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Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900 > General
After 1898 the United States not only solidified its position as an
economic colossus, but by annexing Puerto Rico and the Philippines
it had also added for the first time semi-permanent, heavily
populated colonies unlikely ever to attain statehood. In short
order followed a formal protectorate over Cuba, the "taking" of
Panama to build a canal, and the announcement of a new Corollary to
the Monroe Doctrine, proclaiming an American duty to "police" the
hemisphere. Empire had been an American practice since the nation's
founding, but the new policies were understood as departures from
traditional methods of territorial expansion. How to match these
actions with traditional non-entanglement constituted the central
preoccupation of U.S. foreign relations in the early twentieth
century. International lawyers proposed instead that the United
States become an impartial judge. By becoming a force for law in
the world, America could reconcile its republican ideological
tradition with a desire to rank with the Great Powers. Lawyers'
message scaled new heights of popularity in the first decade and a
half of the twentieth century as a true profession of international
law emerged. The American Society of International Law (ASIL) and
other groups, backed by the wealth of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, held annual meetings and published journals.
They called for the creation of an international court, the holding
of regular conferences to codify the rules of law, and the
education of public opinion as to the proper rights and duties of
states. To an extent unmatched before or since, the U.S.
government-the executive branch if not always the U.S.
Senate-embraced this project. Washington called for peace
conferences and pushed for the creation of a "true " international
court. It proposed legal institutions to preserve order in its
hemisphere. Meanwhile lawyers advised presidents and made policy.
The ASIL counted among its first members every living secretary of
state (but one) who held office between 1892 and 1920. Growing
numbers of international lawyers populated the State Department and
represented U.S. corporations with business overseas. International
lawyers were not isolated idealists operating from the sidelines.
Well-connected, well-respected, and well-compensated, they formed
an integral part of the foreign policy establishment that built and
policed an expanding empire.
In this book, Judy Kutulas complicates the common view that the
1970s were a time of counterrevolution against the radical
activities and attitudes of the previous decade. Instead, Kutulas
argues that the experiences and attitudes that were radical in the
1960s were becoming part of mainstream culture in the 1970s, as
sexual freedom, gender equality, and more complex notions of
identity, work, and family were normalized through popular
culture--television, movies, music, political causes, and the
emergence of new communities. Seemingly mundane things like
watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show, listening to Carole King songs,
donning Birkenstock sandals, or reading Roots were actually
critical in shaping Americans' perceptions of themselves, their
families, and their relation to authority. Even as these cultural
shifts eventually gave way to a backlash of political and economic
conservatism, Kutulas shows that what critics perceive as the
narcissism of the 1970s was actually the next logical step in a
longer process of assimilating 1960s values like individuality and
diversity into everyday life. Exploring such issues as feminism,
sexuality, and race, Kutulas demonstrates how popular culture
helped many Americans make sense of key transformations in U.S.
economics, society, politics, and culture in the late twentieth
century.
The year is 1932. In Rome, the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini
unveils a giant obelisk of white marble, bearing the Latin
inscription MVSSOLINI DVX. Invisible to the cheering crowds, a
metal box lies immured in the obelisk's base. It contains a few
gold coins and, written on a piece of parchment, a Latin text: the
Codex fori Mussolini. What does this text say? Why was it buried
there? And why was it written in Latin? The Codex, composed by the
classical scholar Aurelio Giuseppe Amatucci (1867-1960), presents a
carefully constructed account of the rise of Italian Fascism and
its leader, Benito Mussolini. Though written in the language of
Roman antiquity, the Codex was supposed to reach audiences in the
distant future. Placed under the obelisk with future excavation and
rediscovery in mind, the Latin text was an attempt at directing the
future reception of Italian Fascism. This book renders the Codex
accessible to scholars and students of different disciplines,
offering a thorough and wide-ranging introduction, a clear
translation, and a commentary elucidating the text's rhetorical
strategies, historical background, and specifics of phrasing and
reference. As the first detailed study of a Fascist Latin text, it
also throws new light on the important role of the Latin language
in Italian Fascist culture.
The Rarefied Air of the Modern examines technology, modern
identity, and history-making in Peru by telling the story of the
surprising success of Peruvian pilots in European aviation
competitions in 1910, and how their achievements generated great
optimism that this new technology could lift the country out of its
self-perceived backwardness. Though poor infrastructure, economic
woes, a dearth of technical expertise, and a ghastly number of
pilot deaths slowed the project after the first flights over Lima
in 1911, the image of intrepid Peruvian pilots inspired a new sense
of national possibility. Airplanes seemed to embody not just
technological progress but enlightened rationality, capitalist
enterprise, and nation-state aggrandizement. By 1928, three
commercial lines were transporting passengers, mail, and
merchandise from Lima to other parts of the country and South
America. This exploration of the fitful development of Peruvian
aviation illuminates how a Eurocentric modernizing vision has
served as a powerful organizing force in regions with ambivalent
relationships to the West. More broadly, it underscores the
important role that technology plays in larger, complex historical
processes. Even as politicians, businessmen, military officials,
journalists, and ruling oligarchs felt a special kinship with
Peru's aviation project, diverse socioeconomic groups engaged
aviation to challenge power asymmetries and historical silences
rooted in Peru's postcolonial past. Most observers at the time
considered airplanes a "universal" technology that performed the
same function in Europe, the United States, and Peru. In reality,
how Peruvians mobilized and understood airplanes reflected
culturally specific values and historical concerns.
