Burma (Myanmar) is a Southeast Asian country that is emerging from crisis after more than a half century of hard-line military rule and cultural, diplomatic and economic isolation. With the dissolution of its military regime, the State Peace and Development Council, in 2011, a formally civilian but military-dominated constitutional government was inaugurated. By 2012, Burma's president, retired General Thein Sein, had established a working relationship with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the country's pro-democracy movement since 1988, and after a 2012 by-election she and members of her opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), entered the new Union Parliament as legislators. However, even with the election victory of Daw Suu Kyi and the NLD in the General Election of November 2015, Burma faces daunting challenges: it is still one of the poorest countries in Southeast, fissured by longstanding ethnic conflicts that have made a nationwide peace agreement elusive and its people's security and the environment are threatened by foreign economic exploitation. Religious discord is also widely evident, as Buddhist militants instigate violence against the country's religious minorities, especially Muslims. Today Burma's prospects are the most hopeful they have been for over half a century, as the country takes steps along the road to a more open society and economy. This edition of the Historical Dictionary of Burma (Myanmar) encompasses not only current developments, but also Burma's over 1,500 years-old recorded history and the most important features of its cultures, ethnicity, religions, society and economy. This is done through a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture.

This book, first published in 1987, examines the experience of the North Vietnamese economy during the struggle for national reunification and the Vietnam war. It chronicles the impact of war and Socialist Construction upon an extremely poor area left undeveloped by French colonial exploitation. The analysis focuses on the severe restraints that faced socio-economic development in North Vietnam, and the adverse effects of forced development based upon neo-Stalinist institutional models. Deep problems were encountered in attempting to implement Socialist Construction in the North, and wartime aid from fraternal Socialist countries masked the fundamental economic imbalances created by the development effort. After national reunification in 1975 the structural difficulties of the Northern economy and the shortcomings of its economic management system crushed the expectations of rapid peacetime development and led to the economic crisis of the late 1970s.

The Bolsheviks Come to Power is one of the most important histories of the Russian Revolution to challenge the mainstream narratives. Originally published to great acclaim in 2004, this new edition marks the 100th anniversary of one of the explosive and game-changing moments in modern times. In this absorbing narrative, Alexander Rabinowitch counters the claims by mainstream historians that the revolution was a military coup led by Lenin and a small band of fanatics. He refutes the Soviet myth that the party's triumph in the October Revolution was inevitable, and explains the ebbs and flows of the revolutionary period, tracing the moods of the working class and the political positions of the Bolsheviks at different historical moments, including the immediate aftermath of the February Revolution, the July Days, the Kornilov affair, and up to and including the October Revolution itself. Drawn from a wealth of primary sources and archival material, this new edition of Rabinowitch's classic account is a must-have for anyone interested in clearing away the tired platitudes of mainstream historians, and reclaiming the revolution on this important anniversary.

This book, first published in 1984, provides a wealth of original evidence that explores not only the impact of the Vietnam War on the beliefs of American leaders - the 'lessons' they believed had been learnt by Americans from the conflict in Vietnam.

This volume explores several notable themes related to social, political, and religious movements in Latin America and offers insightful historical perspectives to understand national, regional, and global issues from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. This volume's collected chapters focus on the Latin American society and are divided into three sections. The first section, Social, presents some cultural, demographic, and urban changes that have occurred with increasing frequency in Latin America from the early twentieth century onward. The second section, Political, shows migratory, political, and identity movements that in recent decades have re-emerged with force. Finally, the third section, Religious, analyzes various Latin American religious visions with their particular characteristics. From the religious hegemony of Catholicism, a change in the religious panorama in the last decades can be seen intermingled with politics, history, and society.

Since the end of the Cold War there have been a number of cases where the democratization process has been turbulent, or even violent. Addressing electoral violence, its evolution and impact in the Western Balkans, this book explores the conflict logic of election and tries to understand its basic patterns. Two decades of electoral competition in the region are analysed to identify an interesting evolution of electoral violence in terms of forms, actors, motivations and dynamics. By identifying the potential drivers of electoral violence and explaining the escalation and stimulus of violence-related events, the author combines a theoretical approach with original data to emphasise the variability of the phenomenon and its evolution in the region. The book will appeal to students and scholars of post-communist Europe and democratisation processes and the Western Balkans in particular. It should also be of interest to political advisors and those involved in developing or implementing democratisation programmes.

Offering the first in-depth analysis of the relationship between populism and political meritocracy, this book asks why states with meritocratic systems such as Singapore and China have not faced the populist challenge to the extent that liberal-democratic states have. Is political meritocracy immune to populism? Or does it fan its flames? Exploring this puzzle, the authors argue that political meritocracies are simultaneously immune and susceptible to populism. The book maintains that political meritocracy's focus on the intellect, social skills, and most importantly virtue of political leaders can reduce the likelihood of populist actors rising to power; that meritocracy's promise of upward mobility for the masses can work against elitism; and that rule by the 'meritorious' can help avoid crises, diminishing the political opening for populism. However, it also shows that meritocracy does little to eliminate grievances around political, cultural, and social inequality, instead entrenching a hierarchy - an allegedly 'just' one. The book ultimately argues that the more established the system of political meritocracy becomes, the more it opens the door to populist resentment and revolt. Pitched primarily to scholars and postgraduate students in political theory, comparative politics, Asian studies, and political sociology, this book fills an important scholarly gap.

This book offers an in-depth investigation of the emergence and spread of social mobilizations that transcend ethnicity in societies violently divided along ethno-national lines. Using Bosnia Herzegovina as a case study, the book explores episodes of mobilization which have superseded ethno-nationalist cleavages. Bosnia Herzegovina emerged from the 1992-95 war brutally impoverished and deeply ethnically divided, representing a critical and strategic case for the examination and understanding of the dynamics of mobilization in such divided societies. Despite difficult circumstances for civic-based collective action, social mobilizations in the country have grown in size, number and intensity in recent years. Marked by citizen demand for accountable governance, responsive urbanism, and access to basic human rights, these protests have been driven by economic, social and political problems which cut across religious and ethnic divides. Examining the variation in spatial and social scale of contention, the book investigates movements' formation, their organizational structures and networking strategies and advances research on divided societies and social movements. This volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Southeastern Europe and those examining political dissent, social movements and mobilization in divided societies, as well as practitioners in civil society, grassroots groups and political activists.

Conflict and instability are built into the very fabric of the Middle East and North African (MENA) state and states system; yet both states and states system have displayed remarkable resilience. How can we explain this? This handbook explores the main debates, theoretical approaches and accumulated empirical research by prominent scholars in the field, providing an essential context for scholars pursuing research on the MENA state and states system. Contributions are grouped into four key themes: * Historical contexts, state-building and politics in MENA * State actors, societal context and popular activism * Trans-state politics: the political economy and identity contexts * The international politics of MENA The 26 chapters examine the evolution of the state and states system, before and after independence, and take the 2011 Arab uprisings as a pivotal moment that intensified trends already embedded in the system, exposing the deep features of state and system-specifically their built-in vulnerability and their ability to survive. This handbook provides comprehensive coverage of the history and role of the state in the MENA region. It offers a key resource for all researchers and students interested in international relations and the Middle East and North Africa.

This volume analyses the narration of the social through music and the seismographic function of music to detect social problems and envision alternatives. Beyond state-driven attempts to link musical production to the official narrative of the nation, mass musical movements emerged during the 20th century that provided countercultural and alternative narratives of the prevailing social context. The Americas contain numerous examples of the strong connection between music and politics; Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" envisioned a socialist transformation of the U.S., the Chilean Nueva Cancion created a narrative and affective frame for the recognition of popular culture as a central element of the cultural politics of the Chilean way to socialism, and Reggae emerged as a response to British colonialism, drawing inspiration and guidance from the pan-Africanist visions of Marcus Garvey. Providing a significant contribution to the study of music and politics/social movements from an inter-American perspective, this book will appeal to students and scholars of U.S. and Latin American Cultural Studies, Transnational Studies, History and Political Studies, Area Studies, and Music Studies. For additional information, please see the authors' Sonic Politics webpage: https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/cias/sonicpolitics/index.html

