Download or read book Europe s Steppe Frontier 1500 1800 written by William H. McNeill and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-09-23 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Europe’s Steppe Frontier, acclaimed historian William H. McNeill analyzes the process whereby the thinly occupied grasslands of southeastern Europe were incorporated into the bodies-social of three great empires: the Ottoman, the Austrian, and the Russian. McNeill benefits from a New World detachment from the bitter nationality quarrels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century which inspired but also blinded most of the historians of the region. Moreover, the unique institutional adjustments southeastern Europeans made to the frontier challenge cast indirect light upon the peculiarities of the North American frontier experience.

Download or read book Russia s Steppe Frontier written by Michael Khodarkovsky and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on sources and archival materials in Russian and Turkic languages, Russia's Steppe Frontier presents a complex picture of the encounter between indigenous peoples and the Russians. It is an original and invaluable resource for understanding Russia's imperial experience. Michael Khodarkovsky is Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago.

Download or read book Warfare in Eastern Europe 1500 1800 written by Brian Davies and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-01-05 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative examination of military development in early modern Eastern Europe, focusing on Russian, Polish-Lithuanian, Ottoman, Habsburg, Cossack, and Western European mercenary practice.

Download or read book Imperial Boundaries written by and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Plough that Broke the Steppes written by David Moon and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-02-28 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first environmental history of Russia's steppes. From the early-eighteenth century, settlers moved to the semi-arid but fertile grasslands from wetter, forested regions in central and northern Russia and Ukraine, and from central Europe. By the late-nineteenth century, they had turned the steppes into the bread basket of the Russian Empire and parts of Europe. But there was another side to this story. The steppe region was hit by recurring droughts, winds from the east whipped up dust storms, the fertile black earth suffered severe erosion, crops failed, and in the worst years there was famine. David Moon analyses how naturalists and scientists came to understand the steppe environment, including the origins of the fertile black earth. He also analyses how scientists tried to understand environmental change, including climate change. Farmers, and the scientists who advised them, tried different ways to deal with the recurring droughts: planting trees, irrigation, and cultivating the soil in ways that helped retain scarce moisture. More sustainable, however, were techniques of cultivation to retain scarce moisture in the soil. Among the pioneers were Mennonite settlers. Such approaches aimed to work with the environment, rather than trying to change it by planting trees or supplying more water artificially. The story is similar to the Dust Bowl on the Great Plains of the USA, which share a similar environment and environmental history. David Moon places the environmental story of the steppes in the wider context of the environmental history of European colonialism around the globe.

Download or read book Empire and Military Revolution in Eastern Europe written by Brian Davies and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-16 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In terms of resource mobilization and devastation the wars between Russia, the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire were some of the largest of the 18th century, and had enormous consequences for the balance of power in Eastern Europe. Brian Davies examines how these conflicts characterized the course of Russian military development in response to Ottoman and Crimean Tatar threats and to determine under what circumstances and in what ways Russian military power experienced a "revolution" awarding it clear preponderance over the Ottoman-Crimean system. A central part of Davies' argument is that identifying and explaining a Military Revolution must involve examining the role of factors not purely military. One must look not only at new military technology, new force and command structure, new tactical thinking, and new recruitment and military finance practices but also consider the impact of larger demographic, economic, and sociopolitical changes.

Download or read book A History of Slavery and Emancipation in Iran 1800 1929 written by Behnaz A. Mirzai and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The leading authority on slavery and the African diaspora in modern Iran presents the first history of slavery in this key Middle Eastern country and shows how slavery helped to shape the nation's unique character.

Download or read book European Warfare in a Global Context 1660 1815 written by Jeremy Black and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-02-12 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This original book presents a global approach to eighteenth century warfare. Emphasis is placed on the importance of conflict in the period and the capacity for decisiveness in impact and development in method. Through this Jeremy Black extends the view beyond land to naval conflict. European Warfare in a Global Context offers a comparative approach, in the sense of considering Western developments alongside those elsewhere, furthermore it puts emphasis on conflict between Western and non-western powers. This approach necessarily reconsiders developments within the West, but also offers a shift in emphasis from standard narrative of the latter. This book is the ideal study of warfare for all students.

Download or read book Taming the Wild Field written by Willard Sunderland and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-10 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stretching from the tributaries of the Danube to the Urals and from the Russian forests to the Black and Caspian seas, the vast European steppe has for centuries played very different roles in the Russian imagination. To the Grand Princes of Kiev and Muscovy, it was the "wild field," a region inhabited by nomadic Turko-Mongolic peoples who repeatedly threatened the fragile Slavic settlements to the north. For the emperors and empresses of imperial Russia, it was a land of boundless economic promise and a marker of national cultural prowess. By the mid-nineteenth century the steppe, once so alien and threatening, had emerged as an essential, if complicated, symbol of Russia itself.Traversing a thousand years of the region's history, Willard Sunderland recounts the complex process of Russian expansion and colonization, stressing the way outsider settlement at once created the steppe as a region of empire and was itself constantly changing. The story is populated by a colorful array of administrators, Cossack adventurers, Orthodox missionaries, geographers, foreign entrepreneurs, peasants, and (by the late nineteenth century) tourists and conservationists. Sunderland's approach to history is comparative throughout, and his comparisons of the steppe with the North American case are especially telling.Taming the Wild Field eloquently expresses concern with the fate of the world's great grasslands, and the book ends at the beginning of the twentieth century with the initiation of a conservation movement in Russia by those appalled at the high environmental cost of expansion.

Download or read book Climate of Conquest written by Pratyay Nath and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-28 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can war tell us about empire? In Climate of Conquest, Pratyay Nath seeks to answer this question by focusing on the Mughals. He goes beyond the traditional way of studying war in terms of battles and technologies. Instead, he unravels the deep connections that the processes of war-making shared with the society, culture, environment, and politics of early modern South Asia. Climate of Conquest closely studies the dynamics of the military campaigns that helped the Mughals conquer North India and project their power beyond it. The author argues that the diverse natural environment of South Asia deeply shaped Mughal military techniques and the course of imperial expansion. He also sheds light on the world of military logistics, labour, animals, and the organization of war; the process of the formation of imperial frontiers; and the empire’s legitimization of war and conquest. What emerges is a fresh interpretation of Mughal empire-building as a highly adaptive, flexible, and accommodative process.

Download or read book Europe and the Islamic World written by John Tolan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping history of Islam and the West from the seventh century to today Europe and the Islamic World sheds much-needed light on the shared roots of Islamic and Western cultures and on the richness of their inextricably intertwined histories, refuting once and for all the misguided notion of a "clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and Europe. In this landmark book, three eminent historians bring to life the complex and tumultuous relations between Genoans and Tunisians, Alexandrians and the people of Constantinople, Catalans and Maghrebis—the myriad groups and individuals whose stories reflect the common cultural, intellectual, and religious heritage of Europe and Islam. Since the seventh century, when the armies of Constantinople and Medina fought for control of Syria and Palestine, there has been ongoing contact between the Muslim world and the West. This sweeping history vividly recounts the wars and the crusades, the alliances and diplomacy, commerce and the slave trade, technology transfers, and the intellectual and artistic exchanges. Here readers are given an unparalleled introduction to key periods and events, including the Muslim conquests, the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, the commercial revolution of the medieval Mediterranean, the intellectual and cultural achievements of Muslim Spain, the crusades and Spanish reconquest, the rise of the Ottomans and their conquest of a third of Europe, European colonization and decolonization, and the challenges and promise of this entwined legacy today. As provocative as it is groundbreaking, this book describes this shared history in all its richness and diversity, revealing how ongoing encounters between Europe and Islam have profoundly shaped both.

Download or read book Russia in the Early Modern World written by Donald Ostrowski and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fundamental problem in studying early modern Russian history is determining Russia’s historical development in relationship to the rest of the world. The focus throughout this book is on the continuity of Russian policies during the early modern period (1450–1800) and that those policies coincided with those of other successful contemporary Eurasian polities. The continuities occurred in the midst of constant change, but neither one nor the other, continuities or changes alone, can account for Russia’s success. Instead, Russian rulers from Ivan III to Catherine II with their hub advisors managed to sustain a balance between the two. During the early modern period, these Russian rulers invited into the country foreign experts to facilitate the transfer of technology and know-how, mostly from Europe but also from Asia. In this respect, they were willing to look abroad for solutions to domestic problems. Russia looked westward for military weaponry and techniques at the same time it was expanding eastward into the Eurasian heartland. The ruling elite and by extension the entire ruling class worked in cooperation with the ruler to implement policies. The Church played an active role in supporting the government and in seeking to eliminate opposition to the government.

Download or read book The Russo Turkish War 1768 1774 written by Brian L. Davies and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Russo-Turkish War was one of the most decisive conflicts of the 18th century. In this book, Brian Davies offers a thorough survey of the war and explains why it was crucial to the political triumph of Catherine the Great, the southward expansion of the Russian Empire, and the rollback of Ottoman power from southeastern Europe. The war completed the incorporation of Ukraine into the Russian Empire, ended the independence of the great Cossack hosts, removed once and for all the military threat from the Crimean Khanate, began the partitions of Poland, and encouraged Catherine II to plan projects to complete the "liberation" of the lower Danubian and Balkan Slavs and Greeks. The war legitimated and secured the power of Catherine II, finally made the Pontic steppe safe for agricultural colonization, and won ports enabling Russia to control the Black Sea and become a leading grain exporter. Traditionally historians (Sorel, for example) have treated this war as the beginning of the "Eastern Question," the question of how the European powers should manage the decline of the Ottoman Empire. A thorough grasp of the Russo-Turkish War is essential to understanding the complexity and volatility of diplomacy in 18th-century Europe. This book will be an invaluable resource for all scholars and students on European military history and the history of Eastern Europe.

Download or read book Exploring European Frontiers written by B. Dolan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2000-03-02 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The explorations of eighteenth-century travellers to the 'European frontiers' were often geared to define the cultural, political, and historical boundaries of 'European civilization.' In an age when political revolutions shocked nations into reassessing what separated the civilised from the barbaric, how did literary travellers contemplate the characteristics of their continental neighbours? Focusing on the writings of British travellers, we see how a new view of Europe was created, one that juxtaposed the customs and living conditions of populations in an attempt to define 'modern' Europe against a 'yet unenlightened' Europe.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History written by Andrew C. Isenberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the methodology of environmental history, with an emphasis on the field's interaction with other historiographies such as consumerism, borderlands, and gender. It examines the problem of environmental context, specifically the problem and perception of environmental determinism, by focusing on climate, disease, fauna, and regional environments. It also considers the changing understanding of scientific knowledge.

Download or read book Faith and Sword written by Alan G. Jamieson and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2006-06-26 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In today’s tense geopolitical climate, terrorist groups avow their allegiance to the Islamic faith in their edicts, while the president of the United States undertakes controversial wars in Islamic nations and openly refers to his Christian faith as a key component of his decision-making. With the recent surge in terrorist acts and military confrontations, as well as ever-strengthening fundamentalist ideologies on both sides, the Christian-Muslim divide is perhaps more visible than ever—but it is not new. Alan G. Jamieson explores here the long and bloody history of the Christian-Muslim conflict, revealing in his concise yet comprehensive study how deeply this ancient divide is interwoven with crucial events in world history. Faith and Sword opens with the tumultuous first centuries of the conflict, examining the religious precepts that framed clashes between Christians and Muslims and that ultimately fueled the legendary Crusades. Traversing the full breadth of the Arab lands and Christendom, Jamieson chronicles the turbulent saga from the Arab conquests of the seventh century to the rise of the powerful Ottoman Empire and its fall at the end of World War I. Faith and Sword then explores the complex dynamics that emerged later in the twentieth century, as Christendom was transformed into the secular West and Islamic nations overthrew European colonialism to establish governments straddling modernity and religiosity. From the 1979 Iranian revolution to the Lebanon hostage crisis to the present-day war in Iraq, Faith and Sword reveals the essence of this enduring struggle and its consequences.

Download or read book European Muslims and the Qur an written by Gulnaz Sibgatullina and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-12-18 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume aims to advance a Muslim-centered perspective on the study of Islam in Europe. To do so, it brings together a range of case studies that illustrate how European Muslims engaged with their Sacred Scripture while being part of a Christian-dominated social and political space. The research presented in this volume seeks to analyse Muslims’ practices of translating, interpreting and using the Qur’an as a sacred object and, thus, pursues three main research agendas. Part I focuses on the issues of Muslim-Christian relations in Europe and studies how these relations have engendered discursive connections between Muslim- and Christian-produced texts related to the study and interpretation of the Qur’an. Part II aims to bring scholarly attention to the under-represented cases of Muslim communities in Europe. This part introduces new research on Polish-Belarusian, Daghestani, Bosnian and Kazan Tatars and examines local traditions of producing vernacular Qur’ans and commodification of Qur’anic manuscripts. The final section of the volume, Part III, contributes to filling in the gaps related to the theoretical and conceptual framing of Muslim translation activities. The history of religious thought and practice in European history is in many ways still uncharted territory. This book aims to contribute to a better understanding of the cultural history of the Qur’an and Muslim agency in interpreting, transmitting and translating the Sacred Scripture.