The movement of goods and passengers between port cities not only stimulates growth in coastal trading networks and centers but also inevitably changes the social and economic lives of people in these port cities and, subsequently, of their fellow compatriots farther inland. Studies of port cities have focused on the interactive political and economic relationship between trading centers. The center of attention in this book is socioeconomic life and cultural identity, which are shaped by the movement of goods, people, knowledge, and information, particularly when the community faces a crisis. Transnational studies focus on cross-border connections between people, institutions, commodities, and ideas, with an emphasis on their global presence. This book looks at the responses of different localities to the same global crisis. It gathers a selection of the fifty papers presented at the conference on "Coping with Transnational Crisis: Chinese Economic and Social Lives in East Asian Port Cities, 1850-1950," held in Hong Kong on June 7-11, 2016. The period from the 1850s to the outbreak of war in the Pacific in the late 1930s encompasses two major transnational crises with significant impacts on the Chinese population in Southeast Asian port cities in terms of their way of living and the construction of their identity: the emergence of bubonic plague in the 1880s and 1920s and the global economic crisis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The authors discuss the social and economic lives in various South East Asian port cities where many residents had to cope with these transnational crises. They do so through examining institutional measurements, rituals and festivals, communication, knowledge and information exchange as well as identity (re)construction. In addition, they explore how local communities responded to knowledge and information between the port cities and cities as well as inland locations. The chapters in this book offer solid grounds for future comparisons, not only based on a specific time or event but also on how society reacted over time, space, and various types of crises.

“It seemed as if Theodore Roosevelt’s biographers had closed the book on his life story. But Ryan Swanson has uncovered an untold chapter” (Johnny Smith, coauthor of Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X). Crippling asthma, a frail build, and grossly myopic eyesight: these were the ailments that plagued Teddy Roosevelt as a child. In adulthood, he was diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition and was told never to exert himself again. Roosevelt’s body was his weakness, the one hill he could never fully conquer—and as a result he developed what would become a lifelong obsession with athletics that he carried with him into his presidency. As President of the United States, Roosevelt boxed, practiced Ju-Jitsu, played tennis nearly every day, and frequently invited athletes and teams to the White House. It was during his administration that America saw baseball’s first ever World Series; interscholastic sports began; and schools began to place an emphasis on physical education. In addition, the NCAA formed, and the United States hosted the Olympic Games for the first time. From a prize-winning historian, this book shows how Roosevelt fought desperately (and sometimes successfully) to shape American athletics in accordance with his imperialistic view of the world. It reveals that, in one way or another, we can trace our fanaticism for fitness and sports directly back to the twenty-sixth president and his relentless pursuit of “The Strenuous Life.” “Essential reading for anyone who cares about the history of sports in America.” —Michael Kazin, author of War against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914–1918

Years of Recovery was the first comprehensive study of the transition from war to peace in the British economy under the Labour government of 1945–51. It includes a full account of the successive crises and turning-points in those hectic years – the coal and convertibility crises of 1947, devaluation in 1949 and rearmament in 1951. These episodes, apart from their dramatic interest, light up the dilemmas of policy and the underlying economic trends and pressures in a country delicately poised between economic disaster and full recovery. Many of the debates on economic policy that are still in progress – on incomes policy, demand management, the welfare state and relations with Europe, for example – have their roots in those years. Many of the trends originating then persisted long afterwards. The book also examines the interaction between events and policy and the role in a managed economy of the policy-making machine. Now that the public records are open to 1954, it has been possible to make use of official documents to review the possibilities of action that were canvassed and the thinking and differences of opinion that underlay ministerial decisions. Combining personal involvement with thorough research, this fascinating study will be a major contribution to our understanding of post-war economic policy. Alec Cairncross was Chancellor of the University of Glasgow and a former Master of St Peter’s College, Oxford. He spent the years covered by this volume as a civil servant in London, Berlin and Paris before moving to Glasgow as Professor of Applied Economics. This classic book of some of his most brilliant research was first published in 1985.