It is tempting to take the tremendous rate of contemporary linguistic change for granted. What is required, in fact, is a radical reinterpretation of what language is. Steven Roger Fischer begins his book with an examination of the modes of communication used by dolphins, birds and primates as the first contexts in which the concept of "language" might be applied. As he charts the history of language from the times of Homo erectus, Neanderthal humans and Homo sapiens through to the nineteenth century, when the science of linguistics was developed, Fischer analyses the emergence of language as...

This book looks at the struggle between the processes of globalization and geopolitical forces over the last 150 years. The twentieth century witnessed a struggle between geopolitical states who wanted to close off and control earth space, resources and population and globalizing ones who wished to open up the world to the free flow of ideas, goods and services. Brian W. Blouet analyzes the tug-of-war between these tendencies, the playing out of which determined the shape and behavior of today's world. Beginning his survey in the late nineteenth century, Blouet shows how the Second World War...

Monarchies 1000 2000 surveys a form of government whose legitimacy rests not on voluntary consensus but on age-old custom, heredity and/or religious sanction. Global in scope and comparative in approach, W. M. Spellman's survey establishes connections between monarchy as idea and practice in a variety of historical and cultural contexts across a millennium when the system was without serious rival.
Spellman examines the intellectual assumptions behind different models of monarchy, tracing the ways in which each of these assumptions shifted in response to historical factors. While...

This book traces the evolution of the highly integrated global financial system from 1750 to the present. It examines the corporate form of business organization in the 18th century that saw an explosion of growth in the 19th, which facilitated the international movement of capital. The author also deals with the parallel growth of financial markets and explains how the need to finance public debts paved the way for stock markets as well as outlining the role of private merchant bankers, who originated as international bankers with family-run offices across Europe. He charts the development...

China to Chinatown tells the story of one of the most notable examples of the globalization of food: the spread of Chinese recipes, ingredients and cooking styles to the Western world. Beginning with the accounts of Marco Polo and Franciscan missionaries, J.A.G. Roberts describes how Westerners first impressions of Chinese food were decidedly mixed, with many regarding Chinese eating habits as repugnant. Chinese food was brought back to the West merely as a curiosity.
The Western encounter with a wider variety of Chinese cuisine dates from the first half of the 20th century, when Chinese...

From the earliest scratches on stone and bone to the languages of computers and the internet, A History of Writing offers a fascinating investigation into the origin and development of writing throughout the world.

Commencing with the first stages of information storage, Fischer focuses on the emergence of complete writing systems in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC. He documents the rise of Phoenician and its effect on the Greek alphabet, generating the many alphabetic scripts of the West. Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese writing systems are dealt with in depth, as...

This book deals with the history of mining and smelting from the Renaissance to the present. Martin Lynch opens with the invention, sometime before 1453, of a revolutionary technique for separating silver from copper. It was this invention which brought back to life the rich copper-silver mines of central Europe, in the process making brass cannon and silver coin available to the ambitious Habsburg emperors, thereby underpinning their quest for European domination. Lynch also discusses the Industrial Revolution and the far-reaching changes to mining and smelting brought about by the steam...

Navies in Modern World History traces the role of navies in history from the early nineteenth century, through both World Wars, to the dawn of the twenty-first century and beyond.
In a series of case studies Lawrence Sondhaus examines the national fleets of Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Japan, Brazil, Chile and the Soviet Union, and demonstrates the variety of ways in which each country has made decisive use of naval power. In each case the author argues that the navy in question helped change the course of modern world history; he also systematically analyses the...

China to Chinatown tells the story of one of the most notable examples of the globalization of food: the spread of Chinese recipes, ingredients and cooking styles to the Western world. Beginning with the accounts of Marco Polo and Franciscan missionaries, J.A.G. Roberts describes how Westerners first impressions of Chinese food were decidedly mixed, with many regarding Chinese eating habits as repugnant. Chinese food was brought back to the West merely as a curiosity.
The Western encounter with a wider variety of Chinese cuisine dates from the first half of the 20th century, when Chinese...

With the recent surge in terrorist acts and military confrontations, as well as ever-strengthening fundamentalist ideologies, the Christian Muslim divide is perhaps more visible than ever but it is not new. Alan G. Jamieson explores here the long and bloody history of the Christian Muslim conflict, revealing in his concise yet comprehensive study how deeply this ancient divide is interwoven with crucial events in world history.
Faith and Swordopens with the tumultuous first centuries of the conflict, examining the religious precepts that framed clashes between Christians and...