The End of the West or Ending Empire

The End of the West?: Crisis and Change in the Atlantic Order

Author: Jeffrey Anderson

The past several years have seen strong disagreements between the U.S. government and many of its European allies, largely due to the deployment of NATO forces in Afghanistan and the commitment of national forces to the occupation of Iraq. News accounts of these challenges focus on isolated incidents and points of contention. The End of the West? addresses some basic questions: Are we witnessing a deepening transatlantic rift, with wide-ranging consequences for the future of world order? Or are today's foreign-policy disagreements the equivalent of dinner-table squabbles? What harm, if any, have recent events done to the enduring relationships between the U.S. government and its European counterparts?

The contributors to this volume, whose backgrounds range from political science and history to economics, law, and sociology, examine the "deep structure" of an order that was first imposed by the Allies in 1945 and has been a central feature of world politics ever since. Creatively and insightfully blending theory and evidence, the chapters in The End of the West? examine core structural features of the transatlantic world to determine whether current disagreements are minor and transient or catastrophic and permanent.

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Ending Empire: Contested Sovereignty and Territorial Partition

Author: Hendrik Spruyt

At the dawn of the twentieth century, imperial powers controlled most of the globe. Within a few decades after World War II, many of the great empires had dissolved, and more recently, multinational polities have similarly disbanded. This process of reallocating patterns of authority, from internal hierarchy to inter-state relations, proved far more contentious in some cases than in others. While some governments exited the colonial era without becoming embroiled in lengthy conflicts, others embarked on courses that drained their economies, compelled huge sacrifices, and caused domestic upheaval and revolution. What explains these variations in territorial policy? More specifically, why do some governments have greater latitude to alter existing territorial arrangements whereas others are constrained in their room for maneuver?

In Ending Empire, Hendrik Spruyt argues that the answer lies in the domestic institutional structures of the central governments. Fragmented polities provide more opportunities for hard-liners to veto concessions to nationalist and secessionist demands, thus making violent conflict more likely. Spruyt examines these dynamics in the democratic colonial empires of Britain, France, and the Netherlands. He then turns to the authoritarian Portuguese empire and the break-up of the Soviet Union. Finally, the author submits that this theory, which speaks to the political dynamics of partition, can be applied to other contested territories, including those at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

About the Author:
Hendrik Spruyt is Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International Relations at Northwestern University. He is the author of The SovereignState and Its Competitors, which won the J. David Greenstone Award given by the History and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.

Foreign Affairs

This insightful book explores one of the great dramas of the twentieth century: how imperial powers left their colonial territories. Why were the British able to relinquish control of their empire without getting caught in protracted conflicts, while others — such as the French in Indochina and Algeria — were drawn into long and violent struggles? Spruyt argues that the character of government institutions at the "center" was key. The more fragmented the political system, the greater the opportunities for hard-liners who resisted territorial partition to block policy change. Detailed case histories illuminate the domestic politics of imperial endings. Postwar Britain was an open democracy with a strong executive and extensive military oversight, and so political elites were able to deal with secessionist demands unimpeded by veto groups and entrenched interests. The French Fourth Republic, in contrast, lacked civilian control of the military, and undisciplined political parties provided hard-liners with opportunities to resist changes in the status quo. Spruyt also takes a close look at the unraveling of the Soviet empire — a surprisingly swift and peaceful divestiture of territorial control.

What People Are Saying

Charles Lipson
The unwinding of Europe's vast colonial empires is one of the great transitions of the twentieth century. Hendrik Spruyt explains the process with clear, nuanced arguments, backed with historical studies, all designed to show why different imperial powers handled that unwinding so differently. What accounts for the differences, according to Spruyt, are the varied political structures in the metropolitan countries themselves. In some countries-but not in all-groups opposed to decolonization held effective veto power over territorial changes. In developing this 'veto points' approach, Spruyt's Ending Empire provides a powerful analysis of the varied paths that decolonization took. It is a major achievement.

David A. Lake
Ending Empire is a remarkable achievement. Hendrik Spruyt addresses the collapse of overseas empires and, in one case, a multinational state/continental empire. Spruyt shines in his talent for combining theoretically informed analysis with deep historical research across multiple cases.

