Periodising globalisation: Mauritian integration into the sugar commodity chain (1825-2005)

Using the case study of Mauritius, and its integration into the international sugar commodity chain, this paper shows that the analysis of commodity chains can be fruitfully employed to respond to recent calls in the field of global/world history for a periodisation of globalisation. The entry of Mauritius into the British Empire brought about a particular kind of integration of the island into the capitalist world system. Central to this integration was the production of sugar under the West Indian Sugar Protocol, with this ultimately turning Mauritius from a free port into a plantation economy. This shaped the island's economic and political practice, and brought the formation of a range of institutions that sustained a high degree of inequality among Mauritians by finding ever newer ways of conciliating socio-economic mobility with exploitation. The paper discusses Mauritian history through the framework of bilateral and multilateral trading agreements that had a significant impact on the sugar industry, and kept the island economically dependent on this single crop. This only changed when the postcolonial state succeeded in diversifying the Mauritian economy during the 1970s and 1980s.

Johann Jakob Bachofen. Mutterrecht und Urreligion. Eine Sammlung der einflussreichsten Schriften

Bachofens Mutterrecht – längst ein Klassiker. Mit seiner These vom Matriarchat als ursprünglicher Gesellschaftsform war Bachofen der Erste, der es wagte, über eine geschichtliche Bedingtheit der Geschlechterrollen zu spekulieren und darüber, dass das Patriarchat eine vorübergehende Erscheinung sein könnte. Er half damit, die Krise der Männlichkeit zu bearbeiten, die sich nach dem verlorenen Krieg in den 20er Jahren besonders zuspitzte. Generationen von Autoren wurden von ihm beeinflusst; gelesen haben sie den Text – in der Kröner-Ausgabe. Zum 200. Geburtstag des Basler Altertumsforschers und Juristen erscheint die Auswahl seiner wirkungsmächtigsten Texte, die ab 1925 in mehreren kommentierten Auflagen im Kröner-Verlag erschien, erneut. Neben dem Mutterrecht (1861) enthält sie den Versuch über die Gräbersymbolik der Alten (1859) und Die Sage von Tanaquil (1870), neu und ausführlich eingeleitet von Yahya Elsaghe.

From The Hague to Geneva: The protection of civilians and refugees in the perspective of legal history, 1899-1951

The presentation proposed here shall focus on international (and as far as possible some cases of national) legal protection of civilians and refugees between the first Hague Convention of 1899 and the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Refugees in 1951. An analysis of international legal texts as well as, if possible, some exemplary national constitutions will form the core of the presentation, which will try to find out, to what extent not only the civilian population remaining close to front-line fighting, but also under occupation was supposed to be protected by legal norms, but also to what extent the issue of forcing civilian to leave their homes became part of the international legal discourse as well as of international legal norms.