This book presents a great deal of new primary research on a wide range of aspects of early modern East Asia. Focusing primarily on maritime connections, the book explores the importance of international trade networks, the implications of technological dissemination, and the often unforeseen consequences of missionary efforts. It demonstrates the benefi ts of a global history approach, outlining the complex interactions between Western traders and Asian states and entrepreneurs. Overall, the book presents much interesting new material on this complicated and understudied period. .

Award-winning journalist Elizabeth Becker started covering Cambodia in 1973 for "The Washington Post," when the country was perceived as little more than a footnote to the Vietnam War. Then, with the rise of the Khmer Rouge in 1975 came the closing of the border and a systematic reorganization of Cambodian society. Everyone was sent from the towns and cities to the countryside, where they were forced to labor endlessly in the fields. The intelligentsia were brutally exterminated, and torture, terror, and death became routine. Ultimately, almost two million people--nearly a quarter of the population--were killed in what was one of this century's worst crimes against humanity."When the War Was Over" is Elizabeth Becker's masterful account of the Cambodian nightmare. Encompassing the era of French colonialism and the revival of Cambodian nationalism; 1950s Paris, where Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot received his political education; the killing fields of Cambodia; government chambers in Washington, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Hanoi, and Phnom Penh; and the death of Pol Pot in 1998; this is a book of epic vision and staggering power. Merging original historical research with the many voices of those who lived through the times and exclusive interviews with every Cambodian leader of the past quarter century, "When the War Was Over" illuminates the darkness of Cambodia with the intensity of a bolt of lightning.

Michel Paradis's Last Mission to Tokyo, a "superb" (The Wall Street Journal) and "engrossing...richly researched" (The New York Times Book Review) account of a key but underreported moment in World War II: The Doolittle Raids and the international war crimes trial in 1945 that defined the Japanese-American relations and changed legal history. In 1942, freshly humiliated from the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was in search of a plan. President Roosevelt, determined to show the world that our nation would not be intimidated or defeated by enemy powers, demanded recommendations for a show of strength. Jimmy Doolittle, a stunt pilot with a doctorate from MIT, came forward and led eighty young men, gathered together from the far-flung corners of Depression-era America, on a seemingly impossible mission across the Pacific. Sixteen planes in all, they only had enough fuel for a one-way trip. Together, the Raiders, as they were called, did what no one had successfully done for more than a thousand years. They struck the mainland of Japan and permanently turned the tide of the war in the Pacific. Almost immediately, The Doolittle Raid captured the public imagination, and has remained a seminal moment in World War II history, but the heroism and bravery of the mission is only half the story. In Last Mission to Tokyo, Michel Paradis reveals the dramatic aftermath of the mission, which involved two lost crews captured, tried, and tortured at the hands of the Japanese, a dramatic rescue of the survivors in the last weeks of World War II, and an international manhunt and trial led by two dynamic and opposing young lawyers--in which both the United States and Japan accused the other of war crimes--that would change the face of our legal and military history. Perfect for fans of Lucky 666 and Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial, Last Mission to Tokyo is an unforgettable war story-meets-courtroom-drama that "captures the reader with the first sentence and never lets go" (John Grisham).

This memoir by empress Farah Pahlavi looks back on her reign over an Iran so modern it is unrecognizable today-written just a few years before the Islamic Revolution of 1979. "Beautifully written, intelligent and insightful, the memoirs of Farah Diba Pahlavi open a window on the life of one of the great women of our time and offer a unique perspective on the extraordinary country over which she and her husband reigned before darkness fell." -Bob Colacello, founding editor Interview magazine At the time I wrote my memoir, I had no idea what was to come . . . Empress Farah Pahlavi was the first crowned empress of Iran, little did she know she would also be the last. This memoir was written in 1976, at the height of her reign on the glittering peacock throne. The candid words reveal her vision for a better Iran, without any idea of what history would bring-the end of the fairy tale. Farah Pahlavi helped usher in a modern Iran now lost to the sands of time.

This book argues that as colonialism brought the concept of individual, as opposed to collective, land ownership to indigenous society, along with Western surveying techniques, the changes that resulted altered the relationship of the state to its citizens, and, thereby, the structure of local societies. The book considers these issues in all of East Asia, including China, Japan and Korea, focusing in particular on Hong Kong, which was subject to British rule from 1842 to 1997, and on Taiwan, which was subject to Japanese rule from 1895 to 1945. The book discusses how, although the main impact of land ownership by individuals and modern surveying were felt after colonialism had ended, it is by studying the introduction of these factors that their impact can be most clearly understood.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2013 'Dazzling' Sunday Times 'Magnificent' Guardian 'Sparkling' Daily Telegraph In the spring of 1839, Britain invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes and re-established on the throne Shah Shuja ul-Mulk. On the way in, the British faced little resistance. But after two years of occupation, the Afghan people rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into violent rebellion. The First Anglo-Afghan War ended in Britain's greatest military humiliation of the nineteenth century: an entire army of the then most powerful nation in the world ambushed in retreat and utterly routed by poorly equipped tribesmen. Using a range of forgotten Afghan and Indian sources, William Dalrymple's masterful retelling of Britain's greatest imperial disaster is a powerful parable of colonial ambition and cultural collision, folly and hubris. Return of a King is history at its most urgent and important. 'As taut and richly embroidered as a great novel ... this book is a masterpiece' Sunday Telegraph

Partition occurring simultaneously with British decolonization of the Indian subcontinent led to the formation of independent India and Pakistan. While the political and communal aspects of the Partition have received some attention, its enormous personal and psychological costs have been mostly glossed over, particularly when it comes to the splitting of Bengal. The memory of this historical ordeal has been preserved in literary archives, and these archives are still being excavated. This book examines neglected narratives of the Partition of India in 1947 to study the traces left by this foundational trauma on the national- and regional-cultural imaginaries in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. To arrive at a more complex understanding of how Partition experiences of violence, migration, and displacement shaped postcolonial societies and subjectivities in South Asia, the author analyses, through novels and short stories, multiple cartographies of disorientation and anxiety in the post-Partition period. The book illuminates how contingencies of political geography cut across personal and collective histories, and how these intersections are variously marked and mediated by literature. Examining works composed in Bengali and other South Asian languages, this book seeks to broaden and complicate existing conceptions of what constitutes the Partition literary archive. A valuable addition to the growing field of Partition studies, this book will be of interest to scholars of South Asian history, gender studies, and literature.

While inquiries into early encounters between East Asia and the West have traditionally focused on successful interactions, this collection inquires into the many forms of failure, experienced on all sides, in the period before 1850. Countering a tendency in scholarship to overlook unsuccessful encounters, it starts from the assumption that failures can prove highly illuminating and provide valuable insights into both the specific shapes and limitations of East Asian and Western imaginations of the Other, as well as of the nature of East-West interaction. Interdisciplinary in outlook, this collection brings together the perspectives of sinology, Japanese and Korean studies, historical studies, literary studies, art history, religious studies, and performance studies. The subjects discussed are manifold and range from missionary accounts, travel reports, letters and trade documents to fictional texts as well as material objects (such as tea, chinaware, or nautical instruments) exchanged between East and West. In order to avoid a Eurocentric perspective, the collection balances approaches from the fields of English literature, Spanish studies, Neo-Latin studies, and art history with those of sinology, Japanese studies, and Korean studies. It includes an introduction mapping out the field of failures in early modern encounters between East Asia and Europe, as well as a theoretically minded essay on the lessons of failure and the ethics of cross-cultural understanding.

Life at the Crossroads gives the rich history of Gaza from ancient times until the present. The strategic importance of the area geographically is addressed as a crossroads of culture. The role of Gaza in the current conflict with Israel is analyzed in its historical context.The book culminates with the two intifadas and the Israeli war on Gaza in 2008-09, explaining the territory 's association with the development of the Islamic movement within the Palestinian community.This book reveals the rich history of Gaza. Continuously inhabited for more than 3,000 years at a key strategic crossroads of the region, it has witnessed the rise and fall of dozens of kingdoms and dynasties. As well as considering the early period, the age of the Pharaohs and the Philistines of the Bible, Life At The Crossroads includes accounts of the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine eras. The coming of Islam, the interlude of the Crusades and the long period of Ottoman domination bring the story up to the First World War. The crucial history of Gaza in the 20th century is discussed in the period of the British Mandate and the conflicts with Israel.

Providing a contemporary history of the Palestinian prisoners movement, this book illustrates the centrality of the movement in the broader Palestinian national struggle. Based on direct interviews with former prisoners and former security sector personnel, it offers new insights into the strategies that prisoners employed to gain rights over time, as well as the tactics used by prison authorities to maintain control. Prisons have functioned as microcosms of the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, with the Israeli state aiming to use mass incarceration for security, and Palestinian prisoners seeking to take back the prison space for organizing and resistance. Prisoners' actions included but were not limited to hunger strikes, as prisoners often relied more on everyday acts of noncompliance and developing an internal "counterorder" to challenge authorities. The volume demonstrates how the Palestinian prisoners movement was intertwined with the Palestinian national movement, strongest in the popular mobilization era of the 1970s and 1980s, and significantly weaker and more fragmented after the Oslo Accords of the 1990s and the second intifada. Presenting a fresh analysis of a central, but often overlooked aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the volume offers valuable reflections on prison-based resistance in protracted conflicts more broadly. It is a key resource to students and scholars interested in contemporary conversations on mass incarceration, criminal justice, Middle East politics and history.

In the period between the 1770s and 1840s, through the process of colonial state formation, the early colonial state in India was able to harness and extract vast amounts of agrarian wealth in north India. However, little is known of the histories of the Indian scribes and the role they played in shaping the early patterns of British colonial rule. This book offers a new way of interpreting the colonial state's origins in north India. It examines how the formation of early agrarian revenue settlements exacerbated an extant late Mughal taxation tradition, and how the success of British power was shaped by this extant paper-oriented revenue culture. It goes on to examine how the service and cultural histories of various Hindu scribal communities fit within broader changes in political administration, taxation, patterns of governance and a shared Indo-Islamic administrative culture. The author argues that British power after the late eighteenth century came as much through bureaucratic mastery, paper and taxes as it did through military force and commercial ruthlessness. The book draws upon private family papers, interviews and Persian sources to demonstrate how the fortunes of scribes changed between empires, and the important role they played at the height of the British Raj by 1900. Offering a detailed account of how agrarian wealth provided the bedrock of the colonial state's later patterns of administration, this book is a unique and refreshing contribution to studies in South Asian History, Governance and Imperialism.

The Thiri Rama - or the Great Rama - was written for court performance and is the only known illustrated version of the Ramayana story in Myanmar. Based on palm-leaf manuscripts and scenes carved on over 300 sandstone plaques at a mid-nineteenth-century Buddhist pagoda west of Mandalay in Myanmar, this book presents an original translation of the Thiri Rama rendered in prose. The volume also includes essays on the history and tradition of the Ramayana in Myanmar as well as the cultural context in which the play was performed. It contains many helpful resources, incorporating a glossary and a list of characters and their corresponding personae in Valmiki's Ramayana. With over 250 fascinating visuals and core text contributions by distinguished Burmese scholars, U Thaw Kaung, Tin Maung Kyi, and U Aung Thwin, this book will greatly interest scholars and researchers of South and Southeast Asian culture, literary forms, epics, art and art history, theatre and performance studies, religion, especially those concerned with Hinduism, as well as folklorists.

This book explores the intricate and intimate relationship between military organization, imperial policy, and society in colonial South Asia. The chapters in the volume focus on technology, logistics, and state building. The present volume highlights the salient features of expansion and consolidation of imperial control over the subcontinent, and ultimate demise of the Raj. Further, it turns the spotlight on to subaltern challenges to imperialism as well as the role of non-combatants in warfare. The volume: * Deals with both conventional and guerrilla conflicts and focuses on the frontiers (both North-West and North-East, including Burma); * Looks at the army as an institution rather than present a chronological account of military operations, which highlights the complex and tortuous relationship between combat institution, colonial state, and Indian society; * Integrates top-down approaches in military and strategic studies with the bottom-up perspectives and discusses on how the conduct of war (organisation and technology) is related to the economic, societal, and cultural impact of war. A rich account of the British 'Army in India', this book will be essential reading for scholars and researchers of South Asian history, military history, political history, colonialism, and the British Empire.

Since the late-19th century, Japan has made remarkable strides in industrialization. Beginning with the economic vision of Miura Baien in the 18th century, and employing a detailed comparison with the West, this book delves into the economic thought of the scholars who played a pivotal role in Japan's modernization process. The author takes Fukuzawa Yukichi's theory of 'civilization' as the standard measure of Japan's modernization and compares it with differing visions from various critics whose research focused on rural poverty and social problems, such as Maeda Masana, early socialists, Yanagita Kunio and Kawakami Hajime. Further, the book explores new liberalism (Ishibashi Tanzan, Fukuda Tokuzo) and Marxism (Yamada Moritaro, Uno Kozo) in the 1920s and 1930s. After discussing the dilemmas faced by economists during wartime (Takata Yasuma, Ryu Shintaro, Shibata Kei), the author concludes this intellectual history with the country's post-1945 democratic reforms and their early demise. This book is valuable reading for students and researchers of Japan's intellectual history. However, due to the book's comparative perspective, as well as the universality of the modernization experience, it will also appeal to students and researchers of the history of economic thought and modern intellectual history.

The history of Taiwan, an island-state lying less than 100 miles off the coast of China whose world-class economy and geopolitical position in Asia give it an importance that goes far beyond what a population of only 22.5 million would suggest, is little explored or understood in the West. This important book is the most integrated, comprehensive, and accessible history of Taiwan available.

The contributors, distinguished leading experts from three continents, guide the reader through Taiwan's colorful history, from Neolithic times to the present. Each chapter, especially commissioned for this book, stands alone as a scholarly contribution. Collectively, the chapters bring the reader from the geographical and climatological context, through the stages of pre-modern history and the coming of the Chinese and the West, through the Japanese occupation, to a modern polity that has just experienced democratic elections and troubling military threats from its powerful neighbor, China. The general reader, the student, and Asian-Americans who trace their roots back to Taiwan or to China through Taiwan will find this book invaluable.

This is an easy-to-read book that explains how and why Japan industrialized rapidly. It traces historical development from the feudal Edo period to high income and technology in the current period. Catch-up industrialization is analyzed from a broad perspective including social, economic and political aspects. Historical data, research and contesting arguments are amply supplied. Japan's unique experience is contrasted with the practices of today's developing countries. Negative aspects such as social ills, policy failures, military movements and war years are also covered. Nineteenth-century Japan already had a happy combination of strong entrepreneurship and relatively wise government, which was the result of Japan's long evolutionary history. Measured contacts with high civilizations of China, India and the West allowed cumulative growth without being destroyed by them. Imported ideas and technology were absorbed with adjustments to fit the local context. The book grew out of a graduate course for government officials from developing countries. It offers a comprehensive look and new insights at Japan's industrial path that are often missing in standard historical chronicles. Written in an accessible and lively form, the book engages scholars as well as novices with no prior knowledge of Japan.

The period between the 1880s and the 1920s was a time of momentous changes in the Ottoman Empire. It was also an age of literary experiments, of which autobiography forms a part. This book analyses Turkish autobiographical narratives describing the part of their authors' lives that was spent while the Ottoman Empire still existed. The texts studied in this book were written in the cultural context of the Turkish Republic, which went to great lengths to disassociate itself from the empire and its legacy. This process has only been criticised and partially reversed in very recent times, the resurging interest in autobiographical texts dealing with the "old days" by the Turkish reading public being part of a wider, renewed regard for Ottoman legacies. Among the analysed texts are autobiographies by writers, journalists, soldiers and politicians, including classics like Halide Edip Adivar and Sevket Sureyya Aydemir, but also texts by authors virtually unknown to Western readers, such as Ahmed Emin Yalman. While the official Turkish republican discourse went towards a dismissal of the imperial past, autobiographical narratives offer a more balanced picture. From the earliest memories and personal origins of the authors, to the conflict and violence that overshadowed private lives in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, this book aims at showing examples of how the authors painted what one of them called "images of a past world."

The newest volume in the Elections in Israel series focuses on the twentieth Knesset elections held in March 2015 following the collapse of the third Netanyahu government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's main opposition party, the Zionist Camp, ran a negative personalized election campaign, assuming that Israelis had grown tired of him. Netanyahu, however, achieved a surprising and dramatic victory by enhancing and radicalizing the same identity politics strategies that helped him win in 1996. The Elections in Israel 2015 dissects these and other campaigns, from the perspective of the voters, the media and opinion polls, the political parties, and electoral competition. Several contributors delve into the Left and Arab fear mongering Likud campaign, which produced strategic identity voting. Other contributions analyze in-depth the Israeli party and electoral systems, highlighting the exceptional decline of the mainstream parties and the adoption of a higher electoral threshold. Providing a close analysis of electoral competition, legitimacy struggles, stability and change in the voting behavior of various groups, partisanship, personalization and political polarization, this volume is a crucial record of Israeli political history.

- Iosif Stalin was a past master of deception, disinformation, and camouflage, through which he gained supremacy in China and defeated imperialism on Chinese soil. -The editor is a leading scholar of the subject with a long track record of publications. - The volume is based on extensive archival research.

This edited book examines the significance of intangible cultural heritage to local communities and the state in Hong Kong and China. Through ethnographic studies, the various chapters in this edited book argue for the role of the local community in the creation and conservation of the intangible cultural heritage and traditions. Irrespective of whether they are selected and listed as regional, national or UNESO intangible cultural heritage, they are part of the living traditions unique to that particular local community. This edited book argues that there are threefold significance of intangible cultural heritage to the local community and the state. First, intangible cultural heritage is seen as a social prestige. Second, it acts as socio-cultural and economic capital for members of the community to tap into to ensure socio-cultural and economic sustainability of the community. Finally, the intangible cultural heritage serves as a depository of the collective memories of the community, linking the past to the present and the future.

In recent years, there has been a noticeable and enthusiastic increase of interest in Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in Japan. The legends of these temples and shrines are recorded in many historical manuscripts and these genealogies have such great significance that some of them have been registered as national treasures of Japan. They are indispensable to elucidate the history of these temples and shrines, in addition to the formation process of the ancient Japanese nation. This book provides a comprehensive examination of the genealogies and legends of ancient Japanese clans. It advances the study of ancient Japanese history by utilizing new analytical perspective from not only the well-known historical manuscripts relied upon by previous researchers, but also valuable genealogies and legends that previous researchers largely neglected.

Although colonies are often viewed as having been of crucial economic importance to Britain's empire, those responsible for administering the colonies were often not at all interested in or supportive of commercial ventures, as this book demonstrates. Based on extensive original research, and including detailed case studies of the agricultural and mining sectors in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Malaya, the book examines how administrators and capitalists interacted, showing how administrators were often hostile to business and created barriers to business success. It discusses in particular contradictory colonial government policies, confusion over land grants and conflicts within bureaucratic hierarchies, and outlines the impact of such difficulties, including the failure to attract capital inflows and outright business failures. Overall, the book casts a great deal of light on the detail of how business and government actually worked in Britain's colonial empire.

In the first half of the twentieth century, a diverse community of Australians settled in Shanghai. There they forged a 'China trade', circulating goods, people and ideas across the South China Sea, from Shanghai and Hong Kong to Sydney and Melbourne. This trade has been largely forgotten in contemporary Australia, where future economic ties trump historical memory when it comes to popular perceptions of China. After the First World War, Australians turned to Chinese treaty ports, fleeing poverty and unemployment, while others sought to 'save' China through missionary work and socialist ideas. Chinese Australians, disillusioned by Australian racism under the White Australia Policy, arrived to participate in Chinese nation building and ended up forging business empires which survive to this day. This book follows the life trajectories of these Australians, providing a means by which we can address one of the pervading tensions of race, empire and nation in the twentieth century: the relationship between working-class aspirations for social mobility and the exclusionary and discriminatory practices of white settler societies.

This book introduces an English-speaking public to the life of Madeleine Riffaud - one of the last living leaders of the French Resistance. It considers the nature of the rebel hero in France's founding historical narratives (revolution, insurrection, resistance) while asking what contributions such a hero might make to debates on national identity today. Through a series of narrative close-ups, the book offers perspectives on major chapters in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French history through the eyes of activists who experienced them: the Revolution of July 1830 and the 1851 insurrection against Napoleon, as experienced by Riffaud's ancestor Edme Liron, and the French Resistance, the Vietnam War and French-Algerian conflict as experienced by Riffaud herself. The book aims to explore the kinds of choices individuals face when their beliefs set them at odds with the state, and to suggest that there is a place for individual action in a global arena where state boundaries are becoming increasingly less relevant.

Politics in Pakistan has traditionally been understood in the context of civil-military relationship. In May 2013, for the first time in history, Pakistan saw an elected government complete a full term in office and transfer power through the ballot box to another civilian government. In view of such an important development, this book offers critical perspectives on Pakistan's current democratic transition and its implications for national politics, security and foreign policy. It critically analyses the emerging political trends in the country, including their underlying sources, attributes, constraints, and prospects of sustainability. Drawing on history, diverse theoretical perspectives, and empirical evidence, it explains the dynamics of the democratic process, contested borders and spaces, and regionalism. Contributions are from 13 prominent scholars in the field, who provide a wide-ranging analysis of Pakistan's contemporary national and regional challenges, as well as the opportunities they entail for its viability as a democratic state. Taking the debate on Pakistan beyond the outmoded notions of praetorian politics and security, the book explores the future prospects of civilian supremacy in the country. It will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Politics, Political Sociology and Security Studies, as well as policy-makers, diplomats, security experts and military professionals.