Books in the The Human Tradition around the World series series

This engaging and humanizing text traces the development of Europe since the mid-eighteenth century through the lives of people of the time. Capturing key moments, themes, and events in the continent's turbulent modern past, the book explores how ordinary Europeans both shaped their societies and were affected by larger historical processes. By focusing on the lives of individual actors, both famous and obscure, students can gain a sense for how the well-known revolutions, wars, and social transformations of the modern era were experienced in private homes, work places, political forums, and on battlefields throughout the region.

This lively and engaging text offers a panorama of modern Chinese history through compelling biographies of the famous and obscure. Spanning five hundred years, they include a Ming dynasty medical pioneer, a Qing dynasty courtesan, a nineteenth-century Hong Kong business leader, a Manchu princess, an arsenal manager, a woman soldier, and a young maid in contemporary Beijing. Through the lives of these diverse people, readers will gain an understanding of the complex questions of modern Chinese history: What did it mean to be Chinese, and how did that change over time? How was learning encouraged and directed in imperial and post-imperial China? Was it possible to challenge entrenched gender roles? What effects did European imperialism have on Chinese lives? How did ordinary Chinese experience the warfare and political upheaval of twentieth-century China? What is the nature of the gap between urban and rural China in the post-Mao years? These richly researched biographies are written in an accessible and appealing style that will engage all readers interested in modern China.Contributions by: Daria Berg, John M. Carroll, Kenneth J. Hammond, Joshua H. Howard, Fabio Lanza, Oliver Moore, Pan Yihong, Hugh Shapiro, Kristin Stapleton, and Shuo Wang

Presents a study of Russian history since 1861, from the perspective of individuals and groups usually underrepresented in scholarly studies, giving the reader a view of Modern Russia from the 'grassroots' level. This collection is suitable for courses on Russian history and civilization, modern European history, and world history.

Emphasizes the human element in the study of Latin American history by focusing on the lives of twenty-three men, women, and children. This collection brings out the various ways in which Latin Americans have coped with the fortunes and vicissitudes of 'progress.'

Like snapshots of everyday life in the past, the compelling biographies in this book document the making of the Black Atlantic world since the sixteenth century from the point of view of those who were part of it. Centering on the diaspora caused by the forced migration of Africans to Europe and across the Atlantic to the Americas, the chapters explore the slave trade, enslavement, resistance, adaptation, cultural transformations, and the quest for citizenship rights. Drawing on a rich array of little-known documents, the contributors reconstruct the lives and times of some well-known characters along with ordinary people who rarely left written records and would otherwise have remained anonymous and unknown.

Sweeping across more than two centuries, this compelling book introduces readers to some of the major themes in Imperial Russia. In a set of engaging essays, the contributors present richly human stories of individual and group experiences, as well as of key events in Russian history. We see the effects of reforms; the consequences of an economy and society built on serfdom; as well as the development of a civil society, the "woman question," urbanization, secularization, and modernity. As this book vividly shows, individuals, groups, and events raised out of obscurity remind us of the messiness of everyday life; of people's dreams, frustrations, and transformations; as well as of their sense of self and the community around them.

This engaging book provides a gateway to larger themes in modern British history through a set of fascinating portraits of individuals that explore important events and movements from the perspective of the people involved. As a rich and humanized supplement to traditional survey texts, this book offers readers a deeper understanding of key facets of British life in the early modern and modern periods.

This collection of compact biographies puts a human face on the sweeping historical processes that shaped contemporary societies throughout the Atlantic world. Focusing on life stories that represented movement across or around the Atlantic Ocean from 1500 to 1850, The Human Tradition in the Atlantic World, 1500-1850 explores transatlantic connections by following individuals-be they slaves, traders, or adventurers-whose experience took them far beyond their local communities to new and unfamiliar places. Whatever their reasons, tremendous creativity and dynamism resulted from contact between people of different cultures, classes, races, ideas, and systems in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. By emphasizing movement and circulation in its choice of life stories, this readable and engaging volume presents a broad cross-section of people-both famous and everyday-whose lives and livelihoods took them across the Atlantic and brought disparate cultures into contact.

This collection of compact biographies puts a human face on the sweeping historical processes that shaped contemporary societies throughout the Atlantic world. Focusing on life stories that represented movement across or around the Atlantic Ocean from 1500 to 1850, The Human Tradition in the Atlantic World, 1500-1850 explores transatlantic connections by following individuals-be they slaves, traders, or adventurers-whose experience took them far beyond their local communities to new and unfamiliar places. Whatever their reasons, tremendous creativity and dynamism resulted from contact between people of different cultures, classes, races, ideas, and systems in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. By emphasizing movement and circulation in its choice of life stories, this readable and engaging volume presents a broad cross-section of people-both famous and everyday-whose lives and livelihoods took them across the Atlantic and brought disparate cultures into contact.

