The Missionaries of Order. Law, Sovereignty, and Government in the Political Thought of the Administrators of the British Empire (c.1750-1900)

Questa tesi è un’analisi storico-concettuale del pensiero politico di alcuni tra i più influenti amministratori dell’Impero britannico tra la metà del XVIII e la fine del XIX secolo. Si vedrà come gli eccezionali momenti di crisi che caratterizzarono questo secolo e mezzo della storia imperiale (la Rivoluzione americana, l’abolizione della schiavitù e il Sepoy Mutiny, ma anche l’emergere delle rivendicazioni dei lavoratori in Gran Bretagna) spinsero le figure amministrative attraverso l’Impero a ripensare alcune categorie del pensiero politico. L’obiettivo è quello di tracciare le evoluzioni nella concezione della sovranità imperiale britannica decostruendo le auto-narrazioni del liberalismo moderno, tanto le sue logiche spaziali (la scissione dello spazio imperiale in Stato e mondo coloniale) quanto quelle temporali (la concezione progressiva del tempo storico). Il pensiero politico degli amministratori appare un campo d’indagine particolarmente proficuo a questo scopo: essi – a metà tra teoria e prassi, al punto di congiunzione tra Stato e società, e in viaggio dalla metropoli alla colonia – applicarono la teoria liberale appresa in Inghilterra al governo dell’Impero, e così facendo ne portarono alla luce aporie e cortocircuiti. Alla fine della parabola del pensiero imperiale che qui si delinea, si vedrà come la crisi dell’idea di progresso si porti dietro la disillusione circa ogni rassicurante pretesa di aver neutralizzato il conflitto nello spazio domestico, espellendolo nelle colonie: il tentativo fallito della civilising mission liberale di normalizzare le gerarchie sociali e razziali in un ordine borghese stabile portò a ripensare la sovranità come un management che, fondando la riproduzione del rule of law su un gerarchico principio di governo, fronteggiasse efficientemente i conflitti su scala imperiale. Nello spazio imperiale globale di fine Ottocento, la tensione tra «home» e «abroad» pare infine risolversi, e la colonia diventa il campo di sperimentazione di strategie di governo per correggere i problemi della madrepatria.My doctoral thesis is a historical-conceptual analysis of the political thought of some of the most influential administrators of the British empire between the 1750s and the 1890s. The exceptional moments of crisis which characterized these 150 years of British imperial history (the American revolution, the abolition of slavery, and the Sepoy mutiny, but also the emergence of working class’s claims in Britain) led administrative agents across the empire to rethink some crucial categories of political thought. This thesis is aimed at tracing the evolutions in the conception of British imperial sovereignty and deconstructing the self-narratives of modern liberalism, both in its spatial logics (the opposition between state and empire) and in its temporal logics (the teleological conception of historical time). The political thought of imperial administrators appears as a fruitful field of investigation to this end: the governors – who were midway between theory and practice, placed at the junction point between state and society, and who travelled from the metropole to the colonies – applied the liberal theory they learnt in Britain to the government of the empire, unveiling its inconsistencies and shadows. At the end of this historical reconstruction of British imperial thought, administrative figures realized the impracticable dream of neutralizing conflict at home, by expelling it in colonial dominions. Instead, their failed attempt to normalize social and racial hierarchies within a steady social order, pushed them to rethink sovereignty as a management able to successfully face conflicts on the imperial scale, by founding the reproduction of the rule of law on a harshly hierarchical power of government. In the global imperial space of the late 19th century, the opposition between “home” and “abroad” eventually collapsed, and the colony was assumed as the laboratory of experimentation of governmental strategies in order to amend metropolitan problems

Introduction: approaching space in intellectual history

This article serves as an introduction to the special issue on Conceptions of Space in Intellectual History. It opens with a brief inquiry into the place of ‘space’, both as a topic and as an analytical lens, in the field of intellectual history. The remainder of the introduction suggests a pathway through the special issue. Under three broad headings – ‘territory,’ ‘oceans and empire’, and ‘geopolitics’ – the volume’s articles are presented, brought into dialogue, and situated within a wider trajectory of recent research on conceptions of ‘space’ in intellectual history.Arts and Humanities Research Council; Cambridge Commonwealth, European & International Trust; Levy-Plumb Fund for the Humanities at Christ's College, Cambridge

Implications of TP53 allelic state for genome stability, clinical presentation and outcomes in myelodysplastic syndromes

Tumor protein p53 (TP53) is the most frequently mutated gene in cancer1,2. In patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), TP53 mutations are associated with high-risk disease3,4, rapid transformation to acute myeloid leukemia (AML)5, resistance to conventional therapies6–8 and dismal outcomes9. Consistent with the tumor-suppressive role of TP53, patients harbor both mono- and biallelic mutations10. However, the biological and clinical implications of TP53 allelic state have not been fully investigated in MDS or any other cancer type. We analyzed 3,324 patients with MDS for TP53 mutations and allelic imbalances and delineated two subsets of patients with distinct phenotypes and outcomes. One-third of TP53-mutated patients had monoallelic mutations whereas two-thirds had multiple hits (multi-hit) consistent with biallelic targeting. Established associations with complex karyotype, few co-occurring mutations, high-risk presentation and poor outcomes were specific to multi-hit patients only. TP53 multi-hit state predicted risk of death and leukemic transformation independently of the Revised International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS-R)11. Surprisingly, monoallelic patients did not differ from TP53 wild-type patients in outcomes and response to therapy. This study shows that consideration of TP53 allelic state is critical for diagnostic and prognostic precision in MDS as well as in future correlative studies of treatment response

