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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Revolutions & coups
In a landmark work, a leading scholar of the eighteenth century
examines the ways in which an understanding of the nature of
history influenced the thinking of the founding fathers.As Jack P.
Greene has observed, " The Whig] conception saw the past as a
continual struggle between liberty and virtue on one hand and
arbitrary power and corruption on the other." Many founders found
in this intellectual tradition what Josiah Quincy, Jr., called the
"true old English liberty," and it was this Whig tradition--this
conception of liberty--that the champions of American independence
and crafters of the new republic sought to perpetuate. Colbourn
supports his thesis--that "Independence was in large measure the
product of the historical concepts of the men who made it"--by
documenting what books were read most widely by the founding
generation. He also cites diaries, personal correspondence,
newspapers, and legislative records.Trevor Colbourn is President
Emeritus of the University of Central Florida.
This book provides a micro-historical analysis of the emergence and
contemporary dynamics of recent ethnic sub-nationalist insurgencies
in South Asia. Using comparative case studies, it discusses the
causes of each insurgency, analyses the trajectory and dynamics of
each including attempts at resolution, and highlights the wider
theories of ethno-nationalist insurgency and mobilization. Bringing
together an international group of contributors, the book covers
insurgencies in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
It questions why ethnic sub-nationalist insurgencies occurred at
particular points in time and not at others, and explores the
comparative trajectories of these movements. The book goes on to
discern reappearing patterns of conflict escalation/de-escalation
through the method of comparative process-tracing. It argues that
while identity is a necessary factor for insurgency, it is not a
sufficient one. Instead, ethnic mobilization and insurgency only
emerge when it is activated by tension emerging from political
competition between ethnic and central state elites. These
elite-led dynamics, when combined with favourable socio-economic
and political conditions, make the ethnic masses primed to accept
the often symbolically-rich appeals from their leaders to mobilize
against the central state. Providing an important study on
ethno-nationalist insurgencies in South Asia, the book will be of
interest to those working in the fields of South Asian Politics,
Security Studies and Ethnic Conflict.
Revolutions have been a part of politics for centuries. Their
ideologies, their leaders, and their successes or failures have
shaped the history of nations worldwide. This broad comparative
survey focuses on five big case studies, starting with the English
Revolutions in the 17th century, and going on to the Mexican,
Russian, Vietnamese and Iranian Revolutions. "Revolutions in World
History" traces the origins, developments, and outcomes of these
revolutions, providing an understanding of the revolutionary
tradition in a global context. This broad comparative survey
focuses on five big case studies, starting with the English
Revolutions in the 17th century, and going on to the Mexican,
Russian, Vietnamese and Iranian Revolutions. "Revolutions in World
History". Questions about motivations and ideologies are raised as
well as about the effectiveness of these revolutions.
It is impossible to understand capitalism without analyzing
slavery, an institution that tied together three world regions:
Europe, the Americas, and Africa. The exploitation of slave labor
led to a form of proto-globalization in which violence was
indispensable to the production of wealth. Against the background
of this expanding circulation of capital and slave labor, the first
revolution in Latin America took place: the Haitian Revolution,
which began in 1791 and culminated with Haiti's declaration of
independence in 1804. Taking the Haitian Revolution as a
paradigmatic case, Gruner shows that modernity is not a linear
evolution from the center to the periphery but, rather, a
co-production developed in the context of highly unequal power
relations, where extreme forms of conquest and exploitation were an
indispensable part of capital accumulation. He also shows that the
Haitian Revolution opened up a path to a different kind of
modernity, or "counter-modernity," a path along which Latin America
and the Caribbean have traveled ever since. A key work of critical
theory from a Latin American perspective, this book will be of
great interest to students and scholars of critical and cultural
theory and of Latin America, as well as anyone concerned with the
global impact of capitalism, colonialism, and race.
Why Men Rebel was first published in 1970 after a decade of
political violence across the world. Forty years later, serious
conflicts continue in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Ted Robert
Gurr reintroduces us to his landmark work, putting it in context
with the research it influenced as well as world events. Why Men
Rebel remains highly relevant to today's violent and unstable world
with its holistic, people-based understanding of the causes of
political protest and rebellion. With its close eye on the politics
of group identity, this book provides new insight into contemporary
security challenges.
