An American woman plays a redeeming role amidst America's duplicity and betrayal of the Philippine struggle for independence during the revolution against Spain, which culminated in the Spanish-American and Philippine American wars. The fiction/nonfiction novel highlights the military and romantic exploits of the dashing and legendary hero, 23-year old General Gregorio Del Pilar, then the youngest in the Philippine army and American Christine Kelcher's intimate relationship with him and her allegiance to his country. Aide-de-camp to Philippine president Emilio Aguinaldo in exile in Hong Kong, the young general was euphoric over the coming of the Americans, espousing to his president acceptance of their offer of help in liberating Manila from the Spanish. When Commodore George Dewey and General Wesley Merritt betrayed the insurgency in a secret agreement with the Spanish to wage a mock battle to liberate the city to the exclusion of the insurgents "to protect the pride and honor of Spain," the general vowed to protect the president from capture, "or else the Republic dies." Military maneuvers by Major Peyton March and Colonel Charles Gilbert and their well-armed and well-trained soldiers are matched by surprise maneuvers by the insurgent general, making his last stand in Tirad Pass with 60 soldiers against 600 Texas Volunteers of the 33rd Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Expeditionary Force. The president avoided capture for 11 months more after the battle.

Providing an indispensable resource for students, educators, businessmen, and officials investigating the transformative experience of modern China, this book provides a comprehensive summary of the culture, institutions, traditions, and international relations that have shaped today's China. In Modern China, author Xiaobing Li offers a resource far beyond a conventional encyclopedia, providing not only comprehensive coverage of Chinese civilization and traditions, but also addressing the values, issues, and critical views of China. As a result, readers will better understand the transformative experience of the most populous country in the world, and will grasp the complexity of the progress and problems behind the rise of China to a world superpower in less than 30 years. Written by an author who lived in China for three decades, this encyclopedia addresses 16 key topics regarding China, such as its geography, government, social classes and ethnicities, gender-based identities, arts, media, and food, each followed by roughly 250 short entries related to each topic. All the entries are placed within a broad sociopolitical and socioeconomic contextual framework. The format and writing consistency through the book reflects a Chinese perspective, and allows students to compare Chinese with Western and American views. Covers contemporary Chinese politics, economy, geography, law, education, culture, and history, providing readers with a breadth of insights into modern China and its people Addresses a variety of current issues such as pollution, corruption, human trafficking, human rights, civil liberties, and the one-child policy Contains accessible information ideal for high school and college-level students, grade school teachers, and any readers interested in the general topics of Asia and China

Tajikistan is the poorest and only Persian-speaking country among the post-Soviet independent states. Historically, the Tajiks of Central Asia and Afghanistan along with the Persians of modern Iran came from a related ethnic group. When the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was established in late 1924, it became the first modern Tajik state that remained one of the 15 union republics of the Soviet Union until 1991. Almost immediately after the collapse of the USSR, Tajikistan became a scene of brutal civil war, taking place in one of the global hubs of religiously motivated political struggle, militancy, mass cross-border refugee flows, insurgency, and drug trafficking. During the first decade of the 21st century, the country was making modest progress toward stability. However, the heavy burden of socio-economic problems, in addition to continuing conflict in the neighboring Afghanistan-Pakistan, presented even bigger challenges for Tajikistan. In addition, Western economic sanctions against Russia in 2014, coinciding with continuing lower oil prices, have negatively affected one million of Tajik labor migrants in Russia. Yet Tajikistan has become neither weaker nor less important as a player in world politics. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 800 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Tajikistan.

