An authoritative study of food politics in the socialist regimes of China and the Soviet Union During the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union. In this rigorous and thoughtful study, Felix Wemheuer analyzes the historical and political roots of these socialist-era famines, in which overambitious industrial programs endorsed by Stalin and Mao Zedong created greater disasters than those suffered under prerevolutionary regimes. Focusing on famine as a political tool, Wemheuer systematically exposes how conflicts about food among peasants, urban populations, and the socialist state resulted in the starvation death of millions. A major contribution to Chinese and Soviet history, this provocative analysis examines the long-term effects of the great famines on the relationship between the state and its citizens and argues that the lessons governments learned from the catastrophes enabled them to overcome famine in their later decades of rule.

In Post-war Japan as a Sea Power, Alessio Patalano incorporates new, exclusive source material to develop an innovative approach to the study of post-war Japan as a military power. This archival-based history of Asia's most advanced navy, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force (JMSDF), looks beyond the traditional perspective of viewing the modern Japanese military in light of the country's alliance with the US. The book places the institution in a historical context, analysing its imperial legacy and the role of Japan's shattering defeat in WWII in the post-war emergence of Japan as East Asia's 'sea power'.

The book seeks to situate caste as a discursive category in the discussion of Partition in Bengal. In conventional narratives of Partition, the role of the Dalit or the Scheduled Castes is either completely ignored or mentioned in passing. The authors addresse this discursive absence and argues that in Bengal the Dalits were neither passive onlookers nor accidental victims of Partition politics and violence, which ruptured their unity and weakened their political autonomy. They were the worst victims of Partition. When the Dalit peasants of Eastern Bengal began to migrate to India after 1950, they were seen as the 'burden' of a frail economy of West Bengal, and the Indian state did not provide them with a proper rehabilitation package. They were first segregated in fenced refugee camps where life was unbearable, and then dispersed to other parts of India - first to the Andaman Islands and the neighbouring states, and then to the inhospitable terrains of Dandakaranya, where they could be used as cheap labour for various development projects. This book looks critically at their participation in Partition politics, the reasons for their migration three years after Partition, their insufferable life and struggles in the refugee camps, their negotiations with caste and gender identities in these new environments, their organized protests against camp maladministration, and finally their satyagraha campaigns against the Indian state's refugee dispersal policy. This book looks at how refugee politics impacted Dalit identity and protest movements in post-Partition West Bengal.

This book, edited by April Myung of Bergen County Academies in New Jersey, contains autobiographies of ten Korean teenagers, currently studying in American high schools. This historically significant volume contains writings by break-dancing Julius Im, who understands his Korean-American identity through this medium of African-American dance, to Rei Fujino Park of Flushing, New York, who explores her own dual identiy with a Korean father (who served in the elite Korean military special forces) and a Japanese mother. Rei Fujino describes her parents' marriage as a loving union of "enemies" given the history of Japanese colonization of Korea (1910-1945). Julie Oh describes the difficult situation of the children of Korean company workers for Samsung, LG, SK, Woori Bank, and other Korean companies, who come with a short-term working visa to the United States. The children of these "Joo-Jae-Won" have to go to Saturday school (in her case, "Woori School") in order to maintain the skill level of Korean high schools, in the case that their parents get recalled to South Korea - their children would have to apply for Korean universities and meet the requirements of Korean university entrance tests, which are vastly different from America's SAT, ACT, and AP tests. Andrew Hyeon shars his experience as a Korean Catholic, attending Hopkins School, an elite private school in Connecticut, where former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh, a famous Korean, attended. Ruby Hong's autobiography is written as a fairytale account of her own life. The autobiographies in this book are not only creatively written as to capture the readers' interest, but they also provide valuable resources for Korean American Studies. (This book is the second in the Hermit Kingdom Sources in Korean-American Studies, whose series editor is Dr. Onyoo Elizabeth Kim, Esq.)

Order and Compromise questions the historicity of government practices in Turkey from the late Ottoman Empire up to the present day. It explores how institutions at work are being framed by constant interactions with non-institutional characters from various social realms. This volume thus approaches the state-society continuum as a complex and shifting system of positions. Inasmuch as they order and ordain, state authorities leave room for compromise, something which has hitherto been little studied in concrete terms. By combining in-depth case studies with an interdisciplinary conceptual framework, this collection helps apprehend the morphology and dynamics of public action and state-society relations in Turkey. Contributors are: Marc Aymes, Olivier Bouquet, Nicolas Camelio, Nathalie Clayer, Anouck Gabriela Corte-Real Pinto, Berna Ekal, Benoit Fliche, Muriel Girard, Benjamin Gourisse, Sumbul Kaya, Noemi Levy Aksu, Elise Massicard, Jean-Francois Perouse, Clemence Scalbert Yucel, Emmanuel Szurek and Claire Visier.

