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1. Reasons for the West’s Hatred of Russia

Author:
Yury Sayamov
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:
East View Information Services
Abstract:
Russia as a state and civilization and Russian statehood as an institution have acted for centuries as system-forming factors of the world order. They have, at various times, exerted influence of varying intensity and significance on the shape, character, and content of international relations, while also being influenced by them. The West’s hostility toward Russia arose, took shape, and began to actively manifest itself as one of the constants of this influence, occasionally reaching the level of outright hatred and spiraling into attacks against Russian statehood, which invariably mobilized the country’s peoples to rebuff the aggressors.
Topic:
History, Statehood, Information Warfare, Crusades, and Russophobia
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Eurasia

2. Can the EU still wrest the Balkans from their blighted history?

Author:
Jean Bizet and Fabrice Hugot
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Robert Schuman Foundation (RSF)
Abstract:
It is perhaps necessary, first of all, to recall why the name "Western Balkans" is still used to describe this peninsula in south-eastern Europe, why this imprecise geographical concept is preferred to any other name. To answer this question is to recognise from the outset the difficult fate suffered by this part of Europe: if we prefer to speak of the Balkans, it is quite simply because only geography is stable in this region.
Topic:
European Union, History, Geography, Regional Politics, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Europe and Balkans

3. The Élysée Treaty, FrancoGerman reconciliation and European integration: myth and reality

Author:
Hartmut Marhold
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Robert Schuman Foundation (RSF)
Abstract:
“During General de Gaulle's visit last week, I thought often of you, the man who, with his proposal to create the European Coal and Steel Community, laid the foundations of the friendship which would henceforth bind our two countries so closely together. I always think of our cooperation with great appreciation. I feel the need, especially in the present circumstances, to express this gratitude to you[1],” wrote the German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, on 10 September 1962 to former French Foreign Minister, Robert Schuman. Konrad Adenauer was anxious to set things straight and avoid the creation of a myth. For him, Franco-German reconciliation, at the service of European integration, began on 9 May 1950 with the “Schuman Declaration”. It was not going to start with the Treaty in progress, the future Elysée Treaty. