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Books > Humanities > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > General
During the 1930s, much of the world was in severe economic and
political crisis. This upheaval ushered in new ways of thinking
about social and political systems. In some cases, these new ideas
transformed states and empires alike. Particularly in Europe, these
transformations are well-chronicled in scholarship. In academic
writings on India, however, Muslim political and legal thought has
gone relatively unnoticed during this eventful decade. This book
fills this gap by mapping the evolution of Muslim political and
legal thought from roughly 1927 to 1940. By looking at landmark
court cases in tandem with the political and legal ideas of
Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan's founding
fathers, this book highlights the more concealed ways in which
Indian Muslims began to acquire a political outlook with distinctly
separatist aspirations. What makes this period worthy of a separate
study is that the legal antagonism between religious communities in
the 1930s foreshadowed political conflicts that arose in the run-up
to independence in 1947. The presented cases and thinkers reflect
the possibilities and limitations of Muslim political thought in
colonial India.
Does the industrial development of a country entail the
democratization of its political system? Malaysia in the World
Economy examines this theme with regards to Malaysia in the period
between 1824 and 2011. Capitalism was first introduced into
Malaysia through colonialism specifically to supply Britain with
much-needed raw materials for its industrial development. Aside
from economic exploitation, colonial rule had also produced a
highly unequal and socially distant multicultural society, whose
multifaceted divisions kept the colonial rulers in supreme
authority. After independence, Britain ensured that Malaysia became
a staunch western ally by structuring in a capitalist system
specifically helmed by western-educated elites through what
appeared to be "formal" democratic institutions. In such a system,
the Malaysian ruling elites have been able to "manage" the
country's democratic processes to its advantage as well as preempt
or suppress serious internal challenges to its power, often in the
name of national stability. As a result, an increasingly unpopular
National Front political coalition has remained in power in the
country since 1957. Meanwhile, Malaysia's marginal position in the
world economy, which has maintained its economic subordination to
the developed countries of the west and Japan, has reproduced the
internal social inequities inherited from colonial rule and
channeled the largest returns of economic growths into the hands of
the country's foreign investors as well as local elites associated
with the ruling machinery. Over the years however, the state has
lost some of its political legitimacy in the face of widening
social disparities, increased ethnic polarization, and prevalent
corruption. This has been made possible by extensive exposures of
these issues via new social media and communications technology.
Hence, informational globalization may have begun to empower
Malaysians in a new struggle for political reform, thereby
reconfiguring the balance of power between the state and civil
society. Unlike other past research, Malaysia in the World Economy
combines both macro- and micro-theoretical approaches in critically
analyzing the relationship between capitalist development and
democratization in Malaysia within a comparative-historical and
world-systemic context.
Reprint of 1970 publication from the US Army Center of Military
History. A description of selected small unit actions, written
primarily to acquaint junior officers, noncommissioned officers,
and enlisted soldiers with combat experiences in Korea.
Shanghai Sanctuary assesses the plight of the European Jewish
refugees who fled to Japanese-occupied China during World War II.
This book is the first major study to examine the Nationalist
government's policy towards the Jewish refugee issue and the most
thorough and subtle analysis of Japanese diplomacy concerning this
matter. Gao demonstrates that the story of the wartime Shanghai
Jews is not merely a sidebar to the history of modern China or
modern Japan. She illuminates how the "Jewish issue" complicated
the relationships among China, Japan, Germany, and the United
States before and during World War II. Her groundbreaking research
provides an important contribution to international history and the
history of the Holocaust. Chinese Nationalist government and the
Japanese occupation authorities thought very carefully about the
Shanghai Jews and how they could be used to win international
financial and political support in their war against one another.
The Holocaust had complicated repercussions extending far beyond
Europe to East Asia, and Gao shows many of them in this tightly
argued book. Her fluency in both Chinese and Japanese has permitted
her to exploit archival sources no Western scholar has been able to
fully use before. Gao brings the politics and personalities that
led to the admittance of Jews to Shanghai during World War II
together into a rich and revealing story.
While there is much discussion on Africa-China relations, the focus
tends to lean more on the Chinese presence in Africa than on the
African presence in China. There are numerous studies on the former
but, with the exception of a few articles on the presence of
African traders and students in China, little is known of the
latter, even though an increasing number of Africans are visiting
and settling in China and forming migrant communities there. This
is a phenomenon that has never happened before the turn of the
century and has thus led to what is often termed Africa's newest
Diaspora. This book focuses on analyzing this new Diaspora,
addressing the crucial question: What is it like to be an African
in China? Africans in China is the first book-length study of the
process of Africans travelling to China and forming communities
there. Based on innovative intermingling of qualitative and
quantitative research methods involving prolonged interaction with
approximately 800 Africans across six main Chinese
cities--Guangzhou, Yiwu, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and
Macau--sociolinguistic and sociocultural profiles are constructed
to depict the everyday life of Africans in China. The study
provides insights into understanding issues such as why Africans go
to China, what they do there, how they communicate with their
Chinese hosts, what opportunities and problems they encounter in
their China sojourn, and how they are received by the Chinese
state. Beyond these methodological and empirical contributions, the
book also makes a theoretical contribution by proposing a
crosscultural bridge theory of migrant-indigene relations, arguing
that Africans in China act as sociopolitical, socioeconomic, and
sociocultural bridges linking Africa to China. This approach to the
analysis of Diaspora communities has consequences for crosscultural
and crosslinguistic studies in an era of globalization. Africans in
China is an important book for African Studies, Asian Studies,
Africa-China relations studies, linguistics, anthropology,
sociology, international studies, and migration and Diaspora
studies in an era of globalization.
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