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Books > Humanities > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > General
The Franklin Book Programs (FBP) was a private not-for-profit U.S.
organization founded in 1952 during the Cold War and was subsidized
by the United States' government agencies as well as private
corporations. The FBP was initially intended to promote U.S.
liberal values, combat Soviet influence and to create appropriate
markets for U.S. books in 'Third World' of which the Middle East
was an important part, but evolved into an international
educational program publishing university textbooks, schoolbooks,
and supplementary readings. In Iran, working closely with the
Pahlavi regime, its activities included the development of
printing, publishing, book distribution, and bookselling
institutions. This book uses archival sources from the FBP, US
intelligence agencies and in Iran, to piece together this
relationship. Put in the context of wider cultural diplomacy
projects operated by the US, it reveals the extent to which the
programme shaped Iran's educational system. Together the history of
the FBP, its complex network of state and private sector, the role
of U.S. librarians, publishers, and academics, and the joint
projects the FBP organized in several countries with the help of
national ministries of education, financed by U.S. Department of
State and U.S. foundations, sheds new light on the long history of
education in imperialist social orders, in the context here of the
ongoing struggle for influence in the Cold War.
For more than 140 years, Japan's koseki registration system has
functioned as the official means by which an individual qualifies
as "Japanese". Information concerning each family is entered into
one koseki register record in a system that documents the status
relationship information of Japan's population based on the notion
of "bloodline". Tracing the history of the koseki registration
system from its inception in the Meiji era through its use in
Japan's colonial holdings in the pre-war era and to the present
day, The State Construction of "Japaneseness" challenges the very
foundations of the system, arguing that it promotes prejudice and
discrimination and fosters a divisive understanding of the
"Japanese"as a people. This significant work presents conclusive
evidence on how the koseki registration system has used deeply
problematic understandings of ethnicity, citizenship and the family
to define "the Japanese", excluding and discriminating against
those unable to fit into the framework of this highly politicised
bureaucratic system. Suntory Culture Award for Social Sciences and
Humanities
This volume explores some of the many different meanings of
community across medieval Eurasia. How did the three 'universal'
religions, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, frame the emergence of
various types of community under their sway? The studies assembled
here in thematic clusters address the terminology of community;
genealogies; urban communities; and monasteries or 'enclaves of
learning': in particular in early medieval Europe, medieval South
Arabia and Tibet, and late medieval Central Europe and Dalmatia. It
includes work by medieval historians, social anthropologists, and
Asian Studies scholars. The volume present the results of in-depth
comparative research from the Visions of Community project in
Vienna, and of a dialogue with guests, offering new and exciting
perspectives on the emerging field of comparative medieval history.
Contributors are (in order within the volume) Walter Pohl, Gerda
Heydemann, Eirik Hovden, Johann Heiss, Rudiger Lohlker, Elisabeth
Gruber, Oliver Schmitt, Daniel Mahoney, Christian Opitz, Birgit
Kellner, Rutger Kramer, Pascale Hugon, Christina Lutter, Diarmuid O
Riain, Mathias Fermer, Steven Vanderputten, Jonathan Lyon and Andre
Gingrich.
From the early phases of modern missions, Christian missionaries
supported many humanitarian activities, mostly framed as
subservient to the preaching of Christianity. This anthology
contributes to a historically grounded understanding of the complex
relationship between Christian missions and the roots of
humanitarianism and its contemporary uses in a Middle Eastern
context. Contributions focus on ideologies, rhetoric, and practices
of missionaries and their apostolates towards humanitarianism, from
the mid-19th century Middle East crises, examining different
missionaries, their society's worldview and their networks in
various areas of the Middle East. In the early 20th century
Christian missions increasingly paid more attention to organisation
and bureaucratisation ('rationalisation'), and media became more
important to their work. The volume analyses how non-missionaries
took over, to a certain extent, the aims and organisations of the
missionaries as to humanitarianism. It seeks to discover and
retrace such 'entangled histories' for the first time in an
integral perspective. Contributors include: Beth Baron, Philippe
Bourmaud, Seija Jalagin, Nazan Maksudyan, Michael Marten, Heleen
(L.) Murre-van den Berg, Inger Marie Okkenhaug, Idir Ouahes, Maria
Chiara Rioli, Karene Sanchez Summerer, Bertrand Taithe, and Chantal
Verdeil
Covering the Arab-Israeli conflict from its origins to the present,
this valuable resource traces the evolution of this ongoing,
seemingly unresolvable dispute through a wide array of primary
source documents. Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Documentary and
Reference Guide provides a fresh, accessible, and thorough overview
of the Arab-Israeli conflict, covering its origins in the late-19th
century to the present-day situation and enabling readers to grasp
why peace has proved so elusive, despite massive international
efforts to reach a permanent and lasting solution to this
protracted animosity. Chronological chapters first address the
years up to the establishment of Israel in 1948, then move forward
to the wars of 1956 and 1967 and their impact; the 1973 Yom Kippur
War and early efforts to reach a lasting peace settlement; and the
ongoing international and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since
the mid-1980s. Readers will come away with not only an
understanding of why so many great powers were from the beginning
interested in the fate of the territory known as Palestine and of
the current issues from an international perspective, but also an
appreciation of the personalities and ethnic backgrounds involved
that make the conflict so difficult to resolve. Allows a wide
audience of readers-from high school and college students to
general readers-to understand the complex roots of the conflicting
claims to the territory of Palestine Places the Arab-Israeli
conflict in the broader international context of World Wars I and
II and the Cold War, providing readers with an appreciation of why
so many outside powers have taken an interest in the battle over
this territory Relates the conflict over the territory of Palestine
to both the region's imperial and colonial past and the history of
20th-century global decolonization and nationalism Includes some 90
primary source documents, including major official statements by
all parties to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, including Zionists,
Israel, the Arab League, the Palestine Liberation Organization,
Hamas, and Hezbollah as well as Great Britain, France, the League
of Nations, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Quartet
Covers key topics-such as the creation of Israel in 1948 and the
subsequent wars of 1956, 1967, and 1973; the impact of Israel's
territorial acquisitions in 1967; the international peace
negotiations of subsequent years that slowly brought peace
settlements between Israel and some Arab states; and the
establishment of Palestinian rule in the West Bank and Gaza-in
detail
Reza Shah's authoritarian and modernising reign transformed Iran,
but his rule and Iran's independence ended in ignominy in 1941. In
this book, Shaul Bakhash tells the full story of the Anglo-Soviet
invasion which led to his forced abdication, drawing upon
previously unused sources to reveal for the first time that the
British briefly, but seriously, toyed with the idea of doing away
altogether with the ruling Pahlavis and considered reinstalling on
the throne a little-regretted previous dynasty. Bakhash charts Reza
Shah's final journey through Iran and into his unhappy exile; his
life in exile, his reminiscences; his testy relationship with the
British in Mauritius and Johannesburg; and the circumstances of his
death. Additionally, it reveals the immense fortune Reza Shah
amassed during his years in power, his finances in exile, and the
drawn-out dispute over the settlement of his estate after his
death. A significant contribution to the literature on Reza Shah
and British imperialism as it played out in the case of one
critical country during World War II, the book reveals the fraught
relationship between a once powerful ruler in his final days and
the British government at a critical moment in recent history.
To understand the turnaround in Spain's stance towards Japan during
World War II, this book goes beyond mutual contacts and explains
through images, representations, and racism why Madrid aimed at
declaring war on Japan but not against the III Reich -as London
ironically replied when it learned of Spain's warmongering against
one of the Axis members.
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