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Review of Empire of Poverty. The Moral-Political Economy of the Spanish Empire, by Julia McClure (2025).

In Empire of Poverty, Julia McClure presents an innovative approach to the study of the Spanish Empire. The book analyzes how poverty was conceived in the early years of the Spanish colonization of the Americas, and how it was transformed as attitudes towards the poor were changed by a series of economic, political, religious and social factors. Julia McClure argues that the transition to colonial capitalism in the sixteenth century modified previous attitudes towards poverty and modelled a new approach that shaped the very same institutions of empire.

The most innovative aspect of this work is the analysis of this ideological change. Rather than emphasizing the material aspects of poverty during the transition to capitalism, as previous Marxist analysis have done (in the case of Europe see: Karls Marx’s Capital and Catherina Lys and Hugo Solis’ Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-Industrial Europe), McClure analyzes how the moral-political concepts of empire-building changed and intertwined with social, political and economic factors, eventually influencing the governing models of imperial institutions. As the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the New World and amassed wealth and riches, new theories of monetary value emerged. These theories were accompanied by framing notions of indigenous people as impoverished and ‘‘uncivilized’’, which were constructed to justify Spanish colonization and the subsequent subjugation of these communities. This also explained the emergence of new theories of sovereignty.

Debates regarding the natural rights of Indigenous people and their role in colonial society as well as discussions led by scholars of the School of Salamanca followed the scholastic tradition but also inspired new models of governance. McClure demonstrates how poverty was used as an instrument for the control and subjugation of Indigenous people in the Americas. She identifies this period as the genesis of what she calls ‘‘colonial capitalism’’, marked by the emergence of moral-political values that helped shape new theories of empire and expand sovereignty claims over additional individuals and territories.

Picture of University of Salamanca — University of Salamanca. Source: Wikimedia Commoms

Taking a first look at the Iberian Peninsula, the book first delves with the Spanish arbitristas, intellectuals who wrote treatises to the King on the social, political and economic state of the kingdom. It analyzes the impact the New World wealth had in Spanish society at the time, rejecting previous analysis that regarded Spain as an impoverished kingdom. McClure argues that it was the sudden flow of wealth and riches from the New World that helped construct this idea of decline and poverty at home, with the arbitristas being the first to introduce and articulate this concept.

The book then takes the reader to America to first analyze the economies of pre-Columbian societies such as the Maya, Inca or Aztec. McClure argues that these indigenous political entities had their own mechanisms to face poverty and scarcity. She defines these economic systems as ‘‘moral ecologies’’, characterized by their interactions with their surrounding environment and resources. These systems developed their own mechanisms to reduce poverty and scarcity at times of risk, whether that be it as a result of a natural disaster or harvest failure (pp.54-67). Despite the existence of these mechanisms, the author shows how Spanish officials and intellectuals constructed Indigenous people as poor, and began classifying them in different social ranges, often denoting their economic status and racial features. This only mirrored the developments that were happening at the same time in the Iberian Peninsula.

Picture of Codex Mendoza folio 64r. The top two lines of the page on display here depict the training of a priest (which involved public works such as the repair of temples and bridges). The remaining images feature warriors, and illustrate the importance of war captives in the acquisition of social rank. — *Codex Mendoza folio 64r.* Source: Wikimedia Commons

Focusing again in Europe, McClure stresses the importance of the new theories of state and government that were emerging at the time. She defines them as contractual and collaborative in nature, emphasizing the negotiated relationship between vassals and rulers, despite the increasing power of European monarchs. These new theories of state –often embedded within the ‘mirror for princes’ literature– actively supported the provision of the poor and the existence of welfare systems as the monarch was regarded as the main benefactor and provider of the poor and those in need. As a result, intellectuals from the School of Salamanca legitimized the Spanish colonization of the Americas, and with it, the emergence of colonial capitalism. Their theories of sovereignty and government framed the King as the main supporter and provider of welfare and charity in the kingdom, stressing the contractual nature of this negotiated sovereignty.

At the same time, attitudes towards poverty shifted. These shifts in approaches to poverty and poor relief formed part of a wider trend in Europe where the poor began to be increasingly policed and controlled by government institutions. Treaties such as Juan Luis Vives’ De Subventione Pauperum (1530) or Miguel de Giginta’s Tratado de remedio de pobres (1579) offered new solutions to relief poverty and advocated for a tighter control toward vagrancy. New classifications emerged between deserving and undeserving poor, which further widened the gap between legal and illegal forms of poverty. Moreover, the issue of new poor laws during the reigns of Charles V (1516-1556) and Philip II (1556-1598) meant the further criminalization of poverty, and an acceleration in state-controlled legislation (p.126).

Additionally, the construction of poverty toward Indigenous people often meant their appropriation of their land and labor, which helped further cement the colonial project. McClure analyzes the various forms of labor appropriation and exploitation, including the encomienda system, the repartimiento, and the capture of individuals in combat through just war rhetoric (pp.138-142). In addition, as a result of the creation of novel forms of debt and tributary legislation, new forms of poverty emerged that widely affected Indigenous communities. The appropriation of lands and the legal mechanisms used to claim ‘empty’ lands or legalized already occupied ones, formed a model that ultimately favored Spanish colonists (p.164).

At the same time, the categorization of Indigenous people as ‘‘childish’’ and in need of protection helped Spanish officials to implement further governing structures in the Americas, strengthening the visualization of the Spanish Monarchs as the benefactors of these communities. The Crown exploited this discourse to build around its institution the myth of protector of the Indians and dispenser of justice. Yet, McClure also shows that Indigenous people navigated through the intricate system of Spanish colonial law, and often sought rewards and compensation for their miseries and poverty. This bottom-up system of petitions, rewards, and amparos also shaped the imperial institutions of the Spanish empire in the New World, and created a precedent for a passive resistance and cemented the survival of pre-conquest privileges and rights among Indigenous people and communities (pp.172-173).

