Damascius was head of the Neoplatonist academy in Athens when the Emperor Justinian shut its doors forever in 529. His work, Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles, is the last surviving independent philosophical treatise from the Late Academy. Its survey of Neoplatonist metaphysics, discussion of transcendence, and compendium of late antique theologies, make it unique among all extant works of late antique philosophy. It has never before been translated into English.
The Problems and Solutions exhibits a thorough?going critique of Proclean metaphysics, starting with the principle that all that exists proceeds from a single cause, proceeding to critique the Proclean triadic view of procession and reversion, and severely undermining the status of intellectual reversion in establishing being as the intelligible object. Damascius investigates the internal contradictions lurking within the theory of descent as a whole, showing that similarity of cause and effect is vitiated in the case of processions where one order (e.g. intellect) gives rise to an entirely different order (e.g. soul).
Neoplatonism as a speculative metaphysics posits the One as the exotic or extopic explanans for plurality, conceived as immediate, present to hand, and therefore requiring explanation. Damascius shifts the perspective of his metaphysics: he struggles to create a metaphysical discourse that accommodates, insofar as language is sufficient, the ultimate principle of reality. After all, how coherent is a metaphysical system that bases itself on the Ineffable as a first principle? Instead of creating an objective ontology, Damascius writes ever mindful of the limitations of dialectic, and of the pitfalls and snares inherent in the very structure of metaphysical discourse.

This is a study of the major landholders of England and their estates during the reign of Edward the Confessor. It is the first comprehensive analysis of the lay landholders recorded in Domesday Book. Peter A. Clarke examines not only the great earls but also lesser lords with significant holdings, and the complex network of relationships based on land. As well as Domesday, Dr Clarke makes full use of all other available evidence, such as chronicles and charters, and skilfully builds a detailed and convincing picture of landholding and lordship in eleventh-century England. He assesses the impact of the Norman Conquest, contrasting conditions under Edward the Confessor with those of the Norman regime. Dr Clarke's work marks a significant advance in knowledge and understanding of medieval England, and its extensive and detailed appendices of landholders and their estates will form an invaluable reference resource.

The Chinese and the Romans created the largest empires of the ancient world. Separated by thousands of miles of steppe, mountains and sea, these powerful states developed independently and with very limited awareness of each other's existence. This parallel process of state formation served as a massive natural experiment in social evolution that provides unique insight into the complexities of historical causation. Comparisons between the two empires shed new light on the factors that led to particular outcomes and help us understand similarities and differences in ancient state formation. The explicitly comparative perspective adopted in this volume opens up a dialogue between scholars from different areas of specialization, encouraging them to address big questions about the nature of imperial rule. In a series of interlocking case studies, leading experts of early China and the ancient Mediterranean explore the relationship between rulers and elite groups, the organization and funding of government, and the ways in which urban development reflected the interplay between state power and communal civic institutions. Bureaucratization, famously associated with Qin and Han China but long less prominent in the Roman world, receives special attention as an index of the ambitions and capabilities of kings and emperors. The volume concludes with a look at the preconditions for the emergence of divine rulership. Taken together, these pioneering contributions lay the foundations for a systematic comparative history of early empires.

In 1801 and again in 1809 the British made a treaty with the Qajar regime of Persia. The two treaties and the attempts to define and to protect Great Britain's interests in the Middle East were known at the time as the Persian Connection. Edward Ingram's scholarly and extensively researched study shows how the British expected the Persian Connection to help them win the Napoleonic Wars and to enable them to enjoy the fruits of empire in India. Professor Ingram examines British policies and activities in the Middle East and Central Asia during the early nineteenth century, and traces the course of Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations during this period. The Persian Connection, he argues, was a measure of the status and reputation of Britain as a Great Power; the history of its first twenty years illustrates the limits to British power, as well as having much light to shed on the creation of the Indian Empire.

Italy's Lost Greece is the untold story of the modern engagement with the ancient Greek settlements of South Italy--an area known since antiquity as Magna Graecia. This "Greater Greece," at once Greek and Italian, has continuously been perceived as a region in decline since its archaic golden age, and has long been relegated to the margins of classical studies. Giovanna Ceserani's evocative and nuanced analysis recovers its significance within the history of classical archaeology. It was here that the Renaissance first encountered an ancient Greek landscape, and during the "Hellenic turn" of eighteenth-century Europe the temples of Paestum and the painted vases of South Italy played major roles, but since then, Magna Graecia--lying outside the national boundaries of modern Greece, and sharing in the complicated regional dynamic of the Italian Mezzogiorno--has fitted awkwardly into the commonly accepted paradigms of Hellenism. The unfolding of this process provides a unique insight into three developments: the humanist investment in the ancient past, the evolution of modern Hellenism, and the making of classical archaeology. Drawing on antiquarian and archaeological writings, histories and travelogues about Magna Graecia, and recent rewritings of the history and imagining of the South, Italy's Lost Greece sheds new light on well known figures in the history of archaeology while recovering forgotten ones. This is an Italian story of European resonance, which transforms our understanding of the transition from antiquarianism to archaeology, of the relationship between nation-making and institution-building in the study of the ancient past, and of the reconstruction of classical Greece in the modern world.

How does one play bridge in a gas mask? Or enjoy motoring without consuming petrol? Or deal with a nationwide shortage of pea-sticks? For this compact little book Heath Robinson joined forces with writer Cecil Hunt to show civilians 'how to make the best of things' during the air raids, rationing, allotment tending and blackouts of the Second World War. The result is a warm celebration of the British population's ability to 'make do and mend'.

The Bavarian mountain village of Oberammergau is famous for its decennial passion play. The play began as an articulation of the villagers' strong Catholic piety, but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries developed into a considerable commercial enterprise. The growth of the passion play from a curiosity of village piety into a major tourist attraction encouraged all manner of entrepreneurial behavior and brought the inhabitants of this isolated rural area into close contract with a larger world. Hundreds of thousands of tourists came to see the play, and thousands of temporary workers descended on the village during the play season, some settling permanently in Oberammergau. Adolf Hitler would attend a performance of the play in 1934, later saying that the drama "revealed the muck and mire of Jewry." But, Helena Waddy argues, it is a mistake to brand Oberammergau as a Nazi stronghold, as has commonly been done. In this book she uses Oberammergau's unique history to explain why and how genuinely some villagers chose to become Nazis, while others rejected Party membership and defended their Catholic lifestyle. She explores the reasons why both local Nazis and their opponents fought to protect the village's cherished identity against the Third Reich's many intrusive demands. On the other hand, she also shows that the play mirrored the Gospel-based anti-Semitism endemic to Western culture. As a local study of the rise of Nazism and the Nazi era, Waddy's work is an important contribution to a growing genre. As a collective biography, it is a fascinating and moving portrait of life at a time when, as Thomas Mann wrote, "every day hurled the wildest demands at the heart and brain."

Few heirs to the throne have suffered as much humiliation as Prince Charles. Despite his hard work and genuine concern for the disadvantaged, he has struggled to overcome his unpopularity. After Diana's death, his approval rating crashed to 4% and has been only rescued by his marriage to Camilla. Nevertheless, just one third of Britons now support him to be the next king.

Many still fear that his accession to the throne will cause a constitutional crisis. That mistrust climaxed in the aftermath of the trial of Paul Burrell, Diana's butler, acquitted after the Queen's sensational ‘recollection'. In unearthing many secrets surrounding that and many other dramas, Bower's book, relying on the testimony from over 120 people employed or welcomed into the inner sanctum of Clarence House, reveals a royal household rife with intrigue and misconduct.

The result is a book which uniquely will probe into the character and court of the Charles that no one, until now, has seen.

This collection takes a thematic approach to eighteenth-century history, covering such topics as domestic politics (including popular political culture), religious developments and changes, social and demographic structure and growth, and culture. It presents a lively picture of an era of intense change and growth.

Continuing its distinguished tradition of focusing on central political, sociological, and cultural issues of Jewish life in the last century, Volume XXVI of the annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry examines the visual revolution that has overtaken Jewish cultural life in the twentieth century onwards, with special attention given to the evolution of Jewish museums. Bringing together leading curators and scholars, Visualizing and Exhibiting Jewish Space and History treats various forms of Jewish representation in museums in Europe and the United States before the Second World War and inquires into the nature and proliferation of Jewish museums following the Holocaust and the fall of Communism in Western and Eastern Europe. In addition, a pair of essays dedicated to six exhibitions that took place in Israel in 2008 to mark six decades of Israeli art raises significant issues on the relationship between art and gender, and art and politics. An introductory essay highlights the dramatic transformation in the appreciation of the visual in Jewish culture. The scope of the symposium offers one of the first scholarly attempts to treat this theme in several countries.
Also featured in this volume are a provocative essay on the nature of antisemitism in twentieth-century English society; review essays on Jewish fundamentalism and recent works on the subject of the Holocaust in occupied Soviet territories; and reviews of new titles in Jewish Studies..

Gifts for the Gods is an enlightening and richly illustrated book on animal mummies from ancient Egypt. Introducing readers to the wealth of animal mummies in British museums and private collections, this fascinating collection focuses on the prevalent type of animal mummy to be found in Britain: the votive offering. In a series of chapters written by experts in their field, Gifts for the Gods details the role of animals in ancient Egypt and in museum collections. It concentrates on the unique relationship of British explorers, travellers, archaeologists, curators and scientists with this material. The book describes a best-practice protocol for the scientific study of animal mummies by the Ancient Egyptian Animal Bio Bank team, whilst acknowledging that the current research represents only the beginning of a much larger task.

Conflicts and controversies at home and abroad have led Americans to focus on Islam more than ever before. In addition, more and more of their neighbors, colleagues, and friends are Muslims. While much has been written about contemporary American Islam and pioneering studies have appeared on Muslim slaves in the antebellum period, comparatively little is known about Islam in Victorian America. This biography of Alexander Russell Webb, one of the earliest American Muslims to achieve public renown, seeks to fill this gap.
Webb was a central figure of American Islam during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A native of the Hudson Valley, he was a journalist, editor, and civil servant. Raised a Presbyterian, Webb early on began to cultivate an interest in other religions and became particularly fascinated by Islam. While serving as U.S. consul to the Philippines in 1887, he took a greater interest in the faith and embraced it in 1888, one of the first Americans known to have done so. Within a few years, he began corresponding with important Muslims in India. Webb became an enthusiastic propagator of the faith, founding the first Islamic institution in the United States: the American Mission. He wrote numerous books intended to introduce Islam to Americans, started the first Islamic press in the United States, published a journal entitled The Moslem World, and served as the representative of Islam at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. In 1901, he was appointed Honorary Turkish Consul General in New York and was invited to Turkey, where he received two Ottoman medals of merits.
In this first-ever biography of Webb, Umar F. Abd-Allah examines Webb'slife and uses it as a window through which to explore the early history of Islam in America. Except for his adopted faith, every aspect of Webb's life was, as Abd-Allah shows, quintessentially characteristic of his place and time. It was because he was so typically American that he was able to serve as Islam's ambassador to America (and vice versa). As America's Muslim community grows and becomes more visible, Webb's life and the virtues he championed - pluralism, liberalism, universal humanity, and a sense of civic and political responsibility - exemplify what it means to be an American Muslim.

Was Plato a Pythagorean? Plato's students and earliest critics thought so, but scholars since the 19th century have been more skeptical. In Plato and Pythagoreanism, Phillip Sidney Horky argues that a specific type of Pythagorean philosophy, called "mathematical" Pythagoreanism, exercised a decisive influence on fundamental aspects of Plato's philosophy. The progenitor of mathematical Pythagoreanism was the infamous Pythagorean heretic and political revolutionary Hippasus of Metapontum, a student of Pythagoras who is credited with experiments in harmonics that led to innovations in mathematics. The innovations of Hippasus and other mathematical Pythagoreans, including Empedocles of Agrigentum, Epicharmus of Syracuse, Philolaus of Croton, and Archytas of Tarentum, presented philosophers like Plato with new approaches to science that sought to reconcile empirical knowledge with abstract mathematical theories. Plato and Pythagoreanism shows how mathematical Pythagoreanism established many of the fundamental philosophical questions Plato dealt with in his central dialogues, including Cratylus, Phaedo, Republic, Timaeus, and Philebus. In the process, it also illuminates the historical significance of the mathematical Pythagoreans, a group whose influence over the development of philosophical and scientific methods have been obscured since late antiquity. The picture that results is one in which Plato inherits mathematical Pythagorean method only to transform it into a powerful philosophical argument concerning the essential relationships between the cosmos and the human being.

The works reprinted in this two-volume collection cover the length of Robertson's career, from his student days in 1737 to his closing years in 1789, and show his intellectual and stylistic evolution. Part One contains his lesser known writings and speeches. Subjects explored range from Greek translation to architectural history to university fund-raising to geological speculation to church politics. Part Two consists of the earliest biographical commentaries on Robertson's life, written by five men who knew him personally. Together these items reveal details of Robertson's life and career with the aim of giving the reader a wider picture of Robertson's character and career.

While much has been written about Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., never before has anyone compared the social and political origins and evolution of their thoughts on non-violence. In this path-breaking work, respected political theorist Bidyut Chakrabarty argues that there is a confluence between Gandhi and King's concerns for humanity and advocacy of non-violence, despite the very different historical, economic and cultural circumstances against which they developed their ideas. At the same time, he demonstrates that both were truly shaped by their historical moments, evolving their approaches to non-violence to best advance their respective struggles for freedom. Gandhi and King were perhaps the most influential individuals in modern history to combine religious and political thought into successful and dynamic social ideologies. Gandhi emphasized service to humanity while King, who was greatly influenced by Gandhi, pursued religion-driven social action. Chakrabarty looks particularly at the way in which each strategically used religious and political language to build momentum and attract followers to their movements. The result is a compelling and historically entrenched view of two of the most important figures of the twentieth century and a thoughtful meditation on the common threads that flow through the larger and enduring nonviolence movement.

Deborah Posel breaks new ground in exposing some of the crucial political processes and struggles which shaped the reciprocal development of Apartheid and capitalism in South Africa. Her analysis debunks the orthodoxy view which presents apartheid as the product of a single `grand plan', created by the State in response to the pressures of capital accumulation. Using as a case study influx control during the first phase of apartheid (1948-1961), she shows that apartheid arose from complex patterns of conflict and compromise within the State, in which white capitalists, the black working class, and popular movements exercised varying and uneven degrees of influence. Her book integrates a detailed empirical analysis of the capitalist State and its relationship to class interests.

