This volume offers a history of Haifa during that crucial part of the nineteenth century when Europe's penetration of Palestine combined with Istanbul's centralization efforts to alter irrevocably the social fabric of the country and change its political destiny. After tracing the town's beginnings in the early eighteenth century, the author painstakingly reconstructs from the few sijill volumes that have survived vital aspects of Ottoman Haifa's society and administration. A fresh look at the town's demography is followed by an in-depth discussion of the way inter-communal relations developed after the 1864 Vilāyets Law had brought a restructuring of the sources of elite power. The author's findings on the social status of Haifa's Muslim women significantly add to the vibrant picture of economic activities we now know urban Muslim women in the Ottoman Empire were involved in.

Eleftherios Venizelos (1864–1936) was the outstanding Greek statesman of the first half of the twentieth century. Michael Llewellyn-Smith traces his early years, political apprenticeship in Crete, and energetic role in that island’s emancipation from both Ottoman rule and the arbitrary rule of Prince George of Greece. Summoned to Athens in 1910 by a cabal of officers, Venizelos mastered the Greek political scene, sent the military back to barracks, and led the country through a glorious period of constitutional and political reform, ending in a Balkan alliance waging successful war against Ottoman rule in Europe. By 1914, Greece had doubled in territory and population, and was about to face the challenges of European war. Tensions were rising between the king and the prime minister, foreshadowing political schism. This book illuminates Venizelos’ political mastery, liberalism and nationalism, and traces his fateful friendship with David Lloyd George. A second volume will complete his story, with the Great War, the post-war peace settlement, Greece’s Asia Minor disaster, and Venizelos’ late years of renewed prime ministerial office, political polarisation and exile in Paris.

At the height of her imperial power Britain clashed with Russia at many points from Turkey to China. But it was only in Persia and Central Asia that these two expansionist empires met face to face. The fear of a Russian drive against India had initially impelled the British to oppose the extension of Russian influence. Russia's subsequent advance into Central Asia and her spectacular conquests in the second half of the nineteenth century both startled Europe and narrowed the gap separating the Russians and the British. This classic work by distinguished historian Firuz Kazemzadeh provides an outstanding history of Anglo-Russian relations in Persia in the half century preceding the First World War. It affords both a comprehensive overview of British and Russian policy in Iran and detailed coverage of the most important events. The new introduction includes reflections upon of events after the First World War. Long unavailable this new edition will be welcomed by scholars and students alike and provides a fascinating backdrop to the motivations behind Iran's diplomatic posture today.

Central economic planning is often associated with failed state socialism, and modern capitalism celebrated as its antithesis. This book shows that central planning is not always, or even primarily, a state enterprise, and that the giant industrial corporations that dominated the American economy through the twentieth century were, first and foremost, unprecedented examples of successful, consensual central planning at a very large scale.