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Using case studies, this book explores the publishing of African literature, addressing the construction of literary value, relationships between African writers and British publishers, and importance of the African market. It analyses the historical, political and economic conditions framing the emergence of postcolonial literature.

Annals of Botany is a peer-reviewed plant biology journal. It was started in 1887, making it the oldest continuously published plant science title. A previous article [Jackson MB. 2015. One hundred and twenty-five years of the Annals of Botany Part 1: the first 50 years (1887-1936). Annals of Botany 115: : 1-18] summarized events leading to its founding, highlighted the individuals involved and examined the Journal's achievements and management practices over the first 50 years to 1937. This second article covers the next 75 years. The account draws principally on the Journal's own records, minute books, financial accounts, original letters and notes held by the Annals of Botany Company, the Journal's owners and managers. In 1937, its 51st year, the Journal was re-launched as Annals of Botany New Series and its volume numbers were reset to No. I. The present article evaluates the evolution of the New Series up to 2012, Annals of Botany's 125th anniversary year. The period includes a 2-year run-up to World War II, six war years and their immediate aftermath, and then on through increasingly competitive times. The ebb and flow of the Journal's fortunes are set against a roll-call of the often highly distinguished scientists who managed and edited the Journal. The article also examines an internal crisis in the 1980s that radically altered the Journal's organization in ways that were, ultimately, to its benefit. The narrative is set against changes to economic conditions in Great Britain over the period, to the evolving nature and geographical distribution of much experimental plant science and to the digital revolution that, from the late 20th century, transformed the workings of Annals of Botany and of scientific publishing more generally.

• Background The Annals of Botany is a peer-reviewed scientific journal publishing papers on a wide range of topics in plant biology. It first appeared in 1887, making it the oldest continuously published botanical title. The present article gives a historical account of events leading to the founding of the Journal and of its development over the first 50 years. • Sources of Information Much of the content is drawn from the Journal's own records and from extensive Minutes, financial accounts, personal letters and notes relating to the Annals of Botany that were repatriated from University College, University of London in 1999. Documents held at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and at the Oxford University Press Museum were also consulted. • Content Emphasis is placed on the individuals who instigated, edited and managed the Annals of Botany up to 1937, especially the nine founding members of the Journal and the background that brought them together and motivated them to start the Annals of Botany. A falling out between two of the founders in 1899 is highlighted since not only did this threaten the Journal's future but also gives much insight into the personalities of those most closely involved in the Journal during its formative years. The article also examines the way the Journal was funded and how it dealt with its publisher (the University of Oxford's Clarendon Press), turned itself into a registered company (the Annals of Botany Company) and coped with the travails of the First World War, currency inflation and the Great Depression. Plans to re-start the Journal as a New Series, beginning in 1937, are discussed in the context of the competition the Annals of Botany then faced from younger journals.

[...]the third sub-set of the review looks at more distant horizons, where \"Asia\" bleeds into other geographies, subsuming even Africa and Australia into components of the wider Asian past. [...]they also explore the wider orbits of Asian history, pushing existing boundaries to show where and how and when Asian history became global history-in Australia, Africa, and en route to Europe and the Americas (via silver, migrations, and other interesting signposts of note).

[...]in chapter i, the treatment of ancient Greece, more obviously important to the world history of democracy, shows no awareness of the best recent scholarship, such as Mogens Hansen's discussion of the polis.2 Next up, an uninspiring description of Roman government slides into a discussion of religious institutions with communitarian impulses (with most attention given to the origins of Sikhism). [...]chapter 7 of the book examines a number of cases in which issues of democratic practice in the United States are measured against the standard established by Meckstroth whereby any definition of democratic change is consistent with a philosophically sound definition of democracy. The subjects discussed are democracy and minority rule, same-sex marriage, the New Deal, and gun control and gun rights.

Why did the twentieth century witness unprecedented organized genocide? Can we learn why genocide is perpetrated by comparing different cases of genocide? Is the Holocaust unique, or does it share causes and features with other cases of state-sponsored mass murder? Can genocide be prevented? Blending gripping narrative with trenchant analysis, Eric Weitz investigates four of the twentieth century's major eruptions of genocide: the Soviet Union under Stalin, Nazi Germany, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and the former Yugoslavia. Drawing on historical sources as well as trial records, memoirs, novels, and poems, Weitz explains the prevalence of genocide in the twentieth century--and shows how and why it became so systematic and deadly. Weitz depicts the searing brutality of each genocide and traces its origins back to those most powerful categories of the modern world: race and nation. He demonstrates how, in each of the cases, a strong state pursuing utopia promoted a particular mix of extreme national and racial ideologies. In moments of intense crisis, these states targeted certain national and racial groups, believing that only the annihilation of these \"enemies\" would enable the dominant group to flourish. And in each instance, large segments of the population were enticed to join in the often ritualistic actions that destroyed their neighbors. This book offers some of the most absorbing accounts ever written of the population purges forever associated with the names Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Milosevic. A controversial and richly textured comparison of these four modern cases, it identifies the social and political forces that produce genocide.

Here are two important lessons about information control: first, there is always “too much to know.” This phrase comes from historian Ann Blair, who argues in her book of the same title that in the early modern period the attempt to gather and systematize knowledge was already regarded as a hubristic task. Second, information control is inherently ideological. Think of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's magisterial Encyclopédie (1751–77), which in thirty-two volumes attempted to map the world of knowledge and, in doing so, determined what counted as “knowable” and what was ruled out. Equally ambitious and ideological was Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language (advertised 1800, completed 1828), a monumental undertaking aimed at codifying a national language for the new United States. Both of these lessons apply to the pre-1800 articles in AmeriGrove II, and, indeed, to the eight-volume dictionary as a whole. Confronted with the problem of “too much to know,” AmeriGrove II inherits the optimism of its Enlightenment ancestor and endeavors to expand systematically the knowable world of U.S. music history, yet it leaves much uncovered. Moreover, like Webster's dictionary, the focus of AmeriGrove II is confidently national. Whether it echoes Webster's nationalistic stance is a more complicated question, particularly for the articles on pre-1800 topics.

Colonial civil servant, Confucian scholar, and collector of Chinese art, Sir James Stewart Lockhart spent more than forty years in Hong Kong and Weihaiwei — the former British leased territory in northern China. His career reflects tension and upheaval in the emerging colony of Hong Kong and in a China rapidly giving way to civil war. In her vivid biography of Stewart Lockhart, Shiona Airlie presents a portrait of an imperial official who fought against racism, strove to preserve the Chinese way of life, and was treated by Chinese mandarins as one of their own. Sir James Stewart Lockhart (1858–1937) was a Scot who served for more than 40 years as a colonial official in Hong Kong and Weihaiwei — Britain’s leased territory in northern China. In Hong Kong (1879– 1902) he rose to the highest levels and brought a refreshingly different approach to colonial rule. He immersed himself in Chinese culture, made friends with local leaders, strengthened Chinese institutions, and fought against racism. When the colony was extended in 1898 he was given the important task of delineating the boundaries of the New Territories and organising its administration. As Britain's first Civil Commissioner (1902–21) in remote Weihaiwei, he brought a unique approach to administration — a combination of Scottish laird and Confucian mandarin — and maintained peace and order during troubled times. A fine Chinese scholar, he amassed a large collection of Chinese coins, art and artefacts. Shiona Airlie's lively account of Stewart Lockhart's life and times makes use of his private papers and extensive archival research. This classic study provides valuable insight into the character, career and friends of an imperial official of rare talent and achievement.