|
Books > History > History of other lands
This book studies issues of public order in late colonial and
earlier postcolonial India. It identifies various governmental
practices, such as curfews, bans and police action, that thrive on
extraordinary legislation to maintain public order. The colonial
regime often deployed extraordinary legislation to curtail the
liberties of individuals and groups by citing potential harm to
public order. Through public order, a spectacle of sovereign power
and politics of contestation between the citizens and law
enforcement emerges. The book will contribute to existing
discussions about sovereignty and legitimacy of state power by
providing a representative sample of concrete instances such as
inter and intra-community riots, labour riots, labour strikes and
nationalist agitation. It will also enable a comparative approach
and illustrates processes of the evolution of state formation and
citizenship in South Asia.
For at least two centuries, the South's economy, politics,
religion, race relations, fiction, music, foodways and more have
figured prominently in nearly all facets of American life. In A New
History of the American South, W. Fitzhugh Brundage joins a stellar
group of accomplished historians in gracefully weaving a new
narrative of Southern history from its ancient past to the present.
This groundbreaking work draws on both well-established and new
currents in scholarship, including global and Atlantic world
history, histories of African diaspora, environmental history, and
more. The volume also considers the experiences of all people of
the South: Black, white, Indigenous, female, male, poor, elite, and
more. Together, the essays compose a seamless, cogent, and engaging
work that can be read cover to cover or sampled at leisure.
Contributors are Peter A. Coclanis, Gregory P. Downs, Laura F.
Edwards, Robbie Ethridge, Kari Frederickson, Paul Harvey, Kenneth
R. Janken, Martha S. Jones, Blair L. M. Kelley, Kate Masur, Michael
A. McDonnell, Scott Reynolds Nelson, Jim Rice, Natalie Ring, and
Jon F. Sensbach.
How an obscure Puritan sermon came to be seen as a founding
document of American identity and exceptionalism "For we must
consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill," John Winthrop
warned his fellow Puritans at New England's founding in 1630. More
than three centuries later, Ronald Reagan remade that passage into
a timeless celebration of American promise. How were Winthrop's
long-forgotten words reinvented as a central statement of American
identity and exceptionalism? In As a City on a Hill, leading
American intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers tells the surprising
story of one of the most celebrated documents in the canon of the
American idea. In doing so, he brings to life the ideas Winthrop's
text carried in its own time and the sharply different yearnings
that have been attributed to it since. As a City on a Hill shows
how much more malleable, more saturated with vulnerability, and
less distinctly American Winthrop's "Model of Christian Charity"
was than the document that twentieth-century Americans invented.
Across almost four centuries, Rodgers traces striking shifts in the
meaning of Winthrop's words-from Winthrop's own anxious reckoning
with the scrutiny of the world, through Abraham Lincoln's haunting
reference to this "almost chosen people," to the "city on a hill"
that African Americans hoped to construct in Liberia, to the era of
Donald Trump. As a City on a Hill reveals the circuitous,
unexpected ways Winthrop's words came to lodge in American
consciousness. At the same time, the book offers a probing
reflection on how nationalism encourages the invention of
"timeless" texts to straighten out the crooked realities of the
past.
This book provides an arresting interpretation of the history of
Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific from the earliest
settlements to the present. Usually viewed in isolation, these
societies are covered here in a single account, in which the
authors show how the peoples of the region constructed their own
identities and influenced those of their neighbours.
By broadening the focus to the regional level, this volume develops
analyses - of economic, social and political history - which
transcend
national boundaries. The result is a compelling work which both
describes the aspirations of European settlers and reveals how the
dispossessed and marginalized indigenous peoples negotiated their
own lives as best they could. The authors demonstrate that these
stories are not separate but rather strands of a single history.
Son, there's more treasure buried right here In Oklahoma than in
the rest of the whole Southwest."" Those words from an old-timer
launched Steve Wilson on a yearslong quest for the stones of
Oklahoma's treasures. This book is the result.It is a book of
stories-some true, some legendary- about fabulous caches of lost
treasure: outlaw loot buried in the heat of pursuit, hoards of
Spanish gold dud silver secreted for a later day, Frenchmen's gold
ingots hidden amid massive cryptic symbols, Indian treasure
concealed in caves, and lost mines- gold and silver and platinum.
It tells about the earliest treasure seekers of the region and
those who are still hunting today. Along the way it describes
shootouts and massacres, trails whose routes are preserved in the
countless legends of gold hidden alongside them, Mexicans'
smelters, and mines hidden and sought over the centuries. Among the
chapters: ''The Secrets Spanish Fort Tells,"" ""Quests for Red
River's Silver Mines,"" ""Oklahoma's Forgotten Treasure Trail,'""
""Ghosts of Devil's Canyon and Their Gold,"" ""Jesse James's
Two-Million-Dollar Treasure,"" ""The Last Cave with the Iron
Door,"" and, perhaps most intriguing of all, ""The Mystery of
Cascorillo-A Lost"" City."" This is a book about quests over trails
dim before the turn of the century. It is about early peoples,
Mound Builders, Vikings, conquistadors, explorers, outlaw, gold
seekers. The author has spent years tracking down the stories and
hours listening to the old-timers' tales of their searches. Wilson
has provided maps, both detailed modem ones and photographs of
early treasure maps and has richly illustrated the book with
pictures of the sites that gave rise to the tales. . For armchair
travelers, never-say-die treasure hunters, historians, and
chroniclers and aficionados of western lore, this is an absorbing
and delightful book. And who knows? The reader may find gold!
The shocking characteristics of Rwanda's genocide in 1994 have
etched themselves indelibly on the global conscience. The Path to
Genocide in Rwanda combines extensive, original field data with
some of the best existing evidence to evaluate the myriad theories
behind the genocide and to offer a rigorous and comprehensive
explanation of how and why it occurred, and why so many Rwandans
participated in it. Drawing on interviews with over three hundred
Rwandans, Omar Shahabudin McDoom systematically compares those who
participated in the violence against those who did not. He
contrasts communities that experienced violence early with
communities where violence began late, as well as communities where
violence was limited with communities where it was massive. His
findings offer new perspectives on some of the most troubling
questions concerning the genocide, while also providing a broader
engagement with key theoretical debates in the study of genocides
and ethnic conflict.
In 1906, from the ice fields northwest of Greenland, Commander
Robert E. Peary spotted an unknown land in the distance. He called
it "Crocker Land". Scientists and explorers agreed that Peary had
found a new continent. Several years later, two of his disciples,
George Borup and Donald MacMillan-with the sponsorship of the
American Museum of Natural History-assembled a team to investigate.
They pitched their two-year mission as a scientific tour de force
to fill in the last blank space on the globe. But the Crocker Land
Expedition became a five-year ordeal that endured a fatal boating
accident, a drunken captain, a shipwreck, marooned rescue parties,
disease, dissension and a crewman-turned-murderer. Based on a trove
of unpublished letters, diaries and field notes, A Wretched and
Precarious Situation is a harrowing adventure.
For a thousand years an extraordinary empire made possible Europe's
transition to the modern world: Byzantium. An audacious and
resilient but now little known society, it combined orthodox
Christianity with paganism, classical Greek learning with Roman
power, to produce a great and creative civilization which for
centuries held in check the armies of Islam. Judith Herrin's
concise and compelling book replaces the standard chronological
approach of most histories of Byzantium. Instead, each short
chapter is focused on a theme, such as a building (the great church
of Hagia Sophia), a clash over religion (iconoclasm), sex and power
(the role of eunuchs), an outstanding Byzantine individual (the
historian Anna Komnene), a symbol of civilization (the fork), and a
battle for territory (the crusades). In this way she makes
accessible and understandable the grand sweeps of Byzantine
history, from the founding of its magnificent capital
Constantinople (modern Istanbul) in 330, to its fall to the Ottoman
Turks in 1453.
According to Saunders Lewis the Investiture of 1969 was a turning
point in Welsh history. This book tells the story through the
voices of the most prominent characters: protesters, journalists
and politicians. It tells of the bickering within some of Wales'
most prominent institutions, such as the Urdd and Gorsedd, as well
as the absurd and intense events leading up to the ceremony in
Caernarfon. We read about Cymdeithas yr Iaith rallies,
demonstrations by Aberystwyth and Bangor students, dramatic
appearances by the FWA, the bombing campaign by Mudiad Amddiffyn
Cymru and the suspicious activities of the secret police. This book
creates a picture of the turbulent years of the sixties and gives
an idea of what it was like to be a part of the battle between
Welsh nationalists and the British institution of the time.
The three counties of England's northern borderlands have long had
a reputation as an exceptional and peripheral region within the
medieval kingdom, preoccupied with local turbulence as a result of
the proximity of a hostile frontier with Scotland. Yet, in the
fifteenth century, open war was an infrequent occurrence in a
region which is much better understood by historians of
fourteenth-century Anglo-Scottish conflict, or of Tudor responses
to the so-called 'border reivers'. This first book-length study of
England's far north in the fifteenth century addresses conflict,
kinship, lordship, law, justice, and governance in this dynamic
region. It traces the norms and behaviours by which local society
sought to manage conflict, arguing that common law and march law
were only parts of a mixed framework which included aspects of
'feud' as it is understood in a wider European context. Addressing
the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland
together, Jackson W. Armstrong transcends an east-west division in
the region's historiography and challenges the prevailing
understanding of conflict in late medieval England, setting the
region within a wider comparative framework.
The dramatic religious revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries involved a battle over social memory. On one side, the
Reformation repudiated key aspects of medieval commemorative
culture; on the other, traditional religion claimed that
Protestantism was a religion without memory. This volume shows how
religious memory was sometimes attacked and extinguished, while at
other times rehabilitated in a modified guise. It investigates how
new modes of memorialisation were embodied in texts, material
objects, images, physical buildings, rituals, and bodily gestures.
Attentive to the roles played by denial, amnesia, and fabrication,
it also considers the retrospective processes by which the English
Reformation became identified as an historic event. Examining
dissident as well as official versions of this story, this richly
illustrated, interdisciplinary collection traces how memory of the
religious revolution evolved in the two centuries following the
Henrician schism, and how the Reformation embedded itself in the
early modern cultural imagination.
Eastern Mediterranean port cities, such as Constantinople, Smyrna,
and Salonica, have long been sites of fascination. Known for their
vibrant and diverse populations, the dynamism of their economic and
cultural exchanges, and their form of relatively peaceful
co-existence in a turbulent age, many would label them as models of
cosmopolitanism. In this study, Malte Fuhrmann examines changes in
the histories of space, consumption, and identities in the
nineteenth and early twentieth century while the Mediterranean
became a zone of influence for European powers. Giving voice to the
port cities' forgotten inhabitants, Fuhrmann explores how their
urban populations adapted to European practices, how entertainment
became a marker of a Europeanized way of life, and consuming beer
celebrated innovation, cosmopolitanism and mixed gender
sociability. At the same time, these adaptations to a European way
of life were modified according to local needs, as was the case for
the new quays, streets, and buildings. Revisiting leisure practises
as well as the formation of class, gender, and national identities,
Fuhrmann offers an alternative view on the relationship between the
Islamic World and Europe.
