Senior BSSS

Algeria is a nation at war with itself. Civil strife has engulfed the country since early 1992, when a secular military government called off a national election after its Islamic opponents won the first round. Since then the militant Islamic opposition has employed suicide bombings, assassinations and death threats to make the country ungovernable. The most secularized of nations in the region, Algeria would not seem to have been the most vulnerable to disorder involving Muslim fundamentalists and Islamists. However, as in other postcolonial societies, the lack of democracy since independence has nurtured the growth of religious populism as the only available form of political resistance to corrupt government authority. Algeria: The Fundamentalist Challenge lucidly untangles the roots of this conflict in the colonial era and after, and examines it in the context of local, regional and international politics. It is written for students and other readers who need a clear introduction to one of the more significant struggles of our era.

Looks at the struggles of Angola and Mozambique against colonialism, South African domination, and superpower confrontations.

Describes political, economic, religious, and other problems which plague the entire continent of Africa today, and their sources in European colonial rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This book charts the previously untold story of decolonisation in the oceanic world of the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, presenting it both as an indigenous and an international phenomenon. Tracey Banivanua Mar reveals how the inherent limits of decolonisation were laid bare by the historical peculiarities of colonialism in the region, and demonstrates the way imperial powers conceived of decolonisation as a new form of imperialism. She shows how Indigenous peoples responded to these limits by developing rich intellectual, political and cultural networks transcending colonial and national borders, with localised traditions of protest and dialogue connected to the global ferment of the twentieth century. The individual stories told here shed new light on the forces that shaped twentieth-century global history, and reconfigure the history of decolonisation, presenting it not as an historic event, but as a fragile, contingent and ongoing process continuing well into the postcolonial era.

Looks at the history, culture and peoples of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia - plus fact files. Age 13+ This book shows how colonialism began in the pursuit of trade by the Portuguese, and expanded into a rush for territory that peaked in the 19th century with Britain ruling over a vast territory. It tells the story of the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French and British empires, their rise to grandeur, and their almost complete demise.

In Gentlemanly Terrorists, Durba Ghosh uncovers the critical place of revolutionary terrorism in the colonial and postcolonial history of modern India. She reveals how so-called 'Bhadralok dacoits' used assassinations, bomb attacks, and armed robberies to accelerate the departure of the British from India and how, in response, the colonial government effectively declared a state of emergency, suspending the rule of law and detaining hundreds of suspected terrorists. She charts how each measure of constitutional reform to expand Indian representation in 1919 and 1935 was accompanied by emergency legislation to suppress political activism by those considered a threat to the security of the state. Repressive legislation became increasingly seen as a necessary condition to British attempts to promote civic society and liberal governance in India. By placing political violence at the center of India's campaigns to win independence, this book reveals how terrorism shaped the modern nation-state in India.

British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial 'gift', from the railways to the rule of law was designed in Britain's interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain's Industrial Revolution was founded on India's deindustrialisation, and the destruction of its textile industry.

Kammen illuminates how recurrent episodes of mass violence shaped alliances and enmities within Maubara as well as with supra-local actors, and how those legacies have influenced efforts to address human rights violations, post-conflict reconstruction, and the relationship between local experience and the identification with the East Timorese nation.

Australia's involvement with East Timor began in the Second World War when many Australian soldiers would have died without the aid of the East Timorese. Since that time, East Timor has been left on its own to fight a bloody battle for freedom from Indonesia. How could this be allowed to happen - and what was Australia's part in it? Age 11+.

This is the first biography of a leader whose private life has until now been a closely guarded secret. But it is much more than an account of the life of Hun Sen -- it tells through his eyes the story of the emergence through slaughter of an innocent people. Essential reading for all those who are intrigued and bewildered by the complex recent history of Cambodia, and by the rapid rise of its new leader from obscurity to strongman status.