Book Description
Since the Holocaust, it has been almost impossible to hide large-scale crimes against humanity. In our communicative world, few modern catastrophes are concealed from the public eye. And yet, Ilan Pappe unveils, one such crime has been erased from the global public memory: the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948. But why is it denied, and by whom? The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine offers an investigation of this mystery.
Customer Reviews:
Yet ANOTHER CASE of JEWISH SAVAGERY and HUMILIATION towards the"PALESTINIAN HOLOCAUST.".......2007-10-02
You will have to stop reading at times to wipe the tears coming from your eyes like Niagara Falls. Get a huge box of tissues for this gut-wrenching story of the daily brutal, humiliating and savage treatment against the women and children of Palestine. I started reading about the fate of the Palestinians with Carters book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Carter's book is a great and objective overview of the Palestinians Holocaust. Bush, Rice and Cheney will be rightfully humiliated in History books and in posterity for turning their backs and 'allowing' these atrocities to go on and on and on.... Right now as you read this review, The Palestinian Holocaust is in full terror. I'm 'not' giving up on the idea, that America will soon be "Good 'ole America again." Read this book.
What the U.S. Press Refuses to Show.......2007-09-30
A clear and concise view of the Palestinian holocaust, a view that the American media refuses to show.
Unspeakable evil finally expressed in words.......2007-09-26
The unspeakable evil that has been committed against the Palestinian people in 1948, and the unspeakable evil that is still being committed against the Palestinian people, has at last been expressed in words.
Amidst the vast zionist propaganda machine created to cover up horrendous atrocities, at last we have a book that gives us the truth. This book, with all its shocking details, is the best book I have read on the Palestine/Israel conflict, though it made very grim and painful reading. Ilan Pappe has given the world a wonderful gift in the writing of this book, one that could play a major role in bringing world peace, once all the facts that Pappe presents are known. His sources include the Israeli Archives and Ben Gurion's diaries, as well as eye witness accounts of what happened in 1948, and is continuing today.
If anyone wants to know what the conflict in the Middle East is all about, just read this book; every member of Congress, and every member of the general public should know how our billions of tax dollars that we send to Israel each year are being spent.
History you Must Know.......2007-09-15
If you have not read ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE you do not know the history of Palestine, nor can you understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As part of a new group of Israeli historians, Ilan Pappe reveals previously secret Israeli documents. The cleansing of Palestine of its Arab inhabitants began long before 1948, and continues today. Step by step the plans to cleanse the land, and the entire infrastructure with the cleansing details -- 1927 land surveys, The Red House, the Consultancy, Plan Dalet, Plan D -- is spelled out by Pappe. This is a painful read, but a necessary one to understand the Middle East.
Honest & Excellent.......2007-09-14
Very excellent book that shows part of the sufferings of Palestinians written by a very honest person
Book Description
History has long maintained that the Anglo-Saxon overtaking of the Iron Age Celts was the origin of the British people. Celtic Britain reconstructs the peopling of Britain — through a study of genetics, climatology, archaeology, language, culture, and history — and overturns that myth and others. The Anglo-Saxons, who supposedly conquered the Celts, contributed only five to ten percent of the British gene pool. The “Atlantic Celts,” long believed to have migrated to Britain from Central Europe around 300 BC during the Iron Age, can be linked genetically to the people of Basque country. And linguistic evidence suggests that, besides Celtic languages, a Germanic-type language similar to Norse was also spoken in Britain long before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons.
In this groundbreaking study, Stephen Oppenheimer explaines the surprising roots of the present-day cultural identities of the English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh.
Customer Reviews:
Great Britain as New Euskaria.......2007-09-23
An excellent book, like being back in college and taking a fun course with a witty, funny and knowledgeable professor. I appreciated the linear format with thesis backed with evidence approach. As a precaution, just like college, there were many terms and ideas that went over my head, which meant having to do some additional homework to catch up with text, but well worth the detour. To this regard, the appendix and glossary were extremely valuable. I have always been fascinated with the origins of the Basque; why would they be the only non Indo-European, Sub-Saharan or Semitic language in all of Europe and the Mediterranean and why stuck in the middle of Pyrenees? My other linguistic quandry was the lack of celtic words in the English language and the lack of consistency between English and Dutch/German/Danish. Finally the technology catches up with speculative history and paints a different picture of Western Europe. It is human nature to embelish, pander to the audience or just plain preach propaganda. But blood doesn't lie and for me all the pieces of the puzzle came together in Mr. Oppenheimer's book. I have no doubt the thesis will be seminal in the re-writing of British History.
Difficult, but intermittently rewarding.......2007-08-07
Not the place to begin, but this book may reward advanced readers who can handle a popularized but scholarly work on the implications of recent findings in DNA. Earlier readers posting here frequently disparage this book's ponderous prose and its massive array of recondite DNA analyses. After reading more accessible, and considerably shorter (no coincidence!) works on genetics and anthropology by Spencer Wells and Bryan Sykes (for both authors, their two most recent books reviewed by me on Amazon), I felt ready to tackle Oppenheimer's work, despite its difficulty. While the time invested paid off in a better knowledge of the Celtic and British origin debate and the possible influence of Germanic cultural and linguistic influences preceding not only the Anglo-Saxon invasion but the preceding Roman occupation, Oppenheimer while he may be a better scholar than Sykes remains a less entertaining writer. Sykes can popularize his findings in "Blood of the Isles" & "Seven Daughters of Eve." He also can profit from them if you note the enterprise Oxford Genetics. As I commented when reviewing Sykes' "Blood," it remains curious that two geneticists both at Oxford do not even mention the other colleague in hundreds of pages of closely documented and meticulously referenced texts.
This apparent rivalry aside, Oppenheimer acknowledges very late in his text that names given to Rostov or Ian or Helena are merely "aides memoires" for R1B-11 or the like in an alphabet soup of markers all geneticists rely upon. Readers of both Sykes & Oppenheimer sniff disdainfully at this popularization, but surely both scientists and lay people need assistance in imagining "Eve" or "Lucy" or the "Ice Man" to make more personal the findings buried in blood types or bone samples. Oppenheimer carefully explains his reasons for clarifying relationships among these difficult classifications, numbering in the thousands by now. Much explanatory material on genetics here is relegated to appendices and a glossary; while Sykes & Wells integrate more definitions and analogies into their briefer, more readable books, Oppenheimer opts for density.
This can bore a reader. My eyes glazed over in the second hundred pages full of dull genetics. The first hundred, tackling the Celtic origins debate and guardedly based on scholars such as Simon James & Barry Cunliffe, and Iron Age archaeologists such as John Collis, argues a southerly direction into the British Isles for Celtic infusion, not the La Tene Danube-Central European homeland and its overland route for entry into the Isles. Personally, I'd have liked to have Bob Quinn's book "The Atlantean Irish" (reviewed by me) credited for its prescience regarding the Atlantic Celt "fringe" movement that Cunliffe and others have since fought to replace the Continental migration theories of the 19c. This vexed matter alone, building upon the past two decades of Celtic revision, or Celto-skepticism, could fill an entire book easily.
But, I did perk up eventually. This is more a reference book on a variety of unevenly covered but admittedly provocative topics. He writes clearly in places and dully in many others, depending it seems on his diligence vs. his enthusiasm! This is an arduous trek, but you need to weather this if your curiosity's aroused about this intellectual terrain that for the first time geneticists and linguists have entered to do battle over, not to mention archeologists and historians!
Advances in DNA may soon rely on its suggestions, or they may overturn its assumptions. But, Oppenheimer bravely piles all he has amassed for the benefit of science. It may be too clunky and over-ambitious, but he has done specialized researchers, armchair genealogists, and academics like myself needing a non-technical explanation of dozens of arcane debates all a service.
Oppenheimer builds on this fact-laden if recondite foundation to posit that many of today's ancestors came to the Isles perhaps as early as around 15-7,500 years ago. The land bridge before the end of the last Ice Age became submerged allowed two major inflows of migration, from a Ukrainian-Moldavian refuge, and an Iberian refuge. The former provided a basis for North Sea movements added to later by Scandinavians, Saxons, Belgae, and other Continental peoples. The latter brought people in on the Irish, Welsh, and Scottish sides closest to the Irish Sea that opened up in the later periods of global warming. Germanic languages cannot have diverged in Old English so rapidly after the Saxon incursions, nor were (against the Welsh historian Gildas' spurious claims of Celtic "wipeout") the indigenous natives necessarily Celtic-speakers all prior to the landing of Hengist and his post-Roman mercenaries.
Percentages of genetic disruption rarely reach even the point of "decimation" of 10% in a handful of Anglian areas, according to genetic studies of inhabitants today in these long-stable regions of Britain. Simply and ineradicably, this persistent divide, genetically and perhaps linguistically, Oppenheimer proposes, persists in our DNA. This parallels the Germanic vs. Celtic division of languages in the Isles, the spine of mountains serving as an insular border between these two major routes for farming and colonization.
The hoary myth of a Celtic genocide by Teutonic overlords that inspired Arthur's last stand, it seems, proves more a "Dark Age" screed than plausible history. Granted that this early medieval era remains fraught with dangers for those reliant only on chronicles or a misleading archeological record, Oppenheimer here makes his boldest suggestion.
Probably the first to enter this fray as a geneticist, he confronts linguistic assumptions about the rapid spread and dialectal evolution in only a few centuries of Anglo-Saxon in post-Roman Britain. Germanic languages, he opines, might have become established long before Romans, let alone Saxons, entered into what was not necessarily a Celtic-dominated Brittania. Celts themselves, whatever this term means given the looseness of this pseudo-ethnic linguistic concept, did not rush en masse into the islands, and they too were perhaps the harbingers of not a massive demographic invasion but an elite influencing cultural and linguistic trends among the natives, who may date back ten thousand years before the arrival of Celtic-language speakers. Unfortunately, traces of any words that are pre-Celtic lurk rarely in the archaeological record, according to most experts. We lack a Rosetta Stone to decode whatever insular peoples spoke before Celtic languages became the norm among both the newcoming elite and the long-settled old-timers.
Therefore, Oppenheimer turns to DNA for clues. He challenges linguists who for a century have been indoctrinated to ignore searching for language origins. He argues that science can offer tentative solutions that account for a Germanic undercurrent that may not be that apparent on the surface, but which aligns with what we know about rates of linguistic change that may have begun as long ago as 3000 BCE (estimates differ) that can be calibrated with patterns of genetic migration.
His thesis? Most of the original British Isles inhabitants descend from a massive "founder population"-- maybe far more than three-fourths or more of those today living in some locales. Due to genetics and settlement patterns, most humans stick to one place for millennia. This conservatism therefore provides a solid bedrock. It cannot be eroded even by the waves of more recent, and tribally-named, intruders. While closer to us in time and in the historical record (however tenuous!), these famous warriors themselves often number in the low single-digits (5% often!) in terms of percentages of genetic "material" we British and/or Celts carry today.
All subsequent immigrations, whether Celt, Roman, Saxon, Angle, Jute, Viking, or Norman, Oppenheimer states in the closing line of his epilogue, diminish by their traces in the descendants of the majority who trace their roots to British-resident or Celtic-origin DNA today. Most of the origins of the British predate even the Celts. Oppenheimer concludes: "we are all minorities compared with the first, unnamed pioneers, who ventured into the empty, chilly lands so recently vacated by the great ice sheets." (421)
The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story.......2007-08-02
Oppenheimer has written the most comprehensive, well organized and complete description of the deep origins of the British peoples. At the present time it is easily the best of any other available title. The author is at the very edge of contemporary genetic studies. One of the book's strengths is its inclusion of many of the findings of other genetic researchers. It also contains supporting materials from other disciplines and classical writers.
I found the book to be well written, meticulously documented, illustrated with maps and other visual materials, and well organized for a work of its breath. It is written for the educated or self-educated reader and does presuppose some familiarity with basic genetics and dna structure. If a potential reader fears he/she does not have this background, I recommend purchasing a companion primer on dna or download materials from even Wikipedia. Most genealogists will have little trouble with the technical terms.
I have read critiques that this book gives no final answers. This is true but the author provides the best interpretation of British prehistory available from today's science and supporting disciplines. A good companion book to read with this book is Barry Cunliffe's Facing the Ocean: the Atlantic and Its Peoples.
Accessible, yet not dumbed down.......2007-07-28
For anyone interested in the early history of the British isles this book is a must. Oppenheimer gathered all the information concerning the genetic history of the British isles floating around on the internet, scholarly journals, academic works, etc., and having assembled it all, presents it a serious, yet very readable fashion. Like Sykes and other genetic scholars he used cutsy names to represent specific genetic lineages, but he doesn't force the reader to have to deal with a fictional account of prehistoric lives. Instead the names are easily remembered catch phrases for the aforementioned groups.
Sykes confirmed earlier arguments about ancient regional divisions between populations in the British isles, but rather than beat the Anglo vs. Celtic drum, he argues that the English, Scots, Irish and Welsh all came out of the same prehistoric mix of Iberian, Near Eastern, and Eastern European migrants. Sykes does not, however, argue against the validity of "Celtic" as an lable representing certain populations in Western Europe. Rather, we need to rethink the way in which we use the term.
Using a rational - if not 100% believable argument - based on linguistics, history, genetics and archaeology, Sykes also contends that the roots of the English language in what is now Eastern England might predate the Roman invasion. In other words the linguistic division between the Welsh and the English is not the result of the Anglo-Saxon invasion, instead owing to more long-standing prehistoric social and cultural divisions.
Great Analysis.......2007-05-14
This book is incredibly insightful on a topic that few people know about. It accurately and convincingly dispels many rumors and genealogical cover-ups and gets right down to what is factual. That, in my opinion, is what is most important about a book that presents many important concepts in a objective manner. Forget about the fact that he happens to use "pet names," and that he can drone on a little. His contemporary Bryan Sykes, who wrote a book on exactly the same topic, does the exact same thing and comes to the same basic conclusions. In any case, the meat of the books, the facts, haven't been disputed as of yet.
Book Description
According to Slywotzky, value migration is the flow of economic and shareholder value away from an increasingly outmoded business design toward others that are better equipped to create utility for customers and profit for the company. This book describes the skills that managers will need to identify value shifts in their own industries and to craft the key moves that will determine their ability to achieve and sustain value growth.
Customer Reviews:
Insightful and influential.......2004-06-29
I discovered this book during a business trip to Phoenix in 1996, and it still occupies a space on my special shelf of books that have deeply influenced me.
As the most basic level the concept of value migration is business design, and the ability of that design to evolve in a dynamic market. The simple map of where your business, which is a function of design, is summed up in three states: value inflow, stability or outflow.
At a more complex level, this book provides seven patterns that serve as markers to show how value can migrate from one business (or industry) to another. The final part of this book shows how the concepts and patterns can be applied in your own business.
The foregoing may erroneously give the impression that this book is heavy on concept and lite on practicality. It's not. The material is meticulously presented, reinforced by recognizable examples drawn from industries, and prescriptive measures are laid out with realism and pragmatism. The concepts are what have influenced me. After reading this book I've looked at certain industry trends differently, and after eight years my observations bear out the premise of this book. This is highly actionable information that is invaluable to any company that wants to prevent the outflow of value, while capitalizing on stability and finding ways to create inflow. A more recent book that meshes nicely with this one is "The Ultimate Competitive Advantage: Secrets of Continually Developing a More Profitable Business Model" ISBN 1576751678. In fact, that book extends this book in many ways, especially with respect to business design, and further proves the concepts Slywotzky set forth in this book in 1996.
High level view.......2003-07-07
This book presents a very high level strategic view of business. Slywotzky emphasizes the value of a good business design vs reliance on technology for growth.For example, there is the simplified view of why IBM became a slogging giant in the early 90s. Lou Gerstner would certainly like to add to it
However there is good set of tools to understand your business better. I find his radar screen tool particularly useful to visualize business competitors and analyze the direction of value migration.
All said, this book is worth reading..just don't expect ttoo much.
A whole new way of thinking for me.......2001-08-16
I normally do not read business books of this book's scope; however, it was recommended by my co-author for an article on which we were collaborating. Our challenge was to support the assertion that the U.S. software industry is being supplanted by India, and a shift in off-shore development resources from the U.S. consumer to Indian provider is actually moving to Indian consumer to Russian and Egyptian providers. This is obviously value migration in its truest form and is consistent with the ideas set forth by Mr. Slywotzky in this book.
Using the inflow-stability-outflow model that is one of the basic paradigms in this book, we developed a model upon which we were able to build a case supporting our assertion. More interestingly, the whole concept and numerous case studies that reinforce it throughout the book provided me with a deeper understanding of the macro and micro issues of value migration - this was eye-opening.
My favorite chapter is at the very end of the book. Titled, "Five Moves ... or Fewer," it showed how major companies captured or recaptured the biggest share of value available, and each of the examples involved five or less moves. I was personally fascinated.
Although my initial reason for reading this book was to research an article, it has changed my way of thinking on a number of levels that go well beyond a single-topic research project. The writing style is clear and engaging, and the concepts and ideas ring true. I am giving this remarkable book 5 stars and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see a bigger picture of economics or develop a keen business strategy.
Mastering an "Acquired Skill".......2001-06-05
According to Slywotsky, there are three phases of what he calls "value migration": In "inflow," the initial phase, a company starts to absorb value from other parts of its industry because its business design proves superior in satisfying customers' priorities; the second phase, "stability," is characterized by business designs that are well matched to customer priorities and by overall competitive equilibrium; in "outflow," the third phase, value starts to move away from an organization's traditional activities toward business designs that more effectively meet evolving customer priorities. Slywotsky explains that Part I of this book describes the basic rules of Value Migration" and the workings of what he refers to as "the new game of business." As when playing chess, winning at this game requires an understanding of the individual pieces (i.e. when to deploy them and how to capture them). One must master basic moves and simple techniques such as openings, traps to avoid, end-game moves, etc. It is also important to understand the the importance of controlling (as in chess) "the four central ones." In business as in chess, one must become familiar with certain "basic patterns" which will ultimately determine success or failure. These "patterns" are examined in Part II. There are seven: Multidirectional Migration (from steel to materials), Migration to a Non-Profit Industry (airlines), Blockbuster Migration (pharmaceuticals), Multicategory Migration (coffee), From Integration to Specialization (computing), From Conventional Selling to Low-Cost Distribution, ands finally, From Conventional Selling to High-End Solutions. Slywotsky shifts his attention in Part III to explaining how to play the Value Migration "game" well on a day-to-day basis. He identifies certain specific initiatives to take which help to (a) avoid value loss and (b) preempt the next cycle of value growth. "The final chapter of the book focuses on the increasingly high-stakes nature of the decisions that determine future value growth."
There are more than a dozen charts which effectively illustrate Slywotsky's key points. For example, Figure 15-1 presents "The Grand Masters of Value Growth" and identifies them, their key moves, and the value each created (in terms of billions of dollars) from 1980 until 1994. All of these visionary leaders (Welch, Walton, Vagelos, Gates, Petersen, Grove, Malone, Platt, Noorda, Iverson, and Kelleher) focused on making the right moves and thereby created enormous value for their respective companies. "Business chess is a game that is as demanding as [football and basketball], but in very different ways. It is not physical stamina, but stamina of thought. It is not transactional concentration, but constant shuttling between a focus on the current move and imagining the next several moves out. It is an unrelenting exercise of matching patterns on the current game board to the countless patterns in your mind." Slywotsky concludes the final chapter with a suggestion that this question be asked: What five moves will capture most of the given industry's value growth? "Give yourself a couple of months to analyze and assimilate the grand masters' key moves. Then come back and determine the five (or fewer) critical moves for your company." In this exceptionally thought-provoking book, Slywotsky indicates why he would be an indispensable guide throughout that difficult but necessary process.
Incisive and Penetrating!.......2000-08-15
This book is an invaluable study on those business designs that are based on the Value Chain model. Its premise: Changing customer priorities are responsible for the displacements of old business models which in turn catalyzes the need for the creation of new business designs. This book describes the process that triggers the migration of values from a non profitable design to a more profitable one with the help of seven patterns (multidirectional migration, migration to a non-profit industry, blockbuster migation, multicategory migration, from integration to specialization, from conventional selling to low-cost distribution, and from conventional selling to high-end solutions). Useful Case studies are given to illustrate the problems. Overall, this is a very informative book although this book is not as clear and direct as the author's book 'Profit Patterns.' However, it does serve to provide a better understanding on the value chain/migration thesis a lot better than the 'Profit Patterns'.
Average customer rating:
- Art-lovers for life
- A pleasure to read and a pleasure to see.
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The Great Migration: An American Story
Manufacturer: HarperTrophy
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Me and Uncle Romie: A Story Inspired by the Life and Art of Romare Beardon
ASIN: 0064434281 |
Book Description
Around the time of WWI, large numbers of African Americans began leaving their homes in the rural South in search of employment in the industrial cities of the North. In 1940, Lawrence chronicled their journey of hope in a flowing narrative sequence of paintings."This stirring picture book brings together the sixty panels of Lawrence's epic narrative Migration series, which he created in 1940-1941. They tell of the journey of African-Americans who left their homes in the South around World War I and traveled in search of better lives in the northern industrial cities. Lawrence is a storyteller with words as well as pictures: his captions and introduction to this book are the best commentary on his work. A poem at the end by Walter Dean Myers also reveals [as do the paintings] the universal in the particulars." --BL.
Notable Children's Books of 1994 (ALA)
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1994 Carter G. Woodson Outstanding Merit Book (NCSS)
1994 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)
Customer Reviews:
Art-lovers for life.......2002-10-02
Parents hoping to introduce their children to modern American art could do worse than to buy this edition reproducing 60 paintings by Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), one of the finest African American artists in U.S. history.
First published for children in a 1993 limited edition, with a poem by Walter Dean Myers, this volume reproduces the Great Migration series that Lawrence created in 1940 and 1941 to tell the story of the African American migration north, from the plantations and cotton fields of the antebellum era.
Begun within a year after Lawrence completed a magnificent Harriet Tubman series, these tempura colored, poster paint works made Jacob Lawrence's career. It's easy to see why. Bold and unforgiving, these vibrant works grew from Lawrence's own childhood migration--from Atlantic City, New Jersey to Easton, Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia and finally, at 13, to Harlem--his exposure to African-American culture and his intensive training in the Utopia Children's House and New Deal-sponsored Harlem Art Workshop of the 1930s.
At that time, the WPA was still funding public art murals, but Lawrence was too young to gain a commission. Instead, he determined to show the African-American struggle for freedom in real-life stories that would tie the past to the present.
From 1938 to 1941, he used the New York public library for research, creating in swift succession five series of paintings telling the stories of Toussaint L'Ouverture, Tubman, Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and The Migration of the Negro.
In the last of these, Lawrence hoped to speak artistically of a mass escape from the rural, discriminatory and unjust South--a region of poverty and illiteracy--into an anxious era of hope and expectation in the North. The paintings depicted passage, with railways, train cars, suitcases, and hordes of people constantly in motion. Their visages and body language spoke in terms of expectation and fear. Lawrence wove bold colors and themes throughout the series, thereby joining the paintings into a unit.
In a documentary shown in a museum tour of Lawrence's work, the artist said he "didn't think in terms of history in that series. ...It was like I was doing a portrait of something." Portraits were "a portrait of myself, a portrait of my family, a portrait of my peers."
Lawrence's extraordinary talent was recognized when he was only 24, with the 1941 exhibition of these paintings in the downtown gallery of art dealer Edith Halpert, who had beforehand exclusively shown the work of white artists. So breathtaking were the paintings (as they remain), they instantly transported Lawrence across the U.S. racial divide of that era, making him deservedly famous. The Philips Gallery in Washington D.C. purchased the odd-numbered paintings; the Museum of Modern Art in New York took the even ones.
Treat your kids to this triumph of the human spirit, and to the fine accompanying Myers poem. These paintings make children into art-lovers, for life. Alyssa A. Lappen
A pleasure to read and a pleasure to see........2000-06-13
I checked this book out from the library over a year ago and knew from the illustration that Jacob Lawrence was a special person. I was drawn to the illustration because it is soothing. His illustration style is flat, yet there is a world of depth. It is the kind of art that I could have on my wall and never tire of. I remember more the art than the story. The art told a story. This book is as much for adults as it is for children. Since hearing that Jacob Lawrence died...I instantly felt the need to get one of his books for my home library.
Book Description
From the spread of the earliest hominids onwards, migration has been a major factor in human development. This fascinating study traces the connections among regions brought about by the movements of people, diseases, crops, technology and ideas.
Drawing on examples from a wide range of geographical regions and thematic areas, Manning presents a graceful and dramatic narrative, including:
· earliest human migrations, including the earliest hominids, their development and spread, and the controversy surrounding the rise of homo sapiens
· the first domestication of major plants and animals
· the rise and spread of major language groups such as Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo, Austronesian/Austroasiatic, Sino-Tibetan, Ural-Altaic, and Amerindian
· examination of civilizations, farmers and pastoralists from 3000 BCE to 500 CE, highlighting such groups as Greeks, Phoenicians, Xiongnu, Huns and Scythians
· trade patterns including the early Silk Road and maritime trade in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean
· use of horses and boats, with focus on migratory groups such as Germans, Vikings, Turks, Arabs, Mongols, Arawaks and Caribs, Nilotes, Polynesians and Bantu
· the increasing impact of maritime and overland migrations on areas of life such as religion and family between 1400-1700
· the effect of migration on empire and industry between 1700-1900
the resurgence of migration in the later twentieth century, including movement to cities, refugees and diasporas
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The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 19481967 (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies)
Yaacov Ro'i
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0521390842 |
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In this important new study of Soviet Jewry, Yaacov Ro'i examines their struggle for emigration from the establishment of the State of Israel to the outbreak of the Six-Day War. Using a range of personal interviews, he explores how Jewish self awareness arose both as a result of the founding of the State of Israel and as a product of the Holocaust. Local groups developed and sustained Jewish cultural interests and their Jewish identity in the face of popular anti-Semitism and Soviet policy. The author continues by analyzing the campaign conducted in the West and mobilized by the Israeli government on behalf of Soviet Jewish rights as a whole and emigration in particular. Ro'i convincingly argues that despite the efforts of Soviet Jewish groups to flourish in a steadfastly anti-Semitic system, by 1967 most had accepted that the only way of implementing their Zionist aspirations was to emigrate to Israel. However, without the extensive groundwork carried out in the period 1948-1967, it is doubtful if the mass emigration of the 1970s would have been possible.
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In this important new study of Soviet Jewry, Yaacov Ro'i examines their struggle for emigration from the establishment of the State of Israel to the outbreak of the Six-Day War. Using a range of personal interviews, he explores how Jewish self awareness arose both as a result of the founding of the State of Israel and as a product of the Holocaust. Local groups developed and sustained Jewish cultural interests and their Jewish identity in the face of popular anti-Semitism and Soviet policy. The author continues by analyzing the campaign conducted in the West and mobilized by the Israeli government on behalf of Soviet Jewish rights as a whole and emigration in particular. Ro'i convincingly argues that despite the efforts of Soviet Jewish groups to flourish in a steadfastly anti-Semitic system, by 1967 most had accepted that the only way of implementing their Zionist aspirations was to emigrate to Israel. However, without the extensive groundwork carried out in the period 1948-1967, it is doubtful if the mass emigration of the 1970s would have been possible.
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- Comparison With Guns, Germs, and Steel
- Interesting Theory
- A landmark (but dated) study on the ecological dimension of European expansion
- Book Review: "Ecological Imperialism"
- Triumph of the pig, the rat, the dandelion, the smallpox virus... and the European humans who gave them a ride across the ocean
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Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 9001900 (Studies in Environment and History)
Alfred W. Crosby
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0521546184 |
Book Description
People of European descent form the bulk of the population in most of the temperate zones of the world--North America, Australia and New Zealand. The military successes of European imperialism are easy to explain because in many cases they were achieved by using firearms against spears. Alfred Crosby, however, explains that the Europeans' displacement and replacement of the native peoples in the temperate zones was more a matter of biology than of military conquest. Now in a new edition with a new preface, Crosby revisits his classic work and again evaluates the ecological reasons for European expansion. Alfred W. Crosby is the author of the widely popular and ground-breaking books,The Measure of Reality (Cambridge, 1996), and America's Forgotten Pandemic (Cambridge, 1990). His books have received the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, the Medical Writers Association Prize and been named by the Los Angeles Times as among the best books of the year. He taught at the University of Texas, Austin for over 20 years. First Edition Hb (1986): 0-521-32009-7 First Edition Pb (1987): 0-521-33613-9
Customer Reviews:
Comparison With Guns, Germs, and Steel.......2007-10-04
In the first sentence of the prologue, Alfred Crosby defines his thesis for this book. He says: "European emigrants and their descendants are all over the place, which requires explanation." It is an interesting statement to ponder and an even more interesting one to answer. Crosby does so in a very readable, sometimes humorous style and with convincing arguments. Originally published in 1986, this has become a classic for those studying or just interested in environmental history. He delves into the subjects of not only the migrations of people, but also their animals, domesticated plants and diseases. Does this sound at all familiar? Jared Diamond took up the same subject in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. One can't but help but compare them.
The first question to ask is Diamond's book is so popular and Crosby's not so well known? After all, Ecological Imperialism also won an award, the 1987 Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize given by Phi Beta Kappa, and justifiably so. It is solid scholarship presented in a manner accessible to anyone interested enough to pick up the book. In fact, I found it much more readable than Diamond's book, which presents so much information, it is a little hard to take it all in. Diamond expands upon several of Crosby's assertions--that not only the people from Europe successfully invaded the New World, but so did their plants, animals and germs.
A part of the history of the European invasions (or Neo-Europes as Crosby defines them) which Diamond does not cover are the attempts to settle in a new land that failed. Chapter 3 entitled The Norse and the Crusaders takes an interesting look at why the initial Norse settlements in "Vinland" did not work, and why the attempt to conquer the Holy Land for Christianity failed. In the first instance, the Norsemen came to Vinland, or what is today Newfoundland by way of Greenland, not directly from Norway. Their boats were not seaworthy enough to have made the journey directly across the Atlantic Ocean. Thus when the settlement in Greenland withered and died, so did the connection with Vinland. Crosby points out that ironically, because of the viability of the land, Vinland could have supported the colony in Greenland, but it was not possible the other way around.
These failures helped set the stage for what was to become one of the most important changes in human and ecological history. Crosby tells this story with interest and ease. Why then, has Diamond's book been so popular as opposed to Crosby's? Diamond's contains a lot more detailed information, although in my opinion this makes it more difficult to read. Diamond may have been more well known, having won the MacArthur Foundation fellowship prior to the publication of his book. But it may have been a matter of timing--the public was more interested in the topic at the time of publication, but probably there was also just some amount of sheer luck. Whatever the reason, you won't regret the time you spend with Crosby. It is a thought provoking and interesting read.
Interesting Theory.......2007-01-22
"Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion Of Europe, 900-1900"
by Alfred W. Crosby. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
The implication of this book's theory is that the Europeans succeeded in the "New" World due to the imperialistic strength of European flora and fauna. European cattle and European horses conquered the plains of both North America and Argentina, making them "neo-Europes". When Columbus introduced the pig, (either inadvertently or consciously), he knew that that the porcine animal species would "conquer" their local environment. The author's excellent writing follows this theme throughout his book, but, in my opinion, he spends too much time on New Zealand ... pages 217 to 268.
Yet, if the author's thesis is correct, the book becomes a disparaging comment on human efforts. For example, compare the Pilgrims' landing in 1620 with the landing of Hernando De Cortez (1485-1547) at Vera Cruz in 1519. The Pilgrims snuck ashore, onto that Rock in Plymouth, on a cold winter's day. There was no one to meet them, as the locals (or "indigenes" as Crosby likes to call them) had all been killed off by strange and new diseases. The diseases were probably brought over by Englishmen; otherwise where did Squanto, the Indian chief, learn his rudimentary English? (Just as my aside, if the Scots, who first settled in Ulster, Ireland and then came to North America, are known as Scots-Irish, why weren't the Pilgrims known as "Anglo-Dutch"?)
In February 1519, more than a century before the Pilgrims, Hernando De Cortez landed at the Rich Villa of the Holy Cross, Vera Cruz, with some 500-600 men, to face not thousands, but hundreds of thousands. To instill courage in his men, Cortez burnt his boats. The Spanish had to go forward and they conquered an empire. On the other hand the Pilgrims occupied a dead village. In both cases, European diseases were the deciding factor, but the achievement of either group was entirely different. Crosby's book treats them as if they were equal.
I believe that Alfred W. Crosby has hit on something that bears further investigation. In the late summer of 2004, I attended a wedding in Slovenia. As we drove through Germany, I noticed goldenrod by the sides of the corn fields. I asked and I was told that goldenrod was introduced as a flowering plant but was not doing so well in Europe. I wonder if Crosby's thesis was borne out by the lack of success of goldenrod ...and other American plants? Don't get me wrong: since I am allergic to goldenrod, I am happy it was NOT successful in German farm fields, but why?
A landmark (but dated) study on the ecological dimension of European expansion.......2006-07-16
Alfred Crosby is widely credited for popularising the ecological dimension of the history of imperial expansion. For this reason, and perhaps this reason alone, his book is worth a read.
The book, first published in 1986, revolutionised the way we think about European imperial expansion into the New World. How a few hundred disoriented Europeans armed with spears and misfiring guns managed to overwhelm entire Inca and Aztec civilisations in the early sixteenth century, for example. Crosby convincingly casts aside traditional political or military explanations by attributing the astonishing Portuguese and Spanish victories to bacteriology: how diseases such as smallpox and measles that the Europeans unwittingly carried with them wiped out thousands of New World inhabitants, severely crippling their defences.
The larger point that Crosby drives across is a profound one. Historical events - in this case, European expansion and imperialism - can be explained predominantly by ecological factors. In the clash of `biotas' between the Old and the New World, the Old World won. Convincingly. Hence the presence not just of Europeans in the Americas, but also of pigs and dandelions. According to this thesis, ecology shaped European expansion; creating `Neo-Europes' in the New World that facilitated European migration, precipitating the `Caucasian wave' from the 1820s to the 1930s. Unlike in most other histories, in Crosby's ecological history, humans form the backdrop and inexorable ecological forces take centre-stage.
Refreshing as this perspective is, the way that Crosby has rendered it is problematic in on a number of accounts. By excluding humans from the picture; or at best relegating human developments to the sidelines, Crosby emerges with a dangerously reductive picture of historical development. Deterministic ecological explanations cannot alone account for European expansion - after all, we must not forget that the first European transoceanic voyages were motivated by curiosity rather than necessity. More problematic is the book's implicit assumption that ecological influence was unidirectional. In concentrating on explicating the Old World's ecological victory over the New, Crosby neglects to examine the influence that New World ecology had on the Old.
Nonetheless, Crosby's work remains a landmark study that deserves a read. Moreover, it packs a punch as a piece of writing - its lucid narratives and provocative assertions laid out with the bold and elegant strokes of a master-artist. Yet Crosby's work is also increasingly a dated study that has been qualified over and over by new works in the field, or in the related field of environmental history. Those interested in the subject should by no means stop at Crosby's book.
Book Review: "Ecological Imperialism" .......2006-04-10
Book Review: "Ecological Imperialism"
In his book, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, Alfred W. Crosby investigates the roots of European domination over the western world. He calls the places where early Europeans settled "Neo-Europes" with special emphasis on North and South America , Australia , and New Zealand . In his prologue he ponders whether Europeans dominated their environment and other cultures because of their technology, or whether the consistent "success of European imperialism has a biological, [and] an ecological, component.". Crosby 's thesis is that Europeans were successful imperialists because wherever they went their agriculture and animals thrived; and the indigenous populations and local ecosystems collapsed under their biological advance.
Crosby begins at the beginning, discussing the one big continent, Pangaea, supposed to have existed in pre-history and the slow development of life forms other than reptilian, in particular Homo sapiens. The break up of Pangaea (this hypothetical super-continent) caused the "the decentralization of the process of evolution," that is, when the land cracked apart flora and fauna were spilt between the newly created continents. That continental split is the reason similar species are found in Europe and North America.
Eventually Crosby brings the reader up to the end of the Ice Age. Ten thousand years ago humans were exploring the islands of the Eastern Atlantic including Australia . Once on these islands humans domesticated plants, piled up mounds of garbage, spread disease, and hunted animals into extinction. Normally the despoilment of indigenous flora and fauna occurs over tens of thousands of years. In locations where humans arrived with mature hunting skills a sudden extinction of local plant and animal life occurred. These sudden prehistoric, or Pleistocene, overkills were the first concentrated impact humans had on virgin ecosystems.
The virgin ecosystem of Porto Santo Island was the destination of Portuguese settlers during the 1400s. Porto Santo Island was completely uninhabited and filled with untouched flora and fauna. One Portuguese ship captain brought a mother rabbit and her babies to the island. The rabbits loved Porto Santo and thrived in the island environment. So much so that soon the settlers were blasting away at the rabbits in an attempt to exterminate the entire local rabbit population. It seems the rabbits could not determine the difference between the crops meant for human consumption and the crops meant for bunny consumption. The rabbits won in this instance and for a time the settlers moved elsewhere, "defeated by their own ecological ignorance."
The experience of Spanish invaders in the Canaries showed them that no matter where they went, even if they could not out-fight their opponents, Europeans could dominate their enemies anyway. "In all these [new] places, the newcomers would conquer the human populations and Europeanize entire ecosystems." The Spanish learned from their experiences in the Canaries that their livestock and crops would succeed in these new environments; they also learned they could easily defeat the local natives without traditional warfare. The various "plagues" and "sleeping sicknesses," which the Spanish called peste and modorra, killed off and weakened natives who had no natural immunity to ailments common to the Spanish. In essence, sore throats and colds were the winning weapons of the conquerors; it was the flu that subjugated the Canaries.
