New Books in World Affairs

The history of humanity is intertwined with that of the horse to such a degree that it is no exaggeration to say that the existence of either species as we know it today is a product of its relationship with the other. In The Age of the Horse: An Equine Journey Through Human History (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017), Susanna Forrest looks at the various roles horses have played in the development of human civilization and how, in turn, these roles have shaped and determined the lives of horses. Beginning with the evolutionary journey of horses, she describes how the widespread impact of their domestication has virtually eliminated truly wild horses from existence. This domestication was driven by the enormous utility of horses for humans, who used them as a source of energy, as a means of transportation, as tools of war, and as food. In the process they became a unit of measure, a source of wealth, and a symbol for writers and artists of aspects of humanity itself. As Forrest demonstrates through her own investigative travels, the roles of humans and horses in each others’ lives remains visible today, from American farms to Chinese polo clubs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

For the first time in human history, a significant percentage of the world’s population no longer believes in God. While its true that some societies are even seeing nonbelievers outnumber believers, it is extremely unlikely that we will see a total collapse of religion in the foreseeable future. This is why, according to Dr. Ronald A. Lindsay, countries across the globe must learn to carefully manage the societal mix of religious and irreligious in order to meet the challenge of this unprecedented demographic shift and new form of sectarian discord. In his book, The Necessity of Secularism: Why God Can’t Tell Us What to Do (Pitchstone Publishing, 2014), Lindsay makes the case for the necessity of a discourse for morality and ethics that does not rely on the competing narratives of the world’s religions. He joins us today to explain how such a language of common morality can be found and why it’s so important. Dr. Ronald A. Lindsay was until very recently the president and CEO of the Centre for Inquiry and its affiliates, the Council for Secular Humanism and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, where he continues on as a senior research fellow. He has a PhD in philosophy from Georgetown University, with a concentration in bioethics, and a JD from the University of Virginia. He also has a background in law and policy related to the exercise or abstention from religious practices in government funded contexts. Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Universite Laval in Quebec City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Every time I teach Comparative Genocide, I distribute a letter to the students preparing them for the particular challenges of taking a course about mass violence. In the letter, I point out a simple fact. People, including academics, say the words “never again” repeatedly. Yet, the suffering goes on in Serbia, South Sudan, the DRC, Burma, and so on. So what does it mean to study the Holocaust in a time when people in a variety of countries are suffering mass violence? Leonard Grob and John Roth are leaders in a years long effort to consider what scholars who study the Holocaust can say about the world in which they live. Their new book, Losing Trust in the World: Holocaust Scholars Confront Torture (University of Washington Press, 2016), looks specifically at torture. The essays come from a working group of historians, philosophers, theologians and social scientists, all experts in their field and all passionate about applying their research to the present. The result is a compelling body of essays. Some focus primarily on ethical concerns and responses to mass atrocities. Others draw lessons from the Holocaust about the effects of torture on individuals and societies. Others look specifically at the contemporary world and ask how we should respond in the light of what we know about earlier atrocities. All are readable and challenging. In the end, I’m not sure I know exactly how to ‘confront’ torture. But I am better equipped to try. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Not quite a colony, not quite independent, fiercely nationalist, what is Puerto Rico’s status, exactly? Jorge Duany‘s Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2017) offers clear answers to complicated questions about Puerto Rico’s politics and history, as well as accounting for many phenomena that characterize the island today; migration to and from the island, the state of its economy, the role of language in shaping Puerto Rican identities. Whether you know nothing or a great deal, this book is sure to surprise and inform you.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Rajan Gurukkal‘s Rethinking Classical Indo-Roman Trade: Political Economy of Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Relations (Oxford University Press, 2016) casts a critical eye over the exchanges, usually and problematically termed trade, between the eastern Mediterranean and coastal India in the classical period. Using insights from economic anthropology to recast the standard narrative of the time, the study explores ports and polity in south India as well as the different types of exchange relations in both the eastern Mediterranean and the subcontinent. A provocative, fascinating and deeply detailed study, the book is sure the shake up existing scholarship on the topic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The world order was in crisis at mid-century. Intellectuals in England and the United States perceived the rise of totalitarianism, the Second World War, the invention of the atomic bomb, the start of the Cold War, and the end of imperial rule as threats to stability and, in some cases, to mankind itself. But these intellectuals also theorized alternative political structures, legal frameworks, and communities and, thereby, sought to invent a new world order. Or Rosenboim’s The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and the United States, 1939-1950 (Princeton University Press, 2017), traces this exciting and uncertain moment in international thought. For Rosenboim, the period between the start of World War II in Europe and the beginning of the U.S.-led war in Korea witnessed the emergence of “globalism” itself. The book is a deep engagement with the ideas of an eclectic assortment of intellectuals–H.G. Wells, Lewis Mumford, Raymond Aron, Friedrich Hayek, just to name a handful–who all participated in discussions of the global. For these intellectuals, the global was both a geographic and conceptual space. This space, however, had notable gaps, particularly in relation to the Global South. Given that our present “global” moment inherited these intellectuals’ categories, this book should be read by scholars of history and IR, along with anyone interested in world politics. Or Rosenboim is a Junior Research Fellow in Politics at Queens College and POLIS, both at the University of Cambridge. Dexter Fergie will be pursuing his PhD in US and Global history at Northwestern University in September 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In the capital of the African nation of Angola today stands a statue to Njinga, the 17th century queen of the Ndongo and Matamba kingdoms. Its presence is a testament to her skills as a diplomat, warrior, and leader of her people, all of which she demonstrated over the course of a reign described by Linda Heywood in Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen (Harvard University Press, 2017). The daughter of the Ndongo king Mbande a Ngola, Njinga grew up in a west central Africa that was facing growing encroachment by Portugal, who were major customers in the regions slave trade. Seeking to extend their control, the Portuguese challenged Njinga’s succession to the throne in 1624, prompting a war that lasted for three decades. To persevere, Njinga had to navigate the complex politics of the region, gaining control of the Matamba kingdom and pursuing ties with both the Vatican and the Dutch to provide a counterweight to the Portuguese. The treaty signed with Portugal in 1656 was a testament to her success, allowing her to focus on establishing a legacy of an independent kingdom that she could pass on to her sister after her death. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Michael Bryant’s book is both less and more ambitious than its title. He’s writing less of a history of war crimes than he is a history of the idea and concept of war crimes. He’s most interested in what people have considered a breach of the norms of warfare and how this concept has changed over time. The triumph of A World History of War Crimes: From Antiquity to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2016) is it’s reminder that, while expectations about how soldiers (and others) would act during warfare are not new at all, the notion of war crimes is actually quite recent. Bryant argues that ideas about the proper conduct of war go back to the ancient Near East. But these ideas were rarely based on the dignity of human person. Instead they derived from religion or from the shape of the political institutions in society. It was only in the 18th and 19th century, in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, that norms about conduct during warfare began to be based on the idea that mistreating civilians or wounded soldiers was a crime. And even then, these notions were activated through bilateral or multilateral treaties–implying that the recognition of human dignity had very real limits. It’s an audacious task to attempt to survey the history of war crimes, especially a global history. Meant as a textbook, Bryant inevitably privileges European history. But it’s a thoughtful, well-written, provocative survey, exactly what we hope for in a textbook. Kelly McFall is Associate Professor of History at Newman University in Wichita, Kansas, where he directs the Honors Program. He is particularly interested in the question of how to teach about the history of genocides and mass atrocities and has written a module in the Reacting to the Past series about the UN debate over whether to intervene in Rwanda in 1994. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

