The Jameson Raid was a pivotal moment in the history of South Africa, linking events from the Anglo-Boer War to the declaration of the Union of South Africa in 1910. For more than a century, the failed revolution has been interpreted through the lens of British imperialism, with responsibility laid at the feet of Cecil Rhodes. Yet, the raid was less a serious attempt to overthrow a Boer government than a wild adventure with transnational roots in American filibustering. In The Cowboy Capitalist, renowned South African historian Charles van Onselen challenges a historiography of over 120 years, locating the raid in American rather than British history and forcing us to rethink the histories of at least three nations. Through a close look at the little-remembered figure of John Hays Hammond, a confidant of both Rhodes and Jameson, he discovers the American Old West on the South African Highveld. This radical reinterpretation challenges the commonly held belief that the Jameson Raid was quintessentially British and, in doing so, drives splinters into our understanding of events as far forward as South Africa’s critical 1948 general election, with which the foundations of Grand Apartheid were laid.

"Americans work three jobs just to make ends meet, and unemployment is low only because so many people are in jail." That’s what most European (and many American) pundits believe. While the U.S. economy may create more growth, Europeans think they are better off when it comes to job security, income equality, and other factors. But does European-style "comfy capitalism" really deliver better results than American “cowboy capitalism”? Olaf Gersemann, a German reporter who came to America, checked the facts and discovered that the common perception in Europe and elsewhere of America's economic model is either wrong or misleading. The greater market freedoms in the United States create a more flexible, adaptable, and prosperous system than the declining welfare states of Europe. Contrary to what one might expect, continental Europe’s welfare states provide no meaningful advantage compared with America. In clear and accessible terms, Gersemann separates the economic myths from the reality. Cowboy Capitalism is a provocative and devastating rebuttal to the stereotypes promoted by the likes of Paul Krugman and Michael Moore.

This book identifies and explores the mechanisms linking political institutions and variation in capitalist systems. A strong correlation exists between varieties of political regimes and varieties of capitalism: majoritarian political regimes are correlated with liberal market economies (LMEs) and consensus political regimes are correlated with coordinated market economies (CMEs). Still, correlation is not causation. Empirical findings illustrate that partisanship and policy legacies, the number of political parties, electoral rules, and constitutional constraints are significant indicators of LMEs and CMEs. Arsenault finds that majoritarian institutions create an environment of adversarial politics and strong competition between actors, which makes credible commitment to nonmarket coordination mechanisms unlikely. Consensus institutions, on the other hand, promote an atmosphere of cooperation and coordination between actors, thus encouraging credible commitment to nonmarket coordination mechanisms. Qualitative case studies of Germany, Britain, and New Zealand confirm the quantitative findings and suggest that political regimes were instrumental in shaping the economic adjustment paths of these countries during the era of liberalization in the 1980s.

For 10,000 years before any European immigrants arrived on the North American Continent, Native American Indians engaged in a communal lifestyle. From 1600 to 1791, American Colonists established a thriving home production economy, and having ownership of their tools, or means of production, they produced everything they needed to survive. They were self-reliant, and the American Colonists sold their excess goods to merchants, who resold them for a profit. By 1791, the merchants were able to start the first textile factories as a result, which brought an abrupt end to the home production economy, and the beginning of American Capitalism. Former independent colonists were now forced into the textile factory, and the first wage contract appeared in America. The wage contract also set in motion a contradiction between the capitalist owners of the means of production and the new American Working Class. The wage contract allowed the owners of working class labor, and the instruments of production, to evolve into an American Ruling Class, and the producers of all commodities and wealth became the American Working Class People wage-workers class. Because of their divergent interests, the two classes formed a class contradiction, and the latter became known as the capitalist American Ruling Class Opposite and the American Working Class Opposite (People) wage-workers. This development occurred mainly in the northern factory economy, while in the South, uncompensated African Slave Labor was dominant, which was owned by an American Slaveholding Class. By 1860, the contradiction between the capitalist American Ruling Class Opposite owner of the wage labor system came into a head-on contradiction with uncompensated African Slave Labor, and a bloody Civil War was fought to determine which type of means of production would prevail and dominate during the 20th Century? The South was defeated, and the wage contract system became nationalized. Therefore, throughout the twentieth Century, including the beginning of the new Millennium, the capitalist American Ruling Class Opposite expropriated the labor’s product of the American Working Class Opposite (People) wage-workers, which resulted in this class accumulation of multiple-billions of dollars of Surplus-Value, and simultaneously this loss translated into the American Working Class Opposite (People) wage-workers’ increasing alienation, estrangement, loss self-identity, self-expression, and freedom.

This book intends to be an alert to the fact that the curve measuring environmental costs against the economic benefits of capitalism has irreversibly entered into a negative phase. The prospect of an environmental collapse has been evidenced by the sciences and the humanities since the 1960s. Today, it imposes its urgency. This collapse differs from past civilizations in that it is neither local nor just civilizational. It is global and occurs at the broadest level of the biosphere, accelerated by the convergence of different socio-environmental crises, such as: Earth energy imbalance, climate change and global warming Sea-level rise Decrease and degradation of forests Collapse of terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity Floods, droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather events Degradation of soils and water resources Increase in pollution caused by fossil fuels and coal Increase in waste production and industrial intoxication The book is divided in two parts. In the first part it presents a comprehensive review of scientific data to show the already visible effects of each of the different environmental crises and its consequences to human life on Earth. In the second part, Luiz Marques critically discusses what he calls the three concentric illusions that prevent us from realizing the gravity of the current socio-environmental crises: the illusion of a sustainable capitalism, the illusion that economic growth is still capable of providing more well-being and the anthropocentric illusion. Finally, Marques argues that "fitting" back into the biosphere will only be possible if we dismantle the expansive socioeconomic gear that has shaped our societies since the 16th century by moving from a Social Contract to a Natural Contract, which takes into account the whole biosphere. According to him, the future society will be post-capitalist or it will not be a complex society, and even perhaps, we must fear, no society at all. “This book is backed up with the latest and best science and has made the complexities understandable for the average reader, all in a context of hope for the future.” - William J. Ripple, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Ecology, Director of the Alliance of World Scientists, Oregon State University

Climate change, species loss, and the pollution of our air, water, and soil all indicate that humans have failed in their God-given mandate to care for the earth. Some Christians see these as signs of the “end times” and beyond our control. This book goes back to the beginning of creation to examine humanity’s God-given vocation to care for creation as an expression of holiness. Human power and agency have their limits in a world where God has ordered things for the flourishing of all creatures. The current environmental crisis is understood as the consequence of not respecting these limits. Instead of passive acceptance of the present crisis, the church is encouraged to work for the common good of the whole creation.

Volume 1 of Three Wise Monkeys explores the Portuguese colonisation of Mozambique, and the gradual transformation of the colony into a reservoir of cheap labour, first during the Atlantic slave trade and then during the rise of the voracious Rand mining industry. Mozambique became locked into financial dependence on South Africa. The South African mining industry came to own significant parts of the harbour infrastructure of Lourenço Marques. The mining industry's insatiable appetite for pit props gave rise to a globalised trade in timber flowing in from the US, Scandinavia and Australia via new shipping lines to the port of Lourenço Marques. After World War I, the South African gold-mining industry and Mozambique's weak 'central bank', the Banco Nacional Ultramarino, operating alongside the South African Reserve Bank, a branch of the Royal Mint and the Rand Refinery, effectively controlled the economic fortunes and destiny of South Africa's neighbour. Mozambique was colonised twice over – first by Portugal and then by South Africa.

This book offers readers an alternative history of the origins of the discipline of International Relations. Conventional, western histories of the discipline point to 1919 as the year of the ‘birth of the discipline’ with two seminal initiatives – setting up of the first Chair of IR at Aberystwyth and the founding of the Institute of International Relations on the side-lines of the Paris Peace Conference. From these events, International Relations is argued to have been established as a path to create peace in the post-War era and facilitated through a scientific study of international affairs. International Relations was therefore, both a field of study and knowledge production and a plan of action. This pathbreaking book challenges these claims by presenting an alternative narrative of International Relations. In this book, we make three interconnected arguments. First, we argue that the natal moment in the founding of IR is not World War I – as is generally believed – but the Anglo Boer War. Second, we argue that the ideas, methods and institutions that led to the making of IR were first thrashed out in South Africa – in Johannesburg, in fact. Finally, this South African genealogy of IR, we show in the book, allows us to properly investigate the emergence of academic IR at the interstices of race, Empire and science.

What does it mean to be an American man? Holmberg demonstrates how David Mamet's plays explore complex issues of masculinity.

This book describes the career of an English aristocrat, Christopher Bethell, who arrives in southern Africa in 1878 as the classic "remittance" man, despatched to the colonies to avoid a scandal at home. Bethell, an intelligence officer and later, a border agent, is the protagonist who facilitated the acquisition of arms for Montshiwa's Ratshidi-Barolong to resist the depredations of freebooters, mercenaries based mostly in the Transvaal. In his alliance with Kgosi Montshiwa Tawana, Bethell identifies with Kgosi Montshiwa’s struggle to maintain political independence and economic security. The alliance was further cemented by Bethell’s marriage to a Morolong woman Tepo Boapile – an unusual occurrence in nineteenth century southern Africa. Surrounded by aggressive freebooters from across their eastern border with the Transvaal and the ambiguous forces of colonial advancement from the Cape colony and Britain, Montshiwa and Bethell form an unlikely but enduring relationship aimed at safeguarding Rolong interests. As the Bechuanaland Wars of the early to mid-1880s intensify in brutality Montshiwa and his Chief of Staff, Christopher Bethell are forced to desperate measures to defend the Rolong and avoid outright dispossession. Bethell’s demise is the trigger for firm British imperial intervention, the securing of the Road to the North and events that will determine the fate of Africans in south and central Africa. The book is a reminder that, in the author’s words, "past relations between South Africa’s different races were characterised as much by collusion and collaboration as they were by hostility, friction and dissent."