The Birth of the Despot

The Birth of the Despot PDF Author: Lucette Valensi
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801424809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
In her graceful account of the transformation of European attitudes toward the Ottoman empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Lucette Valensi follows the genealogy of the concept of Oriental despotism. The Birth of the Despot examines a crucial moment in the long and ambiguous encounter between the Christian and Islamic worlds: the period after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, when Venice's pursuit of its commercial and maritime interests brought two powerful protagonists--Venice and the Sublime Porte--face-to-face.Vivaldi's oratorio Juditha Triumphans, in which Judith liberates her besieged town by killing the Turk Holofernes, serves as the organizing metaphor in Valensi's study of how Venice's perceptions of its rival changed. Valensi shows how Venice's initial admiration for the sultan and his orderly empire metamorphosed into revulsion at a monstrous tyrant.

The Birth of the Despot

The Birth of the Despot PDF Author: Lucette Valensi
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801424809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Get Book Here

Book Description
In her graceful account of the transformation of European attitudes toward the Ottoman empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Lucette Valensi follows the genealogy of the concept of Oriental despotism. The Birth of the Despot examines a crucial moment in the long and ambiguous encounter between the Christian and Islamic worlds: the period after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, when Venice's pursuit of its commercial and maritime interests brought two powerful protagonists--Venice and the Sublime Porte--face-to-face.Vivaldi's oratorio Juditha Triumphans, in which Judith liberates her besieged town by killing the Turk Holofernes, serves as the organizing metaphor in Valensi's study of how Venice's perceptions of its rival changed. Valensi shows how Venice's initial admiration for the sultan and his orderly empire metamorphosed into revulsion at a monstrous tyrant.

Contending Visions of the Middle East

Contending Visions of the Middle East PDF Author: Zachary Lockman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521629379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
An accessible and broad ranging survey of Western perceptions of Islam and the Middle East.

The Ottomans

The Ottomans PDF Author: Marc David Baer
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541673778
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 567

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Book Description
This major new history of the Ottoman dynasty reveals a diverse empire that straddled East and West. The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans’ multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe’s heart. Indeed, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans’ remarkable rise from a frontier principality to a world empire, historian Marc David Baer traces their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic, and Byzantine heritage. The Ottomans pioneered religious toleration even as they used religious conversion to integrate conquered peoples. But in the nineteenth century, they embraced exclusivity, leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the empire’s demise after the First World War. The Ottomans vividly reveals the dynasty’s full history and its enduring impact on Europe and the world.

Ethnography and Encounter

Ethnography and Encounter PDF Author: Guido van Meersbergen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004471820
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
The global operations of the East India Companies were profoundly shaped by European perceptions of foreign lands. Providing a cultural perspective absent from existing economic and institutional histories, Ethnography and Encounter is the first book to systematically explore how Company agents’ understandings of and attitudes towards Asian peoples and societies informed institutional approaches to trade, diplomacy, and colonial governance. Its fine-grained comparisons of Dutch and English activities in seventeenth-century South Asia show how corporate ethnography was produced, how it underpinned given modes of conduct, and how it illuminates connections across space and time. Ethnography and Encounter identifies deep commonalities between Dutch and English discourses and practices, their indebtedness to pan-European ethnographic traditions, and their centrality to wider histories of European expansion.

Montesquieu's Science of Politics

Montesquieu's Science of Politics PDF Author: Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742511811
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
In what constitutes the only English-language collection of essays ever dedicated to the analysis of Montesquieu's contributions to political science, the contributors review some of the most vexing controversies that have arisen in the interpretation of Montesquieu's thought. By paying careful attention to the historical, political, and philosophical contexts of Montesquieu's ideas, the contributors provide fresh readings of The Spirit of Laws, clarify the goals and ambitions of its author, and point out the pertinence of his thinking to the problems of our world today.

The Despot's Apprentice

The Despot's Apprentice PDF Author: Brian Klaas
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510735933
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
”[A] primer on the threat to democracy posed by—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—the current president of the United States.” —David Litt, New York Times bestselling author Donald Trump isn’t a despot. But he is increasingly acting like The Despot’s Apprentice, an understudy in authoritarian tactics that threaten to erode American democracy, including: Attacking the press Threatening rule of law by firing those who investigate his alleged wrongdoings Using nepotism to staff the White House and countless other techniques Donald Trump is borrowing tactics from the world’s dictators and despots. Trump’s fascination with the military, his obsession with his own cult of personality, and his deliberate campaign to blur the line between fact and falsehood are nothing new to the world of despots. But they are new to the United States. With each authoritarian tactic or tweet, Trump poses a unique threat to democratic government in the world’s most powerful democracy. At the same time, Trump’s apprenticeship has serious consequences beyond the United States. His bizarre adoration and idolization of despotic strongmen—from Russia’s Putin, to Turkey’s Erdogan, or to the Philippines’ Duterte—has transformed American foreign policy into a powerful cheerleader for some of the world’s worst regimes. In The Despot’s Apprentice, an ex-US campaign advisor who has sat with the world’s dictators explains Donald Trump’s increasingly authoritarian tactics and how Trump uniquely threatens American democracy... and how to save it from him.

The Origins of the Modern European State System, 1494-1618

The Origins of the Modern European State System, 1494-1618 PDF Author: M.S. Anderson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317892763
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
This study examines the early years of the post-medieval European states and the growth of a recognisably 'modern' system for handling their international relations. M S Anderson gives much of his space to France, Spain and England and to the state of the relations between them, as their various power plays rolled over Italy and the Low countries, but, he also incorporates the Northern and Eastern states including Russia, Poland and the Baltic world into the main European political arena. He provides a broad narrative of European politics and its impact on diplomacy including the Italian Wars 1494-1559, the French Wars of Religion, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and the relations of Christendom and Islam with the advance of the Ottoman empire. He also gives considerable attention to the influence of military and economic factors on international relations.

Venetian Studies

Venetian Studies PDF Author: Horatio F. Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Venice (Italy)
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description


Islam in Liberalism

Islam in Liberalism PDF Author: Joseph A. Massad
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022620622X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
Joseph Massad s "Desiring Arabs" (UCP, 2007) was an intellectual/literary history that sought out links between Orientalism and representations of sex and desire, rebutting in the meantime Western efforts to impose categories of heterosexual/homosexual where (in Islam) no such subjectivities exist. His new book broadens the purview to show us what Islam has become in today s world, attending fully to the multiplication of meanings of Islam. Islam in Liberalism is an intellectual/political history, enabling us to understand that history in terms of how Islam operated as a category within western liberalism; another way to phrase this is to say that Massad underscores how the anxieties about what Europe constituteddespotism, intolerance, misogyny, homophobiahave gotten projected onto Islam. It is, he avers, only through this projection that Europe could emerge as democratic, tolerant, gynophilic, and hemophilicin short, Islam-free. But in fact Islam has been there since the birth of Europe. Liberalism has been the weapon of choice since the late 18th century against the internal and external others of Europe. Massad s brilliant critique of anti-Muslim sexual politics in Desiring Arabs is now broadened provocatively to include NGOs, international organizations, and therapeutic programs. He moves from consideration of the meanings of democracy (and the ideological assumption that Islam is not compatible with democracy) through chapters on women in Islam, sexuality and/in Islam, psychoanalytic interpretations of Islamic themes, and the more recent development of the idea of Abrahamic religions among those valorizing an inter-faith agenda. Overall, Massad sets this book up as a biting critique of the sort of liberalism Euro-American propagated and brought as good news to an unenlightened Islam."

The Rise of Modern Despotism in Iran

The Rise of Modern Despotism in Iran PDF Author: Ali Rahnema
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 086154143X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 740

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Book Description
How did the Shah of Iran become a modern despot? In 1953, Iranian monarch Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi emerged victorious from a power struggle with his prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, thanks to a coup masterminded by Britain and the United States. Mosaddeq believed the Shah should reign not rule, but the Shah was determined that no one would make him a mere symbol. In this meticulous political history, Ali Rahnema details Iran’s slow transition from constitutional to despotic monarchy. He examines the tug of war between the Shah, his political opposition, a nation in search of greater liberty, and successive US administrations with their changing priorities. He shows how the Shah gradually assumed control over the legislature, the judiciary, the executive, and the media, and clamped down on his opponents’ activities. By 1968, the Shah’s turn to despotism was complete. The consequences would be far-reaching.