John Tone recounts the dramatic story of how; between 1808 and 1814; Spanish peasants created and sustained the world's first guerrilla insurgency movement; thereby playing a major role in Napoleon's defeat in the Peninsula War. Focusing on the army of Francisco Mina; Tone offers new insights into the origins; motives; and successes of these first guerrilla forces by interpreting the conflict from the long-ignored perspective of the guerrillas themselves. Only months after Napoleon's invasion in 1807; Spain seemed ready to fall: its rulers were in prison or in exile; its armies were in complete disarray; and Madrid had been occupied. However; the Spanish people themselves; particularly the peasants of Navarre; proved unexpectedly resilient. In response to impending defeat; they formed makeshift governing juntas; raised new armies; and initiated a new kind of people's war of national liberation that came to be known as guerrilla warfare. Key to the peasants' success; says Tone; was the fact that they possessed both the material means and the motives to resist. The guerrillas were neither bandits nor selfless patriots but landowning peasants who fought to protect the old regime in Navarre and their established position within it. from the book: "That unfortunate war destroyed me; it divided my forces; multiplied my obligations; undermined my morale. . . . All the circumstances of my disasters are bound up in that fatal knot.--Napoleon Bonaparte on the Spanish war
#2741253 in Books The University of North Carolina Press 2003-06-30Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.21 x .75 x 6.14l; 1.13 #File Name: 0807854581368 pages
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. I found it extremely interesting and it's good even for non-specialized peopleBy Alberto SatisfactionThis is a highly well-written book about the subject of how zen buddhism entered the West via the Colombian Parlament in 1893 celebrated in Chicago. I know there's a book by Richard Seager that deals specifically with the Parlament; but this one presents a whole context in America; Europe and Japan. I found it extremely interesting and it's good even for non-specialized people; I think. Anyway; great reading.3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Disorienting Meeting of East and MidwestBy Crazy FoxThis is really an excellent book. Using the World's Parliament of Religions in 1893 as a focal point; Snodgrass explores the various issues; conflicting interests and uneasy alliances; and mutual perceptions and misperceptions coming together in and branching out from this seminal event in religious history. Snodgrass has a historian's knack for critical scholarship and turns a keen eye towards the political dimensions of all of this without being reductive...one still gets a clear sense of the various deeply felt religious beliefs and spiritual convictions held by the different people who appear in the book. The Buddhist reform movements of the Meiji period and their formulation of a modern Buddhism (formulations that have become "common sense" in both Japan and America today) are covered in great; illuminating detail and with careful analysis. American assumptions of Buddhism are also dissected; and the author's critique of Paul Carus' "Gospel of Buddha"--a popular work that introduced (in a highly distorted fashion; as she shows) many Americans to the "other world religion" (besides Christianity)--is quite to the point."Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West" is scholarly and sophisticated yet written in a clear; engaging prose style. It should be of particular interest especially to anyone interested in modern Japanese Buddhism and modern American religion; in colonial and post-colonial studies; or in the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago.0 of 5 people found the following review helpful. There you go go go....By WoderlustThis is from the book: There are predominant view that Asian cultures are objectified and understood strictly through Western ideas. Based on a detailed examination of presentations by Japanese Buddhists at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893; Snodgrass argues that Buddhists themselves helped reformulate Buddhism into a modern world religion.
