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Beyond Pain The Role of Pleasure and Culture in the Making of Foreign Affairs
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Thomas A. Breslin
ISBN: 0-275-97430-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-97430-5
216 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 10/30/2001
List Price: $110.95 (UK Sterling Price: £76.95)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Paperback Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: Breslin demonstrates that, for two millennia, states in East Asia, Europe, and America have successfully used pleasure to protect themselves and advance their interests, at a small fraction of the cost of militarized policies. Indeed, the Chinese demonstrated that pleasure-based policies primed a stream of highly profitable foreign trade and bolstered the state. Pleasure was feared because it was effective as both an offensive and defensive strategy. The colleens of Ireland and the bibis of India showed how inexorably effective pleasure could be in confounding militarily stronger invaders. In contrast, resorting to violence and pain generally undermined aggressive states.

Cultural factors have shaped the choice of pleasures used. Food-centered China has used food, as well as sex and tourism, as tools in its foreign relations. Rome used wine; Byzantium, precious metals, banquets, and public spectacles; Venice, sex, money, and art; England, money and education. America has used sex, money, education, music, and tourism. Breslin's provocative text is based on a wide reading of secondary sources and some primary sources as well as a quarter century of teaching the history of foreign relations.
Table of Contents:
  • Preface
    The Five Baits
    Ten Thousand Persian Archers
    Roman Virgins and Vandals
    The Glittering Diplomacy of Byzantium
    The Byzantine Doge and the Parsimonious Prince
    Lording It Over the Britons: England's Anglo-Norman Empire
    The British Empire: Doomed in the Fleshpots of Paris
    Whiskey versus Rum: The Roots of America's Bicultural Foreign Policy
    Sweet and Sour: China Deals with the Modern West
    Bibliography
    Index
About the Author: THOMAS A. BRESLIN is Vice President for Research and Associate Professor of International Relations at Florida International University. Professor Breslin has published three earlier books and numerous articles in scholarly journals.
LCC Class: 327
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