Specific wars and military campaigns Books

Book SynopsisIn the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Algerian piracy in the Mediterranean loomed large in the American imagination. An estimated seven hundred American citizens, sailors, and naval officers were taken captive over the course of the Barbary Crises (1784–1815), and this overseas danger threatened to grow and irreparably harm the young republic. Blood and Ink reconstructs the largely forgotten influence of these early American conflicts with North Africa on notions of publicity, print culture, and racial and national identity from independence to the Civil War. Exploring the extensive archive of texts inspired by the conflicts—from captivity narratives, novels, plays, and poems to broadsides, travel narratives, children’s literature, newspaper articles, and visual ephemera—Jacob Crane connects anxieties surrounding North African piracy and white slavery to both the development of American abolitionism and representations of transatlantic African and Jewish identities in the early national and antebellum periods.Trade ReviewCrane’s book makes a very clear case for why writing about Barbary piracy matters to the development of American ideas and ideas of race, freedom, and citizenship. He recovers several different early American works that can be used as the basis for further scholarship while also adding to the extant scholarship on the transatlantic and transnational origins of US literature." - Sharada Balachandran Orihuela, author of Fugitives, Smugglers, and Thieves: Piracy and Personhood in American Literature"Blood and Ink draws attention to a significant but critically neglected area of focus in early US print culture concerning Barbary discourse. It will have a major impact within early American studies of print culture and its relationship to race, nation, and global perceptions in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries." - Keri Holt, author of Reading These United States: Federal Literacy in the Early Republic, 1776–1830

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Book SynopsisFrom the first Union attack on Vicksburg in the spring of 1862 through Benjamin Grierson's last raid through Mississippi in late 1864 and early 1865, this book traces the campaigns, fighting, and causes and effects of armed conflict in central and North Mississippi, where major campaigns were waged and fighting occurred.The Civil War in Mississippi: Major Campaigns and Battles will be a must-read for any Mississippian or Civil War buff who wants the complete story of the Civil War in Mississippi. It discusses the key military engagements in chronological order. It begins with a prologue covering mobilization and other events leading up to the first military action within the state's borders. The book then covers all of the major military operations, including the campaign for and siege of Vicksburg, and battles at Iuka and Corinth, Meridian, Brice's Crossroads, and Tupelo. The colorful cast of characters includes such household names as Sherman, Grant, Pemberton, and Forrest, as well as a host of other commanders and soldiers. Author Michael B. Ballard discusses at length minority troops and others glossed over or lost in studies of the Mississippi military during the war.

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Book SynopsisIndependence Day, 1861. The schooner S. J. Waring sets sail from New York on a routine voyage to South America. Seventeen days later, it limps back into New York’s frenzied harbor with the ship's black steward, William Tillman, at the helm. While the story of that ill-fated voyage is one of the most harrowing tales of captivity and survival on the high seas, it has, almost unbelievably, been lost to history. Now reclaiming Tillman as the real American hero he was, historian Brian McGinty dramatically returns readers to that riotous, explosive summer of 1861, when the country was tearing apart at the seams and the Union army was in near shambles following a humiliating defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. Desperate for good news, the North was soon riveted by reports of an incident that occurred a few hundred miles off the coast of New York, where the Waring had been overtaken by a marauding crew of Confederate privateers. While the white sailors became chummy with their Southern captors, free black man William Tillman was perfectly aware of the fate that awaited him in the ruthless, slave-filled ports south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Stealthily biding his time until a moonlit night nine days after the capture, Tillman single-handedly killed three officers of the privateer crew, then took the wheel and pointed it home. Yet, with no experience as a navigator, only one other helper, and a war-torn Atlantic seaboard to contend with, his struggle had just begun. It took five perilous days at sea—all thrillingly recounted here—before the Waring returned to New York Harbor, where the story of Tillman's shipboard courage became such a tabloid sensation that he was not only put on the bill of Barnum’s American Museum but also proclaimed to be the "first hero" of the Civil War. As McGinty evocatively shows, however, in the horrors of the war then engulfing the nation, memories of his heroism—even of his identity—were all but lost to history. As such, The Rest I Will Kill becomes a thrilling and historically significant work, as well as an extraordinary journey that recounts how a free black man was able to defy efforts to make him a slave and become an unlikely glimmer of hope for a disheartened Union army in the war-battered North.Trade Review"Spectacular. . . . [A] carefully researched and expertly crafted book . . . . The Rest I Will Kill should enchant a wide audience: history buffs, Civil War enthusiasts, pirate junkies, readers who love action and adventure, and those interested in the seemingly unending quest for liberty. It’s difficult to imagine the person who can’t find something to admire in these pages" -- Michael Kleber-Diggs - Minneapolis Star Tribune"Vivid writing creates an exciting read, and McGinty’s use of primary sources such as newspapers and government documents is exceptional. . . . McGinty dubs Tillman a hero and a patriot, one of the first during the Civil War. An important contribution to the shelf of Civil War histories, this story will transfix readers." -- Patricia Ann Owens - Library Journal (Starred Review)

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Book SynopsisIn the months following the May 1780 capture of Charleston, South Carolina, by combined British and loyalist forces, British soldiers arrested sixty-three paroled American prisoners and transported them to the borderland town of St. Augustine, East Florida--territory under British control since the French and Indian War. In Patriots in Exile, James Waring McCrady and C. L. Bragg chronicle the banishment of these elite southerners, the hardships endured by their families, and the plight of the enslaved men and women who accompanied them, as well as the motives of their British captors. McCrady and Bragg thoroughly examine the exile from the standpoint of the British who governed occupied Charleston, the families left behind, the armies in the field, the Continental Congress, and finally the Jacksonboro Assembly of January and February 1782. Using primary sources and archival materials, the authors develop biographical sketches of each exile and illuminate important facets of the American Revolution's southern theater. While they shared a common fate, the exiles were a diverse lot of tradesmen, artisans, prominent civilians, and military officers--among them three signers of the Declaration of Independence. Although they had clear socioeconomic differences, most were unrepentant patriots. In this first comprehensive examination and narrative history of these patriots, McCrady and Bragg reveal how the exiles navigated their new surroundings within the context of a revolutionary conflict that involved various imperial powers of the Old World--Britain, France, and Spain--and American colonists seeking to create an independent nation.Trade ReviewA detailed, fascinating account of a neglected facet of the history of the American Revolution in South Carolina." —Walter Edgar, author of South Carolina: A History"Patriots in Exile fills a significant gap in the history of the American Revolution and broadens the perspective by exploring events that took place outside the limits of the thirteen colonies. This book will appeal to both academic and general readers, particularly those whose interests are focused on the South." —Jim Piecuch, author of Three Peoples, One King"Bragg and McCrady have highlighted a frequently neglected topic of the Revolutionary War in the South: the travails of men who were torn from families and familiar surroundings, often not knowing what awaited them in this forced removal from South Carolina. Engaging and original." —Carl Borick, Charleston Museum"McCrady and Bragg shed new light on how in 1780 the patriot elite of Charleston, South Carolina, came to be exiled to one of the most isolated corners of the British empire. While not quite a gulag or Guantanamo Bay, St. Augustine served a similar function as a place where the British could make disappear individuals deemed to be dangerous enemies of the state." —David K. Wilson, author of The Southern Strategy: Britain's Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775-1780

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Book SynopsisWith words and photographs, Rain in Our Hearts takes readers into Alpha Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, 196th LIB, Americal Division in 1969–1970. Jim Logue, a professional photographer, was drafted and served as an infantryman; he also carried a camera. "In order to take my mind off the war," he would say, "I took pictures." Logue's photos showcase the daily lives of infantrymen: setting up a night laager, chatting with local children, making supply drops, and "humping" rucksacks miles each day in search of the enemy. His camera records the individual experiences and daily lives of the men who fought the war. Accompanying Logue's over 100 photographs is the narrative written by Gary D. Ford. Wanting to reconstruct the story of Alpha Company during the time in which Logue served, Ford and Logue trekked across America to meet with and interview every surviving member whom they could locate and contact. Each chapter of Rain in Our Hearts focuses on the viewpoint and life of one member of Alpha Company, including aspects of life before and after Vietnam. The story of the Company's movements and missions over the year unfold as readers are introduced to one soldier at a time. Taken together, Rain in Our Hearts offers readers a window into the words and sights of Alpha Company's Vietnam War.

