Showing papers in "History: Reviews of New Books in 2000"
TL;DR: The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History as mentioned in this paper is a study of Mediterranean history with a focus on the Corrupted Sea and its role in the Middle East.
Abstract: (2000). The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 139-139.
444 citations
TL;DR: Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India as mentioned in this paper is a collection of books about science and the imagination of modern India with a focus on India's history and culture.
Abstract: (2000). Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 84-84.
261 citations
TL;DR: An Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare as discussed by the authors is an excellent overview of the twenty-first century's history of killing.
Abstract: (2000). An Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 88-88.
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TL;DR: In this paper, women such as Lucretia Mott, Jeanne Deroin, and a multitude of others were ablc to share concerns, express anxieties, and keep hopes alive for a future of radical activism that could bring about swift and lasting change.
Abstract: a body of correspondence that verifies her thesis regarding women’s interconnectivity. Through letters, women such as Lucretia Mott, Jeanne Deroin, and a multitude of others were ablc to share concerns, express anxieties, and keep hopes alive for a future of radical activism that “could bring about swift and lasting change.” For women’s historians the book is essential; however, the breadth of its analysis will make it of inrerest to a wider audience. Those who study international movements and social changc generally will find the book instructive. I.ikewise, feminist scholars can use Joyou.~ (;reetings both for its empirical value and to teach students that feminism is not a passing fad but part of a much larger and more active tradition both within the United States and internationally.
90 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the life inside the Antebellum Slave Market and the people who worked in the market, including slaves and slaves' families, in detail.
Abstract: (2000). Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 106-106.
84 citations
66 citations
TL;DR: A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology as mentioned in this paper is a history and identity in Chinese history book with a focus on the history of identity in the Chinese people.
Abstract: (2000). A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 137-137.
65 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a study of Indians and English: Facing off in Early America, focusing on the early years of the United States of America (1700-1800).
Abstract: (2000). Indians and English: Facing off in Early America. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 155-156.
TL;DR: Working-class New York: Life and Labor since World War II as mentioned in this paper, a history of working-class life and labor in New York City since the early 1970s.
Abstract: (2000). Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 149-149.
TL;DR: The course as discussed by the authors introduces main currents and important controversies in the recent history of the United States in the nineteenth century, and provides a survey of the most important works in the field.
Abstract: This course introduces main currents and important controversies in the recent historiography of the United States in the nineteenth century. It is designed to speed your preparation for qualifying exams, to enrich your sense of materials you will teach in the U.S. history survey, and to help you articulate the ways your dissertations will pose and answer questions that have engaged historians. We will read a few classic texts and several recent monographs—most of them revised dissertations. All of the books listed here appear (or will soon appear) on the Master List of reading for the comprehensive examination. Not all have to read in their entirety; parts of some can be skimmed for their argument; and others (I trust) can be savored for their writing as well as their interpretation. I have also included some articles assessing a “state of the field” or probing a new patch of real estate (e.g. the relation between slavery and capitalism.) There is a lot of reading here, and I will happily suggest short-cuts as we go forward, particular with respect to the books.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, a collection of alternative and counterfactual views of the history of virtual reality. And they present a review of new books: Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 51-52.
Abstract: (2000). Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 51-52.
TL;DR: The tension in the political culture of the United States between First Amendment jurisprudence and the high crime of treason as the Constitution sets it forth is too great to be explicated fully in the span of time that Gary has chosen: it would surely require some discussion, for instance, of Lincoln's ambivalence toward Confederate propaganda as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: liberals rather than the “nervous liberals.” Nonetheless, to his credit, Gary rises above a perfectionistic stance in his reflections on one of the central dilemmas of modem democracy: its obligation in the name of free speech to tolerate sedition in its midst now and then. In ancient times, democracy was sometimes a good deal easier: In Athens, for example, nervous democrats relied on the policy of ‘‘ostracism”-ten-year banishment-to deal with the problem of sedition. The tension in the political culture of the United States between First Amendment jurisprudence and the high crime of treason as the Constitution sets it forth is too great to be explicated fully in the span of time that Gary has chosen: It would surely require some discussion, for instance, of Lincoln’s ambivalence toward Confederate propaganda. Nonetheless, Gary has written an illuminating book that sheds light on important cross-currents of American liberalism-as distinct from the influence of those twentieth-century American defenders of democracy who do not, apparently, fall neatly into the “liberal” classification.
TL;DR: Geifman et al. as discussed by the authors provided a collection of thirteen articles analyzing the numerous factors that brought about the end of the Romanov monarchy, focusing on institutions: the Council of the State, the security police, and the church.
Abstract: As the Russian archives become increasingly available to scholars, new perspectives on the imperial era are beginning to emerge. Anna Geifman, an associate professor of history at Boston University has provided a collection of thirteen articles analyzing the numerous factors that brought about the end of the Romanov monarchy. Geifman’s first book was Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894-1917. She is also about to publish a study of the Russian spy Evno Azef. Her present work, Russia under the Last Czar: Opposition and Subversion, 1894-1917, engages American, Western European, and Russian scholars whose contributions are a mix of historiography and original archival research. Several of the authors take contrary positions; others directly challenge interpretations of established Western historians. Robert C. Williams suggests that Leninism and Bolshevism are not the same ideology. He further argues that the major struggle between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks was for control of funds from fictional marriages with wealthy women and from bank robberies. The Bolsheviks are pictured as quite diverse and flexible, making them considerably more popular than previously believed. In fact the differences between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were sufficiently obscure that identification of their moment of separation is difficult. Moreover, Bolsheviks frequently interacted with social revolutionaries, anarchists, and even constitutional democrats. Particularly interesting is Geifman’s discussion of the anarchists and “other obscure extremists.” Those groups threatened all aspects of the established order, occasionally engaging in killing for its own sake. One anarchist is even said to have threatened Peter Kropotkin’s life. Advocates of that philosophy eventually became hard to distinguish from common criminals, seriously damaging their credibility. Other potential disrupters of Russian stability were the minority nationalists, most of whom had legitimate grievances. However, the broad definition of what constituted “Russian,” as well as modest reforms after 1905, mollified some malcontents. For most of those people, however, little satisfaction was possible because of their own internal and external divisions. One common theme of this volume is that internal divisions tended to characterize all government opposition, not just the radical Left, but moderate and rightwing groups as well. Kadets engaged in internecine disputes over labor policy, land compensation for peasants, nationality issues, and voting rights for women. When Stolypin tried to organize the Octobrists as part of a Duma majority, his efforts were frustrated by the undisciplined nature of that loose coalition, not just the court intrigue. Even the political Right, the Union of Russian People, who cause the government as much grief as the radical Left, failed to reimpose the old pre-1905 system, in part because they too were composed of strong-minded individuals lacking political discipline. Four of the authors direct their attention to institutions: the Council of the State, the security police, and the church. Although the tsar refused to allow the Duma and Council of State to be destroyed as the radical Right demanded, neither did he allow a base of support for the government to be established through those bodies. As a result they evolved into debating societies with limited influence. The government suffered a loss of strength because the security police failed to maintain leadership that might have modernized those instruments of support. After 1909, they degenerated, losing credibility and reputation by unnecessarily antagonizing the population, being scandalized by the Bogrov affair, and finally contracting due to budget cuts. To make matters worse for the tsar and his government, the Russian Orthodox Church was sufficiently estranged from the government that by 1917 it was willing to accept change. In the end, the tsar had only the support of the army, which was alienated during the course of the war. College instructors, upper-level undergrads, and graduate students will find Geifman’s work stimulating, even should they not wholly accept all the contributors’ conclusions.
TL;DR: The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression as mentioned in this paper is a seminal work in the history of modern political thought, especially in the area of cyber-warfare.
Abstract: (2000). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 99-100.
TL;DR: Mote as discussed by the authors describes a political history of the Chinese Empire in the context of an evolving civilization and with the whole ensemble encompassed by its East and Inner Asian context, concluding with Mote's reflections on the confrontation between Chinese and Western worlds, each with its pretensions to universality and ultimate superiority in a modernizing world order.
Abstract: Imperial China is a tour de force: a millennium of Chinese history in the form of an intelligible narrative. F. W. Mote has accomplished this by holding unwaveringly to one perspective and one voice throughout. The perspective is that of a political history of the Chinese Empire in the context of an evolving civilization and with the whole ensemble encompassed by its East and Inner Asian context. The narrative culminates in Mote’s reflections on the confrontation, after 1800, between Chinese and Western worlds, each with its pretensions to universality and ultimate superiority in the context of a modernizing world order. Mote respects the reader and wears his learning lightly. The intended audience is an intelligent layperson willing to roll up his sleeves and do some serious reading on Chinese history. Mote brings the reader close to the subject, despite its immensity, by staying close to his documents. He has relied mainly on his own translations from the Chinese texts and on the translations of others from the literary languages of the Inner Asian frontiers. Moreover, the reader is constantly reminded of the power of human agency in history by the scores of concise sketches of the lives and the character of representative actors as they appear. Imperial China is also distinguished by its extensive and in-depth histories of the steppe and forest peoples along the Inner Frontiers. These take up about 150 pages, in addition to Mote’s thoughtful accounts of the hybrid, conquest regimes, with their unstable collaborations between alien courts and military establishments and Chinese civil administrators. The frontier emphasis throws the Chinese world order into high relief while connecting it with universal history. On the vexed question of the periodization of Chinese history, Mote labels the nine centuries of his narrative as “later imperial” (3). By doing so, he avoids the teleological and Eurocentric “early modern” tag, while acknowledging its use by others for the period beginning in the Southern Song (320-321). Mote supports his rejection of Western models of historical development in a lucid and thoroughgoing refutation of the “buds of capitalism” theory, which claims to have found evidence that China entered a precapitalist stage in the late imperial period (765). His adoption of the Five Dynasties era (907-959) as the beginning of the late imperial period is justified here on several grounds. It marked the beginning of a millennium during the greater part of which some or all of the Chinese people were subject to non-Chinese (that is, non-Han) rulers. It saw the final displacement of the political center of the empire eastward from the Wei valley to the north China plain. The Five Dynasties period also accomplished the definitive destruction of the aristocratic elite of the Six Dynasties and Tang, which prepared the way for accelerated commercial urbanization, and easier upward social mobility through the civil service examination system. Mote lets the year 1800 stand as the end of the late imperial period, when continuous Chinese contacts with the Western world, already more than two centuries old, were about to spin out of control and assume a threatening character. An issue often raised in relation to Chinese frontier history is whether an author’s stance does justice to claims of both Chinese and their non-Han neighbors. In conquest regimes, where a ruling elite of non-Chinese origin makes certain accommodations to Chinese culture and institutions, the better to govern their Chinese subjects, is this a question of “sinification,” that is, of barbarians striving to become culturally Chinese? Or is it a question of barbarians skillfully employing Chinese means in their own undisguised “barbarian” interests? Mote addresses the issue in relation to the Khitans’ Liao dynasty by ascribing to them the latter policy (42). In the context of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, he still rejects the sinification thesis, but with a difference. Owing to their relatively precarious military situation at the time of the conquest, the Manchus adopted “a public stance [italics mine] of being more Chinese than the Chinese.” This does not appear to contradict the anti-sinocentric position staked out by Evelyn Rawski in her recently published The Last Emperors. If the “barbarian” conquerors retained their ethnic identity, with one foot in China and the other in steppe or forest, the Chinese also maintained their identity under alien domination, though both were at times “corrupted” in some degree by the other. That raises the question of Chinese ethnic identity in the face of regional differences and changes over time, which Mote defines in
TL;DR: The Philippine War, 1899-1902 as discussed by the authors, a period of conflict between the United States and the Philippines, is considered a seminal event in the history of new book reviews.
Abstract: (2000). The Philippine War, 1899–1902. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 136-136.
TL;DR: The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB as mentioned in this paper is an excellent collection of documents about the history of the Russian secret service.
Abstract: (2000). The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 77-77.
TL;DR: The Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War as mentioned in this paper is a collection of oral histories of the first World War.
Abstract: (2000). Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 133-133.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss anti-politics and the search for alternatives in German Modernity, 1890-1914, and present a review of new books on this topic.
Abstract: (2000). Reformers, Critics, and the Paths of German Modernity: Anti-Politics and the Search for Alternatives, 1890–1914. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 29-29.
TL;DR: The Language of American Nationhood as mentioned in this paper is a collection of essays about the language of American nationhood and its history, with a focus on the role of women in American history.
Abstract: (2000). Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 107-108.
TL;DR: Berman as discussed by the authors argues that this straightforward story is actually a myth fabricated in the late twelfth century in reaction to the dominance that the daughter-house of Clairvaux had usurped during the abbacy of Bernard (who died in 1153) and to criticism of Cistercian practice by Pope Alexander III (1159-81).
Abstract: that the order expanded with astonishing rapidity through the establishment of numerous new daughter-houses and the charismatic leadership of Bernard of Clairvaux, who entered Citeaux in 11 12. Stephen is also said to have composed a narrative of Citeaux’s creation, the so-called Exordium parvum, which provided a reliable firsthand account of the order’s establishment and early structure. Berman’s investigation of the evidence has persuaded her that this straightforward story is actually a myth fabricated in the late twelfth century in reaction to the dominance that the daughter-house of Clairvaux had usurped during the abbacy of Bernard (who died in 1153) and to criticism of Cistercian practice by Pope Alexander III (1159-81). It was only then, Berman argues, that the order emerged as an administrative entity; but texts, including those attributed to Stephen, were produced to suggest that the entire constitutional apparatus, with its highly developed institutions, had existed from the start, and they became standard. In Berman’s reconstruction, therefore, the growth of an administrative order, which had actually been a gradual, evolutionary process, was suddenly transformed into a Genesis-like tale of sudden creation. In the course of this refashioning, moreover, certain important aspects of the twelfth-century reality were deliberately suppressed, including the presence of houses for women within the movement and the fact that most Cistercian houses were not monasteries created as daughters by “apostolic generation,” but originally autonomous reform foundations that affiliated with the gradually emerging order at a considerably later date. To make her case, Berman scrutinizes a wide array of twelfth-century data and disputes past assumptions about it. She redates fundamental documents, contending that many of them that indicate an earlier existence of an administrative order-papal bulls, as well as the constitution and narrative attributed to Stephen-are either later forgeries or the result of interpolation and alteration. She interprets the word “ordo” in demonstrably early texts to refer to a regular mode of life rather than an administrative structure. She employs cartularies and other materials to argue that in the first half of the twelfth century most Cistercian houses were not new foundations but previously-independent monasteries gradually drawn to Citeaux, that they often showed marked dissimilarities among themselves (in architecture, for instance), and that they frequently were communities partially or exclusively female. What is the success of Berman’s wideranging assault on received wisdom? In some respects she makes very valid points. The importance of the incorporation of existing reform houses to the order’s early growth is often underestimated, and the presence of women’s communities in its early history overlooked. On those matters Berman’s work is a useful corrective. The broader argument of the book, howev-