Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics

Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics

Author: Hanna Batatu

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2012-09-17

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 140084584X

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In this book, the distinguished scholar Hanna Batatu presents a comprehensive analysis of the recent social, economic, and political evolution of Syria's peasantry, the segment of society from which the current holders of political power stem. Batatu focuses mainly on the twentieth century and, in particular, on the Ba`th movement, the structures of power after the military coup d'état of 1963, and the era of îvfiz al-Asad, Syria's first ruler of peasant extraction. Without seeking to prove any single theory about Syrian life, he offers a uniquely rich and detailed account of how power was transferred from one demographic group to another and how that power is maintained today. Batatu begins by examining social differences among Syria's peasants and the evolution of their mode of life and economic circumstances. He then scrutinizes the peasants' forms of consciousness, organization, and behavior in Ottoman and Mandate times and prior to the Ba`thists' rise to power. He explores the rural aspects of Ba`thism and shows that it was not a single force but a plurality of interrelated groups--prominent among them the descendants of the lesser rural notables--with different social goals and mental horizons. The book also provides a perceptive account of President Asad, his personality and conduct, and the characteristics and power structures of his regime. Batatu draws throughout on a wide range of socioeconomic and biographical information and on personal interviews with Syrian peasants and political leaders, offering invaluable insights into the complexities of a country and a regime that have long been poorly understood by outsiders.


Stalin's Peasants

Stalin's Peasants

Author: Sheila Fitzpatrick

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 9780195104592

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Drawing on Soviet archives, especially the letters of complaint with which peasants deluged the Soviet authorities in the 1930s, this work analyzes peasants' strategies of resistance and survival in the new world of the collectivized village


Spectres of John Ball

Spectres of John Ball

Author: James G. Crossley

Publisher: Equinox Publishing (UK)

Published: 2022

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781800501379

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For centuries, the priest John Ball was one of the most infamous or famous figures in the history of English rebels, best known for his saying 'When Adam delved and Eve Span, Who was then the gentleman'. But over the past hundred years his memory has faded dramatically. Along with Wat Tyler, Ball was one of the leaders of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, a historically remarkable event in that leading figures of the realm were beheaded by the rebels. For a few days in June 1381, the rebels dominated London but soon met their demise, with Ball executed. Ball provided the theological justification for the uprising which he saw in apocalyptic terms. After the revolt, he was soon vilified and received an overwhelmingly hostile press for 400 years as an archetypal enemy of the state and a religious zealot. His reputation was rescued from the end of the eighteenth century onward and for over one hundred years he rivalled Robin Hood and Wat Tyler as a great English folk (and even abolitionist) hero. But his 640-year reception involves much more, of course, and is tied up with the story of what England is or could be.Overall, the book explains how we get from an apocalyptic priest who promoted a theocracy favouring the lower orders and the decapitation of the leading church and secular authorities to someone who promoted democracy and vague notions about love and tolerance. The book also explains why he has gone out of fashion and whether he can make another comeback.


The Rational Peasant

The Rational Peasant

Author: Samuel L. Popkin

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1979-06-11

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9780520039544

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[This provacative reinterpretation of Vietnamese history in particular and peasant society in general will be of wide interest to political scientists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, development planners, and Asian scholars].


The Abbot and his Peasants

The Abbot and his Peasants

Author: Katherine Brun

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-09-26

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 3110507161

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Der Abt und seine Bauern. Territorialisierung als Prozess in Salem vom Spten Mittelalter bis zum Dreiigjhrigen Krieg Die Studie ber die reichsunmittelbare Zisterzienserabtei Salem erffnet neue Einsichten ber grundlegende politische Entwicklungen in der Frhen Neuzeit. Sie beleuchtet die Mglichkeiten und die Grenzen kirchlicher Herrschaft und weist auf breiter Quellengrundlage den dauerhaften politischen Einfluss der Bauernschaft nach. In der untersuchten Periode von 1473 bis 1637 festigte die Abtei ihre politische Herrschaft ber Land und Leute. Im Zuge der Territorialisierung verdichtete sie verschiedene Herrschaftsrechte in ihrer Hand und schloss das Herrschaftsgebiet ab. Dies wurde auf zwei Ebenen erreicht: Erstens wurden die Grenzen des Territoriums gegen Auen eindeutig definiert - in rumlich-physischer, rechtlicher und symbolischer Hinsicht. Zweitens wurden die Untertanen vollstndig in das eigene Territorium integriert. Diesen Prozess kann man jedoch nicht einfach als Staatsbildung von "oben" - durch die Aktivitten der bte - charakterisieren. Deren Herrschaft wurde zwar gestrkt und zentralisiert, aber durchaus nicht vornehmlich auf Kosten der Bauernschaft. Deren materielle Bedrfnisse und Interessen wurden aufgegriffen, so dass gtliche Vergleiche zustande kamen. Das Beispiel Salem zeigt das Moment politischer Inklusion auf einer breiten sozialen Basis. Durch kleinteiliges Agieren und auf dem Wege direkter Kommunikation brachten sich die kommunalen Entscheidungstrger aus der Bauernschaft wirkungsvoll ein. So entwickelte sich die Herrschaft in der Abtei aufgrund interaktiver Prozesse fort. Wir begegnen also in der Arbeit vielseitigen Aushandlungsprozessen, bei denen sowohl wechselnde Bndnisse und ungleiche Partnerschaften als auch das Prinzip der Gegenseitigkeit sowie direkte Kooperation zwischen sozialen Gruppen mitwirkten. Dieses Primat des Verhandlungsprinzips brachte wechselseitige Vorteile, nicht weil die sozialen Gruppen von vornherein gemeinsame Interessen hatten, sondern da sich Kommunikationskanle ffneten und Konflikte abschwchten. Die Kommunikation im Territorium lief ber zwei zentrale Institutionen, das "Sidelgericht," und das "Verhr." Diese beiden Krperschaften vermochten es, nicht nur Konflikte zu dmpfen und diverse soziale Gruppen zu integrieren, sondern auch deren Anliegen zu bercksichtigen, und hier lag das Fundament der bemerkenswerten politischen und sozialen Stabilitt in Salem. So ist dieses kleine Territorium ein Beispiel dafr, wie ein erfolgreiches Gemeinwesen vorgeht, wie es stndig neue Ziele entwickelt und sich dabei selbst erhlt. Durch diese Forschungsarbeit ber Salem werden die Potenziale und Grenzen der Staatsbildung im Reich grundlegend beleuchtet, sie zeigt auf, wie die Beziehungen zwischen Herren und Untertanen in der Frhen Neuzeit miteinander verflochten waren.


Peasants, Power, and Place

Peasants, Power, and Place

Author: Mark R. Baker (History professor)

Publisher: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781932650150

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Mark R. Baker focuses on Ukrainian-speaking peasants during the 1914-1921 revolutionary period. Arguing that the peasants of Kharkiv province thought of themselves primarily as members of their particular village communities, and not as members of any nation or class, he advances the historiography beyond the ideologized categories of the Cold War.


Speaking of Peasants

Speaking of Peasants

Author: William R. Pinch

Publisher: Manohar Publishers and Distributors

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13:

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The present volume springs out of a festschrift confernece to honor the career of Walter Hauser, professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia and pioneer scholar in the study of Indian peasant movements. Because Hauser's work focuses on Bihar and the peasant leader, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, some of the authors, such as the late Arvind Narayan Das, Christopher Hill, and Sho Kuwajima, are concerned directly with peasant politics in Bihar. Other authors, such as Harry Blair, Majid Siddiqi, Harold Gould, and the late James R. Hagen, constrast agrarian history and politics in Bihar to other parts of India. A third group, including Stuart Corbridge, Ron Herring, and Ruhi Grover, investigate related questions in agrarian history and politics from regions formally outside of Bihar. A fourth group of authors, including Peter Robb, Ajay Skaria, and William R. Pinch, examine culture, religion, and meaning that inform (and are informed by) peasant politics. A fifth set of authros, Frederick H. Damon, Peter Gottschalk, and Mathew Schmalz, provide ethnographic context. Damon takes readers from Bihar to Melanesia and many points in between, with a focus on ethno-botany over three millennia; Gottschalk and Schmalz provide a closely detailed examination of a Bihari village, focusing in particular on the problem of religion. Importantly, these authors structure their investigations around a reversal of the ethnographer's gaze'. In this spirit of reflexive reversal, the volume concludes with a reflection on the project' of South Asian studies in the United States by Hauser himself, focusing on (but not limited to) his experiences at the University of Virginia.


Peasant Protest and Social Change in Colonial Korea

Peasant Protest and Social Change in Colonial Korea

Author: Gi-Wook Shin

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2014-06-01

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0295805129

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The period from 1876 to 1946 in Korea marked a turbulent time when the country opened its market to foreign powers, became subject to Japanese colonialism, and was swept into agricultural commercialization, industrialization, and eventually postcolonial revolutionary movements. Gi-Wook Shin examines how peasants responded to these events, and to their own economic and political circumstances, with protests that shaped the course of postwar revolution in the north and reform in the south. Utilizing interviews, documentary research, and statistical analysis, Shin analyzes variation in peasant activism and its historical, political, and socioeconomic roots, and offers a major revisionist interpretation. The study contributes to an understanding of Korea’s rural political economy during the colonial era, Japanese agricultual policy, and the historical legacy of colonialism for post war social and political change in Korea.


The Greatest Knight

The Greatest Knight

Author: Thomas Asbridge

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2014-12-02

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0062262076

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Renowned scholar Thomas Asbridge brings to life medieval England’s most celebrated knight, William Marshal—providing an unprecedented and intimate view of this age and the legendary warrior class that shaped it. Caught on the wrong side of an English civil war and condemned by his father to the gallows at age five, William Marshal defied all odds to become one of England’s most celebrated knights. Thomas Asbridge’s rousing narrative chronicles William’s rise, using his life as a prism to view the origins, experiences, and influence of the knight in British history. In William’s day, the brutish realities of war and politics collided with romanticized myths about an Arthurian “golden age,” giving rise to a new chivalric ideal. Asbridge details the training rituals, weaponry, and battle tactics of knighthood, and explores the codes of chivalry and courtliness that shaped their daily lives. These skills were essential to survive one of the most turbulent periods in English history—an era of striking transformation, as the West emerged from the Dark Ages. A leading retainer of five English kings, Marshal served the great figures of this age, from Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine to Richard the Lionheart and his infamous brother John, and was involved in some of the most critical phases of medieval history, from the Magna Carta to the survival of the Angevin/Plantagenet dynasty. Asbridge introduces this storied knight to modern readers and places him firmly in the context of the majesty, passion, and bloody intrigue of the Middle Ages. The Greatest Knight features 16 pages of black-and-white and color illustrations.