The "Critical Period" of American history—the years between the end of the American Revolution in 1783 and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789—was either the best of times or the worst of times. While some historians have celebrated the achievement of the Constitutional Convention, which, according to them, saved the Revolution, others have bemoaned that the Constitution’s framers destroyed the liberating tendencies of the Revolution, betrayed debtors, made a bargain with slavery, and handed the country over to the wealthy. This era—what John Fiske introduced in 1880 as America’s "Critical Period"—has rarely been separated from the U.S. Constitution and is therefore long overdue for a reevaluation on its own terms. How did the pre-Constitution, postindependence United States work? What were the possibilities, the tremendous opportunities for "future welfare or misery for mankind," in Fiske’s words, that were up for grabs in those years? The scholars in this volume pursue these questions in earnest, highlighting how the pivotal decade of the 1780s was critical or not, and for whom, in the newly independent United States. As the United States is experiencing another, ongoing crisis of governance, reexamining the various ways in which elites and common Americans alike imagined and constructed their new nation offers fresh insights into matters—from national identity and the place of slavery in a republic, to international commerce, to the very meaning of democracy—whose legacies reverberated through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and into the present day. Contributors:Kevin Butterfield, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon * Hannah Farber, Columbia University * Johann N. Neem, Western Washington University * Dael A. Norwood, University of Delaware * Susan Gaunt Stearns, University of Mississippi * Nicholas P. Wood, Spring Hill College

Since independence from Great Britain in 1963, Kenya has survived five decades as a functioning nation-state, holding regular elections; its borders and political system intact and avoiding open war with its neighbours and military rule internally. It has been a favoured site for Western aid, trade, investment and tourism and has remained a close security partner for Western governments. However, Kenya's successive governments have failed to achieve adequate living conditions for most of its citizens; violence, corruption and tribalism have been ever-present, and its politics have failed to transcend its history. The decisions of the early years of independence and the acts of its leaders in the decades since have changed the country's path in unpredictable ways, but key themes of conflicts remain: over land, money, power, economic policy, national autonomy and the distribution of resources between classes and communities.While the country's political institutions have remained stable, the nation has changed, its population increasing nearly five-fold in five decades. But the economic and political elite's struggle for state resources and the exploitation of ethnicity for political purposes still threaten the country's existence. Today, Kenyans are arguing over many of the issues that divided them 50 years ago. The new constitution promulgated in 2010 provides an opportunity for national renewal, but it must confront a heavy legacy of history. This book reveals that history.

The majority of the existing work on nationalism has centered on its role in the creation of new states. After Independence breaks new ground by examining the changes to nationalism after independence in seven new states. This innovative volume challenges scholars and specialists to rethink conventional views of ethnic and civic nationalism and the division between primordial and constructivist understandings of national identity. "Where do nationalists go once they get what they want? We know rather little about how nationalist movements transform themselves into the governments of new states, or how they can become opponents of new regimes that, in their view, have not taken the self-determination drive far enough. This stellar collection contributes not only to comparative theorizing on nationalist movements, but also deepens our understanding of the contentious politics of nationalism's ultimate product--new countries." --Charles King, Chair of the Faculty and Ion Ratiu Associate Professor, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service "This well-integrated volume analyzes two important variants of nationalism-postcolonial and postcommunist-in a sober, lucid way and will benefit students and scholars alike." --Zvi Gitelman, University of Michigan Lowell W. Barrington is Associate Professor of Political Science, Marquette University.

Steven I. Wilkinson explores how India has succeeded in keeping the military out of politics, when so many other countries have failed. He uncovers the command and control strategies, the careful ethnic balancing, and the political, foreign policy, and strategic decisions that have made the army safe for Indian democracy.

Although Libya and its current leader have been the subject of numerous accounts, few have considered how the country's tumultuous history, its institutional development, and its emergence as an oil economy combined to create a state whose rulers ignored the notion of modern statehood. International isolation and a legacy of internal turmoil have destroyed or left undocumented much of what researchers might seek to examine. Dirk Vandewalle supplies a detailed analysis of Libya's political and economic development since the country's independence in 1951, basing his account on fieldwork in Libya, archival research in Tripoli, and personal interviews with some of the country's top policymakers. Vandewalle argues that Libya represents an extreme example of what he calls a "distributive state," an oil-exporting country where an attempt at state-building coincided with large inflows of capital while political and economic institutions were in their infancy. Libya's rulers eventually pursued policies that were politically expedient but proved economically ruinous, and disenfranchised local citizens. Distributive states, according to Vandewalle, may appear capable of resisting economic and political challenges, but they are ill prepared to implement policies that make the state and its institutions relevant to their citizens. Similar developments can be expected whenever local rulers do not have to extract resources from their citizens to fund the building of a modern state.

"From Independence to Revolution tells the story of the complicated relationship between the Egyptian population and the nation's most prominent political opposition--the Islamist movement. Most commentators focus on the Muslim Brotherhood and radical jihadists constantly vying for power under successive authoritarian rulers, from Gamal Abdul Nasser to General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Yet the relationship between the Islamists and Egyptian society has not remained fixed. Instead, groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, radical jihadists and progressive Islamists like Tayyar al Masri have varied in their responses to Egypt's socio-political transformation over the last sixty years, thereby attracting different sections of the Egyptian electorate at different times. From bread riots in the 1970s to the 2011 Tahrir Square uprising and the subsequent election of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi in 2012, Egypt's Islamists have been countering authoritarian elites since colonial independence. This book is based on the author's fieldwork interviews in Egypt and builds on comparative political approaches to the topic. It offers an account of Egypt's contesting actors, demonstrating how a consistently fragmented Islamist movement and an authoritarian state have cemented political instability and economic decline as a persistent trend."--Provided by publisher.

This ethnohistory uses colonial-era native-language texts written by Nahuas to construct history from the indigenous point of view. The book offers the first internal ethnographic view of central Mexican indigenous communities in the critical time of independence, when modern Mexican Spanish developed its unique character, founded on indigenous concepts of space, time, and grammar. The Aztecs at Independence opens a window into the cultural life of writers, leaders, and worshippers--Nahua women and men in the midst of creating a vibrant community.

Mexico Since Independence brings together six chapters from Volumes III, V and VII of the Cambridge History of Latin America to provide in a single volume an economic, social and political history of Mexico since independence from Spain in 1821. This, it is hoped, will be useful for both teachers and students of Latin American history. Each chapter is accompanied by a bibliographical essay.

'The Baltic States After Independence is an excellent and informative account of how the Baltic republics have failed. . . . This excellent book is indispensable for any scholar studying the former Soviet Union. Although this book will be a definitive reference for transition scholars, it deserves a wider audience. I would encourage every economics major to read it, or at least parts of it. Too often the economics curriculum, tainted by orthodoxy, ignores the interdependence of economics, politics, and international relations. The authors superbly demonstrate that markets do not develop independently and ahistorically, rather their development is path dependent and guided by a qualified and efficient state apparatus. I can think of no better book that disparages neoclassical orthodoxy almost to the point of irrelevancy, while at the same time vindicating the central tenets of institutionalism.' - Jack Reardon, Journal of Economic Issues Acclaim for the first edition: 'The book is of great help in understanding the Baltic states, in particular the survival of what has been referred to as the civil society and the (re)-establishment of democracy.' - Ulf Hansson, Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity The second edition of this widely acclaimed book considers the extent to which the Baltic states have succeeded politically and economically in their aspirations to emulate Western institutions since independence. The book has been completely revised since the first edition to account for the rapid changes in the countries themselves, and in the theories that attempt to generalize the patterns of development in post-communist countries.