Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From the waves of empire to unsilencing the Haitian Revolution in US hip hop, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history.

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The Waves of Empire

Michael Patrick Cullinane and William D. Riddell
The Gilded Age and Progressive Era Podcast

As the labor movement pushed for greater recognition, pay, and conditions in the workplace (on land), the sailors of America had a tougher fight. The nature of maritime commerce made sailors foreign in a domestic sense, as the Supreme Court would rule. Geography complicated their place in constitutional law, and made them at once victims and agents of the American empire. Will Riddell joins me to discuss these labor issues and his new book On the Waves of Empire. [Listen to the interview]

Christie’s cancels auction of jewelry linked to Nazi-era fortune

Christy Choi
CNN

The sale of over 400 pieces of jewelry once owned by late art collector Heidi Horten broke records at a series of auctions earlier this year. But amid ongoing criticism from Jewish advocacy groups and human rights organizations over the source of the Austrian billionaire’s wealth, Christie’s auction house announced Thursday that it has canceled the final part of the controversial sale.

Horten’s former husband, Helmut, first made his fortune in Nazi Germany by buying out Jewish businesses “sold under duress,” Christie’s acknowledged in its sale catalog, having initially described him simply as “a German entrepreneur and businessman” in press releases. “The sale of the Heidi Horten jewelry collection has provoked intense scrutiny, and the reaction to it has deeply affected us and many others, and we will continue to reflect on it,” Anthea Peers, Christie’s president of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said in a statement announcing the decision to cancel November’s online sale of around 300 items. [continue reading]

Mental Maps, Territorial Imaging, and Strategy: Thinking about the Japanese Empire

Alexis Dudden
Learning from History

For much of the seventeenth through mid-nineteenth centuries, Japan’s Tokugawa leaders sealed off their country from the world, turning political, social, and economic planning and policy inward. It was not necessarily illegal to leave Japan, yet should you return, you would get your head chopped off (castaways could be exempted, although not always). Foreign arrivals were heavily regulated, being almost exclusively restricted to diplomats from the Choson, Qing, and Ryukyuan courts to convey tribute and news.

Thus mediated, firsthand awareness of the formative moments of great modern Western industrial transformation and empire building—particularly by Britain and France—remained largely unknown to Tokugawa officials. That said, a famous chink existed in this wall on the man-made island of Dejima off the southern city of Nagasaki, where a small Dutch population lived (only Dutch and Chinese ships were allowed into port). The shogun had banished most Europeans (threatened by the rapid spread of Portuguese efforts at Catholic conversion), yet he permitted a handful of Dutch employees of the Dutch East India Company to remain at this heavily controlled outpost. They mainly imported cotton and silk from India and China and bought silver, copper, porcelain, and lacquerware for export. [continue reading]

Retired Chilean Army brigadier takes own life after conviction for 1973 murder of Víctor Jara

Rocía Montes
El País

One of the seven former members of the Chilean military convicted of the torture and assassination of singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, retired brigadier Hernán Chacón Soto, took his own life after the verdict was returned by the Supreme Court, as confirmed to this newspaper by the Ministry of the Interior. Soto, 86, was found dead by the Investigations Police (PDI), as reported by Radio ADN, who arrived at his home to transfer him to prison to serve his sentence: 15 years for aggravated homicide and 10 years for aggravated kidnapping for his part in the murders of Jara and Littré Quiroga, who oversaw the prison system during the socialist government of Salvador Allende. The killings took place a few days after the coup d’état of September 11, 1973.

According to local media, the PDI arrived at Chacón’s home in the municipality of Las Condes, in the eastern part of Santiago, to notify him of the ruling, when he reportedly asked for permission to go to his bedroom to retrieve some medicines. At that point, he shot himself. [continue reading]

Unsilencing the Haitian Revolution in US Hip Hop

Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall
Black Perspectives

The Haitian Revolution (1791 – 1804) was the first successful revolution by enslaved people in the Americas. Recent books by Leslie Alexander, Brandon Byrd and Millery Polyné have emphasized the event’s significance for 19^th- and 20^th-century African Americans. As Alexander argues in Fear of a Black Republic, “Haiti’s triumphant ascendance created a beacon of hope for free and enslaved Black people…, especially those fighting for freedom in the United States.” Other scholars have examined the Revolution’s appearances in Black culture forms from jazz and art to theater. The place of the Haitian Revolution in US hip hop has received much less attention, however. In fact, the Haitian Revolution has made appearances in the lyrics of several rap artists—especially those from Brooklyn and other NYC boroughs with sizable Caribbean populations— showing that it remains relevant to Black freedom struggles today.

Schools throughout the United States have long ignored the Haitian Revolution, and many academic historians have also long excluded the Revolution from their analyses of revolutions of the same era. The Haitian Revolution was also largely hidden from movie screens. In general, discrimination and stereotyping against Haitians immigrants compounded the silencing of the Haitian Revolution. During the 1980s, for example, both white and Black Americans labelled Haitian immigrants as AIDS carriers, which pushed young Haitians to camouflage their origins. [continue reading]