New Books in Diplomatic History

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/adchoices

Dr. Amy Stambach is the author of Confucius and Crisis in American Universities: Culture, Capital, and Diplomacy in U.S. Public Higher Education (Routledge, 2014). Dr. Stambach is a lecturer in Comparative and International Education at University of Oxford.Dr. Stambach’s book, a part of the Education in Global Context series, offers an ethnographic look at the partnership between American universities and the Confucius Institutes, the Chinese government funded language and cultural teaching centers. Drawing on student, faculty, and administrator interviews, personal experience, and institutional document review, the author provides an in-depth insight and analysis of the often-maligned relationship between these institutions.In the book, it is argued that American universities turn to ventures such as the Confucius Institutes on the grounds that US congressional cuts to higher education can be offset by funding from China. Dr. Stambach also introduces the term “eduplomacy” in this book, which she defines as “diplomatic uses of education to advance the political and economic interests of competing… groups” (p. 3).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes are the co-authors of authors of HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton (Crown Publishers 2014). Allen is White House bureau chief at Bloomberg; Parnes is White House correspondent for The Hill.This is a big, buzzy book that has gotten a lot of media attention. Much of the book is about how important trust is to Hillary Clinton. Allen and Parnes refer to the “concentric circles of trust” that dominate the political decisions made by the Clintons. They also write that Hillary Clinton has a “bias for action” that compels her to focus on doing rather than debating. One of the most interesting parts of the book is about how Secretary Clinton embraced technology and relied on staff to integrate technology into diplomacy innovative ways. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joseph Nye‘s latest book is Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era (Princeton University Press, 2013). Professor Nye is University Distinguished Professor and former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.Nye’s long career and major contributions to scholarship on international relations and American foreign policy make this new book a welcome new publication.He reaches some surprising conclusions about how to judge the leadership of former US presidents in the international arena. He writes “I conclude below that some presidents matter, but not always the ones who are most dramatic or inspiring” and continues “I found to my surprise that while transformational presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan changed how Americans see the world, transactional presidents like Dwight Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush were sometimes more effective and more ethical. I would not have come to this unconventional conclusion before I undertook this study.” It is these surprises that make this such a great read. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matthew Mosca‘s impressively researched and carefully structured new book maps the transformation of geopolitical worldviews in a crucial period of Qing and global history. From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing China (Stanford University Press, 2013) traces a shift in... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inderjeet Parmar‘s Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power (Columbia University Press, 2012) navigates the history of US foreign policymaking in the twentieth century. Parmar is President of the British International Studies Association and Professor in the Department of International Politics School of Social Sciences, City University London. His new book examines foreign policy making from the perspective of philanthropic foundations and the ways foundations sought to influence policy through the creation of foreign policy ideas and institutions. Parmar dissects the role foundations played in US foreign policy toward Indonesia, Chile, and elsewhere through institutions such as the Council of Foreign Relations and various University-based international relations programs. The book ends with an examination of the development of the “democratic peace” doctrine and post 9/11 foreign policy making.Foundations have increasingly moved to the center of political science research (see recent podcast with Sarah Reckhow). Dr. Parmar’s wide-ranging book follows in this approach and is a major contribution to scholarship on philanthropy and public policy making. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is there an “American Empire?” A lot of people on the Left say “yes.” Actually, a lot of people on the Right say “yes” too. But Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman says “no.” In her stimulating new treatment of the history of American foreign policy American Umpire (Harvard UP, 2013), Hoffman lays out the case that America have never been an “empire” in any real sense. Rather, she says America has been and (for better or worse) still is an “umpire,” making calls according to an evolving set of rules about what makes a legitimate state. She points out that not all of the calls have been good ones–Vietnam and Iraq II being the most obvious examples. Nonetheless, America has long served the world as a kind of fair broker. Whether America should continue in this role is, as she says, an open question. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sanjay Subrahmanyam‘s new book explores translations across texts, images, and cultural practices in the early modern world. Courtly Encounters: Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern Eurasia (Harvard University Press, 2012) uses three key themes in early modern history – diplomacy, warfare, and visual representation – to show how commensurability across cultures, rather than existing prior to an encounter, had to be actively made by its agents. Subrahmanyam brings us into the many faces of a key battle in the sixteenth-century history of the Deccan, a dramatic martyrdom by cannon in the Malay world, and a circulation of visual tropes across European and Mughal contexts in a fascinating analysis of the ways that insult, intimacy, violence, and paint shaped relationships within and among the courtly ecologies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The book expertly weaves a series of compelling microhistorical narratives into a larger story that takes us across the Indian Ocean and beyond, and is a must-read for anyone interested in global history or early modernity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do ideologies shape foreign policy? That is question Dr. Mark Haas examines in his new book The Clash of Ideologies: Middle Eastern Politics and American Security (Oxford University Press, 2012). The book analyzes how ideologies shape the perceptions and actions of governments, and specifically the impact this has on relations between the US and the Middle East. Dr. Haas examines two key variables, ideological distance and ideological polarity, using case studies on the Syrian-Iranian alliance, Iran’s ideological factions in the past decade, Turkey’s post-cold war foreign policies, and the US-Saudi relationship. The book not only analyzes the ways in which ideologies impact foreign policy, but also tries to provide ways for improving foreign policy decisions in the future by employing strategies that use ideological analysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are three Americans in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. One is Horace Wilson, the professor of English who brought his students outside for a game in 1872, thus introducing baseball to Japan. Another is Wally Yonamine, the Hawaii-born Nisei who played professional baseball in Japan in the 1950s... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices