Readers of H-Diplo will likely wonder “who is that?” when they see identity of the author of this essay since I am neither a historian of diplomacy nor a specialist in international relations. I am a historian of the nineteenth century United States who focuses on slavery, the Civil War, and emancipation, with a teaching…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Article Review 166: DuBois on Zeiler, “Projecting China”
Thomas W. Zeiler’s “Projecting China: Trade Engagement in Beijing’s Half Century,” chronicles the oscillations in US foreign economic policy for China from the Nixon to Biden administrations. Zeiler offers a focused study of a bilateral relationship predominantly through the lens of a multilateral free-trade theory known as the capitalist peace doctrine.[1] For nearly fifty years…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-19 on Cohrs, The New Atlantic Order
Patrick Cohrs’s impressive history of European and American interaction covers the late-nineteenth century through Adolf Hitler’s coming to power. The focus is on the Versailles Treaty—its negotiations and consequences—with a long running start from 1860 and an intensive study of the diplomacy that sought to manage its consequences extending to 1933. At almost 1100 pages,…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 86: Tønnesson on Moir, Number One Realist
Bernard B. Fall (19 November 1926–21 February 1967) was born in Austria, moved with his family to France after the 1938 Anschluss, lost his parents in the Holocaust, and joined the French Maquis at the age of 16. He thus earned experience with guerrilla warfare, including political mobilization and the assassination of collaborators with a…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-18 on Ekbladh, Plowshares into Swords
David Ekbladh’s Plowshares into Swords: Weaponized Knowledge, Liberal Order, and the League of Nations follows the economic and financial agencies of the League of Nations until their displacement from Geneva to Princeton, New Jersey during 1940–1941. It invites us to consider their valuable statistical work and other studies during the turbulent economic interwar years as…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 85: Dieter on Meijer, Awakening to China’s Rise
Hugo Meijer has analyzed one of the most pressing issues in international relations in the twenty-first century: how do countries deal with an increasingly assertive People’s Republic of China? He examines Europe’s three most important countries: France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The author argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, these countries started to alter…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-17 on Pelopidas, Repenser Les Choix Nucléaires
This important and well-researched book appears at a time when concern about nuclear weapons, which lapsed after the end of the Cold War, has resurfaced because of the war in Ukraine and anxieties over Iran. The recent film Oppenheimer gives eloquent expression to these fears, with the main character worrying that the development of the…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-16 on Levine Allies and Rivals
Can all modern history be construed as international history? There is hardly a consumer product or social movement or work of art that is not somehow tied to inputs and influences beyond the borders of a single nation-state. Pitched broadly, the concept of international society might encompass all manner of organizations and individuals, from inter-governmental…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-15 on Lee, Crippling Leviathan
Following the Cold War, the United States led the West in a normative global push for liberal democracy, becoming deeply invested in the project. The narrative held that the West had arrived at the “End of History,” the conclusion of institutionalizing Enlightenment ideals and witnessing their triumph over communism, leaving liberal democracy as the unrivaled…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Article Review 165: Nauert on Howe, “The Tailings of Cold War US Foreign Policy”
The closing lines of Joshua P. Howe’s keenly argued April 2023 Diplomatic History article express a potent hope for a new generation of environmental historians of the American Empire. Readers today, Howe asserts, can better “understand the relationships between past and present in a materially re-made twenty-first-century world” by scrutinizing the “tailings of US foreign…