The unfortunate natives of the Canary Islands , the Guanches, did not survive their meeting with the Spanish sailors. These previously isolated people died rapidly from dysentery, pneumonia, and venereal disease. According to Crosby "few experiences are as dangerous to a people's survival as the passage from isolation to membership in the worldwide community that included European sailors, soldiers, and settlers." When the Spanish conquered the Canaries the Guanches lost their land and therefore their livelihood. Some Guanches joined the Spanish army and went to fight in the Americas ; the Spanish sold others into slavery. The majority of Guanches however died of disease and the entire population became extinct.
Unlike the Guanches of the Canaries, the Maoris of New Zealand did survive despite great odds. When invaded by Europeans the Maoris assumed they would become extinct. European rats annihilated the Maori rat, an animal that was a food staple for the natives. The Maori fly might have help ward off the incursion of sheep that quickly destroyed the local flora, but invading European houseflies wiped out the local flies. Clover took over where ferns had been, and the Maori waited for their own extinction. The Maori population hit bottom in 1890 but then began a mysterious recovery and 280,000 people claim to be Maori by 1981.
In the 1500s Europeans arrived in the Americas with horses, technology (weapons), domesticated plants (crops), farm animals, germs, insects, diseases, weeds, and varmints. The garbage piled up by farmers encouraged varmint populations (mainly mice and rats) which spread disease and attacked human food supplies. Crosby devoted an entire chapter to the spread of weeds around the world. Weeds are not specific plants. "Weed" is a general term applied to a plant that spreads rapidly and encroaches on other plants. The study of where specific weeds appeared and when, aids in tracking population movements. The weeds brought by Europeans were actually another unintentional imperial victory. Weeds repaired damaged top soils and provided feed for livestock. " Rye and oats were once weeds." "Weeds are the Red Cross of the plant world; they deal with ecological emergencies." "Weeds thrive on radical change, not stability. That, in the abstract, is the reason for the triumph of European weeds in the Neo-Europes..." Weeds were resilient and thrived in soils laid bare by European plows, and damaged by drastically altered ecosystems.
European populations exploded in the Americas and Australia . What distinguished these Neo-Europes were the large food surpluses they generated. Neo-Europes led the world in food production "relative to the amount locally consumed." Other cultures actually produced more food per capita and per hectare, but the Neo-Europes exported more food than any other society. Especially successful exports from Neo-Europes were wheat, soybeans, pig products, and beef. Europeans consistently chose to settle in temperate climates where their animals and crops thrived. This was prudent and logical, it would have made no sense for Europeans to settle in torrid climates where their livestock would have suffered, and their favorite crops could not be grown.
The wind also aided European imperialists. When faced with strong winds the Portuguese marinheiros, true sailors, did not turn around and go home or sit sail-less in the water until the winds changed. Marinheiros would "sail around the wind." Sailors would tack close enough to the contrary wind to keep moving and then find a wind that they could use to continue their course. The Portuguese who perfected this "crabwise slide" called it the volta do mar, literally "going back to the sea." This understanding of winds allowed marinheiros to sail out on trade winds and back home on the westerlies.
Smallpox was the big killer of the Aztecs and the Incas in Peru ; the Huron and Iroquois in Mexico ; and the Amerindians of the United States . Crosby claims the victories of the Conquistadors over the Amerindians were "in large part the triumphs of the virus of smallpox." Besides smallpox Europeans brought dysentery and influenza; those epidemics killed almost the whole indigenous population of North America . In effect, the domination over ecology and culture by European invaders was more of a biological accident, than a well-executed military takeover.
Virgin soil epidemics spread through populations who had no prior contact with European diseases. These populations had no immunity to protect them. Virgin soil epidemics had many dramatic consequences. First, the epidemics effectively committed genocide, killing entire populations of native people around the world. Second, certain diseases (measles, influenza, tuberculosis) effected people fifteen to forty years of age more than others. These young adults were responsible for most of the labor involved in supplying food, procreation, raising children, and defending the society. The third and fourth effects of virgin soil epidemics were cultural optimism on the part of the conquerors, and cultural fatalism on the part of the conquered. When Europeans arrived and slew their rivals without raising a sword they believed that God must be on their side and this belief affirmed the rightness of their imperialistic actions. When the indigenous people died by the hoard from mysterious ailments they developed a fatalistic view of their own destiny and supposed the white man's Gods were the more powerful.
Ecological Imperialism is interesting, occasionally humorous, and easy to read. Crosby accomplishes his goal of writing a big book. This author presents a convincing and encompassing explanation for the incredible success of European imperialists. The book leaves the reader with more questions. How aggressively imperialistic were the original conquerors if all they had to do was show up and their opponents fell to the wayside? Crosby argues convincingly that Europeans were triumphant because the places they chose to conquer had ecosystems and indigenous populations that surrendered to the biology of the invaders.
Triumph of the pig, the rat, the dandelion, the smallpox virus... and the European humans who gave them a ride across the ocean.......2006-02-26
The most impressive and pleasant aspect of this new approach to world history is the non-anthropocentric perspective Crosby adopts. He tells the story of the expansion of a tightly connected group of European organisms, which includes humans alongside with other domesticated animals, crops, weeds, viruses and bacteria.
The book shows that humans were the leading elements in this great expansion beyond Europe and across the oceans - but they would not have managed to successfully invade, occupy and dominate vast areas of the planet such as America, Australia and New Zealand if they had not been supported by a powerful combination of fauna, flora and germs. In fact, often enough these supporting organisms even took the lead in making the "new-found" territories hospitable for Europeans. Once they had arrived to faraway lands with similar climatic conditions as Europe - but with much less people, germs, domesticated animals and plants - the horses, pigs, cows, sheep, bees, rats, weeds and endemic diseases carried by European vessels began spreading quickly in these totally unexposed areas, and thrived mainly by destroying the native organisms.
Another important point developed by Crosby is that this apparently aggressive invasion and occupation of other continents was actually the consequence of a long process started many thousands of generations before, and of which Europeans were totally unaware. They were simply the ones most prepared and willing to cross unknown oceans (in fact, for centuries they had to painfully learn all about winds and currents - for which many a vessel with all its human and non-human crew had to be sacrificed) and settle down many 1000 of kilometres away from their original home, because the "old continent" had become overpopulated, deforested and overgrazed. Their "ecological imperialism" was in the end part of their struggle to survive and reproduce (to the disadvantage of other human and non-human organisms).
Thus, Crosby urges his readers to think of this propagation of certain humans and their accompanying flora, fauna and germs in detriment of others as a natural phenomenon. In fact, he often compares the European ecological expansion with an "avalanche" or a "bursting dam", i.e., something that had to inevitably happen given the circumstances. In this scenario, it becomes clear that these organisms were vehicles for a great "biological revolution" (in the words of the author), where humans were the spearhead of the movement - but hardly the all-knowing, dominant, free agents they mostly imagine(d) themselves to be.
Book Description
Dispelling much of what he terms the 'mythology' of the Scotch-Irish, James Leyburn provides an absorbing account of their heritage. He discusses their life in Scotland, when the essentials of their character and culture were shaped; their removal to Northern Ireland and the action of their residence in that region upon their outlook on life; and their successive migrations to America, where they settled especially in the back-country of Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, and then after the Revolutionary War were in the van of pioneers to the west.
Customer Reviews:
An interesting, if prejudiced, look at the Ulster Scots.......2007-04-08
Prof. Leyburn obviously did some study on his subject, and it shows in this book. He is able to recount in fair detail the history of "the Scotch Irish", but it is plain how little he thought of them. It seems that his underlying goal is to correct the "overpraise" the Ulster Scots have received from some quarters. His descriptions of the Scots could have been penned by the most bigoted English historian. Leyburn has used such disparaging accounts of the Scots in their homeland that one would be lead to believe that Cro-Magnons could teach them some things about hygiene and manners, but due to the lack of Cro-Magnons, God gave the Scots the English to help them.
His contention that the Ulster Scots did not remain Ulster Scots but became "Americans" is not wholly true. While those states with a large number of people with Scots ancestry have always been among the first to defend this country and stand up to the rest of the world as Americans, they have also been very rooted in the history of their people and their family. I grew up in the South in an area of heavy Scots/Ulster Scots ancestry, where the current use of words from Scotland and Ulster continues by the elder generation. The people there have all been born in America, but they are quicker to point out that they are "Scotch Irish" than they are to say American. They raised their children to be the same way. The United States may be the place of birth, but the blood is Scots.
The birth and assimilation of a people.......2005-09-27
Book contents: foreword - 2pp, table of contents - 4 pp, text -344pp (including 5 maps), timeline of Scotland - 3pp, notes -16pp, bibliography - 19pp, and index - 5 pp.
Overall the book was very good, particularly for someone like myself who wasn't certain his roots were Scotch or Scotch Irish. It was well researched.
The maps of America were not particularly helpful. It was not immediately clear how they fit into the colonies as a whole, and it was sometimes difficult to picture migration patterns. There were no arrows on the maps or other indications of patterned settlement or movement to complete the text descriptions.
The timeline was helpful, but it was only of Scotland up to 1690. A timeline for the Scotch Irish from 1610 forward would have been more germane.
The book first covers Scottish culture prior to the migration of Lowland Scots to Northern Ireland. Then in 1610 King James of England opened Northern Ireland, aka Ulster, to both English and Scottish settlers at the expense of the native Irish. This act set the stage for the current strife and political separation of Northern Ireland.
Through four generations, the Scottish settlers in Northern Ireland became culturally separated from the Scotland of their origin. Then many of them immigrated to America in five great waves between 1717 and 1775, entering colonial America primarily through Pennsylvania and migrating south through the Virginia valley. Initially, these people were commonly referred to as Irish. The term "Scotch Irish" was later invoked to distinguish them from the Irish immigrating to America from the southern part of Ireland.
The lives and contributions of the Scotch Irish in America are described. Separate identity of the Scotch Irish essentially ends with the American Revolution, after which these people meld into the overall cultural fabric of the United States.
Scottish people don't refer to themselves as "Scotch".......2005-07-27
Scots, maybe, but usually just plain Scottish. Scotch is a common name for whisky. It amazes me how many people here tell me that they are "Scotch-Irish" - to me it makes them sound like an idiot.
"For They Desired a Better Country"-Hebrews 11:16.......2004-03-18
This is the first book I've read about the Scotch Irish and seems to be the accepted standard on the subject.
Professor Leyburn explains in his introduction that his book is "a social history of the Scotch-Irish. In this day of specialization, a social historian who undertakes to recount the life of people through three centuries and in three countries knowingly risks his scholarly head. Experts in Scottish, Irish, and American colonial history can only regard him as...ignorant of the finer points within their special fields. Scottish history is full of old controversies...Irish history has been so turbulent...few of its events is agreed upon." And Leyburn accomplishes this in only 330 pages. He divides his book into three parts:the Scot in 1600, the Scots in Ireland, the Scotch-Irish in America.
Being a southerner with Scotch-Irish roots in Tennessee, I was upset early on when Leyburn stated that Teddy Roosevelt's and others' claims that the Scotch-Irish were hardy, honorable folk was overblown. (Teddy's mother, Eleanor's grandmother, was a native Georgian, hardened, undoubtedly, by the Civil War's trials, Sherman's fiery footprints, amongst other things). Some of the trials of the Ulster scots in war and life and the deprivations they had to endure reminded me of the 40 day siege of Vicksburg, MS and the resiliency demonstrated by its citizens during the civil war. However, later on in the book, Leyburn's careful reasoning convinced me that he was more realistic. What stirred my thinking was Leyburn's comments in Chapter 16 when he states "political opinion and activity among the Scotch-Irish varied enormously from place to place. The whole mythology concerning this people rests upon a false assumption:that all Scotch-Irish thought alike. Why should they? They had come from different social classes back home; they entered America during six decades of remarkable fluctuation in ideas; they lived in colonies whose policies, attitudes, Indian problems, and progress toward stable institutions diverged widely." One can validate that statement easily by simply surfing the web and looking at the politics of numerous U.S. presidents with Scotch-Irish roots and see the "divergence" Leyburn speaks of.
I do believe, however, that Teddy Roosevelt's assertion that some Ulster Scots, Scotch-Irish, did play a pivotal role in early American history has many proofs. In Pennsylvania, as Leyburn recounts, in 1764, Ulster Scots pushed for equal representation within the state which was dominated by the minority quaker population concentrated around Philadelphia. That issue was one which the Scot felt most keenly following the Union of the crowns in 1707 accomplished during Queen Anne's reign; in parliament, Scots nobles were unfairly outnumbered by their English counterparts, see Paterson's History of Ayrshire.
I do believe some of these simple, biblically literate peoples, did desire a better country, and considered it their God-given task to try to make it a reality. The Baptists in Virginia, James Madison's state, were a significant force behind the freedom of religion/separation of church and state movement; ONE I FIRMLY BELIEVE MUST BE MAINTAINED! Just look at the bloody history of Christian Great Britain 300 years before the Revolutionary War; events that brought persecuted immigrants to the U.S. in the first place. The stuff seminarians don't study!
If you are an American doing geneaological research on your Scotch-Irish roots this is the resource book to get. I must add, too, if you have French Huguenot roots, they might have resided in Northern Ireland, in Ulster, before coming to America. I thought Leyburn was mistaken when he referred to Alexander Hamilton as an Ulster Scot. I know for a fact (court records) that his Hamilton ancestors were Scots from Ayrshire on the western coast of Scotland. That portion of Ayr, however, is extremely close to Northern Ireland, just a hop, skip, and a jump away! Alexander Hamilton's mother was French Huguenot, possibly her ancestors left Ulster to settle in Nevis, West Indies. Leyburn's statement is therefore correct again. Chapters 12 and 13 cover the conditions prompting immigration and the actual areas of settlement in colonial America of Scotch-Irish. Many people have been researching my Hamilton ancestors for years and can't get past 1780. Many of Leyburn's analyses are correct I believe.
A New Ireland by John Hume is on my books to read list about the 1998 Good Friday peace accord. Another book highly recommended to me is The Triumph of the Laity: Scots-Irish Piety and the Great Awakening, 1625-1760 by Marilyn J. Westerkamp. Hopefully, that book will give me a better understanding of my ancestors' background.
I gave the 5 star rating because I believe the subject matter warrants further study and is relevant for today. Truly understanding Ulster's history, (I believe), the conflicts, the circumstances and the social make-up of Northern Ireland itself, at distinct times in its history, is essential to the peace process there.
Thoroughly Documented & Well Written.......2004-01-25
Professor Leyburn left a valuable legacy in this volume. A niche of American history is covered that sadly, frequently goes overlooked. The Scotch-Irish are a substantial part of the U.S. population. Thankfully Dr. Leyburn told some of the story and it wasn't lost. He tells us in the foreword, "Histories of Scotland rarely devote more than a paragraph to the departure of thousands of Lowland Scots to Ireland in the seventeenth century." It is significant to Americans because "they came, two hundred thousand strong, to the American colonies in the eighteenth century."
They enthusiastically supported the American Revolution (as in significantly caused it to happen) and thought of themselves as "Americans" rather than Scotch-Irish.
This book covers their migrations, their lifestyles, the dominant element of the Christian religion in their society. It is informative, and to me, inspirational.
Book Description
The "one China" policy officially supported by the People's Republic of China, the United States, and other countries asserts that there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of it. The debate over whether the people of Taiwan are Chinese or independently Taiwanese is, Melissa J. Brown argues, a matter of identity: Han ethnic identity, Chinese national identity, and the relationship of both of these to the new Taiwanese identity forged in the 1990s. In a unique comparison of ethnographic and historical case studies drawn from both Taiwan and China, Brown's book shows how identity is shaped by social experience--not culture and ancestry, as is commonly claimed in political rhetoric.
Customer Reviews:
The Description of this book is Misleading........2006-06-25
"The "one China" policy officially supported by the People's Republic of China, the United States, and other countries asserts that there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of it." The Description of this book is Misleading.
United States acknowledged China's claim but do not agree with "Taiwan is a part of China". United states position is the resolution shall be peaceful.
The answers I was looking for !.......2006-05-11
If - like me - you are interested in the title's answer, Ms.Brown's is the book! Quoting some of her words: " Many events are completely unknown to us, many events are known only through extremely biased perspectives, and many events are so contradictorily reported that is difficult to reconstruct even a chronological sequence of what occurred". And - believe me! - Ms. Brown interviewed people - in Taiwan ( living there) and interviewed people - in China !!! We are talking about an Stanford University Professor. Congratulations and thanks to Amazon .
Very insightful !.......2005-09-19
I'm a Taiwanese myself. Even though the content of this book is not new to me, it still provides a fantastic read for me personally and I can imagine it'd be more fantastic for someone wishing to know more about Taiwan. Because Taiwan is so isolated in the international arena, books such as this one is highly recommended for the average person. The only aspect I did not like about this book is the first part of this book's title: "Is Taiwan Chinese?". I'd just like to inform readers that all the population in Asian countries (east, north and south east) all originated from China. So basically everyone is Chinese, so it doesn't just apply to Taiwan. It is like saying: Is Australia British? Nevertheless, a rather informative book for all.
Been Waiting For This!.......2004-02-02
At last, a book that covers an aspect of Taiwanese history and culture not often discussed until recent years: the Taiwanese people are a hybrid people. Many have some Plains Aborigine blood (traced on the maternal side). But, with cultural stigma, many Plains Aborigines and part Plains Aborigines forfeited their identity and were absorbed by "Han" identity. I've been waiting for a book in English to discuss this area and am glad Melissa Brown published this book.
Book Description
A New York Times bestseller, the groundbreaking authoritative history of the migration of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North. A definitive book on American history, The Promised Land is also essential reading for educators and policymakers at both national and local levels.
Customer Reviews:
Worthy but not about what the title says.......2007-09-12
This is a well written interesting book presenting information vital to understanding contemporary America. At the same thime this is only indirectly a book about the Great Black Migration. Rather it is about policies at the federal level, especially the collage of programs called the "war on poverty" and how they relate to American society in the 1960s and 1970s with examples from several African Americans from the Clarksdale Mississippi area who migrated to Chicago, several of them returning to Clarksdale.
One of the most valuable parts of the book--and well-written-is the description of the changes that went on in the 1940s with mechanism of agriculture that led to the migration--cotton got picked and then weeded mechanically the army of cotton field hads who had been the most important segment of the African American population was no longer needed in the South. This is one of the best and most practical explanations of this, especially as he focuses on Clarksdale Mississippi and the surrounding area. He gives a good history of the evolution of the cotton crop in the area and the evolution of Black society, providing examples in the lives of several people.
To me this is quite useful because one of my chief focuses is the history of the Blues. Clarksdale --the big town near where Muddy Waters, Ike Turner, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, Son House, Charlie Batton, and so many other Blues singers came from--is central to the history of the Delta Blues. Knowing the social and economic conditions that existed there is quite useful for music scholars who can profit from this part of the book.
Lemann is pretty good in descripting the way the plantation system broke up families and how the immigration to Chicago impacted several different Clarksdale folk who travelled up to Chicago. He charts their stories getting into Chicago in the 1940s and early 1950s fairly well.
Once he does this, there is an abrupt shift. He tries to chart the various conflicts in the Kennedy and Johnson administration about dealing with the Black urban problems, the rebellions, and poverty, which is really an aside from discussing Black migration. In this regard as he used Clarksdale as an example, he uses Chicago where all of his people from Clarksdale have migrated. I would imagine that the intimate detail that he goes into regarding the inside debates on forming the poverty programs and the infighting between Johnson and Kennedy factions of the Democratic party over it and the way the Daley machine in Chicago related to all of this is of interest to many people. It was told in such a way that even though I am not interested in it, it was interesting though not absorbing.
He presents the end result of the programs is that they never did anything but create a larger base for the Black middle and upper middle class among administrators of these programs and other public functionary jobs. In the 1960s, many of us who fought for a perspective for Black people independent of the Republicans and Democrats pointed out that this was the actual purpose of the programs, not to end poverty, but to encorporate political activists who might otherwise be drawn into the struggle for the interests of Black people into the apparatus of the government and into the feeding ground to become part of the Democratic and Republican parties and corporate America.
Lemann is good at showing the failure of these programs and the hell they produced for Black working folk like the subjects of his story, but he rarely steps back and examines the larger question of the way society as a whole functions.
If American capitalist society persistently creates a large army of poor African Americans, now supplemented by millions of equally poor or poorer workers without papers with even less rights, is this not something reqired by the system. Is this not a damper of the attempts of all working people for better working conditions, better wages, better social programs in education, health, and the environment. Is this not a feeding ground for the racist ideas that nourish acceptance of this society. Is this not a way of stopping social solidarity among working folks.
Again, I expected an overall history of the migration covering the whole of the nation in the 20th Century. This is not that book, but an extremely readable book giving very good case studies of how the Southern cotton plantation system worked, how it ended, and a history of the war on poverty in the 1960s and early 1970s. In passing, he provides some stories of African Americans women and men who lived through this history.
Recommended by a conservative talk show host.......2007-02-09
Years ago, on the recommendation of a black conservative talk show host, I read this book. While I could understand how this man could read a corroboration of his own views into this book, the conclusions I drew were considerably more compassionate. This historical analysis does not propose solutions as much as illustrate and analyze the issues of ascendancy from slavery.
Great read with valuable insights on US history.......2006-11-02
As an historic account, The Promised Land contains many interesting personal anecdotes hung on the framework of a much broader social picture that make the book an engaging and informative read. Although the book covered many different characters, which made it hard to follow at times, each one had a valuable contribution to make to Lemann's work in portraying for his readers the society and factors that influenced migration amongst the black population in the middle of the 20th century. I think Lemann could be criticized for focusing too much on the political sparring during the chapter on Washington, which digresses from the book's topic of black migration and adds little relevant information. I also think that while Lemann's relating of the personal lives of black migrants has the advantage of being engaging, it has the disadvantage of perhaps being too personal. In other words, the experiences of the individuals he elects to interview and record may not accurately relate the average experience for a migrant. I think that to carry more weight, the stories must be compared to some sort of statistical data to show that they correlate to the norm. I felt the writing was eloquent yet easily readable. I gained a much greater understanding of two areas of history of the United States of which I had little prior knowledge: the life of African-Americans in the Civil Rights era and the domestic influences of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in focusing on poverty amongst the black minority.
Terrific reading.......2006-06-28
For someone who has just visited the delta area of Mississippi and actually traversed some of the hollow grounds of the plantations all thru the Clarksdale area, this was accurate,enjoyable and fascinating reading.
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
The Power of Israel in the United States
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History
