■ Myhill, John, 2006. Language, Religion and National Identity in Europe and the Middle East. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. vii + 300 pp. ISBN 902722711X
| DOI | 10.1177/00223433070440020713 |
| Published date | 01 March 2007 |
| Date | 01 March 2007 |
| Author | Naima Mouhleb |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
ble world-views have spilled over into genocidal
situations. The book switches between brief
political analyses and more detailed accounts of
dramatic events, especially the infamous govern-
ment bombing of the Kauda elementary school
on 8 February 2000. Central to the book is the
Catholic Bishop Macrans Max Gassis and his
struggle to keep the spirit of the Nuba alive. The
book has a certain Christian leaning, but no
attempt is made to hide this. Despite its obvious
drawbacks as a source for academic work, its
accessibility, emotional appeal, and explicit dis-
claimer of being an authoritative account make
the book very useful for its purpose, namely,
ensuring that the horror of the Sudanese civil
war is not forgotten. The photos of James
Nichols accompanying the stories further ensure
this.
Ole Magnus Theisen
䊏Mintz, Alex & Bruce Russett, eds, 2005. New
Directions for International Relations: Confronting
the Method-of-Analysis Problem. New York:
Lexington. vii + 281 pp. ISBN 0739108492.
Alex Mintz suggests here that contradictory find-
ings in IR be resolved by developing multiple
streams of evidence based on a variety of
methods. Bruce Russett focuses on five ‘revol-
utions’ in the field, having to do with the chang-
ing structure of IR, formal theory, more data
availability, increased replicability, and better
statistical methods that might produce more
convergent findings. Zeev Maoz, Lesley Terris,
Ranan Kuperman, and Ilan Talmud use a social
networks approach to develop evidence regarding
the pacifying impact of democracy. Kristian
Gleditsch and Michael Ward produce visual evi-
dence that clusters of democracy are more peace-
ful. Hazem Ghobarah, Paul Huth, and Bruce
Russett find that civil wars produce negative, lin-
gering effects on the health of civilians. Brett
Ashley Leeds suggests that disputes involving
targets without allies are three times more likely
to escalate to war. William Howell and Jon
Pevehouse report that US presidents are more
likely to initiate military conflicts if Congress is
controlled by their own party. Karl DeRouen, Jr.
and Shaun Goldfinch provide evidence that
monadic as well as joint democracy increases the
probability that crises will be resolved through
negotiation. Alastair Smith and Allan Stam
emphasize the importance of treating war as
another means of bargaining. Suzanne Werner
and Amy Yuen find that third-party enforcers
who are willing to risk a return to war in order to
blackmail belligerents into compliance are better
able to enforce the terms of a treaty. Finally,
Mintz reports the results of an experiment that
support a basic tenet of poliheuristic theory. The
book will be of greatest interest to graduate stu-
dents and professionals in the field of interna-
tional politics.
James Lee Ray
䊏Myhill, John, 2006. Language, Religion and
National Identity in Europe and the Middle East.
Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
vii + 300 pp. ISBN 902722711X.
The author’s focus is on the development or
non-development of what he dubs pre-modern
national churches and their impact on develop-
ment of a modern nationalism based on ‘small’
or ‘big’ (e.g. German, French and Arabic) lan-
guages. In his view, the existence in some places
of pre-modern national churches facilitated
the development of a positive national identity
based on vernaculars. However, this did not
happen in other states experiencing pan-ideolo-
gies, where destructive nationalisms developed.
The issue of such pre-modern small churches is
an interesting piece of history that not many his-
torians treat in analyses on the development of
nationalism, either in Europe or in the Middle
East. However, when Myhill tries to conclude
on the issue of actions taken by modern states
based on this perspective alone, the connections
become a bit too simplistic. The almost complete
absence of other coinciding historical events or
political realities reduces his argumentation to
a near tautological exercise. This reader finds
the causal relationship between ‘big’ languages
and elements such as fascism poorly developed
and certainly not sufficient to causally conclude
upon. Furthermore, his tendency to come to a
value-oriented conclusion (good nationalism–
bad nationalism) solely based on the presence of
‘big’/‘small’ languages does not do his complex
topic justice, nor does it constitute a proper
normative debate on positive or negative aspects
of nationalism. All in all, it is disappointing that
the title promises more than the book delivers.
On the other hand, Myhill’s historical insight
into what he calls pre-modern national churches
is something he perhaps could explore as a topic
of its own.
Naima Mouhleb
BOOK NOTES 251
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