New Books in History

Philip J. Stern, an Associate Professor of History at Duke University, dives into the pivotal role of corporations in British colonialism. He reveals how entities like the East India Company were not just accomplices to empire but key drivers of global expansion. Stern discusses the blurred lines between formal and informal imperialism, along with the frequent failures of corporate ventures. He highlights the paradox of corporate power, intertwined with state authority, and how this legacy continues to shape notions of British identity today.

Join Andrew S. Curran, a William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University, as he explores how Enlightenment thinkers influenced the concept of race. He discusses pivotal figures like Louis XIV and Jefferson, revealing the intertwining of Enlightenment ideals with systems of oppression. Curran examines how taxonomy transformed human classifications and highlights counterarguments from thinkers like Diderot. The conversation unpacks the moral complexities of these historical figures, making it both enlightening and thought-provoking.

W. Ralph Eubanks, an award-winning writer and scholar, delves into the complex history of the Mississippi Delta, a region often misrepresented as merely impoverished. He discusses the dynamic interplay between economic oppression and grassroots resilience, spotlighting figures like Gloria Carter Dickerson, who fought for desegregation. Eubanks also examines the lasting impacts of historical injustices, the myth-making surrounding the Delta, and the nuanced relationships between politics, race, and economic instability, providing a thought-provoking perspective on the region's legacy.

Theodore J. Karamanski, a historian and professor specializing in the environmental history of the Great Lakes, discusses his new book on Lake Michigan. He explores the deep connections between human history and the lake, from Indigenous peoples' sustainable practices to the drastic changes brought on by Euro-American settlement. Karamanski highlights the lake's evolving role—from a vital resource to a recreational hub—while examining the ecological impacts of invasive species and climate change. He advocates for real-world engagement with the lake to inspire stewardship and protection.

In this engaging discussion, Kerry Brown, a prominent Chinese studies professor, explores four centuries of Britain-China relations from Queen Elizabeth I's failed attempts to establish trade to the more complex dynamics of the 19th century. He highlights the significance of the East India Company and the Macartney embassy, alongside the intriguing tale of tea 'intellectual property' theft by Robert Fortune. Brown also delves into Britain's evolving relationship with China post-1949, emphasizing the striking shift of power favoring a rapidly rising China.

Many women wrote philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain, and they wrote across the full range of philosophical topics. Yet these important women thinkers have been left out of the philosophical canon and many of them are barely known today.The aim of Women Philosophers in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2023) is to put them back on the map. It introduces twelve women philosophers - Mary Shepherd, Harriet Martineau, Ada Lovelace, George Eliot, Frances Power Cobbe, Helena Blavatsky, Julia Wedgwood, Victoria Welby, Arabella Buckley, Annie Besant, Vernon Lee, and Constance Naden. Alison Stone looks at their views on naturalism, philosophy of mind, evolution, morality and religion, and progress in history. She shows how these women interacted and developed their philosophical views in conversation with one another, not only with their male contemporaries. The rich print and periodical culture of the period enabled these women to publish philosophy in forms accessible to a general readership, despite the restrictions women faced, such as having limited or no access to university education. Stone explains how these women became excluded from the history of philosophy because there was a cultural shift at the end of the nineteenth century towards specialised forms of philosophical writing, which depended on academic credentials that were still largely unavailable to women.Alison Stone is a British philosopher. She is a Professor of European Philosophy in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University, UK.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Conventional wisdom holds that tradition and history meant little to nineteenth-century American Protestants, who relied on common sense and "the Bible alone." The Old Faith in a New Nation: American Protestants and the Christian Past (Oxford UP, 2023) challenges this portrayal by recovering evangelical engagement with the Christian past. Even when they appeared to be most scornful toward tradition, most optimistic and forward-looking, and most confident in their grasp of the Bible, evangelicals found themselves returning, time and again, to Christian history. They studied religious historiography, reinterpreted the history of the church, and argued over its implications for the present. Between the Revolution and the Civil War, American Protestants were deeply interested in the meaning of the Christian past. Paul J. Gutacker draws from hundreds of print sources-sermons, books, speeches, legal arguments, political petitions, and more-to show how ordinary educated Americans remembered and used Christian history.Lane Davis is an Instructor of Religion at Huntingdon College. Find him on Twitter @TheeLaneDavis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Scott A. Mitchell, Dean at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, discusses his groundbreaking book on American Buddhism. He reveals how second-generation Japanese Americans, the Nisei, shaped this religion's identity in the U.S. post-World War II. Mitchell highlights the significance of the Berkeley Bussei magazine and the roles of figures like Kanmo and Jane Imamura in establishing community and resilience. He also encourages a shift from traditional lineage metaphors to networked approaches in understanding Buddhist connections and calls for a hopeful future in scholarly work.

The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism (2024) is the first detailed and critical study of the intellectual and political connections that existed between some German scholars specializing on India, non-academic ‘India experts,’ Indian anti-colonialists and various organs of the Nazi state published by the Oxford University Press. It explores the ways in which different knowledge discourses pertaining to India, particularly its colonization and the anti-colonial movement, were used by these individuals for a number of German organisations to fulfil the demands of Nazi politics. This monograph also inspects the links between the knowledge providers and embodiments of National Socialist politics like the Nazi party and its affiliates. In this study, Baijayanti Roy aims to ascertain whether such political engagements were actually more rewarding for the scholars than their 'practical services' to the state in the form of strategic deployment of their knowledge of India. The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism offers case studies of four organisations which incorporated such complicated entanglements of knowledge and power: the India Institute of the Deutsche Akademie in Munich, the Special Department India of the German Foreign Ministry, the Seminar for Oriental languages and its successor institutions at the University of Berlin, and the Indian Legion of the German Army. The knowledge networks underlying these organisations were dominated by German Indologists, but non-specialist knowledge providers, both German and Indian were also included. The Nazi regime expected all scholars and intellectuals to engage in Kulturpolitik (cultural politics), which entailed propagating the glories of the 'Reich' and its supreme leader as well as collecting 'politically valuable' knowledge within and outside Germany. For the four organizations concerned, this meant conducting pro-German and from around 1938, anti-British propaganda aimed at Indians. Loosely following an analogy provided by Herbert Mehrtens in the context of natural sciences, this monograph posits that there were ‘patterns of collaboration’ between the knowledge providers and the representatives of the Nazi regime. At the core of these 'patterns' was, to borrow Mitchell Ash’s theory, an exchange of resources and capital in which scholars and experts offered their knowledge of Indian languages, history and culture to authorities like the Foreign Ministry, the SS and the Army. In return, they received increased professional opportunities, financial remuneration or in some cases, increased power and influence. Deep Acharya is a PhD student and a George L. Mosse fellow of Modern European Cultural History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working on the history of fatherhood in 20th century Germany. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

What does it mean when a radical understanding of National Socialism is inextricably embedded in the work of the twentieth century's most important philosopher? Martin Heidegger's sympathies for the conservative revolution and National Socialism have long been well known. As the rector of the University of Freiburg in the early 1930s, he worked hard to reshape the university in accordance with National Socialist policies. He also engaged in an all-out struggle to become the movement's philosophical preceptor, "to lead the leader." Yet for years, Heidegger's defenders have tried to separate his political beliefs from his philosophical doctrines. They argued, in effect, that he was good at philosophy but bad at politics. But with the 2014 publication of Heidegger's "Black Notebooks," it has become clear that he embraced a far more radical vision of the conservative revolution than previously suspected. His dissatisfaction with National Socialism, it turns out, was mainly that it did not go far enough. The notebooks show that far from being separated from Nazism, Heidegger's philosophy was suffused with it. In Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology (Yale University Press, 2022), Richard Wolin explores what the notebooks mean for our understanding of arguably the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, and of his ideas--and why his legacy remains radically compromised. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history