Other Pasts, Different Presents, Alternative Futures

Other Pasts, Different Presents, Alternative Futures PDF Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253017068
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
“The most robust defense of historical counterfactuals to date . . . For those interested in this fascinating subject, Black’s book is indispensable.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) What if there had been no World War I or no Russian Revolution? What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo in 1815, or if Martin Luther had not nailed his complaints to the church door at Wittenberg in 1517, or if the South had won the American Civil War? The questioning of apparent certainties or “known knowns” can be fascinating and, indeed, “What if?” books are very popular. However, this speculative approach, known as counterfactualism, has had limited impact in academic histories, historiography, and the teaching of historical methods. In this book, Jeremy Black offers a short guide to the subject, one that is designed to argue its value as a tool for public and academia alike. He “demonstrates that, in skillful hands, counterfactual history is more than just fun; as one ingredient among many, it can be an extremely fertile source of explanation” (History Today). “[Black’s] illustrative examples of ‘what if' ‘how,’ and ‘why’ will make readers sit back and wonder.”—Kirkus Reviews “With a unique methodology, Black performs a what-if analysis of history to show how little it takes to change the world’s fate . . . This book provokes thought and speculation while also entertaining.”—Foreword Reviews “A sparkling defense of the legitimacy and utility of counterfactual history―of what ifs―and the best single work on its subject available.”—Weekly Standard

Other Pasts, Different Presents, Alternative Futures

Other Pasts, Different Presents, Alternative Futures PDF Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253017068
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book Here

Book Description
“The most robust defense of historical counterfactuals to date . . . For those interested in this fascinating subject, Black’s book is indispensable.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) What if there had been no World War I or no Russian Revolution? What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo in 1815, or if Martin Luther had not nailed his complaints to the church door at Wittenberg in 1517, or if the South had won the American Civil War? The questioning of apparent certainties or “known knowns” can be fascinating and, indeed, “What if?” books are very popular. However, this speculative approach, known as counterfactualism, has had limited impact in academic histories, historiography, and the teaching of historical methods. In this book, Jeremy Black offers a short guide to the subject, one that is designed to argue its value as a tool for public and academia alike. He “demonstrates that, in skillful hands, counterfactual history is more than just fun; as one ingredient among many, it can be an extremely fertile source of explanation” (History Today). “[Black’s] illustrative examples of ‘what if' ‘how,’ and ‘why’ will make readers sit back and wonder.”—Kirkus Reviews “With a unique methodology, Black performs a what-if analysis of history to show how little it takes to change the world’s fate . . . This book provokes thought and speculation while also entertaining.”—Foreword Reviews “A sparkling defense of the legitimacy and utility of counterfactual history―of what ifs―and the best single work on its subject available.”—Weekly Standard

Everfair

Everfair PDF Author: Nisi Shawl
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 076533805X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
An "alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's ... colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier"--Amazon.com.

To Lose an Empire

To Lose an Empire PDF Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350216070
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Bringing strategy, foreign policy, domestic and imperial politics together, this book challenges the conventional understanding as to why the British Empire, at perhaps the height of its power, lost control of its American colonies. Critiquing the traditional emphasis on the value of alliance during the Seven Years' War, and the consequences of British isolation during the War of American Independence, Jeremy Black shows that this rests on a misleading understanding of the relationship between policy and strategy. Encompassing both the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence and grounded in archival research, this book considers a violent and contentious period which was crucial to the making of modern Britain and its role in the wider world. Offering a reinterpretation of British strategy and foreign policy throughout this time, To Lose an Empire interweaves British domestic policy with diplomatic and colonial developments to show the impact this period and its events had on British strategy and foreign policy for years to come.

Deleuze and Derrida

Deleuze and Derrida PDF Author: Vernon W. Cisney
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748696237
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Examines independent documentary film production in India within a political context.

Dismantling the Nation

Dismantling the Nation PDF Author: Florencia San Martín
Publisher: Amherst College Press
ISBN: 1943208573
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
The first academic volume to theorize and historicize contemporary artistic practices and culture from Chile in the English language, Dismantling the Nation takes as its point of departure a radical criticism against the nation-state of Chile and its colonial, capitalist, heteronormative, and extractivist rule, proposing otherwise forms of inhabiting, creating, and relating in a more fluid, contingent, ecocritical, feminist, and caring worlds. From the case of Chile, the book expands the scholarly discussion around decolonial methodologies, attending to artistic practices and discourses from distinct and distant locations-from Arica and the Atacama Desert to Wallmapu and Tierra del Fuego, and from the Central Valley, the Pacific coast, and the Andes to territories beyond the nation's modern geographical borders. Analyzing how these practices refer to issues such as the environmental and cultural impact of extractivism, as well as memory, trauma, collectivity, and resistance towards neoliberal totality, the volume contributes to the fields of art history and visual culture, memory, ethnic, gender, and Indigenous studies, filmmaking, critical geography, and literature in Chile, Latin America, and other regions of the world, envisioning art history and visual culture from a transnational and transdisciplinary perspective.

Geographies of an Imperial Power

Geographies of an Imperial Power PDF Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253031591
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
From explorers tracing rivers to navigators hunting for longitude, spatial awareness and the need for empirical understanding were linked to British strategy in the 1700s. This strategy, in turn, aided in the assertion of British power and authority on a global scale. In this sweeping consideration of Britain in the 18th century, Jeremy Black explores the interconnected roles of power and geography in the creation of a global empire. Geography was at the heart of Britain’s expansion into India, its response to uprisings in Scotland and America, and its revolutionary development of railways. Geographical dominance was reinforced as newspapers stoked the fires of xenophobia and defined the limits of cosmopolitan Europe as compared to the "barbarism" beyond. Geography provided a system of analysis and classification which gave Britain political, cultural, and scientific sovereignty. Black considers geographical knowledge not just as a tool for creating a shared cultural identity but also as a key mechanism in the formation of one of the most powerful and far-reaching empires the world has ever known.

Plotting Power

Plotting Power PDF Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253026792
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
An examination of strategy in war and international relations that links military ideas and practice, political concepts, diplomacy, and geopolitics. Military strategy takes place as much on broad national and international stages as on battlefields. In a brilliant reimagining of the impetus and scope of eighteenth-century warfare, historian Jeremy Black takes us far and wide, from the battlefields and global maneuvers in North America and Europe to the military machinations and plotting of such Asian powers as China, Japan, Burma, Vietnam, and Siam. Europeans coined the term “strategy” only two centuries ago, but strategy as a concept has been practiced globally throughout history. Taking issue with traditional military historians, Black argues persuasively that strategy was as much political as battlefield tactics and that plotting power did not always involve outright warfare but also global considerations of alliance building, trade agreements, and intimidation. “This is both an overview of eighteenth-century warfare and an interpretation of how war was made; a polemical contribution to a debate on the nature of strategy; and a contribution to global history.” —Alan Forrest, author of Napoleon: Life, Legacy, and Image: A Biography “A refreshing new look at how meanings behind these terms [strategy and strategic culture] were understood and employed in the eighteenth century. With his vast knowledge and insights of the period, he is able to take us on a wide-ranging exploration that provides stimulating food for thought for historians of all periods.” —Richard Harding, author of The Emergence of Britain’s Global Naval Supremacy: The War of 1739-1748

Bills of Union

Bills of Union PDF Author: Aaron Graham
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030676773
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
This book brings together for the first time more than half a dozen proposals for an imperial paper currency in the mid-eighteenth century British Atlantic, to show how manage colonial currency and banking in the expanding empire. Existing studies have looked at the successes and failures of schemes in individual colonies. But some had grander ambitions, such as Benjamin Franklin, and offered proposals for ‘imperial’ or ‘continental’ paper currencies and monetary unions which would help knit together colonial territories throughout North America and even the Caribbean into a cohesive whole during a moment of imperial reform. This book brings together these proposals for the first time, including several never studied before, to show how thinkers and writers on empire, currency and finance drew on financial practices, precedents and principles from across the British Atlantic to present their own visions of monetary union and the future of empire. In doing so it makes an important and original contribution to the wider histories of monetary and financial thought and theory and the roots of American monetary policy, and the links between finance, empire, politics, reform and revolution. It will be of interest to academics working on the history of finance, banking and currency in the British Isles, North America and the Caribbean in the eighteenth century, as well as those working on the political economy of the British Empire, including mercantilism, trade, warfare and the politics of empire in the decades leading up to the American Revolution.

The Holocaust

The Holocaust PDF Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253022185
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
“A compact and cogent academic account of the Holocaust.” —Kirkus Reviews Brilliant and wrenching, The Holocaust: History and Memory tells the story of the brutal mass slaughter of Jews during World War II and how that genocide has been remembered and misremembered ever since. Taking issue with generations of scholars who separate the Holocaust from Germany’s military ambitions, historian Jeremy M. Black demonstrates persuasively that Germany’s war on the Allies was entwined with Hitler’s war on Jews. As more and more territory came under Hitler’s control, the extermination of Jews became a major war aim, particularly in the east, where many died and whole Jewish communities were exterminated in mass shootings carried out by the German army and collaborators long before the extermination camps were built. Rommel’s attack on Egypt was a stepping stone to a larger goal—the annihilation of 400,000 Jews living in Palestine. After Pearl Harbor, Hitler saw America’s initial focus on war with Germany rather than Japan as evidence of influential Jewish interests in American policy, thus justifying and escalating his war with Jewry through the Final Solution. And the German public knew. In chilling detail, Black unveils compelling evidence that many everyday Germans must have been aware of the genocide around them. In the final chapter, he incisively explains the various ways that the Holocaust has been remembered, downplayed, and even dismissed as it slips from horrific experience into collective consciousness and memory. Essential, concise, and highly readable, The Holocaust: History and Memory bears witness to those forever silenced and ensures that we will never forget their horrifying fate. “A balanced and precise work that is true to the scholarship, comprehensive yet not overwhelming, clearly written and beneficial for the expert and informed public alike.” —Jewish Book Council “A demanding but important work.” —Choice Reviews

Competition

Competition PDF Author: Stefan Arora-Jonsson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192652869
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
One of the predominant trends of modern society is the pervasive presence of competition. No longer just a function of economic markets or democratic systems, competition has become a favoured tool for governing people and organizations, from the provision of schooling and elder care to the way we consume popular culture. Yet social scientists have played a surprisingly modest role in analysing its implications, as the discussion of competition has largely been confined to its narrow economic meaning. This book opens up competition for the study of social scientists. Its central message is that while competition seems ubiquitous, it should not be taken for granted or be naturalized as an inevitable aspect of human existence. Its emergence, maintenance, and change are based on institutions and organizational efforts, and a central challenge for social science is to learn more about these processes and their outcomes. With the use of a novel definition of competition, more fundamental questions can be addressed than merely whether or not competition works. How is competition constructed - and by whom? Which behaviours result from competition? What are its consequences? Can competition be removed? And, how do these factors vary with the object of competition - be it money, attention, status, or other scarce and desired objects? This book investigates these and more questions in studies of competition among and within schools, universities, multinational corporations, auditors, waste-disposal firms, fashion designers, and more.