Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency. Terry M. Moe and William G. Howell. Princeton University Press. 2025.

Rise of the strongman, decline of democracy

The rise of populist and authoritarian leaders has prompted examination of how they navigate societal problems, in particular through centralising power within the executive office. Executive aggrandisement – when elected leaders legally dismantle or weaken checks and balances to concentrate more power within the executive branch – has increased globally, along with the crisis of democracy. Trajectory of Power examines these developments. It considers what has enabled a “strongman president” as Donald Trump builds on the cracks in the rattled administrative and political systems in the US.

As Bill Resh argued recently and Don Moynihan regularly discusses, rule of law and the administrative in the US have been under severe attack. Presidentialisation (ie, the increasing role of the executive in politics and policy processes) has reached a point where “it now threatens to substitute autocracy four our centuries-old system of self-government [in the US]” (12).

The origins of the administrative state

The book begins with an account of constitutionalism, the establishment and rise of the administrative state, and the norms and expectations about the president’s space for exercising executive power. This chapter discusses how the executive politics were set out both in legal terms and in normative ways. Chapter Two presents the “symmetric logic”: the executive needs the administrative state to implement policies and to provide order and welfare to society. At the same time, bureaucracy has been steadily expanding in size (eg, budget, personnel). Over time, the presidents downsized the ever-growing administrative state and centralised decision-making and policymaking authorities. Both Republican and Democratic presidents have made the Executive Office of the President a central node in executive politics: the National Security Council created in 1947, the Domestic Council established in late 1970 by Nixon, Clinton’s National Economic Council in 1993, among others (57-59).

Trump’s 2025 “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies” executive order demonstrated the rise of executive power over regulatory agencies

At the same time, the autonomy of regulatory agencies has been undermined. Systematically employed by Nixon and other presidents, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs have institutionalised its authority over autonomous agencies (62-64). Most recently, Trump’s 2025 “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies” executive order demonstrated the rise of executive power over these agencies, which also has its origins in the backlash against the regulatory state.

When presidents reign supreme

In Chapter Three Howell and Moe trace the ideational and political origins of the asymmetric logic – “antagonism toward the administrative state and presidential power as the primary mean of retrenching the administrative state” (79), as the (Republican) presidents increasingly perceived the administrative state as the “domestic political enemy” (95-98). Building on this ideational account, Chapter Four reflects on the shape and nature of these attacks. It begins by pointing to the “long-standing opposition of free-market conservatives to regulation, spending, and taxes” and “the demand of social conservatives for the defense of their cultural beliefs and values on race, religion, gender, and the family” (113). Yet, how could the executive address its constituency’s concerns while wrestling with the administrative state? The unitary executive theory (UET) posits that “[P]residents reign supreme within the executive branch – and thus, in essence, over the entire administrative state – and they are endowed with exclusive, inherent authority to control everyone and everything within it” (122). The book shows that both Republican and Democrat presidents exploited the UET for unilateral acts: Clinton’s “bombing campaign in Kosovo” (126), the Bush administration’s “extralegal counterterrorism program” (127), and Obama’s “war actions” (130).

Chapter Five notifies us about the current UET extremists who are acting against the “bedrock values of democracy”, which small and gradual acts from both sides of the political spectrum have significantly eroded, given their commitment to deconstruct the “established system” on behalf of “the people”, which is unchecked by democracy and the rule of law (152). Echoing Anti-system Politics, the authors point to the socio-cultural, political, and economic origins of today’s extremism. Like many other jurisdictions, such extremism has risen and become more visible and “noisy”. This can be explained by extreme inequalities, lower economic growth and higher unemployment rates, the loss of ideational anchors that inform programmatic and normative agendas, and everyday failures of decapacitated administrative state.

Chapter Six concludes with an argument that “[T]he UET soon became conservative orthodoxy” (212-213), and such extremism has enabled Trump to ascend as a “strongman president” through incessant attacks on bureaucracy (e.g., cutting funding for research, pressure on bureaucrats, the DOGE experiment with Elon Musk), “weaponising” the judiciary against opponents and instrumentalising it for nepotism, overthrowing the 2020 election, among others.

Unfortunately, Trajectory of Power cautions us that the Congress, the judiciary, the administrative, and the “people” cannot alone be a veto player against the “strongman president”. For instance, the “people” are not knowledgeable about how the democratic system works (226); or Trump’s loyalist appointments can insulate bureaucracy from its natural and legal tendencies to pushback against presidents’ unilateral acts (238-241). The book ends with possible trajectories in a context where one cannot rely on any of these potential veto players: if the “strongman president” cannot deliver, the constituencies may develop alienation as their expectations are not satisfied; or short-term gains address anger and dissatisfaction but with diminishing returns in the future.

The accumulation regime

Trajectory of Power reveals the dark origins of executive power and how it has expanded in recent times. While it provides a detailed mix of a historical, actor-based, ideational, and institutional analyses, the book could have incorporated a broader outlook. Firstly, it spends too much ink on individuals that craft the ideational bases of the UET. The book refers to political, economic, and socio-cultural factors enabling the “strongman presidency”, but it misses a deeper debate about the elites, elite circulation, and elite coalitions.

The accumulation regime is cracking down on the administrative state. It does so by eroding further the remaining institutional, agential, ideational, and structural bases of transparency, rule of law, and accountability, the core pillars of democratic governance.

Current populist and authoritarian leaders come with their own elites. The kleptocratic, or oligarchic, elite circulation has become so “dirty” that “corrupt elites” are being replaced by equally “corrupt elites” with self-enrichment and insider trading tendencies. While the “new elite” is trying to replace the “old elite” and without an anchored ideological map, the new elite tries to hijack the administrative state and dismantle the rule of law. Such elite circulation clearly has a politico-economic basis. Replacing the older version of neoliberalism, the accumulation regime is cracking down on the administrative state. It does so by “politicising to depoliticise”, i.e., eroding further the remaining institutional, agential, ideational, and structural bases of transparency, rule of law, and accountability, the core pillars of democratic governance.

This points us to a significant gap in the book’s scholarly framework: bringing together political economy and public policy and administration scholarships. The partial analyses miss a broader picture where the political economic context sets the stage, policy and institutional arrangements define the “decor”, and actors’ interactions on that stage. A broader understanding of the interactions between politico-economic contexts and politics-administration nexus based on cross-fertilisation could have enabled us to empower veto players against the “strongman presidents”.

A must-read for whoever wishes to develop a sense of why and how the core of the executive has become a severe threat to the administrative state and democracy.

Finally, the book tends to treat Democrats as not having a broad impact on the trajectory of power. They do discuss Democrats’ mistakes, but if a system is flawed, and if Democrats are part of it, the book reads as a partisan cry against the allegedly powerful (Republican) president. Still, Howell and Moe guide us through the trajectory of power and notify us about the threats of the “strongman presidency”. The book is therefore a must-read for whoever wishes to develop a sense of why and how the core of the executive has become a severe threat to the administrative state and democracy.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

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The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition. Volume I: The Ancient World and Christendom and Volume II: The Modern and Contemporary West. Allen C. Guelzo and James Hankins. Encounter Books. 2025.

The role of history in culture wars

Is it possible to write a definitive history of Western Civilisation that is also a positive celebration of its achievements and value? The Golden Thread is a significant new two-volume book on the subject that is both massive (it spans over 2,000 pages and weighs six kilograms) and beautifully produced, containing hundreds of portraits, colour prints, maps and illustrations. Wisely, the authors Allen C. Guelzo and James Hankins do not claim that it is the only such history, but they nevertheless have a clear vision of what they wish to achieve in this impressive venture. While striving to be authoritative, it is also a profoundly political book on multiple levels, all of which make it of interest to academics and its intended student and popular audience.

The woke agenda is supposed to have captured elite higher education institutions (such as Harvard University), according to right-wing commentators and campaigners like Christopher Rufo and the late Charlie Kirk.

Hankins is a distinguished scholar and author of a prize-winning work on Renaissance political thought, formerly of Harvard and now a visiting Professor at the Hamilton School at the University of Florida. Guelzo is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute which is leading the rethinking of American Conservatism as a site of cultural politics. Its reputation goes back to Straussian scholars such as Harry V. Jaffa, and more recently it has been associated with the cultural and populist turn, championed by the Trump administration, against “woke” or progressive liberalism. Central to that project has been the defence of Western Civilisation against the progressive turn which challenges its values and achievements. The woke agenda is supposed to have captured elite higher education institutions (such as Harvard University), according to right-wing commentators and campaigners like Christopher Rufo and the late Charlie Kirk.

Defending the study of Western Civilisation

Hankins and Guelzo weigh into this debate to defend the concept and pedagogical value of studying Western Civilisation. For them, this tradition is composed of the interweaving of Ancient Greek culture, Hellenised Roman culture and the Christianised Greco-Roman culture of the high Middle Ages. The first volume sets out this tradition through an account of the art, philosophy, political ideas and literature of two millennia from the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE to the beginning of the Reformation in 1517. Of course, the story goes back further to include the Homeric tradition of Greek literature, which no such history could exclude.

This is not just a history of political ideas in the traditional Leo Strauss sense; but more so a list of great books from Greece to the present with a contextual narrative of development followed by one of decline and decadence which for conservatives are the characteristics of modernity. As such, it is a story of the philosophical and theological sources of our political world and the challenges they currently face. It is interesting that the point of departure in the Greek world is the defeat of Persia at Marathon: a civilisational contest that is supposed to have opened the peculiarly western alternative of liberty and political self-government, especially in the context of the US war in the Persian Gulf.

For Guelzo and Hankins, alternative histories have their place, but are a danger when they displace the study of Western Civilisation in the academy or perpetuate a critical climate that undermines the achievements of the West

The second volume begins with the birth of the modern nation state following the Reformation and concludes with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the final confrontation with another emerging civilisational confrontation with Islamism represented by Al-Qaeda and most especially the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The story of Western Civilisation is bookended by confrontation with Persia or Iran – and consciously opts for Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations (2002) model of contemporary Global politics as a renewed period of civilisation conflict over Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1992) which was supposed to be the story of 1991 and the triumph of the US and liberal democracy over the USSR and communism.

Guelzo and Hankins celebrate and defend Western Civilisation against Peter Frankopan’s displacement of it in his influential The Silk Roads (2015), a global history which looks beyond the west. Frankopan argues that Western Civilisation is constituted by the engagement and impact of more ancient civilisational cultures such as Persia or China. For Guelzo and Hankins, these alternative histories have their place, but are a danger when they displace the study of Western Civilisation in the academy or perpetuate a critical climate that undermines the achievements of the West as an object of enquiry and especially as a political project.

Conservatism from Burke to Vance

The authors set out this conservative agenda in a manifesto style introduction and foreground it throughout the two volumes. They cite Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the first explicitly conservative political theorist, as an exemplar of the type of conservatism the books support. They call for a return to a Burkean ethos in face of the “woke” progressivism currently rupturing modernity with its ideal of modernism and the principle of permanent progress that seeks to undermine and relinquish the traditional values that underpin their view of the modern west.

Their civilisational story challeng[es] the increasingly dominant voice of inward-looking Christian Nationalism […] celebrating many of the features of classical liberal constitutional politics that the Christian Nationalists want to turn their backs on.

This overt political dimension to the narrative links the celebration of Western Civilisation to the attacks of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice-President J.D. Vance on what they see as a decadent Europe that is failing to defend itself from immigration and cultural dilution. Guelzo and Hankins’ history chimes with strands of new Conservatism, such as post-liberalism and some variants of Political-Catholicism. More subversively, their civilisational story contributes to the debate within new conservativism by challenging the increasingly dominant voice of inward-looking Christian Nationalism – which focuses on isolationism and patriarchal paternalist politics – and thus by celebrating many of the features of classical liberal constitutional politics that the Christian Nationalists want to turn their backs on. The book makes a partisan case in this struggle for a new conservatism.

The political purpose behind this otherwise traditional, even old-fashioned book is what gives it much of its interest to contemporary scholars of politics. The book is well written and researched, and in its own terms, no more controversial than any other such sweeping book although it downplays the dark side of the story such as slavery and colonialism. There are plenty of other narrative histories of the West as a geographic space, a cultural unit and philosophical and theological civilisation (like Josephine Quinn’s and Tom Holland’s, for instance), but The Golden Thread is worth reading if you have plenty of time (and very strong wrists!).

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: Terracotta Classical Greek oinochoe (jug), Mid-4th century BCE. Open access courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Rogers Fund, 1925.

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Reading Wars. Don Herzog. LSE Press. 2026.

Resurging censorship

Late in the 2025 autumn semester at Texas A&M University, administrators decided to clamp down on curricula outside of their defined established norms. After months of relentless attacks by President Trump against transgender identity during his 2024 presidential campaign and signing of an Executive Order in The White House on Inauguration Day (20 January 2025) to proclaim the existence of two and only two genders – male and female, the emboldened conservative leadership at Texas A&M forced Martin Peterson – a professor of philosophy and ethics – to remove The Symposium by Plato (387 BCE) from his syllabus.

Why? In The Symposium the ancient Greek philosopher (who founded The Academy, the first higher learning institute in world history for the purpose of seeking truth) not only characterised homosexuality as a constituent phenomenon of humanity. He also declared “in times past our nature was not the same as it is now, but otherwise…there were three kinds of human being and not two as nowadays, male and female. No, there was also a third kind, a combination of both genders.” Rather than allow students to consider Plato and his postulation, the university banned the text and forbade the faculty from introducing any literature unsupportive of gender binarism.

Herzog examines how elites maintain hegemony by denying rival groups education and the power to read and publish words of dissenting opinion, and illuminates the varied dynamics behind the suppression of knowledge.

In a new and engaging monograph Reading Wars (2026), Don Herzog examines how elites maintain hegemony by denying rival groups education and the power to read and publish words of dissenting opinion, and illuminates the varied dynamics behind the suppression of knowledge. Herzog, professor of law at The University of Michigan, succeeds in portraying how, despite centuries of egalitarian progress, the battle over books, articles and pamphlets remains relevant. The book complements the new, expanding scholarship on the politics of knowledge control including Dangerous Ideas by Eric Berkowitz (2021), Burning the Books by Richard Ovenden (2022) and Free Speech by Jacob Mchangama (2025).

Suppressed abolitionist literature

From the initial chapter (“Stop The Presses!”), Herzog examines the plight of institutional critics and their battle to issue written dissent. By the 1830s, African chattel slaves, whom had been stripped of their identities, culture and language, had languished on plantations in The South for more than two-hundred years (1619). After the American Revolution (1775-1783), opponents of slavery became more vocal with each passing decade. In 1832, Elijah Lovejoy launched the St. Louis Observer and published articles critical of slavery and slaveholders – a less than welcome development in the slave state of Missouri. After a mob destroyed his office and threatened his life, he relocated to Illinois (a free state) and continued his diatribes against slave power in the Alton Observer.

As the US had been founded on a compromise to permit slavery, many citizens both north and south demanded either restrictions or the complete stifling of anti-slavery publications to preserve the union. This was a case of censorship for the supposed “greater good.” The intrepid Lovejoy refused to relent, and another angry mob appeared, and he would lose his life in a murderous assault for his ideals. Thirty years before the American Civil War (1861-1865), the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights in the American Constitution (1791), which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” had begun to buckle under political division and intolerance (9-13).

Translating the Bible for the masses

In Chapter Two “Reading Bibles, and Burning Them,” Herzog compellingly highlights the contentious row between The Vatican and its dissenters in early 16th century England over whether the Bible ought to be translated for commoners to read and study. According to The Church, the masses, who remained largely illiterate, semi-literate and/or poorly educated, would likely misinterpret scripture and thus commit sins. William Tyndale disagreed. After completing a degree at Oxford, mastering seven languages and pursuing advanced studies at Cambridge, Tyndale translated The Bible from Hebrew and Greek in 1525, and copies of the banned translation pierced the borders of England and Europe from Antwerp – his selected city of exile. For his academic rebellion, the courts of The Holy Roman Empire under Charles V found Tyndale guilty of heresy for espousing views contrary to Catholic doctrine, and the Oxford scholar lived his final months in prison prior to being burned at the stake – a precursor to the fate of Elijah Lovejoy for the same devotion to free thought three hundred years later (33-40).

From the spike of printed words critical of the status quo on both sides of the Atlantic, financial and cultural elites fiercely opposed societal liberalisation.

After two subsequent, reinforcing chapters (“Censoring Protestants” and “Keeping Black People from Reading”) exploring how Protestants and Catholics in England and Europe and pro-slavery and anti-slavery coalitions in the US sparred to attain narrative supremacy, Chapter Five (“Spreading the Word(s): Britain”) and Chapter Six (“Spreading the Word(s): America”), detail the rise of the middle classes and their thrust to expand access to literature and democratise religious and political knowledge in the emerging public sphere.

No democracy without a free press

While the 1832 Reform Act enfranchised large segments of the English working class, a multitude of other formal and informal schools reduced illiteracy and ushered in an age of mass consumption of newspapers, magazines and books (108-111). In the US, both the proliferation of public schools and libraries and the noble effort by the Freedmen’s Bureau to empower former slaves through education (1865-1872) widened the concept of “We The People.” From the spike of printed words critical of the status quo on both sides of the Atlantic, however, financial and cultural elites fiercely opposed societal liberalisation (113-114, 129-135). In the final pages of the book, Herzog briefly surveys the religious right-wing agenda to ban books in counties across the US and offers insight into the threats to freedom of thought (138-141 and 153-162).

In his essay “Freedom and the Colleges” (May 1940), Cambridge philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) wrote:

As soon as a censorship is imposed upon the opinions which teachers may avow, education ceases to serve this purpose and tends to produce, instead of a nation of men [and women], a herd of fanatical bigots.

From that standpoint, Professor Peterson resigned from Texas A&M and joined the faculty of another college due to imposed censorship and the elimination of Women’s and Gender Studies programs at the university. In academia, the dual filing of federal lawsuits (again on specious grounds) and withholding of critical funds from top American universities by the Trump administration successfully forced many colleges to alter their curriculums and settle out-of-court. For the institutions of higher learning that capitulated, it constituted a victory for intellectual tyranny and a cravenly permitted abridgement of the First Amendment. For anyone seeking to review the contested space of the written word and its political implications from the Renaissance to the present day, Reading Wars delivers a lively account on a subject at the core of fundamental human rights and free societies.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Don Herzog will launch the book at an LSE event on Tuesday 9 June. Book now.

Read an article by Don Herzog about the book published on LSE Impact.

Main image: Andrei Metelev on Shutterstock.

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The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade. Jake Subryan Richards. 2025.

On March 25, 2026, the United Nations declared the transatlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity in world history. This followed a motion introduced by Ghana, acknowledging the continuing impact of the slave trade on Africa and its global legacy. The slave trade significantly fuelled the economic development of Europe and the Americas at Africa’s expense, in clear violation of John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, which holds that the pursuit of individual happiness must not come at the cost of harm to others. The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade by Jake Subryan Richards arrives at a critical moment and offers an important intervention in the historiography of abolition and its aftermath.

Richards’ work forms part of a growing body of scholarship that re-centres liberated Africans within the history of abolition, alongside Ford and Parkinson’s Legislating Liberty: Liberated Africans and the Abolition Act, 1806–1824, as well as the edited volume by Anderson and Lovejoy, Liberated Africans and the Abolishing of the Slave Trade, 1807–1896. These works signal a broader historiographical shift toward examining the legal, social, and political lives of liberated Africans and their central role in shaping the end of the slave trade.

Reframing abolition and its aftermath

After more than three centuries of forced transportation of Africans across the Atlantic, the slave trade was formally abolished in the early 19th century. Plantation owners, however, received substantial compensation, which many reinvested in other economic ventures. Meanwhile, illegal slave trading persisted, prompting the deployment of naval squadrons tasked with intercepting slave ships. Many such vessels were captured and enslaved people “liberated.” Richards refers to these individuals as “liberated Africans.” Yet, an essential question remains: what did “freedom” actually mean for those who were liberated? The Bonds of Freedom provides compelling and unsettling answers.

The book examines the lives of Africans freed from intercepted slave ships after the 1807 abolition, demonstrating how ‘freedom’ often translated into new forms of coercion.

The book examines the lives of Africans freed from intercepted slave ships after the 1807 abolition, demonstrating how “freedom” often translated into new forms of coercion. Liberated Africans – men, women and children – were absorbed into controlled labour systems such as bonded labour, indentured servitude, and apprenticeships that could last over fourteen years. This outcome was hardly surprising given the powerful coalition opposed to abolition, comprising the plantation owners, financial institutions in London that underwrote slave voyages, and influential commercial interests in cities like Bristol, Glasgow, and Liverpool. Despite the efforts of anti-slavery patrols, slave trading continued into the late 19th century, particularly to Cuba and Brazil. Within this context, Richards argues that “liberation” frequently reproduced servitude through the actions of courts, state agents, and plantation economies. As he notes, the 1807 abolition “neither ended the slave trade nor guaranteed the security of liberated Africans” (10).

While the slave trade underdeveloped Africa, Richards further demonstrates that it simultaneously enriched Europe and the Americas. Enslaved labourers endured extreme exploitation – working up to twenty hours a day – and produced a significant share of global commodities, including on fifth of the world’s sugar in Cuba and half of the world’s coffee in Brazil (138). These examples reinforce the logic of racial capitalism and challenge Adam Smith’s assertion that slavery was an inefficient system for enslavers.

“Freedom” as reconstituted bondage

Under systems of apprenticeship and bonded labour, liberated Africans continued to endure severe exploitation, particularly on plantations in Brazil, Cuba, and across the Caribbean. They were alienated from their families, denied freedom of movement, inadequately fed, excluded from citizenship, and subjected to physical and sexual abuse, thus denied the rights later enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Couples were often separated, and punishment could be brutal – sometimes resulting in miscarriage or death (100-101). Their labour remained indispensable, contributing to major infrastructural projects, including prisons, railways, and agricultural enterprises. Richards observes, “… throughout the Atlantic world, the liberated Africans built the state” (109).

Individual cases illustrate these abuses vividly. A woman named Adenon reported severe beatings, noting that another woman was “beaten so badly that her clothing looked like a sieve” (109). On the slave ship Santa Cruz, captives were flogged and several died (160). Richards also recounts the story of Librada, who, despite being “rescued,” was forced into compulsory labour by Spanish colonial authorities and separated from her young child of seven years old (23). Such cases reveal a troubling paradox: those presented as liberators often became new agents of oppression. It is therefore unsurprising that these “liberated Africans” were sometimes described as “recaptured Africans,” (6) compelled to struggle for the real freedom.

Liberated Africans were not passive victims. They actively resisted and negotiated their circumstances through a variety of strategies.

Legal institutions such as the Vice Admiralty Courts (operating under prize law) and the Courts of Mixed Commission (under treaty law) failed to guarantee genuine freedom. Instead, they often facilitated the transformation of illegally trafficked Africans into legally controlled labourers. Enslavers exploited legal ambiguities to legitimise their claims, while the law remained silent on the long-term status of liberated Africans after apprenticeship – particularly regarding residency, property rights, and the fate of their children (201). In some cases, employers re-enslaved apprentices through fraudulent means, including falsified death certificates – a practice Richards terms the “mortuary economy” (74).

Resistance and solidarity

Despite these oppressive conditions, liberated Africans were not passive victims. They actively resisted and negotiated their circumstances through a variety of strategies. They demanded reforms to apprenticeship systems and ultimately sought full freedom, including adequate food, housing, rest days, and wages. Their capacity for collective action was strengthened by common linguistic or regional identities, and shared experiences which resulted to shipmate bonds during the Middle Passage; what social psychologists might describe as in-group solidarity. As a result, they organised petitions, riots, insurrections, mutual aid systems, and legal challenges to defend their rights and support one another.

One of the book’s greatest strengths is its extensive use of diverse archival sources spanning South Africa, Sierra Leone, Brazil, Cuba and the United States.

One of the book’s greatest strengths is its extensive use of diverse archival sources spanning South Africa, Sierra Leone, Brazil, Cuba and the United States. This breadth of evidence underscores its originality and scholarly rigor. Detailed accounts of slave ships such as Emila, Amila, Nancy, Amedie, Progreso, Santa Cruz, and Ysavel further enrich the narrative, offering case studies that challenge the notion of genuine emancipation.

Although Richards notes that apprentices were trained in trades such as tanning, cobbling, bookbinding, and agriculture – while women were largely assigned domestic labour – the book does not fully explore the outcomes of this “training”. Such outcomes are significant, especially given the arguments that many Africans already possessed sophisticated skills prior to enslavement, including expertise in iron working, agriculture, medicine, construction, and long-distance trade. Indeed, some scholars argue that enslaved Africans transferred valuable knowledge to the Americas, such as wet rice cultivation techniques in South Carolina and Georgia. This perspective complicates the narrative of “training” apprentices and highlights Africans as active agents in their history.

Overall, The Bonds of Freedom makes an important contribution to legal and Atlantic history by tracing the evolution and implications of numerous legal instruments, including the Slave Trade Act (1794), Foreign Slave Trade Act (1806), Abolition Act (1807), Slavery Abolition Act (1833), and subsequent 19th-century legislation. Crucially, Richards demonstrates how these laws functioned not simply as tools of emancipation but also as mechanisms for regulating and, at times, perpetuating coerced labour. The book will appeal to scholars of history, law, international relations, sociology, political science and development studies as well as for general readers interested in human rights and global justice.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: Studio Portrait of Woman Wearing Head Scarf, Shawl, and Plaid Skirt, Brazil (1861–62)
artist unknown. Open access courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, via The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2018.

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The Emma LaRocque Reader: On Being Human. Elaine Coburn (ed.). University of Toronto Press. 2026.

To justify their political existence, all nations tell origin stories. The founding myths of the world’s most powerful states, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, tell of heroic Europeans discovering lands that were empty but for primitive peoples, the “Indians” or “Aboriginals”.  Colonial oppressors characterised Indigenous peoples as savages who deserved to be wiped out, unworthy of a future, or doomed to disappear, given their primitive “race” or culture unsuited to modernity.

The myth of manifest destiny

Tomorrow was reserved for European peoples, who brought civilisation to a wild land. The oppression and massacre of Indigenous peoples was justified as part of the inevitable “march of progress”, known in America as manifest destiny; “the right”, as the Representative of Massachusetts claimed in 1846, “to spread over this whole continent.” These founding myths uphold capitalist relations, redefine the land as private property to be bought and sold, justify colonial power structures, and overwrite Indigenous peoples’ governance practices. Today, Donald Trump’s efforts to “restore truth and sanity to American history” by removing exhibits from the Smithsonian museums that are critical of white supremacy exemplify the dangers of the authoritarian control of historical narratives.

But myths are not reality. Indigenous peoples did not die out, and they are reclaiming their histories, their voices, their lands. Vine Deloria Jr, Brendan Hokowhitu, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, and Audra Simpson, and many more scholars and intellectuals are speaking back to empire. Among the most striking contemporary contributions to this demythologising literature is the writing of a Cree-Métis intellectual and poet, now gathered together for the first time in The Emma LaRocque Reader: On Being Human. Born in 1950 in Lac La Biche, in northeastern Alberta, Canada, LaRocque grew up Métis in a “Cree oral literature language and worldview” that together made up a “richly woven cultural life” (145). From the vantage point of her own culture and the experience of “colonialism lived” (251), she mobilises her powers as a scholar and poet to challenge foundational myths of the most powerful nations in the world.

The myth of terra nullius

The first myth she debunks is that the lands were empty, or at least empty of any meaningful civilisation, before the Europeans arrived. LaRocque gives testament to the many original peoples in the Americas who had their own histories, traditions and attachment to the land. For her part, she grew up with a rich cultural life, in a log cabin built by her resourceful father. In characteristically vivid prose, LaRocque recalls her childhood:

I was born into a world of people whose roots of pride, independence, industriousness and skills go back to the Red River Métis, back to the Cree. I was born into a world of magic, where seeing and hearing ghosts was a routine occurrence, where the angry Pehehsoo (thunder-bird) could be appeased by a four-directional pipe chant, where the spirits danced in the sky on clear nights and where tents shook for people to heal (48).

.With particular intensity from the late 19^th century onwards, colonisers deliberately disrupted the lifeworlds of Indigenous peoples, including LaRocque’s Métis people, through violent repression but also through forced religious instruction, residential and public schooling

Colonising Europeans interrupted self-determining Indigenous civilisations for their own gain. With particular intensity from the late 19^th century onwards, colonisers deliberately disrupted the lifeworlds of Indigenous peoples, including LaRocque’s Métis people, through violent repression but also through forced religious instruction, residential and public schooling (c.1890 to 1996), and adopting Indigenous children into White families. Despite efforts at erasure, Indigenous peoples have persisted, remembering their histories on lands filled with the stories of their ancestors.

The myth of the prehistoric “Indian”

Indigenous peoples are often considered purely historical, consigned to the past. Against this myth, change is part of every living culture, LaRocque emphasises, including Indigenous civilisations. The Métis practiced adaptable economies, rooted in land-based and wage labour, and their participation has been central to the development of contemporary nations like Canada and the United States:

Métis have been the labouring backbone of this country, serving first as portaging and fur packing coureur de bois, defining the buffalo industry with their organization and technologies, then on to building railroad lines and roads, clearing fields for farmers or fighting fire for forestry (98).

Today, LaRocque emphasises that artists, writers, poets and political and social commentators are revitalising and renewing Indigenous lifeways and knowledges.

Despite tendencies to imagine Indigenous peoples as consigned to a “primitive past” (131), their cultures have been fluid and changing. If forced change is oppression, some change is chosen. “Like the rest of humanity” LaRocque writes, Indigenous peoples are “facing and adapting to change” (xxxi, italics in original), participating in a world in movement.

The myth of the “Vanishing Race”

As LaRocque documents, Indigenous peoples, including Cree-speaking Métis like her own family, were deemed incapable of “civilisation,” hence doomed to vanish as too savage for the present or future. This myth was popularised by the 19^th and early 20^th century photographer Edward Curtis, who stripped his Indigenous subjects of any sign of modernity and then labelled them, “The Vanishing Race”. Too primitive and too pure to survive the wicked world, they were destined to disappear in the face of the “progress” brought by European colonisers. This myth lives on in contemporary re-tellings, from The Last of the Mohicans to coffee-house artbooks, like Jimmy Nelson’s infamous Before They Pass Away. In reality, “the Métis were systematically coerced from their land” (8) by civil servants, priests, police, surveyors and settlers. European settler success, never total, was a contingent fact of struggle, rather than a result of the necessary march of history. Today, LaRocque emphasises that artists, writers, poets and political and social commentators are revitalising and renewing Indigenous lifeways and knowledges (269).

The myth of the savage

Colonial oppressors created dehumanising stereotypes about Indigenous peoples to justify their oppression, which linger today. One frames them as ignoble savages, “grunting and bloodthirsty” (32), hence deserving of elimination by a more civilised European colonial culture. Recalling the first cowboy and Indian movie she watched, LaRocque writes:

I was riveted, revolted, and terrified. I was perhaps eight years old. I do not remember the name of the movie; I only remember “the Indians”: grotesque, wild-eyed, lurking creatures with painted bodies and hideous faces, tomahawks on hand, howling and whooping, crouching like animals across the screen, preying on beautiful white people on their way west to bring law and order (122).

LaRocque urges us to relate to each other as more than the “sum of our colonial parts” (xxiv); this is key to challenging oppression.

Alternatively, “Indians” are figured as noble savages, wise, kind and close to nature. LaRocque laments that the noble savage trope, for instance, the ecologically attuned Indigenous person, acts as a “prop for the conscience of a morally lethargic corporate world” (133). The noble savage is a normative ideal, not a fully realised person. Rejecting these fictions, LaRocque reminds us that Indigenous peoples are, simply, human: “People who can laugh, cry, hate and love” (xxxi). The response to demands for the “authentic Indian” (130), whether in the ignoble or noble variant, must be an insistence on Indigenous humanity. This requires the direct, honest appraisal of “the good, the bad and the ugly” (xxxvi).

Beyond myths to the human

In her scholarship and poetry spanning a half a century, LaRocque has appealed to our “will for justice” (133) to writings remind us of the imperative to dismantle dangerous, obfuscating political mythologies, and that recognising each other’s humanity:

I am ethically committed to the vocation of humanization, that is, both to the ending of injustice and oppression, whether social or intellectual, and at the same time, to the reconstruction of Indigenous humanity. And ultimately, all humanity (227).

LaRocque urges us to relate to each other as more than the “sum of our colonial parts” (xxiv); this is key to challenging oppression. We can begin by telling the truth about the lands that we are on and the original peoples who have lived here, not as ciphers representing good or evil, but as human beings filled with hopes and dreams, foibles and failures, strengths and weakness. In an era where truth is a casualty of national mythmaking this is a special challenge; but only then can we begin to build right relations for a future together.

Note: This essay gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: Bing Wen on Shutterstock.

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Dichotomies in Media and Communication Theory. Bart Cammaerts. Routledge. 2026.

How the internet fostered subcultures

The internet has been described as a revolutionary, disruptive technology that has created a global networked information society and paradigmatic shifts in all walks of life. Such techno-optimist discourses are often deemed overly technologically deterministic, but they are highly prevalent and salient in business-oriented literature, in macro-economics, as well as in sociology, political science, and media and communication studies. One of the most defining characteristics of the contemporary new media and communication environment shaped by the internet is the “convergence of specific technologies into a highly integrated system” according to Castells. This has a material side to it, but also a cultural dimension, which is encapsulated in what American media scholar Henry Jenkins termed “convergence culture”. Convergence culture has, however, disrupted and complicated the distinction between mainstream and alternative media.

The many affordances of the internet – to publish freely and cheaply, to enable the transnational exchange of information, to connect groups and individuals, its horizontal architecture, and the strength of weak ties – stimulated innovation within subcultural movements.

The internet originated from a productive collaboration between military power and academic interests, but clearly pertaining to a mainstream agenda. Subsequently, the internet was enthusiastically embraced and further developed by various countercultures that we could denote as “alternative”. The techno-hippies and -punks of the 1970s and 1980s, fuelled by a hacker and cracker subculture, embraced and subsequently popularised cyber-anarcho idioms and values such as: “Information Wants to be Free”, “Mistrust Authority”, “Promote Decentralization”, “Do It Yourself”, “Fight the Power”, “Feed the Noise Back into the System”, and “Surf the Edges”, as posted on the San Franscisco-bay area Bulletin Board System (BBS) called the “Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link” or WELL. These slogans expressed an alternative digital imaginary and libertarian counterculture which played a constitutive role in the shaping the internet.

Soon enough the many affordances of the internet – to publish freely and cheaply, to enable the transnational exchange of information, to connect groups and individuals with each other in communities of interest and action, its horizontal architecture, and the strength of weak ties – stimulated innovation within subcultural movements. They also enhanced these movements’ ability to organise, communicate, mobilise, attack, and circumvent.

The very idea of a ‘free’ internet, as advocated by the alternative cyberpunks and lodged into the popular imagination, has paradoxically fuelled a mainstream business model based on the commodification of users’ sociality and their digital footprint

This stimulated what the Feminist American philosopher Nancy Fraser called “subaltern counterpublics” and the American sociologist Todd Gitlin “public sphericules”, which arguably became much easier to establish online than offline, removing geographical and temporal barriers. BBSs exemplified this capability, facilitating connection, debate and the exchange of information between individuals with similar interests, and relating to various subcultures. Today we still see remnants of this in sites such 4Chan or Reddit. The alternative DIY print-culture phenomenon of the Fanzines became eZines and Web 2.0 also gave rise to the phenomenon of weblogs or blogs, as well as an explosion of bottom-up “citizen” journalism. Also noteworthy in the alternative sphere is the development of a Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) movement, partially undermining proprietary software development.

When capitalist interests took over

However, just as the American sociologist Daniel Bell predicted in his book on the post-industrial society, dominant interests and capitalist power would eventually – with some help from the US government and the EU – fully appropriate the internet and commodify the information society, bringing it firmly in line with capitalist interests and wealth creation. In stark contrast to the myth of the internet being a level-playing field of equal opportunities, the commercialisation of the internet led to an extreme and global oligopolisation accelerated by network effects characterised by a “winner-takes-all” logic. This was achieved through two old models of media monetisation, namely subscription advertising, often combined. Subscription models are platforms designed to counter the illegal downloading of media content such as Netflix and Spotify, but also the ways in which alternative platforms encourage donations by their audiences. The advertising model is more prevalent, however, because of the free culture ideology that accompanied the emergence of the internet.

In the age of social media and big data, the advertising model has become both more sophisticated and more insidious. The privileging of data extraction models and the commodification of our sociality and everything this reveals about us, led to an era of “surveillance capitalism”, whose “mechanisms and economic imperatives have become the default model for most internet-based businesses”. The very idea of a “free” internet, as advocated by the alternative cyberpunks and lodged into the popular imagination, has paradoxically fuelled a mainstream business model based on the commodification of users’ sociality and their digital footprint. As a result, capitalism today does not only feed off our collective labour, but “every aspect of every human’s experience”.

Mainstream or alternative media?

This symbiotic dynamic between mainstream and alternative in the convergent internet era opens a range of profound questions around the continued usefulness of the categories of alternative and mainstream today. Do we consider social media platforms to be alternative channels of distribution for alternative voices and content, or are they quintessential mainstream, corporate controlled platforms? Or both? While self-management, autonomy, and independence from State and market were deemed quintessential characteristics for alternative offline media, this has been seriously undermined – and near impossible to achieve – on the internet. Atton already asked in the early 2000s whether it even “makes sense to talk of alternative media in cyberspace?”.

It is increasingly difficult to ascertain what constitutes mainstream media and what alternative. Does it refer to the nature of the content, the way it is presented, or the platform/publication it is distributed through?

When it comes to mainstream media, the emergence of social media platforms and online podcasts has also had a destabilising impact for the category of “mainstream”. What we considered mainstream media – newspapers, radio, television – is increasingly called “legacy” media to differentiate between “old” and “new” forms. Ultimately, social media platforms are also mainstream corporate spaces. At the same time, all newspapers and broadcasters are also active online, and mainstream celebrities, pundits, and journalists are increasingly setting up their own podcast operations. Furthermore, commercial tensions have emerged between social media companies and legacy media corporations, mainly because the former have eaten up a large portion of the advertising revenue of the latter. Additionally, social media also thrive on and capitalise the circulation of content produced by legacy media. Tied to this, consumption patterns and practices of news and information have also changed considerably.

In this fluid context, it is increasingly difficult to ascertain what constitutes mainstream media and what alternative. Does it refer to the nature of the content, the way it is presented, or the platform/publication it is distributed through? And what remains of the strong democratic origins of alternative media being truly independent, bottom-up, horizontal, and implicated in human rights struggles?

This is an edited extract (pp. 141-144) from Dichotomies in Media and Communication Theory
by Bart Cammaerts, published by Routledge, 2026 © reprinted here by permission.

Bart Cammaerts will speak about the book at a public LSE event from 6.30pm to 8pm on Tuesday 31 March 2026. Find details and register to end.

Note: This extract gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: Tomas Martinez on Unsplash.

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The Women’s Library is the oldest and largest library in Britain devoted to the history of women’s campaigning and activism. It was officially opened in 1926 as the Library of the London Society for Women’s Service and was renamed the Fawcett Library in 1957 in memory of Millicent Garrett Fawcett, and The Women’s Library in 2002. It moved to LSE in 2013 and has remained there since.

Throughout its history, encompassing different names and locations, the Library has remained faithful to its original aims: to preserve a history of the struggle for women’s suffrage and to provide access to materials that can be used by contemporary women’s rights campaigners. It contains an array of personal and organisational archives, books, journals, pamphlets, zines, audio-visual, objects, textiles and visual materials relating to campaigning and activism from the late 19th century onwards.

It is striking how much the development of the library depended upon the long-term work of determined women

To mark its 100^th anniversary, a new exhibition at LSE explores its collections from the viewpoint of researchers and their current engagement with the materials, and celebrates the figures who created, maintained and expanded the Library in its early years. It is striking how much the development of the library depended upon the long-term work of determined women: the first official librarian was Lahore-born Vera Douie who managed the Library for over 40 years.

You can listen online to an oral history of her memories about the library produced in 1975 as part of a suffrage history interviews project. Below is a reading list of books to accompany the exhibition, shedding light on the powerful history of the Library and the women behind it.

Enterprising Women: The Garretts and their circle. Elizabeth Crawford. Francis Boutle Publishers. 2002.

Elizabeth Crawford’s Enterprising Women sheds light on the networks of women who fought for the vote and, after winning it, continued to work after with campaigning organisations such as those preserved in the Library. The book focuses on the women of the Garrett family, providing a fascinating account of how members including Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Emily Davies made pioneering achievements for women in such diverse fields as education, medicine and interior design.

Turning the Tide: The life of Lady Rhondda. Angela V. John. Parthian. 2013.

The exhibition celebrates some of the many campaigning organisations who contributed to improving the lives of women. These include the work of the Six Point Group founded by Lady Rhondda in 1921 to press for changes in the law of the United Kingdom in six areas: improving legislation on child assault;  legal rights for widowed mothers; legal rights for unmarried mothers; equal rights of guardianship for married parents; equal pay for teachers and equal opportunities for men and women in the civil service.

Angela V. John’s fascinating biography of Lady Rhondda, Turning the Tide, reveals that she was the director of over 30 companies and the first woman president of the Institute of Directors in the 1920s. She also founded Time and Tide magazine, an influential, all-female produced publication which played a key role in covering politics and the arts in the interwar period.

Housewives and Citizens: Domesticity and the Women’s Movement in England, 1928-64. Caitriona Beaumont. Manchester University Press. 2013.

Many of the campaigning organisations archived in the Women’s Library were small grassroots groups run by dedicated volunteers, often from their own homes. Caitriona Beaumont’s Housewives and Citizens is an excellent insight for anyone interested in these groups. It focuses on six organisations in the period 1928-64: the Mothers’ Union, the Catholic Women’s League, the National Council of Women, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (whose records are held by LSE) and the National Union of Townswomen’s Guild.

Many of these published journals which included calendars of events and articles on campaigns, which are rich sources of information on women’s local, regional and national activism. The LSE Digital Library has recently added the Townswoman, a journal published by the Townswomen’s Guild.

A Bookshop of One’s Own: How a Group of Women Set Out to Change the World. Jane Cholmeley. Mudlark. 2024.

Feminist book publishing is a key theme in the exhibition, (including the work of the Sheba Press which became a pioneering publisher of Black women. A Bookshop of One’s Own is a riveting account of the women who set up and ran the famous Silver Moon bookshop on Charing Cross Road, written by one of its co-founders, Jane Cholmeley. The bookshop championed women’s and feminist writing, like that of Sheba. Watch a YouTube video of or read a Q&A with the author from 2024 detailing the trials and tribulations and the grit and optimism required to open a bookshop in 1980s London despite a lack of business experience and funding!).

For more recent accounts of journal publishing by feminists. I would also recommend the Liberating Histories website which provides detailed timelines, research bibliographies and teachers notes of iconic and recent feminist magazines ranging from Spare Rib to Red Rag.

Chrystal Macmillan, 1872-1937: Campaigner for Equality, Justice and Peace. Helen Kay and Rose Pipes. Edinburgh University Press. 2024.

The exhibition also emphasises the long history of feminist internationalism, as many organisations engaged in international campaigning and forged alliances with their peers overseas. This historical biography by Helen Kay and Rose Pipes celebrates the achievements of Chrystal Macmillan, a remarkable woman who was one of the founders of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She was also an organiser of the 1915 International Women’s Congress at The Hague, which urged political leaders to use mediation to stop World War One.

Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel. Rachel Holmes. Bloomsbury. 2020.

Did you know that suffrage campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst was also politically involved in Ethiopia? In 1935 she campaigned against the Italian invasion of the country and in the 1950s moved there permanently, working ceaselessly to improve social conditions and writing a detailed history of the country as well as founding a newspaper.

This was one of the great surprises I discovered from a recent biography of Pankhurst by Rachel Holmes which offers a highly readable insight into the achievements of her long, impactful life, including those that have been less examined. Watch a video of the author speaking about the book at LSE library.

Race Women Internationalists: Activist-Intellectuals and Global Freedom Struggles. Imaobong Umoren. University of California Press. 2018.

An LSE author who has also emphasised the long history and importance of transnational feminist connections is Imaobong Umoren, based in the Department of International History. Her book, Race Women Internationalists, which won the 2019 Women’s History Network Book Prize, focuses on the lives of American Eslanda Robeson, Martinican Paulette Nardal, and Jamaican Una Marson, exploring how they created and used global networks to campaign against colonialism, fascism, sexism, and racism.in the 20^th Century.

I hope these recommendations have inspired you to explore the exhibition and Women’s Library itself. During March, look out for links I will be posting on Instagram of other recommended resources available via LSE Library, including databases of articles and primary resources. LSE staff and students can book one-to-one advice sessions for further help researching women’s history resources.

Note: This article gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies procession with Frances Balfour, Millicent Fawcett, Emily Davies and Sophie Bryant, 13 June 1908. Credit: The Women’s Library collection by LSE Library on Flickr.

The LSE exhibition The Women’s Library at 100: celebrating a century of collections, curated by Patricia Owens, Kelly Bosomworth, Grace Heaton, Lyndsey Jenkins, Claire Cunnington, Caroline Derry, Nazmia Jamal, Angèle David-Guillou, and Gillian Murphy, runs from 2 March to 30 September 2026.

A launch event for the exhibition will take place next Thursday 12 March from 5 to 8 pm at LSE – find details and register.

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The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years. Sunil Amrith. Penguin Books. 2025 (paperback) 2024 (e-book).

Today, Earth is a burning planet. And yet, human societies’ relationship to changing ecologies is not something new. If environmental history “begins in the belly”, as the old saying goes, Sunil Amrith’s book only further demonstrates that our relationship with nature – how we eat, live, and breath – has always been the driving force of political, social, and cultural change. As a historian of transnational migration in Southeast Asia, Amrith presents a series of networked vignettes indebted to thinking within the Anthropocene, or what Dipesh Chakrabarty describes as the collapse of age-old distinctions between human and natural history. He moves, almost theatrically, from meditations on Mongol horsemanship to the Black Death; from the Bengal Bay to the transatlantic slave trade; and from the First World War to chemical warfare in Vietnam, India, and China. In this way, he shows how the motion and movement of changing ecologies reshaped ideas about freedom across time and space, and underpinned conquest, empire, and the emergence of new visions of human life.

Seeds of change

The first part examines how ecologies shaped medieval and early modern worlds. Amrith moves from the Mongol Empire to Ming China, the Russian steppe, and the Iberian conquest of the Americas. The mines of Potosí, Bolivia are a recurring image: silver extracted in the Andes, refined with mercury, and funnelled into global trade networks transformed demography, ecology, and economies across continents. China’s demand for silver to pay taxes connected Iberian conquests to Ming fiscal policy and, crucially, gave claims to power an ecological foundation: “As the ecological basis of China’s power and wealth came under strain from the length of the growing seasons [and] the soundness of flood defenses, it is no surprise that the mandate of heaven, the Ming dynasty’s right to rule, teetered” (57-58). Smallpox, the Columbian Exchange, and the transformation of forests into furnaces for refining ore all appear as ecological processes that underwrote empire.

Land and labour reconfigurations helped naturalise racial hierarchies and legitimise slavery, linking environmental change to the ideological birth of racial capitalism.

Following the ecological provocations of David Graber and David Wengrow, Amrith shows how these transformations were intertwined with new justifications for hierarchy and human exceptionalism. Likewise, land and labour reconfigurations helped naturalise racial hierarchies and legitimise slavery, linking environmental change to the ideological birth of racial capitalism. Sovereignty, he suggests, depended on ecological conditions, whether in food supply, flood control, or labour organisation. Likewise, the Atlantic slave trade is presented as a multispecies tragedy: “So violent were the floating prisons that their impact reverberated across species. Sharks followed slave ships, hungry for the broken bodies that would be thrown overboard” (71). This is one of the book’s most powerful images, demonstrating how the quest for cheap things becomes legible, not simply from an ecological bird’s-eye view of, for example, sugar extraction in Madeira.

