Upper Silesia, one of Central Europe's most important industrial borderlands, was at the center of heated conflict between Germany and Poland and experienced annexations and border re-drawings in 1922, 1939, and 1945. This transnational history examines these episodes of territorial re-nationalization and their cumulative impacts on the region and nations involved, as well as their use by the Nazi and postwar communist regimes to legitimate violent ethnic cleansing. In their interaction with-and mutual influence on-one another, political and cultural actors from both nations developed a transnational culture of territorial rivalry. Architecture, spaces of memory, films, museums, folklore, language policy, mass rallies, and archeological digs were some of the means they used to give the borderland a "German"/"Polish" face. Representative of the wider politics of twentieth-century Europe, the situation in Upper Silesia played a critical role in the making of history's most violent and uprooting eras, 1939-1950.

This book throws a penetrating light on the life and work of the physiologist turned neurologist G.G.J. Rademaker against the background of flourishing clinical research in the Netherlands of the early twentieth century. It charts the rise and fall of the branch of experimental neurophysiology of which Rademaker was a master, which was transmitted from Charles Sherrington in England to Rudolf Magnus at Utrecht and then to Rademaker, Magnus's most talented pupil. Reaching its apogee in the 1920s and 1930s, it was replaced after World War II by other less invasive approaches. This biography is a fitting memorial to a man who, though somewhat neglected in his own land, was recognised as a genius by his peers worldwide.

Tracing the religious history of Siler City, North Carolina, Chad E. Seales argues that southern whites cultivated their own regional brand of American secularism and employed it, alongside public religious performances, to claim and regulate public spaces. Over the course of the twentieth century, they wielded secularism to segregate racialized bodies, to challenge local changes resulting from civil rights legislation, and to respond to the arrival of Latino migrants. Combining ethnographic and archival sources, Seales studies the themes of industrialization, nationalism, civility, privatization, and migration through the local history of Siler City; its neighborhood patterns, Fourth of July parades, Confederate soldiers, minstrel shows, mock weddings, banking practices, police shootings, Good Friday processions, public protests, and downtown mural displays. Offering a spatial approach to the study of performative religion, The Secular Spectacle presents a generative narrative of secularism from the perspective of evangelical Protestants in the American South.

Keith Robbins provides an excellent introduction to Winston Churchill's rise to power and a vivid picture of the political landscapes through which he moved.

Winston Churchill's rise to power was dramatic—brilliant, flawed and distrusted in his early career, he rose to become a national hero in the dark days of the Second World War. Yet after the war, Churchill was ousted from power and by 1955, eclipsed by the USA and USSR, Britain seemed to be losing everything Churchill had sought to preserve. This book outlines his career and uncovers what made possible Churchill's leading role in national and world affairs.

This volume explores how the idea of empire in France was expressed in film, photography, painting and monuments. It analyzes how the image of the universal, civilizing mission saturated French society during the first half of the twentieth century. In particular it examines how the subject peoples of the empire were represented in art and fiction. In this way, the authors underline that there was not just one single image of empire but many, ranging from the extreme right to the extreme left. The volume contains and in-depth consideration not just of the triumphalist images of empire but the oppositional ones, most notably the surrealists, which directly challenged the emergent colonial consensus.

"The definitive account of a beloved hotel that has played a memorable role in San Antonio's history....the fascinating story of the people who owned the Menger and the noteworthy folk they entertained.....This generously illustrated book is one that visitors and San Antonians alike will want to make their own".
Frank W. Jennings
Historian, journalist, and author of "San Antonio: The Story of an Enchanted City"
"An engaging and generous history of a Texas institution. Williams' work is a mix of panoramic views and detail, from resident ghosts to army generals, from recipes to love stories, that should give anyone a peg for their curiosity".
Dr. John L. Davis
Author, professor, historian/researcher at the University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio
"Written with heart and humor throughout, whether she wrote of the true German grit of William and Mary Menger or the eerie wanderers of the Menger corridors. I love the Menger and so will you, if you don't already".
Polly Price
Author, host/producer [Book Fare, ] Time Warner TV, San Antonio
Author Docia Schultz Williams is a longtime resident and certified professional tour guide in San Antonio. Her books include "Best Tales of Texas Ghosts", "Exploring San Antonio with Children", and "When Darkness Falls: Tales of San Antonio Ghosts and Hauntings".

Britain's Moment in the Middle East: was it an imperial triumph or a decisive staging post in the end-of-empire story? Sir Percy Cox (1864-1937) was a vital figure in the history of the British Empire in the Middle East, part of the pantheon with such legends as T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell. As High Commissioner in Iraq from 1920 to 1923 he presided over the birth of modern Iraq - the climax of his career -- but left an infant state fraught with political, ethnic and religious problems which have bedevilled Iraq and the Middle East to the present day.

John Townsend paints a convincing picture of Britain's global empire and brings Cox to life as an archetypal patrician proconsul. This is the first major biography of Cox, based on extensive research in original sources and long experience in the region. It strikingly illustrates the troubled contemporary history of Iraq and the modern Middle East and will become the standard work on Cox.

Commentary on memorials to the Holocaust has been plagued with a sense of "monument fatigue", a feeling that landscape settings and national spaces provide little opportunity for meaningful engagement between present visitors and past victims. This book examines the Holocaust via three sites of murder by the Nazis: the former concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany; the mass grave at Babi Yar, Ukraine; and the razed village of Lidice, Czech Republic. Bringing together recent scholarship from cultural memory and cultural geography, the author focuses on the way these violent histories are remembered, allowing these sites to emerge as dynamic transcultural landscapes of encounter in which difficult pasts can be represented and comprehended in the present. This leads to an examination of the role of the environment, or, more particularly, the ways in which the natural environment, co-opted in the process of killing, becomes a medium for remembrance.

The argument about the limits of Free Trade or Protectionism rages throughout the world to this day. Following the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, free trade became one of the most distinctive defining features of the British state, and of British economic, social, and political life. While the United States, much of the British Empire, and the leading European Powers turned towards protectionism before 1914, Britain alone held to a policy which had seemingly guaranteed power and prosperity. This book seeks to explain the political history of this tenacious loyalty. While the Tariff Reform opponents of free trade have been much studied, this is the first substantial account, based on a wide range of printed and archival sources, which explains the primacy of free trade in nineteenth- and early-twentieth century Britain. It also shows that by the centenary of the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1946, although British free traders lamented the death of Liberal England, they heralded, under American leadership, the rebirth of the liberal international order.

Andrew Thompson examines imperialism as a political cause in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He argues that British politics were influenced and modified significantly by an imperial mindset based upon the concept of a 'Greater Britain'. Economic, demographic, intellectual and military influences on debate about empire are all considered. 'High' and 'low' politics are joined together, showing how parliamentary and party opinion interacted with imperial ideas and interests in the country at large.

The army in India was the principal pillar of British power in South Asia from the mid-nineteenth century until Indian independence. This volume aims to evaluate the combat effectiveness of the army in British India from the mutiny of 1857 until the British departed India in 1947. It examines how the army in India developed from a colonial police force into one of the world's largest volunteer armies which saw service around the globe. The author presents new primary material from international archival sources and develops original interpretations of the political and military role of the army in colonial India. These new arguments include: the army's conduct of 'small wars' on the North-West frontier aided it in conducting tactical warfare in Burma during World War II; small unit raids developed in India were put to good effect beyond India's borders; the army's practical experience of counter-insurgency was used in Greece and Indonesia after 1945; and, contrary to existing scholarship, the British did not follow a deliberate policy of 'Indianization' of the officer corps .

Joint winner of the North American Conference on British Studies 2017 Stansky Book Prize for the best book on British Studies since 1800 Communal Violence in the British Empire focuses on how Britons interpreted, policed, and sometimes fostered violence between different ethnic and religious communities in the empire. It also asks what these outbreaks meant for the power and prestige of Britain among subject populations. Alternating between chapters of engaging narrative and chapters of careful, cross-colonial analysis, Mark Doyle uses outbreaks of communal violence in Ireland, the West Indies, and South Asia to uncover the inner workings of British imperialism: it's guiding assumptions, its mechanisms of control, its impact, and its limitations. He explains how Britons used communal violence to justify the imperial project even as that project was creating the conditions for more violence. Above all, this book demonstrates how communal violence exposed the limits of British power and, in time, helped lay the groundwork for the empire's collapse. This book shows how violence, and the British state's handling thereof, was a fundamental part of the imperial experience for colonizer and colonized alike. It offers a new perspective on the workings of empire that will be of interest to any student of imperial or world history.

This compelling work of documentary history tells a story of idealism betrayed, a story of how the Comintern (Communist International), an organization established by Lenin in 1919 to direct and assist revolutionary movements throughout the world, participated in and was ultimately destroyed by the Stalinist repression in the late 1930s. Presenting and drawing on recently declassified archival documents, William J. Chase analyzes the Comintern's roles as agent, instrument, and victim of terror. In both principle and practice, the Comintern was an international organization, with a staff that consisted primarily of Communist emigres who had fled dictatorial regimes in Europe and Asia. It was, however, headquartered in Moscow and controlled by Soviet leaders. This book examines the rise of suspicions and xenophobia among Soviet and Comintern leaders and cadres for whom many foreigners were no longer the heroes of the class struggle but rather possible enemy agents. Some Comintern members internalized and acted on Stalin's theories about the infiltration of foreign spies into Soviet society, supplying the Soviet police with information that led to the exile or execution of imigris. Thousands of other imigris also became victims of the purges. Together the text and documents of this book convey graphically the essential roles played by the Comintern, providing a unique perspective on the era of Stalinist repression and terror.

This volume examines factors associated with success and failure of historical episodes of democratization in Europe, giving a historical and comparative approach. It focuses on a series of important case studies, including Britain and the Netherlands, the Weimar Republic, Spanish Second Republic, the German Federal Republic, and the post-Communist studies of East Europe and Russia.

Pertinent to contemporary demands for reparations from Turkey is the relationship between law and property in connection with the Armenian Genocide. This book examines the confiscation of Armenian properties during the genocide and subsequent attempts to retain seized Armenian wealth. Through the close analysis of laws and treaties, it reveals that decrees issued during the genocide constitute central pillars of the Turkish system of property rights, retaining their legal validity, and although Turkey has acceded through international agreements to return Armenian properties, it continues to refuse to do so. The book demonstrates that genocides do not depend on the abolition of the legal system and elimination of rights, but that, on the contrary, the perpetrators of genocide manipulate the legal system to facilitate their plans.

The Weimar era in Germany is often characterized as a time of significant change. Such periods of rupture transform the way people envision the past, present, and future. This book traces the conceptions of time and history in the Germany of the early 20th century. By focusing on both the discourse and practices of the youth movement, the author shows how it reinterpreted and revived the past to overthrow the premises of modern historical thought. In so doing, this book provides insight into the social implications of the ideological de-historicization of the past.

Strike-action has long been a notable phenomenon in Israeli society, despite forces that have weakened its recurrence, such as the Arab-Jewish conflict, the decline of organized labor, and the increasing precariousness of employment. While the impact of strikes was not always immense, they are deeply rooted in Israel's past during the Ottoman Empire and Mandate Palestine. Workers persist in using them for material improvement and to gain power in both the private and public sectors, reproducing a vibrant social practice whose codes have withstood the test of time. This book unravels the trajectory of the strikes as a rich source for the social-historical analysis of an otherwise nation-oriented and highly politicized history.

Drawing on an eclectic array of historical and cultural studies, this collection seeks to move the perspectives that are marginal to mainstream war stories, namely those of non-combatants, to center stage. It does so through analyzing the ways in which wars, real and imagined, impact (and have impacted) individuals all over the western world. This book illustrates the ever-present reality of war since the late nineteenth century, affecting adults and children alike, regardless of whether they are the participants in, or the witnesses of, theatres of conflict.

Why did the British win the Anglo-Boer War? Although there is truth in the simple statement that they were much stronger than the Boers, it does not explain everything. Therefore, the main focus of this book is to analyse the most important strategic and operational decisions made on both sides, and to measure them according to accepted modern military theory. It is shown that both the British and Boer war efforts were very haphazard at the beginning, but that both learnt as the war went on. In the end, the British got the Boers in a vice from which they could not escape.

Root Shock examines 3 different U.S. cities to unmask the crippling results of decades-old disinvestment in communities of color and the urban renewal practices that ultimately destroyed these neighborhoods for the advantage of developers and the elite. Like a sequel to the prescient warnings of urbanist Jane Jacobs, Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove reveals the disturbing effects of decades of insensitive urban renewal projects on communities of color. For those whose homes and neighborhoods were bulldozed, the urban modernization projects that swept America starting in 1949 were nothing short of an assault. Vibrant city blocks - places rich in culture - were torn apart by freeways and other invasive development, devastating the lives of poor residents. Fullilove passionately describes the profound traumatic stress- the "root shock"that results when a neighborhood is demolished. She estimates that federal and state urban renewal programs, spearheaded by business and real estate interests, destroyed 1,600 African American districts in cities across the United States. But urban renewal didn't just disrupt black communities: it ruined their economic health and social cohesion, stripping displaced residents of their sense of place as well. It also left big gashes in the centers of cities that are only now slowly being repaired. Focusing on the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the Central Ward in Newark, and the small Virginia city of Roanoke, Dr. Fullilove argues powerfully against policies of displacement. Understanding the damage caused by root shock is crucial to coping with its human toll and helping cities become whole. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, is a research psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute and professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at Columbia University. She is the author of five books, including Urban Alchemy.

British Counterinsurgency examines the insurgencies that have confronted the British State since the end of the Second World War, and at the methods used to fight them. It looks at the guerrilla campaigns in Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, South Yemen, Oman, and most recently in Northern Ireland, and considers the reasons for British success or failure in suppressing them. It provides a hard-nosed account of the realities of counterinsurgency as practiced by the most experienced security establishment in the world today.

A few years after the Nazis came to power in Germany, an alliance of states and nationalistic movements formed, revolving around the German axis. That alliance, the states involved, and the interplay between their territorial aims and those of Germany during the interwar period and World War II are at the core of this volume. This "territorial revisionism" came to include all manner of political and military measures that attempted to change existing borders. Taking into account not just interethnic relations but also the motivations of states and nationalizing ethnocratic ruling elites, this volume reconceptualizes the history of East Central Europe during World War II. In so doing, it presents a clearer understanding of some of the central topics in the history of the war itself and offers an alternative to standard German accounts of the period and East European national histories.