Starting in the early part of the nineteenth century, American administrations expressed a desire to own Cuba. A rationale for adding Cuba to the territory of the United States could be built on Cuba's sugar and tobacco industries, as well as Cuba's mineral deposits. But economics was not the primary motivation. American presidents knew that in the event of war, any nation occupying Cuba would have an advantage over the US military strategies; this fear, coupled with the economic benefit, explains a century of policy decisions. As Frank R. Villafana shows, Cubans were not sitting idle, waiting for outsiders to liberate them from Spanish oppression. A major part of this research is devoted to studying Cuban efforts to liberate their island from prolonged Spanish domination. Cuba had been struggling for independence from Spain since the 1830s, followed by the Ten Year War. During the 1895-1898 War of Independence, Cuba came close to defeating Spain, but a merciless Spanish military effort converted Cuba into a series of concentration camps. Spain surrendered after its naval defeats by the US at Manila Bay and Santiago de Cuba, following a failed ground campaign in eastern Cuba. After the US occupied Cuba militarily, American political leaders realized only a small minority of Cubans supported annexation, and the Platt Amendment was developed as a substitute. Today, most Cubans agree that independence, even constrained by the United States, was better than enslavement by the Castro brothers. However, as Villafana emphasizes, Cubans living in Cuba as well as abroad still seek a land free and independent of foreign threat and domestic tyrants.

In this original and compelling book book, William Schell Jr. examines the largest foreign colony in Mexico during the reign of Porfirio D'az, from 1876 to 1911. Expatriate Americans constituted the greatest number of technicians, technocrats, consultants, engineers, agronomists, mining specialists, railroad experts, and venture capitalists in Mexico. The influence of these 'integral outsiders' extended far beyond economics and Porfirian efforts to manage the booming era of Mexican modernization. Marriages between Americans and Mexican society women and membership in such organizations as Masonic brotherhoods brought the foreigners into the most important social circles.

Integral Outsiders: The American Colony in Mexico City, 1876D1911, contains a colorful history of the Porfiriato through the lens of American participation, including carefully wrought descriptions of expatriate Americans. These individual biographies make the narrative more human and interesting, allowing Schell to move beyond the simplistic view of weak, greedy Mexican elites conspiring with powerful, greedy foreign capitalists to amass great wealth while impoverishing the Mexican masses and creating economic underdevelopment.

Basing his comments on meticulous research, Schell points out that U.S. influence was hardly a one-way street and that the interaction between U.S. citizens and Mexicans was a complex system of cultural negotiations. He demonstrates convincingly that, while insinuating themselves into Mexican society, Americans thought that they were changing Mexico, and, in so doing, changed themselves. As Schell states, 'Ultimately, then, it may be said that the Porfirian regime got the form of hegemony it sought, and Washington took the sort of hegemony it could get.'

In its original Spanish language version, this tour de force was awarded the famed "Espejo de Espana" prize. Rubert deVentos examines the ambiguous yet highly charged relationships between Spain and the American nations of the Western hemisphere. Writing with the grace and charm that characterizes the best of the "pensador" tradition, the author has produced a fundamental treatise on social development.
With his deep appreciation for the indigenous populations of South and Central America, Rubert deVentos offers a comparative perspective on the two major forms of colonization in the Americas--that of Spain and of the United States, leading to the provocative conclusion that each should have learned from the traditional rather than the modern lives of the other. He emphasizes with great precision distinctions in relative stages of industrialization in the West, differences between Catholic and Protestant faiths, the variety of legal codes imposed on Latin America, and above all the fine but critical differences between civilization and evangelization.
Rubert deVentos's effort is exemplary for its immersion into the actual patterns of culture found in the encounter of civilizations. He engages in no harshness, no condemnation, no trivial pursuit of post-mortem name-calling. Rather he has a keen sense of the historical, the theological, and the inevitable. Written for the general reader and specialist in area studies alike, providing a deep sense of anthropology as well as history, "The Hispanic Labyrinth" has an ambitious aim: to give all concerned in this relationship a sense of common cause in building democracy in the process of global interaction.
"Xavier Rubert deVentos" holds the chair in Esthetics at the University of Barcelona. He is a Santayana Fellow at Harvard University and a founding member of the New York Institute for the Humanities. He has held visiting professorships at the University of Cincinnati, and the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of works in Spanish and Catalan, including "On Modernity; The Theory of Sensibility" and other books on philosophical themes. He is also a deputy to the European Parliament. "The Hispanic Labyrinth" is translated from Spanish by Mary Ann Newman, teacher of Spanish-American literature in New York City.

A major result of the Second World War was the emergence of small states which vastly increased the membership of the international system. While a number of small states existed before the war many of these had made no effort to participate actively in the system; since then, the doctrine of equality of states has been established, in theory at least, through their admission to the UN. This book, first published in 1984, deals with the factors which have contributed to the emergence of such a large number of small states, the difficulties which they have experienced in achieving statehood, and their struggle to gain political integration. A precise analysis of the foreign policy and economic factors governing the activity of small states, particularly that of Kuwait and the other Gulf states, is presented here.

This work, first published in 1972, is an objective introduction to the social, political, and cultural changes that took place in the Middle East in the years after the Second World War. It includes papers by some of the most distinguished scholars in the field as well as personal accounts by insightful observers living in the area. It includes articles on such topics as Arab socialism and nationalism, religious communities, ethnic minorities, women in Arab society, education, and many more.

This book, first published in 1984, examines the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and UAE. Culturally, historically, geographically and politically the GCC countries represent a rare instance of regional homogeneity and they face similar problems and challenges. Despite their international importance as oil exporters, there is a lack of solid statistical information on each country or as a region as a whole. This book addresses that gap with a substantial collection of data on the individual countries and the larger region.

Oman is one of the most beautiful and popular countries in the Middle East, yet a few years ago it was one of the world's backwaters where visitors were discouraged. The turning point came with the takeover of power by Sultan Qaboos bin Said in 1970. This book, first published in 1979, takes the reader around the country, from the rugged Musandam peninsula in the north to the southern province of Dhofar. It builds a bridge between historical and modern Oman, describes the people and their landscapes, and the country's indigenous arts and crafts.

First published in 1990. This volume is essentially a study in decolonization. The approach of the author is of a conflict resolution process taken from the perspective of 1974 as the chosen point. Following the decolonization of the Portuguese colonial empire, the uniqueness of the decolonization of Rhodesia became more apparent and the conflict began to realize its full potential. The author has taken three analytical concepts- the goals' continuum, the strategic options' continuum and the interaction within and between the three levels of the conflict system.

The intensifying conflicts between religious communities in contemporary South and Southeast Asia signify the importance of gaining a clearer understanding of how societies have historically organised and mastered their religious diversity. Based on extensive archival research in Asia, Europe, and the United States, this book suggests a new approach to interpreting and explaining secularism not as a Western concept but as a distinct form of practice in 20th-century global history. In six case studies on the contemporary history of India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, it analyses secularism as a project to create a high degree of distance between the state and religion during the era of decolonisation and the emerging Cold War between 1945 and 1970. To demonstrate the interplay between local and transnational dynamics, the case studies look at patterns of urban planning, the struggle against religious nationalism, conflicts around religious education, and (anti-)communism as a dispute over secularism and social reform. The book emphasises in particular the role of non-state actors as key supporters of secular statehood - a role that has thus far not received sufficient attention. A novel approach to studying secularism in Asia, the book discusses the different ways that global transformations such as decolonisation and the Cold War interacted with local relations to reshape and relocate religion in society. It will be of interest to scholars of Religious Studies, International Relations and Politics, Studies of Empire, Cold War Studies, Subaltern Studies, Modern Asian History, and South and Southeast Asian Studies.

Traces the consequences of agricultural development in western Kenya in the 1950s and 1960s After more than fifty years of development, why have interventions and aid failed to yield greater poverty alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa? Why did the agricultural development projects that were transpiring in places like Kenyaduring the "development era" of the 1950s and 1960s not take-off? Cultivating Their Own: Agriculture in Western Kenya during the "Development" Era explores these questions and others that continue to drive the research agendas of international aid agencies and development scholars in the twenty-first century. The book centers on four agricultural development projects unfolding in a densely populated rural area of western Kenya during the country'stransition to independence and its first few years under de facto one-party rule. Drawing on an array of primary sources and oral interviews, Saeteurn argues that the project of agrarianism failed to germinate in places like western Kenya because of competing interests, conflicting agendas, and structural problems inherent in the process of development at the international, national, and local level. Cultivating Their Own is a timely reminder of theimportance of paying attention not only to local people's aspirations but also to the realities of rural life when creating projects that mobilize agriculture for poverty reduction.

Since the formation of the UN in 1945 the international community has witnessed a number of violent self-determination conflicts such as the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Kashmir, and South Sudan that have been a major cause of humanitarian crises and destruction. This book examines the scope and applicability of political self-determination beyond the decolonisation process. Explaining the historical evolution of self-determination, this book provides a theoretical examination of the concept and background. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the author analyses self-determination in relation to contemporary conflicts, which inform and drive a coherent theoretical framework for international responses to claims for self-determination. Built upon an examination of the conceptual foundations of self-determination, this book presents a new understanding and application of self-determination. It addresses the important question of whether self-determination claims legitimate armed violence, either by the self-determining group's right to rebel, or by the international community in the form of humanitarian intervention. The Politics of Self-Determination will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, international relations, security studies and conflict studies.

The image of the Caribbean figure has been reconfigured by photography from the mid-19th century onwards. Initial images associated with the slave and indentured worker from the locations and legacies associated with plantation economies have been usurped by visual representations emerging from struggles for social, political and cultural autonomy. Contemporary visual artists engaging with the Caribbean as a 21st century globalised space have focused on visually re-imagining historical material and events as memories, histories and dreamscapes. Creole in the Archive uses photographic analysis to explore portraits, postcards and social documentation of the colonial worker between 1850 and 1960 and contemporary, often digital, visual art by post-independent, postcolonial Caribbean artists. Drawing on Derridean ideas of the archive, the book reconceptualises the Caribbean visual archive as contiguous and relational. It argues that using a creolising archive practice, the conjuncture of contemporary artworks, historical imagery and associated locations can develop insightful new multimodal representations of Caribbean subjectivities.

Divided societies, tormented pasts, and unrepentant perpetrators. Why are some countries more intent on vanquishing uncomfortable pasts than others? How do public and often unsightly attempts at memorialisation both fail the victims and valorize their oppressors? This book offers fresh and original perspectives on dictatorship, fascism and victimization from the bloodiest decades in Europe's, Australia's and Central America's colonial and modern history. Chapters include analyses of Francoist memorials in Spain, assessments of the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, the forgetting of frontier colonial violence in Tasmania, Romania's treatment of its Roma populations in the midst of Holocaust memorialization in Bucharest's urban development, and whether or not the Holocaust continues to serve as an instructional model or impossible aspiration for cross-cultural genocide memorialization strategies. In an era of ongoing political, ethnic and religious conflict, and unrepentant insurgent activity around the world, this collection reminds readers that genocidal actions, wherever and whenever they occurred, must be held to account by more than rhetoric and concrete memory. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research.

Palestine: A Socialist Introduction systematically tackles a number of important aspects of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, contextualizing it in an increasingly polarized world and offering a socialist perspective on how full liberation can be won.

Through an internationalist, anti-imperialist lens, this book explores the links between the struggle for freedom in the United States and that in Palestine, and beyond. It examines both the historical and contemporary trajectory of the Palestine solidarity movement in order to glean lessons for today’s organizers, and compellingly lays out the argument that, in order to achieve justice in Palestine, the movement has to take up the question of socialism regionally and internationally.

Contributors include: Jehad Abusalim, Shireen Akram-Boshar, Omar Barghouti, Nada Elia, Toufic Haddad, Remi Kanazi, Annie Levin, Mostafa Omar, Khury Petersen-Smith, and Daphna Thier.

The standard image of the Raj is of an aloof, pampered and prejudiced British elite lording it over an oppressed and hostile Indian subject population. Like most caricatures, this obscures as much truth as it reveals. The British had not always been so aloof. The earlier, more cosmopolitan period of East India Company rule saw abundant 'interracial' sex and occasional marriage, alongside greater cultural openness and exchange. The result was a large and growing 'mixed-race' community, known by the early twentieth century as Anglo-Indians. Notwithstanding its faults, Empire could never have been maintained without the active, sometimes enthusiastic, support of many colonial subjects. These included Indian elites, professionals, civil servants, businesspeople and minority groups of all kinds, who flourished under the patronage of the imperial state, and could be used in a 'divide and rule' strategy to prolong colonial rule. Independence was profoundly unsettling to those destined to become minorities in the new nation, and the Anglo-Indians were no exception. This refreshing account looks at the dramatic end of British rule in India through Anglo-Indian eyes, a perspective that is neither colonial apologia nor nationalist polemic. Its history resonates strikingly with the complex identity debates of the twenty-first century.

What India's founders derived from Western political traditions as they struggled to free their country from colonial rule is widely understood. Less well-known is how India's own rich knowledge traditions of two and a half thousand years influenced these men as they set about constructing a nation in the wake of the Raj. In Righteous Republic, Ananya Vajpeyi furnishes this missing account, a ground-breaking assessment of modern Indian political thought. Taking five of the most important founding figures-Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B. R. Ambedkar-Vajpeyi looks at how each of them turned to classical texts in order to fashion an original sense of Indian selfhood. The diverse sources in which these leaders and thinkers immersed themselves included Buddhist literature, the Bhagavad Gita, Sanskrit poetry, the edicts of Emperor Ashoka, and the artistic and architectural achievements of the Mughal Empire. India's founders went to these sources not to recuperate old philosophical frameworks but to invent new ones. In Righteous Republic, a portrait emerges of a group of innovative, synthetic, and cosmopolitan thinkers who succeeded in braiding together two Indian knowledge traditions, the one political and concerned with social questions, the other religious and oriented toward transcendence. Within their vast intellectual, aesthetic, and moral inheritance, the founders searched for different aspects of the self that would allow India to come into its own as a modern nation-state. The new republic they envisaged would embody both India's struggle for sovereignty and its quest for the self.

This book combines an analysis of the ideas and policies that governed the British experience of decolonization. It shows how the British, perhaps more correctly the English, political tradition, with its emphasis on experience over abstract theory, was integral to the way in which the empire was regarded as being transformed rather than lost. This was a significant aspect of the relatively painless British loss of empire. It places the process of decolonization in its wider context, tracing the twentieth-century domestic and international conditions that hastened decolonization, and, through a close analysis of not only the policy choices but also the language of British imperialism, it throws new light on the British way of managing both the expansion and contraction of empire.

First published in 1930, this book sought to explain to western readers the vital necessity of approaching the 'Indian problem' from the emerging national standpoint in India, and of appreciating its ideals. The author relates this necessity directly to the task undertaken by the Simon Commission in 1928 to make a survey of India and the resultant suggestions for constitutional changes in their report in early 1930. This work represents an attempt to bridge the gulf between India and Britain, one which appeared to be widening at the time of the report. This book will be of interest to students of colonialism and colonial India, especially as a prelude to its independence in 1947.

Relying on the concept of a shared history, this book argues that we can speak of a shared heritage that is common in terms of the basic grammar of heritage and articulated histories, but divided alongside the basic difference between colonizers and colonized. This problematic is also evident in contemporary uses of the past. The last decades were crucial to the emergence of new debates: subcultures, new identities, hidden voices and multicultural discourse as a kind of new hegemonic platform also involving concepts of heritage and/or memory. Thereby we can observe a proliferation of heritage agents, especially beyond the scope of the nation state. This volume gets beyond a container vision of heritage that seeks to construct a diachronical continuity in a given territory. Instead, authors point out the relational character of heritage focusing on transnational and translocal flows and interchanges of ideas, concepts, and practices, as well as on the creation of contact zones where the meaning of heritage is negotiated and contested. Exploring the relevance of the politics of heritage and the uses of memory in the consolidation of these nation states, as well as in the current disputes over resistances, hidden memories, undermined pasts, or the politics of nostalgia, this book seeks to seize the local/global dimensions around heritage.

This book is a critical reposition of the study of military regimes in Africa. Documenting and delving deep into the reign and rule of General Mohamed Siad Barre regime in Somalia from 1969 up to 1991, the book puts emphasis on African agencies-ostensibly shaped by external beneficiaries and patrons-over what went wrong with Africa after the much-awaited post-colonial period. It does so by critically engaging with the wider theoretical and conceptual frameworks in African Studies which more often than not tend to attribute the post-colonial African State raptures to colonialism. The main thesis of the book is that colonialism left Africa on its own space wherein African leaders could have made a difference. By putting discrete perspectives into historical context, the book circumnavigates through comparative and comprehensive holistic approach to the Siad Barre regime to reveal how colonialism did not produce less than what criminalisation of the State resulted in Somalia. This empirical analysis is crucial to understanding the contemporary conundrum facing the Somali world today. The argument is that the contemporary conflicts are not only attributable to-but also because of-the past plunders of the post-colonial leaders trained by the departed colonial authorities. Employing nuanced analytic concepts and categories, the aim of the book is to refine the past to recapture the present and envision the future. Framing new ways of analyzing military regimes in Africa begins with (re)assessment of how the Siad Barre regime was previously approached. Marshalling extensive and extraordinary amount of sources, the book unveils the intricacies and contradictions of the dictatorship and its impact on the Somali psyche. The book locates the evolution of the regime within the wider context of the Cold War political contestation between the East and the West. Unparalleled in-depth and analysis, this book is the first full-length scholarly study of the Siad Barre regime systematically explaining the politics and process of the dictatorial rule. The historicity of exploring Somali State trajectory entails employing a Braudelian longue duree approach. Thus, three interrelated sets of contexts/questions inform the study: how Siad Barre himself came into power, how he ruled and maintained his authoritarian reign over the Somalis and who had assisted him from inside and outside the Somali world.

This book analyses the consequences of the Roman occupation of North Africa (c.50 BC-AD 250). It describes the region's acculturation, offers a fresh look at the purpose of the Roman frontier-system, and re-examines the army's place in the society and culture of the Roman frontiers.

Over the last three decades, our understanding of the city worldwide has been revolutionized by three innovative theoretical concepts - globalisation, postcolonialism and a radically contested notion of modernity. The idea and even the reality of the city has been extended out of the state and nation and re-positioned in the larger global world. In this book Anthony King brings together key essays written over this period, much of it dominated by debates about the world or global city. Challenging assumptions and silences behind these debates, King provides largely ignored historical and cultural dimensions to the understanding of world city formation as well as decline. Interdisciplinary and comparative, the essays address new ways of framing contemporary themes: the imperial and colonial origin of contemporary world and global cities, actually existing postcolonialisms, claims about urban and cultural homogenisation and the role of architecture and built environment in that process. Also addressed are arguments about indigenous and exogenous perspectives, Eurocentricism, ways of framing vernacular architecture, and the global historical sociology of building types. Wide-ranging and accessible, Writing the Global City provides essential historical contexts and theoretical frameworks for understanding contemporary urban and architectural debates. Extensive bibliographies will make it essential for teaching, reference and research.

Over the last three decades, our understanding of the city worldwide has been revolutionized by three innovative theoretical concepts - globalisation, postcolonialism and a radically contested notion of modernity. The idea and even the reality of the city has been extended out of the state and nation and re-positioned in the larger global world. In this book Anthony King brings together key essays written over this period, much of it dominated by debates about the world or global city. Challenging assumptions and silences behind these debates, King provides largely ignored historical and cultural dimensions to the understanding of world city formation as well as decline. Interdisciplinary and comparative, the essays address new ways of framing contemporary themes: the imperial and colonial origin of contemporary world and global cities, actually existing postcolonialisms, claims about urban and cultural homogenisation and the role of architecture and built environment in that process. Also addressed are arguments about indigenous and exogenous perspectives, Eurocentricism, ways of framing vernacular architecture, and the global historical sociology of building types. Wide-ranging and accessible, Writing the Global City provides essential historical contexts and theoretical frameworks for understanding contemporary urban and architectural debates. Extensive bibliographies will make it essential for teaching, reference and research.

Britain and Empire, 1880-1945 traces the relationship between Britain and its empire during a period when the two spheres intersected with one another to an unprecedented degree. The story starts with the imperial expansion of the late nineteenth century and ends with the Second World War, at the end of which Britain was on the brink of decolonisation. The author shows how empire came to figure into almost every important development that marked Britain?s response to the upheavals of the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century. He examines its influence on foreign policy, party politics, social reforms, cultural practices, and national identity. At the same time, he shows how domestic developments affected imperial policies. Written in an engaging and accessible manner, this book: integrates British and imperial history in a single narrative provides a useful synthesis of recent historical research in the area analyses topics ranging from ideology and culture to politics and foreign affairs contains a chronology, glossary, who?s who and guide to further reading Britain and Empire, 1880-1945 provides an up-to-date, accessible survey, ideal for students coming to the subject for the first time.