The Boomship Crisis is a fictional novel about the tale of a journey through a world struck by disaster. A crisis has happened. The world will never be the same as it once was. Follow a group of up to ten diverse characters and their journey in the present as they discover the pasts of themselves, one another, and the world itself. How did the crisis happen? What was it? How did the new world form after it? How did the characters find their way through it? What did all this mean for them now? These are all questions to be answered. This extremely detail-rich story provides plenty of content for the enthusiast. It is a tale unlike any other. 271
A sustained period of significant growth in the US, however, seemed to save the day against all the odds. So impressive was the surface appearance of this rescue mission that all manner of commentators proclaimed—once again—that a ‘new economy’ or ‘new paradigm’ of unlimited and harmonious growth had been forged. Today, as recession looms, the babble about Internet start-ups is exposed as vapid. Yet the pundits are no nearer an understanding of how or why the boom turned into a bubble, or why the bubble has burst. In this crisp and forensic book, Robert Brenner demonstrates that the boom was always a fragile phenomenon—buoyed up by absurd levels of debt and stock-market overvaluation—which never broke free from the fundamental malady of overcapacity and overproduction which continues to afflict the global economy. Carefully dismantling the myths and hype that surround the US boom in terms of profitability, investment, and productivity, Brenner restores the properly international context to the process. He portrays the ‘zero-sum’ character of the American success, which presupposed the relative weakness of its main German and Japanese competitors: a strategy that has laid huge obstacles in the path of a ‘soft landing’ to end the current phase of growth. A substantial new Postscript provides and up-to-date analysis of the Bush economic debacle—the crisis of manufacturing, the telecom bust, the record twin deficits, plummeting employment, and the real estate bubble.
A comprehensive and challenging analysis of the British defence of Egypt, primarily against fascist Italy, in the critical lead-up period to the Second World War. Culminating in the decisive defeat of the Italian military threat at Sidi Barrani in December 1940, this is a fascinating new contribution to the field.
A comprehensive and challenging analysis of the British defence of Egypt, primarily against fascist Italy, in the critical lead-up period to the Second World War. Culminating in the decisive defeat of the Italian military threat at Sidi Barrani in December 1940, this is a fascinating new contribution to the field. The security of Egypt, a constant of British imperial strategy, is a curiously neglected dimension of the still burning appeasement debate. Steven Morewood adds to the originality of his interpretation by suggesting the old view should be reinstated: that Mussolini should and could have been stopped in his empire-building at the Abyssinian hurdle. Thereafter, as Nazi Germany tore the Versailles peace settlement to shreds, the drift to war accelerated as British resolve and credibility were brought into question. The fascist dictators in Rome and Berlin held no respect for weakness and Mussolini became the conduit through which Hitler could apply pressure to a sensitive British interest through reinforcing Libya at critical moments.
Nadia Ellis attends to African diasporic belonging as it comes into being through black expressive culture. Living in the diaspora, Ellis asserts, means existing between claims to land and imaginative flights unmoored from the earth—that is, to live within the territories of the soul. Drawing on the work of Jose Muñoz, Ellis connects queerness' utopian potential with diasporic aesthetics. Occupying the territory of the soul, being neither here nor there, creates in diasporic subjects feelings of loss, desire, and a sensation of a pull from elsewhere. Ellis locates these phenomena in the works of C.L.R. James, the testy encounter between George Lamming and James Baldwin at the 1956 Congress of Negro Artists and Writers in Paris, the elusiveness of the queer diasporic subject in Andrew Salkey's novel Escape to an Autumn Pavement, and the trope of spirit possession in Nathaniel Mackey's writing and Burning Spear's reggae. Ellis' use of queer and affect theory shows how geographies claim diasporic subjects in ways that nationalist or masculinist tropes can never fully capture. Diaspora, Ellis concludes, is best understood as a mode of feeling and belonging, one fundamentally shaped by the experience of loss.
The nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 triggered one of the gravest international crises since the Second World War. The fiftieth anniversary of the Suez crisis in 2006 presented an ideal opportunity to re-visit and reassess this seminal episode in post-war history. Although much has been written on Suez, this study provides fresh perspectives by reflecting the latest research from leading international authorities on the crisis and its aftermath. By drawing on recently released documents, by including previously neglected aspects of Suez, and by reassessing its more familiar ones, the volume makes a key contribution to furthering research on - and understanding of - the crisis. The volume explores the origins of the crisis, the crisis itself and the aftermath all from a broad perspective. An introduction by the editor presents the current state of the historiography and provides an overview of the debates surrounding the crisis, while the conclusion by Scott Lucas not merely draws the themes of the book together, but also explores the crisis in its regional and international context. Within the overall context of focussing on the international and military aspects of the crisis, it is an explicit intention to embody in the contributions the multifaceted nature of Suez. Although Britain, as in many ways the principal actor, is strongly represented, there are also highly original chapters on both the regional and international dimensions to the crisis, and crucially the interaction between the two. As well as exploring the role of the main protagonists, essays also deal with American, Jordanian and Turkish reactions to the invasion. The overall result is an innovative, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging reassessment of Suez and its aftermath, which at a time when the Middle East once again holds the world's attention, is particularly appropriate.
Siddharth Kara is a tireless chronicler of the human cost of slavery around the world. He has documented the dark realities of modern slavery in order to reveal the degrading and dehumanizing systems that strip people of their dignity for the sake of profit—and to link the suffering of the enslaved to the day-to-day lives of consumers in the West. In Modern Slavery, Kara draws on his many years of expertise to demonstrate the astonishing scope of slavery and offer a concrete path toward its abolition. From labor trafficking in the U.S. agricultural sector to sex trafficking in Nigeria to debt bondage in the Southeast Asian construction sector to forced labor in the Thai seafood industry, Kara depicts the myriad faces and forms of slavery, providing a comprehensive grounding in the realities of modern-day servitude. Drawing on sixteen years of field research in more than fifty countries around the globe—including revelatory interviews with both the enslaved and their oppressors—Kara sets out the key manifestations of modern slavery and how it is embedded in global supply chains. Slavery offers immense profits at minimal risk through the exploitation of vulnerable subclasses whose brutalization is tacitly accepted by the current global economic order. Kara has developed a business and economic analysis of slavery based on metrics and data that attest to the enormous scale and functioning of these systems of exploitation. Beyond this data-driven approach, Modern Slavery unflinchingly portrays the torments endured by the powerless. This searing exposé documents one of humanity’s greatest wrongs and lays out the framework for a comprehensive plan to eradicate it.
This book is open access under a CC BY NC ND 4.0 license. This open access book discusses how Norwegian shipping companies played a crucial role in global shipping markets in the 20th century, at times transporting more than ten per cent of world seaborne trade. Chapters explore how Norway managed to remain competitive, despite being a high labour-cost country in an industry with global competition. Among the features that are emphasised are market developments, business strategies and political decisions The Norwegian experience was shaped by the main breaking points in 20th century world history, such as the two world wars, and by long-term trends, such as globalization and liberalization. The shipping companies introduced technological and organizational innovations to build or maintain a competitive advantage in a rapidly changing world. The growing importance of offshore petroleum exploration in the North Sea from the 1970s was both a threat and an opportunity to the shipping companies. By adapting both business strategies and the political regime to the new circumstances, the Norwegian shipping sector managed to maintain a leading position internationally.