In conclusion, Empire of Poverty shows how moral and political concepts of poverty influenced the governing institutions of the Spanish empire while also laying the foundations for the modern unequal systems that affect the exact same societies that were first colonized in the sixteenth century. Simultaneously, the monograph shifts attention from the Anglophone historiographical tradition that has usually overemphasized the Protestant models to study poverty and charity (highly influenced by Weber’s thesis on the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) to explain early modern attitudes towards poverty. This offers a new paradigm to explain the role and impact of Catholicism in poor relief and poverty management.

As a result, McClure concludes that scholars and officials of the Spanish Empire ‘reinvented poverty’ to legitimize their expansion of sovereignty in these new territories. In doing so, they created new forms of poverty through alien systems of labor extraction, tribute collection, and land appropriation. Despite this, the negotiated and participative nature of the Spanish empire also enabled its vassals to negotiate and even lobby for their own interests. At times, this led to the preservation of their rights and status, or the obtaining of rewards, in the newly created colonial society, evidencing the participatory and contractual nature of this system of rule and government. Finally, McClure stresses how the colonial capitalist model that developed over the sixteenth century paved the way for modern inequalities that continue in these territories, often shaping Indigenous ways of life and survival.

Jorge García-García is a first-year PhD History student at the University of Texas-Austin. He studied History as an undergraduate at the University of Glasgow (United Kingdom), obtaining a MA with Honors of the First Class. He then studied a postgraduate degree in World History at the Pompeu Fabra University (Spain). His research focuses on Colonial Latin America and the Spanish Empire.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

This is Democracy – Hubert Humphrey & Civil Rights

This week, Jeremi and Zachary sit down with Samuel G. Freedman to talk about the often overlooked contributions of Hubert Humphrey to American history and civil rights.

The discussion traces Humphrey’s rise from a small-town boy in South Dakota to a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement and U.S. politics. Despite not achieving the presidency, Humphrey’s impact as Mayor of Minneapolis, U.S. Senator, and Vice President is profound, particularly his efforts on civil rights, African American and Jewish relations.

Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “The Old Days.”

Samuel G. Freedman is an award-winning author, columnist, and professor. A former columnist for The New York Times and a professor at Columbia University, he is the author of 10 acclaimed books, including the newly-released Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights. Jon Meacham has hailed the book as “a compelling and important account of Humphrey’s critical role in the freedom struggles of the mid-20th century.”

Freedman’s previous books are Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School (1990); Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church (1993); The Inheritance: How Three Families and America Moved from Roosevelt to Reagan and Beyond (1996); Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry (2000); Who She Was: My Search for My Mother’s Life (2005); and Letters To A Young Journalist (2006); and Breaking The Line: The Season in Black College Football That Transformed the Game and Changed the Course of Civil Rights (2013).

With his colleague Kerry Donahue, Freedman co-produced a radio documentary and authored a companion book, both entitled Dying Words: The AIDS Reporting of Jeff Schmalz and How it Transformed The New York Times. The documentary and book were released in conjunction with World AIDS Day on December 1, 2015, and since then the documentary has been broadcast on more than 500 NPR member stations. In 2020, Freedman wrote Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: The Journey From Stage to Screen, the companion book to the film adaptation of August Wilson’s classic play.

Small Victories was a finalist for the 1990 National Book Award and The Inheritance was a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize. Upon This Rock won the 1993 Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. Four of Freedman’s books have been listed among The New York Times’ Notable Books of the Year.

Jew vs. Jew won the National Jewish Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2001 and made the Publishers Weekly Religion Best-Sellers list. As a result of the book, Freedman was named one of the “Forward Fifty” most important American Jews in the year 2000 by the weekly Jewish newspaper The Forward.

Freedman was a staff reporter for The New York Times from 1981 through 1987. From 2004 through 2008, he wrote the paper’s “On Education” column, winning first prize in the Education Writers Association’s annual competition in 2005. From 2006 through 2016, Freedman wrote the “On Religion” column, receiving the Goldziher Prize for Journalists in 2017 for a series of columns about Muslim-Americans that had been published over the preceding six years.

Freedman has contributed to numerous other publications and websites, including The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Daily Beast, New York, Rolling Stone, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Buzzfeed, Salon, Slate, Chicago Sun-Times, Tablet, The Forward, Ha’aretz, The Undefeated, The Root, and BeliefNet.

A tenured professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Freedman was named the nation’s outstanding journalism educator in 1997 by the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2012, he received Columbia University’s coveted Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. Freedman’s class in book-writing has developed more than 110 authors, editors, and agents, and it has been featured in Publishers Weekly and the Christian Science Monitor. He is a board member of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Awards and member of the Journalism Advisory Council of Religion News Service and the faculty advisory board of the Center for Journalism Ethics. He has spoken at the Smithsonian Institution, Yale University, and UCLA, among other venues, and has appeared on National Public Radio, CNN, and the PBS News Hour.

Freedman holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which he received in May 1977. He lives in New York with his wife, Christia Chana Blomquist.

“London is Drowning and I, I Live by the River”: The Clash’s London Calling at 40

By Edward Watson

On February 7, Seattle’s non-profit broadcaster KEXP headed to London for their seventh annual International Clash Day. In celebration of The Clash’s London Calling turning 40 in December 2019, KEXP organized a 4-day live broadcast in Seattle and London, featuring performances from contemporary bands and covers of The Clash’s songs. Their intention was to highlight the “enduring influence” of The Clash’s music as well as their “human rights message.” Released in the UK in December 1979 and in the US in January 1980, London Calling is widely recognized as one of the most influential albums of the twentieth century. Rolling Stone listed it as the eighth best album of all time, Q Magazine listed it at number 20, and the NME placed it at number 39.

The Clash are tied to punk’s emergence in 1976. After the band made its live debut supporting the Sex Pistols in Sheffield in 1976, The Clash became one of the key players in London’s punk scene. By January the following year, The Clash had signed with CBS Records for £100,000 and in April they released their self-titled debut album. The record deal was considered an astronomical fee by the music press and fans alike. Mark Perry, founder of influential punk fanzine Sniffin’ Glue, claimed, “punk died the day The Clash signed to CBS.” Nonetheless, The Clash’s debut record was still recognizably a punk record. London Calling, however, reflected the band’s exploration into styles of music that transcended their punk origins, such as rock and roll, reggae, and ska. In spite of their substantial record deal, The Clash struggled financially. By 1979, The Clash was largely in debt and they were at war with their record company. They needed a commercial success and fast. London Calling delivered, selling around two million copies upon its release. In the UK, it was certified gold in December 1979 and in the US it peaked at number 27 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.

Cover of the first edition of Sniffin’ Glue (via Wikipedia)

In addition to its diverse range of musical influences, London Calling’s success derived from its sociopolitical content. In the album’s title track, Joe Strummer declared, “we ain’t got no swing, ‘cept for the ring of that truncheon thing.” Strummer was referring to the collapse of what Time had labeled “Swinging” London in the 1960s, evoking police truncheons and riots in the city to elucidate a growing sense of turmoil in the 1970s. After the optimism of the 1960s, London seemed culturally and politically stagnant. But these changes were not just limited to the city of London. London Calling was released at a critical moment in Britain’s post-war history: unemployment was on the rise; there were frequent trade union strikes in 1973 and 1974; the British government sought a loan from the IMF in 1976; and ongoing disputes between James Callaghan’s Labour government and trade unions during the coldest winter for 16 years was dubbed the “Winter of Discontent” in 1978 and early 1979. Britain, once a manufacturing and imperial powerhouse on the global stage, was perceived to be in sociopolitical disarray. The overarching sense of doom and disorder was a large factor in Thatcher’s election in May 1979. Not only this, but the punk movement seemed to have lost its early momentum as an articulation of political and cultural discontent. “Phony Beatlemania” Strummer dubbed it, had “bitten the dust.”

Even though historians such as Jim Tomlinson and Andy Beckett have argued that the doom and gloom of the 1970s tends to be exaggerated, The Clash spoke to genuine political discontent and a seemingly desolate socioeconomic climate. Their earliest songs were particularly scathing about the state of the world. “White Riot” expressed exasperation at the lack of white working-class struggle, claiming “all the power’s in the hands, of people rich enough to buy it, while we walk the street, too chicken to even try it.” “London’s Burning” reflected on cultural stagnation and crippling boredom and “I’m so Bored with the U.S.A.” critiqued American imperialism: “Yankee dollar talk, to the dictators of the world, in fact it’s giving orders, and they can’t afford to miss a word.” The Clash was one of the more overtly political punk bands, using punk’s fast-paced, urgent, and aggressive style to critique 1970s society from the left.

London Calling continued in this vein, with most of its songs predictably centered on London. “Jimmy Jazz” and “Guns of Brixton” tell the stories of fictional characters in the city’s criminal underbelly. “Rudie Can’t Fail,” a heavily ska-influenced song, documents how young first-generation immigrant men, known as “rude boys,” were often subject to scorn from the British white middle class. The Clash also described how young people often neglect their idealism and political views once they get older and more comfortable in “Clampdown.” In “Spanish Bombs” the band drew comparisons between the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and the rhetoric of Basque nationalists of the late 1970s. “Lost in the Supermarket,” offers a critique of consumerism as a key reason for political apathy and “Lovers Rock” endorses safe sex and family planning. Finally, the title track and album opener depicts a scene of rising unemployment, racial tensions, and drug use. London Calling is a scathing sociocultural commentary of the 1970s. This was reflected on International Clash Day when KEXP spotlighted various social justice organizations “because The Clash was anti-racist, anti-fear, pro-solidarity, pro-unity, pro-inclusion.”

But questions about whether The Clash had sold out never went away. To some, these doubts undermined the legacy of London Calling with regard to its political message. Others see a more complex history. American artist and activist, Mark Vallen, argued in 2002 that even though The Clash had sold out by allowing Jaguar to use “London Calling” to advertise cars, its original composition had been in keeping with the punk ethos. “When The Clash released London Calling,” he claimed, “the song was one of the band’s most chilling works. Ominous and dark, it foretold of the Western world collapsing in a spasm of war and out of control technologies, it addressed our fears of government repression.” Although some people in the punk movement believed The Clash had already sold out by this point, the initial excitement that London Calling generated was contingent on the authenticity of its political message.

London Calling’s continued popularity is largely down to a careful balancing act. The album could be called the greatest punk rock record of the era or it could be said that it is not a punk rock record at all. From a musical perspective, it is an amalgamation of various styles. Particularly, it pays homage to rock and roll. The album cover captures bassist Paul Simonon smashing his bass guitar on stage. This rock cliché is anchored by a logotype referencing Elvis Presley’s 1956 debut album. Musically, it was a nod to the past while incorporating an eclectic blend of contemporary styles. The three cover songs on the album emphasize this: “Wrong ‘em Boyo” and “Revolution Rock” were first recorded by reggae artists and the other was “Brand New Cadillac,” originally a rock and roll song from 1959. All three sound at home on the album next to the Clash’s original compositions.

London Calling undeniably helped bridge the divide between punk as music and punk as a historical moment. It normalized punk as a credible genre of music while articulating the sociopolitical grievances that British punks were reacting to: high unemployment, racial politics, and the sense that society around them was falling apart. The album has the feeling of a party during the apocalypse. From a historical perspective, even though The Clash had signed to a record label – a cardinal sin for a 70s punk rock band – their wide-ranging sociopolitical commentary encapsulated the cynical mood of the late 1970s. At the end of the title track there is a message in Morse code, created using Mick Jones’ guitar pickups, that spells out S-O-S. Amidst political crises in Westminster, London Calling’s apocalyptic tone is as relevant to Britain in 2019 as it was in the winter of 1979.

Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary, by Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali

Nikita Khrushchev is one of the most important men of the last century. Moreover, he was the main protagonist of Soviet foreign policy during the most perilous period of the Cold War which climaxed with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. How dangerous was the Soviet Union to the West during Khrushchev’s term? Which factors contributed to sow distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union, and to what extent the Soviet menace was more bluff than real capabilities? Fursenko and Naftali answer these questions successfully by presenting an extensive and well-researched study that uncovers Soviet foreign policy during the Khrushchev’s Era.

In Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary, the authors explore the complicated balance between cooperation with the West and competition for Third World support that undergirded the Soviet diplomatic strategy from 1955 to 1963.To understand these diplomatic maneuvers, Fursenko and Naftali focus on Khrushchev’s complex policies of building détente with his penchant for risky brinkmanship and coercive diplomacy which, he hoped, would yield substantive geopolitical gains. From the two Germanys question to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the final outcome of this dual diplomatic approach proved contradictory. The competition for Third World allies diverted scarce economic resources from domestic problems, and exacerbated tensions between the superpowers effectively undermining any sustainable opportunity for détente.

Fursenko and Naftali underline two elements that contributed to heightened tensions during the Cold War. The first one, perception in international politics, led to the frequent misreading of the adversary’s intentions, fostering a strong and lingering feeling of mistrust and deception. This atmosphere of misunderstanding transformed the years between 1958 and 1962 into the most dangerous period of the Cold War concluding with the perilous Cuban Crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

1960s poster with Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev: “Long live the eternal, indestructible friendship and cooperation between the Soviet and Cuban peoples” (via Wikipedia)

The second element draws on the first, and involves the crucial role played by Third World leaders in aggravating the perceived threat that each superpower felt from the other. The authors do an excellent job in dispelling one of the greatest myths of the Cold War, the erroneous impression that the United States and the Soviet Union orchestrated and fully controlled events in Africa, Asia and Latin America. To the contrary, leaders like Fidel Castro and Gamal Nasser skillfully courted and played off the superpowers for their own gains. This perspective restores a great deal of agency to social and political actors that in other Cold War narratives have been relegated to the roles of mere pawns.

The authors conclude that Khrushchev’s foreign policy did much to preserve the boundaries of the Soviet empire but less in extracting considerable geopolitical concessions from the West. The inherent military weaknesses of the Soviet Union, coupled with limited economic resources, led Khrushchev to rely more on the appearance rather than the reality of Soviet power. However, his brinkmanship at least succeeded in deterring the United States from invading Cuba and in securing recognition for East Germany in the long run.

The book’s writing style is fluid with a clear prose, making it accessible to any audience. This is quite an achievement in a co-authored work. Fursenko and Naftali also succeed in providing an informative and compelling account of Soviet foreign policy under Khrushchev by relying mostly on declassified material from the Soviet Presidium. It is certainly a pertinent starting point for anyone interested in the intricacies of world affairs and foreign relations from the Soviet perspective.

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott (2017)

By Steven Richter

Beginning with the title and continuing through the final pages, James C. Scott’s Against the Grain seeks to subvert the historical narrative of inevitable progress toward civilization that has been dominant for millennia. Instead of framing agriculture as a driver of enlightened civilization, he conceives of it as a social and ecological building block that spawned early states that were more coercive than civil. Scott may not have launched the first attack of this kind, but his clear prose synthesizes evidence from a broad range of disciplines to craft a well-reasoned barrage of arguments, causing irreparable damage to a foundational element of western thought – that, since the first agricultural civilizations, the organized state has brought about enlightened and morally superior society.

Beginning from the perspective of a “thin” Anthropocene, a historical approach that emphasizes the ways in which human action has shaped the environment and landscapes, Scott emphasizes the richness of social-ecological relations before organized states appeared. The more traditional “thick” Anthropocene claims the environmental impact of modern industry has so thoroughly transformed the planet that it constitutes a new geological epoch. The “thin” perspective points out that that human activity, especially ecosystem niche creations through fire, so pervaded the landscape that it is difficult to think of ancient nature as separate from human influence.

Early settled communities built around the diverse and abundant sustenance activities along rivers and wetlands slowly domesticated plants and animals millennia before states first emerged. These novel arrangements, which Scott terms the “late Neolithic multi-species resettlement camps,” constituted the core of a long, slow transition. Contrasting with the more abrupt “Neolithic Revolution,” such a transition yielded not only plants with bigger seeds and more docile animals, but also dangerous new organisms that thrived in larger communities – diseases. Only through the combination of elevated birthrates and inherited immunity in settled communities could states eventually coagulate. But in many ways, these states represented, to borrow a phrase from Chief Seattle’s 1854 speech, “the end of living and the beginning of survival.”

Scott primarily defines states through the presence of tax collection, officials, and walls, with grain serving as the keystone to the political-economic system. Predictable, transportable, and calorie-dense, grain represented a surplus that could be monitored, collected, and, crucially, controlled. Put another way, grain was the perfect resource for taxation, allowing for the emergence of a ruling class. Despite the advantages yielded by such a surplus – a large, non-agricultural workforce – grain-derived civilization remained fragile. A single bad harvest could throw an early state into disarray, and even without catastrophic floods or drought, extractive agricultural and forestry practices often led to a slower demise. When combined with this ecological instability, the laborious nature of agrarian life made it so unappealing that early states likely built walls for restriction as much as for protection.

An Ancient Egyptian Statue of Grinding Grain (via Wikimedia)

Early states had to overcome tremendous social and ecological friction, so much that they typically were short lived. Only through the control and acquisition of its primary resource – people – could early states persist. The incorporation of human assets, whether by conquest of small neighboring communities or through slave trade, invigorated early states. Such a capricious system lacks robustness, and state failure could come from without or within. Such narratives of “collapse,” as it has often been framed, should be viewed critically. Scott argues what may appear to an archeologist as the catastrophic downfall of a monumental capitol may be more accurately, though not exclusively, thought of as disassembly into decentralized, independent communities. It is crucial to keep in mind that, perhaps as late as 1600, non-state peoples constituted the vast majority of global human population. States were “small alluvial archipelagos,” surrounded by hordes of ungoverned people who provided valuable trading and military allies, at least when they weren’t raiding and pillaging.

