Angela E . Zimmerman | The George Washington University (original) (raw)
Papers by Angela E . Zimmerman
Journal of Social History, 2024
This is a contribution to a forum dedicated to Walter Johnson's "On Agency" at Twenty Walter John... more This is a contribution to a forum dedicated to Walter Johnson's "On Agency" at Twenty
Walter Johnson’s point about “agency” can be extended to other central concepts of historical analysis: what might appear as a salutary extension of a foundational category of liberal democracy to the histories of enslaved people in fact forces those histories into frameworks that are, ultimately, those of enslavers. The interconnected insights of Black feminism and Queer theory—particularly about “domestic institutions”—suggest that politics is another of those categories that, like agency, risks forcing the histories of enslaved people into analytic categories of an ultimately white-supremacist liberalism.
Reviews in American History, 2021
Review essay on Edward Onaci, Free the Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Blac... more Review essay on Edward Onaci, Free the Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Black Nation-State, Justice, Power, and Politics (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
Labor: Studies in Working-Class History , 2021
Review essay on The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation," by Tha... more Review essay on The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation," by Thavolia Glymph (Chapel Hill, 2019).
History of the Present , 2020
Comment on Ethan Kleinberg, Joan Wallach Scott, and Gary Wilder, Theses on Theory and History (Wi... more Comment on Ethan Kleinberg, Joan Wallach Scott, and Gary Wilder, Theses on Theory and History (Wild On Collective, 2018).
Cambridge Review of International Affairs , 2020
History of the Present, 2018
In James S. Humphreys, ed., The New South, 37-62. Kent State University Press, 2018. First publi... more In James S. Humphreys, ed., The New South, 37-62. Kent State University Press, 2018. First published as “Reconstruction: Transnational History.” In John David Smith, ed. Reconstruction, 171-196. Kent State University Press, 2016.
The history of Germany and the history of imperialism have long served as stark reminders that mo... more The history of Germany and the history of imperialism have long served as stark reminders that modernity is not always a process of growing enlightenment and emancipation. Once, both modern German history and overseas colonialism could be dismissed as the result of feudal holdovers, for example, in the work of Ralph Dahrendorf on Germany and Joseph Schumpeter on imperialism. 1 Today modern German history and the history of imperialism have become exemplars of modernity, but a modernity of a decidedly authoritarian and dystopian type. Paul Rabinow, for example, has termed colonies "laboratories of modernity," while Detlev Peukert has found the "spirit of science" at work even in the Holocaust. 2 German and colonial history no longer trouble the concept of modernity but rather constitute exemplars of a modernity that is itself troubling. Given the separate significance of the histories of imperialism and of Germany for our understanding of modernity, it should perhaps come as no surprise that the German colonial empire itself played a central, and contradictory, role in the construction of a modernity that we today recognize as liberal internationalism. Before the First World War, European colonial thinkers, the greatest liberal internationalists of their day, looked to Germany with envy and admiration for its modernizing (or kulturbestrebend), colonial policy. 3 After the war, these same European colonial powers cast Germany 6
Over the last decade, this journal has published eight AHR Conversations on a wide range of topic... more Over the last decade, this journal has published eight AHR Conversations on a wide range of topics. By now, there is a regular format: the Editor convenes a group of scholars with an interest in the topic who, via e-mail over the course of several months, conduct a conversation that is then lightly edited and footnoted, finally appearing in the December issue. The goal has been to provide readers with a wide-ranging and accessible consideration of a topic at a high level of expertise, in which participants are recruited across several fields. It is the sort of publishing project that this journal is uniquely positioned to undertake.
The Colonization of Antislavery and the Americanization of Empires: The Labor of Autonomy and the Labor of Subordination in Togo and the United States, 2015
“The Colonization of Antislavery and the Americanization of Empires: The Labor of Autonomy and th... more “The Colonization of Antislavery and the Americanization of Empires: The Labor of Autonomy and the Labor of Subordination in Togo and the United States.” In Daniel E. Bender and Jana K. Lipman, eds. Making the Empire Work: Labor & United States Imperialism, 267-288. New York: New York University Press, 2015.
These are the page proofs of the chapter
Review essay on Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies, by Kev... more Review essay on Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies, by Kevin B. Anderson (Chicago, 2010).
Review essay on Return from the Natives: How Margaret Mead Won the Second World War and Lost the ... more Review essay on Return from the Natives: How Margaret Mead Won the Second World War and Lost the Cold War, by Peter Mandler (New Haven, 2013), and The Law of Kinship: Anthropology, Psychoanalysis, and the Family in France, by Camille Robcis (Ithaca, 2013).
This is the English original of a text translated as “Die Gipsmasken der Brüder Schlagintweit: Ve... more This is the English original of a text translated as “Die Gipsmasken der Brüder Schlagintweit: Verkörperung kolonialer Macht.” In Moritz von Brescius, Friederike Kaiser, and Stephanie Kleidt, eds, Über den Himalaya: Die Expedition der Brüder Schlagintweit nach Indien und Zentralasien 1854-1858, 241–49. Cologne: Böhlau, 2015.
The European partition of Africa, given formal sanction at the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1... more The European partition of Africa, given formal sanction at the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884-1885, is often treated as an expression of exuberant nationalism in which each nation, vying for what Germans would come to call a "place in the sun," sought to outdo the others in sticking their flags in far-flung territories. In fact, it was an expression of exuberant humanitarianism, guaranteed by such state power as the signatories of the General Act of the Berlin Conference were willing to provide. The General Act guaranteed a free flow of commerce along the African coast and in the Congo and Niger Rivers and their tributaries. The signatories also vowed to fight slavery in Africa; "watch over the preservation of the native tribes, and to care for the improvement of the conditions of their moral and material well-being"; guarantee "freedom of conscience and religious toleration" for foreigners and Africans alike; and protect "Christian missionaries, scientists and explorers. " The signatories of the act "recognize[d] the obligation to ensure the establishment of authority in the regions occupied by them on the coasts of the African Continent sufficient to protect existing rights, and, as the case may be, freedom of trade and of transit under the conditions agreed upon. " 1 "Effective occupation" replaced conquest as a form of land appropriation. Like the signatories of the Covenant of the League of Nations almost thirty-five years later, these powers bound themselves to serve humanity, a service they would carry out through institutions of their particular national states. "[W]hoever invokes humanity wants to cheat. " This was the judgment of Carl Schmitt, the German political theorist who, in his revolt against the terms
![Research paper thumbnail of “Раса против революции в Центральной и Восточной Европе: от Гегеля до Вебера, от крестьянских восстаний до ‘полонизации’” [Race against Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe: From Hegel to Weber, from Rural Insurgency to ‘Polonization.’] Ab Imperio (2014): 23-57.](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/34673671/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](This is the English original.
Journal of Social History, 2024
This is a contribution to a forum dedicated to Walter Johnson's "On Agency" at Twenty Walter John... more This is a contribution to a forum dedicated to Walter Johnson's "On Agency" at Twenty
Walter Johnson’s point about “agency” can be extended to other central concepts of historical analysis: what might appear as a salutary extension of a foundational category of liberal democracy to the histories of enslaved people in fact forces those histories into frameworks that are, ultimately, those of enslavers. The interconnected insights of Black feminism and Queer theory—particularly about “domestic institutions”—suggest that politics is another of those categories that, like agency, risks forcing the histories of enslaved people into analytic categories of an ultimately white-supremacist liberalism.
Reviews in American History, 2021
Review essay on Edward Onaci, Free the Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Blac... more Review essay on Edward Onaci, Free the Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Black Nation-State, Justice, Power, and Politics (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
Labor: Studies in Working-Class History , 2021
Review essay on The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation," by Tha... more Review essay on The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation," by Thavolia Glymph (Chapel Hill, 2019).
History of the Present , 2020
Comment on Ethan Kleinberg, Joan Wallach Scott, and Gary Wilder, Theses on Theory and History (Wi... more Comment on Ethan Kleinberg, Joan Wallach Scott, and Gary Wilder, Theses on Theory and History (Wild On Collective, 2018).
Cambridge Review of International Affairs , 2020
History of the Present, 2018
In James S. Humphreys, ed., The New South, 37-62. Kent State University Press, 2018. First publi... more In James S. Humphreys, ed., The New South, 37-62. Kent State University Press, 2018. First published as “Reconstruction: Transnational History.” In John David Smith, ed. Reconstruction, 171-196. Kent State University Press, 2016.
The history of Germany and the history of imperialism have long served as stark reminders that mo... more The history of Germany and the history of imperialism have long served as stark reminders that modernity is not always a process of growing enlightenment and emancipation. Once, both modern German history and overseas colonialism could be dismissed as the result of feudal holdovers, for example, in the work of Ralph Dahrendorf on Germany and Joseph Schumpeter on imperialism. 1 Today modern German history and the history of imperialism have become exemplars of modernity, but a modernity of a decidedly authoritarian and dystopian type. Paul Rabinow, for example, has termed colonies "laboratories of modernity," while Detlev Peukert has found the "spirit of science" at work even in the Holocaust. 2 German and colonial history no longer trouble the concept of modernity but rather constitute exemplars of a modernity that is itself troubling. Given the separate significance of the histories of imperialism and of Germany for our understanding of modernity, it should perhaps come as no surprise that the German colonial empire itself played a central, and contradictory, role in the construction of a modernity that we today recognize as liberal internationalism. Before the First World War, European colonial thinkers, the greatest liberal internationalists of their day, looked to Germany with envy and admiration for its modernizing (or kulturbestrebend), colonial policy. 3 After the war, these same European colonial powers cast Germany 6
Over the last decade, this journal has published eight AHR Conversations on a wide range of topic... more Over the last decade, this journal has published eight AHR Conversations on a wide range of topics. By now, there is a regular format: the Editor convenes a group of scholars with an interest in the topic who, via e-mail over the course of several months, conduct a conversation that is then lightly edited and footnoted, finally appearing in the December issue. The goal has been to provide readers with a wide-ranging and accessible consideration of a topic at a high level of expertise, in which participants are recruited across several fields. It is the sort of publishing project that this journal is uniquely positioned to undertake.
The Colonization of Antislavery and the Americanization of Empires: The Labor of Autonomy and the Labor of Subordination in Togo and the United States, 2015
“The Colonization of Antislavery and the Americanization of Empires: The Labor of Autonomy and th... more “The Colonization of Antislavery and the Americanization of Empires: The Labor of Autonomy and the Labor of Subordination in Togo and the United States.” In Daniel E. Bender and Jana K. Lipman, eds. Making the Empire Work: Labor & United States Imperialism, 267-288. New York: New York University Press, 2015.
These are the page proofs of the chapter
Review essay on Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies, by Kev... more Review essay on Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies, by Kevin B. Anderson (Chicago, 2010).
Review essay on Return from the Natives: How Margaret Mead Won the Second World War and Lost the ... more Review essay on Return from the Natives: How Margaret Mead Won the Second World War and Lost the Cold War, by Peter Mandler (New Haven, 2013), and The Law of Kinship: Anthropology, Psychoanalysis, and the Family in France, by Camille Robcis (Ithaca, 2013).
This is the English original of a text translated as “Die Gipsmasken der Brüder Schlagintweit: Ve... more This is the English original of a text translated as “Die Gipsmasken der Brüder Schlagintweit: Verkörperung kolonialer Macht.” In Moritz von Brescius, Friederike Kaiser, and Stephanie Kleidt, eds, Über den Himalaya: Die Expedition der Brüder Schlagintweit nach Indien und Zentralasien 1854-1858, 241–49. Cologne: Böhlau, 2015.
The European partition of Africa, given formal sanction at the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1... more The European partition of Africa, given formal sanction at the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884-1885, is often treated as an expression of exuberant nationalism in which each nation, vying for what Germans would come to call a "place in the sun," sought to outdo the others in sticking their flags in far-flung territories. In fact, it was an expression of exuberant humanitarianism, guaranteed by such state power as the signatories of the General Act of the Berlin Conference were willing to provide. The General Act guaranteed a free flow of commerce along the African coast and in the Congo and Niger Rivers and their tributaries. The signatories also vowed to fight slavery in Africa; "watch over the preservation of the native tribes, and to care for the improvement of the conditions of their moral and material well-being"; guarantee "freedom of conscience and religious toleration" for foreigners and Africans alike; and protect "Christian missionaries, scientists and explorers. " The signatories of the act "recognize[d] the obligation to ensure the establishment of authority in the regions occupied by them on the coasts of the African Continent sufficient to protect existing rights, and, as the case may be, freedom of trade and of transit under the conditions agreed upon. " 1 "Effective occupation" replaced conquest as a form of land appropriation. Like the signatories of the Covenant of the League of Nations almost thirty-five years later, these powers bound themselves to serve humanity, a service they would carry out through institutions of their particular national states. "[W]hoever invokes humanity wants to cheat. " This was the judgment of Carl Schmitt, the German political theorist who, in his revolt against the terms
This is the English original.
A forum edited by Jonathan Wiesen and Andrew Zimmerman, co-authored by Geoff Eley, Rebekka Haberm... more A forum edited by Jonathan Wiesen and Andrew Zimmerman, co-authored by Geoff Eley, Rebekka Habermas, Eve Rosenhaft, and Siegfried Weichlein
Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and José Pedro Monteiro, eds., Os Passados do Presente. Internacionalism... more Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and José Pedro Monteiro, eds., Os Passados do Presente. Internacionalismo, imperialismo e a construção do mundo contemporâneo (Coimbra: Almedina, 2015)
Este livro inclui um conjunto de textos ilustrativo do novo fulgor que vivem a história internacional e transnacional, marcado por importantes progressos conceptuais, metodológicos e analíticos. Explorando a intersecção de dois processos históricos fulcrais na história recente – internacionalismo e imperialismo –, Os Passados do Presente contribui para uma visão mais rica e detalhada do século xx, desvelando o papel de actores, instituições processos históricos cuja importância é frequentemente obscurecida pelas narrativas tradicionais sobre as dinâmicas internacionais, mas cuja relevância para a compreensão de todo o século anterior bem como do presente é inegável. O livro aborda temas como o controlo geopolítico das populações e a regulação e cooperação internacional dos saberes e das políticas sociais, visando contribuir para a compreensão da génese histórica de fenómenos tão actuais como a ajuda ao desenvolvimento, a natureza do humanitarismo, o papel local e global das organizações internacionais e de movimentos transnacionais ou a longa duração das geopolíticas imperiais.
AUTORES:
Alison Bashford · David Ekbladh
David C. Engerman · Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo
Sandrine Kott · Daniel Laqua · Daniel Maul
José Pedro Monteiro · Jason Parker · Jessica Pearson-Patel
Perrin Selcer · Corinna Unger · Andrew Zimmerman