Colonialism and imperialism Books

Book SynopsisPerfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal-an ode to the steadfastness of a nation. Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscuredthe perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial. Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation. How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.

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Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.'At the peak of European Imperialism, steamboat captain Charles Marlow travels deep into the African Congo on his way to relieve the elusive Mr Kurtz, an ivory trader renowned for his fearsome reputation. On his journey into the unknown Marlow takes a terrifying trip into his own subconscious, overwhelmed by his menacing, perilous and horrifying surroundings.The landscape and the people he meets force him to reflect on human nature and society, and in turn Conrad writes revealingly about the dangers of imperialism.

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Book SynopsisRewriting the “origin stories” of the Anthropocene No geology is neutral, writes Kathryn Yusoff. Tracing the color line of the Anthropocene, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None examines how the grammar of geology is foundational to establishing the extractive economies of subjective life and the earth under colonialism and slavery. Yusoff initiates a transdisciplinary conversation between feminist black theory, geography, and the earth sciences, addressing the politics of the Anthropocene within the context of race, materiality, deep time, and the afterlives of geology. Forerunners is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital works. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.Trade Review"A historically grounded and embodied understanding of geological transformation."—Antipode"A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None could be summed up as a new history of the relationship between geology and subjectivity. This is by no means a novel concern – pre-black conscious writers such as WEB du Bois, black conscious writers including Frantz Fanon and Steve Biko, and their contemporaries and successors, for example Sylvia Wynter, Achille Mbembe and Kathrine McKittrick, have all grappled with the complex human-citizenship-land question. What makes Kathryn Yusoff’s book different is that it addresses these questions via contemporary concerns about the Anthropocene, the name given to the new geological epoch. Unlike previous epochs, such as the Pleistocene, which was marked by climatological planetary impacts – in this case repeated glaciations, which is why it’s also called the Ice Age – the Anthropocene is marked by human interference."—New Frame"Black studies scholars and geographers interested in the environment and materiality alike are likely to find the text useful in asserting that a grammar of biopolitics cannot adequately account for the social history and present of Black people’s proximity to death, from the silver mines of sixteenth-century Potosí to the toxic environs of late-capitalist US urbanity."—ISLE"In steering away from specific dates, Yusoff engages with concepts of geologic time by connecting struggles for equity and justice with some of the foundational epistemologies that are normally used to connect historical and physical geology: uniformitarianism, the vastness of time, and the trade of time for location."—Nature Geoscience"Yusoff’s Billion Black Anthropocenes calls to mind this multitude of examples of colonialism and attendant resource exploitation, reminding us that the Anthropocene is simply the latest in a centuries-long string of world destructions enacted by western colonizers."—Inhabiting the Anthropocene "Yusoff’s A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None charts and unearths the grammar of geology as one that is foundational to and enabling of the extractive economies and histories of colonialism and slavery."—Eye on Design

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Prix Goncourt Winner of the Goncourt du Premier Roman Winner of the Prix des Cinq Continents Winner of the Prix François Mauriac THE NOVEL THAT HAS TAKEN THE INTERNATIONAL LITERARY WORLD BY STORM He was the brother of ‘the Arab’ killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Camus’s classic novel. Angry at the world and his own unending solitude, he resolves to bring his brother out of obscurity by giving him a name – Musa – and a voice, and by describing the events that led to his senseless murder on a dazzling Algerian beach. A worthy complement to its great predecessor, The Meursault Investigation is not only a profound meditation on Arab identity and the disastrous effects of colonialism in Algeria, but also a stunning work of literature in its own right, told in a unique and affecting voice.Trade Review'A splendid achievement...Daoud has an angry and loquacious register...both beguiling and arresting. It's reminiscent of Italo Calvino: magical, labyrinthian, rhetorical and playfully dark'. * The Tablet * 'Daoud has created his own memorable fiction in which he brilliantly exposes the rise of Islamism in Algeria and his nation's failures post-independence.' * Huffington Post *'[A] wonderfully entangled novel. Establishing a conversation across time, Daoud not only uses Camus's words to expose the hypocrisy and inherent violence of the French 'civilising mission', but also deploys them in order to convey the cultural, political and social suffocation that is the lot of so many contemporary Algerians. This is a crucial novel for our times' * Literary Review * 'Daoud's work stands on its own as it tackles grief, growing up, post-independence Algeria and conservative Islam today...a clever and suspenseful work that is a masterpiece in its own right'. * The Times (Saturday Review) *'A tour-de-force... Daoud has performed a great service for his country: he has taken a western classic and used it to illuminate the Algerian mind'. * The Sunday Times (Culture) *'Wholly astonishing...There are no illusions to be found in this wonderfully embittered, beautiful book.' * Observer *'An indispensable companion to Camus...superlative writing, beautifully translated...brilliantly metaphorical. For its incandescence, its precision of phrase and description, and its cross-cultural significance, The Meursault Investigation is an instant classic.' * Guardian *'A dazzling appropriation of L'Etranger' * London Review of Books *'An accomplished work of fiction, the anger of Daoud’s hero convinces' * Spectator *‘There is far more to his book than a clever deconstruction of a canonical novel… suspenseful…its narrative vitality never flags…beautifully taut…Despite the gravity of its concerns, Daoud’s writing maintains a wryness that makes its moments of sharp insight even more arresting. It is a testament to Daoud’s subtle, profound talent that his story works both as a novelistic response to Camus and as a highly original story in its own right. The Meursault Investigation is perhaps the most important novel to emerge out of the Middle East in recent memory’ * FT *'An impressive, provocative undertaking...that might not prove easy to put down...the polemic is balanced by artistic ingenuity...A relentlessly adroit blend of fire and clinical precision ensures that Kamel Daoud's iconoclastic deliberation is about far more than a renowned novel by Albert Camus' * Irish Times *‘[An] extraordinary novel.’ * London Review of Books *'A tour de force.' * The New Yorker *‘Clever… Daoud is in equal measure a thoughtful and provocative writer’ * Times Literary Supplement *'[Kamel Daoud’s] book, The Meursault Investigation, is a retelling of Albert Camus’s classic The Stranger, from an Algerian perspective. Within its 160 pages, Mr. gives voice to the brother of the nameless Arab murder victim who is shot five times on a beach in Algiers by the antihero, Meursault.' * New York Times *‘A thrilling retelling of Albert Camus’s 1942 classic … ingenious.’ * New York Times Magazine *‘a scorching debut novel that is sure to become an essential companion to Camus’s masterpiece.’ * The Economist *‘Daoud’s novel has the magnetism of its forebear, but its themes of voicelessness and vengeance feel utterly present day’ * Vogue (US) *‘[A] mesmerizing first novel … The Meursault Investigation has an inescapable topical resonance, given the role played by political Islam in Algeria in recent times … an absorbing, independent story and a shrewd critique of a country trapped in history’s time warp.’ * Wall Street Journal *‘Humour erupts in The Meusrsault Investigation every time there is tragedy, and this recipe for the Algerian absurd gives Daoud’s book its literary sting.' * The Nation *‘Give Kamel Daoud credit for audacity. In his debut novel, The Meursault Investigation, the Algerian journalist goes head-to-head with a pillar of 20th century literature…The true measure of the novel…is that Daoud realizes critique is not enough…the power – and, yes, the beauty – of The Meursault Investigation is that it moves … to an unexpected integration in which we recognize that for all the intractable divides of faith or nationality, our humanity remains (how can it not?) essentially the same.’ * Los Angeles Times *‘Mr. Daoud’s writing is like a live wire flowing with anger. It sparks fresh insights, raises important questions about the links between literature and politics, and challenges us to view the literary past and political present in new ways.’ * Pittsburgh Post Gazette *‘Camus’s The Outsider is vividly reimagined in Daoud’s intensely atmospheric novel … readers will be captivated.’ * Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) *‘In the hands of Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud, The Outsider has become the springboard for another novel that serves as both homage and rebuke to Camus’ masterpiece … It is a brilliant, infinitely rich tour de force of the imagination that never mentions Camus by name but gives Meursault’s victim not only a name – Musa – but a history, a family and a would-be future … Its originality of vision carries the book a long way toward mastery of its form … The Meursault Investigation stirs our imagination, showing that literary classics are never finished.’ * Wichita Eagle *‘Very beautiful writing, original, located between suppressed anger and bursts of elation.’ * Les Echos *‘A breathtaking and effectively realized novel. The Outsider becomes a palindrome ... The Meursault investigation approaches the incredible, in that it reverses the perspective and point of view not without an emphatic ferociousness, all while playing with the prose and perspective of The Outsider.’ * La Croix *‘A remarkable homage to its model.’ * Le Nouvel Observateur *‘Fiction with a strong moral edge, offering a Rashomon-like response to a classic novel.’ * Kirkus *‘A superb novel … In the future, The Outsider and The Meursault Investigation will be read side by side.’ * Le Monde des Livres *‘An intense and surprising story.’ * La Montagne *'A labyrinth of dilemmas, absurdities and personal crisis. Camus started it and Daoud finished it. you’ll think of The Stranger in a different way after reading this book.' -- World Translations Review

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Book SynopsisBy long convention, American history began during the early seventeenth century along the Atlantic Seaboard with the English colonies at Jamestown in Virginia and Plymouth in New England. From that eastern origin, America supposedly expanded westward, reaching only the Appalachian mountains by the end of the colonial period. In this version of history, earlier Spanish and contemporary French settlements seemed irrelevant except as enemies that brought out the best in the English as they remade themselves into Americans. Indians appeared only as wild and primitive peoples engaged in an ultimately futile resistance to American destiny. And historians formerly treated African slaves in passing as unfortunate aberrations in a fundamentally upbeat story of Englishmen becoming freer and more prosperous by colonizing an abundant continent of free land. During the past generation, however, historians have broadened our understanding of colonial America by adopting both a trans-Atlantic and a trans-continental perspective, examining the interplay of Europe, Africa, and the Americas through the flows of goods, people, plants, animals, capital, and ideas. In this Very Short Introduction, Alan Taylor presents the current scholarly understanding of colonial America to a broader audience.American colonization derived from a global expansion of European exploration and commerce, beginning in the fifteenth century. In an Atlantic and global perspective, the English had to share the stage with the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Russians, each of whom created alternative Americas. By comparing the diverse colonies of rival empires, Taylor aims to recover what was truly distinctive about the English enterprise in North America. In particular, he intends to pay greater attention to slavery as central to the economy, culture, and political thought of the colonists and, by taking a Continental approach, to restore the importance of native peoples to the colonial story. To adapt to the new land, the colonists needed the expertise, guidance, alliance, and trade of the Indians who dominated the interior. The new historical approach emphasizes the ability of the diverse natives to adapt to the newcomers and to compel concessions from them.In sum, colonial America produced an unprecedented mixing of radically diverse peoples--African, European, and Indian--under stressful circumstances for all. The colonial intermingling of peoples,microbes, plants, and animals from different continents was unparalleled in speed and volume in global history. Everyone had to adjust to a new world of unpredictable social and cultural hybrids that compromised and complicated the ambitious plans of empire-builders.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Table of ContentsList of illustrations ; Introduction ; Chapter 1: Encounters ; Chapter 2: New Spain ; Chapter 3: New France ; Chapter 4: Chesapeake colonies ; Chapter 5: New England ; Chapter 6: West Indies and Carolina ; Chapter 7: British America ; Chapter 8: Empires ; Timeline ; Further reading ; Index

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Book Synopsis''A groundbreaking work . . . Federici has become a crucial figure for . . . a new generation of feminists'' Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars RoomA cult classic since its publication in the early years of this century, Caliban and the Witch is Silvia Federici''s history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages through the European witch-hunts, the rise of scientific rationalism and the colonisation of the Americas, it gives a panoramic account of the often horrific violence with which the unruly human material of pre-capitalist societies was transformed into a set of predictable and controllable mechanisms. It Is a study of indigenous traditions crushed, of the enclosure of women''s reproductive powers within the nuclear family, and of how our modern world was forged in blood.''Rewarding . . . allows us to better understand the intimate relationship between modern patriarchy, the rise of the nation state and the transition from feudalism to capitalism'' GuardianTrade ReviewRewarding . . . allows us to better understand the intimate relationship between modern patriarchy, the rise of the nation state and the transition from feudalism to capitalism * Guardian *A groundbreaking work . . . Federici has become a crucial figure for young Marxists, political theorists, and a new generation of feminists . . . a true radical who has lived by her political commitments, not just to women but against all forms of exploitation -- Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars RoomIt is both a passionate work of memory recovered and a hammer of humanity's agenda -- Peter Linebaugh, author of The London Hanged

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Book SynopsisA collection of essays about language and its constructive role in national culture, history, and identity, that advocates for linguistic decolonization.Trade ReviewMany of the ideas are familiar from Ngugi's earlier critical books, and earlier lectures, elsewhere. But the material here has a new context and the ideas a new focus. This leading African writer presents the arguments for using African language and forms after successfully using an African language himself. - -- Anne Walmsley * THE GUARDIAN *... after 25 years of independence, there is beginning to emerge a generation of writers for whom colonialism is a matter of history and not of direct personal experience. In retrospect that literature characterised by Ngugi as Afro-European - the literature written by Africans in European languages - will come to be seen as part and parcel of the uneasy period between colonialism and full independence, a period equally reflected in the continent's political instability as it attempts to find its feet. Ngugi's importance - and that of this book - lies in the courage with which he has confronted this most urgent of issues. - -- Adewale Maja-Pearce * THE NEW STATESMAN *Ngũgĩ's is a many splendored book. It is the personal testimony of an author who has fought a long battle of his own to undo the colonization of his mind. At the same time the book presents a historical analysis of subversion of personal identities and cultures of the colonized peoples in the process of colonization. It is also a book on the historical development of orature and literature in Africa. Finally, it is an essay in literary theory and criticism on the role of the artist in society. Ngũgĩ writes about Africa, his analysis applies to all of the Third World. -- African Studies Review

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Book SynopsisHobson-Jobson is a unique lexicon of British India. Part dictionary, part encyclopedia it shows how words of Indian origin entered the English language and offers insight into Victorian views of Asia and the way cultures transform one another. Quirky and entertaining, this selected edition includes a fascinating introduction and notes.Trade Review'Everyone interested in British India should have a copy.' * Andrew Robinson, The Independent *'Hobson-Jobson is a rare dictionary that can be read for pleasure' * Christopher Howse, Sunday Telegraph *'Teltscher's introduction to this new abridged edition is a model of scholarship and readability.' * Neel Mukherjee, Financial Times *

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Book SynopsisA reappraisal of the tumultuous Partition and how it ignited long-standing animosities between India and Pakistan Trade ReviewA 2008 Top Seller in Asian History as compiled by YBP Library Services"Mahatma Gandhi called the traumatic experience of Partition 'the vivisection of India'. In this book, Yasmin Khan shows how this operation was performed. She describes the suffering of the victims with great sensitivity, and traces the perceptions of contemporary observers, most of whom were at a loss when trying to imagine the contours of the new states. To a country that took its territorial unity for granted, the partition of India came as a rude shock; its impact reverberates through the pages of this illuminating book."--Dietmar Rothermund, Professor Emeritus of South Asian History, Heidelberg University, and author of The Routledge Companion to Decolonisation and (with H Kulke) A History of India"This is a compassionate and devastating book. It charts the long, complex and often brutal processes that engulfed millions of unsuspecting people in chaos. Few among the South Asian and British political elite could have imagined what they were letting loose, while many of those swept up even tangentially had no clear idea of what it might mean. Its long aftermath still scars the subcontinent, as India and Pakistan see each other through the lens of carefully constructed nationalist history which feeds on the partially understood history of Partition. This is a book for all who wish to understand attitudes on the subcontinent today."--Judith M Brown, Balliol College Oxford, and author of Nehru"Yasmin Khan makes a significant contribution to the ongoing study of the Partition of India in this lucid account. Her eye for detail strongly evokes the issues, personalities and events at this crucial moment in the subcontinent's modern history. Narrative and sharp analysis go hand in hand in a work which bears all the hallmarks of a first-rate scholar."--Ian Talbot, University of Southampton"Yasmin Khan's The Great Partition vividly and memorably portrays the sheer turmoil of decolonisation. In turning the spotlight away from high-level politics to bitter personal experience, she exposes the bewilderment, brutality and mayhem that followed the hasty British decision to 'divide and quit.' This book will be a touchstone in the retelling of one of the twentieth century's greatest calamities."--David Arnold, University of Warwick and Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Asiatic Society"This is an exceptional book. Yasmin Khan has written a vivid, authoritative and accessible account of one of the greatest human tragedies and dislocations of the modern era. Her particular achievement is in weaving the lived experience of Partition - the agony, the uncertainty, the conflicting identities and loyalties - into a broader account of the turmoil and confusion which so gravely soured India's and Pakistan's achievement of independence."--Andrew Whitehead, editor of History Workshop Journal and former BBC South Asia correspondent

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Book SynopsisIn this theoretical tour-de-force, renowned scholar Ariella Aïsha Azoulay calls on us to recognize the imperial foundations of knowledge and to refuse its strictures and its many violences.Azoulay argues that the institutions that make our world, from archives and museums to ideas of sovereignty and human rights to history itself, are all dependent on imperial modes of thinking. Imperialism has segmented populations into differentially governed groups, continually emphasised the possibility of progress while trying to destroy what came before, and voraciously sought out the new by sealing the past away in dusty archival boxes and the glass vitrines of museums.By practising what she calls potential history, Azoulay argues that we can still refuse the imperial violence that shattered communities, lives, and worlds, from native peoples in the Americas to the Congo ruled by Belgium's brutal King Léopold II, from dispossessed Palestinians in 1948 to displaced refugees in our own day. In Potential History, Azoulay travels alongside historical companions - an old Palestinian man who refused to leave his village in 1948, an anonymous woman in war-ravaged Berlin, looted objects and documents torn from their worlds and now housed in archives and museums - to chart the ways imperialism has sought to order time, space, and politics.Rather than looking for a new future, Azoulay calls upon us to rewind history and unlearn our imperial rights, to continue to refuse imperial violence by making present what was invented as "past" and making the repair of torn worlds the substance of politics.Trade ReviewAriella Azoulay takes on the seemingly impossible task of teaching us how to unlearn: unlearning imperialism, unlearning the archive, unlearning our complicity with regimes of violence, domination and exploitation, and most importantly for this ambitious volume, unlearning photography and its capacity to foreclose 'potential histories' that must urgently be realized and reclaimed. The monumental implications of unlearning are revealed with dizzying effect through her rigorous analysis, lucid writing, and vivid examples. In Potential History, she once again delivers a work of breathtaking scope that challenges us to reconfigure both what constitutes history, as well as what it means to learn from and unlearn toward its radical potential for living otherwise. -- Tina Campt, author of Listening to ImagesA magisterial call to reorient our relations to objects, archives, art, and plunder. * Protocols *A remarkably rich and evocative history on the problem of violence and the importance of engaging aesthetics. -- Brad Evans * Los Angeles Review of Books *Azoulay has produced a unique handbook for the 2020s that details how, why, when and where to say no in the affirmative. Her greatest achievement is that, against the foreshortened horizons of a despoiling barbarism, she makes all our tomorrows thinkable. -- Guy Mannes-Abbott * Third Text *Offers revitalising approaches to imperialism and to photography as a cultural phenomenon, grounded in the re-cognition of the figures 'leaning against the edge' of photographs. -- Louis Rogers * review31 *Azoulay has produced a unique handbook for the 2020s that details how, why, when and where to say no in the affirmative. Her greatest achievement is that, against the foreshortened horizons of a despoiling barbarism, she makes all our tomorrows thinkable. -- Guy Mannes-Abbott * Notes From a Fruitstore *Across some six-hundred pages, Azoulay accomplishes that rare thing wherein her call becomes more urgent and acutely resonant even as the contours and magnitude become less perceivable and more outsized.3 By the book's end, she has thoroughly denaturalized the terms of political classification and made the claim for a worldly sovereignty beyond the nation-state. -- Luke Urbain, University of Wisconsin-Madison * InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture *By creating a "potential history," Azoulay questions the imperialist construction of time, space, and politics through objects and experiences of struggles around the world, from the original peoples in the Americas, to the Congo under King Leopold II. * The Architect's Newspaper *A political call to arms that argues the need for critical examination of archive material...provocative and stimulating. -- Sean Sheehan * The Prisma *Much of Potential History's 500 pages bear particular relevance to this moment of racial reckoning and faltering of neoliberal capitalism. As mass movements mobilize in the streets against anti-Black police brutality, white supremacy, and systemic, structural racism, her call for reconceptualizing "the strike" to include historians, artists, photographers, museum workers, and "the governed" seems poignant. -- Stephen Sheehi * Hyperallergic *To acknowledge the violence inherently embedded in archives-particularly in cultural archives that the neutral we understand as our cultural commons-and to then envision new ways of being with these cultural objects so as to allow them to speak their own futures are essential components of [Azoulay's] urgent project of unlearning imperialism. -- Rachel Stevens * World Records Journal *Building from Azoulay's argument that our actually existing commons-whether they are water systems or cultural archives-are constituted by imperial violence, we should ask how to transform imperial public spheres and institutions into worldly spaces of care and interdependence. -- Kareem Estefan * World Records *To acknowledge the violence inherently embedded in archives-particularly in cultural archives that the neutral we understand as our cultural commons-and to then envision new ways of being with these cultural objects so as to allow them to speak their own futures are essential components of [Azoulay's] urgent project of unlearning imperialism. -- Rachel Stevens * World Records *A codependent politics of appearance.manifests as superficial investment in others' problems, often to satisfy the emotional needs of the voyeur. This mode of despotic empathy has displaced the sharing of a world-in-common-precisely what, in Ariella Aïsha Azoulay's wording 'was destroyed and should be restored'-with ubiquitous spectacles of privation and racialized violence. -- Irmgard Emmelhainz * World Records *According to Azoulay, an initial problem with unlearning imperialism is that for most of us, our thinking and acting-indeed, our very being-in-theworld-is conditioned by imperialism. Unlearning imperialism is a paradoxical task because we must first learn how imperialism works by rendering its working explicit so that we might unlearn it. -- Corey McCall * Contemporary Political Theory *The book reads as though it were composed by Walter Benjamin's "Angel of History," who backs, horrified into the future while in front of him the ruins pile up. The angel, in this case, is the citizen, forced into the position of a perpetrator and trying to unwind history, to undo it not to return to a "golden age," but to do away with traditional chronological thinking altogether. -- Margaret Olin * Political Theology *

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Book SynopsisDuring a Biblical seven years in the middle of the nineteenth century, fully a quarter of Ireland''s citizens either perished from starvation or emigrated in what came to be known as Gorta Mor, the Great Hunger. Waves of hungry peasants fled across the Atlantic to the United States, with so many dying en route that it was said, you could walk dry shod to America on their bodies. In this sweeping history Ireland''s best-known historian, Tim Pat Coogan, tackles the dark history of the Irish Famine and argues that it constituted one of the first acts of genocide. In what The Boston Globe calls his greatest achievement, Coogan shows how the British government hid behind the smoke screen of laissez faire economics, the invocation of Divine Providence and a carefully orchestrated publicity campaign, allowing more than a million people to die agonizing deaths and driving a further million into emigration. Unflinching in depicting the evidence, Coogan presents a vivid and horrifying pic

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Book SynopsisA fascinating, beautifully illustrated study of the daring war in East Africa waged by German colonial forces against the wide array of Allied Powers.The East African Campaign in World War I comprised a series of battles and guerrilla actions which began in German East Africa in 1914 and spread to portions of Portuguese Mozambique, northern Rhodesia, British East Africa, the Uganda Protectorate, and the Belgian Congo. German colonial forces under Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck attempt to divert Allied forces from the Western Front. Despite the efforts of the Allied forces, Lettow-Vorbeck''s troops remained undefeated at the end of the war.In this fascinating work, David Smith documents how a wide array of British, Indian, South African, Belgian, Portuguese and local native forces invaded German East Africa and slowly ousted the German forces, a process made tortuous by Lettow-Vorbeck''s masterful management of the campaign. Among the events coveredTable of ContentsORIGINS OF THE CAMPAIGN CHRONOLOGY OPPOSING COMMANDERS British German South African OPPOSING FORCES Orders of battle OPPOSING PLANS THE EAST AFRICA CAMPAIGN Part I: The British offensive Part II: The railway war Part III: The South African offensive Part IV: The Germans withdraw Part V: The final stage AFTERMATH THE BATTLEFIELDS TODAY FURTHER READING INDEX

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Book SynopsisThe Indian government, touted as the world's largest democracy, often repeats that Jammu and Kashmir—its only Muslim-majority state—is "an integral part of India." The region, which is disputed between India and Pakistan, and is considered the world's most militarized zone, has been occupied by India for over seventy-five years. In this book, Hafsa Kanjwal interrogates how Kashmir was made "integral" to India through a study of the decade long rule (1953-1963) of Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, the second Prime Minister of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. Drawing upon a wide array of bureaucratic documents, propaganda materials, memoirs, literary sources, and oral interviews in English, Urdu, and Kashmiri, Kanjwal examines the intentions, tensions, and unintended consequences of Bakshi's state-building policies in the context of India's colonial occupation. She reveals how the Kashmir government tailored its policies to integrate Kashmir's Muslims while also showing how these policies were marked by inter-religious tension, corruption, and political repression. Challenging the binaries of colonial and postcolonial, Kanjwal historicizes India's occupation of Kashmir through processes of emotional integration, development, normalization, and empowerment to highlight the new hierarchies of power and domination that emerged in the aftermath of decolonization. In doing so, she urges us to question triumphalist narratives of India's state-formation, as well as the sovereignty claims of the modern nation-state.Trade Review"Colonizing Kashmir offers a brilliant rethinking of how sovereignty and secularism work to obscure the colonizing projects of postcolonial states. For India, Kanjwal argues, the colonial occupation of Kashmir is not an aberration nor a residual of the past, rather pivotal to the formation of the newly independent state. Scholars of religion, settler colonialism, secularism, and anyone interested in the varied and unexpected modalities through which territorial control functions will gain tremendously from the sharp conceptual interventions in this meticulously researched book."—Jasbir K Puar, Rutgers University"Hafsa Kanjwal brilliantly illuminates how India consolidated its occupational control over Kashmir through state-level practices across multiple institutional domains – development, tourism, film production, economic policies, culture, and law. Through archival and interpretative analysis of a rich variety of previously unexamined primary source historical materials, Kanjwal demonstrates how India cemented Kashmir's accession over time and, in effect, domesticated the international dispute. Her fine-grained analysis of processes of integration, normalization, and bureaucratization reveals how state-building operates as a mechanism for building, entrenching, and sustaining an architecture of colonial occupation in a 'space of political liminality' such as Kashmir."—Haley Duschinski, Ohio University"Colonizing Kashmir is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the region. Its diligent analysis and exhaustive documentation deftly incorporates the perspectives of Kashmir's political consciousness and memory. In doing so, the book challenges and disrupts existing historiographical frameworks pertaining to Kashmir and its politics. The work holds considerable resonance with the present and future trajectory of Kashmir."—Haris Zargar, Middle East Eye"Historically invasive, theoretically cutting edge, and written in prose at once mellifluous and purposeful, this book is nothing short of a wonderfully mesmerizing intellectual earthquake in the fields of South Asian history and contemporary politics more broadly."—New Books Network"Colonizing Kashmir enables us to understand the repetitious discourse of development and normalcy through a historicization that allows for understanding the present forms of India's colonization of Kashmir as settler-colonial."—Goldie Osuri, The Contrapuntal"Kashmir's people have had a troubled history since 1947. Kanjwal presents a scholarly, impassioned historical analysis of the Indian-occupied Kashmir Valley during the crucial, decade-long regime of Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad.... Recommended."—M. H. Fisher, CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Genealogies of Colonial Occupation and State-Building: Becoming Khalid-i-Kashmir 2. Narrating Normalization: Media, Propaganda, and Foreign Policy amid Cold War Politics 3. Producing and Promoting Paradise: Tourism, Cinema, and the Desire for Kashmir 4. Developing Dependency: Economic Planning, Financial Integration, and Corruption 5. Shaping Subjectivities: Education, Secularism, and Its Discontents 6. Jashn-e-Kashmir: Patronage and the Institutionalization of Kashmiri Culture 7. The State of Emergency: State Repression, Political Dissent, and the Struggle for Self-Determination Conclusion

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Book Synopsis***THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER*** In the eighteenth century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalised racism, and caused millions to die from starvation. British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial 'gift' from the railways to the rule of law was designed in Britain's interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain's Industrial Revolution was founded on India s deindustrialisation, and the destruction of its textile industry. In this bold and incisive reassessment of colonialism, Tharoor exposes to devastating effect the inglorious reality of Britain's stained Indian legacy.Trade Review'In Inglorious Empire, Shashi Tharoor documents the realities of the British empire in India and makes a compelling case for the need to acknowledge, and, atone for, these realities.' -- Book Riot, ’14 Must-Read Indian History Books’

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Book SynopsisEdward Said experienced both British and American imperialism as the old Arab order crumbled in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This account of his early life reveals how it influenced his books Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism. Edward Said was born in Jerusalem and brought up in Cairo, spending every summer in the Lebanese mountain village of Dhour el Shweir, until he was 'banished' to America in 1951. This work is a mixture of emotional archaeology and memory, exploring an essentially irrecoverable past. As ill health sets him thinking about endings, Edward Said returns to his beginnings in this personal memoir of his ferociously demanding 'Victorian' father and his adored, inspiring, yet ambivalent mother.Trade ReviewEdward Said is among the truly important intellectuals of our century. His examined life, from the tragic and triumphant perspective of a mortal illness, is superbly worth living. I know I shall not read an autobiography to match this one for many years -- Nadine GordimerSaid is capable of writing like a gifted novelist, like a Palestinian Proust * Independent on Sunday *Out of Place recreates the sights and sounds, the smells and shouts, of a lost world, as Gunter Grass did for Danzig or Joyce for turn-of-the-century Dublin ... One of the greatest cities of our age has produced a work of art, one of the noblest autobiographies of our time * Irish Times *A fine elegy and a scrupulous reckoning with the past -- Marina Warner, Books of the Year * Daily Telegraph *This delicate and candid memoir by a very private man moved me enormously. Written in "counterpoint" to his illness (leukaemia) at times when he was recovering from chemotherapy, its importance may be measured by the ferocity of the public attempt which preceded and accompanied publication to discredit him as an authentic Palestinian voice -- Ahdaf SoueifOut of Place is an intensely moving act of reclamation and understanding, a portrait of a transcultural and often painful upbringing written with wonderful vividness and unsparing honesty. To read it is to come to know [Said's] family and his younger self as closely as we know characters in literature, to be shown, intimately and unforgettably, what it has meant in the last half-century to be a Palestinian -- Salman Rushdie

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Book SynopsisNiall Ferguson''s acclaimed bestseller on the highs and lows of Britain''s empireOnce vast swathes of the globe were coloured imperial red and Britannia ruled not just the waves, but the prairies of America, the plains of Asia, the jungles of Africa and the deserts of Arabia. Just how did a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic achieve all this? And why did the empire on which the sun literally never set finally decline and fall? Niall Ferguson''s acclaimed Empire brilliantly unfolds the imperial story in all its splendours and its miseries, showing how a gang of buccaneers and gold-diggers planted the seed of the biggest empire in all history - and set the world on the road to modernity.''The most brilliant British historian of his generation ... Ferguson examines the roles of pirates, planters, missionaries, mandarins, bankers and bankrupts in the creation of history''s largest empire ... he writes with splendid panache ... and a seemingly effortless, debonair wit'' Andrew Roberts ''Dazzling ... wonderfully readable'' New York Review of Books''A remarkably readable précis of the whole British imperial story - triumphs, deceits, decencies, kindnesses, cruelties and all'' Jan Morris ''Empire is a pleasure to read and brims with insights and intelligence'' Sunday Times

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Book SynopsisA vital feminist manifesto from one of our most inspiring political voicesTrade Review'A vibrant and compelling framework for feminism in our times' -- Judith Butler‘Powerfully outlines the reasons why mainstream feminism has been failing and excluding women of colour since its conception’ -- Hanna Bechiche, gal-dem'Brilliant' -- Lola Olufemi, author of 'Feminism, Interrupted' (Pluto, 2020)'Anchored in a deep commitment to justice and liberation, Vergès’s writing encourages us to open our minds and think with our hearts about the many ways the world oppresses and destroys, and about the things that are done, everyday and everywhere, to resist this and make it otherwise' -- 'Bad Form''A powerful tool of social transformation' -- Djamila Ribeiro, Brazilian human rights activist and author of 'Nos, Madelenas: uma palavra pelo feminism' (Fonte, 2012)‘Incisive… an invitation to reconnect with the utopian power of feminism’ -- Aurelien Maignant, 'Fabula'‘A powerful work’ -- 'Les Inrocks''Develops a critical perspective on feminism to reconsider the conditions of possibility and purpose… resituates feminism in a truly political, emancipatory and critical dimension’ -- Jean-Philippe Cazier, 'Diacritik''Essential for highlighting the current divisions within feminist political agendas, and for collective reflection on a profound, radical transformation of society… Necessary reading.' -- 'Axelle n°219''A feminist narrative of how decolonization is a never-ending struggle!' -- Veronica Gago, co-author of 'A Feminist Reading of Debt' (Pluto, 2021)Table of ContentsPreface Translator’s Introduction Introduction: Invisible, They “Open the City” 1. Taking Sides: Decolonial Feminism 2. The Evolution towards Twenty-First Century - Civilizational Feminism Notes Index

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Book Synopsis*** Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize*** In 1903 a Brahmin woman sailed from India to Guyana as a 'coolie', the name the British gave to the million indentured labourers they recruited for sugar plantations worldwide after slavery ended. The woman, who claimed no husband, was pregnant and travelling alone. A century later, her great-granddaughter embarks on a journey into the past, hoping to solve a mystery: what made her leave her country? And had she also left behind a man? Gaiutra Bahadur, an American journalist, pursues traces of her great-grandmother over three continents. She also excavates the repressed history of some quarter of a million female coolies. Disparaged as fallen, many were runaways, widows or outcasts, and many migrated alone. Coolie Woman chronicles their epic passage from Calcutta to the Caribbean, from departures akin either to kidnap or escape, through sea voyages rife with sexploitation, to new worlds where women were in short supply. When they exercised the power this gave them, some fell victim to the machete, in brutal attacks, often fatal, by men whom they spurned. Sex with overseers both empowered and imperiled other women, in equal measure.It also precipitated uprisings, as a struggle between Indian men and their women intersected with one between coolies and their overlords.Trade Review'With Coolie Woman, Bahadur lifts the veil of anonymity. She combines her journalistic eye for detail and story-telling gifts with probing questions, relentlessly pursuing leads to create a haunting portrait of the life of a subaltern. 'Can the subaltern speak?' the theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak had asked rhetorically. Yes, she can. Through the story of Sheojari, Bahadur shows how.' * The Independent *'Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture is a genealogical page-turner interwoven with a compelling, radical history of empire told from the perspective of indentured women. The collective voice of the jehaji behen (ship sisters) has been barely audible across the centuries, until now ... Bahadur grants us rare imaginative access to the odyssey through the experience of women's stories she finds in the archives.' * The Guardian *'Gaiutra Bahadur has produced an intricate, thoroughly researched and beautifully written book that evokes the experience of emigrant Indians and their descendants.' * Times Literary Supplement *'In her remarkable book, Gaiutra Bahadur chronicles the extraordinary but neglected saga of indentured labour that evolved when the British began to replace slavery on their sugar plantations worldwide. But the book is more than this: it is also a highly personal account that traces the history of the author s maternal line to the present day. As Bahadur clambers down the generations, she provides the reader with a meticulous and lushly detailed family memoir. ...This is a fascinating story, which will have resonance for millions of others who are swept up and transformed by history and have to find a new way to create 'home'.' * Literary Review *' …an epic and remarkably revealing account of love, intrigue, betrayal, and murder on the sugar plantations … Bahadur has shed unexpected light on the origins of sexual violence in many a dislocated community.' * The Philadelphia Inquirer *'In this fine book, Gaiutra Bahadur probes the hidden world of these indentured women. … Bahadur' s research (conducted in Guyana, India, and the United Kingdom) is deep and meticulous in both primary and secondary literature, and the story is told with the novelist's practiced eye for the telling detail. Good history here is a good read as well. And along the way, we catch glimpses of the sordid world of servitude and suffering on the colonial plantations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries across the world.' * The Journal of Asian Studies *'An astonishing document… both a historical rescue mission and a profound meditation on family and womanhood, Bahadur's Coolie Woman spans continents and centuries, the private and national, to bring to light the extraordinary lives of the author's great-grandmother and the other quarter of a million kuli women that came to the New World as indentured laborers. Bahadur's meticulous research and tireless perseverance have restored an important chapter in our histories — outstanding work.' * Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and This Is How You Lose Her *'I thought I knew something about slavery and forced labour, having written two books on the subject. And I thought I knew something about immigration to the New World. But Gaiutra Bahadur's book made me realise how the experience of a whole generation of women like her great-grandmother profoundly challenges the various stereotypes we have. This is a highly original combination of careful scholarship and well-told personal journey.' * Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains: the British Struggle to Abolish Slavery *'With the exhilarating meticulousness of a period film, Coolie Woman recreates a vanished world and casts a personal searchlight on the saga of indenture. Gaiutra Bahadur rescues her great-grandmother Sujaria and other 'coolie' women from the archives by means of a narrative that is both scholarly and soulful. In detailing the bitter journeys of her forebears, in making their astonishing experiences real and sympathetic, and in registering the complexities of their lives -- not least the extent to which they made choices where one might have expected helplessness -- Bahadur honours their memories and shows herself their worthy descendant.' * Teju Cole, author of Open City *'Coolie Woman is an important, unmissable account. From colonialism to labour in India, immigrant narratives to the hidden lives of women, Ms Bahadur excavates a rich and unforgettable set of stories that will permanently change our view of the past.' * Business Standard *'At one level this is a family history, as the author…searches for her roots. At a deeper level, it explores the social history of indentured labour and the imperial policies by which it was governed… It is a colourful story, well told.' * Asian Affairs *'…a moving, foundational book, investigating the experience of indentured Indian women in the Caribbean. It is solidly researched and as such it reveals the difficulty of understanding the human lives concealed within documents. Bahadur delicately reconstructs these women's lives, seen only through a glass darkly, piecing them together with respect and even admiration. This is a book that will both be of great use to scholars and a compelling text for non-specialists.' * Women's Review of Books *'Bahadur's passion shines through … Its real success is to balance Bahadur's personal tale of discovery with the broader story of the 250,000 other “coolie women” who fled sometimes tricky personal circumstances in India only to find their new lives were another battle for survival.' * The National *

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewPraise for A Dying Colonialism "The writing of Malcolm X or Eldridge Cleaver or Amiri Baraka or the Black Panther leaders reveals how profoundly they have been moved by the thoughts of Frantz Fanon." -The Boston Globe

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Book SynopsisTHE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERIn his ground-breaking new book, Sathnam Sanghera traces the legacies of British empire around the world. A wonderful book' Rory StewartNuanced and deeply researched' Financial TimesNot just a welcome corrective but a book for our times' Peter Frankopan_____________________________________________________The British empire was built on slavery, but it also pioneered abolition. It spread democracy, but it also seeded geopolitical instability. It devastated nature but it also gave birth to modern notions of environmentalism. In this urgent sequel to Empireland, award-winning author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera extends his examination of British imperial legacies beyond Britain to the wider world. Travelling across outposts of the former empire from Barbados and Mauritius to India and Nigeria and beyond, Sanghera puts to bed the conventional balance-sheet view of imperial history where the good is merely weighed up against the bad. In Empireworld, Sanghera instead seeks out nuance to reveal how contradictory forces of the British empire have shaped our world and what they mean for our place within it today. _____________________________________________________An absolute masterpiece' James O'BrienPuts Sanghera in the firmament of great imperial historians' Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, i Profoundly moving' Elizabeth Day

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Book SynopsisTraces of History presents a new approach to race and to comparative colonial studies. Bringing a historical perspective to bear on the regimes of race that colonizers have sought to impose on Aboriginal people in Australia, on Blacks and Native Americans in the United States, on Ashkenazi Jews in Western Europe, on Arab Jews in Israel/Palestine, and on people of African descent in Brazil, this book shows how race marks and reproduces the different relationships of inequality into which Europeans have coopted subaltern populations: territorial dispossession, enslavement, confinement, assimilation, and removal.Charting the different modes of domination that engender specific regimes of race and the strategies of anti-colonial resistance they entail, the book powerfully argues for cross-racial solidarities that respect these historical differences.Trade Review'Race is a social construct.' Sure, but what does that mean? Patrick Wolfe, preeminent scholar of settler colonial studies, tackles this question with theoretical sophistication and vivid historical detail. Spanning four continents and four centuries, Wolfe reveals the operations of race-making in specific historical processes, in the always contingent struggles over land, labor, culture, and power. A magnificent work of erudition and elucidation, Traces of History will change how we talk about the 'social construction of race.' -- Robin D. G. Kelley, UCLA, author of Africa Speaks, America AnswersWolfe brilliantly historicises a comprehensive and global thesis, concluding that racism is not here to stay. An original and essential text. -- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United StatesA unique tour de force. This powerful journey into the past, covering Australia, North America, Brazil, Europe and Palestine, will leave you convinced that racism can be defeated, but its elusive and cynical human attitude has still to be acknowledged and confronted. No other book will help you do this better. -- Ilan Pappe, University of Exeter, author of The Idea of IsraelAlthough racial conflict and racial injustice have shaped the modern history of the entire planet, there is little awareness of how pervasive the legacy of race and racism really is. Traces of History at long last provides a global, comparative text on race. Wolfe draws on a wide range of scholars to provide an accessible text on race and racism as worldwide phenomena. A deeply researched, long-overdue effort. Highly recommended for course adoption! -- Howard Winant, University of California, Santa Barbara, author of Racial Formation in the United StatesAs profound as it is unsettling. -- Gershon Shafir, author of Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli–Palestinian ConflictWolfe's work directly addresses the questions "how are races constructed, under what circumstances, and in whose interests?" A thorough reckoning with these questions in Traces of History powerfully suggests that if we understand how race was constructed in various contexts, then we can work to comprehensively dismantle those constructions to the benefit of a truly egalitarian society. -- Steven Delmagori * Socialism and Democracy *

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Book SynopsisThoroughly updated and revised edition of a popular classic of modern anthropology.Trade Review'A well written and informative book on a subject of great importance for all social anthropologists. A work which offers a sober and balanced account of the historical growth of anthropology'. It certainly deserves to be widely read' -- The European Journal of Developmental Research'The authors describe this book as an ambitious but unpretentious attempt to 'cover all the major traditions in social and cultural anthropology'. They achieve this in nine pithy chapters that follow the development of anthropological ideas from the ancient Greeks to the end of the 1990s. -- The Australian Journal of AnthropologyTable of ContentsSeries preface Preface 1. Proto-Anthropology Introduction Herodotus and other Greeks After Antiquity The European Conquests and their Impact Why All This is not Quite Anthropology Yet The Enlightenment Romanticism 2. Victorians, Germans and a Frenchman Introduction Evolutionism and Cultural History Morgan Marx Bastian and the German Tradition Tylor and Other Victorians The Golden Bough and the Torres Expedition German Diffusionism The New Sociology Durkheim Weber 3. Four Founding Fathers Introduction The Founding Fathers and their Projects Malinowski and the Trobriand Islanders Radcliffe-Brown's Natural Science of Society Boas and Historical Particularism Mauss and the Total Social Prestation Anthropology in 1930: Parallels and Divergences 4. Expansion and Institutionalisation Introduction A Marginal Discipline? Oxford and LSE, Columbia and Chicago The Dakar-Djibouti Expedition Culture and Personality Cultural History Ethnolinguistics The Chicago School 'Kinshipology' Functionalism's Last Stand Some British Outsiders 5. Forms of Change Introduction Neo-evolutionism and Cultural Ecology Formalism and Substativism Methodological Individualists at Cambridge Role Analysis and System Theory 6. The Power of Symbols Introduction From Function to Meaning Ethnoscience and Symbolic Anthropology Geertz and Schneider Levi-Strauss and Structuralism Early Impact The State of the Art in 1968 7. Questioning Authority Introduction The Return of Marx Structural Marxism The Not-Quite-Marxists Political Economy and the Capitalist World System Feminism and the Birth of Reflexive Fieldwork Ethnicity Practice Theory The Sociobiology Debate and Samoa 8. The End of Modernism? Introduction The End of Modernism? The Postcolonial World A New Departure or a Return to Boas? Other Positions 9. Global Networks Introduction Towards an International Anthropology? Trends for the Future Biology and Culture Globalisation and the Production of Locality Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisBritish rule in India caused millions of deaths, economic devastation, and cultural exploitation. The East India Company's ruthless tactics led to suffering and decline in GDP. Despite claims of benefits, the reality was a brutal and exploitative regime that harmed India in numerous ways.

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewEngrossing ... eye-opening ... an enormously refreshing treat -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times *With great skill the authors have managed to combine clarity and consistency, substance and fluency, historical precision and a text that is a joy to read * Lira Neto *A thoughtful and profound journey into the soul of Brazil...The Brazil that emerges from this book is, indeed, a fascinating, complex, multicoloured, contradictory and challenging organism, more like a living being than a political, cultural and geographical entity -- Laurentino Gomes * Folha de São Paulo *Coinciding with the election of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, this epic history of the world's sixth most populous country is a shocking, dramatic and utterly engrossing read. The details of Brazil's history, from the 19th-century empire to the suicide of the quasi-fascist dictator Getulio Vargas, are largely unknown to British readers, but that only makes its dark story all the more fascinating. * The Sunday Times, Books of the Year *Detailed and deeply reasoned . . . Illuminating, engrossing, and consistently thoughtful. -- Larry Rohter * The New York Review of Books *Compelling and insightful . . . One of Schwarcz and Starling's great strengths is their dissection of changing racial identity. -- Geoff Dyer * Financial Times *Evocative . . . Schwarcz and Starling adopt what they call a biographical approach: an attempt to tell the collective stories of the generations of Brazilians that have lived . . . They achieve this with flair in their rich evocations of colonial and imperial Brazil . . . Rich and absorbing. -- Patrick Wilcken * The Times Literary Supplement *

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Book Synopsis ‘This is history bursting at the seams with English eccentrics and Indian gentry…the charm of Tunzelmann’s approach is to restore her cast to full and vital life’ Observer‘A compelling narrative, sometimes controversial, occasionally perverse, never boring or unintelligent’ SpectatorFully revised and updated for the 70th anniversary. The stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947 liberated 400 million Indians from the British Empire. One of the defining moments of world history had been brought about by a tiny number of people, including Jawaharlal Nehru, the fiery prime minister-to-be; Gandhi, the mystical figure who enthralled a nation; and Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, the glamorous but unlikely couple who had been dispatched to get Britain out of India without delay. Within hours of the midnight chimes, however, the two new nations of India and Pakistan would descend into ana

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Book SynopsisThis title describes the brutal impact of capitalism and colonialism on both the colonizer and the colonized, exposing the contradictions and hypocrisy implicit in western notions of progress and civilisation.

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Book SynopsisThe Age of Discovery was a time of exploration and developing new ideas, when Europeans first travelled across the seas to other lands. In his warm and expressive style, Charles Kovacs tells stories of key European historical figures, from the Crusades to the Renaissance, including Saladin, Joan of Arc, Columbus, Magellan, Queen Elizabeth I and Francis Drake, and draws out the interrelation of world events.This revised edition of a classic text is an engaging resource for teachers and home-schooling parents. This historical period is traditionally covered in Class 7 (age 13-14) of the Steiner-Waldorf curriculum.Trade Review'An excellent overview of world history, compiled from Charles Kovacs' copious lesson notes. Throughout, Kovacs is keen to convey to the reader the notion of cause and effect and the inter-relatedness of world events. Any teacher of the 13-year-old age group will find this book an excellent resource.'-- New View

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Book Synopsis'Wry, readable and often astonishing... A provocative and absorbing history of the United States' New York TimesThe United States denies having dreams of empire.We know America has spread its money, language and culture across the world, but we still think of it as a contained territory, framed by Canada above, Mexico below, and oceans either side. Nothing could be further from the truth.This is the story of the United States outside the United States – from nineteenth-century conquests like Alaska and Puerto Rico to the catalogue of islands, archipelagos and military bases dotted around the globe. Full of surprises and previously forgotten episodes, this fascinating book casts America’s history, and its present, in a revealing new light.Trade Review[A] smashing new book… fascinating -- Tim Stanley * Daily Telegraph *Lively and fascinating … [Immerwahr] is incapable of writing a dull page, and he has a real gift for making striking and unusual connections -- Noel Malcolm * Sunday Telegraph *To call this standout book a corrective would make it sound earnest and dutiful, when in fact it is wry, readable and often astonishing … It’s a testament to Immerwahr’s considerable storytelling skills that I found myself riveted by his sections on Hoover’s quest for standardized screw threads, wondering what might happen next. But beyond its collection of anecdotes and arcana, this humane book offers something bigger and more profound. How to Hide an Empire nimbly combines breadth and sweep with fine-grained attention to detail. The result is a provocative and absorbing history of the United States — ‘not as it appears in its fantasies, but as it actually is.’ * New York Times *There are many histories of American expansionism. How to Hide an Empire renders them all obsolete. It is brilliantly conceived, utterly original, and immensely entertaining - simultaneously vivid, sardonic and deadly serious. -- Andrew J. Bacevich, author of Twilight of the American CenturyThis book changes our understanding of the fundamental character of the United States as a presence in world history. By focusing on the processes by which Americans acquired, controlled, and were affected by territory, Daniel Immerwahr shows that the United States was not just another “empire,” but was a highly distinctive one the dimensions of which have been largely ignored. -- David A. Hollinger, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Protestants AbroadHow to Hide an Empire is a breakthrough, for both Daniel Immerwahr and our collective understanding of America’s role in the world. His narrative of the rise of our colonial empire outside North America, and then our surprising pivot from colonization to globalization after World War II, is enthralling in the telling -- and troubling for anyone pondering our nation’s past and future. The result is a book for citizens and scholars alike. -- Samuel Moyn, professor of law and history at Yale UniversityA deft disquisition on America, and America in the world, with a raconteur’s touch and keen sense of the absurd -- Stephen Phillips * Spectator *[A] lively new book… Immerwahr peppers his account with colourful characters and enjoyable anecdotes… [How to Hide an Empire] throws light on the histories of everything from the Beatles to Godzilla, the birth-control pill to the transistor radio * Economist *This is an easily readable and vividly written book, filled with numerous fascinating tales, some well known, but many obscure… [How to Hide an Empire] illuminate[s] the wider history of both the United States and its colonies -- Andrew Johnstone * BBC History *How to Hide an Empire…achieves a strong grounding in its sources material and the wider history of empire studies… [it] is timely and raises weighty questions on themes of identity and belong that are all very relevant today * All About History *[A] vivid, and sometimes quirky, retelling of American expansionism… The originality of Immerwahr’s book… [is] in his explanation of how Washington purposely avoided converting its occupations to annexations -- Gavin Jacobson * New Statesman *Daniel Immerwahr… writes in the manner of an entertaining and informative lecturer who cannot wait to tell the class his latest discovery from the archives -- James Michael * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisA taboo-busting critique of the transfer of wealth from the global South to the global North.Trade Review'The most significant book published on the political economy of imperialism in the 21st century, written by the foremost scholar of global imperialism today.' -- Immanuel Ness, author of 'Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class''Global inequality isn't natural; it's created. Zak Cope explains how the rules of the international economy have been designed to benefit a few powerful nations in the Global North at the expense of most of the rest of the world. A brilliant intervention from one of the best scholars in the field.' -- Jason Hickel, Goldsmiths, University of London'Highly important and timely. Required reading for anyone interested in understanding the nature of current global capitalism, rather than remaining hoodwinked by the mythology of equality and liberty' -- Amiya Bagchi, Monash University'Powerfully challenges the imperialism-denial dominating Marxist theory and practice in Europe and North America and influential elsewhere. Whether or not you agree with all its arguments and conclusions, you'll find this to be a stimulating and thought-provoking book' -- John Smith, author of 'Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century'Table of ContentsList of Figures and Tables Acknowledgements Introduction Part I - The Mechanics of Imperialism 1. Value Transfer 2. Colonial Tribute 3. Monopoly Rent 4. Unequal Exchange Part II - The Econometrics of Imperialism 5. Imperialism and Its Denial 6. Measuring Imperialist Value Transfer 7. Measuring Colonial Value Transfer 8. Comparing Value Transfer to Profits, Wages and Capital Part III - Foundations of the Labour Aristocracy 9. Anti-Imperialist Marxism and the Wages of Imperialism 10. The Metropolitan Labour Aristocracy 11. The Native Labour Aristocracy Part IV - Social Imperialism Past and Present 12. Social Imperialism before the First World War 13. Social Imperialism after the First World War 14. Social-Imperialist Marxism 15. Conclusion: Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism Today Appendix: Physical Quality of Life in Capitalist and Socialist Countries Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family historyIn 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, ?in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.? Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi?s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective.Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members?mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists?The Hundred Years'' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel?s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process. Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years'' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.

