North-East Passage to Muscovy Stephen Borough and the First Tudor Explorations
Kit Mayers, "North-East Passage to Muscovy: Stephen Borough and the First Tudor Explorations"
English | ISBN: 0750940697 | 2005 | 241 pages | PDF | 6 MB
Nearly 25 years before Francis Drake began his famous voyage around the world a much less well-known sailor led the first great Tudor exploration. The sailor was Stephen Borough, a Devon man, who undertook to find a north-east passage to China and the riches of the Orient. He did not find a north-east passage but he did take the first steps in the creation of Britain's great overseas commercial empire by creating the first trading company - the Muscovy Company. North-East to Muscovy explores for the first time these important and overlooked voyages, the motivation behind them, the geographical knowledge acquired on the voyages which put England in the forefront of cartography, and the extraordinary dealings of the Muscovy Company - which included passing on a proposal of marriage to Elizabeth I from Ivan the Terrible. An exciting tale set at a key point in the development of the English nation, this book encapsulates the determination of Englishmen to undertake feats of endurance in the search for prizes which had eluded their rivals.

Networks in Tropical Medicine Internationalism, Colonialism, and the Rise of a Medical Specialty, 1890-1930
Deborah Neill, "Networks in Tropical Medicine: Internationalism, Colonialism, and the Rise of a Medical Specialty, 1890-1930"
English | ISBN: 0804778132 | 2012 | 312 pages | PDF | 3 MB
Networks in Tropical Medicine explores how European doctors and scientists worked together across borders to establish the new field of tropical medicine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book shows that this transnational collaboration in a context of European colonialism, scientific discovery, and internationalism shaped the character of the new medical specialty. Even in an era of intense competition among European states, practitioners of tropical medicine created a transnational scientific community through which they influenced each other and the health care that was introduced to the tropical world. One of the most important developments in the shaping of tropical medicine as a specialty was the major sleeping sickness epidemic that spread across sub-Saharan Africa at the turn of the century. The book describes how scientists and doctors collaborated across borders to control, contain, and find a treatment for the disease. It demonstrates that these medical specialists' shared notions of "Europeanness," rooted in common beliefs about scientific, technological, and racial superiority, led them to establish a colonial medical practice in Africa that sometimes oppressed the same people it was created to help.

Near Eastern Tribal Societies During the Nineteenth Century Economy, Society and Politics Between Tent and Town
Eveline van der Steen, "Near Eastern Tribal Societies During the Nineteenth Century: Economy, Society and Politics Between Tent and Town "
English | ISBN: 1908049839 | 2005 | 320 pages | PDF | 2 MB
This volume provides an in-depth study of tribal life in the Near East in the 19th century, exploring how tribes shaped society, economy and politics in the desert, as well as in villages and towns. Until the First World War Near Eastern society was tribally organized. Particularly in the Levant and the Arabian peninsula, where the Ottoman empire was weak, large and powerful tribes such as Anaze, Beni Sakhr and Shammar interacted and competed for control of the land, the people and the economy. The main sources for this study are travel accounts of 19th century adventurers and explorers. Their travels, on horseback, on camel or on foot opened a fascinating window on a world with an ideology that was fundamentally different from their own, often Victorian background. One chapter is dedicated to oral traditions in the region, from heroic epics to short poems, which lets the tribes and tribe members themselves speak, giving a voice to the tribal frame of mind. Evidence of tribal organization as a driving force in society can be found in documents and sometimes in the archaeological record from the Bronze Age onwards. While a straight comparison between ancient and subrecent tribal communities is fraught with difficulties and must be treated with caution, a better understanding of 19th century tribal ethics and customs provides useful insights into the history and the power relations of a more distant past. At the same time it may help us understand some of the underlying causes for the present conflicts afflicting the region.

Natural Law Ethics in Theory and Practice A Joseph Boyle Reader
Joseph Boyle, "Natural Law Ethics in Theory and Practice: A Joseph Boyle Reader"
English | ISBN: 0813232953 | 2020 | 352 pages | PDF | 2 MB
Natural Law Ethics in Theory and Practice brings together a selection of essays of the late Joseph Boyle. Boyle was, with Germain Grisez and John Finnis, a founder and developer of the New Classical Natural Law Theory, arguably the most important development in Catholic moral philosophy of the twentieth century. While this theory is indebted to the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, it incorporates an understanding and assessment of that work that is different from that found in other statements of natural law. Boyle made crucial contributions to a wide variety of aspects of this theory, and the volume is divided into two parts.

Nation, Constitutionalism and Buddhism in Sri Lanka
Nation, Constitutionalism and Buddhism in Sri Lanka By Silva Wijeye De; Roshan De Silva Wijeyeratne
2013 | 256 Pages | ISBN: 0415462665 | PDF | 5 MB
Nation, Constitutionalism and Buddhism in Sri Lanka offers a new perspective on contemporary debates about Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka. In this book de Silva Wijeyeratne argues forcefully that 'Sinhalese Buddhism' in the period prior to its engagement with the British colonial State signified a relatively unbounded (although at times boundary forming) set of practices that facilitated both the inclusion and exclusion of non-'Buddhist' concepts and people within a particular cosmological frame. Juxtaposing the premodern against the backdrop of colonial modernity, de Silva Wijeyeratne tells us that in contrast modern 'Sinhalese Buddhism/nationalism' is a much more reified and bounded concept, one imagined through a 19th century epistemology whose purpose was not so much inclusion, but a much more radical exclusion of non-'Buddhist' ideas and people.In this insightful analysis modern Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, then, emerges through the conjunction of discourse, power and knowledge at a distinct moment in the trajectory of the colonial State. An intrinsic feature of this modernist moment is that premodern categories (such as the cosmic order) were subject to a bureaucratic re-valuation that generated profound consequences for State-society relations and the wider constitutional/legal imaginary. This book goes onto explore how key constitutional and nation-building moments were framed within the cultural milieu of modern Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism - a nationalism that reveals the power of a re-valued Buddhist cosmic order to still inform the present.Given the intensification of the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist project following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, this book is of interest to scholars of nationalism, South Asian studies, the anthropology of ritual, and comparative legal history.