He is a specialist on Russian, Eurasian, and transnational environmental history. He began his career as a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin, at the southern end of the Great Plains, and completed his new book as a visiting professor at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan, in the heart of the Eurasian steppes.The American Steppes: The Unexpected Russian Roots of Great Plains Agriculture, 1870s-1930s (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which explores connections between these two regions, is his fifth book. He would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for supporting his work.Steven Seegel is Professor of History at University of Northern Colorado. 

Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not (Cambridge UP, 2020) addresses one of the big questions in economics and economic history: why did the modern economy emerge in northwestern Europe at some point in the 17th or 18th century but not in the Middle East? After all, for centuries following the spread of Islam, the Middle East was far ahead of Europe – on both technological and economic terms.Jared Rubin argues that the religion itself is not to blame; the importance of religious legitimacy in Middle Eastern politics was the primary factor. In much of the Muslim world, religious authorities were given an important seat at the political bargaining table, which they used to block important advancements such as the printing press and usury. In Europe, however, the Church played a weaker role in legitimizing rule, especially where Protestantism spread (indeed, the Reformation was successful due to the spread of printing, which was blocked in the Middle East). It was precisely in those Protestant nations, especially England and the Dutch Republic, where the modern economy was born.In this interview, Jared shares with us his opinions on a wide range of topics – from the work of Jared Diamond and the theories of Max Weber, to his serendipitous journey in academia that led him to write his first book.Joshua Tham is an undergraduate reading History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research interests include economic history, sociolinguistics, and the "linguistic turn" in historiography.

On this episode of New Books in History, Jana Byars talks with Colin Rose, Assistant Professor of History at Brock University in St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada, about his new book, A Renaissance of Violence: Homicide in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Seventeenth-century Bologna saw a severe uptick of homicide, the result of several factors that we discuss here. Beyond just a discussion of the book and its impact on our understanding of early modern Italy, Colin talks about his source material in detail, providing a small primer on the workings of an early modern criminal court. This makes for a lively conversation between two very happy historians about the joys of archival work.Jana Byars is the academic director of SIT Amsterdam’s study abroad program, Gender and Sexuality in an International Perspective.

What explains voting behavior in local elections? More specifically, what explains how ethnic and racial blocs vote in local elections, especially when the candidate may be of a different race or ethnicity? These are the main question animating the research in Racial Coalition Building in Local Elections: Elite Cues and Cross-Ethnic Voting (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Political Scientist Andrea Benjamin examines the coalitions that form in local elections and the roles that they play in those elections. Racial Coalition Building in Local Elections outlines not only the most successful form of coalitions between different groups of people, but also tries to get at what might prompt the elite members of those groups to advocate to voters to cast their ballots for a candidate, especially a candidate from a different ethnic or racial group.Using a variety of complex data sets, including experimental surveys to try to tease out distinctions within racial and ethnic groups in terms of mayoral candidate selections, Benjamin’s research focuses on how Black and Latinx voting coalitions in major cities are open to shifting their support for mayoral candidates. Benjamin was most interested in examining the impact of cross-ethnic voting cues and how elite endorsements within the Black and Latinx communities might move voters to vote across racial and ethnic lines. Often coalitions are formed when candidates need to reach across interest areas in order to build a large enough bloc to elect a candidate. As Benjamin points out in the book, mayoral elections often cut across expected partisan lines, which is why these coalitions are fascinating to explore. Racial Coalition Building in Local Elections examines the reasons why groups of people shift or support one candidate more than others. The data includes 20 years of mayoral races in the largest cities in the United States and traces out voting shifts in mayoral elections in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Houston. This is supplemented by experimental surveys that mirrored voter data from these races while building on some of the conclusions about endorsements, candidate preferences, and racial coalitions.Andrea Benjamin also discusses how co-ethnic cues provide the theoretical framework for her analysis. The co-ethnic cue theory notes that “[w]hen partisan cues are absent and race/ethnicity is salient in an election, co-ethnic endorsements should prompt minority group members to vote for that candidate, even if that candidate is from another ethnic group.” (Benjamin, 8). Benjamin explains that if there is a race between a black candidate and a Latino candidate, the expectation is that each ethnic group will support the candidate with whom they share ethnicity; but, for example, if there is a race between a white candidate and a Latinx candidate, Black voters will likely support the candidate supported by most Black leaders in that community. Racial Coalition Building in Local Elections explains why this is the coalition dynamic, then unpacks what coalitions may be most effective and why, contextualized within the political dynamics in the cities themselves.Eli Levitas-Goren assisted with this podcast. Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

