Since the Anglo-Norman period itself, the relations beween the English and the Normans have formed a subject of lively debate. For most of that time, however, complacency about the inevitability of assimilation and of the Anglicization of Normans after 1066 has ruled. This book first challenges that complacency, then goes on to provide the fullest explanation yet for why the two peoples merged and the Normans became English. Drawing on anthropological theory, the latest scholarship on Anglo-Norman England, and sources ranging from charters and legal documents to saints' lives and romances, it provides a complex exploration of ethnic relations on the levels of personal interaction, cultural assimilation, and the construction of identity. As a result, the work provides an important case study in pre-modern ethnic relations that combines both old and new approaches, and sheds new light on some of the most important developments in English history.

On March 5, 1770, after being harassed for two years during their occupation of Boston, British soldiers finally lost control, firing into a mob of rioting Americans, killing several of them, including Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave and sailor, the first African American patriot killed. The aftermath of this ‘massacre’ led to what was eventually the American Revolution. The importance of the event grew, as it was used for political purposes, to stoke the fires of rebellion in the colonists and to show the British in the most unflattering light. The Boston Massacre gathers together the most important primary documents pertaining to the incident, along with images, anchored together with a succinct yet thorough introduction, to give students of the Revolutionary period access to the events of the massacre as they unfolded. Included are newspaper stories, the official transcript of the trial, letters, and maps of the area, as well as consideration of how the massacre is remembered today.

Why did the nation-state emerge and proliferate across the globe? How is this process related to the wars fought in the modern era? Analyzing datasets that cover the entire world over long stretches of time, Andreas Wimmer focuses on changing configurations of power and legitimacy to answer these questions. The nationalist ideal of self-rule gradually diffused over the world and delegitimized empire after empire. Nationalists created nation-states wherever the power configuration favored them, often at the end of prolonged wars of secession. The elites of many of these new states were institutionally too weak for nation-building and favored their own ethnic communities. Ethnic rebels challenged such exclusionary power structures in violation of the principles of self-rule, and neighboring governments sometimes intervened into these struggles over the state. 'Waves of War' demonstrates why nation-state formation and ethnic politics are crucial to understand the civil and international wars of the past 200 years.