Human Tradition around the World series – serie

This rich collection of biographies of African men and women adds a crucial human dimension to our understanding of African history since 1800. The last two centuries have been a time of enormous change on the continent, and these life stories show how people survived by resisting European conquest and colonial rule, by collaborating with colonial powers, or by finding a middle way to live their lives through tumultuous times. Bringing the story to the present, the book traces the era of independence since the 1960s through challenges to the rule of African dictators, struggles for the rights of women and mothers, the exploitation of youth and child soldiers, and economic booms and busts.By recounting the lives of real, identifiable people from societies across Africa south of the Sahara and from African communities in Europe, this unique book underscores the importance and power of individual agency in understanding the recent African past, a vital complement to analyses of broader, impersonal social and economic factors.Contributions by: Agnès Adjamagbo, Maryan Muuse Boqor, Dennis D. Cordell, José C. Curto, Mamadou Diouf, Andreas Eckert, Laura Fair, Tovin Falola, Doug Henry, Lidwien Kapteijns, Issiaka Mandé, Cora Ann Presley, Carolyn F. Sargent, Pamela Scully, Ibrahim Sundiata, and Marcia Wright.

This rich collection of biographies of African men and women adds a crucial human dimension to our understanding of African history since 1800. The last two centuries have been a time of enormous change on the continent, and these life stories show how people survived by resisting European conquest and colonial rule, by collaborating with colonial powers, or by finding a middle way to live their lives through tumultuous times. Bringing the story to the present, the book traces the era of independence since the 1960s through challenges to the rule of African dictators, struggles for the rights of women and mothers, the exploitation of youth and child soldiers, and economic booms and busts.By recounting the lives of real, identifiable people from societies across Africa south of the Sahara and from African communities in Europe, this unique book underscores the importance and power of individual agency in understanding the recent African past, a vital complement to analyses of broader, impersonal social and economic factors.Contributions by: Agnès Adjamagbo, Maryan Muuse Boqor, Dennis D. Cordell, José C. Curto, Mamadou Diouf, Andreas Eckert, Laura Fair, Tovin Falola, Doug Henry, Lidwien Kapteijns, Issiaka Mandé, Cora Ann Presley, Carolyn F. Sargent, Pamela Scully, Ibrahim Sundiata, and Marcia Wright.

This engaging book provides a gateway to larger themes in modern British history through a set of fascinating portraits of individuals that explore important events and movements from the perspective of the people involved. Political developments are illuminated through chapters on John Locke, Charles Townshend, popular radicalism, and Margaret Thatcher. Religion and education are considered through essays on evangelicalism, the Oxford Movement, Charles Bradlaugh, and Sir James Kay Shuttleworth. Industrial and imperial questions are explored through pieces on the Great Exhibition, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and post-colonial Nigeria. National identity and wartime experience come to life in the lives of G. K. Chesterton and of Barbara Nixon, an Airraid Warden during the Blitz. Many of the chapters examine the experiences of women, including single women in early modern England, suffragettes, and Irish nationalist Mary Butler. As a rich and humanized approach to history, this book offers readers a deeper understanding of key facets of British life in the early modern and modern periods.

This engaging book provides a gateway to larger themes in modern British history through a set of fascinating portraits of individuals that explore important events and movements from the perspective of the people involved. Political developments are illuminated through chapters on John Locke, Charles Townshend, popular radicalism, and Margaret Thatcher. Religion and education are considered through essays on evangelicalism, the Oxford Movement, Charles Bradlaugh, and Sir James Kay Shuttleworth. Industrial and imperial questions are explored through pieces on the Great Exhibition, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and post-colonial Nigeria. National identity and wartime experience come to life in the lives of G. K. Chesterton and of Barbara Nixon, an Airraid Warden during the Blitz. Many of the chapters examine the experiences of women, including single women in early modern England, suffragettes, and Irish nationalist Mary Butler. As a rich and humanized approach to history, this book offers readers a deeper understanding of key facets of British life in the early modern and modern periods.

This compelling set of essays presents richly human stories of individual and group experiences, as well as of key events in the history of Imperial Russia. Beginning with Peter I's dress reforms in the early eighteenth century and concluding with poets arising out of a stratified and largely urban working class between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the essays introduce readers to many of the major changes in Imperial Russian history and their consequences. We see the effects of reforms; the consequences of an economy and society built on serfdom; as well as the development of a civil society, the "woman question," urbanization, secularization, and modernity. At the same time, the contributors' nuanced reconstruction of personal and group histories provides important correctives to the traditional grand narratives of Russian history. These microhistories reveal individuals' daily negotiations with authority figures, be they government officials, religious leaders, individuals of another class, or even members of their own class. As this book vividly shows, individuals, groups, and events raised out of obscurity remind us of the messiness of everyday life; of people's dreams, frustrations, and transformations; as well as of their sense of self and the community around them.Contributions by: Rodney D. Bohac, Barbara Alpern Engel, ChaeRan Y. Freeze, William B. Husband, Laura L. Phillips, David L. Ransel, Christine Ruane, Rochelle G. Ruthchild, Rebecca Spagnolo, Mark D. Steinberg, Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, and Christine D. Worobec

This engaging and humanizing text traces the development of Europe since the mid-eighteenth century through the lives of people of the time. Capturing key moments, themes, and events in the continent's turbulent modern past, the book explores how ordinary Europeans both shaped their societies and were affected by larger historical processes. By focusing on the lives of individual actors, both famous and obscure, students can gain a sense for how the well-known revolutions, wars, and social transformations of the modern era were experienced in private homes, work places, political forums, and on battlefields throughout the region.Fittingly, the book opens with the French Revolution and concludes with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Eastern European communism. Throughout, the contributors use compelling biographies to examine many of the major events and developments in European history, including the age of reaction and revolutions in the early nineteenth century; industrialization; Victorianism; new imperialism; fin de siècle culture; the first and second World Wars; the Russian Revolution; Italian fascism, Nazism, the Holocaust, and decolonization; Americanization; and the 1968 youth revolts.Contributions by: Karin Breuer, Helen Harden Chenut, John Cox, Stephen P. Frank, Cora Granata, Maura E. Hametz, Michael Kilburn, Cheryl A. Koos, Robert A. McLain, Karen Petrone, Paolo Scrivano, Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, Matthew G. Stanard, Michele M. Strong, and Patricia Tilburg

This lively and engaging text offers a panorama of modern Chinese history through compelling biographies of the famous and obscure. Spanning five hundred years, they include a Ming dynasty medical pioneer, a Qing dynasty courtesan, a nineteenth-century Hong Kong business leader, a Manchu princess, an arsenal manager, a woman soldier, and a young maid in contemporary Beijing. Through the lives of these diverse people, readers will gain an understanding of the complex questions of modern Chinese history: What did it mean to be Chinese, and how did that change over time? How was learning encouraged and directed in imperial and post-imperial China? Was it possible to challenge entrenched gender roles? What effects did European imperialism have on Chinese lives? How did ordinary Chinese experience the warfare and political upheaval of twentieth-century China? What is the nature of the gap between urban and rural China in the post-Mao years? These richly researched biographies are written in an accessible and appealing style that will engage all readers interested in modern China.Contributions by: Daria Berg, John M. Carroll, Kenneth J. Hammond, Joshua H. Howard, Fabio Lanza, Oliver Moore, Pan Yihong, Hugh Shapiro, Kristin Stapleton, and Shuo Wang

This lively and engaging text offers a panorama of modern Chinese history through compelling biographies of the famous and obscure. Spanning five hundred years, they include a Ming dynasty medical pioneer, a Qing dynasty courtesan, a nineteenth-century Hong Kong business leader, a Manchu princess, an arsenal manager, a woman soldier, and a young maid in contemporary Beijing. Through the lives of these diverse people, readers will gain an understanding of the complex questions of modern Chinese history: What did it mean to be Chinese, and how did that change over time? How was learning encouraged and directed in imperial and post-imperial China? Was it possible to challenge entrenched gender roles? What effects did European imperialism have on Chinese lives? How did ordinary Chinese experience the warfare and political upheaval of twentieth-century China? What is the nature of the gap between urban and rural China in the post-Mao years? These richly researched biographies are written in an accessible and appealing style that will engage all readers interested in modern China.Contributions by: Daria Berg, John M. Carroll, Kenneth J. Hammond, Joshua H. Howard, Fabio Lanza, Oliver Moore, Pan Yihong, Hugh Shapiro, Kristin Stapleton, and Shuo Wang

Like snapshots of everyday life in the past, the compelling biographies in this book document the making of the Black Atlantic world since the sixteenth century from the point of view of those who were part of it. Centering on the diaspora caused by the forced migration of Africans to Europe and across the Atlantic to the Americas, the chapters explore the slave trade, enslavement, resistance, adaptation, cultural transformations, and the quest for citizenship rights. The variety of experiences, constraints and choices depicted in the book and their changes across time and space defy the idea of a unified "black experience." At the same time, it is clear that in the twentieth century, "black" identity unified people of African descent who, along with other "minority" groups, struggled against colonialism and racism and presented alternatives to a version of modernity that excluded and alienated them. Drawing on a rich array of little-known documents, the contributors reconstruct the lives and times of some well-known characters along with ordinary people who rarely left written records and would otherwise have remained anonymous and unknown.Contributions by: Aaron P. Althouse, Alan Bloom, Marcus J. M. de Carvalho, Aisnara Perera Díaz, María de los Ángeles Meriño Fuentes, Flávio dos Santos Gomes, Hilary Jones, Beatriz G. Mamigonian, Charles Beatty Medina, Richard Price, Sally Price, Cassandra Pybus, Karen Racine, Ty M. Reese, João José Reis, Lorna Biddle Rinear, Meredith L. Roman, Maya Talmon-Chvaicer, and Jerome Teelucksingh.

Like snapshots of everyday life in the past, the compelling biographies in this book document the making of the Black Atlantic world since the sixteenth century from the point of view of those who were part of it. Centering on the diaspora caused by the forced migration of Africans to Europe and across the Atlantic to the Americas, the chapters explore the slave trade, enslavement, resistance, adaptation, cultural transformations, and the quest for citizenship rights. The variety of experiences, constraints and choices depicted in the book and their changes across time and space defy the idea of a unified "black experience." At the same time, it is clear that in the twentieth century, "black" identity unified people of African descent who, along with other "minority" groups, struggled against colonialism and racism and presented alternatives to a version of modernity that excluded and alienated them. Drawing on a rich array of little-known documents, the contributors reconstruct the lives and times of some well-known characters along with ordinary people who rarely left written records and would otherwise have remained anonymous and unknown.Contributions by: Aaron P. Althouse, Alan Bloom, Marcus J. M. de Carvalho, Aisnara Perera Díaz, María de los Ángeles Meriño Fuentes, Flávio dos Santos Gomes, Hilary Jones, Beatriz G. Mamigonian, Charles Beatty Medina, Richard Price, Sally Price, Cassandra Pybus, Karen Racine, Ty M. Reese, João José Reis, Lorna Biddle Rinear, Meredith L. Roman, Maya Talmon-Chvaicer, and Jerome Teelucksingh.

This unique collection emphasizes the human element in thestudy of Latin American history by focusing on the lives of twenty-three men, women, and children. Though they differ widely from each other in background and circumstance, these individuals share a common experience: all are caught up in some way by the profound, sometimes devastating, changes that accompany the modernization of a traditional society. Their stories bring vividly to life the impact that revolution, economic upheaval, urbanization, destruction of community life, and the disruption of family and gender roles have on ordinary people. These studies also bring out the various ways, often creative and courageous, in which Latin Americans have coped with the fortunes and vicissitudes of 'progress.'

SR Books' two popular Human Tradition in Latin America titles covering nineteenth- and twentieth-century history have been combined into one exciting new volume. The most compelling chapters from these books are now presented in The Human Tradition in Modern Latin America. This collection offers powerful, fascinating biographies of ordinary people caught in the sometimes devastating historical changes that have occurred in Latin America. From the turbulent struggles for independence in the 1800s to the profound and often overwhelming transformations that have accompanied modernization in this century, The Human Tradition in Modern Latin America personalizes the impact that revolution, economic upheaval, urbanization, the destruction of community life, and the disruption of both traditional family and gender roles have had on Latin Americans. The Human Tradition in Modern Latin America is an invaluable text for courses in Latin American studies. Nowhere else can such varied portraits be found as in these diverse and carefully researched essays written by leading scholars.

The Human Tradition in Modern France gives a human perspective of the history of France from 1789 to the present, revealed in essays that highlight individuals and intriguing events that too often have been lost under labels and statistics. Students will gain an understanding of the humor and passion in French history from these new, original essays by well-established scholars. This collection also relates the individuals, events, and controversies to current historiographical debates. The Human Tradition in Modern France is an excellent supplementary text for courses on French history and is also useful for courses in world history and Western Civilization.

By integrating the human dimension into Russian history, this lively textbook introduces Russian social history since 1861 to readers in provocative and interesting new ways. The essays in this unique collection are based largely on previously classified Russian archival information available only since 1991. Bringing in the perspectives of individuals and groups usually overlooked, the authors give the reader a grassroots view of modern Russia. The Human Tradition in Modern Russia is an ideal for courses on Russian history and civilization and modern European history.

The Human Tradition in Modern Japan is a collection of short biographies of ordinary Japanese men and women, most of them unknown outside their family and locality, whose lives collectively span the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their stories present a counterweight to the prevailing stereotypes, providing students with depictions of real people through the records they have left-records that detail experiences and aspirations. The Human Tradition in Modern Japan offers a human-scale perspective that focuses on individuals, reconstitutes the meaning of people's experiences as they lived through them, and puts a human face on history. It skillfully bridges the divides between the sexes, between the local and the national, and between rural and urban, as well as spanning crucial moments in the history of modern Japan. The Human Tradition in Modern Japan is an excellent resource for courses on Japanese history, East Asian history, and peoples and cultures of Japan.

The Human Tradition in Premodern China is a collection of biographical essays revealing the variety and complexity of human experience in China from the earliest historical times to the dawn of the modern age. China is a vast country with a long history, and one which is by itself as complex as the history of Europe. This broad expanse of time and space in Chinese history has largely been approached in terms of narrative political and cultural history in most books. The reigns of emperors and the thoughts of the great masters such as Confucius or Laozi have been the principal focus. Yet the history of the Chinese, as with any great people, is built up from the lives of individuals, families, groups, and movements. By presenting life stories of individuals ranging from ancient court diviners to late imperial merchants to women in various periods, this engaging anthology highlights aspects of Chinese social, political and intellectual history not usually addressed. Additionally, The Human Tradition in Premodern China broadens the common image and understanding of society based on the dominant elite male discourse. Rich in new perspective and new scholarship, The Human Tradition in Premodern China is an ideal introduction to Chinese history, East Asian history, and world history.

The Human Tradition in Modern Brazil makes the last two centuries of Brazilian history come alive through the stories of mostly non-elite individuals. The pieces in this lively collection address how people experienced historical continuities and changes by exploring how they related to the rise of Brazilian national identity and the emergence of a national state. By including a broad array of historical actors from different regions, ethnicities, occupations, races, genders, and eras, The Human Tradition in Modern Brazil brings a human dimension to major economic, political, cultural, and social transitions. While many books on modern Brazilian history emphasize the growth of the state and the oscillations of nationalist sentiment by generalizing about groups of undifferentiated people such as slaves, industrial workers, army officers, Indians, and clerics, The Human Tradition in Modern Brazil brings a personal perspective to broad historical events and trends. Because these perspectives do not always fit with the generalizations made about the predominant attitudes, values, and beliefs of different groups, they bring a welcomed complexity to the understanding of Brazilian society and history. These original and gripping vignettes of life and society in Brazil are sure to engage readers with its colorful stories of Brazilians throughout the past.

This collection of compact biographies puts a human face on the sweeping historical processes that shaped contemporary societies throughout the Atlantic world. Focusing on life stories that represented movement across or around the Atlantic Ocean from 1500 to 1850, The Human Tradition in the Atlantic World, 1500–1850 explores transatlantic connections by following individuals whose experience took them far beyond their local communities to new and unfamiliar places. A formidable barrier, the Atlantic Ocean profoundly influenced the lives it touched. For some brave or desperate souls, it offered an escape, a source of adventure or romance. For countless others, it provided a steady source of income. For those who voluntarily undertook the voyage, crossing the Atlantic meant hope for a better, happier life; for the millions of less-fortunate others who relocated because they had been enslaved, tricked, or banished, the Atlantic was a sea of sorrow and loss. Yet, whatever the reason, tremendous creativity and dynamism resulted from contact between people of different cultures, classes, races, ideas, and systems in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. At its most fundamental level, the syncretic nature of Atlantic world societies was created and re-created on a daily basis by myriad choices made by hundreds of thousands of individuals. By emphasizing movement and circulation in its choice of life stories, this readable and engaging volume presents a broad cross-section of people—both famous and everyday—whose lives and livelihoods took them across the Atlantic and brought disparate cultures into contact.Contributions by: Robert D. Aguirre, Troy Bickham, Olwyn M. Blouet, Sarah Cline, Andrew B. Fisher, John Garrigus, Noah L. Gelfand, Mark Hinchman, Charlene Boyer Lewis, Gail Danvers MacLeitch, Beatriz G. Mamigonian, Mark Meuwese, Joan Meznar, John Navin, Jeff Pardue, Magnus Roberto de Mello Pereira, Cassandra Pybus, and Karen Racine.

This collection of compact biographies puts a human face on the sweeping historical processes that shaped contemporary societies throughout the Atlantic world. Focusing on life stories that represented movement across or around the Atlantic Ocean from 1500 to 1850, The Human Tradition in the Atlantic World, 1500–1850 explores transatlantic connections by following individuals whose experience took them far beyond their local communities to new and unfamiliar places. A formidable barrier, the Atlantic Ocean profoundly influenced the lives it touched. For some brave or desperate souls, it offered an escape, a source of adventure or romance. For countless others, it provided a steady source of income. For those who voluntarily undertook the voyage, crossing the Atlantic meant hope for a better, happier life; for the millions of less-fortunate others who relocated because they had been enslaved, tricked, or banished, the Atlantic was a sea of sorrow and loss. Yet, whatever the reason, tremendous creativity and dynamism resulted from contact between people of different cultures, classes, races, ideas, and systems in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. At its most fundamental level, the syncretic nature of Atlantic world societies was created and re-created on a daily basis by myriad choices made by hundreds of thousands of individuals. By emphasizing movement and circulation in its choice of life stories, this readable and engaging volume presents a broad cross-section of people—both famous and everyday—whose lives and livelihoods took them across the Atlantic and brought disparate cultures into contact.Contributions by: Robert D. Aguirre, Troy Bickham, Olwyn M. Blouet, Sarah Cline, Andrew B. Fisher, John Garrigus, Noah L. Gelfand, Mark Hinchman, Charlene Boyer Lewis, Gail Danvers MacLeitch, Beatriz G. Mamigonian, Mark Meuwese, Joan Meznar, John Navin, Jeff Pardue, Magnus Roberto de Mello Pereira, Cassandra Pybus, and Karen Racine.

The Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America is an anthology of stories of largely ordinary individuals struggling to forge a life during the unstable colonial period in Latin America. These mini-biographies vividly show the tensions that emerged when the political, social, religious, and economic ideals of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial regimes and the Roman Catholic Church conflicted with the realities of daily living in the Americas.Now fully updated with new and revised essays, the book is carefully balanced among countries and ethnicities. Within an overall theme of social order and disorder in a colonial setting, the stories bring to life issues of gender; race and ethnicity; conflicts over religious orthodoxy; and crime, violence, and rebellion. Written by leading scholars, the essays are specifically designed to be readable and interesting. Ideal for the Latin American history survey and for courses on colonial Latin American history, this fresh and human text will engage as well as inform students.Contributions by: Rolena Adorno, Kenneth J. Andrien, Christiana Borchart de Moreno, Joan Bristol, Noble David Cook, Marcela Echeverri, Lyman L. Johnson, Mary Karasch, Alida C. Metcalf, Kenneth Mills, Muriel S. Nazzari, Ana María Presta, Susan E. Ramírez, Matthew Restall, Zeb Tortorici, Camilla Townsend, Ann Twinam, and Nancy E. van Deusen.

The Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America is an anthology of stories of largely ordinary individuals struggling to forge a life during the unstable colonial period in Latin America. These mini-biographies vividly show the tensions that emerged when the political, social, religious, and economic ideals of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial regimes and the Roman Catholic Church conflicted with the realities of daily living in the Americas.Now fully updated with new and revised essays, the book is carefully balanced among countries and ethnicities. Within an overall theme of social order and disorder in a colonial setting, the stories bring to life issues of gender; race and ethnicity; conflicts over religious orthodoxy; and crime, violence, and rebellion. Written by leading scholars, the essays are specifically designed to be readable and interesting. Ideal for the Latin American history survey and for courses on colonial Latin American history, this fresh and human text will engage as well as inform students.Contributions by: Rolena Adorno, Kenneth J. Andrien, Christiana Borchart de Moreno, Joan Bristol, Noble David Cook, Marcela Echeverri, Lyman L. Johnson, Mary Karasch, Alida C. Metcalf, Kenneth Mills, Muriel S. Nazzari, Ana María Presta, Susan E. Ramírez, Matthew Restall, Zeb Tortorici, Camilla Townsend, Ann Twinam, and Nancy E. van Deusen.

The Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America is an anthology of life stories of largely ordinary individuals struggling to forge a life during the unstable colonial period in Latin America. These mini-biographies show the tensions that emerged when the political, social, religious, and economic ideals of the Spanish and Portugese colonial regimes and the Roman Catholic Church conflicted with the realities of daily life in the Americas. The essays examine subthemes of gender roles; race and ethnicity; conflicts over religious orthodoxy; and crime, violence, and rebellion, while illustrating the overall theme of social order and disorder in a colonial setting. Professor Andrien has carefully selected pieces to comprise a volume that is well balanced in terms of geography, gender, and ethnicity. Written by established scholars, the essays are designed to be readable and interesting to students. Ideal for courses on Colonial Latin American history and the Latin American history survey, The Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America will interest as well as inform students.