The French In Macao In The Nineteenth And Early Twentieth Centuries

The French in Macao in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Literary, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives investigates the role that Macao played as a meeting place of the East and the West during this period of time and its decline as a Portuguese colony in the eyes of the Europeans. The book provides a comprehensive view of representations of Macao as portrayed by the French. These texts in French have been studied less than Chinese or Portuguese texts on Macao. Overall, the book contributes to the study of colonial history, cultural studies, and China in the late Qing dynasty.

This book discusses how Western ideas, knowledge, concepts and practices were imported, adapted and even transformed into varied contexts in East Asia. In particular, authors in this rich volume focus on the role translation played in the processes of modernization in China, Japan, and Korea in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Victims of the Book uncovers a long-neglected but once widespread subgenre: the fin-de-siècle novel of formation in France. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, social commentators insistently characterized excessive reading as an emasculating illness that afflicted French youth. Novels about and geared toward adolescent male readers were imbued with a deep worry over young Frenchmen’s masculinity, as evidenced by titles like Crise de jeunesse (Youth in Crisis, 1897), La Crise virile (Crisis of Virility, 1898), La Vie stérile (A Sterile Life, 1892), and La Mortelle Impuissance (Deadly Impotence, 1903). In this book, François Proulx examines a wide panorama of these novels, as well as polemical essays, pedagogical articles, and medical treatises on the perceived threats posed by young Frenchmen’s reading habits. Fin-de-siècle writers responded to this pathologization of reading with a profusion of novels addressed to young male readers, paradoxically proposing their own novels as potential cures. In the early twentieth century, this corpus was critically revisited by a new generation of writers. Victims of the Book shows how André Gide and Marcel Proust in particular reworked the fin-de-siècle paradox to subvert cultural norms about literature and masculinity, proposing instead a queer pact between writer and reader.

How does our colonial past echo through today's global politics? How have former empire-builders sought vindication or atonement, and formerly colonized states reversal or retribution? This groundbreaking book presents a panoramic view of attitudes to empires past and present, seen not only through the hard politics of international power structures but also through the nuances of memory, historiography and national and minority cultural identities. Bringing together leading historians, poitical scientists and international relations scholars from across the globe, Echoes of Empire emphasizes Europe's colonial legacy whilst also highlighting the importance of non-European power centres- Ottoman, Russian, Chinese, Japanese- in shaping world politics, then and now. Echoes of Empire bridges the divide between disciplines to trace the global routes travelled by objects, ideas and people and forms a radically different notion of the term 'empire' itself. This will be an essential companion to courses on international relations and imperial history as well as a fascinating read for anyone interested in Western hegemony, North-South relations, global power shifts and the longue duree.

Spanning the history of the island from pre-Columbian times to the present, this highly acclaimed survey examines Cuba's political and economic development within the context of its international relations and continuing struggle for self-determination. The dualism that emerged in Cuban ideology--between liberal constructs of patria and radical formulations of nationality--is fully investigated as a source of both national tension and competing notions of liberty, equality, and justice. Author Louis A. Pérez, Jr., integrates local and provincial developments with issues of class, race, and gender to give students a full and fascinating account of Cuba's history, focusing on its struggle for nationality.

Sample Text

From its beginnings as the humble inn, the hotel has undergone enormous changes over the centuries. Elaine Denby charts the development of the Grand Hotel and how it has kept pace with technological innovations.