Download or read book Mercenaries and Mandarins written by Richard Joseph Smith and published by Kto Press. This book was released on 1978 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book written by Samuel C. Chu and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 1994 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Li Hung-chang (1823-1901) was a Chinese statesman particularly notable for his promotion of industrialization and advocacy of bureaucratic reform. Most of the papers in this volume were first presented in two panels devoted to Li at the 1987 annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. The volume is divided into six parts: introduction ("The Beginnings of China's Modernization"), the rise of Li Hung-chang, Li in the role of a national official, Li as diplomat, Li as modernizer, and conclusion (including a bibliographical essay). Paper edition (unseen), $22.50. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Robert Hart and China s Early Modernization written by Richard Smith and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As the Ch’ing government’s Inspector General of the Maritime Customs Service, Robert Hart was the most influential Westerner in China for half a century. These journal entries continue the sequence begun in Entering China’s Service and cover the years when Hart was setting up Customs procedures, establishing a modus operandi with the Ch’ing bureaucracy, and inspecting the treaty ports. They culminate in Hart’s return visit to Europe with the Pin-ch’un Mission and his marriage in Northern Ireland. Smith, Fairbank, and Bruner interleave the segments of Hart’s journals with lively narratives describing the contemporary Chinese scene and recounting Hart’s responses to the many challenges of establishing a Western-style organization within a Chinese milieu."
Download or read book The Mercenary written by Christopher Kinsey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-19 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the French Revolution and the rise of the rise of national armies, the mercenary has been viewed as a maligned and marginalized actor in international relations. The Mercenary challenges this view, suggesting instead that while delegated to the periphery of Great Power politics, the mercenary remained a coercive instrument of state power who was willing to discretely promote the client's foreign policy when called upon to do so. Never has this been more evident than today. This book offers fresh insight into the future of the mercenary as an instrument of state coercion and explains why there is a mercenary renaissance in the 21st century. The start of the 21st century has seen renewed interest in the mercenary from across the political spectrum. The growing reliance by the US, Russia, and China on military and security contractors suggests that the mercenary remains a key player in International Politics, now emerging from the shadows to help expand state influence on the world stage by serving as an important actor in the conduct of conflict and the winning of small wars. Far from being marginalized, the future of the mercenary is set to be increasingly active.
Download or read book From Mercenaries to Market written by Simon Chesterman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2007-07-12 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frequently characterized as either mercenaries in modern guise or the market's response to a security vaccuum, private military companies are commercial firms offering military services ranging from combat and military training and advice to logistical support, and which play an increasingly important role in armed conflicts, UN peace operations, and providing security in unstable states. Executive Outcomes turned around an orphaned conflict in Sierra Leone in the mid-1990s; Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) was instrumental in shifting the balance of power in the Balkans, enabling the Croatian military to defeat Serb forces and clear the way for the Dayton negotiations; in Iraq, estimates of the number of private contractors on the ground are in the tens of thousands. As they assume more responsibilities in conflict and post-conflict settings, their growing significance raises fundamental questions about their nature, their role in different regions and contexts, and their regulation. This volume examines these issues with a focus on governance, in particular the interaction between regulation and market forces. It analyzes the current legal framework and the needs and possibilities for regulation in the years ahead. The book as a whole is organized around four sets of questions, which are reflected in the four parts of the book. First, why and how is regulation of PMCs now a challenging issue? Secondly, how have problems leading to a call for regulation manifested in different regions and contexts? Third, what regulatory norms and institutions currently exist and how effective are they? And, fourth, what role has the market to play in regulation?
Download or read book Liu Hung Chang and China s Early Modernization written by Samuel C. Chu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of Li Hung-chang which represents a collaboration of Li experts among Chinese and Western scholars. The biography examines the beginnings of China's modernisation; the Confucian as a patriot and pragmatist; his formative years, 1823-1866; and other aspects of his life.
Download or read book Confronting the Colonies written by Rory Cormac and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving the debate beyond the place of tactical intelligence in counterinsurgency warfare, Confronting the Colonies considers the view from Whitehall, where the biggest decisions were made. It reveals the evolving impact of strategic intelligence upon government understandings of, and policy responses to, insurgent threats. Confronting the Colonies demonstrates for the first time how, in the decades after World War Two, the intelligence agenda expanded to include non-state actors, insurgencies, and irregular warfare. It explores the challenges these emerging threats posed to intelligence assessment and how they were met with varying degrees of success. Such issues remain of vital importance today. By examining the relationship between intelligence and policy, Cormac provides original and revealing insights into government thinking in the era of decolonisation, from the origins of nationalist unrest to the projection of dwindling British power. He demonstrates how intelligence (mis-)understood the complex relationship between the Cold War, nationalism, and decolonisation; how it fuelled fierce Whitehall feuding; and how it shaped policymakers' attempts to integrate counterinsurgency into broader strategic policy.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Yemen written by Robert D. Burrowes and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A small and extremely poor Islamic country, Yemen is located on the edge of the Arab world in the southernmost corner of the Arabian Peninsula. It was the product of the unification of the Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in May 1990. The location of the two Yemens on the world's busiest sea-lane at the southern end of the Red Sea where Asia almost meets Africa gave them strategic significance from the start of the age of imperialism through the Cold War. More vital today is the fact that Yemen shares a long border with oil-rich Saudi Arabia and is a key to efforts both to spread and to end global revolutionary Islam and its use of terror. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Yemen has been thoroughly updated and greatly expanded. Through its list of acronyms and abbreviations, a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 800 cross-referenced dictionary entries, greater attention has been given to foreign affairs, economic institutions and policies, social issues, religion, and politics.
Download or read book The Counter Insurgency Myth written by Andrew Mumford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-06 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the complex practice of counter-insurgency warfare through the prism of British military experiences in the post-war era and endeavours to unpack their performance. During the twentieth century counter-insurgency assumed the status of one of the British military’s fortes. A wealth of asymmetric warfare experience was accumulated after the Second World War as the small wars of decolonisation offered the army of a fading imperial power many opportunities to deploy against an irregular enemy. However, this quantity of experience does not translate into quality. This book argues that the British, far from being exemplars of counter-insurgency, have in fact consistently proved to be slow learners in counter-insurgency warfare. This book presents an analysis of the most significant British counter-insurgency campaigns of the past 60 years: Malaya (1948-60), Kenya (1952-60), South Arabia (1962-67), the first decade of the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ (1969-79), and the recent British counter-insurgency campaign in southern Iraq (2003-09). Colonial history is used to contextualise the contemporary performance in Iraq and undermine the commonly held confidence in British counter-insurgency. Blending historical research with critical analysis, this book seeks to establish a new paradigm through which to interpret and analyse the British approach to counter-insurgency, as well as considering the mythology of inherent British competence in the realm of irregular warfare. It will be of interest to students of counter-insurgency, military history, strategic studies, security studies, and IR in general.
Download or read book What the British Did written by Peter Mangold and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-04-07 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Britain has been engaged in the Middle East for over two centuries. During the Napoleonic Wars it expelled the French from Egypt. During World War I it helped to dismantle the Ottoman empire. During World War II, it defeated the Italians and Germans. In the post-war years, it attempted to reassert its domination of the Middle East but with little success. Today British forces in the region are fighting ISIS. Variously seen as intruders by most of the local populations and nationalists and as protectors by local pliant rulers, the British have been key arbiters in Middle Eastern politics. They created new states, determined who could hold power, resolved disputes and offered security to their clients. In this major new study, Peter Mangold shows how Britain sought to protect its changing interests in the region and assesses the British response to Arab nationalism. He examines the successes and failures of British policy and the reasons it has often proved controversial and accident prone.And he evaluates Britain's complex legacy in the Middle East - its contribution to the stability of Jordan (at least to date) and the Gulf states, set against the instability which has plagued Iraq and the unresolved Palestine conflict. In tracing the history of Britain's relationship with the Middle East, Mangold reveals how Britain's involvement in the Middle East sowed the seeds for today's crises.
Download or read book Stonewall Jackson and Religious Faith in Military Command written by Kenneth E. Hall and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2005-04-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between war and religion is nothing new. For millennia, humankind has waged war over religion and derived religion from war. It is not surprising, then, that military leadership and religious conviction frequently coincide. This study documents the long tradition of the religious warrior in Western history and literature, with a special focus on Civil War general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. It also provides a general survey of the religious antecedents of Jackson and other more modern American military heroes. The book begins with an introduction to the Confederate general, largely from the perspective of those who lived with and served under him, whose testimonies attest to his courage, initiative, innate tactical talent, deep religious faith, and eccentric personal habits. The author analyzes the extent to which Jackson's national zeal has elevated him to the status of a religious martyr, remembered today within an epic frame of sainthood and heroism. Concise comparisons are drawn between Jackson and his Old World predecessors, including Ulrich Zwingli, John Knox and Oliver Cromwell. Similar associations are made between Jackson and such Civil War contemporaries as William Dorsey Pender and Oliver Otis Howard. A chapter addressing the representation of "Stonewall" in modern Civil War literature and film, particularly in the novel and subsequent motion picture Gods and Generals, provides an insightful juxtaposition of Jackson's status among the "gods" of the Civil War and his own reverence for the God of his Presbyterian faith.
Download or read book Twelve Years in China written by John Scarth and published by . This book was released on 1860 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nasser s Gamble written by Jesse Ferris and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nasser's Gamble draws on declassified documents from six countries and original material in Arabic, German, Hebrew, and Russian to present a new understanding of Egypt's disastrous five-year intervention in Yemen, which Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser later referred to as "my Vietnam." Jesse Ferris argues that Nasser's attempt to export the Egyptian revolution to Yemen played a decisive role in destabilizing Egypt's relations with the Cold War powers, tarnishing its image in the Arab world, ruining its economy, and driving its rulers to instigate the fatal series of missteps that led to war with Israel in 1967. Viewing the Six Day War as an unintended consequence of the Saudi-Egyptian struggle over Yemen, Ferris demonstrates that the most important Cold War conflict in the Middle East was not the clash between Israel and its neighbors. It was the inter-Arab struggle between monarchies and republics over power and legitimacy. Egypt's defeat in the "Arab Cold War" set the stage for the rise of Saudi Arabia and political Islam. Bold and provocative, Nasser's Gamble brings to life a critical phase in the modern history of the Middle East. Its compelling analysis of Egypt's fall from power in the 1960s offers new insights into the decline of Arab nationalism, exposing the deep historical roots of the Arab Spring of 2011.
Download or read book Challenging Retrenchment written by Tore T. Petersen and published by Tapir Academic Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays examines the British and American experience in the Middle East from 1950 to 1980. The book compares British and American foreign policy in the Far East and the Persian Gulf, explaining that the Anglo-American relationship was far from harmonious. Both powers tried to manipulate the other to its own advantage. While Washington was clearly the stronger power, London was never reduced to subservience. The book looks at the often neglected role of Egypt's King Farouk, arguing that Egypt was forced to contend with Britain's imperial power, which could, at a few hours notice, overwhelm or undermine Egypt's supposed sovereign institutions. At the same time, however, London was unwilling or unable to prevent Gamal Abdul Nasser and his revolutionary officers from seizing power in 1952. While London perhaps mishandled the transfer of power in Egypt, the book points out how the British managed the transition from being the dominant power in Jordan to preserving a substantial influence, by inviting American participation in securing regime legitimacy. In the end, American dollars supported the Hashemite regime while British influence remained, just as British officials had wished. Challenging Retrenchment argues that, by the mid-1970s, there was an Anglo-American understanding that the Northern Gulf was America's responsibility and that the southern Gulf was Britain's. The book also looks at how intelligence and clandestine operations were used and abused by the British in pursuit of their strategic interests, first somewhat unsuccessfully in Yemen in the 1960s, but with more tangible success in Oman in the 1970s. (Series: ROSTRA Books Trondheim Studies in History - No. 4)
Download or read book A Journal of the Chinese Civil War 1864 written by Prosper Giquel and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Orphan Warriors written by Pamela Kyle Crossley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-1600s, Manchu bannermen spearheaded the military force that conquered China and founded the Qing Empire, which endured until 1912. By the end of the Taiping War in 1864, however, the descendants of these conquering people were coming to terms with a loss of legal definition, an ever-steeper decline in living standards, and a sense of abandonment by the Qing court. Focusing on three generations of a Manchu family (from 1750 to the 1930s), Orphan Warriors is the first attempt to understand the social and cultural life of the bannermen within the context of the decay of the Qing regime. The book reveals that the Manchus were not "sinicized," but that they were growing in consciousness of their separate ethnicity in response to changes in their own position and in Chinese attitudes toward them. Pamela Kyle Crossley's treatment of the Suwan Guwalgiya family of Hangzhou is hinged upon Jinliang (1878-1962), who was viewed at various times as a progressive reformer, a promising scholar, a bureaucratic hack, a traitor, and a relic. The author sees reflected in the ambiguities of his persona much of the plight of other Manchus as they were transformed from a conquering caste to an ethnic minority. Throughout Crossley explores the relationships between cultural decline and cultural survival, polity and identity, ethnicity and the disintegration of empires, all of which frame much of our understanding of the origins of the modern world.
Download or read book Struggle for Empire written by Kenneth M. Swope and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2024-05-17 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Struggle for Empire provides the first comprehensive modern biography in English of the late Qing dynasty statesman, strategist, and military commander, Zuo Zongtang (1812-1885). A national hero in China, Zuo’s remarkable story remains understudied in the West. Author Kenneth Swope traces Zuo's unlikely rise from poverty and obscurity in rural Hunan province to become the most powerful Han Chinese official in Manchu China. Zuo embodied a new practical type of Chinese official, grounded in the study of military history and strategic geography, who realized that the secret to China’s survival was to both live up to traditional Confucian norms and expectations while also adapting science and technology from the West. Zuo also pushed for self-strengthening, building China’s first modern naval yard and setting up arsenals, silk factories, and publishing houses across China. Zuo also helped the Qing put down the greatest civil war in human history, the Taiping Rebellion.
