This is the first English version of Tadao Umesao's classic, published first in Japanese in 1957, with a full description of his "ecological theory" of civilizations of Eurasia. Dividing the Eurasian continent into three major ecological zones consisting of Western Europe, Japan, and the region between them, he shows how the first two are basically similar and demonstrates fundamental differences between Japan and China. In 1964 a jury of ten intellectuals chose this treatise as one of the 18 most influential treatises since 1945 from among more than a hundred which were considered. In 1998, when an influential monthly, Bungei Shunju, solicited "the ten most impactful books" in the twentieth century from more than 170 intellectuals in Japan, this book won the third highest vote among 67 books that were nominated.

This volume offers an account of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) as a rational theologian who created a symbiosis of philosophy and theology and infused rationality into Sufism. The majority of the papers herein deal with important topics of al-Ghazali's work, which demonstrate his rational treatment of the Qur'an and major subjects of Islamic theology and everyday life of Muslims. Some other contributions address al-Ghazali's sources and how his intellectual endeavors were later received by scholars who had the same concern of reconciling religion and rationality within Islam, Christianity and Judaism. With contributions by Binyamin Abrahamov, Hans Daiber, Ken Garden, Avner Giladi, Scott Girdner, Frank Griffel, Steven Harvey, Alfred Ivry, Jules Janssens, Taneli Kukkonen, Luis Xavier Lopez-Farjeat, Wilferd Madelung, Yahya M. Michot, Yasien Mohamed, Eric Ormsby, M. Sait OEzervarli, and Hidemi Takahashi.

The Aulikaras were the rulers of western Malwa (the northwest of Central India) in the heyday of the Imperial Guptas in the fifth century CE, and rose briefly to sovereignty at the beginning of the sixth century before disappearing from the spotlight of history. This book gathers all the epigraphic evidence pertaining to this dynasty, meticulously editing and translating the inscriptions and analysing their content and its implications.

This volume presents one of the most important historical sources for medieval Islamic scholarship: The Compendium of Chronicles, written by the vizier to the Mongol Ilkhans of Iran, Rashiduddin Fazlullah. It includes a valuable survey of the Turkic and Mongolian peoples, a history of Genghis Khan's ancestors, and a detailed account of his conquests. Distinguished linguist and orientalist, Wheeler M. Thackston, provides a lucid, annotated translation that makes this key material accessible to a wide range of scholars.

This volume explores the transition from the old regime to modern forms of sovereignty in the Middle East. By rereading Tocqueville's classic, "The Old Regime and the French Revolution," through an Ottoman prism this study probes the unresolved paradoxes in his analysis of institutional change while documenting an old regime that has remained in the shadows of modern history. Each section of the book explores a specific dimension of Ottoman sovereignty - space, hierarchy, and vernacular governance - through a detailed examination of a particular 18th century document. An Ottoman perspective on the eighteenth century not only furnishes critical pieces of the old-regime puzzle. It also illustrates how an uncritical reception of Tocqueville's model of modernization has obscured the ongoing interaction between the "Eurasian" and Westphalian state systems and parallel processes of sociopolitical change.

In this stimulating and timely book, Scott Bailey, an American teaching Russian and Eurasian history in Japan, traces the history of the dynamic Russian Geographical Society, which carried out major research expeditions to Central Eurasia during the second half of the nineteenth century. The immediate goal of its expeditions was to collect ethnographic, geographic, and natural-scientific information on these regions and their peoples. Their wider benefits established and extended Russia's imperial control in Central Eurasia, including some regions under direct or indirect Chinese control. These expeditions served the acquisition of social and scientific information to benefit the Russian Empire's colonization efforts. Their leaders were often elites trained in ethnography, geography, and natural science subjects, and a major objective of this book is to give a fuller picture of the diverse biographies of these figures, not all of whom were Russian or European males. In the `Wild Countries' moves chronologically from the founding of the Russian Geographical Society in 1845 to the beginning of the revolutionary period in Russia in 1905. During these decades, research missions became more overtly "imperial" and coincided with the consolidation of Russian hegemony over Central Eurasia and an increasing Russian interest in territories in the western and northern regions of the Chinese Q'ing Empire. The book also addresses wider moves toward imperial projects worldwide.

This volume examines the Russo-Japanese War in its military, diplomatic, social, political, economic, and cultural context. Through the use of research from newly opened Russian and little used Japanese sources the editors assert that the Russo-Japanese War was, in fact, World War Zero, the first global conflict in the 20th century. The contributors demonstrate that the Russo-Japanese War, largely forgotten in the aftermath of World War One, actually was a precursor to the catastrophe that engulfed the world less than a decade after the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth. This study not only further reveals the weaknesses of Imperial Russia but also exhibits Japan as it entered its fateful 20th century. Contributors: Oleg Rudolfovich Airapetov; Boris Vasilevich Ananich; Michael Auslin; Paul A. Bushkovitch; John Bushnell; Frederick R. Dickinson; Tatiana Aleksandrovna Filippova; David Goldfrank; Antti Kujala; Dominic Lieven; Igor Vladimirovich Lukoianov; Pertti Luntinen; Steven Marks; Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka; David Maclaren Mcdonald; Bruce W. Menning; Edward S. Miller; Ian Nish; Dmitrii Ivanovich Oleinikov; Nicholas Papastratigakis; Paul A. Rodell; Norman E. Saul; Charles Schencking; Barry Scherr; David Schimmelpenninck Van Der Oye; Evgenii Iurevich Sergeev; Naoko Shimazu; Yokote Shinji; John W. Steinberg; Richard Stites; James T. Ulak; David Wolff; Don Wright.

