Between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and nations. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia, and South Africa catalyzed a global battle over 'the Chinese Question': would the United States and the British Empire outlaw Chinese immigration?
This history of the Chinese diaspora and global capitalism chronicles how a feverish alchemy of race and money brought Chinese people to the West and reshaped the nineteenth-century world. Prize-winning historian Mae Ngai narrates the story of the thousands of Chinese who left their homeland in pursuit of gold, and how they formed communities and organizations to help navigate their perilous new world. Out of their encounters with whites, and the emigrants' assertion of autonomy and humanity, arose the pernicious western myth of the 'coolie' laborer, a racist stereotype used to drive anti-Chinese sentiment.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the United States and the British Empire had answered 'the Chinese Question' with laws that excluded Chinese people from immigration and citizenship. Ngai explains how this happened and argues that Chinese exclusion was not extraneous to the emergent global economy but an integral part of it.
Eine faszinierende Saga um Hoffnung und den Glauben an die eigenen Ziele: Als die junge Ma Li von einem Mädchenhändler im Jahr 1919 nach Shanghai gebracht wird, hat sie einen großen Wunsch: Sie will in einem Jadepalast wohnen, wie ihn ihre Mutter oft beschrieben hat. Die Wirklichkeit sieht jedoch anders aus, denn Ma Li gerät an einen gefährlichen Gangsterboss, verliebt sich in einen Revolutionär und heiratet einen reichen Fabrikbesitzer. Doch nie verliert sie ihren Traum aus den Augen - ob es den Jadepalast jedoch wirklich gibt? -
Ein Pakt gegen den Dalai Lama? Als der chinesische Staatschef dem tibetischen Oberhaupt überraschend ein Friedensangebot unterbreitet und ihn zu Gesprächen über die Unabhängigkeit Tibets einlädt, werden zwei Amerikaner plötzlich von Visionen heimgesucht, dass es sich um eine Falle handeln könnte. In Tibet angekommen, finden die beiden heraus, dass sie die drohende Katastrophe verhindern können: Der Schlüssel dazu ist ein tibetisches Heiligenbild: Das schwarze Thangka, mit dessen Hilfe sie den Dämonen Kamdhar Gyor bezwingen wollen ...-
Just over one week after the landings in Normandy, American troops took part in a massive amphibious invasion of Saipan, but intense public interest in operations in Europe meant that this invasion received less media coverage at the time, and it has been the subject of far less interest from historians and writers since. Part of the reason seems to be the different perception of the war in the Pacific. During the war in Europe, Allied troops were, for the most part, welcomed as liberators by the inhabitants of the countries they occupied. Combat was generally conducted according to the accepted rules of war, with troops who surrendered becoming prisoners of war.
In the Pacific Theater, combat was very different. The clash between American and Japanese troops was not just a battle between two modern nations; it was a conflict between two very different cultures and ideologies. Many Japanese soldiers fought according to the tenets of Bushido, the ancient warrior code first employed by the Samurai. This held that death was infinitely preferable to surrender, and that suicide was regarded as a legitimate and even praiseworthy act. The Japanese soldiers who did surrender were regarded with contempt, and enemy soldiers who fell into Japanese hands were treated with extreme cruelty. To American soldiers, the Japanese troops they encountered seemed to fight with fanatical zeal.
As a result, the fighting on Saipan was bloody and intense. Although the battle lasted less than one month, almost 50,000 soldiers died or became casualties on the island, and many Japanese soldiers chose death, either through suicide or assaults on the enemy that had no real prospect of success. Civilians also suffered horrendous casualties on Saipan - more than 20,000 died, with many committing suicide rather than becoming prisoners of the Americans.
How China used a network of surveillance to intern over a million people and produce a system of control previously unknown in human history
Novel forms of state violence and colonization have been unfolding for years in China's vast northwestern region, where more than a million and a half Uyghurs and others have vanished into internment camps and associated factories. Based on hours of interviews with camp survivors and workers, thousands of government documents, and over a decade of research, Darren Byler, one of the leading experts on Uyghur society and Chinese surveillance systems, uncovers how a vast network of technology provided by private companies―facial surveillance, voice recognition, smartphone data―enabled the state and corporations to blacklist millions of Uyghurs because of their religious and cultural practice starting in 2017. Charged with "pre-crimes" that sometimes consist only of installing social media apps, detainees were put in camps to "study"―forced to praise the Chinese government, renounce Islam, disavow families, and labor in factories. Byler travels back to Xinjiang to reveal how the convenience of smartphones have doomed the Uyghurs to catastrophe, and makes the case that the technology is being used all over the world, sold by tech companies from Beijing to Seattle producing new forms of unfreedom for vulnerable people around the world.
Arising out of Naipaul's lifelong obsession and passion for a country that is at once his and totally alien, India: A Million Mutinies Now relates the stories of many of the people he met traveling there more than fifty years ago. He explores how they have been steered by the innumerable frictions present in Indian society-the contradictions and compromises of religious faith, the whim and chaos of random political forces. This book represents Naipaul's last word on his homeland, complementing his two other India travelogues, An Area of Darkness and India: A Wounded Civilization.
Über den Verlust unserer Gewissheiten in chaotischen Zeiten
China, Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Eine christliche Aufstandsbewegung überzieht das Kaiserreich mit Terror und Zerstörung. Ein junger deutscher Missionar, der bei der Modernisierung des riesigen Reiches helfen will, reist voller Idealismus nach Nanking, um sich ein Bild von der Rebellion zu machen. Dabei gerät er zwischen die Fronten eines Krieges, in dem er am Ende alles zu verlieren droht, was ihm wichtig ist. An den Brennpunkten des Konflikts – in Hongkong, Shanghai, Peking – begegnen wir einem Ensemble so zerrissener wie faszinierender Persönlichkeiten: darunter der britische Sonderbotschafter, der seine inneren Abgründe erst erkennt, als er ihnen nicht mehr entgehen kann, und der zum Kriegsherrn berufene chinesische Gelehrte, der so mächtig wird, dass selbst der Kaiser ihn fürchten muss.
In seinem packenden neuen Buch erzählt Stephan Thome eine Vorgeschichte unserer krisengeschüttelten Gegenwart. Angeführt von einem christlichen Konvertiten, der sich für Gottes zweiten Sohn hält, errichten Rebellen in China einen Gottesstaat, der in verstörender Weise auf die Terrorbewegungen unserer Zeit vorausdeutet. Ein großer und weitblickender Roman über religiösen Fanatismus, über unsere Verführbarkeit und den Verlust an Orientierung in einer sich radikal verändernden Welt.
It begins to dawn on the nine-year-old Sambhaji that his father has fled from the clutches of the Mughal badshah Aurangzeb and left him behind. He must now find his way back home with the help of strangers . . .
Under the shadow of an illustrious father, Sambhaji finds himself thrust into the Maratha-Mughal conflict from a tender age. His mistakes cost him dearly and when his father suddenly dies and he becomes the chhatrapati, it is as if he has inherited a crown of thorns.
In the nine years that follow, he faces a constant battle-internally, as palace intrigues simmer to kill him, and externally, as Aurangzeb descends on the Deccan with full military force.
Even Chhatrapati Shivaji had never faced a full-blown Mughal aggression.
Will he be able to protect the Maratha nation and Swaraj that was his father's dream? Will he prove to be a worthy son to his father-in life as well as in death?
History has been unfair to Sambhaji, but it can't deny that he inspired a generation of Maratha warriors, who eventually ensured the end of Aurangzeb's jihad.
In the first comprehensive history of the Horde, Marie Favereau shows that the accomplishments of the Mongols extended far beyond war.
Favereau takes us inside one of the most powerful sources of cross-border integration in world history. The Horde was the central node in the Eurasian commercial boom of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and was a conduit for exchanges across thousands of miles. Its unique political regime-a complex power-sharing arrangement among the khan and the nobility-rewarded skillful administrators and diplomats and fostered an economic order that was mobile, organized, and innovative. From its capital at Sarai on the lower Volga River, the Horde provided a governance model for Russia, influenced social practice and state structure across Islamic cultures, disseminated sophisticated theories about the natural world, and introduced novel ideas of religious tolerance.
The Horde is the eloquent, ambitious, and definitive portrait of an empire little understood and too readily dismissed. Challenging conceptions of nomads as peripheral to history, Favereau makes clear that we live in a world inherited from the Mongol moment.
‘A delightful piece of writing and research which describes the remarkable history behind the handover of this unique and exciting city’ Jasper Becker
‘Deeply researched and beautifully written’ Mike Chinoy
A superb new history of the rise of China and the fall of Hong Kong to authoritarian rule.
The rise of China and the fall of Hong Kong to authoritarian rule are told with unique insight in this new history by Michael Sheridan, drawing on eyewitness reporting over three decades, interviews with key figures and documents from archives in China and the West.
The story sweeps the reader from the earliest days of trade through the Opium Wars of the 19th century to the age of globalisation and the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. It ends with the battle for democracy on the city’s streets and the ultimate victory of the Chinese Communist Party.
How did it come to this? We learn from private papers that Margaret Thatcher anguished over the fate of Hong Kong, sought secret American briefings on how to handle China and put her trust in an adviser who was torn between duty and pride. The deal they made with Beijing did not last.
The Chinese side of this history, so often unheard, emerges from memoirs and documents, many new to the foreign reader, revealing how the party’s iron will and negotiating tactics crushed its opponents. Yet the voices of Hong Kong people – eloquent, smart and bold – speak out here for ideals that refuse to die.
Sheridan’s book tells how Hong Kong opened the way for the People’s Republic as it reformed its economy and changed the world, emerging to challenge the West with a new order that raises fundamental questions about progress, identity and freedom. It is critical reading for all who study, trade or deal with China.
How do Enslaved People Today Win (and Sometimes Lose) their Freedom?
A community of rock quarry miners in a village in Uttar Pradesh, India gave their tiny cluster of thatched roofed houses the name Azad Nagar. Freedomville. But it hasn't always been identified by that auspicious moniker. The miners renamed their village in 2000, after they staged a revolt that overthrew the profit-driven landowners who held their families in debt bondage for generations. Non-profits celebrated their tenacity; a film promoted their non-violent grassroots efforts; their success inspired other villages to fight for their own freedom. But the complex story of Freedomville, the murder that these revolutionaries nearly got away with, and the short-lived freedom its inhabitants created for themselves has never before been told until now.
Laura T. Murphy, a leading scholar of contemporary global slavery, spent years following the story of a small group of transgenerationally-enslaved men and women who fought to liberate themselves from their overseers, wrest control of the rock quarry in which they worked, and become masters of their own fates. Their journey reveals the precarity of that hard-won freedom, as those rock quarry miners fight to sustain their freedom after liberation without the literal and figurative tools necessary to run their own businesses, develop their village, and improve the opportunities available to their children. Their struggle suggests that the effort to sustain freedom after liberation is as much about successful revolution as it is about the stories we tell about societal change. In the process of capturing the constantly changing narrative that emerged, Murphy reveals how it is that slavery continues to exist in the twenty-first century, how the slow and possibly interminable dissolution of the caste system has led to a veritable class war in India, and how the global construction boom has contributed to the continued alienation of impoverished people around the world.
In early 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy were advancing on all fronts, humiliating Allied forces throughout the Pacific. In a matter of months, Japan had conquered an area larger than Hitler's empire at its apex. Hawaiians and Australians feared a future under Hirohito. The fate of half of mankind was hanging in the balance.
But by the end of 1943, the tables had turned entirely. The American-led military machine had kicked into gear, and the Japanese were fighting a defensive battle along a frontline that crossed thousands of miles of land and sea. In Japan Runs Wild, 1942-1943, historian Peter Harmsen details the astonishing transformation that took place in that period, setting the Allies on a path to ultimate victory over Japan.
The second installment of Peter Harmsen's three-part history, Japan Runs Wild, 1942-1943 continues his comprehensive chronicle of the Pacific Theater during the Second World War. Giving due emphasis to the Japanese-American struggle, Harmsen also sheds light on the other peoples involved, including the British, Australians, Soviets, Filipinos, Indians, and Koreans. Above all, the central importance of China is highlighted in a way that no previous general history of the war against Japan has achieved.
