States of Division analyses the division of Germany and the development of the Iron Curtain during the four and a half decades of the Cold War. The centerpiece of this global fault-line was the thousand-mile-long border dividing Germany into West and East. This long border traversed primarily rural peripheries and the development of division along it entailed protracted processes of social and cultural demarcation. Unlike the Berlin Wall, which sprang up overnight in the urban enclave under watchful eyes of Soviet and Western armies, the inter-German border evolved slowly through interactions between frontier residents and various state agencies. The division of Germany and of the world emerged through conflicts between everyday practices, economic necessities, policies of German and foreign governments, and their ability to push these policies through. The division of Germany was a multi-faceted process, which progressed slowly and unevenly. States of Division demonstrates that along with the crucial context of the Cold War, multiple historical and social frameworks are required to decipher division and explain how and where it took place. Dividing a modern integrated society along a thousand-mile border was not planned or intended by the allies and at no stage was agreed upon by East and West German authorities. It gave rise to contradictions and conflicts with practice and tradition, undermining economy and culture in the borderlands, and required protracted negotiations and considerable resources. It was not a fait accompli of Yalta or Potsdam, nor was it completed with the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. German division only stabilized as a sociopolitical fact through the inter-German compromise of the 1970s, which also planted the seeds of its undoing. Integrating local, regional and national perspectives, this volume tells a complex story, showing how diplomacy and policy affected daily practices and were affected by them.

Farming was the basis of the wealth that made England worth invading, twice, in the eleventh century, while trade and manufacturing were insignificant by modern standards. In Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming, the authors employ a wide range of evidence to investigate how Anglo-Saxon farmers produced the food and other agricultural products that sustained English economy, society, and culture before the Norman Conquest. The first part of the volume draws on written and pictorial sources, archaeology, place-names, and the history of the English language to discover what crops and livestock people raised, and what tools and techniques were used to produce them. In part two, using a series of landscape studies - place-names, maps, and the landscape itself, the authors explore how these techniques might have been combined into working agricultural regimes in different parts of the country. A picture emerges of an agriculture that changed from an essentially prehistoric state in the sub-Roman period to what was recognisably the beginning of a tradition that only ended with the Second World War. Anglo-Saxon farming was not only sustainable, but infinitely adaptable to different soils and geology, and to a climate changing as unpredictably as it is today.

""The Worst Journey in the World" is to travel writing what "War and Peace" is to the novel . . . a masterpiece."--"The New York Review of Books
""When people ask me, 'What is your favorite travel book?' I nearly always name this book. It is about courage, misery, starvation, heroism, exploration, discovery, and friendship." --Paul Theroux
"National Geographic Adventure "magazine hailed this volume as the #1 greatest adventure book of all time. Published in 1922 by an expedition survivor, it recounts the riveting tale of Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated race to the South Pole. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the youngest member of the party, offers sensitive characterizations of each of his companions. Their journal entries complement his narrative, providing vivid perspectives on the expedition's dangers and hardships as well as its inspiring examples of optimism, strength, and selflessness.
Hoping to prove a missing link between reptiles and birds, the author and his companions traveled through the dead of Antarctic winter to the remote breeding grounds of the Emperor Penguin. They crossed a frozen sea in utter darkness, dragging an 800-pound sledge through blizzards, howling winds, and average temperatures of 60 below zero. This "worst journey" was followed by the disastrous trek to the South Pole. Cherry-Garrard's compelling account constitutes a moving testament to Scott and to the other men of the expedition. This new edition of the adventure classic features several pages of vintage photographs.

Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the increasing accuracy and legibility of cartographic projections, the proliferation of empirically based chorographies, and the popular vogue for travel narratives served to order, package, and commodify space in a manner that was critical to the formation of a unified Britain. In tandem with such developments, however, a trenchant anti-cartographic skepticism also emerged. This critique of the map can be seen in many literary works of the period that satirize the efficacy and value of maps and highlight their ideological purposes. Against the Map argues that our understanding of the production of national space during this time must also account for these sites of resistance and opposition to hegemonic forms of geographical representation, such as the map. This study utilizes the methodologies of critical geography, as well as literary criticism and theory, to detail the conflicted and often adversarial relationship between cartographic and literary representations of the nation and its geography. While examining atlases, almanacs, itineraries, and other materials, Adam Sills focuses particularly on the construction of heterotopias in the works of John Bunyan, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Johnson, and Jane Austen. These "other" spaces, such as neighborhood, home, and country, are not reducible to the map but have played an equally important role in the shaping of British national identity. Ultimately, Against the Map suggests that nation is forged not only in concert with the map but, just as important, against it.

From Morocco to Iran and the Black Sea to the Red, Water on Sand rewrites the history of the Middle East and North Africa from the Little Ice Age to the Cold War. As the first holistic environmental history of the region over the last half millennium, it shows the intimate connections between peoples and environments and how these relationships shaped political, economic, and social history in startling and unforeseen ways. Nearly all political powers in the region based their rule on the management and control of natural resources, and nearly all individuals were in constant communion with the natural world. To grasp how these multiple histories were central to the pasts of the Middle East and North Africa, the chapters in this book evidence the power of environmental history to open up new avenues of historical research and understanding. Water on Sand furthermore traces how the Middle East and North Africa deeply affected the global histories of climate, disease, trade, energy, environmental politics, ecological manipulation, and much more. Lying at the intersection of three continents and as many seas, the Middle East has obviously been central to world history for millennia. Studying the ecological implications of these global connections, both for the region itself and for the rest of the world, helps to bring the Middle East and North Africa into global history and to show how the region must be an essential part of any understanding of the environments of Eurasia over the last five hundred years. Deeply researched, globally comparative, and highly provocative, Water on Sand represents both a new kind of Middle Eastern history and a new kind of environmental history.

This edited collection examines the formation of urban networks and role of gateways in Europe from the Middle Ages to the modern world. In the past, gateway cities were merely perceived as transport points, only relevant to maritime shipping. Today they are seen as the organic entities coordinating the allocation of resources and supporting the growth, efficiency and sustainability of logistics (including both the transport and distribution of goods and services). Using different historical case studies, the authors consider how logistics shaped urban networks and were shaped by them.

The #1 New York Times bestseller by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that's "as resonant today as ever" (The Wall Street Journal)-the settling of the Northwest Territory by courageous pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would define our country. As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam. They settled in what is now Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River. McCullough tells the story through five major characters: Cutler and Putnam; Cutler's son Ephraim; and two other men, one a carpenter turned architect, and the other a physician who became a prominent pioneer in American science. They and their families created a town in a primeval wilderness, while coping with such frontier realities as floods, fires, wolves and bears, no roads or bridges, no guarantees of any sort, all the while negotiating a contentious and sometimes hostile relationship with the native people. Like so many of McCullough's subjects, they let no obstacle deter or defeat them. Drawn in great part from a rare and all-but-unknown collection of diaries and letters by the key figures, The Pioneers is a uniquely American story of people whose ambition and courage led them to remarkable accomplishments. This is a revelatory and quintessentially American story, written with David McCullough's signature narrative energy.

No detailed comparison of the city-state in medieval Europe has been undertaken over the last century. Research has concentrated on the role of city-states and their republican polities as harbingers of the modern state, or else on their artistic and cultural achievements, above all in Italy. Much less attention has been devoted to the cities' territorial expansion: why, how, and with what consequences cities in the urban belt, stretching from central and northern Italy over the Alps to Switzerland, Germany, and the low countries, succeeded (or failed) in constructing sovereign polities, with or without dependent territories. Tom Scott goes beyond the customary focus on the leading Italian city-states to include, for the first time, detailed coverage of the Swiss city-states and the imperial cities of Germany. He criticizes current typologies of the city-state in Europe advanced by political and social scientists to suggest that the city-state was not a spent force in early modern Europe, but rather survived by transformation and adaption. He puts forward instead a typology which embraces both time and space by arguing for a regional framework for analysis which does not treat city-states in isolation but within a wider geopolitical setting.

The classic guide to exploring English local history, brought up to date and expanded. This is a book for anyone wanting to explore local history in England. It summarises, in an accessible and authoritative way, current knowledge and approaches, bringing together and illustrating the key sources and evidence, the skills and tools, the contexts and interpretations for successive periods. Case studies show these ingredients in use, combined to create histories of people and place over time. A standard text since its first edition in 1992, this new edition features extensive fresh material, updated to reflect additional availability of evidence, changing interpretations, new tools and skills (not least the use of IT), and developments in the time periods and topics tackled by local historians. The interdisciplinary character of twenty-first-century local, family and community history is a prominent feature. Complemented by 163 illustrations, this book offers an unrivalled introduction to understanding and researching local history.

This book tells the story of the Mount Songshan area architecture in simple terms, while also providing detailed information on the history of Buddhist architecture. The history of the Mount Songshan area can be traced back to the Xia Dynasty in the 23rd century B.C. The heritage architecture in this area has seen the rise and fall of various powers - including the Han Dynasty, Northern Wei Dynasty, Tang and Song Empires, Jin Dynasty, Yuan Dynasty, and the Ming and Qing Empires - and reflects the character of each historical period. Over the past 2,000 years, history has been continuously woven into the architecture. The Mount Songshan area is, therefore, a perfect representation of the perpetual Chinese civilization, and the most magnificent museum of ancient Chinese architecture. Most importantly, these various types of architecture offer valuable insights into the architectural design and technologies of each historical period. The products of ingenuity and innovation, they are marvellous creations that ancient Chinese people took great pride in.

A collection of essays on European historiography, focussing on the overlapping national histories in Europe presenting many of the contested areas through conflicting historiographies. Sponsored by the European Science Foundation, this unique volume is part of Writing the Nation , a major international project.

The definitive history of the Vikings -- from arts and culture to politics and cosmology -- by a distinguished archaeologist with decades of expertise The Viking Age -- from 750 to 1050 -- saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe. But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more. None of these appropriations capture the real Vikings, or the richness and sophistication of their culture. Based on the latest archaeological and textual evidence, Children of Ash and Elm tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology and religion, their material world. Known today for a stereotype of maritime violence, the Vikings exported new ideas, technologies, beliefs, and practices to the lands they discovered and the peoples they encountered, and in the process were themselves changed. From Eirik Bloodaxe, who fought his way to a kingdom, to Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir, the most traveled woman in the world, Children of Ash and Elm is the definitive history of the Vikings and their time.

Richard Halliburton (1900-1939), considered the world's first celebrity travel writer, swam the length of the Panama Canal, recreated Ulysses' voyages in the Mediterranean, crossed the Alps on an elephant, flew around the world in a biplane, and descended into the Mayan Well of Death, all the while chronicling his own adventures. Several books treat his life and travels, yet no book has addressed in detail Halliburton's most ambitious expedition: an attempt to sail across the Pacific Ocean in a Chinese junk. Set against the backdrop of a China devastated by invading Japanese armies and the storm clouds of world war gathering in Europe, Halliburton and a crew of fourteen set out to build and sail the Sea Dragon-a junk or ancient sailing ship-from Hong Kong to San Francisco for the Golden Gate International Exposition. After battling through crew conflicts and frequent delays, the Sea Dragon set sail on March 4, 1939. Three weeks after embarking, the ship encountered a typhoon and disappeared without a trace. Richly enhanced with historic photographs, Richard Halliburton and the Voyage of the Sea Dragon follows the dramatic arc of this ill-fated expedition in fine detail. Gerry Max artfully unpacks the tensions between Halliburton and his captain, John Wenlock Welch (owing much to Welch's homophobia and Halliburton's unconcealed homosexuality). And while Max naturally explores the trials and tribulations of preparing, constructing, and finally launching the Sea Dragon, he also punctuates the story with the invasion of China by the Japanese, as Halliburton and his letters home reveal an excellent wartime reporter. Max mines these documents, many of which have only recently come to light, as well as additional letters from Halliburton and his crew to family and friends, photographs, films, and tape recordings, to paint an intricate portrait of Halliburton's final expedition from inception to tragic end.

The Juan Fernandez Archipelago is located in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile at 33 Degrees S latitude. Robinson Crusoe Island is 667 km from the continent and approximately four million years old; Alejandro Selkirk Island is an additional 181 km west and only one million years old. The natural impacts of subsidence and erosion have shaped the landscapes of these islands, resulting in progressive changes to their subtropical vegetation. The older island has undergone more substantial changes, due to both natural causes and human impacts. After the discovery of Robinson Crusoe Island in 1574, people began cutting down forests for lumber to construct boats and homes, for firewood, and to make room for pastures. Domesticated plants and animals were introduced, some of which have since become feral or invasive, causing damage to the local vegetation. The wealth of historical records on these activities provides a detailed chronicle of how human beings use their environment for survival in a new ecosystem. This book offers an excellent case study on the impacts that people can have on the resources of an oceanic island.

A Commerce of Knowledge tells the story of three generations of Church of England chaplains who served the English Levant Company in Syria during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Reconstructing the careers of its protagonists in the cosmopolitan city of Ottoman Aleppo, Simon Mills investigates the links between English commercial and diplomatic expansion, and English scholarly and missionary interests: the study of Middle-Eastern languages; the exploration of biblical and Greco-Roman antiquities; and the early dissemination of Protestant literature in Arabic. Early modern Orientalism is usually conceived as an episode in the history of scholarship. By shifting the focus to Aleppo, A Commerce of Knowledge brings to light the connections between the seemingly separate worlds, tracing the emergence of new kinds of philological and archaeological enquiry in England back to a series of real-world encounters between the chaplains and the scribes, booksellers, priests, rabbis, and sheikhs they encountered in the Ottoman Empire. Setting the careers of its protagonists against a background of broader developments across Protestant and Catholic Europe, Mills shows how the institutionalization of English scholarship, and the later English attempt to influence the Eastern Christian churches, were bound up with the international struggle to establish a commercial foothold in the Levant. He argues that these connections would endure until the shift of British commercial and imperial interests to the Indian subcontinent in the second half of the eighteenth century fostered new currents of intellectual life at home.

This book discusses the sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands from the perspectives of Ryukyu and Okinawa. Written in chronological order, the book has 13 chapters featuring 121 documents and maps. The first 12 chapters explain, based on detailed historical facts on the Diaoyu Islands, the rise and decline of the Ryukyu Kingdom and the historical roles of China, Japan, and the United States in the history of the kingdom. The final chapter is an overview of the Sino-Ryukyuan, Japan-Ryukyuan and US-Ryukyuan relations, and further clarifies the issue of ownership of the Diaoyu Islands and their strategic position. The book demonstrates that Ryukyu did not have sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands, refutes Japan's claim that these islands were a part of the Ryukyu Kingdom, and reveals the causes and consequences of the Sino-Japanese conflicts created by the United States. The book examines the 500-year friendship between China and Ryukyu, recounting moving stories. Lastly, citing ancient documents and more, the books proves that the Ryukyus never owned the Diaoyu Islands and that these islands belong to China.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was not just a world-historical event in its own right, but also struck powerful blows against racism and imperialism, and so inspired many black radicals internationally. This edited collection explores the implications of the creation of the Soviet Union and the Communist International for black and colonial liberation struggles across the African diaspora. It examines the critical intellectual influence of Marxism and Bolshevism on the current of revolutionary 'black internationalism' and analyses how 'Red October' was viewed within the contested articulations of different struggles against racism and colonialism. Challenging European-centred understandings of the Russian Revolution and the global left, The Red and the Black offers new insights on the relations between Communism, various lefts and anti-colonialisms across the Black Atlantic - including Garveyism and various other strands of Pan-Africanism. The volume makes a major and original intellectual contribution by making the relations between the Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic central to debates on questions relating to racism, resistance and social change. -- .

This slim volume, published anonymously in 1771 within months of the Endeavour's return from Captain Cook's first voyage, predates Hawkesworth's publication of Cook's own journal in his Voyages (1773, also reissued). It has been attributed variously to two of the ship's petty officers (Orton and Perry); Sydney Parkinson, draughtsman; his employer Joseph Banks; or the Swedish botanist Solander. The story moves rapidly, with well-chosen detail: mines that 'destroy two thousand slaves yearly', or the brown granite of a communal laundry. The author describes marine animals, Tahitian and New Zealand society, and foodstuffs including a 'large milky farinaceous fruit, which when baked resembles bread' - the breadfruit that Joseph Banks later decided to introduce to the Caribbean, leading to the ill-fated Bounty voyage (Bligh's account of which is also reissued). The author reports making 'considerable progress in learning the language of the country', and concludes with a short list of Tahitian words.

This book examines the 1583 voyage of Sir Humphrey Gilbert to North America. This was England's first attempt at colonization beyond the British Isles, yet it has not been subject to thorough scholarly analysis for more than 70 years. An exhaustive examination of the voyage reveals the complexity and preparedness of this and similar early modern colonizing expeditions. Prominent Elizabethans assisted Gilbert by researching and investing in his expedition: the Printing Revolution was critical to their plans, as Gilbert's supporters traveled throughout England with promotional literature proving England's claim to North America. Gilbert's experts used maps and charts to publicize and navigate, while his pilots experimented with new navigating tools and practices. Though he failed to establish a settlement, Gilbert created a blueprint for later Stuart colonizers who achieved his vision of a British Empire in the Western Hemisphere. This book clarifies the role of cartography, natural science, and promotional literature in Elizabethan colonization and elucidates the preparation stages of early modern colonizing voyages.

"The history of water development . . . offers a particularly fine post for observing the astonishing and implausible workings of historical change and, in response, for cultivating an appropriate level of humility and modesty in our anticipations of our own unknowable future."
Tracing the origins and growth of the Denver Water Department, this study of water and its unique role and history in the West, as well as in the nation, raises questions about the complex relationship among cities, suburbs, and rural areas, allowing us to consider this precious resource and its past, present, and future with both optimism and realism.
Patricia Nelson Limerick is the faculty director and board chair of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, where she is also a professor of history and environmental studies. She currently serves as the vice president for the teaching division of the American Historical Association. Her most widely read book, "The Legacy of Conquest," is in its twenty-fifth year of publication.
Jason L. Hanson is a member of the research faculty at the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where his work focuses on natural resource use and the environment. He lives in Denver.

John Rickman, second lieutenant on one of the two ships commanded by James Cook on his last expedition, wrote this journal during the voyage. It was first published anonymously in 1781, because the Admiralty embargoed all personal accounts until an official report of the voyage was released. Rickman apparently wanted to anticipate any attempt to blame him (a party under his command had killed a Hawaiian chief) for precipitating Cook's death. This revised edition, 'compared with, and corrected from, the voyage published by authority' was published - again anonymously - in 1785. After an editorial preface and an introductory account of earlier voyages to the South Seas, the journal itself offers a detailed first-hand narrative of the four-year voyage, including the deaths of Cook and of Captain Clerke, who took over command of the expedition but died of tuberculosis while searching for the western entrance to the North-West Passage.