Reviews

S.M. IMAMUDDIN. Muslim Spain, 711–1492 A.D.: A Sociological Study. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981. Pp. viii, 269. £36.80. Reviewed by Jill R. Webster

DANIEL R. HEADRICK. The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Pp. 221, $14.95 (US). Reviewed by Barrie M. Ratcliffe

V.R. BERGHAHN. Militarism: The History of An International Debate 1861–1979. Leamington Spa: Berg Publishers, 1981. Pp. 132. $8.95. Reviewed by Martin Kitchen

HUYNH KIM KHANH. Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1945. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Pp. 379. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by William J. Duiker

RALPH B. LEVERING. The Cold War, 1945–1972. Arlington Heights, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1982. Pp. 165, $6.95 (US). Reviewed by Wesley T. Wooley

R. DAN RICHARDSON. Comintern Army: The International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1982. Pp. 232. $19.50 (US). Reviewed by Stanley G. Payne

KATHLEEN BURK (Editor). War and the State: The Transformation of British Government 1914–1919. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1982. Pp. 189. $29.50 (US). Reviewed by M.L. Dockrill

TONY SMITH. The Pattern of Imperialism: The United States, Great Britain and the Late-Industrialising World since 1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Pp. xi, 308. $34.50 (US). Paperback $10.95 (US). Reviewed by Barbie M. Ratcliffe

D. GEORGE BOYCE. Nationalism in Ireland. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. Pp. 441. $32.50 (US). Reviewed by Don M. Cregier

ODED ERAN. The Mezhdunarodtniki: An Assessment of Professional Expertise in the Making of Soviet Foreign Policy. Ramat Gan, Israel: Turtledove Publishing, 1979. Pp. 331. £11.75. Reviewed by Teddy J. Uldricks

BINNAZ TOPRAK. Islam and Political Development in Turkey. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981. Pp. viii, 164. $22.75 (US). Reviewed by Dimitri Kitsikis

ORVILLE T. MURPHY. Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes: French Diplomacy in the Age of Revolution, 1719–1787. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, pp. 607. $16.95 (US) paper. Reviewed by William Stinchcombe

HUNTER R. RAWLINGS III. The Structure of Thucydides' History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Pp. xiv, 278. $21.00 (US), MARC COGAN. The Human Thing: The Speeches and Principles of Thucydides' History. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1981. Pp. xvii, 309. $20.00 (US). Reviewed by Malcolm F. McGregor

H.E. MAUDE. Slavers in Paradise: The Peruvian Slave Trade in Polynesia, 1863–1864. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1981. Pp. xxii, 244. $22.50 (US). Reviewed by James A. Boutilier     

State Ceremonial,Court Culture and Political Power in Early Modern Denmark, 1536-1746

In early modern Europe the court of a prince was many things: the household of a prince, a point of contact between the ruler and the elites, a cultural trendsetter, a focal point of patronage and an important institution of regional and international politics. In short, the court had many functions. In this article the focus is on the main lines of development in the court culture of early modern Denmark, from the Reformation (1536) until early Absolutism. Certain structural changes are highlighted and an attempt is made to explain them in political terms. As a prelude, I offer some theoretical reflections on the meaning of court culture in general and ceremonial culture in particular. Let me say from the outset that I have found my inspiration mainly in German and American historical scholarship, which for the past twenty years or so has witnessed a continuous and fruitful debate on the early modern court.     

Diffusion patterns of violence in civil wars

Much of the current conflict literature attempts to explain the occurrence of violence as the result of determinants exogenous to the conflict process. This paper takes a different approach and analyzes how violence in civil wars spreads in space and time, drawing on earlier work on micro-diffusion of violence in criminology as well as high resolution conflict data. Two general scenarios are distinguished in our analysis: the relocation and the escalation of conflict. Relocation diffusion corresponds to a shift in the location of violence, whereas escalation diffusion refers to the spatial expansion of the conflict site. We argue that unconventional warfare in civil wars without demarcated front lines should primarily lead to the second type of pattern. We describe an extension to a joint count statistic to measure both diffusion types in conflict event data. Monte Carlo simulation allows for the establishment of a baseline for the frequency of contiguous conflict events under the assumption of independence, and thus provides a significance test for the observed patterns. Our results suggest that violence in civil wars exhibits patterns of diffusion, and in particular, that these patterns are primarily of the escalation type, driven by the dynamic expansion of the scope of the conflict.     

The mediatisation of war in a transforming global media landscape

Before the rise of digital new media technology in 2002, ‘old’ media at its heart displayed a fundamental division between sender and receiver, a division which for a long time had structurally, materially and politically conditioned the nature of the relationship between ‘old’ media and war. Within the recently emerging digital new media technology, however, this age-old separation between sender and receiver has been eroded. Thus, alongside traditional media platforms, an entirely new form of media technology has arisen. This development has transformed the hitherto multipolar nature of the old media landscape and has led to a heteropolar global media landscape, in which the relationship between media and war has been altered. By exploring how digital new media poles are forming and old media poles are evolving, this article examines how this seismic shift in the global media landscape requires a redefinition of the understanding of the nature of the relationship between media and conflict today.     

Child Poverty in the American States: The Impact of Welfare Reform,Economics, and Demographics

This article identifies the predictors of child poverty rates at the state level before and after the adoption and implementation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. The analysis shows that the most important state‐level factors that influence child poverty rates are demographics, the health and viability of the state economy, and often the generosity, inclusiveness, and quality of state welfare programs. States with large numbers of black citizens, and those that score highest on infant mortality, teen births, births to unmarried women, children living with a parent without a high school degree, and children living with a single parent have the highest rates of child poverty. Child poverty rates are lowest in states that suffer less unemployment, and in wealthier states. States that score higher on per capita personal income, tax revenues, and taxable resources have lower child poverty rates. While specific “tough” welfare policies adopted by some states seem to have no impact on child poverty rates, we tested for the first time a sophisticated measure of the overall quality of state welfare programs. The analysis reveals that the global quality of a state's welfare programs is often an independent predictor of child poverty. States with the most generous, inclusive, and supportive welfare programs have done the best job of lowering and containing child poverty.     

Claude Bernard and an introduction to the study of experimental medicine: "physical vitalism," dialectic, and epistemology

This article explores the profound impact of the thought of Claude Bernard (1813-78) and his philosophy of experimentalism elaborated in his masterwork An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine. I argue that Bernard's far-ranging theoretical impact on medicine and biology marks the end of conventional vitalism and the elusive notion of a "vital force" as a legitimate scientific concept. His understanding of medicine is as epistemologically significant in its time as Newton's contribution was to the physical sciences in the seventeenth century. This essay treats Bernard's philosophical ambitions seriously, exploring his important, even central, role in the mental world of nineteenth-century France. This includes his influence on Henri Bergson (1859-1941) and other late-nineteenth century thinkers. The subtext of Bernard's experimental epistemology is also contrasted with a key idealist philosopher of the period, the German Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), and placed in the context of the larger European philosophical sphere. In contrast to much of mid-nineteenth-century philosophy, Bernard, in creating the framework for experimental medicine, argued for an experimental approach in which a priori assumptions were to be strictly constrained. Bernard's thoughts on the nature of experiment put an end to "systems" in medicine, ironically by replacing all previous medical philosophies with the all-embracing "system" of experiment. And yet, while "vital forces" fade after Bernard, a form of vitalism still flourishes. Even in Bernard's own work, in the struggle with concepts like determinism, complexity, and causality, there is a realization of the unique character of living function in a kind of "physical vitalism."