Empire and Environment in the Making of Manchuria

Empire and Environment in the Making of Manchuria PDF Author: Norman Smith
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 9780774832908
Category : Human geography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"This unique and compelling analysis of Manchuria's environmental history demonstrates how the region's geography shaped China's past. Since the seventeenth century, the call of the Manchurian wilderness, with its abundant wildlife, timber, and mining deposits, has led some of the greatest empires in the world to do battle for its riches. Chinese, Japanese, Manchu, Russian, and other imperial forces have defied unrelenting summers and unforgiving winters as they fought for sovereignty over this vast "frontier." Until now, historians have focused on rivalries between Manchuria's colonizing forces. Empire and Environment in the Making of Manchuria examines the interplay of climate and competing imperial interests in the region's vibrant--and violent--cultural narrative. Families that settled this borderland reaped its riches while at the mercy of an unforgiving and hotly contested landscape. As China's strength as a world leader continues to grow, this volume invites further exploration of the indelible links between empire and environment. The role of Manchuria in China's social and political evolution provides context for understanding how the geopolitical future of this global economic powerhouse is rooted in its past."--

Empire and Environment in the Making of Manchuria

Empire and Environment in the Making of Manchuria PDF Author: Norman Smith
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 9780774832908
Category : Human geography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This unique and compelling analysis of Manchuria's environmental history demonstrates how the region's geography shaped China's past. Since the seventeenth century, the call of the Manchurian wilderness, with its abundant wildlife, timber, and mining deposits, has led some of the greatest empires in the world to do battle for its riches. Chinese, Japanese, Manchu, Russian, and other imperial forces have defied unrelenting summers and unforgiving winters as they fought for sovereignty over this vast "frontier." Until now, historians have focused on rivalries between Manchuria's colonizing forces. Empire and Environment in the Making of Manchuria examines the interplay of climate and competing imperial interests in the region's vibrant--and violent--cultural narrative. Families that settled this borderland reaped its riches while at the mercy of an unforgiving and hotly contested landscape. As China's strength as a world leader continues to grow, this volume invites further exploration of the indelible links between empire and environment. The role of Manchuria in China's social and political evolution provides context for understanding how the geopolitical future of this global economic powerhouse is rooted in its past."--

The Third Degree

The Third Degree PDF Author: Scott D. Seligman
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1640120602
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
If you've ever seen an episode of Law and Order, you can probably recite your Miranda rights by heart. But you likely don't know that these rights had their roots in the case of a young Chinese man accused of murdering three diplomats in Washington DC in 1919. A frantic search for clues and dogged interrogations by gumshoes erupted in sensational news and editorial coverage and intensified international pressure on the police to crack the case. Part murder mystery, part courtroom drama, and part landmark legal case, The Third Degree is the true story of a young man's abuse by the Washington police and an arduous, seven-year journey through the legal system that drew in Warren G. Harding, William Howard Taft, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John W. Davis, and J. Edgar Hoover. The ordeal culminated in a sweeping Supreme Court ruling penned by Justice Louis Brandeis that set the stage for the Miranda warning many years later. Scott D. Seligman argues that the importance of the case hinges not on the defendant's guilt or innocence but on the imperative that a system that presumes one is innocent until proven guilty provides protections against coerced confessions. Today, when the treatment of suspects between arrest and trial remains controversial, when bias against immigrants and minorities in law enforcement continues to deny them their rights, and when protecting individuals from compulsory self-incrimination is still an uphill battle, this century-old legal spellbinder is a cautionary tale that reminds us how we got where we are today and makes us wonder how far we have yet to go.

Heaven and Hell

Heaven and Hell PDF Author: Takarabe Toriko
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824876385
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Takarabe Toriko’s autobiographical novel Heaven and Hell is a beautiful, chilling account of her childhood in Manchukuo, the puppet state established by the Japanese in northeast China in 1932. As seen through the eyes of a precocious young girl named Masuko, the frontier town of Jiamusi and its inhabitants are by turns enchanting, bemusing, and horrifying. Takarabe skillfully captures Masuko’s voice with language that savors Manchukuo’s lush forests and vast terrain, but violence and murder are ever present, as much a part of the scenery as the grand Sungari River. Masuko recounts the “Heaven” of her early life in Jiamusi, a place so cold in winter her joints freeze as she walks to school. She accepts this world, with its gentle ways and terrible brutality, because it is the only home she has known. Masuko feels at ease wandering among the street vendors hawking their hot and sticky steamed cakes or watching the cook slaughter ducks for dinner, and takes pleasure in following the routines of her Chinese, Russian, and Japanese neighbors. Her world is shattered in 1945, when she and her family must flee their adopted home and struggle, along with other Japanese settlers, to return to Japan. This second half of the book, the “Hell” of refugee life, is heartbreaking and disturbing, yet described with ferocious honesty.

The Rape of Nanking

The Rape of Nanking PDF Author: Iris Chang
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 046502825X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
The New York Times bestselling account of one of history's most brutal—and forgotten—massacres, when the Japanese army destroyed China's capital city on the eve of World War II, "piecing together the abundant eyewitness reports into an undeniable tapestry of horror". (Adam Hochschild, Salon) In December 1937, one of the most horrific atrocities in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (what was then the capital of China), and within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. In this seminal work, Iris Chang, whose own grandparents barely escaped the massacre, tells this history from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone, which saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and documents brought to light for the first time, Iris Chang's classic book is the definitive history of this horrifying episode.

The Killing Time

The Killing Time PDF Author: M J Lee
Publisher: Canelo
ISBN: 1788630564
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
As tensions simmer in Shanghai, children go missing... Shanghai 1932: Inspector Danilov hasn't recovered from the death of his child... but across a Shanghai riven with communal tensions, children are going missing. Missing, and then murdered. Who is responsible? Why have the children's bodies been exhibited for all to see? Just as Danilov thinks the stakes couldn't be higher there is a new dimension, Japan, a rising power flexing its muscles. In fractious Shanghai, an explosion is long overdue. With the clock ticking can Danilov and his assistant Strachan solve the case? The fate of Shanghai may be at stake. So is Danilov’s job... And his sanity. The latest instalment of the Inspector Danilov mysteries will leave you breathless. Perfect for fans of Philip Kerr or Rory Clements. Inspector Danilov Crime Thriller Series Death in Shanghai City of Shadows The Murder Game The Killing Time

A Second Reckoning

A Second Reckoning PDF Author: Scott D. Seligman
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1640124659
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
""A Second Reckoning" tells the heartbreaking story of the murder that led to the city of Annapolis's last hanging and a broader appeal for posthumous justice, especially in racially tainted cases"--

The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate PDF Author: Richard Condon
Publisher: RosettaBooks
ISBN: 0795335067
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
The classic thriller about a hostile foreign power infiltrating American politics: “Brilliant . . . wild and exhilarating.” —The New Yorker A war hero and the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Sgt. Raymond Shaw is keeping a deadly secret—even from himself. During his time as a prisoner of war in North Korea, he was brainwashed by his Communist captors and transformed into a deadly weapon—a sleeper assassin, programmed to kill without question or mercy at his captors’ signal. Now he’s been returned to the United States with a covert mission: to kill a candidate running for US president . . . This “shocking, tense” and sharply satirical novel has become a modern classic, and was the basis for two film adaptations (San Francisco Chronicle). “Crammed with suspense.” —Chicago Tribune “Condon is wickedly skillful.” —Time

The Great Kosher Meat War Of 1902

The Great Kosher Meat War Of 1902 PDF Author: Scott D. Seligman
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1640124101
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
2020-21 Reader Views Literary Award, Gold Medal Winner 2021 Independent Publisher Book Award, Gold Medal Winner 2020 National Jewish Book Award, Finalist 2020 American Book Fest Best Book Awards Finalist in the U.S. History category 2020 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Finalist In the wee hours of May 15, 1902, three thousand Jewish women quietly took up positions on the streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Convinced by the latest jump in the price of kosher meat that they were being gouged, they assembled in squads of five, intent on shutting down every kosher butcher shop in New York's Jewish quarter. What was conceived as a nonviolent effort did not remain so for long. Customers who crossed the picket lines were heckled and assaulted and their parcels of meat hurled into the gutters. Butchers who remained open were attacked, their windows smashed, stock ruined, equipment destroyed. Brutal blows from police nightsticks sent women to local hospitals and to court. But soon Jewish housewives throughout the area took to the streets in solidarity, while the butchers either shut their doors or had their doors shut for them. The newspapers called it a modern Jewish Boston Tea Party. The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902 tells the twin stories of mostly uneducated women immigrants who discovered their collective consumer power and of the Beef Trust, the midwestern cartel that conspired to keep meat prices high despite efforts by the U.S. government to curtail its nefarious practices. With few resources and little experience but steely determination, this group of women organized themselves into a potent fighting force and, in their first foray into the political arena in their adopted country, successfully challenged powerful, vested corporate interests and set a pattern for future generations to follow.

The Winter Station

The Winter Station PDF Author: Jody Shields
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316385328
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
An aristocratic Russian doctor races to contain a deadly plague in an outpost city in Manchuria - before it spreads to the rest of the world. 1910: people are mysteriously dying at an alarming rate in the Russian-ruled city of Kharbin, a major railway outpost in Northern China. Strangely, some of the dead bodies vanish before they can be identified. During a dangerously cold winter in a city gripped by fear, the Baron, a wealthy Russian aristocrat and the city's medical commissioner, is determined to stop this mysterious plague. Battling local customs, an occupying army, and a brutal epidemic with no name, the Baron is torn between duty and compassion, between Western medical science and respect for Chinese tradition. His allies include a French doctor, a black marketeer, and a charismatic Chinese dwarf. His greatest refuge is the intimacy he shares with his young Chinese wife - but she has secrets of her own. Based on a true story that has been lost to history, set during the last days of imperial Russia, The Winter Station is a richly textured and brilliant novel about mortality, fear and love.

Murder in Manchuria

Murder in Manchuria PDF Author: Scott D. Seligman
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1640126031
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
In Murder in Manchuria, Scott D. Seligman explores an unsolved murder set amid the chaos that reigned in China in the run-up to World War II. The story unfolds against the backdrop of a three-country struggle for control of Manchuria--an area some called China's "Wild East"--and an explosive mixture of nationalities, religions, and ideologies. Semyon Kaspé, a young Jewish musician, is kidnapped, tortured, and ultimately murdered by disaffected, antisemitic White Russians, secretly acting on the orders of Japanese military overlords who covet his father's wealth. When local authorities deliberately slow-walk the search for the kidnappers, a young French diplomat takes over and launches his own investigation. Part cold-case thriller and part social history, the true, tragic saga of Kaspé is told in the context of the larger, improbable story of the lives of the twenty thousand Jews who called Harbin home at the beginning of the twentieth century. Scott D. Seligman recounts the events that led to their arrival and their hasty exodus--and solves a crime that has puzzled historians for decades.