Joshua M. Rosenthal is a Professor of History and Non-Western Cultures at Western Connecticut State University. He received his PhD and MA from Columbia University, and his BA from Wesleyan University. His research focus is nineteenth-century Colombia. He wrote Salt and the Colombian State. Local Society and Regional Monopoly, 1821-1900(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). His current work is on pardons after civil wars in the Republic of New Granada (1832-1858). He has also published critical essays on Capoeira.