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Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects
Among the voyages of exploration and surveying in the late 18th
century, that of Alejandro Malaspina best represents the high
ideals and scientific interests of the Enlightenment. Italian-born,
Malaspina entered the Spanish navy in 1774. In September 1788 he
and fellow-officer Jose Bustamante submitted a plan to the Ministry
of Marine for a voyage of survey and inspection to Spanish
territories in the Americas and Philippines. The expedition was to
produce hydrographic charts for the use of Spanish merchantmen and
warships and to report on the political, economic and defensive
state of Spain's overseas possessions. The plan was approved and in
July 1789 Malaspina and Bustamante sailed from CA!diz in the
purpose-built corvettes, Descubierta and Atrevida. On board the
vessels were scientists and artists and an array of the latest
surveying and astronomical instruments. The voyage lasted more than
five years. On his return Malaspina was promoted Brigadier de la
Real Armada, and began work on an account of the voyage in seven
volumes to dwarf the narratives of his predecessors in the Pacific
such as Cook and Bougainville. Among much else, it would contain
sweeping recommendations for reform in the governance of Spain's
overseas empire. But Malaspina became involved in political
intrigue. In November 1795 he was arrested, stripped of his rank
and sentenced to life imprisonment. Although released in 1803,
Malaspina spent the last seven years of his life in obscure
retirement in Italy. He never resumed work on the great edition,
and his journal was not published in Spain until 1885. Only in
recent years has a multi-volume edition appeared under the auspices
of the Museo Naval, Madrid, that does justice to the achievements
of what for long was a forgotten voyage. This first volume of a
series of three contains Malaspina's diario or journal from 31 July
1789 to 14 December 1790, newly translated into English, with
substantial introduction and commentary. Among the places visited
and described are Montevideo, Puerto Deseado, Port Egmont, Puerto
San Carlos, ValparaA so, Callao, Guayaquil and PanamA!. Other texts
include Malaspina's introduction to his intended edition, and his
correspondence with the Minister of the Marine before and during
the voyage.
Writing the Rebellion presents a cultural history of loyalist
writing in early America. There has been a spate of related works
recently, but Philip Gould's narrative offers a completely
different view of the loyalist/patriot contentions than appears in
any of these accounts. By focusing on the literary projections of
the loyalist cause, Gould dissolves the old legend that loyalists
were more British than American, and patriots the embodiment of a
new sensibility drawn from their American situation and upbringing.
He shows that both sides claimed to be heritors of British civil
discourse, Old World learning, and the genius of English culture.
The first half of Writing Rebellion deals with the ways "political
disputation spilled into arguments about style, form, and
aesthetics, as though these subjects could secure (or ruin) the
very status of political authorship." Chapters in this section
illustrate how loyalists attack patriot rhetoric by invoking
British satires of an inflated Whig style by Alexander Pope and
Jonathan Swift. Another chapter turns to Loyalist critiques of
Congressional language and especially the Continental Association,
which was responsible for radical and increasingly violent measures
against the Loyalists. The second half of Gould's book looks at
satiric adaptations of the ancient ballad tradition to see what
happens when patriots and loyalists interpret and adapt the same
text (or texts) for distinctive yet related purposes. The last two
chapters look at the Loyalist response to Thomas Paine's Common
Sense and the ways the concept of the author became defined in
early America. Throughout the manuscript, Gould acknowledges the
purchase English literary culture continued to have in
revolutionary America, even among revolutionaries.
Why put Abraham Lincoln, the sometime corporate lawyer and American
President, in dialogue with Karl Marx, the intellectual
revolutionary? On the surface, they would appear to share few
interests. Yet, though Lincoln and Marx never met one another, both
had an abiding interest in the most important issue of the
nineteenth-century Atlantic world-the condition of labor in a
capitalist world, one that linked slave labor in the American south
to England's (and continental Europe's) dark satanic mills. Each
sought solutions-Lincoln through a polity that supported free men,
free soil, and free labor; Marx by organizing the working class to
resist capitalist exploitation. While both men espoused
emancipation for American slaves, here their agreements ended.
Lincoln thought that the free labor society of the American North
provided great opportunities for free men missing from the American
South, a kind of "farm ladder" that gave every man the ability to
become a landowner. Marx thought such "free land" a chimera and
(with information from German-American correspondents), was certain
that the American future lay in the proletarianized cities. Abraham
Lincoln and Karl Marx in Dialogue intersperses short selections
from the two writers from their voluminous works, opening with an
introduction that puts the ideas of the two men in the broad
context of nineteenth-century thought and politics. The volume
excerpts Lincoln's and Marx's views on slavery (they both opposed
it for different reasons), the Civil War (Marx claimed the war
concerned slavery and should have as its goal abolition; Lincoln
insisted that his goal was just the defeat of the Confederacy), and
the opportunities American free men had to gain land and economic
independence. Through this volume, readers will gain a firmer
understanding of nineteenth-century labor relations throughout the
Atlantic world: slavery and free labor; the interconnections
between slave-made cotton and the exploitation of English
proletarians; and the global impact of the American Civil War.
In 1794, two years before Tennessee became a state, the legislature
of the Southwest Territory chartered Blount College in Knoxville as
one of the first three colleges established west of the Appalachian
Mountains. In 1807, the school changed its name to East Tennessee
College. The school relocated to a 40-acre tract, known today as
the Hill, in 1828 and was renamed East Tennessee University in
1840. The Civil War literally shut down the university. Students
and faculty were recruited to serve on battlefields, and troops
used campus facilities as hospitals and barracks. In 1869, East
Tennessee University became the states land-grant institution under
the auspices of the 1862 Morrill Act. In 1879, the state
legislature changed the name of the institution to the University
of Tennessee. By the early 20th century, the university admitted
women, hosted teacher institutes, and constructed new buildings.
Since that time, the University of Tennessee has established
campuses and programs across the state. Today, in addition to a
rich sports tradition, the University of Tennessee provides
Tennesseans with unparalleled opportunities.
Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in
the Spanish Civil War.
This book offers a unique perspective for understanding how and why
the Second World War in Europe ended as it did-and why Germany, in
attacking the Soviet Union, came far closer to winning the war than
is often perceived. Why Germany Nearly Won: A New History of the
Second World War in Europe challenges this conventional wisdom in
highlighting how the re-establishment of the traditional German art
of war-updated to accommodate new weapons systems-paved the way for
Germany to forge a considerable military edge over its much larger
potential rivals by playing to its qualitative strengths as a
continental power. Ironically, these methodologies also created and
exacerbated internal contradictions that undermined the same war
machine and left it vulnerable to enemies with the capacity to
adapt and build on potent military traditions of their own. The
book begins by examining topics such as the methods by which the
German economy and military prepared for war, the German military
establishment's formidable strengths, and its weaknesses. The book
then takes an entirely new perspective on explaining the Second
World War in Europe. It demonstrates how Germany, through its
invasion of the Soviet Union, came within a whisker of cementing a
European-based empire that would have allowed the Third Reich to
challenge the Anglo-American alliance for global hegemony-an
outcome that by commonly cited measures of military potential
Germany never should have had even a remote chance of
accomplishing. The book's last section explores the final year of
the war and addresses how Germany was able to hang on against the
world's most powerful nations working in concert to engineer its
defeat. Detailed maps show the position and movement of opposing
forces during the key battles discussed in the book More than 30
charts, figures, and appendices, including detailed orders of
battle, economic figures, and equipment comparisons
Since the late nineteenth century, fears that marriage is in crisis
have reverberated around the world. Domestic Tensions, National
Anxieties explores this phenomenon, asking why people of various
races, classes, and nations frequently seem to be fretting about
marriage. Each of the twelve chapters analyzes a specific time and
place during which proclamations of marriage crisis have dominated
public discourse, whether in 1920s India, mid-century France, or
present-day Iran. While each nation has had its own reasons for
escalating anxieties over marriage and the family, common themes
emerge in how people have understood and debated crises in
marriage. Collectively, the chapters reveal how diverse individuals
have deployed the institution of marriage to talk not only about
intimate relationships, but also to understand the nation, its
problems, and various socioeconomic and political transformations.
