Search results for ""C Hurst Co Publishers Ltd""

Shortlisted for the African Business Book of the Year Award For Heineken, ‘rising Africa’ is already a reality: the profits it extracts there are almost 50 per cent above the global average, and beer costs more in some African countries than it does in Europe. Heineken claims its presence boosts economic development on the continent. But is this true? Investigative journalist Olivier van Beemen has spent years seeking the answer, and his conclusion is damning: Heineken has hardly benefited Africa at all. On the contrary, there are some shocking skeletons in its African closet: tax avoidance, sexual abuse, links to genocide and other human rights violations, high-level corruption, crushing competition from indigenous brewers, and collaboration with dictators and pitiless anti-government rebels. Heineken in Africa caused a political and media furore on publication in The Netherlands, and was debated in their Parliament. It is an unmissable exposé of the havoc wreaked by a global giant seeking profit in the developing world.

Read more less

In 1945, three young brothers joined and eventually led Brazil’s first government-sponsored expedition into its Amazonian rainforests. After more expeditions into unknown terrain, they became South America's most famous explorers, spending the rest of their lives with the resilient tribal communities they found there. People of the Rainforest recounts the Villas Boas brothers’ four thrilling and dangerous ‘first contacts’ with isolated indigenous people, and their lifelong mission to learn about their societies and, above all, help them adapt to modern Brazil without losing their cultural heritage, identity and pride. Author and explorer John Hemming vividly traces the unique adventures of these extraordinary brothers, who used their fame to change attitudes to native peoples and to help protect the world’s surviving tropical rainforests, under threat again today.

Read more less

An indispensable guide to understanding modern warfare, especially the decisions made by politicians and generalsboth good and bad.Has any war in history gone according to plan? Monarchs, dictators and elected leaders alike have a dismal record on military decision-making, from over-ambitious goals to disregarding intelligence, terrain, or enemy capabilities. This not only wastes the lives of civilians, the enemy and one's own soldiers, but also fails to achieve geopolitical objectives, and usually lays the seeds for more wars down the line.Conflict scholar and former soldier Mike Martin takes the reader through the hard, elegant logic to fighting a conclusive interstate war that solves geopolitical problems, and reduces future conflict. In cool and precise prose, he outlines how to orchestrate military forces, from infantry to information, and from strategy to tactics.How to Fight a War explains the unavoidable, yet seemingly elusive,

Read more less

This book narrates the tumultuous era of total war through the fate of AachenImperial Germany's seat of power for 600 years, site of Charlemagne's coronation as Holy Roman Emperor, and a place with greater geopolitical significance for Adolf Hitler in 1944 than Stalingrad in 1943.This was a stark contrast with the events of the Great War: in 1918, the Imperial German Army had abandoned Aachen in a rout-like flight. In the Nazi period, however, Aachen became a major symbol of Germany's defiance against the Allies. For Hitlerhis mind warped after surviving the Stauffenberg bomb plotGermany's westernmost city became pivotal in his last-ditch defence of the thousand-year Reich'.War Comes to Aachen weaves together the city's story from 1900, tracing its entrenched Catholic orthodoxy, its growth as an industrial urban centre, the demise of democracy, the rise of Nazism, the two world wars, and the Holocaust. The book surveys Churchill's wartime

Read more less

Most accounts of Nigeria's colonisation were written by British officials, presenting it as a noble civilising mission to rid Africans of barbaric superstition and corrupt tribal leadership. Thanks to this skewed writing of history, many Nigerians today still have Empire nostalgia and view the colonial period through rose-tinted glasses. Max Siollun offers a bold rethink: an unromanticised history, arguing compellingly that colonialism had few benevolent intentions, but many unjust outcomes. It may have ended slavery and human sacrifice, but it was accompanied by extreme violence; ethnic and religious identity were cynically exploited to maintain control, while the forceful remoulding of longstanding legal and social practices permanently altered the culture and internal politics of indigenous communities. The aftershocks of this colonial meddling are still being felt decades after independence. Popular narratives often suggest that the economic and political turmoil are homegrown, b

Read more less

Seventy-five years after 1984first published, George Orwell is back. Progressives denounce Orwellian' untruths by Trump, Johnson, Putin et al, while conservatives accuse governments and mainstream media of Orwellian' censorship. But what does Orwellian' really mean? What would the man himself say about these crises, and what can we learn from his ideas?Orwell's Ghostsreveals Orwell in all his complexity, exploring his commitment to political liberty and economic justice alongside his undeniable chauvinism. This sharp free thinker's commentaries remain invaluable, whether on political truth, disinformation, class, race and empire, or highlighting the promise of socialism and the dangerous appeal of authoritarianism. Even Orwell's misogyny offers troubling lessons about gender politics on the left. All of his books show remarkable resonance between the first half of the twentieth century and today's world.Revisiting Orwell's own age of rap

Read more less

Olivier Roy, world-renowned authority on Islam and politics, finds in the modern disconnection between faith communities and socio-cultural identities a fertile space for fundamentalism to grow. Instead of freeing the world from religion, secularization has encouraged a kind of holy ignorance to take root, an anti-intellectualism that promises immediate, emotional access to the sacred and positions itself in direct opposition to contemporary pagan culture. The secularization of society was supposed to free people from religion, yet individuals are converting en masse to fundamentalist faiths, such as Protestant evangelicalism, Islamic Salafism, and Haredi Judaism. These religions either reconnect adherents to their culture through casual referents, like halal fast food, or maintain their momentum through purification rituals, such as speaking in tongues, a practice that allows believers to utter a language that is entirely their own. Instead of a return to traditional religious worship, we are now witnessing the individualization of faith and the disassociation of faith communities from ethnic and national identities. Roy explores the options now available to powers that hope to integrate or control these groups; and whether marginalization or homogenization will further divide believers from their culture.

Read more less

In his seminal work "The Clash of Civilisations", Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington claimed that conflict between cultural blocs, or civilizations, will dominate the future. More controversially, he predicted that future conflicts will occur on the borders between Western and Islamic civilisations. The statements of Osama Bin-Laden seem to support his views: 'This battle is not between al-Qaeda and the US,' he said in October 2001. 'This is a battle of Muslims against the Global Crusaders. 'This specially commissioned set of essays sets out critically to examine the border zones of Islamic civilisation, be they geographical, cultural or virtual. The contributors explore the local dynamics in these zones to test whether or not they support or contradict Huntingdon's thesis of an emerging global confrontation between Islamic civilisation and its neighbours, be they Christian, Hindu, Buddhist or godless.Among the borders discussed are those where Muslims are the majority (Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Somalia,Pakistan, Turkey), those with very large Muslim minorities (Philippines, Nigeria, India) and those where new faultlines have been created, either through migration (France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain) or technology (the internet). A commonthread running through the book is whether the rise of international Salafi jihadism can be traced to countries on the faultline between Islam and the non-Islamic world. The contributors conclude by arguing that many of the border regions of Islamic civilisation are influenced by mechanisms far more complex than those highlighted in "The Clash of Civilisations", suggesting that poverty and institutional failure, both often the result of war, tend to heighten religious awareness and practice, but that the effects of these phenomena differ from those suggested by Huntington.

Read more less

If a state carries out or sanctions atrocities on a mass scale within its borders, is there an international right, or even duty, to intervene in support of the victims? Or does this notion undermine state sovereignty at the expense of weaker states? These are key questions in the debate on humanitarian intervention, which has become increasingly polarised in the twenty-first century. Many now view this as little more than a rationale for Western neo-imperialism, while others uphold it as a crusade for liberal democracy and individual rights.This book seeks to establish an alternative position. It critiques current international policies by examining their impact on developing and transitional countries, and it also argues that military interventions have had limited success in building sustainable peace. But it endorses the notion of a 'responsibility to protect', suggesting that a more progressive future would be possible if this were interpreted radically and combined with an enlarged conception of 'humanitarianism' that addressed issues of global inequality and poverty.This work will have particular resonance for those who have opposed recent Anglo-American policy, but have simultaneously believed that 'something must be done' to save those threatened with genocide or other atrocities. Drawing on a range of disciplines and offering a distinct approach, it is aimed at all those who wish to understand a complex issue of contemporary importance. It will be particularly useful for students of international relations, contemporary history, peace and conflict studies, international law, politics, and development studies, and those working in NGOs.

Read more less

The internet has profoundly shaped how Muslims perceive Islam, and how Islamic societies and networks are evolving and shifting within the twenty-first century. While these electronic interfaces appear new and innovative in terms of how the media is applied, much of their content has a basis in classical Islamic concepts, with an historical resonance that can be traced back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad. "I-Muslims" explores how these transformations and influences play out in diverse cyber Islamic environments, and how they are responding to shifts in technology and society. This book discusses how, in some contexts, the application of the internet has had an overarching transformational effect on how Muslims practice Islam, how forms of Islam are represented to the wider world, and how Muslim societies perceive themselves and their peers. On one level, this may be in terms of practical performance of Islamic duties and rituals, or on the interpretation and understanding of the Qur'an. On another level, cyber Islamic environments have exposed Muslims to radical and new influences outside of traditional spheres of knowledge and authority, causing long-standing paradigmatic shifts at a grassroots level within societies. "I-Muslims" looks at how these changes are taking place, including through social networking sites and the blogosphere. This book also explores how the internet has dramatically influenced jihad-oriented campaigns by networks such as al-Qaeda, and has made a significant difference to how forms of Islamic activism and radicalization have been engendered. This book concludes by determining the way forward for the articulation of diverse understandings of Islam online, and how Muslim networks will be further shaped through their relationships with the internet.

Read more less

This present volume presents annotated selections from the British records that were copied in situ by the author in al-Fashir and Kutum in 1970 and 1974 and of which the originals were subsequently destroyed by accident. The British were in Darfur for only forty years (1916-56) and, administratively, their impact was minimal. In retrospect, their most important role was in recording and codifying the customary law and administrative practice under the sultans. Their significance has become the greater recently following reports that the Sudan National Records Office is no long accessible to researchers. Darfur was unique in a Sudanese colonial context in that in 1916 the British conquered a functioning multi-ethnic African Muslim state. Their policy in the forty years of their rule was largely to maintain the system they had inherited from the sultans. Although they made some administrative modifications, it was only in the last few years before independence in 1956 that tentative steps were taken towards change, for example the introduction of local government in the towns.The material described here, a combination of administrative practice and ethnographic reporting, is far from simply academic in importance, but is invaluable on such issues as land tenure, agricultural practice, grazing rights and livestock migration routes, tribal administration and compensation for injury and death.

Read more less

What does it mean to be Zulu today? Does being Zulu today differ from what it meant in the past? Zulu Identities wrestles with these and many other related questions to show how the characteristic traditions of a pre-industrial people have evolved into different cultural expressions of 'Zulu-ness' in modern South Africa. This authoritative and specially commissioned volume, which contains more collected expertise on the Zulus than is available from any other source, examines the legacies of Shaka, the intrigues of Zulu royalty, gender and generational struggles, cultural and symbolic projections, and spirituality. It highlights the debates in contemporary South Africa over the manipulation of Zulu heritage, whether deployed for party political purposes or exploited to promote eco - and battlefield-tourism. And finally the book contemplates the future of Zulu identity in a unitary South Africa seeking to embrace the forces of globalisation.

Read more less

While governments are obliged to protect society and bring terrorists to justice, their effectiveness in tackling terrorism without undermining the support of the population for law and order or jeopardising basic liberties is paramount. In dealing with extremism, governments have found it difficult to balance the imperatives of security and the rights of liberty. That said, neither lethargy nor hysteria is conducive to ensuring national security. Rather, steely determination grounded in facts and sound judgments about the challenges confronting us are required.The exaggeration by governments of a terrorist threat in order to sustain a credible anti-terrorism narrative, to manipulate public opinion, to push through draconian legislation or even to win elections are not novelties of the post-9/11 world, but as the contributors to this book point out, governments in many countries, from Putin's Russia and Fujimori's Peru to Italy in the 1970s, have stumbled towards repressing the very liberty and democratic culture which the terrorists seek to destroy.It includes contributors such as: Paul Wilkinson (St Andrews), Leonard Weinberg (Nevada), John Mueller (Ohio), Richard Drake (Montana), Martin Miller (Duke), Jonathan Stevenson (Naval War College), Jo-Marie Burt (George Mason), Javier Jordan (Granada), Robert Saunders (New York), William Eubank (Nevada), Richard Jackson (Manchester), Chris Michaelsen (OSCE), and Nicola Horsburg (King's College).

Read more less

Who is Omar Nasiri? Why does he matter? What makes his story worth telling? In the early 1990s, Nasiri, a Moroccan brought up in Europe, fell in with a gang of North African Islamist extremists who were planning attacks, raising money, and buying weapons and explosives. The DGSE, France's foreign espionage arm, recruited Nasiri as an informer - routine, workaday stuff at first, but his talents for dissimulation meant he became increasingly useful to his handlers. After proving himself to his superiors in Paris, they set him a seemingly impossible task: to infiltrate Al Qaeda's training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Read more less

This book investigates the paradox at the heart of present-day Gulf of Guinea politics. The governance crisis festering throughout every one of the region's states ought to discourage outsiders from capital-intensive, long-term commercial involvement and cast doubts over the political survival of ruling cliques. However, the presence of large petroleum deposits radically changes this equation: the negative dynamics of state failure and widespread violence affect the general population but spare the oil nexus. The material and political resources made available by oil allow states to survive regardless of bad policies, facilitate their governing elites' material success regardless of reckless management, earn international allies regardless of erratic domestic conduct, and make companies want to invest regardless of risk. The recent oil boom only strengthens this paradoxical viability. Making possible what is arguably the largest inflow of resources into Africa in history, it is of a different order from the short-term viability afforded by the exploitation of other natural resources. Nonetheless, the partnership between insiders and outsiders that permits the extraction of oil is not conducive to positive long-term outcomes in institution-building or broad-based economic growth. Highly dependent on uninterrupted money flows and beset by various destabilising trends, the political economy of oil in the Gulf of Guinea is poised in a state of 'permanent crisis'. This study, based on extensive fieldwork, interviews and engagement with primary and secondary sources, is the first on the subject to take on the regional, as opposed to the country-specific, dimension. It has four key aims. The first is to bring out the extent to which oil has forged the interaction of the region with the world economy and how the ongoing expansion of the oil sector will deepen this pivotal role. Secondly, how this international relevance of petroleum has shaped postcolonial domestic politics and institutions. Thirdly, it examines the interests of different sets of empowered actors in the partnership between importers, producers and oil companies, their interplay, and the manner and contexts in which their goals diverge or converge. Finally, it analyses the sources of long-term sustainability of the political economy of oil in the Gulf of Guinea amidst seemingly unmanageable chaos.

Read more less

For anyone interested in the story of English in India, or in the finest English storytellers of India, this book, an illustrated history of two hundred years of Indian literature in English, should be a useful companion. It discusses the canonical poets, novelists and dramatists as well as many of the lesser known literary figures - scientists, spiritualists and learned men and women - who have made major contributions to the evolution of Indian literature in English. The book comprises 24 chapters, each by a well-known writer or critic. Each chapter is devoted to either a single author (Kipling, Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, R.K. Narayan, Rushdie) or to a group of authors (the Dutt family 19th-century Calcutta; the Indian diasporic writers of the twentieth century) or to a genre (beginnings of the Indian novel; poetry since Independence). This is a book for the non-specialist general reader. Biographical information on every major Indian literary figure is provided and the work of each author, genre or "school" is historically contextualized. The essays can be read selectively - for example, to follow the development of a genre - or read in the order in which they appear, which is chronological. The information is supplemented by 150 rare photographs and sketches of writers, collected specially for this volume William Jones and Thomas Macaulay, Henry Derozio and Toru Dutt, Bankim and Tagore, Kipling and Naipaul, G.V. Desani and Raja Rao, R.K. Narayan and Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Sarojini Naidu and Anita Desai, Gandhi and Nehru, Mulkraj Anand and Aubrey Menen, Khushwant Singh and Ved Mehta, Verrier Elwin and Salim Ali, Jim Corbet and M. Krishnan, Nissim Ezekiel and A.K. Ramanujan, Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and I. Allan Sealy, Gieve Patel and Girish Karnad, social reformers and religious thinkers, conservationists and hunters, drama and translation, this volume covers everything of literary significance in India from Ram Mohan Ray to Arundhati.

Read more less

On publication in France, Bouissou's depiction of modern Japan was acclaimed as `the best of its kind', and this translation has been updated to cover events up till 1999, and augmented by an overview of the Japanese historical legacy before 1945. In the tradition of French scholarship, which rejects a too narrow focus, this textbook encompasses all the aspects of the transformation that raised Japan from the ashes of defeat to the status of `an economic model'. Bouissou closely relates economic growth to social change and politics - of which he gives a particulary detailed account. He shows how these upheavals affected the Japanese value system, collective mind, way of living and culture, illustrating his argument from post-war Japanese literature and cinema. The combination of this broad approach, and provocative analysis which emphasises social dislocation rather than the much-vaunted Japanese predilection for social harmony, distinguishes this textbook from others in the field.

Read more less

When the Roman Empire split in the 4th century AD into the Western and Eastern empires, the boundary between the two stretched from the Montenegrin coast up the river Drina to the confluence of the Slava and the Danube and then further north. This boundary has remained virtually unchanged for 1500 years: the European, Catholic west and the Orthodox east meet on Slav territory. With Croatia having become an independent state in the 1990s, this text traces the history of the region and its people. It is divided into major sections on: the early medieval Croatian state (until 1101); the periods of union with Hungary (1102-1526) and with Austria (1526-1918); incorporation in Yugoslavia (1918-91); and the creation of a sovereign state.

Read more less

This is a diary of Sir Henry Rider Haggard's tour of South Africa in 1914. It captures his feelings and perceptions on the change of Southern Africa, and of himself, since his departure in 1881. In 1914, Sir Henry Rider Haggard, returned to South Africa. He had left in 1881, in his mid-twenties, an unknown, he returned a houshold name, after the success of his novels, such as "King Solomon's Mines" and "She". Touring the country as a member of the Dominions Royal Commission, Haggard found it hard to recognise the South Africa of his youth; war and politics had left their mark. Haggard had also changed, he considered himself a "man of affairs" rather than as a novelist. This account of his journey through Southern Africa shows his feelings and views on the changes he encountered and shows his thoughts on the plight of the Zulus and his meeting with John Dube, the first president of the African National Congress.

Read more less

Conceptions of nationalism as a historical and contemporary phenomenon remain fragmentary in the late-1990s. This text analyzes the contraditions inherent in the general understanding of nationalism in order to fashion a new intellectual synthesis. In particular George Schopflin questions why states in the West are able to live with the nation as the legitimate space for democratic institutions, wheras in the post-communist world, especially in Eastern Europe, ethnicity is pre-eminent. He argues that the nation is simultaneously ethnic, civic and structured by the state. Schopflin applies his understanding of nationalism to various East and Central European case studies, including the former Yugoslavia and Hungary. He also compares the role of ethnicity in other states, including Britain.

Read more less

This volume has been written at a time when Mozambique is coming to the end of its second decade of independence and there are signs that the debilitating South African-backed rural insurgency may at last be on the wane. The bulk of the literature on the country has been concerned to promote causes rather than face realities. However, the much greater openness of Mozambican society and the Mozambican government in recent years, as well as the appearance of new research, makes it possible to attempt a reinterpretation of events. This analysis of the post-independence period sets out to challenge much of the conventional wisdom. In particular, it suggests that the significance of the "liberated zones" was greatly exaggerated by Frelimo and its sympathizers in order to give the regime ideological respectability.

Read more less

In one of the world's most intractable and under-reported rebellions, the Naxalites have been engaged in a decades-long battle with the Indian state. Presented in the media as a deadly terrorist group, the movement is made up of Marxist ideologues and lower-caste and tribal combatants who seek to overthrow a system that has abused them. In 2010, anthropologist Alpa Shah embarked on a seven-night trek with some of these communist guerrillas, walking 250 kilometres through the dense, hilly forests of eastern India. Speaking to leaders and living for years with villagers in guerrilla strongholds, Shah seeks to understand how and why some of India's poor have shunned the world's largest democracy and taken up arms to fight for a fairer society--and asks whether they might be undermining their own aims. Nightmarch is a compelling reflection on dispossession and conflict at the heart of contemporary India. SHORT-LISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING, 2019 SHORT-LISTED FOR THE NEW INDIA FOUNDATION BOOK PRIZE, 2019 WINNER OF THE 2020 ASSOCIATION FOR POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY BOOK PRIZE A 2018 New Statesman Book of the Year

Read more less

For nearly 40 years, Ronald Reagan's vision--small government, lower taxes, and self-reliant individualism--has remained America's dominant political ideology. The Democratic Party has offered no truly convincing competing vision. Instead, American liberalism has fallen under the spell of identity politics. Mark Lilla argues with acerbic wit that liberals, originally driven by a sincere desire to protect the most vulnerable Americans, have now unwittingly invested their energies in social movements rather than winning elections. This abandonment of political priorities has had dire consequences. But, with the Republican Party led by an unpredictable demagogue and in ideological disarray, Lilla believes liberals now have an opportunity to turn from the divisive politics of identity, and offer positive ideas for a shared future. A fiercely-argued, no-nonsense book, The Once and Future Liberal is essential reading for our momentous times.

Read more less

Much of the recent surge in writing about the practice of nonviolent forms of resistance has focused on movements that occurred after the end of the Second World War, many of which have been extremely successful. Although the fact that such a method of resistance was developed in its modern form by Indians is acknowledged in this writing, there has not until now been an authoritative history of the role of Indians in the evolution of the phenomenon. Celebrated historian David Hardiman shows that while nonviolence is associated above all with the towering figure of Mahatma Gandhi, ‘passive resistance’ was already being practised by nationalists in British-ruled India, though there was no principled commitment to nonviolence as such. It was Gandhi, first in South Africa and then in India, who evolved a technique that he called ‘satyagraha’. His endeavours saw ‘nonviolence’ forged as both a new word in the English language, and a new political concept. This book conveys in vivid detail exactly what nonviolence entailed, and the formidable difficulties that the pioneers of such resistance encountered in the years 1905-19.

Read more less

Yorkshireman Lionel Abson was the longest surviving European stationed in West Africa in the eighteenth century. He reached William's Fort at Ouidah on the Slave Coast as a trader in 1767, took over the English fort in 1770, and remained in charge until his death in 1803. He avoided the ‘white man's grave’ for thirty-six years. Along the way he had three sons with an African woman, the eldest partly schooled in England, and a bright daughter named Sally. When Abson died, royal lackeys kidnapped his children. Sally was placed in the king's harem and pined away; her brothers vanished. That king became so unpopular as a result that the people of Dahomey disowned him. Abson also mastered the local language and became an historian. After only two years as fort chief, he was part of the king’s delegation to make peace with an enemy, a unique event in centuries of Dahomean history. This singular book recounts the remarkable life of this key figure in an ignominious period of European and African history, offering a microcosm of the lives of Europeans in eighteenth-century West Africa, and their relationships with and attitudes towards those they met there.

Read more less

Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) was an influential Egyptian ideologue credited with establishing the theoretical basis for radical Islamism in the postcolonial Sunni Muslim world. Lacking a pure understanding of the leader’s life and work, the popular media has conflated Qutb’s moral purpose with the aims of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. He is often portrayed as a terrorist, Islamo-Fascist, and advocate of murder. This book rescues Qutb from misrepresentation, tracing the evolution of his thought within the context of his time. An expert on social protest and political resistance in the modern Middle East, as well as Egyptian nationalism, John Calvert recounts Qutb’s life from the small village in which he was raised to his execution at the behest of Abd al-Nasser’s regime. His study remains sensitive to the cultural, political, social, and economic circumstances that shaped Qutb’s thought—major developments that composed one of the most eventful periods in Egyptian history. These years witnessed the full flush of Britain’s tutelary regime, the advent of Egyptian nationalism, and the political hegemony of the Free Officers. Qutb rubbed shoulders with Taha Husayn, Naguib Mahfouz, and Abd al-Nasser himself, though his Islamism originally had little to do with religion. Only in response to his harrowing experience in prison did Qutb come to regard Islam and kufr (infidelity) as oppositional, antithetical, and therefore mutually exclusive. Calvert shows how Qutb repackaged and reformulated the Islamic heritage to pose a challenge to authority, including those who claimed (falsely, he believed) to be Muslim.

Read more less

What drives Marine Le Pen and France's Front National? Has her party really changed its ways, or is she merely rebranding its old ideas and policies for a new era? In the age of Brexit and Trump, France too has seen a growing audience for identity-based politics. Under 'Marine', the FN is enjoying unprecedented success. But what's her secret? This is a probing investigation into the philosophy of Marine Le Pen's FN. It seeks answers in her speeches, in the history of French nationalism and in revealing interviews with those on the far right--including Jean-Marie Le Pen himself. Michel Eltchaninoff exposes a vision of France tyrannised by liberalism and seduced by the offer of an uncompromising alternative: a Republic 'beyond Left and Right', defined by its enemies and aligned with Putin's Russia. Whatever Marine Le Pen is thinking, she has not forgotten the FN's roots. The French far right is now stronger than ever.

Read more less

600 million Indians, more than half the population, are under twenty-five. This generation lives between extremes: more connected and global than ever, but with narrow ideas of Indian identity; raised with the cultural values of their grandparents, but the life goals of American teenagers. These dreamers are the face of a new India. Angry, and frustrated with being marginalised by both globalisation and India's old politics, they place hope in the Modi government's exclusionary nationalism and, above all, in their personal truths: shape your own future; exploit, or be exploited. Journalist Snigdha Poonam tracks these young fortune-seekers -- aspiring Bollywood stars and clickbait gurus, the Cow Protection Army hoodlums and Allahabad University’s first female Student Union President --all united by the belief that they were born for bigger and better things. Dreamers brings to life their boundless ambition and extraordinary imagination to create opportunities in the unlikeliest of spaces.

Read more less

This book is about a region on the fringes of empire, which neither Tsarist Russia, nor the Soviet Union, nor in fact the Russian Federation, ever really managed to control. Starting with the nineteenth century, it analyses the state's various strategies to establish its rule over populations highly resilient to change imposed from outside, who frequently resorted to arms to resist interference in their religious practices and beliefs, traditional customs, and ways of life. Jeronim Perovic offers a major contribution to our knowledge of the early Soviet era, a crucial yet overlooked period in this region's troubled history. During the 1920s and 1930s, the various peoples of this predominantly Muslim region came into contact for the first time with a modernising state, demanding not only unconditional loyalty but active participation in the project of 'socialist transformation'. Drawing on unpublished documents from Russian archives, Perovic investigates the changes wrought by Russian policy and explains why, from Moscow's perspective, these modernisation attempts failed, ultimately prompting the Stalinist leadership to forcefully exile the Chechens and other North Caucasians to Central Asia in 1943-4.

Read more less

Alexander von Humboldt was the most admired scientist of his day. But the achievements for which he was most celebrated in his lifetime always fell short of perfection. When he climbed the Chimborazo, then believed to be the highest mountain in the world, he did not quite reach the top; he established the existence of the Casiquiare canal, between the great water systems of the Orinoco and the Amazon, but this had been well known to local people; and his magisterial work, Cosmos, was left unfinished. This was no coincidence. Humboldt's pursuit of an all-encompassing, immersive approach to science was a way of finding limits: of nature and of the scientist's own self. A Longing for Wide and Unknown Things portrays a scientific life lived in the era of German Romanticism -- a time of radical change, where the focus on the individual placed a new value on feeling, and the pursuit of personal desires. As Humboldt himself admitted, he 'would have sailed to the remotest South Seas, even if it hadn't fulfilled any scientific purpose whatever'.

Read more less

The storm came on the night of 31 October. It was a full moon, and the tides were at their peak; the great rivers of eastern Bengal were flowing high and fast to the sea. In the early hours the inhabitants of the coast and islands were overtaken by an immense wave from the Bay of Bengal -- a wall of water that reached a height of 40 feet in some places. The wave swept away everything in its path, drowning around 215,000 people. At least another 100,000 died in the cholera epidemic and famine that followed. It was the worst calamity of its kind in recorded history. Such events are often described as 'natural disasters'. Kingsbury turns that interpretation on its head, showing that the cyclone of 1876 was not simply a 'natural' event, but one shaped by all-too-human patterns of exploitation and inequality -- by divisions within Bengali society, and the enormous disparities of political and economic power that characterised British rule on the subcontinent. With Bangladesh facing rising sea levels and stronger, more frequent storms, there is every reason to revisit this terrible calamity. An Imperial Disaster is troubling but essential reading: history for an age of climate change.

Read more less

South Asia is today the region inhabited by the largest number of Muslims--roughly 500 million. In the course of the Islamisation process begun in the eighth century, it developed a distinct Indo-Islamic civilisation that culminated in the Mughal Empire. While paying lip service to the power centres of Islam in the Gulf, including Mecca and Medina, this civilisation has cultivated its own variety of Islam, based on Sufism. Over the last fifty years, pan-Islamic ties have intensified between these two regions. Gathering together some of the best specialists on the subject, this volume explores these ideological, educational and spiritual networks, which have gained momentum due to political strategies, migration flows and increased communications. At stake are both the resilience of the civilisation that imbued South Asia with a specific identity, and the relations between Sunnis and Shias in a region where Saudi Arabia and Iran are fighting a cultural proxy war, as evident in the foreign ramifications of sectarianism in Pakistan. Islamic Connections investigates the nature and implications of the cultural, spiritual and socio-economic rapprochement between these two Islams.

Read more less

In most societies, courts are where the rubber of government meets the road of the people. If a state cannot settle disputes and ensure that its decisions are carried out, for practical purposes it is no longer in charge. This is why successful rebels put courts and justice at the top of their agendas. Rebel Law examines this key weapon in the armory of insurgent groups, ranging from the Ireland of the 1920s, where the IRA sapped British power using 'Republican Tribunals' to today's 'Caliphate of Law' -- the Islamic State, by way of Algeria in the 1950s and the Afghan Taliban. Frank Ledwidge tells how insurgent courts bleed legitimacy from government, decide cases and enforce judgments on the battlefield itself. Astute counterinsurgents, especially in 'ungoverned space,' can ensure that they retain the initiative. The book describes French, Turkish and British colonial 'judicial strategy' and contrasts their experience with the chaos of more recent 'stabilization operations' in Iraq and Afghanistan, drawing lessons for contemporary counterinsurgents. Rebel Law builds on his insights and shows that the courts themselves can be used as weapons for both sides in highly unconventional warfare.

Read more less

This ambitious and wide-ranging popular history is the first narrative account of the entire Near East (Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States), from the genesis of civilisation in the fourth millennium BCE until modern times. It provides an historical outline of the civilisations and cultures that dominated the region, one that has had an immense impact on the development of humankind, ever since the ancient Sumerians invented urban living and writing around 3200 BCE. Later, the Babylonians and the Assyrians built upon the Sumerian legacy. They were the world's earliest great powers, whose actions in the cradle of monotheism influenced Judaism and, eventually, Christianity and Islam. The Near East discusses the long eras of Arab, Persian and Ottoman rule, and the destabilising intervention of Western colonial powers. Cotterell's book is a timely reminder of how historical events have shaped the outlooks of various peoples, just as political turbulence in the Near East is challenging both neighbouring countries and the wider world.

Read more less

This book provides a comprehensive account of the mysterious story of Pakistan's attempt to develop nuclear weapons in the face of severe odds. Hassan Abbas profiles the politicians and scientists involved, and the role of China and Saudi Arabia in supporting Pakistan's nuclear infrastructure. Abbas also unravels the motivations behind the Pakistani nuclear physicist Dr A.Q. Khan's involvement in nuclear proliferation in Iran, Libya and North Korea, drawing on extensive interviews. He argues that the origins and evolution of the Khan network were tied to the domestic and international political motivations underlying Pakistan's nuclear weapons project, and that project's organisation, oversight and management. The ties between the making of the Pakistani bomb and the proliferation that then ensued have not yet been fully illuminated or understood, and this book's disclosures have important lessons. The Khan proliferation breach remains of vital importance for understanding how to stop such transfers of sensitive technology in future.Finally, the book examines the prospects for nuclear safety in Pakistan, considering both Pakistan's nuclear control infrastructure and the threat posed by the Taliban and other extremist groups to the country's nuclear assets.

Read more less

Western Christians in the twentieth century viewed Islam through a lens of social and political concerns that would have appeared novel to their medieval and early-modern predecessors. Concerns about the predicament of secular 'modernity' infused Christian discourse with distinct assumptions that shaped engagement with Islam in fundamentally new ways. J. N. D. (Norman) Anderson (1908-94), a highly influential British Christian scholar of Islam, embodied this new orientation in his commitment to 'modernise' Islam. Anderson's engagement with Islam as a missionary, intelligence agent, scholar of Islamic law and advisor to various Muslim governments, spanned multiple decades and continents. As well as shaping Western understandings of Islamic law and its application, he was involved in debates about the end of the British Empire and the transformation of Christian missions following formal decolonisation. Because of Anderson's location at the intersection of so many different debates concerning Islam, his life provides unique insights into the ways in which Christians reconfigured their response to Islam in the last century. Given Christianity's continued influence on British and American ideas about Islam, this study provides crucial insight into the persistent focus on 'modernising' and 'secularising' Islam today.

Read more less

This book is about a story (Ousmane Sembene's Xala), about a time (the aftermath of Senegalese Independence), and about a place (Dakar, the capital of Senegal). It's also about the collaboration between an artist and an anthropologist, who have reacted in their different mediums to the story, time and place, and to what the other made of them ...' So opens a unique account in a genre of its own devising that will engage readers interested in Sembene Ousmane as writer and film director, in Senegal, in African film, in West Africa, or in books designed to be desirable objects in their own right.

Read more less

The planet is currently experiencing alarming levels of species loss caused in large part by intensified poaching and wildlife trafficking driven by expanding demand, for medicines, for food, and for trophies. Affecting many more species than just the iconic elephants, rhinos, and tigers, the rate of extinction is now as much as 1000 times the historical average and the worst since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. In addition to causing irretrievable biodiversity loss, wildlife trafficking also poses serious threats to public health, potentially triggering a global pandemic. The Extinction Market explores the causes, means, and consequences of poaching and wildlife trafficking, with a view to finding ways of suppressing them. Vanda Felbab-Brown travelled to the markets of Latin America, South and South East Asia, and eastern and southern Africa, to evaluate the effectiveness of various tools, including bans on legal trade, law enforcement, and interdiction; allowing legal supply from hunting or farming; alternative livelihoods; anti- money-laundering efforts; and demand reduction strategies. This is an urgent book offering meaningful solutions to one of the world's most pressing crises.

Read more less

Shanon Shah investigates the connections between geography and identity; Jasper M. Trautsch explains the invention of the West; Nazry Bahrawi asks if the collapse of Western civilisation is imminent; Gordon Blaine Steffey explores what a post- Western world might look like; Natasha Ezrow analyses US imperialism in Latin America; Elma Berisha compares Europe with Southeast Asia; Jalal Afhim explores the emergence of China; Shiv Visvanathan problematises the rise of India; Julia Sveshnikova critiques Russia's supposed comeback; Michael Perez is proud to be American, Muslim, male and feminist; Sughra Ahmed argues that young British Muslims carve their identities out of Britain's tradition of dissent; Amir Hussain suggests that Islam is a Western religion after all; Julian Bond and Fatimah Ashrif celebrate Christian-Muslim friendship; and Samia Rahman relates the remarkable story of an Uzbek pianist in London. About Critical Muslim: A quarterly publication of ideas and issues showcasing groundbreaking thinking on Islam and what it means to be a Muslim in a rapidly changing, interconnected world. Each edition centers on a discrete theme, and contributions include reportage, academic analysis, cultural commentary, photography, poetry, and book reviews.

Read more less

Despite the 1989 global ivory trade ban, poaching and ivory smuggling have not abated. More than half of Tanzania's elephants have been killed for their ivory since 2007. A similarly alarming story can be told of the herds in northern Mozambique and across swathes of central Africa. But why the new upsurge? The popular narrative blames a meeting of two evils - criminal poaching and terrorism. But the answer is not that simple.Since ancient times, large-scale killing of elephants for their tusks has been driven by demand beyond Africa's range states from the Egyptian pharaohs through the industrialising West to the new wealthy business class of China. Elephant hunting in Africa is also governed by human-elephant conflict, traditional hunting practices and the impact of colonial exploitation and criminalisation.Ivory follows this complex history of the tusk trade in Africa, and explains why it is corruption, crime and politics, rather than insurgency, that we should worry about. In this ground-breaking work, Somerville argues that regulation - not prohibition - of the ivory trade is the best way to stop uncontrolled poaching.

Read more less

A number of studies of colonial Lahore in recent years have explored such themes as the city's modernity, its cosmopolitanism and the rise of communalism which culminated in the bloodletting of 1947. This first synoptic history moves away from the prism of the Great Divide of 1947 to examine the cultural and social connections which linked colonial Lahore with North India and beyond. In contrast to portrayals of Lahore as inward looking and a world unto itself, the authors argue that imperial globalisation intensified long established exchanges of goods, people and ideas. Ian Talbot and Tahir Kamran's book is reflective of concerns arising from the global history of Empire and the new urban history of South Asia. These are addressed thematically rather than through a conventional chronological narrative, as the book uncovers previously neglected areas of Lahore's history, including the links between Lahore's and Bombay's early film industries and the impact on the 'tourist gaze' of the consump--tion of both text and visual representation of India in newsreels and photographs.

