Cambridge University Press strana 14 z 64

In the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, more than a million Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Russian children were sent abroad. Aided by the unprecedented efforts of transnational NGOs and private individuals, these children were meant to escape and recover from radiation exposure, but also from the increasing hardships of everyday life in post-Soviet society. Through this opening of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of people in over forty countries witnessed the ecological, medical, social and political consequences of the disaster for the human beings involved. This awareness transformed the accident into a global catastrophe which could happen anywhere and have widespread impact. In this brilliantly insightful work, Melanie Arndt demonstrates that the Chernobyl children were both witness to and representative of a vanishing bipolar world order and the future of life in the Anthropocene, an age in which the human impact on the planet is increasingly borderless.

In many areas of the natural and physical world, long periods of seeming stasis or small incremental changes are interrupted by large, sudden leaps. This book illustrates how similar processes characterize international relations. This book points to such occurrences, for example the collapse of the USSR, the unravelling of Napoleon's wartime alliance, and the possible future status of the US dollar; and it illustrates in greater detail the admission of China to the United Nations, the history of economic development of various countries, and the possible formation of a countervailing coalition against US primacy. Steve Chan investigates these instances and explains the dynamics governing these processes of lulls and lurches and illuminates how qualitative research can apply the Boolean logic to study systematically the danger of a possible future Sino-American conflict based on past episodes.

In this unprecedented history of intelligence cooperation during the Cold War, Aviva Guttmann uncovers the key role of European intelligence agencies in facilitating Mossad''s Operation Wrath of God. She reveals how, in the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre, Palestinians suspected of involvement in terrorism were hunted and killed by Mossad with active European cooperation. Through unique access to unredacted documents in the Club de Berne archive, she shows how a secret coalition of intelligence agencies supplied Mossad with information about Palestinians on a colossal scale and tacitly supported Israeli covert actions on European soil. These agencies helped to anticipate and thwart a number of Palestinian terrorist plots, including some revealed here for the first time. This extraordinary book reconstructs the hidden world of international intelligence, showing how this parallel order enabled state relations to be pursued independently of official foreign policy constraints or public scrutiny.

In The Autocratic Voter, Natalie Wenzell Letsa explores the motivations behind why citizens in electoral autocracies choose to participate in politics and support political parties. With electoral autocracies becoming the most common type of regime in the modern world, Letsa challenges the dominant materialist framework for understanding political behavior and presents an alternative view of partisanship as a social identity. Her book argues that despite the irrationality and obstacles to participating in autocratic politics, people are socialized into becoming partisans by their partisan friends and family. This socialization process has a cascading effect that can either facilitate support for regime change and democracy or sustain the status quo. By delving into the social identity of partisanship, The Autocratic Voter offers a new perspective on political behavior in electoral autocracies that has the potential to shape the future of these regimes.

In this innovative exploration of British rule in India, John Marriott tackles one of the most significant and unanswered questions surrounding the East India Company's success. How and when was an English joint stock company with trading interests in the East Indies transformed into a fully-fledged colonial power with control over large swathes of the Indian subcontinent? The answer, Marriott argues, is to be found much earlier than traditionally acknowledged, in the territorial acquisitions of the seventeenth century secured by small coteries of English factors. Bringing together aspects of cultural, legal and economic theory, he demonstrates the role played by land in the assembly of sovereign power, and how English discourses of land and judicial authority confronted the traditions of indigenous peoples and rival colonial authorities. By 1700, the Company had established the sites of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, providing the practical foothold for further expansion.

The Holocaust is now widely recognized as a central event in twentieth-century Europe. But how did the genocide of the Jews affect European attitudes towards Jews, Judaism and Jewishness after 1945? While many histories of antisemitism exist, Good Jews offers the first investigation of philosemitism ? defined as a politics of post-Holocaust friendship. Gerard Daniel Cohen presents a critical exploration of the languages of philosemitism in mainstream European politics and culture from 1945 to the present day, with particular emphasis on Germany and France. Within this framework Cohen explores how the ''Jewish question'', or the problem of Jewish difference and incorporation in Western countries during the postwar decades, has been distinctively foregrounded in the language of philosemitism. Ultimately, Good Jews demonstrates that philosemitic Europe is not an idealised love story, but a reflection of European attitudes towards Jews from the Holocaust to the present.

How did Britain cease to be global? In Untied Kingdom, Stuart Ward tells the panoramic history of the end of Britain, tracing the ways in which Britishness has been imagined, experienced, disputed and ultimately discarded across the globe since the end of the Second World War. From Indian independence, West Indian immigration and African decolonization to the Suez Crisis and the Falklands War, he uncovers the demise of Britishness as a global civic idea and its impact on communities across the globe. He also shows the consequences of this diminished 'global reach' in Britain itself, from the Troubles in Northern Ireland to resurgent Englishness and the startling success of separatist political agendas in Scotland and Wales. Untied Kingdom puts the contemporary travails of the Union for the first time in their full global perspective as part of the much larger story of the progressive rollback of Britain's imaginative frontiers.

Zoroastrianism is a religion with a long history, but it has been comparatively neglected by contemporary philosophers. This Element aims to bring aspects of its long intellectual history into conversation with contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. Section 1 provides an introduction to Zoroastrianism and its history, some of the important texts, and some contemporary philosophy engaged with Zoroastrian themes. Section 2 discusses distinctive contributions Zoroastrian thought can make to the problems of evil and suffering. And Section 3 discusses a 'quasi-universalist' approach to puzzles about heaven and salvation, inspired by Zoroastrian theological texts. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Fishermen, monks, saints, and dragons met in medieval riverscapes; their interactions reveal a rich and complex world. Using religious narrative sources to evaluate the environmental mentalities of medieval communities, Ellen F. Arnold explores the cultural meanings applied to rivers over a broad span of time, ca. 300-1100 CE. Hagiographical material, poetry, charters, chronicles, and historiographical works are explored to examine the medieval environmental imaginations about rivers, and how storytelling and memory are connected to lived experiences in riverscapes. She argues that rivers provided unique opportunities for medieval communities to understand and respond to ecological and socio-cultural transformations, and to connect their ideas about the shared religious past to hopes about the future.

Galen was notable in the ancient world for his creative intermingling of medicine and practical ethics. This book is the first authoritative analysis of Galen's psychological and ethical works alongside a large number of his technical tracts, both medical and philosophical, and offers a robust framework through which we can comprehend his role as a practical ethicist - an aspect of his intellectual profile that has been little understood until now. Sophia Xenophontos explores a wide range of literature on moralia in the Roman imperial period, as well as topics including the pathology of emotions, the social role of medicine, and character formation and social ethics, to show the sophisticated and complex ways in which moral themes and controversies from antiquity were adapted and reinvigorated by Galen. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

When World War II ended Chiang Kai-shek seemed at the height of his power-the leader of Nationalist China, one of the victorious Allied Powers in 1945 and with the financial backing of the US. Yet less than four years later, he lost the China's civil war against the communists. Offering an insightful chronological treatment of the years 1944–1949, Parks Coble addresses why Chiang was unable to win the war and control hyperinflation. Using newly available archival sources, he reveals the critical weakness of Chiang's style of governing, the fundamental structural flaws in the Nationalist government, bitter personal rivalries and Chiang's personal lack of interest in finance. This major work of revisionist scholarship will engage all those interested in the shaping of twentieth-century history.

This is a ground-breaking study of German operational command during a critical phase of the First World War from November 1916 to the eve of the third battle of Ypres. The situation faced by the German army on the Western Front in 1917 was very different from the one anticipated in pre-war doctrine and Holding Out examines how German commanders and staff officers adapted.  Tony Cowan analyses key command tasks to get under the skin of the army's command culture, internal politics and battle management systems from co-ordinating the troops, matériel and different levels of command needed to fight a modern battle to continuously learning and applying lessons from the ever-changing Western Front. His detailed analysis of the German defeat of the 1917 Entente spring offensive sheds new light on how the army and Germany were able to hold out so long during the war against increasing odds.

Non-sovereign territories today account for more than half the states in the Caribbean but regional and global histories of the twentieth century tend to exclude them from narratives of protest and change. This book argues that our current understanding of global decolonisation is partial. We need a fuller picture which includes both independent and non-independent states, and moves beyond a focus on political independence, instead conceptualising decolonisation as a process of challenging and dismantling colonial structures and legacies. Decolonisation is neither an inevitable nor a linear process, but one which can ebb and flow as the colonial grip is weakened and sometimes restrengthened, often in new forms. Using the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Martinique and Guadeloupe as case studies, Grace Carrington demonstrates that a focus on the processes of decolonisation in these non-sovereign states enriches our understanding of the global experience of twentieth century decolonisation.

What explains change and continuity in Japan's economic statecraft? This Element examines the interplay between factional dynamics in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Japan's foreign policy through two cases: Japan's unprecedented decision to impose severe sanctions on Russia following its 2022 Ukraine invasion, and its decades-long ASEAN strategy amid political uncertainty and great power competition. The authors find that factional balance or the outsized influence of a large faction facilitates abrupt political-economic shifts, sustained until a similar dynamic triggers correction. Unlike most systems, Japan's intra-party politics do not lead to full leadership turnover, enabling factions to influence policy while empowering non-leadership members to drive change. This dual role strengthens barriers to change, embedding political inertia. Using factional membership data from 1961 to 2024, they argue that factions are a more systematic unit of analysis than political entrepreneurs in understanding the relationship between Japan's domestic politics and foreign policy decisions.

Since the Reagan era, conservatives in the United States have championed cutting taxes, especially for wealthy individuals and corporations, as the best way to achieve economic prosperity. In his new book, Pay Up!, John L. Campbell shows that while these claims are highly influential, they are also wrong. Using historical and cross-national evidence, the book challenges and refutes every justification conservatives have made for tax cuts ? that American taxes are too high; they hurt the economy; they facilitate government waste; they constitute an unfair downward redistribution of income; and they threaten individual freedom ? and conversely shows that countries can actually benefit from higher taxes, especially when tax increases fall most heavily on those most able to pay them. Through clear prose and a well-reasoned argument, Campbell''s book provides an accessible, engaging, and much-needed perspective on the role of taxes in American society.

The Dutch Republic was an important hub in the early modern world-economy, a place where hundreds of monies were used alongside each other. Sebastian Felten explores regional, European and global circuits of exchange by analysing everyday practices in Dutch cities and villages in the period 1600-1850. He reveals how for peasants and craftsmen, stewards and churchmen, merchants and metallurgists, money was an everyday social technology that helped them to carve out a livelihood. With vivid examples of accounting and assaying practices, Felten offers a key to understanding the internal logic of early modern money. This book uses new archival evidence and an approach informed by the history of technology to show how plural currencies gave early modern users considerable agency. It explores how the move to uniform national currency limited this agency in the nineteenth century and thus helps us make sense of the new plurality of payments systems today.