Tag: Imperial

Free Download The gods left first : imperial collapse and the repatriation of Japanese from northeast Asia, 1945-56 By Barshay, Andrew E
2013 | 256 Pages | ISBN: 0520276159 | EPUB | 6 MB
At the time of Japan’s surrender to Allied forces on August 15, 1945, some six million Japanese were left stranded across the vast expanse of a vanquished Asian empire. Half civilian and half military, they faced the prospect of returning somehow to a Japan that lay prostrate, its cities destroyed, after years of warfare and Allied bombing campaigns. Among them were more than 600,000 soldiers of Japan’s army in Manchuria, who had surrendered to the Red Army only to be transported to Soviet labor camps, mainly in Siberia. Held for between two and four years, and some far longer, amid forced labor and reeducation campaigns, they waited for return, never knowing when or if it would come. Drawing on a wide range of memoirs, art, poetry, and contemporary records, The Gods Left First reconstructs their experience of captivity, return, and encounter with a postwar Japan that now seemed as alien as it had once been familiar. In a broader sense, this study is a meditation on the meaning of survival for Japan’s continental repatriates, showing that their memories of involvement in Japan’s imperial project were both a burden and the basis for a new way of life.

Free Download Tim Whitmarsh, "Local Knowledge and Microidentities in the Imperial Greek World "
English | ISBN: 1108984975 | 2021 | 244 pages | PDF | 10 MB
This volume explores the proposition that the absorption of the Greek world into the Roman empire created a new emphasis upon local identities, much as globalisation in the modern world has done. Localism became the focal point for complex debates: in some cases, it was complementary with imperial objectives, but in others tension can be discerned. The volume as a whole seeks to add texture and nuance to the existing literature on Greek identity, which has tended in recent years to emphasise the umbrella category of the Greek, to the detriment of specific polis and regional identities. It also contributes to the growing literature on the Romanisation of provinces, by emphasising the dialogue between a region’s self-identification as a distinct space and its self-awareness as a component of the centrally-governed empire.

Free Download Islam as Political Religion: The Future of an Imperial Faith By Shabbir Akhtar
2010 | 312 Pages | ISBN: 0415781469 | PDF | 2 MB
This comprehensive survey of contemporary Islam provides a philosophical and theological approach to the issues faced by Muslims and the question of global secularisation. Engaging with critics of modern Islam, Shabbir Akhtar sets out an agenda of what his religion is and could be as a political entity. Exploring the views and arguments of philosophical, religious and political thinkers, the author covers a raft of issues faced by Muslims in an increasingly secular society. Chapters are devoted to the Qur’an and Islamic literature; the history of Islam; Sharia law; political Islam; Islamic ethics; and political Islam’s evolving relationship with the West. Recommending changes which enable Muslims to move from their imperial past to a modest role in the power structures of today’s society, Akhtar offers a detailed assessment of the limitations and possibilities of Islam in the modern world. Providing a vision for an empowered yet rational Islam that distances itself from both Islamist factions and Western secularism, this book is an essential read for students and scholars of Islamic studies, religion, philosophy and politics.

Free Download Bogdan G. Popescu, "Imperial Borderlands: Institutions and Legacies of the Habsburg Military Frontier "
English | ISBN: 1009365169 | 2023 | 300 pages | PDF | 83 MB
What are the institutions which govern border spaces and how do they impact long-term economic and social development? This book focuses on the Habsburg military frontier zone which originated in the sixteenth century as an instrument for protecting the empire’s southern border against the threat of the Ottoman Empire and which lasted until the 1880s. The book outlines the conditions under which this extractive institution affected development, showing how locals were forced to work as soldiers and exposed to rigid communal property rights, an inflexible labor market, and discrimination when it came to the provision of public infrastructure. While the formal institutions set up during the military colony disappeared, their legacy can be traced in political attitudes and social norms even today with the violence and abuses exercised by the imperial government transformed into distrust in public authorities, limited political involvement, and low social capital.

