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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > War & defence operations > Civil war
Lord Derby, Lancashire's highest-ranked nobleman and its principal
royalist, once offered the opinion that the English civil wars had
been a 'general plague of madness'. Complex and bedevilling, the
earl defied anyone to tell the complete story of 'so foolish, so
wicked, so lasting a war'. Yet attempting to chronicle and to
explain the events is both fascinating and hugely important.
Nationally and at the county level the impact and significance of
the wars can hardly be over-stated: the conflict involved our
ancestors fighting one another, on and off, for a period of nine
years; almost every part of Lancashire witnessed warfare of some
kind at one time or another, and several towns in particular saw
bloody sieges and at least one episode characterised as a massacre.
Nationally the wars resulted in the execution of the king; in 1651
the Earl of Derby himself was executed in Bolton in large measure
because he had taken a leading part in the so-called massacre in
that town in 1644.In the early months of the civil wars many could
barely distinguish what it was that divided people in 'this war
without an enemy', as the royalist William Waller famously wrote;
yet by the end of it parliament had abolished monarchy itself and
created the only republic in over a millennium of England's
history. Over the ensuing centuries this period has been described
variously as a rebellion, as a series of civil wars, even as a
revolution. Lancashire's role in these momentous events was quite
distinctive, and relative to the size of its population
particularly important. Lancashire lay right at the centre of the
wars, for the conflict did not just encompass England but Ireland
and Scotland too, and Lancashire's position on the coast facing
Catholic, Royalist Ireland was seen as critical from the very first
months.And being on the main route south from Scotland meant that
the county witnessed a good deal of marching and marauding armies
from the north. In this, the first full history of the Lancashire
civil wars for almost a century, Stephen Bull makes extensive use
of new discoveries to narrate and explain the exciting, terrible
events which our ancestors witnessed in the cause either of king or
parliament. From Furness to Liverpool, and from the Wyre estuary to
Manchester and Warrington...civil war actions, battles, sieges and
skirmishes took place in virtually every corner of Lancashire.
WINNER OF THE LINCOLN FORUM BOOK PRIZE "A Lincoln
classic...superb." -The Washington Post "A book for our
time."-Doris Kearns Goodwin Lincoln on the Verge tells the dramatic
story of America's greatest president discovering his own strength
to save the Republic. As a divided nation plunges into the deepest
crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln boards a train for
Washington and his inauguration-an inauguration Southerners have
vowed to prevent. Lincoln on the Verge charts these pivotal
thirteen days of travel, as Lincoln discovers his power, speaks
directly to the public, and sees his country up close. Drawing on
new research, this riveting account reveals the president-elect as
a work in progress, showing him on the verge of greatness, as he
foils an assassination attempt, forges an unbreakable bond with the
American people, and overcomes formidable obstacles in order to
take his oath of office.
Explore the Civil War history of West Virginia's Coal River Valley.
The American Civil War shaped the course of the country's history
and its national identity. This is no less true for the state of
Arkansas. Throughout the Natural State, people have paid homage and
remembrance to those who fought and what was fought for in memorial
celebrations and rituals. The memory of the war has been kept alive
by reunions and preservationists, continuing to shape the way the
War Between the States affects Arkansas and its people. Historian
W. Stuart Towns expertly tells the story of Arkansas's Civil War
heritage through its rituals of memorial, commemoration and
celebration that continue today.
Desperate to seize control of Kentucky, the Confederate army
launched an invasion into the commonwealth in the fall of 1862,
viciously culminating at an otherwise quiet Bluegrass crossroads
and forever altering the landscape of the war. The Battle of
Perryville lasted just one day yet produced nearly eight thousand
combined casualties and losses, and some say nary a victor. The
Rebel army was forced to retreat, and the United States kept its
imperative grasp on Kentucky throughout the war. Few know this
hallowed ground like Christopher L. Kolakowski, former director of
the Perryville Battlefield Preservation Association, who draws on
letters, reports, memoirs and other primary sources to offer the
most accessible and engaging account of the Kentucky Campaign yet,
featuring over sixty historic images and maps.
Why did Abraham Lincoln sneak into Washington for his inauguration? was the Gettysburg Address written on the back of an envelope? Where did the Underground Railroad run? Did General Sherman really say, "War is Hell"? If you can't answer these questions, you're not alone. Millions of Americans, bored by dull textbooks, are in the dark about the most significant event in our history. Now New York Times bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis comes to the rescue, deftly sorting out the players, the politics, and the key events - Emancipation and Reconstruction, Shiloh and Gettysburg, Generals Grant and Lee, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and much more. Drawing on moving eyewitness accounts, Davis includes a wealth of "hidden history" about the roles played by women and African Americans before and during the war, along with lesser-known facts that will enthrall even learned Civil War buffs. Vivid, informative, and hugely entertaining, Don't Know Much About the Civil War is the only book you'll ever need on "the war that never ended."
On the centenary of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Mike
Makin-Waite surveys the history of the communist movement, tracking
its origins in the Enlightenment, and through nineteenth-century
socialism to the emergence of Marxism and beyond. As we emerge from
the long winter of neoliberalism, and the search is on for ideas
that can help shape a contemporary popular socialism, some of the
questions that have preoccupied socialist thinkers throughout left
history are once more being debated. Should the left press for
reform and work through the state or should it focus on protest and
a critique of the whole system? Is it possible to expand the
liberal idea of democracy to include economic democracy? Which
alliances require too great a compromise and which can help secure
future change? Arguments on questions such as these have been
raging since the mid-nineteenth century, and were the basis of the
split between Social Democrats and Communists in the aftermath of
the First World War. Mike Makin-Waite believes that revisiting
these debates can help us to avoid some of the mistakes made in the
past, and find new solutions to some of these age-old concerns. His
argument is that the democratic and liberal counter-currents that
have always existed within the communist movement have much to
offer the left project today. This unorthodox account therefore
tracks an alternative history that includes nineteenth-century
revisionists such as Karl Kautsky, Menshevik opponents of Bolshevik
oppression in 1917, Popular Front critiques of sectarianism in the
1930s, communist support for 1968's Prague Spring, and the turn to
Gramsci and Eurocommunism in the 1970s. The aim of Communism and
Democracy: history, debates and potentials is to recover some of
the hard-won insights of the critical communist tradition, in the
belief that they can still be of service to the
twenty-first-century left.
For two decades after the civil war the Franco regime applied
systematic historical propaganda and imposed relentless repression
of history professionals. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, the
balance shifted from all-pervading propaganda to structural but
flexible censorship. Gradually and reluctantly, the regime had to
give back the initiative for explaining the recent past to where it
belonged: to the professional historians, but not without oversee
and livelihood threat. In its efforts to keep control, the regime
could count on historians who were willing to censor their more
adventurous colleagues. But the outcome of this process was biased
and uncertain. The main issue was always whether an author could be
considered a friend of the regime. Personal interventions by Franco
himself regularly played a decisive role. Historians fully loyal to
the regime and its aims were published without difficulty; others
took a reformist path, albeit without endangering the dominant
interpretation that favoured the tropes of inevitability and
positive consequences of Francos rebellion. Reformist historians
avoided criticism of the personal integrity of the dictator and the
army, and did not address the issue of systematically planned
terror in Francos National Zone during the Civil War. Historians
who dared to embrace these topics were condemned to write from
abroad. Historical works dealing with the Spanish Civil War
(19361939) have been regularly studied in-depth. Dutch historian
Jan van Muilekom provides a wider perspective by viewing the Franco
historiography from the time of the preceding Second Republic
(1931-1936). His analysis recognizes the crucial 1939-1952 period
where Franco consolidated his seizure of power. The research is
based on a wealth of published censored books, unpublished
manuscripts, censorship archives and historical propaganda
material. The book is an important complement to earlier studies
that mainly dealt with the regimes dealing with the press, the film
industry and literature. Over a span of four decades, Franco never
lost his grip on how recent Spanish history should be read.
Exploring the historiography of the regime provides multiple
insights into the links between authoritarianism and censorship.
At the end of the Spanish Civil War the Nationalist government
instigated mass repression against anyone suspected of loyalty to
the defeated Republican side. Around 200,000 people were imprisoned
for political crimes, including thousands of women who were charged
with offences ranging from directing the home front to supporting
their loved ones engaged in combat. Many women wrote and published
texts about their experiences, seeking to make their voices heard
and to counteract the dehumanising master narrative of the
right-wing victors that had criminalised their existence. The
memoirs of Communist women, such as Tomasa Cuevas and Juana Dona,
have heavily influenced our understanding of life in prison for
women under franquismo, while texts by non-Communist women have
largely been ignored. Narratives of Resistance and Survival offers
a comparative study of the life writing of female political
prisoners in Spain, focusing on six texts in particular: the two
volumes of Carcel de mujeres by Tomasa Cuevas; Desde la noche y la
niebla by Juana Dona; Requiem por la libertad by Angeles Garcia
Madrid; Abajo las dictaduras by Josefa Garcia Segret; and Aquello
sucedio asi by Angeles Malonda. All the texts share common themes,
such as the hunger and repression that political prisoners
suffered. However, the ideologically-driven narratives of Communist
women often foreground representations of resistance at the expense
of exploring the emotional and intellectual struggle for survival
that many women political prisoners faced in the aftermath of the
war. This study nuances our understanding of imprisoned women as
individuals and as a collective, analysing how they sought
recognition and justice in the face of a vindictive dictatorship.
It also explores their response to the spirit of convivencia during
the transition to democracy, which once again threatened to silence
them. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for
Contemporary Spanish Studies
The British governments policy of non-intervention in response to
the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War sought primarily to prevent
the conflict escalating into a wider European war but also to
ensure that it could maintain or establish cordial relations with
whichever side emerged victorious. Due to General Francos military
successes, the support he received from Fascist Italy and Nazi
Germany, and the geostrategic importance of the Iberian Peninsula
in Britains Mediterranean strategy, non-intervention evolved into a
policy of appeasing Franco. This sustained strategic programme
remained in place beyond the Civil War and throughout the Second
World War. It aimed to drive a wedge between Franco and the Axis
Powers to prevent Spains incorporation into the Rome-Berlin Axis
and thereby ensure the neutrality of the Iberian Peninsula. The
British governments diplomatic recognition of Franco and
simultaneous abandonment of the Spanish Republic in February 1939
formed a concession comparable to British policy towards Abyssinia
and Czechoslovakia. Negotiating Neutrality uses appeasement as an
analytical framework to show how appeasement policies alter power
dynamics in diplomatic relationships. As a beneficiary of
appeasement, Franco, like Hitler and Mussolini, intuitively
understood how to use this policy to his regimes advantage and it
formed an important part of his development as a statesman
alongside his German and Italian counterparts. For its part, the
British government increasingly encountered difficulties when
trying to re-assert itself as the dominant power in Anglo-Spanish
relations. In this sense, the author challenges the dominant view
within the existing historiography that British policy makers
harboured ideological prejudices towards the Spanish Republic, or
sympathy for the military rebels, and allowed these to cloud their
judgement when formulating a policy towards the Civil War to show
that Francos victory was far from the preferred outcome for the
British government. Published in association with the Canada Blanch
Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, LSE
Leonidas Polk is one of the most fascinating figures of the Civil
War. Consecrated as a bishop of the Episcopal Church and
commissioned as a general into the Confederate army, Polk's life in
both spheres blended into a unique historical composite. Polk was a
man with deep religious convictions but equally committed to the
Confederate cause. He baptized soldiers on the eve of bloody
battles, administered last rites and even presided over officers'
weddings, all while leading his soldiers into battle. Historian
Cheryl White examines the life of this soldier-saint and the legacy
of a man who unquestionably brought the first viable and lively
Protestant presence to Louisiana and yet represents the politics of
one of the darkest periods in American history.
Virginia's Shenandoah Valley was known as the "Breadbasket of the
Confederacy" due to its ample harvests and transportation centers,
its role as an avenue of invasion into the North and its capacity
to serve as a diversionary theater of war. The region became a
magnet for both Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War,
and nearly half of the thirteen major battles fought in the valley
occurred as part of General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's 1862
Valley Campaign. Civil War historian Jonathan A. Noyalas examines
Jackson's Valley Campaign and how those victories brought hope to
an infant Confederate nation, transformed the lives of the
Shenandoah Valley's civilians and emerged as Stonewall Jackson's
defining moment.
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