A review in The New Republic of Cambridge historian Tim Harper's Underground Asia: Global Revolutionaries and the Assault on Empire. The book looks fascinating. A couple of bits caught my eye. This one: The locales that interest him are cosmopolitan ports that were at least partly incorporated into Western empires—cities such as Canton, Kuala Lumpur, … Continue reading Magnets for Militants on the Move
The Arc of Presidential Libraries
Paul Musgrave, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, has published an op-ed on problems with the Presidential library system in the US, and how the current (outgoing) President could exploit it to his usual ends. The essay is a fine complement to Jill Lepore's New Yorker piece on the transition politics … Continue reading The Arc of Presidential Libraries
That They Can Gain in Judgments
The writer and historian Jill Lepore has penned a great piece in the 23 November 2020 issue of the New Yorker (posted online 16 November). Her focus, in "Will Trump Burn the Evidence?", is the politics of historical records and archives. It's a great, topical essay that captures some of the anxiety about how the … Continue reading That They Can Gain in Judgments
Poetic Nods to an Atomic Indochina
Bernard Fall... nuclear strategist? One of the pieces of archival treasure I discovered among Fall's personal papers is a document that reveals his awareness of and engagement with nuclear issues. In a general sense, that's a claim that could be made of just about anyone at the time. At the height of the Cold War, … Continue reading Poetic Nods to an Atomic Indochina
A Word That Wanders in an International Semantic Jungle
I often tell people that research on sanctuary in international politics - the subject of my forthcoming book, Streets Without Joy: A Political History of Sanctuary and War, 1959-2009, is a gift that keeps on giving. Streets is nothing if not the history of a concept, an account of its uses and continual reinvention in … Continue reading A Word That Wanders in an International Semantic Jungle
