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Books > History > European history > General
Women Activists between War and Peace employs a comparative
approach in exploring women's political and social activism across
the European continent in the years that followed the First World
War. It brings together leading scholars in the field to discuss
the contribution of women's movements in, and individual female
activists from, Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Great
Britain, Hungary, Russia and the United States. The book contains
an introduction that helpfully outlines key concepts and broader,
European-wide issues and concerns, such as peace, democracy and the
role of the national and international in constructing the new,
post-war political order. It then proceeds to examine the nature of
women's activism through the prism of five pivotal topics: *
Suffrage and nationalism * Pacifism and internationalism *
Revolution and socialism * Journalism and print media * War and the
body A timeline and illustrations are also included in the book,
along with a useful guide to further reading. This is a vitally
important text for all students of women's history,
twentieth-century Europe and the legacy of the First World War.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century Kyiv was an important
city in the European part of the Russian empire, rivaling Warsaw in
economic and strategic significance. It also held the unrivaled
spiritual and ideological position as Russia's own Jerusalem. In
Imperial Urbanism in the Borderlands, Serhiy Bilenky examines
issues of space, urban planning, socio-spatial form, and the
perceptions of change in imperial Kyiv. Combining cultural and
social history with that of urban studies, Bilenky unearths a wide
range of unpublished archival materials and argues that the changes
experienced by the city prior to the revolution of 1917 were no
less dramatic and traumatic than those of the Communist and
post-Communist era. In fact, much of Kyiv's contemporary urban
form, architecture, and natural setting were shaped by imperial
modernizers during the long nineteenth century. The author also
explores a general culture of imperial urbanism in Eastern Europe.
Imperial Urbanism in the Borderlands is the first work to approach
the history of Kyiv from an interdisciplinary perspective and
showcases Kyiv's rightful place as a city worthy of attention from
historians, urbanists, and literary scholars.
This book explores the evolution of the role of the heirs to the
throne of Italy between 1860 and 1900. It focuses on the future
kings Umberto I (1844-1900) and Vittorio Emanuele III (1869-1947),
and their respective spouses, Margherita of Savoia (1851-1926) and
Elena of Montenegro (1873-1952). It sheds light on the soft power
the Italian royals were attempting to generate, by identifying and
examining four specific areas of monarchical activity: firstly, the
heirs' public role and the manner in which they attempted to craft
an Italian identity through a process of self-presentation;
secondly, the national, royal, linguistic and military education of
the heirs; thirdly, the promotion of a family-centred dynasty
deploying both male and female elements in the public realm; and
finally the readiness to embrace different modes of mobility in the
construction of italianita. By analysing the growing importance of
the royal heirs and their performance on the public stage in
post-Risorgimento Italy, this study investigates the attempted
construction of a cohesive national identity through the crown and,
more specifically, the heirs to the throne.
Cavan W. Concannon makes a significant contribution to Pauline
studies by imagining the responses of the Corinthians to Paul's
letters. Based on surviving written materials and archaeological
research, this book offers a textured portrait of the ancient
Corinthians with whom Paul conversed, argued, debated, and
partnered, focusing on issues of ethnicity, civic identity,
politics, and empire. In doing so, the author provides readers a
unique opportunity to assess anew, and imagine possibilities
beyond, Paul's complicated legacy in shaping Western notions of
race, ethnicity, and religion.
The Communist Temptation: Rolland, Gide, Malraux, and Their Times
traces the evolution of the committed left-wing public intellectual
in the interwar period, specifically in the 1930s, and focuses on
leading left-wing intellectuals, such as Romain Rolland, Andre
Gide, and Andre Malraux, and their relationships with communism and
the broader anti-fascist movement. In that turbulent decade, Paris
also welcomed a growing number of Russian, Austrian, Italian,
Dutch, Belgian, German, and German-speaking Central European
refugees-activists, writers, and agents, among them Willi
Munzenberg, Mikhail Koltsov, Eugen Fried, Ilya Ehrenburg, Manes
Sperber, and Arthur Koestler-and Paris once again became a hotbed
of international political activism. Events, however, signaled a
decline in the high ethical standards set by Emile Zola and the
Dreyfusards earlier in the twentieth century, as many pro-communist
intellectuals acted in bad faith to support an ideology that they
in all likelihood knew to be morally bankrupt. Among them, only
Gide rebelled against Moscow, which caused ideological lines to
harden to the point where there was little room for critical reason
to assert itself.
Feasting and commensality formed the backbone of social life in the
polis, the most characteristic and enduring form of political
organization in the ancient Greek world. Exploring a wide array of
commensal practices, Feasting and Polis Institutions reveals how
feasts defined the religious and political institutions of the
Greek citizen-state. Taking the reader from the Early Iron Age to
the Imperial Period, this volume launches an essential inquiry into
Greek power relations. Focusing on the myriad of patronage roles at
the feast and making use of a wide variety of methodologies and
primary sources, including archaeology, epigraphy and literature,
Feasting and Polis Institutions argues that in ancient Greece
political interaction could never be complete until it was
consummated in a festive context.
With an in-depth exploration of rule by a single man and how this
was seen as heroic activity, the title challenges orthodox views of
ruling in the ancient world and breaks down traditional ideas about
the relationship between so-called hereditary rule and tyranny. It
looks at how a common heroic ideology among rulers was based upon
excellence, or arete, and also surveys dynastic ruling, where rule
was in some sense shared within the family or clan. Heroic Rulers
examines reasons why both personal and clan-based rule was
particularly unstable and its core tension with the competitive
nature of Greek society, so that the question of who had the most
arete was an issue of debate both from within the ruling family and
from other heroic aspirants. Probing into ancient perspectives on
the legitimacy and legality of rule, the title also explores the
relationship between ruling and law. Law, personified as 'king'
(nomos basileus), came to be seen as the ultimate source of
sovereignty especially as expressed through the constitutional
machinery of the city, and became an important balance and
constraint for personal rule. Finally, Heroic Rulers demonstrates
that monarchy, which is generally thought to have disappeared
before the end of the archaic period, remained a valid political
option from the Early Iron Age through to the Hellenistic period.
This book presents a narratological analysis of the Kaiserchronik,
or chronicle of the emperors, the first verse chronicle to have
been written in any European vernacular language, which provides an
account of the Roman and Holy Roman emperors from the foundation of
Rome to the eve of the Second Crusade. Previous research has
concentrated on the structure and sources of the work and
emphasized its role as a Christian narrative of history, but this
study shows that the Kaiserchronik does not simply illustrate a
didactic religious message: it also provides an example of how
story-telling techniques in the vernacular were developed and
explored in twelfth-century Germany. Four aspects of narrative are
described (time and space, motivation, perspective, and narrative
strands), each of which is examined with reference to the story of
a particular emperor (Constantine the Great, Charlemagne, Otto the
Great, and Henry IV). Rather than imposing a single analytical
framework on the Kaiserchronik, the book takes account of the fact
that modern theory cannot always be applied directly to works from
premodern periods: it draws critically on a variety of approaches,
including those of Gerard Genette, Boris Uspensky, and Eberhard
Lammert. Throughout the book, the narrative techniques described
are contextualized by means of comparisons with other texts in both
Middle High German and Latin, making clear the place of the
Kaiserchronik as a literary narrative in the twelfth century.
Merry Hell is the only complete history of the 25th Canadian
infantry battalion, which was recruited in the autumn and winter of
1914-15 and served overseas from spring 1915 until spring 1919.
Author Robert N Clements, who served in the battalion throughout
that period and rose from private to captain, wrote the story many
years after the war, based on his personal memories and
experiences. As such, his story reflects two unique perspectives on
Canadian military history - the remarkably fresh recollections and
anecdotes of a veteran, and the outlook of a man eager to share
what his generation contributed to the nation's history, character,
and identity.
Professional military historian Brian Douglas Tennyson
buttresses Clements's story with a valuable critical apparatus,
including an analytical introduction that contextualizes the
history and notes that explain unfamiliar points and people. Merry
Hell is a captivating tale for those who enjoy stories of war and
battle, and one that will entertain readers with Clements's richly
colourful anecdotes and witty poems, none of which have been
published before.
Arguably, trade is the engine of history, and the acceleration in
what you mightcall 'globalism' from the beginning of the last
millennium has been driven by communities interacting with each
other through commerce and exchange. The Ottoman empire was a
trading partner for the rest of the world, and therefore the key
link between the west and the middle east in the fifteenth to
nineteenth centuries. much academic attention has been given to the
east india Company, but less well known is the Levant Company,
which had the exclusive right to trade with the Ottoman empire from
1581 to 1825. The Levant Company exported British manufacturing,
colonial goods and raw materials, and imported silk, cotton,
spices, currants and other Levantine goods. it set up 'factories'
(trading establishments) across Ottoman lands and hired consuls,
company employees and agents from among its members, as well as
foreign tradesmen and locals. here, despina vlami outlines the
relationship between the Ottoman empire and the Levant Company, and
traces the company's last glimpses of prosperity combined with
slump periods and tension, as both the Ottoman and the British
empire faced significant change and war. she points out that the
growth of 'free' trade and the end of protectionism coincided with
modernisation and reforms, and while doing so, provides a new lens
through which to view the decline of the Ottoman world.
This groundbreaking book attempts a fully contextualized reading of
the poetry written by Pindar for Hieron of Syracuse in the 470s BC.
It argues that the victory odes and other occasional songs composed
by Pindar for the Sicilian tyrant were part of an extensive
cultural program that included athletic competition, coinage,
architecture, sanctuary dedication, city foundation, and much more.
In the tumultuous years following the Persian invasion of Greece in
480, elite Greek leaders and their cities struggled to capitalize
on the Greek victory and to define themselves as free peoples who
triumphed over the threat of Persian monarchy. Pindar's victory
odes are an important contribution to Hieron's goal of panhellenic
pre-eminence, redescribing contemporary tyranny as an instantiation
of golden-age kingship and consonant with best Greek tradition. In
a delicate process of cultural legitimation, the poet's praise
deploys athletic victories as a signs of more general preeminence.
Three initial chapters set the stage by presenting the history and
culture of Syracuse under the Deinomenid tyrants, exploring issues
of performance and patronage, and juxtaposing Hieron to rival Greek
leaders on the mainland. Subsequent chapters examine in turn all
Pindar's preserved poetry for Hieron and members of his court, and
contextualizes this poetry by comparing it to the songs written for
Hieron by Pindar's poetic contemporary, Bacchylides. These odes
develop a specifically "tyrannical " mythology in which a hero from
the past enjoys unusual closeness with the gods, only to bring ruin
on him or herself by failing to manage this closeness
appropriately. Such negative exemplars counterbalance Hieron's good
fortune and present the dangers against which he must (and does)
protect himself by regal virtue. The readings that emerge are
marked by exceptional integration of literary interpretation with
the political/historical context.
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