Ulrike Freitag’s A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge University Press), offers a rich urban and biographical history of Jeddah.Known as the 'Gate to Mecca' or 'Bride of the Red Sea', Jeddah has been a gateway for pilgrims travelling to Mecca and Medina and a station for international trade routes between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean for centuries. Seen from the perspective of its diverse population, this first biography of Jeddah traces the city's urban history and cosmopolitanism from the late Ottoman period to its present-day claim to multiculturalism, within the conservative environment of the Arabian Peninsula.Contextualising Jeddah with developments in the wider Muslim world, Ulrike Freitag investigates how different groups of migrants interacted in a changing urban space and how their economic activities influenced the political framework of the city. Richly illustrated, this study reveals how the transformation of Jeddah's urban space, population and politics has been indicative of changes in the wider Arab and Red Sea region, re-evaluating its place in the Middle East at a time when both its cosmopolitan practices and old city are changing dramatically against a backdrop of modernisation and Saudi nation-building.Ulrike Freitag is a historian of the Modern Middle East with a special interest in urban history and the Arabian Peninsula in its global context. She directs Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient and teaches at the Freie Universität. She is author of Indian Ocean Migrants and State Formation in Hadhramaut (Brill, 2003).Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of law and the environment across the western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners’ feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome.

Kathleen Klaus, Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco has written a terrific book, Political Violence in Kenya: Land, Elections, and Claim-Making published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press. Kathleen’s book is richly researched and beautifully written. She draws on 15 months of survey and interview methods to center the politics of elites in crafting land narratives that lead—or not—to electoral violence. Kathleen’s book is a great example of mixed methods as a way to understand and explain what are the conditions in which individuals’ can be primed for physical violence. Political Violence in Kenya is a fascinating book that raises novel questions about the role of contentious politics in framing elite political outcomes, as well as how elites coordinate with ordinary people to try to instigate violence.For those wanting to dig deeper into Kenya politics or electoral violence, Dr. Klaus recommends:-The Elephant Blog.-The Journal of Peace Research: Special Issue on Electoral Violence, January 2020.-Violence in African Elections: Between Democracy and Big Man Politics, edited by Bjarnesen and Söderburg Kovacs (2019).-Voting in Fear: Electoral Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Bekoe (2012)

