In the long span of human history to the twentieth century, almost all great leaders of empires and states were men, with few exceptions. One of them was Heavenly Empress Wu Zetian. She is the only female ruler in history to have replaced a powerful dynasty with her own in a major country and crowned herself emperor of China. This book is about how this daughter of a concubine, who began life in the palace as a lowly concubine of Emperor Taizong (see Heavenly Khan) at a very young age, overcame all obstacles in a man-dominated world and rose to the summit of power in medieval China.
擴張、爆炸、加速理解人類史上最富創造力也最具破壞性的時代所有21世紀的問題，都可以從20世紀找到根源與解答！中央研究院歷史語言研究所助研究員 孔令偉——專文導讀政經動盪、科技進展、環境轉變……，現今人類面臨的問題，來自瘋狂加速、暴烈成長的20世紀上個世紀發生了什麼事？21世紀的我們要收穫或承擔哪些後果？以全新角度理解人類歷史上最不平凡的一段歲月，透過分析20世紀，連結現在與預測未來趨勢20世紀堪稱是人類歷史上充滿最多奇蹟和最富創造力的時代，但同時也是最具破壞性的。過去一百五十年來，全球各地的現代社會經歷了一場非比尋常、史無前例的轉型，而這股轉型的力量乃是植根於十九世紀的科技發展。《超級世紀》建立起一個框架，以此來理解那些真的在全球尺度上塑造世界的基本因素，並且分析歷史趨勢以及在當中運作的主要力量之成因和後果。本書從1870年代橫跨到今日，探討現代世界是如何被打造成一個全球發展的相聯模式。讀者將可從中習得如何將過去這兩個世紀理解為一過程，從一系列的政經動盪、科技進展以及環境轉變來看這漫長的20世紀是如何形塑出來的。媒體讚譽行文用字清楚，充滿洞察力，迪金森寫下的這部過去一百五十年的全球史，堪稱是一傑作。不論是初學者還是資深的史學家，都可在字裡行間找到充滿啟發性的觀點，尤其是在政治、經濟和環境史方面。——麥克尼爾（J. R. McNeill），《太陽底下的新鮮事：二十世紀的世界環境史》（Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the 20th-Century World）作者以全面性的敘述呈現重塑整個現代世界的強大力量。「擴張」、「爆炸」和「加速」的敘事弧線引人入勝，迪金森整理出大量史料來佐證科技、經濟和環境的變革性的力量，非常具有原創性。——伊恩．克里斯朵夫．弗萊徹（Ian Christopher Fletcher），《大英帝國女性參政權：公民權、民族與種族》（Women's Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation, and Race）共同主編以一種真正的創新方法來探討全球史，為理解今日世界面臨的社會和生態挑戰奠定歷史基礎。以大規模移民、帝國主義、戰爭以及去殖民化來提供一個引人入勝的框架，用以探討這些對地球以及人類條件造成
What can be called the long twentieth century represents the most miraculous and creative era in human history. It was also the most destructive. Over the past 150 years, modern societies across the g
What can be called the long twentieth century represents the most miraculous and creative era in human history. It was also the most destructive. Over the past 150 years, modern societies across the g
This book examines the array of financial crises, slumps, depressions and recessions that happened around the globe during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It covers events including World War I, hyperinflation and market crashes in the 1920s, the Great Depression of the 1930s, stagflation of the 1970s, the Latin American debt crises of the 1980s, the post-socialist transitions in Central Eastern Europe and Russia in the 1990s, and the great financial crisis of 2008–9. In addition to providing wide geographic and historical coverage of episodes of crisis in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia, the book clarifies basic concepts in the area of recession economics, analysis of high inflation, debt crises, political cycles and international political economy. An understanding of these concepts is needed to comprehend big recessions and slumps that often lead to both political change and the reassessment of prevailing economic paradigms.
This book examines the array of financial crises, slumps, depressions and recessions that happened around the globe during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It covers events including World War I, hyperinflation and market crashes in the 1920s, the Great Depression of the 1930s, stagflation of the 1970s, the Latin American debt crises of the 1980s, the post-socialist transitions in Central Eastern Europe and Russia in the 1990s, and the great financial crisis of 2008–9. In addition to providing wide geographic and historical coverage of episodes of crisis in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia, the book clarifies basic concepts in the area of recession economics, analysis of high inflation, debt crises, political cycles and international political economy. An understanding of these concepts is needed to comprehend big recessions and slumps that often lead to both political change and the reassessment of prevailing economic paradigms.
In the discipline of world history, there has been a surprising paucity of thinking and writing about how to approach and conceptualize the long twentieth century from the 1870s through the early 200
This is a pioneering survey of the rise of internationalism as a mainstream political idea mobilised in support of the ambitions of indigenous populations, feminists and anti-colonialists, as well as politicians, economists and central bankers. Leading scholars trace the emergence of intergovernmental organisations such as the League of Nations, the United Nations, the International Labour Organisation and the World Health Organisation, and the corresponding expansion in transnational sociability and economic entanglement throughout the long twentieth century. They reveal how international thought helped to drive major transformations in the governance of global issues from refugees to slavery and sex-trafficking, from the environment to women's rights and human rights, and from state borders and national minorities to health, education, trade and commerce. In challenging dominant perceptions of how contemporaries thought of nations, states and empires, Internationalisms radically alte
This is a pioneering survey of the rise of internationalism as a mainstream political idea mobilised in support of the ambitions of indigenous populations, feminists and anti-colonialists, as well as politicians, economists and central bankers. Leading scholars trace the emergence of intergovernmental organisations such as the League of Nations, the United Nations, the International Labour Organisation and the World Health Organisation, and the corresponding expansion in transnational sociability and economic entanglement throughout the long twentieth century. They reveal how international thought helped to drive major transformations in the governance of global issues from refugees to slavery and sex-trafficking, from the environment to women's rights and human rights, and from state borders and national minorities to health, education, trade and commerce. In challenging dominant perceptions of how contemporaries thought of nations, states and empires, Internationalisms radically alte
The early 20th-century world experienced a growth in international cooperation. Yet the dominant historical view of the period has long been one of national, military, and social divisions rather than
The early 20th-century world experienced a growth in international cooperation. Yet the dominant historical view of the period has long been one of national, military, and social divisions rather than
One of the most violent conflicts in the history of civilization, World War I has been strangely forgotten in American culture. It has become a ghostly war fought in a haze of memory, often seen merel
Concerns about rights in the United States have a long history, but the articulation of global human rights in the twentieth century was something altogether different. Global human rights offered individuals unprecedented guarantees beyond the nation for the protection of political, economic, social and cultural freedoms. The World Reimagined explores how these revolutionary developments first became believable to Americans in the 1940s and the 1970s through everyday vernaculars as they emerged in political and legal thought, photography, film, novels, memoirs and soundscapes. Together, they offered fundamentally novel ways for Americans to understand what it means to feel free, culminating in today's ubiquitous moral language of human rights. Set against a sweeping transnational canvas, the book presents a new history of how Americans thought and acted in the twentieth-century world.
Long before the arrival of the Empire Windrush after the Second World War, Liverpool was widely known for its polyglot population, its boisterous sailortown and cosmopolitan profile of transients, soj
Modern Italian drama ranks among the most important and influential in the western world, yet it has long been inaccessible to English-language readers. Finally, an anthology is available of the best
States have long been wary of putting international migration on the global agenda. As an issue that defines sovereignty - that is, who enters and remains on a state's territory - international migration has called for protection of national prerogatives and unilateral actions. However, since the end of World War I, governments have sought ways to address various aspects of international migration in a collaborative manner. This book examines how these efforts to increase international cooperation have evolved from the early twentieth century to the present. The scope encompasses all of the components of international migration: labor migration, family reunification, refugees, human trafficking and smuggling, and newly emerging forms of displacement (including movements likely to result from global climate change). The final chapter assesses the progress (and lack thereof) in developing an international migration regime and makes recommendations towards strengthening international coop
States have long been wary of putting international migration on the global agenda. As an issue that defines sovereignty - that is, who enters and remains on a state's territory - international migration has called for protection of national prerogatives and unilateral actions. However, since the end of World War I, governments have sought ways to address various aspects of international migration in a collaborative manner. This book examines how these efforts to increase international cooperation have evolved from the early twentieth century to the present. The scope encompasses all of the components of international migration: labor migration, family reunification, refugees, human trafficking and smuggling, and newly emerging forms of displacement (including movements likely to result from global climate change). The final chapter assesses the progress (and lack thereof) in developing an international migration regime and makes recommendations towards strengthening international coop
From one of the world’s leading economists, a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, yet left us unsatisfied Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation and utterly transforming the economy again and again. Our ancestors would have presumed we would have used such powers to build utopia. But it was not so. When 1870–2010 ended, the world instead saw global warming; economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality; and broad rejection of the status quo. Economist Brad DeLong's Slouching Towards Utopia tells the story of how this unprecedented explosion of material wealth occurred, how it transformed the globe, and why it failed to deliver us to utopia. Of remarkable breadth and ambition, it reveals the last century to have been less a march of progress than a slouch in the right dir
