Comparativ (E-Journal)

Middell, Matthias

Rezensionen | Reviews | 137
proves extraordinarily useful because we 
learn from the author himself with what 
motives and against what background the 
printed essays were written. And so we 
follow him on the path to a theory of the 
state during the French Revolution, to the 
role of Maximilien Robespierre, and to 
the history of the various organizations 
of French (revolutionary) historians, for 
example, during the German occupation 
in the Second World War or after the end 
of the Cold War. Mazauric and his editors 
have left the next generation of historians 
a treasure trove of insights that can help to 
understand the profession and its peripe-
ties in the second half of the twentieth 
century and thus perhaps also to realize 
what this has to do with our own exercise 
of the profession.
Raquel Varela: A People’s History of 
Europe: From World War I to Today, 
London: Pluto Press, 2021, 252 pp.
Reviewed by 
Matthias Middell, Leipzig
“A people’s history” became the hallmark 
of a new kind of historiography a little bit 
more than half a century ago. At least two 
characteristics converged here. On the one 
hand, many authors not only evoked the 
tradition of a history from below, which 
had found a famous pioneer in Edward P. 
Thompson in the late 1950s, but also, in 
a broader phalanx, reconceived a history 
of the early modern period and the era of 
the French Revolution by asking about 
the social and mental history of peasants 
and sansculottes and the intervention of 
the nameless in the political history of 
the elites. Albert Soboul, Richard Cobb, 
Kalmán Benda, Georges Rudé, Walter 
Markov, and a whole series of others were 
concerned with the seemingly insignifi-
cant, ordinary men and women, without 
whom history did not proceed yet who 
too often appeared only as the “masses”. 
The demarcation from a liberal historiog-
raphy that concentrated on the educated 
and those in power was constitutive for 
this history from below, which initially 
took on the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries in Europe but soon expanded its 
view to include the anti-colonial uprisings 
outside Europe. A second characteristic 
was related to this. Authors of this history 
from below saw themselves as representa-
tives of a radical history – a social com-
mitment of historians to the cause of the 
underprivileged.
These histories were to be academically of 
the highest calibre, but they were to find 
their audience outside university circles as 
a means of encouraging those who were the 
underprivileged of the present. The peo-
ple’s history advocated the possibility of al-
ternative paths in history and highlighted 
the moments of forks in the road where 
the victory or defeat of such alternative 
paths was decided. The authors of people’s 
history understood and still understand 
this as an encouragement to search for 
such alternatives in the present and future 
as well and not to resign themselves to the 
existing conditions. Correspondingly ex-
plicit was the reference to the social move-
ments from below, to whom this kind of 
historiography was intended to offer their 
own image of history. 
138 | Rezensionen | Reviews
Howard Zinn had presented a version of 
the history of the United States in 1980 
that wanted to offer not only a supplement 
to what had been known so far but also 
a critical version of the “fundamental na-
tionalist glorification of the country” and 
a narrative that focused on a heroic march 
towards democracy. That such a version 
of history in which the oppressed often 
fight back but are mostly defeated at the 
end of their class struggles meets with op-
position does not come as a surprise. Not 
coincidentally, spurred by then contempo-
rary events, Larry Schweikart and Michael 
Allen presented the conservative counter-
manifesto in 2004 with A Patriot’s History 
of the United States: From Columbus’s 
Great Discovery to the War on Terror. 
The Portuguese historian Raquel Varela 
thus consciously places herself in a tradi-
tion to which, incidentally, she herself 
contributed a few years ago with a history 
of the Portuguese Revolution (2018) – 
also conceived as a history from below and 
as a history of a caesura that opened up 
new possibilities for social development in 
Portugal and in the areas of Africa finally 
liberated from colonial rule. 
This prehistory now informs her narra-
tive of European history since World War 
I. This history, unlike the account of the 
Portuguese Revolution, is not a work that 
opens up new archives or makes use of 
previously completely unnoticed material. 
Rather, it is driven by an effort to weave 
the many known pieces of a history of so-
cial movements in Europe into a new nar-
rative. In doing so, Varela focuses on or-
dinary people and structures her narrative 
by using data on social movements (pref-
erably strikes and other forms of unrest in 
response to socioeconomic crises), but she 
does not reduce this view to the industrial 
workforce. Here the merit of a decentring 
view from the European south-west be-
comes clear, for in the social struggles of 
Portugal (and numerous other countries 
in the so-called peripheries of Europe) the 
land question, the injustices in military 
hierarchies, and the experience of exploi-
tation in the colonies continue to play an 
important role in motivating resistance to 
established forms of domination.
The content of and argumentative prelude 
to this European history are World War I; 
the Russian Revolution; and, above all, the 
absence of (successful) revolutions in West-
ern and Central Europe serve the author 
as the main explanations for the transfor-
mation of a successful socialist revolution 
into Stalinism. The following history of a 
century that goes beyond the year 2000 fol-
lows a three-step description of a history of 
the defensive struggles of ordinary people 
in the face of the deep crises of capitalism. 
The crisis of 1929 is followed by the next 
crisis in the early 1970s with the collapse 
of the Bretton Woods system and finally by 
the crisis of 2008. The revolutions that ac-
companied these defensive struggles (Varela 
highlights a large number of revolutionary 
convulsions that characterize the twentieth 
century) were almost universally not direct-
ly successful but at times spurred reforms 
in favour of workers and the expansion of 
the welfare state. This was accompanied, 
however, by a tendency towards militariza-
tion and mobilization for total wars, which 
was inevitably inherent in an imperialism 
that was not only concerned with the con-
quest of colonies. Varela recalls Osvaldo 
Coggiola’s striking metaphor: “the burning 
of wealth becomes an imperative of capital 
metabolism” (p. 23).
Rezensionen | Reviews | 139
In contrast to a narrative in which the Red 
Army saved liberal capitalism by bearing 
the brunt of the defeat of fascism, Varela 
sees Stalinism as the fruit of the failure of 
the Bolshevik revolution and not so much 
as a result of the international constella-
tion. She does not conceal her sympathy 
for Trotsky and his refusal to bring the Red 
Army to bear against Stalin’s bureaucracy. 
In her view, such a militarization of the 
revolution would have led to similar en-
crustations that Stalin’s takeover had pro-
duced. She remains consistent in her per-
spective of tying the success of revolutions 
to the preservation of their emancipatory 
quality. The fact that revolutions also have 
the function of encouraging the victorious 
opposing side to reform out of fear of the 
next shock is also brought into the story, 
but this fact remains in the background of 
the narrative, in contrast to the emphatic 
emphasis on the emancipatory quality of 
revolutions.
The strongest chapter in the volume is un-
doubtedly devoted to the new awakening 
of social unrest in the 1960s and 1970s, 
for here the author is able to draw on her 
deep familiarity with the history of the la-
bour movement in the Global North and 
Global South, as well as with the wave of 
revolutions from Portugal to Mozambique 
to Angola. Here she emphasizes the poten-
tial of an enduring resistance to the dis-
mantlement of welfare states that has be-
come dominant since the 1980s and that 
has continued to this day, culminating in 
the economic crisis of 2008.
It is not surprising that the author vigor-
ously opposes the ideas of any end of his-
tory, be it part of a liberal or a Marxist-
Leninist ideology. Although Stalinism 
finally failed in 1990, the socialist perspec-
tive in her eyes has not disappeared from 
the agenda; however, this perspective re-
quires a new conceptualization that takes 
into account the experiences of multiple 
failures in the twentieth century but does 
not distance itself from the social demands 
and hopes contained therein.
The history of the masses (or of the peo-
ple) in twentieth-century Europe was one 
of social improvement, of failed illusions, 
and of deep setbacks, as well as of brutal 
suffering under the wars that gripped the 
continent. But it was not, in the stimu-
lating version that Varela presents to us, 
teleologically oriented towards a clear goal 
that could be achieved without alterna-
tive, nor was it a story that followed the 
same course to be taken everywhere. To 
understand it, one must engage with the 
differentiated nature of situations and so-
cial equations. In addition, one must not 
view the continent in isolation from its 
connections with other world regions (or 
even misunderstand it as the centre of the 
world), and, according to Varela’s central 
message, one should never underestimate 
the inexhaustible energy of the many be-
cause, after every defeat, new attempts can 
be observed – sometimes only in niches 
of societies, but sometimes also as entire 
chains of revolutions – at the beginning of 
the twenty-first century, when many com-
mentators had expected the definitive end 
of such an impulse.


English

Raquel Varela: A People’s History of Europe: From World War I to Today, London: Pluto Press, 2021, 252 pp.

Schaper, Ulrike

Becoming a Subject in Court: Law, Subjection, and Resistance in the German Colony Cameroon

Editorial
Once again, a spectre is haunting us, this time by no means only in Europe. The com-
plaint about rampant populism goes hand in hand with the reference to a social cohesion 
that is endangered in the long term. One immediately feels invited to ask from which 
position the threat appears to be particularly serious. However, one is soon left confused: 
liberals bemoan the threat to (parliamentary) democracy and the market economy; left-
ists see the cause rather in neo- or ultra-liberalism, which is widening the gap between 
rich and poor ever further; from the point of view of ethno-national thinking, it is 
above all migration and the advance of lifestyles that do not seem to fit the nation that 
threaten cohesion. The Chinese Communist Party is equally opposed to the corruption 
of economic and bureaucratic elites who have become too rich too quickly and to the in-
subordination of subjects who behave in an undisciplined manner, which is why a point 
system is supposed to ensure cohesion-friendly good behavior. This system has only the 
format of points in common with the Canadian technique of assigning scores for im-
migrant suitability, but otherwise rests on completely different ideological foundations.
As this issue impressively demonstrates with examples from southern Africa, the debate 
about social cohesion extends to the most diverse parts of the world and is based on com-
pletely contradictory traditions of discourse: In the Cape, it is about the disappointed 
hopes of a rainbow nation after the abolition of apartheid, which was accompanied by 
one of the last acts of decolonization in the larger region, but has not led to the dreamed-
of egalitarian and prosperous society in Namibia and Zimbabwe either. This explains 
why racialized inequalities can be increasingly politicized - primarily between whites and 
coloured people, of course, but racism clearly does not stop at the infamous colour line 
drawn in colonial times, as the violent attacks against Zimbabwean migrants in South 
Africa demonstrate. Populism, in many configurations around the world, forms an un-
holy alliance with racism and xenophobia, and Southern Africa is no exception. Former 
US President Donald Trump’s “Americans First” slogan has provided a cue that has since 
been seized upon by many populist imitators and has helped recruit a mass base because 
envy of the little that others who are socially disprivileged possess or can claim is particu-
larly easy to mobilize in times of substantial crisis and constraint. 
It now stands to reason that the bundles of causes for such crises should be identified 
primarily in national, regional, and local contexts. A wide variety of studies on the rise of 
populisms in different world regions have gathered impressive material for this purpose, 
Comparativ | Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 33 (2023) Heft 4, S. 447–448.
448 | Editorial
showing the enormous flexibility of populist politicians and campaigners to generate 
polarization from a wide variety of occasions, building on social discontent and pushing 
many political systems to the limits of functioning. What seems to be common is the 
juxtaposition of “people” and “elites”, which echoes old motifs of criticism of liberalism. 
Populists claim to speak for these “people”, who are otherwise screwed over. To this end, 
they hold out the prospect of unmasking the elites and promise that everything will be 
better under their rule. 
But does this old figure of thought explain why populism has been able to become so 
successful in so many different places at the same time in recent years? Two lines of re-
search proceed from this assumption: one describes (quite rightly) the exacerbation of so-
cial inequalities or cultural grievances that go hand in hand with unequal opportunities 
for participation. The others consider these very slights and a lack of political education 
to be the leading cause to be addressed. Ethnic affiliations, differently motivated clien-
telism, lack of insight into the functioning of political systems and much more are tested 
to explain the growing following of populist movements, which themselves usually not 
only have little to promise when it comes to overcoming social inequality, but actually 
promise little as well. Instead, however, they highly emotionalize the political and thus 
incite and exploit anger about the many unsolved problems.
If we consider only these elements of the many populisms we can observe worldwide, we 
are indeed left with the impression of a thin ideology, as Cas Mudde has put it. Beyond 
that, however, two characteristics seem important for contemporary populism.
Whereas older research assumed that only one part of the world was ever covered by 
populist movements in a given historical period, there is now a broad consensus that 
populism is an almost worldwide phenomenon, albeit with very different manifestations 
and contexts. However, these movements do not emerge independently of each other; 
instead, they refer to, learn from, and support each other (in their election campaigns, 
in joint parliamentary work for example within the EU, through cross-border funding, 
and in the further development of their ideological foundations). This part of the trans-
national quality of populism, which initially appears counter-intuitive in movements 
that rely so heavily on national sovereignty, has been little explored and deserves further 
attention.
At the same time, individual populist movements are united by more than occasional 
bilateral and multilateral relationships and organizational efforts to effectively coordinate 
their forces. Instead, a clear commonality emerges in the (negative) reference to the obvi-
ously failed globalization ideology of the 1990s and 2000s, which was driven by the con-
viction that victory in the Cold War would establish a permanent hegemony of the lib-
eral camp. Globalism as an enemy image is found in almost all populist movements and 
is increasingly developing into a brand core from which anti-liberal, anti-Semitic, and 
xenophobic resentments can be fed – in very different mixes depending on the context.
This makes populism and the efforts to re-found social cohesion in response to it a topic 
of global history that is more than an ephemeral reaction to the excitements of contem-
porary diagnostics.                   Matthias Middell


