Abstract Despite the rise in environmental thinking and environmental questions throughout the humanities—what some people call the “environmental turn”—environmental history has remained marginal to the field of North African history. This article explores the field of environmental history of North Africa in order to think through some potential ways to address this lacuna. The article does this by first providing a brief overview of the field of environmental history, with an emphasis on North Africa. It then turns to the broader trends in this area and highlights some recent scholarship before suggesting an alternative approach that might be useful to North Africanists and other scholars.

Abstract The field of Shanghai Studies has a history of more than a century. It evolves along with the unfolds of modern history of Shanghai. The city's dramatic growth in the late 19th century aroused early scholarly attempts in writing the history of the city. In the following half century, however, due to the chaotic socio‐political context, the studies of Shanghai had never really taken off. After 1949, when the Chinese communists took power, the studies of Shanghai was forced to conform with major political themes of modern Chinese history. Broad political ideas always superseded local history. It was not until the late 1980s, when the study of Shanghai history began to surge and immediately grew into one of the most vibrant and prolific subfields of historical studies. It has no sign of crescent so far, with an ever growing research community and the openness towards new perspective and methodology.

Abstract Igbo historiography has advanced since the publication of the epic narrative of Olaudah Equiano in 1789 and its different versions, especially that of Paul Edwards, a British literary historian in 1969. The main objective of this essay is to demonstrate the vitality and diversity of Igbo historical studies and provide informative and thoughtful interpretations of its strengths and weaknesses. In three parts, the essay examines the origin, dispersal, and settlement of the people; sociopolitical institutions and organization; economic systems, including slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, and the colonial economy; Igbo religion, Islam, Christianity, and Western education; colonial encounter; the Igbo in precolonial and modern Nigeria with focus on intergroup relations, ethnicity, and the Nigeria–Biafra War; and Igbo intellectual history. The essay makes a spirited critique of areas of overemphasis and the conceptual and methodological issues. It suggests important neglected themes that require further historical investigations. Its primary goal is to nudge Igbo historiography in new and challenging directions and inspire historians interested in Igbo studies to adopt a historiographical approach that emphasizes currency, relevance, and usability.

Abstract Why did widespread opposition to the African slave trade first emerge in Britain in the late 1780s? This question has been one of the most contested in British imperial historiography for generations. The first half of this article examines various answers that scholars have posited, highlighting in particular their broadening frames of reference. The second half looks at recent works on other aspects of Britain's late 18th‐century empire that are breaking down traditional historiographic divisions, especially between the British Atlantic and British India. This research is demonstrating just how interconnected the British world was during the age of revolutions, and is simultaneously offering new ideas and methodologies for studying British antislavery from a global perspective.

No abstract is available for this article.

Abstract The early medieval history of the European periphery in the 9th century and its relations with the Carolingian and the Byzantine Empire have in the last two decades become a focal point for medievalists. In a number of research papers studying the areas beyond the eastern borders of the Carolingian Empire, interest has been shown for the northeastern hinterlands of the Adriatic coast, that is, the area in which the Duchy of Croatia was formed during the 9th century. The question at the heart of these medievalists' interest is the appearance of Croats in recorded history. The modern solutions to this question are not unanimous, as they range from a collective migration in the 7th century to the creation of a Croatian elite in the first half of the 10th. Also, due to the lack of primary sources, various methodological templates have been used to make sense of the past, applied chiefly—until recently—by non‐Croatian historians. Meanwhile, the developmental perspective of the 9th century has often been disregarded due to the ever‐present fragmentation of research—especially regarding the interrelated shaping of social and identity structures during the Carolingian and post‐Carolingian era—although this has proven essential as a means of historical inquiry when primary sources are scarce. The formation and survival of structures in early medieval Croatia during the 9th and 10th centuries should be considered in terms of the long‐term binarity of identities at the juncture of the Carolingian and the Byzantine Empire, as this paper will attempt to do.

Abstract While visiting what is considered the most European and White country in Latin America, I often asked Argentines, “What happened to the Black population?” The most common response I heard on the streets of Argentina “there are no Blacks, they disappeared.” But how can a population “disappear” and what exactly does that constitute for a country that prides itself in being European. Scholars have grappled with the meaning of disappearance and the consequences of the myth of Black disappearance since the 1960s. This essay traces their observations and conclusions, which have put the color back into Argentina's whitened past.

Abstract In the first part of the essay, I outlined the theoretical underpinning of the modern state and how it generated a paradoxical relationship with the concept of revolution. This conceptual exercise is necessary because it yields huge political significance in a people's desire to master their own destiny, and also for the understanding of the democratic and development dynamics in West Africa. In spite of the intellectual and media popularity that the Arab Spring has enjoyed, especially within its scholarly framing as a significant set of political actions, the consequentialist argument presented in this paper points attention to the outcomes rather than the processes that constitute the Arab Spring. I argue that a revolutionary situation ought to lead to the consequences of expanding the capacities that define the freedom of the citizenry. On the one hand, I argue that the Arab Spring does not qualify as species of revolutions because it falls short of what the freedom argument requires. On the other hand, I deploy the argument against the Arab Spring to interrogate the question: How does the nature of the postcolonial West African state generate the socioeconomic conditions that either augment the freedom of the citizens or aggravate the revolutionary quest for that freedom? I conclude by arguing that the freedom to enlarge the capacities of the citizenry serves as the first conceptual point from which West Africa can be transformed as a democratic hub that escapes the anarchy unleashed by the Arab Spring.

Abstract This essay surveys the ways in which India‐related knowledge has been produced and disseminated in China since 1950 when diplomatic ties were established between the two nascent nation‐states. The examination proceeds along two differing yet intertwined dimensions: academic knowledge and popular knowledge. At the academic level, both traditional and modern Indology in China have undergone remarkable development, which is mainly charasterised by institutional extension, growing multidisciplinarity, and diversification of languages taught and research subjects. However, confined mostly within the intelligentsia, scholarly knowledge has limited impact on shaping China's public views on India. This task, instead, has been well fulfilled by popular modes of knowledge production that target a wider audience, such as translated literary works, subtitled films, and travel writings. Thanks largely to the rise of Internet and social media in China, recent years have seen gradual convergence of the two modes of production of India‐related knowledge, with junior academics embracing digital mediums to popularise rational thinking about Indian issues, while non‐academics starting to generate well‐studied contents in their creative engagement with Indian culture and society. In light of India's economic growth and China's increasing emphasis on neighbouring countries and those located along the Belt and Road, China's demand and supply for unbiased and specialised knowledge about India are anticipated to grow in the future.

No abstract is available for this article.