The Cambridge World History of Violence

Description

This book explores one of the most intractable problems of human existence - our propensity to inflict violence. It provides readers with case studies of political, social, economic, religious, structural and interpersonal violence from across the entire globe since 1800. It also examines the changing representations of violence in diverse media and the cultural significance of its commemoration. Together, the chapters provide in-depth understanding of the ways that humans have perpetrated violence, justified its use, attempted to contain its spread and narrated the stories of its impacts. Readers also gain insight into the mechanisms by which the parameters about the acceptable limits to and locations of violence have dramatically altered over the course of a few decades. Leading experts from around the world have pooled their knowledge to provide concise, authoritative examinations of the complex phenomenon of human violence. Annotated bibliographies provide overviews of the shape of the research field.

Louise Edwards is Scientia Professor of Chinese History at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her research explores women in politics in China and Asia and gendered cultures of war in China, as well as Chinese literature and intellectual history. Her most recent sole-authored books include Gender Politics and Democracy: Women's Suffrage in China (2008) and Women Warriors and Wartime Spies of China (2016), and Citizens of Beauty: Drawing Democratic Dreams in Republican China (forthcoming). Professor Edwards is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences, the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities. Nigel Penn is Professor of History at the University of Cape Town. He has written about the impact of colonialism on the Khoisan societies of southern Africa and on the nature of early colonial society in both the Dutch and British periods. He is the co-editor of several books including Written Culture in a Colonial Context: Africa and the Americas, 1500-1900 (with Adrien Delmas 2011), and most recently Science, Africa and Europe: Processing Information and Creating Knowledge (with Martin Lengwiler and Patrick Harries, 2019). Among his sole-authored books is The Forgotten Frontier: Colonist and Khoisan on the Cape's Northern Frontier in the Eighteenth Century (2005). Jay Winter is Charles J. Stille Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University, Connecticut. He is a specialist on World War I and its impact on the twentieth century, and the author or co-author of twenty-five books, including Socialism and the Challenge of War: Ideas and Politics in Britain, 1912-18 (2014); Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (1995); 1914-1918: Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century (1996); Rene Cassin and Human Rights (with Antoine Prost, 2013); and most recently, War beyond Words: Languages of Remembrance from The Great War to the Present (2017). In addition he has edited or co-edited thirty books and contributed 130 book chapters to edited volumes. He is a founder of the Research Centre of the Historial de la Grande Guerre, at Peronne, Somme, France.