This book sheds light on the growing phenomenon of cyberactivism in the Arab world, with a special focus on the Egyptian political blogosphere and its role in paving the way to democratization and socio-political change in Egypt, which culminated in Egypt's historical popular revolution on Jan. 25, 2011. In doing so, it examines the relevance and applicability of the concepts of citizen journalism and civic engagement to the discourses and deliberations in five of the most popular political blogs in Egypt, through exploring the potential connection between virtual activism, as represented in the postings on these blogs, and real activism in Egyptian political life, as represented in the calls for social, economic and political reform on the streets.

Elazar examines the social and political processes that determined the character of Fascist organization in Italy and its seizure of state power first in the provinces and then in the nation. She argues that the Fascists' "modus operandi" shaped the political struggles they engaged in and reflexively determined their own political significance. Employing both primary and secondary historical sources, Elazar reveals the crucial internal political struggles and inner contradictions through which Fascism was invented.

The political strategy of paramilitary organization and assault on labor and the Socialists carried out by the Fascist Action Squads in collusion with men of property was crucial in determining their seizure of power. But this also determined the ideological and organizational contours of Fascism itself. The Fascist Squads' alliances with men of property made them a formidable faction within the Fascist organization that could and did challenge Mussolini's authority. The making of Fascism is thus marked by the irony of the relationship between Mussolini and his political power base--the Squads. The very element of paramilitary organization that was decisive in the Fascists' seizure of power in the provinces had to be submerged by Mussolini if he was to preserve his power. Historical and comparative sociologists, political sociologists, and students of Italian Fascism and Italian history will find this new explanation of the making of Fascism both provacative and fascinating.

In view of the 100th anniversary of the 1911 Revolution and Sun Yat-sen's relations with the Nanyang communities, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and the Chinese Heritage Centre came together to host a two-day bilingual conference on the three-way relationships between Sun Yat-sen, Nanyang and the 1911 Revolution in October 2010 in Singapore. This volume is a collection of papers in English presented at the conference. While there are extensive research and voluminous publications on Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 Revolution, it was felt that less had been done on the Southeast Asian connections. Thus this volume tries to chip in some original and at times provocative analysis on not only Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 Revolution but also contributions from selected Southeast Asian countries.

Mikhail Gorbachev was a major force at the center of political change in the latter half of the 20th century. His emphasis on the spoken word and the visual image was so pronounced that the character of the reform program he introduced became both a reflection and an extension of his own political persona. To promote his political program, Gorbachev depended upon the media to assist him in delivering his message and restructuring the Soviet experience; it was almost as if he believed that he could talk a revolution into existence. He hoped to promote both real and symbolic change, but found instead that such efforts led to his own downfall.

GorbacheV's case is an example of the power of personality in transforming a political culture. The author organizes his material into three topic areas: "perestroika," "glasnost," and New Thinking in foreign policy; and, in each of these areas he highlights GorbacheV's relations with the media, his public image, and the political influence of the media. GorbacheV's New Thinking influenced Soviet foreign policy and set in motion a change in the international environment, as he preached disarmament and international understanding as opposed to military confrontation and nuclear conflict. The net result, however, was the loss of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe and the end of the Soviet Union's superpower status.

The transformation of political systems is explored in this edited collection by assessing the relationships among political conflict, political development, and public policy. The continuous collapse and regeneration of political systems accompanied by violence and destruction are experiences shared by a majority of the world's population. Most often this larger phenomenon is conceived of in terms of political conflict, repression, and political development. This volume is devoted to exploration of this behavior as a means of understanding system transformation.

The story of the American Revolution in rural Pennsylvania.

This book moves the story of Pennsylvania's pivotal role in the American Revolution beyond familiar Philadelphia into the rural areas to the north and west. It covers not only the city's surrounding counties of Bucks and Chester but also the interior areas of the Lehigh, Schuylkill, Susquehanna, and Juniata River valleys.

What was the ethnic, religious, and political makeup of Pennsylvania on the eve of revolt? Who supported the Revolution and who opposed it? What role did Native Americans play? Did the Revolution produce social, political, and economic change? The nine essays in Beyond Philadelphia represent the current state of our knowledge on how most Pennsylvanians experienced the Revolution. The introduction and afterword set the essays in the context of early Pennsylvania history and the course of the American Revolution in other states.

From these essays, we can see three patterns of Revolution in Pennsylvania. The oldest counties near Philadelphia gave little support, had large numbers of neutral Quakers and active Loyalists, and endured sporadic partisan warfare. The central region of the state supported the Revolution almost unanimously. It contributed mightily to the Continental Army in men and production of the sinews of war. On the frontiers, brutal guerrilla warfare involving Indians and rival white claimants for land began before the Revolution and continued after it ended, resulting in economic devastation. Here, the Revolution was but an episode in a local struggle for survival.

Beyond Philadelphia will interest all readers who seek a better understanding of how the American Revolution was experiencedthroughout Pennsylvania.

Contributors are Tim H. Blessing, Robert G. Crist, Paul E. Doutrich, John B. Frantz, Karen Guenther, Owen S. Ireland, Gregory T. Knouff, William Pencak, Eugene R. Slaski, Frederick J. Stefon, and Rosemary S. Warden.

In Michael Romanov: Brother of the Last Tsar, translator Helen Azar and Romanov historian Nicholas B. A. Nicholson present for the first time in English the annotated 1916-1918 diaries and letters of Russia's Grand Duke Michael, from the murder of the Siberian mystic Grigorii Rasputin through the Revolution of 1917, which dethroned the Romanov dynasty after Michael briefly found himself named Emperor when his brother Nicholas II abdicated. Michael's diaries provide rare insight into the fall of the Empire, the rise and fall of the Provisional Government and brief Russian republic, and the terrifying days of the February and October Revolutions after which Michael found himself a prisoner who would meet his end in the Siberian city of Perm. Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia (1878-1918) was born the youngest son of Tsar Alexander III, but with the death of his brother Grand Duke George in 1899, Michael was thrust into the spotlight and the role of "Heir-Tsesarevich" to Emperor Nicholas II, then the father of three girls. Even after the birth of an heir in 1904, Michael found himself pushed closer to the throne with each of the boy's bouts of hemophilia. By 1916 during World War I, Nicholas and Alexandra found themselves deeply unpopular not only in political circles but also with other members of the House of Romanov, who felt that the parlous times required drastic change. Michael found himself at the center of these events. Azar's translation is uniquely faithful to the original text and gives readers the feeling of the immediacy and haste in Michael's original observations of these tumultuous times. Nicholson's annotations provide biographical and historical background, while quoting dozens of other rare primary sources.

Alexander Neville was an English humanist, scholar, author and translator who made his reputation as a Latinist and worked as a secretary for Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury. The book offers the Latin text and modern translations of his De furoribus Norfolciensium Ketto Duce, Norwicus, and Ad Walliae proceres apologia. Alexander Neville (1544-1614) was an English humanist, author, poet and translator. His skill as a Latinist brought him to the attention of Matthew Parker, Elizabeth I's first Archbishop of Canterbury, who appointed him one of hissecretaries. This book presents Neville's Latin texts of De furoribus Norfolciensium Ketto Duce and Norwicus (1575) and Ad Walliae proceres apologia (1576) alongside modern English translations. Neville's account ofKett's Rebellion is one of the earliest and most important sources on the 'Commotion Tyme' of 1549, when England was rocked by a series of uprisings triggered by socio-economic conditions and the impacts of religious change. Oneof the first published urban histories, The City of Norwich offers a unique perspective on the development of Tudor historiography and demonstrates Neville's skill in weaving his source materials into a polished expression of national and civic pride. At the same time, its account of the city's bishops honours the life and work of Neville's patron, Archbishop Parker, who was himself a Norwich man. The Reply to the Welsh Nobility challenges the accusationsof libel that followed the publication of De furoribus and is a small masterpiece of Ciceronian forensic oratory. Drawing on the editors' combined expertise in Renaissance Latin, early modern history and translation studies, these texts and translations are prefaced by a wide-ranging introductory section that examines what is known of Neville's life, his texts' origins and literary contexts, their significance in the development of Tudor historiography and the ways in which they reflect contemporary politico-religious concerns. The translators' preface discusses the role of translations in the appreciation of historical sources, using recent developments in translation theory. Together, these three texts reveal much about the uses of rhetoric and historiography in legitimating the actions of Tudor governing elites, affirming national identity and promoting the Elizabethan Religious Settlement. INGRID WALTON was formerly Head of Library and Information Services at the John Innes Centre, Norwich. CLIVE WILKINS-JONES is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Socety and a Research Fellow in the School of History atthe University of East Anglia. PHILIP WILSON is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies at the University of East Anglia.

In the first book to explore the cultural politics of Cuba's epic military engagement in the Angolan civil war, Christabelle Peters shows how the internationalist mission profoundly influenced Cuban thinking on the African cultural element in national identity. Drawing from multiple sources, including films, political speeches, literature, and autoethnography, Cuban Identity and the Angolan Experience reveals the underlying mythological context for Operation Carlota. By tracing the evolution of slave iconology during the first five--most ideological--years of the intervention, Peters reveals a parallel shift in Cuba's regional identification from Latin American to Caribbean.

In 1929, tens of thousands of south eastern Nigerian women rose up against British authority in what is known as the Women's War. This book brings togther, for the first time, the multiple perspectives of the war's colonized and colonial participants and examines its various actions within a single, gendered analytical frame.

In this concise interpretation of Wilson's Russian policy, Schild challenges the belief that Wilson's response to the 1917 October Revolution was exclusively ideological. Contrary to the belief that when Wilson sent American troops to intervene in 1918, his goal was to establish a democratic order in Russia, this book shows that his actions were more pragmatic. Wilson's belief in the superiority of liberalism over totalitarianism was so strong that he expected democratic forces in Russia to take power without outside aid. At the Paris Peace Conference, he rejected suggestions for an anti-Soviet crusade. His July 1918 decision to intervene was not a part of Wilson's ideology. It was based on an effort to maintain unity with Britain and France during the final phase of World War I. Wilson did, indeed, have a liberal anti-Bolshevik agenda. However, his belief in the superiority of liberalism over totalitarianism was so strong that he expected democratic forces in Russia to take power without any outside aid. At the Paris Peace Conference, he rejected all suggestions for a Western anti-Soviet crusade or for a division of Russia. His 1918 decision to intervene was not part of Wilson's ideological confrontation with the Bolsheviks. It was based on an effort to maintain unity with the British and French governments during the final phase of World War I. Wilson's Russian policy, the author concludes, was determined both by his ideological anti-Bolshevism and pragmatic demands for alliance cohesion.

Through a paired comparison of two moments of mass mobilization, in Ukraine and Argentina, focusing on the role of different actors involved, this text maps out a multi-layered sequence of events leading up to mass mobilization.

Among the men who rose to power in France in 1789, lawyers were heavily represented. To a large extent, they also shaped the evolution of French political culture of the ancien regime. Lawyers and Citizens traces the development of the French legal profession between the reign of Louis XIV and the French Revolution, showing how lawyers influenced, and were influenced by, the period's passionate political and religious conflicts. David Bell analyzes how these key "middling" figures in French society were transformed from the institutional technicians of absolute monarchy into the self-appointed "voices of public opinion", and leaders of opposition political phamphleteering. He describes the birth of an independent legal profession in the late seventeenth century, its alienation from the monarchy under the pressure of religious disputes in the early eighteenth century, and its transformation into a standard-bearer of "enlightened" opinion in the decades before the Revolution. Lawyers and Citizens also illuminates the workings of politics under a theoretically absolute monarchy, and the importance of long-standing constitutional debates for the ideological origins of the Revolution. It also sheds new light on the development of the modern professions, and of the French legal system. Based on extensive primary research, this study will be of interest to historians and legal scholars alike.

The 2011 revolution in Egypt was revolutionary far beyond regime change in Cairo. It may be considered our first view of what a civil, egalitarian society in the Middle East might look like in the age of Twitter, YouTube and instant global media. Using international news reports and translations of the social media pages that triggered millions of Egyptians to flood the streets in mass protest rallies, Yale University sociologist Jeff Alexander uncovers the narrative of a revolution that was scripted by its organizers as both a moral and media statement. He explores why the world was so captivated by months of news reports about the perilous uprising and explains the revolution as a theatrical performance, one designed to reveal to the world that the microcosm of Tahrir Square of mostly peaceful civil disobedience was a template for democratic movements internationally. Compelling and effective, the use of digital and social media, the organized protests that sprang from it and the peace and persistence of the demonstrators ultimately, Alexander argues, swayed the Egyptian army to support the movement and brought about regime change. This powerful and insightful book on what is being called the Arab Spring is a must-read for anyone interested in how social media is fundamentally changing global politics.

A philosophical analysis informed by history, this work examines the reasons for the highly destructive behavior of the Red Guards in the early part of China's Cultural Revolution. By probing the political, educational, and psychological factors influencing the Red Guards, Jing Lin sheds light on how teenagers and young adults were able to justify violence in the name of class struggle and human rights. She concludes that non-critical, categorical thought--buttressed by the political and educational systems--was pivotal.

Jing Lin introduces the work with a discussion of democratic and non-democratic thought, and of the Red Guards' views about class struggle, authority and justice. She then examines the theory behind Mao's totalitarian rule. Chapter Three is devoted to schools, and their decisive role in developing the Red Guards. The psychology of the Red Guards follows: Lin details how concepts of the proletariat, class enemies, and intellectuals nurtured habits of aggression and obedience. In concluding, Lin suggests how to foster critical and democratic thinking in Chinese education. This book is a valuable resource for students of Chinese history, revolution, political psychology, and education.

Leon Gambetta is renowned as a founder of the French Third Republic. This unique study of his correspondence with his lover, Leonie Leon, provides a fascinating insight into their intimate and political partnership. It brings to life Gambetta as lover and politician, the unknown figure of Leon, and the political and cultural world of 1870s Paris.

Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Liberia, Somalia, Azerbaijan, El Salvador, Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Cambodia -- all provide bloody evidence that civil wars continue to have a powerful impact on the international scene. Because they tear at the very fabric of a society and pit countryman against countryman, civil wars are often the most brutal and difficult to extinguish -- witness the American Revolution.
And yet, civil wars do inevitably end. England is no longer criss-crossed by warring armies representing York and Lancaster or King and Parliament. The French no longer kill one another over the divine right of kings. Argentines seem reconciled to living in a single state, rather than several. The ideologies of the Spanish Civil War now seem largely irrelevant. And the possibility of Southern secession is an issue long-buried in the American past.
The question then begs itself: how do people who have been killing one another with considerable enthusiasm and success come together to form a common government? How can individuals and factions work together, politically and economically, with others who have killed their friends, parents, children and lovers? How are armed societies disarmed? What effect does a total military victory have on a lasting peace? In sum, how are civil societies constructed from civil violence and chaos? This is the central concern of Stopping the Killing.

In this highly original and much needed volume, a distinguished group of experts on civil wars discuss both specific conflicts and broader theoretical issues. Individual chapters examine civil wars in Colombia, the Sudan, Yemen, America, Greece, and Nigeria, and analyze the causes of peace, the relationship between the battlefield and the negotiating table, and issues of settlement. An introduction and conclusion by the editor unify the volume. Contributors include: Jonathan Hartlyn (Univ. of North Carolina), Caroline Hartzell (Univ. of California, Davis), Jane E. Holl (U.S. Military Academy), John Iatrides (Southern Connecticut State University), James O'Connell (University of Bradford), Donald Rothchild (Univ. of California, Davis), Stephen John Stedman (Johns Hopkins Univ.), Robert Harrison Wagner (Univ. of Texas, Austin), Harvey Waterman (Rutgers Univ.), Manfred Wenner (Northern Illinois Univ.), and I. William Zartman (Johns Hopkins Univ.).

This modern, annotated adaptation of the original three-volume edition of Women of the American Revolution by Elizabeth Ellet restores, in a single volume, a unique compilation of the roles played by eighty-four American women in the Revolutionary War. A best-seller in the 1850s, Ellet's work is here carefully edited for today's readers by a distinguished Revolutionary War historian. It contains a new introduction and many explanatory footnotes. A new organization arranges these biographies from north to south by colony, underlining the vast differences in class and culture among the various states. While not America's earliest female historian, Elizabeth Ellet may easily lay claim to being America's first historian of women. Before publication of her books, readers had come close to losing track of the important role played by women in the War for Independence. Ellet preserved these valuable stories through reliance, whenever possible, on first-person accounts which are still as fresh and compelling today as they were in the nineteenth century. A vivid and comprehensive account which will be of interest to both military historians and scholars of women's history.

The unleashing of the French Revolution in 1789 resulted in the acceleration of time coupled with an inability to predict what might happen next. As unprecedented events outpaced the days, those caught up in the whirlwind had little time to make judicious decisions about which course of action to follow. The lack of reliable information and delays in communication between Paris and the provinces only exacerbated the situation. Consequently, some fled into exile in Europe and the United States, while others remained to take advantage of new opportunities provided by the revolutionary government. Between 1789 and 1794, the government moved from a position of hopeful cooperation to one of desperate measures instigated during the Terror of 1793-1794. As a result, those French citizens who had fled early in the revolution, including many aristocrats and the king's brothers, as well as the artist Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrun, could not return until many years later, while those who had remained, such as Vigee-LeBrun's husband, the art dealer Jean-Baptiste Pierre LeBrun, as well as the artist Jacques-Louis David, the writers Sebastien Chamfort and Andre Chenier, and expelled Girondin deputies, chose survival strategies that they hoped would be successful. For all those concerned, timing was key to survival, and those who lived found that they had crossed a bridge between the Ancien Regime and the beginning of the modern world. It would not be possible to grasp the full import of the period between 1789 and 1795 until time had decelerated to a more reasonable level after the fall of Robespierre in 1794. Yet few could have then imagined that almost one hundred years would pass before a stable French republic would be established.

During the 20th century, a variety of social movements and civil society groups stepped into the arena of international politics. This volume collects innovative research on international solidarity movements in Belgium and the Netherlands, and places these movements prominently in debates about the history of globalization, transnational activism, and international politics.

Examines the evolution of Lenin's thinking on the place of the Russian peasant in theory and in the potential reality of Marxist revolution.

This new study of Napoleon emphasizes his ties to the French Revolution, his embodiment of its militancy, and his rescue of its legacies. Jordan's work illuminates all aspects of his fabulous career, his views of the Revolution and history, the artists who created and embellished his image, and much of his talk about himself and his achievements.