This study examines the creation of the Soviet State in Central Asia through the lens of Uzbek cinema—from the collapse of the Russian Empire to WWII.Between the founding of Soviet Uzbekistan in 1924 and the Stalinist Terror of the late 1930s, a nationalist cinema emerged. In Cinema, Nation, and Empire in Uzbekistan Cloé Drieu argues that the Uzbek films of this period provide a perfect angle for viewing the complex history of domination, nationalism, and e...

The 1916 Revolt was a key event in the history of Central Asia, and of the Russian Empire in the First World War. This volume is the first comprehensive re-assessment of its causes, course and consequences in English for over sixty years. It draws together a new generation of leading historians from North America, Japan, Europe, Russia and Central Asia, working with Russian archival sources, oral narratives, poetry and song in Kazakh and Kyrgyz. These illuminate in unprecedented detail the...

Between the founding of Soviet Uzbekistan in 1924 and the Stalinist Terror of the late 1930s, a nationalist cinema emerged in Uzbekistan giving rise to the first wave of national film production and an Uzbek cinematographic elite. In Cinema, Nation, and Empire in Uzbekistan Cloé Drieu uses Uzbek films as a lens to explore the creation of the Soviet State in Central Asia, starting from the collapse of the Russian Empire up through the eve of WWII. Drieu argues that cinema provides ...

During the two World Wars that marked the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of non-European combatants fought in the ranks of various European armies. The majority of these soldiers were Muslims from North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, or the Indian Subcontinent.How are these combatants considered in existing historiography? Over the past few decades, research on war has experienced a wide-reaching renewal, with increased emphasis on the social and cultural dimensions...

History can be a very useful tool in understanding why we and those we must deal with think and react in certain ways. But in the wrong hands it can be dangerous and used to foster a sense of grievance or a desire for revenge. Eminent historian Margaret MacMillan is fascinated by the power of history in our thinking. In The Uses and Abuses of History, she points out some of the traps that we can fall into when assessing the present in light of the past.

As the 100th anniversary of World War I approaches, historian Margaret MacMillan compares current global tensions-rising nationalism, globalization’s economic pressures, sectarian strife, and the United States’ fading role as the world’s pre-eminent superpower-to the period preceding the Great War. In illuminating the years before 1914, MacMillan shows the many parallels between then and now, telling an urgent story for our time. THE BROOKINGS ESSAY: In the spirit of its commitment to high...

As fitting for the twenty-first century as von Clausewitz’s On War was in its own time, Invisible Armies is a complete global history of guerrilla uprisings through the ages.Beginning with the first insurgencies in the ancient world—when Alexander the Great discovered that fleet nomads were harder to defeat than massive conventional armies—Max Boot, best-selling author and military advisor in Iraq and Afghanistan, masterfully guides us from the Jewish rebellion ag...

The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It brought down six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, returned de Gaulle to power, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marked by an unholy marriage of revolutionary terror and repressive torture.Nearly a half century has passed since this savagely fought war...

“A provocative history . . . helps us to understand why the Arab spring is so important and valuable.”—David Ignatius, National InterestIn the twentieth century, while fighting a common enemy in Europe, Britain and France were locked in a clandestine struggle for power in the Middle East. From the first agreement to divide the region between them to the birth of Israel, A Line in the Sand is a gripping narrative of the last gasp of imperialism, with tales of unscr...

More than 50 years after independence, Algerian Chronicles, with its prescient analysis of the dead end of terrorism, appears here in English for the first time. Published in France in 1958—the year the war caused the collapse of the Fourth French Republic—it is one of Albert Camus’ most political works: an exploration of his commitment to Algeria.

The memoirs of the greatest historian of the Middle East, Professor Bernard Lewis.After 9/11, people who had never given much thought to the politics of the Middle East found themselves wondering why there was such rage brewing in the region. Many of them turned to Bernard Lewis for an explanation. The world's pre-eminent historian of the Middle East, Lewis was among the first to identify the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism.In this exceptional memoir, ...

"A story of how empires rattle along until their sheer scale makes them nonsensical . . . [Reid's] very capable prose just begs to be read" ( The Scotsman).At the end of the First World War, Britain, and to a much lesser extent France, created the modern Middle East. The possessions of the former Ottoman Empire were carved up with scant regard for the wishes of those who lived there. Frontiers were devised and alien dyna...