front cover of Tatiana Romanov, Daughter of the Last Tsar
Tatiana Romanov, Daughter of the Last Tsar
Diaries and Letters, 1913–1918
Helen Azar
Westholme Publishing, 2016
Translated for the First Time in English with Annotations by a Leading Expert, the Romanov Family’s Final Years Through the Writings of the Second Oldest Daughter

Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia was the second of the four daughters of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Long recognized by historians as the undisputed “beauty” of the family, Tatiana was acknowledged for her poise, her elegance, and her innate dignity within her own family. Helen Azar, translator of the diaries of Olga Romanov, and Nicholas B. A. Nicholson, Russian Imperial historian, have joined together to present a truly comprehensive picture of this extraordinarily gifted, complex, and intelligent woman in her own words. Tatiana Romanov, Daughter of the Last Tsar: Diaries and Letters, 1913–1918, presents translations of material never before published in Russian or in English, as well as materials never published in their entirety in the West.

The brisk, modern prose of Tatiana’s diary entries reveals the character of a young woman who was far more than the sheltered imperial beauty as she previously has been portrayed. While many historians and writers describe her as a cold, haughty, and distant aristocrat, this book shows instead a remarkably down-to-earth and humorous young woman, full of life and compassion. A detail-oriented and observant participant in some of the most important historical events of the early twentieth century, she left firsthand descriptions of the tercentenary celebrations of the House of Romanov, the early years of Russia’s involvement in World War I, and the road to her family’s final days in Siberian exile. Her writings reveal extraordinary details previously unknown or unacknowledged. Lavishly annotated for the benefit of the nonspecialist reader, this book is not only a reevaluation of Tatiana’s role as more than just one of four sisters, but also a valuable reference on Russia, the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the people closest to the Grand Duchess and her family.
[more]

front cover of Tennessee's Experience during the First World War
Tennessee's Experience during the First World War
Michael E. Birdwell
University of Tennessee Press, 2023

“On the day that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, was assassinated, Tennesseans worried about the weather,” Carole Bucy writes. Indeed, the war that began in Europe in 1914 was unimaginably remote from Tennessee—until it wasn’t.

Drawing on a depth of research into a wide array of topics, this vanguard collection of essays aims to conceptualize World War I through the lens of Tennessee. The book begins by situating life in Tennessee within the greater context of the war in Europe, recounting America’s growing involvement in the Great War. As the volume unfolds, editor Michael E. Birdwell and the contributors weave together soldier narratives, politics and agribusiness, African American history, and present-day recollections to paint a picture of Tennessee’s Great War experience that is both informative and gripping.

An essential addition to the broader historiography of the American experience during World War I, this collection of essays presents Tennessee stories that are close to home in more than just geography and lineage. By relating international conflict through the eyes of Tennessee’s own, editor Michael E. Birdwell and the contributing authors provide new opportunities for academics and general readers alike to engage with the Great War from a unique and—until now—untold perspective.

[more]

front cover of They All Made Peace—What Is Peace?
They All Made Peace—What Is Peace?
The 1923 Lausanne Treaty and the New Imperial Order
Edited by Jonathan Conlin and Ozan Ozavci
Gingko, 2023
An analysis of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne from multiple historical, economic, and social perspectives.
 
The last of the post-World War One peace settlements, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne departed from methods used in the Treaty of Versailles and took on a new peace-making initiative: a forced population exchange that affected one and a half million people. Like its German and Austro-Hungarian allies, the defeated Ottoman Empire had initially been presented with a dictated peace in 1920. In just two years, however, the Kemalist insurgency enabled Turkey to become the first sovereign state in the Middle East, while the Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Egyptians, Kurds, and other communities previously under the Ottoman Empire sought their own forms of sovereignty.

Featuring historical analysis from multiple perspectives, They All Made Peace, What is Peace? considers the Lausanne Treaty and its legacy. Chapters investigate British, Turkish, and Soviet designs in the post-Ottoman world, situate the population exchanges relative to other peacemaking efforts, and discuss the economic factors behind the reallocation of Ottoman debt and the management of refugee flows. Further chapters examine Kurdish, Arab, Iranian, Armenian, and other communities that were refused formal accreditation at Lausanne, but which were still forced to live with the consequences, consequences that are still emerging, one hundred years on.
 
[more]

front cover of To Can the Kaiser
To Can the Kaiser
Arkansas and the Great War
Michael D. Polston
Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, 2015
On April 2, 1917, the United States officially entered a war that had been raging for nearly three years in Europe. Even though America’s involvement in the “Great War” lasted little more than a year and a half, the changes it wrought were profound. More than seventy thousand Arkansans served as soldiers during the war. Wartime propaganda led to suspicions directed against Germans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and African Americans in Arkansas, but war production proved a boon to the state in the form of greater demand for cotton, minerals, and timber. World War I connected Arkansas to the world in ways that changed the state and its people forever, as shown in the essays collected here.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Twice a Stranger
The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey
Bruce Clark
Harvard University Press, 2006

In the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, nearly two million citizens in Turkey and Greece were expelled from homelands. The Lausanne treaty resulted in the deportation of Orthodox Christians from Turkey to Greece and of Muslims from Greece to Turkey. The transfer was hailed as a solution to the problem of minorities who could not coexist. Both governments saw the exchange as a chance to create societies of a single culture. The opinions and feelings of those uprooted from their native soil were never solicited.

In an evocative book, Bruce Clark draws on new archival research in Turkey and Greece as well as interviews with surviving participants to examine this unprecedented exercise in ethnic engineering. He examines how the exchange was negotiated and how people on both sides came to terms with new lands and identities.

Politically, the population exchange achieved its planners' goals, but the enormous human suffering left shattered legacies. It colored relations between Turkey and Greece, and has been invoked as a solution by advocates of ethnic separation from the Balkans to South Asia to the Middle East. This thoughtful book is a timely reminder of the effects of grand policy on ordinary people and of the difficulties for modern nations in contested regions where people still identify strongly with their ethnic or religious community.

[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter