Faithful Fighters

During the first four decades of the twentieth century, the British Indian Army projected an illusion of racial and religious inclusivity. The army recruited diverse soldiers, called 'Martial Races,' including British Christians, Punjabi Sikhs, Hindu Rajputs, Muslims from northwestern India and Afghanistan, and 'Gurkhas' from Nepal. They incorporated some of these soldiers' traditions into the army to keep them disciplined and loyal. This included allowing Muslims to fast during Ramzan, mandating purification ceremonies for Nepali Hindus, and enabling Sikhs to carry religious swords. Military officials hoped that bringing these practices into the army would undermine criticisms of imperial military service within communities where anti-colonial sentiment grew stronger. Instead, as Faithful Fighters shows, it created unintended dialogues between soldiers and civilians while hardening differences between and among communities. Though the illusion of soldiers' detachment from anticolonialism crumbled during World War II, Kate Imy argues that the army militarized racial and religious difference, creating lasting legacies for the violent partition and independence of India, and the endemic violence of the postcolonial world. Faithful Fightersreceived the NACBS Stansky prize and the Pacific Coast Branch Book Award of the American Historical Association.

Who Do You See In The Mirror? Do you see a young woman who is strong and confident? Or, do you see someone who feels insecure and somehow “not enough?” Do you see a courageous lady living each day fully and freely? Or, do you see someone who is weighed down with emotional baggage? Do you see a Christ-follower passionate about making a difference? Or, do you see someone who is defined by the current culture? It is time. No more filling the voids of your soul with exhausting and empty substitutes. God wants you to look into His Mirror of Truth and… Solidify your confidence in your Christ-given identity Tenaciously fight for your spiritual & emotional freedom Powerfully influence this world with your unique voice In this six-week Bible study, specifically written for young women ages 16 to 25, you have the opportunity to be emotionally and spiritually transformed during this critical time in your life. You will get to the real issues of your heart and be mentored by His truth as you • Bravely confront your past & how it has impacted you • Examine your soul to determine your life’s core values • Make realistic plans to live out your God-given dreams Each lesson encourages you to dig deep into God’s Word and take a real look at yourself by guiding you through the unique process of stopping, looking, asking, and changing. Experience for yourself the Mirror of Truth, and the truth will set you free.

This study seeks to fill a major gap in the fields of Nineteenth-Century American and British Studies by examining how nineteenth-century intellectuals shaped and re-shaped aesthetic traditions across the Atlantic Ocean. Special attention is paid to a group of salient cultural concepts, such as artist-as-hero, imagination, the picturesque, reform, simultaneity, and seriality. Although embedded in a particular aesthetic tradition, these concepts travel from one culture to another and are transformed along their transatlantic journeys. The purpose of this book is to explore the roles of these ‘traveling concepts’ within the realm of transatlantic cultures and to trace their at times surprising paths within ever-widening transnational intellectual networks.

Losing Hearts and Minds explores the loss of British power and prestige in colonial Singapore and Malaya from the First World War to the Malayan Emergency. During this period, British leaders relied on a growing number of Asian, European and Eurasian allies and servicepeople, including servants, police, soldiers, and medical professionals, to maintain their empire. At the same time, British institutions and leaders continued to use racial and gender violence to wage war. As a result, those colonial subjects closest to British power frequently experienced the limits of belonging and the broken promises of imperial inclusion, hastening the end of British rule in Southeast Asia. From the World Wars to the Cold War, European, Indigenous, Chinese, Malay, and Indian civilians resisted or collaborated with British and Commonwealth soldiers, rebellious Indian troops, invading Japanese combatants, and communists. Historian Kate Imy tells the story of how Singapore and Malaya became sites of some of the most impactful military and anti-colonial conflicts of the twentieth century, where British military leaders repeatedly tried—but largely failed—to win the "hearts and minds" of colonial subjects.

The Bohemian preacher and religious reformer Jan Hus has been celebrated as a de facto saint since being burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415. Patron Saint and Prophet analyzes Hus's commemoration from the time of his death until the middle of the following century, tracing the ways in which both his supporters and his most outspoken opponents sought to determine whether he would be remembered as a heretic or saint. Phillip Haberkern examines how specific historical conflicts and exigencies affected the evolution of Hus's memory-within the militant Hussite movement that flourished until the mid-1430s, within the Czech Utraquist church that succeeded it, and among sixteenth-century Lutherans who viewed Hus as a forerunner and even prophet of their reform. Using close readings of written sources such as sermons and church histories, visual media including manuscript illuminations and monumental art, and oral forms of discourse such as vernacular songs and liturgical prayers, this book offers a fascinating account of how changes in media technology complemented the shifting theology of the cult of saints in order to shape early modern commemorative practices. By focusing on the ways in which the invocation of Hus catalyzed religious dissent within two distinct historical contexts, Haberkern compares the role of memory in late medieval Bohemia with the emergence of history as a constitutive religious discourse in the early modern German land. In this way, he also provides a detailed analysis of the ways in which Bohemian and German religious reformers justified their dissent from the Roman Church by invoking the past.

The Magnificent Ride examines the social and religious dimensions of the Hussite revolutionary movement in 15th-century Bohemia. It argues that ’the magnificent ride’ was, in fact, the first reformation, and not merely a precursor to the reformations of the 16th century. The religious revival which had begun in Prague in the later middle ages reached its zenith in the period between Jan Hus and the Council of Basel. This book reconstructs the Hussite myth and shows how that myth evolved into the historical phenomenon of heresy. Acts of heretical practice in Bohemia, condemnation of Jan Hus, defiance of ecclesiastical authority and attempts by the official church to deal with the dissenters are fascinating chapters in the history of late medieval Europe.

An award-winning journalist’s powerful portrait of his native Baghdad, the people of Iraq, and twenty years of war. “An essential insider account of the unravelling of Iraq…Driven by his intimate knowledge and deep personal stakes, Abdul-Ahad…offers an overdue reckoning with a broken history.”—Declan Walsh, author of The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State “A vital archive of a time and place in history…Impossible to put down.”—Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise The history of reportage has often depended on outsiders—Ryszard Kapuściński witnessing the fall of the shah in Iran, Frances FitzGerald observing the aftermath of the American war in Vietnam. What would happen if a native son was so estranged from his city by war that he could, in essence, view it as an outsider? What kind of portrait of a war-wracked place and people might he present? A Stranger in Your Own City is award-winning writer Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s vivid, shattering response. This is not a book about Iraq’s history or an inventory of the many Middle Eastern wars that have consumed the nation over the past several decades. This is the tale of a people who once lived under the rule of a megalomaniacal leader who shaped the state in his own image; a people who watched a foreign army invade, topple that leader, demolish the state, and then invent a new country; who experienced the horror of having their home fragmented into a hundred different cities. When the “Shock and Awe” campaign began in March 2003, Abdul-Ahad was an architect. Within months he would become a translator, then a fixer, then a reporter for The Guardian and elsewhere, chronicling the unbuilding of his centuries-old cosmopolitan city. Beginning at that moment and spanning twenty years, Abdul-Ahad’s book decenters the West and in its place focuses on everyday people, soldiers, mercenaries, citizens blown sideways through life by the war, and the proliferation of sectarian battles that continue to this day. Here is their Iraq, seen from the inside: the human cost of violence, the shifting allegiances, the generational change. A Stranger in Your Own City is a rare work of beauty and tragedy whose power and relevance lie in its attempt to return the land to the people to whom it belongs.