While Africa is inextricably linked to the formation of Brazilian identity in all its manifestations and ramifications, the discourses of hybridity in Latin America have minimized the significant impact of Africa in that cultural contact zone by encouraging the propaganda of racial harmony, mythological state of racelessness, and non-racism while fundamentally masking the contentious terrains of struggle for institutional, economical, and cultural equality among different races. Through the analysis of select works of Manuel, this article argues that the reversal of perpetual dislocations in African diaspora discourses that emanate from myopic rendering and simplification of complex cultural realities and contexts, must begin with a close examination of the contributions of each racialized group in order to better understand the extent of the strategic contribution of every race, and deliberate marginalization of African diaspora voices in Brazilian continuously problematic racial democracy.

Brittany, a region with an obscure early history and an identity in dispute between Britain and France, enters an unusually well-evidenced period in the ninth century when it was conquered, and then placed under native rulership, by the Frankish Carolingian emperors. Taking advantage of Carolingian weakness to expand territorially, the Breton polity outlasted dynastic violence and Viking attack and would eventually survive until 1532. The historiography of the period has blossomed since the 1980s. English- and French-language historians are in agreement that the creation of Brittany was a direct consequence of the rise and fall of the Carolingian empire, and an illustration of ‘the fundamental political and social changes that often occur on the periphery of dynamic and rapidly evolving societies’ (J.M.H. Smith). They differ, however, in that Francophones are inclined to emphasise the extension of Carolingian institutions to Brittany, while English historiography minimises the institutionalisation of politics, in Brittany and increasingly in the Carolingian empire as a whole. Regardless of these differences, Breton evidence gives a view of the interplay between the local and the supra-national in social organisation, legal practice, and Christian culture, the significance of which for the whole Carolingian world is increasingly recognised.

This essay argues for a need to develop a new political history of colonial Spanish America in order to bring up to date the old institutional history of the Spanish empire. In recent decades, historians of colonial Spanish America have not shown much interest in the study of political and institutional history. Originally, this constituted a welcome reaction against the previous emphasis on the institutional and legal aspects of the Spanish empire. But one effect of this historiographical development has been that, while our knowledge of the social history of colonial Spanish America has progressed in an impressive way, our knowledge of the mechanisms of imperial rule has made very little progress in the last 50 years. As a result, colonial historians have to rely on antiquated or inadequate notions regarding the political and institutional nature of Spanish colonialism. However, the new political history of colonial Spanish America should not focus on the study of the colonial state, but rather on the political culture of the Spanish empire.

Argentina occupies a prominent place in Latin American historiography. Latin Americanists as well as historians of other world regions are less familiar, though, with the intensity of cultural, political, and economic flows that defined the broader region of the Río de la Plata, comprising today’s Uruguay and Argentina specifically, as well as Paraguay and southern Brazil more generally. Such exchanges of goods, ideas, and people were especially true of the late colonial period and the nineteenth century. Yet in this equation studies of Uruguay have remained on the margins in historical scholarship. This essay focuses on three core areas of research in the recent historiography of Uruguay as a gateway to nineteenth-century cultural history of the Río de la Plata region. These areas are: (1) the African diaspora and blackness; (2) political culture and cultural history; and (3) a revitalized political history that draws from intellectual history and new energy surrounding the bicentennials of independence throughout Latin America. Knowledge of the historical forces shaping nineteenth-century Uruguay not only contributes to a more complete understanding of the region’s cultural history; it also allows for the development of a historical perspective that is much more in tune with the historical experience of the region’s inhabitants throughout the long nineteenth century. Moreover, students and scholars of Argentina will note some parallels in research problems, though seeing them through the Uruguay prism can yield alternative approaches and point to previously unknown or under-utilized source bases.

This speculative essay is a call for further research and the beginning of a long overdue conversation among historians of the Middle East about the importance of sounds and soundscapes in studying history. In the process, I will suggest some research strategies for uncovering the sounds and noises of the past – especially before the introduction of recording technologies. All the while, I hope to encourage more multidisciplinary conversations by Middle East historians with other scholarly disciplines that examine sound and listening.

Recent developments in Italian, Portuguese and colonial inquisition histories around the globe have greatly enhanced our knowledge both of these persecuting bodies’ own institutional nature and of the varied sorts of human experience they sought to discipline. Social historians continue to find evidence for a wide range of premodern mentalities and lifeways in inquisitorial and related trial documents, not only in Europe but among indigenous and subaltern peoples in colonial settings as well. At the same time, studies of inquisitorial personnel, policies and organizational structures are contributing to broader historiographies of religion and politics in the late medieval and early modern periods. The future of inquisition history now requires increased collaboration and sharing of research across traditional divides of region, confession, and specialization.