Showing titles in Colonialism & Post-Colonialism

The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China's markets with opium. The Company’s practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today. This expanded edition explores how the four forces of scale, technology, finance and regulation drove its spectacular rise and fall.

Villains of All Nations explores the 'Golden Age' of Atlantic piracy (1716-1726) and the infamous generation whose images underlie our modern, romanticized view of pirates. Rediker introduces us to the dreaded black flag, the Jolly Roger; swashbuckling figures such as Edward Teach, better known...

Dopo saggi considerati pietre miliari della storiografia del conflitto araboisraeliano, lo storico israeliano Ilan Pappé rivolge qui la sua analisi al futuro di Israele e della Palestina, riflettendo sui rischi e sulle opportunità che emergono dagli orrori di questo momento storico. Il libro è suddiviso in tre parti.

Brought to you by Penguin. From the Wolfson History Prize-winning author of Black Spartacus, a revelatory history of enslaved people's resistance to Atlantic slavery. The ending of the slave trade and abolition of slavery by European powers during the 19th century is generally told as the work...

Ordinary items take on new meanings when you cast them in different light. The origins of tea, coffee and sugar are well known, but when you discover that gym treadmills were pioneered on plantations or that denim jeans were once clothing for enslaved people, you can't help but ask where else...

Rise and Fall opens with the Akkadian Empire, which ruled over a vast expanse of the region of ancient Mesopotamia, then turns to the immense Roman Empire, where we trace back our Western and Eastern roots. Next Strathern describes how a great deal of Western classical culture was developed in the Abbasid and Umayyid Caliphates. Then, while Europe was beginning to emerge from a period of cultural stagnation, it almost fell to a whirlwind invasion from the East, at which point we meet the Emperors of the Mongol Empire....

‘An important contribution … Delving lucidly into the most significant ideological battles of the era, this book deftly outlines the thinking and dialogue that laid the foundations of the Republic – and which remain deeply relevant and contentious today’ Shashi Tharoor, author of...

How did an ancient spiritual practice become the preserve of the privileged? Nadia Gilani has been practising yoga as a participant and teacher for over twenty-five years. Yoga has saved her life and seen her through many highs and lows; it has been a faith, a discipline, and a friend, and she...

The United States is in a state of decline—a reality decades in the making. At the thin end of the wedge sits Appalachia, one of the nation's most deprived regions, mythologized by outsiders and misunderstood the world over. Embedded as a therapist within this community, Rayelle Davis frames...

As an infant, Julian Brave NoiseCat's father was found abandoned in a dumpster. Against all odds, he survived and made it out of his impoverished reservation only to abandon his own son. As a young man, NoiseCat embarks on an unforgettable journey into his family's past and his people's present. NoiseCat grapples with the erasure of North America's First Peoples and the trauma that cascades across generations, and illuminates the vital Indigenous cultural, environmental and political movements that are reshaping the future.

As the daughter of a white Welsh-speaking mother and black father from Guyana, Charlotte Williams's childhood world was one of mixed messages dominated by the feeling that 'somehow to be half-Welsh and half Afro-Caribbean was to be half of something but never quite anything whole at all.' Sugar and Slate tells the fascinating story of her journey of self-discovery, from the small north Wales town of her birth to Africa, the Caribbean and back to Wales.

The story of the forging of India, the world's largest democracy, is a rich andinspiring one. This volume, a sequel to the India's Struggle forIndependence, analyses the challenges India has faced and the successes ithas achieved in the light of its colonial legacy and century-long struggle...

An 'entertaining, informative and utterly depressing global history of an important commodity . . . By alerting readers to the ways that modernity's very origins are entangled with a seemingly benign and delicious substance, Sugar raises fundamental questions about our world.' Sven Beckert, the...

In this riveting new book, John Laband, pre-eminent historian of the Zulu Kingdom, tackles some of the questions that swirl around the assassination in 1828 of King Shaka, the celebrated founder of the Zulu Kingdom and war leader of legendary brilliance. In his search for answers, Laband turns to the Zulu voice heard through recorded oral testimony and praise-poems, and to the written accounts and reminiscences of the Port Natal trader-hunters and the despatches of Cape officials.

In five short essays, the award-winning writer dissects the nervous condition of being not only Black, and not only a woman, but also quote-unquote "postcolonial". Weaving together the experiences, events, intersections and negotiations of her multifaceted identity, Dangarembga offers a powerful vision of Black liberation.

This is the story of the "Benin Bronzes", their creation, theft, and what should happen to them now. When first exhibited in London, they caused a sensation and helped reshape European attitudes towards Africa, challenging the prevailing view of the continent as "backward" and without culture. But seeing them in the British Museum today is, in the words of one Benin City artist, like "visiting relatives behind bars". In a time of fevered debate about the legacies of empire, loot, museums, and history, what does the future hold for the Bronzes themselves? 

A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies is the story of the Spanish Dominican priest Bartolome de las Casas, who came to the Americas in the 16th century. Immediately he was struck by the inhumane ways in which the native peoples were treated by the European explorers and conquerors, Las Casas went on to be a leading opponent of slavery, torture, and genocide of the Native Americans by the Spanish colonists.

Five Alchemists. One book. A constellation of ideas. The second annual Alchemy Lecture was presented in November 2023 at York University to a sold out in-person audience and nearly one thousand live online viewers. Moderated by Dr. Christina Sharpe, the Alchemists—agile thinkers and...

In 2016, while working as a journalist in Yangon, Clare Hammond discovered an obscure map that showed a web of new railways spanning the length and breadth of the country - railways not shown on any other publicly available maps. She was determined to uncover the railways' origins, purpose, and most of all, the silence that surrounded them. She would spend three months travelling on these mysterious railways, and the next five years piecing their story together.

The decline and fall of America's global empire is the central feature of today's geopolitical landscape, and the nature of our response to it will determine much of our future trajectory, with implications that reach far beyond the limits of one nation's borders. Decline and Fall: The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America challenges the conventional wisdom of empire, using a wealth of historical examples combined with groundbreaking original analysis.