Rethinking the Middle East runs counter to the received wisdom in modern Middle East studies. This discipline has been dominated by what may be termed a culture of victimization; it views the local populations of the Middle East Arabs in particular as the hapless victims of alien encroachment, and blames the region's endemic malaise on Western political and cultural imperialism. The author contends that the influence of the Great Powers has not been the primary force behind the region's political development, nor the main cause of its famous volatility. He argues that the main impetus has been provided by regional factors; and that even at their weakest point in modern history - during the final stages of the Ottoman Empire - the peoples in the Middle East have played an active role in the restructuring of their region. Historical writing and popular beliefs concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict are re-examined in the light of this thesis.

This is the only scholarly study of Arab historiography. It covers the period from 1820 and is a major contribution both to the study of Arab historiography and to our understanding of modern Arab thought.

China's Route Heritage examines the creation, development and proliferation of the route heritage discourse of the Ancient Tea Horse Road (Chamagudao), in the People's Republic of China. Examining the formation of the tea-horse road as a concept, its development as a platform for cultural branding, and its most recent interactions with the policy of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the revival of the discourse on the Silk Roads, the book demonstrates that the tea-horse road is an important part of the discourse on Chinese modernity. Describing the route heritage of the tea-horse road as a 'mobility narrative', whereby an ancient route is used to form a narrative of ethnic unity and cooperation, the book demonstrates that the study of such heritage offers unique insights into issues that are of concern to the wider field of critical heritage studies. Sigley also shows how the study of alternative route heritage enables us to gain a broader sense of route heritage discourse and its implications for the discussion of historical, present and future forms of mobility and connectivity within China and beyond its borders. China's Route Heritage should be of interest to researchers and postgraduate students who are engaged in the study of heritage, China, the Silk Roads and the BRI, politics, international relations and tourism.

East Asia from 1400 to 1850 was a vibrant web of connections, and the southern coast of the Korean peninsula participated in a maritime world that stretched to Southeast Asia and beyond. Within this world were Japanese pirates, traders, and fishermen. They brought things to the Korean peninsula and they took things away. The economic and demographic structures of Kyongsang Province had deep and wide connections with these Japanese traders. Social and political clashes revolving around the Japan House in Pusan reveal Korean mentalities towards the Japanese connection. This study seeks to define 'Korea' by examining its frontier with Japan. The guiding problems are the relations between structures and agents and the self-definitions reached by pre-modern Koreans in their interaction with the Japanese. Case studies range from demography to taxation to trade to politics to prostitution. The study draws on a wide base of primary sources for Korea and Japan and introduces the problems that animate modern scholarship in both countries. It offers a model approach for Korea's northern frontier with China and shows that the peninsula was and is a complex brocade of differing regions. The book will be of interest to anyone concerned with pre-1900 East Asia, Korea in particular, and especially Korea's relations with the outside world. Anyone interested in early-modern Japan and its external relations will also find it essential reading.

'A thrilling collection of stories featuring the exploits of the Society's members.' - Western Daily Press

'There are fascinating nuggets of information and much humour ... I congratulate Hugh Leach and Susan Farrington on a job very well done.' - Asian Affairs

This book provides a general introduction to the history of Jewish life in 14th century Asia at the time of the conqueror Tamerlane (Timur). The author defines who are the Central Asian Jews, and describes the attitudes towards the Jews, and the historical consequences of this relationship with Tamerlane. Left alone to live within a stable empire, the Jews prospered under Tamerlane. In founding an empire, Tamerlane had delivered Central Asia from the last Mongols, and brought the nations of Transoxonia within the orbit of Persian civilisation. The Central Asian Jews accepted this spirit and preserved it until modern times in their language and culture.

This is a collection of essays by one of the leading scholars of Chinese history, Patricia Buckley. In the essays she has selected for this fascinating volume, Professor Ebrey explores features of the Chinese family, gender and kinship systems as practices and ideas intimately connected to history and therefore subject to change over time. The essays cover topics ranging from dowries and the sale of women into forced concubinary, to the excesses of the imperial harem, excruciating pain of footbinding, and Confucian ideas of womanly virtue.
Patricia Ebrey places these sociological analyses of women within the family in an historical context, analysing the development of the wider kinship system. Her work provides an overview of the early modern period, with a specific focus on the Song period (920-1276), a time of marked social and cultural change, and considered to be the beginning of the modern period in Chinese history.
With its wide-ranging examination of issues relating to women and the family, this book will be essential reading to scholars of Chinese history and gender studies.

Goto introduces the diverse and multilayered skylore and cultural astron- omy of the peoples of the Japanese Archipelago. Going as far back as the Jomon, Yayoi, and Kofun periods, this book examines the significance of constellations in the daily life of farmers, fishermen, sailors, priests, and the ruling classes throughout Japan's ancient and medieval history. As well as covering the systems of the dominant Japanese people, he also explores the astronomy of the Ainu people of Hokkaido, and of the people of the Ryukyu Islands. Along the way he discusses the importance of astronomy in official rituals, mythol- ogy, and Shinto and Buddhist ceremonies. This book provides a unique overview of cultural astronomy in Japan and is a valuable resource for researchers as well as anyone who is inter- ested in Japanese culture and history.

This book sets out to open up the space for interpretation of history and politics in Aceh which is now in a state of armed rebellion against the Indonesian government. It lays out a groundwork for analysing how female agency is constituted in Aceh, in a complex interplay of indigenous matrifocality, Islamic belief and practices, state terror, and political violence. Analysts of the current conflict in Aceh have tended to focus on present events. Siapno provides a historical analysis of power, co-optation, and resistance in Aceh and links it to broader comparative studies of gender, Islam, and the state in Muslim communities throughout the world.

This volume proposes a historical analysis of Italian-Libyan relations in contemporary times. After examining the colonialism of liberal Italy, which in 1911 culminated in the military campaign for the conquest of the Libyan regions, it evaluates the impact of fascism in Libya and the attempt to launch a broader pro-Arab policy. The third section analyzes the construction of the so-called 'special relationship' between Rome and Tripoli since the 50s when an economic interdependence between the Libyan oil producer and the Italian industrial power was pursued despite political differences. Finally, the volume also focuses on the dramatic implosion of Libya and the loss of its political unity following the fall of the Gaddafi regime, which on the one hand, scaled back Italy's regional role, on the other, spread instability throughout the Euro-Mediterranean area. The volume uses a historiographical methodology focused on primary sources and updated scientific literature but also includes specialized analyses of the most current scenarios. This is the first systematic work on the Italian-Libyan relationship produced in English, accessible to area scholars, specialists, analysts and students, who intend to deepen their understanding of one of the pivotal factors of the Euro-Mediterranean balance, which is currently missing.

The western steppelands of Central Eurasia, stretching from the Danube, through the modern Ukraine and southern Russia, to the Caspian, have historically been the meeting ground of Inner Asian pastoral nomads and the agrarian societies of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. This volume deals, firstly, with the interaction of the nomads with their sedentary neighbours - the Kievan Rus' state and the medieval polities of Transcaucasia, Georgia in particular - in the period from the 6th century to the advent of the Mongols. Second, it looks at questions of nomadic ethnogenesis (Oghuz, Hungarian, Qipchaq), at the evolution of nomadic political traditions and the heritage of the Turk empire, and at aspects of indigenous nomadic religious traditions together with the impact of foreign religions on the nomads - notably the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. A number of articles focus on the Qipchaqs, a powerful confederation of complex Inner Asian origins that played a crucial role in the history of Christian Eastern Europe and Transcaucasia and the Muslim world between the 11th and 13th centuries.

This book investigates how the material culture of South Indian courts was perceived by those who lived there in the pre-colonial period. Howes peels away the standard categories used to study Indian palace space, such as public/private and male/female, and replaces them with indigenous descriptions of space found in court poetry, vastu shastra and painted representations of courtly life. Set against the historical background of the events which led to the formation of the Ramnad Kingdom, the Kingdom's material circumstances are examined, beginning with the innermost region of the palace and moving out to the Kingdom via the palace compound itself and the walled town which surrounded it. An important study for both art historians and South India specialists. The volume is richly illustrated in colour.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203221036

Series Information:
Rewriting Histories

Investigates how women, religion and culture have interacted in the context of 19th and 20th century Iran, covering topics as seemingly diverse as the social and cultural history of Persian cuisine, the work and attitudes of 19th century Christian missionaries, the impact of growing female literacy, and the consequences of developments since 1979.

