Until 500 years ago China's technology was the most advanced in Eurasia and as recently as 200 years ago its standards of living surpassed those of most other civilizations. However, the economies of the West and smaller developing countries then overtook the Chinese economy. China had reached its developmental limits and deadlock set in. Covering the time span from the Shang to the Qing Periods (1520BC - 1911AD), Gang Deng examines important factors in the decline of the Chinese economy from medieval sophistication to modern underdevelopment. These factors include: resource endowments; socio-economic structure; property rights; state and bureaucracy; ideology and values; geo-political environment; internal rebellions; external invasions and conquests. This is a comprehensive analysis of China's economic history and provides background to the study of this country's modern struggle for growth and development. Deng's emphasis on comparative analysis offers insights into the concept of underdevelopment and theories of transitional economics. This should become a major reference work in the fields of Chinese studies, economic history and development studies.

This set of four volumes collects the major English language contributions to the theories of the structure and performance of the Japanese economy in the 20th century. It covers a wide range of topics: Volume I covers Japan before the Pacific War; Volume Two covers post-war growth; Volume Three covers trading with Japan; Volume Four explores the nature of the Japanese firm. The set gives the reader access to the most important debates about the contours of the modern Japanese economy and their evolution. Many of the articles in the set should also be accessible to non-economists, especially to political scientists.

Contents:
1 Introduction 2 The old and the new 3 Population 4 Migration & the diaspora communities 5 Race, ethnicity and language 6 Religion 7 Education 8 Womens movements in the Pacific 9 Pacific images 10 Pacific Cinemas 11 The culture of politics

This important new text examines the crucial social and cultural factors associated with the rise of the Asia- Pacific region at the end of the Twentieth Century.
It takes a close look at those areas which have affected the everyday life of the people most directly. These include:
* the family
* gender relations and the position of women
* religion
* the arts, with specific reference to film
* ethnic relations and population migration
* education, and the images of the Asia-Pacific.
The authors discuss real tensions between tradition and modernity in different nations of the Asia-Pacific, exploring the effects that economic growth has on powerful traditional cultures.

The East India Company played a major part in the growth of Britain's empire. Its functions went beyond those of a trading concern and merged military force, government and colonization with economic expansion. This six-volume work covers the history of the Company from its origins in 1599-1600 to its abolition in the wake of the Indian Mutiny of 1857. This comprehensive collection contains reprinted first-hand sources, scholarly surveys, and thematically arranged collections of recent journal articles, offering scholarly coverage of the Company's history, and presenting recent interpretations of its development.

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A study of the Ottoman military machine and its successes in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East in a period when they were feared by western European states and the focus of much military concern. The book is intended for undergraduate courses in early modern history, Ottoman history, history of the Middle East and North Africa, and for military historians.

This book begins in 1820 with the Portuguese attempt to create a third, African, empire after the virtual loss of Asia and America. In the nineteenth century the most valuable resource extracted from Angola was agricultural labour, first as privately owned slaves and later as conscript workers. The colony was managed by a few marine officers, by several hundred white political convicts, and by a couple of thousand black Angolans who had adopted Portuguese language and culture. The hub was the harbour city of Luanda which grew in the twentieth century to be a dynamic metropolis of several million people. The export of labour was gradually replaced when an agrarian revolution enabled white Portuguese immigrants to drive black Angolan labourers to produce sugar-cane, cotton, maize and above all coffee. During the twentieth century this wealth was supplemented by Congo copper, by gem-quality diamonds, and by off-shore oil. Although much of the countryside retained its dollar-a-day peasant economy, new wealth generated conflict which pitted white against black, north against south, coast against highland, American allies against Russian allies.The generation of warfare finally ended in 2002 when national reconstruction could begin on Portuguese colonial foundations.

The Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology covers sources from Mesopotamia, Syro-Palestine and Anatolia, from around 2800 to 300 BC. It contains entries on gods and goddesses, giving evidence of their worship in temples, describing their 'character', as documented by the texts, and defining their roles within the body of mythological narratives; synoptic entries on myths, giving the place of origin of main texts and a brief history of their transmission through the ages; and entries explaining the use of specialist terminology, for such things as categories of Sumerian texts or types of mythological figures.

eBook available with sample pages: EB:020302852X

The six newly independent Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan - have redefined the Middle East, creating a region of interest for both the international community and the neighbouring states who have had to adjust their policies to the possible ramifications, new opportunities and novel challenges. The emergence of Muslim republics has been part of a larger transformation experienced by the Middle East in the 1990s. The main purpose of this volume is to examine the impact of the transformation on the Middle East, with special emphasis placed on the republics' relations with Turkey and Iran - the two countries closest to and most actively involved in the Muslim republics of Central Asia and Transcaucasia. The ability of Middle Eastern states to influence the republics is still questionable - regional relationships between the Middle East and Central Asia have (re)emerged only in the 1990s - but their independence has had profound implications for the Middle East itself.

The six newly independent Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan - have redefined the Middle East, creating a region of interest for both the international community and the neighbouring states who have had to adjust their policies to the possible ramifications, new opportunities and novel challenges. The emergence of Muslim republics has been part of a larger transformation experienced by the Middle East in the 1990s. The main purpose of this volume is to examine the impact of the transformation on the Middle East, with special emphasis placed on the republics' relations with Turkey and Iran - the two countries closest to and most actively involved in the Muslim republics of Central Asia and Transcaucasia. The ability of Middle Eastern states to influence the republics is still questionable - regional relationships between the Middle East and Central Asia have (re)emerged only in the 1990s - but their independence has had profound implications for the Middle East itself.

The Bear Went Over the Mountain is a collection of vignettes written by Soviet junior officers describing their experiences fighting the Mujahideen guerrillas. The material was originally collected and published by the Frunze Combined Arms Staff College to serve as a text on combat against a guerrilla force in mountain-desert terrain. It was originally intended for internal use only and as such provides examples of both good and bad military practice. The hard lessons learned are not specifically 'Russian' in nature and many of the same mistakes and successes would apply equally to the American Army in Vietnam. Indeed, the knowledge gained from these reports should also apply to future conflicts involving civil war, guerrilla forces and rugged terrain.
This is not a history of the Soviet-Afghan War, but rather a series of snapshots of combat as seen by young platoon leaders, company commanders, battalion commanders and military advisers. It is an intimate look at the boring, brutal business of counterinsurgency punctuated by moments of heady excitement and terror.
Colonel Grau, the editor and translator, has added his own commentary to produce a useful guide for commanders to meet the challenges of this kind of war and to help keep his fellow soldiers alive. This book will also be of interest to the historian and general reader, who will discover that advances in technology have had little impact on this kind of war, and that many of the same tactics the British Army used on the Northwest Frontier still apply today.

China Under Communism examines how Marxism took root, flourished and developed within the context of an ancient Chinese civilization.
Through analysis of China's history and traditional culture, the author explores the nature of Chinese communism and how it has diverged from the Soviet model. This book also provides insight into the changing perceptions Westerners have of the Chinese, and vice versa.
Key features include:
* assessment of controversial issues: The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and Mao's record
* coverage of gender and family, ethnicity, nationalism, and popular culture
* long historical context.
This timely evaluation details how China's political and economic policies have been inextricably linked, and assesses past failures and successes, as well as major problems for the future.

As America Has Done to Israel is a comprehensive survey of American and Israeli history, showing how America's support of Israel has led to blessings in line with the promise of Genesis 12: 2??????3: "I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." It shows how America's disregard for the literal covenant promises of the Old Testament have brought disasters upon our nation. McTernan warns Christians to avoid God's wrath by supporting Israel as the end times draw near, and goes on to carefully analyze the future events that are predicted by the Bible's apocalyptic passages.

Part of a series that offers mainly linguistic and anthropological research and teaching/learning material on a region of great cultural and strategic interest and importance in the post-Soviet era."

Part of a series that offers mainly linguistic and anthropological research and teaching/learning material on a region of great cultural and strategic interest and importance in the post-Soviet era.

Narendra Modi has been a hundred years in the making, and this book provides the backstory. It begins with the creation of Hindu nationalism, moves on to the 1980 formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and ends with its first national administration, from 1998 to 2004. By revisiting these events, we can trace the Modi government's current dominance of Indian politics all the way back to its origins. Vinay Sitapati follows this journey through the entangled lives of the party's founding fathers: Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. Over their six-decade-long relationship, Vajpayee and Advani worked as a team, despite differences in personality and beliefs. Bound together by RSS discipline and shared ambition-for a Hinduised Indian polity- their partnership explains the nature of the BJP before Modi, and why it won power. In supporting roles are a colourful cast of characters, from the warden's wife who made room for Vajpayee in her family to the billionaire grandson of Pakistan's founder, who happened to be a major early BJP benefactor. Based on private papers, party documents, newspapers and over 200 interviews, this is a must-read for all those interested in the Hindu nationalist ideology that now rules India.

The transition to sustainable development will test government and democracy in a fundamentally radical way. There is probably no such end state as truly sustainable development. So the pathways towards it are endless. In any case, like a mirage, sustainable development will metamorphose like a more distant goal as it is approached.
This series of essays looks at three elements of sustainable development in terms of the institutional challenge they pose, and from the viewpoint of five European Union Member States.

The history of Taiwan, an island-state lying less than 100 miles off the coast of China whose world-class economy and geopolitical position in Asia give it an importance that goes far beyond what a population of only 22.5 million would suggest, is little explored or understood in the West. This important book is the most integrated, comprehensive, and accessible history of Taiwan available.

The contributors, distinguished leading experts from three continents, guide the reader through Taiwan's colorful history, from Neolithic times to the present. Each chapter, especially commissioned for this book, stands alone as a scholarly contribution. Collectively, the chapters bring the reader from the geographical and climatological context, through the stages of pre-modern history and the coming of the Chinese and the West, through the Japanese occupation, to a modern polity that has just experienced democratic elections and troubling military threats from its powerful neighbor, China. The general reader, the student, and Asian-Americans who trace their roots back to Taiwan or to China through Taiwan will find this book invaluable.

This is an astonishing and timely account of 50 years of bloodshed and tragedy in the Middle East from one of our finest and most revered journalists. The Great War for Civilisation is written with passion and anger, a reporter's eyewitness account of the Middle East's history. All the most dangerous men of the past quarter century in the region - from Osama bin Laden to Ayatollah Khomeini, from Saddam to Ariel Sharon - come alive in these pages. Fisk has met most of them, and even spent the night out at a guerrilla camp with Bin Laden himself. In a narrative of blood and mass killing, Fisk tells the story of the growing hatred of the West by millions of Muslims, the West's cynical support for the Middle East's most ruthless dictators and America's ever more powerful military presence in the world's most dangerous lands as well as its uncritical, unconditional support for Israel's occupation of Palestinian land.

The transition to sustainable development will test government and democracy in a fundamentally radical way. There is probably no such end state as truly sustainable development. So the pathways towards it are endless. In any case, like a mirage, sustainable development will metamorphose like a more distant goal as it is approached.
This series of essays looks at three elements of sustainable development in terms of the institutional challenge they pose, and from the viewpoint of five European Union Member States.

Part of a series that offers mainly linguistic and anthropological research and teaching/learning material on a region of great cultural and strategic interest and importance in the post-Soviet era.

Part of a series that offers mainly linguistic and anthropological research and teaching/learning material on a region of great cultural and strategic interest and importance in the post-Soviet era.

Part of a series that offers mainly linguistic and anthropological research and teaching/learning material on a region of great cultural and strategic interest and importance in the post-Soviet era.

An extraordinary tale, much-neglected by historians, of courage, bravery and eventual tragedy which took place during the First World War in the Middle East. It is the story of a small group of people, of whom Sarah and Aaron Aaronsohn were the core, who were devoted to the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, and who were convinced that it was in imminent danger of extinction from the Turks.They resolved to help the British in Egypt by collecting military intelligence. Unfortunately, as Peter Calvocoressi points out, their understanding of the British position was quite wrong...[their] miscalculations created the tragedy which this book recounts...'