New Books in Diplomatic History

War in Europe: 1450 to the Present (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) is a masterful overview of war and military development in Europe since 1450, bringing together the work of a renowned historian of modern European and military history in a single authoritative volume. Beginning with the impact of the Reformation and continuing up to the present day, Professor Emeritus at Exeter University, Jeremy Black discusses the following key theme in this truly splendid book:long-term military developments, notably in the way war is waged and battle conducted; the relationship between war and transformations in the European international system; the linkage between military requirements and state developments, the consequences of these requirements, and of the experience of war, for the nature of societyAdopting a clear chronological approach, Professor Black weaves a rich and detailed narrative of the development of war in relation to transformations in the European international system, demonstrating the links between its causes and consequences in the military, political and social spheres. Assimilating decades of important research as well as bringing new perspectives to the topic, War in Europe is a key text for students taking courses in European history, international relations and war studies and the lay educated public interested in early-modern and modern European history and military history.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 recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What brought about an end to the Cold War has long been a subject of speculation and mythology. One prominent argument is that the United States simply bankrupted the Soviet Union, outspending the Soviets on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or "Star Wars"). Renowned Soviet and Russian scholar, Professor Archie Brown in his latest work rejects any simple answers.In The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War (Oxford UP, 2020), Brown focuses on the human element, and in particular on the main figures involved--Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher. His book looks at them both as individuals and as engaged in a dynamic that between 1985, when Gorbachev came to power and 1989, when Reagan left office, brought about not only an easing of East-West tensions but a great deal more. Brown cogently argues that the Cold War ended at an ideological level with Mikhail Gorbachev's speech at the United Nations in December 1988, when he announced that the people of every country had the right to choose their own government. The Cold War ended on the ground when the peoples of Eastern Europe took Gorbachev at his word in 1989 and Soviet troops were ordered to stay in their barracks.The standard narrative of the end of the Cold War--that it was won by the threat of American military power and spending--has underpinned support for the use of force in the Middle East (including the invasion of Iraq in 2003), the expansion of NATO, and advocacy of a hard line toward contemporary Russia. On the other side of the divide, the view that the United States set out to break up the Soviet Union and undermine Russia is widely accepted in Russia today and has led to a hardening of both domestic and foreign policy. Subversive of both of these narratives, Professor Brown's book will is set to become the standard work dealing with this highly important topic.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 recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the summer of 1960, the Republic of the Congo won its independence from Belgium. Only one week later, however, Belgium had already dispatched paratroopers into the country and the Congolese government was appealing to the United Nations to intervene and protect Congolese sovereignty. The ensuing crisis, as Alanna O’Malley writes in her deeply researched and important book, The Diplomacy of Decolonisation: America, Britain, and the United Nations during the Congo Crisis, 1960-1964 (Manchester University Press, 2020) “catapulted the Congo into the international consciousness.”The Diplomacy of Decolonisation examines the global contours of the Congo crisis, which fragmented the newly independent Republic of the Congo and rocked the international order in the early 1960s. It even led the United Nations, for the first time ever, to dispatch peacekeepers to protect the sovereignty of one of its member states against secessionists. O’Malley guides readers through this complicated story. She charts the sprawling geography of the crisis, pulling readers through foreign capitals, the United Nations, and the Congo itself. And she shows how the crisis transformed the Cold War and the politics of decolonization.Dexter Fergie is a PhD student of US and global history at Northwestern University. He is currently researching the 20th century geopolitical history of information and communications networks. He can be reached by email at dexter.fergie@u.northwestern.edu or on Twitter @DexterFergie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This fascinating book by Richard Carswell looks at how the fall of France in the Second World War has been recorded by historians and remembered within French society. The Fall of France in the Second World War: History and Memory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) argues that explanations of the 'debacle' have usually revolved around the four main themes of decadence, failure, constraint and contingency. It shows that the dominant explanation claimed for many years that the fall was the inevitable consequence of a society grown rotten in the inter-war period. This view has been largely replaced among academic historians by a sizable consensus that distinguishes between the military defeat and the political demise of the Third Republic. It emphasizes the various contingent factors that led to the military defeat of French forces by the Germans. At the same time seeks to understand the constraints within which France’s policy-makers were required to act and the reasons for their policy-making failures in economics, defence and diplomacy. This book makes for most interesting reading for both the academic world and for the lay-educated reader and university student.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 recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The history of the Cold War is littered with what-ifs, and in Diplomacy Shot Down: The U-2 Crisis and Eisenhower's Aborted Mission to Moscow, 1959–1960 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020), Professor of History, E. Bruce Geelhoed of Ball State University explores one of the most intriguing: What if the Soviets had not shot down the American U-2 spy plane and President Dwight D. Eisenhower had visited the Soviet Union in 1960 as planned?In August 1959, with his second term nearing its end, Eisenhower made the surprise announcement that he and Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev would visit each other’s countries as a means of “thawing some of the ice” of the Cold War. Khrushchev’s trip to the United States in September 1959 resulted in plans for a four-power summit involving Great Britain and France, and for Eisenhower’s visit to Russia in early summer 1960. Then, in May 1960, the Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 surveillance plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers.The downing of Powers’s plane was, in Professor Geelhoed’s unorthodox recounting of this episode in Cold War history, not just a diplomatic crisis. The ensuing collapse of the summit and the subsequent cancelation of Eisenhower’s trip to the Soviet Union amounted to a critical missed opportunity for improved US-Soviet relations at a crucial juncture in the Cold War.In a blow-by-blow description of the diplomatic overtures, the U-2 incident, and the aftermath, Diplomacy Shot Down draws upon Eisenhower’s projected itinerary and unmade speeches and statements, as well as the American and international press corps’ preparations for covering the aborted visit, to give readers a sense of what might have been. Eisenhower’s prestige within the Soviet Union was so great, Geelhoed imaginatively observes, that the trip, if it had happened, could well have led to a détente in the increasingly dangerous US-Soviet relationship.Instead, the cancellation of Ike’s visit led to a heightening of tensions that played out around the globe and nearly guaranteed that the “missile gap” would reemerge as an issue in the 1960 presidential campaign. A detailed account, based almost entirely on American sources of an episode that some would say helped to define the Cold War for a generation, Diplomacy Shot Down is, in its narrative, something rarer still—a behind-the-scenes look at history in the unmaking.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, and the University of Rouen’s online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lauren Turek is an Assistant Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She earned her doctorate from the University of Virginia in 2015 and holds a degree in Museum Studies from New York University. A specialist in U.S. diplomatic history and American religious history, Dr. Turek’s first book, titled To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Relations (Cornell University Press, 2020), examines the growth and influence of Christian foreign policy lobbying groups in the United States beginning in the 1970s.Turek specifically assesses the effectiveness of Christian efforts to attain foreign aid for favored regimes and to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions on those nations that persecuted Christians and stifled evangelism. To Bring the Good News to All Nations offers a fascinating look into the politicization of the Christian Right, expanding our understanding from evangelical concerns over domestic concerns (like abortion and gay rights) to events around the globe.Chris Babits is an Andrew W. Mellon Engaged Scholar Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He researches the intersecting histories of medicine, religion, and gender and sexuality and is currently working on his book about the history of conversion therapy in the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earlier this year the world marked the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide. An occasion for mourning and reflection also offered a chance to reflect on the state of research about the genocide.Among the many books that were published in the past year, Joyce E. Leader's new book From Hope to Horror: Diplomacy and the Making of the Rwanda Genocide (Potomac Books, 2020) stands out. Leader was the Deputy Chief of Mission in Rwanda from 1991 through April 1994. As such, she was ideally positioned to witness Rwanda's slide into catastrophe. The book is an unusual combination of memoir, reflection and lessons learned. Leader offers a nuanced interpretation of the causes of the violence, one that supplements other secondary research. She also reflects on how we can apply the lessons of Rwanda to future conflicts.But most interesting are her own reflections on her experiences. Leader paints vivid pictures of what it was like to live in Rwanda before and at the very beginning of the genocide. And she is unusually honest and self-reflective about ways in which foreign diplomats could have acted differently. It's an important and valuable book.Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He’s the author of four modules in the Reacting to the Past series, including The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994, published by W. W. Norton Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The balance of power in nineteenth-century Europe was anchored on one end by the redoubtable Queen Victoria (1819 -1901), the doyenne of sovereigns, and at the opposite end by the autocratic Romanov dynasty — four successive emperors who ruled Russia during Victoria's own 63-year reign. Between these great powers lay the rising military power of Prussia, which concerned both Britain and Russia, and a decaying Ottoman Empire from which both hoped to benefit, as well as shipping routes vital to both countries' commercial and military interests. These and numerous other concerns made the relationship tense at the best of times. But Victoria's large family was also entangled with the Romanovs through the complicated web of royal and dynastic marriages that linked the ruling houses of Europe.These political and personal ties are the subject of royal biographer, Coryne Hall's new book, Queen Victoria and the Romanovs: 60 Years of Mutual Distrust (Amberley, 2020). Ms. Hall is a seasoned royal biographer and chronicler, who has delighted royal buffs with her authoritative biographies of Empress Maria Fyodorovna, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, and her exploration of royal Princesses who served as wartime nurses as well as the Imperial estates in the Crimea. In "Queen Victoria and the Romanovs," Ms. Hall delves into the extensive trove of Queen Victoria's diaries and personal correspondence to construct an ambitious and highly informative portrait of her six-decade relationship with the Romanovs, which is at times cordial and diplomatic and at other times overtly hostile.The first encounter takes place "off stage" as far as Victoria is concerned, but very much sets the stage for the tension to come. Victoria's aunt, Juliane of Saxe-Coburg Saalfeld's miserable marriage to Russia's Grand Duke Constantine ended — most extraordinarily for the time — in divorce. The Coburg family felt that Juliane had been very badly treated by the Romanovs, a sentiment that was inherited by the next generation of Coburgs, which included Victoria and her cousin and future husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg.Before Albert linked his name in perpetuity with that of Victoria, however, the 20-year-old Queen was swept off her feet — quite literally— by the dashing Grand Duke Alexander, son and heir of Tsar Nicholas I. On a visit to London in 1839, the Grand Duke made quite an impression on the young Queen; all thoughts of poor Aunt Julie and the prudent warnings of Lord Melbourne and Victoria's Coburg Uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians, were forgotten as Victoria indulged in champagne and her first "crush" on the future Tsar Alexander II.The heady attraction did not last. Though Nicholas I and Victoria exchanged courteous, diplomatic correspondence, they were destined to clash in one of the nineteenth century's most brutal conflicts: the Crimean War, in which the British prevailed and Nicholas was driven to an early grave.Coryne Hall is the author of 12 books, including A Biography of the Empress Marie Feodorovna 1847-1928, Imperial Dancer. Mathilde Kschessinska and the Romanovs, and Imperial Crimea: Estates, Enchantment & the Last of the Romanovs. Follow Coryne Hall on Twitter.Jennifer Eremeeva is an American expatriate writer who writes about travel, culture, cuisine and culinary history, Russian history, and Royal History, with bylines in Reuters, Fodor's, USTOA, LitHub, The Moscow Times, and Russian Life. She is the award-winning author of Lenin Lives Next Door: Marriage, Martinis, and Mayhem in Moscow and Have Personality Disorder, Will Rule Russia: A Pocket Guide to Russian History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

China is a veto-holding member of the UN Security Council yet Chinese officials have been skeptical of using the powers of the UN to pressure nations accused of human rights violations. The PRC has emphasized the norm of sovereignty and rejected external interference in its own internal affairs. Yet they have supported UN intervention when states have been accused of mass human rights abuses. Why has China acquiesced and supported intervention? Neither realism or liberalism offer complete explanations for China’s seeming inconsistency. Courtney Fung finds that social constructions by way of public discourse of regime change matter when embedded in wider material conditions. She argues that anxieties about loss of status help explain China’s choices.In her new book China and Intervention at the UN Security Council: Reconciling Status (Oxford University Press, 2019), Fung explores three cases involving mass atrocities: Darfur (2004-2008), Libya (2011-2012), and Syria (2011-2015). China’s focus on status requires thinking about China’s twin statuses as both a great power and a developing state. China focuses on recognition from its intervention peer group: the Western, permanent members of the UN Security Council, US, UK, and France (P3). But China is also concerned with the Global South, which includes geographic-specific regional organizations and often the host state. Fung urges political scientists (and foreign policy experts implementing policy) to take “status triggers” in both peer groups seriously.Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Fake news existed long before Donald Trump…. What is ironic is that fake news has indeed been the only news disseminated by the rulers of U.S. empire.”—From American Exceptionalism and American Innocence (Skyhorse Publishing, 2019).According to Robert Sirvent and Danny Haiphong, Americans have been exposed to fake news throughout our history—news that slavery is a thing of the past, that we don’t live on stolen land, that wars are fought to spread freedom and democracy, that a rising tide lifts all boats, that prisons keep us safe, and that the police serve and protect.Thus, the only “news” ever reported by various channels of U.S. empire is the news of American exceptionalism and American innocence. And, as this book will hopefully show, it’s all fake.Did the U.S. really “save the world” in World War II? Should black athletes stop protesting and show more gratitude for what America has done for them? Are wars fought to spread freedom and democracy? Or is this all fake news?American Exceptionalism and American Innocence examines the stories we’re told that lead us to think that the U.S. is a force for good in the world, regardless of slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, and the more than a century’s worth of imperialist war that the U.S. has wrought on the planet.Sirvent and Haiphong detail just what Captain America’s shield tells us about the pretensions of U.S. foreign policy, how Angelina Jolie and Bill Gates engage in humanitarian imperialism, and why the Broadway musical "Hamilton" is a monument to white supremacy.Danny Haiphong is a socialist activist, writer, and political analyst.Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices