In celebration of LGBT+ History Month 2024, LSE’s librarian for Gender Studies Heather Dawson recommends seven popular texts on LGBTQ+ themes.

As LSE Library’s Gender Studies Librarian, I compiled this list of contemporary and classic books relating to LGBTQ+ history using books on current LSE course reading lists, so they are all available from LSE Library and endorsed by our academic staff, too.

During February, I will be posting links on X and Instagram to other recommended LGBTQ+ resources available via LSE Library, including article and primary resource databases. LSE staff and students can book one-to-one advice sessions for further help researching LQBTQ+ resources.

LSE Library is also home to the Hall-Carpenter Archives, an extensive collection of ephemera and printed material documenting the development of gay activism in the UK since the 1950s. For LGBT+ History Month, the collection’s curator Gillian Murphy is hosting a drop-in session to showcase a selection of items. This will take place on Wednesday 14 February from 5 to 6.30pm in the Community Space, Third Floor, LSE Saw Swee Hock Building. Explore the full list of LSE events for the month here.

The Economies of Queer Inclusion : Transnational Organizing for LGBTI Rights in Uganda. SM Rodriguez. Lexington Books. 2019.

The first monograph by SM Rodriguez who is based in LSE’s Gender Department, The Economies of Queer Inclusion focuses on the relationships of power between transnational US LGBTQ+ activists and grassroots organisations in Uganda.

Trans Feminist Epistemologies in the US Second Wave. Emily Cousens. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

Cousens’ text is a key reading from the GI429: Archival Interventions course led by Clare Hemmings. It forms part of the readings on diversifying history and the nature and organisation of archives.

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Judith Butler. Routledge, 2006.

Gender Trouble is a classic text from the renowned philosopher who changed the discourse on gender. She will also be speaking at two upcoming events at LSE, Transnational anti-gender politics and resistance on 22 February and Who’s Afraid of Gender in March, a launch event for her latest book.

The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1, The Will to Knowledge. Michel Foucault.  Penguin, 1998.

Foucault’s The History of Sexuality is another essential book on sexuality featuring on several LSE reading lists, including GI421, also taught by Clare Hemmings.

Foucault’s text broadened understanding of the different experiences of sexuality in different historical periods and the way it is socially constructed.

King James & Letters of Homoerotic Desire. D. M. Bergeron. University of Iowa Press. 1999.

For more on LGBTQ+ early modern histories, this book is featured on the HY4B5: Queer early modernities course which provides insight into how “queerness” was understood and practiced in past centuries. This book is currently out of print but available from libraries.

The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale and David M. Halperin (eds.). Routledge. 1993.

I would recommend is this classic reader is ideal for those new to the subject area. It provides a good basic introduction to a range of approaches and features on many LSE reading lists. It contains 42 key essays across disciplines exploring a range of sexual, ethnic, racial, and socio-economic experiences.

Courage to Be: Organised Gay Youth in England 1967 – 90 : A History of the London Gay Teenage Group and Other Lesbian and Gay Youth Groups. Clifford Williams.  The Book Guild Ltd. 2021.

Finally, a book not currently on a taught course reading list but which deserves to be is Clifford Williams’ Courage to Be. The author is a long-established visitor to the LSE and his research is based upon materials in LSE’s Hall Carpenter Archives.

It tells the inside story of groups set up to support and provide social opportunities for LGBT teenagers in London in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. You can find out more in this blog post, and I recommend watching this inspiring recording of an LSE event where the author introduces the book and shares insight on items from the archive.

Note: This reading list gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics.

In Incomplete Conquests: The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines, Stephanie Joy Mawson considers histories of resistance to colonialism in the Philippines during the 1600s. While it relies on Spanish archival rather than indigenous sources, Cai Barias deems the book a worthwhile contribution to the understanding of how marginalised communities in the Philippines responded to colonial agents. This post was originally published on the LSE Southeast Asia Blog.

Incomplete Conquests: The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines. Stephanie Joy Mawson. Cornell University Press. 2023.

This summer I began to study my own Ibanag roots, and as a budding historian, I first searched for what had been written about my father’s native Cagayan Valley. Reaching out to relatives and neighbours in Tuguegarao brought me into the company of Ibanag anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians. From my own search and their shared expertise, I found that the academic literature on Ibanag history, and the indigenous peoples of the Cagayan Valley more broadly, was regrettably scarce. The opportunity to review Stephanie Joy Mawson’s monograph, Incomplete Conquests: The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines was a welcome change of pace, and in the first few paragraphs I began to imagine myself alongside her, standing atop the Calvary Hills in Iguig to view the vast expanse of the Cagayan Valley from above.

Mawson’s deeply researched book approaches the seventeenth century from the limits of Spanish empire, and elucidates how indigenous and external threats, as much as internal Spanish shortcomings, limited Spanish imperial expansion in the Philippines.

Mawson’s deeply researched book approaches the seventeenth century from the limits of Spanish empire, and elucidates how indigenous and external threats, as much as internal Spanish shortcomings, limited Spanish imperial expansion in the Philippines. Mawson’s work rests on three main arguments. First, Mawson argues that the Spanish colonial apparatus was thinly and unevenly spread through the archipelago. Second, Mawson argues that the Spanish adapted indigenous systems of labour and belief into their own practices of governance, often with the effect of undermining their own authority. And third, by focusing on the Cagayan Valley and surrounding mountain communities, Mawson argues that the imposed distinction between highland and lowland colonial histories is historically inaccurate.

Incomplete Conquests is organised roughly thematically into seven chapters that together bring the Spanish empire into fuller view. Chapters One and Seven best demonstrate the internal limitations of Spanish colonial authority. Chapter One focuses on moments of indigenous resistance in the Philippines between 1600-1663. These crises were previously characterised as exceptional, but Mawson argues that they were endemic and inevitable due to a weak economy, political competition from indigenous datus and the Dutch, the disintegration of alliances with indigenous people, and the growth of trade with China in the port of Manila. Chapter One lays the groundwork for the rest of her narrative and demonstrates the financial and political weakness of the Spanish, as well as their struggles to maintain personnel and a physical presence throughout Luzon. This argument is further expanded in Chapter Seven, in which Mawson argues that even in the colonial seat of power, Manila, the Spanish did not wield total authority over inhabitants. Mawson finds that Spanish power in Manila was exerted through law and bureaucracy, while Chinese inhabitants wielded power economically and thus came to control the city’s food supply.

The limitations of Spanish authority had significant implications for the changes that they were able to, or not, impose on indigenous social structures in the seventeenth century.

The limitations of Spanish authority had significant implications for the changes that they were able to, or not, impose on indigenous social structures in the seventeenth century. In Chapters Two, Three, and Four, Mawson argues that the Spanish adapted to pre-Hispanic social, spiritual, and economic structures to maintain their authority. In Chapter Two, Mawson argues that pressure from indigenous elite allies forced the Spanish to adopt pre-Hispanic social and economic structures, like debt bondage. Mawson also considers how the continuation of debt bondage further entrenched the divide between wealthy and poor indigenous peoples, and how the latter overwhelmingly turned to rebellion in response to this system. Chapter Three turns to Spanish efforts at conversion against the backdrop of the indigenous spiritual landscape. Mawson considers both the literal landscape and various communities’ beliefs in spirits and signs embedded in the natural world, and missionaries’ attempts to move indigenous peoples into Spanish settlements. Finally, in Chapter Four, Mawson details the politics of slave raiding in the southern regions of the Philippine archipelago and argues that Moro leaders used slave raids deliberately to destabilise Spanish presence in the Visayas. Moro leaders also engaged in diplomacy with the Spanish and were often able to sway negotiations in their favour. Together, these three chapters show how indigenous peoples were able to maintain aspects of their politics, beliefs, and in the case of the Moros, their land, despite myriad efforts to disrupt pre-Hispanic ways of life.

Mawson details the politics of slave raiding in the southern regions of the Philippine archipelago and argues that Moro leaders used slave raids deliberately to destabilise Spanish presence in the Visayas.

Chapters Five and Six focus on the process of colonisation in the Cagayan Valley and collectively demonstrate that highland and lowland histories were intimately connected throughout. Chapter Five brings the reader to the Cagayan Valley and surrounding mountain communities to show how autonomous mountain communities and lowland fugitives moved to and from the mountains. Mawson finds that the mountains offered spaces of refuge for indigenous peoples looking to leave Spanish-controlled areas, and that the Spanish were largely unable to navigate the terrain. Chapter Six details Cagayan insurgencies from 1572-1745 and expands the argument that upland and lowland histories were intertwined: this time through social connections including trade and kinship networks. Both chapters highlight how Cagayan communities resisted Spanish incursions, by attacking settlements, threatening allies, and moving throughout the region, as early as 1580s. Through such resistance, indigenous peoples in Cagayan limited Spanish settlement in the north for the duration of seventeenth century. Mawson’s focus on the Cagayan Valley is perhaps this book’s most meaningful intervention, as few studies of this region during the seventeenth century exist.

Mawson’s focus on the Cagayan Valley is perhaps this book’s most meaningful intervention, as few studies of this region during the seventeenth century exist.

Throughout Incomplete Conquests, Mawson relies a great deal on Spanish archives with the intention of “reading the silences” for indigenous agency. On the one hand, this archive allows Mawson to recreate moments of Spanish expansion and retreat in detail. Indeed, the use of Spanish sources to demonstrate imperial weakness is appropriate and challenges a historiography that overattributes success to the Spanish empire. On the other hand, however, this method necessarily limits the reader to impressions of indios as mediated through Spanish eyes and ears. Mawson works to challenge colonial characterisations of slave raiding and headhunting as “savagery” by framing such practices within broader Southeast Asian cosmographies but falls short of including original research utilising non-colonial sources. Including a greater diversity of sources, perhaps even non-textual indigenous sources, would have only enriched Mawson’s work.

For those interested in the history of Cagayan Valley, I recommend reading this book alongside work by Cagayano researchers and academics who do the work to bridge the gap between colonialism and indigenous cultural revival

Overall, Incomplete Conquests is a thorough and engaging book and would benefit students of Philippine history, Iberian empire, and Southeast Asia alike. For those interested in the history of Cagayan Valley, I recommend reading this book alongside work by Cagayano researchers and academics who do the work to bridge the gap between colonialism and indigenous cultural revival including the Cagayan Heritage Conservation Society and the Cagayan Museum and Historical Research Center.

This book review is published by the LSE Southeast Asia blog and LSE Review of Books blog as part of a collaborative series focusing on timely and important social science books from and about Southeast Asia. This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, the LSE Southeast Asia Blog, or the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

Main Image Credit:

Reinterpreting Bagehot's mature work as the origin of the key currency tradition

I was on the scientific committee for the conference that planned to revisit Bagehot’s Lombard Street on the occasion of its 150th anniversary, and I mostly used my influence to try to get someone else to write this paper! One reason I did not want to write it was that my own expertise is American, not British, and 20th century not 19th. Another is that the secondary literature on Bagehot is huge and cannot be ignored, whereas my own predilection is to work from primary sources, starting secondary literature rather than contributing to them. But I could not persuade anyone to take the bait, and so in the end I felt an obligation to do it myself, imperfect though it inevitably would be, trusting the other participants in the conference to make me aware of literature I was ignoring.

I had of course read Lombard Street long ago, and more or less swallowed the conventional interpretation. Indeed I have for many years assigned my students the key passages where Bagehot spells out what we have come to know as the Bagehot Rule: in a crisis lend freely at a high rate against security that would be good in normal times. My initial idea for the 150th was just to revisit the book but in the context of Economic Studies, the unfinished three-volume work with which Bagehot seems to have planned to occupy his retirement years. I had learned also from Charles Kindleberger about Bagehot’s pamphlet on Universal Money and had written a blog post on it, and I had written a critical review of Grant’s new biography of the man. So I convinced myself that I could fairly quickly pound out a conference paper for the event.

But as I reread Lombard Street, in the context of Bagehot’s other writings, the book surprised me. It was not the book that I remembered, and in multiple dimensions. No doubt the main reason is that I was no longer the economist that I had been when I first encountered the book. In the interim, I had spent fifteen years developing what I came to call the “money view”, as expounded in the MOOC filmed in the fall of 2012 and now in its tenth year running on Coursera. And I had spent the next ten years extending the money view to global money, using the life and times of Charles P. Kindleberger as my entry point. In the process, I came to see Kindleberger as a kind of money viewer, and that frame was no doubt very much in my mind when I came to revisit Bagehot.

It was not just me that changed over those twenty-five years, but also the world around me. Not to put too fine a point on it, I came to understand financial globalization as the dominating fact of my professional career, a fact about the world that required transformation of the US central bank on two dimensions. First, the rise of market-based finance—money market funding of capital market lending—required evolution from lender of last resort to dealer of last resort as a backstop for global money and capital markets. And second, the expansion of the global dollar system across the face of the globe—first Europe, then Asia, and after the GFC to the Global South—required an evolution of the Fed from a national central bank to a global central bank, operating through liquidity swaps with the central banks that issued other major currencies.

In effect, my career has paralleled the birth of global money, and that made me prepared to see Bagehot’s own career as following a similar trajectory, but for sterling rather than the dollar, and for the Bank of England rather than the Fed. I recognized Bagehot not only because he was like Kindleberger, but also because he was like me. But he was also profoundly different--a banker and journalist rather than an academic and historian--and in his engagement with economics his formation was classical whereas mine was of course neoclassical. But even with these differences, I could recognize a common spirit—we were both devoting our lives to a minority “key currency” view (as Kindleberger called it, and John H. Williams also before him), but it was a minority view only in academia, not at all in the world of banking practitioners where it seems more or less common sense.

Adopting this standpoint, I propose a new interpretation of Lombard Street that emphasizes Bagehot’s concern about the emerging new global duties of the Bank of England. Most importantly, the French indemnity after the Franco-Prussian War seemed to Bagehot a kind of pivot point for financial history. Not to put too fine a point on it, France paid the indemnity by borrowing the sum in London, the largest single sum ever raised, and Germany took payment by accepting bills on London, which could in principle be redeemed in gold at maturity. For Bagehot this incredible achievement marked a moment of maturation for the City, but at the same time exposed the rather primitive character of the Bank of England. From now on, the Bank would have to be a global lender of last resort, a task for which it was quite definitely not fit for purpose.

Bagehot died at the very birth of what we now remember as the era of the international gold standard, and also at the very birth of what we now remember as the era of neoclassical economics, two developments that subsequently proceeded largely independently of one another. The bridge he was trying to build between the two at their respective births proved impossible for those who followed after, as the distance between the shores only widened. The failure of attempts to reconstruct the sterling system after WWI, and its final collapse in September 1931 left the field open for the emergence of the dollar system that would eventually replace it, but not until after the World Depression and another World War. Bagehot’s project, to bridge between the bankers and the economists, was also Kindleberger’s project a century later.

Today’s dollar system is a global system, characterized by the same inherent instability that infects all credit, and so requires some kind of management to keep it in line. Bagehot’s project and Kindleberger’s project must be our project today. Bagehot’s words inspire us: “I believe that our system, though curious and peculiar, may be worked safely; but if we wish so to work it, we must study it.” If Lombard Street speaks to us still today, 150 years later, it is because we as economists can hear the banker trying to tell us vital things about the world in which he lives, trying in fact to enlist us in his project of studying that world in order to work it.

Part 4 and (for now) last of this series. Earlier installments can be found here.

So, by early 1999 various attempts to resolve the Kosovo situation had failed. In autumn 1998 the Americans had sent Richard Holbrooke as a special envoy to Belgrade. Holbrooke negotiated a deal that looked good on paper, with a ceasefire, partial Serb withdrawal, international observers, and negotiations leading to eventual elections. However, in practice the KLA ignored the deal – they hadn’t been consulted, after all – and the Serbs quickly began to foot-drag and renege. So, by January 1999, armed intervention was under serious discussion.

One theory of the conflict deserves mention here. This is the idea that US President Bill Clinton provoked the bombing campaign in order to distract public attention away from the Monica Lewinsky scandal and his subsequent impeachment. This idea was widely discussed at the time, usually referencing the 1997 movie Wag the Dog, in which a US Presidential administration concocts a war in Albania to distract from the President’s sexual misconduct.

It’s not completely impossible! But on the other hand, it’s also completely unprovable. There’s no way to know what Clinton was thinking, and there’s no evidence that distraction from the scandal was a core motivation.

Also, there are several problems with this theory. One is that, in the particular case of Kosovo, the Americans were not the ones pushing hardest for action. American public opinion was slow to become interested in Kosovo. It was in Europe that reports of oppressions and atrocities circulated most widely. “Tabloid headlines in London, above the fold in Berlin, page three in Washington”. Britain’s Tony Blair, in particular, was out ahead of Clinton; he was a passionate advocate for intervention from quite early on.

Another problem with the theory is that Clinton wasn’t even the biggest hawk within his own administration. That honor probably belongs to his Secretary of State, Madeline Allbright. Allbright had several bad experiences with Milosevic and neither liked nor trusted him. But there were plenty of other voices within the administration urging a hard line.

A third problem is that Clinton had always been willing to use force abroad. The Clinton administration had bombed Iraq and fought a minor war in Somalia in 1993; had installed Jean Bertrand Aristide as President of Haiti in 1994; had carried out bombings in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 and — as noted a couple of posts back — had bombed the Serbs in Bosnia in 1995. So his behavior on Kosovo was pretty consistent.

Anyway, I mention the “Wag the Dog” theory because it’s still out there and sometimes comes up in online conversation. Okay, back to Kosovo.

The particular status of Slobodan Milosevic deserves some mention here. Milosevic had never been popular in Europe; rightly or wrongly, he was seen as the most culpable actor in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. However, after Dayton there was a hope that he might now become a force for stability in the region.

These hopes were disappointed. Not only did repression in Kosovo continue and worsen, but Belgrade continued to support the Bosnian Serbs in their endless conflicts with Bosnia’s weak central government. From Milosevic’s POV, he was maintaining a valuable buffer on his border; from a European perspective, he was continuing to meddle and spoil, preventing Bosnia from emerging as a viable state. (To be fair to Milosevic, it turned out that almost every other Serbian government would take a similar position. But this was not apparent at the time.) More generally, Milosevic’s Serbia continued to be a corrupt kleptocracy with close ties to organized crime, and generally had poor to terrible relations with its neighbors in the region and with the rest of Europe generally. So, by 1999, both European leaders and European public opinion were quite thoroughly sick of Milosevic, and open to the idea of an intervention that might remove or at least neutralize him.

Note that Milosevic was not actually a dictator.  True, his party and his allies controlled most Serbian media.  They dispensed immense amounts of patronage; the judiciary was under their control; opposition leaders were spied upon, slandered, and harassed; and protestors or whistleblowers were likely to be targeted by nationalist paramilitary groups or organized crime with close ties to the government. Nevertheless, Serbia was not a one-party state. There were regular elections, and Milosevic had to contest these. Also, Belgrade in particular had a history of anti-government protest going back decades; even under Communism, protests and riots in Belgrade were a concern for Yugoslav governments. (And, in fact, it would be Belgrade protestors who would eventually bring Milosevic down.) So, Milosevic was hardly a Hitler or a Saddam Hussein or even a Vladimir Putin. He had to worry about public opinion, and also about keeping the loyalty of the army, the security services, and Serbia’s oligarch class.