Technological innovation reshaped landscapes as profoundly as armies did, and imperial violence and animal slaughter are treated as parallel acts of mastery over nature.

Equally, Amrith traces these entanglements through early modern political thought. Hobbes’s claim that “the NUTRITION of a Commonwealth consisteth in the plenty and distribution of materials conducing to life” (8), Bacon’s vision of making nature a “slave” (84), and Jefferson’s notion of liberty arising from the “spontaneous energies” of the earth and its gifts (91) are all interpreted as ways of framing human freedom through the remaking of non-human nature. Where others have looked at the “death of nature” from the perspective of feminism, or as a the conceptual problem of the “free gift” as a social form, Amrith demonstrates how Enlightenment attitudes have a much longer duration history of ecological entanglement with empire.

Breaking the chains

The second part examines the 19th and early 20th centuries, which Amrith calls the “chasm of freedom” (111). In settler colonies, freedom often meant unbounded land acquisition and mobility, with little regard for Indigenous land claims. Across the US, Russia, India, and China, ecological reconfigurations in grain markets, cattle expansion, refrigeration, and fossil-fuel use were central to new visions of liberty and life. Technological innovation reshaped landscapes as profoundly as armies did, and imperial violence and animal slaughter are treated as parallel acts of mastery over nature. While Amrith appears to be following Pierre Charbonnier and the fraught imperial legacy of the relationship between freedom and abundance, the extent to which these long ecological underpinnings might make the concept politically problematic remain quite vague. Still, Amrith establishes the gap between freedom as a horizon of expectation and those experiences of imperial conquest, slavery, and war – all mediated by our relation to nature, or more politically stated, our ecologies of freedom.

The First World War appears as “not only an imperial, but also an ecological catastrophe. It slaughtered animals, devoured forests, feasted on minerals, and left its poisonous trace in soils that remained toxic more than a century later” (162-163). Here, Amrith figures the global dimensions of this war, and how it required a global ecology. In what feels like the heart of the book, “Nitrogen Nightmares” (Chapter seven), interweaves stories about this new, global ecology that set the Great War in motion. On the one hand, we have a familiar story about the invention of synthetic nitrogen by Fritz Haber and the promise of technology to feed a hungry world. On the other, we see the environmental reverberations of chemical warfare in the eyes of Russian, Senegalese, and Indian soldiers. Amrith’s use of images to support his vignettes is brilliant, using art as a window into the experience of wartime destruction and its environmental underpinnings.

Hydroelectric dams and other mega-development projects are used to think through the Janus-faced nature of emancipation, as these projects often generated ecological dilemmas.

The Second World War similarly illustrates how struggles over resources and space (“Lebensraum”) in Germany and Japan reflect fears of ecological limits. Instead of thinking these movements as “stages” or “ages”, Amrith instead considers how “planetary power beyond comprehension” (207) builds upon much longer traces and legacies of ecological entanglement across empires. This is a great strength of Amrith’s writing: he resists Eurocentric narration by showcasing the ecological shockwaves of events placed in a global context. And yet, the political implication of his bricolage remains unclear, perhaps intentionally. He mentions the pathbreaking work of Andreas Malm and the rise of fossil capital and discusses what Timothy Mitchell frames as remaking of our carbon-based democracy. But the extent to which Amrith believes his narration of the ecological underpinnings of freedom bend towards a potentially class-oriented form of politics (as suggested by the many working-class testimonies) is not made explicit.

The human exception

The third part, 1945-2025, links freedom to the ecological transformations of the postwar world. Anticolonial leaders like Sukarno, Ho Chi Minh, Ambedkar, and Nehru are mobilised as touchstones to think critically about how freedom came to be seen as the “sovereign control over the products of nature” (216). Here, hydroelectric dams and other mega-development projects are used to think through the Janus-faced nature of emancipation, as these projects often generated ecological dilemmas. Readers may enjoy “The Human Condition” (Chapter 10), in which Amrith juxtaposes Hannah Arendt, Rachel Carson, and Indira Gandhi to trace the rise of postwar environmentalism, the Green Revolution, and the globalisation of climate change. He notes that environmentalists brought “a multiplicity of aims and tactics and a breadth of utopian visions” (297), but whether Amrith deems any of them useful remains an open question.

How does one “conclude” such a bricolage of open-ended stories and moving images from which to make ecology legible? Amrith does by navigating Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece Princess Mononoke to emphasise that what is needed are “roads to repair”. While one cannot disagree, there is something lofty about stating that “the struggle ahead is to remember and to integrate our creatureliness into new visions of human flourishing on earth. Only then can we regain our freedom” (348). If political theory is a precondition for writing history, then we may be left wondering what kind of politics leads to this freedom? Despite these uncertainties, The Burning Earth offers a compelling reorientation of global history, insisting that any vision of emancipation must reckon with the material webs that have always sustained and imperilled human life.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: A_Lesik on Shutterstock

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Islam: A New History from Muhammad to The Present. John Tolan. Princeton University Press. 2025.

Islam’s beginnings and evolution 

What are the roots of Islam, and how has it been interpreted and practiced in different ways across time and place since its inception? Islam: A New History from Muhammad to the Present by John Tolan, surveys a wide range of defining historical episodes and movements from the time of the Prophet Muhammad in the 6^th century through to today. Tolan’s historicising approach focuses not only on events, but highlights the diverse contributions of caliphs, travellers, Sufi saints, merchants, and Islamic reformers in shaping Islamic societies across regions and eras.  

From the spiritual legacy of Rabia al-Adawiyya, the 8th-century Muslim saint, to contemporary interpretations of Islam, the tradition has continually transformed, adapted, and evolved since its inception. During the life of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam remained unified under his direct guidance and the presence of his companions. However, the significant doctrinal and political developments emerged following his death in 632 CE. The first caliph was chosen by Abu Bakr al-Siddiq (632-634) and unifying the Arabian Peninsula and combating early waves of apostasy. The question of succession – specifically who would lead the Ummah (believers of Islam) – marked a decisive moment in Islamic history and led to the emergence of sectarianism such as Sunni and Shi’a. 

Tolan reveals how early political rivalries were transformed into lasting sectarian cleavages within the Islamic tradition.

Tolan draws attention to Nana Asmau, Uthman ibn Fodio’s daughter, a distinguished scholar, poet, Sufi, and reformer, who exercised significant intellectual and political influence during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In the modern period, figures such as African American Imam Amina Wadud – who converted from Christianity to Islam – have continued this tradition of reinterpretation. In her work Qur’an and Woman (1999), Wadud argues that each generation of Muslims must retain the freedom to reread and reinterpret the Quran, underscoring Islam’s dynamic and evolving engagement with history, and society. Further, Tolan highlights how Muslim scholars, organisations, and leaders have politically mobilised Muslim communities across the world and their contribution of proliferations of Islam especially in the Middle East, the USA and Europe. He discusses figures from an Egyptian author Gamal al-Banna to the brother of Hassan al-Banna and from Malcolm X to Mahmud Muhammad Taha and Bilali Muhammad.  

The Quran and sectarianism

Tolan  episodic historical approach zones in on key events in Islam, particularly those surrounding the compilation of the Quran and the struggle for political authority after the Prophet Muhammad’s death. The Quran was first full text compiled in written form during the caliph of Uthman ibn Affan, a process that later became a source of sectarian controversy. Certain Shi’a scholars such as Ibn Abil Hadid and Yasir al-Habib have argued that portions of the original revelation were concealed, alleging that Ali ibn Abi Talib as the rightful successor were omitted, and that some Quranic materials were destroyed during the standardisation of the text. 

Tolan further situates these theological disputes within the larger political conflicts between emerging Sunni authorities and Shi’a factions during the Umayyad period, followed by the Abbasid era, when competing claims to the caliphate continued to shape Islamic governance. He demonstrates how the institution of the caliphate became a source of deep and enduring division within Islam. For instance, Tolan discusses accusations directed at Ali in relation to the assassination of Caliph Umar, including claims that Ali protected and facilitated the escape of the assassin, Piruz Nahavandi – a Persian captive taken during the Battle of Al-Qadisiyya (25). Through these episodes, Tolan reveals how early political rivalries were transformed into lasting sectarian cleavages within the Islamic tradition. 

