Movements Books - Page 6

The nationalization of the masses: Political symbolism and mass movements in Germany from the Napoleonic wars through the Third Reich

George L Mosse

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent...well written 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 9 people found this review helpful.

In the book Mosse provides the reader with a great account of German history. He discussses the power of political symbolism, the arts, public festivals, and sports and as means of promoting nationalism. I found the final few chapter especially interesting. It is here that he talks about the Third Reich. He explains how religion and politics can closely resemble one another. This is a "must read" for anyone interested in WWII. This book is well written from cover to cover. Mosse reminds us that history is "always contemporary".

Imagining Spain: Historical Myth and National Identity

Henry Kamen

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Editorial Review:

This book, the latest contribution by eminent historian Henry Kamen, is a unique analysis of the myths that Spaniards have held, and continue to hold, about themselves and about their collective past. Kamen discusses how perceptions of key aspects of early modern Spain, such as the monarchy, the empire, and the Inquisition, were influenced by ideologies that continue to play a role in the formation of contemporary Spanish attitudes.

 

Anxious to create a national identity, influential politicians and historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries sought the roots of that identity—an allegedly powerful, united, and Catholic nation—in a fictitious image of what Spain was during the sixteenth century. Kamen holds up this imagined Spain to historical light and also examines the persistent obsession with the notion of national decline. Analyzing the historical basis of attempts to create a convincing nationalist ideology, Kamen speaks to issues that remain at the heart of Spanish politics and public controversy today.

(20080723)

The politics of cultural despair;: A study in the rise of the Germanic ideology (A Doubleday Anchor Book)

Fritz Richard Stern

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A presage of the rise of German National Socialism. Similarities to modern Islamic Radicalism. 4 out of 5 stars.
22 of 25 people found this review helpful.

Stern's book gives us valuable insight into currents of German thinking from the 19th century up to the rise of National Socialism in the 20s and 30s. Stern's books focuses on the writings of Paul de Lagarde, Julius Langbehn, and Moeller van den Bruck.

Paul de Lagarde was a biblical scholar and a master of oriental languages like Aramaic and Persian. He was also a rabid Jew hater who openly called for extermination. He loathed classical Western liberalism, science, and capitalism. For him, these were all spiritless abstractions. For Lagarde, Western liberalism, capitalism, science, and the Jews where the monstrous embodiment of all he hated. He had a romantic notion of a mythical Germanic past, and he believed the Jews and the modern society of the West were conspiring to pollute and corrupt this pure German spirit. He advocated a Great Leader, a "purge the Jew" program, and a divinely inspired expansionist foreign policy to rekindle an authentic and noble Germanic way of life.

Lagarde despised bourgeois 19th century German Christianity, and he called for a "new" German religion that would purge all the Jewish elements of Christianity and become the unifying spiritual basis and justification for the new German state. This new religion would fuse the squabbling German factions and sects into a unified people and nation with one single will .... embodied in the form a "Great Leader."

Lagarde rejected the premise of general education, and instead, he proposed a totally new education system based on social status and intellectual promise. This new, state-run authoritarian education system would mold the leaders of the new German nation.

Julius Langbehn wrote a book that extolled the Dutch artist Rembrandt as an authentic "German man". If this sounds confusing, well ... it is ..., but recall that many years later the Nazis attempted to use Rembrandt as a cultural symbol to force a Dutch-German alliance after they occupied Holland during the war.

Like Lagarde, Langbehn hated the modern liberal society because of its mechanization, realism, bourgeois lifestyle, and commercialism. Like Hitler, Langbehn was an "artist"; he was anti-scientific, anti-Western, and anti-rational. He postulated a "cult of the young" (think Hitler Youth) and a "Hidden Emperor" (think Führer) who would emerge to unite the German people. Again like Lagarde, Langbehn hated the U.S.A because it was the embodiment of all he despised. He warned that Jews were destroying the German "Volk" by "worming" their way into German life. For Langbehn, modernity itself was the ultimate cause of German decay, and the Jews were to blame for bringing this modernity to German society. For Langbehn, the Jews were "democratically inclined; they have an affinity for the mob," and like Lagarde, Langbehn called for extermination of the Jews.

I won't go on about Moeller van den Bruck, because it is similar to Lagarde and Langbehn. One important footnote: The Nazi's got the term "The Third Reich" from one of Moeller's books.

In summary, we find a set of three German intellectual romantics who were alienated by modernism and who abhorred all that was new. They suffered from "cultural despair." For these three, the "Jews" were the immediate agents of corrupting change, and it was America that was the colossal embodiment of all they detested. For them, a pure and authentic German way of life was lost due to the conspiracy and confluence of these horrible forces of modernism. All of the ills and fractiousness and faithlessness of German society were attributable to Jews and liberal modernism (as exemplified by America).