Editorial

Originally composed in 2007 this (composition-as-output) work has now been recorded for inclusion on the upcoming album, Flotsam, due out later in 2023

Fay, Richard J.; id_orcid

Gee, Sam

St Cecilia's Day:In memory of Doreen Mary Fay (née Simpson)

Kasdi, Mohamed

Terrier, Didier

The Determination of Workers’ Remuneration in a Cotton-Spinning Factory. A (Re)Reading of the Payrolls of the Voortmann Spinning Mill in Ghent, 1850–1890

Ennas, Giorgio

Negotiating Protection: Ottoman-Swiss Relations and the Inclusion of Switzerland into a Diplomatic Germansphere during the First World War

Konopka, Torsten

Military Assistance for the Malian Armed Forces by the German Bundeswehr. A Historical Perspective

Rehling, Andrea

514 | Rezensionen | Reviews
sellschaft, 2021) oder K. Mengisteab zur Krise 
der Demokratie am Horn (James Currey, 2020).
2 Interview, Der Spiegel, 20. Januar 2021. 
URL: <https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/aethi-
opien-orientalist-alfred-schlicht-ueber-den-
krisenherd-am-horn-von-afrika-a-94032b91-
ae8a-42c6-89d8-a2c5856af21e> (Zugriff: 31. 
Oktober 2021).
Marie Huber: Developing Heritage 
– Developing Countries. Ethiopian 
Nation-Building and the Origins of 
UNESCO World Heritage, 1960–1980 
(= Africa in Global History, vol. 1), 
Berlin/ Boston: De Gruyter  
Oldenbourg, 2021, 204 S.
Rezensiert von  
Andrea Rehling, Augsburg
Seit die Kämpfer der Tigray People’s Li-
beration Front in Äthiopien im August 
2021 Lalibela erobert haben, erfreut sich 
das äthiopische Welterbe in der inter-
nationalen Medienöffentlichkeit neuer 
Aufmerksamkeit. Sorgenvoll richtet die 
Berichterstattung den Blick auf eine et-
waige Gefährdung der „heiligen Stadt“ 
und UNESCO Welterbestätte durch die 
„Tigray-Rebellen“ und reklamiert so einen 
internationalen Mitspracheanspruch über 
die Zukunft der Stadt.[1] 
Lalibela ist eine der ersten zwölf Stätten, 
mit denen die Welterbeliste 1978 eröffnet 
wurde. Auch der Sämen-Nationalpark in 
Äthiopien gehört dazu. Mit ihnen gelang 
es der äthiopischen Regierung, sich in 
das UNESCO-Welterbeprogramm einzu-
schreiben. Trotzdem hatten sich die äthi-
opischen Vertreter wahrscheinlich mehr 
erhofft, denn sie hatten nicht weniger als 
elf Nominierungen ins Rennen geschickt 
und etablierten sich so als absoluter Spit-
zenreiter im Bewerberfeld.[2] Warum aber 
war das Interesse der äthiopischen Re-
gierung am Welterbeprogramm so groß? 
Und inwiefern gelang es den äthiopischen 
Vertretern, das Programm, dessen Euro-
zentrismus sogar von der UNESCO selbst 
regelmäßig problematisiert wird, in ihrem 
Sinne zu prägen bzw. wie wurde der äthi-
opische Denkmal- und Naturschutz durch 
die internationale Organisation geprägt? 
Diese Fragen sind bisher weitgehend un-
beachtet geblieben. Es ist das Verdienst 
dieser Arbeit, quellengesättigt erste Ant-
worten auf diese Fragen zu liefern. Sie 
gewährt so wichtige Einblicke in die Be-
deutung von „Heritage“ in afrikanischen 
nation-building-Prozessen, verliert darüber 
aber nicht die in der Literatur zum UN-
ESCO-Welterbeprogramm sonst häufig 
vernachlässigte ökonomische Dimension 
des Welterbetitels und sein geradezu sym-
biotisches Verhältnis zum Tourismus aus 
den Augen.[3]
Entsprechend beginnt Marie Huber ihre 
Analyse mit der Entwicklung Äthiopiens 
zur touristischen Destination, die gleich-
zeitig der ökonomischen Entwicklung die-
nen sollte. Sie kann zeigen, dass der Touris-
mus in den 1960er Jahren als Branche galt, 
in der sich ohne große Investitionen Ge-
winne erzielen ließen. Tourismus galt des-
halb nicht nur in Äthiopien als Motor für 
ökonomische Entwicklung. Entsprechend 
vermarktbare Natur- und Kulturgüter wa-
ren schnell identifiziert und Wissenschaft-
ler aus Europa bzw. den USA wurden als 
Experten herangezogen, um sie gezielt für 
Rezensionen | Reviews | 515
die Nachfrage eines tourist gaze US-ame-
rikanischer und europäischer Kultur- und 
Naturtourist:innen zuzuschneiden. 
Im zweiten Kapitel der Arbeit wird deut-
lich, dass ein Verweis auf westlichen Kul-
turimperialismus zur Erklärung der Äthio-
pischen „Heritage“-Politik zu kurz greifen 
würde. Marie Huber zeigt, wie Geschichts-
bilder und -erzählungen mit den sie stüt-
zenden Relikten herangezogen wurden, 
um die Vorstellung eines äthiopischen zi-
vilisatorischen Exzeptionalismus in Afrika 
zu etablieren und so territoriale Ansprüche 
sowie innenpolitisch die Vorherrschaft des 
Amharischen in einem „Groß-Äthiopien“ 
zu legitimieren. Die Rolle, welche die 
westliche Äthiopistik und die staatliche 
Geschichtsschreibung in Äthiopien dabei 
spielten, diese Bilder und Erzählungen mit 
Inhalt zu füllen, wird im Kapitel über den 
Aufbau der äthiopischen „Heritage“-Insti-
tutionen beleuchtet. Es wird deutlich, dass 
es der äthiopische Staat verstand, das aus-
ländische Interesse an seinem Kultur- und 
Naturerbe zu nutzen, um mit Hilfe der 
sogenannten technical assistance Ressour-
cenengpässe und fehlendes Fachpersonal 
sowie lückenhafte Ausbildungsmöglich-
keiten zumindest graduell zu kompensie-
ren. Marie Huber zeigt aber auch, dass 
dieser Strategie Grenzen gesetzt waren, die 
immer wieder die Kontinuität getroffener 
Maßnahmen in Frage stellten. Das En-
gagement insbesondere der UNESCO in 
Äthiopien, das den Regimewechsel 1974 
überdauerte, wirkte trotzdem beschleu-
nigend auf die Institutionalisierung von 
Natur- und Denkmalschutzbehörden. Der 
Bürgerkrieg, dessen Hauptschauplätze vor 
allem im Norden, im Gebiet der wich-
tigsten Natur- und Kulturstätten, lagen, 
erschwerte bis 1991 Ausgrabungen und 
Restaurierungsarbeiten massiv, konnte 
diesen Prozess aber nicht aufhalten. Schon 
damals war die Tigray People’s Liberation 
Front ein wichtiger Akteur in diesem Kon-
flikt. 
Trotz der Schwierigkeiten gelang es der 
nunmehr sozialistischen äthiopischen Re-
gierung mit Unterstützung interessierter 
internationaler Experten, sieben Stätten in 
die Welterbeliste eintragen zu lassen. Ende 
der 1970er Jahre waren die Expert:innen 
allerdings nicht mehr zwangsläufig aus 
Europa oder den USA. Persönliche Netz-
werke und spezifische Personenkonstellati-
onen spielten aber weiter eine nicht uner-
hebliche Rolle bei der Identifikation und 
Aufbereitung der Stätten für die Welter-
beliste. So kann Marie Huber zeigen, dass 
es dem in Äthiopien für die Bewerbungen 
Verantwortlichen Berhanu Abebe nicht 
nur gelang einen Consultant zur Unter-
stützung der Bewerbungen für die Welter-
beliste bei der UNESCO einzuwerben, 
sondern mit dem entsandten iranischen 
Archäologen Firouz Bagherzadeh den Vor-
sitzenden des Büros des Welterbekomitees 
an seine Seite zu bringen. 
Das folgende Kapitel ist dem Spannungs-
feld zwischen dem Anspruch eines Erbes 
der Welt und den konkreten lokalen Ge-
gebenheiten in Äthiopien gewidmet. Es 
beleuchtet die Standardisierungsbemü-
hungen der internationalen Organisation 
und problematisiert die Marginalisierung 
von lokalen Akteur:innen in der For-
schung und in Erhaltungsprojekten, die 
u.a. zu einer Zurückdrängung traditio-
nellen Wissens zugunsten der internati-
onalen Standards führte. Die imperialen 
