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Heaven's Wrath explores the religious thought and religious rites of the early Dutch Atlantic world. D. L. Noorlander argues that…
the Reformed Church and the West India Company forged and maintained a close union, with considerable consequences across the seventeenth century.Dutch merchants, officers, sailors, and soldiers found in their faith an ideology and justification for mercantile and martial activities. The West India Company supported the Reformed Church financially in Europe and helped spread Calvinism to other continents, while Calvinist employees and colonists benefitted from the familiar aspects of religious instruction and public worship. Yet, Noorlander argues, the church-company union also encouraged destructive military operations against Catholic enemies abroad and divisive campaigns against sinners and religious nonconformers in colonial courts. Religious fervor, violence, and intolerance imposed financial and demographic costs that the small Dutch Republic and its people-strapped colonies could not afford. At the same time, the Reformed Church in the Netherlands undermined its own religious mission by trying to control colonial hires, publications, and organization from afar.Noorlander's argument in Heaven's Wrath questions the core assumptions about why the Dutch failed to establish a durable empire in America. He downplays the usual commercial explanations and places the focus instead on the tremendous expenses incurred in the Calvinist-backed war and the Reformed Church's meticulous, worried management of colonial affairs.By pinpointing the issues that hampered the size and import of the Dutch Atlantic world, Noorlander is poised to revise core notions about the organization and aims of the Dutch empire, the culture of the West India Company, and the very shape of Dutch society.Amoral Communities: Collective Crimes in Time of War
By Mila Dragojević. 2019
In Amoral Communities, Mila Dragojević examines how conditions conducive to atrocities against civilians are created during wartime in some communities.…
She identifies the exclusion of moderates and the production of borders as the main processes. In these places, political and ethnic identities become linked and targeted violence against civilians becomes both tolerated and justified by the respective authorities as a necessary sacrifice for a greater political goal.Dragojević augments the literature on genocide and civil wars by demonstrating how violence can be used as a political strategy, and how communities, as well as individuals, remember episodes of violence against civilians. The communities on which she focuses are Croatia in the 1990s and Uganda and Guatemala in the 1980s. In each case Dragojević considers how people who have lived peacefully as neighbors for many years are suddenly transformed into enemies, yet intracommunal violence is not ubiquitous throughout the conflict zone; rather, it is specific to particular regions or villages within those zones. Reporting on the varying wartime experiences of individuals, she adds depth, emotion, and objectivity to the historical and socioeconomic conditions that shaped each conflict.Furthermore, as Amoral Communities describes, the exclusion of moderates and the production of borders limit individuals' freedom to express their views, work to prevent the possible defection of members of an in-group, and facilitate identification of individuals who are purportedly a threat. Even before mass killings begin, Dragojević finds, these and similar changes will have transformed particular villages or regions into amoral communities, places where the definition of crime changes and violence is justified as a form of self-defense by perpetrators.Victory's Shadow: Conquest and Governance in Medieval Catalonia
By Thomas W. Barton. 2019
At the beginning of the eleventh century, Catalonia was a patchwork of counties, viscounties, and lordships that bordered Islamic al-Andalus…
to the south. Over the next two centuries, the region underwent a dramatic transformation. The counts of Barcelona secured title to the neighboring kingdom of Aragon through marriage and this newly constituted Crown of Aragon, after numerous failed attempts, finally conquered the Islamic states positioned along its southern frontier in the mid-twelfth century. Successful conquest, however, necessitated considerable organizational challenges that threatened to destabilize, politically and economically, this triumphant regime. The Aragonese monarchy's efforts to overcome these adversities, consolidate its authority, and capitalize on its military victories would impose lasting changes on its governmental framework and exert considerable influence over future expansionist projects.In Victory's Shadow, Thomas W. Barton offers a sweeping new account of the capture and long-term integration of Muslim-ruled territories by an ascendant Christian regime and a detailed analysis of the influence of this process on the governmental, economic, and broader societal development of both Catalonia and the greater Crown of Aragon. Based on over a decade of extensive archival research, Victory's Shadow deftly reconstructs and evaluates the decisions, outcomes, and costs involved in this experience of territorial integration and considers its implications for ongoing debates regarding the dynamics of expansionism across the diverse boundary zones of medieval Europe.The Credibility Challenge: How Democracy Aid Influences Election Violence