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Book SynopsisThe contemporary perspectives – fiction, first-hand accounts, reportage and photographs - found in the pages of this collection give a unique insight into the experiences and suffering of those affected by the American Civil War. The essays and recollections detail some of the earliest attempts by medical professionals to understand and help the wounded, and look at how writers and poets were influenced by their own involvement as nurses, combatants and observers. So alongside the medical observations of figures such as Silas Weir Mitchell and William Keen, you’ll find memoirs of writers including Louisa May Alcott, Ambrose Bierce and Walt Whitman. By presenting the wide range of frequently traumatic experiences by writers, medical staff, and of course the often ignored common foot soldiers on both sides, this volume will complement the older emphasis on military history and will appeal to readers of the evolution of medicine, of the literature the time, of social anthropology, and of the whole complex issue of how the war was represented and debated from many different perspectives. While a century and a half of developments in medicine, social care and science mean that the level of support and technology available to amputees is now incomparable to that in the mid-nineteenth century, the insights into the lives and thoughts of those devastated by psychological traumas, complex emotions and difficulties in adjusting to life after limb loss remain just as relevant today. Phenomena explored in the book, such as ‘Phantom Limb Syndrome’, continue to be the subject of medical and academic research in the twenty-first century.Trade ReviewReviews 'The book is nicely presented and handsomely illustrated with both figures and plates. It bears similarities in form with David Seed’s earlier edited anthology onAmerican Travellers in Liverpool (Liverpool University Press, 2008) with which local readers may already be familiar. Life and Limb may find a welcome niche in the library of anyone with an interest in medical history and of the Civil War in particular.A. J. Larner, Medical Historian, Issue 26'This volume should prove a very good classroom companion for teaching the Civil War’s medical history at ground level, and for understanding how the war took shape in written word and visual image, as suffering morphed into memory.' Steven M. Stowe, Social History of Medicine'A short and accessible primary source reader on the medical history of the American Civil War.'Handley-Cousins, H-DisabilityTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Civil War Voices and Views David SeedMEDICAL AND SURGICAL MEMOIRSEarly Experiences in the Field: ‘Surgical Reminiscences of the Civil War’ William Williams KeenCase 275: The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the RebellionACCOUNTS OF NURSINGWith the US Sanitary Commission: On the Hospital Boat Wilson Small: The Other Side of War Katherine Prescott WormeleyEvacuation from Virginia, 1862: Hospital Transports Frederick Law OlmstedHospital Routine Jane WoolseyA Death in the Ward: Hospital Sketches Louisa May AlcottNurse and Spy: Nurse and Spy in the Union Army Sarah Emma EdmondsFront-line Nursing: Reminiscences of My Life in Camp Susie King Taylor‘The Mute Look that Rolls and Moves’: Walt Whitman’s Civil War Robert Leigh DavisSpecimen Days & Collect Walt WhitmanMEDICAL FACILITIES AND PATHOLOGYJonathan Letterman on the Medical Corps: Medical Recollections of the Army of the Potomac Jonathan LettermanThe Confederate Military Prison Hospital at Andersonville, Georgia: Contributions Relating to the Causes and Prevention of Disease Austin FlintField Hospitals: A Glimpse: Hardtack and Coffee John B. BillingsField Hospitals: The Need: A Manual of Military Surgery Samuel David GrossPlea for an Ambulance Service: A Brief Plea for an Ambulance System Henry Ingersoll BowditchHospital Broadside: North Carolina Hospital Broadside, 1863Hospitals in Richmond, Virginia: A Diary from Dixie Mary ChestnutMalingering: ‘Surgical Reminiscences of the Civil War’ and A Rebel’s Recollections William Williams Keen and George Cary EgglestonRoberts Bartholomew on Nostalgia: Contributions Relating to the Causes and Prevention of Disease Roberts BartholomewMedical Welfare Begins: ‘Debut and Prospectus (The Crutch) and ‘Wounded’ (poem by ‘Sanatosia’)(Dis)embodied Identities: Civil War Soldiers, Surgeons, and the Medical Memories of Combat Susan-Mary GrantPHOTOGRAPHYPainful Looks: Reading Civil War Photographs Mick GidleyMathew Brady’s Photographs: Pictures of the Dead at Antietam (New York Times)AMPUTATIONS AND PROSTHETIC LIMBS‘The Invalid Corps’ (song)The Case of Napoleon Perkins Dillon Jackson CarrollThe First Amputee: ‘Record of Services’ James Edward HangerTestimonial Letter Lieutenant George WarnerThe Salem Leg (brochure)Testimony of Wearers (The Salem Leg: Under the Patronage of the United States Government for the Use of the Army and the Navy)The Human Wheel: ‘The Human Wheel, Its Spokes and Felloes’ Oliver Wendell Holmes‘The Case of George Dedlow’ Silas Weir Mitchell‘Phantom Limbs’ Silas Weir MitchellIN THE FIELD OF BATTLEDiary: October 29, 1862: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Sergeant Henry W. Tisdale Henry TisdaleThe Battle of Shiloh: Aftermath: ‘The Battle of Shiloh’ from Annals of the War Willis De HassThe Battle of Ellyson’s Mills: A Confederate Surgeon’s Letters to His Wife Spencer Glasgow WelchAftermath of Battle, Cedar Mountain, Virginia: ‘Personal Recollections of the War’ David Hunter StrotherAfter the Battle of Winchester: A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War David Hunter StrotherThe Negro as a Soldier Christian FleetwoodArmy Life in a Black Regiment Thomas Wentworth HigginsonPOST-WAR NARRATIVES‘What I Saw of Shiloh’ Ambrose Bierce‘The Coup de Grace’ Ambrose Bierce‘A Resumed Identity’ Ambrose Bierce‘Recollections of a Private’ Warren Lee GossThe Red Badge of Courage Stephen CraneThe Aftermath Stephen C. KennyContributorsSelect BibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThose on Crusade needed their interests at home to be protected; this volume looks at how this could be achieved, in both theory and practice. On taking the cross, crusaders received a diverse set of privileges designed to appeal to both spiritual and more temporal concerns. Among these was the papal protection granted to them and extended over their families and possessions at home. This book is the first full length investigation of this protection. It begins by examining the privilege from its inception in around 1095, and its development and consolidation through to 1222. It then moves on to illustrate how this privilege operated in practice through the appointments of regency governments and close communication with both the papacy and local ecclesiastical officials, centring on the rich crusading evidence fromFlanders, Champagne and the Kingdom of France. While the protection privilege has been seen as unwieldy and over ambitious, close analysis of particular cases and individuals reveals that not only were regents well aware of theirprivileged status, but that the papacy could directly intervene when its protection was contravened. DANIELLE PARK is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of York.Trade Review[An] illuminating study [that makes] an important contribution in presenting regency, for a crusade or otherwise, as an integral part of the aristocratic family's experience. * JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY *Makes a substantial contribution to our understanding on major themes.It is well discussed and very closely argued, o?ering many insightful observations and conclusions. * JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, LITERATURE AND CULTURE *Refreshingly, Park's book is not a story of triumphalism or apocalypticism, but one of pragmatism and worry, which serves to humanize the traditional crusade history. * H-FRANCE *Table of ContentsIntroduction From Pilgrimage Privileges to Protecting the First Crusaders Defending Flanders and Champagne during the First Crusade Developing and Consolidating Protection, 1123-1222 The Second Crusade and the Royal Regency Crusade Regencies in Flanders and Champagne, 1145-77 Crusade Regencies from the Third Crusade to the Fifth Crusade, 1189-1222 Conclusion Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAn examination into two of the most important activities undertaken by the Normans. The reputation of the Normans is rooted in warfare, faith and mobility. They were simultaneously famed as warriors, noted for their religious devotion, and celebrated as fearless travellers. In the Middle Ages few activities offered a better conduit to combine warfare, religiosity, and movement than crusading and pilgrimage. However, while scholarship is abundant on many facets of the Norman world, it is a surprise that the Norman relationship with crusading and pilgrimage, so central in many ways to Norman identity, has hitherto not received extensive treatment. The collection here seeks to fill this gap. It aims to identify what was unique or different about the Normans andtheir relationship with crusading and pilgrimage, as well as how and why crusade and pilgrimage were important to the Normans. Particular focus is given to Norman participation in the First Crusade, to Norman interaction in latercrusading initiatives, to the significance of pilgrimage in diverse parts of the Norman world, and finally to the ways in which crusading and pilgrimage were recorded in Norman narrative. Ultimately, this volume aims to assess, insome cases to confirm, and in others to revise the established paradigm of the Normans as crusaders par excellence and as opportunists who used religion to serve other agendas. Dr KATHRYN HURLOCK is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at Manchester Metropolitan University; Dr PAUL OLDFIELD is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Andrew Abram, William M. Aird, Emily Albu, Joanna Drell, Leonie Hicks, Natasha Hodgson, Kathryn Hurlock, Alan V. Murray, Paul Oldfield, David S. Spear, Lucas Villegas-Aristizábal.Trade ReviewA lively group of essays. * HISTORY *A very useful collection that has been compiled intelligently and edited carefully. * NOTTINGHAM MEDIEVAL STUDIES *[T]his well-presented volume provides a wealth of information for the expert and the inexpert. . . . [T]he chapters and bibliographical materials ensure that anyone coming to this will be given an excellent stepping-stone from which to embark on further research into the interplay between crusading, pilgrimage, and the Norman World. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Kathryn Hurlock and Paul Oldfield 'Many others, whose names I do not know, fled with them': Norman Courage and Cowardice on the First Crusade - William M. Aird The Enemy Within: Bohemond, Byzantium and the Subversion of the First Crusade - Alan Murray / The Editor Norman Italy and the Crusades: Thoughts on the 'Homefront' - Joanna Drell The Norman Influence on Crusading from England and Wales - Kathryn Hurlock The Secular Clergy of Normandy and the Crusades - David S Spear Norman and Anglo-Norman Intervention in the Iberian Wars of Reconquest Before and After the First Crusade - Lucas Villegas-Aristizábal The Pilgrimage and Crusading activities of the Anglo-Norman Earls of Chester - Andrew Abram The Use and Abuse of Pilgrims in Norman Italy - Paul Oldfield Antioch and the Normans - Emily Albu The Landscape of Pilgrimage and Miracles in Norman Narrative Sources - Leonie V. Hicks Normans and Competing Masculinities on Crusade - Natasha R. Hodgson Select Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThe idea of what an "eyewitness" account is here scrutinised through examination of key Crusading texts. Eyewitness is a familiar label that historians apply to numerous pieces of evidence. It carries compelling connotations of trustworthiness and particular proximity to the lived experience of historical actors. But it has received surprisingly little critical attention. This book seeks to open up discussion of what we mean when we label a historical source in this way. Through a close analysis of accounts of the Second, Third and Fourth Crusades, aswell as an in-depth discussion of recent research by cognitive and social psychologists into perception and memory, this book challenges historians of the Middle Ages to revisit their often unexamined assumptions about the place of eyewitness narratives within the taxonomies of historical evidence. It is for the most part impossible to situate the authors of the texts studied here, viewed as historical actors, in precise spatial and temporal relation to the action that they purport to describe. Nor can we ever be truly certain what they actually saw. In what, therefore, does the authors' eyewitness status reside, and is this, indeed, a valid category of analysis? This book argues that the most productive way in which to approach the figure of the autoptic author is not as some floating presence close to historical events, validating our knowledge of them, but as an artefact of the text's meaning-makingoperations, in particular as these are opened up to scrutiny by narratological concepts such as the narrator, focalization and storyworld. The conclusion that emerges is that there is no single understanding of eyewitness runningthrough the texts, for all their substantive and thematic similarities; each fashions its narratorial voice in different ways as a function of its particular story-telling strategies. MARCUS BULL is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel HillTrade ReviewA stimulating book. * WAR IN HISTORY *This book is an undoubted academic tour de force, furthering modern understanding of several canonical 'crusade' narratives and challenging the prominence of the eyewitness in historical analysis. -- Andrew Buck University College Dublin * SPECULUM *This richly interdisciplinary book should benefit anyone teaching or researching historiography, memory, literature, or the crusades. * SEHEPUNKTE *This well-researched study examines the problems of human memory and perception, and includes a lengthy chapter on recent psychological research into the accuracy of eyewitness accounts. Recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Medieval and Modern Approaches to Eyewitnessing and Narratology as an Analytical Tool Memory and Psychological Research into Eyewitnessing The Second Crusade: The De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi and Odo of Deuil's De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem The Third Crusade: Ambroise's Estoire de la Guerre Sainte and Points of Comparison and Contrast Geoffrey of Villehardouin's and Robert of Clari's Narratives of the Fourth Crusade Conclusion Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThe five-year period following the proclamation of the Republic in April 1931 was marked by physical assaults upon the property and public ritual of the Spanish Catholic Church. These attacks were generally carried out by rural and urban anticlerical workers who were frustrated by the Republic's practical inability to tackle the Church's vast power. On 17- 18 July 1936, a right-wing military rebellion divided Spain geographically, provoking the radical fragmentation of power in territory which remained under Republican authority. The coup marked the beginning of a conflict which developed into a full-scale civil war. Anticlerical protagonists, with the reconfigured structure of political opportunities working in their favour, participated in an unprecedented wave of iconoclasm and violence against the clergy. During the first six months of the conflict, innumerable religious buildings were destroyed and almost 7,000 religious personnel were killed. To date, scholarly interpretations of these violent acts were linked to irrationality, criminality and primitiveness. However, the reasons for these outbursts are more complex and deep-rooted: Spanish popular anti-clericalism was undergoing a radical process of reconfiguration during the first three decades of the twentieth century. During a period of rapid social, cultural and political change, anticlerical acts took on new -- explicitly political -- meanings, becoming both a catalyst and a symptom of social change. After 17--18 July 1936, anticlerical violence became a constructive force for many of its protagonists: an instrument with which to build a new society. This book explores the motives, mentalities and collective identities of the groups involved in anti-clericalism during the pre-war Spanish Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War, and is essential reading for all those interested in twentieth-century Spanish history. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

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Book SynopsisDespite over 20,000 published books on the Spanish civil war, it remains the case that the social and cultural dimensions of the conflict have been relatively under-researched. Ruptura focuses on how nationalism, and extremist conceptions and projects, defined daily life experiences in both the battlefield and civilian cities and towns. A principal objective is to demonstrate that the civil war was not a struggle waged between ideologies disconnected from the preoccupations and daily lives of the Spanish people. A tripartite division of the chapter contributions -- Construction of the war; Wartime experiences; Memory and legacies -- brings to light the climate of violence, the social and symbolic transformations resulting from political divergence, and the widespread uncertainty that shaped the behavior, attitudes, lifestyles, practices and experiences of both combatants and civilians. New theoretical approaches on so-called war studies are addressed and engaged with. Several contributions frame their analyses within the international context of radicalization and political violence of interwar Europe. However, attention to the European frame does not diminish the importance accorded throughout the volume to the events that occurred in Spain. Without an understanding of the development of extremist projects, ideologies and attitudes in their particular and international dimensions it is impossible to explain the atmosphere of severe social radicalization and the unprecedented levels of violence reached during and after the civil war. In present times, when the relationship of extremism and nationalism to civil war is once again at the heart of public discourse and a preoccupation of media and governments, an historical perspective on these questions could not be more timely or necessary. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

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Book SynopsisWhen a failed right-wing military coup provoked civil war in Spain, in July 1936, the Spanish government made a worldwide plea for help. In Britain, Aid Spanish Committees sprang up nationwide. Nowhere was empathy more keenly felt for the working people of Spain than among the people of Glasgow, which became the hub of the Scottish Aid for Spain movement. Glasgow was also home to an enterprise which was to make a significant contribution to the Spanish Republic the Scottish Ambulance Unit (SAU). The Unit was the brainchild of a wealthy Glaswegian philanthropist, Sir Daniel Macaulay Stevenson (18511944). The Units valiant and tireless work soon earned it an excellent reputation among Republican forces and as news of its remarkable work spread, volunteers became affectionately known as Los Brujos The Wizards. However, the off-duty activities of some of the SAUs members earned it an altogether different kind of reputation, and the Unit was soon to become immersed in scandal which tarnished its good name. Donald Gallie was a member of the first SAU team to arrive in Madrid (there would be three successive expeditions). He was 24 years old when Civil War broke out. His family shared a strong sense of commitment, and this, together with Donalds love of travel and adventure, is what impelled him to volunteer for service. His skills as mechanic would prove invaluable in the aid and transport given to casualties. His Diary is a remarkable document, and its publication a significant event in the historiography of the Spanish Civil War.

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Book SynopsisAt the end of the Spanish Civil War the Nationalist government instigated mass repression against anyone suspected of loyalty to the defeated Republican side. Around 200,000 people were imprisoned for political crimes in the weeks and months following 1st April 1939, including thousands of women who were charged with offences ranging from directing the home front to supporting their loved ones engaged in combat. Many women wrote and published texts about their experiences, seeking to make their voices heard and to counteract the dehumanising master narrative of the right-wing victors that had criminalised their existence. The memoirs of Communist women, such as Tomasa Cuevas and Juana Doña, have heavily influenced our understanding of life in prison for women under franquismo, while texts by non-Communist women have largely been ignored. This monograph offers a comparative study of the life writing of female political prisoners in Spain, focusing on six texts in particular: the two volumes of Cárcel de mujeres by Tomasa Cuevas; Desde la noche y la niebla by Juana Doña; Réquiem por la libertad by Ángeles García-Madrid; Abajo las dictaduras by Josefa Garcia Segret; and Aquello sucedió así by Ángeles Malonda. All the texts share common themes, such as describing the hunger and repression that all political prisoners suffered. However, the ideologically-driven narratives of Communist women often foreground representations of resistance at the expense of exploring the emotional and intellectual struggle for survival that many women political prisoners faced in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. This study nuances our understanding of imprisoned women as individuals and as a collective, analysing how women political prisoners sought recognition and justice in the face of a vindictive dictatorship. It also explores the women's response to the spirit of convivencia during the transition to democracy, which once again threatened to silence them.

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Book SynopsisOn the day in 1936 that Franco invaded Spain, a fifteen-year-old girl from Madrid was on vacation in the Sierra de Gredos, a mountain range popular for hikers. Isa (Conchita) Reyes fled Spain for Paris with her mother and sister, taking only what they could carry in their suitcases. Her father stayed behind to fight on the Loyalist side. It was not long before the last piece of jewelry had been sold, and ways had to be found to make a living. Working as a model, she was discovered and given the stage name Isa. A renowned Flamenco dancer, she performed in Paris and in the capitals and resorts of Europe. In 1938 she was crowned Miss Spain in Exile. In Venice, she was courted by Count Ciano, Mussolinis son-in-law, and used an imaginative lie to avoid his affections. In Berlin, in 1939, she performed (unwillingly) at Hitlers fiftieth birthday celebrations organized by Joseph Goebbels. Later in the year, whilst on a dancing tour in Athens, she met the man she would marry my father. Together, they escaped Europe for the New World. This is Isas story, from the nightclubs and ateliers of Paris, to the performance halls of Europe, to the harrowing inspections by the Gestapo while transiting Germany. This is a story of a young girl who had to grow up quickly when war turned her world upside down. Isa fulfilled her dream of becoming a dancer, albeit in ways she could not have imagined when growing up. Her story is told against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and Europes inexorable march to conflict. Isa never lost her optimism or her sense of humor. Her dream came true, but the circumstances were tragic and tumultuous.

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Book SynopsisAt the end of the Spanish Civil War the Nationalist government instigated mass repression against anyone suspected of loyalty to the defeated Republican side. Around 200,000 people were imprisoned for political crimes in the weeks and months following 1st April 1939, including thousands of women who were charged with offences ranging from directing the home front to supporting their loved ones engaged in combat. Many women wrote and published texts about their experiences, seeking to make their voices heard and to counteract the dehumanising master narrative of the right-wing victors that had criminalised their existence. The memoirs of Communist women, such as Tomasa Cuevas and Juana Doña, have heavily influenced our understanding of life in prison for women under franquismo, while texts by non-Communist women have largely been ignored. This monograph offers a comparative study of the life writing of female political prisoners in Spain, focusing on six texts in particular: the two volumes of Cárcel de mujeres by Tomasa Cuevas; Desde la noche y la niebla by Juana Doña; Réquiem por la libertad by Ángeles García-Madrid; Abajo las dictaduras by Josefa Garcia Segret; and Aquello sucedió así by Ángeles Malonda. All the texts share common themes, such as describing the hunger and repression that all political prisoners suffered. However, the ideologically-driven narratives of Communist women often foreground representations of resistance at the expense of exploring the emotional and intellectual struggle for survival that many women political prisoners faced in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. This study nuances our understanding of imprisoned women as individuals and as a collective, analysing how women political prisoners sought recognition and justice in the face of a vindictive dictatorship. It also explores the women's response to the spirit of convivencia during the transition to democracy, which once again threatened to silence them.

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Book SynopsisA new investigation into the twelfth-century accounts of the First Crusade, showing their complex relationship with the Bible. The Bible exerted an enormous influence on the crusading movement: it provided medieval Christians with language to describe holy war, spiritual models for crusaders, and justifications for conquests in the East. This book adds tothe growing body of scholarship on the biblical underpinnings of crusading, offering a reappraisal of the early twelfth-century narratives of the First Crusade as works of biblical exegesis rather than simply historical texts. Itrestores these works and their authors to the context of the monastic and cathedral schools where the curricula centred on biblical study, and demonstrates how the crusade's narrators applied familiar methods of scriptural commentary to the crusade, treating it as a text which could, like the Bible, be understood through historical, allegorical, and mystical lenses. These glosses of the First Crusade, which collectively constitute one of the greatintellectual achievements of their age, drew upon the Scriptures and earlier Christian theology, pilgrimage guides, and polemic to construct the crusade as a new chapter of sacred history. Within this story, the first crusaders played various biblically inspired roles: as new Israelites, they wrested the promised land from Muslims cast as new Canaanites and Babylonians; as new apostles, they reenacted some of the greatest miracles of the Gospels. By reconstructing the interpretive processes that made such readings possible, this study allows us to better appreciate the crusading movement's relationship to church reform, the apostolic revival, and the growth of anti-Jewish sentiment in twelfth-century Europe. KATHERINE ALLEN SMITH is professor of history at the University of Puget Sound.Trade ReviewAs Katherine Allen Smith convincingly demonstrates in this thorough and fascinating book, we stand to learn a significant amount about the authors of crusade texts, their audiences, and what it meant to write crusade narrative, if we take the time to tap into this rich seam. This book should be required reading for any student or scholar of the medieval historiography of crusading, or of medieval Latin Christian historiography in general. -- SPECULUM[A] highly interesting work that should be essential reading for anyone who teaches or studies the crusades. -- JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS CULTURES[This] rich study opens the door to further investigations of the relationships between different literary genres and between exegesis, theology, and history. * SEHEPUNKTE *Table of ContentsIntroduction History and Biblical Exegesis in the Latin West The Bible in the Chronicles of the First Crusade Into the Promised Land Babylon and Jerusalem Conclusion Appendix 1: Tables and Charts of Biblical References Appendix 2: List of Biblical References in the Texts Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAn exploration of the letters from the First Crusade, yielding evidence for a number of reinterpretations of the movement.The letters stemming from the First Crusade are premier sources for understanding the launch, campaign, and aftermath of the expedition. Between 1095 and 1100, epistles sustained social relationships across the Mediterranean and within Europe, as a mixture of historical writing, literary invention, news, and theological interpretation. They served ecclesiastical administration, projected authority, and formed focal points for spiritual commemoration and para-liturgical campaigns.This volume, grounded on extensive research into the original manuscripts, and presenting numerous new manuscript witnesses, argues that some of the letters are post hoc "inventions", composed by generations of scribe-readers who visited crusading sites from the twelfth century on, adding new layers of meaning in the form of interpolations and post-scripts. Drawing upon this new understandin

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Book SynopsisThe first critical edition, with facing-page English translation, of a thirteenth-century source, offering insights into crusading, material culture, and aristocratic-monastic relations.In 1152, a knight from the southern Low Countries named Manasses of Hierges returned home after eleven years spent crusading in the Holy Land. He carried with him a precious relic, said to be a fragment of the True Cross that had belonged to the princes of Antioch. Nearly sixty years later, a writer associated with a nearby monastery composed a new Latin narrative, hagiographical, and liturgical textual programme known as Quomodo Sancta Crux ab Antiochia allata sit in Broniense cenobium (How the Holy Cross Came from Antioch to the Monastery of Brogne). It tells the story of Manasses, his career in Europe and the Near East, and of the conflict that broke out over possession of the relic after his death.This volume provides the first critical edition and English translation of a source that contributes greatly to our knowledge of the medieval world, from crusading to material religion to relations between the lay aristocracy and religious communities. The work of a learned author with ambitions to a high literary and homiletic style, it offers a fresh perspective on the question of what motivated crusaders and on the history of the Holy Land under crusader occupation, providing critical new details to the story of the civil war between Queen Melisende of Jerusalem and her son, King Baldwin III. The sustained account of the conflict over a relic provides a window into the importance of sacred objects, and competing notions of sacrality, legal possession, and value. Previously unknown to historians, this work provides a rich illustration of the place of crusading in the memory of a local community. A detailed critical apparatus establishes what can be known about the work's composition and the author's reliance on Classical, Patristic, and Scriptural authorities, while an introduction gives an account of the work's political, cultural, and intellectual context.

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Book SynopsisOlivia Munoz-Rojas critically examines the wartime destruction and post-war rebuilding of three prominent sites in Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. Each case highlights different dimensions of the material impact of the conflict, the practical challenges of reconstruction and the symbolic uses of the two processes by the winning side. The books reveals aspects of the Spanish Civil War and the evolution of the Franco regime from an original and fruitful angle as well as more general insights into the topic of wartime destruction and post-war reconstruction of cities. The title -- Ashes and Granite -- aims to capture, visually and texturally, on the one hand, the damage caused by the war and, on the other, the Franco regime's concept of the ideal Hispanic construction material. Written from an interdisciplinary perspective at the intersection of urban and political history and theory, planning and architecture, the book draws largely on unpublished archival material. Key features of the Franco regime's rebuilding programme are considered, such as the priority given to rural reconstruction and the persistent search for a national architectural style. The case of Madrid centres on the failure of the Falange's ambitious plans for a neo-imperial capital as illustrative of the regime's gradual shift from state planning to privately driven urban development. The case of Bilbao focuses on the reconstruction of the bridges of the city to demonstrate how, occasionally, the regime managed to turn destruction and reconstruction into opportunities for successfully marking the beginning of what was perceived as a new era in Spain's history. Finally, the opening of Avenida de la Catedral in Barcelona exemplifies how wartime destruction sometimes facilitated the implementation of controversial planning, acting as a catalyst for urban redevelopment. Moreover, the opening of the avenue contributed to the disclosure of the ancient Roman city-wall, allowing the regime to appropriate the ancient legacy symbolically. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

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Book SynopsisThe Spanish Civil War is one of the most studied events in modern European history. Its origins, that is to say the politics of the Second Republic (1931-1936), have been much debated. The republican period has been much idealised and in particular the myth of Spanish democracy beset by fascism, of which Franco was its leading figure, has been much cultivated. But was this really the case? Recently historians of the Republic have proposed a new and non-ideological perspective on the 1930s. Spain's path was at once different yet in many ways similar to that of Europe during the inter-war period. This book brings together leading and innovative specialists to analyse the main obstacles to the consolidation of democracy in Spain and to debate the principal stereotypes of the traditional historiography of both left and right. The issues addressed include: the breakdown of democracy; whether the CEDA was an opportunity or a threat; the centrist appeal under the Republic; how the elections were viewed and conducted; the transformation of fascism; new revelations about the Communist party; the politics of exclusion at the local level; the perceived necessity for repression; new perspectives on the Civil Guard; the role of intellectuals in the Republic; and revisionism and sectarian history. The book offers a new and dynamic vision of why Spanish democracy failed to consolidate itself and why it finally fell into the terror of civil war. Essential reading for all those interested in modern European history.

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Book SynopsisIn Spain today the civil war remains 'the past that will not pass away'. The long shadow of the Second World War is now also bringing back centre frame its most disquieting aspects, revealing to a broader public the stark truth already known by specialist historians -- that in Spain, as in the many other internecine wars soon to convulse Europe, war was waged predominantly upon civilians -- millions were killed not by invaders and strangers, but by their own compatriots, including their own neighbours. Across the continent, Hitler's war of territorial expansion after 1938 would detonate a myriad 'irregular wars', of culture as well as of politics, which took on a 'cleansing' intransigence as those driving them sought to make 'homogeneous' communities, whether ethnic, political or religious. So much of this was prefigured with primal intensity in Spain in 1936, where, on 17-18 July, a group of army officers rebelled against the socially-reforming Republic. Saved from almost certain failure by Nazi and Fascist military intervention, and by a British inaction amounting to complicity, these army rebels unleashed a conflict in which civilians became the targets of mass killing. The new military authorities authorised and presided over an extermination of those sectors associated with Republican change -- especially those who symbolised cultural change and thus posed a threat to old ways of being and thinking: progressive teachers, self-educated workers, 'new' women. In the Republican zone, resistance to the coup also led to the murder of civilians. This extrajudicial and communal killing in both zones would fundamentally make new political and cultural meanings that changed Spain's political landscape forever. Helen Graham explores the origins, nature and long-term consequences of this exterminatory war in Spain, charting the resonant forms of political, social and cultural resistance to it and the memory/legacy these have left behind in Europe and beyond. Not least is our growing sense of the enormity of what, in greater European terms, the Republican war effort resisted: Nazi adventurism, and the continent-wide wars of ethnic and political 'purification' it would unleash.Trade Review"Spain, it shows, was not a one-off but rather a distinctive victim of a relatively isolated southern European variant of extreme nationalism, one whose development was assisted by the fascist Axis powers and facilitated by the democracies policy of non-intervention. On the other hand, her brilliant demonstration of the European context relativizes and aids comprehension and her compassionate focus on individuals, particularly her chapter on the Brigaders (her inaugural lecture at Royal Holloway), serves to incite engagement and sympathy." - J. K. J. Thomson, University of Sussex,International Affairs 89: 2, 2013Table of ContentsRecollecting the Child; History, Marriage & the Afterlife; To the East; Gone West; Opening the Guarded Door; Explorations in the Craft; Kingdom of the Wise; An Ark for England; A Walk in the Folk Park; Anglican Outcasts & Orthodox Catholicism; Wartime Trials; Cyprus & Beyond Notes; Index.

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Book SynopsisIn Spain today the civil war remains 'the past that will not pass away'. The long shadow of the Second World War is now also bringing back centre frame its most disquieting aspects, revealing to a broader public the stark truth already known by specialist historians -- that in Spain, as in the many other internecine wars soon to convulse Europe, war was waged predominantly upon civilians -- millions were killed not by invaders and strangers, but by their own compatriots, including their own neighbours. Across the continent, Hitler's war of territorial expansion after 1938 would detonate a myriad 'irregular wars', of culture as well as of politics, which took on a 'cleansing' intransigence as those driving them sought to make 'homogeneous' communities, whether ethnic, political or religious. So much of this was prefigured with primal intensity in Spain in 1936, where, on 17-18 July, a group of army officers rebelled against the socially-reforming Republic. Saved from almost certain failure by Nazi and Fascist military intervention, and by a British inaction amounting to complicity, these army rebels unleashed a conflict in which civilians became the targets of mass killing. The new military authorities authorised and presided over an extermination of those sectors associated with Republican change -- especially those who symbolised cultural change and thus posed a threat to old ways of being and thinking: progressive teachers, self-educated workers, 'new' women. In the Republican zone, resistance to the coup also led to the murder of civilians. This extrajudicial and communal killing in both zones would fundamentally make new political and cultural meanings that changed Spain's political landscape forever. Helen Graham explores the origins, nature and long-term consequences of this exterminatory war in Spain, charting the resonant forms of political, social and cultural resistance to it and the memory/legacy these have left behind in Europe and beyond. Not least is our growing sense of the enormity of what, in greater European terms, the Republican war effort resisted: Nazi adventurism, and the continent-wide wars of ethnic and political 'purification' it would unleash.Trade Review"Spain, it shows, was not a one-off but rather a distinctive victim of a relatively isolated southern European variant of extreme nationalism, one whose development was assisted by the fascist Axis powers and facilitated by the democracies policy of non-intervention. On the other hand, her brilliant demonstration of the European context relativizes and aids comprehension and her compassionate focus on individuals, particularly her chapter on the Brigaders (her inaugural lecture at Royal Holloway), serves to incite engagement and sympathy." - J. K. J. Thomson, University of Sussex,International Affairs 89: 2, 2013"Spain, it shows, was not a one-off but rather a distinctive victim of a relatively isolatedsouthern European variant of extreme nationalism, one whose development was assistedby the fascist Axis powers and facilitated by the democracies policy of non-intervention.On the other hand, her brilliant demonstration of the European context relativizes andaids comprehension and her compassionate focus on individuals, particularly her chapteron the Brigaders (her inaugural lecture at Royal Holloway), serves to incite engagementand sympathy." - J. K. J. Thomson, University of Sussex,International Affairs 89: 2, 2013Table of ContentsRecollecting the Child; History, Marriage & the Afterlife; To the East; Gone West; Opening the Guarded Door; Explorations in the Craft; Kingdom of the Wise; An Ark for England; A Walk in the Folk Park; Anglican Outcasts & Orthodox Catholicism; Wartime Trials; Cyprus & Beyond Notes; Index.

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Book SynopsisPatience Darton's unpublished letters and papers from 1930s Spain and 1950s China are at the heart of this new biography by Angela Jackson, together with testimony from recorded interviews and a wealth of photographs that illustrate the life of this remarkable woman. 'For us it was Heaven' tells the story of a young, upper middle-class nurse in the 1930s who becomes dramatically caught up in Spain's civil war and the passionate political issues of her times, but whose intimate writings reveal emotions and attitudes that will strike a chord with most self-aware and determined women today. While Patience nursed near the front lines in Spain, she met and fell in love with Robert, a German volunteer in the International Brigades, deeply committed to fighting fascism. Their passionate relationship coloured the rest of her long life, taking her to communist China and then, finally, back to Spain. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.Trade Review"Ms Jackson describes the personalities, the medical treatments, the living conditions, the politics, and the conduct of everyday life with an immediacy which makes this biography such a readable and vivid portrayal of a war which it will help to keep alive in our memories, and the index and references make it also an important resource. Through interviews and letters, she paints an unforgettable picture of an intrepid, stubborn, indomitable character, a woman of great ability who might not have made a very comfortable friend or lover, but whose concern for others was a driving force throughout her life." - Nick Coni, The Royal Society of Medicine Newsletter, March 2012This is a moving and illuminating book a wonderful, if extremely sad, love story, infused with selfless political dedication, it also provides a fascinating insight into English involvement with two key periods in countries which experienced major political upheaval and conflict during the 20th century: Spain, with its Civil War, and the International Brigades involvement; and newly-Communist China, with its idealistic foreign revolutionaries. - Books4Spain 2012Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionPART ONE: BUILDING A FRAME OF REPRESENTATION1. The Press, the Personal and News Values2. Issues of Public and Private3. Unifying Key ThemesPART TWO: EXPLORING TRADITIONAL REPRESENTATION4. Histories of Homosexuality: Definition and Discrimination5. Private Lives, Public Consequences: Representation Pre-19806. Immoral Sexuality, Moralistic Press Coverage: Representation 19801990PART THREE: EXPLORING CONTEMPORARY REPRESENTATION7. Histories of Homosexuality: the (Slow) Advancement of Gay Equality8. Scurrilous Politicians, Scandalous Stories: Representation 199019979. Public Life, Public Pressures: Representation Post-1997ConclusionBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThis book sets out to analyse the schism in French public opinion during the Spanish Civil War that was to end in the tragic collapse of French national unity. It makes no claim to being a new history of the conflict, or even of the international events surrounding it. It touches only cursorily upon the events in Spain proper. It considers only tangentially French public opinion in regard to the two Spains. Instead, it examines how the French people viewed their position in the international imbroglio swirling around the Spanish question, and how news was manipulated as never before. And since opinion polls were inexistent and radio commentary had little influence, almost the only means of gauging public opinion is the press. Mainstream historical fact is presented merely as the skeleton on which French press reportage is grafted. Included in the historical material is the author's research in the archives of all five of the French departements bordering on Spain. Within the press, four areas predominate: editorial opinion; propaganda; French correspondents in Spain; and collateral events in France (frontier incidents, arms supplies, foreign volunteers, and espionage activities). The work is divided into two parts, the chronological hiatus coming in December 1936. This division is explained by the policy formulated by the democracies that went through no appreciable change; a policy sufficiently strong, perhaps, to deter the Axis powers from all-out intervention in Spain, but weak enough to allow them to pursue with impunity a victory by attrition. The periodic opening and closing of the French frontier played no decisive part in the outcome, since French aid to the Spanish Republic never came close to what the Axis provided the Nationalists. The book ends with the agony of the Republican exodus. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

