Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Laura Robson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
State Building ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Primary Mode

This chapter introduces the main question of the book: how did mass violence come to be a primary—perhaps the primary—mode of making political claims in the twentieth and twenty-first century Middle East? It asks when mass violence became a constitutive aspect of the political landscape of the region, why it took precedence over other strategies of state building and establishing political authority, and how governments, armies, and civilians alike came to think of mass violence as a viable and legitimate mode of claiming political space and national rights. Drawing on several different and largely separate historiographies, this introduction argues, makes it possible to produce a synthetic account of violence in the twentieth century Eastern Mediterranean that takes account of regional developments as much as individual national histories.

scholarly journals Status gazety „Politika” w Jugosławii Karađorđeviciów (1918–1941)

2014 ◽  
pp. 106-124
Author(s):  
Konrad Sebastian Morawski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Strong Influence ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
First Century ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Status ◽  
Twenty First Century

Status of the newspaper “Politika” in Karađorđevićs’ Yugoslavia (1918-1941)The newspaper Politika was founded on 25 January 1904 by Vladislav F. Ribnikar. Since that time the Serbian Press market has begun to develop, and the Politika permanently has taken the important role up to this day. The newspaper witnessed important events in the Balkans in the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century but at the same time it was also under strong influence of Serbian centers of political authority. One example of such an influence was the status of the Politika in the period during the reign of Karađorđević dynasty in Yugoslavia, in 1918-1941. The newspaper then served a propaganda function for the royal court, particularly in 1929-1934. Then king Aleksander ruled in an authoritarian way and Politika played an important part in the country. The mechanism of functioning of the newspaper in the period of the royal authoritarianism, as well as in the remaining years of the interwar Yugoslavia was thus discussed in the article to help clarify the status of Politika under the rule of Karađorđevićs. Status gazety „Politika” w Jugosławii Karađorđeviciów (1918–1941)Gazeta pod nazwą „Politika” została założona 25 stycznia 1904 roku przez Vladislava F. Ribnikara. Od tego czasu zaczął kształtować się serbski rynek prasowy, w którym „Politika” trwale zajmuje istotne miejsce do dzisiejszego dnia. Gazeta była świadkiem ważnych i doniosłych wydarzeń na Bałkanach w XX wieku i na początku XXI wieku, ale zarazem znajdowała się również w strefie ścisłych wpływów politycznych serbskich ośrodków władzy. Jednym z przykładów takiego wpływu był status „Politiki” w okresie panowania dynastii Karađorđeviciów w Jugosławii w latach 1918–1941. Gazeta pełniła wtedy funkcję propagandową dworu królewskiego, co dało się szczególnie zauważyć w latach 1929–1934. Wtedy bowiem król Aleksander I sprawował autorytarne rządy w państwie, których ważną częścią stała się „Politika”. Mechanizm funkcjonowania gazety zarówno w okresie autorytaryzmu królewskiego, jak i w pozostałych latach międzywojennej Jugosławii został więc poddany omówieniu, które umożliwiło wyjaśnienie statusu „Politiki” pod panowaniem Karađorđeviciów.

Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations in Comparison

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-89
Author(s):  
Nader Sohrabi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Political Development ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
Constitutional Revolution

The history of both modern Turkey and modern Iran have often been told through their founding figures, Atatürk and Reza Shah, whose state-building projects are often assumed to have been similar. This chapter compares the Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire of 1908 with the Constitutional Revolution in Iran in 1906 to point to both similarities and differences in the trajectories of these two countries in the early twentieth century. Both revolutions, it is argued, were foundational moments for the political development and processes of each country and are key to understanding the context in which Atatürk and Reza Shah emerged.

“To Build a New World”: Black American Internationalism and Palestine Solidarity

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 52-68
Author(s):  
Russell Rickford
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Middle East ◽  
New World ◽  
Black American ◽  
The Political ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Pan Africanism ◽  
Political Imaginary

This essay traces the arc of Black American solidarity with Palestine, placing the phenomenon in the context of twentieth-century African American internationalism. It sketches the evolution of the political imaginary that enabled Black activists to depict African Americans and Palestinians as compatriots within global communities of dissent. For more than half a century, Black internationalists identified with Zionism, believing that the Jewish bid for a national homeland paralleled the African American freedom struggle. During the 1950s and 1960s, however, colonial aggression in the Middle East led many African American progressives to rethink the analogy. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, African American dissidents operating within the nexus of Black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and Third Worldism constructed powerful theories of Afro-Palestinian kinship. In so doing, they reimagined or transcended bonds of color, positing anti-imperialist struggle, rather than racial affinity, as the precondition of camaraderie.

