Bøger udgivet af Lund University Press

As the guns fell silent in Palestine following the first Arab-Israeli war, a covert war was just unfolding. Espionage and counter-espionage networks were established in Damascus and Beirut. Soon enough, an insurrection erupted in the streets of the Syrian capital, and the crowd demanded the execution of the president. Some foreign agents feared the country may turn communist, and the head of the Bank of Syria and Lebanon cabled the French capital asserting that the King of Jordan could soon be crowned King of Syria in the Umayyad Mosque. In his book, Carl Rihan reveals why, on just another spring night, armoured battalions overran the Syrian capital, how the new junta's leader went on a collision course with the region's conservative regimes, and how secret negotiations, jeopardized intelligence-gathering networks, along with a substantial dose of misunderstandings, inevitably resulted in executions, assassinations, and estrangements. From discrete escapades to the Jordanian capital, to meetings in the French Embassy in Beirut, to night couriers and arms smugglers, Coup in Damascus unravels the calculations and fears of a league of officers, politicians, diplomats, and secret agents who fought in secrecy for dominion over Syria and Lebanon. It argues for a different approach for writing the contemporary history of the Middle East, through prioritizing the internal logic of local actors and their relationship with their political and socioeconomic contexts. By bringing forth previously unstudied sources, Coup in Damascus sheds the light over an obscure episode in Syria's and Lebanon's history that still bares its bitter fruits today.

Focusing on the crisis of transition marked by the English Revolution (1640-1660), this collection of essays also places it in the context of a long seventeenth century.Leading experts in the field explore this theme with special reference to developments in politics, religion and society, at both national and local levels. The volume breaks decisively with recent historiography, in emphasising both the long-term nature and revolutionary implications of the seventeenth-century events in question. Features of the crisis include the growing challenge to the confessional state from within the ranks of Protestantism itself and the enlargement of the public sphere of politics, fuelled increasingly by the role of print, along with the painful emergence of a new style parliamentary monarchy and associated fiscal-military apparatus. The explosive role of religion especially is highlighted, in chapters ranging from the popularity politics engaged in under Elizabeth I to the escalating party strife of Charles II's reign and beyond. At the same time the epicentre of the revolution is firmly located in the two tumultous decades of civil war and interregnum. The volume will be essential reading for both students and teachers working on this period.

Refugee crises are one of the gravest problems facing the modern world. This book explores the paradox of why countries such as Britain pride themselves on their past treatment of refugees yet are suspicious and hostile towards asylum seekers trying to gain entry. It explores the contemporary treatment and representation of refugees ranging from the Huguenots in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries through to the many groups that have gained entry more recently. Was the treatment of refugees such as Jews escaping Tsarist and later Nazi persecution as welcoming as politicians and others now make out? Why have some groups been remembered positively, whilst others have been forgotten? Remembering refugees plays particular attention to how historians and those in the heritage industry have dealt with the refugee presence. By adopting an original and critical framework, it asks why a variety of academic disciplines, as well as politicians, the media and the general public, have difficulty with refugees. A richly textured book that utilizes a huge range of sources from parliamentary debates through to novels, films and autobiographical writing, it argues that the current panic about refugees and asylum seekers says more about the moral failings of contemporary society than it does about those fleeing persecution.