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Written by well-known scholars, this book raises pertinent questions and takes up alternate perspectives on the growth and development of international trade between Europe and Asia, especially India, in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Through a comparative and comprehensive study of merchant communities, markets and commodities the individual authors argue, contrary to conventional views, that Asian merchants were in no way inferior to Europeans in terms of their commercial operations and business acumen. The book emphasizes the continuing and growing importance of India's overland trade, even in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, traces the little-known world of Armenian merchants, the hitherto obscure, but voluminous, Indian trade with the Ottoman Empire, and by unearthing new evidence, demonstrates that the export activity of Asian merchants through the overland route from Bengal was higher, in fact, than the combined total of European exports

The most authoritative anthology of Islamist textsThis anthology of key primary texts provides an unmatched introduction to Islamist political thought from the early twentieth century to the present, and serves as an invaluable guide through the storm of polemic, fear, and confusion that swirls around Islamism today. Roxanne Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman gather a broad selection of texts from influential Islamist thinkers and place these figures and their writings in their multifaceted political and historical contexts. The selections presented here in English translation include writings of Ayatollah Khomeini, Usama bin Laden, Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, and Moroccan Islamist leader Nadia Yassine, as well as the Hamas charter, an interview with a Taliban commander, and the final testament of 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Ata.Illuminating the content and political appeal of Islamist thought, this anthology brings into sharp relief the commonalities in Islamist arguments about gender, democracy, and violence, but it also reveals significant political and theological disagreements among thinkers too often grouped together and dismissed as extremists or terrorists. No other anthology better illustrates the diversity of Islamist thought, the complexity of its intellectual and political contexts, or the variety of ways in which it relates to other intellectual and religious trends in the contemporary Muslim world

"Examines the literature of black Caribbean emigrant and island women including Dorothea Smartt, Edwidge Danticat, Paule Marshall, and others, who use the terminology and imagery of "sucking salt" as an articulation of a New World voice connoting adaptation, improvisation, and creativity, offering a new understanding of diaspora, literature, and feminism"--Provided by publisher

Robert Fanuzzi illustrates how the dissemination of abolitionist tracts served to create an "imaginary public" that promoted and provoked the discussion of slavery. He critically examines the writings of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, and Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and their massive abolition publicity campaign geared to an audience of white male citizens, free black noncitizens, women, and the enslaved.

In mid-nineteenth-century Canada, the Irish outnumbered the English and Scots two to one. Yet they have been much less studied than their US counterparts, even though their experience was very different. Irish settlers arrived earlier in Canada, formed a larger proportion of the founding communities, and were largely rural-based; more than half were Protestant. The Famine provided only a rather late part of the Irish emigration to Canada, which took place principally between 1816 and 1855. The authors evaluate both emigration and settlement and present as well revealing personal documents about intense, often painful experiences of the settlers. Part I explores the geographical links - particularly the phenomenon of chain migration - that shaped decisions to leave Ireland. Part II examines patterns of settlement in the new land. Part III, with biographies of immigrants and collections of letters written home, chronicles personal and social life in the new land and the abiding interest in family and friends in Canada and back in Ireland. The documents illustrate links and patterns revealed in the earlier analysis of emigration and settlement; they also offer an additional, intimate perspective on a key phase in the cultural history of Canada and Ireland

This study focuses on the relationship between nobility and freemasonry from 1750 to 1850. It examines the specific role of an esoteric discourse surrounding the roots of the human race, centring on legendary constructions of noble genealogies in eighteenth century Europe. The aristocratic idea of blood as a type of »liquid memory of virtue« was also found in the freemason lodges frequented by the European nobility of the eighteenth century. Both groups therefore believed in educational systems that used rites, pictures and symbols to imprint the virtues in ones blood and heart respectively. The foundation of this belief – strongly combined with an interest in occult sciences and the existence of an afterlife – can be seen in the antique »art of memory«. The example of an aristocratic lodge in Düsseldorf shows how these ›research interests‹ overlapped within masonic and non-masonic networks of European noblemen and citizens. In the perspective of Rhenish noblemen in the mid of the eighteenth century freemasonry took the role of an educational system that improved the qualities of the noble blood to secure the leading position of nobility in the God-given »Ständegesellschaft«. The aristocratic lodge La Parfaite Amitié therefore was not only dominated by Rhenish noblemen but also by cousinship. As a consequence, it struggled to become a »provincial lodge«, which had a stronger jurisdictional position in comparison with the civil-lodge of Düsseldorf.
The second example is the masonic network of Joseph zu Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck (1773– 1861), from the Napoleonic period. Born in the Ancient Regime to an aristocratic familiy of the lower Rhineland, Joseph zu Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck faced the extensive changes for the nobility of the Rhineland, caused by the French Revolution and the French occupation of the area. Together with his second wife, the Parisian Salonier Constance de Salm, he became a prominent person in the Napoleonic era. He not only acted as an influential scientist of systematic botany, as a politician and states-man but also as a high-ranking freemason in several rites, especially in the Rit écossais philosophique.
This masonic system can be seen as a ›scientific‹ one built upon the traditions of alchemistical and hermetical circles of the Ancient Regime. The Napoleonic period saw the occult sciences increasingly outdated and replaced by modern natural sciences. The methods considered as »exact« in the nineteenth century subsequently formed the perspective of civil dominated societies and its lodges on masonic rites and grades. In the masonic network of Joseph zu Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck, the Rit écossais philosophique was crossed with his network as a natural scientist, resulting in masonry being seen not only as an educational system but also as an exact way to uncover the »hidden roots« of the human soul and to assess the respective qualities of it. These tendencies were strongly influenced by the natural sciences outside the masonic sphere, which in parallel tried to uncover the »hidden roots« of the nations with the pseudo-scientific concepts of »race«.
The civil lodges of the Napoleonic era and afterwards, with their strong emphasis on the nation, could no longer be seen as a retreat for noble man and their exclusive ideology of
noble blood. The majority of the Rhenish nobility therefore turned away from the lodges in order to maintain a conservative view of itself in exclusively noble circles which still believed in the quality of the noble blood and its inherited race. - Welche Rolle spielte das »Esoterische« für die Selbstsicht der adlig-bürgerlichen Eliten beim Übergang zur Moderne? Dieser Frage geht die Studie Martin Otto Brauns mit dem Titel »An den Wurzeln der Tugend. Rheinischer Adel und Freimaurerei 1765–1815« nach. Auf der Grundlage der mythischen Geschichtskonstruktionen von Genealogien des rheinischen Adels sowie des Geheimbunds der Freimaurerei zeichnet der Autor die parallel zu den Entwicklungen der Naturwissenschaften verlaufende Transformation der Vorstellung vom tugendhaften »Adel des Blutes« hin zum bürgerlichen »Adel des Intellekts« nach. Die Studie kann dabei zeigen, wie der esoterische Gehalt des frühneuzeitlichen Bildes von Wachstum und Fortschritt des Familienstammbaums sich um 1800 mehr und mehr auf die Konzepte »Nation« und »Volk« im Gesamten ausweitete. Das esoterische Denken hielt sich auf dieser Grundlage bis in die Moderne und sollte vorhandene rassische Vorstellungen adlig-bürgerlicher Eliten der »Sattelzeit« nachhaltig prägen. Martin Otto Braun promovierte im Fach Neuere und Mittelalterliche Geschichte an der Universität zu Köln und war Doktorand in der Forschergruppe »Aufbruch in die Moderne. Der Rheinische Adel in westeuropäischer Perspektive 1750–1850« des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Paris unter Leitung von Prof. Dr. Gudrun Gersmann. Er ist Autor und Mitherausgeber der durch die Fritz Thyssen Stiftung geförderten »Netzbiografie: Joseph zu Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck (1773–1861)«.
Er veröffentlicht Beiträge zu seiner Forschung in den Blogs »EsoHist. A blogged history of esotericism and secret societies« (Facebook: EsoHist), »Rheinischer Adel« und »Napoleon auf der Spur«.
Webseite: http://uni-koeln.academia.edu/MBraun

Wenn über 45 Jahre nach dem Tod von Bundeskanzler Ludwig Erhard seine Erinnerungen veröffentlicht werden, ist dies eine kleine Sensation. Der Text aus dem Jahr 1976 ist eine schonungslose Abrechnung mit politischen Gegnern und falschen Freunden in der eigenen Partei. Das Skript beeindruckt aber vor allem durch eine unglaubliche Aktualität. Ludwig Erhard bezeichnet die FDP als Bremser, die jeden Koalitionspartner zur Verzweiflung bringt. Er kritisiert die Bundesneuverschuldung, beklagt übertriebenen Lobbyismus, wettert gegen die GroKo und schreibt, dass wir die Hauptlast für die Sicherheit Europas nicht den USA überlassen dürfen. Ulrich Schlie hat das Skript mit einer Einleitung, knappen Anmerkungen und einem einordnenden Essay versehen.