The Struggle For Mastery

In this comprehensive synthesis canvassing the peoples, economies, religion, languages, and political leadership of medieval Britain, Carpenter weaves together the histories of England, Scotland, and Wales.

Around 1900, the southern states embarked on a series of political campaigns aimed at disfranchising large numbers of voters. By 1908, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia had succeeded in depriving virtually all African Americans, and a large number of lower-class whites, of the voting rights they had possessed since Reconstruction--rights they would not regain for over half a century. Struggle for Mastery is the most complete and systematic study to date of the history of disfranchisement in the South. After examining the origins and objectives of disfranchisement, Michael Perman traces the process as it unfolded state by state. Because he examines each state within its region-wide context, he is able to identify patterns and connections that have previously gone unnoticed. Broadening the context even further, Perman explores the federal government's seeming acquiescence in this development, the relationship between disfranchisement and segregation, and the political system that emerged after the decimation of the South's electorate. The result is an insightful and persuasive interpretation of this highly significant, yet generally misunderstood, episode in U.S. history.

The authors "show how the Hashemites played a decisive role in shaping present Middle Eastern boundaries and in hastening the collapse of Ottoman rule."--Jacket.

In this expansive book, David Narrett shows how the United States emerged as a successor empire to Great Britain through rivalry with Spain in the Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast. As he traces currents of peace and war over four critical decades--from the close of the Seven Years War through the Louisiana Purchase--Narrett sheds new light on individual colonial adventurers and schemers who shaped history through cross-border trade, settlement projects involving slave and free labor, and military incursions aimed at Spanish and Indian territories. Narrett examines the clash of empires and nationalities from diverse perspectives. He weighs the challenges facing Native Americans along with the competition between Spanish, French, British, and U.S. interests. In a turbulent era, the Louisiana and Florida borderlands were shaken by tremors from the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolution. By demonstrating pervasive intrigue and subterfuge in borderland rivalries, Narrett shows that U.S. Manifest Destiny was not a linear or inevitable progression. He offers a fresh interpretation of how events in the Louisiana and Florida borderlands altered the North American balance of power, and affected the history of the Atlantic world.

“Fascinating . . . [a] 300-plus year history of North America” from the award-winning historian and author of The Holocaust: History & Memory (Military Heritage). Prize-winning author Jeremy Black traces the competition for control of North America from the landing of Spanish troops under Hernán Cortés in modern Mexico in 1519 to 1871 when, with the Treaty of Washington and the withdrawal of most British garrisons, Britain accepted American mastery in North America. In this wide-ranging narrative, Black makes clear that the process by which America gained supremacy was far from inevitable. The story Black tells is one of conflict, diplomacy, geopolitics, and politics. The eventual result was the creation of a United States of America that stretched from Atlantic to Pacific and dominated North America. The gradual withdrawal of France and Spain, the British accommodation to the expanding U.S. reality, the impact of the American Civil War, and the subjugation of Native peoples, are all carefully drawn out. Black emphasizes contingency not Manifest Destiny, and reconceptualizes American exceptionalism to take note of the pressures and impact of international competition. “A refreshing take on Manifest Destiny . . . American (and Canadian) readers will learn a lot of new things and be led into new ways of viewing old ones. An important contribution.”—Walter Nugent, author of Into the West: The Story of Its People

The one hundred year history of how Europe coerced the African continent into its various empires—and the resulting story of how Africa succeeded in decolonization. In this dramatic (and often tragic) story of an era that radically changed the course of world history, Lawrence James investigates how, within one hundred years, Europeans persuaded and coerced Africa into becoming a subordinate part of the modern world. His narrative is laced with the experiences of participants and onlookers and introduces the men and women who, for better or worse, stamped their wills on Africa. The continent was a magnet for the high-minded, the adventurous, the philanthropic, the unscrupulous. Visionary pro-consuls rubbed shoulders with missionaries, explorers, soldiers, big-game hunters, entrepreneurs, and physicians. Between 1830 and 1945, Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Italy and the United States exported their languages, laws, culture, religions, scientific and technical knowledge and economic systems to Africa. The colonial powers imposed administrations designed to bring stability and peace to a continent that appeared to lack both. The justification for occupation was emancipation from slavery—and the common assumption that late nineteenth-century Europe was the summit of civilization. By 1945 a transformed continent was preparing to take charge of its own affairs, a process of decolonization that took a quick twenty years. This magnificent history also pauses to ask: what did not happen and why?

This book attempts to combine geopolitics, modernization theory and the primacy of foreign policy to provide a fresh perspective on the struggle for mastery in Germany before 1850. Any form of rigid determinism is eschewed; the outcome of this contest was still relatively open in 1780. Nevertheless, the book shows why after the upheavals--domestic and internal--of the revolutionary period, and the geopolitical revolution of 1815, Prussia and not Austria was on the verge of winning the struggle for mastery by mid-century. At every decisive stage along the way, it was Prussia rather than Austria or the "Third Germany" which showed itself capable of socio-economic and (partial) political modernization in order to adapt to external pressures and opportunities.

History.