Enfilade

Another title now 50% off at the Princeton UP sale:

Itohan Osayimwese, Africa’s Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2025), 296 pages, ISBN: 978-0691251431, £30 / $35.

A groundbreaking history of Africa’s looted architectural heritage—and a bold proposal for the repatriation of the continent’s stolen cultural artifacts

Between the nineteenth century and today, colonial officials, collectors, and anthropologists dismembered African buildings and dispersed their parts to museums in Europe and the United States. Most of these artifacts were cataloged as ornamental art objects, which erased their intended functions, and the removal of these objects often had catastrophic consequences for the original structures. Africa’s Buildings traces the history of the collection and distribution of African architectural fragments, documenting the brutality of the colonial regimes that looted Africa’s buildings and addressing the ethical questions surrounding the display of these objects.

Itohan Osayimwese ranges across the whole of Africa, from Egypt in the north to Zimbabwe in the south, and spanning the western, central, and eastern regions of the continent. She describes how collectors employed violent means to remove elements such as columns and door panels from buildings, and how these methods differentiated architectural collecting from conventional collecting. She shows how Western collectors mischaracterized building components as ornament, erasing their architectural character and concealing the evidence of their theft. Osayimwese discusses how the very act of displacing building parts like floor tiles and woven screen walls has resulted in a loss of knowledge about their original function and argues that because of these removals, scholars have yet to fully grasp the variety and character of African architecture.

Richly illustrated, Africa’s Buildings uncovers the vast scale of cultural displacement perpetrated by the West and proposes a new role for museums in this history, one in which they champion the repatriation of Africa’s architectural heritage and restitution for African communities.

Itohan I. Osayimwese is professor of the history of art and architecture and urban studies at Brown University, where she is an affiliate faculty in Africana studies and at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She is the author of Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Germany and the editor of German Colonialism in Africa and Its Legacies.

Recently released in paperback from Princeton UP, where many books are now 50% off with code SPRING50 (until June 9) . . .

Tristan Brown, Laws of the Land: Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023), 356 pages, ISBN: 978-0691246734 (hardback), £38 / $45 / ISBN: 978-0691247175 (paperback), £25 / $30.

Today the term fengshui, which literally means “wind and water,” is recognized around the world. Yet few know exactly what it means, let alone its fascinating history. In Laws of the Land, Tristan Brown tells the story of the important roles—especially legal ones—played by fengshui in Chinese society during China’s last imperial dynasty, the Manchu Qing (1644–1912).

Employing archives from Mainland China and Taiwan that have only recently become available, this is the first book to document fengshui’s invocations in Chinese law during the Qing dynasty. Facing a growing population, dwindling natural resources, and an overburdened rural government, judicial administrators across China grappled with disputes and petitions about fengshui in their efforts to sustain forestry, farming, mining, and city planning. Laws of the Land offers a radically new interpretation of these legal arrangements: they worked. An intelligent, considered, and sustained engagement with fengshui on the ground helped the imperial state keep the peace and maintain its legitimacy, especially during the increasingly turbulent decades of the nineteenth century. As the century came to an end, contentious debates over industrialization swept across the bureaucracy, with fengshui invoked by officials and scholars opposed to the establishment of railways, telegraphs, and foreign-owned mines. Demonstrating that the only way to understand those debates and their profound stakes is to grasp fengshui’s longstanding roles in Chinese public life, Laws of the Land rethinks key issues in the history of Chinese law, politics, science, religion, and economics.

Winner of the John K. Fairbank Prize, American Historical Association
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year
Winner of the Biannual Book Prize, International Society of Chinese Law and History

Tristan G. Brown is S.C. Fang Chinese Language and Culture Career Development Professor in History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

From Haus Publishing, with distribution by The University of Chicago Press:

Monika Czernin, with an introduction by Dominic Lieven, The Emperor Incognito: Joseph II’s Journey through Enlightenment Europe, translated by Jamie Bulloch (London: Haus Publishing, 2026), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-1914979439, £22 / $30.

The first complete account of Emperor Joseph II’s undercover journey through his kingdom

Travelling incognito, and without the customary pomp and entourage, the young emperor Jospeh II travels through the Holy Roman Empire and his Hapsburg lands to see with his own eyes how his subjects live, suffer, and starve. As well as kings, queens, and the European political and social elite, Joseph engages with and observes ordinary people and their hospitals and factories, eagerly soaking up Enlightenment ideas of progress and liberty. Visiting his sister, Marie Antoinette, in Versailles in 1777, he senses the French Revolution looming and realises that reform is inevitable if he is to build a modern state. The Emperor Incognito tells the story of an extraordinary man, far ahead of his time and in an age of great upheaval, who spent a quarter of his twenty-five-year reign on the road. The result of his titanic efforts, despite his own admission (as inscribed on his tombstone) that he ‘failed everything he undertook’, was the foundation of a more modern Austrian monarchy, in a Europe in which progress was no longer determined solely by its rulers.

Monika Czernin is an internationally renowned author and filmmaker. Her research focuses on key figures and turning points of European History, and her book, Anna Sacher and Her Hotel, spent many weeks on the bestseller lists in Germany. Czernin was awarded the Friedrich Schiedel Literature Prize in 2023 and is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Dominic Lieven is a Fellow of the British Academy and Honorary and Emeritus Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge University.
Jamie Bulloch is a historian and has worked as a professional translator from German.

This incredible labor of love is now available for free download at arthistoricum.net:

Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, Incognito: An Annotated Edition of the Archival Documentation for Saxon Electoral Prince Friedrich Christian’s Two-Year Tour Abroad in 1738–40 (ART-Dok: Publication Platform for Art and Visual Studies, full-text server of arthistoricum.net, Heidelberg University Library, 2026), 1628 pages.

Rosalba Carriera, Portrait of Prince Friedrich Christian of Saxony, ca. 1740, pastel on paper (Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Mrs. Arthur W. Levy, Jr., in memory of her husband; inv. 66.55).

Electoral prince Friedrich Christian’s father, grandfather, and great uncle each traveled abroad as part of their princely educations, with Versailles the main objective; his father, Friedrich August II (1696–1763), also converted to Catholicism while on the grand tour, which enabled him to marry a Catholic princess and stand in line for the Polish crown, succeeding his father in 1733 as Augustus III.

Friedrich Christian (1722–1763) was the third and oldest surviving son of the future Augustus III and his Habsburg bride, Maria Josepha (1699–1757); three princesses followed, then three princes. Hence, he became and remained the heir to the throne despite having been born with an incurable disability, considered to have been cerebral palsy. When treatments in the mineral waters at Teplice, Bohemia, failed to improve the boy’s health, his parents sought medical advice from their representatives in France and even England.

Yet it was his sister’s marriage by proxy to Charles Bourbon (1716-1788), the king of Naples, in 1738 that opened the door to medical treatments on the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples, and it was hastily decided to send the prince, incognito, to accompany Queen Maria Amalia (1724–1760), cognito, on the journey to meet her new husband. The route was scripted as a Marian pilgrimage, with stops in Prague, Mariazell and Loreto, bypassing Vienna and Rome to avoid the delays of state receptions for the new queen.

Following a cure on Ischia (July 12–Sept. 23, 1738) and a period of recuperation at Portici and Naples (July 23–Nov. 15, 1738), the prince sojourned for a year in Rome, residing in Palazzo Albani alle Quattro Fontane (Nov. 18, 1738 – Oct. 14, 1739). After Rome, he toured Tuscany, Lombardy and the Veneto (Oct. 14–Dec. 21, 1739), while his staff mostly went ahead, perhaps to quarantine, before they all floated into Venice on Dec. 21, 1739, where the prince resided for six months in Ca’Foscari, until June 11, 1740. Prior to returning to Dresden on Sept. 7, 1740, he spent two months in Vienna, to meet the Imperial Family and others, and spend time with his grandmother, dowager empress Wilhelmine Amalie (1673–1742).