This book explores the historical inter-relations between international law and revolution, with a focus on how international anti-capitalist struggle plays out through law. The book approaches the topic by analysing the meaning of revolution and what revolutionary activity might look like, before comparing this with legal activity, to assess the basic compatibility between the two. It then moves on to examine two prominent examples of revolutionary movements engaging with international law from the twentieth century; the early Soviet Union and the Third World movement in the nineteen sixties and seventies. The book proposes that the 'form of law', or its base logic, is rooted in capitalist social relations of private property and contract, and that therefore the law is a particularly inhospitable place to advance revolutionary breaks with established distributions of power or wealth. This does not mean that the law is irrelevant to revolutionaries, but that turning to legal means comes with tendencies towards conservative outcomes. In the light of this, the book considers the possibility of how, or whether, international law might contribute to the pursuit of a more egalitarian future. International Law and Revolution fills a significant gap in the field of international legal theory by offering a deep theoretical reflection on the meaning of the concept of revolution for the twenty-first century, and its link to the international legal system. It develops the commodity form theory of law as applied to international law, and explores the limits of law for progressive social struggle, informed by historical analysis. It will therefore appeal to students and scholars of public international law, legal history, human rights, international politics and political history.

Was the Bolshevik success in Russia during the revolution and civil war years a legitimate expression of the will of the people? Or did Russian workers, peasants, bourgeoisie, and upper-class groups pose numerous challenges to Bolshevik authority, challenges that were put down through unyielding repression? In this book distinguished scholars from East and West draw on recently opened archives to challenge the commonly held view that the Bolsheviks enjoyed widespread support and that their early history was simply a march toward inevitable victory. They show instead that during this period Russian society was at war with itself and with the Bolsheviks. Authors discuss such previously neglected subjects as government policies toward women and toward religious institutions, the protests of workers and peasants, and the anti-Bolshevik movements and parties. In particular, they investigate the actions of other political parties and White leaders, the peasant rebellions and workers' strikes, Bolshevik operations against the church, attitudes toward peasant and working-class women, and new data on Lenin (the last in a chapter by Richard Pipes). Describing not one civil war but several social, political, and military confrontations going on simultaneously, they portray a Russia in turmoil and an outcome that was by no means inevitable.

As with other terrorist and extremist organizations, religion forms the basis of the Ku Klux Klan's dogmatic philosophy, providing justification for its beliefs and actions. The Klan represents a link to America's cultural past. While America has undergone tremendous social change, the secretive order has since the end of the Civil War kept alive the antiquated values-predicated on racism and religion-of white supremacism. Covering nearly a century of Klan ideology, this book examines the group's religious rhetoric in their songs and literature, from its heyday during the 1920s to 2014.

The spectres of Marx and Lenin have long loomed prominently in Africa and Asia and they still do so in the 21st century. Many of the founding fathers of postcolonial republics believed socialism could transform their societies. Yet what socialism meant in theory and in practice has always been highly heterogeneous and differed markedly from the European experience. African and Asian movements did not simply mimic the ideas and institutions of Soviet or European Marxists, but endeavoured to define their own, experimenting with a variety of interpretations and in the process adapting doctrines and templates to their unique contexts. This volume brings together anthropologists, historians and political scientists from around the world to reflect on three great challenges which various types of socialists in Africa and Asia have had to simultaneously contend with in their articulations of liberation: how to build up empirical and juridical statehood, how to forge a nation after colonial divide-and-rule, and how to position themselves in an international order not of their making. In a post-colonial world, this helps centre a key question running through the different chapters: what can African and Asian imaginaries, institutions and practices tell us about socialism as a global phenomenon? The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

This book provides novel and critical insights into the complex relationship between politics of memory and oblivion in European countries in the 20th and early 21st centuries as well as the cultural, political and institutional backgrounds against which they function. It explores the uses of the past in terms of a conscious choice to either reactivate or overlook memories as selective reference points for the promotion and legitimation of contemporary political goals. The chapters of this volume bring together theoretical discussions on the interrelationship between remembrance and purposeful oblivion as active processes that serve particular interests and ideologies in the present. By addressing the diverse meanings given to practices of memory, the contributions offer new perspectives on how institutions shape cultural memory, power relations and identity projects. Politics of Memory and Oblivion in the European Context: Critical Perspectives will be of interest to scholars and graduate students from the fields of memory studies, heritage studies, cultural studies, history, and political science who engage with the legacies of violent and traumatic pasts, post-colonial contexts, societal transition and reconciliation. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, European Politics and Society.

