Perhaps no work of history written in the 20th century has done more to undermine an existing consensus and cause its readers to re-evaluate their own preconceptions than has Jonathan Riley-Smith's revisionist account of the motives of the first crusaders. Riley-Smith's thesis - based on extensive original research and firmly rooted in his refusal to uncritically accept the evidence or reasoning of earlier historians - is that the majority of the men who travelled to the east on crusade in the years 1098-1100 were primarily motivated by faith. This finding, which ran directly counter to at least four centuries of consensus that other motives, not least greed for land, were more important, has helped to stimulate exciting reappraisals of the whole crusading movement. Riley-Smith backed it up with forensic examination of the key crusader-inspiring speech delivered by Pope Urban II, looking to clarify the meanings of five competing contemporary accounts in order to understand how an initially simple, and rather confused, appeal for help became a sophisticated rationale for the concept of 'just war.'

Every age has had its rebels: socialists, peace activists, sexual reformers, fundamentalists, and more. The collections of the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam are full of them. The IISH is the world's largest documentation centre in the field of social history and emancipation movements. This book looks back on seventy-five years of the IISH and its collections, with a focus on creative ideas and people who fought for radical change, from Karl Marx to Aung San Suu Kyi, the French Revolution to the Chinese student revolt of 1989, from the early modern world explorers to today's anti-globalists.

The twenty-first century so far has seen the global rise of authoritarian populism, systematic racism, and dogmatic metaphysics. Even though these events demonstrate the growth of an age of 'unreason', in this original and compelling book John Roberts resists the assumption that such thinking displays an unthinking irrationality or loss of reason; instead he asserts that an important feature of modern reactionary politics is that it offers a supposedly convincing integration of the particular and the universal. This move is defined by what Roberts calls the 'reasoning of unreason' and has deep roots in the history of Western thought and politics. Tracing the dark history of enlightenment-disenlightenment, John Roberts explores 'the reasoning of unreason' across centuries from Aquinas, William of Ockham, the most important treatise on witchcraft Malleus Maleficarum, Locke, Kant, and Count Arthur de Gobineau, to Social Darwinism, Nazism, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and Friedrich von Hayek. Roberts provides a new set of philosophical-political tools to understand the formation and denigration of the rational subject and the current reinvestment in various forms of political unreason globally. The Reasoning of Unreason is the first book to draw on the philosophy of reason, political philosophy, political theory and political history, in order to produce a dialectical account of the 'making of reason' internal to the forces of unreason and the limits of reason.

Originally published in 1931 this volume is a level-headed account of the Bolshevik Revolution and Bolshevist Russia which covers the whole ground of the Revolution, the early history of Bolshevism and the state of Russia in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Based on two visits by the author to Russia, the book presents a picture in which real problems are set against an historical background, examining life under Bolshevism and examining it as a working system.

Originally published in 1928, this book is a result of a visit to Russia by the author who stayed in a remote village and mixed with the local population. A crusader for social justice, Dorothy Buxton in theory saw Bolshevism as a fairer system and went to Russia to see the effects of the Revolution. With an intellectual honesty rarely seen by critics of Soviet Russia, the author examines fundamental questions of sociology and religion with some unexpected conclusions.

In a time of renewed interest in insurrectionary movements, urban protest, and anti-austerity indignation, the idea of resistance is regaining its relevance in social theory. De-Pathologizing Resistance re-examines resistance as a concept that can aid social analysis, highlighting the dangers of pathologising resistance as illogical and abnormal, or exoticising it in romanticised but patronising terms. Taking a de-pathologising and de-exoticising perspective, this book brings together insights from older and newer studies, the intellectual biographies of its contributing authors, and case studies of resistance in diverse settings, such as Egypt, Greece, Israel, and Mexico. From feminist studies to plaza occupations and anti-systemic uprisings, there is an emerging need to connect the analysis of contemporary protest movements under a broader theoretical re-examination. The idea of resistance-with all of its contradictions and its dynamism-provides such a challenging opportunity. This book was originally published as a special issue of History and Anthropology.

