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This is the first book to address the topic of mutiny in and of itself, or to present mutiny in a comparative framework. The fourteen contributors, a mixture of military, social, and political historians, examine instances of mutiny that occurred from ancient to modern times and on nearly every continent. Their findings call into question standard definitions of mutiny, while shedding new light on the patterns that mutiny tends to take, as well as the interactions that can occur between mutinous soldiers and surrounding civilian societies. While standard definitions of mutiny emphasize mass defiance by rank-and-file soldiers of the orders of their military superiors, the essays here demonstrate that mutiny can often take other forms.
Mutiny could consist of mass desertion, insurgency in the face of competing military and political authorities, or lengthy strings of strikes and assassinations against military and political superiors. The threat of mutiny, furthermore, could be as potent as an actual outbreak. Areas studied include early modern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, the antebellum United States, the British Empire, revolutionary Russia, the emerging nation-states of Latin America, imperial and Communist China, fascist Italy, war-torn Vietnam, and Nasser's Egypt. In the concluding section, contributors assess commemorations of mutiny and how they are modified or distorted in the process of their incorporation into official and popular memory.
List of contents
Foreword by Geoffrey Parker
Introduction by Jane Hathaway
Problems in Defining MutinyDesertion as Mutiny: Upcountry Georgians in the Army of Tennessee by Mark A. Weitz
Mutineer Johnny? The Italian Partisan Movement as Mutiny by Victoria C. Belco
Mutiny and EmpiresIdeology, Greed, and Social Discontent in Early Modern Europe: Mercenaries and Mutinies in the Rebellious Netherlands, 1568-1609 by David J.B. Trim
Mutinies on Anglo-Jamaica, 1656-1660 by Carla Gardina Pestana
Mutiny in British IndiaVellore 1806: The Meanings of Mutiny by Devadas Moodley
Military Culture and Military Protest: The Bengal Europeans and the "White Mutiny" of 1859 by Peter Stanley
The Indian Army, Total War, and the Dog that Didn't Bark in the Night by Raymond Callahan
Muntiny in Emerging Nation-StatesThe Politics of Seduction: Mutiny and Desertion in Early Nineteenth-Century Córdoba by Seth Meisel
100 Fathers to None: Successs and Failure in Two Wuhan Mutinies, 1911 and 1967 by Christopher A. Reed
Naval MutiniesMutiny in the Destroyer Division of the Baltic Fleet, May-June 1918 by Anatol Shmelev
Austro-Hungarian Naval Mutinies of World War I by Lawrence Sondhaus
Mutiny Remebered, Recounted, ReinventedThe River Crossing: Breaking Points (Metaphorical and Real) in Ottoman Mutiny by Palmira Brummett
The Symbolism of Slave Mutiny: Black Abolitionist Responses to the Amistad and Creole Incidents by Roy E. Finkenbine
With God on Our Side: Scripting Nasser's Free Officer Mutiny by Joel Gordon
Index
About the author
JANE HATHAWAY is associate professor of Islamic and world history at The Ohio State University. Her specialty is the Ottoman Empire, particularly Egypt and Yemen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She is the author of The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdaglis, as well as numerous articles on topics related to the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Arab provinces, and early Islamic history.