By incorporating innovative forms of evidence, Scott illuminates a critical perspective on the origins of modern states. He should have pointed out the difficulties of life outside states to create a more balanced narrative, but this omission takes little away from the central argument. Crucially, Scott compels the reader to be cognizant of the invisible or illegible, both historically and in our present lives. To make his argument, Scott relies on historical sources, such as dental analysis of ancient teeth, that prove just as informative as formal edicts or other, more visible historical sources. In a time with so much information, Against the Grain reminds us to be critical of whose story is told and why. For this reason, Scott’s work should have a place in courses focused on both the present and the future, not just the past. It suggests that students ask about the role coercion and bondage play in the twenty first century, or if our economy is built around appropriation or ecological wisdom. The reader, while learning about the distant past, cannot help but ponder what about our daily lives we take for granted and which narratives or stories should be elevated, and which should be relegated to the past.

Steven Richter is currently a PhD Student in the Community and Regional Planning program in the University of Texas School of Architecture whose focus is on sustainability, regional land use, and natural capital.

Inching Towards War: Military Preparedness in the 1930s

The 1936 National Democratic Convention in Philadelphia was a coronation of sorts for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who faced little serious opposition in his pursuit of a second nomination. The convention program was full of articles and photographs that talked up the president’s programs and achievements during his first term. However a closer look at the working drafts found in the program printer’s archive, stored on campus at UT Austin’s Briscoe Center, shows that the administration grappled with presenting the political issues of the day to the public. Of particular note are essay drafts related to America’s role in the world, and specifically how Roosevelt sought to justify military investment to a skeptical public.

The printer’s archive includes original artwork, photographs, advertisements and party leader biographies from the 1936 convention program. In addition, it boasts a set of fully annotated typed essays written by Roosevelt’s Cabinet members and other officials. Those essays—including entries for the State and Treasury departments, the National Park Service, and the Works Progress Administration—comprise the bulk of the program’s content.

The program represented a chance for the Roosevelt administration to project its philosophy, policies, and achievements upon both the convention and the upcoming general election. The essays’ many edits point to the ways that Roosevelt’s ideas and activities were deeply contested at the time within the Roosevelt administration, the Democratic Party, and the wider American public during the 1930s.

George Dern, United States Secretary of War from 1933-19336 (via Wikipedia)

George Dern’s essay is more annotated than most. The former governor of Utah was Roosevelt’s secretary of war from 1933 until his death shortly after the convention. Like the staunch anti-war campaigner, U.S. Senator Gerald Nye, Dern was a western progressive. His essay reflects this, emphasizing that American foreign policy “contemplates no aggressive action: it is entirely defensive. We are a peace-loving people.” And yet, unlike Nye, Dern advocated for upgrading the military’s capabilities to create a force – neither “dangerously small” nor “menacingly large” — that could respond rapidly in a crisis. Treading lightly, Dern remains pointed in his criticism of the Republican controlled Congresses of the 1920s, accusing them of underfunding the Army, which left it lacking in both equipment and personnel: “The President and the [now Democratic] Congress have taken steps to remedy at least in part this serious defect.” However, he is quick to add that America remains “considerably behind the armies of other countries.”

It’s a point that Dern reiterates again and again, but, intriguingly, Roosevelt’s communication strategists omitted many of these assessments. Whole paragraphs alluding to America’s unpreparedness for war are crossed out, including references to needing more soldiers and rifles and the Army being “very much smaller than that of any of the nations of comparable importance.” Roosevelt operatives—aware that the president’s internationalist leanings were stronger than those of the American public as a whole—were as keen as Dern to stress the practical rather than idealistic reasons for military investment. However, they appear to have thought Dern went too far and risked making America appear weak. In a world stalked by Hitler and Stalin, during a decade that had witnessed Japanese aggression in Manchuria and the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, that would be an understandable concern. In any case, Dern’s essay employs another motif to broker consensus for military investment: the Army as an agent of social and economic progress.

Essay by Dern with edits (via the Dolph Briscoe Center)

Dern states that the Army had been a “vital creative force that is closely identified with the growth and progress of our country.” Not only was it instrumental in pioneering preventative medicine and radio transmission, it was Army engineers who had “surveyed the routes of the early canals and the first railroads.” In addition to placing the Army within America’s glorious, trailblazing past, Dern emphasizes its nonmilitary achievements in the present. He highlights the Army’s work in disaster response and flood mitigation, as well as in training, equipping, and feeding members of the Civilian Conservation Corps. which employed nearly 3 million unemployed American youths in a variety of conservation programs such as trail maintenance and tree planting during its nine-year existence. Dern’s point was to show that the Army could “serve the people as well in the exigencies of peace as in the travails of war.” This was aimed at cultivating consent for an enhanced and enlarged military during a period when the public remained on the fence about internationalism and the prospect of upgrading America’s role in world affairs.

Dern was succeeded as secretary of war by Harry Hines Wooding, who continued his predecessor’s cautious modernization. Likewise, Roosevelt’s internationalism remained tempered, and domestic issues still dominated. However, events were to evolve rapidly. America’s perceived lack of response to Nazi aggression from 1938 on drew national and international criticism. After Paris fell to Hitler in 1940, the United States quietly pivoted toward Britain, as it had in World War I, supplying materials and later armaments in the war against Germany. Wooding was forced to resign and was replaced with Henry Stimson, who echoed Roosevelt’s now-increasingly hawkish tone and practice.

Sections concerning military nixed in this draft (via Dolph Briscoe Center)

Congress, however, remained divided even as late as the fall of 1941. Efforts to dilute the neutrality acts of the previous decade were successful, but the legislative opposition, led by Nye and others, was vociferous. Indeed, an extension to the military draft in August 1941 (from one to two and a half years) passed in the House by only one vote — that of Speaker Sam Rayburn from Texas. (Rayburn is pictured behind Roosevelt, right). But the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan in December proved to be the tipping point, outraging American public opinion and leading to a swift congressional declaration of war. Even Nye voted aye. Germany, Japan’s ally, declared war on America in the days following. The United States was now at war both in the Pacific and the Atlantic. As in 1917, policy had edged forward but then seemed to turn on a dime. More than 16 million Americans went on to serve in World War II. Partially, gradually, emphatically, intervention had prevailed over isolation.