Despite having been written over a century ago, the 3rd edition of Rubens Duval's History of Syriac Literature remains one of the best - and most readable - introductions to Syriac literature. This edition provides the first English translation of the work, translated by Olivier Holmey.

The Tuareg (Kel Tamasheq) are an ancient nomadic people who have inhabited the Sahara, one of the most extreme environments in the world, for millennia. In what ways have the lives of the Tuareg changed, and what roles do they have, in a modern and increasingly globalized world? Here, leading scholars explore the many facets of contemporary Tuareg existence: from transnational identity to international politics, from economy to social structure, from music to beauty, from mobility to slavery. This book provides a comprehensive portrait of Saharan life in transition, presenting an important new theoretical approach to the anthropology and history of the region. Dealing with issues of mobility, cosmopolitanism, and transnational movements, this is essential reading for students and scholars of the history, culture and society of the Tuareg, of nomadic peoples, and of North Africa more widely. This book is the first comprehensive study of the Tuareg today, exploring the ways in which the Tuareg themselves are moving global.

This edited volume of translations covers the major political essays of India's first feminist Hindi poet. A devout follower and advocate of Gandhi, Mahadevi Varma is a household name in India and is a major woman of letters in the modern Hindi world. The essays collected in this volume represent some of Mahadevi Varma s most famous writings on the woman question in India. The collection also includes an introduction to her life, with biographical notes, an analysis of her importance in the field of Hindi letters, as well as a selection of her poems these latter because Mahadevi Varma made her mark in the world of Hindi literature through her poetry, and a volume of translations would be incomplete without a sampling of them. The introduction to the translated volume sketches Mahadevi Varma's life and work and her significance to both the development of modern standard Hindi as well as to the nascent women's movement underway in the 1920s in India. Little scholarly attention has been given in the academy outside of India to Varma s numerous contributions to women s education, to the development of modern standard Hindi, and to political thought during the Independence movement in late-colonial India. This volume of translations engages themes like language and nationalism, women s roles as artists, the politics of motherhood and marriage themes that continue to be relevant to women s lives in contemporary India and to movements for women s rights outside India as well. This volume of translations of Mahadevi Varma s feminist political essays is the first of its kind. While some of these essays, especially those from Mahadevi Varma s Hamari Shrinkhala Ki Kariyan collection have been translated by Neera K. Sohoni and published under the title Links in the Chain (Katha, 2003), there is no sustained treatment of Varma s political thinking in one, accessible volume. While there is ample work on Varma in Hindi, scholars of feminism (and students of Hindi who are in the nascent stages of language acquisition) have nowhere to turn for a comprehensive sampling of her work. Mahadevi Varma is also one of the most difficult writers to access even for trained scholars of Hindi language and literature. Her highly Sanskritized diction and her stylized prose sketches make her work a pleasure to read in the original but daunting to translate into English. This volume has contributions from some of the most highly regarded Hindi experts. In the editor s introduction to the volume of translations a brief biographical sketch followed by an analysis of the political climate of Northern India has been provided so that the reader unfamiliar with India of the 1920s-1940s will have the necessary historical context to place her work. The introduction to the volume also raises the issue of why she gave up writing poetry and turned solely to writing prose when she became involved with the movements for women s rights and national independence. Finally, the volume provides feminist cultural historians a rich archive of how Indian women like Mahadevi Varma were actively negotiating their lives as women, activists, artists, teachers, and married women. This work will be of use to scholars of Hindi language and literature in the US/European academy and should be of interest to cultural and feminist historians of modern India. This volume will introduce Mahadevi Varma s literary scope to an English-speaking audience, and will serve as a reference for feminist historians of the nationalist period in the Indian subcontinent.

The Dutch and English East India Companies were formidable organizations that were gifted with expansive powers that allowed them to conduct diplomacy, wage war and seize territorial possessions. But they did not move into an empty arena in which they were free to deploy these powers without resistance. Early modern Asia stood at the center of the global economy and was home to powerful states and sprawling commercial networks. The companies may have been global enterprises, but they operated in a globalized region in which they encountered a range of formidable competitors. This groundbreaking collection of essays explores the place of the Dutch and English East India Companies in Asia and the nature of their engagement with Asian rulers, officials, merchants, soldiers, and brokers. With contributions from some of the most innovative historians in the field, The Dutch and English East India Companies: Diplomacy, Trade and Violence in Early Modern Asia presents new ways to understand these organizations by focusing on their diplomatic, commercial, and military interactions with Asia.

In In Search of Identity: The Hadhrami Arabs in the Netherlands East Indies and Indonesia (1900-1950) Huub de Jonge discusses changes in social, economic, cultural and national identity of Arabs originating from Hadhramaut (Yemen) in the Netherlands East Indies and Indonesia. Within the relatively isolated and traditionally oriented Hadhrami community, all sorts of rifts and divisions arose under the influence of segregating colonial policies, the rise of Indonesian nationalism, the Japanese occupation, and the colonial war. The internal turmoil, hardly noticed by the outside world, led to the flourishing of new ideas, orientations, loyalties and ambitions, while traditional values, customs, and beliefs were called into question.

Japan's so-called 'peace constitution' renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation, and bans the nation from possessing any war potential. Yet Japan also maintains a large, world-class military organization, namely the Self-Defence Forces (SDF). In this book, Tomoyuki Sasaki explores how the SDF enlisted popular support from civil society and how civil society responded to the growth of the SDF. Japan's Postwar Military and Civil Society details the interactions between the SDF and civil society over four decades, from the launch of rearmament in 1950. These interactions include recruitment, civil engineering, disaster relief, anti-SDF litigation, state financial support for communities with bases, and a fear-mongering campaign against the Soviet Union. By examining these wide-range issues, the book demonstrates how the militarization of society advanced as the SDF consolidated its ideological and socio-economic ties with civil society and its role as a defender of popular welfare. While postwar Japan is often depicted as a peaceful society, this book challenges such a view, and illuminates the prominent presence of the military in people's everyday lives.

In August 1765 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish a new administration in his richest provinces. Run by English merchants who collected taxes using a ruthless private army, this new regime saw the East India Company transform itself from an international trading corporation into something much more unusual: an aggressive colonial power in the guise of a multinational business.

William Dalrymple tells the remarkable story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.

This study is an effort to reveal how patriarchy is embedded in different societal and state structures, including the economy, juvenile penal justice system, popular culture, economic sphere, ethnic minorities, and social movements in Turkey. All the articles share the common ground that the political and economic sphere, societal values, and culture produce conservatism regenerate patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity in both society and the state sphere. This situation imprisons women within their houses and makes non-heterosexuals invisible in the public sphere, thereby preserving the hegemony of men in the public sphere by which this male-dominated mentality or namely hegemonic masculinity excludes all forms of others and tries to preserve hierarchical structures. In this regard, the citizenship and the gender regime bound to each other function as an exclusion mechanism that prevents tolerance and pluralism in society and the political sphere.

The Cold War has been researched in minute detail and written about at great length but it remains one of the most elusive and enigmatic conflicts of modern times. With the ending of the Cold War, it is now possible to review the entire post-war period, to examine the Cold War as history. The Middle East occupies a special place in the history of the Cold War. It was critical to its birth, its life and its demise. In the aftermath of the Second World War, it became one of the major theatres of the Cold War on account of its strategic importance and its oil resources. The key to the international politics of the Middle East during the Cold War era is the relationship between external powers and local powers. Most of the existing literature on the subject focuses on the policies of the Great Powers towards the local region. The Cold War and the Middle East redresses the balance by concentrating on the policies of the local actors. It looks at the politics of the region not just from the outside in but from the inside out. The contributors to this volume are leading scholars in the field whose interests combine International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies.

This volume presents one of the most important historical sources for medieval Islamic scholarship - Khwandamir's "The Reign of the Mongol and the Turk". It covers the major empires and dynasties of the Persianate world from the 13th to the 16th century, including the conquests of the Mongols, Tamerlane, and the rise of the Safavids. Distinguished linguist and orientalist, Wheeler M. Thackston, provides a lucid, annotated translation that makes this key material accessible to a wide range of scholars.

In the Name of the Battle against Piracy discusses antipiracy campaigns in Europe and Asia in the 16th-19th centuries. Nine contributors argue how important antipiracy campaigns were for the establishment of a (colonial) state, because piracy was a threat not only to maritime commerce, but also to its sovereignty. 'Battle against piracy' offered a good reason for a state to claim its authority as the sole protector of people, and to establish peace, order, and sovereignty. In fact, as the contributors explain, the story was not that simple, because states sometimes attempted to make economic and political use of piracy, while private interests were strongly involved in antipiracy politics. State formation processes were not clearly separated from non-state elements. Contributors are: Kudo Akihito, Satsuma Shinsuke, Suzuki Hideaki, Lakshmi Sabramanian, Ota Atsushi, James Francis Warren, Fujita Tatsuo, Murakami Ei, and Toyooka Yasufumi.

Artillery in the Era of the Crusades provides a detailed examination of the use of mechanical artillery in the Levant through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Rather than focus on a selection of sensational anecdotes, Michael S. Fulton explores the full scope of the available literary and archaeological evidence, reinterpreting the development of trebuchet technology and the ways in which it was used during this period. Among the arguments put forward, Fulton challenges the popular perception that the invention of the counterweight trebuchet was responsible for the dramatic transformation in the design of fortifications around the start of the thirteenth century. See inside the book.