The book delves into the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath, focusing on the lives of key figures such as Dolours Price, Brendan Hughes, Gerry Adams, and Jean McConville's children. It explores the civil rights movement, the Provisional IRA's bombing campaign, the 1981 hunger strike, the peace process, and the post-conflict struggle to understand crimes like McConville's murder. The narrative also incorporates the Belfast Project, a secret oral history endeavor that collected stories from former IRA members. The book is a panoramic history that captures the complexities and tragic consequences of the Troubles[1][2][5].
This book by Marc David Baer challenges the traditional depiction of the Ottoman Empire as the Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West. Instead, it highlights the Ottomans' debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic, and Byzantine heritage. The book explores the Ottomans' pioneering of religious toleration, their use of religious conversion to integrate conquered peoples, and their eventual embrace of exclusivity leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the empire’s demise after the First World War. Baer also redefines the dynasty’s enduring impact on Europe and the world, upending Western accounts of the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration, and the Reformation.
This week on Sinica, I chat with SCMP Senior Europe Correspondent Finbarr Bermingham, who joins from Brussels where he's been covering the EU-China relationship in fantastic depth and with great insight.
3:17 – EU-China relations in early 2025: the effect of the 2021 sanctions, who advocated for engagement versus confrontation with China, and the importance of the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI)
13:49 – How Brussels initially reacted to the rupture in the transatlantic alliance
17:14 – China’s so-called charm offensive
21:03 – The idea of de-risking from Washington
23:10 – The impact of the Oval Office meeting with Zelensky
24:55 – Europe’s dual-track approach with China and shift toward pragmatism
29:35 – National interests versus EU unity regarding Chinese investment, and whether Brussels could extract concessions
35:20 – Brussels’ worry over Trump cutting a deal with China
38:06 – Possible signs of China’s flexibility on different issues
40:25 – The lifting of the sanctions on European parliamentarians
42:21 – The decrease in calls for values-based diplomacy, and whether securitization is happening in Europe
47:05 – How the EU might address tensions over China’s industrial overcapacity
50:17 – The possible future of EU-China relations, and whether the transatlantic relationship could go back to normal
55:50 – The knee-jerk element of looking past Europe
Paying It Forward: Ji Siqi at SCMP, Cissy Zhou at Nikkei, and Kinling Lo and Viola Zhou at Rest of World
Recommendations:
Finbarr: The Stakeknife podcast series; Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe; and the 20th anniversary edition of Wilco’s album, A Ghost Is Born
Kaiser: The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs by Marc David Baer
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