History | Modern | 20th Century

Terror in the Countryside
Campesino Responses to Political Violence in Guatemala, 1954–1985
By Rachel A. May

The key to democratization lies within the experience of the popular movements. Those who engaged in the popular struggle in Guatemala have a deep understanding of substantive democratic behavior, and the experience of Guatemala’s civil society should be the cornerstone for building a meaningful formal democracy.In Terror in the Countryside Rachel May offers an in-depth examination of the relationship between political violence and civil society.

Empire State-Building
War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925–1952
By Joanna Lewis

This history of administrative thought and practice in colonial Kenya looks at the ways in which white people tried to engineer social change.It asks four questions: - Why was Kenya’s welfare operation so idiosyncratic and spartan compared with that of other British colonies? - Why did a transformation from social welfare to community development produce further neglect of the very poor? - Why was there no equivalent to the French tradition of community medicine?

The Cuban Counterrevolution
By Jesús Arboleya
· Translation by Rafael Betancourt

For forty years the Cuban Revolution has been at the forefront of American public opinion, yet few are knowledgeable about the history of its enemies and the responsibility of the U.S. government in organizing and sustaining the Cuban counterrevolution.

Television, Nation, and Culture in Indonesia
By Philip Kitley

The culture of television in Indonesia began with its establishment in 1962 as a public broadcasting service. From that time, through the deregulation of television broadcasting in 1990 and the establishment of commercial channels, television can be understood, Philip Kitley argues, as a part of the New Order’s national culture project, designed to legitimate an idealized Indonesian national cultural identity.

Black Lawyers, White Courts
The Soul of South African Law
By Kenneth S. Broun
· Foreword by Julius L. Chambers

In the struggle against apartheid, one often overlooked group of crusaders was the coterie of black lawyers who overcame the Byzantine system that the government established oftentimes explicitly to block the paths of its black citizens from achieving justice.Now, in their own voices, we have the narratives of many of those lawyers as recounted in a series of oral interviews. Black Lawyers, White Courts is their story and the anti-apartheid story that has before now gone untold.Profess

Every Factory a Fortress
The French Labor Movement in the Age of Ford and Hitler
By Michael Torigian

French trade unions played a historical role in the 1930s quite unlike that of any other labor movement. Against a backdrop of social unrest, parliamentary crisis, and impending world war, industrial unionists in the great metal-fabricating plants of the Paris Region carried out a series of street mobilizations, factory occupations, and general strikes that were virtually unique in Western history.The

Dangerous Dames
Women and Representation in Film Noir and the Weimar Street Film
By Jans B. Wager

Both film noir and the Weimar street film hold a continuing fascination for film spectators and film theorists alike. The female characters, especially the alluring femmes fatales, remain a focus for critical and popular attention. In the tradition of such attention, Dangerous Dames focuses on the femme fatale and her antithesis, the femme attrapée.Unlike

Midwives of the Revolution
Female Bolsheviks and Women Workers in 1917
By Jane McDermid and Anna Hillyar

The Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 and the ensuing communist regime have often been portrayed as a man’s revolution, with women as bystanders or even victims. Midwives of the Revolution examines the powerful contribution made by women to the overthrow of tsarism in 1917 and their importance in the formative years of communism in Russia.Focusing

Labor and Democracy in Namibia, 1971–1996
By Gretchen Bauer

In this compelling study of labor and nationalism during and after Namibia’s struggle for liberation, Gretchen Bauer addresses the very difficult task of consolidating democracy in an independent Namibia. Labor and Democracy in Namibia, 1971-1996 argues that a vibrant and autonomous civil society is crucial to the consolidation of new democracies, and it identifies trade unions, in particular, as especially important organizations of civil society.

Namibia under South African Rule
Mobility and Containment, 1915–46
Edited by Patricia Hayes, Jeremy Silvester, Marion Wallace, and Wolfram Hartmann

The peoples of Namibia have been on the move throughout history. The South Africans in 1915 took over from the Germans in trying to fit Namibia into a colonial landscape. This book is about the clashes and stresses which resulted from the first three decades of South African colonial rule.Namibia under South African Rule is a major contribution to Namibian historiography, exploring, in particular, many new themes in twentieth-century Namibian history.

Mountain People in a Flat Land
A Popular History of Appalachian Migration to Northeast Ohio, 1940–1965
By Carl E. Feather

First popular history of Appalachian migration to one community—Ashtabula County, an industrial center in the fabled “best location in the nation.”

Good-Bye to Old Peking
The Wartime Letters of U.S. Marine Captain John Seymour Letcher, 1937–1939
Edited by Katie Letcher Lyle and Roger B. Jeans

For two and a half years (1937-1939), Captain John Seymour Letcher commanded a company of the U.S. Embassy Marine Guard in Peking. During that time, he wrote a series of letters to his parents in Virginia describing the life of a Westerner in the former imperial city. During that same time, China was invaded by Japan.Captain Letcher describes the flavor of life in pre-Communist China—the food, servants, cold Peking winters and torrid summers, hunting, and excursions to the major tourist sites.B

Confronting Leviathan
Mozambique Since Independence
By Margaret Hall and Tom Young

Confronting Leviathan describes Mozambique’s attempt to construct a socialist society in one African country on the back of an anti-colonial struggle for national independence. In explaining the failure of this effort the authors suggest reasons why the socialist vision of the ruling party, Frelimo, lacked resonance with Mozambican society. They also document in detail South Africa’s attempts to destabilize the country, even to the extent of sponsoring the Renamo insurgents.

The Decolonization of Africa
By David Birmingham

This bold, popularizing synthesis presents a readily accessible introduction to one of the major themes of twentieth-century world history. Between 1922, when self-government was restored to Egypt, and 1994, when nonracial democracy was achieved in South Africa, 54 new nations were established in Africa.

Theory in the Practice of the Nicaraguan Revolution
By Bruce E. Wright

Even in the period following the electoral defeat of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1990, the revolution of 1979 continues to have a profound effect on the political economy of Nicaragua.

Violence and the Dream People
The Orang Asli in the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960
By John D. Leary

Violence and the Dream People is an account of a little-known struggle by the Malayan government and the communist guerrillas, during the 1948-1960 Malayan Emergency, to win the allegiance of the Orang Asli, the indigenous people of the peninsular Malaya.

Education in the Development of Tanzania, 1919–1990
By Lene Buchert

Deals with the realities of education in a debt-ridden African country trying to cope with the pressures of externally imposed educational budgets.

Seven Years Among Prisoners of War
By Chris Christiansen

Hundreds of thousands of prisoners were incarcerated in camp around the world during World War II. And individuals from all walks of life joined international organizations like the Red Cross, churches, and other religious groups to help counter the hopelessness of camp life.

Apartheid’s Genesis
Edited by Philip Bonner, Peter Delius, and Deborah Posel

Apartheid is synonymous in most people’s minds with a virulent form of racial ideology and social engineering. Yet ideologies of racial domination and segregation long preceded apartheid, and cannot by themselves explain the shift in racial domination that apartheid involved.Focusing on the period 1935–1962, this collection explores the dynamics which molded apartheid.

Faces in the Revolution
The Psychological Effects of Violence on Township Youth in South Africa
By Gill Straker

One of South Africa’s most serious problems is the large number of youths in the black townships who have been exposed to an incredible depth and complexity of trauma. Not only have they lived through severe poverty, the deterioration of family and social structures, and an inferior education system, but they have also been involved in catastrophic levels of violence, both as victims and as perpetrators. What are the effects of the milieu? What future is there for this generation?

Juscelino Kubitschek and the Development of Brazil
By Robert J. Alexander

Kubitschek was one of the most important political leaders of Brazil during the twentieth century. As president, he pushed decisively for the industrialization of the largest of the Latin American nations. He also provided his country with the most democratic regime it had ever experienced. His leadership stimulated a flowering of Brazilian culture in literature, art, music, and architecture.

Khaki and Blue
Military and Police in British Colonial Africa
By Anthony Clayton and David Killingray

Drawing upon a survey of former police officers in the six British colonies of Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, and Malawi, Clayton and Killingray examine the work of colonial law enforcement during the last years of British supremacy. In addition to such basic institutional information as the development of police forces from local militia, the training of African recruits, and the africanization of the police forces, the authors examine the typical activities of the colonial police.

Running Amok
An Historical Inquiry
By John C. Spores

Amok, one of the few Malay words commonly appearing in English, names a syndrome of unpredictable and indiscriminate homicidal behavior with suicidal intent. In tracing the development of this behavioral pattern, Spores examines historical data, including frequently colorful colonialist accounts of such episodes, from British Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies during the period 1800–1925.Spores

Spectator Society
The Philippines Under Martial Rule
By Benjamin N. Muego

As the first post-war president of the Philippines to win reelection, Ferdinand Marcos enjoyed grassroots popularity and was also highly esteemed by the officer corps and rand-and-file of the armed forces. Even more important, he was decisive, ruthless, and without equal as a political tactician. This study traces chronologically and topically the events which led to Marcos’ declaration of martial law in 1972 and calls for a return to participatory democracy.

From Kampung to City
A Social History of Kucing Malaysia, 1820-1970
By Craig Lockard

One of the major processes in modern Southeast Asian history has been the development of ethnically heterogeneous towns and cities. Kucing, an intermediate-sized urban center in Sarawak, Malaysia, is today an institutionally complex, predominantly Chinese city of 100,000 led by modern political leaders. Lockard’s account of the development and growth of Kucing over 150 years devotes particular attention to the remarkable absence of ethnic conflict in the mixed society of Kucing.

Report on Brunei in 1904
By M. S. H. McArthur

In 1904 the British Protectorate of Brunei had reached the nadir of its fortunes. Reduced to two small strips of territory, bankrupt, and threatened with takeover by the Rajah of Sarawak (Sir Charles Brooke), Brunei received M. S. H. McArthur who was dispatched to make recommendations for Brunei’s future administration.

Children’s Literature in Hitler’s Germany
The Cultural Policy of National Socialism
By Christa Kamenetsky

Kamenetsky shows how Nazis used children’s literature to shape a “Nordic Germanic” worldview, intended to strengthen the German folk community, the Führer, and the fatherland by imposing a racial perspective on mankind. Their thus corroded the last remnants of the Weimar Republic’s liberal education, while promoting a following for Hitler.