In Globalization and the Colonial Origins of the Great Divergence Pim de Zwart examines the Dutch East India Company's intercontinental trade and its effects on living standards in various regions on the edges of the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Contrary to conventional views, De Zwart finds significant evidence of the integration of global commodity markets, an important dimension of globalization, before the 1800s. The effects of this globalization, and the associated colonialism, were diverse and could vary between and within regions. As globalization and colonialism affected patterns of economic development across the globe they played a part in the rise of global economic inequality, known as the 'Great Divergence', in the early modern period.

Fifteen years after the end of a protracted civil and regional war, Beirut broke out in violence once again, forcing residents to contend with many forms of insecurity, amid an often violent political and economic landscape. Providing a picture of what ordinary life is like for urban dwellers surviving sectarian violence, The Insecure City captures the day-to-day experiences of citizens of Beirut moving through a war-torn landscape. While living in Beirut, Kristin Monroe conducted interviews with a diverse group of residents of the city. She found that when people spoke about getting around in Beirut, they were also expressing larger concerns about social, political, and economic life. It was not only violence that threatened Beirut's ordinary residents, but also class dynamics that made life even more precarious. For instance, the installation of checkpoints and the rerouting of traffic - set up for the security of the elite - forced the less fortunate to alter their lives in ways that made them more at risk. Similarly, the ability to pass through security blockades often had to do with an individual's visible markers of class, such as clothing, hairstyle, and type of car. Monroe examines how understandings and practices of spatial mobility in the city reflect social differences, and how such experiences led residents to be bitterly critical of their government. In The Insecure City, Monroe takes urban anthropology in a new and meaningful direction, discussing traffic in the Middle East to show that when people move through Beirut they are experiencing the intersection of citizen and state, of the more and less privileged, and, in general, the city's politically polarized geography.

The objective of Walking through Jordan is to acknowledge and honor the singular achievements and wider impacts of Jordan's most prominent survey archaeologist, Burton MacDonald. MacDonald is a biblical scholar by training who has written extensively about the Iron Age and early Christianity. However, unlike many biblical scholars, MacDonald has also undertaken large regional survey projects which encompass the entire gamut of Jordanian prehistory and history. Thus, his work is unique in that it attracts the interest of a wide range of scholars.Contributing scholars from around the world reflect on three important areas of MacDonald's archaeological contributions: on archaeological survey in general, including those focusing on methodology and/or field projects that depend to a large extent on surveys, MacDonald's five major surveys- papers that incorporate data from his field projects and sites tested or excavated by others that were first identified by his work, and the archaeology of the Bronze and Iron Ages, as well as the Roman Period and the early Christian era. Despite his important contributions to prehistoric archaeology, the early historical periods constitute the main emphasis of Burton's scholarly output.

This book begins with the analysis of America's post-war intelligence operations, propaganda campaigns, and strategic psychological warfare in Japan. Banking on nuclear safety myths, Japan promoted an aggressive policy of locating and building nuclear power plants in depopulated areas suffering from a significant decline of local industries and economies. The Fukushima nuclear disaster substantiated that U.S. propaganda programs left a long lasting legacy in Japan and beyond and created the fertile ground for the future nuclear disaster. The book reveals Japan's tripartite organization of the dominating state, media-monopoly, and nuclear-plant oligarchy advancing nuclear proliferation. It details America's unprecedented pro-nuclear propaganda campaigns; Japan's secret ambitions to develop its own nuclear bombs; U.S. dumping of reprocessed plutonium on Japan; and the joint U.S.-Nippon propaganda campaigns for "safe" nuclear-power and the current "safe-nuclear particles" myths. The study shows how the bankruptcy of the central state has led to increased burdens on the population in post-nuclear tsunami era, and the ensuing dangerous ionization of the population now reaching into the future.

Transcending ethnic, linguistic, and religious boundaries, early empires shaped thousands of years of world history. Yet despite the global prominence of empire, individual cases are often studied in isolation. This series seeks to change the terms of the debate by promoting cross-cultural, comparative, and transdisciplinary perspectives on imperial state formation prior to the European colonial expansion.
Two thousand years ago, up to one-half of the human species was contained within two political systems, the Roman empire in western Eurasia (centered on the Mediterranean Sea) and the Han empire in eastern Eurasia (centered on the great North China Plain). Both empires were broadly comparable in terms of size and population, and even largely coextensive in chronological terms (221 BCE to 220 CE for the Qin/Han empire, c. 200 BCE to 395 CE for the unified Roman empire). At the most basic level of resolution, the circumstances of their creation are not very different. In the East, the Shang and Western Zhou periods created a shared cultural framework for the Warring States, with the gradual consolidation of numerous small polities into a handful of large kingdoms which were finally united by the westernmost marcher state of Qin. In the Mediterranean, we can observe comparable political fragmentation and gradual expansion of a unifying civilization, Greek in this case, followed by the gradual formation of a handful of major warring states (the Hellenistic kingdoms in the east, Rome-Italy, Syracuse and Carthage in the west), and likewise eventual unification by the westernmost marcher state, the Roman-led Italian confederation. Subsequent destabilization occurred again in strikingly similar ways: both empires came to be divided into two halves, one that contained the original core but was more exposed to the main barbarian periphery (the west in the Roman case, the north in China), and a traditionalist half in the east (Rome) and south (China).
These processes of initial convergence and subsequent divergence in Eurasian state formation have never been the object of systematic comparative analysis. This volume, which brings together experts in the history of the ancient Mediterranean and early China, makes a first step in this direction, by presenting a series of comparative case studies on clearly defined aspects of state formation in early eastern and western Eurasia, focusing on the process of initial developmental convergence. It includes a general introduction that makes the case for a comparative approach; a broad sketch of the character of state formation in western and eastern Eurasia during the final millennium of antiquity; and six thematically connected case studies of particularly salient aspects of this process.

Originally published in 1931, this is a systematic and comprehensive history of caste in India and its influence on Hindu law, social institutions and society as a whole. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include: The Caste System - Caste in the Rigveda - Caste during the Brahmana Period - Caste in the Sutras - Caste in the Sutras Continued - Appendix - Verifications from Non-Brahmanical Writings - Caste in Early Buddhist Literature - Caste in Greek Accounts - Bibliography

Since the age of the Sasanian Empire (224-651 AD), Iran and the West have time and again appeared to be at odds. Iran and the West charts this contentious and complex relationship by examining the myriad ways the two have perceived each other, from antiquity to today. Across disciplines, perspectives and periods contributors consider literary, imagined, mythical, visual, filmic, political and historical representations of the 'other' and the ways in which these have been constructed in, and often in spite of, their specific historical contexts. Many of these narratives, for example, have their origin in the ancient world but have since been altered, recycled and manipulated to fit a particular agenda. Ranging from Tacitus, Leonidas and Xerxes via Shahriar Mandanipour and Azar Nafisi to Rosewater, Argo and 300, this inter-disciplinary and wide-ranging volume is essential reading for anyone working on the complex history, present and future of Iranian-Western relations.

Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lama enjoy global popularity and relevance, yet the longstanding practice of oracles within the tradition is still little known and understood. The Nechung Oracle, for example, is believed to become possessed by an important god named Pehar, who speaks through the human medium to confer with the Dalai Lama on matters of state. The Dalai Lama and the Nechung Oracle is the first monograph to explore the mythologies and rituals of this god, the Buddhist monastery that houses him, and his close friendship with incarnations of the Dalai Lama over the centuries. In the seventeenth century, during the reign of the Fifth Dalai Lama, the protector deity Pehar and his oracle at Nechung Monastery were state-sanctioned by the nascent Tibetan government, becoming the head of an expansive pantheon of worldly deities assigned to protect the newly unified country. The governments of later Dalai Lamas expanded the deity's influence, as well as their own, by establishing Pehar at monasteries and temples around Lhasa and across Tibet. Pehar's cult at Nechung Monastery came to embody the Dalai Lama's administrative control in a mutual relationship of protection and prestige, the effects of which continue to reverberate within Tibet and among the Tibetan exile community today. The friendship between these two immortals has spanned nearly five hundred years across the Tibetan plateau and beyond.

Originally published in 1935, this a translation of the original Chinese text. The book follows Ch'ang-Ch'un through the crowded Chinese plains, through Mongolia, Samarkand and Afghanistan. It is a fascianting travelogue and an intriguing insight in to medieval Taoism. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include: Sources - Sun Hsi's Preface to the Hsi Yu Chi - Translation of Hsi Yu Chi - Appendix - Index - Map

Annexation and the Unhappy Valley: The Historical Anthropology of Sindh's Colonization addresses the nineteenth century expansion and consolidation of British colonial power in the Sindh region of South Asia. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach and employs a fine-grained, nuanced and situated reading of multiple agents and their actions. It explores how the political and administrative incorporation of territory (i.e., annexation) by East India Company informs the conversion of intra-cultural distinctions into socio-historical conflicts among the colonized and colonizers. The book focuses on colonial direct rule, rather than the more commonly studied indirect rule, of South Asia. It socio-culturally explores how agents, perspectives and intentions vary-both within and across regions-to impact the actions and structures of colonial governance.

This collection opens the geospatiality of "Asia" into an environmental framework called "Oceania" and pushes this complex regional multiplicity towards modes of trans-local solidarity, planetary consciousness, multi-sited decentering, and world belonging. At the transdisciplinary core of this "worlding" process lies the multiple spatial and temporal dynamics of an environmental eco-poetics, articulated via thinking and creating both with and beyond the Pacific and Asia imaginary.

The Korean War occupies a unique place in American history and foreign policy. Because it followed closely after World War II and ushered in a new era of military action as the first hot conflict of the cold war, the Korean War was marketed as an entirely new kind of military campaign. But how were the war-weary American people convinced that the limited objectives of the Korean War were of paramount importance to the nation?
In this ground-breaking book, Steven Casey deftly analyzes the Truman and Eisenhower administrations' determined efforts to shape public discourse about the war, influence media coverage of the conflict, and gain political support for their overall approach to waging the Cold War, while also trying to avoid inciting a hysteria that would make it difficult to localize the conflict. The first in-depth study of Truman's and Eisenhower's efforts to garner and sustain support for the war, Selling the Korean War weaves a lucid tale of the interactions between the president and government officials, journalists, and public opinion that ultimately produced the twentieth century concept of limited war.
It has been popularly thought that the public is instinctively hostile towards any war fought for less than total victory, but Casey shows that limited wars place major constraints on what the government can say and do. He also demonstrates how the Truman administration skillfully rededicated and redefined the war as it dragged on with mounting casualties. Using a rich array of previously untapped archival resources--including official government documents, and the papers of leading congressmen, newspaper editors, and war correspondents--Casey's work promises to bethe definitive word on the relationship between presidents and public opinion during America's "forgotten war."