Books published by Manchester University Press

Repeal and revolution. 1848 in Ireland examines the events that led up to the 1848 rising and examines the reasons for its failure. It places the rising in the context of political changes outside Ireland, especially the links between the Irish nationalists and radicals and republicans in Britain, France and north America. The book concludes that far from being foolish or pathetic, the men and women who led and supported the 1848 rising in Ireland were remarkable, both individually and collectively. This book argues that despite the failure of the July rising in Ireland, the events that let to it and followed played a crucial part in the development of modern Irish nationalism This study will engage academics, students and enthusiasts of Irish studies and modern History

This is a landmark study which examines the film and reading tastes of working-class consumers in 1930s Britain. Drawing on a wealth of original research, Robert James argues that working-class consumers used popular film and fiction to answer a range of cultural and social needs in this tumultuous decade.

Impostors and impostures featured prominently in the political, social and religious life of early modern England. Who was likely to be perceived as impostor, and why? This book offers the first full-scale analysis of an important and multifaceted phenomenon. Tobias B. Hug examines a wide range of sources, from judicial archives and other official records to chronicles, newspapers, ballads, pamphlets and autobiographical writings. This closely argued and pioneering book will be of interest to specialists, students and anyone concerned with the timeless questions of why and how individuals fashion, re-fashion and make sense of their selves.

Richard Hillman applies to tragic patterns and practices in early modern England his long-standing critical preoccupation with English-French cultural connections in the period. With primary, though not exclusive, reference on the English side to Shakespeare and Marlowe, and on the French side to a wide range of dramatic and non-dramatic material, he focuses on distinctive elements that emerge within the English tragedy of the 1590s and early 1600s. These include the self-destructive tragic hero, the apparatus of neo-Senecanism (including the Machiavellian villain) and the confrontation between the warrior-hero and the femme fatale. The broad objective is less to 'discover' influences - although some specific points of contact are proposed - than at once to enlarge and refine a common cultural space through juxtaposition and intertextual tracing. The conclusion emerges that the powerful, if ambivalent, fascination of the English for their closest Continental neighbours expressed itself not only in but through the theatre.

A new work that looks at the struggle against fascism in Britain between the wars, argues that the British left have been overlooked in studies of anti-fascism, and maintains that the Labour Party, the Communist Party and other left-wing currents developed sophisticated analyses of fascism on a par with those of European socialists and communists.

This book examines how regional political parties have used Europe to advance their territorial projects in a period of rapid state restructuring. It offers a new and theoretically innovative account of the dynamics of multi-level governance based on a comparative study of territorial party strategies in the UK, Germany and Italy.

Irish nationalism and European integration are enduringly powerful forces - each able to provoke momentous change in national identities, borders and governance. This book analyses the ways in which Irish political leaders have assiduously presented these two forces as complementary and, in so doing, have redefined the island of Ireland as a whole.

This book examines the experiences of the millions of service dependents created by total war, particularly those of men taken captive in both Europe and the Far East.

The English republican tradition and eighteenth-century France offers the first full account of the role played by English republican ideas in eighteenth-century French moral and political thought

This book is the first study of how the BBC, through radio, tried to represent what it meant to be British. The book combines an examination of the BBC's desire to construct a strong, unitary sense of Britishness (through empire and the monarchy) with a thorough consideration of the broadcasting in the non-English parts of the United Kingdom.

Can groups effectively link citizens to political institutions and policy processes? Are groups an antidote to emerging democratic deficits? This book will prompt senior students, researchers and seasoned scholars to think critically about the claim that groups can contribute to repairing democratic deficits.

Romania's predatory rulers, the heirs of the sinister communist dictator Ceauescu, have inflicted a humiliating defeat on the European Union. This book discusses policy failures in the areas of justice, administrative and agricultural reform and shows how Romania moved backwards politically during the years of negotiations.

This volume explores the political implications of violence and alterity (radical difference) for the practice of democracy, and reformulates the possibility of community that democracy is said to entail. Most significantly, contributors intervene in traditional democratic theory by boldly contesting the widely-held assumption that increased inclusion, tolerance and cultural recognition are democracy's sufficient conditions. Rather than simply inquiring how best to expand the 'demos', they investigate how claims to self-determination, identity and sovereignty are a problem for democracy and how, paradoxically, alterity may be its greatest strength. Drawing largely on the Left, continental tradition, contributions include an appeal to the tension between fear and love in the face of anti-Semitism in Poland, injunctions to rethink the identity-difference binary and the ideal of 'mutual recognition' that dominate liberal-democratic thought, critiques of the canonical 'we' that constitutes the democratic community, and a call for an ethics and a politics of 'dissensus' in democratic struggles against racist and sexist oppression. The authors mobilise some of the most powerful critical insights emerging across the social sciences and humanities - from anthropology, sociology, critical legal studies, Marxism, psychoanalysis and critical race theory and post-colonial studies - to reconsider the meaning and the possibility of 'democracy' in the face of its contemporary crisis. The book will be of direct interest to students and scholars interested in cutting-edge, critical reflection on the empirical phenomenon of increased violence in the West provoked by radical difference, and on theories of radical political change.

A comparative reading of Donne's poetry and prose, which eschews questions of personal or religious sincerity in order to recreate an image of John Donne as a man of many performances

Fauset sees Kavanagh as a significant but neglected writer and returns her to her proper place in the history of women's writing.

This book deals with the inherent violence of "e;race relations"e; in two important countries that remain iconic expressions of white supremacy in the twentieth century. Cultures of violence does not just reconstruct the era of violence. Instead it convincingly contrasts the "e;lynch culture"e; of the American South to the "e;bureaucratic culture of violence"e; in South Africa. By contrasting mobs of rope-wielding white Southerners to the gun-toting policemen and administrators who formally defended white supremacy in South Africa, Cultures of violence employs racial killing as an optic for examining the distinctive logic of the racial state in the two contexts. Combining the historian's eye for detail with the sociologist's search for overarching claims, the book explores the systemic connections amongst three substantive areas to explain why contrasting traditions of racial violence took such firm root in the American South and South Africa.

In the mid-1970s, a long wave of contentious radicalism swept through Italy: 'Proletarian youth', 'metropolitan Indians', 'the area of Autonomy'... For the first time in English, Phil Edwards has told the story of a unique and fascinating group of political movements, and of their disastrous engagement with the mainstream Left.

This book is the first, definitive history of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP), a unique political force in twentieth century British and Irish politics that drew its support from Protestants and Catholics and became electorally viable despite deep-seated ethnic, religious and national divisions.

A fascinating and comprehensive analysis of the official security discourse in Colombia, this book investigates discursive and material practices that write the identities of state, self and others.

Why did Tony Blair take Britain to war with Iraq? This book argues that he was following the core political beliefs and style - the Blair identity - manifest and consistent throughout his decade in power. It reconstructs Blair's wars, tracing his personal influence on British foreign policy and international politics during his tumultuous tenure.

Mothers and meaning on the early modern English stage is a study of the dramatised mother figure in English drama from the mid-sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. It explores a range of genres: moralities, histories, romantic comedies, city comedies, domestic tragedies, high tragedies, romances and melodrama and includes close readings of plays by such diverse dramatists as Udall, Bale, Phillip, Legge, Kyd, Marlowe, Peele, Shakespeare, Middleton, Dekker and Webster. The study is enriched by reference to religious, political and literary discourses of the period, from Reformation and counter-Reformation polemic to midwifery manuals and Mother's Legacies, the political rhetoric of Mary I, Elizabeth I and James VI, reported gallows confessions of mother convicts and Puritan conduct books. It thus offers scholars of literature, drama, art and history a unique opportunity to consider the literary, visual and rhetorical representation of motherhood in the context of a discussion of familiar and less familiar dramatic texts.

This book is the first full-length study of this major director's work, from his early social realist films set in the Basque Country to his later forays into the genres of the war and horror film.

This book takes four stories by Vladimir Odoevsky, the Russian-Romantic author, to illustrate 'pathways' in modern fiction, developed further by subsequent writers. Featured here are: the artistic story, the rise of science fiction, aspects of the detective story, and of confession in the novel.

As the world marvelled at a black family moving into the White House, arguments raged over whether America's race relations had truly been transformed. This book looks at the hard facts of life for minorities on both side of the Atlantic, providing an illuminating comparative picture of diversity.

This original and exciting book examines the processes of nation building in the British West Indies. It argues that nation building was a more complex and messy affair, involving women and men in a range of social and cultural activities, in a variety of migratory settings, within a unique geo-political context. Taking as a case study Barbados which, in the 1930s, was the most economically impoverished, racially divided, socially disadvantaged and politically conservative of the British West Indian colonies, Empire and nation-building tells the messy, multiple stories of how a colony progressed to a nation. It is the first book to tell all sides of the independence story and will be of interest to specialists and non-specialists interested in the history of Empire, the Caribbean, of de-colonisation and nation building.

This book provides a critical analysis of the definitions of war crimes and crimes against humanity as construed in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The first full-length study of the government of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela within wider discussions on populism and globalisation in Latin America. It provides a comprehensive and critical account of Chavez's emergence, socio-economic policies, democratic credentials, impact, foreign policy and future prospects.

Examines the underlying foundations on which the European Union's counter-terrorism and police co-operation policies have been built since the inception of the Treaty on European Union.

This is a path breaking study of the European Union's impact on UK central government. It is the first book to deal comprehensively with the EU's impact on central government across the period from the UK's first application to join in 1961 right up to the end of the Blair administration.

Why is the nation in a postcolonial world so often seen as a motherland? Stories of women is a pathbreaking study of the perenially fascinating relationship between foundational fictions of the nation and gendered images. The book focuses critically on postcolonial spaces ranging from West Africa to India.