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This book explores the evolving African security paradigm in light of the multitude of diverse threats facing the continent and the international community today and in the decades ahead. It challenges current thinking and traditional security constructs as woefully inadequate to meet the real security concerns and needs of African governments in a globalized world. The continent has becoming increasingly integrated into an international security architecture, whereby Africans are just as vulnerable to threats emanating from outside the continent as they are from home-grown ones. Thus, Africa and what happens there, matters more than ever. Through an in-depth examination and analysis of the continent’s most pressing traditional and non-traditional security challenges—from failing states and identity and resource conflict to terrorism, health, and the environment—it provides a solid intellectual foundation, as well as practical examples of the complexities of the modern African security environment. Not only does it assess current progress at the local, regional, and international level in meeting these challenges, it also explores new strategies and tools for more effectively engaging Africans and the global community through the human security approach.
English radicalism has been a deep-rooted but minority tradition in the political culture since at least the seventeenth century. The central aim of this book is to examine, in historical and political context, a range of key events and individuals that exemplify English radicalism in the twentieth century. This analysis is preceded by defining precisely what has constituted this tradition; and by the main outline of the development of the tradition from the Civil War to the end of the nineteenth century. Three of the main currents of English radicalism in the twentieth century have been the labour movement, the women’s movement and the peace movement. These are discussed in some detail, as a framework for the detailed consideration of ten key representative figures of the tradition in the twentieth century: Bertrand Russell, Sylvia Pankhurst, Ellen Wilkinson, George Orwell, E.P. Thompson, Michael Foot, Joan Maynard, Stuart Hall, Tony Benn and Nicolas Walter. The question of ‘agency’ – of how to bring about radical change in a predominantly conservative society and culture – has been a fundamental issue for English radicals. It is argued that, in the twentieth century, many of the important achievements in progressive politics have taken place in and through extra-parliamentary movements, as well as through formal political parties and organisations – the Labour Party and other socialist organisations – and on occasion, through libertarian and anarchist politics. The final chapter considers the continuing relevance of this political tradition in the early twenty-first century, and reviews its challenges and prospects.
in some horrific way thus more psychologically healthy? It is just this kind of hypothesis with which Daniel Pick has taken issue. He says in his introduction to War Machine that ‘the writers I discuss are men, and often men for whom war evidently raises troubling questions of sexuality and gender, even though, at the same time, war is frequently said to resolve them’.78 He asks critics to be wary of attributing a healing, relieving, power to war. In some respects this healing does occur, and does so in Ford’s wartime character of Christopher Tietjens. As explored
extracted from the agrarian produce of eastern India and the Company’s desperate search for a stable, predictable source 74 Part I: Coherence and fragmentation to fund its increasingly expensive military campaigns, has not been studied.12 In short, the colonial regime by the 1790s had become an expensive, expanding, and insatiable war machine, and the primary concern of both the Company and its critics was how to sustain it. It will be argued here that earlier attempts to explain and sustain colonial warfare were replaced by new arguments prioritizing resources for
Ralph Knevet's Supplement of the Faery Queene (1635) is a narrative and allegorical work, which weaves together a complex collection of tales and episodes, featuring knights, ladies, sorcerers, monsters, vertiginous fortresses and deadly battles – a chivalric romp in Spenser's cod medieval style. The poem shadows recent English history, and the major military and political events of the Thirty Years War. But the Supplement is also an ambitiously intertextual poem, weaving together materials from mythic, literary, historical, scientific, theological, and many other kinds of written sources. Its encyclopaedic ambitions combine with Knevet's historical focus to produce an allegorical epic poem of considerable interest and power.
This new edition of Knevet's Supplement, the first scholarly text of the poem ever published, situates it in its literary, historical, biographical, and intellectual contexts. An extensive introduction and copious critical commentary, positioned at the back of the book, will enable students and scholars alike to access Knevet's complicated and enigmatic meanings, structures, and allusions.
instrumentalised by the tribunes so as to reinforce popular legitimacy. But as soon as Coriolanus comes back with his ‘war machine’, the plebeians change their minds and show that they are as changeable as, to take up Elias Canetti’s metaphor, a field of corn subjected to the wind: ‘It [corn] is as pliant as grass and subject to the influence of every wind. The blades move together in accordance with the wind; the whole field bows down
banished man does not leave the territory, thus flouting the proclamation) – and not delayed transgression (the banished man leaves but later comes back with a vengeance). This signifies that the risk incurred is greater, since, in this case, the trespasser has no deterrent ‘war machine’; if discovered, he will be killed. Lear’s threat to Kent is absolutely clear: ‘If on the seventh day following / Thy banished trunk be
In King Richard II , nothing is said about how Bolingbroke experiences exile before striking back at England with his ‘war machine’. We do know, however, that time goes so unbearably slowly for his father that he dies without seeing his son again. Richard II has perturbed both the cyclical time of festivity and the linear time of history, and this has an impact upon the way Gaunt perceives his near environment and the
deliberation, determination and military preparations. The ‘war machine’ is so swift that it is as if it were already there, imposing itself before the adverse forces that are unprepared and unable to retaliate; the victory is on its side already. Conversely, the dynamic of deviation triggers a process of deprivation, degradation and humiliation that requires psychological and physical endurance, even though the necessity of enduring
soundly defeated in the second round of the 2012 presidential election. But in terms of conquering a party organisation, there appeared to be little doubt. The memory was of Sarkozy as a killer, a bulldozer who would sweep aside all opposition; as the all-conquering former minister who had captured the UMP in 2004 – against opposition from President Chirac – and transformed it into a war machine that swept him to power in the 2007 presidential election; as the comeback kid, who returned from a brief period of crossing the desert (2012–14) and swept aside all challengers