This study examines how debates about history during the French Revolution informed and changed the nature of the British novel between 1790 and 1814. During these years, intersections between history, political ideology, and fiction, as well as the various meanings of the term "history" itself, were multiple and far reaching. Morgan Rooney elucidates these subtleties clearly and convincingly. While political writers of the 1790s-Burke, Price, Mackintosh, Paine, Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and others-debate the historical meaning of the Glorious Revolution as a prelude to broader ideological arguments about the significance of the past for the present and future, novelists engage with this discourse by representing moments of the past or otherwise vying to enlist the authority of history to further a reformist or loyalist agenda. Anti-Jacobin novelists such as Charles Walker, Robert Bisset, and Jane West draw on Burkean historical discourse to characterize the reform movement as ignorant of the complex operations of historical accretion. For their part, reform-minded novelists such as Charlotte Smith, William Godwin, and Maria Edgeworth travesty Burke's tropes and arguments so as to undermine and then redefine the category of history. As the Revolution crisis recedes, new novel forms such as Edgeworth's regional novel, Lady Morgan's national tale, and Jane Porter's early historical fiction emerge, but historical representation-largely the legacy of the 1790s' novel-remains an increasingly pronounced feature of the genre. Whereas the representation of history in the novel, Rooney argues, is initially used strategically by novelists involved in the Revolution debate, it is appropriated in the early nineteenth century by authors such as Edgeworth, Morgan, and Porter for other, often related ideological purposes before ultimately developing into a stable, nonpartisan, aestheticized feature of the form as practiced by Walter Scott. The French Revolution Debate and the British Novel, 1790-1814 demonstrates that the transformation of the novel at this fascinating juncture of British political and literary history contributes to the emergence of the historical novel as it was first realized in Scott's Waverley (1814).

Fugitive Politics explores the intersection between politics and ecology, between the requirements for radical change and the unprecedented challenges posed by the global crisis, a dialectic has rarely been addressed in academia. Across eight chapters, Carl Boggs explores how systemic change may be achieved within the current system, while detailing attempts at achieving change within nation-states. Boggs states that any notion of revolution seems fanciful in the current climate, contending that controlling elites have concentrated their hold on corporate power along three self-serving fronts: technology (Big Tech) and the surveillance order, militarism and the warfare state, and intensification of globalized power. Combined with this Boggs cites the fundamental absence of revolutionary counter-forces, arguing that after decades of subservice relevant, allied to the rise of identity politics and social movements, the Marxist theoretical legacy is now exhausted and will not provide an exit from the crisis. Boggs concludes that the only possibility for fundamental change will come from an open style of politics, in the Jacobin tradition, operating within the overall structures of the current democratic state. Written for both an academic and a general readership, in the U.S. and beyond, Fugitive Politics will be of vital importance to those studying political theory, political philosophy, political history, Marxism and Marxist theory, authoritarian politics, ecology, environmental politics, and climate politics.

Cultural factors shape the symbolic environment in which contentious politics take place. Among these factors, collective memories are particularly relevant: they can help collective action by providing symbolic material from the past, but at the same time they can constrain people's ability to mobilise by imposing proscriptions and prescriptions. This book analyses the relationship between social movements and collective memories: how do social movements participate in the building of public memory? And how does public memory, and in particular the media's representation of a contentious past, influence strategic choices in contemporary movements? To answer these questions the book draws its focus on the evolution of the representation of specific events in the Italian and Spanish student movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore, through qualitative interviews to contemporary student activists in both countries, it investigates the role of past waves of contention in shaping the present through the publicly discussed image of the past.

Fugitive Politics explores the intersection between politics and ecology, between the requirements for radical change and the unprecedented challenges posed by the global crisis, a dialectic has rarely been addressed in academia. Across eight chapters, Carl Boggs explores how systemic change may be achieved within the current system, while detailing attempts at achieving change within nation-states. Boggs states that any notion of revolution seems fanciful in the current climate, contending that controlling elites have concentrated their hold on corporate power along three self-serving fronts: technology (Big Tech) and the surveillance order, militarism and the warfare state, and intensification of globalized power. Combined with this Boggs cites the fundamental absence of revolutionary counter-forces, arguing that after decades of subservice relevant, allied to the rise of identity politics and social movements, the Marxist theoretical legacy is now exhausted and will not provide an exit from the crisis. Boggs concludes that the only possibility for fundamental change will come from an open style of politics, in the Jacobin tradition, operating within the overall structures of the current democratic state. Written for both an academic and a general readership, in the U.S. and beyond, Fugitive Politics will be of vital importance to those studying political theory, political philosophy, political history, Marxism and Marxist theory, authoritarian politics, ecology, environmental politics, and climate politics.

