Central Asia is at the forefront of China’s efforts to assert itself as a major world power. Since 1991, Beijing has emerged as the region’s main investor, creditor and trade partner, as well as an increasingly important security provider. But its growing influence has met opposition: in recent years, anti-China protests have erupted across Central Asia, threatening Beijing’s shaky regional hegemony.Bradley Jardine and Edward Lemon examine how Central Asians are pushing back agains...

The southernmost and poorest state of the Eurasian space, Tajikistan collapsed immediately upon the fall of the Soviet Union and plunged into a bloody five-year civil war (1992–1997) that left more than 50,000 people dead and more than half a million displaced. After the 1997 Peace Agreements, Tajikistan stood out for being the only post-Soviet country to recognize an Islamic party—the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT)—as a key actor in the civil war as well as in postwar reco...

Central Asia remains on the periphery, both spatially and in people’s imaginations. When the region does attract international attention, it is often related to security issues, including terrorism, ethnic conflict and drug trafficking.This book brings together leading specialists from a range of disciplines including geography, anthropology, sociology and political science to discuss how citizens and governments within Central Asia think about and practise security.The authors exp...

Philip Mansel's highly acclaimed history absorbingly charts the interaction between the vibrantly cosmopolitan capital of Constantinople - the city of the world's desire - and its ruling family.In 1453, Mehmed the Conqueror entered Constantinople on a white horse, beginning an Ottoman love affair with the city that lasted until 1924, when the last Caliph hurriedly left on the Orient Express. For almost five centuries Constantinople, with its enormous racial and cultural diversity, ...

A masterful account of the assassins who hunted down the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide set in the context of Ottoman and Armenian history."A dramatic work of history that reads like a thriller." —Michael Bobelian, Los Angeles TimesIn 1921, a tightly knit band of killers set out to avenge the deaths of almost one million victims of the Armenian Genocide. They were a humble bunch: an accountant, a life insurance salesman, a new...

A virtuoso performance by historian Norman Stone, who has lived and worked in the country since 1997, this concise survey of Turkeys relations with its immediate neighbours and the wider world from the 11th century to the present day. Stone deftly conducts the reader through this story, from the arrival of the Seljuks in Anatolia in the eleventh century to the modern republic applying for EU membership in the twenty-first. It is an historical account of epic proportions, featuring rapaciou...

How has Saudi Arabia managed to maintain its Arab and Islamic values while at the same time adopting Western technology and a market economy? How have its hereditary leaders, who govern with a mixture of political pragmatism and religious zeal, managed to maintain their power? This comprehensive history of Saudi Arabia from 1745 to the present provides insight into its culture and politics, its powerful oil industry, its relations with its neighbours, and the ongoing influence of the Wahha...

A thrilling history of the West’s scramble for the riches of ancient Egypt by the foremost Egyptologist of our time.From the decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon a hundred years later, the uncovering of Egypt’s ancient past took place in an atmosphere of grand adventure and international rivalry.In A World Beneath the Sands, acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson chronicles ...

The definitive history of the Ottoman Empire“Lucid, judicious and enjoyable.” (Times Literary Supplement)The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and most influential empires in world history. Its reach extended to three continents and it survived for more than six centuries, but its history is too often colored by the memory of its bloody final throes on the battlefields of World War I.In this magisterial work—the first d...

Award-winning historian Zachary Karabell tells the epic story of the greatest engineering feat of the nineteenth century--the building of the Suez Canal-- and shows how it changed the world.The dream was a waterway that would unite the East and the West, and the ambitious, energetic French diplomat and entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps was the mastermind behind the project. Lesseps saw the project through fifteen years of financial challenges, technical obstacles, and political int...

The Ottoman Empire was one of the most important non-Western states to survive from medieval to modern times, and played a vital role in European and global history. It continues to affect the peoples of the Middle East, the Balkans and central and western Europe to the present day. This new survey examines the major trends during the latter years of the empire; it pays attention to gender issues and to hotly-debated topics such as the treatment of minorities. In this second edition, Donal...

"Arresting … Stone’s Turkey breaks the popular mould and introduces its readers to a place beyond their presumptions" —The Sunday TimesIn Turkey: A Short History the celebrated historian Norman Stone deftly conducts the reader through the fascinating and complex story of Turkey’s past, from the arrival of the Seljuks in Anatolia in the eleventh century to the modern republic applying for EU membership in the twenty-first. It is an account of epic ...