When Japanese signals were decoded at Bletchley Park, who translated them into English? When Japanese soldiers were taken as prisoners of war, who interrogated them? When Japanese maps and plans were captured on the battlefield, who deciphered them for Britain? When Great Britain found itself at war with Japan in December 1941, there was a linguistic battle to be fought--but Britain was hopelessly unprepared. Eavesdropping on the Emperor traces the men and women with a talent for languages who were put on crash courses in Japanese, and unfolds the history of their war. Some were sent with their new skills to India; others to Mauritius, where there was a secret radio intercept station; or to Australia, where they worked with Australian and American codebreakers. Translating the despatches of the Japanese ambassador in Berlin after his conversations with Hitler; retrieving filthy but valuable documents from the battlefield in Burma; monitoring Japanese airwaves to warn of air-raids--Britain depended on these forgotten 'war heroes'. The accuracy of their translations was a matter of life or death, and they rose to the challenge. Based on declassified archives and interviews with the few survivors, this fascinating, globe-trotting book tells their stories.
In 2013 Ousmane Diallo, a 26-year-old Senegalese olive harvester, lost his life when a gas canister exploded in a Sicilian field. As an African migrant, he was little mourned. But though they''ve been deliberately forgotten, neither the events of Ousmane''s life nor his tragic death are uncommon. Across Italy today, African workers toil in the fields that make it one of Europe''s largest exporters of fruit and vegetables. Having fled home countries devastated by colonialism and global capitalism, those who survive the journey across the Mediterranean arrive on European shores only to find themselves systematically segregated and exploited. They have been subject to anti-migrant policies over decades, from administrations across the political spectrum. Trapped in a chokehold of subhuman living and working conditions, they are the dehumanised Other, invisible by design--the people hidden behind foods and goods branded ''Made in Italy''. Ciao Ousmane is the story of this subordinated class. Through the lives and stories of Italy''s migrant workers, Hsiao-Hung Pai exposes the open secret of how state and society create ''necessary outcasts''. This is a bitter, frank and moving tale of racial capitalism, against which workers constantly find new ways to organise and fight back.
We are said to be living in an age of anger, and national populist movements are often identified as its political manifestation. In Populism Michael Burleigh explores this new global era, drawing on his Engelsberg Lectures. The first chapter explores the nature of mass anger, mainly in Europe and the US: how might popular discontent be artificially incited and sustained by elite figures claiming to speak for the common people? The second chapter compares the difficult aftermaths of empire in Britain and Russia. Has that experience fostered these countries'' sense of exceptionality and inability to evolve into normal societies? Many national populist movements exploit History, as we saw with the so-called ''statue wars'' reignited in 2020. The third chapter ranges across Europe, but also China, where a nationalised version of History has become intrinsic to social support for the ruling Communist Party. In the short term, COVID-19 has created problems for several populist leaders, whose image has suffered amidst the public''s new-found respect for expertise and unfavourable comparisons with less shouty politicians who have handled the pandemic differently. Yet, with the looming risk of an extended economic depression, Burleigh fears that new post-populists may arise in the long run.
Born in 1920, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman studied law. One of the founders of the Awami League in 1949, he later led his party to an absolute majority in the 1970 election, a key event in the emergence of Bangladesh. On 7 March 1971 he called for a non-cooperation movement, proclaiming: ''This struggle is the struggle for freedom; this struggle is the struggle for independence.'' Later that month he issued a declaration of independence and was arrested by the Pakistan Army. Following the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, which occurred while he was still in jail in Pakistan, he became prime minister of Bangladesh in 1972 and president from 1975.On 15 August that year, he and his family were brutally assassinated at home by a group of renegade Bangladesh Army officers. Soldiers ransacked the whole house, butΓÇöthinking that Mujib''s notebooks were of no interestΓÇöleft them behind. These revealing diaries, which Mujib had entitled ''A plate, a bowl and a blanket are the only things one gets in prison'', were later found among the debris.
An original contribution to international ethics and humanitarian intervention, Westphalia From Below draws on history and IR theory to offer a fresh analysis of an insufficiently understood subject. This new history of the lead-up to 1648 exposes the mythical and problematic nature of the Peace of Westphalia and its implications for international politics, questioning the impoverished visions of this landmark treaty that influence IR theory and humanitarian protection to this day.IR is infused with perspectives from the humanities based on reconstructions of the mentalities of the Thirty Years'' War. Scholars tell us that the Westphalia settlement instituted an absolutist understanding of sovereignty as a right and a strict principle of non-intervention, which was only later displaced by the ''radical innovation'' of humanitarian interventionΓÇöbut Thomas Peak exposes this myth as a fabrication that cannot sustainably be upheld as a normative precept. He shows from the ground up that, in fact, Westphalia established an order grounded in human dignity, in which sovereignty and intervention were not opposed. This true legacy of Westphalia has important and valuable connections with recent conceptions of international politics, particularly the legitimacy of intervention on humanitarian grounds. Peak''s study is as relevant as it is refreshing.
What does the biggest geopolitical project of our time tell us about China's global ambitions?
A first-hand account of the bitterly fought wars for control over some of the world's highest borders.
A highly original mix of polemic and ethnographic scholarship, exploring how South Asia's culture of road-building reflects the world's dangerous obsession with progress and growth.
In 2019, Islamic State lost its last remaining sliver of territory in Syria, and its Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed. These setbacks seemed to herald the Caliphate''s death knell, and many now forecast its imminent demise. Yet its affiliates endure, particularly in Africa: nearly all of Islamic State''s cells on the continent have reaffirmed their allegiance, attacks have continued in its name, many groups have been reinvigorated, and a new province has emerged. Why, in Africa, did the two major setbacks of 2019 have so little impact on support for Islamic State? The Islamic State in Africa suggests that this puzzle can be explained by the emergence and evolution of Islamic State''s provinces in Africa, which it calls ''sovereign subordinates''. By examining the rise and development of eight Islamic State ''cells'', the authors show how, having pledged allegiance to IS Central, cells evolved mostly autonomously, using the IS brand as a means for accrual of power, but, in practice, receiving relatively little if any direction or material support from central command. Given this pattern, IS Central''s relative decline has had little impact on its African affiliates--who are likely to remain committed to the Caliphate''s cause for the foreseeable future.
A slave woman in 1840s America dresses as a white, disabled man to escape to freedom, while a twenty-first-century black rights activist is ΓÇÿcancelledΓÇÖ for denying her whiteness. A Victorian explorer disguises himself as a Muslim in ArabiaΓÇÖs forbidden holy city. A trans man claiming to have been assigned male at birth is exposed and murdered by bigots in 1993. Today, Japanese untouchables leave home and change their name.All of them have ΓÇÿpassedΓÇÖ, performing or claiming an identity that society hasnΓÇÖt assigned or recognised as theirs. For as long as weΓÇÖve drawn lines describing ourselves and each other, people have naturally fallen or deliberately stepped between them. What do their storiesΓÇöin life and in artΓÇötell us about the changing meanings of identity? About our need for labels, despite their obvious limitations?Lipika Pelham reflects on tales of fluidity and transformation, including her own. From Pope Joan to Parasite, Brazil to Bangladesh, London to Liberia, Passing is a fascinating, timely history of the self.
In 2018, journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi regime operatives, shocking the international community and tarnishing the reputation of Muhammad bin Salman, the kingdomΓÇÖs young, reformist crown prince. Domestically, bin Salman''s reforms have proven divisive, and his adoption of populist nationalism and fierce repression of diverse critical voicesΓÇöreligious scholars, feminists and dissident youthΓÇöhave failed to silence a vibrant and well-connected Saudi society.Madawi Al-Rasheed lays bare the world of repression behind the crown prince''s reforms. She dissects the Saudi regime''s propaganda and progressive new image, while also dismissing Orientalist views that despotism is the only pathway to stable governance in the Middle East. Charting old and new challenges to the fragile Saudi nation from the kingdom''s very inception, this blistering book exposes the dangerous contradictions at the heart of the Son King''s Saudi Arabia.
It''s in our instant noodles and chocolate bars, our lipsticks and fuel tanks. But what even is palm oil, and how has it come to dominate our lives so completely? Jocelyn C. Zuckerman travels across four continents and back two centuries to find answers about the most widely used vegetable oil on Earth. The little oil palm fruit has played an outsized role in world history and economic development. But the multi-billion-dollar palm oil business has been built on stolen land and slave labour; it spurred colonisation and swept away lives and cultures. Today, its fires and mass deforestation generate carbon emissions to rival those of entire industrialized nations, and they''ve pushed animals like the orangutan to the brink of extinction.Combining history, travelogue and investigative reporting, Planet Palm offers an unsettling, urgent look at a global industry that has become an environmental, public health, and human rights disaster.
The Noncooperation Movement of 1920-22, led by Mahatma Gandhi, challenged every aspect of British rule in India. It was supported by people from all levels of the social hierarchy and united Hindus and Muslims in a way never again achieved by Indian nationalists. It was remarkably nonviolent. In all, it was one of the major mass protests of modern times. Yet there are almost no accounts of the entire movement, although many aspects of it have been covered by local-level studies. This volume both brings together and builds on these studies, looking at fractious all-India debates over strategy; the major grievances that drove local-level campaigns; the ways leaders braided together these streams of protest within a nationalist agenda; and the distinctive features of popular nonviolence for a righteous cause. David Hardiman's previous volume, The Nonviolent Struggle for Indian Freedom, examined the history of nonviolent resistance in the Indian nationalist movement. The present volume takes his study forward to examine the culmination of this first surge of struggle. While the campaign of 1920-22 did not achieve its desired objective of immediate self-rule, it did succeed in shaking to the core the authority of the British in India.
How has the poster child of "cradle to grave" welfare fared in recent decades, and what have the strains on Swedish society revealed about its true nature?
What does it feel like to move through a world designed to limit and exclude you? What are the joys and pains of holidays for people of colour, when guidebooks are never written with them in mind? How are black lives today impacted by the othering legacy of colonial cultures and policies? What can travel tell us about our sense of self, of home, of belonging and identity? Why has the world order become hostile to human mobility, as old as humanity itself, when more people are on the move than ever?Nanjala Nyabola is constantly exploring the world, working with migrants and confronting complex realities challenging common assumptions ΓÇô both hers and othersΓÇÖ. From Nepal to Botswana, Sicily to Haiti, New York to Nairobi, her sharp, humane essays ask tough questions and offer surprising, deeply shocking and sometimes funny answers. It is time we saw the world through her eyes.
Muhammad bin Salman Al-Saud and Muhammad bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the respective princely strongmen of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have torn up the old rules. They have spurred game-changing economic master plans, presided over vast anti-corruption crackdowns, tackled entrenched religious forces, and overseen the mass arrest of critics. In parallel, they also appear to have replaced the old ''sheikhly'' consensus systems of their predecessors with something more autocratic, more personalistic, and perhaps even analytically distinct.These are the two wealthiest and most populous Gulf monarchies, and increasingly important global powers--Saudi Arabia is a G20 member, and the UAE will be the host of the World Expo in 2021-2022. Such sweeping changes to their statecraft and authority structures could well end up having a direct impact, for better or worse, on policies, economies and individual lives all around the world. Christopher M. Davidson tests the hypothesis that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now effectively contemporary or even ''advanced'' sultanates, and situates these influential states within an international model of autocratic authoritarianism. Drawing on a range of primary sources, including new interviews and surveys, ''From Sheikhs to Sultanism'' puts forward an original, empirically grounded interpretation of the rise of both MBS and MBZ.
In 1960, the GDP per capita of Southeast Asian countries was nearly half of that of Africa. By 1986 the gap had closed and today the trend is reversed, with more than half of the world''s poorest now living in sub­ Saharan Africa.Why has Asia developed while Africa lagged? The Asian Aspiration chronicles the stories of explosive growth and changing fortunes: the leaders, events and policy choices that lifted a billion people out of abject poverty within a single generation, the largest such shift in human history.The relevance of Asia''s example comes as Africa is facing a populationboom, which can either lead to crisis or prosperity, and as Asia is again transforming, this time out of low-cost manufacturing into hi-tech, leaving a void that is Africa''s for the taking. Far from the optimistic determinism of ''Africa Rising'', this book calls for unprecedented pragmatism in the pursuit of African success.
ItΓÇÖs not just intelligence thatΓÇÖs going artificial! Numerous elements of our everyday life reek of inauthenticity. Even the grass we walk on and the plants we decorate our homes with demonstrate how the artificial has permeated our lives in ways we do not often give a thought to. In this issue of Critical Muslim, we explore how the artificial controls our livesΓÇöfrom the cities we live in to the online lives in which we immerse ourselves at every free moment. Challenges will be explored: AI has irrevocably changed the way we work and increased the ease with which we spend money. Notions of desire and freedom dissolve or fall by the wayside. Fake news and the lies we continue to tell ourselves give the phoney impression that everything is situation normalΓÇöyet the truth is anything but. About Critical Muslim: A quarterly publication of ideas and issues showcasing groundbreaking thinking on Islam and what it means to be a Muslim in a rapidly changing, interconnected world. Each edition centers on a discrete theme, and contributions include reportage, academic analysis, cultural commentary, photography, poetry, and book reviews.
What is the ultimate destination? Is it a place, a state of mind, or a vision of how we would like things to be? Slick airline adverts tell us itΓÇÖs the journey, not the destination, that matters--but the selfie generation is all about capturing, filtering and digitally preserving the destination, in all its Instagrammable glory. How has ΓÇÿthe destinationΓÇÖ evolved in our rapidly changing times? Whether it is a physical reality that we yearn for, a spiritual reckoning or an introspective quest to find one''s self, this issue of Critical Muslim explores what it means to want to get there, and maybe even how our original goals--even the destination--may change, wherever or whenever they may be.About Critical Muslim: A quarterly publication of ideas and issues showcasing groundbreaking thinking on Islam and what it means to be a Muslim in a rapidly changing, interconnected world. Each edition centers on a discrete theme, and contributions include reportage, academic analysis, cultural commentary, photography, poetry, and book reviews.
In April 2019, following over six months of persistent youth-led protests, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir was successfully deposed, bringing an end to three decades of authoritarian rule in Sudan.In this illuminating volume, Khalid Mustafa Medani examines the political and socioeconomic factors that led to the revolution and diagnoses the challenges that remain for the consolidation of democracy. He explores the role of political economy in the popular uprising and discusses some oft-neglected factors in the analysis of popular protests in Africa and the Middle East. These include the relationship between geopolitics and grassroots activism in democratisation; the role of social media and diasporic activism in helping to shape and sustain local networks of resistance; and new dynamics of mobilisation, which have seen the emergence of youth and women in particular as central actors in the protests.Based on many years of research, Revolutionary Sudan shines light on the ways in which Sudan''s revolution holds important lessons for popular uprisings in the region and beyond.
For many liberal commentators at the turn of the 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union represented a final victory for Western reason and capitalist democracy. But, in recent years, liberal norms and institutions associated with the post-Cold War moment have been challenged by a visceral and affective politics. Electorates have increasingly opted for a closing inwards of the nation-state, not just in the democratic heartlands of Europe and North America, but also on the periphery of the world economy. As the popular appeal of the ''open society'' is thrown into question, it is necessary to revisit assumptions about the permanence of its enabling political and ethical projects. Previously promoted by the US and its allies as a necessary complement to liberal capitalistculture and the globalisation of markets, humanitarian multilateralism seems to have lost strategic currency. In this collection of essays, public intellectuals, scholars, journalists and aid workers reflect on the relationship between humanitarianism and ''liberal order''. What role has humanitarianism played in processes of liberal ordering? Amidst challenges to liberal order, what are the implications for the political economy of humanitarianism, and for the practices of humanitarian agencies?
A courageously personal exploration of gender identity across Muslim cultures, from the West to South Asia. From an early age, Leyla Jagiella knew that she would be defined by two things: being Muslim and being trans. Struggling to negotiate these identities in her conservative, small hometown, she travelled to India and Pakistan, where her life was changed by her time among third-gender communities.Known as hijras in India, khwajasaras in Pakistan, these marginal communities have traditionally been politically and culturally important, respected for their supernatural powers to bless or curse, and often serving as eunuchs in Mughal IndiaΓÇÖs palaces. But under British colonialism, the hijras were criminalised and persecuted, entrenching taboos they still battle today. Among the Eunuchs reveals vastly varied interpretations of religion, gender and sexuality, illuminating how deeply culture informs our experiences. As identity becomes an ideological battlefield, Jagiella complicates binaries and dogma with her rich personal reflections. Her fascinating journey speaks to all who find themselves juggling different kinds of belonging.
In 1960 a mysterious car crash killed Albert Camus and his publisher Michel Gallimard, who was behind the wheel. Based on meticulous research, Giovanni Catelli builds a compelling case that the 46-year-old French Algerian Nobel laureate was the victim of premeditated murder: he was silenced by the KGB.The Russians had a motive: Camus had campaigned tirelessly against the Soviet crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and vociferously supported the awarding of the Nobel Prize to the dissident novelist Boris Pasternak, which enraged Moscow.Sixty years after CamusΓÇÖ death, Catelli takes us back to a murky period in the Cold War. He probes the relationship between Camus and Pasternak, the fraught publication of Doctor Zhivago, the penetration of France by Soviet spies, and the high price paid by those throughout Europe who resisted the USSR.
A new political history of the former British colony in West Africa.
Presents analysis of interrelated struggles fought in 1941-5, during the short but tragic period of Hitler's failed 'New Order', over the territory that was no longer the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Federal Peoples' Republic of Yugoslavia.
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