Historical Monographs Thread

[Franz Fanonipants]

I'm not sure if this should go here or elsewhere. Broadly I want this thread to be about two things - 1. baller historical monographs you are reading and want to recommend, 2. not having ridiculous tendency wars/using history to prove some hilariously obscure anarchist/marxist/whateverleftcomsare correct beyond repudiation.

I'll get this started.

Right now, I am reading A Jar of Severed Hands: Spanish Deportation of Apache Prisoners of War, 1770-1810 (http://books.google.com/books?id=XbUYkgAACAAJ&dq=the+jar+of+severed+hands&hl=en&sa=X&ei=V91GT77QJeahsgLQptTqCA&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA). Its pretty good, I am rewriting a paper that is similar to this monograph to present at a couple of conferences. Everything I read in it makes me feel like an ass for not reading it before while writing the paper initially.

Each chapter looks at the complex cycles of violence and peace in northern Mexico during the late eighteenth century. Spanish officials had a conflicting directive to follow, as certain viceregal policies from Mexico City urged a "pacification" and the formation of a material dependency for the Apaches while others pushed for their military dispersal. Neither policy was implemented fully but bits and pieces of it were, causing strange extremes between crazy Cormac McCarthy-style babies-on-spikes violence and the use of military presidios or forts as centers for distributing goods like sugar and corn to semi-sedentary Apache groups.

[Franz Fanonipants]

reading The Great Arab Conquests: How The Spread of Islam Changed The World We Live In (http://books.google.com/books/about/The_great_Arab_conquests.html?id=QNsCPOnTfhoC) at the methodology part in the beginning. will write more.

just read Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China (http://books.google.com/books?id=91Kdmi0X3fkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=sojourners+in+a+strange+land&hl=en&sa=X&ei=BOtXT9vpDKPr0gHN3Ni_Dw&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=sojourners%20in%20a%20strange%20land&f=false) for the same class. i guess a lot of people were pissed that it was not about chinese-jesuit relationships, but actually about the Jesuit invention of the scholar-missionary figure as a literary representation of themselves in China to Europeans but it was pretty interesting. structurally every other chapter presented a literary form used by the Jesuits to project a certain impression of themselves as scholar-missionaries, then is followed by secular or non-Jesuit European responses. obviously Hsia was limited in her sources, but i think the book is pretty interesting if weirdly argued in spots.

[Invader Zim]

Joe Moran, On Roads: A Hidden History.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Roads-Hidden-History-Joe-Moran/dp/1846680603/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331162529&sr=8-1

Tis good.

[Os Cangaceiros]

What exactly is a monograph.

My understanding was always that it was an academic-type book, usually published by a university press, that dealt with some kind of microscopic aspect of history, like Cod Fishing in Icelandic Culture: 1805-1810. But I guess it's really just any book about history or science?

[Franz Fanonipants]

yeah usually its just a snobby discipline-specific way of saying a book by a single author

shit i guess edited anthologies/edited primary source reading you are doing works here too

[Os Cangaceiros]

Ok then. Last one I read was "Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism and Guerrilla War, from the American Revolution to Iraq" by William Polk. The author is an old professor/government official, but he's got a good sense of humor and the book is an entertaining read about what makes guerrillas successful and what makes them unsuccessful.

groups covered:
American revolutionary terrorists during the American Revolution
Spanish guerrillas against Napoleon
Filipino guerrillas against Spain, the USA, and Japan
Irish resistance pre and post IRA
Tito's partisans during WW2
Greek EAM partisans during WW2, and afterwards when they got sold out by the USSR
The Kenyan Mau Mau rebellion
The Algerian war of independence
Vietnam war against the French and Americans
Afghan resistance against the British and the USSR

Then there's a conclusion in which he basically goes on an extended screed about how stupid the American government is in regards to Iraq/Afghanistan, and how apparently they've learned nothing about how insurgents attain success or failure (success in an insurgency, he argues, is 80% about winning the political war, 15% about destroying the occupation government's ability to function and govern, and 5% about the actual military aspect of the conflict).