By Inken Von Borzyskowski. 2019
The key to the impact of international election support is credibility; credible elections are less likely to turn violent. So…
argues Inken von Borzyskowski in The Credibility Challenge, in which she provides an explanation of why and when election support can increase or reduce violence. Von Borzyskowski answers four major questions: Under what circumstances can election support influence election violence? How can election support shape the incentives of domestic actors to engage in or abstain from violence? Does support help reduce violence or increase it? And, which type of support—observation or technical assistance—is better in each instance? The Credibility Challenge pulls broad quantitative evidence and qualitative observations from Guyana, Liberia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Bangladesh to respond to these questions. Von Borzyskowski finds that international democracy aid matters for election credibility and violence; outside observers can exacerbate postelection violence if they cast doubt on election credibility; and technical assistance helps build electoral institutions, improves election credibility, and reduces violence. Her results advance research and policy on peacebuilding and democracy promotion in new and surprising ways.Fifty Early Medieval Things: Materials of Culture in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
By Paolo Squatriti, Deborah Deliyannis, Hendrik Dey. 2019
Fifty Early Medieval Things introduces readers to the material culture of late antique and early medieval Europe, north Africa, and…
western Asia. Ranging from Iran to Ireland and from Sweden to Tunisia, Deborah Deliyannis, Hendrik Dey, and Paolo Squatriti present fifty objects—artifacts, structures, and archaeological features—created between the fourth and eleventh centuries, an ostensibly "Dark Age" whose cultural richness and complexity is often underappreciated. Each thing introduces important themes in the social, political, cultural, religious, and economic history of the postclassical era. Some of the things, like a simple ard (plow) unearthed in Germany, illustrate changing cultural and technological horizons in the immediate aftermath of Rome's collapse; others, like the Arabic coin found in a Viking burial mound, indicate the interconnectedness of cultures in this period. Objects such as the Book of Kells and the palace-city of Anjar in present-day Jordan represent significant artistic and cultural achievements; more quotidian items (a bone comb, an oil lamp, a handful of chestnuts) belong to the material culture of everyday life. In their thing-by-thing descriptions, the authors connect each object to both specific local conditions and to the broader influences that shaped the first millennium AD, and also explore their use in modern scholarly interpretations, with suggestions for further reading. Lavishly illustrated and engagingly written, Fifty Early Medieval Things demonstrates how to read objects in ways that make the distant past understandable and approachable.National Reckonings: The Last Judgment and Literature in Milton’s England
By Ryan Hackenbracht. 2019
During the tumultuous years of the English Revolution and Restoration, national crises like civil wars and the execution of the…
king convinced Englishmen that the end of the world was not only inevitable but imminent. National Reckonings shows how this widespread eschatological expectation shaped nationalist thinking in the seventeenth century. Imagining what Christ's return would mean for England's body politic, a wide range of poets, philosophers, and other writers—including Milton, Hobbes, Winstanley, and Thomas and Henry Vaughan,—used anticipation of the Last Judgment to both disrupt existing ideas of the nation and generate new ones. Ryan Hackenbracht contends that nationalism, consequently, was not merely a horizontal relationship between citizens and their sovereign but a vertical one that pitted the nation against the shortly expected kingdom of God. The Last Judgment was the site at which these two imagined communities, England and ecclesia (the universal church), would collide. Harnessing the imaginative space afforded by literature, writers measured the shortcomings of an imperfect and finite nation against the divine standard of a perfect and universal community. In writing the nation into end-times prophecies, such works as Paradise Lost and Leviathan offered contemporary readers an opportunity to participate in the cosmic drama of the world's end and experience reckoning while there was still time to alter its outcome.Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Nationalism, and Memory in a Balkan Community
By Max Bergholz. 2016
During two terrifying days and nights in early September 1941, the lives of nearly two thousand men, women, and children…
were taken savagely by their neighbors in Kulen Vakuf, a small rural community straddling today’s border between northwest Bosnia and Croatia. This frenzy—in which victims were butchered with farm tools, drowned in rivers, and thrown into deep vertical caves—was the culmination of a chain of local massacres that began earlier in the summer. In Violence as a Generative Force, Max Bergholz tells the story of the sudden and perplexing descent of this once peaceful multiethnic community into extreme violence. This deeply researched microhistory provides provocative insights to questions of global significance: What causes intercommunal violence? How does such violence between neighbors affect their identities and relations? Contrary to a widely held view that sees nationalism leading to violence, Bergholz reveals how the upheavals wrought by local killing actually created dramatically new perceptions of ethnicity—of oneself, supposed "brothers," and those perceived as "others." As a consequence, the violence forged new communities, new forms and configurations of power, and new practices of nationalism. The history of this community was marked by an unexpected explosion of locally executed violence by the few, which functioned as a generative force in transforming the identities, relations, and lives of the many. The story of this largely unknown Balkan community in 1941 provides a powerful means through which to rethink fundamental assumptions about the interrelationships among ethnicity, nationalism, and violence, both during World War II and more broadly throughout the world.New York Amish: Life in the Plain Communities of the Empire State
By Karen M. Johnson-Weiner. 2017
In a book that highlights the existence and diversity of Amish communities in New York State, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner draws…
on twenty-five years of observation, participation, interviews, and archival research to emphasize the contribution of the Amish to the state's rich cultural heritage. While the Amish settlements in Pennsylvania and Ohio are internationally known, the Amish population in New York, the result of internal migration from those more established settlements, is more fragmentary and less visible to all but their nearest non-Amish neighbors. All of the Amish currently living in New York are post–World War II migrants from points to the south and west. Many came seeking cheap land, others as a result of schism in their home communities. The Old Order Amish of New York are relative newcomers who, while representing an old or plain way of life, are bringing change to the state. So that readers can better understand where the Amish come from and their relationship to other Christian groups, New York Amish traces the origins of the Amish in the religious confrontation and political upheaval of the Protestant Reformation and describes contemporary Amish lifestyles and religious practices. Johnson-Weiner welcomes readers into the lives of Amish families in different regions of New York State, including the oldest New York Amish community, the settlement in the Conewango Valley, and the diverse settlements of the Mohawk Valley and the St. Lawrence River Valley. The congregations in these regions range from the most conservative to the most progressive. Johnson-Weiner reveals how the Amish in particular regions of New York realize their core values in different ways; these variations shape not only their adjustment to new environments but also the ways in which townships and counties accommodate—and often benefit from—the presence of these thriving faith communities.Prostitute, adulteress, unmarried woman who engages in sexual relations, victim of seduction—the Victorian "fallen woman" represents a complex array of…
stigmatized conditions. Amanda Anderson here reconsiders the familiar figure of the fallen woman within the context of mid-Victorian debates over the nature of selfhood, gender, and agency. In richly textured readings of works by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, among others, she argues that depictions of fallen women express profound cultural anxieties about the very possibility of self-control and traditional moral responsibility.Mercenaries and Missionaries: Capitalism and Catholicism in the Global South
By Brandon Vaidyanathan. 2019
Mercenaries and Missionaries examines the relationship between rapidly diffusing forms of capitalism and Christianity in the Global South. Using more…
than two hundred interviews in Bangalore and Dubai, Brandon Vaidyanathan explains how and why global corporate professionals straddle conflicting moral orientations in the realms of work and religion. Seeking to place the spotlight on the role of religion in debates about the cultural consequences of capitalism, Vaidyanathan finds that an "apprehensive individualism" generated in global corporate workplaces is supported and sustained by a "therapeutic individualism" cultivated in evangelical-charismatic Catholicism.Mercenaries and Missionaries uncovers a symbiotic relationship between these individualisms and shows how this relationship unfolds in two global cities—Dubai, in non-democratic UAE, which holds what is considered the world's largest Catholic parish, and Bangalore, in democratic India, where the Catholic Church, though afflicted by ethnic and religious violence, runs many of the city's elite educational institutions. Vaidyanathan concludes that global corporations and religious communities create distinctive cultures, with normative models that powerfully orient people to those cultures—the Mercenary in cutthroat workplaces, and the Missionary in churches. As a result, global corporate professionals in rapidly developing cities negotiate starkly opposing moral commitments in the realms of work and religion, which in turn shapes their civic commitment to these cities.The Dark Sides of Empathy
By Fritz Breithaupt. 2019
Many consider empathy to be the basis of moral action. However, the ability to empathize with others is also a…
prerequisite for deliberate acts of humiliation and cruelty. In The Dark Sides of Empathy, Fritz Breithaupt contends that people often commit atrocities not out of a failure of empathy but rather as a direct consequence of over-identification and a desire to increase empathy. Even well-meaning compassion can have many unintended consequences, such as intensifying conflicts or exploiting others.Empathy plays a central part in a variety of highly problematic behaviors. From mere callousness to terrorism, exploitation to sadism, and emotional vampirism to stalking, empathy all too often motivates and promotes malicious acts. After tracing the development of empathy as an idea in German philosophy, Breithaupt looks at a wide-ranging series of case studies—from Stockholm syndrome to Angela Merkel's refugee policy and from novels of the romantic era to helicopter parents and murderous cheerleader moms—to uncover how narcissism, sadism, and dangerous celebrity obsessions alike find their roots in the quality that, arguably, most makes us human.The Afterlives of the Terror: Facing the Legacies of Mass Violence in Postrevolutionary France
By Ronen Steinberg. 2019
The Afterlives of the Terror explores how those who experienced the mass violence of the French Revolution struggled to come…
to terms with it. Focusing on the Reign of Terror, Ronen Steinberg challenges the presumption that its aftermath was characterized by silence and enforced collective amnesia. Instead, he shows that there were painful, complex, and sometimes surprisingly honest debates about how to deal with its legacies. As The Afterlives of the Terror shows, revolutionary leaders, victims' families, and ordinary citizens argued about accountability, retribution, redress, and commemoration. Drawing on the concept of transitional justice and the scholarship on the major traumas of the twentieth century, Steinberg explores how the French tried, but ultimately failed, to leave this difficult past behind. He argues that it was the same democratizing, radicalizing dynamic that led to the violence of the Terror, which also gave rise to an unprecedented interrogation of how society is affected by events of enormous brutality. In this sense, the modern question of what to do with difficult pasts is one of the unanticipated consequences of the eighteenth century's age of democratic revolutions.Thanks to generous funding from Michigan State University and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes, available from Cornell Open (cornellopen.org) and other Open Access repositories.The Lay Saint: Charity and Charismatic Authority in Medieval Italy, 1150–1350
By Mary Harvey Doyno. 2019
In The Lay Saint, Mary Harvey Doyno investigates the phenomenon of saintly cults that formed around pious merchants, artisans, midwives,…
domestic servants, and others in the medieval communes of northern and central Italy. Drawing on a wide array of sources—vitae documenting their saintly lives and legends, miracle books, religious art, and communal records—Doyno uses the rise of and tensions surrounding these civic cults to explore medieval notions of lay religiosity, charismatic power, civic identity, and the church's authority in this period.Although claims about laymen's and laywomen's miraculous abilities challenged the church's expanding political and spiritual dominion, both papal and civic authorities, Doyno finds, vigorously promoted their cults. She shows that this support was neither a simple reflection of the extraordinary lay religious zeal that marked late medieval urban life nor of the Church's recognition of that enthusiasm. Rather, the history of lay saints' cults powerfully illustrates the extent to which lay Christians embraced the vita apostolic—the ideal way of life as modeled by the Apostles—and of the church's efforts to restrain and manage such claims.Virgin Whore
By Emma Maggie Solberg. 2018
In Virgin Whore, Emma Maggie Solberg uncovers a surprisingly prevalent theme in late English medieval literature and culture: the celebration…
of the Virgin Mary’s sexuality. Although history is narrated as a progressive loss of innocence, the Madonna has grown purer with each passing century. Looking to a period before the idea of her purity and virginity had ossified, Solberg uncovers depictions and interpretations of Mary, discernible in jokes and insults, icons and rituals, prayers and revelations, allegories and typologies—and in late medieval vernacular biblical drama.More unmistakable than any cultural artifact from late medieval England, these biblical plays do not exclusively interpret Mary and her virginity as fragile. In a collection of plays known as the N-Town manuscript, Mary is represented not only as virgin and mother but as virgin and promiscuous adulteress, dallying with the Trinity, the archangel Gabriel, and mortals in kaleidoscopic erotic combinations. Mary’s "virginity" signifies invulnerability rather than fragility, redemption rather than renunciation, and merciful license rather than ascetic discipline. Taking the ancient slander that Mary conceived Jesus in sin as cause for joyful laughter, the N-Town plays make a virtue of those accusations: through bawdy yet divine comedy, she redeems and exalts the crime.By revealing the presence of this promiscuous Virgin in early English drama and late medieval literature and culture—in dirty jokes told by Boccaccio and Chaucer, Malory’s Arthurian romances, and the double entendres of the allegorical Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn—Solberg provides a new understanding of Marian traditions.Violence as Usual: Policing and the Colonial State in German Southwest Africa
By Marie Muschalek. 2019
Slaps in the face, kicks, beatings, and other forms of run-of-the-mill violence were a quotidian part of life in German…
Southwest Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unearthing this culture of normalized violence in a settler colony, Violence as Usual uncovers the workings of a powerful state that was built in an improvised fashion by low-level state representatives.Marie A. Muschalek's fascinating portrayal of the daily deeds of African and German men enrolled in the colonial police force called the Landespolizei is a historical anthropology of police practice and the normalization of imperial power. Replete with anecdotes of everyday experiences both of the policemen and of colonized people and settlers, Violence as Usual re-examines fundamental questions about the relationship between power and violence. Muschalek gives us a new perspective on violence beyond the solely destructive and the instrumental. She overcomes, too, the notion that modern states operate exclusively according to modes of rationalized functionality. Violence as Usual offers an unusual assessment of the history of rule in settler colonialism and an alternative to dominant narratives of an ostensibly weak colonial state.Warlord Survival: The Delusion of State Building in Afghanistan
By Romain Malejacq. 2019
How do warlords survive and even thrive in contexts that are explicitly set up to undermine them? How do they…
rise after each fall? Warlord Survival answers these questions. Drawing on hundreds of in-depth interviews in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2018, with ministers, governors, a former vice-president, warlords and their entourages, opposition leaders, diplomats, NGO workers, and local journalists and researchers, Romain Malejacq provides a full investigation of how warlords adapt and explains why weak states like Afghanistan allow it to happen.Malejacq follows the careers of four warlords in Herat, Sheberghan, and Panjshir—Ismail Khan, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ahmad Shah Massoud, and Mohammad Qasim Fahim). He shows how they have successfully negotiated complicated political environments to survive ever since the beginning of the Soviet-Afghan war. The picture he paints in Warlord Survival is one of astute political entrepreneurs with a proven ability to organize violence. Warlords exert authority through a process in which they combine, instrumentalize, and convert different forms of power to prevent the emergence of a strong, centralized state. But, as Malejacq shows, the personal relationships and networks fundamental to the authority of Ismail Khan, Dostum, Massoud, and Fahim are not necessarily contrary to bureaucratic state authority. In fact, these four warlords, and others like them, offer durable and flexible forms of power in unstable, violent countries.The Man in the Dog Park: Coming Up Close to Homelessness
By Cathy A. Small. 2020
The Man in the Dog Park offers the reader a rare window into homeless life. Spurred by a personal relationship…
with a homeless man who became her co-author, Cathy A. Small takes a compelling look at what it means and what it takes to be homeless. Interviews and encounters with dozens of homeless people lead us into a world that most have never seen. We travel as an intimate observer into the places that many homeless frequent, including a community shelter, a day labor agency, a panhandling corner, a pawn shop, and a HUD housing office.Through these personal stories, we witness the obstacles that homeless people face, and the ingenuity it takes to negotiate life without a home. The Man in the Dog Park points to the ways that our own cultural assumptions and blind spots are complicit in US homelessness and contribute to the degree of suffering that homeless people face. At the same time, Small, Kordosky and Moore show us how our own sense of connection and compassion can bring us into touch with the actions that will lessen homelessness and bring greater humanity to the experience of those who remain homeless.The raw emotion of The Man in the Dog Park will forever change your appreciation for, and understanding of, a life so many deal with outside of the limelight of contemporary society.When Violence Works: Postconflict Violence and Peace in Indonesia
By Patrick Barron. 2019
Why are some places successful in moving from war to consolidated peace while others continue to be troubled by violence?…
And why does postconflict violence take different forms and have different intensities? By developing a new theory of postconflict violence Patrick Barron's When Violence Works makes a significant contribution to our understanding. Barron picks out three postconflict regions in Indonesia in which to analyze what happens once the "official" fighting ends: North Maluku has seen peace consolidated; Maluku still witnesses large episodes of violence; and Aceh experiences continuing occurrences of violence but on a smaller scale than in Maluku. He argues that violence after war has ended (revenge killings, sexual violence, gang battles, and violent crime, in addition to overtly political conflict) is not the result of failed elite bargains or weak states, but occurs because the actors involved see it as beneficial and lowcost. His findings pertain directly to Indonesia, but the theory will have relevance far beyond as those studying countries such as Colombia, the Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria seek a framework in which to assess what happens after war ends. Barron's theory also provides practical guidance for policymakers and development practitioners. Ultimately, When Violence Works pushes forward our understanding of why postconflict violence occurs and takes the forms it does.Mass Violence and the Self: From the French Wars of Religion to the Paris Commune
By Howard G. Brown. 2019
Mass Violence and the Self explores the earliest visual and textual depictions of personal suffering caused by the French Wars…
of Religion of 1562–98, the Fronde of 1648–52, the French Revolutionary Terror of 1793–94, and the Paris Commune of 1871. The development of novel media from pamphlets and woodblock printing to colored lithographs, illustrated newspapers, and collodion photography helped to determine cultural, emotional, and psychological responses to these four episodes of mass violence.Howard G. Brown’s richly illustrated and conceptually innovative book shows how the increasingly effective communication of the suffering of others combined with interpretive bias to produce what may be understood as collective traumas. Seeing these responses as collective traumas reveals their significance in shaping new social identities that extended beyond the village or neighborhood. Moreover, acquiring a sense of shared identity, whether as Huguenots, Parisian bourgeois, French citizens, or urban proletarians, was less the cause of violent conflict than the consequence of it. Combining neuroscience, art history, and biography studies, Brown explores how collective trauma fostered a growing salience of the self as the key to personal identity. In particular, feeling empathy and compassion in response to depictions of others’ emotional suffering intensified imaginative self-reflection. Protestant martyrologies, revolutionary "autodefenses," and personal diaries are examined in the light of cultural trends such as the interiorization of piety, the culture of sensibility, and the birth of urban modernism to reveal how representations of mass violence helped to shape the psychological processes of the self.Bishops and the Politics of Patronage in Merovingian Gaul
By Gregory I. Halfond. 2019
Following the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire, local Christian leaders were confronted with the problem of how to conceptualize…
and administer their regional churches. As Gregory Halfond shows, the bishops of post-Roman Gaul oversaw a transformation in the relationship between church and state. He shows that by constituting themselves as a corporate body, the Gallic episcopate was able to wield significant political influence on local, regional, and kingdom-wide scales.Gallo-Frankish bishops were conscious of their corporate membership in an exclusive order, the rights and responsibilities of which were consistently being redefined and subsequently expressed through liturgy, dress, physical space, preaching, and association with cults of sanctity. But as Halfond demonstrates, individual bishops, motivated by the promise of royal patronage to provide various forms of service to the court, often struggled, sometimes unsuccessfully, to balance their competing loyalties. However, even the resulting conflicts between individual bishops did not, he shows, fundamentally undermine the Gallo-Frankish episcopate's corporate identity or integrity. Ultimately, Halfond provides a far more subtle and sophisticated understanding of church-state relations across the early medieval period.