Showing papers in "The American Historical Review in 1979"

States and social revolutions : a comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China

Abstract: List of tables and maps Preface Introduction 1. Explaining social revolutions: alternatives to existing theories Part I. Causes of Social Revolutions in France, Russia and China: 2. Old-regime states in crisis 3. Agrarian structures and peasant insurrections Part II. Outcomes of Social Revolutions in France, Russia and China: 4. What changed and how: a focus on state building 5. The birth of a 'modern state edifice' in France 6. The emergence of a dictatorial party-state in Russia 7. The rise of a mass-mobilizing party-state in China Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index.

A just measure of pain : the penitentiary in the industrial revolution, 1750-1850

Abstract: Subtitled "The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution 1750-1850", "A Just Measure of Pain" describes the moment in 18th century England when the modern penitentiary and its ambiguous legacy were born. In depicting how the whip, the brand and the gallows - public punishments once meant to cow the unruly poor into passivity - came to be replaced by the "moral management" of the prison and the notion that the criminal poor should be involved in their own rehabilitation. Michael Ignatieff documents the rise of a new conception of class relations and with it a new philosophy of punishment, one directed not at the body but at the mind. "A Just Measure of Pain" is a highly atmospheric and compellingly written work of social history, which has already become a classic study of its subject. For the Penguin edition the author will provide an afterword concerning the polemics which followed the book's first publication in 1978.

Life in the English country house : a social and architectural history

Abstract: This best-selling book is a beautifully illustrated history of the English country house from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. In it, renowned architectural historian Mark Girouard presents a rare and revealing glimpse of the English upper classes-their public and personal lives, their servants, and their homes. "A deeply important book, one of the most interesting contributions to architectural history."-J. H. Plumb, The New York Review of Books "A survey of country houses through the past five centuries, from a broad range of materials: family archives, literature, plans and photographs.... The book itself is a physical artifact of surpassing beauty which could fit on the grandest table in the houses it describes."-David Hackett Fischer, The New Republic "Informative, balanced, knowledgeable, and witty."-The New Yorker "This enthralling and immensely informative book...tells with wit, scholarship, and lucidity how the country house evolved to meet the needs and reflect the social attitudes of the times."-Philip Ziegler, The Times "One of those very useful and very enjoyable books that the learned can seldom write, and the entertaining seldom achieve-clear, detailed, and witty."-Angus Wilson, The Observer Winner of the 1978 Duff Cooper Memorial Prize and the W. H. Smith & Son Annual Literary Award for 1979.

Urban utopias in the twentieth century : Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier

Abstract: As Robert Fishman writes of three of urban planning's greatest visionaries, Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, they 'hated the cities of their time with an overwhelming passion. The metropolis was the counter-image of their ideal cities, the hell that inspired their heavens.'

The Evolution of the International Economic Order

Abstract: Do rich industrial nations underestimate the threat to their economic stability posed by demands for a new international economic order? Are the developing countries wrong to assume that their economic advancement depends on a transfer of wealth from the richer nations? Sir W. Arthur Lewis's provocative analysis of the present economic order and its origins suggests that the answer to both questions is yes.Professor Lewis perceptively illuminates aspects of recent economic history that have often been overlooked by observers of international affairs. He asks first how the world came to be divided into countries exporting manufactures and countries exporting primary commodities. High agricultural productivity and a good investment climate allowed countries in Northwest Europe to industrialize rapidly, while the favorable terms of trade they enjoyed assured them and the temperate lands to which Europeans migrated of continuing dominance over the tropical countries. At the core of the author's argument lies the contention that as the structure of international trade changes, the tropical countries move rapidly toward becoming net importers of agricultural commodities and net exporters of manufactures. Even so, they continue to depend on the markets of the richer countries for their growth, and they continue to trade on unfavorable terms. Both of these disadvantages, he concludes, stem from large agricultural sectors with low productivity and will disappear only as the technology of tropical food production is revolutionized.Originally published in 1978.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The History of Contract as a Motif in Political Thought

Abstract: THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN CONTRACTARIAN THOUGHT has been radically distorted by certain pervasive assumptions in the established classics on the subject. As intellectual history, the story of European contractualism was created by the formidable mind of the German legal scholar, Otto von Gierke, in the late nineteenth century. Most of Gierke's career was devoted to the research and writing of his monumental Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, whose four volumes were published in 1868, 1873, 1881, and 1913. Actually composed two decades before publication, the fourth volume contains the critical sections on contractarian thought during the period 1500-1800, which Ernest Barker published in English translation in 1934.' As amplified and disseminated by Barker, and J. W. Gough, Gierke's views have become standard for our understanding of this aspect of early modem political thought. Within his framework of supposed essentials, a host of specialized studies has appeared. Although valuable in some respects, much of this work is vitiated by ahistorical dogma. We shall first attempt to uncover his dogmatic elements and then proceed to sketch an alternative story. The first task is by no means simple, for the literature is full of contradictory assertions and judgments. Everyone agrees on the centrality of contractarian arguments to the political thoughts of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries; but, aside from consensus at this trivial level, almost every statement about the history of contract has been met with contradictions. We are told, for example, that social contract theory was-and was not-invented in ancient Greece, that the Christian Middle Ages did-and did not-rediscover or anticipate the rediscovery of social contract theory, and that the Protestant and Cath-

What Fascism is Not: Thoughts on the Deflation of a Concept

Abstract: "PERHAPS THE WORD FASCISM SHOULD BE BANNED, at least temporarily, from our political vocabulary," S. J. Woolf wrote in i968.1 Historians who have confronted the problem of defining this mulish concept may sympathize with this modest proposal. Unfortunately, the word "fascism" is here to stay; only its meaning seems to have been banned. Nevertheless, the German philosopher-historian Ernst Nolte is probably correct in stressing that historians do not have the responsibility to invent new terms simply because the existing ones seem inadequate. But they do have the responsibility to confess how truly inadequate the term fascism has become: put simply, we have agreed to use the word without agreeing on how to define it. This article is concerned with the reasons for this unfortunate state of affairs. Although some scholars attempted from the start to restrict the use of the term fascism to Mussolini's movement in Italy, most have joined in a process of proliferation that began as early as the 1920S. After Mussolini's success, observers thought they recognized men and organizations of the same type arising in other nations. From this beginning emerged a popular image of fascism as an international movement, a phenomenon that found purest expression in Italy and Germany, but also appeared in a wide number of other countries. When stripped of national trappings, it is commonly believed, all of these movements had a common characteristic that was the essence of fascism itself. Although that essence is difficult to define, the prevailing hope is that continuing research will eventually reveal the nature of facism more clearly. Thus, while the thing itself continues to elude us, the name goes on as before. Edward R. Tannenbaum has observed that the study of fascism appears to instill in scholars a particular compulsion for reductive logic, a tendency to

On the Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini

Abstract: Gemini was the intermediate manned space flight program between America's first steps into space with Mercury and the manned lunar expeditions of Apollo. Because of its position between these two other efforts, Gemini is probably less remembered. Still, it more than had its place in man's progress into this new frontier. Gemini accomplishments were manyfold. They included many firsts: first astronaut-controlled maneuvering in space; first rendezvous in space of one spacecraft with another; first docking of one spacecraft with a propulsive stage and use of that stage to transfer man to high altitude; first traverse of man into the earth's radiation belts; first extended manned flights of a week or more in duration; first extended stays of man outside his spacecraft; first controlled reentry and precision landing; and many more. These achievements were significant in ways one cannot truly evaluate even today, but two things stand out: (1) it was the time when America caught up and surpassed the Soviet Union in manned space flight, and (2) these demonstrations of capability were an absolute prerequisite to the phenomenal Apollo accomplishments then yet to come.