New Books in World Affairs

In Coffee: A Global History (Reaktion Books, 2019), Jonathan Morris discusses the diverse cast of caffeinated characters who drank coffee, why and where they did so, as well as how it was prepared and what it tasted like. He identifies the regions and ways in which coffee has been grown, who worked the farms and who owned them, and how the beans were processed, traded, and transported. Morris also explores the businesses behind coffee—the brokers, roasters, and machine manufacturers—and dissects the geopolitics linking producers to consumers. Written in a style as invigorating as that first cup of Java, and featuring fantastic recipes, images, stories, and surprising facts, Coffee will fascinate foodies, food historians, baristas, and the many people who regard this ancient brew as a staple of modern life.Jonathan Morris is research professor in Modern History at the University of Hertfordshire, and Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society. He is an historian of consumption and consumer societies. Jonathan has also published Coffee: The Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage and the Industry; and is a judge for the Specialty Coffee Association's Best New Product Awards. Instagram and Twitter: @coffeehistoryJM. Listen to Jonathan’s “A History of Coffee."Amir Sayadabdi is a lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. He is mainly interested in anthropology of food and its intersection with gender studies, migration studies, and studies of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

When East Germany collapsed in 1989-1990, outside observers were shocked to learn the extent of environmental devastation that existed there. The communist dictatorship, however, had sought to confront environmental issues since at least the 1960s. Through an analysis of official and oppositional sources, Saving Nature Under Socialism: Transnational Environmentalism in East Germany, 1968-1990 (Cambridge UP, 2021) complicates attitudes toward the environment in East Germany by tracing both domestic and transnational engagement with nature and pollution. The communist dictatorship limited opportunities for protest, so officials and activists looked abroad to countries such as Poland and West Germany for inspiration and support. Julia Ault outlines the evolution of environmental policy and protest in East Germany and shows how East Germans responded to local degradation as well as to an international moment of environmental reckoning in the 1970s and 1980s. The example of East Germany thus challenges and broadens our understanding of the 'greening' of post-war Europe, and illuminates a larger, central European understanding of connection across the Iron Curtain.Julie Ault is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Utah. She completed her PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2015 before joining the faculty at Utah. She is currently a faculty fellow at the University of Utah’s Tanner Humanities Center with the goal of developing her second book project, tentatively entitled Solidarity & Socialist Riches: East German Diplomacy, Environment & Technology, 1949-1989. Her research interests include the environment, transnational networks, social movements, socialism, and the Cold War.Leslie Waters is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at El Paso and author of Borders on the Move: Territorial Change and Ethnic Cleansing in the Hungarian-Slovak Borderlands, 1938-1948 (University of Rochester, 2020). Email her at lwaters@utep.edu or tweet to @leslieh2Os. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In 1917, the adoption of the revolutionary Mexican Constitution and the October Revolution shook the foundations of international order in profound, unprecedented and lasting ways. These events posed fundamental challenges to international law, particularly to foundational concepts of property, statehood and non-intervention, and the role of law itself. Revolutions in International Law: The Legacies of 1917 (Cambridge UP, 2021) asks what we might learn about international law from analysing how its various sub-fields have remembered, forgotten, imagined, incorporated, rejected or sought to manage the revolutions of 1917. It shows that those revolutions had wide-ranging repercussions for the development of laws relating to intervention, human rights, investment, alien protection and state responsibility, and for the global economy subsequently enabled by international law and overseen by international institutions. The varied legacies of 1917 play an ongoing role in shaping political struggle, global anti-imperialist and anti-racism movements to this day. Listen in and see how these complex events shaped international law, human rights and anti-imperialist movements globally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Yuri Kostenko’s Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2020) is a meticulous account of how the Ukrainian government made a decision in the 1990s to give up the nuclear status. The book includes unique documents from the private archive, which Yuri Kostenko shares with the readers. Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament provides not only an account of nuclear weapons elimination in Ukraine, but also offers a broader picture of the political environment in which Ukraine found itself after the fall of the USSR. What political players participated in the construction of the newly formed independent state? What challenges did the country face? In addition to this retrospective approach, the book also provides insights into the present moment, particularly in terms of the ongoing armed conflict initiated by Russia in 2014. Yuri Kostenko mentions that the occupation of the Crimea and the subsequent Russian military aggression against Ukraine were not a surprise to him. The book engages with the consequences of the nuclear disarmament and prompts the readers to draw parallels between the decisions that were made in the 1990s and the current international position that was created for Ukraine. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a PhD candidate in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, Indiana University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Globalization is possibly the most important economic phenomenon of the past several decades. Opening borders, increasing trade and deepening integration has transformed our economies, our societies and our politics. Globalization changed establishment politics; the reaction against it transformed those against the establishment.But there’s a world of difference between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders’ critiques of globalization. And those who have concerns about globalization due so for different reasons, building different alliances as they work to implement, reform or roll back globalization.Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp, authors of Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters (Harvard University Press: 2021) looks more closely at these debates, building out distinct narratives that classify how we should think about the politics of globalization, and how different political movements understand who wins from globalization: everyone, a few, or nobody.Those interested in learning more about the book and its arguments: “Who wins and who loses from globalization? There are (at least) six answers”, a book excerpt published on BigThink “Want to know what future battles over globalization will be about? Look to the chip shortage”, a commentary piece published on Fortune Paul Krugman and Branko Milanovic in conversation with Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp In this interview, Anthea, Nicolas and I talk about the politics of globalization: the arguments used to support it, and the stories used to criticize it. We explore some of the interesting intersections between these arguments … and where we think the politics of globalization might go from here.Anthea Roberts is professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at Australian National University and author of the prizewinning Is International Law International? (Oxford University Press: 2017).Nicolas Lamp is associate professor in the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University, Ontario. Before joining Queen’s University, he worked as a dispute settlement lawyer at the World Trade Organization.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Six Faces of Globalization. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Is the West finished as a political idea? In recent years, observers have begun pointing to signs that the transatlantic community is eroding. When the European Union expanded, the classic European nation state was in decline. Now, nationalism is on the rise. Furthermore, nations within the EU are less willing to cooperate with the US on policies that require sacrifice and risks, such as using military force alongside the US. Today, following the twin shocks of Brexit and Trump’s election, the concept of a unified Western transatlantic community seems to be a relic. But, in Pax Transatlantica: America and Europe in the Post-Cold War Era (Oxford UP, 2021) the international historian Jussi Hanhimäki explains why the West is far from over.Hanhimäki argues that despite Trump’s inflammatory, dismissive rhetoric, NATO continues to provide robust security for its member states. NATO has survived by expanding its remit and scope, and it is viewed favorably by member states overall. Moreover, the transatlantic relationship boasts the richest and most closely connected transcontinental economy in the world. Despite the potential fallout from current trade wars—especially between the US and China—and the rise of economic nationalism, the West still benefits from significant transatlantic trade and massive investment flows. Lastly, Hanhimäki traces the parallel evolution of domestic politics on both sides of the Atlantic, focusing on the rise of populism. He contends that populism is not causing a rift between the US and Europe. Rather, the spread of populism evinces that their politics are in fact closely integrated.Shifts and even crises abound in the history of the transatlantic relationship. Still, the West endures. Conflicts, rather than undermining the relationship, illustrate its resilience. Hanhimäki shows that the transatlantic relationship is playing out this cycle today. Not only will the "Pax Transatlantica" continue to exist, Hanhimäki concludes, it is likely to thrive in the future.Jussi Hanhimaki is Professor of International History and co-director of the History and Policy Initiative at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. He is the author of many books, including the award-winning The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (2004) and The Rise and Fall of Détente: American Foreign Policy and the Transformation of the Cold War (2013).Joe Renouard is Resident Professor of American Studies and Fei Yi-Ming Journalism Foundation Chair of American Government and Comparative Politics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Nanjing, China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Dilek Kurban’s Limits of Supranational Justice: The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey's Kurdish Conflict (Cambridge UP, 2020) considers the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) engagement with Turkey’s ongoing Kurdish conflict. Tracing the legal mobilization of Kurdish people alongside legal and political histories, Kurban’s work highlights the factors enabling ongoing violence in the Kurdish region. As Kurban argues, considering the effectiveness of supranational courts, like the ECtHR, in cases like that of Turkey invokes difficult questions about international human rights regimes. Limits of Supranational Justice contributes to studies of supranational courts and legal mobilization—as well as broader conversations about human rights—by pointing to new avenues of sociolegal inquiry alongside the broader sociohistoral context in the case of Turkey.Rine Vieth is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at McGill University, where they research the how UK asylum tribunals consider claims of belief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In this ambitious book, Max Siollun provides an overview of Nigerian history from 1472 to the 1950s. As such, What Britain Did to Nigeria: A Short History of Conquest and Rule (Hurst, 2021) provides an excellent primer for those interested in learning about the gradual process of colonial conquest and the attendant resistance by local populations, as well as colonialism’s long-term impact on what would become modern-day Nigeria.Part I and II of the book explore early trade relations between the peoples of coastal Nigeria and European merchants. Particular attention is given here to George Taubman Goldie and his business ventures, most notably the Royal Niger Company. By examining the Royal Niger Company’s tactics of fraudulent (or at minimum, misleading) treaties and the violent misconduct of its employees, Siollun evidences the destructive nature of Britain’s presence even before the official start of colonization.Part III concerns colonial conquest, from 1851 to 1920. Siollun starts with an exploration of what gets referred to as Glover’s Hausas, generally considered to be the start of the modern-day Nigerian army. This provides an entry point for Siollun to examine Britain’s policy of racialized military recruitment, and to reflect on the problems this caused in post-colonial Nigeria. Siollun’s detailed description of the violence of colonial conquest, as well as the resistance by ordinary Nigerians across the country (the subject of Part IV), make plain that despite British claims of a “civilizing mission,” colonization was very much self-serving and unwanted.Part V considers “how British rule radically changed Nigeria’s cultural, educational, and religious identity,” and in doing so, depended divides between the Northern and Southern parts of the country.Max Siollun is a historian and author who specializes in Nigeria's history. Besides What Britain Did to Nigeria, he is the author of the books Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria's Military Coup Culture 1966-1976, Soldiers of Fortune: A History of Nigeria (1983-1993), and Nigeria's Soldiers of Fortune: The Abacha and Obasanjo Years.Sara Katz is a postdoctoral associate in the history department at Duke University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Antony Best's British Engagement with Japan, 1854-1922: The Origins and Course of an Unlikely Alliance (Routledge, 2020) reconsiders the circumstances which led to the unlikely alliance of 1902 to 1922 between Britain, the leading world power of the day and Japan, an Asian, non-European nation which had only recently emerged from self-imposed isolation. Based on extensive original research, the book not only provides an overview of Anglo-Japanese relations between the 1850s and 1920s, but also goes beyond existing accounts which concentrate on high politics, strategy and simple assertions about the two countries’ similarities as island empires. It brings into the picture cultural factors, particularly the ways in which Japan was portrayed in Britain, and ambivalent British attitudes to race and supposed European superiority which were overcome but remained difficulties. It charts how the relationship developed as events unfolded, including Japan’s wars against China and Russia, and in addition looks at royal diplomacy, where the Japanese Court came eventually to be treated as a respected equal. Overall, the book provides a major reassessment of this important subject.Antony Best is a professor of international history at the London School of Economics (LSE). Shatrunjay Mall is a PhD candidate at the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He works on transnational Asian history, and his dissertation project explores intellectual, political, and cultural intersections and affinities between Indian anti-colonialism and imperial Japan in the twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Christine Schwöbel-Patel's Marketing Global Justice: The Political Economy of International Criminal Law (Cambridge UP, 2021) is a critical study of efforts to 'sell' global justice. The book offers a new reading of the rise of international criminal law as the dominant institutional expression of global justice, linking it to the rise of branding. The political economy analysis employed highlights that a global elite benefit from marketised global justice whilst those who tend to be the 'faces' of global injustice - particularly victims of conflict - are instrumentalised and ultimately commodified. The book is an invitation to critically consider the predominance of market values in global justice, suggesting an 'occupying' of global justice as an avenue for drawing out social values.Margot Tudor is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Exeter, based in the Politics department. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs