New Books in Diplomatic History

Salvaging Empire: Sovereignty, Natural Resources, and Environmental Science in the South Atlantic (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Dr. James J. A. Blair probes the historical roots and current predicaments of a twenty-first century settler colony seeking to control an uncertain future through resource management and environmental science.Four decades after a violent 1982 war between the United Kingdom and Argentina reestablished British authority over the Falkland Islands (Las Malvinas in Spanish), a commercial fishing boom and offshore oil discoveries have intensified the sovereignty dispute over the South Atlantic archipelago. Scholarly literature on the South Atlantic focuses primarily on military history of the 1982 conflict. However, contested claims over natural resources have now made this disputed territory a critical site for examining the wider relationship between imperial sovereignty and environmental governance.Dr. Blair argues that by claiming self-determination and consenting to British sovereignty, the Falkland Islanders have crafted a settler colonial protectorate to extract resources and extend empire in the South Atlantic. Responding to current debates in environmental anthropology, critical geography, Atlantic history, political ecology, and science and technology studies, Dr. Blair describes how settlers have asserted indigeneity in dynamic relation with the environment. Salvaging Empire uncovers the South Atlantic's outsized importance for understanding the broader implications of resource management and environmental science for the geopolitics of empire.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The idea of “hybrid sovereignty” describes overlapping relations between public and private actors in important areas of global power, such as contractors fighting international wars, corporations regulating global markets, or governments collaborating with nongovernmental entities to influence foreign elections. Hybrid Sovereignty in World Politics (Cambridge UP, 2022) shows that these connections – sometimes hidden and often poorly understood – underpin the global order, in which power flows without regard to public and private boundaries. Drawing on extensive original archival research, Swati Srivastava reveals the little-known stories of how this hybrid power operated at some of the most important turning points in world history: spreading the British empire, founding the United States, establishing free trade, realizing transnational human rights, and conducting twenty-first century wars. In order to sustain meaningful dialogues about the future of global power and political authority, it is crucial that we begin to understand how hybrid sovereignty emerged and continues to shape international relations.Swati Srivastava is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University. Her research focuses on private actors in global governance including tech companies, contractors, lobbyists, and international NGOs. She is the author of articles in International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, and other outlets. She directs the International Politics and Responsible Tech (iPART) research lab with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and is currently a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Empires​ are supposed to be a thing of the past but very big countries with global reach are becoming more entrenched. By 2050, almost 40 per cent of the world’s population will live in just four polities: India, China, the US and the EU. So, in what respects are these entities imperial and is there a future for small states? Listen to Owen Bennett-Jones in conversation with Alasdair Roberts, author of Superstates: Empires of the 21st Century (Polity Press, 2023). Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2014, Sweden announced the world’s first “feminist foreign policy,” an approach more than two dozen other nations have since adopted. But different national approaches and a range of theoretical frameworks complicate definitions of what feminist foreign policy should or could be. With Feminist Foreign Policy in Theory and in Practice: An Introduction (Routledge 2023), Stephenie Foster and Susan Markham offer an accessible overview of the main tenets of a feminist foreign policy, and how such policies have evolved in practice since 2014. With decades of experience working on gender equality issues, both in and out of government, Markham and Foster build on their own professional backgrounds to examine what feminist foreign policy roadmap might look like in the United States context, drawing on definitions from governments, civil society organizations, feminist activists, and academics. As feminist foreign policy continues to spread on the global stage, “Feminist Foreign Policy in Theory and in Practice” is a useful primer for practitioners and scholars seeking to understand the origins and the future of this agenda.Rebecca Turkington is a PhD Candidate in History at Cambridge University studying transnational women’s networks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

England and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages: Papal Privileges in European Perspective, c. 680-1073 (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Benjamin Savill provides the first dedicated, book-length study of interactions between England and the papacy throughout the early middle ages. It takes as its lens the extant English record of papal privileges: legal diplomas drawn-up on metres-long scrolls of Egyptian papyrus, acquired by pilgrim-petitioners within the city of Rome, and then brought back to Britain to negotiate local claims and conflicts.How, why, and when did English petitioners choose to invoke the distant authority of Rome in this way, and how did this compare to what was taking place elsewhere in Europe? How successful were these efforts, and how were they remembered in later centuries?By using these still-understudied papal documents to reassess what we know of the worlds of Bede, the Mercian Supremacy, the West Saxon 'Kingdom of the English', and the Norman Conquest—locating them in the process within a comparative, Europe-wide setting—this book offers important new contributions to Anglo-Saxon studies, legal and documentary history, papal history, and the study of early medieval Europe more widely.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How should we understand the emergence of the Global South as a political actor? What is the role of India within this framework? Which challenges and tensions arise from China’s assertiveness in Asia, and how is it reshaping regional dynamics? How is the Indo-Pacific region emerging as a new geopolitical structure with the potential to redefine regional alliances and relationships?Ravinder Kaur is joined by leading foreign policy expert on India, Raja Mohan to discuss these questions. Drawing on decades of experience, Mohan lays out India’s relationship with the Global South as an increasingly consequential political actor, examining the factors that have pushed this concept to the forefront of today’s geopolitical stage. Professor Mohan provides valuable insights into the contrasting nature of Asia's political terrain compared to Europe’s, underscoring the pivotal role played by mini-lateralism – an intricate network of overlapping alliances and cooperative endeavors between nations. Tune in to the newest episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast to learn more…Professor Raja Mohan is a renowned commentator on world affairs and a distinguished policy fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Mumbai. As a leading analyst of India’s foreign policy, Mohan is also an expert on South Asian security, great-power relations in Asia, and arms control. He is the foreign affairs columnist for the Indian Express, and a visiting research professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.Our host, Ravinder Kaur is an associate professor of Modern India and South Asian Studies at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. Kaur works across the disciplines of history, anthropology, and international politics. Her long-term research has focused on two critical transformations in the history of modern India. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The conventional story of Hong Kong celebrates the people who fled the mainland in the wake of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. In this telling, migrants thrived under British colonial rule, transforming Hong Kong into a cosmopolitan city and an industrial and financial hub. Unsettling Exiles: Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong and the Southern Periphery During the Cold War (Columbia UP, 2023) recasts identity formation in Hong Kong, demonstrating that the complexities of crossing borders shaped the city’s uneasy place in the Sinophone world.Angelina Y. Chin foregrounds the experiences of the many people who passed through Hong Kong without settling down or finding a sense of belonging, including refugees, deportees, “undesirable” residents, and members of sea communities. She emphasizes that flows of people did not stop at Hong Kong’s borders but also bled into neighboring territories such as Taiwan and Macau. Chin develops the concept of the “Southern Periphery”—the region along the southern frontier of the PRC, outside its administrative control yet closely tied to its political space. Both the PRC and governments in the Southern Periphery implemented strict migration and deportation policies in pursuit of border control, with profound consequences for people in transit. Chin argues that Hong Kong identity emerged from the collective trauma of exile and dislocation, as well as a sense of being on the margins of both the Communist and Nationalist Chinese regimes during the Cold War. Drawing on wide-ranging research, Unsettling Exiles sheds new light on Hong Kong’s ambivalent relationship to the mainland, its role in the global Cold War, and the origins of today’s political currents.Angelina Y. Chin is associate professor of history at Pomona College. She is the author of Bound to Emancipate: Working Women and Urban Citizenship in Early Twentieth-Century China and Hong Kong (2012).Li-Ping Chen is a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Perhaps no other single day in US history was as threatening to the survival of the nation as August 24, 1814, when British forces captured Washington, DC. This unique moment might have significantly altered the nation’s path forward, but the event and the reasons why it happened are little remembered by most Americans. Robert P. Watson's book When Washington Burned: The British Invasion of the Capital and a Nation's Rise from the Ashes (Georgetown UP, 2023) narrates and examines the British campaign and American missteps that led to the fall of Washington during the War of 1812. Watson analyzes the actions of key figures on both sides, such as President James Madison and General William Winder on the US side and Rear Admiral George Cockburn and Major General Robert Ross on the British side. He pinpoints the reasons the campaign was such a disaster for the United States but also tells the redeeming stories of the courageous young clerks and the bold first lady, Dolley Madison, who risked their lives to save priceless artifacts and documents from the flames, including the Constitution. The British invasion was repulsed over the coming weeks and months, and the United States ultimately emerged stronger. General readers interested in the history of Washington, US history, and military history will be fascinated by this book.AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviewed Richard Gowan, UN director of the International Crisis Group. Gowan discusses the different views of the UN on the occasion of the annual meeting of the General Assembly. The absence of a number of key figures was widely noted, but most major world leaders, such as Biden, Scholz, and Lula did attend. Gowan also commented on the power dissemination taking place in global governance, as other organizations such as the G20, G7 and BRICS are gaining importance. Finally, Gowan recognized the challenges that the UN General Assembly has in terms of securing the sovereignty of countries, but also acknowledges the role of other actors in hindering conflict.International Horizons is a podcast of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly expertise to bear on our understanding of international issues. John Torpey, the host of the podcast and director of the Ralph Bunche Institute, holds conversations with prominent scholars and figures in state-of-the-art international issues in our weekly episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Moscow's Heavy Shadow: The Violent Collapse of the USSR (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Dr. Isaac Mckean Scarborough tells the story of the collapse of the USSR from the perspective of the many millions of Soviet citizens who experienced it as a period of abjection and violence. Mikhail Gorbachev and the leaders of the USSR saw the years of reform preceding the collapse as opportunities for rebuilding (perestroika), rejuvenation, and openness (glasnost). For those in provincial cities across the Soviet Union, however, these reforms led to rapid change, economic collapse, and violence.Focusing on Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Dr. McKean Scarborough describes how this city experienced skyrocketing unemployment, a depleted budget, and streets filled with angry young men unable to support their families. Tajikistan was left without financial or military resources, unable and unprepared to stand against the wave of populist politicians of all stripes who took advantage of the economic collapse and social discontent to try to gain power. By May 1992, political conflict became violent and bloody and engulfed the whole of Tajikistan in war. Moscow's Heavy Shadow tells the story of how this war came to be, and how it was grounded in the reform and collapse of the Soviet economy that came before.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices