Century War Research Articles

The Gibraltar Crusade: Castile and the Battle for the Strait (review)

Reviewed by: The Gibraltar Crusade: Castile and the Battle for the Strait Sam Zeno Conedera Joseph F. O’Callaghan, The Gibraltar Crusade: Castile and the Battle for the Strait (Philadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2011) vii + 376 pp. In 2003, Joseph O’Callaghan made an important scholarly contribution with the publication of Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain. While his latest book picks up where Reconquest left off chronologically, it is significant that [End Page 248] The Gibraltar Crusade is not presented as a second volume in a series. It mostly steers clear of the debate over Reconquest and crusade, opting instead for a straightforward narrative of the battle for the Strait between 1248 and the death of Alfonso XI. Gibraltar is divided into eleven chapters. The first describes the geography of the Strait, gives a brief synopsis of major events prior to 1248, and identifies the main sources that the author has used. The next eight chapters proceed chronologically through the back-and-forth contest for control of the Pillars of Hercules. The book is rounded out with a thematic chapter on the waging of the crusade in general, and a conclusion that very briefly describes the final Christian victory over the Strait in the age of the Catholic Monarchs. The conclusion may indicate that O’Callaghan does not intend to write another monograph on Reconquest and crusade in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Gibraltar displays all the hallmarks of the scholarship that has made O’Callaghan one of the great historians of medieval Iberia. His masterful command of the sources allows him to put together a clear and detailed account of events. One particular area of strength is the attention to numbers. O’Callaghan offers the best approximation of how many troops participated in campaigns, the cost of expeditions, and so forth. Obtaining reliable numbers is a difficult task thanks to the exaggeration of contemporary chronicles, but O’Callaghan is meticulous in his calculations. The reader learns, for example, that the Battle of Salado, though much less well known than Las Navas de Tolosa, was not only decisive for the war of the Strait, but was also the largest battle ever fought in medieval Iberia in terms of troop participation (188). There is no lack of colorful episodes during a century of war. O’Callaghan revisits the tragic story of Alfonso X’s decline and humiliation, about which he had written at greater length in his biography of the Learned King. Readers will enjoy the tale of Robert Bruce’s posthumous participation in the siege of Teba in 1330. Sir James Douglas, on his way to the Holy Land to bury the Bruce’s heart, was persuaded to participate in the Iberian crusade. The Scottish historian John Barbour tells us that Douglas flung the silver casket containing the heart at the Moorish armies before going into battle after it, ultimately to his own death (279). There is also the case of Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán, who earned the sobriquet of el Bueno for his defense of Tarifa. When his son was captured and threatened with death, Guzmán threw down a knife from the city walls, in case the captors needed a weapon with which to do the deed. A frequently forgotten detail of this episode is that it was not the Moors who executed the boy, but the rebel Infante Juan (107). Guzmán himself, before his heroics at Tarifa, had once been in the service of the Marinid emir (258). The habit of making alliances across religious lines, a practice that was documented in Reconquest, remained alive and well in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In writing such a thorough yet concise and readable account of the oft-neglected post-1248 Reconquest, O’Callaghan has done an important service to the field. I have the feeling, however, that something is missing from Gibraltar. O’Callaghan offers little sense of how ideology or the social reality of chivalry changed during the period, nor how such changes were relevant to the battle for the Strait. To be fair, he does not altogether neglect the theoretical questions [End Page 249] that were more prominent in his...

WAR FOR BLUE GOLD

While the nineteenth century was the century of ‘gold nuggets’, the twentieth century of ‘black gold’, the twenty-first century will be the century of wars for ‘bread’ and ‘blue gold’ and related crises. Approximately eighteen thousand children die every day from hunger or malnutrition as 850 million people go to bed with an empty stomach. Mozambique, Eritrea, Afghanistan are just a few countries whose instability result from hunger and water shortages. C. Clausewitz argued that each era has its own war. So do our times. They will have their war too. Deficiencies related to the insufficiency of life is a key category of internal security of each country and region. Therefore, to determine their contemporary character is the starting point for local but also global safety. Today, more and more domestic security is related to the global security situation and vice versa. Risks associated with lack of basic life-giving ‘materials’, which is food and water, could become a potential situation that might affect values and national interests, posing a threat to the life, health and living conditions of hundreds of thousands or millions of peo-ple.

Lubelska komisja Boni Ordinis i jej wpływ na rozwój przestrzenny miasta

The activity of the Lublin Good Order Committee (Boni Ordinis) was the first that gave measurable results to the action of improvement of the image of city, its administration and regulation issues. The city was destroyed and in economic collapse after the seventeenth century wars. Other activities of the Commission of Boni Ordinis was also a manifestation of social thought and increase of the importance of the middle class in the country.

Anglosphere United? Examining and Explaining 20th Century War Time Alliances in the English Speaking World

Throughout the 20th century the major powers in the global Anglosphere often found themselves allies in armed conflict. These war-time alliances – sometimes temporary, more often part of a longer term cooperation – are sometimes held to arise because of common histories, common values, similar national ideologies and similar notions of international right and wrong. Indeed, the political rhetoric surrounding declarations of war has often cited such factors as colonial history, international friendship and “special relationships” as motivators for joining armed coalitions against third party states. Yet while there stand stark examples of these major English speaking powers acting entirely in congress there exist numerous instances where one or more of these powers chose not to join a coalition alongside their Anglophonic associates. This paper argues that explanations of Anglophonic coalitions that rely on notions of a shared history, similar political ideologies, common political and social values or similar notions of international morality all fall short of explaining the coalition joining/rejecting behaviour of the major powers of the Anglosphere in war-time during the 20th century. Drawing on data from the Correlates of War (CoW) project, this paper will show that pure national interest drove the decisions of states to join or reject coalitions, lending strong support to a structural realist explanation for their behaviour.

James L A WebbJr, Humanity’s burden: a global history of malaria, Studies in Environment and History, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. xii, 236, £14.99 (paperback 978-9-521-67012-8)

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the link between swamps (miasmas) and fevers appeared to be well established. The study of malaria was thus based on typical malarial landscapes—the marshes—in North America and Western Europe and on the cycles and intensity of transmission characteristic of Plasmodium vivax (tertian fever). However, this model could not explain the history of infection in other regions of the world where mosquitoes reproduced, not in marshes, but in mountain streams, tidal floodplains or hoof-print size puddles. The subject of this book resembles first of all a geo-history devoted to retracing the shifting distribution of malaria, a geo-history which borrows from these earlier authors on malaria. Secondly, it resembles an epidemiological history, retracing, over a very long period, the transformations in the nature and meaning of the infection in the course of its intercontinental migrations from Africa to Europe, then to the Americas, until the disappearance of malaria from the temperate zone. It is an historical epidemiology which quite logically takes an ecological perspective. Here, the units of analysis are the three main zones of malarial infection. The first, dominated by P. falciparum, is geographically limited to Africa. Mortality there is essentially among children under five years old. In the zone where vivax predominated, attacks occurred primarily in the summer. Mortality was rarely above one per cent: “Vivax was the great debilitator, not the great killer.” The zone of mixed infections was located between the first two, from southern China to the Mediterranean basin, by way of the subcontinent. Although mortality and morbidity were lower than in the zone where falciparum predominated, they could none the less reach very high levels when populations had no acquired immunity. Ecological history and cultural history are closely intertwined. Humanity’s burden identifies three main types of correlation between cultures and landscapes. The first was a pattern of avoidance (East Africa, the Balkans, Central and South America) where populations of the high plains avoided all contact with lowlands during the transmission season. More generally, in agricultural societies, the elites often stayed away from zones of malaria where workers of low social status were concentrated (slaves, serfs, untouchables). The second type was the opposition—disputed by some—between nomads and agriculturalists, the former keeping well away from the latter during the season when the mosquito bit. A third kind opposed agriculturalists and the forest people who remained unscathed by any contamination. By extending slash and burn cultivation (yams in tropical Africa, maize and manioc in the Brazilian forest), agriculturalists spread the infestation. Far from being isolated through disposition, “primitive” people were obliged to withdraw to the deepest forest because of the disease introduced by the agriculturalists. In all these cases, epidemiology and ethnicity were interwoven. The book is divided into two main sections organized according to an eminently Braudelian plan. The first section covers a very long history of the infection on the three continents. The second, with much shorter undulations, retraces the successes, but more often the failures, of science and of malaria policy as played out in eradication campaigns—in reality the “control” of transmission—from the end of the nineteenth century. A final chapter concentrates on the efforts in Africa with which, for better or worse, the name of the WHO is associated. A long chapter on treatment (quinine, opium) and on the “accelerators” of the diffusion of infection in the nineteenth century (migrations, colonization, transportation, war, drought and famine) separates the two sections. Humanity’s burden is testimony of a twofold success. The work offers a historico-epidemiological synthesis devoid of unnecessary technical language on a serious pathology of utmost importance in the world today. Epidemiologists, economists, anthropologists and students can draw on it with considerable benefit. It is also a very convincing essay on global history, both from inside (explaining the persistence of the virulence of the infection by studying the connections between different local epidemiologies) and from outside (integrating the advances in the social and natural sciences). The book is enriched by an abundant bibliography.

Media Visualisation of Conflict: Studying News Imagery in 21st Century Wars

This article considers the influence of the ‘visual turn’ in diverse academic literature on the media representation of conflict. Primarily drawing on examples from American and British scholarship, the article presents encouraging evidence that the visualisation of conflict in news media is finally getting the kind of sustained theoretical scrutiny and rigorous empirical analysis that it deserves. Authors from varied disciplinary fields of research, from security studies to visual culture, are now engaging in a range of analytical and empirical investigations into the purportedly powerful roles of mediated visual imagery during wartime, employing conceptual tools such as ‘mediatisation’ and ‘performativity’. This article offers a summation of some of the key approaches: their intersections, distinctions and usefulness; while suggesting trajectories for further critical research into media visualisation of conflict.

Military Pain Management in 21st Century War

Morphine and other opioid drugs have played a major role in austere environment pain management since the Civil War, particularly in the military. While the pre-eminence and success of such medications is without question, their use is accompanied by significant side effects that are undesirable in the most advanced medical settings, and are potentially devastating in the field environment. Recently, there have been significant improvements in pain care for America's wounded service members, along with a shift in how many care providers view pain management. An increasing number of healthcare providers are seeing pain not merely as a symptom, but as a disease process. In addition to dramatically improving care for wounded service members, the evolution in the military's approach to pain is enhancing care for civilians.

Balkans into Southeastern Europe: A Century of War and Transition. By John Lampe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. x, 338 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Tables. Maps. $33.95, paper.

Balkans into Southeastern Europe: A Century of War and Transition. By John Lampe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. x, 338 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Tables. Maps. $33.95, paper.

How to Calculate Human Losses During the Second World War1

One of the most controversial questions dominating the historiography of the Second World War is that of determining the human cost of this struggle, in particular, the losses suffered by the Soviet Union and its Red Army during this most terrible of 20th century wars. The sheer immensity of these losses, coupled with the radically shifting European borders during and immediately after the war that complicated the task of calculating losses, demonstrates just how formidable, if not utterly futile, this task really is. As a result, estimates of the human losses the Soviet Union's population and military suffered during the war vary widely depending on such factors as the nationality and ethnicity of the author and the methodology the author employed. This article, written by a Russian journalist and historian, presents one of the most radical and gruesome of existing estimates.

Creating young martyrs: conditions that make dying in a terrorist attack seem like a good idea

Chapter One Endangered Children Life in War-Affected Areas On the Ground Past Checkpoints, Into Town Across the Globe Knowledge, Power, Action Social Science of Youthful Terrorists Chapter Two 2007 Madrid: I Declare this Conference Open. Interdisciplinary Analyses of Aggression and Terrorism Update on the Social Science of Aggression and Terrorism The Questions What is Terrorism? Defining Terrorism Defining a Terrorist Prototypes of Terrorists Social Scientists Describing Child Terrorists In the Meantime: Proposal for a Consensus Model Terrorism and Altruism Distinguishing Legitimate Militaries from Terrorist Groups What About Legitimate Grievances? Could Terrorist Acts Ever be Performed by Normal People? What about Demographics and Motivation? What about the Demographics of Child Terrorists? Comparing Child Terrorists with Child Soldiers What about Distribution of Wealth and Resources? A Question that did not come up: Biological Determinism for Aggression Chapter Three Twenty-First Century Terrorism and the Development of Youthful Terrorists Child Soldier, Child Terrorist Cognitive Development and Youth in War-Affected Areas Group-Defined Identity Deciding to Engage in a Terrorist Act: The Youthful Brain The Ecology of Development The Propensity to Engage in Terrorist Acts The Production-Line Analogy Preventing the Recruitment of Youth as Martyrs Chapter Four When the Last Tamil Has Died When will the war end? Never. What will it be like when the war ends? The Irony of a Common Theme Talking About It Freedom to Travel The Privilege of an Education How old should someone be before joining a fighting force? Growing up in War-affected Areas Ethnic Conflict: An Informed Account of a Minority Childs Experience From the Childs Point of View: Very Young Children in War-Affected Areas Middle Childhood Older Children: Thirteen and Beyond Truth and Lies Things You Know Things You Dont Know It all Looks Clear Now Credible? Chapter Five Victims of 21st Century War: Are We all in This Together? Costs of War: Young Men and Women Military Service vs. Rebel Militia Parents of Youthful Terrorists Who have Died in Attacks Chain of Events Creating Martyrs: What Americans Need to Know Common American Theories About Youthful Terrorists Radical Differences in Experience Underscoring the Need for Better Knowledge of the World Ecological Psychology A Very Good Cause A Very Good Cause: What Do They Know and How do They Know It? Trust and Distrust in the US How Distrust of News Contributes to Recruitment of Children in War-Affected Areas Stop Providing Weapons. Resources Dont Discount Our Generation Shared Future: Human Rights, Terrorism, and Youth Around the World Nuclear Taboo Very Brief Historical Overview Contemporary Nuclear Threat Nuclear Threat Some Evidence and Scenarios for Possible Nuclear Attack on the United States Could A Terrorist Organization Obtain a Nuclear Weapon? Could a Nuclear Weapon be Transported into the US? Chapter Six The Fisherman On a Global Scale: The Fishermans Potential Network Good guys and bad guys: The bad guys keep on coming. Managing the Difficult View Hearts and Minds? Winning Hearts and Minds: A Modest Proposal American Compassion and Mercy Knowing Hearts and Minds Why try to understand those who would perpetrate violence on innocent people? Northern Ireland Challenging misperceptions: Everyday heroism About the Authors Series Afterword

Commentary: The Ottoman Menace in Post-Habsburg Historiography

Threevery fine papers deal with the Ottoman menace as metaphor in what we now designate as the post-Habsburg period, that discreet time span between the closing decades of the nineteenth century and World War II, with some forays into the contemporary period. In all three papers, the Ottoman (or the Turk, as was the current usage) served as a foil for contemporary grievances. It is not really the “Ottoman menace” they are dealing with, but, accordingly, the communist, socialist, working-class, Jewish, Serbian, or other “menaces” that are additionally demonized by introducing the analogy to a well-known and popular symbol. In the apt observation of the Austrian playwright J. P. Ostland, quoted by Maureen Healy, this was the present packaged as the past. It needs to be stressed that even the phrase “Ottoman menace” is a neologism form the post-World War II period, when scholarly works insisted correctly on a distinction between “Ottoman” as an imperial designator and “Turk” as an ethnic and later a national one. Although this distinction is justified for analytical purposes, it introduces a tinge of anachronism that belies one of the primary goals of history writing.

Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century (review)

Reviewed by: Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century Robert Francis Saxe Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century. By Jenel Virden. Houndmills, Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. ISBN 978-0-333-72661-7. Maps. Annotated bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 203. £21.99. In this slim volume, Jenel Virden attempts to discuss American participation in the major wars of the twentieth century through the lens of just war theory. In particular, the author provides an overview of the American government's rhetoric during wartime and action on the battlefield, but also expands her focus to investigate the home front in order "to test whether the application of theory to the way governments treat their own citizens during war can provide previously unarticulated insights into the broader issue of just war" (p. 7). This is an admirable approach, as too many histories seek to segment the battlefront from the home front in their discussions of America's wars. And it is as a general primer on America's twentieth century wars that this study succeeds. Chapters on World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War are all laid out identically, each containing sections labeled "The Pre-War Period," "Beginnings," "How the War Was Fought," "US Home Front," and "The Consequences." Virden does an excellent job of synthesizing the voluminous information on the fighting, diplomacy, economics, leadership, rhetoric, and home front issues of all four conflicts. After providing her case studies, she ties all the information together in a chapter simply titled "Conclusions." It is in this chapter where she compares and contrasts the wars, using the idea of just war to critique the wars' origins, how they were fought, their conclusions, and notions of justice on the home front. In these conclusions, Virden makes some controversial assessments, such as her statement that "the targeting or indiscriminate killing of non-combatants… [makes] it difficult if not impossible to suggest the United States fought these [End Page 664] wars justly"(p. 159). Further, after cataloguing numerous injustices on the American home front, she finds that "civil liberties and civil rights, and the American people, became the victims of wartime injustice"(p. 168). In a powerful epilogue, Virden critiques the Bush administration's War on Terror and shows how the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the mistreatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison, as well as the civil liberties questions raised by the Patriot Act, seem to suggest that America has learned very little from its past conduct in wartime. Much of the information in Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century is quite useful and provocative, and this would be a fine selection for a survey course for undergraduates or someone with a general interest in the topic. In terms of construction, however, I had some reservations. Though the just war theme is the guiding force of the book, just war theory is dealt with substantially only in the introduction and conclusion. Increased discussion throughout the chapters would have linked the sections together concretely and made the author's conclusions even more powerful. For instance, the just nature of America's entry into the wars is dealt with in a complex way, but the comparative discussion of their beginnings is so brief in the "Conclusions" chapter that the implications of the similarities and differences of the wars' origins are never fully realized. With greater attention to just war theory throughout, more time might have been spent on expanding the author's analysis. But this is a criticism that comes from the fact that the questions being raised by the book are numerous and important. If the purpose of Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century is to start a conversation, then it has succeeded. Robert Francis Saxe Rhodes College Memphis, Tennessee Copyright © 2009 The Society for Military History

The first 83 and the next 83: Perspectives on neurotoxicology

This commentary depicts the author's history, and how it became interwoven with neurotoxicology. Born in 1925, most of his life spanned a century burdened with calamitous wars as well as revolutionary developments in science. Aviation played a large role in the century's wars and in the author's outlook on the world. He moved from a literary perspective, after his war experiences, to one governed by science, his earliest bent. During his career, which embodied the early development of both behavioral pharmacology and behavioral toxicology, he emphasized the critical need for precise measures, a point of view illustrated by his adoption of digital computer technology in 1962 as a means to secure such measures. The commentary also describes the author's views of some of the new directions open to neurotoxicology, such as the pursuit of questions about endocrine disruptors, countermeasures for brain aging, and epigenetics.

Military Aeromedical Evacuations From Central and Southwest Asia for Ill-Defined Dermatologic Diseases

To determine the diagnoses of US military patients medically evacuated from Central and Southwest Asia for ill-defined dermatologic diseases, to compare these diagnoses with data from earlier military conflicts, and to identify ways to reduce the number of dermatologic evacuations of military personnel from the combat zone. We evaluated the preevacuation and postevacuation diagnoses of military personnel who were evacuated from Central and Southwest Asia for ill-defined dermatologic conditions. Outside the combat zone, these individuals were examined by dermatologists who provided a diagnosis regarded as correct for the purposes of this study. We excluded patients with precise preevacuation diagnoses, battle-related cutaneous injuries, and incomplete identifying data. The geographic area of responsibility for the US Central Command, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Data from January 1, 2003, through December 31, 2006, were obtained from aeromedical evacuation records and the military's electronic medical records system. A total of 170 patients evacuated from the combat zone for ill-defined dermatologic diseases, such as skin disorder, not otherwise specified (International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification code 709.9). The postevacuation diagnosis assigned, in nearly all cases, by a board-certified dermatologist. Dermatitis, benign melanocytic nevus, malignant neoplasms, benign neoplasms, urticaria, and a group of nonspecific diagnoses were the most common postevacuation diagnoses. We propose that thorough predeployment identification of individuals with chronic skin diseases, emphasis of preventive measures, and development of treatment plans will reduce the number of dermatologic evacuations. Improving diagnostic accuracy and treatment plans via teledermatology may also reduce evacuations. The most common dermatologic diseases leading to evacuations are similar to those from 20th century wars.

Discourses of Legitimacy: A Love Song to Our Mongrel Selves

In an intervention that blurs methodological boundaries traditionally separating the researcher from the researched, history from poetry, and the personal from the political, the author weaves a narrative account of her Euro-American family's early history in California into a larger set of social and historical events taking place during the nineteenth century. She employs the metaphor of ‘legitimacy’ to trace her growing awareness of the physical, psychological, and political parallels at work in the colonization of lands, cultures, and bodies in the ‘New World’. Providing context for the mid-nineteenth century war between the USA and Mexico, she analyzes discursive constructs such as hybridity, impurity, and ‘mongrelization’ as they are evoked in the legend of Malinche – the sixteenth-century, indigenous translator and lover of the Spanish conquistador, Hernan Cortés. Four centuries later, echoes of that ‘intermarriage’ and the transgression of many other kinds of boundaries can be heard in the author's unconventional relationship with her son's Mexican father. She offers a ‘post-critical’ perspective in the conclusion by bringing her own voice into dialogue with those of several post-colonial theorists. This ethnography integrates autoethnography, voices from history, and textual analysis into seldom-heard conversations about the conventional and unconventional workings of power and identity. In so doing, both the fixity and fluidity of concepts such as culture, nation, family, language, social class, race, and gender are revealed.

SOLUTIONS FOR LATGALIAN ORTHOGRAPHY PROBLEMS IN THE PRESS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20th CENTURY

As soon as the ban on printing was abolished, one particular solution for the question of Latgalian orthography was found. However, it could not satisfy all language users, since it was too complicated and did not solve all orthographic problems. Teachers were not satisfied by the established orthographic rules either, because the reproduction of phonetic forms did not correspond to the forms as used among the people. However, although historic events were dramatic and tough in the first half of the 20th century (war, change of government, foundation and consolidation of an independent state), the work of linguists was not suspended – newspapers featured publications about language problems, orthography conferences were organized, and books on grammar were published. The amount of publications during that time was quite impressive. Therefore, their review is divided into the following periods: 1. From 1908–1918 only two Latgalian printed publications, „Drywa” and „Jaunas Zinias”, existed on a long-term basis. These paid a great deal of attention to the integrity of the language and problems of orthography, and the authors of the articles were concerned with the „pollution” of the language by germanisms and baltisms. There are only a few publications, for example, an article by Ontons Skrinda called „Woludas waicojumâ”(literally - „On the Issue of Language”, „Drywa”, 21/1913), which raises concrete questions about spelling and orthography. 2. During the time from 1920, when the political situation in the new Latvian state in the post-war period became stable, until the 1923 orthography conference, discussions of problems of language and orthography became even more ardent, articles became more thorough, and there were less pathetic appeals. The paper reviews articles from the magazine „Zīdūnis”, and the newspapers „Latgolas Wōrds” and „Latgalītis”.. Authors of the most important publications of that period are Francis Kemps, Francis Trasuns, as well as Piters Strods, who became the most active and progressive promoter and reviewer of the discussion around orthography problems. 3. From 1923 until 1927 an orthography committee was appointed by the Ministry of Education. Its decisions were binding for all the users up until the end of the 20th century. During that period of time a lot of periodicals were published in Latgalian. Articles on the problems of language and orthography, however, can mainly be found in the newspaper „Latgolas Vōrds”, as well as in the magazines „Latgolas Škola” and „Zīdūnis”. The author of the most serious and thorough articles is P. Strods, who at that time became the main promoter of the solution of the orthographic problems. Unfortunately, there are plenty of publications where the authors’ personal ambitions are more dominant than the questions regarding the problems of orthography. All in all, it can be concluded that all the publications of the first half of the 20th century can be divided into two groups: 1. those which deal with general questions of the existence of the Latgalian language existence and its development, but do not discuss particular orthography problems, and 2. those in which the authors refer to the solution of particular orthography problems and offer concrete suggestions.

Balkans into Southeastern Europe: A Century of War and Transition by John R. Lampe (review)

580 SEER, 86, 3, JULY 2008 For Yavuz, European integration and identitybuilding is a 'process of the imagination' (p. 250). It remains to be seen to what extent the nations of Europe, especially those recently liberated from Soviet imperialism, will conform to the aspirations of Islamists and their fellow travellers. Zurich John Eibner Lampe, John R. Balkans intoSoutheastern Europe: A Centuryof War and Transi tion. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2006. x + 338 pp. Maps. Tables. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. ?16.99 (paperback). The Balkans, in popular narrative as well as in scholarly literature, are regarded as inmany ways different from the rest of Europe. Yet Balkan political and intellectual elites have always regarded themselves as European and endeavoured, in the past two centuries, to make their countries a part of Europe too. In thisbook, John R. Lampe, an eminent economic historian of the Balkans, maps both their endeavours and the formidable obstacles they faced. The EU's opening of its membership to all Balkan countries promises, in his view, a happy ending to that centuries-long endeavour. The Balkans are a mountainous and, in consequence, a sparsely populated region with relatively littlearable land and rather limitedmineral deposits. Until the mid-nineteenth century it formed the borderlands of the multi national Ottoman and Habsburg empires. Since then a growing number of nation-states were created on the Western European model. In the last century the region experienced three large scale inter-state and two intra-state wars (inGreece and Yugoslavia) which had led tohuge human losses, destruc tion of its fledgling industrial infrastructureand unprecedented displacement and migration of populations. In spite of these structural and man-made obstacles, the political leaders in Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia and, to a much lesser extent, Albania succeeded, according to Lampe, in creating more or less modern European states which, on the eve ofWorld War II, retained a surprising degree of independence from theGreat Powers. France and Britain were of littlehelp in their state-building since each pursued its own strategic ends and was unwill ing or unable to offer to them adequate financial support or trade benefits. The imposition of Communist regimes in the last four countries, following World War II, brought unprecedented political repression but converted, for the first time, most of their peasant populations into urban dwellers and eliminated large pockets of illiteracy.The latest transition fromCommunism to liberal democracy and freemarket (the third transition in the past cen tury), supported by unprecedented financial aid and investment from theEU, promises finally to transformall seven independent states (and, eventually, the two international protectorates inBosnia and Kosovo) into stablemulti-party liberal democracies. According to Lampe, in contrast to the neglect Europe showed in the past, '[F]or the newly expanded European Union, however, Southeastern Europe now holds center stage' (p. 293). reviews 581 Lampe thus presents a plausible and coherent argument, rich indetail and supported with well-chosen and well-presented economic data, in support of the view that the Balkans, in their development and ultimate destination ? the EU ? do not significantly differ from the rest of Europe. But the evidence he provides also suggests that the Balkans stillare the borderland of Europe. The emergence, in the last century, of nine nation-states in the region did not improve theirposition in relation to the rest of Europe: the Balkans was Europe's borderland in the past too. In view of the lack of natural and human resources, this is perhaps not so surprising. But if so, the efforts of the Balkan political and intellectual elites to create their own nation-states on the European model, however understandable, appear to have been deeply misguided. Having a nation-state, however liberal democratic and market oriented it is, may not be enough to extricate one's nation from the margins ofEurope; themembership of theEU, ifand when it isgranted, will probably not be enough either. Nonetheless, true to his commitment to liberal democratic values, Lampe openly condemns any significant departure from the liberal democratic standards by the inter-war royal and by recent post-Communist regimes in the Balkans. Yet the handing over, in 1945, of the four Balkan countries to Soviet control and the support...

Win, lose, or draw? China’s quarter century war on corruption

In 1982, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party ordered a crackdown on corruption. As China’s war on corruption enters its 25 year an obvious question is whether the party winning? Because there is no direct way to measure the actual rate of corruption (ARC) and the data we have on the revealed rate of corruption (RRC) may not perfectly reflect changes in the ARC while changes in the perceived level of corruption (PLC) may be subject to subjective distortion, trends in the RRC and the PLC may not provide reliable answers. The mathematical relationship between the ARC and the RRC, however, can be defined as a function of risk. Increases in risk can be interpreted as signaling a narrowing of the ARC–RRC gap. Decreases in risk can be interpreted as signaling a widening of the ARC–RRC gap. By combining data on changes in risk with data on movement in the RRC it is possible, therefore, to assess (in broad terms) the movement of the ARC even though it remains technically unknowable. Using data on the lag between when officials first engage in corruption and when they are prosecuted to measure changes in risk, this article raises doubts about whether Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is winning its war on corruption.

Redes mercantiles y formación de la familia en el comercio colonial español durante el siglo XVIII

This study analyses the close relationship between the creation of trading networks within Spanish colonial trade in the 18th century, and the moment in which the merchants of Cadiz chose to get married and start a family. Following a work of Paloma Fernández Pérez, in which she shows that in the first half of that century Cadiz merchants gave priority to the formation of family networks in order to enter the colonial trade, whereas after the 1750s and 1760s a large proportion of merchants preferred to consolidate their profession first, leaving marriage alliances for later in their lives. The present work explains the reasons for that transformation giving special attention to the changes occurred in the patterns of colonial trade, as a result of the adoption of a system of loose registering of ships in middle of the century. The primary sources used are mainly private letters coming from Spanish America that were intercepted by the British during the 18th century wars.

Memlûk Devleti’nde Savaşın Kültürel Esaslarına Dâir

Mızrağı bulutlara geçiren, oku güneşin kursuna saplayabilen, canlarını feda etmekten çekinmeyen; savaşmak için zırhı, kılıcı ve mızrağı hazır. Şehid olmak için daha önce yüzüne gerekli kokuları sürmüş savaşçı yiğitlerin, her yere harb ve darbın kaim olup, kılıç ve mızrağın pazarının canlanıp, canın değeri ve ruhun ücretinin azaldığı(1) bir bezm u rezm çağının savaş kültürüne nüfûz etmek, savaş kültürü ve mantığını anlamak teşebbüsü İlmî usûl, tahayyül ve tasavvurlarla ve ancak o yüce ruhlara duyulan hayranlık ve minnettarlık anlayışının İlmî bir kisveye bürünmesiyle bir nebze ortaya konulabilir.