Oil is the world's single most important commodity and its political effects are pervasive. Jeff Colgan extends the idea of the resource curse into the realm of international relations, exploring how countries form their foreign policy preferences and intentions. Why are some but not all oil-exporting 'petrostates' aggressive? To answer this question, a theory of aggressive foreign policy preferences is developed and then tested, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Petro-Aggression shows that oil creates incentives that increase a petrostate's aggression, but also incentives for the opposite. The net effect depends critically on its domestic politics, especially the preferences of its leader. Revolutionary leaders are especially significant. Using case studies including Iraq, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, this book offers new insight into why oil politics has a central role in global peace and conflict.

Four of the chapters in this book were first presented at the 'International Conference on Racial Identities in East Asia' held in Hong Kong on 25-26 November 1994. The conference was organised by Frank Dikotter and Barry Sautman and sponsored by the School of Oriental and Mrican Studies, University of London, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The editor of this book would like to thank all the participants of the conference, in particular Michael Banton (University of Bristol), Grant Evans (University of Hong Kong), Andrew Gerstle (SOAS), Richard Tanter and Wang Gungwu (University of Hong Kong). Special thanks are extended to Barry Sautman (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), who served as a consulting editor, and to Geremie Barnle (Australian National University, Canberra) for invaluable advice and help.

Vol. 2 : 1856-1872. - 347 p.

This book examines the overlooked topic of the influence of anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic Russian exiles on Nazism. White émigrés contributed politically, financially, militarily, and ideologically to National Socialism. This work refutes the notion that Nazism developed as a peculiarly German phenomenon: it arose primarily from the cooperation between völkisch (nationalist/racist) Germans and vengeful White émigrés. From 1920-1923, Adolf Hitler collaborated with a conspiratorial far right German-White émigré organization, Aufbau (Reconstruction). Aufbau allied with Nazis to overthrow the German government and Bolshevik rule through terrorism and military-paramilitary schemes. This organization's warnings of the monstrous 'Jewish Bolshevik' peril helped to inspire Hitler to launch an invasion of the Soviet Union and to initiate the mass murder of European Jews. This book uses extensive archival materials from Germany and Russia, including recently declassified documents, and will prove invaluable reading for anyone interested in the international roots of National Socialism.

Tribes and State Formation is the first effort to bring together the disciplines of history, anthropology, and political science around a major topic that none of these alone is adequately equipped to address. How and why did certain tribal societies metamorphose over time into states? Scholars concerned with general questions of theory and methodology and the interaction of anthropology and history, as well as political scientists and sociologists concerned with concepts of the state in the Middle East and other developing regions, will be well served by this innovative work.

Mercenaries have always had a poor press. Theirs is one of the world's oldest professions, but the very word has profoundly negative connotations of infidelity and ruthlessness. But if they were like this, were they so different from soldiers?

Ottoman Warfare is an impressive and original examination of the Ottoman military machine, detailing its success in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Focusing primarily on the evolution of the Ottoman military organization and its subsequent impact on Ottoman society in a period of change, the book redresses the historiographical imbalance in the existing literature, analyzing why the Ottomans were the focus of such intense military concern.Several books have been written on the fiscal, technological, tactical, and political dimensions of Ottoman military history; little has been attempted, however, to recreate or evoke the physical and psychological realities of war as experienced by Ottoman soldiers. Rhoads Murphey seeks to rectify this imbalance, favoring operational matters and providing a detailed study of a number of campaigns: we are offered, for example, vivid descriptions of life in the trenches with the diggers at Baghdad in 1638, who dug a total of five miles at 50 yards a day. Murphey's analysis does not focus on the Ottoman's success or failure in particular campaigns per se; he focuses on understanding the actual process of how the Ottoman military machine worked.This long-awaited work will become the definitive study of Ottoman warfare in the early modern period, and will be invaluable to those studying the Ottoman Empire and early modern European history in general.

Napalm, incendiary gel that sticks to skin and burns to the bone, came into the world on Valentine s Day 1942 at a secret Harvard war research laboratory. On March 9, 1945, it created an inferno that killed over 87,500 people in Tokyo more than died in the atomic explosions at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It went on to incinerate sixty-four of Japan s largest cities. The Bomb got the press, but napalm did the work. After World War II, the incendiary held the line against communism in Greece and Korea Napalm Day led the 1950 counter-attack from Inchon and fought elsewhere under many flags. Americans generally applauded, until the Vietnam War. Today, napalm lives on as a pariah: a symbol of American cruelty and the misguided use of power, according to anti-war protesters in the 1960s and popular culture from "Apocalypse Now" to the punk band Napalm Death and British street artist Banksy. Its use by Serbia in 1994 and by the United States in Iraq in 2003 drew condemnation. United Nations delegates judged deployment against concentrations of civilians a war crime in 1980. After thirty-one years, America joined the global consensus, in 2011. Robert Neer has written the first history of napalm, from its inaugural test on the Harvard College soccer field, to a Marine Corps plan to attack Japan with millions of bats armed with tiny napalm time bombs, to the reflections of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, a girl who knew firsthand about its power and its morality

Voices from the Korean War presents a collection of first-person accounts of those who served in the Korean War. The Korean War is often dubbed the "Forgotten War," although more than 36,000 soldiers died in this three-year conflict. In Voices from the Korean War, author Douglas Rice makes certain the men who served are not forgotten as he shares first-person accounts from seventy-nine soldiers who fought in the war from June of 1950 through July of 1953. Voices from the Korean War follows the soldiers as they trek and fly over the mountainous terrain of the Korean peninsula. Through these eyewitness accounts, hear a soldier describe what happened to a small group of North Korean villagers who refused to divulge their location. Listen in as a wounded soldier tells a flight nurse the story of how he was rescued by American soldiers as he lay wounded in a North Korean home. Learn how some prisoners of war walked their imaginary dogs to irritate their captors. This compilation of different soldiers' perspectives conveys what it must have been like to be directly involved in the conflict. It serves as a reminder of the challenges and the sacrifices the soldiers made in the name of war.