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Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history
This is the first study of Israeli foreign policy towards the
Middle East and selected world powers including China, India, the
European Union and the United States since the end of the Cold War.
It provides an integrated account of these foreign policy spheres
and serves as an essential historical context for the domestic
political scene during these pivotal decades. The book demonstrates
how foreign policy is shaped by domestic factors, which are
represented as three concentric circles of decision-makers, the
security network and Israeli national identity. Told from this
perspective, Amnon Aran highlights the contributions of the central
individuals, societal actors, domestic institutions, and political
parties that have informed and shaped Israeli foreign policy
decisions, implementation, and outcomes. Aran demonstrates that
Israel has pursued three foreign policy stances since the end of
the Cold War - entrenchment, engagement and unilateralism - and
explains why.
Arguments over the relationship between Canaanite and Israelite
religion often derive from fundamental differences in
presupposition, methodology and definition, yet debate typically
focuses in on details and encourages polarization between opposing
views, inhibiting progress. This volume seeks to initiate a
cultural change in scholarly practice by setting up dialogues
between pairs of experts in the field who hold contrasting views.
Each pair discusses a clearly defined issue through the lens of a
particular biblical passage, responding to each other's arguments
and offering their reflections on the process. Topics range from
the apparent application of 'chaos' and 'divine warrior' symbolism
to Yahweh in Habakkuk 3, the evidence for 'monotheism' in
pre-Exilic Judah in 2 Kings 22-23, and the possible presence of
'chaos' or creatio ex nihilo in Genesis 1 and Psalm 74. This
approach encourages the recognition of points of agreement as well
as differences and exposes some of the underlying issues that
inhibit consensus. In doing so, it consolidates much that has been
achieved in the past, offers fresh ideas and perspective and,
through intense debate, subjects new ideas to thorough critique and
suggests avenues for further research.
A repository of subversive, melancholic and existentialist themes
and ideas, the rubaiyat (quatrains) that make up the collected
poems attributed to the 12th century Persian astronomer Omar
Khayyam have enchanted readers for centuries. In this modern
translation, complete with critical introduction and epilogue, Juan
Cole elegantly renders the verse for contemporary readers.
Exploring such universal questions as the meaning of life, fate and
how to live a good life in the face of human mortality, this
translation reveals anew why this singular collection of poems has
struck a chord with such a temporally and culturally diverse
audience, from the wine houses of medieval Iran to the poets of
Western twentieth century modernism.
The attacks and blockade on Yemen by the Saudi-led multinational
coalition have killed thousands and triggered humanitarian
disaster. The longstanding conflict in the country between the
Huthi rebels and (until December 2017) Salih militias on the one
side and those loyal to the internationally recognized government
and many other groups fighting for their interests on the other are
said to have evolved into a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and
Iran. In 2011, however, thousands of Yemenis had taken to the
streets to protest for a better future for their country. When
President Ali Abdullah Salih signed over power in the aftermath of
these protests, there were hopes that this would signal the
beginning of a new period of transition. Yemen and the Search for
Stability focuses on the aspirations that inspired revolutionary
action, and analyzes what went wrong in the years that followed. It
examines the different groups involved in the protests - Salih
supporters, Muslim Brothers, Salafis, Huthis, secessionists, women,
youth, artists and intellectuals- in terms of their competing
visions for the country's future as well as their internal
struggles. This book traces the impact of the 2011 upheavals on
these groups' ideas for a `new Yemen' and on their strategies for
self-empowerment. In so doing, Yemen and the Search for Stability
examines the mistakes committed in the country's post-2011
transition process but also points towards prospects for stability
and positive change.
This innovative, multidisciplinary exploration of the unique
history of the Andaman Islands as a hunter-gatherer society,
colonial penal colony, and state-engineered space of settlement and
development ranges across the theoretical, conceptual and thematic
concerns of history, anthropology and historical geography.
Covering the entire period of post-settlement Andamans history,
from the first (failed) British occupation of the Islands in the
1790s up to the year 2012, the authors examine imperial histories
of expansion and colonization, decolonization, anti-colonialism and
nationalism, Japanese occupation, independence and partition,
migration, commemoration and contemporary issues of Indigenous
welfare. New Histories of the Andaman Islands offers a new way of
thinking about the history of South Asia, and will be
thought-provoking reading for scholars of settler colonial
societies in other contexts, as well as those engaged in studies of
nationalism and postcolonial state formation, ecology, visual
cultures and the politics of representation.
The `refugee crisis' and the recent rise of anti-immigration
parties across Europe has prompted widespread debates about
migration, integration and security on the continent. But the
perspectives and experiences of immigrants in northern and western
Europe have equal political significance for contemporary European
societies. While Turkish migration to Europe has been a vital area
of research, little scholarly attention has been paid to Turkish
migration to specifically Sweden, which has a mix of religious and
ethnic groups from Turkey and where now well over 100,000 Swedes
have Turkish origins. This book examines immigration from Turkey to
Sweden from its beginnings in the mid-1960s, when the recruitment
of workers was needed to satisfy the expanding industrial economy.
It traces the impact of Sweden's economic downturn, and the effects
of the 1971 Turkish military intervention and the 1980 military
coup, after which asylum seekers - mostly Assyrian Christians and
Kurds - sought refuge in Sweden. Contributors explore how the
patterns of labour migration and interactions with Swedish society
impacted the social and political attitudes of these different
communities, their sense of belonging, and diasporic activism. The
book also investigates issues of integration, return migration,
transnational ties, external voting and citizenship rights. Through
the detailed analysis of migration to Sweden and emigration from
Turkey, this book sheds new light on the situation of migrants in
Europe.
Adopting a transnational approach, this edited volume reveals that
Germany and China have had many intense and varied encounters
between 1890 and 1950. It focuses on their cross-cultural
encounters, entanglements, and bi-directional cultural flows.
Although their initial relationship was marked by the logic of
colonialism, interwar Sino-German relations established a
cooperative relationship untainted by imperialist politics several
decades before the era of decolonization. A range of topics are
addressed, including pacifists in Germany on the Boxer Rebellion,
German investment in Qingdao, teachers at German-Chinese schools,
social and pedagogical theories and practice, female literary and
missionary connections, Sino-German musical entanglements,
humanitarian connections during the Nanjing Massacre,
Manchukuo-German diplomacy, and psychoanalysis during the Shanghai
exile.
In the early twenty-first century, trauma is seemingly everywhere,
whether as experience, diagnosis, concept, or buzzword. Yet even as
many scholars consider trauma to be constitutive of psychological
modernity or the post-Enlightenment human condition, historical
research on the topic has overwhelmingly focused on cases, such as
World War I or the Holocaust, in which Western experiences and
actors are foregrounded. There remains an urgent need to
incorporate the methods and insights of recent historical trauma
research into a truly global perspective. The chapters in Traumatic
Pasts in Asia make just such an intervention, extending
Euro-American paradigms of traumatic experience to new sites of
world-historical suffering and, in the process, exploring how these
new domains of research inform and enrich earlier scholarship.
This book examines the role of imperial narratives of
multinationalism as alternative ideologies to nationalism in
Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East from
the revolutions of 1848 up to the defeat and subsequent downfall of
the Habsburg and Ottoman empires in 1918. During this period, both
empires struggled against a rising tide of nationalism to
legitimise their own diversity of ethnicities, languages and
religions. Contributors scrutinise the various narratives of
identity that they developed, supported, encouraged or unwittingly
created and left behind for posterity as they tried to keep up with
the changing political realities of modernity. Beyond simplified
notions of enforced harmony or dynamic dissonance, this book aims
at a more polyphonic analysis of the various voices of Habsburg and
Ottoman multinationalism: from the imperial centres and in the
closest proximity to sovereigns, to provinces and minorities, among
intellectuals and state servants, through novels and newspapers.
Combining insights from history, literary studies and political
sciences, it further explores the lasting legacy of the empires in
post-imperial narratives of loss, nostalgia, hope and redemption.
It shows why the two dynasties keep haunting the twenty-first
century with fears and promises of conflict, coexistence, and
reborn greatness.
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