New Books in World Affairs

Slavery was pervasive in the Ancient World: you can find it in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In Late Antiquity , however, slavery went into decline. It survived and even flourished in the Byzantine Empire and Muslim lands, yet it all but disappeared in Medieval Western and Central Europe. Then, rather suddenly, slavery reappeared in the West, or rather in Western empires. By the early sixteenth century, Portuguese traders had laid the foundations of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. They bought or captured slaves in West Africa and then transported and sold those slaves to plantation owners in European-controlled regions in the New World (especially Brazil, the Caribbean Basin, and Mexico). How, one might well ask, did the trans-Atlantic slave trade emerge so quickly, seemingly from nothing? In his fascinating book The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589 (Cambridge University Press, 2011), historian Toby Green addresses this question. His answer is subtle and multi-faceted, but it might be boiled down to this: the Portuguese traders didn’t build the slave trade, they joined it, expanded it and, ultimately, transformed it. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Judith Kelley is the author of Monitoring Democracy: When International Election Observation Works, and Why It Often Fails (Princeton University  Press, 2012). Kelley is associate professor of public policy and political science at Duke University. Monitoring Democracy, which won the Co-Winner of the 2013 Chadwick F. Alger Prize from the International Studies Association, has numerous theoretical insights and empirical findings to deepen our knowledge of democratic elections. Kelley weaves together new data to answer novel, yet simple questions: Does election monitoring work? And when does it fail? Kelley suggests that governments invite monitors in for a variety of reasons, not all consistent with a goal of holding free and fair elections. And, likewise, monitors – some intergovernmental organizations others non-governmental organizations – have a varied set of constraints on their monitoring and reporting. A critical report on an election can stimulate positive change in some circumstances, but lead to violence and retribution in others. In the second part of the book, Kelley focuses on the quality of elections and correlates between monitoring and sound electoral practices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Most of the authors I’ve interviewed for this show have addressed episodes in the past, campaigns of mass violence that occurred long ago, often well-before the author was born. Today’s show is different. In his book Genocide by Attrition: The Nuba Mountains of Sudan (Transaction Publishers, 2012), Samuel Totten addresses the violence against the people of the Nuba Mountains of the Sudan.  This violence was part of a broader civil war and unrest in the Sudan in the 1980s and 90s.  Totten makes a convincing case that, in the Nuba, it reached a level reasonably labeled genocidal.  To demonstrate this, Totten provides a succinct but thorough history of the conflict. But the heart of the book is a series of interviews with victims of the tragedy.  Totten collected the interviews himself and uses them to demonstrate the nature and consequences of the conflict. Our interview won’t stop with the book, however, for conflict has recently broken out again in the region.  Scholars differ about how to label the new violence (Totten himself prefers to avoid calling the new fighting genocidal).  But there’s no question many of the human tragedies of the 80s and 90s have reemerged.  Totten has written extensively about this new conflict.  We’ll use of one these articles, from the recent issue of Genocide Studies International, as the basis for our discussion of current events. Totten has been active in the field of genocide studies since its inception and brings an enormous wealth of information and passion to the subject.  I trust the interview will convey his commitment to his discipline and to the victims of the violence he studies. Also.  I talked with Sam this week and he tells me he’s just finished a major revision of the book we discussed in this interview, almost doubling its length.  The second edition will presumably be out soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In his new book, Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India (MIT Press, 2014), Amit Prasad, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Missouri, examines what he calls the “entangled histories of MRI” by studying the development of the technology in the United States, Britain and India. In this way, Prasad deconstructs West/non-West technological and cultural divisions, as well as elucidating Euro/West-centrism in the histories of technology. To do so, Prasad examines five key aspects of MRI research: invention, industrial development, market, history, and culture. In so doing, Prasad provides a critique of the situating of the origin of modern science in the West. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Donovan Chau is the author of Exploiting Africa: The Influence of Maoist China in Algeria, Ghana, and Tanzania (Naval Institute Press, 2014). Chau is an associate professor of political science at California State University. Chau examines China’s role in Algeria, Ghana, and Tanzania from the 1950s to the 1970s. China used its limited diplomatic, intelligence, and economic means to shape events and to exploit its relationships to gain lasting influence on the continent. Chau argues that it is critical to understand the nature and character of China’s historical actions in Africa in order to properly grasp the nation’s current and future policies. Rather than merely looking forward, he argues that we must look backward to comprehend the true nature of China in Africa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

What do you say to someone who suggests that genocide is not just destructive, but constructive? This is the basic theme of Benjamin Lieberman‘s excellent new book Remaking Identities:  God, Nation and Race in World History (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013). The book surveys two thousand years of history to explain how people have used violence to reconstruct identities.  This obviously involves death and destruction.  But it also involves recasting the identities of survivors.  It involves evangelism and religious conversion.  It entails education and persuasion.  It sometimes requires forced separation from one’s community and integration into a new community and a new way of viewing the world.  In doing so, Lieberman reminds us, many perpetrators intended to create a new world, not just destroy an old one.  It’s an important insight, one Lieberman explores through a variety of case studies ranging from the Islamic expansion of the 700s to the violence of the 20th century. Lieberman was not content, however, to write just one book.  At almost the same time, he published a textbook titled The Holocaust and Genocides in Europe (Bloomsbury Press, 2013). The book is a study in brevity and in the choices facing the author in compressing such a large topic into a couple of hundred pages.  The result is an excellent text, well worth reading, whether as a college student or as an interested reader. We managed to talk about both books in one regular-length interview. I trust you’ll enjoy the result. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Climate change is in the news a lot today. There seems to be little doubt that it’s getting warmer and that, should present trends continue, the warming trend will have “historical” consequences. Things are going to change. Ever thus. As John L. Brooke shows in his remarkable Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey (Cambridge University Press, 2014), what we might colloquially call “the weather” has been nudging, pushing, and dramatically altering the course of World history for eons. Sometimes it’s dry; sometimes it’s wet. Sometimes it’s hot; sometimes it’s cold. Sometimes the air is good; sometimes it’s bad. There are patterns, as John points out, but there’s also a good degree of unpredictability–it is, after all, the weather. What’s happening right now, though, is not in the slightest unpredictable: if we keep dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it’s going to get hot; if it gets hot, things are going to change–again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Brett Scott is the author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money (Pluto Press, 2013). Scott is a journalist, urban deep ecologist, and Fellow at the Finance Innovation Lab. While much of Scott’s book focuses on explaining various aspects of the financial services section, the heart of the book is a call to action. Scott infuses this call with a variety of first-hand experiences as a campaigner for radical approaches to disrupt the sector. For this reason, the book acts as a guide to activism, applicable for those interested in global finance, but also other domains that are ripe for criticism. His blog that he mentions at the end of the podcast can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The twentieth-century West witnessed a revolution in childbirth. Before that time, most women gave birth at home and were attended by family members and midwives. The process was usually terribly painful for the mother. Beginning in the nineteenth century, however, doctors started to “medicalize” childbirth. Physicians began to think of ways to ease the pain of childbirth. Two main options were explored. One–drugs–is quite familiar to us, for it is the primary tool used by doctors to make women comfortable during the birth process today. The other–“psychoprophylaxis”–has now passed into memory. The most famous form of psychoprophylaxis, and the subject of Paula A. Michaels’ excellent book Lamaze: An International History (Oxford University Press, 2014), is known as the “Lamaze method.” Its history is fascinating and surprising: born in the Soviet Union (or was it the United Kingdom?), it migrated to France, and then to much of Europe. It then jumped the Atlantic and became a quasi-political force in the United States (“natural childbirth”). And Lamaze is still with us, though in a form hard to recognize. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The paleontologist Michael Benton describes a mass extinction event as a time when “vast swaths of the tree of life are cut short, as if by crazed, axe wielding madmen.” Elizabeth Kolbert‘s new book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt, 2014), explores the five major mass extinction events that have occurred on the Earth over the last half billion years. Kolbert contrasts these Big Five, as they are known, to the sixth mass extinction event, which we are in the midst of today. This time, instead of a massive asteroid or a sudden glaciation event, humans are the culprit. Travelling with different scientists to remote ecosystems around the world, Kolbert sees evidence of the many ways humans are altering the planet – through climate change, ocean acidification, and the spread of invasive species. By the end of the century, scientists predict we will lose 20 to 50% of all living species. Kolbert also places this current extinction event in the context of human history: although the rate at which we are driving species extinct has reached an unprecedented pace, humans have been responsible for causing species loss for tens of thousands of years. As Kolbert comments, “We’ve been at this project for a very long time.” Her book also addresses the paradoxical relationship that humans have with the species we share the planet with, especially the large and charismatic megafauna. Kolbert contrasts our remarkable proclivity to kill off species with some touching examples of the inexplicable lengths we will go to save a species from extinction. Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer with The New Yorker since 1999. She is also the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs