Historical geography Books

Book SynopsisReinterprets the making of the modern Middle East by studying its borderlands, drawing on case studies of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Transjordan to overturn popular views of how the borders of the region were formed.Trade Review"Conceiving the post-Ottoman space less through hard borders than porous borderlands, and highlighting the interests of both local and colonial actors, Tejel and ztan develop regimes of mobility" into a percipient rubric for the mandate period. Framed by an astute introduction and afterword, eleven case studies trace how traders, nomads, priests and refugees negotiated customs controls, quarantine regulations and national churches amid competing notions and uses of territory. This is a timely study of both the disconnections and redirections that define eras of deglobalisation."" -Nile Green, Professor of History and Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History, UCLA

Read more less

Book SynopsisBlom’s hypothesis is forceful, and has the potential to be both frightening and, if you hold it up to the light at just the right angle, a little optimistic. The idea can be put like this: climate change changes everything' John Lanchester, New Yorker In this innovative and compelling work of environmental history, Philipp Blom chronicles the great climate crisis of the 1600s, a crisis that would transform the entire social and political fabric of Europe. While hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, by the end of the sixteenth century the temperature plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbours were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and ‘frost fairs’ were erected on a frozen Thames – with kiosks, taverns, and even brothels that become a semi-permanent part of the city. Recounting the deep legacy and sweeping consequences of this ‘Little Ice Age’, acclaimed historian Philipp Blom reveals how the European landscape had ineradicably changed by the mid-seventeenth century. While apocalyptic weather patterns destroyed entire harvests and incited mass migrations, Blom brilliantly shows how they also gave rise to the growth of European cities, the appearance of early capitalism, and the vigorous stirrings of the Enlightenment. A sweeping examination of how a society responds to profound and unexpected change, Nature’s Mutiny will transform the way we think about climate change in the twenty-first century and beyond.Trade ReviewA book that skilfully creates a historical panorama, in such a gripping and thrillingly informative way that it’s a joy. * Giessener Allgemeine Zeitung *An exciting history book, and an educational one. * Stern *A case study that connects the birth of the modern world with the climate change of the time. A fascinating panorama of a whole era. * Freie Presse *An imposing panorama of politics, economics and intellectual history ... [Blom] has written an informative history of the early modern age, which also prompts us to think about the connections between climate and innovation. * Deutschlandfunk Andruck *Drawing on rich sources, including diaries, letters, account ledgers, paintings, and religious sermons as well as data gleaned by climate historians and scientists, journalist and translator Blom creates a vivid picture of the European landscape during the Little Ice Age and of social, political, and cultural changes that may have been accelerated by climate change ... An absorbing and revealing portrait of profound natural disaster. * Kirkus Reviews *A sweeping story, embracing developments in economics and science, philosophy and exploration, religion and politics. Blom delivers much of his argument through compressed, beautifully clear life sketches of prominent men. […] Blom’s hypothesis is forceful, and has the potential to be both frightening and, if you hold it up to the light at just the right angle, a little optimistic. The idea can be put like this: climate change changes everything -- John Lanchester * New Yorker *Lively . . . an eye-catchingly grand thesis * Sunday Times *Provocative . . . lively and intelligent * Literary Review *Table of ContentsUnit - 1: PROLOGUE: Winter Landscape Chapter - 1: Life without Money Chapter - 2: The Great Experiment Unit - 2: "GOD HAS ABANDONED US": Europe, 1570-1600 Chapter - 3: A Monk on the Run Chapter - 4: God’s Wind and Waves Chapter - 5: Harsh Frosts and Burning Sun Chapter - 6: A Time of Confusion and a Fiery Mountain Chapter - 7: Pilgrims and Their Hunger Chapter - 8: Truth and Wine Chapter - 9: Wine in Vienna Chapter - 10: The Lights Go Out Chapter - 11: Witches and Spoiled Harvests Chapter - 12: The Truth in the Stars Chapter - 13: Doctor Faustus Chapter - 14: Infinite Worlds Chapter - 15: The Tower of Books Unit - 3: THE AGE OF IRON Chapter - 16: Hortus Botanicus Chapter - 17: Revolutionary Places Chapter - 18: The City Devours Its Children Chapter - 19: The Magic of Green Cheese Chapter - 20: The Great Transformation Chapter - 21: A Picture of the World Chapter - 22: Idle Talk and Fabrications Chapter - 23: A Warning and a Call to Repent Chapter - 24: Tears Too Plentiful to Count Chapter - 25: The Revolution of the Barrel of a Musket Chapter - 26: Sell More to Strangers Chapter - 27: The State as Machine Chapter - 28: A Profitable Trade Chapter - 29: The Curse of Silver Chapter - 30: Officer, Retired Chapter - 31: The Subversive Republic of Letters Chapter - 32: Germanus incredibilis Chapter - 33: Virtue in the Drowning Cell Chapter - 34: Leviathan Chapter - 35: An Inventory of Morality Unit - 4: ON COMETS AND OTHER CELESTIAL LIGHTS Chapter - 36: The Madness of Crowds Chapter - 37: The Antichrist Chapter - 38: The Messiah and the Whore Chapter - 39: The Fair on the Ice Chapter - 40: The Face of Change Chapter - 41: The Price of Change Chapter - 42: Tapissier du roi Chapter - 43: The Public Sphere and the Vices of Bees Chapter - 44: The Floating Reverend Unit - 5: EPILOGUE: Supplement to The Fable of the Bees Chapter - 45: Songbirds, Wood Lice, and Corals Chapter - 46: Freedom and Luxury Chapter - 47: Inherited Compromises Chapter - 48: New Metaphors Chapter - 49: The Theology of the Market Chapter - 50: The Market and the Fortress Acknowledgements - i: Acknowledgments Section - ii: Notes Section - iii: Bibliography Section - iiii: Illustration Credits Index - v: Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisCelebrating the rich heritage of archaeology and of archaeological research in Hertfordshire, the 15 papers collected in this work focus on various aspects of the region, including the Neolithic to the post-Medieval periods, and include a report on the important excavations at the formative henge at Norton. Several chapters focus new attention on the Iron Age and Roman periods, both from a landscape perspective and through detailed studies of artefacts, while a discussion of the rare early Saxon material recently excavated at Watton at Stone makes a vital contribution to the existing corpus of knowledge about this little-understood period. All of the papers in the volume focus on the local scene with an understanding of wider issues in each period and as a result, the papers are of importance beyond the boundaries of the county and will be of interest to scholars with wide-ranging interests.Table of Contents1 Archaeology in Hertfordshire by Kris Lockyear2 The Welwyn Archaeological Society 1960-1998: a personal history by Merle Rook+ and Kris Lockyear3 A nice place to live: settlement and landscape in Hertfordshire from 1500 BC to 300 BC by Stewart Bryant4 The Baldock Bowl: an exceptional prehistoric landscape on the edge of the Chilterns by Keith J. Fitzpatrick-Matthews5 Burials, ditches and deities: defining the boundaries of Iron Age and Romano-British Baldock by Gil Burleigh6 When was the Roman conquest in Hertfordshire? by Isobel Thompson7 A survey of Roman coin finds from Hertfordshire by Sam Moorhead8 Archaeology and the Roman coin hoards of Hertfordshire by Dave Wythe9 The Iron Age and Roman site at Broom Hall Farm, Watton-at-Stone: a preliminary report by Kris Lockyear10 'Out of town and on the edge?': evaluating recent evidence for Romanisation within the Verulamium region by Simon West11 Prehistoric pits and an Anglo-Saxon hill-top cremation cemetery at Station Road, Watton-at-Stone by Peter Boyer, Katie Anderson, Tom Woolhouse, Barry Bishop and Berni Sudds, with contributions from Nina Crummy and Dr Jean-Luc Schwenninger12 Hertfordshire hundreds: names and places by John Baker13 The fields of Hertfordshire: archaeological, documentary and topographic investigations by Tom Williamson14 Pollards: living archaeology by Anne Rowe15 Dig where we stand by Sarah Dhanjal, Andrew Flinn, Kris Lockyear and Gabriel Moshenska

Read more less

Book Synopsishe first book to focus on the urban development of Newport, Rhode Island, this is an extensively illustrated, multi-layered view of the city as both an urban entity and a cultural site of national significance. This is a richly illustrated portrait of Newport, Rhode Island as a work of urban art, from colonial times to the present, both documented and celebrated in the maps, paintings, photographs, poetry and prose of renowned artists and writers. As one of the most historically intact cities in North America, Newport has a cultural and architectural heritage of national significance. Each of the city's districts has its own distinct character with street plans and buildings revealing the political, religious, commercial and artistic forces that have shaped Newport through the ages. Stately Colonial squares and bustling wharves, picturesque Victorian villas and scenic drives, opulent Gilded Age palaces for the few and electric streetcars for the many, and preservation movements to honor the past and modernist schemes for a metropolis of the future all tell stories of urban beauty and controversy, of eras of lavish building, urban decay and extraordinary revival. AUTHOR: John R. Tschirch is the Newport Historical Society's architectural historian and visiting curator of Urban History, He is the author of Gods and Girls: Tales of Art, Seduction and Obsession (2019) and A Walking History of Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island (Walking History of America) (2013). John is presently an instructor in design history for Rhode Island School of Design CE, which presented him with the 2010 Excellence in Teaching Award, and he is adjunct faculty in art history at Bristol Community College, where his students provide endless inspiration and amusement. He is also the creator and author of a monthly design history blog called John Stories: Confessions of the Globetrekking Architectural Historian, John Tschirch, featuring his photographs and commentary on historic places. 250 colour and b/w illustrations