The Vietnam War is one of the defining conflicts of the twentieth century: not only did it divide American society at every level; the conflict also represented a key shift in Asian anti-colonialism and shaped the course of the Cold War. Despite its political and social importance, popular memory of the war is dominated by myths and stereotypes. In this incisive new text, John Dumbrell debunks popular assumptions about the war and reassesses the key political, military and historical controversies associated with one of the most contentious and divisive wars of recent times. Drawing upon an extensive range of newly accessible sources, Rethinking the Vietnam War assesses all aspects of the conflict - ranging across domestic electoral politics in the USA to the divided communist leadership in Hanoi and grassroots antiwar movements around the world. The book charts the full course of the war - from the origins of American involvement, the growing internationalization of the conflict and the swing year of 1968 to bitter twists in Sino-Soviet rivalry and the eventual withdrawal of American forces. Situating the conflict within an international context, John Dumbrell also considers competing interpretations of the war and points the way to the resolution of debates which have divided international opinion for decades.

In the nineteenth century the Dead Sea and the Tigris-Euphrates river system had great political significance: the one as a possible gateway for a Russian invasion of Egypt, the other as a potentially faster route to India. This is the traditional explanation for the presence of the international powers in the region. This important new book questions this view. Through a study of two important projects of the time -- international efforts to determine the exact level of the Dead Sea, and Chesney's Euphrates Expedition to find a quicker route to India -- Professor Goren shows how other forces than the interests of empire, were involved. He reveals the important role played by private individuals and establishes a wealth of new connections between the key players; and he reveals for the first time an important Irish nexus. The resulting work adds an important new dimension to our existing understanding of this period.

The first of a new series, the Contemporary Archive of the Islamic World, this title draws on the resources of World of Information, a British publisher that since 1975 has published analyses of the politics and economics of all the Middle East countries. For decades Syria lay at the heart of Middle Eastern affairs. Under Assad rulers, and sharing a border with Israel, Syria's fortunes have been complex. Strategic alliances were formed and fell apart. Domestic rebellions were quelled, often violently. Since 2011, Syria has been in the world's headlines every day, riven by a civil war that has risked bringing the world's major powers into open conflict. The CAIW provides an essential background to a complex international problem.

Jami in Regional Contexts: The Reception of 'Abd Al-Rahman Jami's Works in the Islamicate World is the first attempt to present in a comprehensive manner how 'Abd al-Rahman Jami (d. 898/1492), a most influential figure in the Persian-speaking world, reshaped the canons of Islamic mysticism, literature and poetry and how, in turn, this new canon prompted the formation of regional traditions. As a result, a renewed geography of intellectual practices emerges as well as questions surrounding authorship and authority in the making of vernacular cultures. Specialists of Persian, Arabic, Chinese, Georgian, Malay, Pashto, Sanskrit, Urdu, Turkish, and Bengali thus provide a unique connected account of the conception and reception of Jami's works throughout the Eurasian continent and maritime Southeast Asia.

How should failed states in Africa be understood? Catherine Scott here critically engages with the concept of state failure and provides an historical reinterpretation. She shows that, although the concept emerged in the context of the post-Cold War new world order, the phenomenon has been attendant throughout (and even before) the development of the Westphalian state system. Contemporary failed states, however, differ from their historical counterparts in one fundamental respect: they fail within their existing borders and continue to be recognised as something that they are not. This peculiarity derives from international norms instituted in the era of decolonisation, which resulted in the inviolability of state borders and the supposed universality of statehood. Scott argues that contemporary failed states are, in fact, failed post-colonies. Thus understood, state failure is less the failure of existing states and more the failed rooting and institutionalisation of imported and reified models of Western statehood. Drawing on insights from the histories of Uganda and Burundi, from pre-colonial polity formation to the present day, she explores why and how there have been failures to create effective and legitimate national states within the bounds of inherited colonial jurisdictions on much of the African continent.

Baghdad: From its Beginnings to the 14th Century offers an exhaustive handbook that covers all possible themes connected to the history of this urban complex in Iraq, from its origins rooted in late antique Mesopotamia up to the aftermath of the Mongol invasion in 1258. Against the common perception of a city founded 762 in a vacuum, which, after experiencing a heyday in a mythical "golden age" under the early 'Abbasids, entered since 900 a long period of decline that ended with a complete collapse by savage people from the East in 1258, the volume emphasizes the continuity of Baghdad's urban life, and shows how it was marked by its destiny as caliphal seat and cultural hub. Contributors Mehmetcan Akpinar, Nuha Alshaar, Pavel Basharin, David Bennett, Michal Biran, Richard W. Bulliet, Kirill Dmitriev, Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst, Hend Gilli-Elewy, Beatrice Gruendler, Sebastian Gunther, Olof Heilo, Damien Janos, Christopher Melchert, Michael Morony, Bernard O'Kane, Klaus Oschema, Letizia Osti, Parvaneh Pourshariati, Vanessa van Renterghem, Jens Scheiner, Angela Schottenhammer, Y. Zvi Stampfer, Johannes Thomann, Isabel Toral.

This volume reproduces in full Mountbatten's own account of the last five months of British rule in India based on reports he sent to London at the time. Written with disarming frankness, we witness the failure of Mountbatten's initial attempts to secure independence on the basis of a united India. He then turned to some form of agreed partition and his eventual success was achieved after considerable feats of diplomacy. The figures of Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and other key leaders loom large in this account. Mountbatten provides a valuable introductory historical survey and a chapter in which he draws up his conclusions. There are thirteen appendices providing the texts of key documents and an index of the persona involved in these momentous events. Before becoming the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten played a major part in the defeat of Japan in the Second World War. He was Supreme Allied Commander, South-East Asia Command between 1943 and 1946. Here he was also responsible for preparing Burma for civilian rule. Mountbatten served as first Governor-General of the new Dominion of India and after he left India in June 1948 he held a number of senior posts. He was First Sea Lord in Britain between 1955 and 1959 and then became (until 1965) Chief of the U.K. Defence Staff.

From as early as the 1600s, Dutch scholars and scholarship have displayed a keen interest in the studies of the Islamic world. Over the centuries, they have collected a wealth of source texts in various languages, Turkish texts being prominent among them. The present catalogue is the fourth and final volume in a series that covers the Turkish manuscripts preserved in public libraries and museums in the Netherlands. The volume gives a detailed description of Turkish manuscripts in minor Dutch collections, found in libraries and museums in Amsterdam, Groningen, The Hague, Leiden, Rotterdam and Utrecht, which hitherto have received little or no attention.

This collection of essays offers a comprehensive study of the impact of cultural life and intellectual thought on society in Medieval India. Doubtless, if the impact of interaction between the followers of Hindu and Islamic traditions of culture under the Arab and Ghaznavid rulers remained confined, to Sind and the Panjab from the eighth to the twelfth centuries AD, the Ghurian conquest of north India led to far-reaching socio-political changes in the subcontinent. The scientific instruments and devices that found their way with the emigrants from the neighbouring countries after the foundation of the sultanate in the beginning of the thirteenth century became the accompaniments of civilised life and generated new components of elite culture. The essays in this volume shift the focus from the pre-occupation with battles and court politics that dominate the studies of the period and help us understand the complex social phenomena. The essays arranged are first concerned with intellectual life and thought and then come those that deal with literary works containing historical information of supplementary and corroborative importance. The works analysed not only cast light on currents and cross currents resulting from the role played by the elite but also open new vistas for further investigation. The discovery of new sources is of methodological significance as they provide insights into certain aspects not much known. The contributors are scholars of eminence and belong to India, England, USA and Australia.

Aristotle's theory of eternal continuous motion and his argument from everlasting change and motion to the existence of an unmoved primary cause of motion, provided in book VIII of his Physics, is one of the most influential and persistent doctrines of ancient Greek philosophy. Nevertheless, the exact wording of Aristotle's discourse is doubtful and contentious at many places. The present critical edition of Ishaq ibn Hunayn's Arabic translation (9th c.) is supposed to replace the faulty edition by A. Badawi and aims at contributing to the clarification of these textual difficulties by means of a detailed collation of the Arabic text with the most important Greek manuscripts, supported by comprehensive Greek and Arabic glossaries.