Erik Jan Zürcher
Personal Information
Description
Dutch historian and university professor
Books
Fighting for a Living
Fighting for a Living investigates the circumstances that have produced starkly different systems of recruiting and employing soldiers in different parts of the globe over the last 500 years. It does so on the basis of a wide range of case studies taken from Europe, Africa, America, the Middle East and Asia. The novelty of "Fighting for a Living" is that it is not military history in the traditional sense (concentrating at wars and battles or on military technology) but that it looks at military service and warfare as forms of labour, and at the soldiers as workers. Military employment offers excellent opportunities for this kind of international comparison. Where many forms of human activity are restricted by the conditions of nature or the stage of development of a given society, organized violence is ubiquitous. Soldiers, in one form or another, are always part of the picture, in any period and in every region.
Jihad and Islam in World War I
This books investigates the background and nature of the Ottoman Jihad proclamation, but also its effects in the wider Middle East. It looks at the German hopes and British fears of a worldwide rising of Muslims in the colonial empires. It also discusses the fierce academic debates caused by the Jihad proclamation, in which the 1915 manifesto of Leiden Islam scholar Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (?Holy War Made in Germany?) played a key role. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.
Turkey
This comprehensive review of Turkey's health care system shows that health status has improved rapidly in Turkey in recent decades, partly as a result of higher health spending. It describes the introduction of an ambitious Health Transformation Program in 2003 which brought universal health insurance to Turkey in 2008 and has begun the process of public hospital reforms and the rolling out of family-practitioner services throughout the country. Challenges remain, however, including completing the Health Transformation Program and ensuring that the new health system provides value for money and stays affordable. This report analyzes these challenges and sets out policy suggestions aimed at addressing them.--Publisher's description.
Beetle Larvae of the World
A tool used for the identification of beetle larvae to the family and subfamily levels.