New Books in British Studies

In the spring of 1954, after eight years of bitter fighting, the war in Vietnam between the French and the communist-led Vietminh came to a head. With French forces reeling, the United States planned to intervene militarily to shore-up the anti-communist position. Turning to its allies for support, first and foremost Great Britain, the US administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower sought to create what Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called a "united action" coalition. In the event, Winston Churchill's Conservative government refused to back the plan. Fearing that US-led intervention could trigger a wider war in which the United Kingdom would be the first target for Soviet nuclear attack, the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, was determined to act as Indochina peacemaker - even at the cost of damage to the Anglo-American "special relationship".In Anthony Eden, Anglo-American Relations and the 1954 Indochina Crisis (Bloomsbury, 2019), Kevin Ruane and Matthew Jones revisit a Cold War episode in which British diplomacy played a vital role in settling a crucial question of international war and peace. Eden's diplomatic triumph at the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina is often overshadowed by the 1956 Suez Crisis which led to his political downfall. This book, however, recalls an earlier Eden: a skilled and experienced international diplomatist at the height of his powers who may well have prevented a localised Cold War crisis escalating into a general Third World War.Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Freedom Girls: Voicing Femininity in 1960s British Pop (Oxford University Press, 2021) by Alexandra M. Apolloni is about how the vocal performances of girl singers in 1960s Britain defined—and sometimes defied—ideas about what it meant to be a young woman. Apolloni takes a case study approach to tease out many different strands of the nature of femininity in 1960s Britain, but she tackles much more than gender in this book. She also considers larger public conversations about authenticity, race, sexuality, and class which dictated and shaped the careers and the reception of the group of singers she writes about. In what is almost a group biography, Apolloni writes about Sandie Shaw, Cilla Black, Lulu, Dusty Springfield, Millie Small, Marianne Faithfull and P.P. Arnold. They are Black and white, many come from working-class backgrounds, most were born in Britain, and all were very young when they first gained national attention. While most of them have an international following, their careers were rooted in the U.K., but the music they sang was fundamentally influenced by the music of Black Americans. Apolloni carefully separates and interrogates the maelstrom of identity, music, political agendas, and cultural meanings that surround these women. The performances she analyzes reveal the historical and contemporary connections between voice, social mobility, and musical authority, and demonstrate how singers used voice to navigate the boundaries of race, class, and gender.Kristen M. Turner is a lecturer in the music and honors departments at North Carolina State University. Race and Gender in the Western Music History Classroom: A Teacher’s Guide, which she wrote with Horace Maxile, was published by Routledge Press in 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Boasting Europe's largest number of ancient oaks and yews, Britain and Ireland are home to forests that can be traced back for centuries, feature amazing avenues lined with trees hundreds of years old, and include some truly majestic individual trees.Tony Hall is Head of the Arboretum at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. In Great Trees of Britain and Ireland (Kew Publications, 2022) he profiles over 70 of our amazing ancient trees, avenues and forests, revealing their locations across Britain and Ireland. Hall takes the reader on a tremendous tree journey, with treasures such as the stunning wilderness of the highlands of Scotland, home to remnants of the Caledonian Forest, where huge Scots pines grow that are direct descendants from those that first arrived after the last ice age 9,000 years ago. In Ireland, Hall encounters 'Dark Hedges', the imposing beech avenue featured in Game of Thrones, as well as the Muckross yew, one of the country's oldest yews growing in the cloister at Muckross Abbey.In this book, learn about oaks that witnessed ancient battles at the 'Gateway of the Dead' in Wales, and how in central and southern England, the once royal hunting forests from past centuries are now home to some of the best ancient woodland anywhere in Europe and provide a refuge for rare fauna and flora. Great Trees of Britain and Ireland offers a guide to the best ancient trees, avenues and forests across Britain and Ireland, but also aims to help protect these irreplaceable treasures, by telling their stories and making them more accessible.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Sarah Fox's fascinating new book Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England (U London Press, 2022) rewrites all that we know about eighteenth-century childbirth by placing women’s voices at the center of the story. Examining childbirth from the perspective of the birthing woman, this research offers new perspectives on the history of the family, the social history of medicine, community and neighborhood studies, and the study of women’s lives in eighteenth-century England.From “quickening” through to “confinement,” “giving caudle,” delivery, and “lying-in,” birth was once a complex ritual that involved entire communities. Drawing on an extensive and under-researched body of materials, such as letters, diaries, and recipe books, this book offers critical new perspectives on the history of the family, community, and the lives of women in the coming age of modern medicine. It unpacks the rituals of contemporary childbirth—from foods traditionally eaten before and after birth, birthing clothing, and how a woman’s relationship with her family, husband, friends, and neighbors changed during and after pregnancy. In this important and deeply moving study, we are invited onto a detailed and emotional journey through motherhood in an age of immense socio-cultural and intellectual change.Hannah Smith is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She can be reached at smit9201@umn.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

In Feeding Washington's Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778 (University of North Carolina Press, 2022), Dr. Ricardo Herrera presents a major new history of the Continental Army’s Grand Forage of 1778. Dr. Herrera uncovers what daily life was like for soldiers during the darkest and coldest days of the American Revolution: the Valley Forge winter. Here, the army launched its largest and riskiest operation—not a bloody battle against British forces but a campaign to feed itself and prevent starvation or dispersal during the long encampment. Dr. Herrera brings to light the army’s herculean efforts to feed itself, support local and Continental governments, and challenge the British Army.Highlighting the missteps and triumphs of both General George Washington and his officers as well as ordinary soldiers, sailors, and militiamen, Feeding Washington’s Army moves far beyond oft-told, heroic, and mythical tales of Valley Forge and digs deeply into its daily reality, revealing how close the Continental Army came to succumbing to starvation and how strong and resourceful its soldiers and leaders actually were.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Advisory: this episode discusses the literary representation of self-harm and suicide, in particular, how writers such as Shakespeare and Milton often treated the subject in unserious or trivializing ways.In 1643, the writer Thomas Browne introduced the word “suicide” into the English language. Eventually, “suicide” would become a monolith in how we think about self-harm and self-killing. “Suicide” has come to represent an individualizing, pathologizing way of looking at people who contemplate ending their lives. But, when Thomas Browne’s new word was first used, it was entering a discursive space that was wider and more open to campy humor, slapstick, and misogynistic trolling. This is the argument of an exciting and nuanced book from today’s guest, Drew Daniel. The title of the book is Joy of the Worm: Suicide and Pleasure in Early Modern English Literature published by the University of Chicago Press in 2022.Daniel is a Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University, and teaches early modern literature, critical theory, and aesthetics. Joy of the Worm is a fresh, elegantly written exploration of scenes of self-murder (or the contemplation of self-murder) in Antony and Cleopatra, Paradise Lost, and Joseph Addison’s Cato, a Tragedy. He is the author of the previous monograph, The Melancholy Assemblage (from Fordham UP), and the 33 1/3 book on Throbbing Gristle’s Twenty Jazz Funk Greats. He is also one-half of the electronic band Matmos.John Yargo holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His specializations are early modern literature, the environmental humanities, and critical race studies. His dissertation explores early modern representations of environmental catastrophe, including The Tempest, Oroonoko, and the poetry of Milton. He has published in Studies in Philology, The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, and Shakespeare Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Situated at the intersection of law and literature, nineteenth-century studies and post-colonialism, Colonial Law in India and the Victorian Imagination (Cambridge UP, 2021) draws on original archival research to shed new light on Victorian literature. Each chapter explores the relationship between the shared cultural logic of law and literature, and considers how this inflected colonial sociality. Leila Neti approaches the legal archive in a distinctly literary fashion, attending to nuances of voice, character, diction and narrative, while also tracing elements of fact and procedure, reading the case summaries as literary texts to reveal the common turns of imagination that motivated both fictional and legal narratives. What emerges is an innovative political analytic for understanding the entanglements between judicial and cultural norms in Britain and the colony, bridging the critical gap in how law and literature interact within the colonial arena.Leila Neti is an associate professor of English at Occidental College, Los Angeles.  