During the 1690s, both the English and Ottoman states developed new institutions for longer-term borrowing and reformed their imperial monetary systems. These synchronous but divergent developments present a puzzle that has not been answered by rigidly separate English and Ottoman historiographies. “Empires of Obligation” follows merchants trading between England and the Ottoman Empire to understand how both states responded differently to the challenges of global trade and fiscal crisis. At this time, English merchants were the most powerful European traders in the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire represented England’s greatest single market for its woolen textiles, its largest industry. As Levant Company merchants swapped woolens for silk, they also blended international private credit with domestic public finance. They were the largest merchant investors relative to the size of their trade in the Bank of England and helped facilitate Ottoman longer-term public borrowing through the mālikāne system. From within England’s bureaucracy, they also worked to ease global trade through an “intrinsic value” theory of money, the idea that coins represented a government commitment to provide a fixed amount of precious metal. At the same time, the Ottoman state sought to redefine money as an instrument of the state, not a tool of trade. Following merchants who themselves bridged two empires that are rarely compared shows interconnected but divergent responses to the challenges of making money work both within and between states at the end of the seventeenth century.

Les historiens ont fait preuve d’une étonnante indifférence à l’égard des dimensions juridiques de l’« empire informel ». Cet article montre que les pratiques juridiques ont en réalité créé et soutenu une indétermination de souveraineté. Nous nous intéressons à Pitcairn, une petite île isolée du Pacifique, peuplée en 1789 par une poignée de Britanniques et de Tahitiens après la mutinerie du Bounty. Administrateurs britanniques, professionnels du droit, voyageurs et historiens ont avancé un enchevêtrement de revendications, chacune liée à une chronologie particulière, sur la manière dont Pitcairn est devenue britannique. Une des thèses qui ressort de ces controverses est qu’un capitaine de la marine britannique aurait pris possession de l’île en 1838. Nous remettons en question cette version ainsi que d’autres récits prédominants en montrant comment les multiples reconfigurations des liens entre l’île et l’empire ont non seulement empêché la première d’être absorbée dans le second, mais également de devenir une entité indépendante. Les visites intermittentes des officiers de la marine britannique ont progressivement constitué un système juridique improvisé, tandis que des factions rivales parmi les habitants de l’île ont orienté les agents impériaux dans le soutien de projets locaux, y compris des tentatives de prise de pouvoir sur l’île. Pendant un siècle et demi, ces processus ont maintenu Pitcairn au seuil de l’empire. La portée de cette histoire dépasse largement le cas de ce minuscule territoire. En nous appuyant sur une étude micro-historique de Pitcairn afin d’éclairer plus largement l’agencement des relations entre entités politiques, nous montrerons que cette souveraineté indécise a pour origine ce que nous proposons d’appeler les « circuits juridiques » de l’empire au xixe siècle.

El análisis de los precios de la energía es uno de los temas destacados en los estudios sobre transiciones energéticas. Su importancia deriva del impacto que éstos puedan tener en incentivar o retrasar dichos procesos. Esta investigación analiza la influencia de los precios de las energías en las transiciones energéticas chilenas entre 1841 y 1970. Sostenemos que, durante el siglo XIX, los precios de la energía favorecieron la transición energética y la modernización de la economía; mientras que, durante el siglo XX, los mismos precios retrasaron la transición, y ralentizaron la modernización de la economía. Los precios de la energía se vieron fuertemente influenciados por la dotación de recursos energéticos y por las políticas económicas. Esta investigación ofrece la primera serie de precios de energía en Chile, que abarca leña, carbón mineral (nacional e importado), petróleo, gas natural y electricidad, para casi 130 años de historia.

Arowosegbe’s (2023) treatise on the crisis of higher education across the African continent raises many issues about the failures of Africa’s postcolonial states and the situations of the continent’s public universities. His courage in bringing to the fore the predicaments of Africa’s public universities is commendable. Two issues in particular attract my attention. First, while he underscores the strained relations between the state and the academy and recognizes the existence of some divergent ideological underpinnings therein, his account neglects the impacts of ideological contradictions on society’s political stability and socio-economic development. Second, his account omits the quandaries of private universities in Africa, an aspect of higher education across the continent that should not be overlooked if one is to holistically appreciate the predicaments of Africa’s universities within the context of the role of the postcolonial state.

Much of the history of Indian businesses and merchants outside the subcontinent has emphasized the role of specific trading groups that created and utilized ties with India. The rise of Trinidad’s Indian shopkeepers tells an alternative story: former labor migrants turned to commerce. Indentured labor formed the connection between India and Trinidad, an area outside traditional Indian merchant activity. Trinidad’s organic Indian business community arose owing to the absence of traditional trading groups in the immigrant population, the large distance from India, and the growth of the Indian population that in turn demanded services. Shopkeepers came disproportionately from upper castes, who possibly relied on their greater social status and new network ties in Trinidad. However, shopkeepers did not rise into the upper echelons of commerce. This break shows the limits of traditional Indian traders in establishing ties in the farthest reaches of the British Empire.