During the summer of 1916, approximately 270,000 Central
Asians-Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Turkmen, and Uzbeks-perished at the
hands of the Russian army in a revolt that began with resistance to
the Tsar's World War I draft. In addition to those killed outright,
tens of thousands of men, women, and children died while trying to
escape over treacherous mountain passes into China. Experts
calculate that the Kyrgyz, who suffered most heavily, lost 40% of
their total population. This horrific incident was nearly lost to
history. During the Soviet era, the massacre of 1916 became a taboo
subject, hidden in sealed archives and banished from history books.
Edward Dennis Sokol's pioneering Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central
Asia, published in 1954 and reissued now for the first time in
decades, was for generations the only scholarly study of the
massacre in any language. Drawing on early Soviet periodicals,
including Krasnyi Arkhiv ( The Red Archive), Sokol's wide-ranging
and exhaustively researched work explores the Tsarist policies that
led to Russian encroachment against the land and rights of the
indigenous Central Asian people. It describes the corruption that
permeated Russian colonial rule and argues that the uprising was no
mere draft riot, but a revolt against Tsarist colonialism in all
its dimensions: economic, political, religious, and national.
Sokol's masterpiece also traces the chain reaction between the
uprising, the collapse of Tsarism, and the Bolshevik Revolution. A
classic study of a vanished world, Sokol's work takes on
contemporary resonance in light of Vladimir Putin's heavy-handed
efforts to persuade Kyrgyzstan to join his new economic union.
Sokol explains how an earlier Russian conquest ended in disaster
and implies that a modern conquest might have the same effect.
Essential reading for historians, political scientists, and
policymakers, this reissued edition is being published to coincide
with the centennial observation of the genocide.
Amid the turbulence of the 2011 Arab uprisings, the revolutionary
uprising that played out in Cairo's Tahrir Square created high
expectations before dashing the hopes of its participants. The
upheaval led to a sequence of events in Egypt that scarcely anyone
could have predicted, and precious few have understood: five years
on, the status of Egypt's unfinished revolution remains shrouded in
confusion. Power shifted hands rapidly, first from protesters to
the army leadership, then to the politicians of the Muslim
Brotherhood, and then back to the army. The politics of the street
has given way to the politics of Islamist-military detentes and the
undoing of the democratic experiment. Meanwhile, a burgeoning
Islamist insurgency occupies the army in Sinai and compounds the
nation's sense of uncertainty. A Revolution Undone blends analysis
and narrative, charting Egypt's journey from Tahrir to Sisi from
the perspective of an author and analyst who lived it all. H.A.
Hellyer brings his first-hand experience to bear in his assessment
of Egypt's experiment with protest and democracy.And by
scrutinising Egyptian society and public opinion, Islamism and
Islam, the military and government, as well as the West's reaction
to events, Hellyer provides a much-needed appraisal of Egypt's
future prospects.
"Riveting . . . There is a wealth of new information here that adds
considerable texture and nuance to his story and helps to set
Russia apart from previous works."-The Wall Street Journal An epic
new account of the conflict that reshaped Eastern Europe and set
the stage for the rest of the twentieth century. Between 1917 and
1921 a devastating struggle took place in Russia following the
collapse of the Tsarist empire. The doomed White alliance of
moderate socialists and reactionary monarchists stood little chance
against Trotsky's Red Army and the single-minded Communist
dictatorship under Lenin. In the savage civil war that followed,
terror begat terror, which in turn led to ever greater cruelty with
man's inhumanity to man, woman and child. The struggle became a
world war by proxy as Churchill deployed weaponry and troops from
the British empire, while contingents from the United States,
France, Italy, Japan, Poland, and Czechoslovakia played rival
parts. Using the most up to date scholarship and archival research,
Antony Beevor assembles the complete picture in a gripping
narrative that conveys the conflict through the eyes of everyone
from the worker on the streets of Petrograd to the cavalry officer
on the battlefield and the doctor in an improvised hospital.
@lt;P@gt;In 1848 revolutions broke out all over Europe - in France,
the Habsburg and German lands and the Italian peninsular. This
@lt;I@gt;Seminar Study@lt;/I@gt; considers why the revolutions
occurred and why they were so widespread. The book offers a broad
ranging investigation of the social, economic and political
circumstances which led to the revolutions of 1848 as well as an
account of the revolutions themselves. First published in 1981, and
fully revised in 1991, the study has long established itself as one
of the most accessible and valuable introductions to this complex
subject.@lt;/P@gt;
On 17 July 1918, four young women walked down into the cellar of a
house in Ekaterinburg. The eldest was twenty-two, the youngest only
seventeen. Together with their parents and their thirteen-year-old
brother, they were all brutally murdered. Their crime: to be the
daughters of the last Tsar and Tsaritsa of All the Russias. In Four
Sisters acclaimed biographer Helen Rappaport offers readers the
most authoritative account yet of the Grand Duchesses Olga,
Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. Drawing on their own letters and
diaries, she paints a vivid picture of their lives in the dying
days of the Romanov dynasty. We see, almost for the first time,
their journey from a childhood of enormous privilege, throughout
which they led a very sheltered and largely simple life, to young
womanhood - their first romantic crushes, their hopes and dreams,
the difficulty of coping with a mother who was a chronic invalid
and a haemophiliac brother, and, latterly, the trauma of the
revolution and its terrible consequences. Compellingly readable,
meticulously researched and deeply moving, Four Sisters gives these
young women a voice, and allows their story to resonate for readers
almost a century after their death. 'An astoundingly intimate tale
of domestic life lived in the crucible of power' - Observer
Although often neglected and underplayed in mainstream history,
armed resistance to British imperialism is a significant part of
India's epic struggle for freedom. The essays in this volume,
written over several years, document various episodes of resistance
highlighting the role of freedom fighters who inspired generations
of Indians by their sacrifices. They discuss the Vellore Mutiny,
the Chittagong Uprising, the Non-Cooperation Movement and the
militants of Bengal, Gandhi's attitude to the execution of Bhagat
Singh, the Telengana and Kakdwip rising, among others. The essays
also underline the fact that the fight against colonial oppression
and exploitation was inextricably linked to the struggle against
feudalism.
FULLY UPDATED SECOND EDITION 'If you were to read only one book on
present-day Iran you could not do better than this' Ervand
Abrahamian, Times Higher Education For some 40 years the Islamic
Republic has resisted widespread condemnation, sanctions, and
sustained attacks by Iraq in an eight-year war. Many policy-makers
today share a weary wish that Iran would somehow just disappear as
a problem. But with Iran's continuing commitment to a nuclear
programme and its reputation as a trouble-maker in Syria,
Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere, this is unlikely any time soon.
An unending stream of assertions about the revolution's finally
running down continue to be defied by events, and Iran's
institutions are still formidable. This is the definitive history
of this subject, from one of the world's principal experts.
The Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Revolt charts the
history of medieval rebellion from Spain to Bohemia and from Italy
to England, and includes chapters spanning the centuries between
Imperial Rome and the Reformation. Drawing together an
international group of leading scholars, chapters consider how
uprisings worked, why they happened, whom they implicated, what
they meant to contemporaries, and how we might understand them now.
This collection builds upon new approaches to political history and
communication, and provides new insights into revolt as integral to
medieval political life. Drawing upon research from the social
sciences and literary theory, the essays use revolts and their
sources to explore questions of meaning and communication, identity
and mobilization, the use of violence and the construction of
power. The authors emphasize historical actors' agency, but argue
that access to these actors and their actions is mediated and often
obscured by the texts that report them. Supported by an
introduction and conclusion which survey the previous
historiography of medieval revolt and envisage future directions in
the field, The Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Revolt will
be an essential reference for students and scholars of medieval
political history.