Gargi Binju is a researcher at the University of Tübingen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Based on five years of archival research, Britain's Informal Empire in Spain, 1830-1950: Free Trade, Protectionism and Military Power offers a radical reinterpretation of Britain and Spain’s relationship during the growth, apogee and decline of the British Empire. It shows that from the early nineteenth century Britain turned Spain into an ‘informal’ colony, using its economic and military dominance to achieve its strategic and economic ends. Britain’s free trade campaign, which aimed to tear down the legal barriers to its explosive trade and investment expansion, undermined Spain’s attempts to achieve industrial take-off, demonstrating that the relationship between the two countries was imperial in nature, and not simply one of unequal national power. Exploring five key moments of crisis in their relations, from the First Carlist War in the 1830s to the Second World War, the author analyses Britain’s use of military force in achieving its goals, and the consequences that this had for economic and political policy-making in Spain. Ultimately, the Anglo-Spanish relationship was an early example of the interaction between industrial power and colonies, formal and informal, that characterised the post-World War Two period. An insightful read for anyone researching the British Empire and its colonies, this book offers an innovative perspective by closely examining the volatile relationship between two European powers.Dr Nick Sharman is a Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures. His subject is the economic and political relationship between Britain and Spain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has had a career in business and local and regional government and is currently a Councillor in the London Borough of Hackney, where he chairs the Audit Committee. Nick has a PhD from the University of Nottingham, an honours degree in economics and politics from Trinity College, Dublin, an MPhil in town planning from University College London, an MBA from Henley Management College and an MA in history from Royal Holloway University of London. He has written widely on strategic and regeneration issues in local and regional Government and, more recently, on the history of the Anglo-Spanish relationship. His book, Britain's Informal Empire in Spain, 1830-1950: Free Trade, Protectionism and Military Power, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in late 2021.Luka Haeberle is an enthusiastic student of Latin American and economic history. His main areas of interest are political economy, labor history and political theory. You can find him on Twitter: @ChepoteLuka Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

In this episode, Dr. Nilanjana Paul of the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley speaks about her new monograph, Bengal Muslims and Colonial Education, 1854-1947: A Study of Curriculum, Educational Institutions and Communal Politics (Routledge, 2022). The book is a micro history of the spread of education among Muslims in Colonial Bengal. Dr. Paul discusses the role played by Muslim leaders such as Abdul Latif and Fazlul Huq in the spread of education and examines how segregation in education, supported by the British fueled Muslim anxiety and separatism. By examining the conflict of interest between Hindu elites and Muslim aristocrats over education and employment, Dr. Paul shows how discriminatory colonial education policies and pedagogy amplified religious separatism that would eventually culminate in the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan.Bekeh Ukelina is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center of Gender and Intercultural Studies at State University of New York, Cortland. Twitter: @bekeh/ Instagram @mwalimuwakusafiri/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Annette G. Aubert and Zachary Purvis' edited volume Transatlantic Religion: Europe, America, and the Making of Modern Christianity (Brill, 2021) offers a new perspective on nineteenth-century American Christianity that takes into account the century’s major transformations in politics, philosophy, education, and religious doctrine. The book includes previously unexamined material to explain the influences of European ideas on the intellectual diversity and cultural specifics of American Christianity. It gives readers access to a new analytical approach to the transatlantic development of religion in America, one that acknowledges the role of ecumenical and partisan religious journalism, academic-religious mentoring, profound changes in the field of scientific inquiry, and the aims of institution builders.Justin McGeary is Director of Christian Studies at John Witherspoon College and a graduate student at Union School of Theology, Wales. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies