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Books > History > European history
While in the last twenty years perceptions of Europe have been
subjected to detailed historical scrutiny, American images of the
Old World have been almost wantonly neglected. As a response to
this scholarly desideratum, this pioneering study analyzes
neoconservative images of Europe since the 1970s on the basis of an
extensive collection of sources. With fresh insight into the
evolution of American images of Europe as well as into the history
of U.S. neoconservatism, the book appeals to readers familiar and
new to the subject matters alike. The study explores how, beginning
in the early 1970s, ideas of the United States as an anti-Europe
have permeated neoconservative writing and shaped their self-images
and political agitation. The choice of periodization and
investigated personnel enables the author to refute popular claims
that widespread Euro-critical sentiment in the United Studies
during the early 21st century - considerably ignited by
neoconservatives - was a distinct post-Cold War phenomenon.
Instead, the analysis reveals that the fiery rhetoric in the
context of the Iraq War debates was merely the climax of a
decade-old development.
Many of the wars of the Late Republic were largely civil conflicts.
There was, therefore, a tension between the traditional expectation
that triumphs should be celebrated for victories over foreign
enemies and the need of the great commanders to give full
expression to their prestige and charisma, and to legitimize their
power. Triumphs in the Age of Civil War rethinks the nature and the
character of the phenomenon of civil war during the Late Republic.
At the same time it focuses on a key feature of the Roman
socio-political order, the triumph, and argues that a commander
could in practice expect to triumph after a civil war victory if it
could also be represented as being over a foreign enemy, even if
the principal opponent was clearly Roman. Significantly, the civil
aspect of the war did not have to be denied. Carsten Hjort Lange
provides the first study to consider the Roman triumph during the
age of civil war, and argues that the idea of civil war as "normal"
reflects the way civil war permeated the politics and society of
the Late Roman Republic.
Reverberations of Nazi Violence in Germany and Beyond explores the
complex and diverse reverberations of the Second World War after
1945. It focuses on the legacies that National Socialist violence
and genocide perpetrated in Europe continue to have in
German-speaking countries and communities, as well as among those
directly affected by occupation, terror and mass murder.
Furthermore it explores how those legacies are in turn shaped by
the present. The volume also considers conflicting, unexpected and
often dissonant interpretations and representations of these
events, made by those who were the witnesses, victims and
perpetrators at the time and also by different communities in the
generations that followed. The contributions, from a range of
disciplinary perspectives, enrich our understanding of the
complexity of the ways in which a disturbing past continues to
disrupt the present and how the past is in turn disturbed and
instrumentalized by a later present.
With the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War
looming, this new edition of the Wartime Scrapbook revives memories
of this evocative time in Britain's history. Life on the home front
revolved around rationing, blackouts, and air raid precautions,
bringing out that British spirit - humour coupled with making-do
and determination. Poster propaganda kept the population digging
for victory during the years of the Home Guard, Women's Land Army
and austerity with dried eggs. Drawn from Robert Opie's unrivalled
collection, this new edition of The Wartime Scrapbook profusely
illustrates a unique period in history - the song sheets, magazine
covers, comic postcards, fashion and food, games, propaganda
posters and a wealth of wartime ephemera whose very survival is
remarkable.
Tsar and Sultan offers a unique insight into Russian Orientalism as
the intellectual force behind Russian-Ottoman encounters. Through
war diaries and memoirs, accounts of captivity and diplomatic
correspondences, Victor Taki's analysis of military documents
demonstrates a crucial aspect of Russia's discovery of the Orient
based on its rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. Narratives depicting
the brutal realities of Russian-Turkish military conflicts
influenced the Orientalisation of the Ottoman Empire. In turn,
Russian identity was built as the counter-image to the demonised
Turk. This book explains the significance of Russian Orientalism on
Russian identity and national policies of westernisation. Students
of both European and Middle East studies will appreciate Taki's
unique approach to Russian-Turkish relations and their influence on
Eurasian history.
One of the youngest survivors of the Warsaw ghetto, author
Sahbra Anna Markus lived a life only those who have survived
Hitler's hell can imagine. In Only a Bad Dream? she narrates the
drama of her early years through her most vivid memories. Sahbra
courageously recounts those childhood experiences in her compelling
voice, now freed from the repeated warnings: "Don't tell anyone
you're a Jew." "Don't forget you're a Jew." "It was only a dream."
"Hang on tight, or you'll get lost and die."
She tells of traipsing through forests at night, fleeing certain
death, of her parents hiding her in a church, desperate to save her
life. A frantic search for surviving family found the Markuses
traveling throughout Europe on foot, by rowboat, military train,
farm wagon, trucks, and finally the ship Caserta that delivered
them to the land of hope, freedom, and new beginnings-the only
Jewish homeland, Israel.
Only a Bad Dream shares how, in the midst of hunger and
deprivation, Sahbra still found joy in simple things like cats, the
moon, wolves, and fireflies. A story of the triumph of the human
spirit, this memoir provides strong insight into the courage,
strength, and dignity possessed by those who endured the
Holocaust.
Women Activists between War and Peace employs a comparative
approach in exploring women's political and social activism across
the European continent in the years that followed the First World
War. It brings together leading scholars in the field to discuss
the contribution of women's movements in, and individual female
activists from, Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Great
Britain, Hungary, Russia and the United States. The book contains
an introduction that helpfully outlines key concepts and broader,
European-wide issues and concerns, such as peace, democracy and the
role of the national and international in constructing the new,
post-war political order. It then proceeds to examine the nature of
women's activism through the prism of five pivotal topics: *
Suffrage and nationalism * Pacifism and internationalism *
Revolution and socialism * Journalism and print media * War and the
body A timeline and illustrations are also included in the book,
along with a useful guide to further reading. This is a vitally
important text for all students of women's history,
twentieth-century Europe and the legacy of the First World War.
How did print spread through France to become a major force during
the eighteenth century? This question has remained unanswered
because we know surprisingly little about the infrastructure of the
book trade. Between state and market: printing and bookselling in
eighteenth-century France explores the networks of printers and
booksellers that covered eighteenth-century France, situating these
key cultural intermediaries within their political and
socio-economic environments. To draw an overview of printing and
bookselling, and to chart their evolution across the century, the
author analyzes a series of administrative surveys conducted
between 1700 and 1777 by the Direction de la librairie. The
hundreds of reports the central administration gathered on every
printing shop and bookseller in the kingdom reveal not only where
book professionals could be found and who they were, but what
materials they were printing and what books they were selling.
Survey responses also show that book policing was deficient in most
of the provinces, allowing pirated and forbidden books to pour into
the kingdom from nearby foreign presses. Unable to control the
circulation of books, the administration resorted to an austere
Colbertist policy to restrict the number of printing shops. State
intervention brought a decline in provincial book publishing, but
printers could still thrive on job printing, local-interest
publications and pirating. By contrast, the central administration
let booksellers of all kinds proliferate, particularly in the
second half of the century. Better suited than traditional
printer-booksellers to supply whatever books readers wanted, retail
booksellers cashed in on a booming market demand. Examining the
booktrade from each provincial city upwards, the author tracks the
intricate web of relations between state, market, local
institutions and book professionals that shaped the diffusion of
print, and thereby the development of French literature and the
experience of everyday readers.
"Holocaust Remembrance Between the National and the Transnational"
provides a key study of the remembrance of the Jewish Catastrophe
and the Nazi-era past in the world arena. It uses a range of
primary documentation from the restitution conferences, speeches
and presentations made at the Stockholm International Forum of 2000
(SIF 2000), a global event and an attempt to mark a defining moment
in the inter-cultural construction of the political and
institutional memory of the Holocaust in the USA, Europe and
Israel. Containing oral history interviews with British delegates
to the conference and contemporary press reports, this book
explores the inter-relationships between global and national
Holocaust remembrances.The causes, consequences and 'cosmopolitan'
intellectual context for understanding the SIF 2000 are discussed
in great detail. Larissa Allwork examines this seminal moment in
efforts to globally promote the important, if ever controversial,
topics of Holocaust remembrance, worldwide Genocide prevention and
the commemoration of the Nazi past. Providing a balanced assessment
of the Stockholm Project, this book is an important study for those
interested in the remembrance of the Holocaust and the Third Reich,
as well as the recent global direction in memory studies.""
The comparison of early Italy's and Japan's colonialism is without
precedence. The majority of studies on Italian and Japanese
expansion refer to the 1930-1940s period (fascist/totalitarian era)
when Japan annexed Manchuria (1931) and Italy Ethiopia (1936). The
first formative and crucial steps that paved the way for this
expansion have been neglected. This analysis covers a range of
social, political and economic parameters illuminating the
diversity but also the common ground of the nature and aspirations
of Japan's and Italy's early colonial systems. The two states
alongside the Great Powers of the era expanded in the name of
humanism and civilization but in reality in a way typically
imperialistic, they sought territorial compensations, financial
privileges and prestige. A parallel and deeper understanding of the
nineteenth century socio-cultural-psychological parameters, such as
tradition, mentality, and religion that shaped and explain the
later ideological framework of Rome's and Tokyo's expansionist
disposition, has never been attempted before. This monograph offers
a detailed examination of the phenomenon of colonialism by
examining the issue from two different angles. The study
contributes to the understanding of Italy's and Japan's early
imperial expansion. In addition, it traces the origins of these
states' similar and common historical evolution in late nineteenth
and the first half of the twentieth century.
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