5 History / Military e-Books

* The Demographics of Empire: The Colonial Order and the Creation of Knowledge
* Empire of Liberty: Power, Desire, and Freedom
* Transnational Networks: German Migrants in the British Empire, 1670-1914
* The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race, and U.S. Expansion in Central America
* Commanders and Command in the Roman Republic and Early Empire

The Demographics of Empire: The Colonial Order and the Creation of Knowledge
English | 2010 | ISBN: 0821419323, 0821419331 | 352 Pages | PDF | 1,5 MB
The Demographics of Empire is a collection of essays examining the multifaceted nature of the colonial science of demography in the last two centuries. The contributing scholars of Africa and the British and French empires focus on three questions: How have historians, demographers, and other social scientists understood colonial populations? What were the demographic realities of African societies and how did they affect colonial systems of power? Finally, how did demographic theories developed in Europe shape policies and administrative structures in the colonies? The essays approach the subject as either broad analyses of major demographic questions in Africa's history or focused case studies that demonstrate how particular historical circumstances in individual African societies contributed to differing levels of fertility, mortality, and migration. Together, the contributors to The Demographics of Empire question demographic orthodoxy, and in particular the assumption that African societies in the past exhibited a single demographic regime characterized by high fertility and high mortality.

Empire of Liberty: Power, Desire, and Freedom
English | 2010 | ISBN: 1584659300, 1584659319 | 168 Pages | PDF | 0,7 MB
In this thoughtful and timely consideration of the nature of American power and empire, Anthony Bogues argues that America's self-presentation as the bastion of liberty is an attempt to force upon the world a single universal truth, which has the objective of eradicating the radical imagination. Central to this project of American supremacy is the elaboration and construction of a language of power in which a form of self-government appears as the form of sovereignty. Grappling with issues of power, race, slavery, violence, and the nature of postcolonial criticism and critical theory, Bogues offers reconsiderations of the writings of W. E. B. DuBois and Frantz Fanon in order to break holes in this accepted structure of empire. At its heart this is a work of radical humanistic theory that seeks to glean from the postcolonial world and empire an alternative to its imperial form of freedom.

Transnational Networks: German Migrants in the British Empire, 1670-1914
English | 2012 | ISBN: 9004223495 | 187 Pages | PDF | 1 MB
Non-British migrants and their communities were an integral part of the multifaceted and multicultural nature of the British Empire. Their history, however, goes beyond a clearly delineated narrative of the Empire and includes transnational and truly global dimensions. German migrants and their transnational network creation within the structures of the British Empire, pursued over more than two centuries in a multitude of geographical settings, is the constitutive framework of the present volume. Eight contributions cover economic, cultural, scientific and political themes. The book questions traditional nation-centred narratives of the Empire as an exclusively British undertaking.

The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race, and U.S. Expansion in Central America
English | 2011 | ISBN: 0801449154, 0801478995 | 288 Pages | PDF | 1,8 MB
The link between private corporations and U.S. world power has a much longer history than most people realize. Transnational firms such as the United Fruit Company represent an earlier stage of the economic and cultural globalization now taking place throughout the world. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources in the United States, Great Britain, Costa Rica, and Guatemala, Colby combines "top-down" and "bottom-up" approaches to provide new insight into the role of transnational capital, labor migration, and racial nationalism in shaping U.S. expansion into Central America and the greater Caribbean. The Business of Empire places corporate power and local context at the heart of U.S. imperial history.
In the early twentieth century, U.S. influence in Central America came primarily in the form of private enterprise, above all United Fruit. Founded amid the U.S. leap into overseas empire, the company initially depended upon British West Indian laborers. When its black workforce resisted white American authority, the firm adopted a strategy of labor division by recruiting Hispanic migrants. This labor system drew the company into increased conflict with its host nations, as Central American nationalists denounced not only U.S. military interventions in the region but also American employment of black immigrants. By the 1930s, just as Washington renounced military intervention in Latin America, United Fruit pursued its own Good Neighbor Policy, which brought a reduction in its corporate colonial power and a ban on the hiring of black immigrants. The end of the company's system of labor division in turn pointed the way to the transformation of United Fruit as well as the broader U.S. empire.

Commanders and Command in the Roman Republic and Early Empire
English | 2015 | ISBN: 1469621266 | 432 Pages | PDF | 3,5 MB
In this work, Fred Drogula studies the development of Roman provincial command using the terms and concepts of the Romans themselves as reference points. Beginning in the earliest years of the republic, Drogula argues, provincial command was not a uniform concept fixed in positive law but rather a dynamic set of ideas shaped by traditional practice. Therefore, as the Roman state grew, concepts of authority, control over territory, and military power underwent continual transformation. This adaptability was a tremendous resource for the Romans since it enabled them to respond to new military challenges in effective ways. But it was also a source of conflict over the roles and definitions of power. The rise of popular politics in the late republic enabled men like Pompey and Caesar to use their considerable influence to manipulate the flexible traditions of military command for their own advantage. Later, Augustus used nominal provincial commands to appease the senate even as he concentrated military and governing power under his own control by claiming supreme rule. In doing so, he laid the groundwork for the early empire's rules of command.