In A History of Thailand, Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit reveal how a world of mandarin nobles and unfree labour evolved into a rural society of smallholder peasants and an urban society populated mainly by migrants from southern China. They trace how a Buddhist cosmography adapted to new ideas of time and space, and a traditional polity was transformed into a new nation-state under a strengthened monarchy. The authors cover the contests between urban nationalists, ambitious generals, communist rebels, business politicians, and social movements to control the nation-state and redefine its purpose. They describe the dramatic changes wrought by a booming economy, globalization, and the evolution of mass society. Finally, they show how Thailand's path is still being contested by those who believe in change from above and those who fight for democracy and liberal values. Drawing on new Thai-language research, this second edition brings the Thai story up to date and includes a new section on the 2006 coup and the restoration of an elected government in 2008.

As Europe enters a significant phase of re-integration of East and West, it faces an increasing problem with the rise of far-right political parties. Cas Mudde offers the first comprehensive and truly pan-European study of populist radical right parties in Europe. He focuses on the parties themselves, discussing them both as dependent and independent variables. Based upon a wealth of primary and secondary literature, this book offers critical and original insights into three major aspects of European populist radical right parties: concepts and classifications; themes and issues; and explanations for electoral failures and successes. It concludes with a discussion of the impact of radical right parties on European democracies, and vice versa, and offers suggestions for future research.

What's the word that describes the process of making supportive noises when you're listening to someone? What is syntax and how does it differ from grammar? Do you know what a morpheme is? And did you know that it's not only an atom that has a nucleus? The Babel Lexicon of Language is an entertaining and accessible introduction to the key terminology involved in the study of language. It defines over 500 terms and uses contemporary language examples, explaining complex issues in an easy-to-understand way. Written by the expert editorial team behind Babel, the popular language magazine, and assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, The Babel Lexicon of Language is an invaluable resource for students, teachers and anyone with an interest in language.

This is an engaging introduction to the study of language for undergraduate or beginning graduate students, aimed especially at those who would like to continue further linguistic study. It introduces students to analytical thinking about language, but goes beyond existing texts to show what it means to think like a scientist about language, through the exploration of data and interactive problem sets. A key feature of this text is its flexibility. With its focus on foundational areas of linguistics and scientific analysis, it can be used in a variety of course types, with instructors using it alongside other information or texts as appropriate for their own courses of study. The text can also serve as a supplementary text in other related fields (Speech and Hearing Sciences, Psychology, Education, Computer Science, Anthropology, and others) to help learners in these areas better understand how linguists think about and work with language data. No prerequisites are necessary. While each chapter often references content from the others, the three central chapters on sound, structure, and meaning, may be used in any order.

This book is not about music or politics. It is about the 'and' that binds them together. How do these fields intersect, and what theories and approaches can help us understand their interactions? How have the relationships between music and politics changed over time and across cultures, and are the familiar tools we use in dealing with them fit for purpose? This book overhauls our understanding of how these fields interact, offering a rigorous reappraisal of key concepts such as power, protest, resistance, subversion, propaganda, and ideology. It explores and evaluates a wide range of perspectives from contemporary political theory, engaging with an array of musical cultures and practices from medieval chant to rap. In addition, it discusses current ways in which the relationships between music and politics are being reconfigured and reconceptualised. Where else can you find Donald Trump, Kendrick Lamar and Beethoven under one cover?

The writing and reading of history in the early Middle Ages form the key themes of this 2004 book. The primary focus is on the remarkable manifestations of historical writing in relation to historical memory in the Frankish kingdoms of the eighth and ninth centuries. It considers the audiences for history in the Frankish kingdoms, the recording of memory in new genres including narrative histories, cartularies and Libri memoriales, and thus particular perceptions of the Frankish and Christian past. It analyses both original manuscript material and key historical texts from the Carolingian period, a remarkably creative period in the history of European culture. Presentations of the past developed in this period were crucial in forming an historical understanding of the Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian past and, in subsequent centuries, of early medieval Europe. They also played an extraordinarily influential role in the formation of political ideologies and senses of identity within Europe.

In a penetrating account of the evolution of British intelligence gathering in India, C. A. Bayly shows how networks of Indian spies were recruited by the British to secure military, political and social information about their subjects. He also examines the social and intellectual origins of these 'native informants', and considers how the colonial authorities interpreted and often misinterpreted the information they supplied. It was such misunderstandings which ultimately contributed to the failure of the British to anticipate the rebellions of 1857. The author argues, however, that even before this, complex systems of debate and communication were challenging the political and intellectual dominance of the European rulers.

This broad-ranging examination of Chinese state and court ritual from 1000 BC to AD 1750 represents the first modern account of the subject in any language. The essays, written by some of the most distinguished scholars in the field, demonstrate how and why ritual has played such a fundamental and often controversial role in the practice of Chinese politics. The book will be of interest to students of Chinese history and religion, as well as those seeking to understand the legacy of that history in the context of modern China.

The Huns have often been treated as primitive barbarians with no advanced political organisation. Their place of origin was the so-called 'backward steppe'. It has been argued that whatever political organisation they achieved they owed to the 'civilizing influence' of the Germanic peoples they encountered as they moved west. This book argues that the steppes of Inner Asia were far from 'backward' and that the image of the primitive Huns is vastly misleading. They already possessed a highly sophisticated political culture while still in Inner Asia and, far from being passive recipients of advanced culture from the West, they passed on important elements of Central Eurasian culture to early medieval Europe, which they helped create. Their expansion also marked the beginning of a millennium of virtual monopoly of world power by empires originating in the steppes of Inner Asia. The rise of the Hunnic Empire was truly a geopolitical revolution.

Social Complexity in Prehistoric Eurasia challenges current interpretations of the emergence, development, and decline of social complexity in the steppe region of China and the former Soviet Union. Through a thematic investigation of archaeological patterns ranging from monument construction and use and production and consumption of metals to the nature of mobility among societies, the essays in this volume provide the most up-to-date thinking on social and cultural change in prehistoric Eurasia. Collectively, they challenge broader theoretical trends in Anglo-American archaeology, which have traditionally favored comparative studies of sedentary agricultural societies over mobile pastoralist or agro-pastoralist communities. By highlighting the potential and limitations of comparative studies of social complexity, this volume sets the agenda for future studies of this region of the world. It emphasizes how the unique nature of early steppe societies can contribute to more comprehensive interpretations of social trajectories in world prehistory.

The horse is surely the 'aristocrat' of animals domesticated by man. This book assesses the impact of the horse on human society from 4000 BC to AD 2000, by first describing initial horse domestication on the Pontic-Caspian steppes and the early development of driving and riding technologies. Horse-chariotry and cavalry in effect changed the nature of warfare in the civilisations of the Middle East, India, and China. Beyond the battlefield, horsepower also afforded great advances in transport, agriculture, industry, and science. Rapidity of horse communications forged far-flung equestrian empires, where language, law, weights, measures, and writing systems were standardised and revolutionary technologies and ideas were disseminated across continents. Following Columbian contact, Old and New World cultures are evaluated in terms of presence or absence of the horse and Spanish conquest of the horseless America is seen as the model for subsequent European equestrian colonisation of horseless territories around the world.

Madeline C. Zilfi's 2010 book examines gender politics through slavery and social regulation in the Ottoman Empire. In a challenge to prevailing notions, her research shows that throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries female slavery was not only central to Ottoman practice, but a critical component of imperial governance and elite social reproduction. As Zilfi illustrates through her graphic accounts of the humiliations and sufferings endured by these women at the hands of their owners, Ottoman slavery was often as cruel as its Western counterpart. The book focuses on the experience of slavery in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul, also using comparative data from Egypt and North Africa to illustrate the regional diversity and local dynamics that were the hallmarks of slavery in the Middle East during the early modern era. This is an articulate and informed account that sets more general debates on women and slavery in the Ottoman context.

This book examines how national and ethnic identities are being reforged in the post-Soviet borderland states. The first chapter provides a conceptual and theoretical context for examining national identities, drawing in particular upon post-colonial theory. The rest of the book is divided into three parts. In Part I, the authors examine how national histories of the borderland states are being rewritten especially in relation to new nationalising historiographies, around myths of origin, homeland, and descent. Part II explores the ethnopolitics of group boundary construction and how such a politics has led to nationalising policies of both exclusion and inclusion. Part III examines the relationship between nation-building and language, especially with regard to how competing conceptions of national identity have informed the thinking of both political decision-takers and nationalising intellectuals, and the consequences for ethnic minorities. Such perspectives on nation-building are illustrated with substantive studies drawn from the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Belarus, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia.

The Thar Desert, which is today divided by an international boundary, has historically been a frontier region connecting Punjab, Multan, Sindh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. This book looks at the Desert as an historical region shaped through the mobility of its inhabitants - warriors, pastoralists, traders, ascetics and bards, often in overlapping capacities. It challenges the frames of Mughal-Rajput relationships generally employed to explore the histories of the Thar, arguing that Rajputana remains an inadequate category to explore polities located in this frontier region, where along with Rajputs, a range of groups, such as Charans, Bhils, Meenas, Soomras and Pathans controlled circulation, and with whom the Rajput states had to constantly negotiate. Sifting through a wide range of Rajasthani written and oral narratives, travelogues of British administrators, and vernacular as well as English records, the book explores long-term relationships between mobility, martiality, memory and identity in the desert expanses of the Thar.

This is the first ethnohistory of Siberia to appear in English, tracing the history of the native peoples from the Russian conquest onwards. James Forsyth compares the Siberian experience with that of the Indians and Eskimos in North America and the book as a whole will provide readers with a vast corpus of ethnographic information previously inaccessible to Western scholars.

Before the age of Industrial Revolution, the great Asian civilisations - whether located in the Middle East, India, South-East Asia, or the Far East - constituted areas not only of high culture but also of advanced economic development. They were the First World of human societies. This 1985 book examines one of the driving forces of that historical period: the long chain of oceanic trade which stretched from the South China Sea to the eastern Mediterranean. It also looks at the natural complement of the seaborne commerce, its counterpart in the caravan trade. Its main achievement is to show how socially determined demand derived from cultural habits and interpretations operated through the medium of market forces and relative prices. It points out the unique and limiting features of Asian commercial capitalism, and shows how the contribution of Asian merchants was valued universally, in reality if not legally and formally. Professor Chaudhuri's book, based on more than twenty years' research and reflection on pre-modern trade and civilisations, was a landmark in the analysis and interpretation of Asia's historical position and development.