This book presents the history of the Polish resettlement camps in the context of the post-war reconstruction of Britain during the 1950s. The Polish Resettlement Act (1947) concerned some 200, 000 Poles stranded in the country after the war. There are very few studies available in English concerning this migration to the UK and a limited number of Polish ones. The focus of this study is the Husbands Bosworth camp in Northamptonshire which was located on a decommissioned RAF aerodrome at Sulby Hall, between Welford and Naseby. The text relies both on eye-witness testimony, including the author’s own experiences as a child in the camp, as well as on rare documentation located in private archives. In particular, the nationalistic culture of the Poles within the British Isles is examined critically as an indigenous development. The Polish society that emerged out of the hundreds of rural Polish camps, urban Polish clubs, churches, schools, newspapers, libraries, museums and art-galleries was a nationalistic culture of its own kind which drew on pre-war life in Poland and yet also grew along quite different lines. It was a culture created in reaction and in antagonism to the political authorities of the host country. This study will be of interest to anyone concerned with the history of multicultural Britain.

War is often described as an extension of politics by violent means. With contributions from twenty-eight eminent historians, Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of the Second World War examines the relationship between ideology and politics in the war's origins, dynamics and consequences. Part I examines the ideologies of the combatants and shows how the war can be understood as a struggle of words, ideas and values with the rival powers expressing divergent claims to justice and controlling news from the front in order to sustain moral and influence international opinion. Part II looks at politics from the perspective of pre-war and wartime diplomacy as well as examining the way in which neutrals were treated and behaved. The volume concludes by assessing the impact of states, politics and ideology on the fate of individuals as occupied and liberated peoples, collaborators and resistors, and as British and French colonial subjects.

What is fascism? By focusing on the concrete: what the fascists did, rather than what they said, the esteemed historian Robert O. Paxton answers this question. From the first violent uniformed bands beating up “enemies of the state,” through Mussolini’s rise to power, to Germany’s fascist radicalization in World War II, Paxton shows clearly why fascists came to power in some countries and not others, and explores whether fascism could exist outside the early-twentieth-century European setting in which it emerged. "A deeply intelligent and very readable book. . . . Historical analysis at its best." –The Economist The Anatomy of Fascism will have a lasting impact on our understanding of modern European history, just as Paxton’s classic Vichy France redefined our vision of World War II. Based on a lifetime of research, this compelling and important book transforms our knowledge of fascism–“the major political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain.”

A Companion to Contemporary Britain covers the key themesand debates of 20th-century history from the outbreak of the SecondWorld War to the end of the century. Assesses the impact of the Second World War Looks at Britain’s role in the wider world, including thelegacy of Empire, Britain’s ‘specialrelationship’ with the United States, and integration withcontinental Europe Explores cultural issues, such as class consciousness,immigration and race relations, changing gender roles, and theimpact of the mass media Covers domestic politics and the economy Introduces the varied perspectives dominating historicalwriting on this period Identifies the key issues which are likely to fuel futuredebate

Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.

Deporting ‘Black Britons’ exposes the relationship between racism, borders and citizenship by telling the painful stories of four men who have been exiled to Jamaica. It examines processes of criminalisation, illegalisation and racialisation as they interact to construct deportable subjects in contemporary Britain and offers new ways of thinking about race and citizenship at different scales.

Why do some migrants integrate quickly, while others become long-term minorities? What is the role of the state in the settlement process? To what extent are experiences in the past different from the present? Are the recent migrants really integrating in another way than those in the past? Is Islam indeed an obstacle to integration? These are some of the burning questions, which dominate the current politicized debate on immigration in Western Europe. In this book, leading historians and social scientists analyze and compare a variety of settlement processes in past and present migration to Western Europe. Identifying general factors in the process of adaptation of new immigrants, the contributors trace social changes effected by recent European immigration, and the parallels with the great American migration of the 1880s-1920s. The history of migration to Western Europe and the way these migrants found their place in the receiving societies, is not only essential to understand the way nations deal with newcomers in the present, but also constitutes a highly interesting laboratory for different paths of integration now and then. By analyzing and comparing a wealth of settlement processes both in the past and in the present this book is both a bold interdisciplinary endeavor, and at the same time the first attempt to identify general factors underlying the way migrants adapt to their new surroundings, as well as how societies change under the influence of immigration. The chapters in the book both look at specific groups in various periods, but also analyses the structure of the state, churches unions and other important organized actors in Western European nation states. Moreover, the results are embedded in the more theoretical American literature on the comparison of old and new migrants. All chapters have an explicit comparative perspective, either by comparing different groups or different periods, whereas the general conclusion ties together the various outcomes in a systematic way, highlighting the main answers to the central questions about the various outcomes of settlement processes. --Publisher.

Refugee and Forced Migration Studies has grown from being a concern of a relatively small number of scholars and policy researchers in the 1980s to a global field of interest with thousands of students worldwide studying displacement either from traditional disciplinary perspectives or as a core component of newer programmes across the Humanities and Social and Political Sciences. Today the field encompasses both rigorous academic research which may or may not ultimately inform policy and practice, as well as action-research focused on advocating in favour of refugees' needs and rights. This authoritative Handbook critically evaluates the birth and development of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, and analyses the key contemporary and future challenges faced by academics and practitioners working with and for forcibly displaced populations around the world. The 52 state-of-the-art chapters, written by leading academics, practitioners, and policymakers working in universities, research centres, think tanks, NGOs and international organizations, provide a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the key intellectual, political, social and institutional challenges arising from mass displacement in the world today. The chapters vividly illustrate the vibrant and engaging debates that characterize this rapidly expanding field of research and practice.

This history of the poor of Sub-Saharan Africa begins in the monasteries of thirteenth-century Ethiopia and ends in the South African resettlement sites of the 1980s. Its thesis, derived from histories of poverty in Europe, is that most very poor Africans have been individuals incapacitated for labour, bereft of support, and unable to fend for themselves in a land-rich economy. There has emerged the distinct poverty of those excluded from access to productive resources. Natural disaster brought widespread destitution, but as a cause of mass mortality it was almost eliminated in the colonial era, to return to those areas where drought has been compounded by administrative breakdown. Professor Iliffe investigates what it was like to be poor, how the poor sought to help themselves, how their counterparts in other continents live. The poor live as people, rather than merely parading as statistics. Famines have alerted the world to African poverty, but the problem itself is ancient. Its prevailing forms will not be understood until those of earlier periods are revealed and trends of change are identified. This is a book for all concerned with the future of Africa, as well as for students of poverty elsewhere.

Alchemy in Contemporary Art analyzes how twentieth-century artists, beginning with French Surrealists of the 1920s, have appropriated concepts and imagery from the western alchemical tradition. Examining artistic production from ca. 1920 to the present, with an emphasis on artistic on the 1970s to 2000, the author discusses the work of familiar as well as lesser known artists to provide a critical, theorized overview of the alchemical tradition in 20th-century art.