|
|
Books > History > World history > From 1900 > General
The history of noncombatant immunity is well established. What is
less understood is how militaries have rationalized violating this
immunity. This book traces the development of how militaries have
rationalized the killing of the innocent from the thirteenth
century onward. In the process, this historiography shows how we
have arrived at the ascendant convention that assumes militaries
should not intentionally kill the innocent. Furthermore, it shows
how moral arguments about the permissibility of killing the
innocent are largely adaptations to material changes in how wars
are fought, whether through technological innovations or changes in
institutional structures.
Henry Green: Class, Style, and the Everyday offers a critical prism
through which Green's fiction-from his earliest published short
stories, as an Eton schoolboy, through to his last dialogic novels
of the 1950s-can be seen as a coherent, subtle, and humorous
critique of the tension between class, style, and realism in the
first half of the twentieth century. The study extends on-going
critical recognition that Green's work is central to the
development of the novel from the twenties to the fifties, acting
as a vital bridge between late modernist, inter-war, post-war, and
postmodernist fiction. The overarching contention is that the
shifting and destabilizing nature of Green's oeuvre sets up a
predicament similar to that confronted by theorists of the
everyday. Consequently, each chapter acknowledges the indeterminacy
of the writing, whether it be: the non-singular functioning (or
malfunctioning) of the name; the open-ended, purposefully ambiguous
nature of its symbols; the shifting, cinematic nature of Green's
prose style; the sensitive, but resolutely unsentimental depictions
of the working-classes and the aristocracy in the inter-war period;
the impact of war and its inconsistent irruptions into daily life;
or the ways in which moments or events are rapidly subsumed back
into the flux of the everyday, their impact left uncertain. Critics
have, historically, offered up singular readings of Green's work,
or focused on the poetic or recreative qualities of certain works,
particularly those of the 1940s. Green's writing is, undoubtedly,
poetic and extraordinary, but this book also pays attention to the
cliched, meta-textual, and uneventful aspects of his fiction.
Our memory of Sixties New Left radicals often evokes marches in the
streets, battles with the police, or urban bombings. However, the
New Left was a multi-faceted movement, with diverse tendencies. One
of these tendencies promoted electoral as the way to change
America. In every city that was a center of New Left activism, this
"Electoral New Left" entered the political arena. A surprisingly
large number of these New Left radicals were elected to office:
City Council, Mayor, State Senate, even the U.S. Senate. Once in
office, they persisted and prevailed. Cities and places we think of
today as eternally liberal-Berkeley, Madison, Ann Arbor, even the
state of Vermont-were, deeply conservative and deeply Republican
before the triumphs of the local Electoral New Left. These
"Radicals in Power," however, brought about a lasting political
realignment in their locales, and embodied the vision of a better
future that was at the heart of all New Left activism. However, the
accomplishments of the Electoral New Left, even its very existence,
are almost completely unexplored. Historians of the social and
political movements of the Sixties have focused on anti-Vietnam War
protest movements, or on the Revolutionary New Left. Radicals in
Power corrects that oversight and, in doing so, rewrites the
history of the Sixties and the New Left. Based on interviews with
the elected New Left radicals in each of their cities, Davin
details the birth and evolution of a local and regional progressive
politics that has, heretofore, been overlooked.
Lara Douds examines the practical functioning and internal
political culture of the early Soviet government cabinet, the
Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), under Lenin. This study
elucidates the process by which Sovnarkom's governmental
decision-making authority was transferred to Communist Party bodies
in the early years of Soviet power and traces the day-to-day
operation of the supreme state organ. The book argues that
Sovnarkom was the principal executive body of the early Soviet
government until the Politburo gradually usurped this role during
the Civil War. Using a range of archival source material, Lara
Douds re-interprets early Soviet political history as a period
where fledging 'Soviet' rather than simply 'Communist Party' power
was attempted, but ultimately failed when pressures of Civil War
and socio-economic dislocation encouraged the centralising and
authoritarian rather than democratic strand of Bolshevism to
predominate. Inside Lenin's Government explores the basic mechanics
of governance by looking at the frequency of meetings, types of
business discussed, processes of decision-making and the
administrative backdrop, as well as the key personalities of
Sovnarkom. It then considers the reasons behind the shift in
executive power from state to party in this period, which resulted
in an abnormal situation where, as Leon Trotsky commented in 1923,
'leadership by the party gives way to administration by its
organs'.
During the 1930s, much of the world was in severe economic and
political crisis. This upheaval ushered in new ways of thinking
about social and political systems. In some cases, these new ideas
transformed states and empires alike. Particularly in Europe, these
transformations are well-chronicled in scholarship. In academic
writings on India, however, Muslim political and legal thought has
gone relatively unnoticed during this eventful decade. This book
fills this gap by mapping the evolution of Muslim political and
legal thought from roughly 1927 to 1940. By looking at landmark
court cases in tandem with the political and legal ideas of
Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan's founding
fathers, this book highlights the more concealed ways in which
Indian Muslims began to acquire a political outlook with distinctly
separatist aspirations. What makes this period worthy of a separate
study is that the legal antagonism between religious communities in
the 1930s foreshadowed political conflicts that arose in the run-up
to independence in 1947. The presented cases and thinkers reflect
the possibilities and limitations of Muslim political thought in
colonial India.
The #1 Irish Times bestseller WINNER of the An Post Irish Book
Awards 'A clear-eyed, myth-dispelling masterpiece' Marian Keyes
'Sweeping, authoritative and profoundly intelligent' Colm Toibin,
Guardian 'With the pace and twists of an enthralling novel' Irish
Times 'Evocative, moving, funny and furious' Dominic Sandbrook,
Sunday Times 'An enthralling, panoramic book' Patrick Radden Keefe
'A book that will remain important for a very long time' An Post
Irish Book Award We Don't Know Ourselves is a very personal vision
of recent Irish history from the year of O'Toole's birth, 1958,
down to the present. Ireland has changed almost out of recognition
during those decades, and Fintan O'Toole's life coincides with that
arc of transformation. The book is a brilliant interweaving of
memories (though this is emphatically not a memoir) and engrossing
social and historical narrative. This was the era of Eamon de
Valera, Jack Lynch, Charles Haughey and John Charles McQuaid, of
sectarian civil war in the North and the Pope's triumphant visit in
1979, but also of those who began to speak out against the ruling
consensus - feminists, advocates for the rights of children, gay
men and women coming out of the shadows. We Don't Know Ourselves is
an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand modern
Ireland.
In Eleanor Smith's Hull House Songs: The Music of Protest and Hope
in Jane Addams's Chicago, the authors republish Hull House Songs
(1916), together with critical commentary. Hull-House Songs
contains five politically engaged compositions written by the
Hull-House music educator, Eleanor Smith. The commentary that
accompanies the folio includes an examination of Smith's poetic
sources and musical influences; a study of Jane Addams's aesthetic
theories; and a complete history of the arts at Hull-House. Through
this focus upon aesthetic and cultural programs at Hull-House, the
authors identify the external, and internalized, forces of
domination (class position, racial identity, patriarchal
disenfranchisement) that limited the work of the Hull-House women,
while also recovering the sometimes hidden emancipatory
possibilities of their legacy. With an afterword by Jocelyn
Zelasko.
This is the story of the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, the most
notorious police forces in the history of the British Isles. During
the Irish War of Independence (1920-1), the British government
recruited thousands of ex-soldiers to serve as constables in the
Royal Irish Constabulary, the Black and Tans, while also raising a
paramilitary raiding force of ex-officers - the Auxiliary Division.
From the summer of 1920 to the summer of 1921, these forces became
the focus of bitter controversy. As the struggle for Irish
independence intensified, the police responded to ambushes and
assassinations by the guerrillas with reprisals and extrajudicial
killings. Prisoners and suspects were abused and shot, the homes
and shops of their families and supporters were burned, and the
British government was accused of imposing a reign of terror on
Ireland.
Based on extensive archival research, this is the first serious
study of the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries and the part they
played in the Irish War of Independence. Dr Leeson examines the
organization and recruitment of the British police, the social
origins of police recruits, and the conditions in which they lived
and worked, along with their conduct and misconduct once they
joined the force, and their experiences and states of mind. For the
first time, it tells the story of the Irish conflict from the
police perspective, while casting new light on the British
government's responsibility for reprisals, the problems of using
police to combat insurgents, and the causes of atrocities in
revolutionary wars.
This intriguing biography recounts the life of the legendary
Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, revealing his true role in the development
of Las Vegas and debunking some of the common myths about his
notoriety. This account of the life of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel
follows his beginnings in the Lower East Side of New York to his
role in the development of the famous Flamingo Hotel and Casino.
Larry D. Gragg examines Siegel's image as portrayed in popular
culture, dispels the myths about Siegel's contribution to the
founding of Las Vegas, and reveals some of the more lurid details
about his life. Unlike previous biographies, this book is the first
to make use of more than 2,400 pages of FBI files on Siegel,
referencing documents about the reputed gangster in the New York
City Municipal Archives and reviewing the 1950-51 testimony before
the Senate Committee on organized crime. Chapters cover his early
involvement with gangs in New York, his emergence as a favorite
among the Hollywood elite in the late 1930s, his lucrative exploits
in illegal gambling and horse racing, and his opening of the
"fabulous" Flamingo in 1946. The author also draws upon the
recollections of Siegel's eldest daughter to reveal a side of the
mobster never before studied-the nature of his family life.
Assesses Siegel's life as a gangster in organized crime of the time
Provides a detailed account of Siegel's last day in 1947,
culminating with his murder at his girlfriend's house in Beverly
Hills Discusses the facts and fallacies about his association with
the development of Las Vegas Features a chronological treatment of
Siegel in films, novels, documentaries, and accounts in newspapers
and magazines Includes photographs of Siegel and the Flamingo Hotel
and Casino at the time of its construction and opening
In this bold reevaluation of a decisive moment in American history,
Michael Hiltzik dispels decades of accumulated myths and
misconceptions about the New Deal to capture with clarity and
immediacy its origins, its legacy, and its genius.
Vicente Lombardo Toledano was the founder of numerous labour union
organisations in Mexico and Latin America between the 1920s to the
1960s. He was not only an organiser but also a broker between the
unions, the government, and business leaders, able to disentangle
difficult conflicts. He cooperated closely with the governments of
Mexico and other Latin American nations and worked with the
representatives of the Soviet Union when he considered it useful.
As a result he was alternately seen as a government stooge or a
communist, even though he was never a member of the party or of the
Mexican government administration. Daniela Spenser's is the first
biography of Lombardo Toledano based on his extensive private
papers, on primary sources from European, Mexican and American
archives, and on personal interviews. Her even-keeled portrayal of
the man counters previous hagiographies and/or vilifications.
This book provides a bold examination of the political use of
history in contemporary Russia. Anton Weiss-Wendt argues that
history is yet another discipline misappropriated by the Kremlin
for the purpose of rallying the population. He explains how, since
the pro-democracy protests in 2011-12, the Russian government has
hamstrung independent research and aligned state institutions in
the promotion of militant patriotism. The entire state machinery
has been mobilized to construe a single, glorious historical
narrative with the focus on Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
Putin's Russia and the Falsification of History examines the
intricate networks in Russia that engage in "historymaking."
Whether it is the Holocaust or Soviet mass terror, Tsars or Stalin,
the regime promotes a syncretic interpretation of Russian history
that supports the notion of a strong state and authoritarian rule.
That interpretation finds its way into new monuments, exhibitions,
and quasi-professional associations. In addition to administrative
measures of control, the Russian state has been using the penal
code to censor critical perspectives on history, typically advanced
by individuals who also happen to call for a political change in
Russia. This powerful book shows how history is increasingly
becoming an element of political technology in Russia, with the
systematic destruction of independent institutions setting the very
future of History as an academic discipline in Russia in doubt.
Focusing on the era in which the modern idea of nationalism emerged
as a way of establishing the preferred political, cultural, and
social order for society, this book demonstrates that across
different European societies the most important constituent of
nationalism has been a specific understanding of the nation's
historical past. Analysing Ireland and Germany, two largely
unconnected societies in which the past was peculiarly contemporary
in politics and where the meaning of the nation was highly
contested, this volume examines how narratives of origins,
religion, territory and race produced by historians who were
central figures in the cultural and intellectual histories of both
countries interacted; it also explores the similarities and
differences between the interactions in these societies. Histories
of Nationalism in Ireland and Germany investigates whether we can
speak of a particular common form of nationalism in Europe. The
book draws attention to cultural and intellectual links between the
Irish and the Germans during this period, and what this meant for
how people in either society understood their national identity in
a pivotal time for the development of the historical discipline in
Europe. Contributing to a growing body of research on the
'transnationality' of nationalism, this new study of a
hitherto-unexplored area will be of interest to historians of
modern Germany and Ireland, comparative and transnational
historians, and students and scholars of nationalism, as well as
those interested in the relationship between biography and writing
history.
Female philanthropy was at the heart of transformative thinking
about society and the role of individuals in the interwar period.
In Britain, in the aftermath of the First World War,
professionalization; the authority of the social sciences; mass
democracy; internationalism; and new media sounded the future and,
for many, the death knell of elite practices of benevolence. Eve
Colpus tells a new story about a world in which female
philanthropists reshaped personal models of charity for modern
projects of social connectedness, and new forms of cultural and
political encounter. Centering the stories of four remarkable
British-born women - Evangeline Booth; Lettice Fisher; Emily
Kinnaird; and Muriel Paget - Colpus recaptures the breadth of the
social, cultural and political influence of women's philanthropy
upon practices of social activism. Female Philanthropy in the
Interwar World is not only a new history of women's civic agency in
the interwar period, but also a study of how female philanthropists
explored approaches to identification and cultural difference that
emphasized friendship in relation to interwar modernity. Richly
detailed, the book's perspective on women's social interventionism
offers a new reading of the centrality of personal relationships to
philanthropy that can inform alternative models of giving today.
New Age culture is generally regarded as a modern manifestation of
Western millenarianism - a concept built around the expectation of
an imminent historical crisis followed by the inauguration of a
golden age which occupies a key place in the history of Western
ideas. The New Age in the Modern West argues that New Age culture
is part of a family of ideas, including utopianism, which construct
alternative futures and drive revolutionary change. Nicholas
Campion traces New Age ideas back to ancient cosmology, and
questions the concepts of the Enlightenment and the theory of
progress. He considers the contributions of the key figures of the
18th century, the legacy of the astronomer Isaac Newton and the
Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg, as well as the theosophist,
H.P. Blavatsky, the psychologist, C.G. Jung, and the writer and
artist, Jose Arguelles. He also pays particular attention to the
beat writers of the 1950s, the counterculture of the 1960s,
concepts of the Aquarian Age and prophecies of the end of the Maya
Calendar in 2012. Lastly he examines neoconservatism as both a
reaction against the 1960s and as a utopian phenomenon. The New Age
in the Modern West is an important book for anyone interested in
countercultural and revolutionary ideas in the modern West.
In 1974, the Brazilian sports official Joao Havelange was elected
FIFA's president in a two-round election, defeating the incumbent
Stanley Rous. The story told by Havelange himself describes a
private odyssey in which the protagonist crisscrosses two thirds of
the world canvassing for votes and challenging the institutional
status quo. For many scholars, Havelange's triumph changed FIFA's
(International Federation of Football Association) identity,
gradually turning it into a global and immensely wealthy
institution. Conversely, the election can be analyzed as a
historical event. It can be thought of as a political window by
means of which the international dynamic of a specific moment in
the Cold War can be perceived. In this regard, this book seeks to
understand which actors were involved in the election, how the
networks were shaped, and which political agents were directly
engaged in the campaign.
Shanghai Sanctuary assesses the plight of the European Jewish
refugees who fled to Japanese-occupied China during World War II.
This book is the first major study to examine the Nationalist
government's policy towards the Jewish refugee issue and the most
thorough and subtle analysis of Japanese diplomacy concerning this
matter. Gao demonstrates that the story of the wartime Shanghai
Jews is not merely a sidebar to the history of modern China or
modern Japan. She illuminates how the "Jewish issue" complicated
the relationships among China, Japan, Germany, and the United
States before and during World War II. Her groundbreaking research
provides an important contribution to international history and the
history of the Holocaust. Chinese Nationalist government and the
Japanese occupation authorities thought very carefully about the
Shanghai Jews and how they could be used to win international
financial and political support in their war against one another.
The Holocaust had complicated repercussions extending far beyond
Europe to East Asia, and Gao shows many of them in this tightly
argued book. Her fluency in both Chinese and Japanese has permitted
her to exploit archival sources no Western scholar has been able to
fully use before. Gao brings the politics and personalities that
led to the admittance of Jews to Shanghai during World War II
together into a rich and revealing story.
|
|