Over the fifty years between 1940 and 1990, the countries of eastern Africa were embroiled in a range of debilitating and destructive conflicts, starting with the wars of independence, but then incorporating rebellion, secession and local insurrection as the Cold War replaced colonialism. The articles gathered here illustrate how significant, widespread, and dramatic this violence was. In these years, violence was used as a principal instrument in the creation and consolidation of the authority of the state; and it was also regularly and readily utilised by those who wished to challenge state authority through insurrection and secession. Why was it that eastern Africa should have experienced such extensive and intensive violence in the fifty years before 1990? Was this resort to violence a consequence of imperial rule, the legacy of oppressive colonial domination under a coercive and non-representative state system? Did essential contingencies such as the Cold War provoke and promote the use of violence? Or, was it a choice made by Africans themselves and their leaders, a product of their own agency? This book focuses on these turbulent decades, exploring the principal conflicts in six key countries - Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Tanzania. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies.

This book examines the historical FeesMustFall (FMF) university student protests that took place in South Africa and shows how the enduring historical construction, representation and conceptualisation of South African youth (as typically radical and political) contributed to the (mis)interpretation of FMF protests, and led to a discourse on an African National Congress-toppling revolution.

Arguing that the student protests were not the revolutionary movement they have been represented as, Ndlovu demonstrates that ideological divisions amongst the protestors, the declining economy, and reduced youth participation in the political public sphere cannot lead to a new revolution in South African politics.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in South African politics, higher education, democracy and protest movements.

Table of Contents



1. Construction of South African youth before #FeesMustFall

2. Were the 2015 student protests a revolution?

3. What the 2015 protests actually were and how they were possible?

4. Ikhohlisan’ihlomile:# FMF students’ engagement with power and their ideological differences

5. Can South Africa’s declining economy inspire a student-led new revolution?

6. Youth’s declining news consumption levels and ideologically-divided media: the (im) possibility of the new revolution

7. Youth’s polysemic interpretation of the ANC regime text and (im) possibility a new revolution

8. Youth’s declining participation levels in the public sphere and (im) possibility a new revolution

9. Conclusion: #FMF protests will not lead to a revolution per se (at least yet), but to wide ranging reforms

First published in 1988. A functional definition of revolutionary military leadership is essential in understanding Leon Trotsky's role in the Russian Revolution, and it is this goal that Harold Walter Nelson explores in this title. The author states that the words, revolutionary and general carry a heavy connotative burden, and when the first is used to modify the second the new term does not lend itself to easy definition. This book pursues an analysis of this title from the context of the Russian military from 1905-1917.

First published in 1988. A functional definition of revolutionary military leadership is essential in understanding Leon Trotsky's role in the Russian Revolution, and it is this goal that Harold Walter Nelson explores in this title. The author states that the words, revolutionary and general carry a heavy connotative burden, and when the first is used to modify the second the new term does not lend itself to easy definition. This book pursues an analysis of this title from the context of the Russian military from 1905-1917.

This volume, originally published in 1964, presents a series of slides illustrating the major events of the Russian Revolution. Gathering together many accounts from the memoirs of innumerable people from every walk of life and political frame of mind: communists and tsarists, foreign journalists and ambassadors in Petrograd, Russian soldiers at the front and peasants in the countryside. The accounts of the witnesses allow the reader to relive the chaos and the high drama of the revolution through their eyes and experiences.

Originally published in 1969 and representing a quarter of a century's work of one of the USA's most respected scholars in Soviet affairs, this volume discusses the question of what happens to an ideology in power, by focusing on the evolution and uses of Marxism in Soviet practice. As well as analyzing totalitarian behaviour, the author offers advice for Western policy from analysis of the past.

This volume, originally published in 1930, discusses the economics of Russian agriculture during the early 20th century. It analyzes those economic influences which were at work and were bringing about its transformation. Starting from a sketch of the agricultural geography of European Russia, as it had been shaped by natural conditions, historical and economic factors, the author proceeds to the study of the organization and conditions of Russian farming and agricultural production, as well as discussing the Russian characteristics as an agricultural producer and the origins and disposal of her available surpluses of agricultural products.

This book explores how news and information about the conflict in Northern Ireland was disseminated through the most accessible, powerful and popular form of media: television. It focuses on the BBC and considers how its broadcasts complicated the 'Troubles' by challenging decisions, policies and tactics developed by governments trying to defeat a stubborn insurgency that threatened national security. The book uses highly original sources to consider how the BBC upset the efforts of a number of governments to control the narrative of a conflict that claimed over 3,500 lives and caused deep emotional scarring to thousands of people. Using recently released archival material from the BBC and a variety of government archives, the book addresses the contentious relationship between broadcasting officials, politicians, the army, police and civil service from the outbreak of violence throughout the 1980s. -- .

Written in 1918, this volume attempts to give an un-biased account of the Russian Revolution and what it stood for, by asking to what extent the Revolution was the result of the War and how far the struggle for peace which followed the Revolution was inherent in it. It discusses whether or not the peace policy of the revolutionary democracy expressed the true purpose of Russia at the time or were the soviets really alien to the people and to the Revolution. It also questions whether the disintegration of Russia and the dissolution of the Russian Army inevitable.

Until the publication of this book in 1974, the leaders of the October Revolution remained very badly known. This book exhumes the autobiographies written by the men whose actions and ideas have moulded events. Unique as sources of documentation on the Bolsheviks, these autobiographies, encompassing personal and political information up to 1917 add an important historical dimension. They allow the reader to appreciate more accurately the role played by each of the protagonists in preparing and carrying out the Revolution and beyond this they put the Bolsheviks of 1917 in the context of their social milieu and of the circumstances that shaped their minds.

This book, originally published in 1987, focuses on the factors which contributed to the Moscow uprising of December 1905, by comprehensively surveying a vast field of both Russian and English language literature on the subject. In order to explain why the uprising occurred in Moscow when it did, the author discusses the contributions of the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks, the Soviet-Revolutionaries and the government, concluding that the uprising happened at that time because the parties were committed to it and agitated for it and the local government in Moscow was not in control of the situation.

This volume, originally published in 1918, discusses the events which gave rise to the Russian Revolution and finally resulted in Russia's political, economic and military collapse. In order to fully understand the events, the author places them against their social and political background, discussing the historical influences which affected social conditions and the state of affairs which existed in Court, military and Government circles, as well as in the different classes of the population before and during the war.

Exam Board: Edexcel Level: AS/A-level Subject: History First Teaching: September 2015 First Exam: June 2016 Target success in Edexcel AS/A-level History with this proven formula for effective, structured revision; key content coverage is combined with exam preparation activities and exam-style questions to create a revision guide that students can rely on to review, strengthen and test their knowledge. - Enables students to plan and manage a successful revision programme using the topic-by-topic planner - Consolidates knowledge with clear and focused content coverage, organised into easy-to-revise chunks - Encourages active revision by closely combining historical content with related activities - Helps students build, practise and enhance their exam skills as they progress through activities set at three different levels - Improves exam technique through exam-style questions with sample answers and commentary from expert authors and teachers - Boosts historical knowledge with a useful glossary and timeline

The Russian Revolution is undeniably one of the great events in human history. The books in this set: Contain little-known details which help make the events more intelligible. Discuss the events which gave rise to the Russian Revolution and finally resulted in Russia's political, economic and military collapse by placing the events against their social and political background and examining the historical influences which affected social conditions. Exhume the autobiographies written by the men whose actions and ideas moulded events, which allow the reader to appreciate more accurately the role played by each of the protagonists in preparing and carrying out the Revolution. Analyse Russia's economy in the decade preceding the outbreak of the First World War and again in the early twentieth century. They cover trade, finance, transport, industry and agriculture and serve as a guide to assessing Soviet Russia's internal economic problems against the country's historical background.

On March 17, 2011, many Syrians rose up against the authoritarian Asad regime that had ruled them with an iron fist for forty years. Initial successes were quickly quashed, and the revolution seemed to devolve into a civil war pitting the government against its citizens and extremist mercenaries. As of late 2015, almost 300,000 Syrians have been killed and over half of a total population of 23 million forced out of their homes. Nine million are internally displaced and over four million are wandering the world, many on foot or in leaky boats. Countless numbers have been disappeared. These shocking statistics and the unstoppable violence notwithstanding, the revolution goes on. The story of the attempted crushing of the revolution is known. Less well covered has been the role of artists and intellectuals in representing to the world and to their people the resilience of revolutionary resistance and defiance. How is it possible that artists, filmmakers and writers have not been cowed into numbed silence but are becoming more and more creative? How can we make sense of their insistence that despite the apocalypse engulfing the country their revolution is ongoing and that their works participate in its persistence? With smartphones, pens, voices and brushes, these artists registered their determination to keep the idea of the revolution alive. Dancing in Damascus traces the first four years of the Syrian revolution and the activists' creative responses to physical and emotional violence.

What does revolution mean in the Middle East? Can the Middle East experience be compared with revolution in China, Latin America and East Europe? These questions are the focus of this book, first published in 1972, which examines the revolutionary significance of the major economic, social and political changes in the Middle East over the last fifty years. The special feature is the consideration of the changing connotation of the word 'revolution' and a recognition of a certain continuity in the political style of Middle Eastern societies which limits the use of the term in analysing the political change.