On one hand, this narrowed Milosevic’s room for maneuver. Serb domination in Kosovo was popular even with most of the opposition. Among Milosevic’s core supporters, it was absolutely non-negotiable. A real dictator might have been able to ignore these sentiments; Milosevic could not.

At the same time, it made him more vulnerable. A defeat in Kosovo would certainly weaken and discredit Milosevic, and might well lead to his overthrow. (As in fact it did, though it took more than a year.) So, while almost nobody was openly talking about regime change in Serbia — bad form while you’re actually in the middle of diplomatic negotiations with a regime — it was absolutely on the menu.

Okay, so let’s summarize: why did the Kosovo War happen?

The main drivers for NATO intervention were (1) Fear of “another Bosnia” in Kosovo – another Balkan war, with massacres, refugees, and ethnic cleansing; and (2) European public opinion, which put increasing pressure on European leaders to intervene, and (3) a belief that Milosevic was the problem, and thus a desire to humiliate or break him, hopefully leading to his overthrow or at least eliminating him as a problem going forward.

In addition, three other factors made the intervention easier. These weren’t things that pushed NATO forward, but they made intervention seem simpler, more tempting, and more reasonable. These were (1) the experience of Bosnia; (2) the diplomatic isolation of Serbia, and (3) the weakness of Russia.

The experience of Bosnia has already been discussed. In brief, a short NATO bombing campaign in 1995 brought the Bosnian Serbs to the negotiating table and led directly to the Dayton Accords and the end of the war. There was a widespread belief that a bombing campaign in Kosovo would follow the same pattern – in short, that the Serbs would quickly fold.

The diplomatic isolation of Serbia under Milosevic is not much discussed, but it was absolutely a factor. Among the interested major powers, only Russia was friendly to Milosevic: China was neutral, while the US, France, Germany, the UK and Italy were all quite heartily sick of him.  In the immediate region of Serbia, things were even worse. Albania and Hungary were hostile. Romania and Bulgaria had just joined NATO. Macedonia’s government felt – reasonably enough – that Milosevic was ignoring their security concerns, since Macedonia also had a large Albanian minority who were very engaged with events in Kosovo. Even little Montenegro, which was still nominally joined with Serbia in a rump Yugoslavia, had no interest in maintaining Serb domination in Kosovo; the Montenegrin government stood aloof from Milosevic, and would be effectively neutral in the war.

The only country in the region that was somewhat friendly to Serbia was Greece. But while Greek public opinion was sympathetic to Serbia, the Greek government was not about to throw Milosevic a lifeline.  The Greeks might worry about Albanian irredentism in northern Greece, but they didn’t like or trust Milosevic either. So, an attack on Serbia would not (it was thought) drag NATO in any other conflicts, nor would any of his neighbors give him help that would prolong the conflict.

Finally, the weakness of Russia absolutely allowed NATO to be much less cautious. Russia had traditionally been the great power protector of Serbia, and this relationship had to some extent been revived in the 1990s. However, in 1999, Russia under Yeltsin was near a nadir of international influence and prestige. It was of course still a nuclear power. But Russia had no allies worth mentioning, the Russian economy was in shambles, and the Russian military had just suffered a humiliating defeat in the First Chechen War. NATO planners did not believe that Yeltsin’s Russia had either the will or the capacity to intervene in Kosovo. In this they were mostly correct; Russia gave moral and diplomatic support to Belgrade, and staged a dramatic last-minute intervention at Pristina Airport, but in the end it made no difference.

So, to summarize, NATO intervened to prevent “another Bosnia”; because public opinion, especially in Europe, was putting pressure on leaders; and because of a belief that Milosevic was the problem, and a desire to see him weakened or removed. The intervention was made more attractive by the experience of Operation Deliberate Force three years earlier; by Serbia’s diplomatic isolation; and by perceived Russian weakness.

Right. That ends this set of posts! I might come back in a bit to discuss the last-ditch attempt to avoid war at Rambouillet, the war itself, and its aftermath. (Or perhaps not. This is a bit of a niche topic. We shall see.)