Islam’s spread and divisions 

Initially, Islam expanded its dominance from Damascus (634 CE) to Antioch (637 CE) and Jerusalem (638 CE). By the time of Caliph Umar’s death in 644 CE, the Islamic empire spanned from Libya to Afghanistan and from Azerbaijan to Yemen. Later, Tolan briefly discusses the rise of Islam most continents of the world through battles, merchants, and Sufi’s spirituality. Tolan notes that how the first Fitna or civil war stated in the 7^th century in Islam which gave to rise new sectarian divisions such as Sunnis, Shi’a, and Kharijites. These sects started to practice Islam in their own ways. For instance, Shi’a believed that Ali was first Caliph of Umma and Sunnis believed Abu-Bakr, and some Muslim rulers imposed a Jizya (tax) on Christians, Jews, Jains, Buddhists and Hindus. 

Movements including Deobandi, Wahhabi, Ahmadiyya and Faraizi emerged that created identity-based segregation and emphasised strict adherence to the Quran and Hadith, rejecting some traditional practices among Muslims

Tolan highlights the significance of Ibn Battuta’s Rihla (1959) in understanding the global spread and lived diversity of Islam. Battuta’s travels from Mecca to Mali, India, Mauritius, and China – illustrate how Islam adapted cultures across regions. Serving as a qadi (a Muslim judge) in India under Muhammad bin Tughlaq and later as an envoy to China, Battuta offers detailed observations on governance, economy, and international relations. His vivid, experiential narrative enriches Islamic history, particularly through contributions such as his writing of hadith (corpus of sayings or traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) in Arabic at the request of Muhammad ben Aydin, Sultan of Birki (Birkin) (125). 

Colonial influence and modern Islam 

In the chapter “Colonization and Its Discontents, 1798-1918,” Tolan traces the history of European colonisation in Muslim societies from the late 18th to the early 20th century. He examines how India came under the control of European powers such as the East India Company, the Portuguese, and the Dutch, who established colonial regimes across different regions. Tolan highlights how the Dutch East India Company (DEIC) employed Muslims to codify Islamic law in matters of inheritance, marriage, and divorce, at Masulipatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Malabar Coast (Kerala) Gujarat, and some part of Bengal, while the British East India Company similarly institutionalised Islamic (Sharia) law for Muslims in Bengal, Madras, Bombay presidencies and later all over India as part of its colonial governance strategy (168).  

Movements including Deobandi, Wahhabi, Ahmadiyya and Faraizi emerged that created identity-based segregation and emphasised strict adherence to the Quran and Hadith, rejecting some traditional practices among Muslims. For instance, the Deobandi Movement founded in 1866, went against modern western education and promoted traditional studies (Quran, Hadith, Fiqh). Contrastingly, Sir Syed Ahmad founded Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in 1875, to modernise education with Islamic values. Later, these movements spread not only across the Indian subcontinent but also to the Middle East, South Asia and Europe.   

Overall, Tolan’s book is a comprehensive account of key Islamic events and historical developments; however, some of his arguments are insufficiently substantiated. For instance, the claim that Shi’a Muslims believed that Ayesha (wife of Muhammad) concealed Quranic verses proving Ali’s rightful succession is presented with limited evidentiary support. The book also overlooks the significant role of Sufi traditions in the spread of Islam in the Indian subcontinent, particularly the contributions of key figures. Nonetheless, Tolan’s work offers a broad historical perspective on Islam’s evolution, transformation, and the emergence of diverse sects across regions. The book focuses primarily on political events in Islamic history and their role in the making and unmaking of Islam. In so doing, it makes a meaningful contribution for Islamic scholars, academicians and individuals to understand the evolution of Islam from Muhammad to present.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency. Terry M. Moe and William G. Howell. Princeton University Press. 2025.

Conservatives vs. the administrative state

In the early decades following the Progressive Era, as the administrative state grew and put down roots, conservative Republicans and their business and intellectual allies railed against Democratic presidents – Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson – for advancing big government and progressive programs. But the Republican Party was fairly diverse and moderate at that time, and its staunch conservatives were shouting from the margins. The party as a whole, moreover, was in no position to take on the administrative state even if it wanted to. Congress was controlled by Democrats, who stood ready to defend it against any opposition. The courts were filled with judges who accepted it as a modern reality and adapted their jurisprudence to accommodate it. And the bureaucracy was in the expert hands of experienced civil servants who were adept at defending their turf.

Yet conservatives wouldn’t forever reside at the margins. They rose to political power during the late 1970s, elected Ronald Reagan president, took control of the Republican Party (eventually), and dedicated it to undermining the administrative state. The obstacles to change were the same as before. But conservatives hit upon a novel solution that, for professed believers in limited government and individual liberty, has to be regarded as the ultimate irony: they would endorse and pursue a presidency of extraordinary power, capable of dominating, retrenching, and sabotaging the administrative state unilaterally through top-down presidential control of the executive.

Hence the new asymmetry. Democrats didn’t need a president to pursue such domination, because the administrative state was largely performing functions that they supported. If the agencies and programs just did their jobs and carried out their legal missions, the progressive agenda would be advanced. This state of affairs, moreover, was the prevailing status quo; and as political scientists have long known, it takes much less power to protect the status quo than it does to change it. Conservative Republicans were on the other end of this power equation. They were the ones seeking to upend the established system. And to do so, they recognised, they needed a vastly more powerful presidency than the Democrats did.

The pursuit of extraordinary power

Their pursuit of extraordinary power took decades, and it continues today. Its first stirrings can be seen in the “administrative presidency” of Richard Nixon’s final two years in office. But it was Reagan who embraced it as a full-blown, systematic strategy of conservative governance. This involved greatly magnifying the presidency’s traditional reliance on centralisation and politicisation to enhance top-down control. But it also involved a radical move of great historical consequence: Reagan’s Department of Justice, led by Ed Meese, began developing the Unitary Executive Theory (UET), a new line of legal theory that rejected the traditionally understood constraints of statutory law and separation of powers and claimed that the Constitution grants presidents vast inherent powers of unilateral action and supreme authority over all agencies within the executive – what they do, how they do it, how they are staffed, and what decisions get made.

An anti-system populist base [in the Republican Party] yearned for strongman leadership: a president who would exercise unilateral power untethered to traditional democratic norms and procedures.

Over time, the theory came to be more fully developed and diversified by conservative legal scholars. It also was sharply criticised, not simply for its questionable jurisprudence but for its potential to unleash and legitimize strongman powers threatening to democracy. Those fears appeared to be borne out during the presidency of George W. Bush, whose administration relied on the UET to justify controversial actions – notably, the torture of prisoners – that violated existing law. Prominent legal scholars soon began pointing to Bush as the poster boy of an antidemocratic president.

The arrival of the strongman

Bush, however, was but a pale imitation of the real thing, which was coming soon enough. Conservatism itself was slowly being transformed and rendered much more extreme by the rise of right-wing populism, which began to threaten democracies throughout the developed West during the 1990s, was supercharged in the United States by the emergence of the Tea Party in 2010 and the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and became the controlling force within the Republican Party. The party’s pursuit of extraordinary presidential power was no longer just a strategic choice. It was now magnified and driven to extremes by an anti-system populist base that yearned for strongman leadership: a president who would exercise unilateral power untethered to traditional democratic norms and procedures.

In Donald Trump, they found their man – and put American democracy in great danger. That danger was very real during Trump’s first term and has so far been magnified during his second. There is good reason to think, moreover, that it will persist well after he leaves centre stage. For with the Republican Party in the thrall of populist forces – an entrenched feature of American politics that will not end soon – future Republican presidents will have much the same incentives to embrace the role of the strongman.

This is an extract from Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency by Terry M. Moe and William G. Howell, published by Princeton University Press, 2025 © reprinted here by permission.

Note: This extract gives the views of the authors and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: Cristi Dangeorge on Shutterstock.

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