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Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history
By the early 1820s, British policy in the Eastern Mediterranean was
at a crossroads. Historically shaped by the rivalry with France,
the course of Britain's future role in the region was increasingly
affected by concern about the future of the Ottoman Empire and
fears over Russia's ambitions in the Balkans and the Middle East.
The Regency of Tripoli was at this time establishing a new era in
foreign and commercial relations with Europe and the United States.
Among the most important of these relationships was that with
Britain. Using the National Archive records of correspondence of
the British consuls and diplomats from 1795 to 1832, and within the
context of the wider Eastern Question, this book reconstructs the
the Anglo-Tripolitanian relationship and argues that the Regency
played a vital role in Britain's imperial strategy during and after
the Napoleonic Wars. Including the perspective of Tripolitanian
notables and British diplomats, it contends that the activities of
British consuls in Tripoli, and the networks they fostered around
themselves, reshaped the nature and extent of British imperial
activity in the region.
What role does Qatar play in the Middle East, and how does it
differ from the other Gulf states? How has the ruling Al-Thani
family shaped Qatar from a traditional tribal society and British
protectorate to a modern state? How has Qatar become an economic
superpower with one of the highest per-capita incomes in the world?
What are the social, political, and economic consequences of
Qatar's extremely rapid development? In this groundbreaking history
of modern Qatar, Allen J. Fromherz analyzes the country's crucial
role in the Middle East and its growing regional influence within a
broader historical context. Drawing on original sources in Arabic,
English, and French as well as his own fieldwork in the Middle
East, the author deftly traces the influence of the Ottoman and
British Empires and Qatar's Gulf neighbors prior to Qatar's
meteoric rise in the post-independence era. Fromherz gives
particular weight to the nation's economic and social history, from
its modest origins in the pearling and fishing industries to the
considerable economic clout it exerts today, a clout that comes
from having the region's second-highest natural gas reserves. He
also looks at what the future holds for Qatar's economy as the
country tries to diversify beyond oil and gas. The book further
examines the paradox of Qatar where monarchy, traditional tribal
culture, and conservative Islamic values appear to coexist with
ultramodern development and a large population of foreign workers
who outnumber Qatari citizens. This book is as unique as the
country it documents-a multifaceted picture of the political,
cultural, religious, social, and economic makeup of modern Qatar
and its significance within the Gulf Cooperation Council and the
wider region.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Shortlisted for the 2020 Cundill
History Prize 'Riveting and original ... a work enriched by solid
scholarship, vivid personal experience, and acute appreciation of
the concerns and aspirations of the contending parties in this
deeply unequal conflict ' Noam Chomsky The twentieth century for
Palestine and the Palestinians has been a century of denial: denial
of statehood, denial of nationhood and denial of history. The
Hundred Years War on Palestine is Rashid Khalidi's powerful
response. Drawing on his family archives, he reclaims the
fundamental right of any people: to narrate their history on their
own terms. Beginning in the final days of the Ottoman Empire,
Khalidi reveals nascent Palestinian nationalism and the broad
recognition by the early Zionists of the colonial nature of their
project. These ideas and their echoes defend Nakba - the
Palestinian term for the establishment of the state of Israel - the
cession of the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan and Egypt, the Six Day
War and the occupation. Moving through these critical moments,
Khalidi interweaves the voices of journalists, poets and resistance
leaders with his own accounts as a child of a UN official and a
resident of Beirut during the 1982 seige. The result is a
profoundly moving account of a hundred-year-long war of occupation,
dispossession and colonialisation.
Iran and a French Empire of Trade examines the understudied topic
of Franco-Persian relations in the long eighteenth century to
highlight how rising tensions among Eurasian empires and
revolutions in the Atlantic world were profoundly intertwined.
Conflicts between Persia, Turkey, India and Russia, and European
weapons-dealing with these empires occurred against a backdrop of
climate change and food insecurities that destabilized markets.
Takeda shows how the French state relied on "entrepreneurial
imperialism" to extend commercial activities eastwards beyond the
Mediterranean during this time, from Louis XIV's reign to Napoleon
Bonaparte's First Empire. Organized as a collection of
microhistories, her study showcases a colourful set of
characters-rogue merchants from Marseille, a gambling house madam,
a naturalized Greek-French drogman, and a bi-cultural
Genevan-Persian consul, among others-to demonstrate how individuals
on the fringes of French society spearheaded projects to foster
ties between France and Persia. Considering the Enlightenment as a
product of a connected world, Takeda investigates how
trans-imperial adventurers, merchants, consuls, and informants
negotiated treaties, traded commodities and arms, transferred
knowledge, and introduced industrial practices from Asia to Europe.
And she shows the surprising ways in which Enlightenment debates
about regime changes from the Safavid to Qajar dynasties and
Persia's borderland wars shaped French ideas about revolution and
policies related to empire-building.
How did the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution affect everyone's
lives? Why did people re/negotiate their identities to adopt
revolutionary roles and duties? How did people, who lived with
different self-understandings and social relations, inevitably
acquire and practice revolutionary identities, each in their own
light?This book plunges into the contexts of these concerns to seek
different relations that reveal the Revolution's different
meanings. Furthermore, this book shows that scholars of the
Cultural Revolution encountered emotional and intellectual
challenges as they cared about the real people who owned an
identity resource that could trigger an imagined thread of
solidarity in their minds.The authors believe that the Revolution's
magnitude and pervasive scope always resulted in individualized
engagements that have significant and differing consequences for
those struggling in their micro-context. It has impacted a future
with unpredictable collective implications in terms of ethnicity,
gender, memory, scholarship, or career. The Cultural Revolution is,
therefore, an evolving relation beneath the rise of China that will
neither fade away nor sanction integrative paths.
This book comprises several specialized studies written between
1977 and 1997 most of which have been published in french such as
French presence in the Punjab, french search for manuscripts in the
18th century paintings, french patronage of a school of painting in
Punjab, the numismatic collection of Genaral Court, indian
influence on Albert Camus and Andre Malraux in Gandhara. Some
papers study french who took up service with the native states,with
Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan in Mysore and Ranjit Singh in Punjab.
There is the biography of Bnnou Pan Dei of Chamba as an example of
franco indian family.
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