There are many publications dealing with the political career of Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989), who transformed the political landscape of Iran and the Middle East after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Most of the research conducted in the West is on Khomeini’s political strategies, while the influential role of mysticism in all facets of his life is ignored. This book is the first study examining Khomeini’s poetry, mysticism and the reception of his poetry both in Iran and the West. It...

'Wars Overseas' focuses on Dutch military actions outside Europe in the early-modern period. Those actions were rooted in the Eighty Years’ War, the conflict between Spain and the northern Netherlands that led to the creation of the independent Dutch Republic. The Republic was determined to trade in tropical products from Asia, Africa and the Americas, commodities on which the Iberians had had a monopoly for a century or more. To do so, however, it would have to fight. The fledgling State d...

Centuries of intense migrations have deeply impacted expressions of cultural heritage on the ABC islands: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. This volume queries how cultural heritage on these Dutch Caribbean islands relates to the work of nation-building and nation-branding. How does the imagining of a shared political “we” relate to images deliberately produced to market these islands to a world of capital? The contributing authors in this volume address this leading question in their essays ...

Starting in the late nineteenth century, unusual pictographic books began to flow from a remote corner of southwest China into the libraries of the western world. What made these books so attractive? For one, they possessed the air of mystery that came with being “magical” books almost indecipherable to all but a select few ritual specialists, but perhaps more importantly, they were written in what looked like an ancient form of picture writing.

In these books, written in the Naxi dongba ...

This book, 'Climate Security and the Military: Concepts, Strategies and Partnerships', reviews the climate Security Nexus from the military angle and proposes the design of climate security strategies and how they can contribute to adaptation to and mitigation of the related challenges. Part 1 reviews the understanding of the Climate Security Nexus. Subsequently, Part 2 assesses the potential design of climate security strategies. In Part 3, adaptation to climate change by the military is rev...

At the heart of Singapore’s political economy is the PAP government, which controls the levers of control. The accumulation of power occurs through a recurring pattern of state collectivisation and economic liberalisation, while the nation’s wealth expands through state investment vehicles adapting to shifts in geopolitics and trends in international trade and finance. Overshadowing the bicameral capitalistic system is the corridor of power, where ideas are developed to drive growth and p...

'Expeditions in Persia: Exploring Qajar Persia in two 19th-Century Diaries' unveils the intricacies of 19th-century Persian expeditions through two complementary travelogues. The first account, with an anonymous author (attributed to Sir John Malcolm), offers a detailed diplomatic and historical perspective on the journey through Persia during an East India Company mission led by Sir John Malcolm. The second travelogue, written by Mirza Saleh, an Iranian intellectual and later diplomat, chron...

Analyse van geschiedschrijving van archeologisch landschapsonderzoek op Kreta

In 'The Historiography of Landscape Research' on Crete evalueert Marina Gkiasta de geschiedschrijving van een eeuw archeologisch landschapsonderzoek op het Griekse eiland Kreta. Sinds het begin van deze discipline (1900) wordt een aantal relevante projecten uitgelicht en grondig geanalyseerd. Gkiasta benoemd vijf ‘tradities’ ofwel manieren van aanpak binnen onderzoek naar oude landschappen. Ze toont aan dat deze tr...

The aim of Sharia Incorporated is to provide unbiased and contextual information about a topic that has of late been hijacked by politics in the West. Sharia Incorporated is an ambitious study of the development and incorporation of sharia and Islamic and customary law traditions into national legal, political, and social state structures. Sharia Incorporated also explores the sensitive topic of 'Western' human rights and rule of law standards in a Muslim world. This book provides an in-depth...

The Archaeology of the First Farmer-Herders in Egypt explores how and why farming and herding started in the Fayum, which is a large oasis with a permanent lake in the Egyptian Western Desert. Noriyuki Shirai's research on lithic artefacts used by the Epipalaeolithic hunter-fishers and Neolithic famer-herders in the Fayum gives a clue as to the mobility and residential strategy of the Fayum people and their time and labour investments in tool production. The Neolitic famer-herders ( 6th C.B.C...