In this revisionist history of the eighteenth-century Qing Empire from a maritime perspective, Ronald C. Po argues that it is reductive to view China over this period exclusively as a continental power with little interest in the sea. With a coastline of almost 14,500 kilometers, the Qing was not a landlocked state. Although it came to be known as an inward-looking empire, Po suggests that the Qing was integrated into the maritime world through its naval development and customs institutionalization. In contrast to our conventional percept, the Manchu court, in fact, proactively engaged with the ocean politically, militarily, and even conceptually. The Blue Frontier offers a much broader picture of the Qing as an Asian giant responding flexibly to challenges and extensive interaction on all frontiers – both land and sea – in the long eighteenth century.

This volume deals with four non-Chinese regimes: the Khitan dynasty of Liao; the Tangut state of Hsi Hsia; the Jurchen empire of Chin; and the Mongolian Yuan dynasty that eventually engulfed the whole of China. It investigates the historical background from which these regimes emerged and shows how each in its own way set up viable institutions for the control of a multi-racial, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural population. It discusses these problems not just as a long negative episode in China's history, but shows the ingenuity and adaptability of these states, and their success in achieving political and social stability. The volume presents the fullest chronological account of the period, in which political, institutional, social, and economic changes are integrated as far as possible, and sees the period against a broad background of international relations in Northern and Central Asia.

Bulgaria is slated to become a member of the European Union in 2007, yet its history is amongst the least well-known in the rest of the continent. R. J. Campton provides here a general introduction to this country at the crossroads of Christendom and Islam. The text and illustrations trace the rich and dramatic story from prehistory, through the days when Bulgaria was the centre of a powerful mediaeval empire and the five centuries of Ottoman rule, to the cultural renaissance of the nineteenth century and the political upheavals of the twentieth, upheavals which led Bulgaria into three wars. The new and updated edition covers the years from 1995 to 2004, a vital period in which Bulgaria endured financial meltdown, set itself seriously on the road to reform, elected its former king as prime minister, and finally secured membership of NATO and admission to the European Union.

This is the only general introduction in English to Aeschylus' Oresteia, one of the most important and most influential of all Greek dramas. It discusses the Greek drama festival and the social and political background of Greek tragedy, and offers a reading of this central trilogy. Simon Goldhill focuses on the play's themes of justice, sexual politics, violence, and the position of man within culture, and explores how Aeschylus constructs a myth for the city in which he lived. A final chapter considers the influence of the Oresteia on later theatre. Its clear structure and guide to further reading will make this an invaluable guide for students and teachers alike.

The Imperial Security State explores an important but under-explored dimension of British imperialism – its information system and the close links between military knowledge and the maintenance of empire. James Hevia's innovative study focuses on route books and military reports produced by the British Indian Army military intelligence between 1880 and 1940. He shows that together these formed a renewable and authoritative archive that was used to train intelligence officers, to inform civilian policy makers and to provide vital information to commanders as they approached the battlefield. The strategic, geographical, political and ethnographical knowledge that was gathered not only framed imperial strategies towards colonised areas to the east but also produced the very object of intervention: Asia itself. Finally, the book addresses the long-term impact of the security regime, revealing how elements of British colonial knowledge have continued to influence contemporary tactics of counterinsurgency in twenty-first-century Iraq and Afghanistan. - Innovative study of British military intelligence before World War One - Sheds new light on the close links between empire-building and intelligence - Reveals the long-term origins of contemporary counterinsurgency tactics "This book is a groundbreaking study of the rise of the British imperial security regime in the 19th century. James L. Hevia’s mastery of rare military archives demystifies the trope of the Great Game and provides an extraordinarily detailed analysis of how the geopolitical boundaries of Asia were produced through a proliferation of route books, maps and statistics, and other apparati of imperial intelligence networks. His scrutiny of the imperial past makes the contemporary security-obsessed American empire supremely legible." Lydia H. Liu, author of The Clash of Empires "Clearly written, well researched, and persuasively argued, Hevia's latest book will engage a range of readers. Scholars of diplomatic history will find especially valuable Hevia's insights into the growth and development of military intelligence as the other major component of the developing European security regimes in Europe and in Asia. Historians of Asia will also gain much from his research, linking as it does south, central, and eastern Asia into the British imperial network of intelligence gathering and control." Michael H. Fisher, H-Diplo "… an elegant, thoughtful and often provocative analysis of how security imperatives dictated the collection, analysis, and dissemination of military information … The Imperial Security State makes a persuasive and passionate argument for the centrality of military intelligence in not only developing strategies to intervene in Asia but more significantly in defining what Asia actually meant then and now. It is a very compelling account, lucidly presented, solidly researched and theoretically sophisticated." Douglas M. Peers, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History "Recommended." Choice

How can we get inside popular collective struggles and explain how they work? Contentious Performances presents a distinctive approach to analyzing such struggles, drawing especially on incomparably rich evidence from Great Britain between 1758 and 1834. The book accomplishes three main things. First, it presents a logic and method for describing contentious events, occasions on which people publicly make consequential claims on each other. Second, it shows how that logic yields superior explanations of the dynamics in such events, both individually and in the aggregate. Third, it illustrates its methods and arguments by means of detailed analyses of contentious events in Great Britain from 1758 to 1834.