Charles A. Kupchan
An elegant and compelling account of the politics of decolonization, Ending Empire is a major contribution to the literature on imperialism and to the study of how domestic institutions shape grand strategy.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction : contested territories and empire	1
1	Institutional frameworks and territorial policy	11
2	The changing fortunes of empire	39
3	The hexagon or the empire : France and the Algerian quagmire	88
4	Whitehall tacks to the wind of change	117
5	Ranking with Denmark : the Dutch fear of imperial retreat	146
6	The first maritime empire and the last : Portugal in Africa	176
7	Russia retreats from the union	204
8	The fourth republic in Jerusalem	234
	Conclusion : contesting sovereignty in a global system	264

Dr Kimball and Mr Jefferson or The Idea of India

Dr. Kimball and Mr. Jefferson: Rediscovering the Founding Fathers of American Architecture

Author: Hugh Howard

When Thomas Jefferson was born, there were few high-style buildings in America, but in a lifetime full of political accomplishments, he also became the father of America’s new architecture, enabling the Neoclassical to become the de facto national style for public and private buildings. However, in a strange lapse of historical memory, Jefferson’s accomplishments were almost entirely forgotten by the time Kimball arrived on the scene almost a century later.
Dr. Kimball and Mr. Jefferson is a moment-by-moment narrative of the men who created the profession of architecture in America, and Fiske Kimball is the spokesman: As the pioneering writer, scholar, and museum director who first assembled their stories, he takes us along in the surprising paper chase that eventually revealed Jefferson’s architectural genius. Along the way, we also learn his story of dramatic discoveries and his founding of the twin disciplines of historic preservation and architectural history.

Publishers Weekly

As the architect of Monticello and the University of Virginia, among other masterful buildings, Thomas Jefferson is widely considered by contemporary academics to be the most skillful practitioner of early American architecture. In his new retelling, Howard argues persuasively that were it not for Dr. Fiske Kimball, a 20th-century scholar and historian who researched his architectural heritage, we might still think of Jefferson as primarily, and exclusively, a talented statesman. This is not an exhaustive biography-Howard has already written a definitive one on this subject. It's more like a one-act play that alternates between scenes set in Jefferson's late 18th century and Kimball's early 20th century, when he investigates numerous archives. We browse through Jefferson's library, peek over his shoulder as he writes letters and watch him sketch the European buildings that inspire him. Howard's narrative is particularly compelling as he takes us through the decades of efforts that went into Jefferson's laboratory of architectural experimentation-his country home, Monticello. For context, he also includes chapters featuring other practicing architects of the time-Pierre L'Enfant, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Charles Bulfinch. Overall, readers will likely find that Kimball's single-minded passion for all things Jefferson is contagious. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Interwoven stories of America's earliest architects and prodigious scholar Dr. Fiske Kimball (1888-1955), who devoted his career to discovering, restoring and preserving their work. The title is a bit misleading: Although Jefferson does have a significant and signal presence in the work, he is not the only figure Howard discusses. The author has written about the master of Monticello before (Thomas Jefferson, Architect, 2003, not reviewed) and has published frequently on other architectural subjects (House-Dreams, 2001, etc.). Howard begins by sketching the early career of Kimball, who in 1914 discovered a vast cache of Jefferson's architectural drawings, a finding that led to his first book. Howard eventually takes us through Kimball's entire career (ending with his notable and ultimately contentious 30-year tenure as the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art), periodically interrupting with substantial segments about the lives and accomplishments of America's first builders and architects, most notably William Buckland, John Trumbull, Charles Bulfinch, Benjamin Latrobe, Samuel McIntyre and Robert Mills. Some of these-especially McIntyre and Mills-are names not well-known to the general public, and Howard does a stellar job of telling their human and professional stories. The author includes numerous reproductions of early architectural drawings and, for the most part, lets us know the fates of the structures he discusses. His account of the glorious but long-gone Derby mansion in Salem will make readers wish a preservationist spirit had prevailed in 1815, the year workmen razed the building. Howard's vast research enables him to explore the connections (not always amiable) amongthese men (Mills, for example, met them all). He also explores the social and political forces that often affect the design and placement of public buildings. Howard's discussion of the controversies about the Jefferson Memorial is especially clear and comprehensive. The star here is Kimball, who upstages even Jefferson, emerging as a towering figure in American architecture and architectural scholarship.

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The Idea of India

Author: Sunil Khilnani

The key book on India in the postnuclear era, with a new Introduction by the author.Our appreciation of the importance of India can only increase in light of the recent revelations of its nuclear capabilities. Sunil Khilnani's exciting, timely study addresses the paradoxes and ironies of this, the world's largest democracy. Throughout his penetrating, provocative work, he illuminates this fundamental issue: Can the original idea of India survive its own successes?

Ian Buruma

A masterful rebuttal to all cultural romantics and religious chauvinists . . . [A] splendid book about definitions of the Indian nation. -- The New York Review of Books

Chitra Divakaruni

Especially brilliant is Khilnani's attempt to understand the changing nature of India by studying its urban constructs. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

Amartya Sen

A splendid-and timely-book . . . Spirited, combative and insight-filled . . . Khilnani has woven a rich analysis of contemporary India and its evolution since independence. I am inclined to agree with [him] on the robustness and staying power of the secular idea of India. -- The Times Literary Supplement

The New York Times Book Review - Judith M. Brown

Khilnani writes with illuminating dexterity, wit and compassion.

Library Journal

Khilnani (politics, Univ. of London) offers a penetrating analysis of the spread of democracy to ever more diverse segments of the Indian body politic. Juxtaposed to this trend is the breakup of the Congress Party's hegemony and the subsequent growth of regional political parties. With the ebbing of congressional power and the elimination of its Socialist economic constraints, the Indian economy has embraced greater growth as the number of Indians living below the poverty line diminishes. Khilnani attributes much of this growth to India's cities, which emerge as paradoxical points of exclusion and economic dynamism when compared with rural India. In the process, national identity has in Khilnani's vision been subsumed by regional political focuses, urban and rural divisions, and greater religious identification. Hence, India's future will necessitate the continuance of a viable democracy sustaining the economic, cultural, and social diversity of the subcontinent. The author skillfully draws out the ironies and paradoxes of Indian history with a subtle, illuminating prose. For informed readers.John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ. Lib., Mt. Pleasant

The New York Times Book Review - Judith M. Brown

Khilnani writes with illuminating dexterity, wit and compassion.

Table of Contents:

	Foreword to the Paperback Edition
	Preface
	Author's Note
Map	The British Empire in India Before 1947
Map	India in 1997
	Introduction: Ideas of India	1
1	Democracy	15
2	Temples of the Future	61
3	Cities	107
4	Who is an Indian?	150
	Epilogue: The Garb of Modernity	196
	References	209
	Bibliographical Essay	217
	Index	243

What a Party or A Peoples History of American Empire

What a Party!

Author: Terry McAuliff

"I thought I knew Terry McAuliffe as well as anyone, but this time he surprised even me. Who knew Terry could sit still long enough to give us a book this good? What a Party! is a must-read for all of us who love politics, believe in public service, and know that laughter is often the best survival strategy."
President Bill Clinton

"No one knows more about American politics than Terry McAuliffe. He gives us some remarkable insights and knows how to make his accounts both humorous and informative."

Publishers Weekly

The ex-Democratic National Committee chair and political super- fund-raiser lives up to his nickname Mad Dog in this boisterous memoir. McAuliffe is rabidly aggressive toward Republicans (whom he describes as "willing to lie and cheat any way they could"), savaging them on talk shows and facing them down in bristling social encounters. He relentlessly pursues donors, happy to wrestle alligators and sing karaoke for checks ("for $500,000 I didn't mind humiliating myself"). He golfs, dances and plays cards with his political masters Hillary and Bill Clinton ("the Babe Ruth of American presidents"), forever preening over the role his advice and prodigious fund-raising played in their success. But on the exchange of money for access implicit in his activities, he is blustery but evasive. McAuliffe has incisive comments on the Democrats' shortcomings, especially their faintheartedness in fighting Republicans. Though he champions the Democrats as the party of the little guy-contrasting their jeans-and-barbecue shindigs with "swank, hoity-toity" GOP fund-raising events -that stance is undercut by all the name-dropping ("Ben Affleck joined Robin, Marsha, Dorothy and me for a quick tour of the skeet range") and elbow rubbing with grungily dressed billionaires. McAuliffe's inflated self-regard may give more ammunition to Republican opponents than his partisan vitriol does to Democratic allies. Photos. (Feb. 1) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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A People's History of American Empire

Author: Howard Zinn

Adapted from the bestselling grassroots history of the United States, the story of America in the world, told in comics form

Since its landmark publication in 1980, A People’s History of the United States has had six new editions, sold more than 1.7 million copies, become required classroom reading throughout the country, and been turned into an acclaimed play. More than a successful book, A People’s History triggered a revolution in the way history is told, displacing the official versions with their emphasis on great men in high places to chronicle events as they were lived, from the bottom up.
 
Now Howard Zinn, historian Paul Buhle, and cartoonist Mike Konopacki have collaborated to retell, in vibrant comics form, a most immediate and relevant chapter of A People’s History: the centuries-long story of America’s actions in the world. Narrated by Zinn, this version opens with the events of 9/11 and then jumps back to explore the cycles of U.S. expansionism from Wounded Knee to Iraq, stopping along the way at World War I, Central America, Vietnam, and the Iranian revolution. The book also follows the story of Zinn, the son of poor Jewish immigrants, from his childhood in the Brooklyn slums to his role as one of America’s leading historians.
 
Shifting from world-shattering events to one family’s small revolutions, A People’s History of American Empire presents the classic ground-level history of America in a dazzling new form.

School Library Journal

Gr 10 Up -A study of empire-building by established politicians and big businesses from the 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee through the current Iraq war. As nonfiction sequential art narrative, this stellar volume is compelling both as historical interpretation and you-are-there observation during many eras and in many climes. Konopacki melds realistic and energetic cartoons-Zinn lecturing in the present day, American and Vietnamese soldiers in the jungle, the Shah of Irana's White Revolution-with archival photos and document scraps to create a highly textured visual presentation. Each episode has its own period-specific narrator: Woody Guthrie sings about the Ludlow Massacre, a zoot suiter recounts the convergence of racial politics with popular music, and Zinn remembers his class-conscious boyhood through World War II soldiering and activism undertaken as a Civil Rights-era college professor. Politically charged, this book cana't stand alone as a history text, but it is an essential component for contemporary American government education, as well as an easy work to suggest to both narrative nonfiction and sophisticated comics readers.-Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia

Kirkus Reviews

The unknown history and devastating impact of American imperial activities abroad. In this impressively ambitious, if scattered, new offering from Metropolitan's wide-ranging American Empire Project, left-wing historians Zinn (The Unraveling of the Bush Presidency, 2007, etc.) and Buhle (History/Brown Univ.; Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History, 2008, etc.) collaborate with graphic artist Konopacki on a graphic adaptation of key sections from Zinn's bestselling A People's History of the United States (1980). The book is imagined as a lecture on the ugly side of history, delivered by the lean, aging Zinn to a darkened auditorium, with each episode illustrated by Konopacki's almost childishly simple illustrations, sometimes crudely buttressed with grainy photographs. Occasionally, perky sidebars titled "ZINNformation" pop up to point readers to a modern analogy or an interesting bit of trivia. It's an effective technique for delivering this laundry list of despicable behavior, though at times the illustrations seem less than capable of truly rendering their subjects. After a prologue that describes the government's vengeful, knee-jerk reactions to 9/11 as "part of a continuing pattern of American behavior," the main narrative begins abruptly with the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 and moves on to one head-shaking moment of infamy to another. Being that Zinn is most valuable for his insistence on shedding light on dark corners of American history, the book comes most alive when it is describing little-remembered episodes like the shameful American occupation of the Philippines in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, cleverly enlisting Mark Twain's embittered, virtuallyunknown writings on the subject. The authors' thesis-that America's imperial war machine manufactures conflicts abroad to further its economic interests while stoking consumer demand and tamping down dissent at home-is not developed as fully as it should be, and current wars are strangely missing. An overly episodic but nonetheless powerful teaching tool for the next generation of anti-imperialist activists.

Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics or Political Life of Medicare

Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics

Author: Jack A Goldston

The aim of the book is to highlight and begin to give "voice" to some of the notable "silences" evident in recent years in the study of contentious politics. The coauthors hope to redress the present topical imbalance in the field. In particular, the authors take up seven specific topics in the volume: the relationship between emotions and contention; temporality in the study of contention; the spatial dimensions of contention; leadership in contention; the role of threat in contention; religion and contention; and contention in the context of demographic and life-course processes.

