Hawaiian culture as it met foreign traders and settlers is the context for Sahlins's structuralist methodology of historical interpretation

William H. McNeill is known for his ability to portray the grand sweep of history. Now two of his popular books and an essay previously unavailable in book form are brought together in this new paperback edition. In The Human Condition McNeill provides a provocative interpretation of history as a competition of parasites, both biological and human. In The Great Frontier he questions the notion of "frontier freedom" through an examination of European expansion. The concluding essay speculates on the role of catastrophe in our lives. About The Human Condition: "A remarkable tour de force . . . . An elegant, intelligent and scholarly essay."--J. H. Hexter, The New York Times Book Review "A brilliant new interpretation of world history."--David Graber, The Los Angeles Times Book Review About The Great Frontier: There is virtually no one in the profession who can match McNeill as a synthesizer--or, for that matter, as an interdisciplinary historian. . . . There is more insight in this volume than in others of double or triple the length."--David Courtwright, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Translated for the first time into English, Memories of Arrival brings together four books of a migrant's story of displacement and exile in one volume. Adhir Biswas, a Dalit, makes the subalterns gain some visibility. The author, though half-starved, gets an education. He finds possibilities, delighting in the city of Calcutta, making the most of what he can. He finds a place in the book world, finally emerging as the distinguished editor and publisher of Gangchil and Doel. Adhir Biswas writes quietly and tersely, with much unsaid, to depict a life where the past and the present keep coalescing with dreams of the old place and the dreaminess of the new land. His story has much in common with that of migrants who leave a village or a small town to come to a big city and live in its shadows.

Told for the very first time, this is the story of the adventure that shaped the world.

By knowing the shape of our earth we can create maps, survive the oceans, follow rivers, navigate the skies, and travel across the globe. This is the story of our world, of how we discovered what no one thought possible - the shape of the earth.

A thrilling and page-turning account of the first major expedition by data gatherers and qualified observers to interior Peru, to discover the shape and magnitude of the earth. Until humanity discovered this it would be impossible to produce accurate maps and sea charts, without which thousands of lives would be lost, and exact locations of cities, roads and rivers would never be known. This fascinating and dramatic story weaves scientific rigour, egos, funding crises and betrayal with sea voyages, jungles and volcanoes.

This Element is a contribution to the ongoing debate on what it meant to publish a book in manuscript. It offers case-studies of three twelfth-century Anglo-Norman historians: William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Geoffrey of Monmouth. It argues that the contemporary success and rapid attainment of canonical authority for their histories was in significant measure the result of successfully conducted publishing activities. These activities are analysed using the concept of a 'publishing circle'. This concept, it is suggested, may have wider utility in the study of authorial publishing in a manuscript culture. This Element is also available as Open Access.

In this ambitious study, Diane Bjorklund explores the historical nature of self-narrative. Examining over 100 American autobiographers published in the last two centuries, she discusses not only well-known autobiographies such as Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie but also many obscure ones such as a traveling book peddler, a minstrel, a hotel proprietress, an itinerant preacher, a West Point cadet, and a hoopskirt wire manufacturer. Bjorklund draws on the colorful stories of these autobiographers to show how their historical epoch shapes their understandings of self.
"A refreshingly welcome approach to this intriguing topic. . . . [Bjorklund's] extensive and systematic approach to her source material is impressive and enriches our understanding of this essential subject."--"Virginia Quarterly Review"
"Bjorklund studies both famous and obscure writers, and her clear prose style and copious quotations provide insight into the many aspects of the changing American self." --"Library Journal"

Why did men and women in one of the best educated countries in the Western world set out to get rid of Jews? In this book, Judith M. Hughes focuses on how historians' efforts to grapple anew with matters of actors' meanings, intentions, and purposes have prompted a return to psychoanalytically informed ways of thinking. Hughes makes her case with fine-grained analyses of books by Hugh Trevor-Roper, Ian Kershaw, Daniel Goldhagen, Saul Friedlander, Christopher Browning, Jan Gross, Hannah Arendt and Gitta Sereny. All of the authors pose psychological questions; the more astute among them shed fresh light on the Holocaust - without making the past any less disturbing.

