This is the first biography in a hundred years of Jeanne d'Albret, a femme politique worthy of comparison with Elizabeth of England (her ally) and Catherine de Medici (her opponent) in a period when all the political and ideological currents of Reformation Europe converged in France. Her career as a feudal ruler in southwest France illustrates the changing relations between the high nobility and the crown, while her role as co-leader, with Coligny, of the Calvinist party at its height contributes to an understanding of the failure of the French Reformation. As the mother of Henry IV, she was responsible for the political education of France's most popular king, some of whose problems were inherited from her along with the models for some solutions.
The daughter of Marguerite de Navarre, Jeanne d'Albret experienced a dramatic series of crises which her uncompromising Calvinism and iron will enabled her to survive. In addition to the many unpublished letters included here, the author's insights into the character and motives of this unusual woman constitute one of the most enlightening aspects of her biography. Nancy Lyman Roelker's vivid style breathes life into a host of fascinating figures in an era in France richly colored by intrigue, war, and turbulent religious conflict.
Contributors. Josiah Blackmore, Linde M. Brocato, Catherine Brown, Israel Burshatin, Daniel Eisenberg, E. Michael Gerli, Roberto J. González-Casanovas, Gregory S. Hutcheson, Mark D. Jordan, Sara Lipton, Benjamin Liu, Mary Elizabeth Perry, Michael Solomon, Louise O. Vasvári, Barbara Weissberger
Contributors. Alan Bray, Marcie Frank, Carla Freccero, Jonathan Goldberg, Janet Halley, Graham Hammill, Margaret Hunt, Donald N. Mager, Jeff Masten, Elizabeth Pittenger, Richard Rambuss, Alan K. Smith, Dorothy Stephens, Forrest Tyler Stevens, Valerie Traub, Michael Warner
China’s history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has often been framed as a long coda of imperial decline, played out during its last dynasty, the Qing. Quest for Power presents a sweeping reappraisal of this narrative. Stephen Halsey traces the origins of China’s great-power status in the twentieth century to this era of supposed decadence and decay. Threats from European and Japanese imperialism and the growing prospect of war triggered China’s most innovative state-building efforts since the Qing dynasty’s founding in the mid-1600s.
Through a combination of imitation and experimentation, a new form of political organization took root in China between 1850 and 1949 that shared features with modern European governments. Like them, China created a military-fiscal state to ensure security in a hostile international arena. The Qing Empire extended its administrative reach by expanding the bureaucracy and creating a modern police force. It poured funds into the military, commissioning ironclad warships, reorganizing the army, and promoting the development of an armaments industry. State-built telegraph and steamship networks transformed China’s communication and transportation infrastructure. Increasingly, Qing officials described their reformist policies through a new vocabulary of sovereignty—a Western concept that has been a cornerstone of Chinese statecraft ever since. As Halsey shows, the success of the Chinese military-fiscal state after 1850 enabled China to avoid wholesale colonization at the hands of Europe and Japan and laid the foundation for its emergence as a global power in the twentieth century.
Challenging standard interpretations of American dominance and French weakness in postwar Western Europe, Michael Creswell argues that France played a key role in shaping the cold war order. In the decade after the war, the U.S. government's primary objective was to rearm the Federal Republic of Germany within the framework of a European defense force--the European Defense Community. American and French officials differed, however, over the composition of the EDC and the rules governing its organization and use.
Although U.S. pressure played a part, more decisive factors--in both internal French politics and international French concerns--ultimately led France to sanction the plan to rearm West Germany. Creswell sketches the successful French challenge to the United States, tracing the genuine, sometimes heated, debate between the two nations that ultimately resulted in security arrangements preferred by the French but acceptable to the Americans.
Impressively researched and vigorously argued, A Question of Balance advances significantly our understanding of power politics and the rise of the cold war system in Western Europe.
Kenneth Cragg (1913–2012) was one of the West's most gifted interpreters of Islam. In this deeply insightful, classic work of Qur’anic studies, he argues that the West must put aside a "spiritual imperialism" that draws on Western prescripts alien to Muslims and "learn to come within" Islam. Only then can a conversation begin that can relieve the misunderstandings and suspicion that has grown between Islam and the West in the years since 9/11.
Cragg’s close and thoughtful readings are as timely and relevant now as they were when The Qur'an and the West was originally published. With skill and nuance, he illuminates the difficulty that ensues through the Scripture's contradictory teachings on Islam's manifestation in the world—teachings that have brought about a crisis for modern Muslims living in both the West and the westernizing worlds, where a Muslim's obligation to Islamicize is met with anxiety and distrust.
The Qur'an and the West offers a means of study that reaches for a deeper knowledge of the Qur'an, engendering a new understanding of its holy teachings and opening a means for a fruitful discourse.
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