The volume reveals critical insights and showcases original
research across interdisciplinary and national boundaries, making a
groundbreaking contribution to current scholarship on marriage,
family, nationalism, gender, and the law.
The story of Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, one of the world's best-loved hotels, is also the tale of a region rich in cultural and natural history.
As the lodge celebrates its 30th anniversary we tell the story of the hotel, the people and the region - a chronicle of a journey 180 million years in the making.
Routes and Realms explores the ways in which Muslims expressed
attachment to land from the ninth through the eleventh centuries,
the earliest period of intensive written production in Arabic. In
this groundbreaking first book, Zayde Antrim develops a "discourse
of place," a framework for approaching formal texts devoted to the
representation of territory across genres. The discourse of place
included such varied works as topographical histories, literary
anthologies, religious treatises, world geographies, poetry, travel
literature, and maps.
By closely reading and analyzing these works, Antrim argues that
their authors imagined plots of land primarily as homes, cities,
and regions and associated them with a range of claims to religious
and political authority. She contends that these are evidence of
the powerful ways in which the geographical imagination was tapped
to declare loyalty and invoke belonging in the early Islamic world,
reinforcing the importance of the earliest regional mapping
tradition in the Islamic world.
Routes and Realms challenges a widespread tendency to underestimate
the importance of territory and to over-emphasize the importance of
religion and family to notions of community and belonging among
Muslims and Arabs, both in the past and today.
Though the distance between opera and popular music seems immense
today, a century ago opera was an integral part of American popular
music culture, and familiarity with opera was still a part of
American "cultural literacy." During the Ragtime era, hundreds of
humorous Tin Pan Alley songs centered on operatic subjects-either
directly quoting operas or alluding to operatic characters and
vocal stars of the time. These songs brilliantly captured the
moment when popular music in America transitioned away from its
European operatic heritage, and when the distinction between low-
and high-brow "popular" musical forms was free to develop, with all
its attendant cultural snobbery and rebellion.
Author Larry Hamberlin guides us through this large but
oft-forgotten repertoire of operatic novelties, and brings to life
the rich humor and keen social criticism of the era. In the early
twentieth-century, when new social forces were undermining the view
that our European heritage was intrinsically superior to our native
vernacular culture, opera-that great inheritance from our European
forebearers-functioned in popular discourse as a signifier for
elite culture. Tin Pan Opera shows that these operatic novelty
songs availed this connection to a humorous and critical end.
Combining traditional, European operatic melodies with the new and
American rhythmic verve of ragtime, these songs painted vivid
images of immigrant Americans, liberated women, and upwardly
striving African Americans, striking emblems of the profound
transformations that shook the United States at the beginning of
the American century.
In Spectacular Men, Sarah E. Chinn investigates how working class
white men looked to the early American theatre for examples of
ideal manhood. Theatre-going was the primary source of
entertainment for working people of the early Republic and the
Jacksonian period, and plays implicitly and explicitly addressed
the risks and rewards of citizenship. Ranging from representations
of the heroes of the American Revolution to images of doomed
Indians to plays about ancient Rome, Chinn unearths dozens of plays
rarely read by critics. Spectacular Men places the theatre at the
center of the self-creation of working white men, as voters, as
workers, and as Americans.
Fashion History: A Global View proposes a new perspective on
fashion history. Arguing that fashion has occurred in cultures
beyond the West throughout history, this groundbreaking book
explores the geographic places and historical spaces that have been
largely neglected by contemporary fashion studies, bringing them
together for the first time. Reversing the dominant narrative that
privileges Western Europe in the history of dress, Welters and
Lillethun adopt a cross-cultural approach to explore a vast array
of cultures around the globe. They explore key issues affecting
fashion systems, ranging from innovation, production and
consumption to identity formation and the effects of colonization.
