This introduction provides an overview of the theories and methodologies necessary to reveal the social, economic, and political lives of Afro-descended Mexicans after the abolition of slavery and caste. Beginning with the cofradía del Rosario in what is now Morelia, it sets the stage for the collection by showing how references to Afro-descended communities continued after independence in 1821. The introduction argues that the limited sources about Afro-descended Mexican citizens do not preclude the study of these communities after emancipation. Instead, it requires careful, often against the grain, readings of racial identities as well as of individual and collective agency, historical themes related to slavery and freedom that are better known in the colonial period. Ultimately, the introduction attempts to provide a roadmap for future studies into the history of Afro-Mexicans in the nineteenth century.

After gaining independence in 1821, the Mexican government passed laws that abolished the transatlantic slave trade to Mexico in 1824 and the institution of slavery in 1829. While these dates are concrete, the process and implementation of both laws entailed more complexity than these firm dates suggest, and created real and perceived consequences for inhabitants in Mexican territories. This chapter argues that abolition was a contentious social and political process that placed settlement, citizenship, and freedom at the forefront of discussions for the nascent nation in the 1820s and 1830s. The chapter also argues that the process of abolishing slavery in Mexico was steeped in colonial history and set the stage for contentious individual and collective action through the national government in Mexico City and the state/local government of Coahuila y Tejas from 1821 to 1836.

The Quit India Movement as well as the revolutionary movement of colonial India continue to remain embroiled in debates, and, in more recent years, in controversy as well. While in the past, the revolutionary movement was relegated to the margins of the ‘Independence’ movement and seen more as a heroic yet failed enterprise, in the last decade or so, it has become an integral part of a hardened, performative, nationalist repertoire. The word ‘revolutionary’ continues to inspire a strong emotional connection.

Yet this emotional connection is itself varied, diverse and sometimes very complexly interwoven with one another. On the one hand, there is a kind of emotional connection between revolutionaries, their contribution to the anti-colonial movement and the civil society of India today that we get to witness when we visit the world of heritage, especially museums. In this context, I would like to take the reader through a brief journey that I took on a recent visit to two such important museums in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), in West Bengal. The first is the Alipore Central Jail, which has now almost entirely been converted into a museum. The second is the Special Branch Archives in north Kolkata, which used to also be the home of the Kolkata Police Museum.

The final chapter generalizes the theoretical development from other chapters of this book to states in different regions. Venezuela, similar to Zimbabwe, has also experienced many similar dynamics: hyperinflation, decline of the formal sector, and while at one time having a similar if not better level of development to other countries in its region, has now fallen distinctly behind. However, similar to ZANU-PF and the large diamond production after 2006, the PSUV in Venezuela also had a source of funding to perpetuate its rule after 2012: alluvial gold. Eritrea also has some similarities to Venezuela and Zimbabwe, as they have produced and continued to discover a large amount of resource wealth in a single-party dominant political system. Nonetheless, Eritrea may have avoided some of the extreme pitfalls of Venezuela and Zimbabwe. The rapid increase in Zimbabwean diamond wealth and the resulting “opaque” institutions provide lessons for states with a large amount of resource wealth. This study illustrates that different types of resources offer some commonalities but also distinctly different challenges for the institutional trajectory of states and overall capacity.

Chapter 4 plays mainly between Washington, DC, and Pacific Palisades, CA. I present the writer Thomas Mann as part of the memorandum culture fighting against Nazi Germany and I demonstrate, what a literary-critical analysis of his work looks like, if one takes his job situation in the early 1940s into account: Consultant to the Library of Congress, appointed by Archibald MacLeish. For this purpose, I highlight the central role of Mann’s various collaborations – on various scales and levels of intensity – with folklorist Gustave O. Arlt and scholar Joseph Campbell, critical theorist Theodor W. Adorno and journalist Agnes E. Meyer in the making of Doctor Faustus. I reflect on the first publication of Mann’s Doctor Faustus as a mimeographed copy, I revisit his choice of the name Leverkühn for the novel’s protagonist, I elucidate his concept of montage, and I underline the social scientific aspects of the novel.

President Roosevelt to Former Naval Person, 11 March 19421

I have given much thought to the problem of India, and I am grateful that you have kept me in touch with it. As you can well realise, I have felt much diffidence in making any suggestions, and it is a subject which of course all of you good people know far more about than I do. I have tried to approach the problem from the point of view of history and with the hope that the injection of a new thought to be used in India might be of assistance to you. That is why I go back to the inception of the Government of the United States. During the Revolution, from 1775 to 1783, the British Colonies set themselves up as thirteen States, each one under a different form of government, although each one assumed individual sovereignty. While the war lasted there was great confusion between these separate sovereignties, and the only two connecting links were the Continental Congress (a body of ill-defined powers and large inefficiencies), and second the Continental Army, which was rather badly maintained by the thirteen States. In 1783, at the end of the war, it was clear that the new responsibilities of the thirteen sovereignties could not be welded into a Federal Union because the experiment was still in the making and any effort to arrive at a final framework would have come to naught. Therefore the thirteen sovereignties joined in the Articles of Confederation, an obvious stopgap Government, to remain in effect only until such time as experience and trial and error could bring about a permanent union.

These opening lines from a lesser-known novel by Baren Basu, a soldier-turned-novelist, capture the textures of feelings and experiences that wrapped around most Bengalis during the Second World War. Translated from Bengali, they reveal the layered, complex yet varied emotional response to Russia's defeat and a possible German invasion of India.