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Books > Humanities > History > European history > General
This book explores the evolution of the role of the heirs to the
throne of Italy between 1860 and 1900. It focuses on the future
kings Umberto I (1844-1900) and Vittorio Emanuele III (1869-1947),
and their respective spouses, Margherita of Savoia (1851-1926) and
Elena of Montenegro (1873-1952). It sheds light on the soft power
the Italian royals were attempting to generate, by identifying and
examining four specific areas of monarchical activity: firstly, the
heirs' public role and the manner in which they attempted to craft
an Italian identity through a process of self-presentation;
secondly, the national, royal, linguistic and military education of
the heirs; thirdly, the promotion of a family-centred dynasty
deploying both male and female elements in the public realm; and
finally the readiness to embrace different modes of mobility in the
construction of italianita. By analysing the growing importance of
the royal heirs and their performance on the public stage in
post-Risorgimento Italy, this study investigates the attempted
construction of a cohesive national identity through the crown and,
more specifically, the heirs to the throne.
This book challenges long-accepted historical orthodoxy about
relations between the Spanish and the Indians in the borderlands
separating what are now Mexico and the United States. While most
scholars describe the decades after 1790 as a period of relative
peace between the occupying Spaniards and the Apaches, Mark
Santiago sees in the Mescalero Apache attacks on the Spanish
beginning in 1795 a sustained, widespread, and bloody conflict. He
argues that Commandant General Pedro de Nava's coordinated
campaigns against the Mescaleros were the culmination of the
Spanish military's efforts to contain Apache aggression,
constituting one of its largest and most sustained operations in
northern New Spain. A Bad Peace and a Good War examines the
antecedents, tactics, and consequences of the fighting. This
conflict occurred immediately after the Spanish military had
succeeded in making an uneasy peace with portions of all Apache
groups. The Mescaleros were the first to break the peace,
annihilating two Spanish patrols in August 1795. Galvanized by the
loss, Commandant General Nava struggled to determine the extent to
which Mescaleros residing in ""peace establishments"" outside
Spanish settlements near El Paso, San Elizario, and Presidio del
Norte were involved. Santiago looks at the impact of conflicting
Spanish military strategies and increasing demands for fiscal
efficiency as a result of Spain's imperial entanglements. He
examines Nava's yearly invasions of Mescalero territory, his
divide-and-rule policy using other Apaches to attack the
Mescaleros, and his deportation of prisoners from the frontier,
preventing the Mescaleros from redeeming their kin. Santiago
concludes that the consequences of this war were overwhelmingly
negative for Mescaleros and ambiguous for Spaniards. The war's
legacy of bitterness lasted far beyond the end of Spanish rule, and
the continued independence of so many Mescaleros and other Apaches
in their homeland proved the limits of Spanish military authority.
In the words of Viceroy Bernardo de Galvez, the Spaniards had
technically won a ""good war"" against the Mescaleros and went on
to manage a ""bad peace.
Trends and Turning Points presents sixteen articles, examining the
discursive construction of the late antique and Byzantine world,
focusing specifically on the utilisation of trends and turning
points to make stuff from the past, whether texts, matter, or
action, meaningful. Contributions are divided into four
complementary strands, Scholarly Constructions, Literary Trends,
Constructing Politics, and Turning Points in Religious Landscapes.
Each strand cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries and
periodisation, placing historical, archaeological, literary, and
architectural concerns in discourse, whilst drawing on examples
from the full range of the medieval Roman past. While its
individual articles offer numerous important insights, together the
volume collectively rethinks fundamental assumptions about how late
antique and Byzantine studies has and continues to be discursively
constructed. Contributors are: David Barritt, Laura Borghetti,
Nikolas Churik, Elif Demirtiken, Alasdair C. Grant, Stephen
Humphreys, Mirela Ivanova, Hugh Jeffery, Valeria Flavia Lovato,
Francesco Lovino, Kosuke Nakada, Jonas Nilsson, Theresia Raum,
Maria Rukavichnikova, and Milan Vukasinovic.