The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Politics of Viceregal Power in Colonial Mexico by Alejandro Cañeque (2004)

Latin American popular culture presents two common tropes about Spanish colonial rule. One is the representation of viceroys as autocrats who ruled without any institutional constraint. This perception “explains” the authoritarian tendencies of Latin American societies in the postcolonial period. The other trope ironically undermines perceptions of authoritarian control by highlighting the margin of discretion that colonial officials enjoyed in the application of the law. One example of this flexible interpretation of the law is a famous phrase uttered by the Spanish American bureaucrats when a royal order came from the metropolis: “I obey but I do not comply” (obedezco pero no cumplo). Officers used this prerogative in some cases to avoid enforcing certain royal policies that they thought might be harmful for the territories in the New World where they ruled in representation of the king. This trope “explains” the apparent disregard of modern Latin Americans for the law. Neither of these representations of colonial rule is accurate.

Alejandro Cañeque’s The King’s Living Image invites readers to reconsider many of the misconceptions about Spanish America found in Latin American popular culture. Cañeque argues that we cannot understand the colonial Spanish bureaucracy with our modern conceptions of the state. In fact, Cañeque refutes the centralizing and autocratic vocation of the Spanish Monarchy for most of the colonial period (until the beginning of the eighteenth century) because those elements associated often with the modern state simply did not appear there. Without a standing army and an extended and centralized bureaucratic apparatus, how did Spain rule over almost a whole continent? Central to the author’s argument is that political beliefs and institutional practices were crucial in sustaining viceregal power and colonial rule. Spaniards imagined the state as a human body in which each body part (institution) played a key role in the system. The king represented the head, but even a king could not move if his legs did not respond. At the institutional level, the king could not procure good governance in the kingdom without the help of his most trusted councilors working in those institutions. The collective action of the whole created a sense of community among all its members.

Cañeque reinforces this idea by stating that political power was transmitted from God to the community, which then transferred it to a king. Thus, the monarch had the absolute obligation to rule for the benefit of the people and the common good. Justice and good governance became the ideological foundations of the Spanish Monarchy. Their fulfillment depended on the cooperation of the head and the different body parts. Shattering misconceptions about despotism in the Spanish Monarchy, Cañeque claims that this system of government had its analogy in heaven, where God was assisted by the Seraphim, who had the job of purging, illuminating, and perfecting the hierarchies below them. In this framework, the author analyzes the administrative hierarchy in Spanish America from the upper echelons to the local forms of government. Through his study of Viceroyalties, and Audiencias and Cabildos, Cañeque shows how the Spanish Monarchy was structured in a way that any site of power reflected a higher level.

Cañeque focuses in the figure of the viceroy, who represented the living image of the king, playing the role of the head of the political body in Spanish America. Mirroring the celestial court, viceroys had to be exemplary rulers for their subjects. Like the king, they had to rule by virtue, and not by force. If we add to this their mission of dispensing justice, we now can understand the famous phrase “I obey but I do not comply.” Viceroys and other colonial officials did not enforce certain royal policies when they were thought to be contrary to the justice and the laws of the kingdom. Certainly, they could abuse this prerogative for other goals, but its purpose was not the disregard of the law but the protection of the larger conception of justice.

If the viceroy represented the living image of the king, how did the king project his power through the viceroy? Symbolic representations, such as triumphal arches, processions, and the magnificence and pomp in the viceroy’s public appearances, all constituted and sustained viceregal power. People today would see mere spectacle and vanity. But these were the means through which authority was legitimated, especially when coercion on a grand scale was simply impossible. Symbols and political rituals were fundamental for the legitimization of power. Consider modern states and their use of symbols to command respect and loyalty. Think about the purpose of national hymns, or the splendor of national parades. Allegiance to the nation’s flag evokes the same feelings that people would have experienced by seeing the public appearance of the king’s living image in the figure of the viceroy.

Cañeque’s The King’s Living Image is a readable and well researched contribution that serves as a wake-up call to reexamine many of the misconceptions that have informed Latin American popular culture about Spanish American colonial power.

How do we talk about Enoch? Enoch Powell, Race Relations, and Public History in Britain

Embed from Getty Images

by Edward Watson

Few British politicians in the 20th century have been as inflammatory as Enoch Powell. On April 20, 1968, the Conservative MP and Shadow Defence Secretary criticized mass immigration from the Commonwealth into the UK during an address to the Conservative Political Centre in Birmingham. Dubbed the “Rivers of Blood” speech, Powell claimed that the anti-discrimination Race Relations Bill of 1968 would provide immigrant communities with the means to “overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’”

Powell’s speech caused uproar. The Times condemned it as “an evil speech” and Powell was promptly dismissed from the Shadow Cabinet by Conservative leader Ted Heath. However, Powell had his supporters. In fact, a Gallup poll in 1968 found that 74% of respondents supported his suggestion of repatriation. Powell subsequently became a mythologized and divisive figure. For the far-right, “Enoch was right” became a key rallying cry of anti-immigrant sentiment. For many on the center and the left, Powell embodies an openly vitriolic, racist strand of British politics.

BBC Radio 4, a highbrow wing of Britain’s public service broadcaster, decided to air a dramatic reading of Powell’s speech interspersed with commentary from journalists and academics in commemoration of the speech’s 50th anniversary. The presenter, BBC media editor Amol Rajan, promoted the program on Twitter, claiming that “on Saturday, for 1st time EVER, Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech will be read in full on UK radio.” The BBC has widely come under fire, most forcibly from Labour peer Andrew Adonis and academics. Dr Shirin Hirsch, who had been interviewed for the broadcast, tweeted that she was “disgusted by the way the BBC are promoting this show. I made a mistake and was interviewed for this but I have been sick with worry since seeing the way this is being presented.” Considering the divisive nature of Powell’s speech, many questioned the decision to give an uncritical platform to the far-right while others focused more on the decision to commemorate the speech at all. Rajan later defended the decision by arguing that “the speech is broken up, and critiqued by voices from across the spectrum. Not just read out in a single go.”

On Saturday, for 1st time EVER, Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech will be read in full on UK radio (by actor Ian McDiarmid). Please join us @BBCRadio4 8pm. Super-brains Nathan Gower + David Prest have done an amazing production job. Great guests too: https://t.co/3XvDMSH16d
— Amol Rajan (@amolrajan) April 12, 2018

The BBC’s broadcast touches on numerous ethical and methodological issues for public historians. How do we deal with difficult subject matter? What is the best medium for a critical analysis of such an incendiary speech? How should such a broadcast be marketed? What are the risks of presenting the speech as a commemoration? Its hype as “the first time” the speech had been broadcast was fundamental to the controversy. Historians often use anniversaries as an opportunity to disseminate their own work and engage with a public audience. In this instance, the seemingly celebratory nature of the significance of Powell’s speech was widely criticized. Historicizing Powell’s speech is important and we have to establish critical and reflective ways of covering Powell in the wider context of race relations in Britain. There is no singular correct way to do this, but a dramatic reenactment of the speech seems inappropriate, especially as there is no recording of Powell’s most famous and divisive line, “I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’”

This is not to say that Enoch Powell should be ignored. Powell’s speech represents an important juncture in British political and cultural history. Prior to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962, Commonwealth citizens had extensive rights to settle in the UK. Race riots, most notably in Notting Hill and Nottingham in 1958, inflammatory speeches (such as Powell’s), and restrictive immigration laws were indicative of intense debates surrounding race relations in the UK. In 1964, the hugely controversial election in Smethwick in the West Midlands highlighted the prevalence of racism in British politics, as the Conservatives were widely reported as adopting the slogan “if you want a n****r for a neighbour, vote Labour.” By the time British citizens of South Asian origin faced a campaign of discrimination from the Kenya African National Union (KANU) government in 1967, racial tensions and white British concerns over the influx of immigrants from the Commonwealth were immensely influential over government policy. The Kenyan Asian crisis, as it came to be known, prompted the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill in 1968, which reduced immigration from the Commonwealth to 8500 per year and a mere 1500 from Kenya specifically. 80,000 people in Kenya, who had previously been entitled to British passports as Citizens of the UK and Colonies, were effectively rendered stateless. In an effort to appease their critics, the Labour government passed the Race Relations Act in 1968. The act made it illegal to refuse housing, employment or public services to a person on the grounds of race or national origins. Powell rallied against the Labour government’s bill and the levels of immigration, arguing that it was “like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.” He believed that racial tensions “of American proportions” which were “interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.”

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The specific context to Powell’s speech is often forgotten and there are historical and political ramifications in understanding its background and subsequent influence. For the left, so eager to portray the Labour party as the bastions of racial equality, it represents a colossal failure in terms of immigration and race relations for Harold Wilson’s government. On the far-right, Powell’s mythology is increasingly synonymous with all anti-immigrant sentiment. Understanding Powell’s background illuminates why his speech was so dangerous. Powell has been caricatured as a demagogue and a rambling racist, but he was a highly respected, classical scholar with an astute awareness of how he could manipulate history for political means. Powell believed history “was always a series of myths and the point was to choose the most appropriate ones for the hour of national need.” He was an articulate and charismatic orator. This was no incoherent, raving outsider, but a calculated and educated member of the political elite.

This is what made his speech so divisive and why it continues to have relevance in British political life to this day. In 2014, comedian Russell Brand called UKIP leader Nigel Farage a “pound shop Enoch Powell” on the BBC’s political TV show Question Time. Welsh UKIP leader, Neil Hamilton, defended Enoch Powell, arguing the idea that Powell was a “racist villain” is “absolute nonsense.” Even more recently, Commonwealth immigration has hit the headlines with the Home Office coming under fire for destroying landing cards from the “Windrush generation,” with thousands of children who were brought to Britain from the West Indies in 1948 now at risk of deportation. Days ago, Labour MP David Lammy, lambasted the Prime Minister and Home Secretary for appeasing the anti-immigrant sentiment of the far-right, arguing that “if you lay down with dogs, you get fleas.” The ghost of Enoch Powell looms large over UK politics. We would do well to figure out an appropriate way to discuss Powell’s speech in its historical context as well as how it fits into contemporary political discourse. Understanding Powell’s strand of racist rhetoric derives from a closer reading of his speech and the context in which he delivered it. In this sense, the BBC’s decision to critique the speech amidst the dramatic reading is important. However, if Britons are to have a more meaningful discussion about the history of race relations, then the discussion must go beyond a dramatization of Powell’s speech. Moreover, public scholars need to do more thinking in terms of how to appropriately frame such a difficult discussion.

Also by Edward Watson on Not Even Past:

Review of Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert

Did Race and Racism Exist in the Middle Ages?
History Museums: Race, Eugenics, and Immigration in New York History Museums
History in a “Post-Truth” Era

A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America by Grace Elizabeth Hale (2011)

by Ashley Garcia

In the works of modern philosophers and novelists and even in the lyrical stylings of folk icon Bob Dylan, the question of authenticity lingers in the background of our search for meaning and truth. In A Nation of Outsiders, Grace Hale seeks to explain how and why white Americans in the second half of the twentieth century became enamored with the romance and rebellion of the outsider. Hale uncovers how white middle-class youths of the 1950s and 1960s acquired meaning and freedom in their everyday lives through the cultural, social, and political appropriation of marginalized American people, such as African Americans. The perceived authenticity of black Americans fascinated the white youth disillusioned with the phoniness of capitalist culture, state-sponsored violence, and the expectations of their parents.

Hale’s most effective case studies include her chapters on the beatniks, blues followers, New Left Marxists, and folk revivalists who participated in the prevailing counterculture of the 1960s and the creation of their own culture of cool. These groups simultaneously exploited the music, culture, and experiences of black Americans to assuage their own anxiety and yearning for self-determination and authenticity. Hale points to J.D. Salinger, Jack Kerouac, Elvis Presley, and even Bob Dylan as examples of this appropriation of authenticity where white Americans crafted new identities in accordance with the experiences and culture of the oppressed black community they hoped to emulate. Similarly, Hale illuminates how white members of the New Left participated in the Civil Rights Movement out of more than political solidarity. Many white New Left members viewed the movement as an opportunity to transform their own lives into something meaningful and romanticized the Southern experience of black Americans as authentically beautiful.

African American and white supporters of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in front of the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, NJ, 1964 (via Wikimedia)

Hale’s book investigates a historically relevant question of how and why white Americans romanticize and appropriate the experiences of the outsider to find meaning and freedom in their own lives. The romance of the outsider has never left white middle class American minds and Hale’s work uncovers the damage this romanticism has had on material efforts to achieve equality. White fantasies of the black experience allowed the disillusioned white middle class to forge an imaginary bond with the “outsider” and thereby solidified their own status as outsiders as well. However, this one-sided bond that occurred in the white imaginary prevented white Americans from working with actual Africans Americans to achieve equality. This romanticism of the outsider, while it served the yearning of unsatisfied white Americans, did nothing to combat the oppression and inequality the actual outsider faced in the 1950s and 1960s.

Hale’s last chapter echoes an even graver political threat that dominates American electoral politics – the widespread adoption of the ideology of the oppressed outsider by overwhelmingly non-oppressed groups. The adoption of this identity of outsider has evolved since the 1960s, but has been a staple in parts of the New Right and conservative politics for decades. Just as evangelicals in the 1960s and 1970s entered the political sphere as outsiders with a mission to reclaim the moral issues liberals of the era politicized, Tea Party activists and recent Donald Trump supporters have also declared themselves outsiders aiming to recover the “truth” in a world dominated by lying liberals, power hungry elites, and news media phonies. A Nation of Outsiders opens the door to further analysis concerning the political viability of the ideology and identity of the outsider in white politics. Scholars must be aware of how political candidates and their constituents romanticize the notion of the outsider as it provides insight into voters’ perceptions of their social, political, and economic place in the world. What drives this alienation of members of the white middle class? How have they come to understand themselves as outsiders, oppressed, and marginalized in a world where their economic resources and political power indicate otherwise?

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2017)

by Brandon Render

Prior to the publication of “The Case for Reparations” in 2013, Ta-Nehisi Coates was a little-known blogger turned Senior Editor of The Atlantic magazine. Today, Coates has emerged as not only the top contemporary black intellectual, but a leading American thinker – regardless of race – with stinging critiques of President Barack Obama’s administration and American racism. Coates’ We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy traces the evolution of his writing career as it coincides with the eight years of the first black presidency, detailing Coates’ personal life as he completed each assignment, his relationship with Obama, and the public reaction to his essays. Coates chooses an article for each year of Obama’s presidency to describe the disparate moods of Americans towards racism, each essay blending testimonies and historical research. Coates provides a brief introduction to each article, all of which are published by The Atlantic, to describe the financial struggles he and his family faced while establishing himself as a writer, the inspiration and reasoning behind his subject choice, and his post-publication thoughts on each essay.

As Coates became a best-selling author with the publication of Between the World and Me, more attention was placed on his journalistic work. According to the author, these articles are joined here in an effort to provide a fresh take on the previous eight years to describe the historical and contemporary ideas of Black America, from within and without: the black conservatism of Bill Cosby; the nuances of black identity represented by Michelle Obama; the Civil War in the collective black memory and historical imagination; the uses and misuses of Malcolm X’s legacy; the limitations of a black presidency due to “white innocence”; the stifling of black wealth through discriminatory housing policies; the destructive power of negative stereotypes of black families and its relationship to mass incarceration; and Obama’s reflection on his eight years in office. Coates’ concluding epilogue, “The First White President,” describes how the “bloody heirloom” – or centuries of white supremacy and violence against black communities – is used to negate the first black presidency through the election of Donald Trump.

Coates seeks to push boundaries, not only to demystify notions of a post-racial society, but to contextualize America’s first black presidency within the broader scope of American racism. The author explores the complexities of Obama’s attempts to carve out a path in American politics, pitting the impact of black radicalism and the president’s rich knowledge of black history against a persona made palatable for white Americans – what Coates refers to as the “third way – a means of communicating his affection for white America without fawning over it.” The irony in Coates’ assessment is that a distinctly black man, one who refrained from common ideas of assimilation, could rise to the nation’s highest office while still facing the limitations that black Americans experience individually and collectively. While Coates makes the simplified argument that a black presidency does not equate to the end of racism, in these articles he also seeks to uncover the nuances of racial discrimination in Obama’s response to white racial sensibilities.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (via Flickr)

The unique writing career of Ta-Nehisi Coates has produced a leading black voice in public discourse on historical and contemporary American race relations. In a way, it is fitting for Coates to trace his writing career alongside Obama’s presidency given the remarkable similarities of a black journalist and a black politician maintaining their distinctive racial qualities when, historically, they would be rejected by white America in such fields. Coates’ platform in The Atlantic gives him for a wide, predominately white audience that most black journalists do not enjoy. Coates recognizes this fact in the introduction to his article on reparations, claiming that this particular essay “was a lesson in what serious writing married to the right platform could actually achieve.” In other words, arguments that not only surround reparations, but the systematic oppression of black Americans found in black publications that target a black readership are reduced by white audiences to unimportant racial grievances who dismiss “legitimate ideas” because they are not considered by “people of the right ‘reputation.’”

When evaluated individually, each of Coates’ articles tackles a sensitive subject involving the black community, past and present, that is often hidden or unacknowledged by white America. Placed alongside each other, Coates’ powerful illustrations capture the broad, ever-changing nature of American racism. Coates’ thoughts, however, are a departure from the black intellectual tradition, most notably due to his lack of religious faith as evidenced throughout his work. Not only does Coates identify as an atheist, but he makes no attempt to comfort his audience by offering faith or promoting values that transcend America’s history of racism and oppression. Instead, he forces his audience to confront the destructive nature of prejudice, telling the reader that no one can save us but ourselves; ultimately, it is up to us to decide the next move.

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