Communication

A letter to the editor will be considered only if it relates to an article or review published in this journal; publication is solely at the editors' discretion. The AHA disclaims responsibility for statements, of either fact or opinion, made by the writers. Letters should not exceed one thousand words for articles and seven hundred words for reviews. They can be submitted by e-mail to ahr@indiana.edu, or by postal service to Editor, American Historical Review, 914 E. Atwater Ave, Bloomington, IN 47401. For detailed information on the policies for this section, see http://www.historycooperative.org/ahr/communpo.html.

ARTICLES

To the Editors:
In his otherwise excellent article "The Disenchantment of Magic: Spells, Charms, and Superstition in Early European Witchcraft Literature" (AHR, April 2006, 383–404), Michael D. Bailey claims that "Max Weber first articulated his notion of 'the disenchantment of the world'" in a speech in Munich in 1917 and only later incorporated this idea into his seminal Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This is clearly wrong; The Protestant Ethic was first published in 1904, thirteen years before the Munich speech.
Eugene Clay Arizona State University

Michael D. Bailey responds:
Professor Clay is correct that Weber first published "Die protestantische Ethik" as two lengthy articles in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 20 and 21 (1904–1905). Here he developed many ideas, mainly concerning ascetic Calvinism, that would underlie his notion of disenchantment. He did not, however, employ the phrase "Entzauberung der Welt" in this earliest version of his work, nor did he include the passage I quoted from The Protestant Ethic in my article. These were added to the later, revised version published in 1920–1921.
Michael D. Bailey Iowa State University

AHR FORUM

To the Editors:
In the AHR Forum "The Problem of American Homicide" (AHR, February 2006, 75–114), Pieter Spierenburg cites the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 as proof that Americans in the Revolutionary era understood the right to bear arms as an individual right of self-defense. Spierenburg is not alone in using this text to support the so-called "Standard Model" view of the right to bear arms that has been industriously propagated by pro–gun rights supporters both inside and outside the academy. Indeed, the Pennsylvania Constitution's guarantee that its citizens had the right to "bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State" has been cited more than any other eighteenth-century constitution in the debate over guns and gun violence. And yet, no other text has been so misunderstood.
My research, recently presented at the 2006 AHA Annual Meeting ("Defending Themselves: Understanding the Historical Context of the Right to Bear Arms in Revolutionary Pennsylvania"), argues that the modern gun debate misrepresents this text by ignoring the complex history leading up to the drafting of Pennsylvania's Declaration of Rights and the tradition of community self-defense that defined the province since the 1750s. Viewed in the proper historical context, the Pennsylvania Declaration fits better into the emerging "civic rights" model, which sees the right to bear arms as having been an essential requirement for all citizens. Bearing arms was not the right of the state as a legal entity which was then conferred onto citizens acting collectively; it was the obligation of all male citizens so that they could participate in a militia. The new Pennsylvania constitution demanded militia service from every citizen, and with every member of society contributing his share of the defense of Pennsylvania as a whole as well as the smaller communities within its borders, the framers of the 1776 constitution felt they could realize the true goal of responsible government stated in the preamble, namely, the "security and protection of the community."
Given that Pennsylvania was the first state to provide a constitutional right to bear arms, and since this text has played such a key role in the debate over the meaning of the Second Amendment, we need to remedy this text's constant misinterpretation.
Nathan Kozuskanich The Second Amendment Research Center The Ohio State University
Pieter Spierenburg does not wish to respond.

REVIEWS

To the Editor:
I appreciate Alison Games's comments on my Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (AHR, April 2006, 434–435), but I am surprised by her saying that I have omitted Africa and blacks from the story. They are central to both essays. In the first—an exploration of how Atlantic history emerged as a historical subject as distinct from a geographical reference—I stress the critical importance of the outpouring of studies of the slave trade and Africa during and after the 1960s; and in the second essay—a sketch of the substantive historical shape of the subject—I revert to it again, specifying the African population as far and away the largest component of the Western Hemisphere's labor force: "it was of course from Africa that by far the largest number of workers were drawn to the Western Hemisphere: a total of over 5.5 million by 1775—36 percent to British America, 32 percent to Portuguese territory, 13 percent to French territory, 9 percent to Spanish. Enslaved and distributed by a pan-Atlantic, Afro-European coercive commercial system, they were people whose presence almost everywhere in the Western Hemisphere was a major demographic, social, and economic force—in some places (St. Domingue, South Carolina) an overwhelming force." As to Africa and slavery's place in the historical phases I sketch, slavery in and from Africa was in its essence barbarous and hence is central to the early phase of the region's development. And there are references to Africa and slavery throughout the book. Of course I do not attempt to incorporate a sketch of the history of Africa in this outline story, any more than histories of England, Spain, the Netherlands, or France.
Professor Games, who has made her own substantial contribution to Atlantic history, may have reason to know that Harvard's Atlantic History Seminar, to whose members the book is dedicated, has had numerous sessions on slavery and the Black Atlantic; and we will continue to do so in the future. The Seminar's papers on those subjects, as on all others, are available on its website: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~atlantic.
Bernard Bailyn Harvard University

Alison Games responds:
I am grateful to Bernard Bailyn for taking the time to raise such an important issue. I would like to clarify that I did not say that Bailyn "omitted Africa and blacks from the story." Rather, I said that Bailyn's book was "less satisfying" in his efforts to integrate Africa fully into a history of the Atlantic world. The point I sought to make was that Bailyn's conceptual framework for the Atlantic was derived primarily from the themes and transformations most apparent in the Americas in the period from 1492 through 1830. I regard the difficulty of integrating multiple distinct regions and political units, each with their own unique histories and historiographies, as a fundamental challenge confronting historians of any large geographic region such as the Atlantic. This exchange illustrates one of the greatest limitations of the idea of Atlantic history: despite the labors of Africanists for some forty years, we continue to know little about the lived experiences of the majority of those who experienced the Atlantic world. African captives were the dominant human face of Atlantic history for over two centuries, and the cultural hearth for much of the Americas and the Caribbean was African. The history of Atlantic Africa therefore strikes me as central to a study of the Atlantic in a way that the individual histories of France or the Netherlands are not. In a compact essay of this sort, Bailyn undoubtedly had to be ruthlessly selective in what he included, but I disagree with the point Bailyn raises in his letter that, in his "outline story," the history of Africa is equivalent to the histories of single nations such as Spain or England. Historians are likely always to disagree about the relative and appropriate interpretive weight to assign different regions and historical actors, and it is precisely this sort of professional disagreement that provides the necessary avenue to greater understanding. Thus I appreciate Bernard Bailyn's gracious response to my review.
I agree wholeheartedly with Bernard Bailyn on the value of Harvard's International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World. I urge interested colleagues to study the Seminar's offerings and resources and to take part in its extensive array of seminars and workshops.
Alison Games Georgetown University

To the Editors:
I wish to respond to the review by Ifi Amadiume of my book Igbo Women and Economic Transformation in Southeastern Nigeria, 1900–1960 (AHR, April 2006, 600–601). While I have decided not to respond to her biased remarks in reference to my comments on her book Male Daughters, Female Husbands, because I believe that every reviewer is entitled to her/his opinion depending on how she/he understands and interprets the issues raised in any work reviewed, I am particularly amazed at her accusation that I failed to acknowledge Nwando Achebe's "historical research" on Ahebi Ugbabe. This letter is intended to correct Amadiume's uninformed remarks and to put things in their proper perspective. I am compelled to set the record straight for the sake of my scholarship and academic integrity.
First, I did not read Nwando Achebe's book that Ifi Amadiume cited in the review. The reason is that while my book was released by Routledge in January 2005, Achebe's Farmers, Traders, Warriors and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900–1960 came out toward the end of 2005. Therefore, there is no way I could have read and acknowledged that work in my book.
Secondly, the subject in question, Ahebi Ugbabe, as the only female warrant chief in the whole of colonial Nigeria, is well known to any serious historian of Igbo history. Ahebi Ugbabe was among a group of powerful Igbo women I wrote about in 1999 in my "Women as Actors and Victims of the Slave Trade in Igboland, Nigeria" (Working Paper no. 99-16, International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500–1800, Harvard University, 1999). Nwando Achebe was still a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, when I wrote this paper. I had no access to her research. But Achebe had interviewed me both in Nigeria in 1996 at the beginning of her doctoral research and in the United States in 2000 on different aspects of her research. She had also read my publications on Igbo women, including my doctoral dissertation, "The Changing Role of Women in Igbo Economy, 1929–1985" (History Department, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, 1995), for the same purpose.
Thirdly, it is true that Ifi Amadiume is one of those who wrote blurbs for Nwando Achebe's book. As an experienced scholar and author, she cannot deny knowledge of how long it takes a submitted manuscript to make it into print. Since she knew when Achebe's book came out, she should have known that it would not have been possible for me to read and acknowledge Achebe, whose book came out several months after mine was released. Moreover, the fact that my book was sent to her for review is an acknowledgment of her expertise on Igbo women and gender relations. This recognition requires her to be current with the state of scholarship in this particular field of study. Thus, Amadiume could not claim ignorance of my scholarship on Igbo women, which dates back to the early 1990s. I therefore believe that this baseless accusation could have been avoided if Amadiume had not allowed her vested interest in Achebe's work to overshadow true scholarship and common sense.
Gloria Chuku Millersville University of Pennsylvania

Ifi Amadiume responds:
I noted that Gloria Chuku did not acknowledge Nwando Achebe's book. My comment is not based on any "vested interest in Achebe's work," as Chuku puts it. The works of these two scholars are excellent and important. In her book Achebe acknowledges an interview with Chuku in 2000, and Achebe's bibliography also shows that articles based on Achebe's work were already published in 2003.
Ifi Amadiume Dartmouth College

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