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Anchored in the Russian Empire, but not limited to it, the eight studies in this volume explore the nineteenth-century imperial responses to the challenge of modernity, the dramatic disruptions of World War I, the radical scenarios of the interwar period and post-communist endgames at the different edges of Eurasia. The book continues and amplifies the historiographic momentum created by Alfred J. Rieber’s long and fruitful scholarly career. First, the volume addresses the attempts of Russian imperial rulers and elites to overcome the economic backwardness of the empire with respect to the West. The ensuing rivalry of several interest groups (entrepreneurs, engineers, economists) created new social forms in the subsequent rounds of modernization. The studies explore the dynamics of the metamorphoses of what Rieber famously conceptualized as a “sedimentary society” in the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet settings. Second, the volume also expands and dwells on the concept of frontier zones as dynamic, mutable, shifting areas, characterized by multi-ethnicity, religious diversity, unstable loyalties, overlapping and contradictory models of governance, and an uneasy balance between peaceful co-existence and bloody military clashes. In this connection, studies pay special attention to forced and spontaneous migrations, and population politics in modern Eurasia.
Since the age of Alexander the Great, waves of foreign armies have invaded the Middle East and South Asia to plunder their vast treasures. In Imperial Designs, Deepak Tripathi offers a powerful and unique analysis of how this volatile region has endured the manipulation and humiliation of war, especially since World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire. He argues that these foreign invasions and the consequent ignominy of the defeated peoples of the regions have had far reaching consequences. Over the centuries, again and again, the conquered peoples have been left helpless, their shame on display. The victims' collective frustration has strengthened their will to resist and avenge the wrongs done to them—all according to their own values and in their own time. Displaying a keen awareness of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures, Tripathi argues that this enduring theme resonates throughout the region's history and informs the present. Referring to declassified official documents and scholarly works, this book should be read by scholars, policymakers, and concerned citizens, for it tells us how the shame of defeat radicalizes nations and societies and often makes future conflict inevitable.
Since the age of Alexander the Great, waves of foreign armies have invaded the Middle East and South Asia to plunder their vast treasures. In Imperial Designs, Deepak Tripathi offers a powerful and unique analysis of how this volatile region has endured the manipulation and humiliation of war, especially since World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire. He argues that these foreign invasions and the consequent ignominy of the defeated peoples of the regions have had far reaching consequences. Over the centuries, again and again, the conquered peoples have been left helpless, their shame on display. The victims' collective frustration has strengthened their will to resist and avenge the wrongs done to themOCoall according to their own values and in their own time. Displaying a keen awareness of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures, Tripathi argues that this enduring theme resonates throughout the region's history and informs the present. Referring to declassified official documents and scholarly works, this book should be read by scholars, policymakers, and concerned citizens, for it tells us how the shame of defeat radicalizes nations and societies and often makes future conflict inevitable."
This work argues that the influence of neoconservatives has been none too small and all too important in the shaping of this monumental doctrine and historic moment in American foreign policy. Through a fascinating account of the central figures in the neoconservative movement and their push for war with Iraq, he reveals the imperial designs that have guided them in their quest for the establishment of a global Pax Americana.
Imperial Designs is the first text in English to deal comprehensively with the subject of the Italian colonial experience in China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recent scholarship on both the Liberal and Fascist Italian colonial enterprises centers on the Mediterranean and Northern Africa: expeditions, wars, ultimate occupation of territories, and their effect on Italy. This study looks at three Italian enclaves on the other side of the globe: Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai. These present both a window into the Italian experience in the Far East and confirmation of imperial policy. Their very presence confirms the rhetoric of conquest. Journalist Luigi Barzini, Sr.; diplomats Salvago Raggi, Varè, and Ciano; various military personnel; and other foreign nationals tell the story through letters and diaries. They all interact with the local metropolitan and rural poor and cultivate a generalized colonial white man’s detachment from their surroundings. A brief summary of the presence of chinoiserie in the Italian imaginary shows how the Celestial Empire has continued to function in the construction of Italian identity as part of the dichotomy between self and other.
"This book takes an incisive look at the stories we are told -- and tell ourselves -- about evil forces and American responses. Chernus pushes beyond political rhetoric and media cliches to examine psychological mechanisms that freeze our concepts of the world." Norman Solomon, author, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death In his new book Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin, Ira Chernus tackles the question of why U.S. foreign policy, aimed at building national security, has the paradoxical effect of making the country less safe and secure. His answer: The "war on terror" is based not on realistic appraisals of the causes of conflict, but rather on "stories" that neoconservative policymakers tell about human nature and a world divided between absolute good and absolute evil. The root of the stories is these policymakers' terror of the social and cultural changes that swept through U.S. society in the 1960s. George W. Bush and the neoconservatives cast the agents of change not simply as political opponents, but as enemies or sinners acting with evil intent to destroy U.S. values and morals-that is, as "monsters" rather than human beings. The war on terror transfers that plot from a domestic to a foreign stage, making it more appealing even to those who reject the neoconservative agenda at home. Because it does not deal with the real causes of global conflict, it harms rather than helps the goal of greater national security.
"Although Thomas gives original readings of famous English texts by Chaucer and Shakespeare, this is also a book about Czech writers and travelers; one Czech expatriate, Anne of Bohemia, became Queen of England. For both countries these were decades of religious and dynastic turbulence, and Thomas's analyses of the relations between Wyclif and Hus, Lollards and Hussites, help us to understand why Bohemia was viewed as an almost utopian land of refuge ("a blessed shore" on which a ship might wash up) for persecuted English men and women. Of particular interest is his analysis of the ways in which English court culture emulated that of Prague, which was an imperial seat at a time when England was still a peripheral place with little influence on the heart of Europe.
The Spacious Word explores the history of Iberian expansion into the Americas as seen through maps and cartographic literature, and considers the relationship between early Spanish ideas of the world and the origins of European colonialism. Spanish mapmakers and writers, as Padrón shows, clung to a much older idea of space that was based on the itineraries of travel narratives and medieval navigational techniques. Padrón contends too that maps and geographic writings heavily influenced the Spanish imperial imagination. During the early modern period, the idea of "America" was still something being invented in the minds of Europeans. Maps of the New World, letters from explorers of indigenous civilizations, and poems dramatizing the conquest of distant lands, then, helped Spain to redefine itself both geographically and imaginatively as an Atlantic and even global empire. In turn, such literature had a profound influence on Spanish ideas of nationhood, most significantly its own. Elegantly conceived and meticulously researched, The Spacious Word will be of enormous interest to historians of Spain, early modern literature, and cartography.
This book looks at the first ten years of the African Union. This is the second in a series of books that will be produced each year from annual conferences held on the multi-faceted issue of African liberation. The key themes of the book explore ways of improving the effectiveness of the African Union, fostering unity amongst African countries through entrenchment of pan-Africanism, and building ownership of the African Union by the African people and their communities. In addition, the thoughts of key figures of pan-Africanism and black emancipation, such as Sylvester Williams and Franz Fanon, are re-positioned to even greater contemporary relevance. Through its promotion of Ethiopianism, pan-Africanism and the African renaissance, we trust that this book will add new interest and a fresh perspective to how Africans move forward together into a post-colonial era where policies and actions are determined by the united agency of liberated Africans the world over.