A Drag Dynasty is about to be divined from the high life decade of decadence. It is destined, pre-ordained - and perfectly coiffed. Darrin Hagen, under the mentorship of his drag mother, Lulu LaRude, rose to the height of glamour as Gloria Hole, performer extraordinaire at the legendary Flashback nightclub. Beneath the layers of nightlife, stage lights and make-up lay the complex relationships of a chosen family. Both hilarious and moving, "The Edmonton Queen: The Final Voyage" once again invites readers to the exclusive party that was, and should not be missed again.

Eyewitnessing evaluates the place and potency of images among other kinds of historical evidence. By reviewing the many varieties of images across region, period, and medium, and by looking at the pragmatic uses of images (from the Bayeux Tapestry to an engraving of a printing press or a reconstruction of a building), Peter Burke illuminates the damaging consequences of our assumption that these practical uses are reflections of specific historical meanings and influences. Traditionally art historians have depended on two types of analysis when dealing with visual imagery: iconography and iconology. Burke describes and evaluates these approaches, concluding that they are insufficient. Focusing instead on the medium as message and on the social contexts and uses of images, he discusses both religious images and political ones, images in advertising and as commodities. Ultimately, Burke shows how iconographic as well as post-iconographic methods--the latter including psychoanalysis, semiotics, viewer response, and deconstruction--are both useful and problematic to contemporary historians.

Based on the author's more than 50 years of experience as a professional historian in academic and other capacities, Being a Historian is addressed to both aspiring and mature historians. It offers an overview of the state of the discipline of history today and the problems that confront it and its practitioners in many professions. James M. Banner, Jr argues that historians remain inadequately prepared for their rapidly changing professional world and that the discipline as a whole has yet to confront many of its deficiencies. He also argues that, no longer needing to conform automatically to the academic ideal, historians can now more safely and productively than ever before adapt to their own visions, temperaments and goals as they take up their responsibilities as scholars, teachers and public practitioners. Critical while also optimistic, this work suggests many topics for further scholarly and professional exploration, research and debate.

Based on the author's more than 50 years of experience as a professional historian in academic and other capacities, Being a Historian is addressed to both aspiring and mature historians. It offers an overview of the state of the discipline of history today and the problems that confront it and its practitioners in many professions. James M. Banner, Jr argues that historians remain inadequately prepared for their rapidly changing professional world and that the discipline as a whole has yet to confront many of its deficiencies. He also argues that, no longer needing to conform automatically to the academic ideal, historians can now more safely and productively than ever before adapt to their own visions, temperaments and goals as they take up their responsibilities as scholars, teachers and public practitioners. Critical while also optimistic, this work suggests many topics for further scholarly and professional exploration, research and debate.

'Around the middle of the nineteenth century, a social category was born in Bengal, along with a new word that named it: lekhika or the female author.'-Tanika Sarkar, Foreword These writings, translated for the first time from Bengali, form a path-breaking collection of issues that aimed at the empowerment of women and thus remain alive today. The women were the first to receive a 'modern' education, and became members of the reading and writing public that hitherto was entirely male. The writers came from urban elite backgrounds, most from Brahmo Samaj families, many comparatively unknown today like Bamasundari Devi or Kumudini Mitra as well as more famous ones from the Tagore family-Swarnakumari Devi and her daughters. Some were Hindus like Kailashbasini Devi and Krishnabhabini Das, among others. There are also two Muslim women writers-the brilliant Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and the social reformer Khairunnissa Khatun. The articles cover a whole range of social issues: social powerlessness, domestic management, the Swadeshi movement, what to wear outside the house when leaving seclusion, and financial independence. Writing for the new journals that came up as vernacular print media was expanding. Making their way into the literary world, the women opened up new roles for themselves and their successors.

The effect of climate on historical change represents an exciting frontier for reading and research. In this volume scholars contribute to an area of interdisciplinary study which has not been systematically explored by climatologists and historians working together. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), generally recognized as the founder of the school of modern critical historical scholarship, and Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897), the great Swiss proponent of cultural interpretation, are fathers of modern history--giants of their time who continue to exert an immense influence in our own. They are usually seen as contrasts, Ranke as representative of political history and Burckhardt of cultural history. In five essays, each flowing gracefully into the next, the distinguished historian Felix Gilbert shows that such contrasts are oversimplifications. Despite their interest in different aspects of the past, Ranke's and Burckhardt's views arose from common elements in the first half of the nineteenth century, the time in which they grew up and in which their first masterworks attracted such wide attention. This concise volume clarifies the beginnings of history as an autonomous discipline, while forcing us to examine our views on basic questions in historical scholarship. In the case of Ranke, relating his work to his times counteracts the current tendency to disregard the difference between the historical concepts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By focusing on this difference, Gilbert emphasizes the originality and novelty of Ranke's ideas about history. Although Burckhardt is often portrayed as an intellectually lonely figure, this book reveals the importance of relating his thought to the intellectual trends of his time. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The effect of climate on historical change represents an exciting frontier for reading and research. In this volume scholars contribute to an area of interdisciplinary study which has not been systematically explored by climatologists and historians working together.

Originally published in 1981.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This work provides a welcome antidote to some of the distortions and biases which the two dominant schools of Anglo-American philosophical thinking, logical positivism and ordinary language analysis have introduced into the philosophy of history in the past three or four decades. In particular, it challenges two powerful stereotypes: that philosophy and history are conceptually independent of each other; and that there exists a sharp division between "analytical" (reputable) and "speculative" (disreputable) philosophy of history. By offering and defending his own conception of philosophy, the author seeks to show that there is indeed common ground between philosophy and history, that speculative philosophy of history lies between philosophy and history, not because it is neither philosophy nor history, but because it is both philosophy and history. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book is the first to consider the presence of history and the question of historical practice in Walter Benjamin's work. Benjamin, the critic and philosopher of history, was also the practitioner, the authors contend, and it is in the practice of historical writing that the materialist aspect of his thought is most evident.

Some of the essays analyze Benjamin's writings in cultural history and the philosophy of history. Others connect his historical and theoretical practices to issues in contemporary feminism and post-colonial studies, and to cultural contexts including the United States, Japan, and Hong Kong. In different ways, the authors all find in Benjamin's specific notion of historical materialism a dialectic between textual and cultural analysis which can reinvigorate the relation between literary and historical studies.

This book highlights the evolution of India's Constitution into a tool for social revolution, tracing the various stages through which the law on the Right to Property and its relationship with the idea of socialism-as laid out in Parts III and IV of the Constitution-have evolved. It underlines that the road to social revolution has been marked by a process where attempts to give effect to the idea of justice-social, economic, and political-as laid down in the Preamble have achieved a measure of success. If the Constitution, including the Preamble, is to be viewed as a contract that the people of India had entered into with the political leadership of the times and the judiciary being the arbitrator to ensure justice, it may be held that the scheme has worked. This book traces this history by placing the judicial and legislative measures in the larger context of the political discourse.

The "Punjab crisis," a two-decade long armed insurgency that emerged as a violent ethnonationalist movement in the 1980s and gradually transformed into a secessionist struggle, resulted in an estimated 25,000 casualties in Punjab. This ethnonationalist movement, on one hand, ended the perceived notion of looking at Punjab as the model of political stability in independent India and, on the other, raised several lingering socio-political questions which have great effect on Indian politics for decades to come, including the prospects of recurring ethnic insurgencies. The Sikh Separatist Insurgency in India: Political Leadership and Ethnonationalist Movements provides an authoritative political history of the Sikh separatist insurgency in Punjab by focussing on "patterns of political leadership", a previously unexplored explanatory variable. It describes in detail the trends which led to the emergence of the "Punjab crisis", the various dynamics through which the movement sustained itself and the changing nature of "patterns of political leadership" which eventually resulted in its decline in the mid-1990s. Providing a microhistorical analysis of the "Punjab crisis," this book argues that the trajectories of ethnonationalist movements are largely determined by the interaction between self-interested ethnic and state political elites, who not only react to the structural choices they face, but whose purposeful actions and decisions ultimately affect the course of ethnic group-state relations. It consolidates this theoretical preposition through a comparative analysis of four contemporary global ethnonationalist movements-those occurring in Chechnya, Northern Ireland, Kashmir, and Assam. This book will be of interest to students and academics studying political science and history, especially those working on South Asia and the Sikhs, and also for public policy practitioners in multi-ethnic societies. It remains invaluable reading for those interested in the phenomenon of ethnonationalism.

A hitherto unattempted survey of social legislation by the East India Company, this book identifies the principles of Public Justice and Public Instruction as the inspiration for legislative decisions, some of which resonate in post-colonial India. It dwells particularly on legislation which manipulated Muslim criminal law in order to protect, and in some instances, create, the rights of women, slaves, bonded labourers and victims of crime. It also examines the Company's cautious venture into the realm of civil law affecting the ideals of religious toleration, remarriage of Hindu widows as well as inheritance and property law. Finally, it considers excise as a regulatory instrument in the Company's administration of Pilgrim Taxes and Abkarry revenue from liquor and opium. The book traces the journey of the small group of merchants, who initially formed the East India Company, and while enviously guarding their sometimes piratical commercial interests, actually became a burgeoning nation state. It shows how...

The revival of comparative and historical sociology in recent decades has largely neglected the contributions of Max Weber. Yet his work offers a powerful resource for this field. Kalberg rejects the view that Weber's historical writings consist only of an ambiguous mixture of fragmented ideal types on the one hand and the charting of vast processes of rationalization and bureaucratization on the other. On the contrary, Weber's substantive work provides coherent and distinctive guidelines for comparative-historical analysis. A systematization and reconstruction of his comparative-historical sociology, Kalberg argues, uncovers a sophisticated approach which addresses agency and structure, multiple causation and model-building.

Kalberg shows how Weber's work casts a direct light upon issues of pressing importance for comparative-historical research today; it addresses in a forceful way the whole range of problems and dilemmas confronted by the comparative-historical enterprise. Once the full analytic and empirical power of Weber's substantive writings is made clear, they can be seen to generate procedures and strategies appropriate to the study of present day as well as past social processes.

Written in an accessible and engaging fashion, this book will appeal to students and professionals in the areas of sociology, anthropology and comparative history.

Richard Drake presents a new interpretation of Charles Austin Beard's life and work. The foremost American historian and a leading public intellectual in the first half of the twentieth century, Beard participated actively in the debates about American politics and foreign policy surrounding the two world wars. In a radical change of critical focus, Charles Austin Beard places the European dimension of Beard's thought at the center, correcting previous biographers' oversights and presenting a far more nuanced appreciation for Beard's life. Drake analyzes the stages of Beard's development as a historian and critic: his role as an intellectual leader in the Progressive movement, the support that he gave to the cause of American intervention in World War I, and his subsequent revisionist repudiation of Wilsonian ideals and embrace of non-interventionism in the lead-up to World War II. Charles Austin Beard shows that, as Americans tally the ruinous costs—both financial and moral—of nation-building and informal empire, the life and work of this prophet of history merit a thorough reexamination.

In this path-breaking study, a first in many ways, Anandita Pan argues that dalit women are an intersectional category, simultaneously affected by caste and gender. The use of intersectionality permits observation of the ways in which different forms of discrimination combine and overlap, challenging the apparent homogeneity of the categories 'woman' and 'dalit' as seen by mainstream Indian Feminism and Dalit Politics. This points to the difference between women and dalit women and the latter with dalit men, which leave them unrepresented. The book investigates the questions of 'selfhood', identity, representation and epistemology which reveal the 'savarnanization' of 'Indian woman' and the masculinization of 'dalit'. There is an incisive discussion of knowledge produced about dalit women and the intervention and contribution of Dalit Feminism therein. The book concludes with the question of who can be or become a dalit feminist, intriguingly, not a limited category.

In this path-breaking study, a first in many ways, Anandita Pan argues that dalit women are an intersectional category, simultaneously affected by caste and gender. The use of intersectionality permits observation of the ways in which different forms of discrimination combine and overlap, challenging the apparent homogeneity of the categories 'woman' and 'dalit' as seen by mainstream Indian Feminism and Dalit Politics. This points to the difference between women and dalit women and the latter with dalit men, which leave them unrepresented. The book investigates the questions of 'selfhood', identity, representation and epistemology which reveal the 'savarnanization' of 'Indian woman' and the masculinization of 'dalit'. There is an incisive discussion of knowledge produced about dalit women and the intervention and contribution of Dalit Feminism therein. The book concludes with the question of who can be or become a dalit feminist, intriguingly, not a limited category.