These three sought to annihilate the bourgeois modern society they found themselves in and they sought to replace it with a utopian dream. Their utopia was a unified and harmonious German people -- purged of Jews -- who would be orderly, hierarchical, and authentic. This unified German nation would be led by a strong emperor who would perfectly embody the unified will of the people. They sought a "New German religion", free of Jewish influence, that would provide a unifying framework for this new society. They proposed state-controlled education and propaganda, leadership by a small elite, annexation and conquest of middle Europe, and they called for the extermination of Jews.

In short - these three "culturally despairing" egg heads predicted much of the horror of the Nazis. All three were widely read in German society at various points in time leading up to the rise of National Socialism.

We know that Hitler emphatically read Lagarde. For more on this, see "Hitler's Forgotten Library" in the May 2003 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, by Timothy W. Ryback. On p.295, Stern shows how Lagarde, Langbehn, and van den Bruck influenced other key Nazi ideologists like Alfred Rosenberg.

The book contains extensive footnotes and end notes, a large bibliography, and a good index. I have one gripe with the book. There are several book titles, quotes, and passages that are in German without English translation. I could not work them out with my meager German. I wish translations were provided. I also wish pictures or portraits of Lagarde, Langbehn, and van den Bruck were provided.

Finally, I'd like to add that many of the themes we see having emerged from Lagarde, Langbehn, and van den Bruck are similar to what is found the more recent work of the influential Islamic radical Sayyid Qutb. I strongly recommend the Paul Berman book "Terror and Liberalism" for a very readable and enlightening treatment of Qutb.

Editorial Review:

"An enlightening and solidly documented book of great value to those who would like to trace the ideolgoical roots behind the most erratic and dramatic politics phases of modern Germany."--"American Political Science Review" "If only because it presents the intellectual and emotional background to National Socialism with rare clarity and penetrating analysis of its several and often sharply contrasting components, the ably written and profoundly interesting book...would be of importance....With its useful footnotes, selective bibliography and good index Professor Stern's study is American scholarship at its best."-"International Affairs"

Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern

Prasenjit Duara

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Extensively researched and annotated 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Sovereignty And Authenticity: Manchukuo And The East Asian Modern by Prasenjit Duara (Professor of History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago), is a technical and advanced study of imperialism, nationalism, modernity, tradition, government, and exploitation with an especial and illustrative focus on Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in northeast China that lasted from 1932 to 1945. Extensively researched and annotated, this critical and scholarly discourse delves both into the nuanced intricacies of history and the fascinating mass psychology mechanisms of society and government, Sovereignty And Authenticity is an impressive and strongly recommended work of World War II era history.

Editorial Review:

In this powerful and provocative book, Prasenjit Duara uses the intriguing case of Manchukuo--the Japanese puppet state in northeast China from 1932-1945--to explore how such antinomies as imperialism and nationalism, modernity and tradition, and governmentality and exploitation interacted in the post-World War I period. He argues that Manchukuo, as a transparently constructed nation-state, offers a unique historical laboratory for examining the utilization and transformation of circulating global forces mediated by the East Asian modern. With its sweepingly original theoretical and comparative perspectives on nationalism and imperialism, this book will be essential reading for all those interested in contemporary history.

Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition Sao Paulo and Salvador

Kim D. Butler

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Editorial Review:

Winner of the American Historical Association's Wesley-Logan Prize and the Association of Black Women Historian's Letitia Woods Brown Prize "An important, original, much-needed comparative study of post-emancipation Brazil." --Joao Jose Reis, Universidade Federal da Bahia "A deftly written analysis that goes well beyond most existing studies of slavery's legacy in the hemisphere. The author's candor is refreshing, and her use of interviews provides a major new source of evidence." --Robert M. Levine, author of Brazilian Legacies and Father of the Poor?: Vargas and His Times Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won is the first book-length study devoted to understanding the political life of urban Afro-Brazilians in the aftermath of abolition. It explores the ways Afro-Brazilians in two major cities adapted to the new conditions of life after slavery and how they confronted limitations placed on their new freedom. The book sets forth new ways of understanding why the abolition of slavery did not yield equitable fruits of citizenship, not only in Brazil, but throughout the Americas and the Caribbean. In Sao Paulo, Afro-Brazilians united against racial discrimination, giving rise to a vocal black press and numerous political groups. One of these became the first national civil rights organization and Brazil's only black political party. In Salvador, African identity prevailed over black identity, and social protest was oriented toward protecting the right to practice African-based cultural expressions such as candomble and capoeira. Of all the eras and issues studied in Afro-Brazilian history, post-abolition social and political action has been the most neglected. Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won sets theAfro-Brazilian experience in a national context as well situating it within the Afro-Atlantic diaspora through a series of explicit parallels, particularly with Cuba and Jamaica. Kim D. Butler is an associate professor of history in the Africana Studies department at Rutgers University.

A House of Many Mansions

Kamal S. Salibi

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Subjects -> History -> Middle East -> Lebanon

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Editorial Review:

Today Lebanon is one of the world's most divided countries. But paradoxically the faction-ridden Lebanese, both Christians and Muslims, have never shown a keener consciousness of common identity. How can this be? In the light of modern scholarship, a famous Lebanese writer and scholar examines the historical myths on which his country's warring communities have based their conflicting visions of the Lebanese nation. He shows that Lebanon cannot afford this divisiveness, that in order to develop and maintain a sense of political unity, it is necesary to distinuish fact from fiction and then build on what is real in the common experience of both groups.
Salibi offers a major reinterpretation of Lebanese history and provides remarkable insights into the dynamic of Lebanon's recent conflict. In so doing, he illuminates important facets of his country's present and future. This book also gives a masterly account of how the imagined communities that underlie modern nationalism are created and will be of interest to students of international affairs as well as Near Eastern scholars.

Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution

Richard Stites

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The little oddities of Soviet myth making explained 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This is one of the best pieces of Russian History I have read, better than Billington or Pipes to be sure. Stites explores the long tradition of Russian Utopias and cultural myth, he digs up amazing bits of early Soviet cultural practice, and carefully analyzes it all with an impressive set of theoretical tools. Best of all this is an extremely enagaging book, nothing dry about its careful historical work, just fascinating subject matter in a clear, sensible form. I was so engaged by Revolutionary Dreams when I first saw it in a friend's library that he had to lend it to me to get me to go home. Finally, I know of nowhere else that you can learn about what made the Rosa Luxemburg chocolate bar special.

Editorial Review:

The revolutionary ideals of equality, communal living, proletarian morality, and technology worship, rooted in Russian utopianism, generated a range of social experiments which found expression, in the first decade of the Russian revolution, in festival, symbol, science fiction, city planning, and the arts. In this study, historian Richard Stites offers a vivid portrayal of revolutionary life and the cultural factors--myth, ritual, cult, and symbol--that sustained it, and describes the principal forms of utopian thinking and experimental impulse. Analyzing the inevitable clash between the authoritarian elements in the Bolshevik's vision and the libertarian behavior and aspirations of large segments of the population, Stites interprets the pathos of utopian fantasy as the key to the emotional force of the Bolshevik revolution which gave way in the early 1930s to bureaucratic state centralism and a theology of Stalinism.

Commemorations

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Editorial Review:

Memory is as central to modern politics as politics is central to modern memory. We are so accustomed to living in a forest of monuments, to having the past represented to us through museums, historic sites, and public sculpture, that we easily lose sight of the recent origins and diverse meanings of these uniquely modern phenomena. In this volume, leading historians, anthropologists, and ethnographers explore the relationship between collective memory and national identity in diverse cultures throughout history. Placing commemorations in their historical settings, the contributors disclose the contested nature of these monuments by showing how groups and individuals struggle to shape the past to their own ends.

The volume is introduced by John Gillis's broad overview of the development of public memory in relation to the history of the nation-state. Other contributions address the usefulness of identity as a cross-cultural concept (Richard Handler), the connection between identity, heritage, and history (David Lowenthal), national memory in early modern England (David Cressy), commemoration in Cleveland (John Bodnar), the museum and the politics of social control in modern Iraq (Eric Davis), invented tradition and collective memory in Israel (Yael Zerubavel), black emancipation and the civil war monument (Kirk Savage), memory and naming in the Great War (Thomas Laqueur), American commemoration of World War I (Kurt Piehler), art, commerce, and the production of memory in France after World War I (Daniel Sherman), historic preservation in twentieth-century Germany (Rudy Koshar), the struggle over French identity in the early twentieth century (Herman Lebovics), and the commemoration of concentration camps in the new Germany (Claudia Koonz).

Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism

Elaine H. Kim

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent Anaylsis 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Professor Kim is simply amazing in this book and you can see why she is regarded as one of the leading experts in the field of Asian Studies, Ethnic Studies, Asian American Studies. Particularly helpful is the voice that Prof. Kim gives to the disenfranchised in historical books. They say historical books are written by conquerors. Nationalist movements that succeed generally give credit to the one who takes the credit as the conqueror, but we have to remember that there are many people before him (or her) who remain silent because they were in the stage of struggle and suffering, rather than victory. There should be more historical studies like this.

Editorial Review:

Dangerous Women addresses the themes of Korean nationalism and gender construction, as well as various issues related to the colonialization and decolonialization of the Korean nation. The contributors explore the troubled category of "woman," placing it in the specific context of a marginalized and colonized nation. But Korean women are not merely configured here as metaphors for an emasculated and infantilized "homeland;" they are also shown to be products of a problematic gender construction that originates in Korea, and extends even today to Korean communities beyond Asia. Representations of Korean women still attempt to confine them to the status of either mother or prostitute: Dangerous Women rectifies that construction, offering a feminist intervention that might recuperate womanhood.

The Origins of Arab Nationalism

Rashid Khalidi, Lisa Anderson, Muhammad Muslih, Reeva S. Simon

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Editorial Review:

Surveys the various regions of the Arab world on the eve of World War I to trace the roots of Arab nationalism to political conditions in the Ottoman Empire, Syria and Iraq, the Hejaz, and northeast Africa, and to specific personalities and political movements. Readers need their own maps. Annotati