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Book SynopsisThe five-year period following the proclamation of the Republic in April 1931 was marked by physical assaults upon the property and public ritual of the Spanish Catholic Church. These attacks were generally carried out by rural and urban anticlerical workers who were frustrated by the Republic's practical inability to tackle the Church's vast power. On 17- 18 July 1936, a right-wing military rebellion divided Spain geographically, provoking the radical fragmentation of power in territory which remained under Republican authority. The coup marked the beginning of a conflict which developed into a full-scale civil war. Anticlerical protagonists, with the reconfigured structure of political opportunities working in their favour, participated in an unprecedented wave of iconoclasm and violence against the clergy. During the first six months of the conflict, innumerable religious buildings were destroyed and almost 7,000 religious personnel were killed. To date, scholarly interpretations of these violent acts were linked to irrationality, criminality and primitiveness. However, the reasons for these outbursts are more complex and deep-rooted: Spanish popular anti-clericalism was undergoing a radical process of reconfiguration during the first three decades of the twentieth century. During a period of rapid social, cultural and political change, anticlerical acts took on new -- explicitly political -- meanings, becoming both a catalyst and a symptom of social change. After 17--18 July 1936, anticlerical violence became a constructive force for many of its protagonists: an instrument with which to build a new society. This book explores the motives, mentalities and collective identities of the groups involved in anti-clericalism during the pre-war Spanish Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War, and is essential reading for all those interested in twentieth-century Spanish history. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

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Book SynopsisIn this history of Spain since 1975, with the collapse of dictatorship and transition to democracy, Aitana Guia demonstrates that a key factor left out of studies on the period -- namely immigration and specifically Muslim immigration -- has helped reinvigorate and strengthen the democratic process. Despite broad diversity and conflicting agendas, Muslim immigrants --often linking up with native converts to Islam -- have mobilized as an effective force. They have challenged the long tradition of Maurophobia exemplified in such mainstream festivities as the Festivals of Moors and Christians; they have taken to task residents and officials who have stood in the way of efforts to construct mosques; and they have defied the members of their own community who have refused to accommodate the rights of women. Beginning in Melilla, in Spanish-held North Africa, and expanding across Spain, the effect of this civil rights movement has been to fill gaps in legislation on immigration and religious pluralism and to set in motion a revision of prevailing interpretations of Spanish history and identity, ultimately forcing Spanish society to open up a space for all immigrants.Trade Review"Guias archival work and oral history make for a valuable contribution to a broader understanding of the Transition, and to migration studies in Spain. Of particular note is her shrewd engagement with questions of gender. By highlighting the importance of female activism in Melilla and Barcelona, and exploring various responses to the issue of the veil, she challenges accusations that Islamic culture is inherently discriminatory in this respect...there is much to gain from this innovative approach to Spains relationship with Islam today." Stuart Green, University of Leeds, Journal of Contemporary History,volume 22, issue 4, 2014

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Book SynopsisThe Spanish Civil War is one of the most studied events in modern European history. Its origins, that is to say the politics of the Second Republic (1931-1936), have been much debated. The republican period has been much idealised and in particular the myth of Spanish democracy beset by fascism, of which Franco was its leading figure, has been much cultivated. But was this really the case? Recently historians of the Republic have proposed a new and non-ideological perspective on the 1930s. Spain's path was at once different yet in many ways similar to that of Europe during the inter-war period. The Spanish Second Republic Revisited brings together leading and innovative specialists to analyse the main obstacles to the consolidation of democracy in Spain and to debate the principal stereotypes of the traditional historiography of both left and right. The issues addressed include: the breakdown of democracy; whether the CEDA was an opportunity or a threat; the centrist appeal under the Republic; how the elections were viewed and conducted; the transformation of fascism; new revelations about the Communist party; the politics of exclusion at the local level; the perceived necessity for repression; new perspectives on the Civil Guard; the role of intellectuals in the Republic; and revisionism and sectarian history. The Spanish Second Republic Revisited offers a new and dynamic vision of why Spanish democracy failed to consolidate itself and why it finally fell into the terror of civil war. The book is essential reading for all those interested in modern European history.

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Book SynopsisWhen a military coup provoked civil war in Spain in July 1936, many thousands of people around the world rallied to provide humanitarian aid. Britons were no exception. Collective efforts in Britain to provide aid for the Spanish Republic were vast in both scope and effect. Whilst such enterprise has formed the focus of a few previous studies, some of the most dramatic stories of the Spanish war have yet to be uncovered. This book seeks to shed light on the activities of two separate ventures that played important roles in British medical and humanitarian aid to Spain the Scottish Ambulance Unit and Sir George Young's Ambulance Unit. The volunteer members of these teams (those who went out to Spain and those who supported them in Britain) earned the unstinting praise of the Spanish government for their selfless commitment to the cause, as well as winning the respect and gratitude of the citizens whose welfare they strove so selflessly to protect. Recently discovered documentation reveals previously undisclosed details of these remarkably altruistic and, indeed, heroic enterprises, clarifying the reasoning behind their creation and documenting their endeavours in Spain endeavours of key relevance to the wider history of the conflict. In Spain, the volunteers of the Scottish Ambulance Unit and the George Young Ambulance Unit offered a heartening and inspiring antithesis to the suffering they sought to relieve. They deserve to be remembered for what they embodied during those days of untold cruelty and destruction outstanding examples of man's humanity to man.Trade Review"In Aristocrats, Adventurers and Ambulances : British Medical Units in the Spanish Civil War Palfreeman has rescued from the shadows the invaluable contribution made by the SAU and the GYAU during the Spanish Civil War, in the process illuminating the complex nature of the war-time organisational relationships that developed during this period. It is through such studies that a more nuanced understanding becomes possible of how something seemingly as simple as the provision of what by todays standards and even by the standards of the day were two small ambulance units, could have such a big impact upon the lives of those people it touched." - Jonathan Sebastian Browne, University of Kent, Cercles, June 2014"Linda Palfreemans new book, Aristocrats, Adventurers and Ambulances. British Medical Units in the Spanish Civil War, makes an important contribution to the historiography of Spains bitter civil war." - Alan Sennett, Left Central, 28th July 2014"...a strongly researched and well-written book that explores both political and humanitarian commitment in the Spanish conflict. Her desire to set the historical record straight leaps from the page." - Peter Anderson, University of Leeds, War in History 22(1)

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Book SynopsisWhen a military coup provoked civil war in Spain in July 1936, many thousands of people around the world rallied to provide humanitarian aid. Britons were no exception. Collective efforts in Britain to provide aid for the Spanish Republic were vast in both scope and effect. Whilst such enterprise has formed the focus of a few previous studies, some of the most dramatic stories of the Spanish war have yet to be uncovered. This book seeks to shed light on the activities of two separate ventures that played important roles in British medical and humanitarian aid to Spain the Scottish Ambulance Unit and Sir George Young's Ambulance Unit. The volunteer members of these teams (those who went out to Spain and those who supported them in Britain) earned the unstinting praise of the Spanish government for their selfless commitment to the cause, as well as winning the respect and gratitude of the citizens whose welfare they strove so selflessly to protect. Recently discovered documentation reveals previously undisclosed details of these remarkably altruistic and, indeed, heroic enterprises, clarifying the reasoning behind their creation and documenting their endeavours in Spain endeavours of key relevance to the wider history of the conflict. In Spain, the volunteers of the Scottish Ambulance Unit and the George Young Ambulance Unit offered a heartening and inspiring antithesis to the suffering they sought to relieve. They deserve to be remembered for what they embodied during those days of untold cruelty and destruction outstanding examples of man's humanity to man.Trade Review"In Aristocrats, Adventurers and Ambulances : British Medical Units in the Spanish Civil War Palfreeman has rescued from the shadows the invaluable contribution made by the SAU and the GYAU during the Spanish Civil War, in the process illuminating the complex nature of the war-time organisational relationships that developed during this period. It is through such studies that a more nuanced understanding becomes possible of how something seemingly as simple as the provision of what by todays standards and even by the standards of the day were two small ambulance units, could have such a big impact upon the lives of those people it touched." - Jonathan Sebastian Browne, University of Kent, Cercles, June 2014"Linda Palfreemans new book, Aristocrats, Adventurers and Ambulances. British Medical Units in the Spanish Civil War, makes an important contribution to the historiography of Spains bitter civil war." - Alan Sennett, Left Central, 28th July 2014"...a strongly researched and well-written book that explores both political and humanitarian commitment in the Spanish conflict. Her desire to set the historical record straight leaps from the page." - Peter Anderson, University of Leeds, War in History 22(1)

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Book SynopsisThomas Hardy's The Dynasts and Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace are both works which defy attempts to assign them to a particular genre but might seem to have little else in common apart from being set in the same period of history. This study argues that there are important similarities between these two works and examines the close correspondence between Hardy's and Tolstoy's thinking on themes relating to war, ideas of the heroic and the concept of free will. Although coming from very different backgrounds, both writers were influenced by their experiences of war, Tolstoy directly, by involvement in the wars in the Caucasus and the Crimea, and Hardy indirectly, by the events of the Anglo-Boer Wars. Their reaction to these experiences found expression in their descriptions of the wars fought against Napoleon at the beginning of the century. Hegel saw Napoleon as the great world-historical man of his time, and this work considers the ways in which Hardy and Tolstoy undermine this view, portraying Napoleon's physical and mental decline and questioning the role he played in determining the outcomes of military actions. Both writers were deeply interested in the question of free will and determinism and their writings reveal their attempts to understand the nature of the force which lies behind men's actions. Their differing views on the nature of consciousness are considered in the light of modern research on the development of the conscious brain.

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Book Synopsis"It was bright moonlight -- good bombing light -- and once we had to stop and put out our lights as a Fascist aeroplane flew over. They usually come swooping down with guns firing at cars, especially ambulances. Finally we arrived at a town among the hills about 12.30pm. Here there is a hospital of about 100 beds in a former convent. They expect an attack tonight". In these words New Zealand nurse Dorothy Morris described her journey to a Republican medical unit of the Spanish civil war in early 1937. This book is based on the vivid, detailed and evocative letters she sent from Spain and other European countries. They have been supplemented by wide-ranging research to record a life of outstanding professional dedication, resourcefulness and courage. Dorothy Aroha Morris (1904-1988) volunteered to serve with Sir George Young's University Ambulance Unit, and worked at an International Brigades base hospital and as head nurse to a renowned Catalan surgeon. She then headed a Quaker-funded children's hospital in Murcia, southern Spain. As Franco's forces advanced, she fled to France and directed Quaker relief services for tens of thousands of Spanish refugees. Nurse Morris spent the Second World War in London munitions factories, as welfare supervisor to their all-female workforces. She then joined the newly formed UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, working in the Middle East and Germany with those who had been displaced and made homeless and destitute as a result of the war. Dorothy Morris's remarkable and pioneering work in the fields of military medicine for civilian casualties, and large-scale humanitarian relief projects is told in this book for the first time. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.Trade Review"This is an intriguing book which seeks to interpret the world-changing events of the Spanish Civil War and World War Two through the eyes of a nurse from Christchurch, New Zealand..." Murray Rowlands, former director of Morley College, London, New Zealand Studies Network UK & Ireland, August 2015

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Book SynopsisWar is sometimes mistakenly construed as the chief impetus for medical innovation. Nevertheless, military conflict obliges the implementation of discoveries still at an experimental stage. Such was the case with the practice of blood transfusion during the Spanish Civil War, when massive demand for blood provoked immediate recourse to breakthroughs in transfusion medicine not yet integrated into standard medical practice. The Spanish Civil War marked a new era in blood transfusion medicine. Frederic Durán-Jordà and Carlos Elósegui Sarasoles, directors, respectively, of the blood transfusion services of the Republican Army and of the insurgent forces, were innovators in the field of indirect blood transfusion with preserved blood. Not only had they to create transfusion services, almost from scratch, capable of supplying campaigning armies with blood in wartime conditions, they also had to struggle against the medical establishment and to convince their medical peers of the value (not to mention the scientific significance) of what they were doing. The Blood Transfusion Service of the Republic was a truly international effort, with medical volunteers from all over the world carrying out transfusion work in primitive and often dangerous conditions. All took their lead from one man the young Catalan haematologist, Frederic Durán-Jordà, the indisputable pioneer of civil war blood transfusion medicine. From humble beginnings at the outbreak of war, blood transfusion services were created in Spain that would later become crucial in the treatment of casualties during the Second World War and would shape the future evolution of blood transfusion medicine throughout the developed world.

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Book SynopsisDuring the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) the British public raised an estimated one to two million pounds for Republican Spain, mostly through small individual donations at a time when large parts of Britain were experiencing severe economic depression. Across the country people were moved by the plight of Spain, a land in which most had never set foot. The response was quintessentially British; through picnics, whist drives, concerts, dances and rambling expeditions, the war in Spain became embedded in British social and cultural life. Innovative fundraising campaigns ran alongside lectures, film screenings and exhibitions, engaging people with the Spanish conflict. But it was a fragile alliance of progressive opinion, for those involved often had very different interpretations of the political significance of the war and of the Republic's fight for a broadly defined concept of democracy. The book provides a fresh perspective on what is a well-trodden area of scholarship. It places British humanitarian responses to Spain within the context of Britain's flourishing civic and popular political culture, following the advent of mass democracy in 1928 as supported by the Equal Franchise Act. Emily Mason explores engagement with Spain through three foci: the peace movement, the co-operative movement and British Christians groups that were at the heart of the humanitarian response, but which remain underexplored in current historiography. The book explores how the Republican cause resonated with notions of British identity and with the crises that different groups perceived to be threatening their world order. It explores the dilemma that non-intervention posed for many Britons, and argues that humanitarian support for the Spanish Republic offers an example of active citizenship and popular internationalism in Britain between the wars. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.Trade Review"Democracy, Deeds and Dilemmas is a well-crafted and concise study of 1930s inter-war British society and popular political culture as filtered through the lens of the Spanish Civil War. It does not assess the overall impact of British support on the course of the conflict, but instead provides a fascinating overview of some of the diverse networks of public engagement and activism that existed across Britain during the turbulent 1930s....Appropriately enough, Democracy, Deeds and Dilemmas has appeared in time for Britains Vote 100 commemorations of the 1918 Representation of the People Act. It is also a timely and resonant study in light of present-day activism and debate concerning the meaning and ownership of democracy in the age of Brexit, and of continuing popular discussion about Britains place in European and wider international affairs." Reviewer: Dr Edward Packard (University of Suffolk)

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Book SynopsisMarking the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, this volume takes a close look at the initial political moves, military actions and consequences of the fratricidal conflict and their impact on both Spaniards and contemporary European powers. The contributors re-examine the crystallization of the political alliances formed in the Republican and the Nationalist zones; the support mobilized by the two warring camps; and the different attitudes and policies adopted by neighbouring and far away countries. Spain 1936: Year Zero goes beyond and against commonly held assumptions as to the supposed unity of the Nationalist camp vis-a-vis the fragmentation of the Republican one; and likewise brings to the fore the complexities of initial support of the military rebellion by Nazi Germany and Soviet support of the beleaguered Republic. Situating the Iberian conflict in the larger international context, senior and junior scholars from various countries challenge the multitude of hitherto accepted ideas about the beginnings of the Spanish Civil War. A primary aim of the editors is to enable discussion on the Spanish Civil War from lesser known or realized perspectives by investigating the civil wars impact on countries such as Argentina, Japan, and Jewish Palestine; and from lesser heard voices at the time of women, intellectuals, and athletes. Original contributions are devoted to the Popular Olympiad organized in Barcelona in July 1936, Japanese perceptions of the Spanish conflict in light of the 1931 invasion to Manchuria, and international volunteers in the International Brigades.

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Book SynopsisThomas Hardy's The Dynasts and Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace are both works which defy attempts to assign them to a particular genre but might seem to have little else in common apart from being set in the same period of history. This study argues that there are important similarities between these two works and examines the close correspondence between Hardy's and Tolstoy's thinking on themes relating to war, ideas of the heroic and the concept of free will. Although coming from very different backgrounds, both writers were influenced by their experiences of war, Tolstoy directly, by involvement in the wars in the Caucasus and the Crimea, and Hardy indirectly, by the events of the Anglo-Boer Wars. Their reaction to these experiences found expression in their descriptions of the wars fought against Napoleon at the beginning of the century. Hegel saw Napoleon as the great world-historical man of his time, and this work considers the ways in which Hardy and Tolstoy undermine this view, portraying Napoleon's physical and mental decline and questioning the role he played in determining the outcomes of military actions. Both writers were deeply interested in the question of free will and determinism and their writings reveal their attempts to understand the nature of the force which lies behind men's actions. Their differing views on the nature of consciousness are considered in the light of modern research on the development of the conscious brain.

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Book SynopsisThis book proposes an interpretation of Francoism as the Spanish variant of fascism. Unlike Italian fascism and Nazism, the Franco regime survived the Second World War and continued its existence until the death of dictator Francisco Franco. Francoism was, therefore, the Last Survivor of the fascisms of the interwar period. And indeed this designation applies equally to Franco. The work begins with an analysis of the historical identity of Spanish fascism, constituted in the process of fascistization of the Spanish right during the crisis of the Second Republic, and consolidated in the formation of the fascist single-party and the New State during the civil war. Subsequent chapter contributions focus on various cultural and social projects (the university, political-cultural journals, the Labor University Service, local policies and social insurance) that sought to socialize Spaniards in the political principles of the Franco regime and thereby to strengthen social cohesion around it. Francoism faced varying degrees of non-compliance and outright hostility, expressed as different forms of cultural opposition to the Franco regime, especially in the years of its maturity (decades of the fifties and sixties), from Spaniards both inside Spain and in exile. Such opposition is explored in the context of how the regime reacted via the social, cultural and economic inducements at its disposal. The editors and contributors are widely published in the field of Spain of the Second Republic, the civil war and the Franco dictatorship. Research material is drawn from primary archival sources, and provides new information and new interpretations on Spanish politics, culture and society during the dictatorship.

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Book SynopsisMarking the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, this volume takes a close look at the initial political moves, military actions and consequences of the fratricidal conflict and their impact on both Spaniards and contemporary European powers. The contributors re-examine the crystallization of the political alliances formed in the Republican and the Nationalist zones; the support mobilized by the two warring camps; and the different attitudes and policies adopted by neighbouring and far away countries. Spain 1936: Year Zero goes beyond and against commonly held assumptions as to the supposed unity of the Nationalist camp vis-a-vis the fragmentation of the Republican one; and likewise brings to the fore the complexities of initial support of the military rebellion by Nazi Germany and Soviet support of the beleaguered Republic. Situating the Iberian conflict in the larger international context, senior and junior scholars from various countries challenge the multitude of hitherto accepted ideas about the beginnings of the Spanish Civil War. A primary aim of the editors is to enable discussion on the Spanish Civil War from lesser known or realized perspectives by investigating the civil wars impact on countries such as Argentina, Japan, and Jewish Palestine; and from lesser heard voices at the time of women, intellectuals, and athletes. Original contributions are devoted to the Popular Olympiad organized in Barcelona in July 1936, Japanese perceptions of the Spanish conflict in light of the 1931 invasion to Manchuria, and international volunteers in the International Brigades.

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Book SynopsisDuring the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) the British public raised an estimated one to two million pounds for Republican Spain, mostly through small individual donations at a time when large parts of Britain were experiencing severe economic depression. Across the country people were moved by the plight of Spain, a land in which most had never set foot. The response was quintessentially British; through picnics, whist drives, concerts, dances and rambling expeditions, the war in Spain became embedded in British social and cultural life. Innovative fundraising campaigns ran alongside lectures, film screenings and exhibitions, engaging people with the Spanish conflict. But it was a fragile alliance of progressive opinion, for those involved often had very different interpretations of the political significance of the war and of the Republic's fight for a broadly defined concept of democracy. The book provides a fresh perspective on what is a well-trodden area of scholarship. It places British humanitarian responses to Spain within the context of Britain's flourishing civic and popular political culture, following the advent of mass democracy in 1928 as supported by the Equal Franchise Act. Emily Mason explores engagement with Spain through three foci: the peace movement, the co-operative movement and British Christians groups that were at the heart of the humanitarian response, but which remain underexplored in current historiography. The book explores how the Republican cause resonated with notions of British identity and with the crises that different groups perceived to be threatening their world order. It explores the dilemma that non-intervention posed for many Britons, and argues that humanitarian support for the Spanish Republic offers an example of active citizenship and popular internationalism in Britain between the wars. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.Trade Review"Democracy, Deeds and Dilemmas is a well-crafted and concise study of 1930s inter-war British society and popular political culture as filtered through the lens of the Spanish Civil War. It does not assess the overall impact of British support on the course of the conflict, but instead provides a fascinating overview of some of the diverse networks of public engagement and activism that existed across Britain during the turbulent 1930s....Appropriately enough, Democracy, Deeds and Dilemmas has appeared in time for Britains Vote 100 commemorations of the 1918 Representation of the People Act. It is also a timely and resonant study in light of present-day activism and debate concerning the meaning and ownership of democracy in the age of Brexit, and of continuing popular discussion about Britains place in European and wider international affairs." Reviewer: Dr Edward Packard (University of Suffolk)

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Book SynopsisOn 26 April 1937, a weekly market day, nearly sixty bombers and fighters attacked Gernika. They dropped between 31 and 46 tons of explosive and incendiary bombs on the city center. The desolation was absolute: 85 percent of the buildings in the town were totally destroyed; over 2,000 people died in an urban area of less than one square kilometer. Lying is inherent to crime. The bombing of Gernika is associated to one of the most outstanding lies of twentieth-century history. Just hours after the destruction of the Basque town, General Franco ordered to attribute authorship of the atrocity to the Reds and that remained the official truth until his death in 1975. Today no one denies that Gernika was bombed. However, the initial regime denial gave way to reductionism, namely, the attempt to minimize the scope of what took place, calling into question that it was an episode of terror bombing, questioning Francos and his generals responsibility, diminishing the magnitude of the means employed to destroy Gernika and lessening the death toll. Even today, in the view of several authors the tragedy of Gernika is little less than an overstated myth broadcasted by Picasso. This vision of the facts feeds on the dense network of falsehoods woven for forty years of dictatorship and the one only truth of El Caudillo. Xabier Irujo exposes this labyrinth of falsehoods and leads us through a genealogy of lies to their origin, metamorphosis and current expressions. Gernika was a key event of contemporary European history; its alternative facts historiography an exemplar for commentators and historians faced with disentangling contested viewpoints on current military and political conflicts, and too often war crimes and genocide that result. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.The experience of the South African War sharpened the desire to commemorate for a number of reasons. An increasingly literate public, a burgeoning populist press, an army reinforced by waves of volunteers and, to contemporaries at least, a shockingly high death toll embedded the war firmly in the national consciousness. In addition, with the fallen buried far from home those left behind required other forms of commemoration. For these reasons, the South African War was an important moment of transition in commemorative practice and foreshadowed the rituals of remembrance that engulfed Britain in the aftermath of the Great War. This work provides the first comprehensive survey of the memorialisation process in Britain in the aftermath of the South African War. The approach goes beyond the simple deconstruction of memorial iconography and, instead, looks at the often tortuous and lengthy gestation of remembrance sites, from the formation of committees to the raising of finance and debates over form. In the process both Edwardian Britain’s sense of self and the contested memory of the conflict in South Africa are thrown into relief. In the concluding sections of the book the focus falls on other forms of remembrance sites, namely the multi-volume histories produced by the War Office and The Times, and the seminal television documentaries of Kenneth Griffith. Once again the approach goes beyond simple textual deconstruction to place the sources firmly in their wider context by exploring both production and reception. By uncovering the themes and myths that underpinned these interpretations of the war, shifting patterns in how the war was represented and conceived are revealed.Trade ReviewAn impressive work written with exemplary clarity and based on exhaustive research from an established and highly reputable historical scholar. A splendid read. Bill NassonIn Remembering the South African War Peter Donaldson does the important work of tracing the development of commemoration projects after the 1899–1902 war... this study is as much about process as it is about changing social contexts. Nicole Mares, Journal of Modern HistoryRemembering the South African War is felicitously written, and it is a model of scholarly clarity. Harold E Raugh Jr, Soldiers of the QueenTable of Contents Introduction 1: Civic War Memorials: Public Pride and Private Grief 2: Pro Patria Mori: Remembering the Regiment 3: Vitai Lampada: Remembering the War in Schools 4: Alternative Affiliations: Remembering the War in Families, Workplaces and Places of Worship 5: Writing the Anglo-Boer War: Leo Amery, Frederick Maurice and the history of the South African War 6: Filming the War: Television, Kenneth Griffith and the Boer War Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisConfederate President Jefferson Davis hoped one of his commanders could baffle the enemy in his designs on the Mississippi Valley. Confederate Major General Richard Taylor knew that the only long- term solution to protecting the twin river citadels at Vicksburg and Port Hudson was an active offensive. To that end he had already built a modest but well-supplied army while his powerful Rebel gunboat flotilla grew daily. Taylor just needed time. With the enemy army under General Nathaniel P. Banks fixated east of the Mississippi, Taylor believed he might just see his plans put into action With luck, the Confederate army might regain territory lost in Louisiana and its flag might once against float over New Orleans. The Union army would then have much larger issues to worry about.Taylor had cause to be optimistic. The Federal Army and navy had been trying the direct approach against Vicksburg and Port Hudson with mounting casualties, lost ships, and growing frustration. “There is no use longer deceiving the public, for the Banks expedition is a failure,” wrote a Massachusetts journalist. “Much as I admire Gen. Banks I am forced to admit that he is not the soldier I judged him to be nor the general this department needs.”As Rebel plans matured, time grew short for Union efforts. Banks needed to redeem himself, and his officers suggested an indirect approach west of the Mississippi, working from enclaves captured the previous fall, as the the key to victory. “The Teche county was to the war in Louisiana what the Shenandoah Valley was to the war in Virginia” Captain John William De Forest of the 12th Connecticut Infantry noted. “It was sort of a back alley, parallel to the main street wherein the heavy fighting must go on”. Instead of wasting his army against enemy entrenchments and prepared positions, Banks decided instead to roll up Bayou Teche, destroy Taylor’s small army, and isolate Port Hudson from its groceries. Capturing places like Franklin, New Iberia, Opelousas, and Alexandria, he might even open the possibility of cooperation with the army under General Ulysses S. Grant operating against Vicksburg.Taylor, caught by surprise and beaten to the punch, reacted with typical pugnacity “To retreat without fighting was . . . to abandon Louisiana”, he wrote. Unless his army held its ground, the way across the Pelican State lay open to Union invasion with potentially catastrophic results for the fight for the lower Mississippi River. If Union land and naval forces gained control of the Red River, they would shut off the steady supply of corn, hogs, and beef heading into the forts across the river.In the spring of 1863, the opening act of the final scene of the Mississippi Valley campaign would play out in southwestern Louisiana among the bayous and swamps of the massive Atchafalaya Basin.Donald S. Frazier, author of the award-winning Fire in the Cane Field, expands up his Louisiana Quadrille with the release of book two, Thunder Across the Swamp: The Fight for the Lower Mississippi, February-May 1863. The better known stories of the campaigns for Vicksburg and Port Hudson grow richer and more nuanced by taking a look at the fighting west of the river as part of a larger picture.

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Book SynopsisAward-winning author Donald S. Frazier returns to the field of Civil War history with keen turn of phrase and enthralling story-telling with the release of Fire in the Cane Field: The Invasion of Louisiana and Texas, January 1861–January 1863. Beginning with the spasms of secession in the Pelican State, Frazier weaves a stirring tale of bravado, reaction, and war as he describes the consequences of disunion for the hapless citizens of Louisiana. The army and navy campaigns he portrays weave a tale of the Federal Government's determination to suppress the newborn Confederacy - and nearly succeeding - by putting ever-increasing pressure on its adherents from New Orleans to Galveston. The surprising triumph of Texas troops on their home soil in early 1863 proved to be a decisive reverse to Union ambitions and doomed the region to even bloodier destruction to come. This bracing work, ten years in the making, ushered in a chronological string of books on the Civil War in Louisiana and Texas, as Frazier presents fresh sources on new topics in a series of captivating narratives.

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Book SynopsisIn early 1861, most Missourians hoped they could remain neutral in the upcoming conflict between North and South. In fact, a popularly elected state convention voted in March of that year that ""no adequate cause"" existed to compel Missouri to leave the Union. Instead, Missourians saw themselves as ideologically centered between the radical notions of abolition and secession. By summer 1861, however, the situation had deteriorated dramatically. Because of the actions of politicians and soldiers such as Missouri Gov. Claiborne Jackson and Union Gen. Nathaniel Lyon, Missourians found themselves forced to take sides. In this updated edition, author Jeffrey Patrick tells the fascinating story of high-stakes military gambles, aggressive leadership, and lost opportunities. Campaign for Wilson's Creek is a tale of unique military units, untried but determined commanders, colorful volunteers, and professional soldiers. The first major campaign of the Civil War to take place west of the Mississippi River guaranteed that Missourians would be engaged in a long, cruel civil war within the larger, national struggle.Trade ReviewPatrick provides an excellent overview of the campaign and battle of Wilson's Creek, the second major Confederate victory of the Civil War. Patrick's extensive research, use of lively quotations, and strong narrative combine for a compelling story."" -Wilson Piston""This manuscript's greatest strength, is the richness of its first-hand accounts and its multitude of quotes by participants themselves."" - John C. Waugh""This is an excellent manuscript to be included in the Campaign & Commanders series."" - Steven E. Woodworth

