James Crawford

Buildings are more like us than we realise. They can be born into wealth or poverty, enjoying every privilege or struggling to make ends meet. They have parents -- gods, kings and emperors, governments, visionaries and madmen -- as well as friends and enemies. They have duties and responsibilities. They can endure crises of faith and purpose. They can succeed or fail. They can live. And, sooner or later, they die. In Fallen Glory, James Crawford uncovers the biographies of some of the worlds most fascinating lost and ruined buildings, from the dawn of civilisation to the cyber era. The lives of these iconic structures are packed with drama and intrigue. Soap operas on the grandest scale, they feature war and religion, politi and art, love and betrayal, catastrophe and hope. Frequently their afterlives have been no less dramatic -- their memories used and abused down the millennia for purposes both sacred and profane. They provide the stage for a startling array of characters, including Gilgamesh, the Cretan Minotaur, Agamemnon, Nefertiti, Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, Catherine the Great, Adolf Hitler, and even Bruce Springsteen. Ranging from the deserts of Iraq, the banks of the Nile and the cloud forests of Peru, to the great cities of Jerusalem, Istanbul, Paris, Rome, London and New York, Fallen Glory is a unique guide to a world of vanished architecture. And, by picking through the fragments of our past, it asks what history s scattered ruins can tell us about our own future.

Statehood in the early 21st century remains as much a central problem now as it was in 1979 when the first edition of The Creation of States in International Law was published. As Rhodesia, Namibia, the South African Homelands and Taiwan then were subjects of acute concern, today governments, international organizations, and other institutions are seized of such matters as the membership of Cyprus in the European Union, application of the Geneva Conventions to Afghanistan, a final settlement for Kosovo, and, still, relations between China and Taiwan. All of these, and many other disputed situations, are inseparable from the nature of statehood and its application in practice. The remarkable increase in the number of States in the 20th century did not abate in the twenty five years following publication of James Crawford's landmark study, which was awarded the American Society of International Law Prize for Creative Scholarship in 1981. The independence of many small territories comprising the 'residue' of the European colonial empires alone accounts for a major increase in States since 1979; while the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the USSR in the early 1990s further augmented the ranks. With these developments, the practice of States and international organizations has developed by substantial measure in respect of self-determination, secession, succession, recognition, de-colonization, and several other fields. Addressing such questions as the unification of Germany, the status of Israel and Palestine, and the continuing pressure from non-State groups to attain statehood, even, in cases like Chechnya or Tibet, against the presumptive rights of existing States, James Crawford discusses the relation between statehood and recognition; the criteria for statehood, especially in view of evolving standards of democracy and human rights; and the application of such criteria in international organizations and between states. Also discussed are the mechanisms by which states have been created, including devolution and secession, international disposition by major powers or international organizations and the institutions established for Mandated, Trust, and Non-Self-Governing Territories. Combining a general argument as to the normative significance of statehood with analysis of numerous specific cases, this fully revised and expanded second edition gives a comprehensive account of the developments which have led to the birth of so many new states.

Introducción y apéndices traducidos por Luis Fonseca, bajo la supervisión de Carlos Espósito.

Se mire por donde se mire, parece que las tensas líneas de las fronteras vibran al son de los acontecimientos mundiales, o incluso los llaman.Hoy en día hay más fronteras en el mundo que nunca antes en la historia de la humanidad. Empezando por el ejemplo mas antiguo conocido, Crawford viaja a muchas fronteras antiguas y nuevas: desde un paisaje glaciar que se derrite hasta la conflictiva Cisjordania y las fallas de la frontera entre Estados Unidos y Mexico. Sigue la historia de las fronteras hasta nuestro fragil e incierto futuro, hacia las fronteras virtuales de Internet y la cambiante geografia de un mundo acosado por el cambio climatico. A medida que el nacionalismo, el cambio climatico, la globalizacion, la tecnologia y las migraciones masivas chocan con unas fronteras cada vez mas rigidas, algo tiene que ceder. Y Crawford se pregunta: ¿ha llegado el momento de abandonar las lineas que nos dividen?