In this analysis of the life of Arnost Frischer, an influential
Jewish nationalist activist, Jan Lanicek reflects upon how the
Jewish community in Czechoslovakia dealt with the challenges that
arose from their volatile relationship with the state authorities
in the first half of the 20th century. The Jews in the Bohemian
Lands experienced several political regimes in the period from 1918
to the late 1940s: the Habsburg Empire, the first democratic
Czechoslovak republic, the post-Munich authoritarian Czecho-Slovak
republic, the Nazi regime, renewed Czechoslovak democracy and the
Communist regime. Frischer's involvement in local and central
politics affords us invaluable insights into the relations and
negotiations between the Jewish activists and these diverse
political authorities in the Bohemian Lands. Vital coverage is also
given to the relatively under-researched subject of the Jewish
responses to the Nazi persecution and the attempts of the exiled
Jewish leadership to alleviate the plight of the Jews in occupied
Europe. The case study of Frischer and Czechoslovakia provides an
important paradigm for understanding modern Jewish politics in
Europe in the first half of the 20th century, making this a book of
great significance to all students and scholars interested in
Jewish history and Modern European history.
The peasantry accounted for the large majority of the Russian
population during the Imperialist and Stalinist periods - it is,
for the most part, how people lived. Peasants in Russia from
Serfdom to Stalin provides a comprehensive, realistic examination
of peasant life in Russia during both these eras and the legacy
this left in the post-Soviet era. The book paints a full picture of
peasant involvement in commerce and local political life and,
through Boris Gorshkov's original ecology paradigm for
understanding peasant life, offers new perspectives on the Russian
peasantry under serfdom and the emancipation. Incorporating recent
scholarship, including Russian and non-Russian texts, along with
classic studies, Gorshkov explores the complex interrelationships
between the physical environment, peasant economic and social
practices, culture, state policies and lord-peasant relations. He
goes on to analyze peasant economic activities, including
agriculture and livestock, social activities and the functioning of
peasant social and political institutions within the context of
these interrelationships. Further reading lists, study questions,
tables, maps, primary source extracts and images are also included
to support and enhance the text wherever possible. Peasants in
Russia from Serfdom to Stalin is the crucial survey of a key topic
in modern Russian history for students and scholars alike.
This fascinating history book details the Moorish arrival, conquest
and rule over Spain and the Iberian peninsula in Europe. We hear of
how the Moors arrived and conquered the Iberian peninsula,
remaining for some 800 years. Tariq ibn-Ziyad, arriving in 711 AD,
began an upheaval never before seen in the European continent. The
Moorish brought industriousness and commerce, a sophisticated code
of laws, beautiful architecture, and outstanding scholarly
achievements in astronomy and mathematics - together, these would
forever shape the culture of Spain and Portugal. Stanley Lane-Poole
was a historian and archaeologist who worked in partnership with
the British Museum for eighteen years. Specializing in Middle
Eastern and North African culture and architecture, it was through
years of painstaking study and compilation of existing documents
that the author was able to compose this, and other histories.
In this volume, we approach the phenomenon of slavery and other
types of strong asymmetrical dependencies from two methodologically
and theoretically distinct perspectives: semantics and lexical
fields. Detailed analyses of key terms that are associated with the
conceptualization of strong asymmetrical dependencies promise to
provide new insights into the self-concept and knowledge of
pre-modern societies. The majority of these key terms have not been
studied from a semantic or terminological perspective so far. Our
understanding of lexical fields is based on an onomasiological
approach - which linguistic items are used to refer to a concept?
Which words are used to express a concept? This means that the
concept is a semantic unit which is not directly accessible but may
be manifested in different ways on the linguistic level. We are
interested in single concepts such as 'wisdom' or 'fear', but also
in more complex semantic units like 'strong asymmetrical
dependencies'. In our volume, we bring together and compare case
studies from very different social orders and normative
perspectives. Our examples range from Ancient China and Egypt over
Greek and Maya societies to Early Modern Russia, the Ottoman Empire
and Islamic and Roman law.
Consumption in Russia and the former USSR has been lately studied
as regards the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet period. The
history of Soviet consumption and the Soviet variety of consumerism
in the 1950s-1990s has hardly been studied at all. This book
concentrates on the late Soviet period but it also considers
pre-WWII and even pre-revolutionary times.The book consists of
articles, which survey the longue duree of Russian and Soviet
consumer attitudes, Soviet ideology of consumption as indicated in
texts concerning fashion, the world of Soviet fashion planning and
the survival strategies of the Soviet consumer complaining against
sub-standard goods and services in a command economy. There's also
a case study concerning the uses of concepts with anti-consumerist
content. Contributors include: Lena Bogdanova, Olga Gurova, Timo
Vihavainen and Larissa Zakharova.
At the end of the 19th century, German historical scholarship had
grown to great prominence. Academics around the world imitated
their German colleagues. Intellectuals described historical
scholarship as a foundation of the modern worldview. To many, the
modern age was an 'age of history'. This book investigates how
German historical scholarship acquired this status. Modern
Historiography in the Making begins with the early Enlightenment,
when scholars embraced the study of the past as a modernizing
project, undermining dogmatic systems of belief and promoting
progressive ideals, such a tolerance, open mindedness and
reform-readiness. Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen looks at how this
modernizing project remained an important motivation and
justification for historical scholarship until the 20th century.
Eskildsen successfully argues that German historical scholarship
was not, as we have been told since the early 20th century, a
product of historicism, but rather of Enlightenment ideals. The
book offers this radical revision of the history of scholarship by
focusing on practices of research and education. It examines how
scholars worked and why they cared. It shows how their efforts
forever changed our relationship not only to the past, but also to
the world we live in.
Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe is a topic laced by prejudice on
one hand and apologetics on the other. Beginning in the Middle
Ages, Jews were often portrayed as criminals driven by greed. While
these accusations were, for the most part, unfounded, in other
cases criminal accusations against Jews were not altogether
baseless. Drawing on a variety of legal, liturgical, literary, and
archival sources, Ephraim Shoham-Steiner examines the reasons for
the involvement in crime, the social profile of Jews who performed
crimes, and the ways and mechanisms employed by the legal and
communal body to deal with Jewish criminals and with crimes
committed by Jews. A society's attitude toward individuals
identified as criminals - by others or themselves - can serve as a
window into that society's mores and provide insight into how
transgressors understood themselves and society's atttudes toward
them. The book is divided into three main sections. In the first
section, Shoham-Steiner examines theft and crimes of a financial
nature. In the second section, he discusses physical violence and
murder, most importantly among Jews but also incidents when Jews
attacked others and cases in which Jews asked non-Jews to commit
violence against fellow Jews. In the third section, Shoham-Steiner
approaches the role of women in crime and explores the gender
differences, surveying the nature of the crimes involving women
both as perpetrators and as victims, as well as the reaction to
their involvement in criminal activities among medieval European
Jews. While the study of crime and social attitudes toward
criminals is firmly established in the social sciences, the history
of crime and of social attitudes toward crime and criminals is
relatively new, especially in the field of medieval studies and all
the more so in medieval Jewish studies. Jews and Crime in Medieval
Europe blazes a new path for unearthing daily life history from
extremely recalcitrant sources. The intended readership goes beyond
scholars and students of medieval Jewish studies, medieval European
history, and crime in pre-modern society.
The Russo-Turkish War""was one of the most decisive conflicts of
the 18th century. In this book, Brian Davies offers a thorough
survey of the war and explains why it was crucial to the political
triumph of Catherine the Great, the southward expansion of the
Russian Empire, and the rollback of Ottoman power from southeastern
Europe. The war completed the incorporation of Ukraine into the
Russian Empire, ended the independence of the great Cossack hosts,
removed once and for all the military threat from the Crimean
Khanate, began the partitions of Poland, and encouraged Catherine
II to plan projects to complete the "liberation" of the lower
Danubian and Balkan Slavs and Greeks. The war legitimated and
secured the power of Catherine II, finally made the Pontic steppe
safe for agricultural colonization, and won ports enabling Russia
to control the Black Sea and become a leading grain exporter.
Traditionally historians (Sorel, for example) have treated this war
as the beginning of the "Eastern Question," the question of how the
European powers should manage the decline of the Ottoman Empire. A
thorough grasp of the Russo-Turkish War is essential to
understanding the complexity and volatility of diplomacy in
18th-century Europe. This book will be an invaluable resource for
all scholars and students on European military history and the
history of Eastern Europe.
Beginning in 1609, Jesuit missionaries established missions
(reductions) among sedentary and non-sedentary native populations
in the larger region defined as the Province of Paraguay (Rio de la
Plata region, eastern Bolivia). One consequence of resettlement on
the missions was exposure to highly contagious old world crowd
diseases such as smallpox and measles. Epidemics that occurred
about once a generation killed thousands. Despite severe mortality
crises such as epidemics, warfare, and famine, the native
populations living on the missions recovered. An analysis of the
effects of epidemics and demographic patterns shows that the native
populations living on the Paraguay and Chiquitos missions survived
and retained a unique ethnic identity. A comparative approach that
considers demographic patterns among other mission populations
place the case study of the Paraguay and Chiquitos missions into
context, and show how patterns on the Paraguay and Chiquitos
missions differed from other mission populations. The findings
challenge generally held assumptions about Native American
historical demography.
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