Showing results by author "Derek Dwight Anderson" in All Categories

Buenos Aires and Cairo, London and Tokyo are known for being the epicenters of their nations, but what about Enugu, Jolo, Quetzaltenango, or Xinjing? Why did these once vibrant cultural, economic, and political centers fade from prominence? What does their experience tell us about ourselves and our world today? In a fascinating book written to promote reflection and conversation, Derek Dwight Anderson charts the lessons of history as he investigates nine capital cities that most people don’t know. By shedding light on places that were of vital importance at some point in the past 250 ...

This volume in a series of world history case studies utilizes the compelling but little-known journal of a surgeon in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to explore the social history of seventeenth century Holland, South Africa, Indonesia, and Thailand. Gisbert Heeck’s vivid account stands as one of the great travel narratives of his era and provides us with a unique lens to explore early modern life, including everything from the history of Western medical science to mercantilism, from the tradition of Dutch still life painting to Jewish life in Amsterdam. What emerges is a rich ...

This volume in a series of world history case studies analyzes Spanish colonialism in the early seventeenth century by examining the career of Diego Fernández de Córdoba. Fernández served as viceroy of both New Spain (Mexico) and Peru during a period that featured strained race relations, new socio-economic tensions, and bitter conflicts between Catholic religious orders. His measured responses to Jews, the Inquisition, women, and local rebellions reveal a man determined to hold a vast empire together through the power of compromise. What emerges is a new understanding of an often-...

This volume in a series of world history case studies explores the development of the Reformation by shedding light on the experiences of a cautious theologian who helped bring Protestantism to Strasbourg, France. After Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses in 1517, Wolfgang Capito devoted himself to seeking compromise and reconciliation between various Protestant factions. The futility of his persistent efforts illustrate the irreconcilable theological differences between Anabaptists, Calvinists, Catholics, and Lutherans, and help us to understand one of Europe's greatest social ...

This volume in a series of world history case studies explores racism, imperialism, and indigenous resistance to nineteenth century Christian missionary activity in the South Pacific by shedding light on the experiences of a convert named Ta’unga. Born in the Cook Islands, Ta’unga dedicated his life to promoting Christianity in New Caledonia, Vanuatu, and Samoa, but also struggled to have his work be fully appreciated by his supervisors in the London Missionary Society. As an intermediary between two worlds, Ta’unga’s struggles illustrate the complexities of the cultural ...

This volume in a series of world history case studies presents the life of the Chinese general who amazingly survived the political turmoil of the Long March, the Chinese Revolution, the Cultural Revolution, and the Deng era, despite not always having been allied with Mao Zedong. Xu Xiangqian’s career with the People’s Liberation Army inspires and frightens, appalls and confounds. What emerges is the story of a survivor who provides a new look at an era the world is only beginning to understand This book is a volume in the Understanding World History Through Biography series.

This volume in a series of world history case studies centers upon Saudi Arabia’s influential oil minister from 1962 to 1986, Ahmed Zaki Yamani. Yamani consistently pushed Western oil companies to acknowledge the Kingdom’s right to control its own resources, but did so while hoping to preserve profitable relationships with these companies. It was a strategy many OPEC members and Arab nationalists opposed, but Yamani skillfully managed the delicate balancing act for two and a half decades during a transformative period in the Middle East’s volatile history. This careful examination of ...

This volume in a series of world history case studies investigates the career of East Germany’s Walter Ulbricht, one of the few communist leaders to live long enough to experience the most important events of the twentieth century. Too often discounted or ignored by historians, this ever-calculating man survived World War I, Hitler’s rise to power, Stalinism, and World War II to become the architect of Berlin Wall and a man committed to creating a utopian socialist state at any cost. Ulbricht’s perspective helps us to understand Europe’s modern history in a new way.

This volume in a series of world history case studies focuses on Scottish businessman Richard Oswald, a man who epitomized the inter-connectivity of the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century, as well as the horrors that unity produced. By establishing his own triangular trade with a slave station in Sierra Leone, a plantation in Florida, and an office in London, Oswald became a wealthy man who benefited from the misery of others. Because he also served as the chief British negotiator in the Peace of Paris (1783) that ended the American Revolution, Oswald's life also provides us with a ...

This volume in a series of world history case studies explores the life and relationships of Julie de Lespinasse, a thirty-four-year old woman who broke with convention and opened her own salon in Paris in 1764. What she created was a place where both established and nascent intellectuals were free to express themselves candidly. The novelty of that atmosphere regularly allowed Lespinasse to attract the leading figures of the Enlightenment to her salon, including d'Alembert, Diderot, Hume, and Rousseau. What emerges from these interactions and Lespinasse’s biography is a new perspective ...

This volume in a series of world history case studies analyzes the life of the uncompromising Black labor leader and anarchist Lucy Parsons. Parsons’ vivid writings and the fascinating, if painful, ways in which she experienced Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, Progressivism, and the Red Scare of the 1920s shed a unique light on the issues of class, race, and gender through crucial transitional periods of our nation’s history. This book is a volume in the Understanding World History Through Biography series.

This volume in a series of world history case studies celebrates the life of the Mughal princess Jahanara—a woman who challenges Western stereotypes of Muslim women. Once bestowed the honorary title “king of queens,” Jahanara commanded significant power in the Mughal court, serving as mediator, confidant, benefactor and visionary. A noted poet, a deft businesswoman, and a devoted Sufi, Jahanara combined practically with spirituality, thereby providing us with a unique window for understanding politics, economics, and religious conflicts mid-seventeenth century India. Her relationships...

This volume in a series of world history case studies investigates the career of Kate Sheppard, the suffragette and prohibitionist who helped make New Zealand the first place in the world to grant women the right to vote at the national level. The book examines the competing goals and strategies of various organizations, including the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WTCU) and highlights the ways in which the Māori both did and did not factor into the British colony’s political calculus in the late nineteenth century. This book is a volume in the Understanding World History Through ...

This volume in a series of world history case studies investigates the life of the Japanese emperor who abdicated in 1629 and then dedicated the rest of his life to promoting Japanese cultural traditions and artistic forms as a poignant resistance to the assertion of Tokugawa authority. The story of Go-Mizunoo’s defiance, which was deeply tied to the development of Buddhist sects in Japan, presents the familiar story of the rise of the shoguns from an unexpected perspective that helps us to understand the complexities of seventeenth century Japan in a new way. This book is a volume in the...

This volume in a series of world history case studies reveals the life of an Ethiopian woman who personifies a time and place same way that Catherine de Medici does for sixteenth century France and Cixi does for nineteenth century China. Eleni served as regent three times in forty years in the fifteenth century, continually guiding her nation towards European alliances to help her resist Muslim expansion in the Horn of Africa. Eleni’s steadfast rule and vision helped her to overcome fractious court, a divided Orthodox Church, and fraught diplomatic challenges. Her life also helps us to ...