Military Morality Transformed: Weapons and Soldiers on the Nineteenth-Century Battlefield

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 565-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gervase Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Human Aggression ◽  
Close Supervision ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

The increased lethality of nineteenth-century “arms of precision” caused military formations to disperse in combat, transforming the ordinary soldier from a near automaton, drilled to deliver random fire under close supervision, into a moral agent who exercised a degree of choice about where, when, and how to fire his weapon. The emerging autonomy of the soldier became a central theme in contemporary tactical debates, which struggled to reconcile the desire for discipline with the individual initiative necessary on the battlefield. This tactical conundrum offers revealing insights about human aggression and mass violence. Its dark legacy was the propagation of military values into civilian society, thus paving the way for the political soldiers of the twentieth century.

G. K. Chesterton and Islam

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Tom Villis
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Scholarly Attention

G. K. Chesterton's anti-Semitism has attracted much scholarly attention, but his views on Islam have largely passed without comment. This article situates Chesterton's writings in relation to historical views of Islam in Britain and the political, cultural and religious context of the early twentieth century. Chesterton's complex and contradictory opinions fail to support easy conclusions about the immutability of prejudice across time. His views of Islam are at times orientalist and at other times critical of imperialism and elitism. As well as drawing on medieval Catholic ideas about the “heresy” of Islam, Chesterton also links Islam with Protestant Christianity. From another perspective, his views of Islam draw on liberal traditions of humanitarian interventionism and democratic patriotism. Finally, he also used Islam as a symbol of a corroding modernity. This study suggests the need for a historically sensitive genealogy of the evolution of anti-Muslim prejudice which is not predetermined by the politics of the early twenty-first century.

Process Tracing and the Political Economy of Development in the Middle East

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Waldner
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Case Analysis ◽  
State Building ◽  
Process Tracing ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Development ◽  
Analysis Process

In this chapter, David Waldner explores the development of qualitative methods of within-case analysis. Process tracing is a method that can be employed to make valid claims from data gathered in the field. Using his own research work from the 1990s on state building and late development, Waldner discusses the reasons for developing process tracing methods, some early efforts at their development, some critiques of these early efforts, and more recent refinements. The chapter demonstrates the close interplay between theory, evidence, and methods.

Net-Centric and Information Wars

2018 ◽  
pp. 75-90
Author(s):  
Ofer Fridman
Keyword(s):  
Social Problems ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
The Core ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter analyzes two contemporary approaches towards confrontation: net-centric and information wars, developed during late 1990s early 2000s by two Russian scholars, Aleksandr Dugin and Igor Panarin. Although neither mentions Messner’s works, the essence of their concepts echo many of Messner’s ideas discussed in the previous chapter. Indeed, the core of Dugin’s net-centric war and Panarin’s information war (as well as Messner’s subversion-war, as it was interpreted by many Russian contemporary military thinkers) is quite similar. As this chapter shows, all these theories claim that with the geopolitical and technological realities of the twenty-first century, it is easier to achieve political goals by undermining the political authority of the adversary through the manipulation of political elites and the generation of political dissent, separatism and social problems, rather than by waging classic wars and military operations.

scholarly journals Making the Most of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

2015 ◽  
Vol 70 (01) ◽  
pp. 21-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Lindert
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Rate Of Return ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
Political Responses ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstracts Thomas Piketty’s monumental Capital in the Twenty-First Century has transported us to a higher understanding of the historical evolution of inequality. This essay attempts to inventory the different avenues of research, more or less promising, that scholars might usefully pursue when building on his work. The most important path to follow is the history of inequalities in income that Piketty and his team have flagged up so well, supported by the book’s history of the great shocks of the twentieth century and the political responses that they elicited. Less promising is the book’s emphasis on wealth, capital, and the rate of return. The best predictions of future inequality can be achieved by merging Piketty and his team’s history of those who hold the top 10 percent of income with works dedicated to the history of inequality within the lower 90 percent. It is also necessary to integrate other scholarship that has demonstrated that the sort of democratic system Piketty calls for would have positive effects on growth.

Maps and Spaces

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-145
Author(s):  
Christine Noelle-Karimi
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Middle East ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
The Past

Students of Afghan history come up against two sets of academic demarcations and appropriations. First, as Nile Green points out in his introduction to this roundtable, Afghanistan as a field of study tends to fall off the edge of the scholarly traditions associated with the regional denominations of the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia. Second, the tendency to view history through the lens of present-day national entities presents an impediment to historical inquiry and not only in Afghanistan. The attempt to streamline the past to fit a consistent narrative of state-building may serve to foster a national identity, yet it is of little use in gaining a deeper understanding of the political, social, and economic processes at work in a given period.

Kinship Structure and Political Authority: The Middle East and Central Asia

1986 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 334-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Lindholm
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The Political ◽  
Inner Asia ◽  
The Core ◽  
Frontier Region ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
Historical Culture ◽  
Kinship Structure

Kinship studies have traditionally been the core of the anthropological enterprise, but the knowledge gained in studies of indigenous kinship systems has not generally been of interest to other disciplines. This essay intends to draw attention to some of the political and social implications of patterns of kinship relations by comparing two large historical culture areas, that of the frontier region of Inner Asia, and that of the peripheral tribes of the Middle East.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document