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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > General
A newly minted second lieutenant fresh from West Point, Hugh Lenox
Scott arrived on the northern Great Plains in the wake of the
Little Bighorn debacle. The Seventh Cavalry was seeking to subdue
the Plains tribes and confine them to reservations, and Scott
adopted the role of negotiator and advocate for the Indian
"adversaries." He thus embarked on a career unique in the history
of the U.S. military and the western frontier. Hugh Lenox Scott,
1853-1934: Reluctant Warrior is the first book to tell the full
story of this unlikely, self-avowed "soldier of peace," whose
career, stretching from Little Bighorn until after World War I,
reflected profound historical changes. The taste for adventure that
drew Scott to the military also piqued his interest in the tenacity
of Native cultures in an environment rife with danger and
uncertainty. Armand S. La Potin describes how Scott embraced the
lifeways of the Northern Plains peoples, making a study of their
cultures, their symbols, and most notably, their use of an
intertribal sign language to facilitate trade. Negotiating with
dissident bands of Indians whose lands were threatened by Anglo
settlers and commercial interests, he increasingly found himself
advocating federal responsibility for tribal welfare and assuming
the role of "Indian reformer." La Potin makes clear that "reform"
was understood within the context of Scott's own culture, which
scaled "civilization" to the so-called Anglo race. Accordingly,
Scott promoted the "civilization" of Native Americans through
assimilation into Anglo-American society-an approach he continued
in his later interactions with the Moro Muslims of the southern
Philippines, where he served as a military governor. Although he
eventually rose to the rank of army chief of staff, over time Scott
the peacemaker and Indian reformer saw his career stall as Native
tribes ceased to be seen as a military threat and military merit
was increasingly defined by battlefield experience. From these
pages the picture emerges of an uncommon figure in American
military history, at once at odds with and defined by his times.
Why have Asian states - colonial and independent - imprisoned
people on a massive scale in detention camps? How have detainees
experienced the long months and years of captivity? And what does
the creation of camps and the segregation of people in them mean
for society as a whole? This ambitious book surveys the systems of
detention camps set up in Asia from the beginning of the 20th
century in The Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Malaya, Myanmar
(Burma), Vietnam, Timor, Korea and China.
Provides a detailed look at how war affects human life and health
far beyond the battlefield Since 2010, a team of activists, social
scientists, and physicians have monitored the lives lost as a
result of the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan through an
initiative called the Costs of War Project. Unlike most studies of
war casualties, this research looks beyond lives lost in violence
to consider those who have died as a result of illness, injuries,
and malnutrition that would not have occurred had the war not taken
place. Incredibly, the Cost of War Project has found that, of the
more than 1,000,000 lives lost in the recent US wars, a minimum of
800,000 died not from violence, but from indirect causes. War and
Health offers a critical examination of these indirect casualties,
examining health outcomes on the battlefield and elsewhere-in
hospitals, homes, and refugee camps-both during combat and in the
years following, as communities struggle to live normal lives
despite decimated social services, lack of access to medical care,
ongoing illness and disability, malnutrition, loss of
infrastructure, and increased substance abuse. The volume considers
the effect of the war on both civilians and on US service members,
in war zones-where healthcare systems have been destroyed by
long-term conflict-and in the United States, where healthcare is
highly developed. Ultimately, it draws much-needed attention to the
far-reaching health consequences of the recent US wars, and argues
that we cannot go to war-and remain at war-without understanding
the catastrophic effect war has on the entire ecosystem of human
health.
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