The IHR’s Reviews in History publishes weekly commentaries on new books. Our reviews are longer than those in many academic journals and focus on titles published in the last year.
‘Reviews’ will be taking a break during July and the first half of August, but look forward to introducing our expanded editorial board later in the summer. Over the summer, we will also feature reviews of Prosecuting Homicide in Eighteenth-Century Law and Practice, by Drew D. Gray; Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote, by Ellen Carol Dubois; The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, by William Dalrymple; and Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918, by Katja Hoyer.
Below are some recently-reviewed titles:
Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830–1930 / Judith Surkis
Charlotte Legg reviews an ‘exceptional contribution to historical understanding of the colonial legal regime’ in Algeria, which sets out to explain ‘how “the Muslim question” became a sexual question’.
Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour / Sarah Goldsmith
Michèle Cohen reviews ‘a provocative and fascinating book which asks fresh questions and offers ground breaking insights into the ever intriguing Grand Tour’.
Medieval Welsh Genealogy: An Introduction and Textual Study / Ben Guy
Barry J. Lewis reviews this ‘in-depth investigation of the genealogies of medieval Wales’, judging it ‘a major contribution to a vital but neglected field’. This review is published alongside a special issue on Welsh history by Sadie Jarrett, EHS Postan Fellow at the IHR.
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power / Pekka Hämäläinen
David A. Nichols reviews this ‘deeply researched and insightful’ study of ‘an expansive and enduring Indigenous regime that commanded human fates in the North American interior for generations’.
Early Modern Ecclesiastical Law and Consistory Courts / R.H. Helmholz and Depositions in the Consistory Court of the Bishop of Bath and Wells: I. Office Depositions, 1601 to 1605 and II. Instance Depositions, 1604 to 1606 / edited by: William Husband
Jennifer McNabb reviews a monograph and two edited volumes that ‘expand our understanding of ecclesiastical justice and its impact on early modern people in meaningful ways’.
Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition / Bronwen Everill
Alexandra M. MacDonald reviews an ‘important intervention into the historiographies of slavery, abolition, and capitalism’, which demonstrates that ‘fair trade didn’t just spring up out of nowhere’.
Conceived in Crisis: The Revolutionary Creation of an American State / Christopher R. Pearl
Grace Mallon reviews a ‘field-changing’ look at the influence of European models of state-building on the framing and ratification of the US Constitution, which calls into question previous portrayals of the American Revolution.
Feminisms: A Global History / Lucy Delap
Anne Cova reviews a ‘masterful’ and ‘profound analysis’ of the ‘radio waves’ of feminisms across 250 years of global history.