New Books in British Studies

In the second half of the eighteenth century, as European imperial conflicts extended the domain of capitalist agriculture, warring African factions fed their captives to the transatlantic slave trade while masters struggled continuously to keep their restive slaves under the yoke. In this contentious atmosphere, a movement of enslaved West Africans in Jamaica (then called Coromantees) organized to throw off that yoke by violence. Their uprising—which became known as Tacky’s Revolt—featured a style of fighting increasingly familiar today: scattered militias opposing great powers, with fighters hard to distinguish from noncombatants. It was also part of a more extended borderless conflict that spread from Africa to the Americas and across the island. Even after it was put down, the insurgency rumbled throughout the British Empire at a time when slavery seemed the dependable bedrock of its dominion. That certitude would never be the same, nor would the views of black lives, which came to inspire both more fear and more sympathy than before.Tracing the roots, routes, and reverberations of this event across disparate parts of the Atlantic world, Vincent Brown offers us a superb geopolitical thriller. Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (Harvard University Press, 2020) expands our understanding of the relationship between European, African, and American history, as it speaks to our understanding of wars of terror today.Adam McNeil is a 2nd year Ph.D. student in History at Rutgers University-New Brunswick Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

In her fascinating and remarkable new book Faithful Fighters: Identity and Power in the British Indian Army (Stanford University Press, 2019), Kate Imy explores the negotiation of religious identity, military service, and imperial power in the context of twentieth century British India. How were preconceived British imperial notions of religion and loyalty to the state attached to indigenous South Asian communities frustrated by the way Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, and Nepali Gurkha (Hindu and Buddhist) soldiers engaged the state and performed their political and religious identities as part of the British Indian army.Faithful Fighters is a powerful and brilliant meditation on the impossibility of modern colonial power to canonize religion and religious identity. The six chapters of this book examine a range of archives, themes, theaters, and actors including tensions surrounding the valorization of Sikh loyalty and controversies shadowing the Kirpān (sword), the cooptation of pan-Islamic sentiments for British imperialism, suspicions and sexual desires invested in the figure of the Pathan, Nepali Gurkhas, caste hierarchies, and rituals of purification, debates of food and religion in the military, projects of nationalism through military academies, and masculinity, fascism, and Hindu nationalism.This thoroughly researched and multidisciplinary book will attract and interest scholars from a range of fields including South Asian history, Religious Studies, Islamic Studies, Military History, and Cultural Studies. Beautifully written, and populated with enticing narratives and images, it will also be a delight to teach in a variety of classes.SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available here. He can be reached at sherali.tareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

In We Don't Believe You: Why Populists and the Establishment See the World Differently (Bite-Sized Book, 2019), Sir John Redwood gives us fresh insights into why the populist movements and parties have been winning elections. He looks at how the experts and narrative pushed out by the established elites on both sides of the Atlantic have met with disbelief as well as with strong opposition. He shows how great parties have been all but destroyed as election winning forces as new movements and people sweep them aside.From the establishment himself as an expert and a member of one of the traditional parties, he seeks to show how the sensible elites adjust and respond to new moods and new ideas instead of confronting or denying them. In too many cases a rigid and unhappy elite just keeps shouting back the same things people do not want to hear.One of the worst features of what is happening is the inability of the two sides to understand each other or to work together. The establishment shows scorn for the populists and keeps reasserting the same policies and attitudes as if nothing had happened. The populists show they do not believe the analysis let alone the prescription of established institutions and governments, and seek to sweep them all away.Can the main institutions of the western world adapt in time to the new mood?Sir John Redwood is Conservative MP for Wokingham in the UK, first elected in 1987. He was formerly Secretary of State for Wales in John Major's Cabinet, and twice a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party in the 1990s. He is also a Distinguished fellow of All Souls, Oxford and the author of 23 books on a wide range of subjects, from atheism in early modern British history, to 21st century economics, to politics and government. He always has very insightful and often bold things to say on all these topics.Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like rabbits or hats. Paradox works in the abstract, with words and concepts and symbols, to create the illusion of contradiction. There are no contradictions in reality, but there can appear to be. In Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy (MIT Press, 2020), Matt Cook and a few collaborators dive deeply into more than 75 paradoxes in mathematics, physics, philosophy, and the social sciences. As each paradox is discussed and resolved, Cook helps readers discover the meaning of knowledge and the proper formation of concepts―and how reason can dispel the illusion of contradiction.The journey begins with “a most ingenious paradox” from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. Readers will then travel from Ancient Greece to cutting-edge laboratories, encounter infinity and its different sizes, and discover mathematical impossibilities inherent in elections. They will tackle conundrums in probability, induction, geometry, and game theory; perform “supertasks”; build apparent perpetual motion machines; meet twins living in different millennia; explore the strange quantum world―and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus when she was nineteen years old on a bet. The novel spawned two centuries of creatures that turn against their makers. It examines the limits of scientific innovation, whether the quest for knowledge must be tempered by morality, and why human beings tend to ostracize, persecute and sometimes kill anything that does not look like them. I spoke with Julie Carlson, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the author of a gripping biography of Mary Shelley's family, England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley (among other books). Shelley's mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, the first modern feminist and a free thinker vilified for her ideas of equality. Her father was a philosopher. In some ways, Mary Shelley was an experiment herself. We also discussed what it means that a woman wrote the first science fiction novel, and why the book and the "daemon" Shelley imagined still proves so powerful today, 200 years after its first publication.Uli Baer is a professor at New York University. He is also the host of the excellent podcast "Think About It" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

The former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt grew up as a devout Anglophile, yet he clashed heavily and repeatedly with his British counterparts Wilson, Callaghan, and Thatcher during his time in office between 1974 and 1982. Helmut Schmidt and British-German Relations: A European Misunderstanding (Cambridge University Press, 2019) looks at Schmidt's personal experience to explore how and why Britain and Germany rarely saw eye to eye over European integration, uncovering the two countries' deeply competing visions and incompatible strategies for post-war Europe. But it also zooms out to reveal the remarkable extent of simultaneous British-German cooperation in fostering joint European interests on the wider international stage, not least within the transatlantic alliance against the background of a worsening superpower relationship. By connecting these two key areas of bilateral cooperation, Mathias Haeussler of the University of Regensburg offers a major revisionist reinterpretation of Anglo-German bilateral relationship under Schmidt, relevant to anybody interested in British-German relations, European integration, and the Cold War.Charles Coutinho Ph. D. 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 recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

In Unreasonable Histories: Nativism, Multiracial Lives, and the Genealogical Imagination in British Africa (Duke University Press, 2014), Christopher J. Lee recovers the forgotten experiences of multiracial peoples in the British colonies of Nyasaland, Southern and Northern Rhodesia. By carefully reading fragmented correspondence, colonial reports, periodicals and oral testimonies, the author traces the development of Anglo-African, Euro-African and Eurafrican identities that complicated colonial concepts of native and non-native. In light of their ambiguous status, multiracial individuals were generally marginalized and lived in a legal limbo. This led them to redefine kinship ties and political allegiances with the goal of improving their economic and social prospects. Ultimately, the book questions the analytical categories inherited both from colonial and nationalist historiographies and argues that they obscure the social, cultural and intellectual diversity that informs what it means to be African.Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia is Associate Professor of History at Montclair State University. She specializes in modern intellectual history of Africa, historiography, World history and Philosophy of History. She is the co-author of African Histories: New Sources and New Techniques for Studying African Pasts (Pearson, 2011). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Who or what originated and/or caused the Great War from breaking out in July 1914? Was it Serbia with its expansionist and aggressive designs on Austria-Hungary? Was it Austria-Hungary itself, unnecessarily plunging itself and the rest of Europe in a futile effort to keep together its tottering Monarchy? Was it Tsarist Russia? Attempting to both expand its influence in the Balkans at the expense of both Austria and Germany and at the very same time, seeking to bolster its own tottering monarchy by showing its aggrieved public that Mother Russia was backing the cause of its down-trodden, Slavic brothers. Was it Kaiserreich Germany? Aiming in the famous thesis of 20th-century German historian Fritz Fischer, to launch a Great War to establish itself as the hegemonic power on the European continent? A war which its military leaders stated repeatedly, Germany could only win if war occurred in the next few years. Was it France? Aiming in conjunction with its Russian ally to start a war with the aim of regaining the two lost provinces of Alsace-Lorraine. Was it Liberal England? Hoping for the final success of the policy of ‘encirclement’ of Germany, commenced by Edward VII?The origins of the Great War is one of the most fascinating and enthralling subjects in modern History. Which oceans of ink, almost (but not quite) matching the oceans of blood spilled during the war itself, have been devoted to the subject. From the immediate outbreak of the war to the centenary anniversary in 2014, master historians have researched and written on it. Now to bring the topic to the audience of New Books Network, are Jeremy Black, Emeritus Professor of History at Exeter University, without a doubt, the most prolific historian writing in the Anglophone world and Charles Coutinho of the Royal Historical Society. Please listen to this most interesting of podcast.Charles Coutinho Ph. D. 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 recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Limning – the painting of miniature portraits – was an important art form in 16th-century Europe. Among its greatest practitioners was Nicholas Hilliard, who enjoyed an international reputation for his skill in crafting the finely wrought images. In Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist (Yale University Press, 2019), Elizabeth Goldring explains how a young man from a family of Exeter goldsmiths became one of the premier artists of his age. Timing was a key factor, as the ascent of the Catholic Queen Mary to the throne in 1553 led the Protestant Hilliard family to decamp for the continent. Exposure to the art styles there influenced the young Hilliard, who after returning to England and completing his apprenticeship as a goldsmith quickly established himself as the foremost miniature portraitist in England. Goldring shows how both Hilliard’s technical skills and his court connections played equal roles in his prominence, over a career that led to a period at the court of the French king Henri III and lasted through Elizabeth’s death to his final years working as an artist for King James I. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

The story of Chesapeake pirates and patriots begins with a land dispute and ends with the untimely death of an oyster dredger at the hands of the Maryland Oyster Navy. From the golden age of piracy to Confederate privateers and oyster pirates, the maritime communities of the Chesapeake Bay are intimately tied to a fascinating history of intrigue, plunder, and illicit commerce trading. In Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars (The History Press, 2020), Jamie L. H. Goodall introduces infamous men like Edward “Blackbeard” Teach and “Black Sam” Bellamy, as well as lesser-known local figures like Gus Price and Berkeley Muse, whose tales of piracy are legendary from the harbor of Baltimore to the shores of Cape Charles.Rob Denning is Associate Dean for Liberal Arts at Southern New Hampshire University’s Global Campus. He received his Ph.D from The Ohio State University, where he researched environmental policymaking in California during Ronald Reagan’s terms as governor. Rob hosts Working Historians, a podcast about the various career opportunities open to students with history degrees. He can be reached by email at rdenning13@gmail.com or on Twitter @DrRobHistory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies