History

This book investigates the deeper area of class antagonism between the privileged and underprivileged classes as they faced the colonial state and its different ideas of legality and sovereignty in colonial Bengal. It examines the ambiguity in the bhadralok — the educated middle class — response to courts and jails. The author argues that the discourse of superior ‘bhadralok’ ethics and morals was juxtaposed against the ‘chhotolok’ — who were devoid of such ethical values. This enabled the bhadralok to claim for themselves the position of the ‘aware’ legal subject as a class — a ‘good’ subject obedient to the dictates of the new rule of law, unlike the recalcitrant and ethically ill-equipped chhotolok. The author underlines the development of a new cultural language of morality that delineated the parameters of bhadralok public behaviour. As the ‘rule of law’ of the British government slid unobtrusively into the public domain, the criminal courts and the jails turned into public theatres of infamy — spaces that the ethically bound bhadralok dreaded occupying. The volume, thus, documents how the colonial legal and penal institutions streamlined the identities of some sections of the lower castes into ‘criminal caste’. It also examines the nature of colonial bureaucracy and highlights the social silence on gender and women's criminality.

‘Being Soviet’ takes a refreshing and innovative approach to the crucial years between 1939 and 1953 in the USSR. It addresses two of the key recent debates concerning Stalinism. It answers the question ‘what was the logic and language of Soviet power?’ by shifting the focus away from Russian nationalism and onto Soviet identity. ‘Sovietness’ is explored via the newspapers, films, plays, and popular music of the era. Soviet identity, in relation to the outside world, provided a powerful frame of reference in the late‐Stalin years. ‘Being Soviet's’ most significant contribution lies in its novel answer to the question ‘How did ordinary citizens relate to Soviet power?’ It avoids the current Foucault‐inspired emphasis on ‘supporters’ and ‘resistors’ of the regime. Instead it argues that most Soviet citizens did not fit easily into either category. Their relationship with Soviet power was defined by a series of subtle ‘tactics of the habitat’ (Kotkin) that enabled them to stay fed, informed, and entertained in these difficult times. ‘Being Soviet’ offers a rich and textured discussion of those everyday survival strategies including rumours, jokes, hairstyles, music tastes, sexual relationships, and political campaigning. Each chapter finishes by exploring what this everyday behaviour tells us about the collective mentalité of Stalin‐era society. ‘Being Soviet’ focuses on the place of Britain and America within Soviet identity; their evolution from wartime allies to Cold War enemies played a vital role in redefining what it meant to be Soviet in Stalin's last years.

One of the most important aspects of the Reformation in England was its impact on the status of the dead. Protestant reformers insisted vehemently that between heaven and hell there was no ‘middle place’ of purgatory where the souls of the departed could be assisted by the prayers of the living. This was no remote theological proposition, but a revolutionary doctrine affecting the lives of all 16th-century English people, and the ways in which their Church and society were organised. This book illuminates the (sometimes ambivalent) attitudes towards the dead in pre-Reformation religious culture, and traces (up to about 1630) the uncertain progress of the ‘reformation of the dead’ attempted by Protestant authorities as they sought to stamp out traditional rituals and provide the replacements acceptable in an increasingly fragmented religious world. It provides surveys of perceptions of the afterlife, of the cultural meanings of ghosts, and of the patterns of commemoration and memory which became characteristic of post-Reformation England. Together these topics constitute an important case-study in the nature and tempo of the English Reformation as an agent of social and cultural transformation.

The tenth and youngest son of a poor Boston soapmaker, Benjamin Franklin would rise to become, in Thomas Jefferson's words, “the greatest man and ornament of his age”. This book offers a portrait of this towering colonial figure, illuminating Franklin's character and personality. Here is truly one of the most extraordinary lives imaginable, a man who, with only two years of formal education, became a printer, publisher, postmaster, philosopher, world-class scientist and inventor, statesman, musician, and abolitionist. The book presents a chronological account of all these accomplishments, delightfully spiced with quotations from Franklin's own extensive writings. The book describes how the hardworking Franklin became at age twenty-four the most successful printer in Pennsylvania and how by forty-two, with the help of Poor Richard's Almanack, he had amassed enough wealth to retire from business. The book then follows Franklin's next brilliant career, as an inventor and scientist, examining his pioneering work on electricity and his inventions of the Franklin Stove, the lightning rod, and bifocals, as well as his mapping of the Gulf Stream, a major contribution to navigation. Lastly, the book covers Franklin's role as America's leading statesman, ranging from his years in England before the Revolutionary War to his time in France thereafter, highlighting his many contributions to the cause of liberty. Along the way, the book sheds light on Franklin's personal life, including his troubled relationship with his illegitimate son William, who remained a Loyalist during the Revolution, and Franklin's thoughts on such topics as religion and morality.

On the morning of August 9, 1757, British and colonial officers defending the besieged Fort William Henry surrendered to French forces, accepting the generous “parole of honor” offered by General Montcalm. As the column of British and colonials marched with their families and servants to Fort Edward some miles south, they were set upon by the Indian allies of the French. The resulting “massacre,” thought to be one of the bloodiest days of the French and Indian War, became forever ingrained in American myth by James Fenimore Cooper's classic novel The Last of the Mohicans. This book gives us the true story behind Cooper's famous book, bringing to life men such as British commander of Fort William Henry George Monro, English General Webb, his French counterpart Montcalm, and the wild frontier world of Natty Bumppo. The Battle of Lake George and the building of the fort marked the return of European military involvement in intercolonial wars, producing an explosive mixture of the contending martial values of Indians, colonials, and European regulars. The Americans and British who were attacked after surrendering, as well as French officers and their Indian allies, all felt deeply betrayed. Contemporary accounts of the victims—whose identities the book has reconstructed from newly discovered sources—helped to create a powerful, racist American folk memory that still resonates today. Survivors included men and women who were adopted into Indian tribes, sold to Canadians in a well-established white servant trade, or jailed in Canada or France as prisoners of war. Explaining the motives for the most notorious massacre of the colonial period, this book offers a tale of a fledgling America, one which places the tragic events of the Seven Years' War in a fresh historical context.

At the start of his administration, John F. Kennedy launched a personal policy initiative to court African nationalist leaders. This policy was designed to improve US-African relations and constituted a dramatic change in the direction of US foreign relations. The Kennedy administration believed that the Cold War could be won or lost depending upon whether Washington or Moscow won the hearts and minds of the Third World. Africa was particularly important because a wave of independence saw nineteen newly independent African states admitted into the United Nations during 1960–61. By 1962, 31 of the UN’s 110 member states were from the African continent, and both Washington and Moscow sought to add these countries to their respective voting bloc. For Kennedy, the Cold War only amplified the need for a strong US policy toward Africa—but did not create it. The Kennedy administration feared that American neglect of the newly decolonized countries of the world would result in the rise of anti-Americanism and for this reason needed to be addressed irrespective of the Cold War. For this reason, Kennedy devoted more time and effort toward relations with Africa than any other American president has. By making an in-depth examination of Kennedy’s attempt to court African nationalist leaders, this study adds an important chapter to the historiography of John F. Kennedy’s Cold War strategy. It also demonstrates that, through understanding and personal diplomacy, Kennedy realigned US policy toward Africa and largely won over the sympathies of its people.

This book draws on the extraordinary memoirs, diaries, interviews, and letters of Jewish women and men to give us the first intimate portrait of Jewish life in Nazi Germany. The book tells the story of Jews in Germany not from the hindsight of the Holocaust, nor from the vantage of the persecutors, but from the bewildered and ambiguous perspective of Jews trying to navigate their daily lives in a world that was becoming more and more insane. Answering the charge that Jews should have left earlier, the book shows that far from seeming inevitable, the Holocaust was impossible to foresee precisely because Nazi repression occurred in irregular and unpredictable steps until the massive violence of November 1938. Then the flow of emigration turned into a torrent, only to be stopped by the war. By that time Jews had been evicted from their homes, robbed of their possessions and their livelihoods, shunned by their former friends, persecuted by their neighbors, and driven into forced labor. For those trapped in Germany, mere survival became a nightmare of increasingly desperate options. Many took their own lives to retain at least some dignity in death; many others went underground and endured the terrors of nightly bombings and the even greater fear of being discovered by the Nazis. Most were murdered. All were pressed to the limit of human endurance and human loneliness. Focusing on the fate of families and particularly women's experience, this book takes us into the neighborhoods, into the kitchens, shops, and schools, to give us the shape and texture, the very feel of what it was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany.

This book explores the contours of print production in Goa as an extension of the questions that had prompted the studies on print in colonial India. It looks into the nature of and principles guiding Portuguese colonialism in Goa. The discussion of print as the locus of the formation and contestation of polities rests on certain assumptions about the functioning of the colonial state, its relation with the colonial elite, relations within colonial society, dissemination and bilingualism. The book initially draws on the representations of the Catholic elite, who were historically situated by colonial policy to occupy that public realm in which representations from elite and the state circulated among a limited public. The basic determinants of the colonial print sphere, such as language, the price and availability of print, and the Portuguese colonial state’s stance towards indigenous culture and the colonial elite were manifest in this interaction. This book examines how publications such as newsprint, novels, and pamphlets were printed in Goa during the nineteenth century.