History and Archaeology Books

Book SynopsisTraces the phenomenon of ascribing sentimental meaning to floral imagery from its beginnings in Napoleonic France through its later transformations in England and America. At the heart of the book is a depiction of what the three most important flower books from each of the countries divulge about the period and the respective cultures.

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Book SynopsisTraces the often stormy course of US-Chilean relations, covering not only policy decisions but also the overall political, cultural and economic developments that formed the context in which these policies unfolded.

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Book SynopsisThis volume examines the significant role played by women as patrons in the evolution of medieval culture. The essays look at women not simply as patrons of letters but also as patrons of the visual and decorative arts, of architecture and of religious and educational foundations.

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Book SynopsisDocumenting slavery and its development in North America, this work provides excerpts from personal accounts, songs, legal documents, diaries, letters, and other written sources. It portrays the day-to-day connections between, and among, slaves and their owners across two centuries.

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Book SynopsisThis detailed study of the 1513 Piri Reis world map offers commentary and explication of a major milestone in cartography. It aims to disprove dubious conclusions drawn and clarify longstanding mysteries in order to open up new ways of looking at the history of exploration.

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Book SynopsisIn this collection of essays, historians, political scientists and legal scholars examine significant instances in which legal reform produced something other than the foreseen result. Subjects addressed include: the intentions of the framers of the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

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Book SynopsisThis work focuses on a particular place and time to explore how environment and human culture transform each other. It shows how each successive community on the Georgia coast forged unique relationships with the environment, which in turn created unique landscapes.

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Book SynopsisChronicles daily life on the battlefront, and also records interactions between blacks and whites, men and women, and northerners and southerners during and after the war. The author tells of being born into slavery and of learning, in secret, to read and write.

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Book SynopsisA biography of George Washington, written by his close friend and military aide, this work offers a glimpse of Washington's life, from his birth in 1732 until his assumption of the presidency in 1789. It assembles manuscripts from three separate archives to reconstruct and publish the biography along with Washington's ""Remarks.Trade ReviewPriceless... The book belongs on all Washington shelves. - Library Journal

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Book SynopsisAn examination of the political influences of temples in pre-modern Japan. It uses a range of sources to argue that religious protest was a symptom of political factionalism and capital rather than its cause. The analysis brings together the spheres of art, religion, ideas and politics.

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Book SynopsisIsolde Standish is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at SOAS, University of London.Trade ReviewAlthough this book is primarily about film, Isolde Standish has woven into it a vivid, and very gripping, social, political and cultural history of 1960s' Japan. She traces the struggle that was taking place over the narrative of post-war Japanese history: the ‘official story' and its reflection in mainstream studio output against which directors such as Oshima, Yoshida and Imamura reacted bitterly. These and other directors developed avant-garde cinematic and narrative strategies to confront the repression of the past as well as the repressive nature of the state in occupied Japan. Isolde Standish places the development of the avant-garde within its contemporary intellectual context, (including the influence of French thought and literature), the complex politics of the left and the diversifications of the film industry as it faced economic decline. The book is remarkable for the author's mastery of the subject, the clarity of her arguments and the depth of her scholarship. Rarely does one read a book in which the pieces of the jig-saw fall so precisely and illuminatingly into place. --Laura Mulvey, Professor of Film and Media Studies, Birkbeck University of London... an illuminating study of the avant garde... There is a good deal of interesting material here, particularly as regards the theoretical concepts and influences that helped shape Japan's "counter-cinema". -- Sight & Sound, Book of the Month FeatureTable of ContentsChapter One: Film and Philosophy: Towards a Cinema of Praxis; Chapter Two: War, Historicity, and Counter-Memory; Chapter Three: Sexuality, Perversions and Originary Worlds; Chapter Four: The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On.

