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Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history
Evolution and Power: China's Struggle, Survival, and Success,
edited by Xiaobing Li and Xiansheng Tian, brings together scholars
from multiple disciplines to provide a comprehensive look at China
s rapid socio-economic transformation and the dramatic changes in
its political institution and culture. Investigating subjects such
as party history, leadership style, personality, political
movements, civil-military relations, intersection of politics and
law, and democratization, this volume situates current legitimacy
and constitutional debates in the context of both the country s
ideology, traditions, and the wider global community. The
contributors to this volume clarify key Chinese conceptual
frameworks to explain previous subjects that have been confusing or
neglected, offering case studies and policy analyses connected with
power struggles and political crises in China. A general pattern is
introduced and developed to illuminate contemporary problems with
government accountability, public opposition, and political
transparency. Evolution and Power provides essential scholarship on
China s political development and growth.
Sarah Dauncey offers the first comprehensive exploration of
disability and citizenship in Chinese society and culture from 1949
to the present. Through the analysis of a wide variety of Chinese
sources, from film and documentary to literature and life writing,
media and state documents, she sheds important new light on the
ways in which disability and disabled identities have been
represented and negotiated over this time. She exposes the
standards against which disabled people have been held as the
Chinese state has grappled with expectations of what makes the
'ideal' Chinese citizen. From this, she proposes an exciting new
theoretical framework for understanding disabled citizenship in
different societies - 'para-citizenship'. A far more dynamic
relationship of identity and belonging than previously imagined,
her new reading synthesises the often troubling contradictions of
citizenship for disabled people - the perils of bodily and mental
difference and the potential for personal and group empowerment.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan's
then President Pervez Musharraf declared: "The Palestinian front is
affecting the entire Muslim world. All terrorists and militant
activity in the world today has been initiated because of the
Palestinian problem. This is because of the sense of hopelessness,
alienation, and powerlessness." The decade following the aftermath
of September 11th has only proven that a comprehensive peace
settlement in the Middle East and a resolve to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict are a crucial necessity to global
stability. In this well-researched and thoroughly-documented work,
Professor Dennis J. Deeb II objectively aims to provide both a
historical narrative of the events surrounding the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a historiography exploring the
failures to achieve the end result of a final settlement between
the Israelis and the Palestinians. What went wrong with peace? This
book explores the issues of contention that must be resolved
between the parties to reach a lasting settlement.
The History of Ancient Israel: A Guide for the Perplexed provides
the student with the perfect guide to why and how the history of
this most contested region has been studies, and why it continues
to be studied today. Philip R. Davies, one of the leading scholars
of Ancient Israel in recent years, begins by examining the
relevance of the study of Ancient Israel, giving an overview of the
sources and issues facing historians in approaching the material.
Davies then continues by looking at the various theories and
hypotheses that scholars have advanced throughout the 20th century,
showing how different approaches are presented and in some cases
how they are both underpinned and undermined by a range of
ideological perspectives. Davies also explains the rise and fall of
Biblical Archaeology, the 'maximalist/minimalist' debate. After
this helpful survey of past methodologies Davies introduces readers
to the current trends in biblical scholarship in the present day,
covering areas such as cultural memory, the impact of literary and
social scientific theory, and the notion of 'invented history'.
Finally, Davies considers the big question: how the various sources
of knowledge can be combined to write a modern history that
combines and accounts for all the data available, in a meaningful
way. This new guide will be a must for students of the Hebrew
Bible/Old Testament.
Since the mid-twentieth century China and India have entertained a
difficult relationship, erupting into open war in 1962. Shadow
States is the first book to unpack Sino-Indian tensions from the
angle of competitive state-building - through a study of their
simultaneous attempts to win the approval and support of the
Himalayan people. When China and India tried to expand into the
Himalayas in the twentieth century, their lack of strong ties to
the region and the absence of an easily enforceable border made
their proximity threatening - observing China and India's
state-making efforts, local inhabitants were in a position to
compare and potentially choose between them. Using rich and
original archival research, Berenice Guyot-Rechard shows how India
and China became each other's 'shadow states'. Understanding these
recent, competing processes of state formation in the Himalayas is
fundamental to understanding the roots of tensions in Sino-Indian
relations.
The Zheng family of merchants and militarists emerged from the
tumultuous seventeenth century amid a severe economic depression, a
harrowing dynastic transition from the ethnic Chinese Ming to the
Manchu Qing, and the first wave of European expansion into East
Asia. Under four generations of leaders over six decades, the Zheng
had come to dominate trade across the China Seas. Their average
annual earnings matched, and at times exceeded, those of their
fiercest rivals: the Dutch East India Company. Although nominally
loyal to the Ming in its doomed struggle against the Manchus, the
Zheng eventually forged an autonomous territorial state based on
Taiwan with the potential to encompass the family's entire economic
sphere of influence. Through the story of the Zheng, Xing Hang
provides a fresh perspective on the economic divergence of early
modern China from western Europe, its twenty-first-century
resurgence, and the meaning of a Chinese identity outside China.
In the medieval world, geographical knowledge was influenced by
religious ideas and beliefs. Whereas this point is well analysed
for the Latin-Christian world, the religious character of the
Arabic-Islamic geographic tradition has not yet been scrutinised in
detail. This volume addresses this desideratum and combines case
studies from both traditions of geographic thinking. The
contributions comprise in-depth analyses of individual geographical
works as for example those of al-Idrisi or Lambert of Saint-Omer,
different forms of presenting geographical knowledge such as
TO-diagrams or globes as well as performative aspects of studying
and meditating geographical knowledge. Focussing on texts as well
as on maps, the contributions open up a comparative perspective on
how religious knowledge influenced the way the world and its
geography were perceived and described int the medieval world.
Upheavals in the Middle East: The Theory and Practice of a
Revolution engages with some of the most sensitive issues in the
Middle East-revolutions and social protests. The book offers
theoretical paradigms that suit the Middle East's
conditions-culturally, religiously and historically. It deals with
seventeen case studies from a range of Muslim and Arab states and
provides a theoretical framework to study other situations all over
the world, including cases from the recent Arab Spring. Revolution,
as political action, can occur in all societies, but in recent
years it has appeared most frequently in the Middle East. Will this
trend continue? What makes the Middle Eastern revolution unique and
surprising? This book seeks to answer these questions, placing side
by side those cases that were successful and those that were doomed
to fail.
The surprise of the Yom Kippur War rivals that of the other two
major strategic surprises in the 20th century Operation Barbarossa,
the 1941 German surprise attack on the Soviet Union and the bombing
of Pearl Harbor. The major difference between these events is that
Israeli intelligence had a lot more and better quality information
leading up to the attack than did the Americans or the Soviet Union
prior to those attacks. Why, then, was the beginning of the war
such a surprise? The sudden eruption of the Yom Kippur War in 1973
took Israel and the world by surprise. While many scholars have
tried to explain why Israel was caught unawares despite its
sophisticated military intelligence services, Dalia Gavriely-Nuri
looks beyond the military, intelligence, and political explanations
to a cultural explanation. Israeli Culture on the Road to the Yom
Kippur War reveals that the culture that evolved in Israel between
the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War played a large role in the
surprise. Gavriely-Nuri lays out the cultural environment at the
time to show that an attack of any kind would have been experienced
as a strategic surprise despite the amount of intelligence
available.
This comprehensive volume traces the evolution of Japanese military
history-from 300 AD to present day foreign relations-and reveals
how the country's cultural views of power, violence, and politics
helped shape Japan's long and turbulent history of war. The legacy
of Japanese warfare is steeped in honor, duty, and valor. Yet, some
of the more violent episodes in this country's military history
have tainted foreign attitudes toward Japan, oftentimes threatening
the economic stability of the Pacific region. This book documents
Japan's long and stormy history of war and military action,
provides a thorough analysis of the social and political changes
that have contributed to the evolution of Japan's foreign policy
and security decisions, and reveals the truth behind the common
myths and misconceptions of this nation's iconic war symbols and
events, including samurais, warlords, and kamikaze attacks. Written
by an author with military experience and insight into modern-day
Japanese culture gained from living in Japan, A Military History of
Japan: From the Age of the Samurai to the 21st Century examines how
Japan's history of having warrior-based leaderships, imperialist
governments, and dictators has shaped the country's concepts of
war. It provides a complete military history of Japan-from the
beginning of the Imperial institution to the post-Cold War era-in a
single volume. This thoughtful resource also contains photos, maps,
and a glossary of key Japanese terms to support learning. Compiles
Japan's complete military history in one volume Reveals the
strategic blunders and poor choices that led to Japan's surrender
to the United States in 1945 Provides in-depth coverage of the
popular and compelling Samurai, Imperial, and Shogun periods of
history
This study of Galilee in modern times reaches back to the region's
Biblical roots and points to future challenges in the Arab-Jewish
conflict, Israel's development, and inter-faith relations. This
volume covers an array of subjects, including Kabbalah, the rise of
Palestinian nationalism, modern Christian approaches to Galilee's
past and present, Zionist pioneering, the roots of the Arab-Jewish
dispute, and the conflict's eruption in Galilee in 1948. The book
shows how the modernization of Galilee intertwined with mystical
belief and practice, developing in its own grassroots way among
Palestinians, Orthodox Jews, Christians, and Druze, rather than
being a byproduct of Western intervention. In doing so, The History
of Galilee, 1538-1949: Mysticism, Modernization, and War offers
fresh, challenging perspectives for scholars in the history of
religion, military history, theology, world politics, middle
eastern studies, and other disciplines.
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