Traditionen der UNESCO und ihrer Pro-
gramme werden ausgelotet und heraus-
gearbeitet, wie insbesondere beim Schutz 
516 | Rezensionen | Reviews
von Naturerbestätten auch in Äthiopien 
Landnutzungskonflikte entstanden, die zu 
gravierenden Umsiedlungen führten und 
bestehende Konflikte massiv verstärkten. 
Im letzten Kapitel steht die internationale 
Bürokratie des „Ethiopian World Heri-
tage-making“ (S. 144) im Mittelpunkt. Es 
wird gezeigt, dass Äthiopien einen gewis-
sen Modellcharakter für die internationale 
Entwicklungspolitik von und in afrika-
nischen Staaten in diesem Bereich hatte. 
Die Studie, die eine überarbeitete Version 
der 2017 von der Humboldt Universität 
zu Berlin angenommene Dissertation ist, 
leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag zum Ver-
ständnis der Verflechtung und Verstri-
ckung des UNESCO-Welterbeprogramms 
mit ökonomischen Entwicklungspolitiken 
und nation-building-Prozessen. Marie Hu-
ber stellt überzeugend dar, wie wichtig ein 
international anerkanntes heritage für das 
nation-building Äthiopiens gewesen ist. 
Gelegentlich wird die identitätsstiftende 
Dimension von heritage etwas überbe-
wertet, wenn kulturpolitische Maßnah-
men nur aus dieser Perspektive beleuch-
tet werden. Nicht nur mit Blick auf die 
Tourismuspolitik hätte das Prisma eines 
offeneren, dynamischeren Konzepts wie 
des nation-branding über die Frage nach 
nationaler Identität hinaus Einblicke in 
die vielfältigen Perspektiven, Interessen, 
Kommunikationsprozesse und Player 
beim heritage-making ermöglicht. 
In ihrer Einleitung weist Marie Huber 
zu Recht darauf hin, dass die UNESCO 
nicht nur als Organisation eigene Hand-
lungsmacht hat, sondern auch Arena und 
Bühne der internationalen Beziehungen 
ist (S. 9). Dieser Aspekt wird zwar wie-
derholt angesprochen, kommt aber in der 
Analyse etwas kurz, was wohl auch darauf 
zurückzuführen ist, dass die Akten des 
äthiopischen Außenministeriums nicht 
herangezogen werden konnten. So wer-
den die Konfliktlinien des Kalten Krieges 
und des Nord-Süd-Konfliktes zwar be-
nannt, aber die entsprechenden Verhand-
lungsdynamiken, Positionierungen und 
Wahrnehmungen treten ebenso wie die 
Süd-Süd-Beziehungen und die weltregio-
nale Verortung Äthiopiens in der Analyse 
manchmal zu sehr in den Hintergrund: 
Es wäre spannend zu wissen, welche Rol-
le die Nubienkampagne der UNESCO 
im Sudan bei der Entscheidung für die 
Selbstinszenierung als Korridor zwischen 
Europa und Afrika gespielt hat. Für den 
Sudan hatte sich dieses Bild von Nubien 
in der internationalen Kampagne bei den 
Geldgebenden im wahrsten Sinne aus-
gezahlt. Auch die massive Betonung der 
christlichen Tradition wirft die Frage auf, 
was hier nicht nur im Weltmaßstab jeweils 
ausgeblendet wurde bzw. wovon sich mit 
dieser Setzung abgegrenzt werden sollte. 
Diese weiterführenden Fragen, die teil-
weise nur durch die Ergebnisse von Ma-
rie Hubers Arbeit gestellt werden können, 
dürfen nicht darüber hinwegtäuschen, 
dass die Studie den Blick für die Facetten 
und Spielarten des vielzitierten Eurozen-
trismus des UNESCO Welterbes wesent-
lich geschärft hat. Mit Äthiopien bringt 
die Studie einen bisher wenig beachteten 
Akteur ins Blickfeld, wodurch die Studie 
einen äußerst wertvollen Beitrag für das 
Verständnis der internationalen Organisa-
tion und ihres Programms leistet.
Anmerkungen
1 Tigray-Rebellen nehmen Unesco-Welterbestätte 
Lalibela ein, in: Zeit Online 6.8.2021, 
 < h t t p s : / / w w w. z e i t . d e / p o l i t i k / a u s -
