Studies of migration have expanded in recent decades, deepening the inevitable interaction of their analysis. This essay focuses on the issue of scale in the interpretation of migration history, where scale is geographic, temporal, and topical. The analysis compares the work of two outstanding migration historians with each other and with a wider field of migration scholars, asking: How does the interpretation and validity of an analysis in migration vary with the scale of its structure? What are the conclusions on patterns of migrant behavior and migrant reception at each scale? Marlou Schrover and Leo Lucassen have each published at multiple scales, especially on migration within the Netherlands and Europe, but have also published at community, national, continental, and global scopes. In community and national studies, they are able to rely on well-organized empirical data. Is their global analysis carried out as an extension of national analysis, or are there distinctive data, hypotheses, or conclusions at global or extra-European levels? This review suggests that, for these scholars, studies at extra-European and global scales combine national-level approaches with global-level innovations, so that the full array of migration studies shows changing patterns of migration at varying scales of aggregation. Thus, the overall discipline of migration studies may be evolving toward developing interpretations that vary at different scales.

This study presents a research design and hypotheses regarding a wide range of social groups found in long-term human history. It traces the work of the research teams that informally collaborated on the analysis discussed here: network science, which began to emerge in 1998; the earlier and still continuing tradition of Social Network Analysis; and the coalescence of multidisciplinary scholarship on human history. The paper defines social groups, describing their subgroups and their variables. The findings illustrate the number and significance of informal groups, the networked character of basic human communities, language communities as systems, and the dramatic expansion in human social scale after 20,000 years ago. Analysis at each stage centers on the assumption that each adult, as a network node, can support about nine links to other nodes. The results show the promise of relying on human networks (but also social sets and social systems) to explore the full extent of expanded social scale in long-term human history.

This study hypothesizes the emergence of social evolution in northeast Africa, about 70,000 years ago. The combined emergence of syntactic language and collaborative groups generated a process of systematic social change. Spoken language itself and its speaking community, as they solidified, became the first social institutions. A deductive theory formalizes the emergence of language in a group of youths, tracing the “institutional evolution” of their community in a model inspired by Darwinian logic. The model relies on innovative variation in creating institutions, on institutional inheritance by succeeding generations, and a process of social selection that preserves the institutions seen as fit. It is argued that the articulation of this theory, with its testing on evidence from the late Pleistocene era, should help sort out relations among the many current research projects in human biological, cultural, and social evolution. [social evolution, syntactic language, we-group behavior, institutional change, social selection]

Education in the African Diaspora unfolded under difficult conditions yet provided its communities with individual advancement, conceptual discoveries, and institutional achievements. Examining regions across the of African Diaspora, this essay explores education in the era of enslavement and emancipation (up to 1880); in times of industrialization and segregation (up to 1950); and the era of decolonization, civil rights, and high-level educational achievement up to the present. The concept of the African Diaspora is shown to be a major accomplishment of these educational interactions.

Recent developments in the theory of social evolution give support to arguments that the overall pattern of human evolution can effectively be seen through three linked but sequential mechanisms of biological, cultural, and social evolution. This framework is applied in an overview of the intimate group (for residence) and the community (for group defense) within primate species. For Homo sapiens, the intimate group took the form of a household led by a pairbonded couple. The essay, following introductory remarks, narrates the intimate groups and community groups within hominin species that preceded Homo sapiens, as they developed through the natural selection of biological evolution. Then basic models are reviewed for evolution of individual and group behavior in biological evolution and also in the regimes of cultural and social evolution, as expressed in terms of Darwinian variation, reproduction, and selection. The processes of emergence and transformation in the human household are then traced in theory and narrative, for overlapping eras of biological, cultural, and social evolution, and by expansion in social scale including agriculture and industry. Overall, the essay emphasizes long-term transfer of laborers from household to community sectors, expanding the characteristic productivity of each sector. It shows that the human household remains parallel to the intimate social structures of other primates but that it has become greatly distinctive because of its ability to bring numerous offspring to adulthood.

they say once lived among them but thereafter became mountains; they tell also of ancestors who were once living Todas but subsequently became divinities. Beyond such indigenous convictions, Todas have absorbed a plethora of Hindu beliefs and ritual practices. Christian ideology has been propagated among Todas, with foreign-led Christian missionaries succeeded in establishing a breakaway Toda Christian community. But notwithstanding the many divergent sources of Toda religious ideology, the predominant and most public display of Toda ritual activity (apart from among Christian Todas) still centres on their unique sacred dairying cult, despite the rapid decline in the importance of buffaloes in the community's modern-day economic life. This, together with their exclusively Toda deities and culture heroes seems to suggest a unique ethnic religion, frequently categorized as "non-Hindu." But demonstrably Indic (therefore, if only loosely, "Hindu") principles permeate Toda ritual activity. Most notable are the concepts of hierarchy and purity and those of prescribed ritual avoidance coupled with re-

