The dispossessed people of Colonial America included thousands of servants who either voluntarily or involuntarily ended up serving as agricultural, domestic, skilled, and unskilled laborers in the northern, middle, and southern British American colonies as well as British Caribbean colonies. Thousands of people arrived in the British-American colonies as indentured servants, transported felons, and kidnapped children forced into bound labor. Others already in America, such as Indians, freedmen, and poor whites, placed themselves into the service of others for food, clothing, shelter, and security; poverty in colonial America was relentless, and servitude was the voluntary and involuntary means by which the poor adapted, or tried to adapt, to miserable conditions. From the 1600s to the 1700s, Blacks, Indians, Europeans, Englishmen, children, and adults alike were indentured, apprenticed, transported as felons, kidnapped, or served as redemptioners. Though servitude was more multiracial and multicultural than slavery, involving people from numerous racial and ethnic backgrounds, far fewer books have been written about it. This fascinating new study of servitude in colonial America provides the first complete overview of the varied lives of the dispossessed in 17th- and 18th-century America, examining colonial American servitude in all of its forms. Illustrates how a majority of residents in Colonial America at any given time from 1607 to 1776 were dispossessed of basic freedoms Explains how the dispossessed Colonial American, deprived of basic rights, generated principles of freedom and equality that resulted in the American Revolution Shows that the basic rights of children were ignored in Stuart and Georgian England, which resulted in their transportation to America Describes how thousands of inhabitants of Colonial America were felons reprieved of the death penalty and prisoners of war

With the spread of manga (Japanese comics) and anime (Japanese cartoons) around the world, many have adopted the Japanese term 'otaku' to identify fans of such media. The connection to manga and anime may seem straightforward, but, when taken for granted, often serves to obscure the debates within and around media fandom in Japan since the term 'otaku' appeared in the niche publication Manga Burikko in 1983. Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan disrupts the naturalization and trivialization of 'otaku' by examining the historical contingency of the term as a way to identify and contain problematic youth, consumers and fan cultures in Japan. Its chapters, many translated from Japanese and available in English for the first time - and with a foreword by Otsuka Eiji, former editor of Manga Burikko - explore key moments in the evolving discourse of 'otaku' in Japan. Rather than presenting a smooth, triumphant narrative of the transition of a subculture to the mainstream, the edited volume repositions 'otaku' in specific historical, social and economic contexts, providing new insights into the significance of the 'otaku' phenomenon in Japan and the world. By going back to original Japanese documents, translating key contributions by Japanese scholars and offering sustained analysis of these documents and scholars, Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan provides alternative histories of and approaches to 'otaku'. For all students and scholars of contemporary Japan and the history of Japanese fan and consumer cultures, this volume will be a foundation for understanding how 'otaku', at different places and times and to different people, is meaningful.

Born into poverty in Russian Poland in 1911, Zosa Szajkowski (Shy-KOV-ski) was a self-made man who managed to make a life for himself as an intellectual, first as a journalist in 1930s Paris, and then, after a harrowing escape to New York in 1941, as a scholar. Although he never taught at a university or even earned a PhD, Szajkowski became one of the world's foremost experts on the history of the Jews in modern France, publishing in Yiddish, English, and Hebrew. His work opened up new ways of thinking about Jewish emancipation, economic and social modernization, and the rise of modern anti-Semitism. But beneath Szajkowski's scholarly success lay a shameful secret. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the scholar stole tens of thousands of archival documents related to French Jewish history from public archives and private synagogue collections in France and moved them, illicitly, to New York. There, he used them as the basis for his pathbreaking articles. Eventually, he sold them, piecemeal, to American and Israeli research libraries, where they still remain today. Why did this respectable historian become an archive thief? And why did librarians in the United States and Israel buy these materials from him, turning a blind eye to the signs of ownership they bore? These are the questions that motivate this gripping tale. Throughout, it is clear that all involved-perpetrator, victims, and buyers-saw what Szajkowski was doing through the prism of the Holocaust. The buyers shared a desire to save these precious remnants of the European Jewish past, left behind on a continent where six million Jews had just been killed by the Nazis and their collaborators. The scholars who read Szajkowski's studies, based largely on the documents he had stolen, saw the treasures as offering an unparalleled window into the history that led to that catastrophe. And the Jewish caretakers of many of the institutions Szajkowski robbed in France saw the losses as a sign of their difficulties reconstructing their community after the Holocaust, when the balance of power in the Jewish world was shifting away from Europe to new centers in America and Israel. Based on painstaking research, Lisa Leff reconstructs Szajkowski's story in all its ambiguity by taking us backstage at the archives, revealing the powerful ideological, economic and scientific forces that made Holocaust-era Jewish scholars care more deeply than ever before about preserving the remnants of their past.

Winston Churchill is a renowned historical figure, whose remarkable political and military career continues to enthral. This book consists of short, highly readable chapters on key aspects of Churchill's career. Written by leading experts, the chapters draw on documents from Churchill's extensive personal papers as well as cutting-edge scholarship. Ranging from Churchill's youthful statesmanship to the period of the Cold War, the volume considers his military strategy during both World Wars as well as dealing with the social, political and economic issues that helped define the Churchillian era. Suitable for those coming to Churchill for the first time, as well as providing new insights for those already familiar with his life, this is a sparkling collection of essays that provides an enlightening history of Churchill and his era.

The slow collapse of the European colonial empires after 1945 provides one of the great turning points of twentieth century history. With the loss of India however, the British under Harold Macmillan attempted to enforce a 'second' colonial occupation - supporting the efforts of Sir Andrew Cohen of the Colonial Office to create a Central African Federation. Drawing on newly released archival material, The Politics and Economics of Decolonization in Africa offers a fresh examination of Britain's central African territories in the late colonial period and provides a detailed assessment of how events in Britain, Africa and the UN shaped the process of decolonization. The author situates the Central African Federation - which consisted of modern day Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi - in its wider international context, shedding light on the Federation's complex relationships with South Africa, with US Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy and with the expanding United Nations. The result is an important history of the last days of the British Empire and the beginnings of a more independent African continent.

Since the end of World War II, there have been 181 insurgencies around the world. Today, there are over three dozen violent insurgencies, including in such high-profile countries as Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. These insurgencies have been led by a range of groups, from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to the Taliban in Afghanistan. In fact, most warfare today occurs in the form of insurgencies. If we are to understand modern warfare, we need to understand insurgencies. While numerous books have been written on the subject of insurgencies, there is no book that brings together all of what we know into one accessible volume that policymakers can understand and use. Waging Insurgent Warfare is that book. Seth G. Jones, who has been deeply involved in the Afghanistan war over the last decade, aims to help policymakers, scholars, and general readers better understand how groups start, wage, and end insurgencies. He weaves together examples from today and from recent history into an analytic synthesis that focuses on several sets of questions. First, what factors contribute to the rise of an insurgency? Second, what are the key components involved in conducting an insurgency? As he explains, insurgent groups need to decide on a strategy, employ a range of tactics, select an organizational structure, secure outside aid from state and non-state actors, and conduct information campaigns. They then have to routinely re-assess these decisions over the course of an insurgency. Third, what factors contribute to the end of insurgencies? Finally, what do the answers to these questions mean for the conduct of counterinsurgency warfare? Waging Insurgent Warfare is not only a practical handbook for understanding insurgent warfare, but it also has implications for waging counterinsurgent warfare. Highly readable, empirically sophisticated, and historically informed, Waging Insurgent Warfare will become a standard work on the topic.

The truck system was a global phenomenon in the period 1865-1920, where workers were paid through the company store. In Beyond Racism and Poverty Karin Lurvink looks at how this system functioned on plantations in Louisiana in comparison with peateries in the Netherlands. In the United States, the system is often viewed as a 'second slavery' and strongly associated with racism. In the Netherlands, however, not racism but poverty has been seen as the main reason for its continued existence. By using a variety of historical sources and by analyzing the perspectives of both employers and workers, Lurvink provides new insights into how the truck system worked and can be explained. She reveals how the system was not only coercive but had advantages for the workers as well, which should not be overlooked.

While it is generally known that Mahatma Gandhi had great affection for Jawaharlal Nehru and that this was one of the most important factors in the latter succeeding him as the leading figure in the Indian National Congress and becoming the Prime Minister of India, it is seldom realized that the relationship between the two was one of the most determining factors in the history of the Congress and consequently in that of modern India, both before and after the achievement of Independence. To bring all this into focus has been the main objective of this work. Part one of the book consists of the texts of letters exchanged between Gandhi and Nehru and part two shows the impact of the Gandhi-Nehru relationship on the history of the Indian National Congress. Some of the moving writings of Nehru on Gandhi after the latter's passing away, showing Nehru's deep attachment to the master, follow. The introduction not only sums up the materials in two parts, but also discusses the impact of the Gandhi-Nehru relationship on the history of India during the Nehru Era. The book will be of tremendous interest to the general public as well as to scholars of modern Indian history in general and of Gandhi and Nehru in particular.

In The Price and Promise of Specialness, Jin Li Lim revises narratives on the overseas Chinese and the People's Republic of China by analysing the Communist approach to 'overseas Chinese affairs' in New China's first decade as a function of a larger political economy. Jin Li Lim shows how the party-state centred its approach towards the overseas Chinese on a perception of their financial utility and thus sought to offer them a special identity and place in New China, so as to unlock their riches. Yet, this contradicted the quest for socialist transformation, and as its early pragmatism fell away, the radicalising party-state abandoned its promises to the overseas Chinese, who were left to pay the price for their difference.

The true story of a woman's incredible journey into the heart of the Third Reich to find the man she loves. When the Gestapo seize 20-year-old Olga Czepf's fiance she is determined to find him and sets off on an extraordinary 2,000-mile search across Nazi-occupied Europe risking betrayal, arrest and death. As the Second World War heads towards its bloody climax, she refuses to give up - even when her mission leads her to the gates of Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps...Now 88 and living in London, Olga tells with remarkable clarity of the courage and determination that drove her across war-torn Europe, to find the man she loved. The greatest untold true love story of World War Two.