This book, covering the period since 1920, attempts to answer Colombia's failure to properly utilize its vast reserves of coal, hydroelectricity, and petroleum. It examines Colombia's policies concerning a broad range of representative energy development projects.

This book, covering the period since 1920, attempts to answer Colombia's failure to properly utilize its vast reserves of coal, hydroelectricity, and petroleum. It examines Colombia's policies concerning a broad range of representative energy development projects.

Russia's surprising return to the world stage since 2000 has aroused the curiosity-if not the fear-of the West. Gradually, the Kremlin went from a policy of deference to foreign powers to acting with independence. The driver of this transformation was President Vladimir Putin, who with skillful caution navigated Russia back into the ranks of global powers. In theaters of conflict such as Georgia, Syria and Ukraine, the Kremlin won significant victories at little cost to consolidate its decisive position. Following a chronological approach from the fall of the Soviet Union to the present, this book draws on new documents to describe how Russia regained its former global prominence. Clear accounts of key decisions and foreign policy events-many presented for the first time-provide important insights into the major confrontations with the West.

The transition from the Soviet to the post-1991 Russian military is a fascinating story of decline and reinvention. The Soviet army suffered a slow demise, dissolving in 2000 and only gradually reforming based on radically different principles. The First Chechnya War (1994-1996) was the lowest point for the Soviet military but the Second Chechnya War (1999-2004) saw the initial stirrings of the new Russian army. The Five Day War with Georgia in August 2008 was its first major success and marked Russia's return to world power status. Lively accounts and maps describe the actions of these wars, along with the Crimea operation of 2014, the separatist struggles in eastern Ukraine and the ongoing Russian intervention in Syria.

The entry of foreign capital and the adoption of free trade provoked fierce conflicts in many countries of South America during the twenty-first century. In Colombia and Peru, people engaged in clashes, sometimes violent, to defend their livelihood against the encroachments of the free market and the impositions of Wall Street. Farmers organized to save their lands from foreign mining corporations, and cities fought to save their water from toxic contamination. Indian tribes blocked highways to preserve their ancestral lands, and students paralyzed universities to save higher education. In Venezuela the shift toward socialism mobilized those groups previously enjoying privileges. The lightning rod for the clashes in Venezuela was President Hugo Chavez, whose political career spanned most of the period covered in this book. Governments in the three countries tried to quell the turmoil through a combination of corruption, repression, political maneuvering, and propaganda campaigns. Clear and brief chapters offer dramatic accounts of the struggles raging in these three countries. Both thought-provoking and exciting, the text exposes the worst characteristics of the political systems and the growing income inequality in Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela.

Although Latin America had a substantial merchant fleet by the 1950s, at the end of the century most of the major shipping companies have disappeared from the continent. Continuing to grow through protectionist efforts during the 1960s and 1970s, the industry began to decline when container technology, requiring large capital investments, shifted competition to access capital. This book shows how technology undermined and finally shattered the nationalist efforts to create a significant Latin American merchant shipping industry. Written in a clear and concise style, it provides the first authoritative survey of Latin American shipping during the second half of the century. The book opens with a discussion of cargo preference—a form of protectionism—in Chile and shows how Latin American merchant fleets expanded under cargo preference. Most countries witnessed a dramatic expansion in their national fleets. In the 1970s, the impact of containers, a new technology, began to be felt. As the book shows, the large capital outlays needed to adopt containers undermined the foundations of Latin American shipping companies, and most of the merchant shipping companies in the region gradually collapsed. The book also examines the non-commercial role of merchant shipping, particularly in international clashes such as the Cuban Revolution.

Latin Americans as sailors? This remark caused laughter among 19th-century foreign observers, particularly British observers. Yet, Latin Americans did struggle to create important merchant fleets, an effort largely ignored outside the region. This book rescues Latin American shipping from oblivion. In a chronological narrative, it presents the most important events in the emergence of Latin American shipping. While focusing on the shipping companies, the book also roams widely into governmental policy, foreign relations, and naval affairs. Divided into two parts, the book opens with a brief summary of the age of sailing ships, then traces the history of the first steamship companies, focusing on Brazil and Chile until 1914. Part I then goes on to analyze the impact of World War I and the Great Depression. Part II considers World War II and U.S. surplus ships. New issues in Latin American shipping, arising in the 1950s, will be discussed in another volume.

A foremost authority has written the first comprehensive reference about the U.S. Merchant Marine and American shipping from the introduction of steamships to today's diesel containerships--showing the impact of politics, economics, and technology on maritime history during the last two centuries. Over 500 entries describe people, private companies, business and labor groups, engineering and technological developments, government agencies, terms, key laws, landmark cases, issues, events, and ships of note. Short lists of references for further reading accompany these entries. Appendices include a chronology, diagrams of government organizations, and lists of business and labor groups by founding dates. An unusually extensive index lends itself to the varying research interests of students, teachers, and professionals in maritime and economic history, business-labor-government relations, and military studies.

From the beginning of the twentieth century through 1941, Latin America was involved in a number of conflicts and revolutions, many of which escalated into what could truly be called wars. Border disputes and domestic insurrections shaped the history of this area as many countries made the rocky transition from agrarian to industrial societies. Beginning with the War of the Thousand Days, this volume provides a concise survey of Latin American wars between 1899 and 1941. It compares and contrasts the wars and considers them in light of military theory. It also demonstrates how instrumental wars have been in directing the history of Latin America. Only major conflicts between two distinct parties (with one numbering at least a thousand people) and involving sustained combat with significant deployment of troops and an eventual victor have been included. Wars addressed include border disputes in Peru, Bolivia, Panama and Costa Rica, and domestic revolutions in Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Nicaragua. The effect of U.S. influence and industrialization is also discussed. Numerous photographs and maps are also included.