New Books in Diplomatic History

Modernization dominates development’s historiography. Historians characterize moments in development’s history–from the Tennessee Valley Authority to US-led “nation-building”in the Third World–as high-modernist attempts to industrialize, urbanize, bureaucratize, and centralize. Indeed, modernization and development have almost come to be synonymous in our historical imaginations. Daniel Immerwahr’s Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development (Harvard University Press, 2015) shows that this is not the whole story.Immerwahr, an assistant professor of history at Northwestern University, writes communitarianism back into the history of development. He traces a troubling history of how social scientists, policymakers, and civil servants were enamored of ideas of community development and how they tested these ideas in Indian villages, counterinsurgency campaigns in Southeast Asia, and the US war on poverty. Daniel makes important arguments about the mid-century ambivalence towards modernity, the global dimensions of domestic policy formation and the problematic appeal of community. Taking this story to the present, Daniel shows the limits of contemporary localist approaches to global inequality and makes his own profound and persuasive policy prescriptions. This fascinating book should be of interest to intellectual historians, diplomatic historians, historians of the global south, as well as development workers and anyone else engaged in debates about global poverty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Russia’s Securitization of Chechnya: How War Became Acceptable (Routledge, 2017), a study of the transformations of the image of Chechnya in the Russian public sphere, Julie Wilhelmsen performs a post-structuralist revision of the Copenhagen schools concept of securitization a process by which state actors transform subjects into matters of... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Victor Taki’s Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empire (I.B. Taurus, 2016) invites the reader to explore the captivating story of the relationship of the Russian and Ottoman Empires in the 19th century, and highlights the role the Oriental world played in the shaping of Russian national idea... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Was the War for American Independence really about American independence? It depends on who you ask.In his new book, Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It (Knopf, 2016), Larrie Ferreiro draws on decades of new research in archives and on battlefields across the US and Europe to detail the smuggling, espionage, gun running, and politicking that wrested the United States from British control. A revision of the national myth that the American colonies rose up and threw off imperial oversight solely by the unity found in the strength of their convictions, this globalist return to the 1760s and 70s weaves together military, economic, diplomatic, and social history with fascinating stories of the European soldiers, sailors, merchants, and ministers who conspired and collaborated to give the north American colonies a fighting chance. In Brothers at Arms, and in this interview, Dr. Ferreiro advances the argument that for the governments of France and Spain, defeating the British in the American colonies was as much about achieving their own interests in the sphere of European power as it was about heeding the call to advance the ideals of liberty and justice across the Atlantic, and that the relationships that developed between France, Spain, and the new United States did more to shape American institutions and ways of life that we often acknowledge.Carl Nellis is an academic editor and writing instructor working north of Boston, where he researches contemporary American community formation around appropriations of medieval European culture. You can learn more about Carls work at carlnellis.wordpress.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since World War II, the United States has repeatedly posited itself as a defender of democracy, using its military might to promote freedom abroad even as it ascended to the status of the world’s only superpower. The answer to almost every international problem, it seems, has been American military intervention which is always pitched as a disinterested attempt to deal with a crisis. For decades, the world has believed that US foreign policy means well and that Americas motives in spreading democracy are honorable, even noble. According to William Blum’s America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy – the Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else (Zed Books, 2013), nothing could be further from the truth. Discussing his latest book with New Books Network, Blum explains what makes the US the most destructive nation in history and how the exceptionalist goal of spreading democracy is only a cover for a less benign agenda.William Blum is one of the United States leading non-mainstream chroniclers of American foreign policy and author of the popular online newsletter, The Anti-Empire Report, a historian and U.S. foreign policy critic. Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, and other books.Jasun Horsley is the author of Seen & Not Seen: Confessions of a Movie Autist and several other books on extra-consensual perceptions. He has a weekly podcast called The Liminalist: The Podcast Between and a blog. For more info, go to http://auticulture.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In book his new book The Democracy Promotion Paradox (Brookings Institution Press, 2015), Lincoln A. Mitchell (Political Correspondent for the New York Observer) raises difficult but critically important issues by probing the numerous inconsistencies and paradoxes that lie at the heart of the theory and practice of democracy promotion. For example, the United States frequently crafts policies to promote democracy that rely on cooperation with undemocratic governments; democracy promoters view their work as minor yet also of critical importance to the United States and the countries where they work; and many who work in the field of democracy promotion have an incomplete understanding of democracy. Similarly, in the domestic political context, both left and right critiques of democracy promotion are internally inconsistent.Mitchell also provides readers with an overview of the origins of U.S. democracy promotion, analyzes its development and evolution over the last decades, and discusses how it came to be an unquestioned assumption at the core of U.S. foreign policy. His discussion of the bureaucratic logic that underlies democracy promotion offers important insights into how it can be adapted to remain effective. Mitchell also examines the future of democracy promotion in the context of evolving U.S. domestic policy and politics and in a changed global environment in which the United States is no longer the hegemon. With easy-to-follow and engaging prose, The Democracy Promotion Paradox is well suited for general readers interested in U.S. foreign policy; it would also work well in upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What makes a person? What makes an act heroic? And what determines a person’s fate? These are the questions driving the narrative in Ingrid Carlberg‘s new book, Raoul Wallenberg: The Biography (MacLehose Press, 2016). A diplomatic envoy in Hungary, Wallenberg has been lauded throughout the world for his efforts to save Jews living during World War II. But, his fate following his arrest in 1945 remains unknown and, as a result, his story has no clear end. In her excellent biography, Carlberg excavates the details of Wallenberg’s end, but she also digs deeply into the story of his life- shedding light upon a time that is often eclipsed by all that came after. It’s a time which is essential to any understanding of the man Wallenberg was,the course he pursued, and the hero he’s remembered as.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since its coinage in mid-19th century Germany, Realpolitik has proven both elusive and protean. To some, it represents the best approach to meaningful change and political stability in a world buffeted by uncertainty and rapid transformation. To others, it encapsulates an attitude of cynicism and cold calculation, a transparent and self-justifying policy exercised by dominant nations over weaker. Remolded across generations and repurposed to its political and ideological moment, Realpolitik remains a touchstone for discussion about statecraft and diplomacy. It is a freighted concept.The historian John Bew (King’s College London) explores the genesis of Realpolitik in his new book Realpolitik: A History (Oxford University Press, 2015). Besides tracing its longstanding and enduring relevance in political and foreign policy debates, Bew uncovers the context that gave birth to Realpolitik–that of the fervor of radical change in 1848 in Europe. He also explains its application in the conduct of foreign policy from the days of Bismarck onward. Bew is especially adept at illuminating its translation from German into English, one that reveals the uniquely Anglo-American version of realpolitik-small “r” being practiced today–a modern iteration that attempts to reconcile idealism with the pursuit of national interests.Lively, encyclopedic, and utterly original, Realpolitik illuminates the life and times of a term that has shaped and will continue to shape international relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Goebel‘s Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (Cambridge University Press, 2015) thinks globally while focusing on the local, everyday histories of non-Europeans in Paris in the 1920s and 30s. Examining the myriad ways that Paris functioned as a hatchery or clearinghouse for the development of anti-imperial ideas and movements, the book argues that the social history of migration is central to any understanding of the political and intellectual histories of nationalism, from the interwar years through the period of decolonizations that followed the Second World War.Anti-Imperial Metropolis traces the experiences and statuses of different categories of non-Europeans in the city, groups identified variously as French citizens, colonial subjects, and foreigners. Interested in how non-European students, workers, and activists from various parts of the globe met and interacted in Paris, the book details how politicization happened when it did, and how differences between communities revealed crucial inconsistencies and contradictions in the ideological underpinnings and workings of imperialism itself. Moving from the private worlds of non-Europeans as they lived day-to-day in the city, to the work of mutual aid associations, to the impact these communities and their exchanges could have on international diplomacy, the book reveals much about the imbrication of culture and politics. Drawing on a wealth of archival material from several countries, Anti-Imperial Metropolis offers readers new perspective on Paris’ interwar past while making a significant contribution to the transnational history of empires and their undoings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On November 11, 2015, leaders and citizens of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy–Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora–will gather in the small lakeside city of Canandaigua, New York to commemorate the 221st anniversary of a monumental treaty.Negotiated between the Confederacy and representatives of new federal government in the autumn of 1794, the Treaty of Canandaigua recognized the sovereign status of the Six Nations as separate polities with the right to the “free use and enjoyment” of their lands. While state and private actors would soon violate the accord, seizing ever more Haudenosaunee territory, the Canandaigua Treaty remains a binding expression of “peace and friendship” between the the Confederacy (commonly known as the Iroquois) and the United States.Michael L. Oberg tells this remarkable story of intercultural diplomacy in Peacemakers: The Iroquois, the United States, and the Treaty of Canandaigua, 1794 (Oxford University Press, 2015). Distinguished Professor of History at SUNY-Geneseo, Oberg narrates the twists and turns of war, dispossession, and resilience that brought sixteen hundred Haudenosaunee delegates, including Red Jacket, Cornplanter, and Handsome Lake, to a council with Colonel Timothy Pickering, an official representative of President George Washington.“Brother, we the Sachems of the Six Nations will now tell our minds,” Red Jacket declared in 1794. “The business of this treaty is to brighten the Chain of Friendship between us and the fifteen fires.” The Haudenosaunee continue that effort today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices