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HUMAN RIGHTS

Human Rights-Migration-Trafficking-Slavery-History-Memoirs-Philosophy

Johnson's Life of London: The People Who Made the City That Made the World

By Boris Johnson

From chapter 1: “Still they come, surging towards me across the bridge. On they march in sun, wind, rain, snow and sleet. Almost every morning I cycle past them in rank after heaving rank as they emerge from London Bridge station and tramp tramp tramp up and along the broad 239-metre pavement that leads over the river and towards their places of work. It feels as if I am reviewing an honourable regiment of yomping commuters, and as I pass them down the bus-rutted tarmac there is the occasional eyes-left moment and I will be greeted with a smile or perhaps a cheery four-letter cry.

NY. Riverhead Books. Penguin. 2012. 394p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

Thomas Cromwell The Rise And Fall Of Henry Viii's Most Notorious Minister

By Robert Hutchinson

FROM THE PROLOGUE: “Early on the morning of Saturday, 10 June 1540, Thomas Howard, Third Duke of Norfolk, summoned Sir Anthony Wingfield, the Captain of the King's Guard, to the Parliament House at Westminster. He ordered him to arrest Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's all powerful Chief Minister, after dinner - then normally served around noon - later that day. The captain was astonished by the instruction, but Norfolk told him bluntly: 'You need not be surprised. The king orders it."

NY. St. Martn’s Press. 2007. 376p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III Father of the English Nation

By Ian Mortimer

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “On 19 October 1330, at dusk, two dozen men gathered in the centre of Nottingham. They were mostly in their twenties, and all on horsback, ready to ride out of the town. But unlike merchants or pilgrims assem- bling to set out together, these men were silent and unsmiling. Beneath their riding cloaks they were all heavily armed. The reason for their gathering lay within the fortress which overlooked the town. Somewhere within those walls, high on the massive outcrop, was Roger Mortimer, the earl of March, who kept the young king, Edward III, within his power and ruled in his place.”

London. Published by Jonathan Cape. 2006. 571p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

Trafalgar: The Nelson Touch

By David Howarth

From the opening passage: “At ten to six in the morning of the 21st of October 1805, off Cape Trafalgar in the south of Spain, Napoleon's French and Spanish fleet was sighted against the dawn sky, and men in the British fleet who were not on watch swarmed up on deck to look.

It was a beautiful autumn morning, clear under a hazy sky, with a breeze from the west-north-west so light that the sea was scarcely ruffled. The British ships, in line ahead, were sailing slowly north, and rolling in a long Atlantic swell. Some had names that were famous already, and some became famous that day: Victory, Royal Sovereign, Temeraire, Dread- nought, Revenge, Colossus, Ajax, Euryalus, Bellerophon - twenty-seven sail of the line in al, and four frigates. But they were a sight so familiar that nobody spared them a glance, except the officers of the watch on each of the quarterdecks, whose duty was to keep their own ship in station. Everyone else watched the lightening horizon. For more than two years of tedious patrol, summer and winter, blockading Napoleon's ports, the horizon at every dawn had been empty. Now, in eager anticipation, they counted the distant enemy sail: twenty, twenty-five, thirty - thirty-three of them, and frigates among them, a column five miles long, standing south for the Strait of Gibraltar.

There were seventeen thousand men in the British fleet….”

London. Collins. 1969. 165p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP.

Puritanism And Liberty: Being the Army Debates (1647-9) from the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents

Selected And Edited With An Introduction By A. S. P. Woodhouse

From the Preface by A. D. Lindsay: “I commend the book, so completed, to all who wish to be able to give a reason for their democratic faith, and wish it could be read so as to stop the mouths and pens of those who produce facile refutations of the fundamental idea s of democracy. These ideas, liberty, equality and fraternity, if divorced from the religious context in which they belong, become cheap and shallow and easy of refutation. Those who will take the trouble to get behind the theological language of these documents will see how profound those democratic ideas are, how real and concrete and recurring is the situation which gives rise to them; and will see the tension there must always be between them so long as they are alive.”

London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. 1951. 617p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

The Refugee and Asylum-Seeker Experiences, Trust, and Confidence with Police Scotland

By Nicole Vidal & Bryony Nisbet

  This study builds an understanding of the quantity and quality of refugees’ social networks, and their role in influencing public perceptions and engagement with the police. It applies the Social Connections Mapping Tool (SCMT) methodology, combined with in-depth interviews with refugees, asylum-seekers, police personnel, and associated services to identify refugee and asylum-seeker experiences, trust and confidence with Police Scotland and associated services. Findings: • Visibility, trust & confidence: Some participants had limited knowledge of Police Scotland or how to contact them. Confidence in Police Scotland is good despite negative experiences in their countries of origin. Most agreed increased police visibility is important. • Resources & Engagement: Officers recognised the importance of engaging with refugees and asylum-seekers but highlighted the challenge of operational demands and resourcing. • Language: Limited English language makes engaging with the police difficult, and ineffective interpretation and translation impacts on trust and confidence in the service. Police personnel agreed that language barriers can increase call and response times. • Gender: Efforts are being made to improve the gender imbalance in the police workforce. • Racism and hate crime: There was a general concern surrounding racism both at the hands of the community and the police, exacerbated by anecdotal accounts from others. Recommendations: • Engage with refugees and asylum-seekers to gain familiarity of their social networks. • Increase community support and empower communities to develop solutions to problems. • Utilise police officers’ cultural insights to assist with understanding community issues. • Equip all officers with community policing information and resources (e.g. cultural awareness training, working with interpreters, agreeing methods to support inclusion). • Enlist support of refugee-related organisations, local community organisations and/or faithbased organisations; these can serve as a bridge between the police and communities. • Work with the wider community to encourage knowledge sharing and mutual understand  

Edinburgh: Queen Margaret University, 2023. 53p.

Bondage: Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries

By Alessandro Stanziani

For the first time, this book provides the global history of labor in Central Eurasia, Russia, Europe, and the Indian Ocean between the 16th and 20th centuries. It contests common views on free and unfree labor, comparing the latter to many Western countries where wage conditions resembled those of domestic servants. This gave rise to extreme forms of dependency in the colonies, not only under slavery, but also afterwards via indentured labor in the Indian Ocean and obligatory labor in Africa. Stanziani shows that unfree labor and forms of economic coercion were perfectly compatible with market development and capitalism, proven by the consistent economic growth that took place all over Eurasia between the 17th and the 19th centuries. This growth was labor intensive: commercial expansion, transformations in agriculture, and the first industrial revolution required more labor, not less.

New York; Oxford, UK: Berghahn Books , 2014. 270p.

Bonded Labour: Global and Comparative Perspectives (18th–21st Century)

Edited by Sabine Damir-Geilsdorf, Ulrike Lindner, Gesine Müller, Oliver Tappe, Michael Zeuske

Parallel to the abolition of Atlantic slavery, new forms of indentured labour stilled global capitalisms need for cheap, disposable labour. The famous coolie trade – mainly Asian labourers transferred to French and British islands in the Indian Ocean, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, the Caribbean, the Americas, as well as to Portuguese colonies in Africa – was one of the largest migration movements in global history. Indentured contract workers are perhaps the most revealing example of bonded labour in the grey area between the poles of chattel slavery and free wage labour. This interdisciplinary volume addresses historically and regionally specific cases of bonded labour relations from the 18th century to sponsorship systems in the Arab Gulf States today.

Bielefeld: transcript Verlag , 2016.233p.

Human Bondage in the Cultural Contact Zone: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Slavery and Its Discourses (Volume 2)

Edited by Raphael Hörmann,  Gesa Mackenthun

Slavery – the subjection of some human beings to a state of bondage by other, more powerful, people – has been an accepted social institution since ancient times. It is less well known that slavery has also produced cultural contact zones in forcing members of different cultures into sharing the same places – whether in private households, on plantations, in mines and quarries, or indeed the same imaginative sites in works of art and public memory. The recent commemorations of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade by Britain (1807) and the United States (1808), as well as the rise of Black Atlantic Studies as a new academic field, have drawn new attention to this topic. In spite of these recent trends and the prominent position of slavery studies in British and American historiography, slavery’s implications for the study of cultural encounters remain a scholarly desideratum. This volume seeks to contribute to a better understanding of different forms of human bondage in cultural contact zones.

The essays in this collection represent a wide spectrum of the scholarship on slavery, as well as illustrating the vast range of conceptual approaches to the topic. They bring together research from several different disciplines and critical angles addressing, for example, archaeological reconstructions of labor camps in an cient Palestine, the moral significance of early Christian slavery, the ambivalent aestheticization of black bodies within the colonial culture of taste, Enlightenment discourses about black revolution, the significance of mythical narratives in African-American slave culture, the musical mourning for lynching victims, and the blindness toward the presence of slave laborers in Nazi Germany.
Most essays collected here are concerned with the cultural and human aspects of slavery as well as with establishing an understanding for the stark differences between various forms of slavery throughout history, stretching from antiquity into the twentieth century.

Münster, Germany: Waxmann Verlag, 2010. 296p.

The Many Faces of Slavery: New Perspectives on Slave Ownership and Experiences in the Americas

 Edited by Lawrence Aje and Catherine Armstrong  

While the plantation accounts for 90% of slave ownership and experience in the Americas, its centrality to the common conceptions of slavery has arguably led to an oversimplified understanding of its multifarious forms and complex dynamics in the region. Published open access, The Many Faces of Slavery explores non-traditional forms of slavery that existed outside the plantation system to illustrate the pluralities of slave ownership and experiences in the Americas, from the 17th to the 19th century. Through a wide range of innovative and multi-disciplined approaches, the book's chapters explore the existence of urban slavery, slave self-hiring, quasi-free or nominal slaves, domestic slave concubines, slave vendors, slave soldiers and sailors, slave preachers, slave overseers, and many other types of “societies with slaves.” Moreover, it documents unconventional forms of slave ownership like slave-holding by poor whites, women, free blacks, Native Americans, Jewish Americans, corporations and the state. The Many Faces of Slavery broadens our traditional conception of slavery by complicating our understanding of slave experience and ownership in slavery-practising societies throughout Atlantic history. 

London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic,  2020.  257p.

The Politics of Slavery

By Laura Brace

Looking at scholarship on both ‘old’ and ‘new’ slavery, Laura Brace assesses the work of Aristotle, Locke, Hegel, Kant, Wollstonecraft and Mill, and explores the contemporary concerns of human trafficking and the prison industrial complex to consider the limitations of ‘new slavery’ discourse.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.  257p,

Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar: Martinique and the World-Economy, 1830-1848 (Second Edition)


By Dale W. Tomich

A classic text long out of print, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar traces the historical development of slave labor and plantation agriculture in Martinique during the period immediately preceding slave emancipation in 1848. Interpreting these events against the broader background of the world-economy, Dale W. Tomich analyzes the importance of topics such as British hegemony in the nineteenth century, related developments of the French economy, and competition from European beet sugar producers. He shows how slaves' adaptation—and resistance—to changing working conditions transformed the plantation labor regime and the very character of slavery itself. Based on archival sources in France and Martinique, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar offers a vivid reconstruction of the complex and contradictory interrelations among the world market, the material processes of sugar production, and the social relations of slavery. In this second edition, Tomich includes a new introduction in which he offers an explicit discussion of the methodological and theoretical issues entailed in developing and extending the world-systems perspective and clarifies the importance of the approach for the study of particular histories.

Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2016. 528p.

UN Security Council Referrals to the International Criminal Court: Legal Nature, Effects and Limits

By Alexandre Skander Galand  

Galand critically spells out a comprehensive conception of the nature and effects of Security Council referrals that responds to the various limits to the International Criminal Court’s exercise of jurisdiction over situations that concern nationals and territories of non-party State.

Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2019. 279p.

Genocide Perspectives IV: Essays on Holocaust and Genocide

Editor: Colin Tatz  

Genocide isn't past tense and the Nazi and Bosnian eras are not yet closed. The demonising of people as 'unworthy' and expendable is ever-present and the consequences are all too evident in the daily news. These fourteen essays by Australian scholars confront the issues: the need for a measuring scale that encompasses differences and similarities between seemingly divergent cases of the crime; the complicity of bureaucracies, the healing professions and the churches in this 'crime of crimes'; the quest for historical justice for genocide victims generally following the Nuremberg Trials; the fate of children in the Nazi and postwar eras; the 'worthiness' of Armenians, Jews and Romani people in twentieth century Europe; and the imperative to tackle early warning signs of an incipient genocide. Colin Tatz is a founding director of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, visiting fellow in Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University, and honorary visiting fellow at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. He teaches and publishes in comparative race politics, youth suicide, migration studies, and sports history.

Sydney:  UTS ePRESS, University of Technology Sydney, 2012. 497p.

Genocide Perspectives V: A Global Crime, Australian Voices

Edited by Nikki Marczak and Kirril Shields   

Despite the catch-cry bandied about after the Holocaust, "Never Again", genocides continue to destroy cultures and communities around the globe. In this collection of essays, Australian scholars discuss the crime of genocide, examining regimes and episodes that stretch across time and geography. Included are discussions on Australia’s own history of genocide against its Indigenous peoples, mass killing and human rights abuses in Indonesia and North Korea, and new insights into some of the core twentieth century genocides, such as the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. Scholars grapple with ongoing questions of memory and justice, governmental responsibility, the role of the medical professions, gendered experiences, artistic representation, and best practice in genocide education. Importantly, genocide prevention and the role of the global community is also explored within this collection. This volume of Genocide Perspectives is dedicated to Professor Colin Tatz AO, an inspirational figure in the field of human rights, and one of the forefathers of genocide studies in Australia. Kirril Shields is a member of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He teaches at The University of Queensland and The University of Southern Queensland. Kirril is an Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellow, and a Fellow of the Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilisation, Royal Holloway. Nikki Marczak is a member of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute’s 2016 Lemkin Scholar. Her research focuses on Armenian women’s experiences and the current Yazidi Genocide by ISIS.

Sydney:  UTS ePRESS, University of Technology Sydney, 2017. 24p.

Genocide Perspectives VI: The Process and the Personal Cost of Genocide

Edited by Nikki Marczak and Kirril Shields  

Genocide Perspectives VI grapples with two core themes: the personal toll of genocide, and processes that facilitate the crime. From political choices governments and leaders make, through to denialism and impunity, the crime of genocide recurs again and again, across the globe. At what cost to individuals and communities? What might the legacy of this criminality be? This collection of essays examines the personal sacrifice genocide takes from those who live through the trauma, and the generations that follow. Contributors speak to the way visual art and literature attempt to represent genocide, hoping to make sense of problematic histories while also offering a means of reflection after years of “slow violence” or silenced memories. Some authors generously allow us into their own histories, or contemplate how they may have experienced genocide had they been born in another time or place. What facets contribute to the processes that lead to, or enable the crime of genocide? This collection explores those processes through a variety of case studies and lenses. How do nurses, whose role is inherently linked to care and compassion, become mass killers? How do restrictions on religious freedom play a role in advancing genocidal policies, and why do perpetrators of genocide often target religious leaders? Why is it so important for Australia and other nations with histories of colonial genocide to acknowledge their past? Among the essays published in this volume, we have the privilege and the sorrow of publishing the very last essay Professor Colin Tatz wrote before his passing in 2019. His contribution reveals, yet again, the enormous influence of both his research and his original ideas on genocide. He reflects on continuing legacies for Indigenous Australian communities, with whom he worked for many decades, and adds nuance to contemporary understanding of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, two other cases to which he was deeply committed.

Sydney;  NSW: University of Technology Sydney, 2020. 217p.

The Life And Times Of Winston Churchilll

By Malcolm Thomson

From Winston Churchill's speech made in the House of Commons on June 4th, 1940: “Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen, or may fall, into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail, we shal go on ot the end, we shal fight in France, we shallfight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and strength in the air, we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island, or a large part of it, were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle until in God's good time the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the Old.”

London. Odhams Press. 1945. 324p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP.

Migration, equality & racism

Edited by Ilke Adam Tundé Adefioye Serena D'Agostino Nick Schuermans Florian Trauner

"Migration, Equality and Racism trigger ever more salient societal debates. More than 80 VUB academics and co-authors joined forces for this book. Philosophers, lawyers, psychologists, health scientists, sociologists, geographers, criminologists, communication and political scientists … look at migration, equality and racism from different disciplinary angles. Together they aim to contribute to an exercise of humanism as a praxis of criticism or a ‘technique of trouble-making’, in the words of Edward Said. Through 44 thought-provoking and informed opinion pieces, they question widespread beliefs on migration, equality and racism and propose solutions that might disturb. Let this book be a source of inspiration for those who want to spark an informed debate on the ever more salient issues of migration, equality and racism, for those who want to learn more on how and why humanism has often remained an empty box for migrants and racialized groups. Or for those who are in search of inspiration for a just future for all. Migration, Equality and Racism is the work of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) think tank POINcaré and was created under the direction of Ilke Adam, Tundé Adefioye, Serena D’Agostino, Nick Schuermans and Florian Trauner."

Brussels: ASP editions - Academic and Scientific Publishers, 2021. 260p.

Debating Religion and Forced Migration Entanglements

Edited by El ˙zbieta M. Go´zdziak · Izabella Main

This open access book brings into dialogue emerging and seasoned migration and religion scholars with spiritual leaders and representatives of faith-based organizations assisting refugees. Violent conflicts, social unrest, and other humanitarian crises around the world have led to growing numbers of people seeking refuge both in the North and in the South. Migrating and seeking refuge have always been part and parcel of spiritual development. However, the current 'refugee crisis' in Europe and elsewhere in the world has brought to the fore fervent discussions regarding the role of religion in defining difference, linking the ‘refugee crisis’ with Islam, and fear of the ‘Other.’ Many religious institutions, spiritual leaders, and politicians invoke religious values and call for strict border controls to resolve the ‘refugee crisis.’ However, equally many humanitarian organizations and refugee advocates use religious values to inform their call to action to welcome refugees and migrants, provide them with assistance, and facilitate integration processes. This book includes three distinct but inter-related parts focusing, respectively, on politics, values, and discourses mobilized by religious beliefs; lived experiences of religion, with a particular emphasis on identity and belonging among various refugee groups; and faith and faith actors and their responses to forced migration.

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. 200p.

The Sanctuary City: Immigrant, Refugee, and Receiving Communities in Postindustrial Philadelphia

By Domenic Vitiello 

In The Sanctuary City, Domenic Vitiello argues that sanctuary means much more than the limited protections offered by city governments or churches sheltering immigrants from deportation. It is a wider set of protections and humanitarian support for vulnerable newcomers. Sanctuary cities are the places where immigrants and their allies create safe spaces to rebuild lives and communities, often through the work of social movements and community organizations or civil society. Philadelphia has been an important center of sanctuary and reflects the growing diversity of American cities in recent decades. One result of this diversity is that sanctuary means different things for different immigrant, refugee, and receiving communities. Vitiello explores the migration, settlement, and local and transnational civil society of Central Americans, Southeast Asians, Liberians, Arabs, Mexicans, and their allies in the region across the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Together, their experiences illuminate the diversity of immigrants and refugees in the United States and what is at stake for different people, and for all of us, in our immigration debates.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. 311p.