The Anglo-Russian rivalry during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reached unprecedented heights. The two imperial powers engaged in a war of nerves, each vying for control over the vast territories of Central Asia. The British were quick to realize Kashmirs potential as a strategic listening post to monitor Russian activities beyond the formidable Hindu Kush and Karakoram ranges. Kashmirs close sociocultural and economic ties with Xinjiang (in present-day China), and other Central Asian regions since ancient times, facilitated the British in their endeavours to contain Russian designs in Central Asia
The Crossroads traces the history of Kashmir as a melting pot between India and Xinjiang. Exhaustively researched, this authoritative account unravels the intricate power dynamics in the region. It sheds light on IndiaXinjiang relations as a crucial historical determinant, providing valuable insights into contemporary relations between Delhi and Beijing. This book is a must-read for those seeking a deeper understanding of the complex tapestry of regional history and politics. The study also offers important lessons for understanding Chinese premeditated strategy in Hunza, Gilgit and beyond, presenting Kashmirs perspective on the Sino-Indian border in the Ladakh sector.
A beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's speech "Our God Is Marching On,” part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.
="margin-bottom: 5px; color: rgb(33, 37, 41); font-family: Muli, Arial, sans-serif;">At the end of the march from Selma to Montgomery on March 25, 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of a crowd and celebrated the demanding work and effort that had been done by all in the fight against racial injustice for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In this speech, Dr. King testified that this march, for justice had been long and difficult and would continue to be so as those with him resisted the call of normalcy in the name of Jim Crow.
“Our God Is Marching On” showcases a message of determination, faith, and the unyielding pursuit of equality while remaining committed to nonviolence.
This beautifully designed hardcover edition presents Dr. King’s speech in its entirety, paying tribute to this extraordinary leader and his immeasurable contribution, and inspiring a new generation of activists dedicated to carrying on the fight for justice and equality.
... Read more Read lessA beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's last speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop," part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.</p>
On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the pulpit of Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, and delivered what would be his final speech. Voiced in support of the Memphis Sanitation Worker’s Strike, Dr. King's words continue to be powerful and relevant as workers continue to organize, unionize, and strike across various industries today. Withstanding the test of time, this speech serves as a galvanizing call to create and maintain unity among all people.
This beautifully designed hardcover edition presents Dr. King’s speech in its entirety, paying tribute to this extraordinary leader and his immeasurable contribution, and inspiring a new generation of activists dedicated to carrying on the fight for justice and equality.
... Read more Read lessHarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.
But is not the slave trade entirely a war with the heart of man?
In 1789, Olaudah Equiano published his remarkable autobiography of his journey from enslavement to freedom. Kidnapped from his home in West Africa and sold into slavery as a child, Equiano – renamed Gustavus Vassa – travelled the world as an enslaved man, before he eventually purchased his freedom and became a leading figure in the British abolition campaign.
One of the earliest known books published by a Black African author, Equiano’s vivid and harrowing life story shed light on the atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade. The Interesting Narrative has been widely celebrated for its impact on the abolitionist movement and remains today a powerful record of the horrors of slavery.
... Read more Read lessAn original reconstruction of how the debates over peoplehood defined Indian anticolonial thought, and a bold new framework for theorizing the global career of democracy.
Indians, their former British rulers asserted, were unfit to rule themselves. Behind this assertion lay a foundational claim about the absence of peoplehood in India. The purported “backwardness” of Indians as a people led to a democratic legitimation of empire, justifying self-government at home and imperial rule in the colonies.
In response, Indian anticolonial thinkers launched a searching critique of the modern ideal of peoplehood. Waiting for the People is the first account of Indian answers to the question of peoplehood in political theory. From Surendranath Banerjea and Radhakamal Mukerjee to Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian political thinkers passionately explored the fraught theoretical space between sovereignty and government. In different ways, Indian anticolonial thinkers worked to address the developmental assumptions built into the modern problem of peoplehood, scrutinizing contemporary European definitions of “the people” and the assumption that a unified peoplehood was a prerequisite for self-government. Nazmul Sultan demonstrates how the anticolonial reckoning with the ideal of popular sovereignty fostered novel insights into the globalization of democracy and ultimately drove India’s twentieth-century political transformation.
Waiting for the People excavates, at once, the alternative forms and trajectories proposed for India’s path to popular sovereignty and the intellectual choices that laid the foundation for postcolonial democracy. In so doing, it uncovers largely unheralded Indian contributions to democratic theory at large. India’s effort to reconfigure the relationship between popular sovereignty and self-government proves a key event in the global history of political thought, one from which a great deal remains to be learned.
In the latter half of the twentieth century, a revolutionary idea promised to upend the global order. Anti-imperialist militancy, bolstered by international solidarity, would lead to not only the national liberation of oppressed peoples but universal emancipation, shattering the division between the prosperous nations of the capitalist West and the poorer countries of the Global South.
The idea was Third Worldism, and among others it inspired struggles in Iran and Palestine. By the early 1980s, however, progressive visions of independence and freedom had fallen to the reality of an oppressive Islamic theocracy in Iran, while the Palestinian Revolution had been eclipsed by civil war in Lebanon, Israeli aggression and intra-Arab conflict.
This thought-provoking volume explores the dramatic decline of Third Worldism in the Middle East. It reveals the lived realities of the time by focusing on the key protagonists – from student activists to guerrilla fighters, and from volunteer nurses to militant intellectuals – and juxtaposes the Iranian and Palestinian cases to offer a riveting re-examination of this defining era. Ultimately, it challenges us to reassess how we view the end of the long 1960s, prompting us to reconsider perennial questions concerning self-determination, emancipation, change and solidarity.
Most things you ‘know’ about science and religion are myths or half-truths that grew up in the last years of the nineteenth century and remain widespread today.
‘A deeply researched history of the interplay between the two ways of understanding the world.’ ECONOMIST, BEST BOOKS OF 2023
The true history of science and religion is a human one. It’s about the role of religion in inspiring, and strangling, science before the scientific revolution. It’s about the sincere but eccentric faith and the quiet, creeping doubts of the most brilliant scientists in history – Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein. Above all it’s about the question of what it means to be human and who gets to say – a question that is more urgent in the twenty-first century than ever before.
From eighth-century Baghdad to the frontiers of AI today, via medieval Europe, nineteenth-century India and Soviet Russia, Magisteria sheds new light on this complex historical landscape. Rejecting the thesis that science and religion are inevitably at war, Nicholas Spencer illuminates a compelling and troubled relationship that has definitively shaped human history