Table of Contents:

	Preface
1	Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics: Introduction	1
2	Emotions and Contentious Politics	14
3	Space in Contentious Politics	51
4	It's About Time: Temporality in the Study of Social Movements and Revolutions	89
5	Leadership Dynamics and Dynamics of Contention	126
6	The Sacred, Religious, and Secular in Contentious Politics: Blurring Boundaries	155
7	Threat (and Opportunity): Popular Action and State Response in the Dynamics of Contentious Action	179
8	Contention in Demographic and Life-Course Context	195
9	Harmonizing the Voices: Thematic Continuity Across the Chapters	222
	References	241
	Index	267

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Political Life of Medicare

Author: Jonathan Oberlander

In recent years, bitter partisan disputes have erupted over Medicare reform. Democrats and Republicans have fiercely contested issues such as prescription drug coverage and how to finance Medicare to absorb the baby boomers. As Jonathan Oberlander demonstrates in The Political Life of Medicare, these developments herald the reopening of a historic debate over Medicare's fundamental purpose and structure. Revealing how Medicare politics and policies have developed since Medicare's enactment in 1965 and what the program's future holds, Oberlander's timely and accessible analysis will interest anyone concerned with American politics and public policy, health care politics, aging, and the welfare state.

Hamilton Adams Jefferson or To Perpetual Peace

Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding

Author: Darren Staloff

Alexander Hamilton, the worldly New Yorker; John Adams, the curmudgeonly Yankee; Thomas Jefferson, the visionary Virginia squire—each steered their public lives under the guideposts and constraints of Enlightenment principles, and for each their relationship to the politics of Enlightenment was transformed by the struggle for American independence. Repeated humiliation on America's battlefields banished Hamilton's youthful idealism, leaving him a fervent disciple of enlightened realpolitik and the nation's leading exponent of modern statecraft. After ten years in Europe's diplomatic trenches, Adams's embrace of the politics of Enlightenment became increasingly that of the gadfly of his country. And Jefferson's frustrations as a reformer and then Revolutionary governor in Virginia led him to go beyond his previous enlightened worldview and articulate a new and radical Romantic politics of principle.

Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson is a marvelous reminder that the world of ideas is inextricably bound up in the long trajectory of historical events.

Publishers Weekly

By now it's commonplace to ascribe the principles of the American founding to the Enlightenment, and CUNY historian Staloff offers no startling new information or refreshingly original readings of this period. He contends that the epistemological turn to empiricism, the disenchantment with the metaphysical and the move toward urbanism provide the core of Enlightenment politics, and he uncritically uses these three principles as lenses through which to read the politics of three of America's founders: Hamilton, Adams and Jefferson. Hamilton "promoted rapid industrialization and urban growth fostered by a strong central government capable of projecting its interests and power in the world at large." While Adams shared with John Locke an optimism that scientific education could promote liberty, he knew too well that human nature was corrupt enough to need a political system with checks and balances. Staloff (The Making of an American Thinking Class) gives his most thoughtful readings to Jefferson, who he says fostered a Romantic sensibility in American politics. Jefferson, he says, most changed American politics by showing the need for those politics to be built on an idealistic vision. But among a continuing flood of books about these and other American founders, Staloff's provides little that is new or provocative. (July 4) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Responding to the continuing demand by the reading public for books about the Founding Fathers, Staloff (history, City Coll. of New York; The Making of an American Thinking Class) provides a biographical and intellectual comparison among three major early American statesmen. He shows how the personal experiences and regional cultural traditions of each man shaded his interpretation of the European Enlightenment. The austere, often arrogant Hamilton, born poor but manifestly upwardly mobile (he became the quintessential New Yorker), embraced a boldly realistic interpretation of the new nation's place in the world. The vain, short-tempered, but introspective and honest Adams, a New Englander from the middling farming class, held similar hardheaded views. The charming Jefferson, of the Southern landed gentry, was a Romantic visionary (and undoubtedly the most enduringly popular of this triumvirate) who opted for "enlightened compromises" in office. A scholar who has studied Northern intellectuals, Staloff here devotes most of his study to Jefferson. He prefers citing the papers of all three men to critiquing the work of those who have previously mined these same sources. Intended to be suggestive rather than conclusive, Staloff's is another, but not the definitive, contribution to the growing literature on America's original greatest generation. For a similar comparative treatment of these three (plus James Madison), see Andrew S. Trees's The Founding Fathers and the Politics of Character. Recommended for all collections.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Table of Contents:

Ch. 1	Alexander Hamilton : the enlightenment fulfilled
Ch. 2	John Adams : the enlightenment transcended
Ch. 3	Thomas Jefferson : romantic America

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To Perpetual Peace

Author: Immanuel Kant

In this short essay, Kant completes his political theory and philosophy of history, considering the prospects for peace among nations and addressing questions that remain central to our thoughts about nationalism, war, and peace.

Ted Humphrey provides an eminently readable translation, along with a brief Introduction that sketches Kant's argument.