Synopses & Reviews
Alliance and Conflict combines a richly descriptive study of intersocietal relations in early nineteenth-century Northwest Alaska with a bold theoretical treatise on the structure of the world system as it might have been in ancient times. Ernest S. Burch Jr. illuminates one aspect of the traditional lives of the Iupiaq Eskimos in unparalleled detail and depth. Basing his account on observations made by early Western explorers, interviews with Native historians, and archeological research, Burch describes the social boundaries and geographic borders formerly existing in Northwest Alaska and the various kinds of transactions that took place across them. These ranged from violence of the most brutal sort, at one extreme, to relations of peace and friendship, at the other. Burch argues that the international system he describes approximated in many respects the type of system existing all over the world before the development of agriculture. Based on that assumption, he presents a series of hypotheses about what the world system may have been like when it consisted entirely of hunter-gatherer societies and about how it became more centralized with the evolution of chiefdoms. Accounts of specific people, places, and events add an immediate, experiential dimension to the work, complementing its theoretical apparatus and sweeping narrative scope. Provocative and comprehensive, Alliance and Conflict is a definitive look at the greater world of Native peoples of Northwest Alaska. Ernest S. Burch Jr. is a research associate of the Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. He is the author of The Iupiaq Eskimo Nations of Northwest Alaska and a co-editorof Key Issues in Hunter-Gatherer Research.
Review
"For social historians and those interested in the larger field of German Studies, this is serious work."—Choice CHOICE
Review
“This book opens up a number of exciting new vistas and adds to existing lines of research and argument.”—Reinhart Kössler, African History Reinhart Kossler
Synopsis
Germanys Colonial Pasts is a wide-ranging study of German colonialism and its legacies. Inspired by Susanne Zantops landmark book Colonial Fantasies, and extending her analyses there, this volume offers new research by scholars from Europe, Africa, and the United States. It also commemorates Zantops distinguished life and career (1945-2001). Some essays in this volume focus on Germanys formal colonial empire in Africa and the Pacific between 1884 and 1914, while others present material from earlier or later periods such as German emigration before 1884 and colonial discourse in German-ruled Polish lands. Several essays examine Germanys postcolonial era, a complex period that includes the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany with its renewed colonial obsessions, and the post-1945 era. Particular areas of emphasis include the relationship of anti-Semitism to colonial racism; respectability, sexuality, and cultural hierarchies in the formal empire; Nazi representations of colonialism; and contemporary perceptions of race. The volumes disciplinary reach extends to musicology, religious studies, film, and tourism studies as well as literary analysis and history. These essays demonstrate why modern Germany must confront its colonial and postcolonial pasts, and how those pasts continue to shape the German cultural imagination.
About the Author
Eric Ames is an assistant professor of German at the University of Washington. Marcia Klotz is an instructor in the English department at Portland State University. Lora Wildenthal is an associate professor of history at Rice University. Sander L. Gilman is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Emory University and the author of Fat Boys: A Slim Book (Nebraska 2004).