l and /2021 -08 / a e th iop i en - rebe l l en - t i -
Rezensionen | Reviews | 517
g r a y - u n e s c o - l a l i b e l a - b e r i c h t e ? u t m _
referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.
com%2F> (Zugriff: 28.08.2021); B. Dörries, 
Truppen aus Tigray nehmen heilige Stadt ein, 
in: Süddeutsche Zeitung 6.8.2021, <https://
www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/buergerkrieg-
tigray-felsenkirchen-1.5375694> (Zugriff: 
28.08.2021); Lalibela: Ethiopia‘s Tigray rebels 
take Unesco world heritage town, in: BBC News 
5.8.2021, <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
africa-58101912> (Zugriff: 28.08.2021).
2 UNESCO. Convention concerning the Protec-
tion of the World Cultural and Natural Herit-
age. World Heritage Committee. Second Ses-
sion, Washington DC 5 to 8 September 1978, 
List of Nominations to the World Heritage List 
and of Requests for Technical Cooperation, 
CC-78/CONF.010/7, <https://whc.unesco.org/
archive/1978/cc-78-conf010-7e.pdf>.
3 Tourismus taucht hier häufig nur als (Manage-
ment-)Problem bzw. Gefährdung und etwas 
dem Programm Äußerliches auf, vgl. u.a. L. 
Meskell: A Future in Ruins. UNESCO, World 
Heritage, and the Dream of Peace, Oxford 2018; 
C. Cameron/M. Rössler, Many Voices, One Vi-
sion: The Early Years of the World Heritage 
Convention, Farnham 2013.
Daniel Geary / Camilla Schofield /  
Jennifer Sutton (eds.): Global White 
Nationalism. From Apartheid to 
Trump, Manchester: Manchester 
University Press, 2020, 338 pp.
Reviewed by  
Paul S. Landau, College Park
As an “ideology”, the claim to whiteness as 
an excluded or newly marginalized state of 
being, a subjected status, is impoverished. 
After all, white men still dominate wealth 
all over the northern hemisphere, so the 
premise would seem to be shaky. None-
theless, white people, offended at being 
called out for racism or other wrongs, have 
managed to rally worldwide, as suffering, 
somehow. They do not all speak about 
white supremacy, but the rhetoric of many 
of them within one or two menu clicks is 
rank, ugly, racist, and, yes, white suprema-
cist. Since the days of William F. Buckley’s 
purge of the Republican Party of the dom-
inance of the John Birch Society and other 
“patriotic” racist orders, we stand on the 
edge of a resurgence of overt racism into 
the legitimate political sphere again.
The victimhood inherent in this recent 
growth of white supremacy is a focus of 
Global White Nationalism: From Apart-
heid to Trump. That is a reversal, because 
whiteness, when it has any political mean-
ing, has historically indexed a dominant 
status in cosmopolitan societies, both in 
the old and new worlds. How, then, have 
white supremacy and white separatism (or 
both, amalgamated into white national-
ism) managed to incorporate victimhood 
in recent decades in the English-speaking 
world, to become a force to reckon with? Is 
this really a form of self-pity masquerading 
as nationalism? Hasn’t it got something to 
do with the internet and the way anyone’s 
“content” is magnified or diminished by 
counted views?
Yes and no. There are several recent books 
of note that have highlighted the prob-
lem thus: the stance, “Whites must rule”, 
is simply rarely encountered in national 
discourse as a legitimate policy position. 
Instead, there is an intricate weaving of 
white supremacy in “states’ rights”, “con-
servative, traditional”, “pro-family values”, 
“pro-law and order”, and, most interest-
ingly in this book, “nostalgia for settler 
empire” and (connected to that) “anti-IRA 


