|
|
Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Revolutions & coups
A dramatisation of Martin Monath's short life (1913-1944) would
need little artistic embellishment; his identity shrouded in
mystery, and executed by the Gestapo - twice - the historical
record reads like a detective novel. Pieced together for the first
time by Wladek Flakin, this biography tells the story of the Jewish
socialist and editor of Arbeiter und Soldat ('Worker and Soldier'),
and his efforts to turn German rank-and-file soldiers against their
Nazi officers in occupied France. Born in Berlin in 1913, Martin
Monath was a child of war and revolution. In the 1930s he became a
leader of the socialist Zionist youth organisation Hashomer Hatzair
in Germany. Fleeing from Berlin to Brussels in 1939, he joined the
underground Trotskyist party led by Abraham Leon, and soon became a
leading member of the Fourth International in Europe. His
relocation to Paris in 1943 saw the birth of Arbeiter und Soldat
and his work organising illegal cells of German soldiers for a
revolutionary struggle against the Nazis. Drawing on extensive
archival research, Flakin uses letters, testimonies and unpublished
documents to bring Monath's story to life - weaving a tale rich
with conviction and betrayal, ideology and espionage.
This book examines diverse encounters between the British community
and the thousands of French individuals who sought haven in the
British Isles as they left revolutionary and Imperial France. This
painstaking research into the emigrant archival and memorial
presence in Britain uncovers a wealth of underused and alternative
sources on this controversial population displacement. These
include open letters and classified advertisements published in
British newspapers, insurance contracts, as well as lists of
addresses and passports drawn up by local authorities. These
sources question the construction by British loyalists and French
emigre elites of a stereotyped emigrant figure and their use of the
trauma of forced displacement to advance ideological agendas. In
fact, public and private discourses on governmental systems,
foreigners, political and religious dissent, and the economic
survival of French emigrants, demonstrate the heterogeneity of the
responses to emigration in Britain. Ultimately, this book narrates
a story in which the emigrant community and its host have been
often unnoticeably yet fundamentally transformed by their
encounter, in both practical and ideological domains.
From its foundation in 1957 to its self-dissolution in 1972, the
Situationist International established itself as one of the most
radical revolutionary organisations of the twentieth century. This
book brings together leading researchers on the SI to provide a
comprehensive critical analysis of the group's key concepts and
contexts, from its relationship to earlier artistic avant-gardes,
romanticism, Hegelianism, the history of the workers' movement and
May '68 to the concepts and practices of 'spectacle', 'constructed
situations', 'everyday life' and 'detournement'. The volume also
considers historically underexamined areas of the SI, including the
situation of women in the group and its opposition to colonialism
and racism. With contributions from a broad range of thinkers
including Anselm Jappe and Michael Loewy, this account takes a
fresh look at the complex workings of a group that has come to
define radical politics and culture in the post-war period.
This biography of Francois Buzot, a Girondin leader in both the
Constituent Assembly (1789-91) and the National Convention
(1792-93), illustrates how his early life in Evreux and his
training as a lawyer influenced his ideas and actions during the
French Revolution, when he championed individual rights and the
rule of law in a republic. A provincial leader who distrusted the
increasingly centralized government in Paris, Buzot worked
tirelessly to defend departmental interests, which led his Jacobin
opponents to accuse him of federalism. Buzot became an active
participant in the factional disputes dividing the national
assembly in 1792-93, which led to frequent attacks against him and
his cohorts by the radical press and demands for their impeachment.
Consequently, Buzot and twenty-nine other Girondin deputies were
expelled from the assembly in June 1793 and placed under house
arrest. While Buzot and some of his friends escaped and fled to
Caen, those Girondins who had remained in Paris were executed that
October. After their attempt to form a large departmental force to
march against the government in Paris had failed, Buzot and his
friends fled to St. Emilion, where they survived as fugitives,
often hiding in abandoned stone quarries, until June 1794. Buzot's
memoirs, written when he was on the run in 1793-94, provide an
unusual contemporary account of the difficult and dangerous period
known as the Terror. In addition, letters to and from his friends,
notably Madame Roland, with whom he shared a romantic relationship,
offer a more personal view of Buzot than can be found in most
texts. Although Buzot was honored as a local hero by the citizens
of Evreux in 1789, by the summer of 1793 the authorities had
declared him a traitor and ordered his home demolished, and its
furnishings sold at auction. Honored again during the centennial
celebration of the French Revolution, by 1989 he had almost been
forgotten. This first biographical treatment in English of Francois
Buzot, a "bourgeois gentilhomme," provides a new dimension to the
story of an important revolutionary leader.
The long government service of Francois Boissy d'Anglas from 1789
to 1826 is unique, and his abundant writing provides a new look at
the great drama of the French Revolution era. A moderate politician
who served during the Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration,
Boissy d'Anglas's political views remained consistent during
several critical periods when the fate of France was at stake. His
political philosophy, based firmly on religious tolerance, freedom
of expression, strong constitutional government and equality before
the law, made it possible for him to weather the revolutionary
storm and retain positions of influence in each of the regimes
during the period. This book sheds new light on the role of
moderates in the French Revolution and illuminates the changing
political currents of the Revolution from Boissy's moderate
perspective. A political moderate during a period of extremes,
Boissy served for so long because he was committed to ideals,
rather than to groups. Yet, during several periods in his career,
Boissy also placed himself in danger by acting on his ideals. He
held political beliefs that were both appropriate to his time and
effective in application. He made many enemies, but the greatest
testament to Boissy's life was the constant call of the French
people for him to serve.
'A well-written and thought-provoking account of the current crisis
of globalization. Not everyone will agree with Eyal's
interpretation, but few will remain indifferent.' - Yuval Noah
Harari, author of Sapiens Revolt is an eloquent and provocative
challenge to the prevailing wisdom about the rise of nationalism
and populism today. With a vibrant and informed voice, Nadav Eyal
illustrates how modern globalization is unsustainable. He contends
that the collapse of the current world order is not so much about
the imbalance between technological advances and social progress,
or the breakdown of liberal democracy, as it is about a passion to
upend and destroy power structures that have become hollow,
corrupt, or simply unresponsive to urgent needs. Eyal illuminates
the forces both benign and malignant that have so rapidly
transformed our economic, political, and cultural realities,
shedding light not only on the globalized revolution that has come
to define our time but also on the counterrevolution waged by those
who globalization has marginalized and exploited. With a mixture of
journalistic narrative, penetrating vignettes, and original
analysis, Revolt shows that within the mainstream the left and
right have much in common. Teasing out the connections among
distressed Pennsylvania coal miners, anarchists in communes on the
outskirts of Athens, neo-Nazis in Germany, and Syrian refugee
families whom he accompanied from the shores of Greece to their
destination in Germany, Eyal shows how their stories feed our
current state of unrest. More than just an analysis of the present,
though, Revolt also takes a hard look at lessons from the past,
from the Opium Wars in China to colonialist Haiti to the Marshall
Plan. With these historical ties, Eyal shows that the roots of
revolt have always been deep and strong. The current uprisings are
no passing phenomenon - revolt is the new status quo.
The wars between 1792 and 1815 saw the making of the modern world,
with Britain and Russia the key powers to emerge triumphant from a
long period of bitter conflict. In this innovative book, Jeremy
Black focuses on the strategic contexts and strategies involved,
explaining their significance both at the time and subsequently.
Reinterpreting French Revolutionary and Napoleonic warfare,
strategy, and their consequences, he argues that Napoleon's failure
owed much to his limitations as a strategist. Black uses this
framework as a foundation to assess the nature of warfare, the
character of strategy, and the eventual ascendance of Britain and
Russia in this period. Rethinking the character of strategy, this
is the first history to look holistically at the strategies of all
the leading belligerents from a global perspective. It will be an
essential read for military professionals, students, and history
buffs alike.
In 1775, it seemed inconceivable that the American colonists could
overcome the overwhelming military superiority of Great Britain.
Yet the belligerent colonists were certain they could defeat the
British army they so despised. On the other hand, their one great
fear was that they would not be able to overcome the presence of
the Royal Navy. Somehow though, the colonists were able to resist
the British at sea, attract capable allies, and successfully
conclude their quest for independence. The primary focus of this
work is the period prior to 1779 before the French had come to the
aid of the fledgling American nation-when the Blue Water Patriots
confronted the Royal Navy alone, relying on little more than
ingenuity and courage. In 1775, it was inconceivable that the
American colonists could have overcome the overwhelming military
superiority of Great Britain. Yet the belligerent colonists seemed
certain that they could defeat the British army they so despised.
