Declassified documents arguably offer a premier vantage for understanding global governance, current security concerns, and the international market. While the first volume dealt with India—US bilateral relations during the 'Formative Years', this two-part volume focuses on the 'Later Years': the Lyndon B Johnson—Richard M Nixon years (1965–1972), a time when cold war politics had set in, and cold war alliances were evolving in both blocs. These selected documents are collected from the Presidential Libraries (Roosevelt–Carter), White House Papers, National Security Council, Office of Strategic Services, Central Intelligence Agency, and Foreign Relations archives. The two books examine the following topics chronologically: American Interests Abroad; US Foreign Economic Assistance in the Developing World: Market, Military, Geopolitics and Food; India's foreign policy; bilateral relations with the Soviet Union; bilateral relations with China and the 1962 war; bilateral relations with Pakistan and the 1965 war; US military aid; and India's Nuclear Program. This volume comprises seven chapters chart the course of Washington's increasing involvement in South Asia.
After a war breaks out, what factors influence the warring parties' decisions about whether to talk to their enemy, and when may their position on wartime diplomacy change? How do we get from only fighting to also talking? In The Costs of Conversation, Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that states are primarily concerned with the strategic costs of conversation, and these costs need to be low before combatants are willing to engage in direct talks with their enemy. Specifically, Mastro writes, leaders look to two factors when determining the probable strategic costs of demonstrating a willingness to talk: the likelihood the enemy will interpret openness to diplomacy as a sign of weakness, and how the enemy may change its strategy in response to such an interpretation. Only if a state thinks it has demonstrated adequate strength and resiliency to avoid the inference of weakness, and believes that its enemy has limited capacity to escalate or intensify the war, will it be open to talking with the enemy. Through four primary case studies—North Vietnamese diplomatic decisions during the Vietnam War, those of China in the Korean War and Sino-Indian War, and Indian diplomatic decision making in the latter conflict—The Costs of Conversation demonstrates that the costly conversations thesis best explains the timing and nature of countries' approach to wartime talks, and therefore when peace talks begin. As a result, Mastro's findings have significant theoretical and practical implications for war duration and termination, as well as for military strategy, diplomacy, and mediation.
The 1962 War was indeed a traumatic experience for the Indian arms. The story from the Indian side is generally well known but very little is known about how the Chinese planned and orchestrated the entire campaign. While India held a firm belief till the very end that China would not resort to a large scale military action; the Chinese on the other hand had been preparing for it since 1959. Even though the writing was on the wall, Indian Army allowed itself to be hustled into a war on those high Himalayas for which it was ill prepared........a kind of hurtling towards a point of no return. Based on the Chinese literature, for the first time, this book has been able to delve into the Chinese thought process, their grand strategy and reconstruct various battles across the entire front from Chinese point of view; of course tempered with what is known from authentic Indian sources. It is a narrative that is designed to fill a great void that has existed all these years about the 1962 Indo-China War.
It is not possible to fully understand contemporary politics between China and the Dalai Lama without understanding what happened—and why—during the 1950s. In a book that continues the story of Tibet's history that he began in his acclaimed A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State, Melvyn C. Goldstein critically revises our understanding of that key period in midcentury. This authoritative account utilizes new archival material, including never before seen documents, and extensive interviews with Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama, and with Chinese officials. Goldstein furnishes fascinating and sometimes surprising portraits of these major players as he deftly unravels the fateful intertwining of Tibetan and Chinese politics against the backdrop of the Korean War, the tenuous Sino-Soviet alliance, and American cold war policy.
The Cambridge Economic History of India, published in two volumes, aims at tracing the changes in the economy of India from the thirteenth to the middle of the present century and beyond. The second volume covers the period 1757â€“1970, from the establishment of British rule to its termination, with epilogues on the post-Independence period. Part I opens with a broad description of the economy in the middle of the eighteenth century, then describes general economic trends in four main regions up to the middle of the nineteenth century, and includes a discussion of changes in the agrarian structure up to the end of 1947. Part II takes up various themes for the economy as a whole, while Part III deals with post-Independence developments in India and Pakistan. The Cambridge Economic History of India will be widely accepted as the standard work of reference on the subject, and the volumes will be of relevance to fields other than economic history, being the first major collaborative work of its kind to explore the shift of an advanced Asian civilization from pre-colonial times to independence.
Spanish imperial attempts to form strong Indian alliances to thwart American expansion in the Mississippi Valley. Charles Weeks explores the diplomacy of Spanish colonial officials in New Orleans and Natchez in order to establish posts on the Mississippi River and Tombigbee rivers in the early 1790s. Another purpose of this diplomacy, urged by Indian leaders and embraced by Spanish officials, was the formation of a regional Indian confederation that would deter American expansion into Indian lands. Weeks shows how diplomatic relations were established and maintained in the Gulf South between Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee chiefs and their Spanish counterparts aided by traders who had become integrated into Indian societies. He explains that despite the absence of a European state system, Indian groups had diplomatic skills that Europeans could understand: full-scale councils or congresses accompanied by elaborate protocol, interpreters, and eloquent metaphorical language. Paths to a Middle Ground is both a narrative and primary documents. Key documents from Spanish archival sources serve as a basis for the examination of the political culture and imperial rivalry playing out in North America in the waning years of the 18th century.
On September 5, 1886, the entire nation rejoiced as the news flashed from the Southwest that the Apache war leader Geronimo had surrendered to Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles. With Geronimo, at the time of his surrender, were Chief Naiche (the son of the great Cochise), sixteen other warriors, fourteen women, and six children. It had taken a force of 5,000 regular army troops and a series of false promises to "capture" the band. Yet the surrender that day was not the end of the story of the Apaches associated with Geronimo. Besides his small band, 394 of his tribesmen, including his wife and children, were rounded up, loaded into railroad cars, and shipped to Florida. For more than twenty years Geronimo’s people were kept in captivity at Fort Pickens, Florida; Mount Vernon Barracks, Alabama; and finally Fort Sill, Oklahoma. They never gave up hope of returning to their mountain home in Arizona and New Mexico, even as their numbers were reduced by starvation and disease and their children were taken from them to be sent to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
The Vengeful Wife and Other Blackfoot Stories by historian Hugh A. Dempsey presents tales from the Blackfoot tribe of the plains of northern Montana and southern Alberta. Drawn from Dempsey’s fifty years of interviewing tribal elders and sifting through archives, the stories are about warfare, hunting, ceremonies, sexuality, the supernatural, and captivity, and they reflect the Blackfoot worldview and beliefs. This remarkable compilation of oral history and accounts from government officials, travelers, and fur traders preserves stories dating from the late 1700s to the early 1900s. "The importance of oral history," Dempsey writes, "is reflected in the fact that the majority of these stories would never have survived had they not been preserved orally from generation to generation."
Published in association with the New York State Historical Association, a richly illustrated history of New York retraces the fascinating story of this important state, from its origins in Native American culture and early seventeenth-century colonization by Europeans to the mid-1990s. Reprint.