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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2009

        Direct rule and the governance of Northern Ireland

        by Derek Birrell

        This is the first comprehensive study of direct rule as the system of governance which operated in Northern Ireland for most of the period between 1972 and 2007. The major institutions of governance are described and examined in detail, including the often neglected sectors of the role of the Westminster parliament, the civil service, local government, quangos, ombudsmen offices, cross-border structures and the public expenditure process. The book explains how the complex system covering transferred, reserved and excepted functions worked and provided viable governance despite political violence, constitutional conflict and political party disagreements. In addition, a comparison is drawn between direct rule and devolution, analysing both the positive and negative impact of direct rule, as well as identifying where there has been minimal divergence in processes and outcomes. It will prove an invaluable reference source on direct rule and provide a comparative basis for assessing devolution for students of public administration, government, politics, public policy and devolution. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2024

        Premodern ruling sexualities

        Representation, identity, and power

        by Gabrielle Storey, Zita Eva Rohr

        This volume explores a range of premodern rulers and their depictions in historiography, literature, art and material culture to gain a broader understanding of their sexualities. It considers the methodologies and motivations of premodern writers and rulers when fashioning royal and elite sexualities and offers new analyses of an array of texts and artwork from across Europe and the wider Mediterranean.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2021

        Peacemaking in the Middle Ages

        Principles and practice

        by J. E. M. Benham

        Peacemaking in the Middle Ages explores the making of peace in the late-twelfth and early thirteenth centuries based on the experiences of the kings of England and the kings of Denmark. From dealing with owing allegiance to powerful neighbours to conquering the 'barbarians', this book offers a vision of how relationships between rulers were regulated and maintained, and how rulers negotiated, resolved, avoided and enforced matters in dispute in a period before nation states and international law. This is the first full-length study in English of the principles and practice of peacemaking in the medieval period. Its findings have wider significance and applications, and numerous comparisons are drawn with the peacemaking activities of other western European rulers, in the medieval period and beyond. This book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval Europe, but also those with a more general interest in kingship, warfare, diplomacy and international relations.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2020

        Peacemaking in the Middle Ages

        Principles and practice

        by S. H. Rigby, J. E. M. Benham

        Peacemaking in the Middle Ages explores the making of peace in the late-twelfth and early thirteenth centuries based on the experiences of the kings of England and the kings of Denmark. From dealing with owing allegiance to powerful neighbours to conquering the 'barbarians', this book offers a vision of how relationships between rulers were regulated and maintained, and how rulers negotiated, resolved, avoided and enforced matters in dispute in a period before nation states and international law. This is the first full-length study in English of the principles and practice of peacemaking in the medieval period. Its findings have wider significance and applications, and numerous comparisons are drawn with the peacemaking activities of other western European rulers, in the medieval period and beyond. This book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval Europe, but also those with a more general interest in kingship, warfare, diplomacy and international relations.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2017

        Britain and the formation of the Gulf States

        Embers of empire

        by Shohei Sato, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie

        This book offers new insight into the end of the British Empire in the Middle East. It takes a fresh look at the relationship between Britain and the Gulf rulers at the height of the British Empire, and how its effects are still felt internationally today. Over the last four decades, the Persian Gulf region has gone through oil shocks, wars and political changes, and yet the basic entities of the southern Gulf states have remained largely in place. Drawing on extensive multi-archival research in the British, American and Gulf archives, this book illuminates a series of negotiations between British diplomats and the Gulf rulers that inadvertently led Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE to take their current shapes. The story addresses the crucial question of self-determination versus 'better together', a dilemma pertinent to anyone interested in the transformation of the modern world.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2023

        Decolonising the Hajj

        The pilgrimage from Nigeria to Mecca under empire and independence

        by Matthew Heaton

        Muslims from the region that is now Nigeria have been undertaking the Hajj for hundreds of years. But the process of completing the pilgrimage changed dramatically in the twentieth century as state governments became heavily involved in its organization and management. Under British colonial rule, a minimalist approach to pilgrimage control facilitated the journeys of many thousands of mostly overland pilgrims. Decolonization produced new political contexts, with nationalist politicians taking a more proactive approach to pilgrimage management for both domestic and international reasons. The Hajj, which had previously been a life-altering journey undertaken slowly and incrementally over years, became a shorter, safer, trip characterized by round trip plane rides. In examining the transformation of the Nigerian Hajj, this book demonstrates how the Hajj became ever more intertwined with Nigerian politics and governance as the country moved from empire to independence.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2009

        Romania and the European Union

        How the weak vanquished the strong

        by Tom Gallagher

        According to Tom Gallagher, Romania's predatory rulers, the heirs of the sinister communist dictator Ceausescu, have inflicted a humiliating defeat on the European Union. He argues convincingly that Brussels was tricked into offering full membership to this Balkan country in return for substantial reforms which its rulers now refuse to carry out. This book unmasks the failure of the EU to match its visionary promises of transforming Romania with the shabby reality. Benefiting from access to internal reports and leading figures involved in a decade of negotiations, it shows how Eurocrats were outwitted by unscrupulous local politicians who turned the EU's multi-level decision-making processes into a laughing-stock. The EU's famous 'soft power' turned out to be a mirage, as it was unable to summon up the willpower to insist that this key Balkan state embraced its standards of behaviour in the political and economic realms. The book unravels policy failures in the areas of justice, administrative and agricultural reform and shows how Romania moved backwards politically during the years of negotiations. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Historical fiction
        2020

        Cain

        by Volodymyr Yeshkilev

        "It is our time that will decide the future of countries and dynasties to come" said the Cardinal Mazarini's spy to the young nobleman named Pavel Moshkovsky, who will later become the ruler of Ukraine under title of Hetman Teteria. And he was right - the middle of the XVII century started a New Age of European history and drew the apocalyptic outlines of the world in the twilight of which we now live. The dark silhouette of the Biblical figure from the Book of Genesis, who was the firstborn child of Adam and Eve and committed a great sin of killing thy own brother overshadows the last four centuries of the world’s history. Volodymyr Eshkilev dives deep into the secrets of the castles and their rulers in his historical novel "Cain", the second of the trilogy "Cursed Hetmans". The reader will recognise the characters from the author’s previous novel called “Union” and will meet many new historical figures who lived and work during the period called “Ruin”. During the “Ruin” the hetmanate of Teteria, one of the most stipulated and disgraced rulers of Ukraine, held power. Eshkilev offers his own unique and unexpected interpretation of this historical figure. The events of the novel take place in beautiful and artistic surroundings and reflect on political, diplomatic, and even occult affairs of the XVII century.

      • Trusted Partner

        Ratu Isabella

        by Abdul Latip Talib, Nor Azmi

        Andalusia reached the peak of the glory of Islamic art civilization with the construction of the Alhambra palace in Granada during the reign of the Nasriyyah kingdom. The rulers of the Christian kingdom always attacked the Islamic kingdom in order to take back the colonies that were occupied by Islam and then eliminate Islam.   The Christian dream of seeing the Islamic rule wiped out in Andalusia was successfully fulfilled by Queen Isabella and her husband, King Ferdinand when they conquered Granada, the last stronghold of the Muslims.   Abu Abdullah became the last Muslim ruler in Andalusia when he was forced to surrender Granada to the hands of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. When leaving Granada, she shed tears until her mother said, "Don't cry like a woman for something you can't stand like a man.

      • Trusted Partner
        Adventure stories (Children's/YA)
        January 2021

        Four Princesses

        by Oleksandra Orlova (Author), Anna Surgan (Illustrator)

        We know that the daughters of Yaroslav the Wise all married European kings. But who were they really? The author imagined what the childhood of Kyiv princesses could have been. Clever, derisive, playful girls — and at the same time, future rulers that have to learn princely virtues and honor books.    From 5 to 8 years, 5433 words Rightsholders: a.makhnyk@portalbooks.com.ua

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2015

        Sites of imperial memory

        Commemorating colonial rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

        by Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie

        Europe's great colonial empires have long been a thing of the past, but the memories they generated are still all around us. They have left deep imprints on the different memory communities that were affected by the processes of establishing, running and dismantling these systems of imperial rule, and they are still vibrant and evocative today. This volume brings together a collection of innovative and fresh studies exploring different sites of imperial memory - those conceptual and real places where the memories of former colonial rulers and of former colonial subjects have crystallised into a lasting form. The volume explores how memory was built up, re-shaped and preserved across different empires, continents and centuries. It shows how it found concrete expression in stone and bronze, how it adhered to the stories that were told and retold about great individuals and how it was suppressed, denied and neglected. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        February 2024

        The Wigmaker of Königsberg

        A difficult friendship with Immanuel Kant

        by Michael Lichtwarck-Aschoff

        It is said that all the ladies in Königsberg had a crush on Kant. How one coifs one’s intellectual giants, one’s occidental luminaries. Although at the time, Kant employed a Huguenot wigmaker to style his hair. Of whom not much is known. Except that he would have liked to get rid of the wigs and replace them with a short back and sides. And that he tried to comply practically with the idea of enlightenment. But with Kant’s sentences the great philosopher only ever addressed the enlightenment-driven rulers of Europe, and never the people of Africa, whose diff erent skin colour alone proved to Kant that they could not reach a higher level of civilisation on their own. But he and Kant only really fell out seriously over Esther, the pleasing and seductive maid...

