New Books In World Affairs

Thomas Schmidinger‘s Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds (Pluto Press, 2018) is an exploration of the history and present of Syrian Kurdistan. It is an excellent introduction to a fraught topic, one drawn from extensive, first-hand ethnographic research. It presents multiple perspectives from both major and minor political parties as well as the perspective of Kurds and other ethnic groups living within Syrian Kurdistan. Included is an accessible and useful history of the complicated party politics within the Kurds themselves as well as Kurdistan’s relations with not just the Syrian government, but regional states also. Jeffrey Bristol is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Boston University as well as a JD candidate at the University of Michigan Law School. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Paul Bjerk’s compact biography Julius Nyerere, published as part of the Ohio Short Histories of Africa series follows closely on the heels of his monograph on the same subject – Building a Peaceful Nation: Julius Nyerere and the Establishment of Sovereignty in Tanzania, 1960-1964 – published in 2015 by the University of Rochester Press, about which Bjerk was interviewed on the New Books in African Studies podcast. Similar to the monograph, in this short work, Bjerk foregrounds Nyere’s political biography – the founding of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU); his leadership of an independent Tanzania; and his eventual consecration as an icon of postcolonial Africa. Additionally however, considerable time is spent on Nyerere’s personal arc from intellectually gifted rural youth, to principled if flawed leader of an independent nation, to, having foregone many of the trappings of political office, elder statesman living the end of his life much as he began it. The podcast conversation delves deeply in

How can human rights campaigns function in consumer and celebrity society? In The Mass Appeal of Human Rights (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Joel Pruce, assistant professor in political science at the University of Dayton, explores this question through the framework of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory. Rich with examples and detailed histories of the evolution of both human rights campaigns and celebrity and consumerist practices, the book challenges us to rethink contemporary political movements. Including critical discussions of Amnesty International, Save Darfur, Paris Hilton, Pussy Riot, and Live8, the book is essential reading for anyone concerned with how to change the world for the better, rather than just for the benefit of celebrity and consumer capitalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The 1973 oil crisis was an event of world-historic proportions, but the stories we tell about it often center the Global North. For instance, the first images that probably come to mind are of the long gas-station queues of Americans in their cars waiting to fill up at the height of the oil shortage. Christopher Dietrich, in his new book, Oil Revolution: Anticolonial Elites, Sovereign Rights, and the Economic Culture of Decolonization (Cambridge University Press, 2017) approaches the oil crisis with a different perspective. Instead of focusing on the American consumer’s struggles or the State Department’s outlook, Dietrich foregrounds oil elites from the Global South. Dietrich documents how these elites overcame political and ideological differences to form OPEC, and how they sought to transform the global economy. By exploring, what he calls, “the economic culture of decolonization,” Dietrich shows how the material conditions and shared interests of oil elites facilitated their successful drive to organize

Today I talked with Brian Stanley, professor of World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh, about his new book, Christianity in the Twentieth Century: A World History (Princeton University Press, 2018). Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, and representing the expansion, assimilation and contraction of Christian religion in a global context, Stanley’s book offers a compelling account of how the Bible became a global book, and of how expectations for the global conquest of Christian missions in the 1910s gave way before the impact of World War One, the end of empire, secularisation, migration, religious pluralism, political change, persecution and genocide, and the constant proliferation of new religious movements. Christianity in the Twentieth Century is at its heart a story of survival – and of constant change. Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most rec

Of all of the departments of the U.S. government you might expect to be implicated in the exercise of imperialism, the Department of the Interior might not be the first one that you would think of. Of course, Interior played a vital role in American empire, as a vehicle of American territorial expansion and settler colonialism, and later in overseeing overseas territories. Megan Black’s The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power (Harvard University Press, 2018) looks at the role of Interior in shepherding American empire, namely through the acquisition of mineral resources in overseas territories, and later, globally. In doing so, her book reveals another dimension of American empire. Black begins with the “closing” of the frontier and the Department of the Interior’s shift from managing biological resources over to mineral resources. The acquisition of territory in Alaska, the Caribbean, the Philippines, and several other Pacific holdings saw Interior work to develop mining operations, as wel

For all that China’s twenty-first-century ‘rise’ is a much-discussed notion both within the country and globally, it is an increasingly difficult concept to grasp or keep pace with. As a result, books which dissect and analyse developments from a regional perspective are of great value, particularly when they focus on widely-overlooked regions as James M. Dorsey‘s China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) does. Exploring China’s growing and increasingly complex political, economic and security entanglements in the ‘Greater Middle East’ (a region whose extent and diversity is discussed in this podcast), Dorsey argues that this “key global crossroads” (p. 1) is already becoming an arena where Beijing is being forced to reappraise its international strategy and abandon long-cherished principles including ‘non-interference’. In a time of profound transition documented by Dorsey himself, such developments are likely to have implications of not just regional, but global sig

The links between African Americans and the global struggle for decolonization, particularly in Africa are well-documented. Facing similar kinds of repression that were rooted in systemic racism and the denial of political rights, Pan-Africanism became one expression of a transnational fight for equality. The first Pan-African Conference was held in 1900 in London, and in the wake of World War II, the joint struggles for civil rights in the United States and political independence from European powers heated up. Nicholas Grant’s Winning Our Freedoms Together: African Americans and Apartheid, 1945–1960 (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) builds on the earlier work of scholars by focusing in closely on the connections between U.S. activists and black South Africans facing dual repression from anticommunism and racist regimes. Grant begins by describing the factors that drove the U.S. government and South African governments together. Increasing financial investment in South Africa by American businessme

The reason for Great Britain’s war against China in the First Opium War (1839-42) is often taken as a given. British merchants wanted to “open” trade beyond the port of Canton (Guangzhou) and continue dealing in the lucrative commodity, opium. Historian Stephen R. Platt’s book, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age (Knopf, 2018) proves that the path to war was not so simple. Internal rebellions weakened the Qing military and stretched resources thin. British themselves debated the merits of the Canton system that restricted all Western foreigners and their trade in China to a single port. Some Qing officials considered opium a wholly domestic issue while others considered how best to resolve opium smuggling–by legalizing opium or ejecting foreigners from Canton. Platt traces the narratives of figures who played significant roles in the mounting conflict and identifies lynchpin moments when the history of China and the West could have turned out much differently. Learn more ab

Nick Kapur’s Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Harvard University Press, 2018) is an ambitious look at the transformations of Japanese society after the massive protests against renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty (abbreviated as “Anpo” in Japanese) in 1960. The treaty was renewed despite fifteen months of protest that involved 30 million people—1/3 of Japan’s population. The treaty, rammed through by the government of Kishi Nobusuke, but Kapur argues that the aftermath of this political paroxysm fundamentally changed Japan in complex and lasting ways. Kapur’s narrative begins with political changes both at home and in the US-Japan relationship, but the book addresses the economy, society, the labor movement literature, the arts, the mass media, the conservative establishment of the police and courts, and even the revitalization of right-wing forces like the yakuza. Kapur argues that the sometimes violent and ultimately failed protests against Anpo helped delegitimize extra-parl

Today we are joined by Antonio Sotomayor, Assistant Professor and Librarian of Latin American and Caribbean studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Sotomayor is the author of The Sovereign Colony: Olympic Sport, National Identity, and International Politics in Puerto Rico (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), which asks the question of how a colonial possession became a “sovereign international athletic presence.” In The Sovereign Colony, Sotomayor traces the history of Puerto Rican sports from its beginnings during Spanish rule, through the beginnings of American occupation and the promotion of American-style games, and into the solidification of the islands’ national identity through their athletic experiences in regional and international Olympic Games.  He illuminates the ways in which the colonial Olympism of Puerto Rico raised questions about nationalism, sovereignty, and colonialism.  For example, Sotomayor investigates a series of incidents centered on whether Puerto Rican athlete

In her new book, Globalisation, the State and Regional Australia (Sydney University Press, 2018), Amanda Walsh, associate director of government relations at Australian Catholic University, explores the political and economic consequences of globalization across Australia nationally and in regional Australia specifically.  Using a series of case studies on the manufacturing, dairy, and ethanol industries in the Shoalhaven region of New South Wales, she shows how the state’s role in promoting and mediating globalizing forces have affected regional communities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The relationship between neoliberals and the state is one that has been endlessly debated. Are neoliberals anti-statist? Or are they advocates of a strong state? The seeming vagueness of neoliberalism has led some to even call for the word’s abolition. However, Quinn Slobodian, in his new book, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Harvard University Press, 2018) shakes this debate up and reconceptualizes the history of neoliberalism in the process. The neoliberals that he tracks weren’t opposed to the state per se, but rather, to the nation-state. European neoliberals, such as Lionel Robbins and Friedrich Hayek, instead sought to scale up governance beyond the nation-state and establish supranational institutions and laws that would hem in the power of democratic majorities around the world. Slobodian, an associate professor of European and the world history at Wellesley College, also situates the history of neoliberalism in a forgotten yet critically important global context: decolo

Ellen R. Wald’s timely, well-written history of the Saudi national oil company, Saudi Inc. The Arabian Kingdom’s Pursuit of Power and Profit (Pegasus Books, 2018), is as much the story of the Saudi oil industry as it is of the ruling Al Saud family’s reliance on black gold to ensure the survival of its regime. In painting a picture of the Al Saud’s long-term strategy to build up over decades the know-how and expertise needed to run an oil industry and their determination to ultimately after almost half a century take over ownership in a legal, orderly, commercial transaction, Wald contrasts the kingdom’s approach in colourful and painstaking detail with nationalisations as they occurred in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East. It is also the story of a US government that increasingly saw Saudi oil as crucial to its post-World War Two global military operations and was determined to ensure that American oilmen, despite their arrogant underestimation of Saudis whom they saw as Bedouins and willingness to bend

Samuel Moyn’s The Last Utopia traced the evolution of the human rights revolution and argued that human rights as an ideology took the place of socialism and other utopian ideologies that failed. In his new book, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Harvard University Press, 2018), Moyn examines human rights from a different perspective, namely its inability to challenge the rise of inequality across the world. Moyn argues that this development wasn’t inevitable from a historical perspective and was the result of decisions made by politicians and social priorities articulated by philosophers beginning in the twentieth century. As a consequence, human rights has coexisted alongside inequality, unable to meaningfully critique it. Moyn begins by looking at the French Revolution, which he asserts was the first government that explicitly thought in egalitarian terms for its citizens. Noting that the welfare state was ironically a project of right-wing nationalist governments, Moyn argues that the postwar

Today I talked with D. G. Hart, an historian at Hillsdale College, MI, and the author of many books, including Calvinism: A History (Yale University Press, 2013). Listed on the front cover of Time (2009) as one of the ten “ideas changing the world right now,” Calvinism has a formidable history as a global theological movement. Hart’s book offers an expansive account of how one set of protestant ideas evolved from Geneva, Zurich and Basle to become one of the most important intellectual traditions in western Christianity. Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of John Owen and English Puritanism (Oxford University Press, 2016). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

If you work in Asian studies as a scholarly field, you should read Fabio Lanza’s new book. The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Studies (Duke University Press, 2017) takes as its central case study the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) and The Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars that the CCAS published. Tracing the history of the organization from its founding in the midst of the global 60s to its transformations with the dissipation of global Maoism, the book is a carefully researched, beautifully written, and generous history of this organization and its members. But it is also much more broadly relevant to (and directly engaged with) themes of importance for any of us who work on scholarly pursuits within or beyond the academy right now, as it gives careful consideration to the modern history of tensions that many of us experience right now: between scholarship and activism, between the political and the intellectual, between thinking and acting. (And of course, these are not

Though today the public and private sectors are treated as distinct if not separate, the situation was quite different in early modern England. Back then the two were often intertwined, with one of the best examples of this being the English East India Company. In her book A Business of State: Commerce, Politics, and the Birth of the East India Company (Harvard University Press, 2018), Rupali Mishra examines the relationship between the Company and the English state in the early 17th century, showing the many ways in which the two were linked. As Mishra explains, their involvement began with the very creation of the Company, through the granting of a patent that delegated a degree of sovereignty to it. This empowerment was important to the Company’s success, though it also fueled conflicts both internally and with the broader London mercantile community. Added to the semi-official status that the Company sometimes possessed in its dealings abroad was the investment in the Company by many of the leading politi

What does Kant have to tell us about International Relations? In Kant’s International Relations: The Political Theology of Perpetual Peace (University of Michigan Press, 2017), Sean Molloy, a Reader in International Relations at the University of Kent, offers a close reading of key works by Kant to reframe our understanding of the modern world. Written in dialogue with theories of cosmopolitanism and democratic peace theory, the book radically challenges how we understand Kant by focusing in detail on his work and his words. The book works through the breadth of Kant’s ideas, as well as dealing with specific texts in depth. As a result it will be of interest beyond International Relations, for scholars interested in any element of Kant’s philosophy including theological questions, his ideas on judgement, and ultimately what it is to be human. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Melani McAlister’s The Kingdom of God Has No Borders (Oxford University Press, 2018) is a global history of evangelicals since 1945 and focuses on the complexities and contradictions that encompass the modern evangelical movement in the U.S. as it looks at the rest of the world. McAlister begins by examining the impact of the civil rights movement in the United States and the decolonization of much of the Global South to show how evangelical Christians tried to respond to a changing world. In discussions of international events ranging from evangelical perceptions of the Soviet Union and apartheid-era South Africa to contemporary views of the Islamic world, McAlister deconstructs the paradigms that inform evangelical opinions: concerns with persecution of fellow Christians, proselytization, and an eagerness to work with and around members of the Global South. The book turns much of the conventional wisdom about evangelicals in the United States on its head. While the popular stereotype of evangelical Christi