New Books in Diplomatic History

Despite Britain's entering the 20th century as the dominant world power, its public discourses were imbued with cultural pessimism and rising social anxiety. Samuel Foster is a Visiting Academic at the University of East Anglia. His first monograph, Yugoslavia in the British Imagination: Peace, War and Peasants before Tito (Bloomsbury, 2021), explores how this changing domestic climate shaped perceptions of other cultures, and Britain's relationship to them, focusing on those Balkan territories that formed the first Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1941. The book examines these connections and demonstrates how the popular image of the region's peasantry evolved from that of foreign 'Other' to historical victim - suffering at the hand of modernity's worst excesses and symbolizing Britain's perceived decline. This coincided with an emerging moralistic sense of British identity that manifested itself during the First World War. Consequently, Yugoslavia was legitimized as the solution to peasant victimization and, as Foster's nuanced analysis reveals, enabled Britain's imagined (and self-promoted) revival as civilization's moral arbiter. Drawing on a range of previously unexplored archival sources, this compelling transnational analysis is an important contribution to the study of British social history and the nature of statehood in the modern Balkans. Vladislav Lilic is a doctoral candidate in Modern European History at Vanderbilt University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once a powerful figure who reversed the disintegration of China and steered the country to Allied victory in World War II, Chiang Kai-shek fled into exile following his 1949 defeat in the Chinese civil war. As attention pivoted to Mao Zedong’s communist experiment, Chiang was relegated to the dustbin of history.In Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Shame, Grace Huang reconsiders Chiang’s leadership and legacy by drawing on an extraordinary and uncensored collection of his diaries, telegrams, and speeches stitched together by his secretaries. She paints a new, intriguing portrait of this twentieth-century leader who advanced a Confucian politics of shame to confront Japanese incursion into China and urge unity among his people. In also comparing Chiang’s response to imperialism to those of Mao, Yuan Shikai, and Mahatma Gandhi, Grace widens the implications of her findings to explore alternatives to Western expressions of nationalism and modernity and reveal how leaders of vulnerable states can use potent cultural tools to inspire their country and contribute to an enduring national identity.Grace Huang is professor of government at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. She likes to tackle a range of intellectual questions, including: what are the conditions in leadership that promote collective inspiration versus collective hysteria or violence? How do talented subordinates weigh their ability to modify a leader’s deleterious actions against their moral culpability of participating in those policies? How does a particular democratic ideology and culture shape the choices of working mothers, and how do such mothers make decisions about care, family, and work? Her research interests include political leadership, the political uses of shame in Chinese leadership, and gender, labor, and the family. She can be reached at ghuang@stlawu.edu.Dong Wang is distinguished professor of history and director of the Wellington Koo Institute for Modern China in World History at Shanghai University (since 2016), a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Diplomatic relationships between Indigenous sovereigns and colonial and settler governments were defined by language. In some cases, cultural divides were narrowed using common metaphors. In others, objects such as wampum belts were employed as visual records of past agreements. Speeches were carefully recorded, copied, and cited in later negotiations; treaties were ‘signed’ using symbols of name, clan or nation. The treaty texts themselves sit within a constellation of other texts; this is a large, complex and still understudied archive. In Sensitive Negotiations: Indigenous Diplomacy and British Romantic Poetry (SUNY Press, 2021), Nikki Hessell reveals the ways in which poetic texts figure in diplomacy in the 19th and 20th centuries. The book ranges across the colonial world, from the Grand River Six Nations, the Native South, to the Great Lakes ‘middle ground’. It then turns to South Africa and New Zealand. It is deeply researched and powerfully contextual. It is also reflective, challenging those of us who work on Indigenous / settler relations to position ourselves in relation to the history and texts we study.Nikki Hessell is Associate Professor at Victoria University in Wellington New Zealand.Charles Prior is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Hull (UK), where he co-leads the Treatied Spaces Research Cluster. His latest publication is Settlers in Indian Country (Cambridge University Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The first all-encompassing book on Israel’s foreign policy and the diplomatic history of the Jewish people, The Star and the Scepter: A Diplomatic History of Israel (Jewish Publication Society, 2020) retraces and explains the interactions of Jews with other nations from the ancient kingdoms of Israel to modernity.Starting with the Hebrew Bible, Emmanuel Navon argues that one cannot grasp Israel’s interactions with the world without understanding how Judaism’s founding document has shaped the Jewish psyche. He sheds light on the people of Israel’s foreign policy through the ages: the ancient kingdoms of Israel, Jewish diasporas in Europe from the Middle Ages to the emancipation, the emerging nineteenth-century Zionist movement, and Zionist diplomacy following World War I and surrounding World War II.Navon elucidates Israel’s foreign policy from the birth of the state in 1948 to our days: the dilemmas and choices at the beginning of the Cold War; Israel’s attempts to establish periphery alliances; the Arab-Israeli conflict; Israel’s relations with Europe, the United States, Russia, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the United Nations, and the Jewish diasporas; and how twenty-first-century energy geopolitics is transforming Israel’s foreign relations today.Navon’s analysis is rooted in two central ideas, represented by the Star of David (faith) and the scepter (political power). First, he contends that the interactions of Jews with the world have always been best served by combining faith with pragmatism. Second, Navon shows how the state of Israel owes its diplomatic achievements to national assertiveness and hard power—not only military strength but economic prowess and technological innovation. Demonstrating that diplomacy is a balancing act between ideals and realpolitik, The Star and the Scepter draws aspirational and pragmatic lessons from Israel’s exceptional diplomatic history.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at r.garfinkel@yahoo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is grand strategy? What does it aim to achieve? And what differentiates it from normal strategic thought--what, in other words, makes it "grand"? In answering these questions, most scholars have focused on diplomacy and warfare, so much so that "grand strategy" has become almost an equivalent of "military history." The traditional attention paid to military affairs is understandable, but in today's world it leaves out much else that could be considered political, and therefore strategic. It is in fact possible to consider, and even reach, a more capacious understanding of grand strategy, one that still includes the battlefield and the negotiating table while expanding beyond them. Just as contemporary world politics is driven by a wide range of non-military issues, the most thorough considerations of grand strategy must consider the bases of peace and security--including gender, race, the environment, and a wide range of cultural, social, political, and economic issues.Rethinking American Grand Strategy (Oxford UP, 2021) assembles a roster of leading historians to examine America's place in the world. Its innovative chapters re-examine familiar figures, such as John Quincy Adams, George Kennan, and Henry Kissinger, while also revealing the forgotten episodes and hidden voices of American grand strategy. They expand the scope of diplomatic and military history by placing the grand strategies of public health, race, gender, humanitarianism, and the law alongside military and diplomatic affairs to reveal hidden strategists as well as strategies.Grant Golub is a PhD candidate in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When civil war broke out in Spain in 1936, tens of thousands of young men and women from across the world flocked there to fight against the Nationalist uprising. Though their history has been told before, Giles Tremlett’s The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War (Bloomsbury, 2021) draws upon previously unavailable materials to tell the stories of the war they fought. Though these people came from a variety of backgrounds and held a range of different left-wing political views, what united them was their opposition to fascism. Despite their disorganization and lack of training, they made an impact on the battlefield soon after their deployment, and became a highly visible presence in the war against Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces. While the Spanish Republic they fought for was ultimately defeated, Tremlett explains how many of those who served in the Brigades continued their struggle against fascism during the Second World War, reflecting the lasting legacy of their service for their cause. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We live in strange times. Politics around the world seem to be transforming into something new and often frightening. But this process has a history. In 1989, the bi-polar certainties of the Cold War gave way to a neo-liberal consensus, what Francis Fukuyama termed “the End of History”. Yet with BREXIT and Trump in 2016, the End of History seemed to be coming to an end itself. The current COVID crisis has only accelerated this process. To make sense of this Gramscian interregnum and its great variety of morbid symptoms, Alex Hochuli, George Hoare, and Philip Cunliffe started the Aufhebunga Bunga podcast in April 2017. Billing itself as the “global political podcast at the end of the end of history”, the podcast offers theoretically informed and often provocative analysis and commentary. The podcast has led to a book, The End of the End of History: Politics in the Twenty-First Century, out with Zero Books in 2021.In our discussion, these three scholars lay out their defense of the concept of the End of History, discuss post-politics and anti-politics, and explain how politics are back. They also diagnose the pandemic of Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome and explain which demographic groups are most susceptible to NOBS. Drawing from the recent history of the USA and UK, as well as Italy and Brazil, Hochuli, Hoare, and Cunliffe offer an analysis of our world and make some bleak predictions for what is to come in terms of future ideological formations.Alex Hochuli is a writer and translator living in Sao Paolo, Brazil, George Hoare is a political consultant in London, and Philip Cunliffe is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Kent.Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we are joined by Philippe Vonnard, Senior SNSF Researcher at the University de Lausanne, and the author of Creating a United Europe of Football: The Formation of UEFA (1949-1961) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed the role UEFA played in the production of European identity, the global origins of the European confederation, and how European sports bureaucrats were able to navigate the Cold War.In Creating a United Europe of Football, Vonnard explains the rise of UEFA through a close examination of the rarely utilized UEFA archives. His work pushes past a prosopography of European football bureaucrats – such as Stanley Rous, Ottorino Barassi, Ernst Thommen – and instead situates UEFA’s emergence in the rise of the global football and the Cold War. He argues that rather than simply a movement of European football officials, UEFA was also inspired by the South American confederation (CONMEBOL, founded 1916) provided an impetus and model for UEFA.Vonnard does not shy away from the details of the FIFA Executive: he shows how debates over the reorganization of FIFA necessitated the creation of a European confederation to promote officers to the Executive Committee. A new cadre of European football officials, however, opted for a more expansive confederation with independent financial resources rather than a minimalist association organized only to decide that limited question. A more extensive UEFA fought alongside and with FIFA as a major sports stakeholder.UEFA’s professionalism and scope expanded over the 1950s as it responded to issues and opportunities. As UEFA organized a ever wider series of competitions, it crowded out nascent challenges to its control over European football. It succeeded where other political, cultural, and economic unions failed, producing a genuine European-wide organization that formed and operated successfully across the Cold War East-West divide. Vonnard explains the qualities of leadership and strategies that made possible their achievements.Creating a United Europe of Football is a fascinating work from an important francophone sports historian. Now in English translation it provides a compelling read for people interested in the continental conversations about football’s role in European identity and the rise of sports diplomacy during the Cold War.There is also a free French version pour les francophones. https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/65151Keith Rathbone is a senior lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He researches twentieth-century French social and cultural history. His book, entitled Sport and physical culture in Occupied France: Authoritarianism, agency, and everyday life, (Manchester University Press, 2022) examines physical education and sports in order to better understand civic life under the dual authoritarian systems of the German Occupation and the Vichy Regime. If you have a title to suggest for this podcast, please contact him at keith.rathbone@mq.edu.au. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Making the Forever War: Marilyn Young on the Culture and Politics of American Militarism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021) is a timely collection of articles and essays by Marilyn B Young, edited by Mark P. Bradley and Mary L. Dudziak. In this interview, Mark Bradley joined me to discuss Marilyn Young's life and legacy, the impetus for assembling the book, and the relevance of her work in the present moment.The late historian Marilyn B. Young, a preeminent voice on the history of U.S. military conflict, spent her career reassessing the nature of American global power, its influence on domestic culture and politics, and the consequences felt by those on the receiving end of U.S. military force. At the center of her inquiries was a seeming paradox: How can the United States stay continually at war, yet Americans pay so little attention to this militarism? Making the Forever War brings Young's articles and essays on American war together for the first time, including never before published works. Moving from the first years of the Cold War to Korea, Vietnam, and more recent "forever" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Young reveals the ways in which war became ever-present, yet more covert and abstract, particularly as aerial bombings and faceless drone strikes have attained greater strategic value. For Young, U.S. empire persisted because of, not despite, the inattention of most Americans. The collection concludes with an afterword by prominent military historian Andrew Bacevich.Marilyn B Young (1937-2017) was a renowned historian of American foreign relations and a longtime professor of history at New York University. Her landmark book The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990 remains a defining work in the field.Mark P Bradley (interviewee and co-editor of Making the Forever War) is Bernadotte E Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor of International History and the College at the University of Chicago and author of The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century.Mary L Dudziak (co-editor of Making the Forever War) is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University and author of War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences. Catriona Gold is a PhD candidate in Geography at University College London, researching security, subjectivity and mobility in the 20-21st century United States. Her current work concerns the US Passport Office; she has previously published on US Africa Command and the 2013-16 Ebola epidemic. She can be reached by email or on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The history of international organizations has been an exciting area of research in recent years, with such landmark studies as Stephen Wertheim’s Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of US Global Supremacy and Adom Getachew's Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination. From this scholarship, we’ve learned a lot about, say, the politics of creating new intergovernmental organizations or how they became arenas for interstate competition. But the international bureaucracies themselves remain mysterious, even black-boxed. That’s where Organizing the 20th-Century World: International Organizations and the Emergence of International Public Administration, 1920-1960s (Bloomsbury, 2020) comes in.Edited by Karen Gram-Skjoldager (an associate professor at Aarhus University), Haakon Ikonomou (an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen), and Torsten Kahlert (a postdoctoral fellow at the Herzog August Bibliothek), Organizing the 20th-Century World tells the history of international public administration, documenting the arrival of “an entirely new professional figure on the international stage: the international civil servant.” The edited collection’s contributors also introduce tools that could aid in study of international administration, including biography (what Haakon Ikonomou calls an “institutional can opener”), prosopography, and relevant datasets. Thanks to both its methodological and historical contributions, this volume will serve as a useful compass for future scholars of international public administration. Dexter Fergie is a doctoral student in US and global history at Northwestern University. His research examines the history of ideas, infrastructure, and international organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices