Introduction

This tale of animals and Empire in colonial Calcutta rests at the intersection of three scholarships: history of science/medicine, environmental history and urban history. The introduction situates this study in the larger historiographical narrative and describes the contribution of the project to South Asian scholarship and beyond. Much of the extant literature on environmental history has gone toward arguing for the role of nature as a historical actor. But it has been relatively less emphatic toward the study of non-human subjects, particularly domestic animals in empire building. The novelty and richness of the book lies in its invocation of complex networks of human and nonhuman actors in an empire to inform the metropolitan scientific imagination. It also foregrounds the theoretical underpinnings and methodology of this book by highlighting what is new about this work.

“What Are We?”: Latino Politics, Identity, and Memory in the 1983 Chicago Mayoral Election

The 1983 Chicago mayoral election, which polarized Black and white voters, left the nascent Latino electorate in an uncertain position. A reevaluation of this election clarifies the impact of Black mayoral candidate Harold Washington, whose candidacy laid bare significant political divisions and anti-Black sentiment among Latinos as they grappled with their relationship to whiteness. Divisions aside, Washington's effort to court the Latino vote helped legitimate a monolithic, panethnic label in Chicago politics, as evidenced by organizational records, campaign advertising, electoral data, and bilingual media coverage. Reframing the 1983 election as a dual process of race making and panethnic labeling bridges scholarship on Black mayors, Latino politics, and urban history, and questions an enduring political memory of 1983 that has obscured both Latino anti-Blackness and the fragility of Latino unity.

Vernacular Patterns in Portugal and Brazil: Evolution and Adaptations

Traditional towns in Portugal and Brazil have evolved a finely tuned coordination between, on the one hand, modular dimensions for street widths and lot sizes, and on the other, a typology of room shapes and layouts within houses. Despite being well documented in urban history, this coordination was in the last century often interpreted as contingent, a result of the limited material means of pre-industrial societies. But the continued application and gradual adaptation of these urban and architectural patterns through periods of industrialization and economic development suggests that they respond both to enduring housing requirements and to piecemeal urban growth. This article surveys the persistence of urban and architectural patterns up to the early 20th century, showing their resilience in addressing modern housing and urbanization requirements.