On the other hand, the one great fear shared by all colonists was
that they would not be able to overcome the presence of the Royal
Navy. Yet, somehow, the colonists were able to resist the British
at sea, attract capable allies to aid them, and successfully
conclude their quest for independence. The American Revolution can
safely be viewed as part of a prolonged worldwide naval conflict
between France and Britain beginning with the Glorious Revolution
in 1688 and ending with the British victory at Trafalgar in 1805
during the Napoleonic Wars. This was a period in which the armed
merchantmen of the age of trade were replaced by genuine warships
whose task was to control the sea lanes. The American Revolution
was a watershed in this regard with improved warship designs, new
technologies, improved gunpowder and communications, and innovative
tactics. Although French participation in the war for independence
was crucial, the primary focus of this work is the period before
1779, when the colonists confronted the Royal Navy alone with only
their ingenuity and courage to defend them. Every school child
knows that the American Revolution began on Lexington Green in
April, 1775, but how many are aware that in 1764 a Royal Navy
cutter, St. John, engaged in the suppression of smuggling, was
fired upon by Rhode Islanders; that in 1769, the revenue sloop
Liberty was seized and burned by the people of Newport; or that in
1772, the navy cutter Gaspee was burned in the night by armed
patriots attacking from small boats. These Blue Water Patriots
fought the first battles on the road to American independence. This
is their story.
This comparative historical sociology of the Bolshevik
revolutionaries offers a reinterpretation of political
radicalization in the last years of the Russian Empire. Finding
that two-thirds of the Bolshevik leadership were ethnic minorities
- Ukrainians, Latvians, Georgians, Jews and others - this book
examines the shared experiences of assimilation and socioethnic
exclusion that underlay their class universalism. It suggests that
imperial policies toward the Empire's diversity radicalized class
and ethnicity as intersectional experiences, creating an
assimilated but excluded elite: lower-class Russians and
middle-class minorities universalized particular exclusions as they
disproportionately sustained the economic and political burdens of
maintaining the multiethnic Russian Empire. The Bolsheviks' social
identities and routes to revolutionary radicalism show especially
how a class-universalist politics was appealing to those seeking
secularism in response to religious tensions, a universalist
politics where ethnic and geopolitical insecurities were
exclusionary, and a tolerant 'imperial' imaginary where
Russification and illiberal repressions were most keenly felt.
The 1919 Egyptian revolution was the founding event for modern
Egypt's nation state. So far there has been no text that looks at
the causes, consequences and legacies of the 1919 Egyptian
Revolution. This book addresses that gap, with Egyptian and
non-Egyptian scholars discussing a range of topics that link back
to that crucial event in Egyptian history. Across nine chapters,
the book analyzes the causes and course of the 1919 revolution; its
impacts on subsequent political beliefs, practices and
institutions; and its continuing legacy as a means of regime
legitimation. The chapters reveal that the 1919 Egyptian Revolution
divided the British while uniting Egyptians. However, the
"revolutionary moment" was superseded by efforts to restore
Britain's influence in league with a reassertion of monarchical
authority. Those efforts enjoyed tactical, but not long-term
strategic success, in part because the 1919 revolution had
unleashed nationalist forces that could never again be completely
contained. The book covers key issues surrounding the 1919 Egyptian
Revolution such as the role played by Lord Allenby; internal
schisms within the British government struggling to cope with the
revolution; Muslim-Christian relations; and divisions among the
Egyptians.
Looking at royal ritual in pre-revolutionary France, Death and the
crown examines the deathbed and funeral of Louis XV in 1774, the
lit de justice of November 1774 and the coronation of Louis XVI,
including the ceremony of the royal healing touch for scrofula. It
reviews the state of the field in ritual studies and appraises the
situation of the monarchy in the 1770s, including the recall of the
parlements and the many ways people engaged with royal ritual. It
answers questions such as whether Louis XV died in fear of
damnation, why Marie Antoinette was not crowned in 1775 and why
Louis XVI's coronation was not held in Paris. This lively,
accessible text is a useful tool for undergraduate and postgraduate
teaching which will also be of interest to specialists on this
under-researched period. -- .
Robert J. Sierakowski's Sandinistas: A Moral History offers a bold
new perspective on the liberation movement that brought the
Sandinista National Liberation Front to power in Nicaragua in 1979,
overthrowing the longest-running dictatorship in Latin America.
Unique sources, from trial transcripts to archival collections and
oral histories, offer a new vantage point beyond geopolitics and
ideologies to understand the central role that was played by
everyday Nicaraguans. Focusing on the country's rural north,
Sierakowski explores how a diverse coalition of labor unionists,
student activists, housewives, and peasants inspired by Catholic
liberation theology came to successfully challenge the legitimacy
of the Somoza dictatorship and its entrenched networks of power.
Mobilizing communities against the ubiquitous cantinas, gambling
halls, and brothels, grassroots organizers exposed the regime's
complicity in promoting social ills, disorder, and quotidian
violence while helping to construct radical new visions of moral
uplift and social renewal. Sierakowski similarly recasts our
understanding of the Nicaraguan National Guard, grounding his study
of the Somozas' army in the social and cultural world of the
ordinary soldiers who enlisted and fought in defense of the
dictatorship. As the military responded to growing opposition with
heightened state terror and human rights violations, repression
culminated in widespread civilian massacres, stories that are
unearthed for the first time in this work. These atrocities further
exposed the regime's moral breakdown in the eyes of the public,
pushing thousands of previously unaligned Nicaraguans into the
ranks of the guerrilla insurgency by the late 1970s. Sierakowski's
innovative reinterpretation of the Sandinista Revolution will be of
interest to students, scholars, and activists concerned with Latin
American social movements, the Cold War, and human rights.
The spectre of revolution and the nature of radicalism in Britain
from the late eighteenth century through to the age of the
Chartists has for some time engaged the interest of scholars and
been the topic of much debate. This book honours one of the
subject's most renowned and respected historians, Professor Malcolm
I. Thomis. In a collection distinguished by its formidable range of
contributors, a series of stimulating essays explores and
re-examines the threats and ideas of revolution and the byzantine
networks and character of British radical culture in the turbulent
and intriguing years between 1775 and 1848.
The Balkans has long been a place of encounter among different
peoples, religions, and civilizations, resulting in a rich cultural
tapestry and mosaic of nationalities. But it has also been burdened
by a traumatic post-colonial experience. The transition from
traditional multinational empires to modern nation-states has been
accompanied by large-scale political violence that has resulted in
the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the permanent displacement
of millions more.
Mark Biondich examines the origins of these conflicts, while
treating the region as an integral part of modern European history,
shaped by much the same forces and intellectual impulses. It
reminds us that political violence and ethnic cleansing have
scarcely been unique to the Balkans.
As Biondich shows, the political violence that has bedevilled the
region since the late nineteenth century stemmed from modernity and
the ideology of integral nationalism, employed by states that were
dominated by democratizing or authoritarian nationalizing elites
committed to national homogeneity. Throughout this period, the
Balkan proponents of democratic governance, civil society, and
multiculturalism were progressively marginalized. The history of
revolution, war, political violence, and ethnic cleansing in the
modern Balkans is above all the story of this tragic
marginalization.
This book offers a timely and multifaceted reanalysis of student
radicalism in postwar Japan. It considers how students actively
engaged the early postwar debates over subjectivity, and how the
emergence of a new generation of students in the mid-1950s
influenced the nation's embrace of the idea that 'the postwar' had
ended. Attentive to the shifting spatial and temporal boundaries of
'postwar Japan,' it elucidates previously neglected histories of
student and zainichi Korean activism and their interactions with
the Japanese Communist Party. This book is a key read for scholars
in the field of Japanese history, social movements and postcolonial
studies, as well as the history of student radicalism.
Zhang Shenfu, a founder of the Chinese Communist party,
participated in all the major political events in China for four
decades following the Revolution of 1919. Yet Zhang had become a
forgotten figure in China and the West--a victim of Mao's
determined efforts to place himself at the center of China's
revolution--until Vera Schwarcz began to meet with him in his home
on Wang Fu Cang Lane in Beijing. Now Schwarcz brings Zhang to life
through her poignant account of five years of conversations with
him, a narrative that is interwoven with translations of his
writings and testimony of his friends. Moving circuitously,
Schwarcz reveals fragments of the often contradictory layers of
Zhang's character: at once a champion of feminism and an ardent
womanizer, a follower of Bertrand Russell who also admired
Confucius, and a philosophically inclined political pragmatist.
Schwarcz also meditates on the tension between historical events
and personal memory, on the public amnesia enforced by governments
and the "forgetfulness" of those who find rememberance too painful.
Her book is not only a portrait of a remarkable personality but a
corrective to received accounts and to the silences that abound in
the official annals of the Chinese revolution.
'Utterly gripping and consistently witty' Damian Thompson, Literary
Review 'An absolutely splendid book' A. N. Wilson, The Spectator
The story of Catholic Emancipation begins with the violent
Anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in 1780, fuelled by the reduction in
Penal Laws against the Roman Catholics harking back to the
sixteenth century. Some fifty years later, the passing of the
Emancipation Bill was hailed as a 'bloodless revolution'. Had the
Irish Catholics been a 'millstone', as described by an English
aristocrat, or were they the prime movers? While the English
Catholic aristocracy and the Irish peasants and merchants
approached the Catholic Question in very different ways, they
manifestly shared the same objective. Antonia Fraser brings colour
and humour to the vivid drama with its huge cast of characters:
George III, who opposed Emancipation on the basis of the Coronation
Oath; his son, the indulgent Prince of Wales, who was enamoured
with the Catholic Maria Fitzherbert before the voluptuous Lady
Conyngham; Wellington and the 'born Tory' Peel vying for
leadership; 'roaring' Lord Winchilsea; the heroic Daniel O'Connell.
Expertly written and deftly argued, The King and Catholics is also
a distant mirror of our times, reflecting the political issues
arising from religious intolerance.
This study aims to update a classic of comparative revolutionary
analysis, Crane Brinton's 1938 study The Anatomy of Revolution. It
invokes the latest research and theoretical writing in history,
political science and political sociology to compare and contrast,
in their successive phases, the English Revolution of 1640-60, the
French Revolution of 1789-99 and the Russian Revolution of 1917-29.
This book intends to do what no other comparative analysis of
revolutionary change has yet adequately done. It not only
progresses beyond Marxian socioeconomic 'class' analysis and early
'revisionist' stresses on short-term, accidental factors involved
in revolutionary causation and process; it also finds ways to
reconcile 'state-centered' structuralist accounts of the three
major European revolutions with postmodernist explanations of those
upheavals that play up the centrality of human agency,
revolutionary discourse, mentalities, ideology and political
culture.
"Revolutionary Ireland, 1912-25" analyses the main events in
Ireland from the initial crisis over the Third Home Rule Bill in
1912 to the consolidation of partition Ulster with the settling of
the boundary issue in 1925.Written with particular reference to the
needs of students in further and higher education, each chapter
contains an easy to follow narrative, guides to key reading on the
topic, sample essay and examination questions and links to web
resources.The main text is supported by an appendix of contemporary
sources and a range of additional information including a
chronology of significant events, maps, a glossary of key terms and
an extensive bibliography. This comprehensive text will allow
students to get to grips with this turbulent and fascinating period
of modern Irish history.
This book presents rich empirical analyses of the most important
movements in Chile's post-transition era: the Student Movement, the
Mapuche Movement, the Labor Movement, the Feminist Movement, and
the Environmental Movement. The chapters illuminate the processes
that led to their emergence, and detail how actors developed new
strategies, or revisited old ones, to influence the political
arena. The book also offers contributions that situate these cases
both in terms of the general trends in protest in Chile, as well as
in comparison to other countries in Latin America. Emphasizing
various facets of the debate about the relationship between
"institutional" and "non-institutional" politics, this volume not
only contributes to the study of collective action in Chile, but
also to the broader social movement literature.
This volume examines the French Revolution's relationship with and
impact on religious communities and religion in a transnational
perspective. It challenges the traditional secular narrative of the
French Revolution, exploring religious experience and
representation during the Revolution, as well as the religious
legacies that spanned from the eighteenth century to the present.
Contributors explore the myriad ways that individuals, communities,
and nation-states reshaped religion in France, Europe, the Atlantic
Ocean, and around the world.
This book analyses the waves of protests, from spontaneous
uprisings to well-organized forms of collective action, which have
shaken European cities over the last decade. It shows how analysing
these protests in connection with the structural context of
neoliberal urbanism and its crises is more productive than standard
explanations. Processes of neoliberalisation have caused deeply
segregated urban landscapes defined by deepening social inequality,
rising unemployment, racism, securitization of urban spaces and
welfare state withdrawal, particularly from poor peripheral areas,
where tensions between marginalized youth and police often manifest
in public spaces. Challenging a conventional distinction made in
research on protest, the book integrates a structural analysis of
processes of large scale urban transformation with analyses of the
relationship between 'riots' and social movement action in nine
countries: France, Greece, England, Germany, Spain, Poland,
Denmark, Sweden and Turkey.
This comparative historical sociology of the Bolshevik
revolutionaries offers a reinterpretation of political
radicalization in the last years of the Russian Empire. Finding
that two-thirds of the Bolshevik leadership were ethnic minorities
- Ukrainians, Latvians, Georgians, Jews and others - this book
examines the shared experiences of assimilation and socioethnic
exclusion that underlay their class universalism. It suggests that
imperial policies toward the Empire's diversity radicalized class
and ethnicity as intersectional experiences, creating an
assimilated but excluded elite: lower-class Russians and
middle-class minorities universalized particular exclusions as they
disproportionately sustained the economic and political burdens of
maintaining the multiethnic Russian Empire. The Bolsheviks' social
identities and routes to revolutionary radicalism show especially
how a class-universalist politics was appealing to those seeking
secularism in response to religious tensions, a universalist
politics where ethnic and geopolitical insecurities were
exclusionary, and a tolerant 'imperial' imaginary where
Russification and illiberal repressions were most keenly felt.
|
|