In this detailed account of civilian lives during wartime in Asia, high school students, undergrads, and general readers alike can get a glimpse into the often dismal, but surprisingly resilient, lives led by ordinary people-those who did not go off to war but were powerfully affected by it nonetheless. How did people live on a day-to-day basis with the cruelty and horror of war right outside their doorsteps? What were the reactions and views of those who did not fight on the fields? How did people come together to cope with the losses of loved ones and the sacrifices they had to make on a daily basis? This volume contains accounts from the resilient civilians who lived in Asia during the Taiping and Nian Rebellions, the Philippine Revolution, the Wars of Meiji Japan, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. This volume begins with R.G. Tiedemann's account of life in China in the mid-nineteenth century, during the Taiping and Nian Rebellions. Tiedemann examines social practices imposed on the civilians by the Taiping, life in the cities and country, women, and the militarization of society. Bernardita Reyes Churchill examines how civilians in the Philippines struggled for freedom under the imperial reign Spain and the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Stewart Lone looks at how Meiji Japan's wars on the Asian continent affected the lives and routines of men, women, and children, urban and rural. He also explains how the media played a role during the wars, as well as how people were able to spend leisure time and even make wartime humor. Di Wang uses the public space of the teahouse and its culture as a microcosm of daily life in China during tumultuous years of civil and world war, 1937-1949. Simon Partner explores Japanese daily life during World War II, investigating youth culture, the ways people came together, and how the government took control of their lives by rationing food, clothing, and other resources. Shigeru Sato continues by examining the harshness of life in Indonesia during World War II and its aftermath. Korean life from 1950-1953 is looked at by Andrei Lankov, who takes a look at the heart-rending lives of refugees. Finally, Lone surveys life in South Vietnam from 1965-1975, from school children to youth protests to how propaganda affected civilians. This volume offers students and general readers a glimpse into the lives of those often forgotten.

The 547 Buddhist jatakas, or verse parables, recount the Buddha's lives in previous incarnations. In his penultimate and most famous incarnation, he appears as the Prince Vessantara, perfecting the virtue of generosity by giving away all his possessions, his wife, and his children to the beggar Jujaka. Taking an anthropological approach to this two-thousand-year-old morality tale, Katherine A. Bowie highlights significant local variations in its interpretations and public performances across three regions of Thailand over 150 years. The Vessantara Jataka has served both monastic and royal interests, encouraging parents to give their sons to religious orders and intimating that kings are future Buddhas. But, as Bowie shows, characterizations of the beggar Jujaka in various regions and eras have also brought ribald humor and sly antiroyalist themes to the story. Historically, these subversive performances appealed to popular audiences even as they worried the conservative Bangkok court. The monarchy sporadically sought to suppress the comedic recitations. As Thailand has changed from a feudal to a capitalist society, this famous story about giving away possessions is paradoxically being employed to promote tourism and wealth.

The Sufi thinker 'Abd al-Karim al-Jili (d. 1408) is best-known for his treatment of the idea of the Perfect Human, yet his masterpiece, al-Insan al-kamil (The Perfect Human), is in fact a wide-ranging compendium of Sufi metaphysical thought in the Ibn 'Arabian tradition. One of the major topics treated in that work is sacred history, the story of God's revelation of the truth to humanity through His prophets and scriptures. Fitzroy Morrissey provides here the first in-depth study of this important section of al-Jili's major work and the key ideas contained within it. Through a translation and analysis of the key passages on the Qur'an, Torah, Psalms and Gospel, it shows how al-Jili's view of sacred history is conditioned by his Ibn 'Arabian Sufi metaphysics, whereby the phenomenal world is viewed as a manifestation of God, and the prophets and scriptures as special places where the divine attributes appear more completely. It also looks at how this idea influences al-Jili's understanding of the hierarchy of prophets, scriptures and religions. The book argues that, contrary to common assumptions, al-Jili's Sufi metaphysical view of sacred history is in keeping with the common medieval Muslim view of sacred history, whereby the Qur'an is viewed as the best of scriptures, Muhammad as the best of prophets, and Islam as the best religion. The book therefore not only gives an insight into a key text within medieval Sufi thought, but also has ramifications for our understanding of medieval Sufi views on the relationship between Islam and other religions.

In 1878 a young man named William Pryer was sent to North Borneo (now Sabah) to 'establish' the British North Borneo Company there. In 1894 his wife Ada published her account of his early years as an administrator along with some sketches of their life together. The memoir has unique value both as a travel narrative in its own right and for understanding the international politics of the British takeover of North Borneo. The new edition will reproduce the text of the original 1894 edition, including an introductory essay as well as annotations to explain and contextualize references of historical and biographical significance.

This book examines the redress movement for the victims of Japanese military sexual slavery in South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. comprehensively. The Japanese military forcefully mobilized about 80,000-200,000 Asian women to Japanese military brothels and forced them into sexual slavery during the Asian-Pacific War (1932-1945). Korean "comfort women" are believed to have been the largest group because of Korea's colonial status. The redress movement for the victims started in South Korea in the late 1980s. The emergence of Korean "comfort women" to society to tell the truth beginning in 1991 and the discovery of Japanese historical documents, proving the responsibility of the Japanese military for establishing and operating military brothels by a Japanese historian in 1992 accelerated the redress movement for the victims. The movement has received strong support from UN human rights bodies, the U.S. and other Western countries. It has also greatly contributed to raising people's consciousness of sexual violence against women at war. However, the Japanese government has not made a sincere apology and compensation to the victims to bring justice to the victims.

Unbounded Loyalty investigates how frontiers worked before the modern nation-state was invented. The perspective is that of the people in the borderlands who shifted their allegiance from the post-Tang regimes in North China to the new Liao empire (907-1125). Naomi Standen offers new ways of thinking about borders, loyalty, and identity in premodern China. She takes as her starting point the recognition that, at the time, ""China"" did not exist as a coherent entity, neither politically nor geographically, neither ethnically nor ideologically. Political borders were not the fixed geographical divisions of the modern world, but a function of relationships between leaders and followers. When local leaders changed allegiance, the borderline moved with them. Cultural identity did not determine people's actions: Ethnicity did not exist. In this context, she argues, collaboration, resistance, and accommodation were not meaningful concepts, and tenth-century understandings of loyalty were broad and various. ""Unbounded Loyalty"" sheds fresh light on the Tang-Song transition by focusing on the much-neglected tenth century and by treating the Liao as the preeminent Tang successor state. It fills several important gaps in scholarship on premodern China as well as uncovering new questions regarding the early modern period. It will be regarded as critically important to all scholars of the Tang, Liao, Five Dynasties, and Song periods and will be read widely by those working on Chinese history from the Han to the Qing.

In the 1950s, most of the American public opposed diplomatic and trade relations with Communist China; traditional historiography blames this widespread hostility for the tensions between China and the United States during Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency. In this book, Mara Oliva reconsiders the influence of U.S. public opinion on Sino-American relations, arguing that it is understudied and often misinterpreted. She shows how the Eisenhower administration's hard line policy towards Beijing had been formulated in line with U.S. national security interests, not as a result of public pressure. However, the public did play a significant role in shaping the implementation, timing and political communication of Washington's strategy, ultimately hampering relations with the Communist giant and seriously heightening the risk of nuclear conflict. Drawing together an extensive array of published and unpublished sources, this book offers a new prism for understanding one of the most difficult decades in the history of both countries.

Japan's so-called 'peace constitution' renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation, and bans the nation from possessing any war potential. Yet Japan also maintains a large, world-class military organization, namely the Self-Defence Forces (SDF). In this book, Tomoyuki Sasaki explores how the SDF enlisted popular support from civil society and how civil society responded to the growth of the SDF. Japan's Postwar Military and Civil Society details the interactions between the SDF and civil society over four decades, from the launch of rearmament in 1950. These interactions include recruitment, civil engineering, disaster relief, anti-SDF litigation, state financial support for communities with bases, and a fear-mongering campaign against the Soviet Union. By examining these wide-range issues, the book demonstrates how the militarization of society advanced as the SDF consolidated its ideological and socio-economic ties with civil society and its role as a defender of popular welfare. While postwar Japan is often depicted as a peaceful society, this book challenges such a view, and illuminates the prominent presence of the military in people's everyday lives.

The origin of world civilization can be traced to the Sindhu and Sarasvati river valleys (located in present-day Pakistan) as early as 8,000 BC. Here, innovation and originality in every aspect of human endeavor, from mathematics and science to art and sports, flourished. Yet the importance of this civilization, known as the Vedic period, has been deliberately downplayed.

Thoroughly researched and including an extensive bibliography, "From Bharata to India" rectifies this mistake in the perspective of world history and seeks to offer a comprehensive reference source. Author M. K. Agarwal shows how this early culture, where ideation by enlightened philosopher Brahmin kings, brought material and spiritual wealth that was to remain unchallenged until the colonial era. This Vedic-Hindu-Buddhist legacy subsequently influenced peoples and paradigms around the globe, ushering in an era of peace and plenty thousands of years before the Europeans.

By using original sources in Sanskirt as well as regional literature, Agarwal compares corresponding situations in other civilizations within the context of their own literary traditions and records to prove that Bharata forms the basis of world civilization. This is in direct contrast to the "Greek or Arab miracle" hypothesis put forth by numerous scholars.

The first of two volumes in this series, "From Bharata to India" offers a fascinating, in-depth glimpse into ancient India's contribution to the modern world.