Read more less

A Long Watch offers a story of human complexity amid entrenched narratives of Sri Lanka's long civil war. Pulled from a dark ocean after a battle at sea, Commodore Boyagoda became the highest-ranking prisoner detained by the Tamil Tigers. For eight years, he lived at close quarters with his declared enemy, his imprisonment punctuated by high-level talks about his fate, but also by extended conversations with his jailers and scratch games of badminton played in jungle clearings. Throughout, he observed his captors and fellow prisoners acutely, and with discreet empathy for the lives of others undone by war.A memoir retold in Ajith Boyagoda's temperate voice, his is an unblinking relation of experiences difficult, moving and ironic. From going to sea, to war, imprisonment and eventual homecoming, he accepted successive realities as ordinary, in order to survive them.

Read more less

For nearly thirty years the Berlin Wall symbolised a divided Europe. In the euphoric aftermath of the Cold War, the advent of a new 'borderless' world was hailed, one in which such barriers would become obsolete. Today these utopian predictions have yet to be realised. European governments have enacted the most sustained and far-reaching border enforcement program in history in an attempt to repel migrants seeking work or asylum. Detention and deportation, physical and bureaucratic barriers, naval patrols and satellite technologies: all these form part of the militarised response to immigration adopted by European governments, the human cost of which is often overlooked. These efforts have generated a tragic confrontation between some of the richest countries in the world and a stateless population from the poorest - a clash that occurs within Europe's territorial frontiers and also far beyond them. Fortress Europe investigates that confrontation on Europe's 'hard borders.' In a series of searing dispatches, Carr speaks to border officers and police, officials, migrants, asylum-seekers, and activists.The result is a unique and groundbreaking critique of Europe's exclusionary borders, and an essential guide to the wider drama of migration that will dominate politics for years ahead.

Read more less

Faithonomics uses economic theory to provide a new and unorthodox view of religion in today's world. Drawing on state-of-the-art research and on case studies from around the globe, this book shows that religion should be analysed as a market similar to markets for other goods and services, like bottled water or haircuts. Faithonomics is about today's religious markets, but in sweeping detours through the histories of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, Brekke shows us the religious markets of the past, although these were sometimes heavily regulated by states. He argues that government 'control' over religious markets is often the cause of unforeseen and negative consequences. Many of today's problems related to religion, like religious terrorism or rent-seeking by religious political parties, are easier to understand if we think like economists. Religious markets work best when they are relatively free. Religious organisations should be free to sell their products without unnecessary restrictions, but we have no good reason to grant them privileges in the form of subsidies or tax-breaks.

Read more less

Hassan Mahamdallie walks the streets of Detroit - the city America allowed to die, Ziauddin Sardar visits the 'first city' at the crossroads of Asia, Boyd Tonkin is shocked at the new gleaming cultural capitals of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Robert Irwin unearths Basra during the Abbasid period, Kevin Ovenden looks at modern-day Athens in turmoil, Judy Cox sees London through the visions of William Blake and Nazry Bahrawi takes in the nostalgia and popular culture of Singapore. Also in this issue past and present explorations of Lahore, Melbourne, Istanbul, a photo essay on the dreams of the migrant workers of the Gulf and the last word column by Myriam Francois-Cerrah.

Read more less

Oscillations in opium poppy production in Afghanistan have long been associated with how the state was perceived, such as after the Taliban imposed a cultivation ban in 2000-1.The international community's subsequent attempts to regulate opium poppy became intimately linked with its own state-building project, and rising levels of cultivation were cited as evidence of failure by those international donors who spearheaded development in poppy-growing provinces like Helmand, Nangarhar and Kandahar.Mansfield's book examines why drug control - particularly opium bans - have been imposed in Afghanistan; he documents the actors involved; and he scrutinises how prohibition served divergent and competing interests. Drawing on almost two decades of fieldwork in rural areas, he explains how these bans affected farming communities, and how prohibition endured in some areas while in others opium production bans undermined livelihoods and destabilised the political order, fuelling violence and rural rebellion.Above all this book challenges how we have come to understand political power in rural Afghanistan. Far from being the passive recipients of violence by state and non-state actors, Mansfield highlights the role that rural communities have played in shaping the political terrain, including establishing the conditions under which they could persist with opium production.

Read more less

Hassan Mahamdallie argues that racism is twenty-first century's main problem, Shannon Shah detects racial overtones within Islam, Robert Irwin examines race and racism in the Arabian Nights, Hugh Kennedy uncovers the ninth century Zanj slave uprisings, Sejad Mekic looks for signs of hope in Bosnia, Sadiyya Shaikh explores religious imaginaries of ibn Arabi, Avaes Mohammad evokes parallel lives in Blackburn, Gary MacFarlane revisits the Christian fundamentalism of abolitionist John Brown, Ziauddin Sardar has unsavoury encounters in Saudi Arabia, and Naima Khan accuses South Asian Muslims of looking down on Africans. Also in this issue: Ruth Waterman's photographs of Bosnia, an epic poem on Bhopal, poetry by Dorothea Smartt, a short story by Aiysha Jahan, race relations in Trinidad and our list of ten political organisations that promote Islamophobia.

Read more less

One of the most interesting consequences of the Arab awakening has been the central role of Salafists in a number of countries. In particular, there seems to have been a move away from traditional quietism towards an increasing degree of politicisation. The arrival on the political scene of Salafist parties in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, as well as the seemingly growing desire of Salafists in other Arab countries to enter institutional politics through the creation of political parties, high- lights quite clearly the debates and divisions on how to react to the awakening within Salafist circles. This book examines in detail how Salafism, both theologically and politically, is contending with the Arab uprisings across a number of countries. The focus is primarily on what kind of politicisation, if any, has taken place and what forms it has adopted. As some of the contributions make clear, politicisation does not necessarily diminish the role of jihad or the influence of quietism, revealing tensions and struggles within the complex world of Salafism.

Read more less