Read more less

Book SynopsisTo date, over sixty medieval parks have been identified in Hertfordshire - a large number for a relatively small county. In this ground-breaking study of parks created in Hertfordshire between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries, author Anne Rowe has adopted a holistic approach to landscape history. The geographical locations of the parks have been determined and, in most cases, mapped using a combination of field- and place-name evidence, old maps and detailed fieldwork. The documentary history for each park has been compiled, including, where available, details from manorial accounts, which provide an insight into park management in medieval times. All the data for each park is presented in a valuable gazetteer, together with the cartographic and field evidence which has been used to locate the parks in today's landscape. In addition, Anne Rowe has carried out detailed analysis of the parks and their owners and explains how the parks related to the physical and social geography of the county in medieval times. There was a marked difference in the numbers of parks in different parts of the county: the density of parks in the east was double that in the west. The underlying reasons for this pattern are explored, focusing in particular on the unusual relationship between the distribution of the parks and the distribution of woodland in the county at Domesday. Based on an enormous amount of original work, this meticulously researched book opens a window onto medieval Hertfordshire and illuminates a significant aspect of the county's landscape history. A second volume, Tudor and Early Stuart Parks of Hertfordshire (2019), is also published by University of Hertfordshire Press.Trade Review`A positive treasure trove of information both on individual parks and on the workings of medieval parklands generally’ — Essex Gardens Trust; `Rowe takes a refreshing look at the origins, distribution and functions of early parks and is not afraid to challenge the findings of some well-respected landscape historians’ — Institute for Garden and Landscape History; `In many respects it is a model for future local studies’ — Journal of Historical Geography; `Excellent and beautifully produced’ — The Local Historian; `To create such a comprehensive regional overview based on evidence at the individual site level and gleaned from enquiries into local, regional and even national archives, requires patience, inspiration, dedication, and tenacity’ — Journal of Rural HistoryTable of ContentsPart I. Introduction: Medieval parks of Hertfordshire Hertfordshire – a parky county? The sources The chronology of medieval park creation in Hertfordshire The longevity of Hertfordshire’s medieval parks The park creators The spatial relationship between the lord’s residence and his park The geographical distribution of medieval parks in Hertfordshire The distribution of woodland Settlement patterns and lordship Parks in the Hertfordshire landscape The park residents The economic viability of parks Park management Park lodges Park personnel Part II. Gazetteer of medieval parks in Hertfordshire Introduction Gazetteer

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book forms a continuation of the research published in Medieval Parks, Anne Rowe's highly regarded volume of 2009. Now she turns her attention to the deer parks that existed in Hertfordshire during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Drawing on the earliest county maps, most notably those produced by Saxton in 1577 and Norden in 1598, and both State papers and estate records, Anne Rowe builds a detailed picture of Hertfordshire's Tudor and Early Stuart parks. At least 60 parks existed in Hertfordshire at various times between 1485 and 1642, but for only 46 of those parks is there evidence that they contained deer at some point during the period. These confirmed or probable deer parks form the focus of this study. Of course not all of them were sixteenth-century creations: less than one-third were `new' parks, the remainder had been in existence for much longer, in one or two cases being recorded in Domesday Book. In the first part of the book detailed evidence for who created and owned the county's parks and how they were used and managed is given. The dawning of design in Hertfordshire's park landscapes is also explored. Part 2 gives an account of the presence of the Tudor and early Stuart monarchy in Hertfordshire. Several monarchs and members of their immediate families spent significant periods in Hertfordshire and played a notable part in the history of its parkland; indeed, by 1540 Henry VIII held about 70 per cent of the parkland in the county. Part 3 is a gazetteer in which each entry brings together the documentary, cartographic and occasional field evidence available for a park, with a map showing its probable extent in the period covered. At this time hunting continued to be the most popular leisure activity, as it had been for centuries. Wealthy landowners enjoyed a range of hunting activities essentially unchanged from the medieval period, including deer- and hare-coursing on foot, falconry, fishing and wild-fowling. But the pursuit of a stag or buck on horseback accompanied by a pack of hounds was considered the noblest hunting experience. Based, like the first volume, on an enormous amount of original work, this meticulously researched book opens a window onto Tudor and early Stuart Hertfordshire and once again illuminates a significant aspect of the county's landscape history.Table of ContentsPart 1. Introduction: Tudor and early Stuart parks of Hertfordshire The sources Hunting in Hertfordshire's parks The medieval legacy Hertfordshire's parks 1485-1642 Who owned the parks? Summarising the main trends The new parks and new parkland Disparking Early park design The inhabitants of the parks Parks without deer? Poaching Park management Park buildings Part 2. Hertfordshire's parks and the Tudor and Stuart monarchies Introduction The crown estate and its parks in the county The royal family in Hertfordshire Part 3. Gazetteer of Tudor and early Stuart parks in Hertfordshire Introduction Gazetteer

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhile the Edwardian castles of Conwy, Beaumaris, Harlech and Caernarfon are rightly hailed as outstanding examples of castle architecture, the castles of the native Welsh princes are far more enigmatic. Where some dominate their surroundings as completely as any castle of Edward I, others are concealed in the depths of forests, or tucked away in the corners of valleys, their relationship with the landscape of which they are a part far more difficult to discern than their English counterparts. This ground-breaking book seeks to analyse the castle-building activities of the native princes of Wales in the thirteenth century. Whereas early castles were built to delimit territory and as an expression of Llywelyn I ab Iorwerth’s will to power following his violent assumption of the throne of Gwynedd in the 1190s, by the time of his grandson Llywelyn II ap Gruffudd’s later reign in the 1260s and 1270s, the castles’ prestige value had been superseded in importance by an understanding of the need to make the polity he created - the Principality of Wales - defensible. Employing a probing analysis of the topographical settings and defensive dispositions of almost a dozen native Welsh masonry castles, Craig Owen Jones interrogates the long-held theory that the native princes’ approach to castle-building in medieval Wales was characterised by ignorance of basic architectural principles, disregard for the castle’s relationship to the landscape, and whimsy, in order to arrive at a new understanding of the castles’ significance in Welsh society. Previous interpretations argue that the native Welsh castles were created as part of a single defensive policy, but close inspection of the documentary and architectural evidence reveals that this policy varied considerably from prince to prince, and even within a prince’s reign. Taking advantage of recent ground-breaking archaeological investigations at several important castle sites, Jones offers a timely corrective to perceptions of these castles as poorly sited and weakly defended: theories of construction and siting appropriate to Anglo-Norman castles are not applicable to the native Welsh example without some major revisions. Princely Ambition also advances a timeline that synthesises various strands of evidence to arrive at a chronology of native Welsh castle-building. This exciting new account fills a crucial gap in scholarship on Wales’ built heritage prior to the Edwardian conquest and establishes a nuanced understanding of important military sites in the context of native Welsh politics.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book discusses developments in the history of British house names from the earliest written evidence (Beowulf''s Heorot) to the twentieth century. Chapters 1 and 2 track changes from medieval naming practices such as Ceolmundingchaga and Prestebures, to present-day house names such as Fairholme and Oakdene: that is, the shift from recording the name of the householder (Sabelinesbury, ''Sabeline''s manor''), the householder''s occupation (le Taninghus, ''the tannery'') and the appearance of the house (le Brodedore, ''the broad door''); to the five main categories still in use today: the transferred place-name (Aberdeen House), the nostalgically rural (Springfield), the commemorative (Blenheim Palace), the upwardly mobile (Vernon Lodge), and the latest fashion (Fernville). The development and demise of pub names and shop names such as la Worm on the Hope and the Golden Tea Kettle & Speaking Trumpet are detailed, and the rise of heraldic names such as the Red Lion is explained. ChaptTrade ReviewReview from previous edition There are books that wrap up a subject, and books that send the mind wandering serendipitously. Laura Wright's Sunnyside does both ... meticulously researched with respect to both the origins and the occurrences of houses called Sunnyside ... This is a provocative and enticing history of the now sadly neglected custom of naming one's house. * Christina Hardyment, Times Literary Supplement *[...] this is an informative and enjoyable book. Any linguist who lives in a Sunnyside (there is at least one) will undoubtedly be keen to read it, and so will many others. * Geoffrey Sampson, Linguist List *A select bibliography presents the wide array of manuscripts, printed and on-line sources used in compiling this intriguing book that moves from medieval London to branches of non-conformism and Victorian villas, then back to historic solskifte and forward again to house names in our own time. This remarkable work of erudition is not for the faint hearted. The Sunnyside journey taken by Laura Wright is complicated, even labyrinthine, but sharing it with her is well worth the effort. * Hugh Clout, Cercles *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations Acknowledgements List of illustrations Introduction 1: The Earliest London House Names 2: Victorian Villas 3: London's First Sunnysiders 4: Religion, Fame, and Sunnyside 5: Sunnyside and the North Appendix 1 Pre-1400 London House Names Appendix 2 House Names from William Porlond's Book Appendix 3 Stagecoach Names Sunnyside Gazetteer References Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow did rural Britain become modern during the twentieth century? New Lives, New Landscapes examines how the development of modern infrastructure in Britain transformed both its landscapes and the lives of those who lived within them. Shifting the focus away from the city, the narrative challenges us to rethink what we mean by modern Britain.Table of ContentsList of Figures Notes on Contributors 1: Linda M. Ross, Katrina Navickas, Matthew Kelly, and Ben Anderson: Introduction 2: Jeremy Burchardt: In-between Landscapes 3: Kristen Bluemel: Rural Modernity in Britain: Landscape, Literature, Nostalgia 4: Gareth Roddy: Seeing like a Quarryman: Landscape, Quarrying, and Competing Visions of Rural England along Hadrian's Wall, 1930-1960 5: Katrina Navickas: Building Amenity in Areas of Non-Outstanding Natural Beauty in the Southern Pennines 6: Ian Waites: The Post-war Power Station and the Persistence of an English Landscape Tradition 7: Moa Carlsson: England and the Isovist 8: Karen Sayer: The View from the Land, 1947-1968: 'Modernity' in British Agriculture, Farm, and Nation 9: Paul Readman: Landscape of Military Modernity: From 'Eyesores' to National Heritage? 10: Linda M. Ross: Nuclear Narratives: Rural Modernity, Identity, and Heritage in the Highlands and Islands 11: Ysanne Holt: Think Rural: Act Now 12: Ben Anderson and Matthew Kelly: What Happens When Rural Modernity Ceases to be Modern? 13: Tim O'Riordan: The New 'New Landscapes': A Personal View Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn the 19th century, Americans began to use maps in extraordinary new ways. Medical men mapped diseases to understand epidemics, natural scientists mapped climate to uncover weather patterns, and Northerners created slave maps to assess the power of the South. This book charts how thematic maps demonstrated the analytical potential of cartography.Trade Review"Powerful.... Satisfying.... Though both the book and the website can stand alone, together they productively bring the careful, intimate, controlled narrative of the book form alongside the full-color, hyperlinked social nature of web-based projects to convincingly argue that America without maps would have been a different kind of place altogether." (Public Books)"