Legal and political theories are not descriptions of brute facts. Nor are they merely postulated ideals or aspirations. Theories reflect and are reflected in our social relationships … Moral and political values thus cannot and should not be discussed in isolation from the institutions and social histories that shaped them.– N.E. Simmonds cited in Raymond Wacks, Understanding Jurisprudence (2005)Considering the law as a social phenomenon intrinsic to political economy is key to engaging the work in this new volume of scholarly articles edited by Professor Poul Kjaer – The Law of Political Economy: Transformation in the Function of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2020). The book is relevant on many levels to the events unfolding around us including unresolved issues between the private and the public realms (e.g., think banking and government in relation to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008). Current manifestations (post-book publication) include the ruling of the German Constitutional Court in May, which at core, appears to challenge the legitimacy of EU law for German financial interests. However distant such regulatory and legal matters may, at first appear, the idea that theories ‘are reflected in our social relationships’ anchors a more general observation made in this book’s introductory chapter concerning theoretical architectures as differentiating ‘between a holistic or a differentiation-based worldview, that is, between an understanding of society as a whole, which is larger than the sum of its parts, or an understanding of society as a mere collection of differentiated parts.’In this NBn episode, Professor Poul Kjaer distinguishes such concepts among others, and sets the context for those with an interest in learning about ‘the law and political economy’ as a field of study including an explanation of the differences between the European and American approaches to this field. Some other points of elaboration include more detailed thoughts on his introductory chapter, his previous books dealing with governance and governing, corporatism’s many guises, intermediary institutions as key locations for social integration and dis-integration, the concept of crisis and how law regulates the economy and politics, with Georg Simmel, in a sense, underlying it all with the question: ‘how is society possible?’Professor Kjaer explains key concepts and thinkers in this field as he provides a lay of the land as surveyed from the ‘Copenhagen School’. He also shares his impressions with the book editing process, and some of the more foundational concepts and sources. The book brings ‘together an exceptional group of scholars’ providing a ‘novel conceptual framework for studying the role of law and legal instruments in political economy contexts, with a focus on historical transformations and central challenges in both European and global contexts’. This volume’s many contributions cover legal subfields ‘ranging from competition and consumer protection law to labour and environmental law, giving a comprehensive overview of the central challenges of the law of political economy.’ It should be added that the 15 chapters are compellingly written, and the book is available in hardcover and Kindle.Poul F. Kjaer is a professor at the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in Denmark with a research focus on European and global governance, the law and political economy.Keith Krueger lectures at the SHU-UTS Business School in Shanghai.

The province of Odisha, previously “Orissa,” was the first linguistically organized province of India. In Language and the Making of Modern India: Nationalism and the Vernacular in Colonial Odisha, 1803-1953 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Pritipuspa Mishra explores how the idea of the vernacular has a double effect, serving as a means for exclusion and inclusion. She argues that while regional linguistic nationalism enabled nationalism’s growth, it also enabled the exclusion of groups such as the adivasis, who become invisible as a minority in Odisha. Her book traces the role of the vernacular from colonial decisions about governance and education up through the creation of a linguistic homeland in Odisha. Along the way she looks at the construction of literary categories, the idea of the political subject, and the range of views about multilingualism in nationalist discourse. It concludes with a reflective postscript on the continuing impact of linguistic nationalism on adivasi communities in India.Malcolm Keating is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale-NUS College. His research focuses on Sanskrit philosophy of language and epistemology. He is the author of Language, Meaning, and Use in Indian Philosophy (Bloomsbury Press, 2019) and host of the podcast Sutras (and stuff). 

Paulo Drinot’s The Sexual Question: A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s-1950s (Cambridge University Press, 2020), studies the interplay of sexuality, society, and the state in Peru in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drinot analyzes the rules and norms that governed prostitution and venereal disease in this period, and tracks how regulation of prostitution was implemented in the early twentieth century, and then seemingly abandoned in the 1950s. Drinot’s story foregrounds the many agents that intervened in this process: prostitutes––or sex workers as we may call them today––but also government officials, physicians, journalists, feminists, among others.Set in a global and comparative framework, this book centers on Peru, a country that came “late” to the regulation of prostitution, and did so under arguments that combined concerns about public health and ideas about proper female and male sexuality. The Sexual Question goes beyond the history of prostitution for it also sheds light on broader processes such as the medicalization of society and the construction of the nation-state in Latin American societies. Race figures prominently in this story: throughout this period, the regulation of prostitution was accompanied by the racialization of disease, and the policing of certain groups deemed especially dangerous or in need of protection (Afro-Peruvians and indigenous groups for example). This is a timely book, not only for those listeners concerned with Latin American history, but also for those who are interested in sexuality, the state, race, and medical history more generally. A must for our listeners!Lisette Varón-Carvajal is a PhD Candidate at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. You can tweet her and suggest books at @LisetteVaron