Mughal Warfare offers a much-needed new survey of the military history of Mughal India during the age of imperial splendour from 1500 to 1700. Jos Gommans looks at warfare as an integrated aspect of pre-colonial Indian society.
Based on a vast range of primary sources from Europe and India, this thorough study explores the wider geo-political, cultural and institutional context of the Mughal military. Gommans also details practical and technological aspects of combat, such as gunpowder technologies and the animals used in battle. His comparative analysis throws new light on much-contested theories of gunpowder empires and the spread of the military revolution.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203402588

First published in 1929, A History of Nationalism in the East brings together in one truly fascinating volume a mass of information hitherto scattered and partly unavailable. Hans Kohn sums up the general situation in his Introduction. He tells us that the World War I produced three great communities of interest, distinct and, to some extent, mutually antagonistic. The first was that of the continent of Europe, barring Russia, which was faced with the necessity for the gradual breaking down of national boundaries, for political, financial, and economic reasons. The second was that of the Anglo-Saxon people, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. This had to face Soviet Russia on the one hand, and the Oriental, the third, community of interests on the other. Here he sketches suggestively the development of the nationalist movement in Islam, India, Egypt, Turkey, Arabia, and Persia. The language used is a reflection of its era and no offence is meant by the Publishers to any reader by this republication. This book will be of interest to students of history, political science, international relations, and geography.

The partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 was a defining moment which has powerfully shaped the destinies of people in the South Asian region. The birth of nation-states of India and Pakistan produced reverberations which were both immediate and long-term. This book focuses on the aftermath of partition and takes stock of its long term consequences. Earlier works on partition have portrayed it as a tragic and unintended consequence of decolonisation, or subordinated it to larger dramas surrounding the advent of independence. This book sees partition in its own terms. It argues that it was not a single event, but a trigger of processes which have left a deep imprint on state and society in the region. Where other books have looked only at the causes of partition, this book broadens the horizon by looking at its effects. It is constructed around two key motifs, the dislocations and disruptions as well as the long-term impact of partition on peoples, places and institutions. This book draws upon new theoretical insights and fresh bodies of data to historically reappraise partition in the light of its long aftermath. It uses a comparative approach by viewing South Asia in its to

This book examines the legal conundrum of reconciling international human rights law in a Muslim majority country and identifies a trajectory for negotiating the protection of religious minorities within Islam. The work explores the history of religious minorities within Islam in Indonesia, which contains the world's largest Muslim population, as well as the present-day ways by which the government may address issues through reconciling international human rights law and Islamic law. Given the context of multiple sets of religious norms in Indonesia, this is a complicated endeavour. In addition to amending and enacting human rights norms, the government is also negotiating with the long history of Islamisation in Indonesia. Particularly relevant is the practice of customary law, which puts the rights of community over individualism. This practice directly affects the rights of religious minorities within Islam. Readers, especially those conducting research, will also be provided with information and references which are relevant to the field of human rights, especially in relation to religious minorities and international law. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers in the fields of International Human Rights Law, Law and Religion, and Islamic Studies.

Imperialism in South East Asia examines all the countries which might be called imperialist: Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands and the US. Examining the phenomenon from this perspective reveals imperialism as a question of rivalry; and facilitates comparison: imperialism had elements in common, yet differed as did the territories in which they operated.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203402553

Mesopotamia was one of the earliest regions to produce writing, literature and the fine arts, as well as being one of the first areas to construct states. This comprehensive and detailed survey of the region's prehistory and protohistory shows how these fascinating developments were possible.
Petr Charvát explores the economic, social and spiritual spheres in Mesopotamia from the Palaeolithic to the time of the early states, c. 100,000 BC to 2334 BC. The narrative is supplemented by numerous descriptions of the principal archaeological sites for each phase, and by conclusions outlining the most important developments and changes.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203164814

In 1944, the novel Xie [Crabs] by Mei Niang (1916-2013) was honored with the Japanese Empire's highest literary award, Novel of the Year. Then, at the peak of her popularity, Mei Niang published in Japanese-owned, Chinese-language journals and newspapers in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (1932-1945), Japan, and north China. Contemporaries lauded her writings, especially for introducing liberalism to Manchuria's literary world. In Maoist China, however, Mei Niang was condemned as a traitor and a Rightist with her life and career torn to shreds until her formal vindication in the late 1970s. In 1997, Mei Niang was named one of "100 modern Chinese writers." The collection that is translated in this volume, Xiaojie ji [Young lady's collection], was published in 1936, when she was 19 years old. Long thought forever lost in the violence of China's civil war and Maoist strife, the collection was only re-discovered in 2019. This is the first book-length, English-language translation of the work of this high-profile, prolific New Woman writer from Northeast China. Mei Niang's Long-Lost First Writings will appeal to those interested in Chinese literature, the Japanese Empire, historic fiction, history, women's/gender history, and students in undergraduate and graduate level courses. To date, English-language volumes of translated Chinese literature have rarely focused on Manchukuo's Chinese writers or centered on those who left the puppet state by1935. This volume fills an important historical lacuna - a teenaged Chinese woman's views of life and literature in Japanese-occupied Manchuria.

This collection gathers all the primary texts, some rare or hitherto unpublished, written on Ryukyu by Western visitors, scholars, and missionaries from the 16th century to the eve of World War II. The first set of five volumes covered the period up to the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1854. This second set covers the period from 1854 onwards. It will be of interest to historians and anthropologists, as well as to everyone who wishes to understand the background of Okinawa's persistent distinctiveness and of its complex relations with Japanese governments.

Sultans, Spices, and Tsunamis: The Incredible Story of the World's Largest Archipelago Indonesia is by far the largest nation in Southeast Asia and has the fourth largest population in the world after the United States. Indonesian history and culture are especially relevant today as the Island nation is an emerging power in the region with a dynamic new leader. It is a land of incredible diversity and unending paradoxes that has a long and rich history stretching back a thousand years and more. Indonesia is the fabled "Spice Islands" of every school child's dreams--one of the most colorful and fascinating countries in history. These are the islands that Europeans set out on countless voyages of discovery to find and later fought bitterly over in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. This was the land that Christopher Columbus sought, and Magellan reached and explored. One tiny Indonesian island was even exchanged for the island of Manhattan in 1667! This fascinating history book tells the story of Indonesia as a narrative of kings, traders, missionaries, soldiers and revolutionaries, featuring rough sea crossings, fiery volcanoes, and the occasional tiger. It recounts the colorful visits of foreign travelers who have passed through these shores for many centuries--from Chinese Buddhist pilgrims and Dutch adventurers to English sea captains and American movie stars. For readers who want an entertaining introduction to Asia's most fascinating country, this is delightful reading.

"Magnificent [and] wondrous." The Spectator "Rich and illuminating." Literary Review "Phenomenally accurate." History Today "Stunning." The Morning Star "Sweeping." The New European "A wonderful book." Current World Archaeology "In a class of its own." The Caspian Post A landscape of high mountains and narrow valleys stretching from the Black to the Caspian Seas, the Caucasus region has been home to human populations for nearly 2 million years. In this richly illustrated 2-volume series, historian and explorer Christoph Baumer tells the story of the region's history through to the present day. It is a story of encounters between many different peoples, from Scythians, Turkic and Mongol peoples of the East to Greeks and Romans from the West, from Indo-European tribes from the West as well as the East, and to Arabs and Iranians from the South. It is a story of rival claims by Empires and nations and of how the region has become home to more than 50 languages that can be heard within its borders to this very day. This first volume charts the period from the emergence of the earliest human populations in the region - the first known human populations outside Africa - to the Seljuk conquests of 1050CE. Along the way the book charts the development of Neolithic, Iron and Bronze Age cultures, the first recognizable Caucasian state and the arrival of a succession of the great transnational Empires, from the Greeks, the Romans and the Armenian to competing Christian and Muslim conquerors. The History of the Caucasus: Volume 1 also includes more than 200 full colour images and maps bringing the changing cultures of these lands vividly to life.