Through compelling biographies of a wide range of historical figures, this engaging text presents a panorama of modern Chinese history that illustrates the great social and political changes that have occurred over the past 500 years. Through the lives of both the famous and the obscure, the contributors explore such enduring themes of the flexibility of the definition of "Chinese" in an era of imperialism and revolution, the tremendous transformations in gender relations, and the wide gap between the lives of urban and rural Chinese. Richly researched, these biographies are written in an accessible and appealing style that will engage all readers interested in modern China.

The Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America is an anthology of stories of largely ordinary individuals struggling to forge a life during the unstable colonial period in Latin America. Now fully updated with new and revised essays, the book is carefully balanced among countries and ethnicities. Within an overall theme of social order and disorder in a colonial setting, the stories bring to life issues of gender; race and ethnicity; conflicts over religious orthodoxy; and crime, violence, and rebellion. Written by leading scholars, this fresh and human text will engage as well as inform students.

From the turbulent struggles for independence in the 1800s to the transformations that have accompanied modernization, this title personalizes the impact that revolution, economic upheaval, urbanization, the destruction of community life, and the disruption of both traditional family and gender roles have had on Latin Americans.

Like snapshots of everyday life in the past, the compelling biographies in this book document the making of the Black Atlantic world since the sixteenth century from the point of view of those who were part of it. Centering on the diaspora caused by the forced migration of Africans to Europe and across the Atlantic to the Americas, the chapters explore the slave trade, enslavement, resistance, adaptation, cultural transformations, and the quest for citizenship rights. Drawing on a rich array of little-known documents, the contributors reconstruct the lives and times of some well-known characters along with ordinary people who rarely left written records and would otherwise have remained anonymous and unknown.

This engaging book provides a gateway to larger themes in modern British history through a set of fascinating portraits of individuals that explore important events and movements from the perspective of the people involved. Political developments are illuminated through chapters on John Locke, Charles Townshend, popular radicalism, and Margaret Thatcher. Religion and education are considered through essays on evangelicalism, the Oxford Movement, Charles Bradlaugh, and Sir James Kay Shuttleworth. Industrial and imperial questions are explored through pieces on the Great Exhibition, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and post-colonial Nigeria. National identity and wartime experience come to life in the lives of G. K. Chesterton and of Barbara Nixon, an Airraid Warden during the Blitz. Many of the chapters examine the experiences of women, including single women in early modern England, suffragettes, and Irish nationalist Mary Butler. As a rich and humanized approach to history, this book offers readers a deeper understanding of key facets of British life in the early modern and modern periods.

This rich collection of biographies of African men and women adds a crucial human dimension to our understanding of the continent's tumultuous history since 1800. They coped with upheavals such as the Atlantic slave trade, the absorption of smaller societies by larger ones, and growing European intrusion and conquest. More recently, they were actors who participated in the changes and challenges of independence, including dictatorship, economic boom and bust, internal conflict, and, for some, migration from their homeland. Their lives demonstrate that individual women and men can and do indeed "make history."

This rich collection of biographies of African men and women adds a crucial human dimension to our understanding of the continent's tumultuous history since 1800. They coped with upheavals such as the Atlantic slave trade, the absorption of smaller societies by larger ones, and growing European intrusion and conquest. More recently, they were actors who participated in the changes and challenges of independence, including dictatorship, economic boom and bust, internal conflict, and, for some, migration from their homeland. Their lives demonstrate that individual women and men can and do indeed "make history."

The Human Tradition in Premodern China is a collection of biographical essays revealing the variety and complexity of human experience in China from the earliest historical times to the dawn of the modern age.

A collection of short biographies of ordinary Japanese men and women, most of them unknown outside their family and locality, whose lives collectively span the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Presents a human perspective of the history of France from 1789 onward through essays that highlight individuals and intriguing events that too often have been lost under labels and statistics. This book relates the individuals, events, and controversies to historiographical debates.

The Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America is an anthology of stories of largely ordinary individuals struggling to forge a life during the unstable colonial period in Latin America. Now fully updated with new and revised essays, the book is carefully balanced among countries and ethnicities. Within an overall theme of social order and disorder in a colonial setting, the stories bring to life issues of gender; race and ethnicity; conflicts over religious orthodoxy; and crime, violence, and rebellion. Written by leading scholars, this fresh and human text will engage as well as inform students.