In 1432, poet John Lydgate was commissioned to commemorate the triumphal entry of Henry VI to London. Setting the scene, Lydgate wrote of ‘this Citee with laude, pris, and glorie/For joye moustred lyke the sonne beem’.1 He described the participants in this civic muster in terms of their clothing: the mayor in red velvet, the sheriffs and aldermen in scarlet furred …
A “Brief History of Italy?” Isn’t that impossible? Well, sort of, so we’ve kept it very general to provide the reader with merely a survey. Though Italy is really a new nation only coming into being in 1861, the geographical area we now refer to as Italy has had a long, rich, and diverse history. This survey will take you through pre-Roman times with the Greeks and Etruscans to the Roma…
A culture, centered in what is today Eastern Europe, begins to use gold to fashion decorative objects. The gold was probably mined in the Transylvanian Alps or the Mount Pangaion area in Thrace.
The objectives of the textbook are fourfold. The first priority is to familiarize university students of English language and literature with British history from the Ice Age to the twenty first century. The second purpose of the book is to provide information about British geography, holidays, sports, and customs. Also, at the same time, the textbook aims at helping university students deve…
Ancient Greece wasn't one big country like modern Greece is today. Instead, areas of land belonged to ‘city states’ (poleis), which all acted separately from the others. Sometimes they would make alliances with each other to fight enemies like the Persians — sometimes the Greek city states would fight each other.
In early May 1901, the colonial authorities in Kingstown, capital of the island of St Vincent, then a British colony in the Lesser Antilles, were taken by surprise by requests from the Carib populations living on the flanks of Mount La Soufrière to be removed to the south of the island. They were afraid of the increasing frequency of small earthquakes in the area. Stories had bee…
Right after the 2010 earthquake that rocked the Port-au-Prince region and killed many people, a big data competition began between states and in-ternational organizations involved in the relief eff ort. The journalists Rob-ert Muggah and Athena Kolbe, a year and half after the disaster, wrote that “in Haiti, fewer than 46,000 people were killed in the January 2010ear…
Is there a special role for the Low Countries in art history’s current focus on global mobility? How, and why, should we conceive of the globalization of Netherlandish art? The essays brought together in this volume examine how artworks produced in the wake of European expansion – produced in the Netherlands in reaction to the world outside Euro…
This book is an experiment. Starting in the late 1970s, I began conducting ar-chaeological research in the lower Ulua River valley, a 2400 square kilometer swathe of lowlands that stretches over 70 km inland from the Caribbean coast. One of my earliest and continuing interests has been the pottery of the region, particularly the vessels called Ulua Polychromes. Long collected by museums, Ulua P…
In 1529, Pedro de Cazalla, a scion of a prominent family of Jewish converts to Christianity from Toledo, claimed that no more than “a thread” connected men with God and that any mediation by the Church was unnecessary. This book explores the manyfold ramifications of this idea. It stems from the conviction that during the early modern period, the Iberia…
Co-operation is a complex thing. Whether between individuals, organisations or nation-states an ability to co-operate is a crucial part of any successful relation-ship. An inability to co-operate often leads to a downturn in relationships with potential drastic consequences. Today, the promotion of co-operatives is one of the most effective tools used by international policymakers to stimulate …
When Si Zheng, the Shaanxi regional military commissioner, was a young man, he organized many young men of ill repute into a “righteous brother-hood.” If one member was attacked, they would combine forces and take revenge. Zheng had beaten to death a man at a singing loft in the provincial capital.1 The owner was powerless to apprehend him, and Zheng escaped. They seized a certain Mr. Liu, …
Following a successful period working in the colonial capital of Batavia ( Jakarta), Prawiradinata, a young and ambitious clerk in the indigenous civil service, was transferred to a new post in Purwakarta, a small town in Java’s interior. His enthusiasm about his career advancement quickly evaporated when he discovered that beyond the capital, …
Aphotograph presents the bourgeois family idyll in Léopoldville. The father,sit-ting in an armchair in the foreground, dominates the livingroom scene. He iswearingawhiteshirt and tie, polished leather shoes and trousers withacreasein them. His elbowsresting on the arms of the chair,heisengrossed in theVoixdu Congolais,anewspaper for thevernacular elite published by theBelgian Con-go’sGeneral…
The Japanese occupation of both British Borneo – Brunei, Sarawak and North Borneo – and Dutch Borneo in 1941 to 1945 is a much understudied subject. Of particular interest is the occupation of Dutch Borneo, governed by the Imperial Japanese Navy that had long-term plans for ‘permanent possession’. This book surveys Borneo under Western colonialism, examines pre-war Japanese interests in…
This book has two main aims. First, the book will discuss various modes ofstudying and defining the medieval self. This will encompass a wide range ofsource material from Scandinavia,c. 800–1500, such as archaeological, archi-tectural and artistic, documentary and literary sources, and runic inscriptions.The second main aim of the book will be to discuss what processes and practi-ces the self…
From Book 1: Previously published as Ancient Science, Secret History contains 150 pages of new material. It is the definitive edition in a new format. The Secret History of The World and How To Get Out Alive is the definitive book of the real answers where Truth is more fantastic than fiction. Laura Knight-Jadczyk, wife of internationally known theoretical physicist, Arkadiusz Jadczyk, an exper…
Throughout history, military engagements have altered the course of historical events, causing major changes both on a global scale (the battles of Yarmouk & al-Qadisiyyah in 636 determined the religious/linguistic orientation of the Middle East that persists today) as well as within individual cultures (the 1836 battle of San Jacinto gave the United States nearly one-third of its continental t…
When Raphael Cilento drafted his unpublished autobiography, he called it ‘The World, My Oyster’. Some of the other titles he considered—such as ‘Confessions of an International Character’, ‘20th Century Spotlight’, ‘Mankind in the Raw’ and ‘Tapestry of Humanity’—similarly evoked his international career. Other alternatives—such as ‘Topical Confessions of a Tropical D…
From the Wright brothers' first flight and the First Russian Revolution to the horrors of war, to the development of motor and air travel and the birth of the digital revolution, the changes seen in the twentieth century were global in scope and monumental in terms of impact. Modern History in Pictures: A Visual Guide to the Events that Shaped Our World explores these earth-shattering events as…
Belgium once had an empire in Central Africa. The historical processes inform-ing this imperial presence – the foundation of the Congo Free State (CFS) in 1885, its demise, the emergence of the Belgian Congo in 1908, and the subse-quent absorption of ‘Ruanda-Urundi’ by Belgium under the aegis of the League of Nations in 1922 – are well documented and …
This book examines the ways in which people wrote about and engaged with infertility in the German Middle Ages. Striking differences emerge across the vernacular stories, legends, and romances concerned. For some, childlessness is a huge problem, for others, a high ideal. Regina Toepfer considers the reasons for these differences, and how ideas changed over the period, revealing different narra…
Mexico is a nation undergoing rapid change. Past characterizations of the country as rural, undemocratic, and protectionist have been replaced in the last decades of the twentieth century bydescriptions that refer to Mexico as urban, opening to democracy, and market-oriented. For a country composed mostly of peasants before the Revolution (1910—20), Mexico has undergone broad and rapid urbani…
The Prestes Column is one of the most famous events in modern Brazilian history. What started out as an unsuccessful rebellion soon morphed into a roving expedition that crisscrossed the country for almost three years. From 1924 to 1927, a group of roughly one thousand army officers and soldiers marched fifteen thousand miles through the vast interior regions of Brazil (…
We present, in this book, a transliterated transcription of the Bugis text of the work known as the Chronicle of Bone, together with an English translation and notes. The chronicle deals with the affairs of this traditional kingdom in South Sulawesi—almost exactly in the centre of modern Indonesia—from the fourteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth century CE…
This book explores the accounts of commerce and finance developed by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century historians of England. Writers of the period, I argue, were engaged in a series of long-running and politically charged debates concerning a range of economic issues: the impact of popular and arbitrary forms of government on trade; the political and economic conseque…
okyo Ueno Station: A Novel (JR Uenoeki K?enguchi, 2014) by Y? Miri recounts the heartbreaking life story of an unnamed man, born in the same year as the now Emperor Emeritus Akihito (b. 1933; reigned 1989–2019). The protagonist’s son was born on the same day as Akihito’s eldest son, the present Emperor Naruhito, on 23 February 1960. In more ways than one, the life of the pro…
I have been frequently asked over the years how – from the most unlikely of backgrounds – I became a historian of Brazil and how I came to devote the greater part of my academic career to the promotion and development of Brazilian studies in the UK (and, to a lesser extent, in the US).I was born in Leeds in the north of England in 1937. I spent my entire childhood in Hunsl…
All’inizio degli anni ’90 del ’900, quando la città di Torino pareva interrogarsi, tra circospezione e scoramento, sul proprio futuro postin-dustriale, Carlo Cresto-Dina e Franco Fornaris decisero di dar vita a un documentario costruito attraverso una serie molto ampia di interviste a persone informate dei fatti, “per capire se una citt…
Writing equipment is key for the comprehensive study of Roman handwriting, non-monumental inscriptions and literacy. Cost, material and design of the equipment and how it was used had an impact on many aspects of writing such as letter shapes, document layout and who was writing. Im-portantly, the equipment also has an impact on what kinds of ancient handwritten texts have survived and therefor…
I am very thankful to be here. And there is something more in my heart, something I cannot say.’ Sister Teresa González speaks firmly, with characteristic Spanish emphasis in the English she learnt in Australia 53 years ago. She speaks for us all, and we nod. We have sung an ancient liturgy of psalms to remember the eight Benedictine Missionary Sisters who a…
These verses, extracted from a longer Urdu naz?m or poem, were written by Nazir, a blacksmith and bladesmith based in the North Indian city of Rampur in the mid-twentieth century. I first encountered Nazir and his poetry as part of a collection that the librarians of the renowned Raza Library in Rampur had put together to honor the city’s artisanal and material heritage.2 Nazir’s ve…
I came to realize, after facing several difficulties in the con-struction of libraryofbabel.info, that I was attempting to make a faithful recreation of an impossible dream. The website is an online version of Borges’s “The Library of Babel,” which I hope to show was imagined by its author as self-contradictory in every aspect, from its architecture…
In 1922 an in terest ing exchange took place in Moscow’s Botkin hospital concerning a “delicate and even shy” patient who had just had a bullet extracted from his neck and was recovering in ward no. 44.1The patient wanted to know all about his nurse, the other patients, and the medical personnel. He even asked the nurse why she looked so “bad” and ques-tioned the professor tending to …
In nostra terra. From the temple of eternal fire to the Zglenicki platform. Unwritten masterpieces. And this is what Poland is. From Ko?ciuszko’s home-land. Carnival in the colour of blood. The conspirators from the “Hotel pod Luftmaszyn?.” How can we doubt the good results... A manuscript under a lucky star. Studies – the most urgent intention of all. There will be no whit…
Japanese Tattoos explains the imagery featured in Japanese tattoos so that readers can avoid getting ink they don't understand or, worse, that they'll regret. This photo-heavy book also traces the history of Japanese tattooing, putting the iconography and kanji symbols in their proper context so readers will be better informed as to what they mean and have a deeper understanding of irezumi. Fea…
The famed French engineer of the Suez Canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps, destroyed his career and the lives of twenty-ve thousand workers by insisting he could excavate across the mountainous Panamanian isthmus in the s. Learning from his mistakes, the Americans succeeded in the early s by taming the tropical insect-borne diseases and building an ingenious …
No Church is monolithic—this is the preliminary premise of this volume on the public place of religion in a representative number of post-communist countries. The studies confirm that within any religious organization we can expect to find fissures, factions, theological or ideological quarrels, and perhaps even competing interest groups, such as missionary workers, regular clergy versus secu…
Seven leading specialists present chapters devoted to key themes in Soviet and post-Soviet Russian politics. Those themes include: the personal versus the institutional in the political process; legitimacy and legitimation; and change and collapse of a mono-organisational society. While the book focuses on these major themes, individual chapters deal with wide-ranging and even unusual cases: Gr…
The interaction between people and place is the basic ingredient of human history. The historians who interpret this complex and ever-changing relationship are inevitably bit players in the processes they seek to unravel. In settler societies the terms of the relationship are re-negotiated and the heightened awareness of the new and the different reshapes expectations and communal at…
On Sunday 16 September 2018, several hundred people gathered by the Auchengeich Mining Disaster Memorial in the village of Moodiesburn, North Lanarkshire. They included retired miners, trade union representatives and local councillors alongside members of local football teams and a choir made up of schoolchildren. The annual memorial service is timed to…
On 5 September 1908, Frank Eaves, a collier from Tonypandy in the Rhondda Fawr valley, south Wales, stood before Judge Bryn Roberts at Pontypridd County Court. Eaves had met with an accident while working underground in Blaen-clydach Colliery in 1906, when a stone of half a hundredweight had fallen on his foot. He had not worked since that time and had been in receipt of compensa-tion from the …
National hero, Javanese mystic, pious Muslim and leader of the ‘holy war’ against the Dutch between 1825 and 1830, the Yogyakarta prince, Dipanagara (1785-1855, otherwise known as Diponegoro), is pre-eminent in the pantheon of modern Indonesian historical figures. Yet despite instant name recognition in Indonesia, there has never been a full biography of the prince’s life and times based …
Saint Birgitta of Sweden (d. 1373), one of the most famous visionary women of the late Middle Ages, lived in Rome for the last 23 years of her life. Much of her extensive literary work was penned there. Her Celestial Revelations circulated widely from the late 14th century to the 17th century, copied in Italian scriptoria, translated into vernacular, and printed in several Latin and Italian edi…
In an age of accelerating ecological crises, global inequalities and democratic fragility, it has become crucial to achieve renewed articulations of human commonality. With anchorage in critical theory as well as world literary studies, this volume approaches literature – and modes of literary thinking – as a key resource for such a task.
Covering the entire continent from Morocco, Libya, and Egypt in the north to the Cape of Good Hope in the south, and the surrounding islands from Cape Verde in the west to Madagascar, Mauritius, and Seychelles in the east, the Encyclopedia of African History is a new A-Z reference resource on the history of the entire African continent. With entries ranging from the earliest evolution of human …
Until recently relations among siblings did not attract much interest among scholars studying the history of the early medieval family. They were mentioned primarily in discussions of marriage strategies used to safeguard the interests of family groups and in analyses of relations between families linked by marriage. Fraternal relations appeared as a research topic …
Sir George Buc (1560-1622), one of the careful antiquarian scholars of the English Renaissance, is famous in literary history as Master of Revels under King James I. In 1619 Sir George wrote The History of King Richard the Third, a study of Richard’s life and reign and a defence of his historical reputation. In the late 1960s/early 1970s Arthur Kincaid embarked on creating the first authentic…
Physiognomy and ekphrasis are two of the most important modes of description in antiquity and represent the necessary precursors of scientific description. The primary way of divining the characteristics and fate of an individual, whether inborn or acquired, was to observe the patient’s external characteristics and behaviour. This volume focuses initially on two types of descriptive literatur…
The libraries of Tunis are considered lost since the sack of the city by European armies in 1535. This study reconstructs the original holdings of Tunis’ medieval libraries by bringing together dispersed manuscripts from over 30 library collections worldwide. The outcome is twofold: the book maps the networks of the first European Orientalists and, by doing so, retrieves from oblivion an impo…