People's movements in the princely states

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Charles Powell

King Juan Carlos of Spain is currently one of the world's most popular and respected statesmen. This largely reflects the interest and admiration he has aroused both at home and abroad on account of his decisive contribution to the establishment and consolidation of democracy in Spain following the death of General Franco in November 1975. While seeking to determine the precise nature of his role in this process, widely publicised as a result of his part in aborting the military coup of February 1981, this political life of Juan Carlos also aims to shed new light on lesser-known episodes of his life, including his childhood and adolescence, the process leading to his proclamation as Franco's successor in 1969 and his performance as Prince of Spain (1969-75). Additionally, it deals in detail with the King's current role as constitutional monarch, his efforts to hold the newly created semi-federal Spanish state together, and his hitherto ignored contribution to foreign policy.

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[by] Patrick Vinton Kirch

In How Chiefs Became Kings, PKirch addresses a central problem in anthropological archaeology: the emergence of "archaic states" whose distinctive feature was divine kingship. Kirch takes as his focus the Hawaiian archipelago, commonly regarded as the archetype of a complex chiefdom. Integrating anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, traditional history, and theory, and drawing on significant contributions from his own four decades of research, Kirch argues that Hawaiian polities had become states before the time of Captain Cook's voyage (1778-1779). The status of most archaic states is inferred from the archaeological record. But Kirch shows that because Hawai'i's kingdoms were established relatively recently, they could be observed and recorded by Cook and other European voyagers. Substantive and provocative, this book makes a major contribution to the literature of precontact Hawai'i and illuminates Hawai'i's importance in the global theory and literature about divine, kingship, archaic states, and sociopolitical evolution. --Jacket.

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Barbara N. Ramunsack

"Although the princes of India have been caricatured as Oriental despots and British stooges, Barbara Ramusack's study argues that the British did not create the princes. On the contrary, many were consummate politicians who exercised considerable degrees of autonomy until the integration of the princely states after independence. Ramusack's synthesis has a broad temporal span, tracing the evolution of the Indian kings from their precolonial origins to their roles as clients in the British colonial system. The book breaks new ground in its integration of political and economic developments in the major princely states with the shifting relationships between the princes and the British. It represents a significant contribution, both to British imperial history in its analysis of the theory and practice of indirect rule, and to modern South Asian history, as a portrait of the princes as politicians and patrons of the arts."--Jacket.

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Tareq Y. Ismael and Jacqueline S. Ismael

"This volume seeks to explore the impact of the Gulf War on the fashioning of a new world order, with particular reference to the role of the Middle East region. It is divided into four parts, each addressing a different facet. The purpose is to develop a holistic perspective of the new world order and to explore its external and internal dynamics. What is revealed is that the processes of policy articulation, formulation, and impact are interactively interrelated rather than sequentially related and dynamic rather than static vis-à̀-vis the relationship between objectives and outcomes"--Page 1.