Historians of the Middle East in the long nineteenth century have often considered empire-building the preserve of European powers. This book revises this picture by exploring how the Ottomans re-conquered and ruled large parts of present-day Yemen between 1849 and the end of World War I, after more than two centuries of independence under local dynasties. Drawing on a wide range of sources and on recent scholarship on empire and colonialism "Empire, Islam, and Politics of Difference" shows how the concepts and practices of Ottoman imperial rule were shaped through the encounters between Ottoman officials, their European rivals, and local communities. The result is a fresh look at the nature of governance in the late Ottoman Empire more generally.

This book studies family life and gender broadly within Italy, not just one region or city, from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Paternal control of the household was paramount in Italian life at this time, with control of property and even marital choices and career paths laid out for children and carried out from beyond the grave by means of written testaments. However, the reality was always more complex than a simple reading of local laws and legal doctrines would seem to permit, especially when there were no sons to step forward as heirs. Family disputes provided an opening for legal ambiguities to redirect property and endow women with property and means of control. This book uses the decisions of lawyers and judges to examine family dynamics through the lens of law and legal disputes.

Visions of modernity rest in part on a distinction between inherited status (past) and achievement (present). Inheritance is taken as automatic, if not axiomatic; the recipients are passive, if grateful. This study, based on a singular source (Florentine repudiations of inheritance), reveals that inheritance was in fact a process, that heirs had options: at the least, to reject a burdensome patrimony, but also to maneuver property to others and to avoid (at times deceptively, if not fraudulently) the claims of others to portions of the estate. Repudiation was a vestige of Roman law that became once again a viable legal institution with the revival of Roman law in the Middle Ages. Florentines incorporated repudiation into their strategies of adjustment after death, showing that they were not merely passive recipients of what came their way. These strategies fostered family goals, including continuity across the generations.

Without sensationalizing or providing the technical details that would result in a terrorist's handbook, the volume reflects the concerns expressed by experts from 12 states (including many from Slavic regions adjoining or aspiring to membership of the European Union). A range of vulnerabilities are highlighted that are usually neglected. Assessments that focus on the horrifying potential of bioterrorism directly targeting people are commonplace. This book is exceptional because indirect impacts on human health and welfare through challenge to the security of food supplies are the focus. These urgently need to be recognised and made subjects of planned investment to counter the threat. Examples of past state-sponsored and independent actions are discussed. The evolution of biological (chemical defoliant) systems for controlling plant growth with unambiguously humanitarian aims is shown to have resulted in a range of counter terrorist uses.

Family was a central feature of social life in Italian cities. In the Renaissance, jurists, humanists, and moralists began to theorize on the relations between people and property that formed the 'substance' of the family and what held it together over the years. Family property was a bundle of shared rights. This was most evident when brothers shared a household and enterprise, but it also faced overlapping claims from children and wives which the paterfamilias had to recognize. Thomas Kuehn explores patrimony in legal thought, and how property was inherited, managed and shared in Renaissance Italy. Managing a patrimony was not a simple task. This led to a complex and active conceptualization of shared rights, and a conscious application of devices in the law that could override liabilities and preserve the group, or carve out distinct shares for each member. This wide-ranging volume charts the ever-present conflicts that arose and were a constant feature of family life.

Focusing on Florence, Thomas Kuehn demonstrates the formative
influence of law on Italian society during the Renaissance,
especially in the spheres of family and women. Kuehn's use
of legal sources along with letters, diaries, and
contemporary accounts allows him to present a compelling
image of the social processes that affected the shape and
function of the law.
The numerous law courts of Italian city-states
constantly devised and revised statutes. Kuehn traces the
permutations of these laws, then examines their use by
Florentines to arbitrate conflict and regulate social
behavior regarding such issues as kinship, marriage,
business, inheritance, illlegitimacy, and gender. Ranging
from one man's embittered denunciation of his father to
another's reaction to his kinsmen's rejection of him as
illegitimate, "Law, Family, and Women" provides
fascinating evidence of the tensions riddling family life in
Renaissance Florence. Kuehn shows how these same tensions,
often articulated in and through the law, affected women. He
examines the role of the mundualdus--a male legal guardian
for women--in Florence, the control of fathers over their
married daughters, and issues of inheritance by and through
women. An ambitious attempt to reformulate the agenda of
Renaissance social history, Kuehn's work will be of value to
both legal anthropologists and social historians.
Thomas Kuehn is professor of history at Clemson
University.

This book studies family life and gender broadly within Italy, not just one region or city, from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Paternal control of the household was paramount in Italian life at this time, with control of property and even marital choices and career paths laid out for children and carried out from beyond the grave by means of written testaments. However, the reality was always more complex than a simple reading of local laws and legal doctrines would seem to permit, especially when there were no sons to step forward as heirs. Family disputes provided an opening for legal ambiguities to redirect property and endow women with property and means of control. This book uses the decisions of lawyers and judges to examine family dynamics through the lens of law and legal disputes.

Visions of modernity rest in part on a distinction between inherited status (past) and achievement (present). Inheritance is taken as automatic, if not axiomatic; the recipients are passive, if grateful. This study, based on a singular source (Florentine repudiations of inheritance), reveals that inheritance was in fact a process, that heirs had options: at the least, to reject a burdensome patrimony, but also to maneuver property to others and to avoid (at times deceptively, if not fraudulently) the claims of others to portions of the estate. Repudiation was a vestige of Roman law that became once again a viable legal institution with the revival of Roman law in the Middle Ages. Florentines incorporated repudiation into their strategies of adjustment after death, showing that they were not merely passive recipients of what came their way. These strategies fostered family goals, including continuity across the generations.

Without sensationalizing or providing the technical details that would result in a terrorist's handbook, the volume reflects the concerns expressed by experts from 12 states (including many from Slavic regions adjoining or aspiring to membership of the European Union). A range of vulnerabilities are highlighted that are usually neglected. Assessments that focus on the horrifying potential of bioterrorism directly targeting people are commonplace. This book is exceptional because indirect impacts on human health and welfare through challenge to the security of food supplies are the focus. These urgently need to be recognised and made subjects of planned investment to counter the threat. Examples of past state-sponsored and independent actions are discussed. The evolution of biological (chemical defoliant) systems for controlling plant growth with unambiguously humanitarian aims is shown to have resulted in a range of counter terrorist uses.

Historians of the Middle East in the long nineteenth century have often considered empire-building the preserve of European powers. This book revises that picture by exploring how the Ottomans re-conquered and ruled large parts of present-day Yemen between 1849 and the end of World War I, after more than two centuries of independence under local dynasties. Drawing on a wide range of sources and on recent scholarship on empire and colonialism, Empire, Islam, and Politics of Difference shows how the concepts and practices of Ottoman imperial rule were shaped through the encounters between Ottoman officials, their European rivals, and local communities. The result is a fresh look at the nature of governance in the late Ottoman Empire more generally.

Appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate-level courses in HVAC in Departments of Mechanical Engineering.

This text presents a comprehensive introduction to heating, ventilation, and air conditioning that begins with the basic principles of engineering science and leads to the latest HVAC design practice. Its engineering approach emphasizes both fundamentals and realistic applications.