Ward argues that the Dutch East India Company empire manifested itself through multiple networks that amalgamated spatially and over time into an imperial web whose sovereignty was effectively created and maintained but always partial and contingent. Networks of Empire proposes that early modern empires were comprised of durable networks of trade, administration, settlement, legality, and migration whose regional circuits and territorially and institutionally based nodes of regulatory power operated not only on land and sea but discursively as well. Rights of sovereignty were granted to the Company by the States General in the United Provinces. Company directors in Europe administered the exercise of sovereignty by Company servants in its chartered domain. The empire developed in dynamic response to challenges waged by individuals and other sovereign entities operating within the Indian Ocean grid. By closely examining the Dutch East India Company's network of forced migration this book explains how empires are constituted through the creation, management, contestation, devolution and reconstruction of these multiple and intersecting fields of partial sovereignty.

In this magisterial history, Richard B. Sher breaks new ground for our understanding of the Enlightenment and the forgotten role of publishing during that period. "The Enlightenment and the Book" seeks to remedy the common misperception that such classics as "The Wealth of Nations" and "The Life of Samuel Johnson" were made by their authors alone. To the contrary, Sher shows how the process of bookmaking during the late eighteenth century involved complex partnerships between authors and their publishers. Similarly, Sher demonstrates that publishers were involved in the project of bookmaking for a variety of reasons, ranging from accumulating profits to advancing human knowledge.

The Business of Empire assesses the domestic impact of British imperial expansion by analysing what happened in Britain following the East India Company's acquisition of a vast territorial empire in South Asia. Drawing on a mass of hitherto unused material contained in the company's administrative and financial records, the book offers a reconstruction of the inner workings of the company as it made the remarkable transition from business to empire during the late-eighteenth century. H. V. Bowen profiles the company's stockholders and directors and examines how those in London adapted their methods, working practices, and policies to changing circumstances in India. He also explores the company's multifarious interactions with the domestic economy and society, and sheds important new light on its substantial contributions to the development of Britain's imperial state, public finances, military strength, trade and industry. This book will appeal to all those interested in imperial, economic and business history.

After many years of research, award-winning historian Hugh Thomas portrays, in a balanced account, the complete history of the slave trade. Beginning with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, he describes and analyzes the rise of one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures in all of history. Between 1492 and 1870, approximately eleven million black slaves were carried from Africa to the Americas to work on plantations, in mines, or as servants in houses. The Slave Trade is alive with villains and heroes and illuminated by eyewitness accounts. Hugh Thomas's achievement is not only to present a compelling history of the time but to answer as well such controversial questions as who the traders were, the extent of the profits, and why so many African rulers and peoples willingly collaborated. Thomas also movingly describes such accounts as are available from the slaves themselves.

Relive all the thrills and adventure of Alan Moorehead's classic bestseller The White Nile -- the daring exploration of the Nile River in the second half of the nineteenth century, which was at that time the most mysterious and impenetrable region on earth. Capturing in breathtaking prose the larger-than-life personalities of such notable figures as Stanley, Livingstone, Burton and many others, The White Nile remains a seminal work in tales of discovery and escapade, filled with incredible historical detail and compelling stories of heroism and drama.

Book Description
This journal takes the reader from the coasts and interiors of South America to the South Sea Islands. It displays Darwin's speculative mind at work, posing searching questions about the complex relations between the Earth's structure, animal forms, anthropology and the origins of life itself.
Charles Darwin's travels around the world as an independent naturalist on HMS Beagle between 1831 and 1836 impressed upon him a sense of the natural world's beauty, sublimity and otherness which language could barely capture. This journal takes the reader from the coasts and interiors of South America to the South Sea Islands. It displays Darwin's speculative mind at work, posing searching questions about the complex relations between the Earth's structure, animal forms, anthropology and the origins of life itself.
Book Dimension :
length: (cm)19.8 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)12.6

Captain Cook made three voyages to the Pacific, discovered the east coast of Australia, stove a hole in his boat within the Great Barrier Reef, tried to find the Northwest Passage, had countless encounters with natives—and died during one of them—and was one of the greatest explorers the world has ever known. His Journals are a sober but fascinating account of how it felt to redefine the boundaries of the known world.

In 1628 the Dutch East India Company loaded the Batavia, the flagship of its fleet, with a king’s ransom in gold, silver, and gems for her maiden voyage to Java; the ship itself was a tangible symbol of the world’s richest and most powerful monopoly.
The company also sent along a new employee to guard its treasure. He was Jeronimus Corneliszoon, a disgraced and bankrupt man with great charisma and dangerously heretical ideas. With the help of a few disgruntled sailors, he hatched a plot to seize the ship and her riches. The mutiny might have succeeded, but in the dark morning hours of June 3, 1629, the Batavia smashed through a coral reef and ran aground on a small chain of islands near Australia. The captain and skipper escaped the wreck, and in a tiny lifeboat they set sail for Java—some 1,500 miles north—to summon help. More than 250 frightened survivors waded ashore, thankful to be alive. Unfortunately, Jeronimus and the mutineers had survived too, and the nightmare was only beginning.

In 1868, Jack Renton, a teenage Scots sailor, was shanghaied in San Francisco. In 1876, he was rescued from captivity on the Pacific island of Malaita, home to a fearsome tribe of headhunters. After the rescue, in a sensational best-selling memoir, Renton recounted his eight-year adventure: how he jumped ship and drifted two thousand miles in an open whaleboat to the Solomon Islands, came ashore at Malaita, was stripped of his clothes, possessions and his very identity, but lived to serve the island's tribal chief Kabou eventually as his most trusted adviser. For all the authenticity and riveting detail, however, it turns out that Renton's chronicle glossed over key events that made him the man that Kabou said he loved, "as my first-born son. " Mining the oral history passed down in detail from generations of Malaitans, documentary filmmaker Nigel Randell spent seven years piecing together a more complete and grislier account of Renton's experienceas a man forced to assimilate in order to survive. While The White Headhunter is the story of a man transformed by an island, it is also the story of a man who transformed the island as he prepared it for the onslaught of Western civilization.

Statistical pattern recognition relates to the use of statistical techniques for analysing data measurements in order to extract information and make justified decisions. It is a very active area of study and research, which has seen many advances in recent years. Applications such as data mining, web searching, multimedia data retrieval, face recognition, and cursive handwriting recognition, all require robust and efficient pattern recognition techniques. This third edition provides an introduction to statistical pattern theory and techniques, with material drawn from a wide range of fields, including the areas of engineering, statistics, computer science and the social sciences. The book has been updated to cover new methods and applications, and includes a wide range of techniques such as Bayesian methods, neural networks, support vector machines, feature selection and feature reduction techniques.Technical descriptions and motivations are provided, and the techniques are illustrated using real examples. Statistical Pattern Recognition, 3rd Edition:* Provides a self-contained introduction to statistical pattern recognition.* Includes new material presenting the analysis of complex networks.* Introduces readers to methods for Bayesian density estimation.* Presents descriptions of new applications in biometrics, security, finance and condition monitoring.* Provides descriptions and guidance for implementing techniques, which will be invaluable to software engineers and developers seeking to develop real applications* Describes mathematically the range of statistical pattern recognition techniques.* Presents a variety of exercises including more extensive computer projects. The in-depth technical descriptions make the book suitable for senior undergraduate and graduate students in statistics, computer science and engineering. Statistical Pattern Recognition is also an excellent reference source for technical professionals. Chapters have been arranged to facilitate implementation of the techniques by software engineers and developers in non-statistical engineering fields. www.wiley.com/go/statistical-pattern-recognition

This is the first comprehensive history of the most powerful group in the nineteenth-century United States: New York City's economic elite. This small and diverse group of Americans accumulated unprecedented economic, social, and political power, and decisively put their mark on the age. Professor Beckert explores how capital-owning New Yorkers overcame their distinct antebellum identities to forge dense social networks, create powerful social institutions, and articulate an increasingly coherent view of the world and their place within it. Actively engaging in a rapidly changing economic, social, and political environment, these merchants, industrialists, bankers, and professionals metamorphosed into a social class. In the process, these upper-class New Yorkers put their stamp on the major political conflicts of the day - ranging from the Civil War to municipal elections. Employing the methods of social history, The Monied Metropolis explores the big issues of nineteenth-century social change.

本书论述了5-15世纪的英国社会，包括它的封建主义组织，土地制度，法律制度、政治制度，阶级结构，城市制度，商品经济、货币和信用等，从制度史的角度对英国封建社会作了比较详尽的分析。本书的特点是从中国读者的角度出发，对以英国典型的西方封建社会各种制度探本追源，指出其所以如此的社会历史基础和学术背景；并且以中国历史为参照系，对英国封建社会提出自己的看法，破除西方历史独特性决定其发展独特性神话，力图说明世界历史发展的统一性。

英国是近代资本主义政治制度的开拓者，她的政治制度的发展呈现出鲜明的原创性。当欧洲宗教机构和封建割据势力肆虐之际，英国已经建立了独具特色的司法陪审制和地方管理体制。当欧洲封建专政主义普遍加强时，英国又发动资产阶级革命，摧毁封建主义根基，创立了资本主义君主立宪制；当欧洲诸国也开展资产阶级革命时，英国又在政治领域实行广泛改革，创立了资本主义责任内阁制、两党制和文官制。 英国政治制度在国外的影响相当广泛，尤其是近代以来，随着殖民主义扩张，“日不落”帝国的形成，英联邦的建立和英国政治文化的传播，英国政治制度的某些机构与相关制度被不少国家仿效和借用。甚至在社会主义国家中我们也能看到英国议会制度的影响。 《英国政治制度史》分早年岁月（盎格鲁-撒克逊时期）、封建制确立（诺曼王朝和安茹王朝）、议会与君主制（12世纪末-1485年）、过渡时代（都铎王朝）、革命与妥协（1603-1688年）、立宪君主制与寡头政体（1688-1830年）、改革时代（1830年-19世纪末）、动荡与嬗变（19世纪末-1945年）、战后政治制度等九章，对英国的政治制度进行了条陈缕析，是中国史学界该领域研究的集大成之作。 《英国政治制度史》阎照祥编著。

《英国贵族史》作为英国专门史读物，力图为历史学者和爱好者提供一点参考。书中勾勒了英国贵族的发展脉络，揭示了他们先从军事贵族到封建贵族、继而从封建贵族到资产阶级贵族、再从资产阶级贵族中衍变出工党贵族的基本轨迹，阐明了各个时代贵族涵义的广义和狭义区别。另外，还介绍和论证了贵族等级体制与国家政权的关系，指出了他们在国家政治生活中的重要地位、作用和影响。