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Full-Text Articles in History
“Relative Property: Close-Kin Ownership In American Slave Societies”, Aviva Ben-Ur
“Relative Property: Close-Kin Ownership In American Slave Societies”, Aviva Ben-Ur
Aviva Ben-Ur
Most historians of slavery in the Americas treat masters of color who owned their own kin as an oddity, a scribal error, or as a topic to evade. Most others conclude that ruthlessly capitalistic owners reserved such behavior for slaves unrelated to them, and owned their own kin as slaves in name only, with the intention of providing protection and eventual manumission. This article considers several cases of close-kin ownership, particularly in Suriname, and explores the role of coercive economy in families emerging from enslavement, arguing that the capitalistic values of slaveholding pervaded families approaching freedom, often informing both their …
"Identity Imperative: Ottoman Jews In Wartime And Interwar Britain", Aviva Ben-Ur
"Identity Imperative: Ottoman Jews In Wartime And Interwar Britain", Aviva Ben-Ur
Aviva Ben-Ur
By the onset of World War I, hundreds of Ottoman immigrants, including a significant proportion of Jews, were living and trading in Britain. During wartime and through much of the interwar period, these multi-ethnic Ottomans were automatically classified as enemy aliens, subject at times to internment and deportation, stripped of their freedom of movement, and uniformly barred from citizenship. Drawing on nearly sixty recently declassified naturalization applications of Ottoman Jews, this article discusses the prosopography of Middle Eastern newcomers, nativism and xenophobia, and the role of the state in shaping national and ethnic identities, focusing on the British government’s invention …