The educational grand-tour-cum-cure undertaken by the handicapped crown prince of Saxony in 1738–40 is documented by an unparalleled array of archival evidence in Dresden and beyond. This includes four detailed journals, in French, German and Italian, one handwritten by the prince himself and the others by members of his staff, plus boundless correspondence, both official and personal, as well as the account book (privy purse) for his two-year odyssey abroad. Further evidence is found in eyewitness accounts penned by others, whether diplomats or tourists or the clergy, and in published reports. Hence, the transcriptions presented here in eight chapters, including the four handwritten diaries and the account book in Dresden, are annotated with relevant excerpts from archival material in foreign archives or with references to the many known or unknown works of art, relics, and antiquities cited in the journals, not to mention the countless people and places named. The footnotes also offer insights into practical matters, such as the logistics of moving people, correspondence or things from place to place under often challenging circumstances, household management and staffing; matters of protocol, given the prince was travelling incognito; and the patterns and rituals of gift-giving, Catholic devotion and courtly entertainment. Moreover, the transcriptions demonstrate four different approaches to reporting for posterity.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction, Selected Bibliography, and Acknowledgements

1  Electoral Prince Friedrich Christian’s Personal Diary for His Journey Abroad and Homecoming in 1738–40
2  Count Joseph Anton Gabaleon von Wackerbarth-Salmour’s Official Journal Dispatched to the King during the Prince’s Journey Abroad
3  Count Han Moritz von Brühl’s Journal Dispatched to His Brother, the Prime Minister, during the Prince’s Journey Abroad
4  Jesuit Father Wunibald Breinl’s Journal for his Sojourn in Rome
5  The Privy Purse for the Prince’s Journey Abroad
6  The Court Journal for Queen Maria Amalia’s Journey from Dresden to Palmanova in the Company of Electoral Prince Friedrich Christian
7  Diario Ordina

From Penguin Random House:

Andrea Wulf, The Traveler: One Man’s Quest for Humanity from the South Seas to Revolutionary Paris (New York: Knopf, 2026), 512 pages, ISBN: ‎978-0593803400, $38.

From an early age, it was clear that George Forster possessed a brilliant mind. At just ten years old, he became a botanist when he accompanied his irascible father, Reinhold, on a wild expedition to Russia. By the time he was twelve, they had moved to London and the young boy soon became the breadwinner by publishing translations of the most popular travel accounts of the day. Then, in 1772, at the age of seventeen, George Forster joined Cook’s second voyage, the most daring expedition of the time.

The HMS Resolution set sail with orders to find what was then the hypothetical southern continent of Antarctica, stopping at the islands of the South Pacific—including New Zealand, Vanuatu, Tonga, Tahiti, and Easter Island—along the way. The Resolution car­ried the ambitions of the most powerful empire in the world, but Forster brought an understanding that was far ahead of his day. A gifted observer, linguist, artist, and writer, he studied the diverse cultures of the world without prejudice and was one of the first Europeans to talk about universal human rights.

Recognized on his return as one of Europe’s brightest minds, Forster used his fame to advocate for freedom and human rights and wrote against empire, white supremacy, and slavery. He admired strong, educated women, even accepting his wife’s independence—and her love affairs. Driven by his passion for equality, Forster would eventually be pulled into the vortex of the French Revolution and live in Paris during the Reign of Terror. Throughout it all, he held close the radical belief that our common humanity is far greater than what sets us apart. The Traveler recounts the remarkable life of this deeply curious and exceptional man who, though largely forgotten by history, truly belonged to the future.

Andrea Wulf was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She is the author of Magnificent Rebels, The Founding Gardeners, Brother Gardeners, and the New York Times bestseller The Invention of Nature, which has been published in twenty-seven languages and won fifteen international literary awards. Wulf has written for many newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic. She is a member of PEN America and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London.