Lorenzo Ravano, La Rivoluzione haitiana: Scritti giuridici e politici (1789-1805), Verona, ombre corte, 2020

Questa raccolta di fonti politiche e giuridiche della Rivoluzione haitiana (finora in gran parte inedite in italiano) \ue8 destinata a imporsi come uno strumento importante per gli studiosi di Haiti e dell\u2019et\ue0 delle Rivoluzioni atlantiche in Italia, dove contribuisce a colmare una lacuna storiografica resa ancor pi\uf9 evidente dal confronto con la fitta serie di studi pubblicati negli ultimi trent\u2019anni negli Stati Uniti. Completando il lavoro iniziato alla fine degli anni Novanta da Sandro Chignola e Maria Laura Lanzillo con la traduzione degli scritti di Toussaint Louverture, l\u2019accurata selezione e traduzione di testi presentata da Lorenzo Ravano non si concentra su un solo protagonista della Rivoluzione, ma ricostruisce gli oltre quindici anni del processo rivoluzionario nella complessit\ue0 delle fasi che lo scandirono e nella variet\ue0 dei soggetti, individuali e collettivi, che lo animarono

Jeffrey A. Auerbach, Imperial Boredom: Monotony and the British Empire, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018.

Jeffrey Auerbach\u2019s latest book, Imperial Boredom : Monotony and the British Empire (2018), is a remarkably rich compilation of complaints and confessions of boredom by British colonists across the empire in its heyday, the middle decades of the nineteenth century. 1 The author argues that, despite the exciting stories of glory and adventure which promoted imperial expansion and colonization (usually conveyed by propagandistic materials such as published memoirs, travel narratives, and commissioned art), the British empire turned out to be a boring and disappointing endeavour for several individuals who travelled across, represented, settled, governed, and fought for it. This is a provocatively original argument in the study of imperial history. By rereading British imperial primary sources through the critical prism suggested by Auerbach, historians of the British empire are able to detect, beyond the gloriously apologetic narrative of the civilizing mission, numerous pieces of evidence demonstrating that the government of the empire in the bombastically portrayed age of \u2018high imperialism\u2019 was indeed a dull, dreary, and deflating drudgery

Katie Donington, The Bonds of Family: Slavery, Commerce and Culture in the British Atlantic World, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2019

By throwing the legacy of transatlantic slavery and empire into today\u2019s society, Katie Donington\u2019s book shows how the tight interconnections between colonialism and capitalism have shaped the world we live in. This broader aim is accomplished by means of a meticulous historical analysis of an \u2018empire within the empire\u2019: the commercial and proprietary empire of the extended British family of the Hibberts who were Manchester merchants, Anglo-Jamaican slavers and planters, London traders, insurance brokers, pro-slavery lobbyists, members of Parliament, and country landlords. Spanning over one hundred and fifty years of British history (from the early eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries) and travelling from England to Jamaica and back, the book sheds light on the complicities between the coercive and racialized system of West Indian slavery and the making and flourishing of a white family fortune in the two worlds over four generations

I missionari dell'ordine: Pensiero e amministrazione nell'Impero britannico (secoli XVIII-XIX)

Il volume indaga il pensiero politico di alcuni amministratori di spicco dell\u2019Impero britannico tra la met\ue0 del Settecento e la fine dell\u2019Ottocento, articolandosi attorno a tre maggiori momenti di crisi imperiale: la Rivoluzione americana, l\u2019abolizione della schiavit\uf9 nelle Indie occidentali e l\u2019ammutinamento dei reparti indigeni dell\u2019esercito della East India Company nel subcontinente indiano. Indagando questi processi in prospettiva globale, il volume dimostra il contributo degli amministratori ai dibattiti attorno ad alcune nozioni fondamentali dell\u2019apparato concettuale moderno (impero, libert\ue0, cittadinanza, sovranit\ue0, civilizzazione) mettendo in relazione l\u2019indipendenza degli Stati Uniti alle Rivoluzioni francese e haitiana, l\u2019emancipazione degli schiavi caraibici al disciplinamento dei lavoratori britannici, e gli sviluppi costituzionali nelle colonie alle riforme elettorali che estesero il suffragio in Gran Bretagna. A met\ue0 tra teoria e prassi, al punto di congiunzione tra Stato e societ\ue0 e in viaggio dalla metropoli alla colonia, gli amministratori dell\u2019Impero combinarono la speculazione sui principi della societ\ue0, della politica e del diritto all\u2019implementazione concreta di tecniche amministrative in grado di fronteggiare pericoli straordinari

Governare l'emancipazione. Lavoro, sovranit\ue0 e costituzione ai tempi di Morant Bay (1865)

This essay surveys the ways in which the Jamaican Morant Bay rebellion of 1865 pushed British thinkers and administrators to rethink central issues of freedom, labour, and sovereignty. Reinterpreting some of the political and administrative documents used by historians from a conceptual perspective, I argue that the rebellion and the consequent abolition of the Jamaican house of assembly can be interpreted not as episodes of a \uabwar of races\ubb, but rather as moments of a much larger phenomenon, started in the 1830s: the government of the emancipation in the British West Indies