This book offers an original combination of cultural and narrative theory with an empirical study of identity and political action. It is at once a powerful critique of rational choice theories of action and a solution to the historiographical puzzle of why Sweden went to war in 1630. Erik Ringmar a[...]
Using the destruction of Yuanmingyuan, the Chinese emperor's palace, in 1860 as a flashpoint, Ringmar analyzes Europe and the European way of relating to China and by implication to the rest of the world.[...]