Free Download Jenny Quinlan, "Imperial Passions: The Porta Aurea"
English | 2018 | pages: 386 | ISBN: 0999690701 | EPUB | 1,2 mb
The Byzantine Empire spirals from greatness to disaster in the eleventh century. Can one woman’s thirst for revenge stop its decline?

Free Download William H. F. Altman, "Descriptioninus the Master and the Apotheosis of Imperial Platonism"
English | ISBN: 1666944394 | 2024 | 472 pages | PDF | 4 MB
Unlike other recent studies, Descriptioninus the Master and the Apotheosis of Imperial Platonism is critical of Descriptioninus, and in particular of his version of Platonism, here described as "Imperial." It is in contrast with Plato-a teacher whose dialogues challenge his students to think for themselves-that William H. F. Altman presents Descriptioninus as a master, who uses a seductive form of rhetoric throughout the Enneads to persuade his disciples to ignore his self-contradictions and decontextualized quotations from Plato while instead regarding his spiritual experiences, combined with a gift for the creative synthesis of previous thinkers, as the principal basis of their faithful and uncritical allegiance. While setting Descriptioninus in the context of the Roman Empire and his own critique of the Gnostics, this book grapples throughout with his current and virtually uncritical reception.

Free Download Gary D. Stark, "Banned in Berlin: Literary Censorship in Imperial Germany, 1871-1918"
English | 2012 | ISBN: 0857453114, 1845455703 | EPUB | pages: 342 | 2.4 mb
Imperial Germany’s governing elite frequently sought to censor literature that threatened established political, social, religious, and moral norms in the name of public peace, order, and security. It claimed and exercised a prerogative to intervene in literary life that was broader than that of its Western neighbors, but still not broad enough to prevent the literary community from challenging and subverting many of the social norms the state was most determined to defend. This study is the first systematic analysis in any language of state censorship of literature and theater in imperial Germany (1871-1918). To assess the role that formal state controls played in German literary and political life during this period, it examines the intent, function, contested legal basis, institutions, and everyday operations of literary censorship as well as its effectiveness and its impact on authors, ✅Publishers, and theater directors.

Free Download Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Audiobook)
English | ASIN: B0CMJWQVHL | 2023 | 13 hours and 41 minutes | M4B@64 kbps | 391 MB
Author: Gray Brechin
Narrator: Gray Brechin
Imperial San Francisco is the epic saga of how all great cities parasitize their hinterlands for the sake of those elites who own and run them by using the mass media at their command to shape the thought of those who unwittingly serve their interests. Using San Francisco as an example of how cities employ remote control technology to exploit water, energy, natural resources, and labor from an expansive imperium, it takes the listener from ancient Rome to the University of California’s role in the creation of nuclear weaponry and its first use.

Free Download The Early Imperial Republic: From the American Revolution to the U.S.-Mexican War (Early American Studies) by Michael A. Blaakman, Emily Conroy-Krutz, Noelani Arista
English | March 21, 2023 | ISBN: 0812252780 | 352 pages | MOBI | 7.21 Mb
Created in a world of empires, the United States was to be something new: an expansive republic proclaiming commitments to liberty and equality but eager to extend its territory and influence. Yet from the beginning, Native powers, free and enslaved Black people, and foreign subjects perceived, interacted with, and resisted the young republic as if it was merely another empire under the sun. Such perspectives have driven scholars to reevaluate the early United States, as the parameters of early American history have expanded in Atlantic, continental, and global directions. If the nation’s acquisition of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands in 1898 traditionally marked its turn toward imperialism, new scholarship suggests the United States was an empire from the moment of its creation.

Free Download Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917 By Daniel R. Brower
1997 | 339 Pages | ISBN: 0253332745 | PDF | 8 MB
Investigates the impact of the Russian Empire on its non-Russian peoples of the southern and eastern borderlands from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. This title includes the study of ethnic and religious differences that emerged from the Russian encounter with peoples whose cultures differed profoundly from their own.