It’s true that Western “intellectuals” have not always been wrong about dictators fighting for a supposedly “brighter future,” usually (though not always) of the non-capitalist variety. Nonetheless, as Paul Hollander well shows in his readable, relevant book From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chavez: Intellectuals and a Century of Political Hero Worship (Cambridge University Press, 2016), they have been wrong often enough to make one wonder if there is some sort of elective affinity between “deep thinkers” and despots promising to make the world a much, much better place. According to Hollander, there is. I won’t spoil the story for you (you should read the book), but it’s enough to make you think twice (or thrice) about anything Noam Chomsky or any would-be Noam Chomsky has to say about Hugo Chavez or any would-be Hugo Chavez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Almost daily in popular media the Muslim World is pinpointed as a homogeneous entity that stands separate and parallel to the similarly imagined West. But even scratching the surface of the idea of a Muslim World reveals the geographic, social, linguistic, and religious diversity of Muslims throughout the world. So what work is performed through the employment and use of this phrase? And in what context did the idea of the Muslim World emerge? Cemil Aydin, Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, tackles these questions in his wonderful new book The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Harvard University Press, 2017). It in he weaves distant and interconnecting social, intellectual, and political histories of modern Muslims societies with clarity and detail. Altogether, he reveals the complex story of how the concept is constructed as a device intended to point to a geopolitical, religious, and civilizational unity among Muslims. The term is defined and employed by Muslim and non-Muslim actors alike across imperial and national contexts over the past nearly 150 years. In our conversation we discussed the justifications for imperial conflicts, the effects of Christian nationalistic liberation and the colonization of Muslims, orientalism, social Darwinism, the racialization of Muslims, the global role of the Ottomans, European and Russian imperialism, Muslim modernists thinkers, the effects of the World Wars, and the changing political landscape of the late 20th century. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. His research and teaching interests include Theory and Methodology in the Study of Religion, Islamic Studies, Chinese Religions, Human Rights, and Media Studies. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kjpetersen@unomaha.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs