New Books In History

The past is always with us, but it’s really always with politicians. Once you put yourself up for office, and particularly national office, everybody and his brother is going to start digging into your past to see what kind of “dirt” they can find. It’s true now, and it was true when Thomas Jefferson was running for president in the late eighteenth century. Jefferson had had an eventful, largely public life, so there was a lot of “material” to be mined by his foes. Most of the accusations “didn’t stick,” but one that did was that he was a coward. Jefferson was the governor of Virginia during a good portion of the Revolutionary War and, as such, charged with defending the place (and the Revolution) against the British. As Michael Kranish shows in his terrific book Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War (Oxford UP, 2010), he had a rough time of it. Jefferson had no military experience, didn’t like “standing” armies, and received only tepid support from his continental allies. The British invaded, invaded, and invaded again. Jefferson fled, fled, and fled again. What was he supposed to do? His political opponents didn’t care if he had no choice but to run or not—the fact that he didn’t stand and fight was enough to prove he was a “coward.” This charge wounded Jefferson deeply and he fought it for much of his life.

The episode sort of reminded me of a certain presidential candidate a few years back and (shameful, in my opinion) questions about his military service.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup

Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, African Americans, American Revolution, Atlantic World, Benedict Arnold, British Empire, Empires, Enlightenment, Founding Fathers, France, Ideology, Intellectuals, Jefferson, National Identity, Philadelphia, Race, Racism, Republicanism, Revolution, Slave Trade, Slavery, U.S. Presidency, War by Marshall Poe
No Comments »

Africans were the first migrants because they were the first people. Some 60,000 years ago they left their homeland and in a relatively short period of time (by geological and evolutionary standards) moved to nearly every habitable place on the globe. We are their descendants. The Africans never stopped migrating, but they began to do so with particular vigor beginning about 1400 AD. Patrick Manning tells the story of their movements in his remarkable new book The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture (Columbia UP, 2010). The tale Pat tells might well be divided into three phases: before slavery, during slavery, and after slavery. The middle period usually gets the most attention, but happily Pat well covers the “before” and “after” phases as well. This is an excellent corrective to the standard story because it shows us that for most of modern history African migrants were not really victims, but agents. Prior to the emergence of the international slave trade, they travelled and migrated to North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Near East in large numbers. Slavery of course violently brought millions of them to the Americas. But once it was officially ended (slavery continues to exist today…), the Africans in the diaspora set about considering their rightful place in the world. Should they build lives for themselves “abroad”? Or should they return to their African homeland? Should they integrate? Or should they remain apart? These questions–which are asked by every large diaspora community–were hotly debated in the cultural and political efflorescence of the 20th century. To some extent the debate still goes on; and to an even greater extent the African diaspora continues to grow both in numbers and in power. This is an important and neglected topic, and we should all thank professor Manning for shedding light on it.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup

Tags: 15th Century, 16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, Africa, African Americans, Assimilation, Atlantic World, Black Power, Civil Rights Movement, Colonialism, Culture, Emancipation, Exile, Immigration, Imperialism, Migration, National Identity, Race, Racism, Ships, Slave Trade, Slavery, Trade by Marshall Poe
No Comments »

There’s a concept I find myself coming back to again and again–”speciation.” It’s drawn from the vocabulary of evolutionary biology and means, roughly, the process by which new species arise. Speciation occurs when a species must adapt to new circumstances; the more new circumstances, the more new species. Thus one kind of Finch (to take a relevant example) becomes many kinds of Finches when those Finches are compelled to adapt to the circumstances presented by, say, a set of different Islands. To each Island its own Finch. The same process occurs in human history though we don’t really have a name for it (though “ethnogenesis” comes close). When people of one culture spread to many different locales, their cultures “speciate,” that is, become adapted to those new locales and thereby differentiate from the “parent” culture. This process can be very striking in places places where lots of different locales (however defined) are packed into a tiny geographic area. So it is in the Caucasus. Its geography is remarkably diverse, the result being a plethora of what are (to continue the analogy) separate ecological islands. As people moved from island to island, they speciated: their cultures adapted to local conditions and differentiated. To each island its own culture. This is why the Caucasus, though small, is so remarkably complex: it presents huge variety in a small space. And it is this complexity, together with the fact that the Caucusus stands at the nexus of three major empires (the Persian, Turkish, and Russian), that make its story so complicated. There are just a lot of moving parts in the “system.” Happily, we have Charles King to help us make sense of it all. In The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus (Oxford, 2008), he draws together the many threads of Caucasian history into one rich, dense, though supple cloth. Much of the considerable beauty of this book is found precisely in Charles’ ability to weave many complicated themes into one easy-to-follow story, and all in artful but not arty prose. This is a book you can read. Charles also pays considerable attention to the imaginary Caucusus, that is, the one that lived in the heads of the Persian, Turkish, and Russia imperialists who dominated the place for centuries, and the one that, at least in my case, continues to lead and mislead today. Suffice it to say that what you think you know about the Caucusus, you probably don’t. So I suggest you pick up this book and let Charles remove the scales from your eyes. It’s an enjoyable experience.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup

Tags: 15th Century, 16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, Azerbijan, Bolsheviks, Caspian Sea, Caucasus, Christianity, Colonialism, Communism, Empires, Ethnic Cleansing, Frontiers, Imperialism, Islam, Muscovy, Nationalism, Oil, Persia, Romanticism, Russia, Russian Empire, Soviet Union, Turkey, War by Marshall Poe
3 Comments »

Chimps, our closest relatives, kill each other. But chimps do not engage in anything close to mass slaughter of their own kind. Why is this? There are two possible explanations for the difference. The first is this: chimps are not programmed, so to say, to commit mass slaughter, while humans are so programmed. The second is this: chimps do not make their own history and therefore cannot make the conditions conducive to genocide, while humans do, can, and repeatedly have. In the former case, human genocidal behavior is part of our evolved “nature”; in the latter case, it is a historical artifact. After reading Ben Kiernan’s sobering (Yale UP, 2007) I’ve come to believe that it is a bit of both. Much of what we know about the evolution of human psychology and the history of human genocide suggest that we have an ingrained, genetically-encoded, largely unalterable drive to want to kill one another in large numbers. That drive, however, seems to be triggered by particular historical circumstances, these being largely of our own making. In Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (Yale UP, 2007), Ben explores the  nature of these triggering circumstances by looking at the history of genocide over the past five or so centuries. He finds unmistakable commonalities among modern genocides, primarily in the world of ideology. When modern people begin to believe that there is something sacred about their “blood”–that is, their own kind–and “soil”–that is, the plowed fields that sustain their kind–they have taken the first step toward the creation of the above-mentioned triggering conditions. When they believe, further, that their “blood and soil” are threatened by another “kind,” or they see an opportunity to extend the reach of their “blood and soil,” the conditions are almost complete. All that remains is for elites in the community to mobilize the force necessary to launch a genocidal attack. At this point what was merely necessary for genocide becomes, with the addition of a will and a way, sufficient and our innate genocidal tendencies are enacted. The challenge, of course, is to avoid creating the conditions that foster “blood and soil” ideologies and set us on the road to ruin. Alas, thus far we have not been able to accomplish that important task.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup

Tags: 15th Century, 16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, Agriculture, Anthropology, Atrocities, Colonialism, Comparative History, Crimes against Humanity, Evolution, Farmers, Genocide, Homo sapiens, Ideology, Imperialism, National Identity, Nationalism, Prehistory, Race, War, War Crimes, World History by Marshall Poe
1 Comment »

Americans don’t like “big government” right? Not exactly. In the Early Republic (1789 to the 1820s) folks were quite keen on building up the (you guessed it) republic. As in res publica, the “things held in common.” The “founding fathers”–all “Classical Republicans”–designed a form of government that, though “checked and balanced,” gave the federal government significant powers. And throughout the 19th-century Americans asked the federal government to use those powers to do all kinds of things, many of them profoundly self-interested. But as Brian Balogh points out in his thought-provoking new book A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in 19th-Century America they–that is, the American people–preferred that the federal government render aid in a certain way, namely, unobtrusively. Americans wanted the federal government to help, but they didn’t want to see any federal officials. This created a system of “associative” government: the center collected money (or incurred debt) and then distributed it to cities, counties, and states to get what it–and they–wanted done. But the federal government didn’t give the money to local governments alone; they also, even in the 19th century, gave it in the forms of subsidies, tax credits, loans and so on to private individuals and entities. It hardly needs to be said that the impact of this traditional American way of “doing” central power can be seen today. From block grants to states for welfare programs, to for-profit military contractors in Iraq, to “public” healthcare administered by the private insurance industry–it’s all part of “associative” government. So do Americans hate “big government”? Only “big government” they can see.

Brian and two of his colleagues have a radio history show that you should listen to. You can find it here.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup

Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, American Civil War, American Exceptionalism, American Midwest, American Revolution, American West, Atlantic World, British Empire, Congress, Constitutional Law, Democratic Party, Elections, Enlightenment, Foriegn Policy, Founding Fathers, Individualism, Liberalism, National Identity, Renaissance, Republican Party, Republicanism by Marshall Poe
1 Comment »

This is the first in a series of podcasts that New Books in History is offering in conjunction with the National History Center.  The NHC and Oxford University Press have initiated a book series called “Reinterpreting History.”  The volumes in the series aim to convey to readers how and why historians revise and reinterpret their understanding of the past, and they do so by focusing on a particular historical topic, event, or idea that has long gained the attention of historians. The first contribution to the “Reinterpreting History” series is Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (Oxford University Press, 2008). Today we’ll be talking to the editors of the volume, Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan. You may think that historians normally study states or nations, like France and China. But they also study areas of international or imperial interaction. The most famous example of this sort of “international” history is Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1949), but there are many others. Among them one finds contributions to “Atlantic History,” itself a relatively new field. Its object is the “Atlantic World,” roughly, the history of the interaction of four continents (Africa, Europe, North America, and South America) from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. In this podcast, Greene and Morgan talk about the origin of the field, its work to date, and its prospects.

For an introduction to Atlantic history, see Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History. Concepts and Contours (Harvard University Press, 2005) and  J. H. Elliot, Empires of the Atlantic World. Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (Yale University Press, 2006).  There is also a lively Atlantic history discussion list. See H-Atlantic.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup

Tags: 16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, African Americans, American Revolution, Atlantic World, British Empire, Colonialism, Empires, Enlightenment, Exploration, Explorers, Frontiers, Globalization, Historiography, Immigration, Imperialism, National Identity, Republicanism by Marshall Poe
No Comments »

It’s hard to be a Christian. It’s even harder to be a good Christian. But being a good Christian on the frontier of Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century seems to have been next to impossible. That’s one possible gloss of Kevin Kenny‘s eye-opening new book  Peaceable Kingdom Lost. The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn’s Holy Experiment (Oxford, 2009). William Penn was a Quaker, which means he and his followers were trying to be very good Christians indeed. They hoped to take their good intentions to the New World, where they would create (as Penn said) a “peaceable kingdom.” Alas, it was a poor choice of venue to begin a Utopian experiment in godly-living. Pennsylvania was wild and woolly, a mixture of idealistic English Quakers, German Lutherans and Mennonites, Ulster Presbyterians, and, of course, aggrieved Native Americans of many different sorts. Also, just to stir the pot further, the British and French kings were, shall we say, in a rather “heated discussions” about which parts of the New World each would control. It’s not surprising that the lion did not lie down with the lamb in Pennsylvania, or that William Penn’s “holy experiment” broke apart on the rocky shoals of North America. Kevin does a wonderful job of telling the sad, though distressingly familiar, tale of good intentions gone horribly wrong.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup

Tags: 17th Century, 18th Century, American Revolution, Atlantic World, Atrocities, British Empire, Christianity, Colonialism, Empires, Enlightenment, Founding Fathers, Frontiers, Immigration, Imperialism, Native Americans, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Quakers, War, William Penn by Marshall Poe
1 Comment »

When I was in college about a million years ago, we used to sit in bars and talk about the Revolution. Actually, it was this bar and something like this “Revolution.” Clearly nothing ever came of our planning (or drinking). But it wasn’t always so, as you can learn in Benjamin Carp’s remarkable Rebels Rising: Cities in the American Revolution (Oxford UP, 2007; 2009 pbk). When the American colonists got together to talk revolution in taverns, they made revolution. And, as Ben points out, drinking establishments weren’t the only revolutionary loci–docks, churches, assembly halls, and ordinary houses also served as locales in which anger against British “tyranny” was stoked and action against the same planned. Ben’s book is really about public spaces and how they aid in the process of “mobilization.” These are the places where “civil society” moves from fuzzy concept to real thing. This was true in the American Revolution in 1775, and it was true in the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989. It was not true in the Grinnell College pub circa 1984. Everyone knows that the real revolutionaries hung out at The Forum (which, I’m sad to report, is no longer “The Forum” but an IT building).

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup

Tags: 18th Century, American Revolution, Aristocracy, Atlantic World, Boston, British Empire, British-U.S. Relations, Charleston, Churches, Colonialism, Empires, Family Life, Frontiers, Immigration, Imperialism, National Identity, Native Americans, New York, Newport, Philadelphia, Politics, Popular Culture, Radicalism, Social History by Marshall Poe
No Comments »

How different is the United States from other nations? American leaders and common folk have often said it’s very different. The Founding Fathers said it, Abraham Lincoln said it, Woodrow Wilson said it, Franklin Roosevelt said it, Bill Clinton said it, and George W. Bush said it–and they were hardly the only ones. It certainly seems that the history and nature of United States are quite different from other comparable nations. Americans often say that the U.S., almost uniquely, has been and remains ‘a nation of immigrants,’ the ‘land of opportunity,’ and the ‘arsenal of democracy.’ But how much of it is true? In his provocative new book The Myth of American Exceptionalism (Yale UP, 2009) Godfrey Hodgson attempts to answer this important question. He’s the right man to do so. Though British, he has observed the U.S. professionally for nearly half a century. Thus he has both the perspective of the detached outsider and the knowledge of the native insider. He challenges Americans to look at themselves as others see them. Whether you agree with Hodgson or not (and as you’ll hear, we sometimes cross swords), that is certainly a good thing and we should thank him for it.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup

Tags: 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, American Exceptionalism, Anti-Americanism, Foriegn Policy, Founding Fathers, George W. Bush, Historians, Historiography, Ideology, Imperialism, Intellectuals, Iraq War, Liberalism, National Identity, Nationalism, Neoconservatism, Popular Culture, War on Terror by Marshall Poe
No Comments »

Being “sent to Siberia” is practically a synonym for exile even in English-speaking countries. Why is this? In his fascinating new book Exile to Siberia, 1590-1822 (Palgrave, 2008), Andrew Gentes explains. And it’s quite a story indeed. The tsars began to dispatch people to Siberia almost as soon as they “conquered” it in the sixteenth century (an interesting story in itself). Some of the exiles were criminals. Others were simply political enemies. But as Gentes demonstrates, Russian rulers sent them to this frozen vastness not only for the purposes of punishment, but also to populate Russia’s new territories and make them productive, mostly via fur and mineral extraction. Long before the Soviet’s founded the notrious GULag, Siberia was as much a work camp as a penal repository. And though the tsarist settlements were perhaps not as harsh (and certainly not as large) as their Soviet successors, they were still very nasty places. If tsarist-era exiles didn’t die on the way to Siberia, they would very likely end their days there. America had a “Wild West.” Russia had what we might call a “Deadly East.” We should thank Andrew Gentes for showing it to us.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup

Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, Colonialism, Exile, Frontiers, Imperialism, Migration, Punishment, Russia by Marshall Poe
1 Comment »