Walvin’s concise review of slavery in the Atlantic argues that slavery has transformed the West or, indeed, the world to the present day. Chapters in six sections include overviews of Iberian and northern European slave systems, examples from the Middle Passage, slave trade within Brazil and the United States, “managing slavery,” the campaign for freedom, and the argument about the world transformed by slavery—as seen through sugar, tobacco, servile labor, and plantation economies. Walvin’s purpose for writing the book was to restate the history of slavery in support of the discourse around Black Lives Matter.The book’s most original observations are signaled at the opening of the concluding chapter: “The furore which swept round the globe in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 brought slavery back into widespread public debate.” In Walvin’s words, “Critics everywhere were swift to point out that the origins of that injustice lay deep in the history of relations between Black and white … [and] the history of slavery” (331). As he suggests, public discourse turns to history when the issues become most painful and difficult.Walvin argues that the intensity of the reaction to Floyd’s death was reinforced by an earlier debate. “The 1619 Project,” a series published in New York Times Magazine, appeared in 2019 with the 400th anniversary of the delivery of African captives to Virginia.1 These essays, which reviewed U.S. history through the lens of slavery, prompted heated discussion among Americans of varied backgrounds, but they made virtually no reference to history outside the United States. Walvin argues, however, that this renewed interest in U.S. slavery ignited a global debate that linked police violence worldwide to reminders of social inequity, to statues of imperial generals, and to the wealth garnered by powerful families and institutions from the work of forced laborers.Having argued that statements about the past of slavery and inequality need to be updated, Walvin turns to the historical background underlying the explosion of Black Lives Matter. He begins with World War II, in which people from all over the world fought the Axis powers, after which the inhabitants of colonies were able to claim the rights of national citizens. He acknowledges that the U.S. civil-rights movement of that era performed a similar function: “In the USA, the reconstruction of the Black past lifted slavery out of its essentially regional setting.”Walvin’s perspective on the British Empire reaffirms the argument that the slavery/inequality debate is worldwide, not just American. Walvin shows how children born to immigrant parents in Europe found that their school curriculum did not address their family or national background. Educators had to address the issue of whether a history of Europe were even possible without looking at slavery. In ex-colonial countries, the inherited imperial school curriculum was inflected by a study of national rights and independence, relying on national scholars to explain the contrasts of wealth and poverty. Walvin mentions James and Williams for the Caribbean cases.2 In both the United States and overseas, expanding studies of slavery brought new disciplines to historical study—linguistics, archaeology, and expanded digital analysis.Walvin refers ambivalently to both West and world as the locus of slavery’s transformation. Thus, “for centuries, the Western world at large was inextricably entangled with slavery.” But his sense of the underlying dynamic is clear. The spreading realization of the global ubiquity of slavery and its effects begged two inescapable questions: “Why were we not told?” and “How had Europeans become the Lords of Human Kind?” (336, 343). In fact, preceding research, especially in the last fifty years, had deeply documented slavery. Evidence was plentiful, but many saw it as new. Such is the interplay of scholars and communities.Finally, given the insistent question of what would be a fair response to the end of slavery, Walvin addresses reparations, focusing especially on the website that reveals details of payments to British owners of slaves in the 1830s (www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs). The discussion is evidently continuing. At the institutional level, banks and universities have made compensatory payments in recognition of their earlier profits from slavery. Walvin concludes the book with a rhetorical question: “Who could now deny that slavery matters?” (354).

The term "civilization, " articulated in eighteenth century Europe, has been widely used in many languages from the nineteenth century to the present. It refers both to widespread societies governed by powerful states in modern times and to prestigious urban and monumental civilizations of ancient times. This essay explores the history of the concept of civilization through science, ideology, and schooling. Scientific exploration of civilization was an implementation of emerging studies in social science. Ideological statement of social priorities appropriated civilization, especially in the era of expanding capitalism, empire, and white supremacy. In the school systems set up around the world, the term "civilization " was included in the curriculum both to explain ancient heritage and the comparison of modern great powers, religious faiths, and cultural practices. Weaknesses in the concept of civilization are becoming apparent as knowledge expands. New factors to consider include the significance of the end of empire; increased attention to network dynamics as well as hierarchies; comparisons of biological equality and social inequality; the roles of commoners and local scales; the rise of global social and institutional structures; shifting balances of societies and regions; and more attention to the historical role of schooling and science.

This essay traces the path of empires and nations as forms of governance, the eventual predominance of nations and disappearance of empires, and the contemporary interplay of large and small nations as the dominant form of global governance. It also gives attention to the rise of capitalist economic organization as a factor expanding empires and later encouraging nationhood. The essay emphasizes two stages in the emergence of nations: the emergence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of nations and eventually of the great powers, and the post-1945 emergence of nations as the universal form of government, consisting mostly of small powers, linked by the United Nations.

The Story of Work traces the processes of human labor at unprecedented temporal depth. Among the histories of humankind, it is innovative in its bottom-up focus on the steady labor of production rather than structures of dominance or empire. Jan Lucassen’s balance of empirical detail and logical framework unfolds in a graceful and orderly fashion, elegantly summarizing his widely varied source materials and assembling a narrative that reveals continuities and transformations. Lucassen recounts the remarkable variety of tasks within the rise of household work in the era of human evolution, the multiple types of labor relations supporting agriculture and states, the diversification of labor brought by commercial ties, and the complex interactions of work in today’s globalized world. This detailed topical survey is winning lively responses from readers who gain a sense of commonality from its stories. Lucassen seems effortless in overcoming the constraints of ethnic boundaries in this account, evoking the universal experience of work. The book has brought pleasure and even inspiration to numerous newspaper reviewers, some of whom have given deeply thoughtful responses to the connections among working lives. How can a historical work addressing the whole planet and up to seven hundred thousand years be attractive to a general audience? The topic—the ubiquity of work in human life—apparently fits, all the more so in reflection on the labors brought by the COVID pandemic. The descriptions of occupations and the numerous quotes from the lives of work and workers convey the commonality of jobs at home and elsewhere. The nearly 1,200 works cited make clear the book’s social-scientific depth, yet the text reads smoothly across the many topics it explores.

African economies were globally integrated yet regionally autonomous. This chapter addresses volume and direction of slave trade, continental and regional export value, and theories of economic growth and enslavement. Details address the varying regional peaks in slave trade as related to warfare, population, regional social orders, and gender relations. The overseas diaspora grew to 10% of the African total of some 140 million. African economies felt the effects of imperial rivalries and global trade, notably in textiles. (Large-scale colonial rule came only after 1870.) The eighteenth century brought expanding overseas slave trade and its steady incursions into domestic economies. The nineteenth century brought a mix of economic changes. Silver became key to African currencies; peasant agricultural exports rose, but only the post-1870 exports of South African diamonds and gold exports exceeded slave-trade earnings. In the ‘second slavery’, African enslavement reached a mid-century peak, in parallel to current maritime Asian and New World plantations. Analysis of African economies benefits from growing collections of empirical data; contending theories on enslavement, the domestic economy, and overseas trade – developed over half a century of analysis – can be strengthened in global context.

The “society” emerged in the warmth of the early Holocene, absorbing the preceding communities and confederations into institutions of more than a thousand members. The chapter contrasts two models of society, exploring whether diversity was beneficial or harmful. A cultural-evolution model places a premium on evolutionary unity within societies, so that each would maximize internal cooperation and fare better in conflict with others. A social-evolutionary model emphasizes diversity within society, favoring migration, multiple institutions, and tension of network and hierarchy. Further modeling of social evolution traces, society, its clans, and its elites, as both networks and hierarchies emerged in the institutions of agriculture, animal husbandry, artisanal workshops, towns, and judiciary. Some societies grew larger: they built states, measured time and created calendars. Agriculture supported cities but also sustained migrations: agriculture created enough greenhouse gases to warm Earth. Afro-Eurasian advances led the mid-Holocene in literacy, empires, water supply, and large-scale religion.

This essay provides new estimates of the number of captives carried in the Atlantic slave trade during each decade from the 1650s to the 1860s. It relies on two categories of known data—on the routes of voyages and the numbers of captives recorded on those voyages—as a basis for estimation of missing data and totals of captive flows. It uses techniques of Bayesian statistics to estimate missing data on routes and flows of captives. As a framework for the Bayesian estimates, it focuses on analysis of 40 distinct routes linking the African coast to the Americas and traces the captive flows—that is, the number of captives embarked on or disembarked from voyages along those routes. The dataset that provides the basis for this research note is available at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6HLXO3.