Synopses & Reviews
During the height of 19th century imperialism, Rudyard Kipling published his famous poem “The White Mans Burden.” While some of his American readers argued that the poem served as justification for imperialist practices, others saw Kiplings satirical talents at work and read it as condemnation. Gretchen Murphy explores this tension embedded in the notion of the white mans burden to create a new historical frame for understanding race and literature in America.
Shadowing the White Mans Burden maintains that literature symptomized and channeled anxiety about the racial components of the U.S. world mission, while also providing a potentially powerful medium for multiethnic authors interested in redrawing global color lines. Through a range of archival materials from literary reviews to diplomatic records to ethnological treatises, Murphy identifies a common theme in the writings of African-, Asian- and Native-American authors who exploited anxiety about race and national identity through narratives about a multiracial U.S. empire. Shadowing the White Mans Burden situates American literature in the context of broader race relations, and provides a compelling analysis of the way in which literature came to define and shape racial attitudes for the next century.
Review
“This impressive book, which is based on extensive archival research, shows how the transformation of racial categories at the turn of the 20th century was a multidirectional process that often generated new meanings. Murphy reveals how multiple imperial histories shaped changing ideas about race and how readers and writers who engaged the trope of the white mans burden exposed contradictory ideas about whiteness as a domestic and transnational racial construct. Shadowing the White Mans Burden is part of an exciting new body of work on race in transnational contexts. It is one of the best accounts we have of the significance of literature in transformations of and contests over race in this period.”
-Shelley Streeby,author of American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture
Review
"This beautifully argued and engaging literary history addresses a fairly simple question: How did the distinctive multiracial nature of the United States transform that country's sense of itself as an empire? The result is a fascinating and rewarding book worth reading closely and carefully." -Matthew Pratt Guterl,The Journal of American History
Review
"Gretchen Murphy's new book is a compelling work that synthesizes critical race theory and U.S. empire studies to produce an original analysis of whiteness in national and international contexts . . . Shadowing the White Man's Burden is a valuable book that makes an important contribution to the growing body of work on U.S. imperialism. Scholars interested in the topic would do well to attend to this remarkable achievement." -Harilaos Stecopoulos,American Historical Review
Review
“These well-written chapters provide plenty of detail and analysis, displaying the author's deep understanding of the realities of these extremely chaotic and uncertain times in the Caucasus. The Post-Soviet Wars is an interesting read and remains relevant for understanding the contemporary dynamic in the Caucasus.”
-The Russia and Eurasia Review,
Review
“This is an uncommonly well-argued and well-written explanation of the violent conflicts that erupted across the Caucasus during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. With exceptional clarity of thought, Zürcher melds established statistical studies of internal wars with a carefully constructed comparison of the origins and courses of the Chechen, Georgian, and Nagorno-Karabakh wars.”
-Foreign Affairs,
Review
“This book's develops into a first-class, original study of the Russian Caucasus during its first years of detachment from the Soviet Union.”
-Choice,
Review
“With his exciting narratives and compelling analysis of the twentieth century's ‘Caucasian Wars, Zürcher brings events on the periphery of Europe into the mainstream of social science and comparative politics. Disputing existing explanations of internal wars, he shows that rather than mountainous terrain or poverty, a more powerful causal explanation of civil bloodletting can be located in state capacities and the abilities of combatants to finance their struggles. This book is sure to stir debate.”
-Ronald Grigor Suny,University of Michigan
Review
“Democracy is commonly paired with order while ethnic violence is paired with strife and chaos. The Post-Soviet Wars painstakingly documents that both violence and stability have institutional reasons and must be organized politically by specific human agencies. This lesson is obviously relevant to the contemporary discussion of democratization as well as 'failing' states, let alone the effects wrought by the American war on terror.”
-Georgi Derlugyan,author of Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biography
Review
"Murphy's analysis has much to offer to scholars in the humanities...Shadowing the White Man's Burden is an exciting contribution to transnational analysis, African American Studies, and a welcome gift to scholars in various fields interested in deconstructing concepts of race and nation in the modern era."-Journal of African American History,
Synopsis
The Post-Soviet Wars is a comparative account of the organized violence in the Caucusus region, looking at four key areas: Chechnya, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Dagestan. Zürchers goal is to understand the origin and nature of the violence in these regions, the response and suppression from the post-Soviet regime and the resulting outcomes, all with an eye toward understanding why some conflicts turned violent, whereas others not. Notably, in Dagestan actual violent conflict has not erupted, an exception of political stability for the region. The book provides a brief history of the region, particularly the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting changes that took place in the wake of this toppling. Zürcher carefully looks at the conditions within each region — economic, ethnic, religious, and political — to make sense of why some turned to violent conflict and some did not and what the future of the region might portend.
This important volume provides both an overview of the region that is both up-to-date and comprehensive as well as an accessible understanding of the current scholarship on mobilization and violence.
About the Author
Christoph Zürcher is Professor of Political Science at the Free University of Berlin. He is the editor of Potentials of Dis/Order: Explaining Violence in the Caucasus and in the Former Yugoslovia.