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2024

        Coup in Damascus

        Husni al-Za'im and the birth of Syrian military rule

        by Carl Rihan

        Coup in Damascus is a history of Syria's first military regime. It plots the the fall of Syria's democracy and the rise of its military rulers, particularly Husni al-Zaim, whose brief rule in 1949 represented a profoundly transformative moment for the Syrian nation. It is a history of the thoughts, intentions and motives of political actors underpinning the events that have marked Syria's history after the first Arab-Israeli war, and focuses mainly on the interaction between local, regional and international actors. Unlike most histories of the modern Middle East that tackle broad intervals and that focus on the sequences of events, this history seeks to reconstruct the thought processes behind the events, and anchor them within the epoch's existing political and socioeconomic conditions. It draws on several methodological influences, particularly R.G. Collingwood's 'history as re-enactment of the past'.

      • Trusted Partner
        History of medicine
        May 2017

        Leprosy and colonialism

        Suriname under Dutch rule, 1750–1950

        by Stephen Snelders. Series edited by Professor Keir Waddington

        Leprosy and colonialism investigates the history of leprosy in Suriname within the context of Dutch colonial power and racial conflict, from the plantation economy and the age of slavery to its legacy in the modern colonial state. It explores the relationship between the modern stigmatization and exclusion of people affected with leprosy, and the political tensions and racial fears originating in colonial slave society, exerting their influence until after the decolonization up to the present day. In the book colonial sources are read from shifting perspectives, of the colonial rulers and, 'from below', the ruled. Though leprosy is today a neglected tropical disease, recognizing influences of our colonial heritage in our global management of health and disease, and exploring the perspectives of other cultures are essential in a time in which migration movements make the permeability of boundaries, and transmission of diseases, more common then perhaps ever before.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        May 2016

        Representations of Renaissance monarchy

        Francis I and the image-makers

        by Lisa Mansfield

        Representations of Renaissance monarchy analyses the portraits and personal imagery of Francis I, one of the most frequently portrayed rulers of sixteenth-century Europe. The distinctive likeness of the Valois king was widely disseminated and perceived by his French subjects, and Tudor and Habsburg rivals abroad. Complementing studies on the representation of Henry VIII, this book makes a dynamic contribution to scholarship on the enterprise of royal image-making in early-modern Europe. The discussion not only highlights the inventiveness of the visual arts in Renaissance France but also alludes to the enduring politics of physical appearance and seductive power of the face and body in modern visual culture. Coinciding with the five hundredth anniversary of Francis I's accession, this book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval and Renaissance art, the history of portraiture or anyone interested in images of monarchy and the history of France. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2004

        Eastward bound

        Travel and travellers, 1050–1550

        by Rosamund Allen

        Eastward bound looks at travel and travellers in the medieval period. An international range of distinguished contributors offer discussions on a wide range of themes, from the experiences of Crusaders on campaign, to the lives of pilgrims, missionaries and traders in the Middle East. It examines their modes of travel, equipment and methods of navigation, and considers their expectations and experiences en route. The contributions also look at the variety of motives - public and private - behind the decision to travel eastwards. Other essays discuss the attitudes of Middle-Eastern rulers to their visitors. In so doing they provide a valuable perspective and insight into the behaviour of the Europeans and non-Europeans alike. There have been few such accessible volumes, covering such a broad range of material. The book will be of use to students and scholars involved in the history, literature and historical geography of the medieval period. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2018

        Constructing kingship

        The Capetian monarchs of France and the early Crusades

        by S. H. Rigby, James Naus

        Crusading kings such as Louis IX of France and Richard I of England exert a unique hold on our historical imagination. For this reason, it can be easy to forget that European rulers were not always eager participants in holy war. The First Crusade was launched in 1095, and yet the first monarch did not join the movement until 1146, when the French king Louis VII took the cross to lead the Second Crusade. One contemporary went so far as to compare the crusades to 'Creation and man's redemption on the cross', so what impact did fifty years of non-participation have on the image and practice of European kingship and the parameters of cultural development? Constructing kingship considers this question by examining the challenge to political authority that confronted the French kings and their family members as a direct result of their failure to join the early crusades, and their less-than-impressive involvement in later ones.

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