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Book Synopsis'Where are you from?' was the question hounding Hazel Carby as a girl in post-World War II London. One of the so-called brown babies of the Windrush generation, born to a Jamaican father and Welsh mother, Carby's place in her home, her neighbourhood, and her country of birth was always in doubt. Emerging from this setting, Carby untangles the threads connecting members of her family to each other in a web woven by the British Empire across the Atlantic. We meet Carby's working-class grandmother Beatrice, a seamstress challenged by poverty and disease. In England, she was thrilled by the cosmopolitan fantasies of empire, by cities built with slave-trade profits, and by street peddlers selling fashionable Jamaican delicacies. In Jamaica, we follow the lives of both the 'white Carbys' and the 'black Carbys', as Mary Ivey, a free woman of colour, whose children are fathered by Lilly Carby, a British soldier who arrived in Jamaica in 1789 to be absorbed into the plantation aristocracy. And we discover the hidden stories of Bridget and Nancy, two women owned by Lilly who survived the Middle Passage from Africa to the Caribbean.Moving between the Jamaican plantations, the hills of Devon, the port cities of Bristol, Cardiff, and Kingston, and the working-class estates of South London, Carby's family story is at once an intimate personal history and a sweeping summation of the violent entanglement of two islands. In charting British empire's interweaving of capital and bodies, public language and private feeling, Carby will find herself reckoning with what she can tell, what she can remember, and what she can bear to know.Trade ReviewAn elegant memoir which pivots beautifully around those twin imposters, 'belonging' and 'home'. Richly suffused with a love of people and place, Carby's familiar intellectual rigor never lets us drift off course towards nostalgia. -- Caryl Phillips, author of A View of the Empire at SunsetA heartbreaking and beautiful account of growing-up in the impossible space between mutually exclusive terms-Black and British. The history of empire, slavery and colonialism unfolds in the exquisite and painful details of this unflinching auto-portrait. Carby deftly captures the ways that relations of power are lived, intimately, quietly, destructively, and profoundly. What an achievement. -- Saidiya Hartman, author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful ExperimentsThis beautifully written book raises the bar for political life-writing. Hazel Carby invites readers to follow a reconstructive quest propelled by memory, archive and imagination. It is a journey of discovery that forcefully contextualises the injustice dished out by British governments to the 'Windrush generation' and their rebel offspring. Carby disrupts fixed notions of racial identity that contort our understanding of Britain's colonial and postcolonial history. -- Paul Gilroy, author of Darker Than Blue and The Black AtlanticHazel Carby is a foundational scholar of race, class, and empire as critical lenses for understanding culture. In Imperial Intimacies she shares the way that stories-often difficult to mine and face-are at the core of how her indispensable world view was formed. Imperial Intimacies is an epic, generous book that illuminates black Britain as never before and shows us how a great thinker and educator was formed. It is beautifully told, a treasured look into how a girl came to believe that reading and critical thinking could help mend a broken world and give us tools not only for living in it, but for understanding it. I'll treasure this book forever. * Elizabeth Alexander, author of The Light of the World and American Sublime *Hazel Carby assembles a sprawling account of how imperialism--a web of social relations, labor markets, and trade networks-conditions private feeling. The resulting narrative is something like an affective history of the British Empire. -- Maya Binyam * New Yorker *Carby's book lies somewhere between what is recorded in official archives, what is remembered in family lore, and what is considered an affective draw to intellectual questions. The spiny precision of the historical...allows the reader to feel erudite, but Carby's most captivating writing is when she feels on the page. -- Tiana Reid * Bookforum *Captivating. . . offers interesting perspectives on the personal impact of capitalism and colonialism. -- Bernardine Evaristo * TLS Books of the Year, 2019 *Exceptional...By using examples from her own background, she brilliantly demonstrates that 'the personal' is indeed political. -- LSE Review of Books * Manuela Latchoumaya *At every turn, Carby refuses to tell a tidy or convenient story and instead produces an account of empire that is as expansive as it is heartbreaking. -- Saidiya Hartman * Paris Review *While the minotaur of the British imperial past is very far from dead and buried, Carby's memoir offers a course, a set of clues; it brings us a bit closer to the mouth of the maze. -- Phoebe Braithwaite * Dissent *An arresting, courageous, and urgently needed memoir that doubles as social, cultural, and political history. -- Gaiutra Bahadur * The Nation *The poignancy in this moving and patient memoir-Carby writes with equal eloquence about work on the Great Western Railway, lichen and the neglected materiality of black British life-centres on her dedication to discovering (to paraphrase James Baldwin) from whence she came. -- Paul Mendez * Times Literary Supplement *Imperial Intimacies is part of a well-established and growing body of literature that explores the margins and gaps in the historical record. ... For those interested in imperialism, postcolonialism, black studies, black British history, and archival studies, this is an essential book to consider. -- Gabriella Rodriguez * Ethnic and Third World Literatures *In Imperial Intimacies, Carby delicately balances the critical distance of the scholar with the profound subjectivity of the memoirist. ... By exploring the relations between working class Welsh life and the Jamaican colony, Bristol's industrial center and the transatlantic slave economy, and the racial transgressions in the intimacies between her own parents, Carby's critical project illuminates the histories of the British empire that are embedded in the spaces of our everyday lives. -- Sabrina Alli * Guernica *[Carby] poignantly portrays how her father, a man of great dignity, had believed in the promises and ideals proclaimed by the British. Carby moves the reader through every possible response to the complex patterns of family lineage under empire. -- Madeleine Bunting * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisIn 1938, the anthropologist Norman Tindale gave a classroom of young Aboriginal children a set of crayons and asked them to draw. The children, residents of the government-run Aboriginal station Cummeragunja, mostly drew pictures of aspects of white civilization boats, houses and flowers. What now to make of their artwork? Were the children encouraged or pressured to draw non-Aboriginal scenes, or did they draw freely, appropriating the white culture they now lived within? Did their Aboriginality change the meaning of their art, as they sketched out this ubiquitous colonial imagery? Australian Settler Colonialism and the Cummeragunja Aboriginal Station traces Cummeragunja's history from its establishment in the 1880s to its mass walk-off in 1939 and finally, to the 1960s, when its residents regained greater control over the land. Taking in oral history traditions, the author reveals the competing interests of settler governments, scientific and religious organizations, and nearby settler communities. The nature of these interests has broad and important implications for understanding settler colonial history. This history shows white people set boundaries on Aboriginal behaviour and movement, through direct legislation and the provision of opportunities and acceptance. But Aboriginal people had agency within and, at times, beyond these limits. Aboriginal people appropriated aspects of white culture including the houses, the flowers and the boats that their children drew for Tindale - reshaping them into new tools for Aboriginal society, tools with which to build lives and futures in a changed environment.Trade Review"Fiona Davis, a non-Indigenous scholar who grew up in northern Victoria, has done a great service by adapting her doctoral thesis into this fine book. She has written a fascinating, thoughtful, and accessible history of Cummeragunja, tracing its story from its late nineteenth century origins in the nearby Maloga Mission, through to the stations official closure in 1953. Her experience as a journalist in northern Victoria is reflected in the engaging storytelling that is at the heart of her book." Samuel Furphy, Australian National University, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 46, no 1, March 2015.