As a young man, Samuel Johnson, one of the most celebrated English authors of the eighteenth century, translated A Voyage to Abyssinia by Jeronimo Lobo, a tome by a Portuguese missionary about the country now known as Ethiopia. Far from being a potboiler, this translation left an indelible imprint on Johnson. Demonstrating its importance through a range of research and attentive close readings, Abyssinia's Samuel Johnson highlights the lasting influence of an African people on Johnson's oeuvre.
Wendy Laura Belcher uncovers traces of African discourse in Johnson's only work conceived for the stage, Irene; several of his short stories; and, of course, his most famous fiction, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. Throughout, Belcher provides a much needed perspective on the power of the discourse of the other to infuse European texts. Most pointedly, she illuminates how the Western literary canon is globally produced, developing the powerful metaphor of spirit possession to suggest that some texts in the European canon are best understood as energumens--texts that are spoken through. Her model of discursive possession offers a new way of theorizing transcultural intertextuality, in particular how Europe's others have co-constituted European representations. Drawing on sources in English, French, Portuguese, and Ge'ez, this study challenges the conventional wisdom on Johnson's work, from the inspiration for the name Rasselas and the nature of Johnson's religious beliefs to what makes Rasselas so strange.
A rich monograph that fuses eighteenth-century studies, comparative literature, and postcolonial theory, Abyssinia's Samuel Johnson adds a fresh perspective on and a wealth of insights into the great, enigmatic man of letters.

Although trade connects distant people and regions, bringing cultures closer together through the exchange of material goods and ideas, it has not always led to unity and harmony. From the era of the Crusades to the dawn of colonialism, exploitation and violence characterized many trading ventures, which required vessels and convoys to overcome tremendous technological obstacles and merchants to grapple with strange customs and manners in a foreign environment. Yet despite all odds, experienced traders and licensed brokers, as well as ordinary people, travelers, pilgrims, missionaries, and interlopers across the globe, concocted ways of bartering, securing credit, and establishing relationships with people who did not speak their language, wore different garb, and worshipped other gods. Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000-1900 focuses on trade across religious boundaries around the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans during the second millennium. Written by an international team of scholars, the essays in this volume examine a wide range of commercial exchanges, from first encounters between strangers from different continents to everyday transactions between merchants who lived in the same city yet belonged to diverse groups. In order to broach the intriguing yet surprisingly neglected subject of how the relationship between trade and religion developed historically, the authors consider a number of interrelated questions: When and where was religion invoked explicitly as part of commercial policies? How did religious norms affect the everyday conduct of trade? Why did economic imperatives, political goals, and legal institutions help sustain commercial exchanges across religious barriers in different times and places? When did trade between religious groups give way to more tolerant views of "the other " and when, by contrast, did it coexist with hostile images of those decried as "infidels "? Exploring captivating examples from across the world and spanning the course of the second millennium, this groundbreaking volume sheds light on the political, economic, and juridical underpinnings of cross-cultural trade as it emerged or developed at various times and places, and reflects on the cultural and religious significance of the passage of strange persons and exotic objects across the many frontiers that separated humankind in medieval and early modern times.

Written from the perspective of the various denominations that thrived in the 19th century, this comprehensive survey of the middle period in America's religious past actually starts a little earlier, in the 1780s. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, the citizens of the newly-minted republic had to cope with more than the havoc wreaked on churches and denominations by the war. They also tasted for the first time the effects of two novel ideas incorporated in the Constitution and the First Amendment: the separation of church and state and the freedom to practice any religion.

Grant Wacker takes readers on a lively tour of the numerous religions and the major historical challenges--from the Civil War and westward expansion to immigration and the Industrial Revolution--that defined the century. The narrative focuses on the rapid growth of evangelical Protestants, in denominations such as Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists, and their competition for dominance with new immigrants' religions such as Catholicism and Judaism. The author discusses issues ranging from temperance to Sunday schools and introduces the personalities--sometimes colorful, sometimes saintly, and often both--of the men and women who shaped American religion in the 19th century, including Methodist bishop Francis Asbury, ex-slave Sojourner Truth, Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, and evangelist Dwight L. Moody.

Religion in American Life explores the evolution, character, and dynamics of organized religion in America from 1500 to the present day. Written by distinguished religious historians, these books weave together the varying stories that compose the religious fabric of the United States, from Puritanism to alternative religious practices. Primary source material coupled with handsome illustrations and lucid text make these books essential in any exploration of America's diverse nature. Each book includes a chronology, suggestions for further reading, and index.