In this revised edition of A Short History of the Spanish Civil
War, Julian Casanova tells the gripping story of the Spanish Civil
War. Written in elegant and accessible prose, the book charts the
most significant events and battles alongside the main players in
the tragedy. Casanova provides answers to some of the pressing
questions (such as the roots and extent of anticlerical violence)
that have been asked in the 70 years that have passed since the
painful defeat of the Second Republic. Now with a revised
introduction, Casanova offers an overview of recent
historiographical shifts; not least the wielding of the conflict to
political ends in certain strands of contemporary historiography
towards an alarming neo- Francoist revisionism. It is the ideal
introduction to the Spanish Civil War.
Vladimir Burtsev and the Struggle for a Free Russia examines the
life of the journalist, historian and revolutionary, Vladimir
Burtsev. The book analyses his struggle to help liberate the
Russian people from tsarist oppression in the latter half of the
19th century before going on to discuss his opposition to
Bolshevism following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Robert
Henderson traces Burtsev's political development during this time
and explores his movements in Paris and London at different stages
in an absorbing account of an extraordinary life. At all times
Vladimir Burtsev and the Struggle for Free Russia sets Burtsev's
life in the wider context of Russian and European history of the
period. It uses Burtsev as a means to discuss topics such as
European police collaboration, European prison systems,
international diplomatic relations of the time and Russia's
relationship with Europe specifically. Extensive original archival
research and previously untranslated Russian source material is
also incorporated throughout the text. This is an important study
for all historians of modern Russia and the Russian Revolution.
"McElligott's impressive mastery of an enormous body of research
guides him on a distinctive path through the dense thickets of
Weimar historiography to a provocative new interpretation of the
nature of authority in Germany's first democracy." Sir Ian Kershaw,
Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the University of
Sheffield, UK This study challenges conventional approaches to the
history of the Weimar Republic by stretching its
chronological-political parameters from 1916 to 1936, arguing that
neither 1918 nor 1933 constituted distinctive breaks in early
20th-century German history. This book: - Covers all of the key
debates such as inheritance of the past, the nature of authority
and culture - Rethinks topics of traditional concern such as the
economy, Article 48, the Nazi vote and political violence -
Discusses hitherto neglected areas, such as provincial life and
politics, the role of law and Republican cultural politics
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
This book explores the diverse ways in which Holocaust
representations have influenced and structured how other genocides
are understood and represented in the West. Rebecca Jinks focuses
in particular on the canonical 20th century cases of genocide:
Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Using literature, film,
photography, and memorialisation, she demonstrates that we can only
understand the Holocaust's status as a 'benchmark' for other
genocides if we look at the deeper, structural resonances which
subtly shape many representations of genocide. Representing
Genocide pursues five thematic areas in turn: how genocides are
recognised as such by western publics; the representation of the
origins and perpetrators of genocide; how western witnesses
represent genocide; representations of the aftermath of genocide;
and western responses to genocide. Throughout, the book
distinguishes between 'mainstream' and other, more nuanced and
engaged, representations of genocide. It shows how these mainstream
representations - the majority - largely replicate the
representational framework of the Holocaust, including the way in
which mainstream Holocaust representations resist recognising the
rationality, instrumentality and normality of genocide, preferring
instead to present it as an aberrant, exceptional event in human
society. By contrast, the more engaged representations - often, but
not always, originating from those who experienced genocide - tend
to revolve around precisely genocide's ordinariness, and the
structures and situations common to human society which contribute
to and become involved in the violence.
This book discusses WWI-era music in a historical context,
explaining music's importance at home and abroad during WWI as well
as examining what music was being sung, played, and danced to
during the years prior to America's involvement in the Great War.
Why was music so important to soldiers abroad during World War I?
What role did music-ranging from classical to theater music, rags,
and early jazz-play on the American homefront? Music of the First
World War explores the tremendous importance of music during the
years of the Great War-when communication technologies were
extremely limited and music often took the place of connecting
directly with loved ones or reminiscing via recorded images. The
book's chapters cover music's contribution to the war effort; the
variety of war-related songs, popular hits, and top recording
artists of the war years; the music of Broadway shows and other
theater productions; and important composers and lyricists. The
author also explores the development of the fledgling recording
industry at this time. Provides an excellent resource for students
investigating music during the First World War as well as for
adults interested in WWI-era history or music of the pre-twenties
Documents the variety of reasons songs were sung by soldiers in
wartime-to cheer themselves up, boost courage, poke fun at or
stimulate hatred of their enemies, or express grievances or protest
against the war or against authority Covers stage music of the WWI
era, including music hall (British), vaudeville, revues, operettas,
and musicals
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