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Book SynopsisPitcairn, a tiny Pacific island that was refuge to the mutineers of HMAV Bounty and home to their descendants, later became the stage on which one imposter played out his influential vision for British control over the nineteenth-century Pacific Ocean. Joshua W. Hill arrived on Pitcairn in 1832 and began his fraudulent half-decade rule that has, until now, been swept aside as an idiosyncratic moment in the larger saga of Fletcher Christian''s mutiny against Captain Bligh, and the mutineers'' unlikely settlement of Pitcairn. Here, Hill is shown instead as someone alert to the full scope and power of the British Empire, to the geopolitics of international imperial competition, to the ins and outs of naval command, the vicissitudes of court politics, and, as such, to Pitcairn''s symbolic power for the British Empire more broadly.Trade Review'Nechtman's The Pretender of Pitcairn Island intrigues, instructs, and entertains. It is at once an energetic dialogue with many generations of Pacific scholars, a detailed meditation on British colonialism and Oceanian histories, and a feat of literary storytelling with 'Man Who Would Be King' resonances, populated by colorful, tragic, and terrifying characters.' Matt Matsuda, Rutgers University, New Jersey, and author of Pacific Worlds: A History of Seas, Peoples, and Cultures'This is an absorbing account of a missing chapter in the notorious story of the mutiny of the Bounty and its long aftermath. But it is also an engagingly written, wider reflection upon maritime history and myth-making that everyone interested in Oceania's pasts ought to read.' Nicholas Thomas, University of Cambridge and author of Islanders: Experiences of Empire in the Pacific'From the sea came this 'pavonine tin god' named Joshua W. Hill. He came with authority, he said, to reform the descendants of mutineers of HMAV Bounty on Pitcairn's Island. But he had no authority, and instead of reform he left the island in a shambles, under arrest on a British warship.' Herbert Ford, Pitcairn Islands Study Center'Through impressive investigation, [Nechtman] shows us that Hill's CV was not as wholly fictitious as previous authors, myself included, have always assumed. Nechtman has found Hill's textual footprints not just on Pitcairn, but across the 19th-century world, from London to Tahiti.' Adrian Young, The Journal of Pacific History'Nechtman's book will be of great interest to historians of Pitcairn Island and the Pacific region at large.' Richard Lansdown, Journal of New Zealand and Pacific StudiesTable of ContentsPrologue: telling tales of the South Pacific; 1. The masquerade; 2. The chosen people; 3. Kingdoms of God; 4. The age of reform; 5. The island; 6. Seduction; 7. Colonization; Epilogue: the self-constituted king of Pitcairn.

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Book SynopsisExamines how ideological and administrative crises within Islamic lands in the late fifteenth century brought about a new conception of kingship for the early modern period. Through Idris Bidlisi, a major intellectual and statesman, this book paints a picture of a changing Ottoman Empire: shifting from regional dynastic kingdom to global empire.Trade Review'This belongs among the best treatments that combine intellectual and sociopolitical history based on Islamic materials. Markiewicz's dense presentation of the life and work of Idris Bidlisi shows both how ideas matter for the conduct of politics and why they must be understood as responses to specific historical situations. The book is essential reading for scholars concerned with the Ottoman, Aqquyunlu, and Safavid empires as well as with Persian as a medium for historiography and the chancery.' Shahzad Bashir, Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Humanities, Brown University, Rhode Island'A masterly study, deeply researched, many-layered and carefully nuanced. Markiewicz offers keen insights into a little known scholarly and philosophical world, and widens the scope of debate about the Ottoman self-image in the crucial era after 1517. Approaching the topic through the thought and influence of Idris Bidlisi makes a potentially impenetrable mass of esoteric thought clearly accessible to modern researchers.' Christine Woodhead, Honorary Fellow of Ottoman History, University of Durham'This is an old-school monograph in the of best ways; it is extremely focused and necessary reading for experts in the field.' R. A. Miller, Choice'… an admirable biography of a major scholar and scribe as well as a rich study of intellectual activity in the 15th–century and 16th–century … makes important contributions to Islamic political thought, as well as to the nexus between patronage, literary culture, and intellectual output, especially in historical writing. It is also an excellent biography.' Ethan L. Menchinger, International Journal of Middle East Studies'Markiewicz's reworking of his PhD thesis has produced a book that is complex in its ideas and argument, beautifully structured, written in clear and well-signposted prose, and cleanly produced in the Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization series.' Amy Singer, SpeculumTable of ContentsIntroduction; Part I: 1. The realm of generation and decay: Bidlisi in Iran, 1457–1502; 2. Patronage and place among the Ottomans: Bidlisi and the Court of Bayezid II, 1502–1511; 3. The return East (1511–1520); Part II: 4. The Timurid vocabulary of sovereignty; 5. The canons of conventional histories; 6. Ottoman sovereignty on the cusp of Universal Empire; Conclusion.

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Book SynopsisJames Crossland is Senior Lecturer in International History at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. He is the author of Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 1939-1945 (2014), the first study of Britain's humanitarian policy during the Second World War. He has published widely on the history of wartime humanitarianism, international law and the Red Cross movement.Trade ReviewReaders will find no uncritical homage to the peacemakers in this resolutely objective account of political changes during a turbulent half-century of conflict and suffering … James Crossland's patient examination of the decades before World War I is an essential guide to understanding how these fundamental changes in the law of warfare after World War II came to be. * Michigan War Studies Review *A fascinating work for those interested in the nineteenth century, in the development of political thought, in international relations, military history, and a number of other sub-disciplines ... An important introduction to the subject. * European History Quarterly *Crossland’s searching autopsy of humanitarian action, inspiration, and deed, persuasively demonstrates that there was no monolithic humanitarian sensibility in the long nineteenth century—instead the variegated impulses that inspired ostensibly and implicitly humanitarian interventions of all types were motivated by a wide and divergent realm of imperatives. A fascinating read. * Branden Little, Associate Professor of History, Weber State University, USA *Since Geoffrey Best’s Humanity in Warfare (1980), I have never read such a fine work on the attempts to regulate or outcast war. Starting hopefully in the midst of the 19th century and ending horribly in August 1914, War, Law and Humanity tells the tale of military (medical) men, legal and medical humanitarians as well as outright pacifists, debating ideals and realism, quarrelling between each other and among themselves, while several wars set the scene. It is as fascinating as it is important. * Leo van Bergen, Lecturer in Military-medical History, Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, The Netherlands *Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgements Dramatis Personae Timeline Introduction – A Time for Angels 1. The Crimean Crucible 2. Citizen-Humanitarians 3. The Union Way 4. Visions from Geneva 5. How Best to Serve the Suffering? 6. When Angels Go to War 7. Humanity and Necessity 8. The Sound of Drums 9. Enter the Peace-Seekers 10. Regulations for Apocalypse Conclusion – 1914: The Campaign Ends? Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisUlrike Lindner is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cologne, Germany. Dörte Lerp is Senior Researcher in Modern History at the University of Cologne, Germany.Trade ReviewNew Perspectives on the History of Gender and Empire is a compelling contribution to the investigation of the entanglements between gender and imperialism … The several case studies not only add important insights to scholarship on the specific settings but also shed new light on the centrality of the entanglements between violence, intimacy, sexuality, domesticity, and citizenship in the production of colonial rule. * Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work *This fascinating and lucidly written collection of essays advances the historical study of gender and empire through a focus on comparative and global approaches and a combination of case studies relating to both overseas and land-based empires. The introduction provides a valuable critical survey of the state of the field, while the individual case studies provide fascinating insights which move beyond earlier binary interpretations of coloniser-colonised dynamics to give insights into the complex intersectionality of affective and power relationships in colonial contexts. * Clare Midgley, Research Professor in History, Sheffield Hallam University, UK *This volume on "gendered imperial formations" brings us truly new research on less-studied settings as well as fresh findings on more established themes. Thoughtfully conceptualized and carefully written, these essays offer information and insights that are simply not available elsewhere. The authors’ work perfectly demonstrates the necessity of skillful gender analysis for investigations of colonialism. * Lora Wildenthal, Professor of History, Rice University, USA *Table of ContentsIntroduction: New Perspectives on Gender and Empire: Comparative and Global Approaches Ulrike Lindner and Dörte Lerp (both University of Cologne, Germany) I. Intimate Relationships and Marriages 1. The Domestic Foundations of Imperial Sovereignty: Mixed Marriages in the Fascist Aegean Alexis Rappas (Koç University, Turkey) 2. In the Forge of the Empire: Colonists and Marriage in the Nineteenth-century Northern Black Sea Steppe Julia Malitska (Södertörn University, Sweden) 3. Love Affair? State’s Affair? Interpreting a Hanging in German East Africa, or Questions of Gender and Race in Colonial Historiography Bettina Brockmeyer (Bielefeld University, Germany) II. Masculinity, Femininity and Imperial Encounters 4. Colonial Views: Approaching Gender and Empire through the Snapshots of an American Woman in the Philippines (1900-1902) Silvan Niedermeier (Erfurt University, Germany) 5. Male Same-Sex Desire and Masculinity in Colonial German Southwest Africa Jan Severin (Humboldt University, Germany) III. Indigenous Servants and Colonial Homes 6. “Where the home life is white”: Domestic Service Debates in New Zealand and South Africa, c. 1897-1913 Elizabeth Dillenburg (University of Minnesota, USA) 7. Being at Home: Settler Colonial Biopower and the Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender in Colonial Australia Eva Bischoff (Trier University, Germany) IV. Education and Schooling 8. Between Patriarchy, Imperialism, and Women’s Empowerment: Female Education in Colonial India Jana Tschurenev (University of Göttingen, Germany) 9. “Saving Our Sisters”: Female education and the London Missionary Society in Nineteenth-Century South India Divya Kannan (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India) Index

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