Case studies include the cross-cultural trade of silk textiles in
Central Asia, the indigenous dress of the Americas and of Hawai'i,
the cosmetics of the Tang Dynasty in China, and stylistic
innovation in sub-Saharan Africa. Examining the new lessons that
can be deciphered from archaeological findings and theoretical
advancements, the book shows that fashion history should be
understood as a global phenomenon, originating well before and
beyond the fourteenth century European court, which is continually,
and erroneously, cited as fashion's birthplace. Providing a fresh
framework for fashion history scholarship, Fashion History: A
Global View will inspire inclusive dress narratives for students
and scholars of fashion, anthropology, and cultural studies.
Dit is 1713. VOC-admiraal Johannes van Steelant bring sy ryklik belaaide retoervloot via die Kaapse diensstasie terug na Nederland uit Batavia. Saam op die vlagskip, sy vyf jong kinders. Op die oop see raak hulle een-een siek. Hete koors, maagpyn, swere – die gevreesde pokke.
Op 12 Februarie gaan die gesin, nou almal gesond, aan land in Tafelbaai. Hul skeepsklere word gewas in die VOC se slawelosie. Enkele maande later is byna die helfte van die Kaapse bevolking dood aan pokke.
In Retoervloot bring VOC-kenner Dan Sleigh dié gegewe, en die verbysterende werkinge van die VOC-retoervlootstelsel, lewend voor die oog. Aan die hand van Van Steelant se nuut-ontdekte skeepsjoernaal, met die agtergrondinkleding wat ’n meesterlike geskiedkundige soos Sleigh kan bied, staan die leser op die dek van vlagskip Sandenburg – ’n magtige skip van ’n roemryke organisasie, dog uitgelewer aan die woedende oseaan. Verder is Retoervloot ’n gedenksteen vir Kaapstad se grootste ramp tot op hede
Prof. Fransjohan Pretorius se rubrieke oor die geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika van voor Jan van Riebeeck se landing tot die jongste tye wat in die dagblad Beeld verskyn het.
Maak kennis met die helde en hendsoppers, die skurke en sterre van die land se verlede in kort en boeiende rubrieke wat die leser se geheue sal verfris oor al die grootste momente in ons geskiedenis asook 'n paar minder bekende maar ewe interessante gebeure.
Conventional wisdom holds that the US Army in Vietnam, thrust into
an unconventional war where occupying terrain was a meaningless
measure of success, depended on body counts as its sole measure of
military progress. In No Sure Victory, Army officer and historian
Gregory Daddis looks far deeper into the Army's techniques for
measuring military success and presents a much more complicated-and
disturbing-account of the American misadventure in Indochina.
Daddis shows how the US Army, which confronted an unfamiliar enemy
and an even more unfamiliar form of warfare, adopted a massive, and
eventually unmanageable, system of measurements and formulas to
track the progress of military operations that ranged from
pacification efforts to search-and-destroy missions. The Army's
monthly "Measurement of Progress" reports covered innumerable
aspects of the fighting in Vietnam-force ratios, Vietcong/North
Vietnamese Army incidents, tactical air sorties, weapons losses,
security of base areas and roads, population control, area control,
and hamlet defenses. Concentrating more on data collection and less
on data analysis, these indiscriminate attempts to gauge success
may actually have hindered the army's ability to evaluate the true
outcome of the fight at hand--a roadblock that Daddis believes
significantly contributed to the many failures that American forces
suffered in Vietnam.
Filled with incisive analysis and rich historical detail, No Sure
Victory is not only a valuable case study in unconventional
warfare, but a cautionary tale that offers important perspectives
on how to measure performance in current and future armed conflict.
Given America's ongoing counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and
Afghanistan, No Sure Victory provides valuable historical
perspective on how to measure--and mismeasure--military success.
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