The notion that our society, its education system and its intellectual life, is characterised by a split between two cultures - the arts or humanities on one hand and the sciences on the other - has a long history. But it was C. P. Snow's Rede lecture of 1959 that brought it to prominence and began a public debate that is still raging in the media today. This fiftieth anniversary printing of The Two Cultures and its successor piece, A Second Look (in which Snow responded to the controversy four years later) features an introduction by Stefan Collini, charting the history and context of the debate, its implications and its afterlife. The importance of science and technology in policy run largely by non-scientists, the future for education and research, and the problem of fragmentation threatening hopes for a common culture are just some of the subjects discussed.

This lively introduction to measure-theoretic probability theory covers laws of large numbers, central limit theorems, random walks, martingales, Markov chains, ergodic theorems, and Brownian motion. Concentrating on results that are the most useful for applications, this comprehensive treatment is a rigorous graduate text and reference. Operating under the philosophy that the best way to learn probability is to see it in action, the book contains extended examples that apply the theory to concrete applications. This fifth edition contains a new chapter on multidimensional Brownian motion and its relationship to partial differential equations (PDEs), an advanced topic that is finding new applications. Setting the foundation for this expansion, Chapter 7 now features a proof of Itô's formula. Key exercises that previously were simply proofs left to the reader have been directly inserted into the text as lemmas. The new edition re-instates discussion about the central limit theorem for martingales and stationary sequences.

This new volume of philosophical papers by Bernard Williams is divided into three sections: the first Action, Freedom, Responsibility, the second Philosophy, Evolution and the Human Sciences; in which appears the essay which gives the collection its title; and the third Ethics, which contains essays closely related to his 1983 book Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Like the two earlier volumes of Williams's papers published by Cambridge University Press, Problems of the Self and Moral Luck, this volume will be welcomed by all readers with a serious interest in philosophy. It is published alongside a volume of essays on Williams's work, World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams, edited by J. E. J. Altham and Ross Harrison, which provides a reappraisal of his work by other distinguished thinkers in the field.

An accessible introduction to string theory, this book provides a detailed and self-contained demonstration of the main concepts involved. The first part deals with basic ideas, reviewing special relativity and electromagnetism while introducing the concept of extra dimensions. D-branes and the classical dynamics of relativistic strings are discussed next, and the quantization of open and closed bosonic strings in the light-cone gauge, along with a brief introduction to superstrings. The second part begins with a detailed study of D-branes followed by string thermodynamics. It discusses possible physical applications, and covers T-duality of open and closed strings, electromagnetic fields on D-branes, Born/Infeld electrodynamics, covariant string quantization and string interactions. Primarily aimed as a textbook for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate courses, it will also be ideal for a wide range of scientists and mathematicians who are curious about string theory.

Fu Ssu-nien, a scholar, activist, and social critic, was one of the most influential intellectual figures in twentieth-century China. This biography offers the first in-depth examination of his role in intellectual and educational development in modern China. Wang Fan-sen follows Fu's early career as a student activist, his efforts to establish a "modern" historical discipline in China, and his legacy as a founder of modern academe in China. This book, incorporating unpublished material from Fu's personal archives, fills a major gap in the cultural and intellectual history of modern China.

This book shows how political argument in terms of rights and natural rights began in medieval Europe, and how the theory of natural rights was developed in the seventeenth century after a period of neglect in the Renaissance. Dr Tuck provides a new understanding of the importance of Jean Gerson in the formation of the theories, and of Hugo Grotius in their development; he also restores the Englishman John Selden's ideas to the prominence they once enjoyed, and shows how Thomas Hobbes's political theory can best be understood against this background. In general, the book enables us to understand more fully the characteristics of the natural rights theories available to the men of the Enlightenment, and thereby to appreciate the complexity and equivocal nature of modern right theories.

For decades, scholars and politicians have vigorously debated whether Confucianism is compatible with democracy, yet little is known about how it affects the process of democratization in East Asia. In this book, Doh Chull Shin examines the prevalence of core Confucian legacies and their impacts on civic and political orientations in six Confucian countries: China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Analyses of the Asian Barometer and World Values surveys reveal that popular attachment to Confucian legacies has mixed results on democratic demand. While Confucian political legacies encourage demand for a non-liberal democratic government that prioritizes the economic welfare of the community over the freedom of individual citizens, its social legacies promote interpersonal trust and tolerance, which are critical components of democratic civic life. Thus, the author argues that citizens of historically Confucian Asia have an opportunity to combine the best of Confucian ideals and democratic principles in a novel, particularly East Asian brand of democracy.

Focusing on the disciplines of economics, sociology, political science, and history, this book examines how American social science came to model itself on natural science and liberal politics. Professor Ross argues that American social science receives its distinctive stamp from the ideology of American exceptionalism, the idea that America occupies an exceptional place in history, based on her republican government and wide economic opportunity. Professor Ross shows how each of the social science disciplines, while developing their inherited intellectual traditions, responded to change in historical consciousness, political needs, professional structures, and the conceptions of science available to them. This is a comprehensive book, which looks broadly at American social science in its historical context and to demonstrate the central importance of the national ideology of American exceptionalism to the development of the social sciences and to American social thought generally.