On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared its independence, becoming the seventh state to emerge from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. A tiny country of just two million people, 90% of whom are ethnic Albanians, Kosovo is central-geographically, historically, and politically-to the future of the Western Balkans and, in turn, its potential future within the European Union. But the fate of both…
Colombia's recent past has been characterized by what its Nobel laureate Gabriel García Marquez once called "a biblical holocaust" of human savagery. Along with the scourge of drug-related massacres facing the country, politically-motivated assassinations (averaging 30 per day in the 1990s), widespread disappearances, rapes, and kidnappings have run rampant through the country for decades. For…
This is a book about the Irish Question, or more specifically about Irish Questions. The term has become something of a catch-all, a convenient way to encompass numerous issues and developments which pertain to the political, social, and economic history of modern Ireland.The Irish Question has of course changed: one of the main aims of this book is to explore the complicated and shifting natur…
In this Very Short Introduction, Vanessa Schwartz argues that modern France, as both a world stage and a global crossroads, is an essential actor in the development of contemporary culture. Indeed, French is the only language other than English spoken on five continents, and more people still visit France than anywhere else in the world. French fashion continues to dominate haute couture and, a…
In the late fifth century, a girl whose name has been forgotten by history was born at the edge of the Chinese empire. By the time of her death, she had transformed herself into Empress Dowager Ling, one of the most powerful politicians of her age and one of the first of many Buddhist women to wield incredible influence in dynastic East Asia. In this book, Stephanie Balkwill documents the Empre…
By late 1922, Germany and the Allies had entered into a stand-off over the issue of reparation repayments. Germany had defaulted on its reparations payments to such an extent that the governments of France and Belgium ordered troops to occupy the Ruhr, a major industrial region in western Germany. The French and Belgian governments intended that their troops would supervise the extraction and c…
Before the twentieth century was even half over Germany had led Europe and the world into two wars of mass destruction in which over seventy million people died. By 1945 its neighbours were not inclined to trust a country that had visited such a degree of death and destruction on them. The reconstruction of Europe was a mammoth undertaking, as was also the rebuilding and recivilising of Germany…
This open access book explores how medieval societies conversed about the city and citizen in texts, visual imagery and material culture. It adopts a long-term, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural perspective, bringing together contributions on the early, high, and later Middle Ages, covering both the medieval East and West, and representing a wide variety of disciplinary angles and sources. …
This upsetting experience caused us to consider a problem often discussed: how lighting can completely change the viewer’s perception of a painting. Even if Tintoretto knew exactly what type of (natural) light there would be in the Scuola, and kept it in mind as he was painting his great teleri, his paintings nonetheless underwent some transformations over time — for example his c…
For the next twenty-five years, the justifiability of opening the abdo-men to treat ovarian disease would remain contested, causing deep schisms in the profession, through which reputations were lost and careers ruined just as often as fortunes were gained and lives were saved. It was an operation that thrilled and horrified in equal measure with its d…