Author Archives: Middle Ground Journal

The Streets where the Dragons Dance: The Street Life of Calcutta’s Chinatowns

“The trials and tribulations surrounding the evolution and erosion of the Chinese streets of Calcutta have hardly received importance in the popular historical narrative of the city, irrespective of the sustained curiosity regarding the lives of the Chinatowns. A street’s role in constructing a spatial identity often separates a locality from another, but it certainly serves as an arena where interaction, adaptation, and formulation of a syncretic identity take place.”

Read more

Review of Outcaste Bombay by Juned Shaikh

“Outcaste Bombay is successful in broadening the scope of histories from below by expanding its enquiry into the worlds of the lumpen-proletariat, the petty bourgeois shop keepers, and the sex workers. It offers a glimpse of Bombay as it is lived, reshaped, and appro¬priated by its Dalit inhabitants, and makes a great contribution to the bourgeoning scholarship on Dalit labor and Bombay city.”

Read more

Review Essay of Two Books on Burma and Military History

The 1945 Burma Campaign and the Transformation of the British Indian Army. Raymond A. Callahan and Daniel Marston. Kansas University Press, 2021. ISBN: 9780700630417.   A War of Empires: Japan, India, Burma & Britain, 1941-45. Robert Lyman. Oxford: Osprey, 2021. ISBN: 9781472847140. Reviewed by George Wilton, independent scholar, Member of British Commission for Military History, Managing Editor of British Journal for

Read more

Review of Colonial Transactions by Florence Bernault

“Colonial Transactions expands our knowledge and refines our understanding of the two themes that stand at its center – witchcraft and colonialism. The book historicizes witchcraft, arguing that history can enhance our understanding of the obsessions and modes of power of modern witchcraft in Africa. It brings closer the allegedly contradictory ideas of the European colonizers and the colonized Africans and discusses them in the same realm.”

Read more

Review of Colonialism in Global Perspective by Kris Manjapra

Colonialism in Global Perspective. Kris Manjapra. Cambridge University Press, 2020. ISBN-13: 9781108441360. Reviewed by Joseph Snyder, Southeast Missouri State University Edited by Julie Tanaka © 2022 The Middle Ground Journal (ISSN: 2155-1103) Number 23, Spring 2022. http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org See Submission Guidelines page for the journal’s not-for-profit educational open-access policy.

Read more

Review of Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean by Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy

Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean. Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy. University of Illinois Press, 2020. ISBN-13: 9780252085062. Reviewed by Zach Sell, Drexel University (now Brown University) Edited by Julie Tanaka © 2022 The Middle Ground Journal (ISSN: 2155-1103) Number 23, Spring 2022. http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org See Submission Guidelines page for the journal’s not-for-profit educational open-access policy.

Read more

Review of Imperial Peripheries in the Neo-Assyrian Period edited by Craig W. Tyson and Virginia R. Hermann

Imperial Peripheries in the Neo-Assyrian Period. Edited by Craig W. Tyson and Virginia R. Hermann. University Press of Colorado, 2019. ISBN: 9781607328223. Reviewed by Alexander Johannes Edmonds, University of Tübingen Edited by Julie Tanaka and Sarah Pesola © 2021 The Middle Ground Journal (ISSN: 2155-1103) Number 22, Fall 2021. http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org See Submission Guidelines page for the journal’s not-for-profit educational open-access

Read more

Review of Lisbon: A Biography by Magda Pinheiro

Lisbon: A Biography. Magda Pinheiro. Translated by Mario Pereira. Dartmouth, MA: Tagus Press, 2019. ISBN: 9781933227757. Reviewed by Ernst Pijning, Minot State University Edited by Julie Tanaka © 2021 The Middle Ground Journal (ISSN: 2155-1103) Number 22, Fall 2021. http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org See Submission Guidelines page for the journal’s not-for-profit educational open-access policy.

Read more

Review of Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea by David Fedman

Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea. David Fedman. University of Washington Press, 2020. ISBN: 9780295747453. Reviewed by Steven Ivings, Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University Edited by Birgit Schneider © 2021 The Middle Ground Journal (ISSN: 2155-1103) Number 22, Fall 2021. http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org See Submission Guidelines page for the journal’s not-for-profit educational open-access policy.

Read more

Review of Soldiers, Saints, and Shamans: Indigenous Communities and the Revolutionary State in Mexico’s Gran Nayar, 1910-1940 by Nathaniel Morris

Soldiers, Saints, and Shamans: Indigenous Communities and the Revolutionary State in Mexico’s Gran Nayar, 1910-1940. Nathanial Morris. University of Arizona Press, 2021. ISBN: 9780816541027. Reviewed by Joshua Simon, Columbia University Edited by Jeanne E. Grant and Sarah Pesola © 2021 The Middle Ground Journal (ISSN: 2155-1103) Number 22, Fall 2021. http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org See Submission Guidelines page for the journal’s not-for-profit educational

Read more

Review of The Crown and the Capitalists: The Ethnic Chinese and the Founding of the Thai Nation by Wasana Wongsurawat

The Crown and the Capitalists: The Ethnic Chinese and the Founding of the Thai Nation. Wasana Wongsurawat. University of Washington Press, 2019. ISBN: 9780295746241. Reviewed by Fabrizio Martino, Chulalongkorn University-Bangkok Edited by Birgit Schneider and Sarah Pesola © 2021 The Middle Ground Journal (ISSN: 2155-1103) Number 22, Fall 2021. http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org See Submission Guidelines page for the journal’s not-for-profit educational open-access

Read more
« Older Entries