R. Schofield - Böcker

This book examines the remarkable decline of mortality in Europe which began in the nineteenth century and continued in an uninterrupted fashion, into the early twentieth century.The transition of mortality between 1870 and 1920 had profound effects for European and American societies. Interpretations explaining such changes have become a hotbed of controversy. Some scholars stress the importance of improved nutrition, levels of income, and living standards as the crucial factors. Others consider public health, social organization, and scientific advances to be more significant. This volume brings to light the different positions held on these various issues, describes advances made in the field, and indicates directions for future research.

The boundaries of the Arabian peninsula are notable for the sensitivities and disagreements which have accompanied their relatively short history. As the twentieth century progressed, the partition of resources, initially pastures and water wells, subsequently oil and gas, was particularly crucial, but the boundary makers, chiefly the diplomats of the imperial powers, were inconsistent in paying attention to the human and physical characteristics of the terrain when negotiating or imposing many limits. Consequently boundary studies in this area have been and remain a fruitful topic for geographers and anthropologists as well as a necessary preoccupation for strategists and politicians. The records of the various British government departments represented here provide by far the most extensive and complete survey of the evolution of territorial affairs in Arabia and the Gulf. They will certainly form the core of any future legal debate focusing upon the historical aspects of any one of the region's boundaries on land or sea.

The Iran-Iraq boundary can be viewed as unique within the Middle East region, as it has long displayed the classic characteristics of a political frontier zone or a border march. This contrasts sharply with the twentieth-century framework imposed largely by European colonial powers elsewhere in the Middle East. The period under review covers three principal phases of diplomatic activity which have shaped the course of the Iran-Iraq boundary. Each has resulted in the signature of treaties defining or modifying the boundary. This collection contains the key primary documents from British Government files in a single major reference work. The historical evidence for the evolution of the Iran-Iraq border may be considered as a common background for negotiations following the Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq. Included are treaty texts in facsimile and detailed accounts of negotiations between British, Russian, Turkish, Persian and latterly Iraqi sides.

This work is the single most important reference source for tracing the origins of contemporary maritime disputes in the Gulf - coverage includes Warba, Bubiyan, Hawar, Halul, Tamb, Abu Musa; in fact over 290 islands are indexed. It records the development of the continental shelf boundaries of the Gulf, the importance of the islands in determining baselines and oil concession boundaries, evolving state practice and Anglo-American negotiations, and explores Anglo-Arab, Anglo-Persian and Perso-Arab relations. The collection contains facsimiles of letters, reports, memoranda, sketches, charts and maps from a wide range of sources housed in the British Library (Oriental and India Office Collections) and the Public Record Office. This collection was researched and edited by Richard Schofield, who has written widely on the territorial problems of the Gulf region.

Arabian Boundary Disputes is designed as an historical and legal dossier on the development of the international boundaries within the Arabian peninsula, and includes material covering the Arabian peninsula's most critical territorial disputes: Iran-Iraq, Iraq-Kuwait, Bahrain-Qatar and Saudi Arabia-Yemen. Each boundary is documented from its origins in international diplomacy up to 1992, the year of publication of this collection. In order to broaden the historical perspective and particularly to bring the documentary materials as close to the present as possible a wider range of international archival sources was used, and along with a wider geographical coverage and the inclusion of all pertinent contemporary materials, this differentiates Arabian Boundary Disputes from its forerunner, Arabian Boundaries.

This 6-volume set contains documents illustrating the origins of political and territorial authority, and the course of inter-state relations and claims, traditional trade and tribal activity in the area of the Saudi-Yemen border. The Arabian Geopolitics series is a series of documentary studies that examine the key issues in the political evolution of strategic regions of the Arabian Peninsula. It explores the historical background to contemporary developments in political and territorial authority. It highlights the interaction of inter-state relations and claims, traditional trade and tribal activity and the extent to which natural resources dictate national claims. The editor, Richard Schofield, is Deputy Director of the Geopolitics Research Centre, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and editor or author of numerous studies on Arab boundary questions.

Disputes over the status of Abu Musa and the Tunbs dominate the maritime history of the southern Persian Gulf as recorded for the last hundred years in the archives of the Foreign Office and the British government in India. This collection of primary source material makes available for the first time the vital historical evidence pertaining to the status of the islands. It highlights the interaction of interstate relations and claims, traditional trade and tribal activity and the extent to which natural resources dictate national claims. The issues involve Iran, the UAE, Abu Musa, the Tunbs, the lower Persian Gulf islands and the Strait of Hormuz. These volumes present balanced historical evidence on the long-standing dispute over island sovereignty, documenting successive Iranian claims and also the positions taken by the British government on behalf of the Qasimi shaikhdoms before UAE independence.