This ethnographic book deals with the emergence of the Wali Pitu (seven saints) tradition and Muslim pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia. It touches upon the issues of translocal connectivity between Java and Bali, Islam-Hindu relationship, relations between Muslim groups, and questions of authority and authenticity of saint worship tradition. It offers a new perspective on Bali, seeing the island as a site of cultural motion straddling in between Islam and Hinduism with complexities of local figurations, and belongings of ‘Muslim Balinese’. The study also urges the intricate relationship between religion and tourism, between devotion and economy, and shows that the Wali Pitu tradition has facilitated the transgression of spatial and cultural boundaries.

'Wars Overseas' focuses on Dutch military actions outside Europe in the early-modern period. Those actions were rooted in the Eighty Years’ War, the conflict between Spain and the northern Netherlands that led to the creation of the independent Dutch Republic. The Republic was determined to trade in tropical products from Asia, Africa and the Americas, commodities on which the Iberians had had a monopoly for a century or more. To do so, however, it would have to fight. The fledgling State did not itself have the resources for such an undertaking and effectively left it to two monopolistic trading companies, the Dutch East India Company or VOC and the Dutch West India Company or WIC. In Asia, through an adroit policy of war and diplomacy, the VOC built a powerful trade-based empire that lasted for almost two centuries. The WIC began with a large-scale offensive in the Atlantic area, operating in both Africa and the Americas, albeit with less success than its sister company in Asia. In those conflicts overseas, empire builders like Jan Pietersz Coen and Johan Maurits of Nassau played crucial roles. How did they act? What resources did they have? And how did the military revolution in Europe impact the process of Dutch expansion overseas? 'Wars Overseas', the first comprehensive overview of Dutch military action in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, examines these and many other questions in detail, while thematic chapters focus on the deployment of sailors, soldiers and ships, on weapons and fortification-building, and on the confrontation with non-European allies and adversaries.

Philosopher Bas Haring argues that mass extinction is not a harbinger of global disaster.
 
Each year, climate change drives more and more species extinct, leaving many fearful for the fate of the planet. Why Biodiversity Loss is Not a Disaster calms such fears: we have no reason to believe fewer species will result in cataclysmic disaster. In this book, philosopher Bas Haring argues that nature is not like a machine that falls apart without all its parts. While some environments depend on the survival of specific species, he contends, these unique relationships cannot be generalized to the planet at large. In the long view, Haring writes, biodiversity loss is a pity but not a disaster.

Studying change in the course of human history, in different places, through the lens of a diverse set of core themes, World History for International Studies offers readers a set of windows into different debates historians have been conducting. Key themes, such as communication, trade, order, slavery, religion, war, identity, modernity, norms and ecology, are linked to specific world regions, which tell a story about how local ideas and individual contacts developed, started to overlap and became globally understood and used by ever larger groups of people. These themes are brought to life by a diverse set of key primary sources, such as a book, a letter, a medal, a temple and an epic, to showcase how historians have used sources to tell these stories and conduct debates. The book provides an introductory resource into the study of history and includes detailed suggestions for further study.