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Global Urban History Project

Date: 11/4/2021
Subject: Noteworthy in Global Urban History
From: Global Urban History Project



Vol. 34, November 2021.
 
Have you published something new in Global Urban History? 
We'd like our members to know. Contact Ayan Meer with details.
 
GUHP is now a member-supported organization. To join or renew your membership, visit our Homepage.

Latest News // GUHP Dream Conversations
• "Readers Meet Author: Richard Harris", the inaugural event of the Theory Of, For, and By Urban Historians Conversation was held on October 27th. [Watch here]
 
• "Roundtable on Cities and Inequalities", the inaugural event of the Cities and Inequalities Conversation was held on October 28th. [Watch here]
 
Save the Date -- December 16, 2-4 PM UTC, Inaugural Event of the Cities and the Anthropocene Conversation.
  

Books
Settler Colonial City. Racism and Inequity in Postwar Minneapolis
by David Hugill
(University of Minnesota Press, 2021)
 
Colonial relations are often excluded from discussions of urban politics and are viewed instead as part of a regrettable past. In Settler Colonial City, David Hugill confronts this culture of organized forgetting by arguing that Minnesota’s largest city is enduringly bound up with the power dynamics of settler-colonial politics. Examining several distinct Minneapolis sites, he tracks how settler-colonial relations were articulated alongside substantial growth in the Twin Cities Indigenous community during the second half of the twentieth century—creating new geographies of racialized advantage. The book demonstrates how colonial practices and mentalities shaped processes of urban reorganization, animated non-Indigenous “advocacy research,” informed a culture of racialized policing, and intertwined with a broader culture of American imperialism. [more]
Connected History. Essays and Arguments
by Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Verso, 2021)

 
Sanjay Subrahmanyam is becoming well known for the same sort of reasons that attach to Fernand Braudel and Carlo Ginzburg, as the proponent of a new kind of history – in his case, not longue durée or micro-history, but ‘connected history’: connected cross-culturally, and spanning regions, subjects and archives that are conventionally treated alone. Not a research paradigm, he insists, it is more of an oppositionswissenschaft, a way of trying to constantly break the moulds of historical objects. The essays collected here, some quite polemical, illustrate the breadth of Subrahmanyam’s concerns, as well as the quality of his writing. Connected History considers what, exactly, is an empire, the rise of ‘the West’ (less of a place than an idea or ideology, he insists), Churchill and the Great Man theory of history, the reception of world literature and the itinerary of subaltern studies. [more]

Articles
"The Enclosure of the Ejidos of Bogotà. Imperial Wars and the End of Common Lands in Colonial New Granada"
by Costanza Castro Benavides
Journal of Urban History, Fall 2021
 

The article analyses the enclosure of the ejidos of the city of Bogotá in the second half of the 18th century. It shows how, as the land demand increased with population and economic growth, not only landowners but also the Crown sought to increase their income at the expense of common lands. Unlike the classic enclosures in England, the Cabildo kept control over the ejidos of Bogotá. By furthering the private use of municipal ejidos without expropriating Cabildos, the Crown sought to activate the agrarian economy safeguarding, at the same time, the local financial structure that sustained the empire.  [Access the article here]

"The Art of Mercato. Buying City-States in Renaissance Tuscany"
by Michael Martoccio
Past & Present, Fall 2021
 

Italian communes from 1300–1600 bought and sold numerous towns and castles from Crete to Arezzo to Tabarka. Despite the popularity of this custom, however, existing scholarship claims Renaissance cities expanded territorially through violent conquests that centralized government finances and promoted militant imperialist discourses. Drawing on case studies of the Florentine purchase of two cities, this article reveals how the buyers of Renaissance cities instead drew upon a vast, little-studied network of private creditors to pay for new lands. The vendibility of space, moreover, helped foster a commercialized ideology of empire. Buying cities thus allowed Renaissance merchant elites to demonstrate not only their city’s superior material wealth, but also mercantile prowess.  [Access the article here]


Teaching Resources
"Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas"
 
The interactive map visualizes Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s transformations during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Drawing on 1850, 1880, and 1910 census data, it shows how migration, residential, and occupational patterns shaped the city. The Digital Atlas breaks new ground by locating each person counted in the Census at their home address, sometimes before the street grid was even established. Thus far, the maps include 6.5 million unique census records for 1850, 1880, and 1910, matched to home locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn. This is an ongoing project that will expand to include all five boroughs up to the 1940 census over the next three years. This project is the result of a multi-year interdisciplinary collaboration between Columbia University’s Department of History and the Center for Spatial Research at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, and funded by the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. [Access the maps here]

Related Networks and Events
"Reclaiming the Right to the City"
Chicago Council on Global Affairs
 
Edited by Ian Klaus and Samuel Kling, Reclaiming the Right to the City is a collection of essays published by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, features essays by scholars, diplomats and practitioners. The essays take up the question of the Right to the City in Egypt, China, South Africa, Latin America and North America, and in an exciting array of contexts (public health, care giving, transportation, and development). Contributors include Charles T. Brown, Toni Irving,  Emily Talen, Leslie Kern, and Andrew Tucker, among others.
Call for Papers: "Repensar la Ciudad Iberoamericana"
Asociacion Iberoamericana de Historia Urbana, 22-25 Novembre 2022
 
Esta tercera edicion busca un diálogo entre los desafíos del presente a la vida urbana y al diseño de la ciudad y las experiencias del pasado y, fiel al espíritu de anteriores ediciones, apela a los muy diversos campos académicos desde el que se práctica la historia urbana (la historia, el urbanismo, la geografia, entre muchas otras) con el propósito de elaborar reflexiones comunes y sintéticas e intercambiar interpretaciones y enfoques metodológicos.
Berlin Global History Colloquium, Freie Universität
Winter Term 2021/22, Mondays 18.15-19.45 CET
 
The programme of the Berlin Global History Colloquium is now online, featuring talks by Glenda Suga, Naoko Shimazo, Richard Drayton, Cristiana Bastos, Darryl Li, Sujt Sivasundaram, and Guillaume Calafat. Meetings will be held in person and online.