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Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history
It is now recognized that emotions have a history. In this book,
eleven scholars examine a variety of emotions in ancient China and
classical Greece, in their historical and social context. A general
introduction presents the major issues in the analysis of emotions
across cultures and over time in a given tradition. Subsequent
chapters consider how specific emotions evolve and change. For
example, whereas for early Chinese thinkers, worry was a moral
defect, it was later celebrated as a sign that one took
responsibility for things. In ancient Greece, hope did not always
focus on a positive outcome, and in this respect differed from what
we call "hope." Daring not to do, or "undaring," was itself an
emotional value in early China. While Aristotle regarded the
inability to feel anger as servile, the Roman Stoic Seneca rejected
anger entirely. Hatred and revenge were encouraged at one moment in
China and repressed at another. Ancient Greek responses to tragedy
do not map directly onto modern emotional registers, and yet are
similar to classical Chinese and Indian descriptions. There are
differences in the very way emotions are conceived. This book will
speak to anyone interested in the many ways that human beings feel.
Collier presents a timely and fresh reexamination of one of the
most important bilateral relationships of the last century. He
delves deeply into the American desire to promote democracy in Iran
from the 1940s through the early 1960s and examines the myriad
factors that contributed to their success in exerting a powerful
influence on Iranian politics. By creating a framework to
understand the efficacy of external pressure, Collier explains how
the United States later relinquished this control during the 1960s
and 1970s. During this time, the shah emerged as a dominant and
effective political operator who took advantage of waning American
influence to assert his authority. Collier reveals how this
shifting power dynamic transformed the former client-patron
relationship into one approaching equality.
Henrietta is a true original. Clever, vivacious and interested in
everything, she managed to balance the demands of high profile
public life with that of a caring mother. She was the home-schooled
daughter of a bankrupt Earl and more than just a little bit in love
with her handsome wayward brother, but had been married off to a
plump pudding of a man, the nabob Edward Clive, governor of Madras.
And her partial escape was to ride across southern India (in a vast
tented caravan propelled by dozens of elephants, camels and a
hundred bullock carts) and write home. For centuries this account,
the first joyful description of India by a British woman, remained
unread in a Welsh castle. Fortunately it was transcribed by a Texan
traveller, who went on to splice this already evocative memoir with
complementary sections from the diary of Henrietta's precocious
daughter, the 12-year old Charly and images of their artist
companion, Anna Tonelli. The resulting labour of love and
scholarship is Birds of Passage, a unique trifocular account of
three very different women travelling across southern India in the
late 18th century, in the immediate aftermath of the last of the
Mysore Wars between Tipoo Sahib and the Raj. Half a generation
later, the well travelled Charly would be chosen as tutor for the
young princess Victoria, the First Empress of India.
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