Marie Huber: Developing Heritage – Developing Countries. Ethiopian Nation-Building and the Origins of UNESCO World Heritage, 1960–1980 (= Africa in Global History, vol. 1), Berlin/ Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021, 204 S.

Maruschke, Megan

ANNOTATIONEN | ANNOTATIONS
Trevor Burnard: The Atlantic in World 
History, 1490–1830, London: Blooms-
bury Academic, 2020, 344 pp. 
Trevor Burnard’s synthesis addresses many 
of the issues faced by scholars of the Atlan-
tic world. The Atlantic in World History 
offers a fresh historiographical perspective 
on a well-trodden area of research: Atlantic 
history and its position vis-à-vis world his-
tory. In this book, Burnard situates Atlantic 
history as integral to world history. New 
frames of reference can complement rather 
than supplant national, hemispheric, or lo-
cal histories, which helps to “problematize 
the issue of spatial scale instead of working 
at the national, colonial or imperial scale by 
inertia or tradition (p. 4).” And central to 
his understanding is not just the connec-
tions of mobile actors in the Atlantic, but 
also the vast majority of people who re-
mained in place, even in inland locations. 
Their lives were impacted by Atlantic cir-
culations, rivalries, and economies. He fo-
cuses on how people at the time thought 
about and perceived the Atlantic and their 
place in it. 
Burnard’s book is organized into four sec-
tions. The first one is on the historiogra-
phy of the Atlantic in world history. He 
covers major controversies and debates in 
the field. The second section deals with the 
Atlantic over time and is organized chrono-
logically. The third section examines the At-
lantic from the perspective of various places 
– West Africa, Western Europe, South 
American and the Caribbean, and North 
America. It further positions plantations 
and the plantation economy more generally 
as a key site and system that bound the At-
lantic together. The fourth section is organ-
ized around themes: warfare and violence, 
the movement of things, and the “Atlantic 
in Global Consciousness.”
His book manages to highlight histories 
that have often not been privileged in 
general histories of the Atlantic, especially 
some of the more recent work on African 
actors and societies. He therefore brings 
lesser-known histories and places into the 
synthesis and his analysis. His work can be 
read for both undergraduate and graduate 
students, but the specialist will also find 
that his book expands – rather than merely 
summarizes – the existing state of the art 
on the Atlantic world and its relationship 
to world history.
Megan Maruschke, Leipzig


Trevor Burnard: The Atlantic in World History, 1490–1830, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020, 344 pp.

Fischer, Georg

Showcasing a High-Modernist Landscape: Spatial Imaginaries and Rural Development in Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1970s

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