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn this history of the British surveys of India, the author relates how imperial Britain employed modern scientific survey techniques to create and define the spacial image of its Indian empire, and to legitimize its colonialist activities as triumphs of liberal, rational science.

Read more less

Book SynopsisNeil Harris's scholarship of the past twenty-five years has helped to open up the study of American cultural history. This long-awaited collection gathers some of his rich and varied writings. Harris takes us from John Philip Sousa to Superman, with stops along the way to explore art museums and world fairs, shopping malls and hotel lobbies, urban design and utopian novels, among other artifacts of American cultures. The essays fall into three general sections: the first treats the history of cultural institutions, highlighting the role of museums; the second section focuses on some literary, artistic, and entrepreneurial responses to the new mass culture; and the final group of essays explores the social history of art and architecture. Throughout Harris's diverse writings certain themes recurthe redefining of boundaries between high art and popular culture, the relationship between public taste and technological change, and the very notion of what constitutes a shared social experience. Harris's pioneering work has broadened the field of cultural history and encouraged whole new areas of inquiry. Cultural Excursions will be useful for those in American and culture studies, as well as for the general reader trying to make sense of the culture in which we live.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe twentieth century is a pivotal period in map history. Geographic information systems radically altered cartographic institutions and reduced the skill required to create maps. This volume features expert contributors who provide both original research, and interpretations of larger trends in cartography.Trade Review"Certain to be the standard reference for all subsequent scholarship." (New York Times)

Read more less

Book SynopsisOsman, the founder of the Ottoman Empire, had a dream in which a tree sprouted from his navel. As the tree grew, its shade covered the earth; as Osman's empire grew, it, too, covered the earth. This is the most widely accepted foundation myth of the longest-lasting empire in the history of Islam, and offers a telling clue to its unique legacy. Underlying every aspect of the Ottoman Empire's epic history--from its founding around 1300 to its end in the twentieth century--is its successful management of natural resources. Under Osman's Tree analyzes this rich environmental history to understand the most remarkable qualities of the Ottoman Empire--its longevity, politics, economy, and society. The early modern Middle East was the world's most crucial zone of connection and interaction. Accordingly, the Ottoman Empire's many varied environments affected and were affected by global trade, climate, and disease. From down in the mud of Egypt's canals to up in the treetops of Anatolia, AlaTrade Review"This is an outstanding book, carefully written and timely. Mikhail has brought the tools of environmental history to bear in this fresh telling of Egyptian, Ottoman, and Middle Eastern history. He focuses on the last five hundred years, after Egypt became the crown jewel of the Ottoman Empire, and masterfully embeds his history into the complex ecologies surrounding the Nile River, an enduring source of both life and cruel natural disasters. With thoughtful thematic categories driving his analysis, Mikhail makes an important contribution not just to Middle Eastern history, but to how a new generation of historians must view the relationship between people and the changing face of our planet, particularly during the new uncertainty of the Anthropocene Epoch."--Brett L. Walker, Montana State University "Focusing on early modern Egypt, Mikhail puts power and knowledge in the Ottoman Empire in conversation with environmental relations--the movement of water, the accumulation of silt, the distribution of food, the need for wood for ships, the spread of disease, the possession and use of animals as sentient commodities, climatic fluctuations, and fundamental changes in the organization of human and animal labor. The result is a reinterpretation of the Ottoman Empire as an ecosystem that expands the possibilities of environmental history."--Richard White, Stanford University "'The Ottoman Empire was an ecosystem.' Thus, historian Mikhail concludes his rich, part socioeconomic, part environmental history of early modern Ottoman Egypt. Filling a hole in the historiography with a breathtaking array of cases, themes, and illustrations, Mikhail offers an ideal pedagogical tool for all levels of university courses. He digs into his analytical tool box and reveals an Egypt deeply integrated into the larger world, both economically and ecologically. From accounts of droughts and bubonic plagues to the aftereffects of volcanic eruptions in Iceland, Mikhail's contribution opens a new prism through which to study human interactions with nature. Perhaps the most valuable contribution is the author's charting of the vibrant synthesis of life patterns between peasants, local landowners, and imperial governors and the ebbs and flows of the natural life upon which the Ottoman Empire's wealthiest province depended. Add to the mix the equally complex (sometimes deadly) relationship Egyptians necessarily had with beasts of burden, rats, and fleas, all sharing the fate of the temperamental seasonal flooding of the Nile, and this book makes for an outstanding addition to any library. Essential."--Choice "Certainly the best work ever on Ottoman environmental history. Brings the Middle East into the global picture in as comprehensive a way as can possibly be imagined."--Roger Owen, Harvard University "In presenting the early modern Ottoman regime as relatively benign--at least environmentally benign--Alan Mikhail is upsetting a commonly held view of Ottoman rule as singularly destructive and backward looking. . . . In fact, by using the examples of Egyptian food exports to different parts of the Empire--most notably to the Hijaz--and timber imports into Egypt from Anatolia, Professor Mikhail shows how provinces were interdependent and that the centre-periphery model is misleading. Watching the author demolish such preconceptions is one of the many pleasures of reading this book. In making a notable contribution to environmental history, from Nile water, to mud, to animals, crops, and finally to humans, Professor Mikhail also helps us to understand how the Ottoman Empire worked as a political system."--Metascience "Under Osman's Tree frames the Ottoman Empire as an ecosystem. By emphasizing the complex relationships between imperial power and nature, Mikhail introduces a dizzying range of human and nonhuman actors, demonstrating how animals, water, silt, microbes, trees, and volcanoes might recast more traditional readings of sultans, bureaucrats, and peasants. . . . Mikhail offers another trailblazing contribution to the burgeoning field of Middle Eastern environmental history. It is a welcome addition to advanced undergraduate and graduate syllabi, laying out an ambitious agenda for colleagues working on Middle Eastern and global environmental histories."--Environmental History "With this rich and accessible study of the relationship between human communities and their natural environment in Ottoman Egypt, Mikhail offers us an original interpretation of Ottoman history. Rarely does a new book make us rethink completely our assumptions about a subject matter we think we know well. Under Osman's Tree does precisely that, and as such it is a worthy successor to Fernand Braudel's magisterial classic, The Mediterranean."--Resat Kasaba, University of Washington

Read more less

Book SynopsisSusan Schulten tells a story of Americans beginning to see the world around them, tracing U.S. attitudes towards world geography from the end of 19th century exploration to the dawn of the Cold War. The work discusses the study of geography and its place in culture and politicsTrade Review"Schulten steps up to the challenge of producing a full-length work about the political economy of mapmaking.... An ambitious history of the rise of popular cartography in the United States." - Nicholas Lemann, The New Yorker "A well-documented account of how politics, history and culture influenced the study and presentation of geography.... Theory is wisely balanced by a hodgepodge of odd and interesting facts about maps, politics and American cultural trends." - Publishers Weekly "An important new work.... Schulten's original synthesis ranges widely and insightfully from the effects of war on map design to map projection as a reflection of how Americans saw themselves as an emergent world power." - Mark Monmonier, author of How to Lie with Maps and Air Apparent

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn the nineteenth century, Americans began to use maps in radically new ways. This title charts how maps of epidemic disease, slavery, census statistics, the environment, and the past demonstrated the analytical potential of cartography, and in the process transformed the very meaning of a map.Trade Review"In a work of deep scholarship and insight, Susan Schulten traces the origins of a now-ubiquitous presence in American life: maps with a story to tell. Schulten uncovers not only a fascinating panorama of maps but also a colorful array of characters who taught America to see itself in new ways. Read this book and maps will never look the same." -Edward L. Ayers, University of Richmond"

Read more less

Book SynopsisProvides an introduction to how Korea was and is represented cartographically. This title examines the differing cartographic traditions prevalent in the early Joseon period in Korea and its temporal equivalent in early modern Europe.

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review"Foliard offers an exhaustive account of British cartographic knowledge of the region before border incisions were made during and immediately after the First World War. This is a rich and valuable contribution to the body of work on Orientalism, and one that reflects the deep-rooted anxiety that lay at the heart of the imperial project. As an account of imperfect knowledge mixed with hubris, it is also devastating proof that fragility of information was not an obstacle to imperialist ambitions." * Times Literary Supplement *"The great achievement of the first third of Foliard’s book is to describe the various British attempts in the mid-19th century to represent the region visually by means of maps and surveys, and to give an account of the diverse motivations for this. Some were inspired by the biblical or classical past, others by the hope of settlement and economic development. But Foliard’s main point is that there was no system to this, and that it would be wrong-headed to see it in terms of an imperial plan. In particular he shows that the different government departments in London and India had their own quite different reasons for surveying the lands and seas of the region." * London Review of Books *"Ambitious and remarkable. . . . this is an outstanding book: highly original, penetrating, elegantly written, and handsomely produced." * American Historical Review *"Foliard has written an exceptional and important book for historians of cartography, scholars of the Middle East and military-studies researchers." * Imago Mundi *"Foliard has produced a study that will no doubt become the standard work on cartography and the emergence of the Middle East. Beyond its immediate importance to the field of Middle Eastern and British imperial history, it opens up possibilities of comparison as well. Indeed, Dislocating the Orient should be read alongside comparable work in imperial cartography by Matthew Edney, Felix Driver, D. Graham Burnett, and Ian Barrow." * Journal of Modern History *“Foliard’s book is a highly significant contribution to the growing literature on cartography and empire. Not the least of the projects of European imperialism was the mapping of the globe. Far from being an objective exercise, this mapping was bound by ideological and cultural, military, and ethnic considerations. Nowhere was this truer than in the region which came to be known as the Middle East. The importance of Dislocating the Orient lies both in the light it sheds on the construction of the Middle East, underpinning the politics and tensions of today, and on the applicability of its ideas to other imperial zones in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” * John M. MacKenzie, Lancaster University *“Dislocating the Orient is a richly illustrated, wide-ranging, and thought-provoking enquiry into the intellectual and cartographic origins of the ‘Near East’ in a period when the region was of great religious and cultural interest and of enormous strategic importance. Foliard’s focus is maps and mapping—but this book offers so much more. It explores the construction of the ‘Near East’ in nineteenth-century public minds, and in school and university education, in Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, and within the region itself. It illuminates the connections between exploration and espionage and the institutional apparatus of empire. From Victorian atlases and scriptural geographies to the implications of the 1919 Versailles agreement, Foliard traces the fashioning and representation of a region key to the making of the modern world with erudition and élan.” * Charles W. J. Withers, University of Edinburgh * “The space that is ‘the Middle East’ remains contentious and controversial. Foliard’s comprehensive cartographic analysis puts its attempted delineation and definition in a broad cultural context. Appropriately, with such a sprawling subject, this is neither simple history, geography, nor cartography but a fusion of all three. The message is clear: there was no uniform or universal British mental map which holds good across the decades in question. Any notion of a single unitary triumphalist narrative of ‘the Middle East’ dissolves, as maps are shown to emerge from and to serve different constituencies, each with their own preconceptions and purposes, ones that vary from decade to decade. Foliard is well aware that the instrumentalized geographical entities with which he deals have complicated the geo-political realities of the present. His ‘worried history’ makes no claim to absolute truth, place blame or offer immediate lessons for the present. There remains plenty to worry about, but he shows us how we have come to be where we are today.” * Keith Robbins, University of Glasgow *A Book of the Year. “Daniel Foliard’s Dislocating the Orient: British maps and the making of the Middle East, 1854–1921 (Chicago) skillfully examines Victorian and Edwardian conceptions of another “East”, revealing how spiritual journeys shape and deform cartographic documents.” -- Rachel Polonsky * Times Literary Supplement *Table of ContentsIntroductionPart I. From Sebastopol to Suez (1854–1869) 1. The Mid-Victorian Perspective: A Fragmented East 2. Labeling the East 3. Maps for the Masses?Part II. A Shifting East in the Age of High Imperialism (1870–1895) 4. Oriental Designs 5. Virtual Travel in the Age of High ImperialismPart III. The Fabrication of the Middle East (1895–1921) 6. Seeing Red? 7. Enter Middle East 8. Falling Into Places General Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Notes on Methodology and Select Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisContributors introduce the concept of spatial ethnography, a new methodological approach that incorporates both material and abstract perspectives in the study of people and placeTrade Review"Rich, diverse, and provocative meditations on place and identity formation... it builds on the previous scholarship on bodies, memory and place while also moving our understanding of this theme in a refreshing and engaging direction: toward the embodied, performed, and lived dimension of built environment, in both historical and contemporary perspectives." -Abidin Kusno, University of British Columbia "Positioned in a growing anthropological and geographical literature that approaches social space as the product of movement, action, and experience, [and specifically] concerned with how built environments are realized as social spaces." -Stuart Rockefeller, Columbia UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction Embodied Placemaking: An Important Category of Critical Analysis Arijit Sen and Lisa Silverman1. Placemaking and Embodied SpaceSetha Low2. Visualizing the Body PoliticSwati Chattopadhyay3. Inside the Magic Circle: Conjuring the Terrorist Enemy at the 2001 Group of Eight SummitEmanuela Guano4. Eating Ethnicity: Spatial Ethnography of Hyderabad House Restaurant on Devon Avenue, ChicagoArijit Sen5. Urban Boundaries, Religious Experience, and the North West London EruvJennifer A. Cousineau6. "Art, Memory, and the City" in Bogotá: Mapa Teatro's Artistic Encounters with Inhabited PlacesKaren E. Till7. Jewish Memory, Jewish Geography: Vienna before 1938Lisa Silverman

Read more less

Book SynopsisContributors introduce the concept of spatial ethnography, a new methodological approach that incorporates both material and abstract perspectives in the study of people and placeTrade Review"Rich, diverse, and provocative meditations on place and identity formation... it builds on the previous scholarship on bodies, memory and place while also moving our understanding of this theme in a refreshing and engaging direction: toward the embodied, performed, and lived dimension of built environment, in both historical and contemporary perspectives." -Abidin Kusno, University of British Columbia "Positioned in a growing anthropological and geographical literature that approaches social space as the product of movement, action, and experience, [and specifically] concerned with how built environments are realized as social spaces." -Stuart Rockefeller, Columbia UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction Embodied Placemaking: An Important Category of Critical Analysis Arijit Sen and Lisa Silverman1. Placemaking and Embodied SpaceSetha Low2. Visualizing the Body PoliticSwati Chattopadhyay3. Inside the Magic Circle: Conjuring the Terrorist Enemy at the 2001 Group of Eight SummitEmanuela Guano4. Eating Ethnicity: Spatial Ethnography of Hyderabad House Restaurant on Devon Avenue, ChicagoArijit Sen5. Urban Boundaries, Religious Experience, and the North West London EruvJennifer A. Cousineau6. "Art, Memory, and the City" in Bogotá: Mapa Teatro's Artistic Encounters with Inhabited PlacesKaren E. Till7. Jewish Memory, Jewish Geography: Vienna before 1938Lisa Silverman

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Anglo-Norman monk Orderic Vitalis (1075-c.1142) wrote his monumental, highly individual Historia Ecclesiastica as an exercise in monastic discipline intended to preserve the events and character of Christendom for future generations. Though cloistered since childhood in a Benedictine monastery near Normandy''s southern border, Orderic gained access to an intellectual world that extended from Scotland to Jerusalem through his engagement with texts and travelers that made their way into his monastic milieu. His Historia Ecclesiastica, with a breadth of vision unparalleled in its time, is a particularly fertile source for an investigation of concepts of space and historiography in the high Middle Ages.In The Written World: Past and Place in the Work of Orderic Vitalis, Amanda Jane Hingst draws on the blend of intellectual intimacy and historiographical breadth in Orderic''s writings to investigate the ways in which high medieval historians understood geoTrade Review“The Written World is a wonderful, innovative, and beautifully written study of Orderic Vitalis’s Historia Ecclesiastica. Amanda Hingst vividly evokes the meaning and function of history for an Anglo-Norman monk at the end of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth. She emphasizes how geographical space provided a temporal framework through which Orderic Vitalis narrated and experienced historical events. The landscape of Christendom, far from being an unchanging backdrop to human deeds, actively participated in the history of the world. Heaven was glimpsed on earth as God manipulated fields and streams, trees and clouds, tempests and dirt with a divine purpose. This book is a major contribution to the intellectual history of the High Middle Ages.” —Mark Gregory Pegg, Washington University“Hingst has written a thoughtful and elegant study of Orderic’s epic description of the history and geography of his world. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in medieval or church history.” —Academia“Orderic Vitalis was not a particularly influential historian during the Middle Ages, but for modern scholars his vast, detailed, and often idiosyncratic history is a crucial source for studying Western Europe, particularly Normandy and England, in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. As Amanda Jane Hingst’s clever title indicates, her book focuses on place, space, and geography in Orderic’s work. . . her fascinating work enriches our understanding of an important medieval author and will also open up new avenues into thinking about place and geography in medieval writings.” —Church History“Using the twelfth-century chronicle of the Anglo-Norman monk, Orderic Vitalis, as her base, Amanda Hingst has constructed an elegantly written, engaging text that explores medieval understandings of place and time. This ambitious work takes the unusual approach of grounding the historian’s understanding of his wider world by locating him within his physical environment.” —Parergon“The Written World is a thoughtful book . . . this is a useful contribution to our understanding of Orderic and a stimulus to further study of an important chronicler who, as Hingst rightly observes, warrants further attention in his own right.” —The Catholic Historical Review“Hingst’s far-ranging study, with its lush descriptions of landscape and provocative arguments, offers a compelling call to read Orderic’s history as the complete and spiritually anchored creation of a thoughtful man of his age.” —American Historical Review“Amanda Jane Hingst’s book is an eminently readable, continually engaging account of Orderic’s understanding of the world around him, designed on the principle that geographical and topographical space was his primary mode of historical thought. . . . This is a consistently intelligent, thought-provoking, beautifully written book, and a valuable contribution to the field.” —Journal of English and Germanic Philology“This book offers a fascinating exploration of the physical and imaginary landscapes that surrounded the famous Anglo-Norman historian Orderic Vitalis. . . . Hingst has offered a pioneering perspective on the concept of landscape to take a fresh look at Orderic’s Ecclesiastical History.” —The Medieval Review“The book proposes a new way of thinking about Orderic as a historical geographer.” —Medium Aevum“This delightful book offers a fresh perspective on Orderic Vitalis’ great work, the Ecclesiastical History. . . . a lucid and engaging prose style makes [Hingst’s] book a pleasure to read.” —English Historical Review

Read more less

Book SynopsisDrawing on postcolonial and famine theory, Nally shows how British colonial policies undermined Irish rural livelihoods and made Ireland vulnerable to catastrophic food crises.Trade Review“Nally (Cambridge) examines the Great Irish Famine through the prism of postcolonial and modern famine theories. The result is a provocative book that compellingly argues that British relief strategies were shaped by classical liberalfism, cultural chauvinism, and racial prejudice. . . . [T]his important study deserves a wide readership.” —Choice"Nally takes on the formidable subject of famine relief measures. These seemingly 'benevolent' operations, he argues cogently, in fact were part of a long-standing colonialist project—the clearing of Irish land and 'the long-term modernisation of Irish society' . . . [A] deeply important work." —Nineteenth-Century Contexts"In Human Encumbrances: Political Violence and the Great Irish Famine, David Nally . . . presents a brilliant and sophisticated argument outlining how ultimately 'the 'rights of the poor' and the 'rights of property' were not accorded the same value'. He lays bare what he calls the 'transformative forces of colonialism, capitalism and biopolitics,' and offers a compelling reading of how the 'virtues of the market' and a hegemonic scripting of the native Irish as 'racially degenerate' were used to initiate disciplinary, regulatory and corrective mechanisms to recast and regenerate contemporary Irish society and sustain a commitment to a colonial economy of improvement." —Progress in Human Geography“Drawing on copious primary sources to create a searing portrayal of Irish poverty, Nally's work is a thorough account of the famine in a long-term perspective that places it in a contemporary theoretical and postcolonial framework. One great strength of this book is that Nally embeds the famine in comparative studies, drawing on the work of Sen and others, who demonstrate that famines are the result of both crop failures and the inability of the poor to pay for food.” —Journal of Interdisciplinary History"Nally's innovative and important study mobilises a wealth of reports and printed primary accounts—political treatises and travel writings—to understand the ways in which the regulations, interventions, and experiments of the British state on colonial Ireland coordinated a deliberate violence that transformed successive crop failures into famine . . . This is, in short, a sophisticated, powerful, and persuasive telling of one of the most disgraceful episodes in human history." —Journal of Historical Geography“[S]ophisticated and theoretically informed . . . Nally’s book should be hailed as a highly innovative new contribution to the study of the Famine . . . . The main strength of Nally’s book, however, lies in its theoretical underpinnings: Human Encumbrances is almost unique in its rigorous and systematic use of a sophisticated poststructuralist theoretical framework in its effort to make sense of the Famine and disentangle the web of political and social discourses that enabled it to happen.” —Irish University Review“Nally deserves great credit for challenging historians’ assumptions about famine and the Irish famine in particular . . . . It is refreshing, and perhaps comforting, to read an account of the Great Irish Famine that tries to shed new light on the present rather than simply casting dark shadows on the past.” —Journal of British Studies“Nally . . . is concerned with the ways that the famine was produced through the British attempts to civilize the Irish on British terms, and then how the famine itself was used to deepen and further these projects of civility.” —Dialogues in Human Geography“In this challenging contribution to the literature of the Great Famine, David Nally takes Irish historians to task for ignoring scholarship in the international field of ‘Famine Studies,’ as well as for their reluctance to put the Great Famine into a wider theoretical and comparative framework. These perceived failings certainly cannot be leveled at Nally, [whose book] covers the main social and economic developments in Ireland from the Tudor period onwards.” —Irish Studies Review"In his excellent book, David P. Nally approaches the Great Famine through the lens of colonial studies . . . By situating Ireland as a colonized land, Nally explores more deeply the historiography of the Great Famine with respect to its political implications, rather than simply as a natural phenomenon or an 'act of God'. The theory, then, which is a compelling argument, addresses the ill-conceived and in many cases targeted policies of the colonial government, effectively the 'political violence' that contributed to the tragic death and intense reshaping of the Irish landscape." —Interventions

Read more less

Book SynopsisContested Territory explores the ways in which Peru's early colonial landscapes were experienced and portrayed, especially by the Spanish conquerors but also by their conquered subjects.Trade Review"Scott's thesis of landscape creation is nuanced and sophisticated, convincing and compelling, one most befitting a geographer: she is very much interested in, and attuned to, regional as well as local variations. Few anthropologists or historians exhibit the sensitivities to space and scale that Scott demonstrates in piecing together her argument." —W. George Lovell, Queen's University“A fine and timely study on an important topic, this well researched and well written book will be an excellent addition to scholarship on colonial studies. . . . [Scott's] selection of texts is both original and exciting. She clearly expands the field of analysis of the complex workings of geography within the early Spanish colonial context.” —Beatriz Pastor, Dartmouth College"Heidi Scott’s eloquently-written, straight-forward, and original analysis perceptively highlights how cultural preconceptions, ambitions, and desires and shifting networks of power, agency, and interest shaped on-going negotiations over the perceptions, meaning, and use of landscape and geographical knowledge. Through social and political contextualization of a text’s origins and her emphasis on the mundane, she shows that Hispanic and Amerindian populations gave diverse and frequently conflicting meaning to Andean landscapes and territories. The book will, I predict, long serve as a model and inspiration to others interested in colonial history and geography, anthropology, and environmental studies." —Susan Ramirez, Texas Christian University“The author draws upon traditional sources, especially the well-known Relaciones Geogrįficas, to reflect upon the evolving perceptions of Peru's visual environment. Scott studies not only the few pictorial maps that exist for 16th-17th-century Peru, but also the far more abundant written descriptions of terrain and landscapes. . . . [R]esearchers and serious students of the colonial period will welcome this unique look at early Peru.” —Choice“This is a well-written, carefully argued, and thoughtful book, which provides new insights into early modern perceptions of the Andean landscape . . . Scott provides a careful geographical analysis of the materials to offer fresh perspectives on how the Spanish settlers and indigenous peoples gave diverse and often conflicting views about the rich Andean landscapes before them. Scott’s analysis is also not driven by an enthusiastic adherence to a particular theory; rather she uses her training as a geographer to re-examine the ways in which Spaniards and Andeans interacted with and experienced landscape, and how this shaped their portrayals of the natural environment. This is a very rich, intriguing contribution that has much to say to historians, anthropologists, scholars in literary studies and environmental specialists.” —English Historical Review

Read more less

Book SynopsisDespite Wisconsin's rich history, no historical atlas has been produced in the state since 1878. This text presents a colourful portrait of the state's complex development. The atlas highlights the peoples and cultures, economy and land, and the socio-political landscape of Wisconsin.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA history of shells and the creatures that make them, revealing their outsized role in human affairs and what they have to tell us about the changing oceans.Trade Review"Will have you marveling at nature… Barnett’s account remarkably spirals out, appropriately, to become a much larger story about the sea, about global history and about environmental crises and preservation." -- 24 Books to Read this Summer - The New York Times Book Review"... Cynthia Barnett presents us with a glittering Wunderkammer for our age, a staggeringly varied history — scientific, cultural, philosophical and economic — of one of the most beloved and enduring natural objects on Earth: the seashell... “The Sound of the Sea” is a glorious history of shells and of those who have loved shells. It is a history of fascination and of shame. It stretches our capacity to absorb new knowledge. It is as complex, multichambered and beautiful as its subject, and if Barnett can awaken our sense of wonder, then perhaps there is hope for jump-starting our collective sense of responsibility toward the oceans and one another." -- Katherine Norbury - The Washington Post"“Seashells were money before coin, jewellery before gems, art before canvas,” says science writer Cynthia Barnett in her arresting meditation on shells and ocean history." -- Andrew Robinson reviews five of the week’s best science picks - Nature

Read more less

Book SynopsisUsing nearly 500 historical maps and many other illustrations - from rough sketches drawn in the field to commercial maps to beautifully rendered works of art - this illustrated work tells the story of California's past from a visual perspective. It offers an informative look at the transformation of the state from before European contact.Table of ContentsA Visual California The First Californians Notions of a Western Shore Of Gold and Galleons The First New England On the Right Hand of the Indies Spain Moves North Exploring an Unknown Interior Russian California Mexican California West to California American California The Gold Rush The State of California The United States Coast Survey Searching for a Railroad Path Building the Transcontinental Railroad The Southern Pacific A Geological Survey Water, Wine, and Oranges The Rise of Urban California Los Angeles The San Francisco Bay Area San Diego Sacramento Other Cities Rails for Growth The Burning of San Francisco Wildness for the People Bringing Water to the Cities From Bike Paths to Freeways Power for a New Economy Of Airports and Airlines Boom and Bust A West Coast Defended Moving and Shaking Catalog of Maps Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisImaginative Mapping analyzes how intellectuals of the Tokugawa and Meiji eras used specific features and aspects of the landscape to represent their idea of Japan and produce a narrative of Japan as a cultural community. Nobuko Toyosawa argues that the circulation spatial narratives allowed readers to imagine the broader conceptual space of Japan.Trade ReviewThe book is lavishly produced with beautiful four-color illustrations…A genuine contribution to our scholarship on early modern and modern Japanese intellectual history. Toyosawa’s innovative insights into the theme of landscape connect Tokugawa and Meiji-era thought in productive, exciting, and unexpected ways. -- Mark Ravina * Journal of Japanese Studies *Toyosawa analyzes the influential works of several early-modern and modern Japanese scholar-writers that exemplify how the natural landscape has long been a source of power and as a defining core of Japanese identity. -- Rex J. Rowley * Historical Geography *

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume is a compendium of the rich archeological and literary evidence on the Iranian world in its larger sense, comprising part of what is now Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan as well as Iran proper.Originally published in 1984.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.Table of Contents*FrontMatter, pg. i*Contents, pg. v*List of Abbreviations, pg. vii*Editor's introduction, pg. xv*Introduction, pg. 1*Chapter I. Bactria, Balkh, and Tukharistan, pg. 6*Chapter II. Marw and the Course of the Murghab, pg. 35*Chapter III. Harat and the Course of the ETAari Rud, pg. 47*Chapter IV. Sistan, the Southern Part of Afghanistan and Baluchistan, pg. 64*Chapter V. Khurasan, pg. 87*Chapter VI. Qumis And Gurgan, pg. 112*Chapter VII. Ray and Hamadan, pg. 121*Chapter VIII. Quhistan, Kirman, And Makran, pg. 133*Chapter IX. Fars, pg. 148*Chapter CHI. Isfahan, Kashan, And Qum, pg. 169*Chapter XI. Luristan And Khuzistan, pg. 180*Chapter XII. Kurdistan And Mesopotamia, pg. 195*Chapter XIII. The Mountains North Of Hamadan, pg. 207*Chapter XIV. Azerbaijan and Armenia, pg. 214*Chapter XV. Gilan And Mazandaran, pg. 230*BIBLIOGRAPHY, pg. 243*INDEX, pg. 267

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn this beautifully crafted collection of essays, Cole Harris reflects on the strategies of colonialism in British Columbia during the first 150 years after the arrival of European settlers.Trade ReviewThe Resettlement of British Columbia, analyzing the historical geography of distance, disease, and multiculturalism, demonstrates how elegantly and gracefully the social sciences can be written. -- W.H. New * Canadian Literature *An engaging provocative, introduction to the early history of the province that only someone of {Harris's] experience and ability could produce ... The Resettlement of British Columbia is a fine book. Full of wonderful insights and candid observations, it offers a nuanced look at the history of Canada's Pacific province ... What distinguishes the collection, however, is Harris's challenge to the reader to re-think some common assumptions, beliefs, and attitudes. -- Bill Waiser * Western Historical Quarterly *This is an important book, characterized by its broad, sometimes breath-taking, intellectual and empirical sweep ... a provocative and important book by someone who has given a great deal of thought to the relationship between land and power in Canada. -- Tina Loo * BC Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction1 Voices of Smallpox around the Strait of Georgia2 Strategies of Power in the Cordilleran Fur Trade3 The Making of the Lower Mainland4 The Fraser Canyon Encountered5 A Population Geography of British Columbia in 1881 / with Robert Galois6 The Struggle with Distance7 Industry and the Good Life around Idaho Peak8 Farming and Rural Life / with David Demeritt9 Making an Immigrant Society

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Archive of Place weaves together a series of narratives about environmental history in a particular location British Columbia's Chilcotin Plateau. In the mid-1990s, the Chilcotin was at the centre of three territorial conflicts. Opposing groups, in their struggle to control the fate of the region and its resources, invoked different understandings of its past and different types of evidence to justify their actions. These controversies serve as case studies, as William Turkel examines how people interpret material traces to reconstruct past events, the conditions under which such interpretation takes place, and the role that this interpretation plays in historical consciousness and social memory. It is a wide-ranging and original study that extends the span of conventional historical research.Trade ReviewIn this unorthodox and intriguing book, William Turkel uses the Chilcotin Plateau, an arid and sparsely settled region of west-central British Columbia, to ask a series of questions about how we acquire and use knowledge of the past.... This is an engaging and rewarding book. Like much recent work in British Columbia history, it writes First Nations people into the general history of the province, a hugely important project for North American histroy more generally.An amalgam of the material and the representational, the natural and the human, place allows Turkel to move some way toward transcending the old human-environment dichotomy that bedevils the writing of environmental history. -- James Murton * Environmental History Journal, Volume 12, Number 4 *Table of ContentsForeword: Putting Things in Their Place / Graeme WynnPrefaceAcknowledgmentsPart 1: Deep Time in the Present1 Fish Lake2 Prosperity GoldPart 2: The Horizon of Experience3 Mackenzie4 Grease TrailsPart 3: Shadowed Ground5 Converging towards “Banshee”6 Chilcotin WarAfterwordAppendicesGlossary; Notes; Toponymic Index; General Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisWeaves together a series of narratives about environmental history in British Columbia’s Chilcotin Plateau.Trade ReviewIn this unorthodox and intriguing book, William Turkel uses the Chilcotin Plateau, an arid and sparsely settled region of west-central British Columbia, to ask a series of questions about how we acquire and use knowledge of the past.... This is an engaging and rewarding book. Like much recent work in British Columbia history, it writes First Nations people into the general history of the province, a hugely important project for North American histroy more generally.An amalgam of the material and the representational, the natural and the human, place allows Turkel to move some way toward transcending the old human-environment dichotomy that bedevils the writing of environmental history. -- James Murton * Environmental History Journal, Volume 12, Number 4 *Table of ContentsForeword: Putting Things in Their Place / Graeme WynnPrefaceAcknowledgmentsPart 1: Deep Time in the Present1 Fish Lake2 Prosperity GoldPart 2: The Horizon of Experience3 Mackenzie4 Grease TrailsPart 3: Shadowed Ground5 Converging towards “Banshee”6 Chilcotin WarAfterwordAppendicesGlossary; Notes; Toponymic Index; General Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisDescribes the evolving pattern of settlement and the changing relationships of people and land in Canada from the end of the 15th century to the Confederation years of the late 1860s and early 1870s. This book shows how a deeply indigenous land was reconstituted in European terms.Trade ReviewTrial lawyers attending on Aboriginal claims will find this text usefully covers the history from 1500 forward, showing the changes from an Indigenous populated land to one organized on European terms. -- Ronald F. MacIsaac * The Barrister, Issue No.89 *This is a welcome antidote to the simplistic renderings of early Canadian history we are exposed to in high school social studies courses, political speeches and CBC mini-series. […] Harris has crafted a deeply insightful account of the history of what would become Canada. […] The Reluctant Land will be used in historical geography courses for many years to come – but it’s more than that, because Harris set himself the task of writing a scholarly book accessible to the general reader. […] Encountering The Reluctant Land is like listening to a series of articulate public lectures, organized on a regional basis, allowing for an exploration of each part of the country, in turn. -- Raymon Torchinsky * BC Bookworld, Vol.23, No.1, Spring 2009 *Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgments1 Lifeworlds, circa 15002 The Northwestern Atlantic, 1497-16323 Acadia and Canada4 The Continental Interior, 1632-17505 Creating and Bounding British North America6 Newfoundland7 The Maritimes8 Lower Canada9 Upper Canada10 The Northwestern Interior, 1760-187011 British Columbia12 Confederation and the Pattern of CanadaIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis text traces the interaction between humans and the Canadian landscape, from the arrival of the first peoples to our current environmental crisis.Trade ReviewMacDowell…mounts an impressive summary of how Canadian history has been rethought from an environment perspective over the last 40 years. She demonstrates this with a copiously illustrated and well-referenced exploration of the evolution of Canada’s landscape over millennia…a very accessible text for students and general readers, with excellent maps, illustrations, information boxes, and rich bibliographies for each chapter. Highly recommended. -- B. Osborne, Queen's University at Kingston * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroductionPart 1: Aboriginal Peoples and Settlers1 Encountering a New Land2 Settling the Land and Transforming the “Wilderness”Part 2: Industrialism, Reform, and Infrastructure3 Early Cities and Urban Reform4 The Conservation Movement5 Mining Resources6 Cars, Consumerism, and SuburbsPart 3: Harnessing Nature, Harming Nature7 Changing Energy Regimes8 Water9 The Contested World of Food and AgriculturePart 4: The Environmental Era10 The Environmental Movement and Public Policy11 Parks and Wildlife12 Coastal Fisheries13 The North and Climate ChangeConclusionIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn the 1970s, Hydro-Québec declared in a publicity campaign We Are Hydro-Québécois. The slogan symbolized the extent to which hydroelectric development in the North had come to both reflect and fuel French Canada's aspirations. The slogan helped Quebecers relate to the province's northern territory and to accept the exploitation of its resources.In Power from the North, Caroline Desbiens explores how this culture of hydroelectricity helped shape the landscape during the first phase of the James Bay hydroelectric project. Policy makers and citizens did not, she argues, view those who built the dams as mere workers they saw them as pioneers in a previously uninhabited land now inscribed with the codes of culture and spectacle. This insightful work shows that if Quebec hopes to engage in truly sustainable resource development, all actors must bring an awareness of their cultural histories and visions of nature, North, and nation to the negotiating table. Trade ReviewCaroline Desbiens explores the nexus of hydroelectricity, Québécois identity, and the cultural narratives that are used by southern Québécois to justify resource development in the northern regions of the province. The result is a wonderfully personal and critical reflection on the culture of hydroelectricity in Québec and “the importance of reading economic development through a cultural lens.” [It] is an excellent new contribution to the Nature|History|Society series from UBC Press. It connects beautifully with the other books in the series and will compliment work on the ways in which people conceptualize and transform the north through material, and particularly discursive, formations. -- Morgan Moffitt, Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta * Journal of Polar Record *Table of ContentsForeword: Ideas of North / Graeme WynnIntroduction: Looking NorthPart 1: Power and the North1 The Nexus of Hydroelectricity in Quebec2 Discovering a New World: James Bay as Eeyou IstcheePart 2: Writing the Land3 Who Shall Convert the Wilderness into a Flourishing Country?4 From the Roman de la Terre to the Roman des RessourcesPart 3: Rewriting the Land5 Pioneers6 Workers7 SpectatorsConclusion: Ongoing Stories and Powers from the NorthNotesSelected BibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Jianghan Plain in central China has been shaped by its relationship with water. Once a prolific rice-growing region that drew immigrants to its fertile paddy fields, it has, since the eighteenth century, become prone to devastating flooding and waterlogging. Jiayan Zhang consults early records of catastrophic water events and explores their role in shaping Jianghan society in the Qing and Republican periods. In a constantly shifting environment, the peasants of Jianghan were forced to adapt their farming methods; cooperate on complex projects like dike building; and even organize social structures, tenancy arrangements, and lifestyles around the pressure and uncertainty of their environment. The first environmental and socioeconomic history of the region, Coping with Calamity considers the Jianghan Plain's volatile environment, the constant challenges it presented to peasants, and their often ingenious and sophisticated responses.Table of ContentsIntroduction1 Changes in the Environment of the Jianghan Plain2 Water Calamities and the Management of the Dike Systems3 The Dike Systems and the Jianghan Economy4 Agriculture, Commercialization, and Environmental Adaptability5 Tenancy and Environment6 Fisheries and the Peasant Economy7 A Water-Rich Society: Socio-Economic Life in a Marshy KingdomConclusionAppendix: The Yield of Rice in the Jianghan Plain in the Qing and the RepublicGlossary; Notes; References; Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisIt was a megaproject half a century in the making -- a technological and engineering marvel that stands as one of the most ambitious borderlands undertakings ever embarked upon by two countries. The planning and building of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project is one of the defining episodes in North American history.The project began with transnational negotiations that spanned two world wars and the formative years of the Cold War and included a failed attempt to construct an all-Canadian seaway, which was scuttled by US national security fears. Once an agreement was reached, the massive engineering and construction operation began, as did the efforts to move people and infrastructure away from the thousands of acres of land that would soon be flooded.Negotiating a River looks at the profound impacts of this megaproject, from the complex diplomatic negotiations, political manoeuvring, and environmental diplomacy to the implications on national identitieTable of ContentsForeword: National Dreams / Graeme WynnIntroduction: River to SeawayPart 1: Negotiating1 Accords and Discords2 Watershed Decisions3 Caught between Two FiresPart 2: Building4 Fluid Relations5 Lost Villages6 Flowing ForwardConclusion: To the Heart of the ContinentNotesBibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn this beautifully crafted and written volume, Canada’s preeminent historical geographer traces how Canada’s geographical limitations have shaped the nature of its settler societies – from first contacts, to dispossession, to our current age of reconciliation.Trade ReviewA Bounded Land is a guided tour through the work of a brilliant, insightful, and compassionate mind and body of work. -- James Murton * The Canadian Historical Review *This is the most informative, penetrating and best-written account that I have read on the topic. -- Jim Reynolds * The Advocate *A Bounded Land brings new dimensions and reflections to the work of Cole Harris as a scholar. The themes turn on settlement, colonization, dispossession, re-settlement, and the concluding theme throws light on Indigenous displacement and theories of empire and decolonization. -- Barry Gough * The Ormsby Review *Cole Harris has produced an eloquent compilation of work on settler colonialism in Canada. -- Ken Favrholdt, Kamloops, BC * BC Studies, Issue 209 *There is a lot packed into this book ... [It] highlights the theoretical and practical policies that underwrote colonialism. In doing so, it helps to explain how the history of dispossession became inseparable from the rise of nation-states such as Canada. -- Benjamin Hoy * The Canadian Journal of History *It is to Harris’s credit that the innovative assembly of spatial and social vignettes in A Bounded Land prompts our reflection on Indigenous and settler relations in colonial Canada. -- Grace Keng, Pennsylvania State University * University of Toronto Quarterly *Overall, this book is not only a fitting capstone to an extroardinary career, but also an excellent primer for understanding Canada's settler colonial past. -- Ryan Hall, Colgate University * Pacific Historical Review *Table of ContentsIntroductionPart 1: Early EncountersThe Fraser Canyon EncounteredImagining and Claiming the LandVoices of Smallpox around the Strait of GeorgiaPart 2: Early SettlementsAcadia: Settling the MarshlandsOf Poverty and Helplessness in Petite-NationThe Settlement of Mono TownshipPart 3: The Architecture of SettlementEuropean Beginnings in the Northwest AtlanticThe Overseas Simplification of EuropeCreating Place in Early CanadaPart 4: Reconfiguring British ColumbiaThe Making of the Lower MainlandThe Struggle with DistanceIndigenous SpacePart 5: Theorizing Settler ColonialismMaking an Immigrant SocietyHow Did Colonialism Dispossess?Postscript: The Boundaries of Settler ColonialismNotes and Further Readings; Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Government of Natural Resources explores scientific and technical activity in Quebec from Confederation until the eve of the Second World War. Scientific and technical personnel are an often quiet presence within the state, but they play an integral role.At the turn of the twentieth century, the provincial government created geology, forestry, fishery, and agronomy services. These new services drew from recently established university technical programs to amass a corps of skilled employees to support their mission: exploiting resources and occupying territory. Stéphane Castonguay traces the history of mining, logging, hunting, fishing, and agriculture in Quebec to reveal how territorial and environmental transformations thus became a tool of government. By helping to define and shape such interventions, scientific activity contributed to state formation and expanded administrative capacity. The lessons that this thoughtful reconceptualization of resource Trade ReviewThe author provides great detail on the history of technical and scientific advances in the four natural resource areas of Quebec from 1867 to 1939. -- J. Organ, emeritus, University of Massachusetts Amherst * Choice Connect *In meticulously detailed chapters devoted to the development of mining, forestry, wildlife conservation, and agriculture, Casonguay shows how Quebec took control of its resources. -- Geoff White * Literary Review of Canada *Table of ContentsForeword: Science in Action / Graeme WynnIntroduction1 The Administrative Capacities of the Quebec State: Specialized Personnel and Technoscientific Interventions2 The Invention of a Mining Space: Geological Exploration and Mineralogical Knowledge3 Soil Classification and Separation of Forest and Colonization Areas: Scientific Forestry and Reforestation4 Surveillance and Improvement of Fish and Game Territories: Conservation of Wildlife Resources5 Regionalization and Specialization of Agricultural Production: Disseminating Agronomic KnowledgeConclusion: Knowledge, Power, and TerritoryAppendix: Identification of Technoscientific Activities in the Public Accounts (1896–1940)Notes; Bibliography; Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisMuskoka. Now a magnet for nature tourists and wealthy cottagers, the region underwent a profound transition at the turn of the twentieth century. Making Muskoka traces the evolution of the region from 1870 to 1920. Over this period, settler colonialism upended Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee communities, but the land was unsuited to farming, and within the first generation of resettlement, tourism became an integral feature of life. Andrew Watson considers issues such as rural identity, tensions between large- and household-scale logging operations, and the dramatic effects of consumer culture and the global shift toward fossil fuels on settlers' ability to control the tourism economy after 1900. Making Muskoka uncovers the lived experience of rural communities shaped by tourism at a time when sustainable opportunities for a sedentary life were few on the Canadian Shield, and reveals the consequences for those living there year-round.Trade Review"… Making Muskoka is pertinent reading for those studying the impacts of tourism on landscapes and the peoples who inhabit them." -- Matthew Hatvany, Laval University * Canadian Geographies *Table of ContentsIntroduction1 Rural Identity and Resettlement of the Canadian Shield, 1860–802 Indigenous Identity, Settler Colonialism, and Tourism, 1850–19203 Rural Identity and Tourism, 1870–19004 The Promise of Wood-Resource Harvesting, 1870–19205 Fossil Fuels, Consumer Culture, and the Tourism Economy, 1900–20ConclusionAppendix; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis"The various and contradictory signs of English otherworldliness offered medieval writers a remarkably elastic medium with which to construct national identity.... Above all, the wonderful aspects of geographic otherness made it possible for...Trade Review"Angels on the Edge of the World is an exciting disquisition on the critical importance of geography to English identity in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Eloquent on why place matters, and precisely how it matters, this book is indispensable to an understanding of medieval England, and will be hugely influential for all future work of its kind." -- Geraldine Heng, Director of Medieval Studies, University of Texas at Austin, and author of Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy"In Angels on the Edge of the World, Kathy Lavezzo offers a fascinating and provocative account of the imaginative geography of England from Aelfric to Cardinal Wolsey. Drawing on recent developments in the history of cartography and postcolonial theory, Lavezzo explains how England in the Middle Ages managed to justify its position on the geographical margins of Christendom by producing some of the finest verbal and visual mappae-mundi of the period. A scholarly intervention within the field, Angels on the Edge of the World will have important ramifications for scholars working in both Medieval and Renaissance Studies." -- Jerry Brotton, Queen Mary, University of London, author of Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World"In this ambitious new book Kathy Lavezzo explores what she calls the 'exaltation of the English world margin,' the strange embrace of the English of their own peripheral status. Analyzing half a millennia's worth of texts and maps, Lavezzo argues that a nascent kingdom found both self-empowerment and a justification for imperialism in its residence at the edge of the earth. Works by Ülfric, Giraldus Cambrensis, Ranulf Higden, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Wolsey, and John Skelton are read alongside contemporary maps in a breathtakingly interdisciplinary tour of the British Middle Ages. Angels on the Edge of the World is the necessary starting point for future discussions of the early English nation. As lucid as it is compelling, it deserves to be read by every medievalist interested in rethinking the period from a postcolonial point of view." -- Jeffrey J. Cohen, George Washington University"In this excellent consideration of medieval and early modern maps and literary works, Lavezzo explores the paradoxical power of marginality found in the representation of England as a simultaneously isolated and exceptional space.... Including numerous reproductions of medieval maps and drawing on the theoretical models proposed by new cultural geogrpahers, this study offers a theoretically rich, provocative analysis of maps and mapping in medieval and early modern Europe." -- Choice, March 2007"Kathy Lavezzo's Angels on the Edge of the World begins a much-needed discussion of ways in which nations developed and depended on national self-conceptions before the age of print so central to Benedict Anderson's argument about the rise of the nation-state." -- Mary Baine Campbell, Brandeis University, author of Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe"Surveying a theme in English self-identity over almost nine hundred years, Kathy Lavezzo argues that England's distance from the centers of civilization as they were understood in the Middle Ages resulted in both an anxiety about being on the margins and a sense of special status, expressed in a complex negotiation of its nearly colonial condition. Postcolonial theory has replaced the vocabulary of time that has dominated our thinking about nations with the vocabulary of space. Lavezzo's book reinserts questions of location, position, opposition, construction, nationhood, and coloniality to the Middle Ages. There are no other books like Angels on the Edge of the World in quality, scope, or innovation." -- John Ganim, University of California, Riverside

