Classes, Culture, and Politics investigates those fields in British history that have been illustrated by the works of Ross McKibbin, one of the foremost historians of twentieth century Britain. Written by a distinguished team of scholars, it examines McKibbin's life and thought, and explores the implications of his arguments. One of his most important achievements has been to break down the artificial barriers that existed between 'social' and 'political' history, in order to enrich the writing of both; that legacy is reflected throughout this volume.
From international football to Liberal internationalism, from the hedonism of the early Labour party to the relationship between London cabbies and Thatcherism, this volume is an ambitious attempt to explore contemporary Britain, endeavouring to be as original, unsycophantic, rebarbative, and diverting as the historian whose work has inspired it.

It is 1890 when three young women head toward a meadow hidden in the woods outside the village of Shipkovtsi, Bulgaria. As Trina, Vella, and Dobrinka meet in front of an old monastery, a family treasure held secret for generations is revealed. In the end, there are three piles of gold-one in front of each sister-but one pile is bigger than the others. An inheritance has been unfairly divided, leaving two sisters feeling cheated.

In "ASHES of WARS," Radka Yakimov narrates the story of the descendents of two of those Bulgarian sisters. Reconstructed historically on the basis of recorded facts, stories handed down from generation to generation, and her own personal recollections, Yakimov chronicles the main events that impacted the lives of four generations of Bulgarians throughout the twentieth century. As she relays a saga about the twenty-three men, women, and children who escaped in search of a safer place, Yakimov takes her readers beyond the confines of Bulgaria into Yugoslavia, to a refugee camp in Trieste, and finally to new lives in Canada and America.

"ASHES of WARS" profiles the courage, grit, and determination of the people of a beautiful Balkan country torn by wars and oppression, but sustained by hopes for a brighter future.

This book brings together in a comparative analysis the results of studies of the various cultural, social, economic and historical aspects that are formative in African societies' experiences of how people negotiated the spaces and times of being in transit on the road to prosperity. The book analyses the various outcomes of the process of mobility and the experience of spaces and times of transit across gender, generational, and class-differences. These experiences are explored and give insight into the socio-cultural and economics transformations that have taken place in African societies in the past century. Contributors are: Akinyinka Akinyoade, Walter van Beek, Marleen Dekker, Ton Dietz, Rijk van Dijk, Isaie Dougnon, Jan-Bart Gewald, Meike de Goede, Benjamin Kofi Nyarko, Samuel Ntewusu Aniegye, Taiwo Olabisi Oluwatoyin, Shehu Tijjani Yusuf, Augustine Tanle and Amisah Zenabu Bakuri.

J. A. Hobson's critical treatise on the practice of imperialism - whereby countries acquire territories for economic gain - is a classic in its field. This edition includes all of the author's original charts and illustrations. Published at the opening of the 20th century, while colonial imperialism still held decisive sway as a political and social practice, Hobson's treatise caused shockwaves in economics for its condemnation of a procedure long considered irreproachable. While Hobson acknowledges that imperialism is often supported by a sense of nationalistic pride and achievement - as with the British Empire's colonial imperialism - he identifies capitalist oligarchy as the true motivation behind imperialistic ventures. Owners of productive capital, such as factories, generate a large surplus which they desire to reinvest in further factories; this prompts imperialist expansion into foreign lands.

In this book, author Enrique Dick takes us into a whirlwind of family history as Samuel and Annie Andrew arrive from England, to the vast Pampas of Argentina. There the Andrew family prospers and grows. Silvano "Alfredo", Isabel, Wilfred, Ethel, Hilda, William and Edgar are born and raised and eventually all of them will have their share of love, adventure and tragedy. Told by Enrique Dick, this book is based entirely on his family's real life events; from the trials and tribulations that living in Argentina brings, to the journeys that the Andrew children have around the world. This book centres mainly around the tragedy of losing his relative Edgar Andrew on the Titanic. Armed with the extraordinary occurrence of retrieving Edgar's small suitcase and its contents from the Titanic, Enrique Dick embarked on a journey of discovery into his maternal family history. The result is a book that not only uncovers family secrets and historical facts, but also opens a window into lives that impacted history as it was being created.

The Zoot Suit Riots in 1943 and the infamous Sleepy Lagoon murder trial of the preceding year represent a turning point in the cultural identity and historical experience of Mexican Americans in the United States. This engaging study of these regrettable events provides context for understanding the continuing battles in the 21st century over immigration policy and race relations. Although the "zoot suit" had earlier been a black youth fashion trend identified with jazz culture, by the 1940s, the zoot suit was adopted by Mexican American teenagers in wartime Los Angeles, who wore it as their unofficial "uniform" as an act of rebellion and to establish their cultural identity. For a week in June of 1943, the Zoot Suit Riots, instigated by Anglo-American servicemen and condoned by the Los Angeles police, terrorized the Mexican American community. The events were an ugly testament to the climate of racial tension and resentment in Los Angeles-and after similar riots began across the nation, it became apparent how endemic the problem was. This book traces these important historic events and their subsequent cultural and political influences on the Mexican American experience, especially the activist and reform efforts designed to prevent similar future injustices. General readers will gain an understanding of the challenges facing the Mexican American community in wartime Los Angeles, grasp the racial and cultural resistance of the larger Anglo-American society of the time, and see how the blatant injustices of the Sleepy Lagoon trial and the Zoot Suit Riots served to galvanize Latinos and others to fight back. Those conducting in-depth research will appreciate having access to original materials sourced from Federal and state archives as well as newspapers and other repositories of information provided in the book. Connects the racially and socioeconomically motivated events of the World War II-era 1940s to the Chicano movement of the 1970s and the current battles over immigration legislation, allowing readers to see the recurring theme in American history Exposes the distortions of a yellow journalistic press in its coverage and treatment of the Sleepy Lagoon trial and Zoot Suit Riots, providing documentation of how white America's perception of Mexican Americans has been fashioned over many years by the mainstream media Documents how the zoot-suit and Pachuco cultures of Mexican American youths of the 1940s-an expression of their identity and an attempt to establish their place in the larger American culture-were a key reason behind the violent culture clashes Includes previously unpublished primary documents from the National Archives and Records Administration and the Franklin Roosevelt Library

Colonial agents worked for fifty years to make a Japanese Taiwan, using technology, culture, statistics, trade, and modern ideologies to remake their new territory according to evolving ideas of Japanese empire. Since the end of the Pacific War, this project has been remembered, imagined, nostalgized, erased, commodified, manipulated, idealized and condemned by different sectors of Taiwan's population. ""The volume covers a range of topics, ""including colonial-era photography, exploration, postwar deportation, sport, film, media, economic planning, contemporary Japanese influences on Taiwanese popular culture, and recent nostalgia for and misunderstandings about the colonial era. "Japanese Taiwan" provides an inter-disciplinary perspective on these related processes of colonization and decolonization, explaining how the memories, scars and traumas of the colonial era have been utilized during the postwar period. It provides a unique critique of the 'Japaneseness' of the erstwhile Chinese Taiwan, thus bringing new scholarship to bear on problems in contemporary East Asian politics.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Refugees in Europe, 1919-1959 offers a new history of Europe's mid-20th century as seen through its recurrent refugee crises. By bringing together in one volume recent research on a range of different contexts of groups of refugees and refugee policy, it sheds light on the common assumptions that underpinned the history of refugees throughout the period under review. The essays foreground the period between the end of the First World War, which inaugurated a series of new international structures to deal with displaced populations, and the late 1950s, when Europe's home-grown refugee problems had supposedly been 'solved' and attention shifted from the identification of an exclusively European refugee problem to a global one. Borrowing from E. H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis, first published in 1939, the editors of this volume test the idea that the two post-war eras could be represented as a single crisis of a European-dominated international order of nation states in the face of successive refugee crises which were both the direct consequence of that system and a challenge to it. Each of the chapters reflects on the utility and limitations of this notion of a 'forty years' crisis' for understanding the development of specific national and international responses to refugees in the mid-20th century. Contributors to the volume also provide alternative readings of the history of an international refugee regime, in which the non-European and colonial world are assigned a central role in the narrative.

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aAn excellent resource.a
--"Library Journal"

China's dramatic transformation over the past fifteen years has drawn its share of attention and fear from the global community and world leaders. Far from the inward-looking days of the Cultural Revolution, modern China today is the world's fourth largest economy, with a net product larger than that of France and the United Kingdom. And China's dynamism is by no means limited to its economy: enrollments in secondary and higher education are rapidly expanding, and new means of communication are vastly increasing information available to the Chinese public. In two decades, the Chinese government has also transformed its foreign relations--Beijing is now consulted on virtually every key development within the region. However, the Communist Party of China still dominates all aspects of political life. The Politburo is still self-selecting, Beijing chooses province governors, censorship is widespread, and treatment of dissidents remains harsh.

In China, leading experts provide an overview of the region, highlighting key issues as they developed in the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Edited with an introduction by David B. H. Denoon, an authority on China, this volume of articles covers recent events and key issues in understanding this growing superpower. Organized into three thematic sections--foreign policy and national security, economic policy and social issues, and domestic politics and governance--the essays cover salient topics such as China's military power, de-communization, growing economic strength, nationalism, and the possibility for democracy. Thevolume also contains current maps as well as a "Recent Chronology of Events" which provides a decade's worth of information on the region, organized by year and by country.

Contributors: Liu Binyan, David B.H. Denoon, Bruce J. Dickson, June Teufel Dreyer, Michael Dutton, Elizabeth Economy, Barry Eichengreen, Edward Friedman, Dru C. Gladney, Paul H. B. Godwin, Merle Goldman, Richard Madsen, Barry Naughton, Lucian W. Pye, Tony Saich, David Shambaugh, Robert Sutter, Michael D. Swaine, and Tyrene White.

A firsthand exploration of the cost of boarding the bus of change to move America forward--written by one of the Civil Rights Movement's pioneers. At 18, Charles Person was the youngest of the original Freedom Riders, key figures in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement who left Washington, D.C. by bus in 1961, headed for New Orleans. This purposeful mix of black and white, male and female activists--including future Congressman John Lewis, Congress of Racial Equality Director James Farmer, Reverend Benjamin Elton Cox, journalist and pacifist James Peck, and CORE field secretary Genevieve Hughes--set out to discover whether America would abide by a Supreme Court decision that ruled segregation unconstitutional in bus depots, waiting areas, restaurants, and restrooms nationwide. Two buses proceeded through Virginia, North and South Carolina, to Georgia where they were greeted by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and finally to Alabama. There, the Freedom Riders found their answer: No. Southern states would continue to disregard federal law and use violence to enforce racial segregation. One bus was burned to a shell, its riders narrowly escaping; the second, which Charles rode, was set upon by a mob that beat several riders nearly to death. Buses Are a Comin' provides a front-row view of the struggle to belong in America, as Charles Person accompanies his colleagues off the bus, into the station, into the mob, and into history to help defeat segregation's violent grip on African American lives. It is also a challenge from a teenager of a previous era to the young people of today: become agents of transformation. Stand firm. Create a more just and moral country where students have a voice, youth can make a difference, and everyone belongs.

"You're expendable. A young journalist making his way up the ladder. You're not a public figure like some of them. Not yet anyway." Recovering from the horrors of war and the Great Depression, Britain clings to dreams of peace as Europe slides towards Fascist dictatorship. Amidst a web of half-hidden alliances, where rumour and reality interweave, Roger Martin begins his career in Fleet Street journalism. As he is drawn deeper into the murky world of international politics, he quickly realises that discovering the truth is only half of the challenge ...This compelling story follows an idealistic young journalist from his first steps along Fleet Street to the dark and dangerous heart of 1930s Nazi Germany as he uncovers the secrets kept from us by the British Government.

Belonging across the Bay of Bengal discusses themes connecting the regions bordering the Bay of Bengal, mainly covering the period from the mid-19th through the mid-20th centuries - a crucial period of transition from colonialism to independence. Focusing on the notion of 'belonging', the chapters in this collection highlight themes of ethnicity, religion, culture and the emergence of nationalist politics and state policies as they relate to the movement of peoples in the region. While the Indian Ocean has been of interest to scholars for decades, there has been a notable tilt towards historicizing the Western half of that space, often prioritizing Islamic trade as the key connective glue prior to the rise of Western power and the later emergence of transnational Indian nationalism. Belonging across the Bay of Bengal enriches this story by drawing attention to Buddhist and migrant connectivities, introducing discussions of Lanka, Burma and the Straits Settlements to establish the historical context of the current refugee crises playing out in these regions. This is a timely and innovative volume that offers a fresh approach to Indian Ocean history, further enriching our understanding of the current debates over minority rights and refugee problems in the region. It will be of great significance to all students and scholars of Indian Ocean studies as well as historians of modern South and Southeast Asia.

The 11th of November 1918, Polish Independence Day, is a curious anniversary whose commemoration has been only intermittently observed in the last century. In fact, the day -- and the several symbols that rightly or wrongly have become associated with it -- has a rather convoluted history, filled with tradition and myth, which deserves attention.
Independence Day is more than just the history of a day, or the evolution of its celebration, but an explanation of what meaning has come to be associated with that date. It offers a re-reading of Polish history, not by a series of dates, but through a series of symbols whose combination allows the Poles to understand who they are by what they have been. Its focus is on the era 1914-2008, and the central actor is the charismatic Jozef Pilsudski. He came to represent a disposition regarding the meaning of Polish history which eventually penetrated virtually all of modern Polish society. The work is constructed by the analysis of memoirs, documents, coins, stamps, films, maps, monuments, and many other features making it a multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional volume.

An insightful collection of essays focused on American men, women, and children from a range of economic classes and ethnic backgrounds during the Great Depression. Who were the people waiting in the bread lines and living in Hoovervilles? Who were the migrants heading North and West? Did anyone survive the Depression relatively unscathed? Giving a voice to stories often untold, Great Depression: People and Perspectives covers the full spectrum of American life, portraying the experiences of ordinary citizens during the worst economic crisis in the nation's history. Great Depression shows how specific groups coped with the traumatic upheaval of the times, including rural Americans, women, children, African Americans, and immigrants. In addition, it offers revealing chapters on the conflict between social scientists and policymakers responding to the crisis, the impact of the Depression on the health of U.S. citizens, and the roles that American technology and Hollywood movies played in helping the nation survive. 11 expert contributors, including well-established scholars who bring new perspectives to the study of the Great Depression A wide range of primary sources such as news articles, photographs, diaries, and letters that provide a deeper understanding of daily life during the Depression

The February Revolution, Petrograd, 1917 is the most comprehensive book on the epic uprising that toppled the tsarist monarchy and ushered in the next stage of the Russian Revolution. Hasegawa presents in detail the intense drama of the nine days of the revolution, including the workers' strike, soldiers' revolt, the scrambling of revolutionary party activists to control the revolution, and the liberals' conspiracy to force Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate. Based on his previous work, published in 1981, the author has revised, enlarged, and reinterpreted the complexity of the February Revolution, resulting in a major and timely reassessment on the occasion of its centennial. See inside the book.

Descriptions of the late 1800s landscape in the Ovambo floodplain in north-central Namibia closely match the area s late 1900s appearance, suggesting that little change occurred between the pre-colonial baseline and the postcolonial outcome. Yet, paradoxically, colonial conquest, population pressure, biological invasions, new technology, and economic globalization caused both dramatic deforestation and reforestation in less than a century. The paradox stems from the fact that the prevailing global environmental models obscure and homogenize the process of environmental change: different and contradictory interpretations are dismissed as alternative readings or misreadings of the same process. "Deforestation and Reforestation," however, argues that the paradox highlights the need to reframe environmental change as plural processes occurring along multiple trajectories that may be dissynchronized and asymmetrical.

When America declared war on Germany in 1917, the United States had only 200,000 men under arms, a twentieth of the German army's strength, and its planes were no match for the Luftwaffe. Less than a century later, the United States today has by far the world's largest military budget and provides over 40% of the world's armaments. In American Arsenal Patrick Coffey examines America's military transformation from an isolationist state to a world superpower with a defense budget over $600 billion. Focusing on sixteen specific developments, Coffey illustrates the unplanned, often haphazard nature of this transformation, which has been driven by political, military, technological, and commercial interests. Beginning with Thomas Edison's work on submarine technology, American Arsenal moves from World War I to the present conflicts in the Middle East, covering topics from chemical weapons, strategic bombing, and the nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union, to "smart" bombs, hand-held anti-aircraft missiles, and the Predator and other drone aircrafts. Coffey traces the story of each advance in weaponry from drawing board to battlefield, and includes fascinating portraits the men who invented and deployed them-Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project; Curtis LeMay, who sent the Enola Gray to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Herman Kahn, nuclear strategist and model for Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove; Abraham Karem, inventor of the Predator and many others. Coffey also examines the increasingly detached nature of modern American warfare-the ultimate goal is to remove soldiers from the battlefield entirely-which limits casualties (211,454 in Vietnam and only 1,231 in the Gulf War) but also lessens the political and psychological costs of going to war. Examining the backstories of every major American weapons development, American Arsenal is essential reading for anyone interested in the ongoing evolution of the U.S. defense program.

Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy is an historical study of democratic life and institutions and their decline in the early years of the Russian Revolution. Rather than an event-by-event description of this period, it is an attempt at interpretation and synthesis of the vast and relatively recent specialist literature on a subject usually neglected by those analysing Soviet politics for the public at large.

When the Second World War broke out, ballet in Britain was only a few decades old. Few had imagined that it would establish roots in a nation long thought to be unresponsive to dance. Nevertheless, the war proved to be a boon for ballet dancers, choreographers and audiences, for the nation's dancers were forced to look inward to their own identity and sources of creativity. As author Karen Eliot demonstrates in this fascinating book, instead of withering during the enforced isolation of war, ballet in Britain flourished, exhibiting a surprising heterogeneity and vibrant populism that moved ballet outside its typical elitist surroundings to be seen by uninitiated, often enthusiastic audiences. Ballet was thought to help boost audience morale, to render solace to the soul-weary and to afford entertainment and diversion to those who simply craved a few hours of distraction. Government authorities came to see that ballet could serve as a tool of propaganda; the ways it functioned within the larger public discourse of propaganda and sacrifice, and how it answered a public mood of pragmatism and idealism, are also topics in this story of the development of a national ballet identity. This narrative has several key players- dance critics, male and female dancers, producers, audiences, and choreographers. Exploring the so-called "ballet boom" during WWII, the larger story of this book is one of how art and artists thrive during conflict, and how they respond pragmatically and creatively to privation and duress.