"Keddie has rendered a valuable service ... Afghani merits the attention of Western students of the contemporary international scene and the Muslim renaissance since he made the first significant attempt to answer the modern Western challenge to the Muslim world." ---Eastern World "Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897), the well known religious reformer and political activist, led a busy and complex life full of obscure and clandestine ventures. . . . [Keddie] draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources. In part I an attempt is made to provide an accurate biography and a consistent analysis of Afghani. Part II co ntains translations of some of his most important writings. . . Although Afghani was concerned with the wide ranging need for Islamic reform, he devoted most of his life to the more urgent political problems confronting Muslims--problems arising out of their weakness in dealing with the Western Christian powers. Hence the tide of this book. The picture that emerges here confirms Afghani's long standing reputation as a defender of Muslim interests--not against borrowing European advances in science and technology, but against foreign political, economic, or military encroachment."--Middle East journal "Jamal ad-Din was a mysterious figure and most of the mysteries were of his own making . . . it has been left to Professor Keddie to apply the methods of the critical historian to the matter ... This book shows how successful she has been . . . there has emerged for the first time a credible picture of Jamal ad-Din's life . . . The second part contains translations of works by Jamal ad-Din himself, and these are valuable because most of them were written in Persian and have either not been easily available at all or else have been available only in Arabic translation. This is particularly true of the Refutation of the Materialists. "--International journal of Middle East Studies "For the first time a significant collection of the writings of al-Afghani are now available in English, and so, for the first time, this controversial figure has had more life breathed into him."--American Historical Review

The Victorian period, viewed in the West as a time of self-confident progress, was experienced by Asians as a catastrophe. As the British gunned down the last heirs to the Mughal Empire, burned down the Summer Palace in Beijing, or humiliated the bankrupt rulers of the Ottoman Empire, it was clear that for Asia to recover a vast intellectual effort would be required. Pankaj Mishra's fascinating, highly entertaining new book tells the story of a remarkable group of men from across the continent who met the challenge of the West. Incessantly travelling, questioning and agonising, they both hated the West and recognised that an Asian renaissance needed to be fuelled in part by engagement with the enemy. Through many setbacks and wrong turns, a powerful, contradictory and ultimately unstoppable series of ideas were created that now lie behind everything from the Chinese Communist Party to Al Qaeda, from Indian nationalism to the Muslim Brotherhood. Mishra allows the reader to see the events of two centuries anew, through the eyes of the journalists, poets, radicals and charismatics who criss-crossed Europe and Asia and created the ideas which lie behind the powerful Asian nations of the twenty-first century.

This extended monograph examines the work of the radical journalist Kotoku Shusui and Japan’s anti-imperialist movement of the early twentieth century. It includes the first English translation of Imperialism (Teikokushugi), Kotoku’s classic 1901 work. Kotoku Shusui was a Japanese socialist, anarchist, and critic of Japan’s imperial expansionism who was executed in 1911 for his alleged participation in a plot to kill the emperor. His Imperialism was one of the first systematic criticisms of imperialism published anywhere in the world. In this seminal text, Kotoku condemned global imperialism as the commandeering of politics by national elites and denounced patriotism and militarism as the principal causes of imperialism. In addition to translating Imperialism, Robert Tierney offers an in-depth study of Kotoku’s text and of the early anti-imperialist movement he led. Tierney places Kotoku’s book within the broader context of early twentieth-century debates on the nature and causes of imperialism. He also presents a detailed account of the different stages of the Japanese anti-imperialist movement. Monster of the Twentieth Century constitutes a major contribution to the intellectual history of modern Japan and to the comparative study of critiques of capitalism and colonialism.

In A Theory of Imperialism, economists Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik present a new theory of the origins and mechanics of capitalism that sounds an alarm about its ongoing viability. Their theory centers on trade between the core economies of the global North and the tropical and subtropical countries of the global South and considers how the Northern demand for commodities (such as agricultural products and oil) from the South has perpetuated and solidified an imperialist relationship. The Patnaiks explore the dynamics of this process and discuss innovations that could allow the economies of the South to achieve greater prosperity without damaging the economies of the North. The result is an original theory of imperialism that brings to light the crippling limitations of neoliberal capitalism. A Theory of Imperialism also includes a response by David Harvey, who interprets the agrarian system differently and sees other factors affecting trade between the North and the South. Their debate is one of the most provocative exchanges yet over the future of the global economy as resources grow thin, populations explode, and universal prosperity becomes ever more elusive.

Winner of the first Paul A. Baran-Paul M. Sweezy Memorial Award for an original monograph concerned with the political economy of imperialism, John Smith's Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century is a seminal examination of the relationship between the core capitalist countries and the rest of the world in the age of neoliberal globalization.Deploying a sophisticated Marxist methodology, Smith begins by tracing the production of certain iconic commodities-the T-shirt, the cup of coffee, and the iPhone-and demonstrates how these generate enormous outflows of money from the countries of the Global South to transnational corporations headquartered in the core capitalist nations of the Global North. From there, Smith draws on his empirical findings to powerfully theorize the current shape of imperialism. He argues that the core capitalist countries need no longer rely on military force and colonialism (although these still occur) but increasingly are able to extract profits from workers in the Global South through market mechanisms and, by aggressively favoring places with lower wages, the phenomenon of labor arbitrage. Meticulously researched and forcefully argued, Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century is a major contribution to the theorization and critique of global capitalism.