An Imperial Disaster

Author : Benjamin Kingsbury
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2018-09-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9780190876098

Get Book

An Imperial Disaster by Benjamin Kingsbury Pdf

The storm came on the night of 31 October. It was a full moon, and the tides were at their peak; the great rivers of eastern Bengal were full of monsoon rain. In the early hours the inhabitants of the coast and islands were overtaken by an immense wave from the Bay of Bengal -- a wall of water that reached a height of 40 feet in some places. The wave swept away everything in its path, drowning around 215,000 people. At least another 100,000 died in the cholera epidemic and famine that followed. It was the worst calamity of its kind in recorded history. Such events are often described as "natural disasters." Kingsbury turns that interpretation on its head, showing that the cyclone of 1876 was not simply a "natural" event, but one shaped by all-too-human patterns of exploitation and inequality -- by divisions within Bengali society, and the enormous disparities of political and economic power that characterized British rule on the subcontinent. With Bangladesh facing rising sea levels and stronger, more frequent storms, there is every reason to revisit this terrible calamity. An Imperial Disaster is troubling but essential reading: history for an age of climate change.

Author : Benjamin Kingsbury
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2018-10-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780190050252

Get Book

An Imperial Disaster by Benjamin Kingsbury Pdf

The storm came on the night of 31 October. It was a full moon, and the tides were at their peak; the great rivers of eastern Bengal were full of monsoon rain. In the early hours the inhabitants of the coast and islands were overtaken by an immense wave from the Bay of Bengal -- a wall of water that reached a height of 40 feet in some places. The wave swept away everything in its path, drowning around 215,000 people. At least another 100,000 died in the cholera epidemic and famine that followed. It was the worst calamity of its kind in recorded history. Such events are often described as "natural disasters." Kingsbury turns that interpretation on its head, showing that the cyclone of 1876 was not simply a "natural" event, but one shaped by all-too-human patterns of exploitation and inequality -- by divisions within Bengali society, and the enormous disparities of political and economic power that characterized British rule on the subcontinent. With Bangladesh facing rising sea levels and stronger, more frequent storms, there is every reason to revisit this terrible calamity. An Imperial Disaster is troubling but essential reading: history for an age of climate change.

Author : James Bradley
Publisher : Little, Brown
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2015-04-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9780316196666

Get Book

The China Mirage by James Bradley Pdf

"Bradley is sharp and rueful, and a voice for a more seasoned, constructive vision of our international relations with East Asia." --Christian Science Monitor James Bradley introduces us to the prominent Americans--including FDR's grandfather, Warren Delano--who in the 1800s made their fortunes in the China opium trade. Meanwhile, American missionaries sought a myth: noble Chinese peasants eager to Westernize. The media propagated this mirage, and FDR believed that supporting Chiang Kai-shek would make China America's best friend in Asia. But Chiang was on his way out and when Mao Zedong instead came to power, Americans were shocked, wondering how we had "lost China." From the 1850s to the origins of the Vietnam War, Bradley reveals how American misconceptions about China have distorted our policies and led to the avoidable deaths of millions. The China Mirage dynamically explores the troubled history that still defines U.S.-Chinese relations today.

Author : Benjamin Kingsbury
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Bengal (India)
ISBN : OCLC:929998383

Get Book

An Imperial Disaster by Benjamin Kingsbury Pdf

Author : Tripurdaman Singh
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2019-05-23
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108497435

Get Book

Imperial Sovereignty and Local Politics by Tripurdaman Singh Pdf

Provides a radical re-orientation of the way we understand the nature of imperial sovereignty in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Author : U. Mukherjee
Publisher : Springer
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2013-09-24
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781137001139

Get Book

Natural Disasters and Victorian Empire by U. Mukherjee Pdf

Natural Disasters and Victorian Empire looks at the relationship between epidemics and famines in south Asia and Victorian literature and culture. It suggests that much of how we think today about disasters, state and society can be traced back to the 19th-century British imperial experience.

Author : Ian Hughes
Publisher : Pen and Sword
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2013-08-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9781473828636

Get Book

Imperial Brothers by Ian Hughes Pdf

The latest of Ian Hughes' Late Roman biographies here tackles the careers of the brother emperors, Valentinian and Valens. Valentian was selected and proclaimed as emperor in AD 364, when the Empire was still reeling from the disastrous defeat and death in battle of Julian the Apostate (363) and the short reign of his murdered successor, Jovian (364). With the Empire weakened and vulnerable to a victorious Persia in the East and opportunistic Germanic tribes along the Rhine and Danube frontiers, not to mention usurpers and rebellions within, it was not an enviable position. Valentian decided the responsibility had to be divided (not for the first or last time) and appointed his brother as his co-emperor to rule the eastern half of the Empire. Valentinian went on to stabilize the Western Empire, quelling revolt in North Africa, defeating the 'Barbarian Conspiracy' that attacked Britain in 367 and conducting successful wars against the Germanic Alemanni, Quadi and Saxons; he is remembered by History as a strong and successful Emperor. Valens on the other hand, fare less well and is most remembered for his (mis)treatment of the Goths who sought refuge within the Empire's borders from the westward-moving Huns. Valens mishandling of this situation led to the Battle of Adrianople in 378, where he was killed and Rome suffered one of the worst defeats in her long history, often seen as the 'beginning of the end' for the Western Roman empire. Ian Hughes, by tracing the careers of both men in tandem, compares their achievements and analyzes the extent to which they deserve the contrasting reputations handed down by history.

Author : William Dalrymple
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 494 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2013-04-16
Category : History
ISBN : 9780307958297

Get Book

Return of a King by William Dalrymple Pdf

From William Dalrymple—award-winning historian, journalist and travel writer—a masterly retelling of what was perhaps the West’s greatest imperial disaster in the East, and an important parable of neocolonial ambition, folly and hubris that has striking relevance to our own time. With access to newly discovered primary sources from archives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and India—including a series of previously untranslated Afghan epic poems and biographies—the author gives us the most immediate and comprehensive account yet of the spectacular first battle for Afghanistan: the British invasion of the remote kingdom in 1839. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed helmets, and facing little resistance, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the mountain passes from India into Afghanistan in order to reestablish Shah Shuja ul-Mulk on the throne, and as their puppet. But after little more than two years, the Afghans rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into rebellion. This First Anglo-Afghan War ended with an entire army of what was then the most powerful military nation in the world ambushed and destroyed in snowbound mountain passes by simply equipped Afghan tribesmen. Only one British man made it through. But Dalrymple takes us beyond the bare outline of this infamous battle, and with penetrating, balanced insight illuminates the uncanny similarities between the West’s first disastrous entanglement with Afghanistan and the situation today. He delineates the straightforward facts: Shah Shuja and President Hamid Karzai share the same tribal heritage; the Shah’s principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribe, who today make up the bulk of the Taliban’s foot soldiers; the same cities garrisoned by the British are today garrisoned by foreign troops, attacked from the same rings of hills and high passes from which the British faced attack. Dalryrmple also makes clear the byzantine complexity of Afghanistan’s age-old tribal rivalries, the stranglehold they have on the politics of the nation and the ways in which they ensnared both the British in the nineteenth century and NATO forces in the twenty-first. Informed by the author’s decades-long firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan, and superbly shaped by his hallmark gifts as a narrative historian and his singular eye for the evocation of place and culture, The Return of a King is both the definitive analysis of the First Anglo-Afghan War and a work of stunning topicality.

Author : Joshua A. Sanborn
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2014-09-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9780191015441

Get Book

Imperial Apocalypse by Joshua A. Sanborn Pdf

Imperial Apocalypse describes the collapse of the Russian Empire during World War One. Drawing material from nine different archives and hundreds of published sources, this study ties together state failure, military violence, and decolonization in a single story. Joshua Sanborn excavates the individual lives of soldiers, doctors, nurses, politicians, and civilians caught up in the global conflict along the way, creating a narrative that is both humane and conceptually rich. The volume opens by laying out the theoretical relationship between state failure, social collapse, and decolonization, and then moves chronologically from the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 through the fierce battles and massive human dislocations of 1914-16 to the final collapse of the empire in the midst of revolution in 1917-18. Imperial Apocalypse is the first major study which treats the demise of the Russian Empire as part of the twentieth-century phenomenon of modern decolonization, and provides a readable account of military activity and political change throughout this turbulent period of war and revolution. Sanborn argues that the sudden rise of groups seeking national self-determination in the borderlands of the empire was the consequence of state failure, not its cause. At the same time, he shows how the destruction of state institutions and the spread of violence from the front to the rear led to a collapse of traditional social bonds and the emergence of a new, more dangerous, and more militant political atmosphere.

Author : Daniel Jonathan Clarke,Stefan Dercon
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 154 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2016
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780198785576

Get Book

Dull Disasters? by Daniel Jonathan Clarke,Stefan Dercon Pdf

Economic losses from disasters are now reaching an average of US$250--$300 billion a year. In the last 20 years, more than 530,000 people died as a direct result of extreme weather events; millions more were seriously injured. Most of the deaths and serious injuries were in developing countries. Meanwhile, highly infectious diseases will continue to emerge or re-emerge, and natural hazards will not disappear. But these extreme events do not need to turn into large-scale disasters. Better and faster responses are possible. The authors contend that even though there is much generosity in the world to support the responses to and recovery from natural disasters, the current funding model, based on mobilizing financial resources after disasters take place, is flawed and makes responses late, fragmented, unreliable, and poorly targeted, while providing poor incentives for preparedness or risk reduction. The way forward centres around reforming the funding model for disasters, moving towards plans with simple rules for early action and that are locked in before disasters through credible funding strategies while resisting the allure of post-disaster discretionary funding and the threat it poses for those seeking to ensure that disasters have a less severe impact. -- Provided by publisher.

Author : Gennifer Weisenfeld
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 494 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2012-11-14
Category : Art
ISBN : 9780520954243

Get Book

Imaging Disaster by Gennifer Weisenfeld Pdf

Focusing on one landmark catastrophic event in the history of an emerging modern nation—the Great Kanto Earthquake that devastated Tokyo and surrounding areas in 1923—this fascinating volume examines the history of the visual production of the disaster. The Kanto earthquake triggered cultural responses that ran the gamut from voyeuristic and macabre thrill to the romantic sublime, media spectacle to sacred space, mournful commemoration to emancipatory euphoria, and national solidarity to racist vigilantism and sociopolitical critique. Looking at photography, cinema, painting, postcards, sketching, urban planning, and even scientific visualizations, Weisenfeld demonstrates how visual culture has powerfully mediated the evolving historical understanding of this major national disaster, ultimately enfolding mourning and memory into modernization.

Author : Michael Roe
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Shipwrecks
ISBN : 0908528329

Get Book

An Imperial Disaster by Michael Roe Pdf

This study is divided into four sections. The first provides the 'basics': all of the available data concerning the ship and its passengers, the contemporary accounts of the wreck, and the official reports of enquiry. The second offers 'reasons' for the disaster, both imperial and local. The short-term 'impacts' of the wreck in both colony and metropolis are examined in the third section, and the concluding part reflects on the longer-term 'echoes' in Tasmania - its impact on maritime affairs, the subsequent lives of the survivors, and the various acts of remembrance.

Author : Yaron Ayalon
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : History
ISBN : 9781107072978

Get Book

Natural Disasters in the Ottoman Empire by Yaron Ayalon Pdf

Yaron Ayalon explores the Ottoman Empire's history of natural disasters and its responses on a state, communal, and individual level.

Author : Sherry Johnson
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2011-11-14
Category : History
ISBN : 0807869341

Get Book

Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution by Sherry Johnson Pdf

From 1750 to 1800, a critical period that saw the American Revolution, French Revolution, and Haitian Revolution, the Atlantic world experienced a series of environmental crises, including more frequent and severe hurricanes and extended drought. Drawing on historical climatology, environmental history, and Cuban and American colonial history, Sherry Johnson innovatively integrates the region's experience with extreme weather events and patterns into the history of the Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic world. By superimposing this history of natural disasters over the conventional timeline of sociopolitical and economic events in Caribbean colonial history, Johnson presents an alternative analysis in which some of the signal events of the Age of Revolution are seen as consequences of ecological crisis and of the resulting measures for disaster relief. For example, Johnson finds that the general adoption in 1778 of free trade in the Americas was catalyzed by recognition of the harsh realities of food scarcity and the needs of local colonists reeling from a series of natural disasters. Weather-induced environmental crises and slow responses from imperial authorities, Johnson argues, played an inextricable and, until now, largely unacknowledged role in the rise of revolutionary sentiments in the eighteenth-century Caribbean.

Author : Spencer D. Segalla
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2021-05-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781496219633

Get Book

Empire and Catastrophe by Spencer D. Segalla Pdf

Spencer D. Segalla examines natural and anthropogenic disasters during the years of decolonization in Algeria, Morocco, and France and explores how environmental catastrophes impacted the dissolution of France’s empire in North Africa.