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Winner, 2023 New South Wales Premier's History Awards, General History Prize An imam banished from eastern Indonesia to the Cape of Good Hope in 1780 builds a new Muslim community with a mix of fellow exiles, enslaved people, and even the men tasked with supervising his detention. Nineteenth-century colonial chroniclers invent the legend of the “loyal Malay” warrior, whose anger can be tamed through the “mildness” of British rule. A Tunisian-born teacher who arrived in Java from Istanbul in the early twentieth century becomes an enterprising Arabic-language journalist caught between competing nationalisms. Telling these stories and many more, Michael Francis Laffan offers a sweeping ...
Drawing on previously unavailable archival material, this book argues that Indonesian nationalism rested on Islamic ecumenism heightened by colonial rule and the pilgrimage. The award winning author Laffan contrasts the latter experience with life in Cairo, where some Southeast Asians were drawn to both reformism and nationalism. After demonstrating the close linkage between Cairene ideology and Indonesian nationalism, Laffan shows how developments in the Middle East continued to play a role in shaping Islamic politics in colonial Indonesia.
Indonesian Islam is often portrayed as being intrinsically moderate by virtue of the role that mystical Sufism played in shaping its traditions. According to Western observers--from Dutch colonial administrators and orientalist scholars to modern anthropologists such as the late Clifford Geertz--Indonesia's peaceful interpretation of Islam has been perpetually under threat from outside by more violent, intolerant Islamic traditions that were originally imposed by conquering Arab armies. The Makings of Indonesian Islam challenges this widely accepted narrative, offering a more balanced assessment of the intellectual and cultural history of the most populous Muslim nation on Earth. Michael Laf...
Europe's Experimental Union challenges conventional writings on European integration by situating the analysis of the EU in the context of changing patterns of political and economic order. The authors conclude that the union is not evolving towards a federal superstate, but rather, is an arena of deep economic integration governed by a prismatic polity characterised by innovation, experimentation, pragmatism, decentralisation and devolution. Although it may seem unsettleed, this book reveals that in fact the experimental nature of the EU enablwes it to respond to multiple agendas and Europe's diversity in a flexible manner.
"By exploring themes of fragility, mobility and turmoil, anxieties and agency, and pedagogy, The Postcolonial Moment in South and Southeast Asia shows how colonialism shaped postcolonial projects in South Asia including Burma, Indonesia and Pakistan. Through fascinating and original chapters, it unearths the contingency and contention that accompanied the establishment of nation-states and their claim to be postcolonial heirs. Key postcolonial moments - a struggle for citizenship, anxious constitution making, mass education and land reform - are placed against the aftermath of the Second World War and discussed within a global framework, relating them to the global transformation in political geography from Empire to Nation. The chapters analyse how futures and ideals envisioned by anticolonial activists were made reality, whilst others were discarded. Drawing on the expertise of eminent contributors, this is an excellent compilation of ground-breaking research on postcolonial South and Southeast Asia"--
An analysis of the political organisation of Irish republicanism after the Easter Rising of 1916, studying the triumphant but short-lived Sinn Féin party which vanquished its enemies, co-operated uneasily with its military allies, and 'democratised' the anti-British campaign. Its successors have dominated the politics of independent Ireland.
The position of the 19 million Kurds is an extremely complex one. Their territory is divided between 5 sovereign states, none of which have a Kurdish majority. They speak widely divergent dialects, and are also divided by religious affiliations and social factors. It has taken the tragic and horrifying events in Iraq this year to bring the Kurds to the centre of the world stage, but their particular problems, and their considerable geo-political importance, have been the source of growing concern and interest during the last two to three decades. There is a remarkable dearth of reliable and up-to-date information about the Kurds, which this book remedies. Its contributors cover social and po...
Building on the success of the first two editions, Politics in the Republic of Ireland continues to provide an authoritative introduction to all aspects of politics in the Irish Republic.
The European Union beyond the Polycrisis? explores the political dynamics of multiple crises faced by the EU, both at European level and within the member states. In so doing, it provides a state-of-the-art overview of current research on the relationship between politicization and European integration. The book proposes that the EU’s multi-dimensional crisis can be seen as a multi-level ‘politics trap’, from which the Union is struggling to escape. The individual contributions analyze the mechanisms of this trap, its relationship to the multiple crises currently faced by the EU, and the strategies pursued by a plurality of actors (the Commission, the European Parliament, national gove...
Sir John Norreys and the Elizabethan Military World is the first biography of Elizabeth I's most trusted soldier. It chronicles Norreys's life between 1570 and 1600, examining how Norreys built on his family's personal friendship with Elizabeth to navigate the treacherous waters of the court and rise to prominence as a warrior and diplomat. The book incorporates English, Irish, Belgian, Dutch, Spanish and French archival material, including a number of previously unexploited English sources such as Norreys's personal papers in the Bodleian Library. The life of Sir John Norreys is a tale of ambition, rivalry, corruption, violence and achievement typical of the nobility of the Elizabethan age, and provides a marvellous "grand tour" of western Europe in a time of budding imperialism, religious hatred, international intrigue and military innovation.