Read more less

Book SynopsisValley of Opportunity recreates an age when Indians, colonists, and post-Revolutionary settlers embraced a similar dream: to create a successful economy in the rural hinterland of the middle colonies. Peter C. Mancall draws on abundant evidence from seldom-used archives in the region, as well as from libraries on both sides of the Atlantic, to reconstruct their daily economic life.The author describes the varied economic transformations that took place in the area, considering these changes from an environmental as well as an economic standpoint. He shows how different groups of people perceived the resources of the region and how their perceptions shaped settlement patterns, land use, and the formation of commercial networks. Ultimately, each of the three peoples looked beyond the mountains that set the boundaries of their physical world and tried to establish ties to the larger commercial network that linked North America to Europe.Mancall offers connections bTrade ReviewValley of Opportunity is an important book. Like the region it analyzes, it moves across boundaries, providing new vistas while connecting arbitrarily divided terrains. * Journal of American History *Mancall merits commendation for his attention to ecological as well as economic revolutions, his incorporation of Indians into the transition question, and his reminder that conquest left a continental legacy. * Western Historical Quarterly *Mancall shows how valley residents tied themselves into the commercial network that linked North America to Europe. Some people prospered in this valley of opportunity, many did not, and their fates often were determined less by their own endeavors than by the forces of the Atlantic economy that reached into their world. * Ethnohistory *Mancall's central argument is that the 'economic culture’ of the backcountry was shaped by a complex interaction of physical environ- ments, local societies, and powerful developers—an encounter decided on the terms of the latter group, the agents of the greater Atlantic economy. Mancall’s is a sober and sobering thesis, underscoring the power of capital on the eighteenth-century frontier. * William and Mary Quarterly *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Physical World 2. The Susquehanna Indians 3. Indian-Colonist Trade 4. The Collapse of Intercultural Trade 5. The Colonists' Economy 6. The War in the Valley 7. Postwar Economic Development Conclusion: The Economic Culture of the Revolutionary BackcountryAppendix Index

Read more less