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Book SynopsisRomanticized scenes of heroic soldiers fighting on the vast plains are strewn throughout early chronicles of the old frontier army. Such interpretations rarely convey the complex truth or reality of the day-to-day existence of the soldiers or of the American Indians on whose land the battles took place.As new documents surface, coupled with increased digital access for scholars, in-depth examinations of the army’s role during this time in United States history are moving forward. Under the direction of editor R. Eli Paul, contributors to this book present new primary sources and fresh interpretations of the Regular Army in the West in fitting tribute to the careers of Thomas R. Buecker and John D. (“Jack”) McDermott.Centering on military conflicts and postings around present-day South Dakota and in the Black Hills between 1854 and 1890, the contributors highlight the diverse experiences of those associated with the American frontier army and the people they fought on the Great Plains. Observations formed by studying personal letters, recorded memories, and contemporary monuments provide an analysis of how the army and its soldiers are remembered today. Firsthand accounts give previously ignored groups a voice, and readers learn more about lesser-known actors—foot soldiers, minorities, and others on the periphery of popular history. Individually, the essays bring much needed context to this era; together, they present a more complete picture of those confronted with and involved in the nineteenth-century mission of expansion and control.Table of Contents Introduction. The Frontier Army Remembered - R. Eli Paul Chapter 1. Harney’s Aide-de-Camp at the Blue Water Fight, 1855: A Letter by Marshall T. Polk II, United States Army - R. Eli Paul Chapter 2. The Fourth United States Artillery and the Great Sioux War: Source Material - Paul L. Hedren Chapter 3. Shoot Today and Kill Tomorrow: The Function and Evolution of Artillery during the Indian Campaigns, 1866–1890 - Douglas C. McChristian Chapter 4. No Time to Fight: Recreation in the Frontier Army - Lori A. Cox-Paul Chapter 5. “A Very Good Friend to the Army”: The Frontier Soldier in the Western Art of Frederic Remington - Brian W. Dippie Chapter 6. Lakota Perspectives on Wounded Knee, 1890 - Jerome A. Greene Chapter 7. Remembering the Buffalo Soldiers: Memorials to Black Soldiers of the Indian-War Era - Frank N. Schubert Appendix. Notable Works on the Frontier Army and Indian Wars by Thomas R. Buecker and John D. McDermott Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisIntervention Narratives examines the contradictory cultural representations of the US intervention in Afghanistan that help to justify an imperial foreign policy. These narratives involve projecting Afghans as brave anti-communist warriors who suffered the consequences of American disengagement with the region following the end of the Cold War, as victimized women who can be empowered through enterprise, as innocent dogs who need to be saved by US soldiers, and as terrorists who deserve punishment for 9/11. Given that much of public political life now involves affect rather than knowledge, feelings rather than facts, familiar recurring tropes of heroism, terrorism, entrepreneurship, and canine love make the war easier to comprehend and elicit sympathy for US military forces. An indictment of US policy, Bose demonstrates that contemporary imperialism operates on an ideologically diverse cultural terrain to enlist support for the war across the political spectrum. Trade Review"At a time when US hegemony is being challenged and redefined, narratives about Afghanistan - combining the threats of terrorism with the attractions of the region's economic resources - are being used to underscore American exceptionalism and perceptions of national identity. Bose's astute book reveals the underbelly of these 'mock narratives' for what they are: stories that the US tells about itself, both internally and externally, to substitute affective relations for political analysis in the narrative that has become 'Afghanistan.'" -- Susan Jeffords * author of Hard Bodies *"Intervention Narratives is like a bright light switched on suddenly in the mind of those uneasy about temporizing in a world of perpetual war. Instead of probing stories about empire, Bose dismantles empire’s own – the narrative “soft weapons” concocted by strategists of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. In this beautifully factual, honest, and theoretically astute book – roving from canine rescue tales to premature withdrawal fantasies – she upends the usual meaning of posthumanism, affect, and post-truth by inserting them into the dark arenas of contemporary geopolitics." -- Timothy Brennan * author of Borrowed Light *"Campaign for the American Reader: Pg. 99: Purnima Bose's "Intervention Narratives" https://americareads.blogspot.com/2020/01/pg-99-purnima-boses-intervention.html * Campaign for the American Reader *"The Page 99 Test: Purnima Bose's "Intervention Narratives" https://page99test.blogspot.com/2020/01/purnima-boses-intervention-narratives.html * The Page 99 Test *"Intervention Narratives provides theoretical underpinning to explicate the narratives Bose analyzes, and Bose also offers a comprehensive thesis about what makes them persuasive, compulsively repeated, and ultimately harmful." * Time Now *"Bose’s book marks one of the first that actually breaks down the assumptions of the abundance of war literature that has been written about Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. In effect, Bose takes on the knowledge–industrial complex that exists around Afghanistan, showing us, sometimes line by line, where the discursive violence lies, and how it sets the stage for actual violence." -- Helena Zeweri * Interentions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies *Table of ContentsContentsAcronyms ixIntroduction:Intervention Narratives and Geopolitical Fetishism1 The Premature-Withdrawal NarrativeHegemonic Masculinities and the Liberal Humanist Subject2 The Capitalist-Rescue NarrativeAfghan Women and Micro-Entrepreneurship3 The Canine-Rescue Narrativeand Post-Humanist Humanitarianism4 The Retributive-Justice NarrativeOsama bin Laden as SimulacraPostscript: Three Presidents, One PolicyAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisThis book considers the history of the Prester John legend and its impact on the Crusades, investigating its entangled mythical history between East and West during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The present study thus responds to the still pressing need for a comprehensive historical investigation of the twelfth and thirteenth crusading history of the legend and its impact on the Muslim-Crusader encounters, examining various Latin, Arabic, Syriac, and Coptic accounts. It further reflects on new eastern aspects of the legend, presenting a new Arab scholarly view. This book first charts a pre-history of the legend in the late ancient Christian prophecy of the Last Emperor down to the emergence of the legend in the mid-twelfth century. Second, the work presents a historical discussion of the legend and its association with actual occurrences in the Far East and the Levant, analysing the legend history under the crusading crisis and the imperial papal schism in Europe. Meanwhile, the work considers the vague Prester John Letter addressed to Manuel I Komnenus, Byzantine Emperor, and its elaborate conception of a mythical eastern kingdom, revealing imaginative parallels on the wondrous East and legendary Eastern Christian kings in Arabic Muslim and Christian accounts of the Muslim geographer and cartographer al-Idr?s?, the Coptic ?b? al-Mak?rim and the Syriac Ibn al-?Ibr? (Bar Hebraeus), among others. Moreover, the book examines how the legend impacted war and peace processes between the Ayyubids and the Crusaders during the Fifth Crusade against Egypt (1217-1221), revealing how it was mingled with Arabic and Eastern Christian prophecies at the time. The study concludes by investigating the perception of Prester John by the papal and European envoys to the Mongols in the thirteenth century, revealing how the legend was instrumentalised (and even weaponised) to establish a Latin-Mongol crusade through a parallel exploration of relevant Latin, Arabic and Syriac sources.Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgements Note of Transliteration and Style List of Figures and Maps List of Abbreviations INTRODUCTION Historiography: Prester John between Past and Present Objectives and Methodology CHAPTER 1. Setting a Geographic and Mythico-historical Stage for the Prester John Legend CHAPTER 2. Between Transmission and Reception: The Birth of the Prester John Legend and the Crusader-Muslim Conflict, 1122-1145 CHAPTER 3. The Prester John Letter and its Perception between the Crusading Crisis in the Levant and Imperial-Papal Schism in the West CHAPTER 4. Imaging the Prester John Kingdom in the Three Indias: The Legend's Entanglements with Alexander Romance, Jewish and Arab Muslim-Christian Imagination CHAPTER 5. Waiting for King David, Son of Prester John: The Impact of the Legend on Peace and War during the Fifth Crusade (615-618/1217-1221) CHAPTER 6. The Mongol Figure of Prester John: Remembering the Legend and the Enterprise of Latin-Mongol Crusade(s), 1222-1300 CONCLUSION Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisClaiming more than 600,000 lives, the American Civil War had a devastating impact on countless numbers of common soldiers and civilians, even as it brought freedom to millions. This book shows how average Americans coped with despair as well as hope during this vast upheaval. A People at War brings to life the full humanity of the war''s participants, from women behind their plows to their husbands in army camps; from refugees from slavery to their former masters; from Mayflower descendants to freshly recruited Irish sailors. We discover how people confronted their own feelings about the war itself, and how they coped with emotional challenges (uncertainty, exhaustion, fear, guilt, betrayal, grief) as well as physical ones (displacement, poverty, illness, disfigurement). The book explores the violence beyond the battlefield, illuminating the sharp-edged conflicts of neighbor against neighbor, whether in guerilla warfare or urban riots. The authors travel as far west as China and as farTrade Review"Nelson and Sheriff offer a good social history of the US Civil War.... Overall, very well researched and nicely written. Highly recommended."--E.M. Thomas, CHOICE "A People at War is especially welcome because its subject cannot be overstudied and this particular examination is beautifully executed. The authors are comprehensive, wide-ranging and sensitive. The book is informative and pleasurable to read."--Ray B. Browne, Journal of American Cultures "A People at War stands out as one of the best comprehensive overviews because of its focus on the lives and experiences of ordinary civilians and soldiers. Relying upon recent social histories and extensive primary sources, the book provides a new perspective on an otherwise well-studied subject. Scholars, the public, and especially students will benefit greatly from this highly readable and fascinating volume."--Maris Vinovskis, Bentley Professor of History, University of Michigan "In 1861 Abraham Lincoln described the Civil War as 'a people's contest.' A People at War chronicles in encyclopedic detail just what that phrase meant to the millions of soldiers and their families and friends back home who experienced that bloodiest of American wars. Drawing on hundreds of books and articles that have made social history the most dynamic field of Civil War historiography in recent years, the authors bring alive the impact of the war on ordinary as well as extraordinary people."--James M. McPherson, Princeton University "I am very pleased to see someone generally succeed at a book that covers vital themes in the history of the Civil War, seamlessly integrates and builds on the best of recent scholarship--and does so with such economy and, at times, stylistic flair."--Michael Mason, Brigham Young University "An excellent, well-written, broad overview of important yet often muted facets of Civil War history. Scholars, teachers, and buffs should all enjoy this inspired work."--William Feis, The Annals of IowaTable of ContentsIntroduction: A People at War From Compromise to Chaos: 1854-1861 1. The Road to Bleeding Kansas 2. From Wigwam to War The Changing Faces of War: 1861-1863 3. Friends and Foes: Early Recruits and Freedom's Cause, 1861-1862 4. Union Occupation and Guerrilla Warfare 5. Facing Death Political, Military, and Diplomatic Remedies: 1862-1865 6. Two Governments Go to War: Southern Democracy and Northern Republicanism 7. Redefining the Rules of War: The Lieber Code 8. Diplomacy in the Shadows: Cannons, Sailors, and Spies The War Hits Home: 1861-1865 9. We Need Men: Union Struggles over Manpower 10. The Male World of the Camp: Domesticity and Discipline 11. "Cair, Anxiety, & Tryals": Life in the Wartime Union 12. War's Miseries: The Confederate Home Front Rebuilding the Nation: 1865-1877 13. A Region Reconstructed and Unreconstructed: The Postwar South 14. A Nation Stitched Together: Westward Expansion and the Peace Treaty of 1877 Acknowledgements Political Chronology Military Chronology Suggestions for Further Reading Index

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Book SynopsisThe tale of how individual officers on the ground at Guantanamo Bay, along with their direct superiors, were unwittingly co-opted into the Pentagon's plan to turn the prison into an interrogation facility operating at the margins of the law and beyond.Trade ReviewGreenberg is a great storyteller. * Sunday Times *Read this book for an understanding of the fearsome banality of the workings of arbitrary power. * Frank Furedi, Times Higher Education *Greenberg tells an excellent human story, efficiently piecing together the accounts of the guards, inmates and lawyers. * Stephen Robinson, The Guardian *If you thought Guantanamo held no more surprises, this remarkable and timely book will change your mind. Karen Greenberg has unearthed a history we did not know we had, somehow persuading scores of military and intelligence officers-and their former captives-to break a seven-year silence. Packed with revelations, this vivid story shows exactly how nods and winks from Washington led to lawless abuse. Just at the moment we need it most, with a new president vowing to find a way out, Greenberg gives the best account yet of where and how and why the troubles began. * Advance praise from Barton Gellman, author of Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency *Greenberg tells a gripping and vivid story of the first days of the Guantanamo detainee debacle. In a fast paced and well researched narrative, her characters come alive on this dusty island base as they struggle with the moral and professional dilemmas that are a microcosm of a bigger drama being played out in Washington. Policy was formulated by a small cabal of Pentagon and White House zealots who did not understand the fundamental nature of counterterrorism-and forced their ill-conceived policies on a reluctant but ultimately compliant military, judicial and diplomatic corps. * Advance praise from Michael Sheehan, author of Crush the Cell *The consequences of Guantanamo on America's standing in the world have been well chronicled, but here, in heartbreaking detail, we learn the story of how it might have been different. Karen Greenberg's surprising and provocative history of the first hundred days of Guantanamo provides an invaluable comment on how the war on terror turned into a moral assault on our on values and institutions. * Advance praise from Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower *Karen Greenberg's deeply researched account of the early days of Guantanamo shows the legal, political and moral questions that plagued the prison camp from the outset: its dubious legal authority, the uncertain status of the prisoners, and the doubts of key officials who tried to uphold American and international law. The Least Worst Place, which is so well written that it reads in places like a prose poem, is going to be essential reading for anyone who is trying to understand the legal morass surrounding Guantanamo and detainee policy in the 'war on terror.' * Advance praie from Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I Know *Table of ContentsPART I: DECEMBER. PARADISE LOST; PART II: JANUARY. THE NEW WORLD ORDER; PART III: FEBRUARY. SHADOW COMMAND; PART IV: MARCH. FAILURE

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