On the outskirts of Havana lies Mazorra, an asylum known to--and at times feared by--ordinary Cubans for over a century. Since its founding in 1857, the island's first psychiatric hospital has been an object of persistent political attention. Drawing on hospital documents and government records, as well as the popular press, photographs, and oral histories, Jennifer L. Lambe charts the connections between the inner workings of this notorious institution and the highest echelons of Cuban politics. Across the sweep of modern Cuban history, she finds, Mazorra has served as both laboratory and microcosm of the Cuban state: the asylum is an icon of its ignominious colonial and neocolonial past and a crucible of its republican and revolutionary futures. From its birth, Cuban psychiatry was politically inflected, drawing partisan contention while sparking debates over race, religion, gender, and sexuality. Psychiatric notions were even invested with revolutionary significance after 1959, as the new government undertook ambitious schemes for social reeducation. But Mazorra was not the exclusive province of government officials and professionalizing psychiatrists. U.S. occupiers, Soviet visitors, and, above all, ordinary Cubans infused the institution, both literal and metaphorical, with their own fears, dreams, and alternative meanings. Together, their voices comprise the madhouse that, as Lambe argues, haunts the revolutionary trajectory of Cuban history.

The French Revolution remains the most examined event, or period, in world history. It was, most historians would argue, the first "modern" revolution, an event so momentous that it changed the very meaning of the word revolution, from "restoration," as in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England, to its modern sense of connoting a political and/or social upheaval that marks a decisive break with the past, one that moves a society in a forward, or progressive, direction. No revolution has occurred since 1789 without making reference to this first revolution, and most have been measured against it. One cannot utter the date 1789 without thinking of revolution, and so significant were the changes unleashed in that year that it has come to mark the dividing line between early modern and late modern European history Kings This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on the causes and origins; the roles of significant persons; crucial events and turning points; important institutions and organizations; and the economic, social, and intellectual factors involved in the event that gave birth to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about this period.

The Routledge Companion to the French Revolution in World History engages with some of the most recent trends in French revolutionary scholarship by considering the Revolution in its global context. Across seventeen chapters an international team of contributors examine the impact of the Revolution not only on its European neighbours but on Latin America, North America and Africa, assess how far events there impacted on the Revolution in France, and suggest something of the Revolution's enduring legacy in the modern world. The Companion views the French Revolution through a deliberately wide lens. The first section deals with its global repercussions from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean and includes a discussion of major insurrections such as those in Haiti and Venezuela. Three chapters then dissect the often complex and entangled relations with other revolutionary movements, in seventeenth-century Britain, the American colonies and Meiji Japan. The focus then switches to international involvement in the events of 1789 and the circulation of ideas, people, goods and capital. In a final section contributors throw light on how the Revolution was and is still remembered across the globe, with chapters on Russia, China and Australasia. An introduction by the editors places the Revolution in its political, historical and historiographical context. The Routledge Companion to the French Revolution in World History is a timely and important contribution to scholarship of the French Revolution.

If we place women at the center of our account of China's last two centuries, how does this change our understanding of what happened? This deeply knowledgeable book illuminates the places where the Big History of recognizable events intersects with the daily lives of ordinary people, using gender as its analytic lens. Leading scholar Gail Hershatter asks how these events affected women in particular, and how women affected the course of these events. For instance, did women have a 1911 revolution? A socialist revolution? If so, what did those revolutions look like? Which women had them? Hershatter uses two key themes to frame her analysis. The first is the importance of women's visible and invisible labor. The labor of women in domestic and public spaces shaped China's move from empire to republic to socialist nation to rising capitalist power. The second is the symbolic work performed by gender itself. What women should do and be was a constant topic of debate during China's transformation from empire to weak state to partially occupied territory to nascent socialist republic to reform-era powerhouse. What sorts of concerns did people express through the language of gender? How did that language work, and why was it so powerful? Drawing on decades of Hershatter's groundbreaking scholarship and mastery of a range of literatures, this beautifully written book will be essential reading for all students of China's modern history.

This book, first published in 1930 and reissued in 1961, examines the Western phenomenon of the rise of the 'mass-man'. Analysing the state of society before the Second World War, acclaimed philosopher Ortega y Gasset lays bare the problems that faced the countries of Europe in a book that resonates today in the imposition of direct action over discussion.

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.