Jane M. Rausch

The Education of Historians for the Twenty-First Century: Bender, Thomas, Philip Katz, and Colin Palmer and the AHA Committee on Graduate Education: Chicago: University of Illinois Press 222 pp., Publication Date: January 2004

A. N. Sherwin-White’s Racial Prejudice in Impria/ Rome (l967), will make clear the extent to which Isaac has advanced our understanding of this elusive topic. Still, this is not a book for the unwary. Isaac leaps from classical Greece to classical Rome. Alexander the Great is deliberately omitted, as is his celebrated prayer from the Aii(ihusi.v “for harmony and friendship in the empire between Macedonians and Persians.” ‘The Hellenistic Age is also missing and with it the Greek diaspora to Egypt and Syria that defined the age. lssac fails to address, for example, whether Egyptian papyri reveal the stme racist tendencies as Greek literature. Unfortunately, Isaac does not reach beyond the literary sources with their uniform urban, Ale, and male bias. He finds racism in the pages of some, but not all, of these authors. Their diversity of viewpoints makes the analysis of other source material with a less elite bias even more imperative. Isaac is aware of the problem, but does not come to grips with it. He concedes. for example, that i n Syria “mixed marriages were very common” between Greeks and the indigenous population (337). How relevant is the literary condemnation of mixed ancestry when measured against real life’? I n conclusion, Isaac has sharpened our focus. but much remains to be investigated concerning racism in antiquity. Its roots may lay at the dawn of history. In the third millenium BC. the protagonist of the Gilgumesh f

Colombianas en la vanguardia (review)

k. Enkidu, is introduced as the classic “other.” Like all those who live on the steppes, he is less human and more animal, at least from the perspective of the denizens of tabled Llr.

The Taming of a Colombian Caudillo: Juan Nepomuceno Moreno of Casanare

this period. Ethnic settlements offered themselves to war planners and generals as effective destabilizers and pretexts in times of large-scale war. Of course they have to be built up and nurtured with much hyperbole during the times of arms races that were called peace. Lessons from China, the Far East, India and Africa also apply to Latin America. The German sources from World War I show that the German Navy and Army High Command knew these lessons. They applied them, developed them further, and gave them to democratic Germany after 1919. Thus, Lenin was allowed to travel to Russia and the Bolshevik Revolution closed the Eastern Front for Germany. War by ethnic revolution, as examined by McKale, also worked well in the Near East and finished the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the global political strength of the Holy See. Curiously Mitchell omits key German sources dealing with skilled disintegrative work by the German Navy inside Mexico and the United States, actions that confirmed the threat perceptions of the planners before 1914. In other words, examining 1914 simply as just another year full of interesting events, unrelated to a world war (!), shows a ridiculous lack of historical context as well as little knowledge of grand strategy. But it surely does make the US look bad.

Where cultures meet : frontiers in Latin American history

No statue of Juan Nepomuceno Moreno stands today in Bogota. Most Colombians have never heard of him, and probably only a few scholars could identify him as a Llanero patriot who fought in the battles of Boyaca and Carabobo. Yet it is not too much to say that in May 1831, the action of this obscure caudillo from Casanare might have changed the course of Colombian history. Already in Venezuela and Argentina, Jose Antonio Paez and Juan Manuel de Rosas had used the plains as a springboard to unseat the urban elite and take command of their nations. Now Moreno, fresh from a stunning defeat of the forces of Rafael Urdaneta at Cerinza and poised in Zipaquira with an army of fierce Llaneros, threatened to invade Bogota, overthrow Bolivars successor, and impose his own dictatorship. While historians agree that the events of 1831 mark a turning point in the evolution of Colombian politics, they have yet to analyze the role played by Moreno. An examination of his career suggests that his failure to seize control stemmed not only from his own personal limitations as a leader, but was also conditioned by two important trends of nineteenth century Colombian history—the subordination of the Llanos frontier to the highlands, and the emergence of a political system dominated by civilian caudillos.