Comparativ (E-Journal)

Herpolsheimer, Jens

Rezensionen | Reviews | 471
Chapter V contemplates the agency of sci-
entific and indigenous stakeholders within 
the Arctic cross-border cooperation. By 
applying the concept of civic epistemology 
as a “framework of indicators that helps 
us think comprehensively about different 
ways in which authority can be articulated 
or challenged” (p. 129), the author seeks 
to address the uneasy question “whose 
knowledge matters?” and outline the ways 
non-state actors negotiate and establish 
their authority in collecting, representing, 
and applying knowledge in policy-making. 
Drawing on the year-long research ob-
servations of the author and scrupulous 
analysis, Arctic Governance can be seen 
as a handbook on Arctic governance. For 
newcomers to the Arctic, it is an excel-
lent starting point for familiarizing oneself 
with international relations and develop-
ing a critical perspective on the matter. For 
professionals, this book is a brilliant col-
lection of case studies on high-level power 
dynamics in the Arctic, which not only 
advocates new ways of conceptualizing 
Arctic actors but also serves as a practical 
guide for researchers keen on grasping and 
investigating the fugitive, tacit mecha-
nisms of Arctic governance and diplomacy.
Élise Féron / Jyrki Käkönen / Gabriel 
Rached (eds.): Revisiting Regionalism 
and the Contemporary World Order. 
Perspectives from the BRICS and 
beyond, Berlin / Toronto: Opladen /
Barbara Budrich, 2019, 302 pp.
Reviewed by  
Jens Herpolsheimer, Leipzig
Ten years after the first summit of the 
BRICS grouping (Brazil, Russia, India, 
China, and South Africa) the editors of 
this book have taken the opportunity 
to reflect on the role of this grouping 
and its participating states in what they 
(and many other observers) call a chang-
ing world order. Identifying the BRICS 
as potential challengers of one or several 
Western-centric international orders (IO) 
(p. 22), the volume’s declared interest is in 
specifying what exactly is changing when 
new stable forms of international coop-
eration are emerging and what responses 
these propose to current challenges (p. 
21). Aiming at a critical study from a mul-
tidisciplinary and pluralist perspective (p. 
25), the volume comprises an introduc-
tion and 11 chapters, organized into 3 
parts: “Emergence and Challenges of Re-
gionalism” (4 chapters), “Contemporary 
Regionalism in Practice” (4 chapters), and 
“Theoretical Perspectives on the Changing 
World Order” (3 chapters). The authors 
of these chapters hail from “around the 
world” (p. 25); however, most of them are 
associated with a research project titled 
“Regional Challenges to Multilateralism”, 
472 | Rezensionen | Reviews
based at Tampere University (Finland) and 
funded by the Finnish Kone Foundation.
As the subtitle of the edited volume may 
already suggest, most chapters of the vol-
ume (except for two) focus on one of the 
BRICS countries, mostly as unitary state 
actors rather than the grouping as such, 
and their visions and involvement in re-
gional projects. China receives the most at-
tention (3 dedicated chapters). Russia and 
South Africa are the subject of one chap-
ter each. In contrast, Brazil and India are 
hardly mentioned in any of the chapters. 
Interestingly, yet unexplained, the volume 
also includes contributions that deal with 
countries that are not part of the BRICS 
grouping. Chapter 1, by Tuomo Melasuo, 
offers a rather general account of region-
alization processes in Africa since colo-
nial times; chapter 5, by Karim Maiche, 
reflects upon regionalism in the Maghreb; 
and chapter 11, by Jyrki Käkönen, tries to 
offer new insights about a potential post-
Westphalian order from a mythic Finnish 
national epos. Consequently, the volume 
does not offer much new information 
about the BRICS grouping as such, as the 
two chapters that deal with it (chapters 2 
and 3, written by Shraddha Naik and Ga-
briel Rached respectively) are largely based 
on secondary academic literature, offering 
already established academic arguments 
rather than new empirical or analytical 
insights.
Overall, the volume is mostly couched in 
the mainstream narrative about the ero-
sion of a US-dominated IO, which, de-
spite the US remaining a leading power, 
also sees other states rising, in particular 
China, challenging a “liberal international 
order”, as well as norms and rules of re-
gional and global governance, and trying 
to resist Western dominance and increase 
the weight of the “non-Western world” (p. 
24). The introduction of the volume, by 
Élise Féron and Jyrki Käkönen, tries to 
distinguish between at least three over-
lapping Western-centric IOs – a US-led 
post–World War II rule-based IO, a state-
centric Westphalian IO, and a “colonial 
order” (p. 22) – and an underlying “in-
ternational system” (identified as capital-
ist modes of production and markets, pp. 
21–22), which the authors argue may (or 
may not) be affected very differently by the 
target of change at all. However, this dis-
tinction and the related questions are not 
picked up again at any point in the edited 
volume. Most chapters simply refer to a 
“liberal international order” that is being 
contested and potentially changed.
Moreover, while the volume explicitly 
aims to direct attention at the phenom-
enon of regionalism, as a strategy used by 
the “South” to resist Western dominance 
(p. 24), the introduction (and most chap-
ters) refers to existing academic literature 
on new regionalisms and comparative re-
gionalism only in passing, failing to for-
mulate a clear gap that is being filled or to 
state what new insights are being produced 
in relation to that literature. Furthermore, 
the volume’s introduction and several 
chapters join in the call for a “Global IR 
[international relations]”, most promi-
nently formulated by Amitav Acharya and 
colleagues, to overcome shortcomings of 
Western IR theories, looking beyond Eu-
rope and beyond states as the only relevant 
actors (p. 25). However, while the volume 
successfully directs attention beyond Eu-
rope, it largely remains centred on states 
as unitary actors. In addition, though 
identifying the need to look beyond state 
Rezensionen | Reviews | 473
interests, including issues such as the en-
vironment, climate change, as well as in-
digenous people’s rights (p. 25), the vol-
ume focuses exclusively on economics and 
politics.
Although many chapters in this volume re-
main very general, presenting more or less 
established academic arguments, largely 
based on secondary literature, a few chap-
ters stand out with regard to the empiri-
cal detail and new analytical insights that 
they provide. Chapter 4, by Bianca Naude, 
drawing on research undertaken for her 
PhD thesis, offers an interesting perspec-
tive on the role of historical experiences 
and political imagination in the reposi-
tioning of South Africa (here decidedly 
portrayed as a unitary actor) in the world, 
towards negative and positive “Others”. 
However, she convincingly argues that 
South Africa is not only trying to reposi-
tion itself internationally but also trying 
to “regain control over destinies denied by 
colonialism” (p. 107). Taking this serious-
ly, Naude investigates why “South Africa” 
experienced the world as “fundamentally 
unjust and violent” (p. 106) and what an 
imagined reordered world would look like 
(p. 107).
Similarly, chapter 6, by Ekaterina Mikhay-
lenko, drawing on her previous publica-
tions, offers an interesting account of Rus-
sian efforts to cope with a changing world 
order, responding to challenges posed by 
a rise of Western interregionalism by gen-
erating its own regional projects. What 
makes the chapter particularly interesting 
is that Mikhaylenko does not focus on a 
unitary state actor, but instead analyses 
the role of Russian scientists, and an in-
fluential Russian think tank in particular, 
in generating new ideas and visions for 
region-building in Eurasia.
The three chapters dedicated to China 
also offer some interesting perspectives. 
Chapter 8, written by Terry McDonald 
and Benjamin Klasche, brings together 
secondary literature that facilitates under-
standing China’s efforts to gain access to 
the Arctic region. However, while hinting 
at it, the chapter stops short of a critical 
geopolitical analysis of China’s efforts to 
reorganize spaces through a discourse of 
redistributing “global” or, in this case, 
“Arctic commons” (pp. 208–209). It also 
largely equates “China” with Western 
powers, something that contrasts with 
chapters 9 and 10, by Giovanni Barbieri 
and Matti Puranen respectively. The two 
informative and complementary, though 
partly overlapping, chapters juxtapose a 
Western rigid, rule-based, and “win-lose” 
governance model with a Chinese foreign 
policy, built around loose, inclusive, and 
“win-win” network governance (p. 231), 
which is linked to a Chinese school of IR 
(pp. 236ff.) and a “discursive offensive” 
by Chinese scholars to redefine interna-
tional politics and refute the universality 
of Western ideas (p. 255), all the while re-
maining a “stakeholder” of order based on 
the United Nations charter, even though a 
“revisionist” one (p. 260).
In this way, at least these chapters indicate 
answers to some of the questions raised 
in the introduction of the edited volume, 
offering some new empirical and analyti-
cal insights about what exactly might be 
changing in the contemporary world order 
and, at least to some extent, moving be-
yond conventional IR accounts centred on 
unitary state actors.


English

Élise Féron / Jyrki Käkönen / Gabriel Rached (eds.): Revisiting Regionalism and the Contemporary World Order. Perspectives from the BRICS and beyond, Berlin / Toronto: Opladen / Barbara Budrich, 2019, 302 pp.

Fitschen, Klaus

476 | Rezensionen | Reviews
ten Ansprüche einlösen kann. Die Tiefen-
schärfe leidet an manchen Stellen unter der 
Fülle der Ansätze und Erörterungen. Die 
beschriebene mehrfache Dreifaltigkeit von 
Analyseschritten und Untersuchungsebe-
nen macht zusammen mit den eingescho-
benen theoretischen Betrachtungen das 
Buch selbst zu einer anspruchsvollen Kon-
struktion. Wichtige Aspekte, wie z. B. der 
Dammbau als geopolitisches Instrument, 
finden sich zuweilen versteckt in Fußno-
ten (S. 305). Auch geht die angekündigte 
Vergleichsperspektive etwas unter.
Die Frage nach dem wirtschaftlichen Nut-
zen der Dammbauten ist eine Leerstelle 
im Buch, die den gewählten wissenschafts-
historischen und diskurstheoretischen An-
sätzen geschuldet ist. Hier stellt sich die 
Frage, ob es nicht angesichts des oft erheb-
lichen Einflusses von Staudammprojekten 
auf die Realökonomie lohnenswert gewe-
sen wäre, wirtschaftliche Aspekte jenseits 
des Diskursiven und Repräsentativen, wie 
die durch den Bau entstehenden Abhän-
gigkeiten von internationalen Geldgebern 
und die Auswirkungen auf die (nationale) 
Energiewirtschaft, wenigstens zu skizzie-
ren. 
Das Buch analysiert eine beeindrucken-
de Vielzahl von Quellen. Während die 
Darstellung der Dämme als „konvergente 
Konstruktionen“ auf der Basis dieses Ma-
terials überzeugend ist, weckt der Unter-
titel „eine Globalgeschichte des Damm-
baus“ Erwartungen, die der Autor durch 
die Fokussierung auf drei Fallbeispiele im 
20. Jahrhundert nicht ganz erfüllen kann.
Die Stärke von Benjamin Brendels Studie 
liegt aber ungeachtet des zu weit gefassten 
Titels in der multiperspektivischen und 
insgesamt gelungen verschränkten Analyse 
dieser drei Großstaudammprojekte des 20. 
Jahrhunderts. 
Olaf Blaschke / Francisco Javier 
Ramón Solans (Hrsg.): Weltreligion 
im Umbruch. Transnationale Perspek-
tiven auf das Christentum in der Glo-
balisierung, Frankfurt am Main / New 
York, Campus Verlag, 2019, 507 S.
Rezensiert von  
Klaus Fitschen, Leipzig
Der Herausgeber Olaf Blaschke, Histori-
ker mit Wurzeln im Bereich der Katho-
lizismus- und Konfessionsforschung im 
19. und 20. Jahrhundert, führt in seiner 
Einleitung in die Thematik und die Ge-
schichte ihrer Erforschung ein. Dabei ver-
weist er auch auf den 1992 verstorbenen 
Historiker Thomas Nipperdey, der 1988 
im Kontext der Arbeit an seinem dreibän-
digen und vielbeachteten Werk „Deut-
sche Geschichte 1800–1918“ das Buch 
„Religion im Umbruch 1870–1918“ ver-
öffentlichte und damit die Christentums-
geschichte neu in die Geschichte des deut-
schen Kaiserreiches einordnete, gegen alle 
zeitgleichen Tendenzen, die Bedeutung 
der christlichen Religion für diese Epo-
che zu marginalisieren. Nipperdey, dessen 
Schwester im Übrigen die Theologin Do-
rothee Sölle war, gehörte also zu denen, 
die die Bedeutung der Religion für die 
neuzeitliche Geschichte neu entdeckten. 
Blaschkes „Verbeugung vor Nipperdeys 
Pionierleistung“ (S. 11) erklärt dann auch 
Rezensionen | Reviews | 477
den Titel des von ihm herausgegebenen 
Sammelbandes, der eine Erweiterung von 
Nipperdeys „Religion im Umbruch“ und 
dessen „nationalgeschichtlichem Rahmen“ 
darstellen soll. Eine ähnliche Verbeugung 
hätte Jürgen Osterhammel und seinem 
opus magnum über das 19. Jahrhundert 
gelten können, der ebenfalls erwähnt wird. 
Eher nebenbei erfährt man in der Einlei-
tung auf diesen Umwegen auch, was man 
durch den Titel des Bandes nicht erfährt, 
nämlich dass es hier nur um das 19. Jahr-
hundert geht.
Mit der so durchgeführten zeitlichen 
Eingrenzung geht eine inhaltliche einher, 
denn die Perspektive wird bewusst auf den 
Katholizismus und den Protestantismus 
eingeengt. Der Katholizismus konnte sich 
im 19. Jahrhundert durch das Erstarken 
des Papsttums und das von Rom aus ver-
ordnete Selbstverständnis eines Bollwerks 
gegen die Umbrüche der Moderne als 
Weltreligion – und vor allem als solche mit 
einem Zentrum – erfinden. Die Geschich-
te des Protestantismus ist aber zur gleichen 
Zeit von starken inneren Differenzen und 
Differenzierungen, also Zentrifugalkräf-
ten, geprägt, so dass dieser kaum als ge-
schlossene Konfession erkennbar ist. Die 
eigentlichen Motoren der Globalisierung 
auf protestantischer Seite, also Baptisten 
und Methodisten, die evangelische Allianz 
und die protestantischen Missionsgesell-
schaften, aber auch Großverbände wie der 
zunehmend über die Grenzen Deutsch-
lands hinaus aktive Gustav-Adolf-Verein 
kommen in den Beiträgen auffälligerweise 
nicht vor, die Auswanderergemeinden nur 
ganz am Rande. Aber auch auf katholi-
scher Seite zeigt die große Streubreite der 
Beobachtungen in den Beiträgen, dass das 
Feld schwer zu erschließen ist. 
Olaf Blaschke und der Mitherausgeber 
Francisco Javier Ramón Solans (der in der 
Einleitung nicht ausdrücklich zu Wort 
kommt) waren bzw. sind beide in dem 
in Münster angesiedelten Exzellenzclus-
ter „Religion und Politik“ tätig, nämlich, 
in dem Projekt „Ultramontanismus und 
Politik im Europa des 19. Jahrhunderts“. 
Dieser Exzellenzcluster bildete auch den 
Rahmen für eine Tagung, die 2016 statt-
fand und in dem vorliegenden Band doku-
mentiert wird, und aus diesem Projekt ist 
auch die methodische Leitlinie von Olaf 
Blaschke gewonnen (S. 22). Die Liste der 
Autor:innen umfasst neben vielen Nach-
wuchskräften auch Namen etablierter For-
scher: Detlef Pollack (Religionssoziologie), 
Thomas Großbölting (Geschichte, Mit-
glied der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte 
der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz), Bern-
hard Schneider (katholische Kirchenge-
schichte). Auffällig ist der hohe Anteil 
von Beiträgen aus dem Umfeld des Ex-
zellenzclusters und der geringe Anteil von 
Personen mit einer nicht-deutschen Wis-
senschaftsbiographie. Auffällig ist auch 
der geringe Anteil von Expert:innen der 
evangelischen Kirchengeschichte: Vertre-
ten waren nur der inzwischen emeritierte 
Kirchenhistoriker Klaus Koschorke und 
die der Protestantismusforschung zuzu-
rechnende Historikerin Katharina Kunter.
Die einzelnen Beiträge bieten dann, dem 
Untertitel folgend, „transnationale Pers-
pektiven“, die sich auf ganz unterschied-
liche Themen beziehen. Die Beiträge, zu 
denen in der Einleitung des Herausgebers 
kurze Inhaltsangaben geboten werden, 
sind zwei großen Sektionen zugeordnet: 
I. Transnationale und globalgeschichtliche 
Perspektiven auf das Christentum, II. Das 
Christentum in Zeiten der Globalisierung. 
478 | Rezensionen | Reviews
Die Kommentatoren der einzelnen Sektio-
nen (II. zerfällt noch in zwei Untersektio-
nen) haben ihre Beobachtungen verschrift-
licht und tragen damit zur Reflexion und 
Bündelung der Einzelbeiträge erheblich 
bei. Geradezu grundsätzlich ist die Kri-
tik von Detlef Pollack (zu Sektion I), der 
immerhin stellvertretender Sprecher des 
Münsteraner Clusters ist: „Die additive 
Analyseform so mancher globalgeschicht-
licher Studien hat vor allem damit zu tun, 
dass das Konzept der Globalisierung kaum 
analytische Kriterien und theoretisch in-
spirierte Leitfragen aufweist und theore-
tisch weithin vage und unbestimmt bleibt“ 
(S. 180). Die Globalisierungsperspektive, 
so Pollack, lebt von der polemischen Ab-
grenzung gegen die Modernisierungstheo-
rie (deren Verteidiger Pollack nicht nur an 
dieser Stelle ist) mit ihrem Eurozentrismus 
und ihrer Konzentration auf den Nati-
onalstaat. Deutlich wird an dieser Stelle 
bei Pollack (S. 181f ), was auch an anderer 
Stelle deutlicher hätte gesagt werden kön-
nen: Dass das 19. Jahrhundert oft aus der 
Perspektive des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 
wahrgenommen wird und dadurch das 
nun säkular werdende Europa scheinbar 
immer schon randständig war, was die Be-
deutung der Religion angeht. 
Verhaltener ist die Kritik, die Thomas 
Großbölting an den Vorträgen in Sek-
tion II.1 übt. Großbölting erinnert an 
Jürgen Osterhammels Feststellung, dass 
die Geschichte des Christentums im 19. 
Jahrhundert sich eben nicht zu einer Ge-
samtgeschichte ordnet (S. 365). So stellt 
auch Großbölting im Blick auf die von 
ihm kommentierten Beiträge fest: „Zu un-
terschiedlich sind nicht nur die konzeptio-
nellen Herangehensweisen und Vorgaben, 
sondern auch die religiösen Entwicklun-
gen in den Teilen der Welt“ (S. 368). Aus 
der Zusammenschau der Beiträge entsteht 
somit, so Großbölting, ein „Bild, das von 
vielfältigen Verflechtungen und gegensei-
tigen Bezugnahmen, gegenseitigen Rück-
wirkungen des Globalen, Nationalen und 
Lokalen in die jeweiligen Lebenswelten“ 
geprägt ist (S. 370).
Mit Volkhard Krech kommt als Kom-
mentator zu Sektion II.2 ein Religions-
wissenschaftler mit starken religionssozio-
logischen Interessen zu Wort. Während 
die Sektion II.1 die Globalisierung des 
Christentums zum Thema hatte, war das 
Thema der Sektion II.2 die Frage, wie sich 
das Christentum durch die Globalisie-
rung veränderte. Auch Krech rät zu einem 
selbstkritischen Blick auf die eigene Pers-
pektive: „Vieles in der Religionsgeschich-
te zeigt sich – zumindest in evolutionärer 
Hinsicht – erst ex post, von den Resultaten 
evolutionärer Entwicklung her“ (S. 496).
Die Kommentare mit ihren methodischen 
Anfragen verleihen dem Tagungsband 
eine gewinnbringende innere Spannung. 
Insgesamt leistet dieser, was ein Tagungs-
band im Allgemeinen leistet, wenn er gute 
Einzelbeiträge enthält, denen hier (es sind 
16) nicht im Einzelnen nachgegangen 
werden kann. Freilich scheint der Rahmen 
doch recht weit gesteckt, und so bleibt 
der Eindruck eines Kaleidoskops sehr 
unterschiedlicher Themen und Zugänge, 
„transnationaler Perspektiven“ eben. Die 
Kleinteiligkeit der Beiträge ist ja auch 
nicht einmal beklagenswert, denn sie zeigt, 
dass alle historische Arbeit erst einmal auf 
sorgfältigen Quellenstudien ruht (so hät-
te man das jedenfalls im 19. Jahrhundert 
gesehen).
Der inzwischen in akademischen Fest- und 
Programmreden gerne laut werdende Ruf 
Rezensionen | Reviews | 479
zu einem Ausbruch der Christentumsge-
schichte aus der nationalstaatlichen Pers-
pektive (so Blaschke S. 14) ist das eine, die 
Eröffnung konkreter Forschungsperspek-
tiven aber das andere, und ob diese glo-
balgeschichtlich, globalisierungsgeschicht-
lich oder transnational sind, ist dann ein 
sekundäres Problem, da der Forschungs-
gegenstand „Christentum“ eben sehr groß 
und von widerstreitenden Kräften schon 
auf kleinstem Feld geprägt war und ist. 
Fraglos ist die christentumsgeschichtliche 
Forschung in Deutschland (in West- und 
Nordeuropa ist das durchaus anders) zu-
meist auf die deutsche Geschichte begrenzt 
(„im nationalen Container gefangen“, so 
Blaschke S. 17), aber den „polyzentrischen 
Strukturen“ des Christentums entspricht 
auch weder eine polyzentrische Forschung 
mit den dafür notwendigen universitä-
ren Strukturen, noch entsprechen ihr 
polyzentrische Quellenschätze, wie sie in 
deutschen oder europäischen Archiven 
gesammelt und leicht zugänglich sind. 
Von Deutschland aus die Erforschung der 
Geschichte des globalen Christentums in 
großem Stile betreiben zu wollen kann 
angesichts der begrenzten Ressourcen nur 
heißen, andere Aufgaben programmatisch 
zu vernachlässigen, oder ein Indiz für die 
Hoffnung sein, dass fruchtbare Sedimente 
zurückbleiben, auf denen dann langfristige 
Forschung gedeihen kann, wenn sich die 
Flut der Forschungsgelder verlaufen hat.
Ingrid Miethe / Tim Kaiser / Tobias 
Kriele / Alexandra Piepiorka: Globali-
zation of an Educational Idea. Work-
ers’ Faculties in Eastern Germany, 
Vietnam, Cuba and Mozambique, 
Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019, 
388 S. 
Rezensiert von 
Immanuel R. Harisch, Wien
Bereits beim ersten Blick in das Inhalts-
verzeichnis der Monographie fällt auf, dass 
die Autor:innen mit ihrer Darstellung, er-
schienen in der Reihe Rethinking the Cold 
War, nicht nur zur Reflexion über festge-
fahrene Narrative bipolaren Charakters 
des Kalten Kriegs anzuregen gedenken, 
sondern mit ihrer Studie etwas selten an-
zutreffendes präsentieren: eine kollektiv 
verfasste Vergleichsstudie basierend auf 
multilokaler Archivrecherche in vier ver-
schiedenen Sprachen. Die Monographie 
untersucht die sich globalisierende Idee 
und Institution der Arbeiter- und Bau-
ernfakultäten (ABF)1 anhand von vier 
Fallbeispielen, das heißt konkreten Insti-
tutionen auf vier Kontinenten: die ABFs 
in der DDR (1949–1963, verfasst von 
Ingrid Miethe), Nordvietnam (1956–
1964, Tim Kaiser), Kuba (1962–1969/
Gegenwart, Tobias Kriele) und Mosambik 
(1983–1992, Alexandra Piepiorka). Den 
Fallstudien vorangestellt sind eine gemein-
sam verfasste Einleitung, ein Kapitel zu 
theoretischen Ansätzen, methodologische 
Überlegungen und dem Quellenkorpus, 
ein von Miethe und Piepiorka gemeinsam 
verfasstes Kapitel zu den Rabfaks (rabochi 


Olaf Blaschke / Francisco Javier Ramón Solans (Hrsg.): Weltreligion im Umbruch. Transnationale Perspektiven auf das Christentum in der Globalisierung, Frankfurt am Main / New York, Campus Verlag, 2019, 507 S.

Ferrari, Rossella

Rezensionen | Reviews | 685
In den letzten Jahren hat ein neuer Trend 
in der China- und Geschichtsforschung 
eingesetzt: Das Erklären der Transformati-
on Chinas seit den späten 1970er Jahren 
als globales Phänomen, das mit einem 
vermehrten Wissensaustausch, vertieften 
Handelsbeziehungen und diplomatischen 
Beziehungen mit der Welt einherging, 
hiervon beeinflusst wurde und wiederrum 
die Welt beeinflusste. Das aktuelle Jahr-
buch für Kommunismusforschung ver-
sammelt die zu diesem Thema forschenden 
Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler 
und bietet einen gelungenen Überblick 
über Themen und Trends im Bereich der 
global- und wirtschaftgeschichtlichen Er-
forschung der Transformation Chinas und 
Osteuropas. 
Anmerkungen
1 China and the end of the Cold War in Europe. 
Cold War History 17 (2017) 2; F. Bösch, Zeiten-
wende 1979. Als die Welt von heute begann, 
München 2019.
2 Vgl. z. B. P. Vámos, A Hungarian model for 
China? Sino-Hungarian relations in the era of 
economic reforms, 1979–89, in: Cold War His-
tory 18 (2018) 3, S. 361–378.
3 J. Gewirtz, Unlikely partners. Chinese reform-
ers, Western economists, and the making of 
global China, Cambridge MA 2017.
Sean Metzger: The Chinese Atlantic. 
Seascapes and the Theatricality of 
Globalization, Bloomington: Indiana 
University Press, 2020, 274 pp.
Reviewed by 
Rossella Ferrari, Wien
A number of recent studies have widened 
the analytical horizon for comprehend-
ing the increasingly intricate relationship 
between the arts and processes of globali-
zation and transnational mobility. Schol-
arship has shifted from bounded episte-
mologies that situate artistic production 
largely within national or local contexts to 
expansive frameworks which highlight cir-
culatory flows, fluid geographies, and liq-
uid connections. The new conceptual zone 
that Sean Metzger expertly demarcates in 
The Chinese Atlantic broadens the con-
temporary theoretical semantics of fluidity 
and liquid spatiality by foregrounding the 
“seascape” as the book’s central image and 
method. Metzger presents the seascape as 
an original framework for understanding 
“the theatricality of globalization” as artic-
ulated in China-inflected artistic produc-
tion across the Atlantic.
Following a prologue that outlines the 
project’s evolution over many years of re-
search in Trinidad, Martinique, South Af-
rica, and other locales, the volume offers a 
theoretical introduction, five chapters, and 
an epilogue. The chapters are structured 
around five aquatic keywords – “reeling”, 
“incorporating”, “flowing”, “ebbing”, and 
686 | Rezensionen | Reviews
“eddying” – each defining the “logic” of 
a specific type of seascape. The artworks 
examined therein thus resonate with dif-
ferent aesthetic engagements and affective 
responses to these distinct categories. As 
the volume’s conceptual anchor, Metzger’s 
seascape is modelled partly after Appa-
durai’s well-known ‘scapes’ of cultural 
globalization and genealogically linked to 
“the theatricality of marine scenes” (p. 21) 
found in European paintings such as Géri-
cault’s The Raft of the Medusa and Turner’s 
The Slave Ship. Each seascape and corre-
sponding keyword are associated to a spe-
cific art form and informed by a specific 
articulation of Chineseness in the context 
of wider-ranging economic and geopoliti-
cal histories that contribute to Metzger’s 
formulation of the notion of “Chinese-in-
flected globalization”. Hence, the seascape 
is not only “an epistemological frame” but 
also “an event”, “action”, and “practice” (p. 
17). These articulations are, furthermore, 
often contested and their meanings con-
tingent to specific localities, as evidenced 
by the artworks under analysis.
Metzger’s Chinese Atlantic centres on 
‘Chinese’ (racial, representational) imagi-
naries and transnational movement across 
small islands, therefore complementing 
as well as complicating established episte-
mologies of the “Black Atlantic” and the 
“Pacific Rim”. It does so by linking the At-
lantic and Pacific (but also Indian) oceanic 
spheres, by foregrounding territories that 
are often seen as ‘minor’ in the global cul-
tural economy, and by delinking the Atlan-
tic seaways from an almost-exclusive focus 
on black trajectories and totalizing nar-
ratives of transoceanic migration, labour, 
and global capitalist expansion. A view of 
the Atlantic as a Chinese seascape furthers 
the understanding of spatialized dynam-
ics of racial construction and identifica-
tion; it also assists the critical decoupling 
of notions of capitalism and globalization 
from assertions of Western-centric moder-
nity and economic development rooted 
in neoliberalist narratives. The “Chinese-
inflected” mode of globalization that 
Metzger situates within the long history of 
China’s transoceanic trade and against the 
background of Dutch and British coloni-
alism is significant in its effort to decentre 
and decolonize entrenched views of glo-
balization as an inheritance of European 
imperialism and synonymous with Ameri-
canization (p. 114). It also problematizes 
the assessment of China’s economic ex-
pansionism as a contemporary and some-
what ‘sudden’ phenomenon. Moreover, in 
keeping with its intent to look critically at 
narratives of capitalism and globalization 
through the Chinese-inflected lens of the 
Atlantic seascape, the book accentuates 
the value of the seascape as an epistemo-
logical descriptor for “fiscal and cultural” 
processes of Chinese investment in the 
Atlantic (p. 18). Metzger draws attention 
to the inherent theatricality of both glo-
balization and Chineseness “as a symptom, 
or even a feature, of globalization” (p. 35) 
to explore not only the cultural flows but 
also the flows of capital that have shaped 
creative expressions as well as financial and 
infrastructural development in the region. 
Chapter 1, “Reeling”, examines two 
groups of documentary films categorized 
as “Chinese Caribbean domestic ethnog-
raphy” and “Chinese Caribbean synaes-
thetic documentaries”. Films by Rigoberto 
López, Natalie Wei, Jeanette Kong, Peter 
Chin, Jeremy Mimnagh, and Richard 
Fung record peripatetic trajectories of Chi-
Rezensionen | Reviews | 687
neseness in and between Cuba, Trinidad, 
Jamaica, Panama, the United States, Can-
ada, and China that disrupt stable notions 
of Chinese, black, and (Asian) American 
identities and dislocate conventional ge-
ographies of globalization, capitalism, and 
cultural circulation. The logic of “reeling” 
evokes marine practices (deep-sea fishing) 
along with the cinematic pursuit of the 
real in visualizing experiences of Chinese 
migration to and across the Caribbean. 
Additionally, reeling accounts for the af-
fective, performative, and sensory facets 
of documentary realism, which justifies 
Metzger’s examination of these films with-
in the frame of theatricality. 
Chapter 2, “Incorporating”, addresses 
visual artworks by Nicole Awai, Carlisle 
Chang, Willi Chen, and Christopher Co-
zier that highlight the financial dimen-
sions of Chineseness in Trinidad through 
the semantics of seascapes. Metzger’s “log-
ic of incorporating” considers the cultural 
(re)production of Chinese migrant labour 
– historical and contemporary – “as a fig-
ure of and for capitalism” (p. 130) that is 
deeply enmeshed with Chinese investment 
in the region, hence central to the dis-
course of Chinese-inflected globalization. 
Chapter 3, “Flowing”, probes the perform-
ative aspects of Chineseness by looking at 
non-Asian practitioners of tai chi in Fran-
cophone Martinique through the lens of 
“Oriental sensitivity”. The logic of flowing 
informs both transnational migratory and 
networking patterns and local embodied 
practices that constitute “live seascapes” 
(p. 138) of intercultural tension in a Car-
ibbean site characterized by substantial 
Chinese entrepreneurship. In this chapter, 
too, Metzger underscores the theatricality 
of globalization in that the artworks and 
actions under analysis generate phenom-
enological effects in the viewer or, in this 
instance, the practitioner. 
Chapter 4, “Ebbing”, examines Nick 
Broomfield’s 2006 documentary, Ghosts, 
and Isaac Julien’s 2010 installation, Ten 
Thousand Waves, as “screen seascapes” (p. 
164) that memorialize the drowning of 
23 Chinese cockle pickers at Morecambe 
Bay, England, in 2004. The logic of ebbing 
evokes the actual receding tide that uncov-
ered the victims’ bodies and the mnemon-
ic structures that reveal their subjectivities 
in these immersive artworks.
Chapter 5, “Eddying”, revisits Julien’s in-
stallation (as exhibited in Cape Town in 
2018) alongside artworks by William Ken-
tridge, Pieter-Dirk Uys, and DALeast to 
affirm the centrality of the Western Cape 
in the demarcation of the Chinese Atlantic 
and the spiralling assemblage (eddying) of 
Dutch colonial histories and Chinese cul-
tural-economic currents in South Africa. 
The epilogue consolidates the book’s key 
ideas through a discussion of New York-
based Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s 
2014 Shanghai installation, The Ninth 
Wave, which further probes the critical 
construction of the Chinese Atlantic as “an 
analytical rubric” (p. 238) and “conceptual 
metaphor” (p. 239) and its links to theatri-
cality and globalization. 
Early in the volume, Metzger specifies 
that, unlike paradigms such as Shih Shu-
mei’s Sinophone, his investigation of Chi-
neseness does not emphasise language but 
visuality. Still, as I read about the Caribbe-
an documentaries surveyed in Chapter 1, 
I would have wished to see some more de-
tails about the languages spoken in those 
films. Secondly, since the volume centres 
on island cultures and references assem-
688 | Rezensionen | Reviews
blages, constellations, and island clusters, 
I wonder how Metzger’s conceptual model 
might relate to the “archipelagic turn”, 
namely the engagement of the archipelago 
as a methodology for thinking through 
networked formations and clustered im-
aginaries. Nevertheless, these minor points 
do not detract from the book’s undisputed 
value as hitherto the most comprehensive 
study of Chinese-inflected artistic connec-
tions across the Atlantic. Especially with 
regard to the emergent corpus of Chinese 
Caribbean scholarship, Metzger’s book is 
unrivalled in its scope and depth of analy-
sis and will surely become a key reference 
for future studies in this field.
Anne Booth: Living Standards in 
Southeast Asia. Changes over the 
Long Twentieth Century, 1900–2015, 
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University 
Press, 2019, 317 pp.
Rezensiert von 
Vincent Houben, Berlin
This book synthesizes the huge research 
work done by Anne Booth, former pro-
fessor at the School of Oriental and Af-
rican Studies, on the development of liv-
ing standards and social inequality in the 
world region between India and China. 
Trained as an economist, she develops 
an in-depth systematic analysis primarily 
based on quantitative indicators and set 
within a chronological order. The result 
is a standard work, which is compulsory 
reading for anyone interested in Southeast 
Asian economic development as a whole 
and social inequality in particular.
Chapter 1 starts with setting out the com-
posite indicators used to comparatively 
measure changes in living standards and 
the broader debate on the pros and cons 
of using these. For this purpose, Booth has 
collected country data not only on distri-
bution of income and expenditures but 
also on human development indicators 
such as life expectancy, educational levels 
by region, gender, and social class. These 
indicators offer a much more complex 
picture of social inequality than is offered 
by GDP or HDI statistics. Her approach 
is part of a much larger standard of living 
debate between economic historians in 
Britain and elsewhere on the correlation 
between economic growth and changing 
living standards, the great divergence be-
tween the ‘West and the rest’ and the fact 
that growth often did not result in bet-
ter living standards for large parts of the 
population.
Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the colonial 
period, which is treated in a balanced and 
multifaceted manner. On the one hand, 
colonial powers after 1900 did promote 
the economic development of the terri-
tories they controlled, on the other hand 
economic exploitation prevailed over 
possible social transfers to the colonized 
peoples. Population growth and rising 
agricultural output were accompanied by 
differences in access to land, job opportu-
nities, and non-agricultural income. On 
the whole, real wage levels rose but, para-
doxically, did not lead to improvement in 
living standards, a.o. because availability of 
food fell and malnutrition increased. Mor-
tality rates on the whole declined but gaps 


Sean Metzger: The Chinese Atlantic. Seascapes and the Theatricality of Globalization, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020, 274 pp.

Krause, Oliver

714 | Rezensionen | Reviews
Andrew Phillips / J. C. Sharman: 
Outsourcing Empire. How Company-
States made the Modern World, 
Princeton / Oxford: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2020, 253 pp.
Reviewed by 
Oliver Krause, Leipzig
The title of the book by Sharman and Phil-
lips provokes the assumption the authors 
will cope with the role of the company-
state within the process of empire build-
ing, giving answers to the question why 
and how the company-state acts on behalf 
of the empire. Is the empire an assem-
blage of corporations? Are company-states 
as corporative entities within the Empire 
actors the imperial expansion was out-
sourced to? Opposite to the title the au-
thors are not focused on the Empire but 
the company-state itself and the emer-
gence of the modern international system 
from the sixteenth century onwards. The 
main argument of the authors is that un-
til the eighteenth century, company-states 
were hybrid corporations, representing 
a combination of state and company, in-
terlacing the public with the private. The 
company-state is depicted as an inde-
pendent, sovereign entity that “was a ge-
neric institutional solution to a common 
geopolitical problem by European rulers” 
(p. 67). The resurrected companies of the 
nineteenth century were only private com-
panies, without sovereign rights in hand. 
In four chapters Sharman and Phillips de-
scribe the persisting metamorphose of in-
ternational companies from the sixteenth 
to the twenty-first century expedited by 
the growing differentiation between the 
public and private sphere as a story of the 
corporation’s changing impact on the evo-
lution of the international system. 
The authors make a distinction between 
two types of the company-state. The first 
type is the hybrid company-state, which 
existed between the late sixteenth and 
eighteenth centuries. Company-states of 
that era act as sovereigns with a trade mo-
nopoly in specific non-European regions, 
which were defined by charters of their 
European sovereigns. The charters granted 
the company-states with rights and du-
ties to act in non-European regions. The 
primary interest of that type of company-
states, as Sharman and Phillips suggested, 
lies with the gaining of power. From that 
perspective the company-state as being 
from European descent, depending on 
charters, but acting as a sovereign outside 
Europe in global and intercultural trade 
systems, Sharman and Phillips make the 
argument that hybrid company-states are 
“the most important actors in the crucial 
formative stages of the modern interna-
tional system” (p. 1). The authors analyse 
the role of the company-state from a glob-
al and geopolitical perspective, what in the 
consequence leads to the argument that 
not the alliance system established after 
the peace of Westphalia marked the birth 
of the modern international system but the 
diplomacy and political engagement of the 
trading company-states during the period 
of European expansion (p. 215). Despite 
the global perspective on the emergence of 
the international system, the authors con-
sider Europe as the centre and European 
Rezensionen | Reviews | 715
actors as driving forces in the development 
of the modern international system. 
The resurrected companies of the nine-
teenth century are considered as the sec-
ond type of company-states, although 
they were not hybrids anymore but private 
enterprises of a time when the state or im-
perial governments were the unchallenged 
sovereigns. The question, following up for 
Sharman and Phillips after they have re-
flected on the companies’ history of nearly 
300 years, is which of the two described 
types of the company-state will be the 
model for the private security industry 
in the twenty-first century (p. 216). Will 
modern international companies chal-
lenge the authority of the sovereign nation 
state by becoming hybrid again? Will they 
be important actors in a stage of the de-
cline of the nation state? 
To deal with trade companies as sovereigns 
building up the modern international sys-
tem the authors change the perspective 
onto the companies. Power politics seem 
to be more important than profit. Using 
the phrase “power and profit” (e.g. pp. 
33, 55) for describing the ambition of 
the company-states turns the traditional 
historiographical perspective onto the 
role of trade companies around. Not the 
economic ambitions, but the struggle for 
power as a sovereign entity comes to the 
fore. This perspective is highly debatable 
as trade companies are from a legal point 
of view acting in non-European regions 
only as vehicles on behalf of sovereign Eu-
ropean entities even though they act like 
sovereigns in the daily routine caused by 
the distance between the continents. Shar-
man’s and Phillips’ weighting of power and 
profit seems to be determined by the ex-
clusive reference on secondary literature.
To state their arguments Sharman and 
Phillips describe in four chapter the rise, 
fall and resurrection of European compa-
ny-states. In the first two chapters, the au-
thors deliver a comparative analysis of the 
rise of the company-states acting in Asia 
(Chapter 1), Africa and the Atlantic World 
(Chapter 2) from the end of the sixteenth 
century till the early eighteenth century. 
The novelty of the authors’ approach is the 
comparison of companies acting in differ-
ent world regions over a period of almost 
200 years. The purpose of the compari-
son is the conceptional elaboration of the 
characteristic of company-states as corpo-
rations and the founders of the modern in-
ternational system. Besides the story of the 
growth, the description of the administra-
tive structure, trade interests, military, and 
political acting of the big players in Asia 
(“Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie” 
(VOC), “East India Company” (EIC)) the 
competition between the company-states 
and the local authorities of the world re-
gions they acted in stays in the focus of the 
first chapter. In the second chapter the au-
thors depict European trading companies 
in Africa and the two Americas, especially 
the “Hudson Bay Company” as an en-
terprise which existed for a longer period 
than any other company. The purpose is 
to show how company-states act as politi-
cal entities under different circumstances, 
highlighting the common features on a 
global scale. The company-states described 
in the first two chapters belong to the hy-
brid type. The third chapter is dedicated to 
the fall of the before mentioned company-
states till the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury. According to Sharman and Phillips 
the cause of the decline was a combination 
of “intensifying geopolitical competition, 
716 | Rezensionen | Reviews
ideological delegitimation, and functional 
redundancy” (p. 109). The resurrection 
of the company-state in the nineteenth 
century as private enterprise without any 
further sovereign rights is described in the 
fourth chapter, followed up by the conclu-
sion that these enterprises stand for the 
second type of company-states being only 
trading companies.
The authors depict the significance of trade 
companies in the formative stages of the 
modern international system by chang-
ing the perspective onto the companies 
following the approach and terminology 
of Philip J. Stern describing the hybrid-
ity of the company-state.1 Sterns concept 
is transferred to the global scale by com-
paring companies acting in different world 
regions at different times overemphasis-
ing the sovereignty of the company-states 
and their pursuit of power. The profit of 
Sharman’s and Phillips’ contribution is the 
change of the perspective on trade com-
panies as corporations. This perspective 
takes the variability of political entities as 
being important for the emergence and 
change of the modern international system 
and the state building process in the early 
modern times into account.
Note
1 Ph. J. Stern, The Company-State. Corporate 
Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations 
of the British Empire in India, Oxford 2011.
Kenneth Lipartito / Lisa Jacobson 
(eds.): Capitalism’s Hidden Worlds 
(Hagley Perspectives on Business and 
Culture), Philadelphia: University of 
Pennsylvania Press, 2020, 320 pp.
Reviewed by 
Paul Franke, Berlin
This is an insightful, thought provoking 
ensemble of essays that explore the hid-
den economic forces, agents, and prac-
tices in the 19th and 20th century. As the 
product of a conference in 2017 (Hidden 
Capitalism: Below, Beneath, and Beyond 
the Market) with four additional papers, 
the volume spans Europe, as well as the 
Americas and Asia. What unites these di-
verse regional, and historical contexts are 
the questions laid out in the comprehen-
sive introduction. Here, Kenneth Lipartito 
and Lisa Jacobson summarize the articles 
and argue that a new history of the econo-
my and capitalism „requires us to concep-
tualize the relationship between the mar-
gins and the center – between the licit and 
the illicit, the waged and the unwaged, the 
public and the private – to better under-
stand the mutual dependence of the visible 
and invisible markets“ (p. 3).
All contributions thus point a searchlight 
into these “Shadowlands of Capitalism” 
(p. 1), aiming at a particular set of prac-
tices, or processes. The research highlights 
how there are no natural or preset borders 
between visible market and hidden, or ob-
scured economic systems. Connected to 
this perspective are questions on how „fea-
tures of the licit economy transform into 


Andrew Phillips / J. C. Sharman: Outsourcing Empire. How Company- States made the Modern World, Princeton / Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020, 253 pp.

Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen

Rezensionen | Reviews | 125
the notion that the concept of “place mak-
ing”, which is another important hinge of 
the book, opens space for a re-evaluation 
of the Spanish Empire. In sum, it is not 
clear to me what scholarly intervention the 
editors are trying to make by deploying the 
concepts of pluralism and place making. 
To be fair, I am not an archaeologist or 
anthropologist, which could partly explain 
my failure to understand the intention of 
the book. As a historian, I am not in the 
best position to judge the contributions 
that this volume makes to the aforemen-
tioned fields. That said, the editors and 
authors should have made a greater effort 
to describe their scholarly interventions in 
a more explicit and convincing manner. 
Without a robust framework, the chapters 
collected in this volume amount to a series 
of conceptually unrelated, though indi-
vidually insightful, case studies that hap-
pen to deal with territories that were under 
Spanish imperial control at some point in 
the past. These reservations notwithstand-
ing, this book does bring together a wide 
range of accomplished scholars who offer 
insightful perspectives about the particular 
places they study. In this sense, this book 
is incredibly successful. 
Karen Struve: Wildes Wissen in der 
Encyclopédie. Koloniale Alterität, 
Wissen und Narration in der franzö-
sischen Aufklärung (=Romanische 
Literaturen der Welt, Bd. 79), Berlin/
Boston: De Gruyter, 2020, 506 S.
Rezensiert von
Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink, Saarbrücken
Die vorliegende Studie, der die Bremer 
Habilitationsschrift der Verfasserin zu-
grundeliegt, verfolgt die Zielsetzung, For-
men und Funktionen von Alteritätsdar-
stellungen bzw. -konstruktionen in dem 
zweifellos wichtigsten enzyklopädischen 
Werk des Aufklärungszeitalters, der En-
cyclopédie (1751–1772) von Diderot und 
D’Alembert, herauszuarbeiten. „Um die 
Ambivalenzen der Macht wie Alteritäts-
konstruktionen in den enzyklopädischen 
Gestaltungen des kolonialen Anderen in 
der Encyclopédie analysieren zu können“, 
so erläutert die Verfasserin ihre Vorge-
hensweise zu Beginn, „sollen für die post-
kolonial orientierte wissenspoetologische 
Untersuchung zwei methodische Zugänge 
miteinander verquickt werden: die Archäo-
logie nach Foucault zur Untersuchung des 
impliziten Wissens in der Encyclopédie als 
Archiv sowie die kontrapunktische Lektü-
re nach Said zur Analyse der ambivalenten 
Machtkonstellationen“ (S. 55).
Karen Struves Studie, dies zeigen bereits 
die zitierten Sätze, weist ebenso analyti-
sche Zielsetzungen wie theoretische Ambi-
tionen auf, die auf den über 450 Textseiten 
durchaus überzeugend verfolgt werden. 
126 | Rezensionen | Reviews
Untergliedert ist die Studie in drei große 
Teile: auf einen umfangreichen, knapp 
90 Seiten langen Einleitungsteil, in dem 
theoretische und methodische Ansätze so-
wie der Untersuchungsgegenstand präzise 
umrissen werden, folgt der Hauptteil des 
Buches, der „Textlektüren. Macht und 
Ambivalenz in den Narrationen des ko-
lonialen Anderen“ überschrieben ist und 
310 Seiten umfasst. Der dritte und letzte 
Teil schließlich betrifft die Zusammen-
fassung der Ergebnisse der Untersuchung 
und umreißt weiterführenden Perspek-
tiven der Forschung, die in theoretischer 
Hinsicht mit den Stichworten „Postkolo-
niale Archiv- und Ambivalenzkonzepte“ 
und „Wissensnarrative kolonialer Alteri-
tät“ gefasst werden. An den analytischen 
Teil der Arbeit schließen sich ein um-
fangreiches und sehr sorgfältig erstelltes 
Literaturverzeichnis sowie ein „Register“ 
an, das ein – leider recht unvollständiges 
– Sachregister (im Wesentlichen von Lem-
mata und Begriffen aus der Encyclopédie) 
umfasst, dessen Selektionslogik nicht ganz 
klar ist. So finden sich neben zahlreichen 
Begriffen, die auf Lemmata der Encyclopé-
die verweisen (wie „Esclave“, „Fanatisme“ 
und „Mulâtre“), auch vereinzelt theoreti-
sche Konzepte (wie „Othering“), während 
die meisten anderen Begriffe, die in der 
Untersuchung eine zentrale Rolle spielen 
(wie „Alterität“), hier fehlen. Auch ein 
ergänzendes Personenregister wäre sehr 
wünschenswert gewesen. 
Der vorliegenden Untersuchung kommt 
zunächst das Verdienst zu, erstmals umfas-
send und auf der Basis eines sehr breiten 
Untersuchungscorpus – die Verfasserin 
gibt an, sie habe insgesamt 1.500 Artikel 
herangezogen (S. 85)[1] – koloniale Alte-
ritätsfiguren in der Encyclopédie von Dide-
rot und D’Alembert systematisch und auf 
der Grundlage einer sehr differenzierten 
methodischen und theoretischen Refle-
xion untersucht zu haben. Auch wenn der 
Begriff des „kolonialen Anderen“ nicht 
präzise definiert wird und neben koloni-
sierten Territorien und ihren Bewohnern 
auch nicht kolonisierte Reiche wie etwa 
China zumindest teilweise Berücksichti-
gung finden, so sind die erzielten Ergeb-
nisse insgesamt sehr bemerkenswert. Diese 
betreffen zum einen die enzyklopädische 
Erzählerinstanz, den „philosophe“, der 
sehr zutreffend als „Kartograph“, „Navi-
gator“ und „Wegweiser“ (S. 220) charak-
terisiert wird, der die „Wissenskarten der 
Welt“ entwirft, „Zentren und Peripherien, 
Wege und Umwege, Verbindungen und 
Trennlinien“ zeichnet (S. 220). „Wenn der 
philosophe sich nun zur Aufgabe macht“, 
so schreibt die Verfasserin, „das Wissen 
der Welt einzusammeln und verständlich 
zu vermitteln, so ist er zwangsläufig auf das 
Wissen aus Texten angewiesen“ (S. 279). 
Er verfüge über eine „machtvolle“ Defini-
tions- und Deutungsmacht, die den ‚An-
deren‘ kategorisiert, beurteilt und zugleich 
essentialisiert, d. h. auf seine ethno-kultu-
rellen Wesenheiten festlegt und reduziert.
Zum anderen zeichnet sich die vorliegen-
de Untersuchung durch einen stringenten 
methodischen Ansatz aus, der zwischen 
Figuren und Figurationen der Macht so-
wie Figuren und Figurationen der Ambi-
valenz unterscheidet (S. 69) und hiervon 
ausgehend jeweils drei Typen von „Do-
minanzfiguren“ und „Alteritätsformen“ 
definiert, die den folgenden textbezo-
genen Analysen zugrundliegen. Zu den 
Dominanzfiguren des kolonialen Anderen 
gehören das ökonomische Wissen, die 
menschlichen Beziehungen und „vielfäl-
Rezensionen | Reviews | 127
tiges, lebenspraktisches Kulturwissen“ (S. 
91); zu den Alteritätsformen relationale, 
machtvolle und epistemische Formen (S. 
92). Unter Rückgriff auf sehr zahlreiche 
Artikel zu ganz unterschiedlichen Kon-
tinenten und Themenbereichen, die von 
der Geographie über die Ökonomie zur 
Anthropologie und zu kulturellen und re-
ligiösen Phänomenen reichen, arbeitet die 
Verfasserin grundlegende Strukturen der 
Alteritätsrepräsentation in der Encyclopédie 
heraus. Diese sind durch die Vorstellung 
der Menschheitsgeschichte als Geschichte 
des Fortschritts gekennzeichnet. Ihr liegt 
eine „teleologische Argumentation“ zu-
grunde, in der „unterschiedliche Völker in 
eine Entwicklungslinie mit unterschiedli-
chen Progressionsstadien“ gebracht wer-
den, „an deren Spitze sich in der Regel die 
französische Gesellschaft“ (S. 203) bzw. 
die europäische Zivilisation in ihrer Ge-
samtheit befindet. Auch Denkfiguren wie 
der grundlegende Gestus der Vermessung 
und Inventarisierung kolonialer Welten, 
das „Othering“ fremder, kolonialer Gesell-
schaften und Kulturen, das mit Prozessen 
der Hierarchisierung und zugleich der 
Exotisierung einhergeht, werden präzi-
se und unter Heranziehung einer breiten 
Textbasis herausgearbeitet. Als zielführend 
erweisen sich auch die beiden im theore-
tischen Teil der vorliegenden Studie ein-
geführten Kategorien der „Ambivalenz“ 
und der „kontrapunktischen Lektüre“. Sie 
erlauben es, Leerstellen, Nicht-Gesagtes 
und Verdrängtes sowie Grenzzonen und 
Widersprüche des enzyklopädischen Dis-
kurses über koloniale Alterität aufzuzei-
gen und deutlich zu machen – wie etwa 
die „ambivalente Widerständigkeit der 
Alteritätskonstruktionen“ S. (329) oder 
die Hinweise auf „Spuren des kolonialen 
Anderen im Eigenen“ (S. 385).[2] Zu-
mindest in ihrer sehr konsequenten Um-
setzung neu in der Forschung ist auch der 
„wissenspoetologische“ Ansatz der Verfas-
serin der vorliegenden Studie, der darauf 
abzielt, die Encyclopédie als literarischen 
Text zu begreifen und den Blick auf nar-
rative Strukturen, rhetorische Figuren, Ar-
gumentationsmuster und Persuasionsstra-
tegien sowie Stilregister wie die Ironie zu 
lenken. Er geht von der sehr fruchtbaren 
Annahme aus, „dass Wissen nicht schlicht 
mimetisch abgebildet wird, sondern dass 
es konstruiert, narrativ inszeniert und da-
mit auch poetisch bearbeitet wird“ (S. 24). 
Zugleich wirft die vorliegende Untersu-
chung, gerade aufgrund ihrer weitreichen-
den Ambitionen und ihrer vielfältigen Er-
gebnisse, Fragen auf, die durchaus auch als 
weiterführende Forschungsfragen verstan-
den werden sollen. So stellt sich die Frage, 
warum die Verfasserin angesichts der Be-
deutung, die sie dem Intertextualitätsansatz 
beimisst, nicht zumindest in Ansätzen und 
beispielhaft die den Artikeln der Encyclo-
pédie zugrundeliegende Quellenrezeption 
und -aufarbeitung analysiert hat, mit der 
häufig transkulturelle Prozesse des Kultur- 
und Wissenstranfers sowie Übersetzungen 
aus anderen Sprachen einhergehen. Cecil 
Courtney hat 2006 in einem wegweisen-
den Aufsatz mit Blick auf Raynals Histoire 
des deux Indes (1770/1780) die zentrale 
Bedeutung der ‚Kunst der Kompilation‘ 
(„The Art of compilation“[3]) für die Ge-
schichtsschreibung und den enzyklopädi-
schen Diskurs des Aufklärungszeitalters 
betont, eine text- und rezeptionsfiliatori-
sche Untersuchungsperspektive, die in den 
letzten Jahren u.a. in der digitalen und 
kritischen Edition der Encyclopédie (ENC-
CRE, http://enccre.academie-sciences.fr/
128 | Rezensionen | Reviews
encyclopedie) eindrucksvoll weiterverfolgt 
wurde. Einige zum Teil recht apodiktisch 
formulierte Aussagen verdienen gleichfalls 
weitere kritische Auseinandersetzung und 
Diskussion. So etwa die Aussage: „Im 18. 
Jahrhundert der République des Lettres 
sind Texte, wie bereits ausgeführt, noch 
nicht im modernen Sinne in faktuale und 
fiktionale Texte ausdifferenziert“ (S. 32). 
Oder die sehr pauschale und in dieser 
Form zweifellos nicht zutreffende Aussage: 
„Angst, nicht der Wille zum Wissen, prägt 
das enzykopädische Projekt“ (S. 393). 
Auch die Feststellung, der enzyklopädische 
Anspruch, „alles Wissen der Welt zu über-
blicken und es gleichermaßen systema-
tisch zu durchdringen“, verweigere „jeden 
Einblick in die fremden Gedankenwelten“ 
(S. 398), ist, etwa mit Blick auf Artikel wie 
„Philosophie des Canadiens“[4], die Arti-
kel zum Taoismus oder auch die Artikel 
von D’Alembert zur arabischen Astrono-
mie und Arithmetik zu relativieren. Eine 
ausführlichere Behandlung hätte der Arti-
kel „Esclavage“ von De Jaucourt verdient, 
der – wie Alessandro Tuccillo in seinem 
ausgezeichneten kritischen Kommentar in 
der ENCCRE-Edition aufzeigt – ebenso 
wie ein knappes Dutzend weiterer Artikel 
in der Encyclopédie abolitionistische Positi-
onen zur Sklaverei und zum Sklavenhan-
del bezieht und u. a. auf einer radikalisie-
renden Neu-Lektüre des 15. Buches von 
Montesquieus L’Esprit des Loix beruht.[5]
Trotzdem mag zutreffen, daß die Encyclo-
pédie, die in zahlreichen Bereichen beste-
hende Wissensbestände nicht nur zusam-
menfasste und systematisierte, sondern 
kritisch und produktiv weiterentwickelte 
und hiermit neue Wissens- und Denk-
formen hervorbrachte, sich im Bereich 
der Wissensproduktion über außereuro-
päische, koloniale und nicht-koloniale, 
Gesellschaften und Kulturen häufig we-
niger innovativ zeigte. Erst ihre Nachfol-
geprojekte wie die Encyclopédie d’Yverdon, 
die Encyclopédie Méthodique und Jacques 
Peuchets Dictionnaire de la géographie 
commerçante (1798–1799) sollten die-
ses Defizit, unter anderem auch durch 
den Rückgriff auf neue außereuropäische 
Quellen, zumindest ansatzweise zu über-
winden versuchen. Der Verdienst der vor-
liegenden Studie ist es, erstmals umfassend 
und mit differenzierten methodischen 
und theoretischen Ansätzen und Begrif-
fen die Erfassung und Darstellung der 
außereuropäischen kolonialen Welt, ihrer 
Gesellschaften und Kulturen, in der Ency-
clopédie, dem einflußreichsten enzyklopä-
dischen Werk der Aufklärungsbewegung 
des 18. Jahrhunderts, systematisch unter-
sucht und zugleich aus postkolonialer Per-
spektive kritisch aufgearbeitet zu haben. 
Anmerkungen
1 In der Bibliographie auf den Seiten 469–482 
werden ca. 400 Artikel aufgeführt.
2 Vgl. hierzu in ähnlicher Perspektive bereits 
das nicht zitierte Buch von W. Bader/J. Riesz 
(Hrsg.), Literatur und Kolonialismus. I. Die 
Ver arbeitung der kolonialen Expansion in der 
europäischen Literatur, Frankfurt am Main/
Bern 1983.
3 C. P. Courtney, The Art of Compilation and 
the Communication of Knowledge: the Colo-
nial World in Enlightenment Encyclopaedic 
Histories: The Example of Raynal’s Histoire 
philosophique des deux Indes, in: H.-J. Lüse-
brink (Hrsg.), Das Europa der Aufklärung und 
die außereuropäische koloniale Welt, Göttingen 
2006, S. 39–50.
4 Vgl. hierzu auch die von der Vfin. nicht zi-
tierte Studie von M. Roelens, La Hontan dans 
l’Encyclopédie et ses suites, in: J. Proust (Hrsg.), 
Nouvelles recherches sur quelques écrivains des 
Lumières, Genf 1972, S. 163–200.
5 A. Tuccillo, Dossier critique de l’article ES-
CLAVAGE (Droit nat. Religion, Morale) (Ency-
Rezensionen | Reviews | 129
clopédie, Bd. V, S. 934a–939a), Édition numé-
rique collaborative et critique de l’Encyclopédie, 
20.4.2020, http://enccre.academie-sciences.fr/
encyclopedie (Zugriff 4.5.2021).
Irene Fattacciu: Empire, Political  
Economy and the Diffusion of 
Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Early 
Modern Iberian History in Global 
Contexts: Connexions), London: 
Routledge, 2021, 220pp.
Reviewed by
Emma Robertson, Melbourne
Empire, Political Economy and the Diffu-
sion of Chocolate in the Atlantic World is a 
detailed history of the complex economic, 
social, cultural, and political processes by 
which chocolate took hold as a distinctly 
“Spanish” commodity in eighteenth-cen-
tury Spain. Irene Fattacciu addresses the 
fascinating, but perhaps ultimately impos-
sible, question of precisely how consump-
tion of a “new” foodstuff is able to spread 
across geographical and social spaces. In 
doing so, she brings together, in innovative 
ways, cultural histories of representation, 
with economic analysis and the study of 
material culture. 
The diffusion of “exotic” foods and drinks 
in Europe in the wake of the so-called Co-
lumbian Exchange, especially the adop-
tion of medicinal discourses around early 
modern consumption practices, is well 
established in existing literature. However, 
Fattacciu’s specific focus on Spain, and her 
obvious language skills in translating Span-
ish sources into English, brings to light the 
particular significance of Spain in this dy-
namic process. Some of the familiar texts 
such as Philippe Dufour’s Traitez nouveaux 
et curieux du café, du thé et du chocolate 
(New and curious treatises on coffee, tea, 
and chocolate, 1693) are linked to earlier 
Spanish sources. Fattacciu stresses the con-
struction of “chocolate Spanishness” and 
illuminates how foodstuffs from the Span-
ish Empire were key to the formation of 
national identities in the Bourbon era.
There are five central chapters. The first 
examines the nature of Atlantic trade, es-
pecially the creation of Spanish monopo-
listic companies and their relationship 
to increasing chocolate consumption. In 
this part, Fattacciu specifically draws on 
the history of the Guipuzcoan Company 
(1728–1785), being the organization that 
held the monopoly over the cocoa trade. 
She argues that the economic structure 
of the industry at this time was “both 
the product and the agent of chocolate’s 
demand”. The focus is not solely on Eu-
ropean markets for “New World” goods; 
discussions in this chapter also focus on 
cocoa as an “everyday reality” within “New 
Spain”.
Much of the book is devoted to chang-
ing practices of chocolate consumption 
through the development of rituals of 
sociability and associated material cul-
ture in an increasingly secularized Span-
ish society. Gender and public sociability 
are key themes. Chapter 2 explores the 
cultural appropriation of chocolate in the 
Spanish imperial context and the ways 
in which cocoa consumption became di-
vorced from the practices of Mesoameri-
can elites. Chapter 4 and chapter 5 pick up 
this story of the spread of consumption, 


Karen Struve: Wildes Wissen in der Encyclopédie. Koloniale Alterität, Wissen und Narration in der französischen Aufklärung (=Romanische Literaturen der Welt, Bd. 79), Berlin/ Boston: De Gruyter, 2020, 506 S.

Middell, Matthias

Editorial
While many issues of our journal in the recent past have focused on the last two to 
two and a half centuries, following the unfolding of the global condition in which the 
interconnectedness of different societies is in the foreground, this issue takes a differ-
ent perspective. It inquires into changes over the long span of seven or eight centuries, 
observing larger regions or individual societies initially in relative isolation from one 
another – keeping in mind, of course, that these societies remained continuously the 
same neither in their form of government, nor in their population composition, nor in 
their territorial extent. But for the purpose of diachronic comparison, this well-known 
complexity of change must be reduced to the fiction of a unity existing over time. In con-
trast to attempts to calculate GDP backwards for the territories of today’s nation-states, 
this is not problematic in the case of the studies published here on the development of 
wages and other remunerations for labour and services, because the concern is not to 
fictitious national statistics before the respective territory was even filled by an integrated 
economy, but rather to trends and significant examples. These are only possible where 
there is an exceptionally good tradition of suitable documents or where new procedures 
make it possible to construct data series from labouriously collected material. 
If we consider the large gaps we are confronted with between the selected examples, the 
problematic nature of some grand theories becomes even clearer. Recent global labour 
history has already shattered many such certainties in the last three decades, rejecting the 
idea of a linear (and therefore consequential) emergence of modern wage labour as well 
as the notion that coerced labour and free wage labour could coexist only in exceptional 
situations. In this way, theories that make a very clear distinction between the pre-in-
dustrial and industrial eras are also put to the test, for it is evident that there are serious 
differences in this respect between economic sectors and their regional manifestations. 
In this context, it proves productive to use the term remuneration to refer to a consider-
able diversity that the term wage obviously conceals rather than allows us to see. The 
term remuneration addresses a diversity of forms in which work is paid – the monetary 
form is an important one, but by no means the only one – and also of the diversity of the 
yardsticks by which remuneration is measured: working time spent, quantity of product 
achieved, completeness of activity (for example, in the area of care work). 
Comparativ | Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 32 (2022) Heft 1, S. 7–8.
8 | Editorial
Remuneration, according to another thesis of this issue, also plays an important role 
outside of salaried employment, namely in the most diverse forms of granting food, 
accommodation, clothes, tax exemptions, participation in the economic success of the 
company, and many other forms of privileged access to resources. However, this also 
entails additional costs, for example if employees have to bring their own tools (i.e. 
purchase and maintain them) in order to be able to perform the work. With the focus 
on remunerations, a more complex picture of income and expenses emerges than simple 
lists of wages paid allow. But this more complex picture also captures more accurately 
the importance that the activity performed had on the livelihood and reproduction of 
the labour force. Where sufficient data exist to measure remunerations in their entirety, 
it is also possible to compare them with earnings from wage labour. The conversion is 
complicated, but studies that for example compare the amount of calories provided to 
slaves in the highly productive plantation economies with those that wage labourers 
could acquire for their salaries in early industrialization point to a way to relate subsist-
ence resources. 
At the same time, the contributions in this issue show the many factors that played a role 
in the negotiation of remunerations: Institutions such as guilds or communities, collec-
tive and individual agency, demography, gender and ethnicity, and many others. 
If one follows the shift in perspective on remunerations, it may at first seem like a return 
to a complexity of many individual cases that seemed to have been overcome by the 
painstakingly established homogenized data series (primarily based on surviving pay-
rolls). However, the arguments are more than convincing that in this way the criticism 
of “unreal wages” that has arisen from the extrapolation of such data series for macro 
theories can be countered much more effectively. 
Matthias Middell/ Katja Castryck-Naumann


Editorial

Timonina, Liubov

Rezensionen | Reviews | 469
discussions/4033475/roundtable-xx-33-ag-hop-
kins-american-empire-global-history (accessed 1 
March 2021). 
Elana Wilson Rowe: Arctic  
Governance. Power in Cross-border  
Cooperation, Manchester:   
Manchester University Press, 2018, 
176 pp.
Reviewed by  
Liubov Timonina, Stockholm 
As the recent years have shown, the Arctic 
has come to occupy a distinguished place 
in contemporary social imaginaries and 
global political agendas. Together with 
climate change, environmental sustain-
ability, and ecological biodiversity, Arctic 
governance is perhaps the most favoured 
and revisited topic within Arctic-related 
research and policy-making. Yet, grasping 
the many faces of the Arctic and the com-
plexity of actors and factors involved in 
shaping its dynamic governance landscape 
poses an analytical and methodological 
challenge, which requires not only exten-
sive research experience but also, and per-
haps more so, academic sensitivity, creativ-
ity, and investigative thinking.
This is exactly why Elana Wilson Rowe’s 
book is wholeheartedly recommended for 
both academic and non-academic read-
ing. Written in a scientifically eloquent 
yet comprehensive and clear language, it 
is a unique combination of critical mul-
tidisciplinary approaches and a nuanced 
analysis of key actors in Arctic governance 
reweighed anew. Aiming to go beyond the 
disciplinary constraints of international re-
lations (IR), the author employs analytical 
tools from critical geography studies and 
science and technology studies (STS), see-
ing them as “windows on how relations of 
deference and dominance […] shape Arc-
tic cooperation” (p. 2), and carefully tests 
their applicability throughout the book. 
Arctic Governance is by and large a quest 
for understanding what power is and what 
power does in current global politics. The 
book revisits the notion of power and 
reassesses its analytical productivity in 
studying cross-border cooperation and di-
plomacy in the Arctic. With a particular 
focus on power representations and perfor-
mances, the book takes a “systematic and 
theoretically informed look at how power 
relations are enacted, maintained and con-
tested in the production of Arctic cross-
border governance” (p.12) and “sensitises” 
the readers to significant elements of these 
relations. Conceptualizing cooperation as 
an ecosystem of intersecting policy fields, 
Rowe finds her own way of demonstrating 
the hierarchies and inequalities inherent to 
relations among Arctic actors, depending 
on their ability to successfully define what 
matters most and thus gain and maintain 
authority. 
Unlike many publications on the topic, 
Arctic Governance is explicitly “selective” 
and “concrete”, as Rowe points out in the 
very beginning. The selectivity is clearly 
seen in the choice of actors and analysed 
themes informed by the extensive body of 
interviews with Arctic actors conducted 
from 2004 to 2017. The specificity of the 
primary sources brings a human, intimate 
dimension to Arctic governance and pro-
vides a unique insight into the everyday 
470 | Rezensionen | Reviews
politics of Arctic governance, making it 
easier to understand the background and 
motifs of its actors. At the same time, this 
inevitably raises the question of empirical 
representativity and consistency and thus 
dictates the rules and forms of storytelling. 
Arctic Governance therefore reads more 
like a compilation of interconnected and 
interdependent cases – examples of main-
taining and contesting power relations in 
cross-border cooperation – neatly inter-
woven by a conceptual common thread. 
The indisputable advantage of this book 
is its self-reflective stance: it “engages in 
theorising by bringing hitherto underused 
concepts generated by research on other 
global policy fields and empirical findings 
on Arctic governance into productive, if 
not predictive or generalisable, conversa-
tion” (p. 17). Rowe is well aware of her 
own aims and limitations – an attitude 
that establishes an honest communication 
line with her readers and leaves no gap in 
expectations.
To illustrate her theoretical and analyti-
cal claims, the author guides the readers 
along five chapters of the book. Chapter 
I provides a brief yet significant introduc-
tion to Arctic international affairs from a 
historicized perspective and gives an excel-
lent overview of key actors in the Arctic. 
Moving further, the author develops four 
propositions on power, grounding them in 
empirical cases. In Chapter II the author 
illustrates various ways of seeing and fram-
ing the Arctic, which consequently affect 
political outcomes. The main contribu-
tions here are two profound in-depth case 
studies on non-Arctic states seeking mem-
bership in the Arctic Council and business 
actors negotiating their agency within Arc-
tic governance landscape. 
Chapter III introduces an additional ana-
lytical entry point and takes on the task of 
theorizing hierarchies in order to show the 
“hierarchical elevator” in action and the 
malleable dynamics of power relations in 
the Arctic. According to the author, think-
ing in terms of hierarchies allows one to 
“acknowledge the presence of leading ac-
tors, while explicitly directing attention 
to many other […] roles available within 
a policy field […] Hierarchies can differ 
across global policy fields and can change 
without disrupting broader stability in 
world politics” (p.59). Using the example 
of Norway and its status-seeking pathway 
in Arctic governance hierarchy, Rowe trac-
es Norway’s way to being recognized as a 
“knowledge power” and being able to find 
its niche based on its “creative approach” 
and a well-informed, disillusioned posi-
tion in relation to Russia and its “great-
powerness”. 
One of the most intriguing parts of the 
book is perhaps Chapter IV. Here, the 
author offers an analytical exercise for its 
readers: “we need to consider how delim-
ited and ‘local’ the meeting places of cross-
border politics – what we can term global 
governance policy fields – frequently 
become” (p. 83). Localizing and contex-
tualizing power performance is a crucial 
practice in developing a critical approach 
to power in Arctic governance, as the com-
mon bird’s-eye view of the Arctic inevita-
bly upscales any matters and thus diffuses 
the materiality of discursive interactions. 
The chapter focuses on the evolution of 
Russian Arctic post-Cold War diplomacy, 
which is unpacked to “illustrate that Arctic 
governance takes place in a highly social-
ised environment layered with field-specif-
ic norms” (p. 103).
Rezensionen | Reviews | 471
Chapter V contemplates the agency of sci-
entific and indigenous stakeholders within 
the Arctic cross-border cooperation. By 
applying the concept of civic epistemology 
as a “framework of indicators that helps 
us think comprehensively about different 
ways in which authority can be articulated 
or challenged” (p. 129), the author seeks 
to address the uneasy question “whose 
knowledge matters?” and outline the ways 
non-state actors negotiate and establish 
their authority in collecting, representing, 
and applying knowledge in policy-making. 
Drawing on the year-long research ob-
servations of the author and scrupulous 
analysis, Arctic Governance can be seen 
as a handbook on Arctic governance. For 
newcomers to the Arctic, it is an excel-
lent starting point for familiarizing oneself 
with international relations and develop-
ing a critical perspective on the matter. For 
professionals, this book is a brilliant col-
lection of case studies on high-level power 
dynamics in the Arctic, which not only 
advocates new ways of conceptualizing 
Arctic actors but also serves as a practical 
guide for researchers keen on grasping and 
investigating the fugitive, tacit mecha-
nisms of Arctic governance and diplomacy.
Élise Féron / Jyrki Käkönen / Gabriel 
Rached (eds.): Revisiting Regionalism 
and the Contemporary World Order. 
Perspectives from the BRICS and 
beyond, Berlin / Toronto: Opladen /
Barbara Budrich, 2019, 302 pp.
Reviewed by  
Jens Herpolsheimer, Leipzig
Ten years after the first summit of the 
BRICS grouping (Brazil, Russia, India, 
China, and South Africa) the editors of 
this book have taken the opportunity 
to reflect on the role of this grouping 
and its participating states in what they 
(and many other observers) call a chang-
ing world order. Identifying the BRICS 
as potential challengers of one or several 
Western-centric international orders (IO) 
(p. 22), the volume’s declared interest is in 
specifying what exactly is changing when 
new stable forms of international coop-
eration are emerging and what responses 
these propose to current challenges (p. 
21). Aiming at a critical study from a mul-
tidisciplinary and pluralist perspective (p. 
25), the volume comprises an introduc-
tion and 11 chapters, organized into 3 
parts: “Emergence and Challenges of Re-
gionalism” (4 chapters), “Contemporary 
Regionalism in Practice” (4 chapters), and 
“Theoretical Perspectives on the Changing 
World Order” (3 chapters). The authors 
of these chapters hail from “around the 
world” (p. 25); however, most of them are 
associated with a research project titled 
“Regional Challenges to Multilateralism”, 


Elana Wilson Rowe: Arctic Governance. Power in Cross-border Cooperation, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018, 176 pp.

Schwanitz, Wolfgang G.

496 | Rezensionen | Reviews
mean a different approach to different 
parts of the European Union, in part be-
cause of these contrasting histories? This 
is a thoughtful and well-researched book 
that will encourage further work on small 
powers and the Cold War, transnational 
exchange, and Sino-European relations.
Samuel Krug: Die „Nachrichtenstelle 
für den Orient“ im Kontext globaler 
Verflechtungen (1914–1921):  
Strukturen – Akteure – Diskurse, 
Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2020, 
380 S.
Rezensiert von 
Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, Pennsylvania
Nach Maren Bragullas Studie 20071 ist 
diese Dissertation die jüngste Arbeit, die 
sich nur der Nachrichtenstelle für den 
Orient widmet. Samuel Krug stellt ihr drei 
Thesen voran: Akteure benutzten diese 
Stelle des Auswärtigen Amts im Weltkrieg 
auch als Plattform für ihre Interessen, ih-
rem Auftrag zuwiderlaufend, der lautete, 
in britischen, französischen und russischen 
Kolonien Islamismus für antikoloniale Re-
volten zu schüren. In der vorliegenden Ar-
beit geht es Wirksamkeit und Diskurs der 
Nachrichtenstelle. 
Dabei ist These eins wenig überraschend: 
da Personen keine Roboter sind, hegen 
sie stets eigene Interessen. Interaktionen 
waren unharmonisch, dienten übergeord-
neten deutschen Zielen, so These zwei: 
Kooperation war trotz momentaner In-
teresseneinheit von Spannung, Streit und 
Misstrauen geprägt – wie im Krieg meist 
üblich. Die dritte These: edierte Texte 
dienten nicht nur der deutschen Propa-
ganda, sondern privaten Ambitionen, 
oft nach Kontakten der Vorzeit. Das hat 
bereits Gerhard Höpp aufgezeigt.2 Krug 
ergänzt dies durch detailreiche Quellen-
arbeit in verschiedenen Überlieferungen, 
auch, weil das Archiv der Stelle als verlo-
ren gilt. 
Drei Kapitel behandeln die Nachrichten-
stelle als Verein, die verschiedenen Akteure 
und Diskurse, letztere werden gelungen 
ausgelotet. Nach Kriegsausbruch Mitte 
1914 prüfte man zuerst unter dem Di-
plomaten Max von Oppenheim ein Über-
setzungsbüro, um Feindpropaganda zu 
schwächen oder vorauszueilen: eine Kol-
legialbehörde mit horizontaler Entschei-
dungsebene. Neben der Arabischen gab 
es die Türkische, Persische, Indische und 
Russische Abteilung samt Redaktion. Das 
Konsensgebot fiel bald, heraus kam eine 
klassische Linienorganisation unter nur 
deutschen Leitern.
Sie führten zwei Dutzend Nichtdeutsche, 
davon sechs bis neun in der Arabischen 
Abteilung. Alle hatten studiert und rich-
teten sich meist auf Arabisch, Französisch 
und Englisch an Muslime der Kolonien 
und Räume Frankreichs, Großbritanni-
ens und des Osmanischen Reiches; der 
russischen Macht, etwa im Kaukasus; im 
Lager um Berlin mit islamischen Kriegsge-
fangenen. Wichtig waren neutrale Länder 
wie Amerika oder die Schweiz als Propa-
gandaziele und Refugium von Islamisten.  
Durch das Anzetteln islamistischer Revol-
ten sollten im kolonialen Hinterland der 
Entente Truppen gebunden werden, die 
daher in Europa fehlten. Die Ziele der 
Rezensionen | Reviews | 497
Nachrichtenstelle barg von Oppenheims 
Jihad-Plan.3 Es liegt aus meiner Sicht 
nahe, diesen Plan und die Institution ge-
meinsam zu betrachten.
Laut Endbericht 19184 wurden die 
Mittelost-Rekrutierungen der Alliierten 
gestört, Jihadfatwas und „Texte von Ori-
entalen für Orientalen“ zum Kalifat pro-
pagiert. Gründungschef von Oppenheim 
leitete 1915–1917 in der Deutschen Bot-
schaft in Istanbul den Zweig der Nach-
richtenstelle, die in Berlin Dragoman Karl 
E. Schabinger von Schowingen, ab Anfang 
1916 Eugen Mittwoch anführten. Mitte 
des Jahres 1918 wirkten dort 59 Personen 
in 32 Räumen, darunter 14 Frauen – ab-
gesehen von Ruth Buka – in Hilfsrollen; 
Kriegsdienstbefreiung und Geld waren 
Motive für die Mitwirkung.
Zweifellos hatte die Nachrichtenstelle 
„Die Revolutionierung der islamischen 
Gebiete unserer Feinde“ zum Kernziel ih-
rer Propaganda, wie von Oppenheim sei-
ne Denkschrift an den Kaiser im Oktober 
1914 programmatisch betitelte. Der Plan 
zeigte das Ziel, die Nachrichtenstelle bot 
die Mittel. Wie geplant, nutzte sie Bruder-
schaften als Plattform. Krug nannte dabei 
die an-Naqshbandiyya, ar-Rahmaniyya, 
al-Qadiriyya und as-Sanusiyya. 
Dazu sollte laut Jihad-Plan der Sultan-
Kalif Krieg und Revolutionspropaganda 
ausführen: Es ging um die Mitwirkung 
der Türkei unter der Fahne des Sultan-
Kalifs in der Propaganda, dessen direkte 
Aufforderung zu Aufständen gegen „unse-
re Feinde“, um ein kriegerisches Vorgehen 
der Osmanen am Nil und in russisch-isla-
mischen Räumen: ohne solche Aktivitäten 
ließ sich keine ernsthafte Revolutionie-
rung vorstellen.
Viele „kleine Putsche und Attentate“ un-
ter Kolonialisten sollten folgen, keine 
flächendeckende Großrevolte, für die die 
Länder zu verschieden waren. Krug stellt 
den Jihad-Plan und die Nachrichtenstelle 
kaum einander gegenüber: als erhelle man 
das Netzwerk und ignoriere dessen „Ge-
brauchsanweisung“.
Hätte Krug von Oppenheims Erstberichte 
(auch #48, Kairo 05.07.1898 zur Panis-
lamischen Bewegung), Kaiser Wilhelms 
Ideen aus „20 Jahren meiner Türkenpo-
litik“ und Jihad-Texte des Islam-Trios 
Carl H. Becker, Hugo Grothe und Eugen 
Mittwoch benutzt, schiene das ABC auf: 
1896–1913 Ideen für Jihad-Revolten in 
Kolonien der Alliierten, siehe Sudan; 1914 
Jihad-Plan und -Realität; 1915–1918 
Nachrichtenstelle mit Einfluss auf multi-
ple Genozide dort.  
Der Armenische Genozid wird kaum er-
wähnt, ebenso nicht der versuchte Geno-
zid an Palästinas Juden, obwohl der Ägyp-
ter Mansur Rifat Öl ins Feuer goss, als er 
Mitte Oktober 1915 im Kopenhagener 
Extrablatt meinte, alle Armenier hätten 
sich gegen Istanbul erhoben. Er zählte zu 
den Jungtürken und zur Arabischen Ab-
teilung, die seine Worte weit propagierte, 
was osmanische Angriffe gegen lokale Mi-
noritäten deckte. Er wirkte dabei in einer 
Doppelrolle. 
Die Nachrichtenstelle übte in der „eigent-
lich islamistischen Propaganda große Zu-
rückhaltung“ und ließ keine Deutschen 
direkt auftreten: „keine einzige den Islam 
berührende Frage wurde von ihr selbstän-
dig behandelt“.5 Da sie zum Auswärtigen 
Amt zählte, sollte ihre Revolten-Anzette-
lung nicht bekannt werden. Nur die Lei-
ter wussten um jene Aufgabe ihrer Stelle; 
kein Wunder, dass von Oppenheims lange 
498 | Rezensionen | Reviews
geheimer Jihad-Plan im Alltag unerwähnt 
blieb, sonst hätten sie ihre Karten zu früh 
aufgedeckt. Krug betonte, wie solche Zu-
sammenhänge zur Nachrichtenstelle (S. 
192) verschwiegen wurden. Er hat dazu 
manches zuerst entdeckt. 
Laut von Oppenheim sei der Kriegsein-
tritt des Kalifen die beste Propaganda. 
Er umriss im Jihad-Plan, den Pan-Islam 
zu benutzen: Propaganda sei in Istanbul 
zu zentralisieren, aber stets von deutscher 
Seite zu leiten, jedoch so, dass die Türken 
glaubten, ihnen stehe ein freundlicher Be-
rater zur Seite und sich als eigentliche Ma-
cher sahen – und ausgaben. Dazu entstand 
von Marokko über Anatolien und Arabien 
bis nach Iran das Netz der Nachrichtensä-
le. Gustav Stresemann sah 1916 zwei von 
36 (bald bis 75) in Stambul und Pera: die 
Propaganda-Art samt Kurierdienst sei sehr 
gut, weil sie nicht als deutsche Beeinflus-
sung empfunden werde, da in den Nach-
richtenbüros nicht erkenntlich ist, dass 
Deutschland ihr Veranstalter sei.  
Es ging um Propaganda (für Insurrektion 
oder Destabilisierung) in Mittelost, Hilfe 
aus neutralen Ländern wie Amerika und 
der Schweiz sowie von den Mittelmäch-
ten. Zudem gab es für diese Räume zehn 
Extrapunkte als Amtsgebrauch: Betreuung 
und Anleitung von Orientalen als Gäs-
ten, Auskunftei mit Zeitungs-/Personal-
archiven, euro-amerikanische Presseschau, 
Edition von Periodika, Übersetzungen; 
Zensur von Texten, Firmen, Briefen und 
Grammophonplatten; Fürsorge von gefan-
genen Muslimen, Georgiern, Indern und 
deren Briefkontrolle. Resultat 1914–1918: 
1.012 Texte in neun Sprachen Europas, 
insgesamt über drei Millionen Texte.6
Drei Kernprinzipien der Nachrichtenstelle 
waren 1) in islamischen Fragen nur geeig-
neten Muftis, Mullahs oder Führern im 
Berliner Interesse Ideen zu geben, um sie 
vorzuschieben und dann gezielt deren Fat-
was und Texte zu verbreiten. So notierte 
Abd ar-Rahman Azzam (1945–1952 Chef 
der Araberliga) 1917 den vom Auswärti-
gen Amt angeregten Text (S. 191) „Frei-
heitskampf der Tripolitaner“. 2) Männer 
der Nachrichtenstelle sollten Doppeljobs 
erfüllen, einerseits in der Stelle, anderer-
seits in „national-islamischen Kreisen“ zur 
größeren Ausstrahlung, dabei aber wenn 
möglich die Stelle heraushalten. 3) Nur 
Kenner mit Sprach- und Regionalkennt-
nissen einsetzen, jedoch keine Abenteurer. 
Nicht nur nach dem Kriegsausbruch (S. 
155), sondern schon davor gab es Berliner 
Aktivitäten, Inder und Araber auf Tagun-
gen, in Revolutions- und Befreiungsko-
mitees, Kongress-Bewegungen zu einen 
sowie Bruderschaften als antibritische 
Plattformen zu bilden (S. 222). Fraglich 
ist die These, Berlin habe 1916 die Jihad-
Propaganda abgesagt (S. 187).7 Das betraf 
allein Lager mit islamischen Gefangenen. 
Die Jihadisierung lief weiter, so der Ver-
sand des Propaganda-Atlas 20178 und En-
ver Pashas „Islamische Armee“.
Es ist dem Autor in vielem zuzustimmen. 
Gleichzeitig lässt sich mancher Gedanken-
gang noch erweitern: Rückten Muslime 
tatsächlich erst mit „Eroberungen süd-
lich der Sahara in den 1880er Jahren in 
das deutsche Bewusstsein“ (S. 211) oder 
geschah dies schon durch Angriffe gegen 
Wien 1529/1683 oder Napoleons Invasi-
on am Nil und Euphrat vor 1800, durch 
die Dichter und Denker der Aufklärung 
sowie die Deutschen Mittelost-Gründer-
jahre in den drei Dekaden ab 1884? Sollte 
man nicht die Beziehungen zwischen ver-
Rezensionen | Reviews | 499
schiedenen Generationen transnationaler 
Akteure aufzeigen?
Die Nachrichtenstelle verknüpfte Netz-
werke in Nachrichtensälen im Osmanen-
reich und Zweigstellen im Kaukasus, in 
Tiflis, Täbris, Misrata Tripolitanien und 
Vertriebsstellen in Zürich, Absatzstellen 
im Buchhandel in Lausanne, Amsterdam, 
Rotterdam, Haag, Stockholm, dazu ge-
hörte auch Bahnhofspropaganda an Kios-
ken. Wie der Autor zeigt, übernahm sie der 
Deutsche Überseedienst. Ungeachtet der 
Monita hat Samuel Krug der Forschung 
einen Sonderdienst und seine Begabungen 
erwiesen, unüblich neue Inhalte zu bear-
beiten und neue Wege zu gehen.
Anmerkungen:
1 M. Bragulla, Die Nachrichtenstelle für den Ori-
ent. Fallstudie einer Propagandainstitution im 
Ersten Weltkrieg, Saarbrücken 2007. 
2 G. Höpp, Arabische und islamische Periodika in 
Berlin und Brandenburg, Berlin 1994, S. 5–58.
3 Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, PAAA, 
R20938, Denkschrift, Die Revolutionierung 
der islamischen Gebiete unserer Feinde, Berlin 
28.10.–14.11.1914.
4 PAAA, R1535, Berlin 09.08.1918, An Wesen-
donk, Bericht über die Nachrichtenstelle für den 
Orient, Herbert Müller, 1914–1918.
5 Ebd. 
6 Ebd., S. 8. 
7 PAAA, R 21261 Wesendonk, Notiz, PAAA, 
R21261, Berlin 07121916, 37–40: General 
Hoffman, Kriegsministerium: im Konsens mit 
der Obersten Heeresleitung soll Propaganda für 
den Heiligen Krieg in Zossener Sonderlagern 
beendet werden. Die Lagerzeitung „El-Djihad“ 
soll eingestellt werden; Vermerk: sie soll weiter-
erscheinen. Dies stützt nicht Krugs These (S. 
281), dass Jihad-Rhetorik nach 1916 keine Rolle 
mehr spielte. 
8 PAAA, R1531, Notiz Perzynski, Vertrieb 4.000x 
Propaganda-Atlas, Berlin 25.09.2017.
Robert Niebuhr: The Search for a 
Cold War Legitimacy. Foreign Policy 
and Tito’s Yugoslavia, Leiden: Brill 
Publisher, 2018, 248 pp.
Reviewed by 
Arno Trültzsch, Berlin
During the last 30 years, scholarship on 
the former Yugoslavia has shown a clear 
tendency to concentrate solely on the wars 
of the 1990s as a kind of eventual catas-
trophe of the failed “experiment of a state” 
(Holm Sundhaussen). Such interpreta-
tions link the contesting nationalisms to 
the legitimacy crisis of socialist Yugoslavia 
after Marshall Josip Broz Tito’s death in 
1980, with only brief references to ear-
lier political controversies and conflicts 
that contributed to the mass violence and 
ethnic cleansing of the 1990s. Notable ex-
ceptions are the ambitious historical syn-
theses on both Yugoslav states by Sabrina 
P. Ramet,1 the late Holm Sundhaussen,2 
and Marie-Janine Calic3. Since the late 
2000s and especially the last years, multi-
ple scholars have taken over this different 
approach, describing and assessing the fate 
of Yugoslavia as an open-ended historical 
process with several possible outcomes (p. 
3). 
This is also one of the main arguments 
made by Robert Niebuhr’s study on the 
entanglement of Titoist Yugoslavia’s for-
eign policy and the search for legitimacy 
beyond communist ideology. Based on his 
dissertation (completed in 2009), Niebuhr 
wrote a compelling piece on the very na-


German

Samuel Krug: Die „Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient“ im Kontext globaler Verflechtungen (1914–1921): Strukturen – Akteure – Diskurse, Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2020, 380 S.

Pula, Besnik

690 | Rezensionen | Reviews
ognized. Income inequality did, however, 
fall but with Indonesia as important ex-
ception. In the human development rank-
ings, Southeast Asian countries mostly fol-
lowed per capita GDP but Vietnam was, 
for instance, performed better. By and 
large, school attendance levels in Southeast 
Asia have risen, although access to tertiary 
education remains highly dependent on 
household income.
Chapter 8 leaves the chronological ap-
proach and enters into a theme-based 
discussion of how governments have in-
tervened in order to raise living standards. 
National government programmes with 
regard to land reform, land settlement 
policies, public works, control of food 
prices, family planning, and decentraliza-
tion programmes have produced mixed 
results with little effect on poverty allevia-
tion. Chapter 9 summarizes the findings 
of this study. Living standards in Southeast 
Asia have risen but to different degrees in 
individual countries. At the same time, 
income and wealth inequalities as well as 
differences in access to health and educa-
tion have proven to be enduring. In sum, 
economic growth by itself is not sufficient 
to address imbalances but more efficient 
policy interventions are needed. 
As stated above, this is an impressive book 
by a leading scholar, providing the reader 
with a huge amount of detailed informa-
tion on economic development and its ef-
fects on social inequality in Southeast Asia. 
It is exemplary of what economic history 
can offer us in terms of process description 
and systematic explanation. Anne Booth 
does not only render factual evidence but 
also critically engages with a huge number 
of expert studies, quantitative data and the 
instruments of measurement itself. She 
offers a view across entire Southeast Asia, 
making many interesting comparisons 
within the region itself but also with the 
advanced economies in North Asia and 
elsewhere, so that both shared trends and 
country specifics are convincingly exposed 
and explained. In the text, the reader will 
find many useful tables, in which statisti-
cal indicators offer clear insights. Through 
this approach, a highly differentiated as-
sessment of growth, living standards, and 
inequality emerges. It is self-evident that 
in the economic history approach pursued 
here, cultural factors of social change and 
subjective experiences of injustice find lit-
tle place. For this there exists another lit-
erature. 
Max Trecker: Red Money for the 
Global South. East-South Economic 
Relations in the Cold War, Abingdon: 
Routledge, 2020, 243 pp.
Reviewed by 
Besnik Pula, Blacksburg
Historians of Eastern Europe and the So-
viet Union are increasingly disentangling 
the complex nature of global economic 
relations during the “bipolar” Cold War 
era. Among these complexities are the 
sometimes intricate economic ties that 
developed between the Soviet Union, its 
European socialist allies, and the Global 
South. Examining these historical ties is 
significant not only for shedding light on 
the ideologically-driven efforts by the So-
Rezensionen | Reviews | 691
viet Union and its East European allies to 
offer its international trade and develop-
ment order as an alternative to the Western 
capitalist one, but also to understand the 
politics and the often pragmatic interests 
that motivated – and sometimes hindered 
– Soviet and East European economic in-
terests in the South.
Max Trecker presents Red Money for the 
Global South as a contribution to this area 
of research. The book’s title and introduc-
tion suggest a focus on East-South eco-
nomic relations. Upon closer reading one 
finds the book to more broadly encompass 
economic relations both within the social-
ist bloc of the East and between East and 
South. This is partly due to the fact that 
the main perspective from which Trecker 
recounts this history is the Soviet-led trade 
organization, the Council for Mutual Eco-
nomic Assistance (CMEA). As a distinct 
and rare kind of socialist international 
institution, the CMEA offers Trecker the 
venue from which to view the develop-
ment of these economic relations. For 
Trecker, a historian based at the Leibniz 
Institute for Contemporary History, the 
CMEA Secretariat’s archives also served 
an important (but not sole) documentary 
source for the book.
On the one hand, this approach narrows 
the historical analysis of East-South eco-
nomic relations, given that the emphasis 
remains on multilateral undertakings that 
were organized by or coordinated under 
the CMEA, rather than bilateral aid and 
economic exchange. On the other hand, 
centring upon the CMEA enables Trecker 
to gain a handle over this complex topic, 
by reconstructing distinct episodes, pro-
jects, and interactions between state del-
egations, technical groups, and officials 
from the socialist countries and countries 
of the Global South as diverse as Cuba, 
Syria, Iraq, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Mexico, 
and India. As an important by-product, 
because Trecker is partly interested in 
the motivations driving cooperation (and 
non-cooperation), the view from the 
CMEA also provides useful insight into 
intra-socialist economic relations, includ-
ing intra-socialist tensions, through the 
day-to-day workings of the institution that 
was claimed to be the embodiment of “so-
cialist internationalism.”
The book is organized in four parts, each 
with a topical focus on aspects of coop-
eration, competition, and conflict within 
the CMEA framework. While the first 
part discusses the origins of the CMEA in 
the emerging geopolitical rivalry between 
the United States and the Soviet Union, 
the others parts demonstrate the ways 
in which the Soviet Union and its allies 
navigated through and balanced between 
bold ideological declarations touting the 
values of solidarity at the international 
level, geopolitical interests, national eco-
nomic goals, changing political condi-
tions and opportunities across the South 
after decolonization, and the pressures of 
competing internationally against an eco-
nomically much more powerful bloc of 
adversaries. Several of the book’s chapters 
illustrate these themes. For example, chap-
ter 3 discusses efforts, beginning in 1971, 
by CMEA members to shift from basic 
commodity trade towards the promotion 
of technologically advanced development 
through the formulation of the “Complex 
Programme”. The programme began with 
ambitious goals of advancing socialist eco-
nomic integration after Khrushchev’s push 
for instituting joint economic planning at 
692 | Rezensionen | Reviews
the CMEA level encountered fatal oppo-
sition from the Soviet Union’s European 
socialist partners. The programme led to 
a number of large inter-socialist projects, 
including the Mir and Druzhba energy 
systems, and the establishment of the In-
ternational Investment Bank to support 
multilateral projects within and beyond 
the CMEA. However, the programme’s 
design and implementation demonstrated 
that CMEA states were not interested in 
any form of multilateral cooperation that 
would come at the expense of national 
economic sovereignty.
Another chapter illustrates episodes of 
intra-socialist competition by recounting 
the case of a joint CMEA project to build 
a cement factory in Syria. Led by East 
German engineers and with Bulgarian as-
sistance, problems with planning and in 
procuring necessary supplies led to long 
delays and increasing impatience among 
the Bulgarians and frustration by Syrian 
officials. These produced moments of in-
tense drama in which blame passed from 
one party to the next, illustrating the prac-
tical problems and cross-cutting political 
and bureaucratic pressures and bottlenecks 
parties faced in such complex undertak-
ings. Nonetheless, after major delays, the 
Syrians did get their cement factory, which 
ultimately proved to be of high economic 
value for the country, because it dramati-
cally cut Syrian reliance on imported ce-
ment. Trecker uses the latter example to 
show why, even under such difficulties, 
countries of the South still welcomed 
CMEA economic and technical assistance. 
Projects also often came with a dramatical-
ly lower price tag than what was on offer 
from the West and, as Trecker documents, 
with a certain amount of leverage exercised 
by the Southern partners over the terms, 
such as reimbursing credits with commod-
ity exports.
The book illustrates similar problems of 
cooperation driven by competing inter-
ests, intra-bloc rivalries, bureaucratic inef-
ficiencies, opportunism, and at times out-
right obstruction by some members within 
the CMEA. Some of these tensions involve 
diverging interests in relation to the South 
between the resource-rich Soviet Union 
and its resource-poor European allies. We 
understand how the debt problems of the 
1980s intensified CMEA competition for 
hard currency and the strains they put on 
East-South economic relations. Of inter-
est is also chapter 9’s discussion of the 
changing balance of industrial prowess in 
the 1970s, as CMEA members began to 
see major countries of the South less as 
economic opportunities and more as com-
petitors. 
One major drawback of the book is that, 
while offering interesting details from 
historical episodes of East-South rela-
tionships, it does not always do enough 
to situate the cases within a broader his-
torical context of international or regional 
economic and political relations, or does 
so unevenly across the chapters. We also 
do not gain a clear sense of the changing 
importance of the CMEA as a mechanism 
of East-South economic ties relative to bi-
lateral and other arrangements. Similarly, 
the book sporadically addresses a range 
of theoretical and historiographical con-
cerns, such as questioning depictions of 
East-East and East-South ties as “impe-
rial” in nature, giving insight into reasons 
for CMEA’s limited formal expansion be-
yond Europe, and the consequences of the 
1980s debt crisis for East-South trade. In 
Rezensionen | Reviews | 693
these, it offers thought-provoking inter-
pretations that challenge existing litera-
tures. However, the lack of an overarching 
theoretical and conceptual framework to 
organize the book’s inquiry, and the lack 
of any concentrated regional focus with 
regard to countries of the South, contrib-
ute to the book reading more like a set of 
studies held together by a shared theme 
rather than functioning as structured case 
analyses. These lead the book to eventu-
ally offer a broad set of general historical 
observations, more so than advance any 
specific theoretical or historical argument 
about East-South relations or Cold War 
international political economy. Nonethe-
less, this criticism should not be seen as 
detracting from the value of the important 
historical work Trecker has accomplished 
in this book, whose contributions will be 
of relevance to global and regional histori-
ans, and scholars of globalization and in-
ternational political economy.
Sara Lorenzini: Global Development. 
A Cold War History. Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 2019, 296 pp.
Reviewed by 
Bence Kocsev, Budapest
Sara Lorenzini’s monograph is a quite re-
cent work bringing valuable new perspec-
tives into the promising corpus of research 
that has been flourishing in the last years 
on the broader topic of international de-
velopment and its global history.1 Delving 
into the many sources becoming available 
in the research field, these studies provide 
insightful narratives and open up new av-
enues of research and commentary for the 
historiography of development. One of 
the important yields of these studies is that 
they look beyond American perspectives 
and consider initiatives coming from dif-
ferent actors to be decisive in the evolution 
of the international development regime 
of the Cold War while investigating the 
complex connections and interactions that 
these actors produced. 
Against this background, the volume un-
der review adopts an innovative approach 
that seeks to tease out a more a more criti-
cal analysis from the contexts within which 
these policies unfolded in the second half 
of the twentieth century. Impressive in its 
scope and depth, Lorenzini’s book cer-
tainly deserves a prominent place in this 
discourse. Joining a growing body of re-
search, the book shows that the Cold War 
was a far more comprehensive conflict that 
went far beyond military and diplomatic 
conflicts and clashes, taking on many 
other facets, including a fierce economic 
and social rivalry. From this viewpoint, as 
David Engerman suggests, development 
politics is essentially the result of the inter-
action of national and international power 
struggles.2 
When analysing the forty years of Cold 
War development, the book speaks to so 
many points that it is impossible to sum-
marize its main messages within the limits 
of this review, and it is much less possible 
to comment on them with the prominence 
they deserve. For these reasons, I will just 
highlight a few selective ones. 
In Lorenzini’s convincing analysis, in-
ternational development serves as a cen-


Max Trecker: Red Money for the Global South. East-South Economic Relations in the Cold War, Abingdon: Routledge, 2020, 243 pp.

Maruschke, Megan

ANNOTATIONEN | ANNOTATIONS
Brandon Mills: The World Colonization 
Made. The Racial Geography of Early 
American Empire, Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2020
The World Colonization Made is a title that 
makes this book hard to place. And that is 
precisely the issue at stake with histories of 
the American Colonization Society (ACS). 
Very often, histories of the ACS place its 
efforts within the framework of US domes-
tic politics and racial exclusion. Sometimes 
this organization, with a largely white back-
ing, is studied in contrast to Black emigra-
tion projects in the nineteenth century. 
This book takes the perspective that the 
ACS and founding of Liberia can be placed 
within a broader imperial US ideology 
whereby Black and Indigenous people both 
faced removal modeled on republican self-
rule. The book is well organized and works 
through the shifting geographies of colo-
nization, including the Trans-Appalachian 
West, Liberia, Western removal, and the 
Americas. The author situates these ideolo-
gies and projects, some more realized than 
others, within an imperial and geopolitical 
framework. That is, founding (quasi) inde-
pendent settler states on the basis of race 
could also fulfill geopolitical goals while 
serving a domestic purpose: supporting 
white settler colonialism. 
This book is important for several audi-
ences beyond scholars of the American 
Colonization Society and the founding of 
Liberia. Colonizationism as explored in this 
book contributes to debates on the format 
of the US empire in the nineteenth century, 
before the US had formal colonies in name. 
It importantly broadens the scope beyond 
the issue of white settler colonialism to 
show the important racial geography and 
geopolitical aims of colonizationism (ie. 
not only a national project) and its com-
mercial promise. Secondly, the book also 
discusses how colonizationism relates to 
white Americans’ reactions to the found-
ing of Haiti, and is therefore of interest to 
scholars who deal with Haitian and US re-
lations. And third, though the author does 
compare ACS to British efforts in Sierra 
Leone, this book more broadly contributes 
to understanding US empire in a way that 
speaks closely to European colonization in 
the nineteenth century: How to foster a 
“republic” or “nation,” while excluding cer-
tain populations – especially on the basis 
of race – from those rights? Colonization-
ism promised white Americans a solution 
to that conundrum.  As such, this book 
should be read broadly among nineteenth-
century imperial historians.
Megan Maruschke, Duisburg-Essen


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