Amid the current turmoil in the Middle East, Understanding Tahrir
Square sounds a rare optimistic note. Surveying countries in other
parts of the world during their transitions to democracy, author
Stephen Grand argues that the long-term prospects in many parts of
the Arab world are actually quite positive. If the current
polarization and political violence in the region can be overcome,
democracy will eventually take root. The key to this change will
likely be ordinary citizens - foremost among them the young
protestors of the Arab Spring who have filled the region's public
spaces - most famously, Egypt's Tahrir Square. The book puts the
Arab Spring in comparative perspective. It reveals how
globalization and other changes are upending the expectations of
citizens everywhere about the relationship between citizen and
state. Separate chapters examine the experiences of countries in
the former Eastern bloc, in the Muslim-majority states of Asia, in
Latin America, and in Sub-Saharan Africa during the recent Third
Wave of democratization. What these cases show is that, at the end
of the day, democracy requires democrats. Many complex factors go
into making a democracy successful, such as the caliber of its
political leaders, the quality of its constitution, and the design
of its political institutions. But unless there is clear public
demand for new institutions to function as intended, political
leaders are unlikely to abide by the limits those institutions
impose. If American policymakers want to support the brave
activists struggling to bring democracy to the Arab world, helping
them cultivate an effective political constituency for democracy -
in essence, growing the Tahrir Square base - should be the lodestar
of U.S. assistance.
In May 1992 political and social tensions in the former Soviet
Republic of Tajikistan escalated to a devastating civil war, which
killed approximately 40,000-100,000 people and displaced more than
one million. The enormous challenge of the Soviet Union's
disintegration compounded by inner-elite conflicts, ideological
disputes and state failure triggered a downward spiral to one of
the worst violent conflicts in the post-Soviet space. This book
explains the causes of the Civil War in Tajikistan with a
historical narrative recognizing long term structural causes of the
conflict originating in the Soviet transformation of Central Asia
since the 1920s as well as short-term causes triggered by
Perestroika or Glasnost and the rapid dismantling of the Soviet
Union. For the first time, a major publication on the Tajik Civil
War addresses the many contested events, their sequences and how
individuals and groups shaped the dynamics of events or responded
to them. The book scrutinizes the role of regionalism, political
Islam, masculinities and violent non-state actors in the momentous
years between Perestroika and independence drawing on rich
autobiographical accounts written by key actors of the unfolding
conflict. Paired with complementary sources such as the media
coverage and interviews, these autobiographies provide insights how
Tajik politicians, field commanders and intellectuals perceived and
rationalized the outbreak of the Civil War within the complex
context of post-Soviet decolonization, Islamic revival and
nationalist renaissance.
First published in 1949, 'Guerilla Days in Ireland' is an
extraordinary story of the Irish War of Independence and the fight
between two unequal forces, which ended in the withdrawal of the
British from twenty-six counties. Seven weeks before the Truce of
July 1921, the British presence in County Cork consisted of a total
of over 12,500 men. Against these British forces stood the Irish
Republican Army whose flying columns never exceeded 310 riflemen in
the whole of the county. These flying columns were small groups of
dedicated Volunteers, severely commanded and disciplined.
Constantly on the move, their paramount objective was merely to
exist, to strike when conditions were favourable and to avoid
disaster at all costs. In 'Guerilla Days in Ireland' Tom Barry
describes the setting up of the West Cork flying column, its
training and the plan of campaign, which he implemented. In
particular he gives his account of the Kilmichael ambush, one of
the most controversial episodes of the War of Independence.
Now What? is an innovative exploration of artworks and films that
return to radical histories subject to erasure or otherwise lost or
occluded over time. The moments returned to-the Cuban Revolution,
Chile's 1973 coup d'etat, the ambiguous 1989 "revolution" in
Romania, and the mayhem surrounding the Red Army Faction in 1970s
West Germany-stand as historical watersheds, foundational and
precipitate moments in the history of radical politics. Delving
into these key historical moments by way of Tania Bruguera's 2009
performance Tatlin's Whisper in Havana, filmmaker Patricio Guzman's
decades-long cycle of returns to Allende's Chile, Harun Farocki and
Andrei Ujica's Videograms of a Revolution, Corneliu Porumboiu's
12:08 East of Bucharest, the film Germany in Autumn, and Gerhard
Richter's October 18, 1977 suite of paintings, Rachel Weiss
convincingly threads these works together through subtle and
illuminating reflections on the complex dynamics involved in
historical trauma and memory, addressing key questions about the
meanings and uses of the past.
Jeff Strickland tells the powerful story of Nicholas Kelly, the
enslaved craftsman who led the Charleston Workhouse Slave
Rebellion, the largest slave revolt in the history of the
antebellum American South. With two accomplices, some
sledgehammers, and pickaxes, Nicholas risked his life and helped
thirty-six fellow enslaved people escape the workhouse where they
had been sent by their enslavers to be tortured. While Nat Turner,
Gabriel Prosser, and Denmark Vesey remain the most recognizable
rebels, the pivotal role of Nicholas Kelly is often forgotten. All
for Liberty centers his rebellion as a decisive moment leading up
to the secession of South Carolina from the United States in 1861.
This compelling micro-history navigates between Nicholas's story
and the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, while also considering the
parallels between race and incarceration in the nineteenth century
and in modern America. Never before has the story of Nicholas Kelly
been so eloquently told.
Among the examples of civil wars, armed secessionist movements and
minority uprisings in the world today, many involve conflict
between a minority group's aim for political self-determination,
and the nation state's resistance to any diminution of sovereignty.
With the expansion of the international regime of human rights,
minority groups have reconceptualised their struggle with the
understanding that a minority which is linguistically, religiously
or ethnically distinctive is entitled to self-determination if
their aspirations cannot be met. This book explores the
relationship between minority rights, self-determination and
secession within international law, by contextualising these issues
in a detailed case study of the rise of Tamil separatism in Sri
Lanka. Welhengama and Pillay show how Tamil communalism hardened
into secession and assess whether the Sri Lankan government has met
its obligations with respect to the right to self-determination
short of secession. Focusing on the legal and human rights
arguments for secession by the Tamil community of the North and
East of Sri Lanka, the book demonstrates how the language of
international law and international human rights played a major
role in the development of the arguments for secession. Through a
close examination of the case of the Tamil's secessionist movement
the book presents valuable insights into why modern nation states
find themselves threatened by separatist claims and bids for
independence based on ethnicity.
The gripping history of Afro-Latino migrants who conspired to
overthrow a colonial monarchy, end slavery, and secure full
citizenship in their homelands In the late nineteenth century, a
small group of Cubans and Puerto Ricans of African descent settled
in the segregated tenements of New York City. At an immigrant
educational society in Greenwich Village, these early Afro-Latino
New Yorkers taught themselves to be poets, journalists, and
revolutionaries. At the same time, these individuals-including
Rafael Serra, a cigar maker, writer, and politician; Sotero
Figueroa, a typesetter, editor, and publisher; and Gertrudis
Heredia, one of the first women of African descent to study
midwifery at the University of Havana-built a political network and
articulated an ideal of revolutionary nationalism centered on the
projects of racial and social justice. These efforts were critical
to the poet and diplomat Jose Marti's writings about race and his
bid for leadership among Cuban exiles, and to the later struggle to
create space for black political participation in the Cuban
Republic. In Racial Migrations, Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof presents a
vivid portrait of these largely forgotten migrant revolutionaries,
weaving together their experiences of migrating while black, their
relationships with African American civil rights leaders, and their
evolving participation in nationalist political movements. By
placing Afro-Latino New Yorkers at the center of the story,
Hoffnung-Garskof offers a new interpretation of the revolutionary
politics of the Spanish Caribbean, including the idea that Cuba
could become a nation without racial divisions. A model of
transnational and comparative research, Racial Migrations reveals
the complexities of race-making within migrant communities and the
power of small groups of immigrants to transform their home
societies.
Late Modern Palestine looks at the ways in which the relationship
between the subject and representation and the political
problematic of postcolonial late modernity is articulated in the
context of the Palestinians' struggle for liberation. Junko-Aikio
provides a rich, theoretically and empirically, and in part also
visually grounded study of the complex ways in which ordinary
Palestinians face, negotiate and resist multiple regimes of power
and desire in the context of everyday life in the West Bank and
Gaza. The volume examines the early years of the second Palestinian
uprising, an intifada, whose political status remains highly
disputed. The book examines the ways in which Palestinian politics
during the second intifada has been entangled with the broader
social and political changes that are associated with postcolonial
late modernity. It is argued that the dislocation between modern
colonial and late modern/postcolonial regimes of power and
subjectivity greatly complicates the map of power and resistance in
contemporary Palestine, and also renders articulation of national
unity and hegemonic political strategy increasingly unlikely. This
work will be of great interest to students and scholars of Middle
East Studies, Postcolonial Studies, International Relations,
Political Sociology, Critical Security Studies, and Political
Theory.
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