New Books in Diplomatic History

During the years of the Early Republic, prominent Native leaders regularly traveled to American cities--Albany, Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia, Montreal, Quebec, New York, and New Orleans--primarily on diplomatic or trade business, but also from curiosity and adventurousness. They were frequently referred to as "the Chiefs now in this city" during their visits, which were sometimes for extended periods of time. Indian people spent a lot of time in town. Colin Calloway, National Book Award finalist and one of the foremost chroniclers of Native American history, has gathered together the accounts of these visits and from them created a new narrative of the country's formative years, redefining what has been understood as the "frontier."Calloway's The Chiefs Now in This City: Indians and the Urban Frontier in Early America (Oxford UP, 2021) captures what Native peoples observed as they walked the streets, sat in pews, attended plays, drank in taverns, and slept in hotels and lodging houses. In the Eastern cities they experienced an urban frontier, one in which the Indigenous world met the Atlantic world. Calloway's book reveals not just what Indians saw but how they were seen. Crowds gathered to see them, sometimes to gawk; people attended the theatre to watch “the Chiefs now in this city” watch a play.Their experience enriches and redefines standard narratives of contact between the First Americans and inhabitants of the American Republic, reminding us that Indian people dealt with non-Indians in multiple ways and in multiple places. The story of the country's beginnings was not only one of violent confrontation and betrayal, but one in which the nation's identity was being forged by interaction between and among cultures and traditions.Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can we theorize international relations by looking at how nose sizes are depicted in Asian art and literature? Why are Vietnamese immigration officials furious about the maps that appear in Chinese passports? What do Japanese gardens tell us about how nation-states are constructed and defined? And how we could re-imagine border walls as sites of creative destruction, illuminating the sublime?Anyone who knows the work of William Callahan professor of international relations at the London School of Economics), will be familiar with his playful juxtapositions and his relentless determination to break down simplistic categories. In this animated conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo, Bill explains how his latest book Sensible Politics expands the idea of visual politics to embrace a wider range of artifacts, while also challenging what he views as the Eurocentrism of the larger “visual turn” in IR.Bill also discusses the making of his own films including the recent Great Walls (2020) and the extremely popular Mearsheimer vs. Nye on the Rise of China (2015)This podcast is one of a series recorded with the keynote speakers from the Fourteen Annual Nordic NIAS Council Conference ‘China’s Rise/Asia’s Responses’ (https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/chinas-riseasias-responses) held on 10-11 June 2021 in collaboration with the Nordic Association for China Studies and the University of Helsinki.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University.We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcastAbout NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent times, US-Russia relations have deteriorated to what both sides acknowledge is an “all time low.” Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and Putin’s continued support for the Assad regime in Syria have placed enormous strain on this historically tense and complex relationship. In Russia and America: The Asymmetric Rivalry (Polity, 2019), Andrei Tsygankov challenges the dominant view that US-Russia relations have entered a new Cold War phase. Russia’s US strategy, he argues, can only be understood in the context of a changing international order. While America strives to preserve its global dominance, Russia—the weaker power—exploits its asymmetric capabilities and relations with non-Western allies to defend and promote its interests, and to avoid yielding to US pressures. Focusing on key areas of conflict and mutual convergence—from European security to China and the Middle East, as well as cyber, nuclear, and energy issues—Tsygankov paints a nuanced and unsentimental picture of two countries whose ties are likely to remain marked by suspicion and conflict for years to come. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