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Book SynopsisAn inspiring and intersectional re-imagining of the path to liberation in PalestineTrade Review'An inspiring call to action that deconstructs the many oppressive systems we currently find ourselves struggling against, and shows us the way forward' -- Adam Horowitz, Executive Editor at Mondoweiss'The book our movements deserve. Crafted from decades of transnational activism, Nada Elia brilliantly weaves together the challenges of our time and the political frameworks necessary to overcome them' -- Noura Erakat, Associate Professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick in Africana Studies and the Program in Criminal Justice'I am so grateful that a book such as Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts finally exists! Reading it felt like drinking cold water on a parched day. The writing is bold and brave, the analysis clear-sighted and unflinching. And yet somehow, on top of all this, the book is full of heart, fierce love and radical empathy. A must read' -- Jen Marlowe, author of 'I Am Troy Davis' and 'The Hour of Sunlight''Offers a new map altogether: a map of survival, possibility, and hope. Like the Palestinian struggle for freedom itself, this map is collective, collaborative, built on and for radical love' -- Sherene Seikaly, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara'A compelling, even irresistible case for moving beyond rights and statehood for Palestine to a truly decolonial future. Grounded in the analysis of actual struggles, the book is informed by Elia's commitment to abolitionist feminist practice, which reorients the vision of what a post-Zionist Palestine could look like in crucial ways. Defined by solidarity rather than exceptionalism, this is a truly necessary book' -- David Lloyd, Department of English, University of California, US‘A book about community, resistance, and hope … heart-wrenching, inspirational’ -- ‘Mondoweiss’‘Provides a unique view into the problems of Palestine and the resourcefulness of indigenous people, feminists, and the LGBTQ community globally’ -- ‘Palestine Chronicle’‘Probes us to ask: where do we believe knowledge lies? What does it mean to practise solidarity across differences? How can we work to build a liberated future? Read the book, ask yourself these questions, and then organise to answer them – our liberation depends on it.’ -- ‘Red Pepper’‘A book of hope and purpose … an important contribution to the Palestinian fight for self-determination’ -- ‘Bella Caledonia’Table of ContentsIntroduction Part One: Unsettling Indigeneity 1. From Cowboys to Indians: Zionism’s Opportunistic Discourse 2. On this Land: Indigenous Struggles from Turtle Island to Palestine Part Two: Overcoming State-Sanctioned Settler Supremacy 3. Déjà Vu: The Apartheid Analogy 4. Lessons Learned: Looking Forward Part Three: We Teach Life, Sir 5. Social and Political Liberation 6. Conclusion: Beyond Boundaries: Greater than the Sum of Our Parts

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Book SynopsisVladimir Lenin created this hugely significant Marxist text to explain fully the inevitable flaws and destructive power of Capitalism: that it would lead unavoidably to imperialism, monopolies and colonialism. He prophesied that those third world countries used merely as capitalist labour would have no choice but to join the Communist revolution in Russia. GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

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Book SynopsisParadise is Abdulrazak Gurnah's fourth novel, a beautiful story of African life.Trade ReviewMany layered, violent, beautiful and strange ... a poetic and vividly conjured book about Africa and the brooding power of the unknown * Independent on Sunday *An aural archive of a lost Africa ... Tangling travel adventures, social documentary, political indictment and a doomed love story ... Paradise is alive with the unexpected. In it, an obliterated world is enthrallingly retrieved * Sunday Times *Gurnah evokes his world in poetic prose which is pure and lucid - a small paradise in itself ... The pleasures, sadnesses and losses in all the shining facets of this book are lingering and exquisite * Guardian *Paradise is that rare thing, a novel that is totally convincing in the vivid physical world it presents, yet transcending that world and reaching into the universal. Folk tale, travel story, drama of love and loss, by turns touching and horrifying, it is a novel to be grateful for * Barry Unsworth *A gently meandering coming-of-age tale -- Michaela Wong * Spectator, Books of the Year *

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Book SynopsisThe seminal work that has redefined our understanding of colonialism and empire, with a preface by the author''Stimulating, elegant and pugnacious'' Observer''Magisterial'' Terry EagletonIn this highly-acclaimed work, Edward Said surveys the history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East, considering orientalism as a powerful European ideological creation - a way for writers, philosophers and colonial administrators to deal with the ''otherness'' of eastern culture, customs and beliefs. He traces this view through the writings of Homer, Nerval and Flaubert, Disraeli and Kipling, whose imaginative depictions have greatly contributed to the West''s romantic and exotic picture of the Orient. Drawing on his own experiences as an Arab Palestinian living in the West, Said examines how these ideas can be a reflection of European imperialism and racism. ''Beautifully patterned and passionately argued''New Statesman''Very exciting ... his case is not merely persuasive, but conclusive'' John Leonard, New York Times

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Book SynopsisExamines the ways in which the American model is being imposed on the world, and outlines its economic and political consequences.Trade Review"Amin is both a real-world social scientist and a revolutionary socialist." Review of Radical Political EconomyTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Liberal Vision of Society 2. The Ideological and Para-Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism 3. The Consequences: Really-Existing Globalized Liberalism 4. The Origins of Liberalism 5. The Challenge of Liberalism Today Works Cited in the Text Index

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Book SynopsisThe Nawab Nazim was born into one of India's most powerful royal families. Three times the size of Great Britain, his kingdom ranged from the soaring Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. However, in 1880, he was forced to abdicate by the British authorities, who saw him as a threat and permanently abolished his titles. The Nawab's change in fortune marked the end of an era in India and left his secret English family abandoned. The Last Prince of Bengal tells the true story of the Nawab Nazim, his wife and their descendants, as they sought by turns to befriend, settle in and eventually escape Britain. From glamourous receptions with Queen Victoria to a scandalous Muslim marriage with an English chambermaid; from Bengal tiger hunts to sheep farming in the harsh Australian outback, Lyn Innes recounts her ancestors' extraordinary journey from royalty to relative anonymity. Exposing complex prejudices regarding race, class and gender, this riveting account visits the extremes of British rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is also the intimate story of one family and their place in defining moments of recent Indian, British and Australian history.Table of ContentsMaps Family Trees Introduction PART I Chapter 1: A prince in name 1838-1848 Chapter 2: Money, power and politics 1849-1859 Chapter 3: Passage from India 1859-1869 Chapter 4: A Cinderella story 1852-1870 Chapter 5: Battling Parliament and the press 1869-1873 Chapter 6: The Nawab's English family 1871-1881 Chapter 7: Leaving England 1880-1884 PART II Chapter 8: Sarah's fight 1885-1925 Chapter 9: Royal bohemians 1907-1914 Chapter 10: Weathering the war 1914-1919 Chapter 11: Writing for a living 1920-1925 Chapter 12: Farming down under 1925-1927 Chapter 13: Divided families 1927-1941 Epilogue Acknowledgements Image Credits Selective Sources Index

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Book Synopsis'The product of many years of detailed archival research, Wilson’s book is without question the best one-volume history of the Raj currently in print.' - William Dalrymple, The Guardian‘The core of the book is a virtuoso takedown of cherished shibboleths of Raj mythology’ Financial Times ‘A forceful reminder that Britain has its own messy past to come to terms with’ Guardian  In the nineteenth century, imperial India was at the centre of Britain’s global power. But since its partition between India and Pakistan in 1947, the Raj has divided opinion: some celebrate its supposed role in creating much that is good in the modern world; others condemn it as the cause of continuing poverty. Today, the Raj lives on in faded images of Britain’s former glory, a notion used now to sell goods in India as well as Europe. But its real character has been poorly Trade Review‘This is an inspirational book, a challenging source of controversy and an invaluable corrective to the many histories of British India that have scarcely escaped the self-reverential platitudes of imperial rule’ * Times Literary Supplement *‘Wilson understands the complexities of India, illuminating the cultures of the courts, the rivalries of the Marathas, the emergence and destinies of Pindari gangs of peasant-warriors.’ * Literary Review *‘The core of the book is a virtuoso takedown of cherished shibboleths of Raj mythology.’ * Financial Times *‘Conquest comes in many forms and Jon Wilson’s polemical India Conquered is a forceful reminder that Britain has its own messy past to come to terms with.’ * Guardian *‘He delves into every aspect of Indian life, from law to religion, the economy to education, to show how the interaction between rulers and the ruled played out in unexpected and often calamitous ways’ * Guardian *‘It’s a neat and modern telling that feels as necessary as a bucket of water in the face after a dizzying trip to the bazaar.’ * The Times *

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