A steel town daughter’s search for truth and beauty in
Birmingham, Alabama “As Birmingham goes, so goes the
nation,” Fred Shuttlesworth observed when he invited Martin
Luther King Jr. to the city for the transformative protests of
1963. From the height of the Civil Rights Movement through its long
aftermath, images of police dogs, fire hoses and four girls
murdered when Ku Klux Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street
Baptist Church have served as an uncomfortable racial mirror for
the nation. Like many white people who came of age in the Civil
Rights Movement’s wake, Julie Buckner Armstrong knew little about
this history. Only after moving away and discovering writers like
Toni Morrison and Alice Walker did she realize how her hometown and
family were part of a larger, ongoing story of struggle and
injustice. When Armstrong returned to Birmingham decades later to
care for her aging mother, Shuttlesworth’s admonition rang in her
mind. By then an accomplished scholar and civil rights educator,
Armstrong found herself pondering the lessons Birmingham holds for
a twenty-first century America. Those lessons extended far beyond
what a 2014 Teaching Tolerance report describes as the common
distillation of the Civil Rights Movement into “two names and
four words: Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, and ‘I have a
dream.’” Seeking to better understand a more complex local
history, its connection to broader stories of oppression and
resistance, and her own place in relation to it, Armstrong embarked
on a journey to unravel the standard Birmingham narrative to see
what she would find. Beginning at the center, with her family’s
1947 arrival to a housing project near the color line, within
earshot of what would become known as Dynamite Hill, Armstrong
works her way over time and across the map. Weaving in stories of
her white working-class family, classmates, and others not
traditionally associated with Birmingham’s civil rights history,
including members of the city’s LGBTQ community, she forges
connections between the familiar and lesser-known. The result is a
nuanced portrait of Birmingham--as seen in public housing, at old
plantations, in segregated neighborhoods, across contested boundary
lines, over mountains, along increasingly polluted waterways,
beneath airport runways, on highways cutting through town, and
under the gaze of the iconic statue of Vulcan. In her search for
truth and beauty in Birmingham, Armstrong draws on the powers of
place and storytelling to dig into the cracks, complicating easy
narratives of civil rights progress. Among the discoveries she
finds in America’s racial mirror is a nation that has failed to
recognize itself in the horrific images from Birmingham’s past
and to acknowledge the continuing inequalities that make up the
Civil Right’s Movement’s unfinished business. Learning from
Birmingham reminds us that stories of civil rights, structural
oppression, privilege, abuse, race and gender bias, and inequity
are difficult and complicated, but their telling, especially from
multiple stakeholder perspectives, is absolutely necessary.
This is a major, single-volume introduction to the whole of Ancient
Greek History. It covers the period from the Golden Age of Knossos
and Mycenae to the incorporation of Greece into the Roman empire in
the second century BC. The book combines narrative and
socio-economic history to cover all regions of Greece, including
territories on the edge of the Greek and Hellenistic worlds, as
well as the traditional centres such as Athens and Sparta.
"A History of Ancient Greece" provides students with an
accessible history of the region, combining accounts of the major
events with in-depth analyses of the underlying issues. The book is
designed explicitly for student use and contains numerous pedagogic
features including summaries of key issues, balanced accounts of
controversial points, useful discussions of Greek institutions,
chronologies and a glossary.
Written during the First World War, this book describes Romania's
role in World War I during the critical years of 1916 and 1917. The
book analyzes the situation of the Romanians living within the
borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time and the causes
for Romania's entry into the war. The author then discusses
Romania's contribution to the war effort during 1916 and the first
half of 1917. An important record of events for historians
interested in the First World War on the Eastern Front, it includes
several essential historical documents that illustrate the author's
account of the events of the time. The book also has a preface by
Albert Thomas, French minister of Armaments and War Production at
that time, and Maurice Muret. It is a valuable first-hand account
of Romania's involvement in World War I. The author, Nicolae
Petrescu-Comnene was an important Romanian diplomat of the interwar
period. He served as ambassador to Switzerland, Germany, and the
Vatican, as well as a delegate at the League of Nations, before
becoming foreign minister from 1938 to 1939. He authored numerous
studies on history, law, and politics.
|
|