Italians at war: war and experience in Fascist Italy

This article examines Fascist violence in war from the perspective of the strategies employed by the Italian army. Focusing on the military’s use of violence from the re-conquest of Libya to the civil war in Italy, the article argues that Fascism systematically employed forms of violence that were both typical and original.     

The German politics of war: Kunduz and the war in Afghanistan

This article analyses the way in which Germany's participation in the international intervention in Afghanistan has shaped and transformed the country's politics of defence and deriving policies. It argues that in the wake of operational challenges posed by the insurgency in northern Afghanistan since 2007, and in particular the increasing rate of German combat fatalities, established post‐Cold War dogmas of German politics are becoming subject to erosion. Developments in the Kunduz region of northern Afghanistan, with the tanker bombing of 4 September 2009 as its apex, have had a catalyst function in this process. In particular, strategic, operational and tactical requirements for counterinsurgency operations have had significant politico‐strategic repercussions for the country's defence and security policy more generally. As a result, in recent years the Bundeswehr has begun to undergo a far‐reaching structural process of military adaptation and innovation. The article explains and analyses this phenomenon of political change and military learning in the context of political paralysis.     

Fighting the Taliban: Pakistan at war with itself

Some new groups calling themselves Pakistani Taliban with links to the Afghan Taliban have asserted themselves in the tribal areas of Pakistan. This has complicated the internal security scenario for Pakistan. This article traces the roots of the problem and argues that the State with its confessional character emits strong Islamist impulses making it easy for Taliban-like forces to take roots in Pashtun dominated areas in Pakistan. While the process of Talibanisation may not succeed in engulfing the entire state of Pakistan, it will certainly pose a critical internal challenge, contributing to its fragility and compelling Pakistan to stay perennially engaged with its internal security. Roll back is difficult but not impossible. This will involve the strong commitment of the State to take steps to bring about social, economic and political transformation in the Taliban-infested areas, and an effort on the part of the international community to help Pakistan in this critical endeavour.     

Gendered Space: A New Look at Turkish Modernisation

This article examines how an understanding of gender has challenged and changed the perception of ‘modernisation’ and its relation to Western culture. In so doing it also shows how the traditional division of disciplines, especially between political and social history and historical demography, has limited insights into beliefs and behaviours of both women and men. The decline in the numbers of children born within a family was accompanied by many shifts in daily living, not least in the way housework was structured as indicated by the spatial patterns of both formal social life and domestic labour. A detailed examination of these issues, including the use of various types of household labour – slave, free, waged and the ‘adopted daughter’(evlatlök), and poor relation – brings into sharp focus how the leading segment in the process of modernisation, the urban middle class, was active in and responded to such major changes. Women's involvement in education, politics and the labour market was intimately intertwined with these aspects of family and domestic life – but so, in very different ways, was men's.     

The shadow of the civil war: A historiography of civil war memory

The memory of the Civil War has become one of the most vibrant and contested subjects in nineteenth-century American history over the past two decades. Studies of Civil War memory potentially can reveal much about the cultural, political, and intellectual world of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age. Whereas the Civil War has often been studied in historical isolation, histories of memory thrust off the standard constraints of periodization to emphatically link the Civil War with late nineteenthcentury history. David W Blight's award-winning synthesis Race and Reunion (2001) both indicates the topic's rapid maturation and heightens the need for a historiographical excursion to assess the collective strengths and weaknesses of this burgeoning subfield. The following essay explores the convergence of factors, both within and outside of the historical profession, which have encouraged the boom in memory studies. In addition, it traces the emerging historiography to examine both the creative diversity of the field as well as its common assumptions, insights, and strategic limits.     

The Kosovo war: a recapitulation

This article has four objectives: first to make a case for the significance of the Kosovo war in contemporary history; second, to present an overview of the crisis itself and the military confrontation which was its consequence; third, to survey the initial controversies aroused by military action—and, specifically, the debates surrounding NATO's Operation Allied Force; and finally, to reference the longer term significance of the Kosovo war in terms of the themes covered by the remaining contributions which make up this volume.     

National identity and the representation of Italy at war: The case of Combat film

This article examines the documentary series Combat film made by Leonardo Valente and Roberto Olla for Rai-Uno. Shown in April 1994, the series was based on film taken by the American army (1943-5) and provoked a national scandal when it was first shown. The article argues that in order to fully understand Combat film it is necessary to look at the overall design of the programme as well as its content. By concentrating on the 'special' shown on 5 April 1994 the author demonstrates how the revisionist message of 'national reconciliation' which underlies the programme is reinforced by a series of formal and technical strategies.     

An integrated approach to reconstructing primary activities from pit deposits: iron smithing and other activities at Tel Dor under Neo-Assyrian domination

Secondary pit deposits in historical occupations of Near Eastern mounds are usually regarded as uninteresting and are seldom analyzed. We used an integrated approach to study all the artifacts as well as the sediments in a pit at Tel Dor, on Israel's Carmel coast, dating to the 7th c. BCE – a period when the site served as an Assyrian administrative center. This pit was unusually large, had a peculiar ceramic assemblage, and many macroscopic metallurgical wastes. A detailed excavation and analysis revealed that the pit served intermittently as a waste disposal site for an iron smithy and for pottery that was presumably involved in maritime trading. On two occasions the area was also used for animal penning. Despite the obvious importance of the iron industry to the Neo-Assyrian Empire, actual workshops are rare in its archaeological record. Hence the new information regarding an Iron Age iron smithy in the southern Levant contributes to the study of this industry, and also to the history of Dor in this period.     

The Taliban at war: inside the Helmand insurgency, 2004–2012

In seeking to explain why and how the war in Afghanistan has dragged on, most analysis has focused on the western and Afghan government effort. In this article, we examine how the war looks from the perspective of the insurgency. Using Helmand province as a case‐study, we draw on a large number of original interviews with Taliban field commanders and fighters to produce a uniquely detailed picture of the Taliban at war. In the first section, we explore how the Taliban returned to Helmand from 2004 to 2006, and show how the British made the situation far worse when they deployed forces to Helmand in 2006. In the second part of the article we examine the evolution of the Taliban insurgency in Helmand since 2006. We show how the Taliban has developed an increasingly centralized organizational structure, a more militarized shadow government and greater professionalism of field units. The overall picture that emerges is of a resilient insurgency that has adapted under immense military pressure. The Taliban have suffered very heavy attrition in Helmand, but they are far from defeated.