States face choices when people forced to leave their states due to persecution or violence seek refuge. They may assert their sovereignty by either granting or denying entry or they may delegate refugee protection to an international organization. Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford UP, 2021) asks “why do states sometimes assert their sovereignty vis-aá-vis refugee rights and at other times seemingly cede it? Dr. Abdelaaty develops a two-part theoretical framework in which policymakers in refugee-receiving countries weigh international and domestic concerts. At the international level, policymakers consider relations with the refugee-sending country. At the domestic level policymakers consider political competition among ethnic groups. When these international and domestic incentives conflict, shifting responsibility to the UN allows policymakers to placate both refugee-sending countries and domestic constituencies. In short, foreign policy and ethnic identity shapes states’ reactions to refugees.Dr. Lamis Abdelaaty is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, and Senior Research Associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. Her interests include international relations, human rights and humanitarianism, and asylum and migration. In forthcoming research for the International Journal of Human Rights, she provides a statistical analysis on the relationship between government respect for human rights and treatment of refugees. Daniella Campos assisted with this podcast.Susan Liebell is an associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Why Diehard Originalists Aren’t Really Originalists appeared in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage and “Sensitive Places: Originalism, Gender, and the Myth Self-Defense in District of Columbia v. Heller” can be found in July 2021’s Polity. Email her comments at sliebell@sju.edu or tweet to @SusanLiebell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bringing strategy, foreign policy, domestic and imperial politics together, this book challenges the conventional understanding as to why the British Empire, at perhaps the height of its power, lost control of its American colonies. Critiquing the traditional emphasis on the value of alliance during the Seven Years' War, and the consequences of British isolation during the War of American Independence, Professor of History Emeritus Jeremy Black, the most prolific historian writing in the Anglophone world to-day, shows that this rests on a misleading understanding of the relationship between policy and strategy.Encompassing both the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence and grounded in archival research, this book considers a violent and contentious period which was crucial to the making of Second British Empire and its role in the wider world. Offering a reinterpretation of British strategy and foreign policy throughout the period, To Lose an Empire: British Strategy and Foreign Policy, 1758-90 (Bloomsbury, 2021) interweaves British domestic policy with diplomatic and colonial developments to show the impact this period and its events had on British strategy and foreign policy for years to come.Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The UNESCO World Heritage Convention is one of the most widely ratified international treaties, and a place on the World Heritage List is a widely coveted mark of distinction. Building on ethnographic fieldwork at Committee sessions, interviews and documentary study, Christoph Brumann's book The Best We Share: Nation, Culture and World-Making in the UNESCO World Heritage Arena (Berghahn, 2021) links the change in operations of the World Heritage Committee with structural nation-centeredness, vulnerable procedures for evaluation, monitoring and decision-making, and loose heritage conceptions that have been inconsistently applied. Through richly textured ethnography that goes into the inner workings of one of the most powerful international organisations, The Best We Share is one of the most ambitious studies of the World Heritage arena and a crucial reading for anthropologists and scholars interested in the notion of ‘world-making’ and workings behind global governance. Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist specializing in Chinese society and history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new and incisive account of how Mussolini pioneered policies which we would not label ‘populism’ in reaction to Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 —and thereby reinforced his role as a model for later authoritarian leadersOn the tenth anniversary of his rise to power in 1932, Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) seemed to many the “good dictator.” He was the first totalitarian and the first fascist in modern Europe. But a year later Hitler’s entrance onto the political stage signaled a German takeover of the fascist ideology.In this definitive account, eminent historian, Professor of History R.J.B. Bosworth charts Mussolini’s leadership in reaction to Hitler. Professor Bosworth shows how Italy’s decline in ideological pre-eminence, as well as in military and diplomatic power, led Mussolini to pursue a more populist approach: angry and bellicose words at home, violent aggression abroad, and a more extreme emphasis on charisma. In his embittered efforts to bolster an increasingly hollow and ruthless regime, it was Mussolini, rather than Hitler, who offered the model for all subsequent authoritarians. In short, Mussolini and the Eclipse of Italian Fascism: From Dictatorship to Populism (Yale University Press), is a must read for any scholar or lay educated reader interested in Mussolini and his regime.R.J.B. Bosworth is Emeritus Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. He is a leading authority on Mussolini & 20th century Italian history and is the author of more than two dozen books on fascism and Italy’s twentieth-century experience. He lives in Oxford, UK.Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Western media accounts often suggest that China is rising inexorably as a global economic and political powerhouse. A new book by Luke Patey offers a more nuanced picture, focusing on the growing backlash against Chinese aspirations. Author Luke Patey, a senior researcher from the Danish Institute for International Studies, discusses his new book How China Loses: The Pushback against Chinese Global Ambitions (Oxford University Press, 2021) with Andreas Bøje Forsby from NIAS. Their conversation covers a wide range of topical issues in the current debate about the rise of China, including China’s economic coercion, the dependency myth and specific manifestations of pushback against China.How China Loses is a critical look at how the world is responding to China's rise, and what this means for America and the world. China is advancing its own interests with increasing aggression. From its Belt and Road Initiative linking Asia and Europe, to its "Made in China 2025" strategy to dominate high-tech industries, to its significant economic reach into Africa and Latin America, the regime is rapidly expanding its influence around the globe. Many fear that China's economic clout, tech innovations, and military power will allow it to remake the world in its own authoritarian image. But despite all these strengths, a future with China in charge is far from certain. Rich and poor, big and small, countries around the world are recognizing that engaging China produces new strategic vulnerabilities to their independence and competitiveness.How China Loses tells the story of China's struggles to overcome new risks and endure the global backlash against its assertive reach. Combining on-the-ground reportage with incisive analysis, Luke Patey argues that China's predatory economic agenda, headstrong diplomacy, and military expansion undermine its global ambitions to dominate the global economy and world affairs. In travels to Africa, Latin America, East Asia and Europe, his encounters with activists, business managers, diplomats, and thinkers reveal the challenges threatening to ground China's rising power.At a time when views are fixated on the strategic competition between China and the United States, Patey's work shows how the rest of the world will shape the twenty-first century in pushing back against China's overreach and domineering behavior. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries began to confront their political differences and economic and security challenges with China and realize the diversity and possibility for cooperation in the world today.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University.We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dkTranscripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Being arguably each side’s most enduring international bond, the China-Korea relationship has long been of great practical and symbolic importance to both. Moreover, as Odd Arne Westad observes in his new book, this has in many ways also been a paradigmatic kind of tie between a large ‘empire’ and smaller (though by no means small) ‘nation’, and thus has much to teach us about past and present international relationships in East Asia and beyond.Westad’s Empire and Righteous Nation: 600 Years of China-Korea Relations (Harvard UP, 2021) is both a highly readable survey of a special dynamic between polities and cultures, and an argument for the important continuities and trends running throughout six centuries of tumultuous Ming, Choson, Qing, Japanese, Soviet, American, Republican, Nationalist and Communist history. As this book convincingly shows, in all its mutual admiration, suspicion, hierarchy and compromise, this has been a deeply revealing relationship and one which – as scholars in both countries would themselves agree – it would benefit today’s world to understand in greater historical context.Ed Pulford is a Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A clear-eyed look at modern India's role in Asia and the broader world. One of India's most distinguished foreign policy thinkers addresses the many questions facing India as it seeks to find its way in the increasingly complex world of Asian geopolitics. A former Indian foreign secretary and national security adviser, Shivshankar Menon traces India's approach to the shifting regional landscape since its independence in 1947. From its leading role in the "nonaligned" movement during the cold war to its current status as a perceived counterweight to China, India often has been an after-thought for global leaders--until they realize how much they needed it. In India and Asian Geopolitics (Brookings, 2021), Menon focuses in particular on India's responses to the rise of China, as well as other regional powers. Menon also looks to the future and analyzes how India's policies are likely to evolve in response to current and new challenges. As India grows economically and gains new stature across the globe, both its domestic preoccupations and international choices become more significant. India itself will become more affected by what happens in the world around it. Menon makes a powerful geopolitical case for an India increasingly and positively engaged in Asia and the broader world in pursuit of a pluralistic, open, and inclusive world order.Medha Prasanna is an MA candidate at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. Her current research focuses on International Organizations and Human Rights Law. You can learn more about her here or email her medp16@gwu.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices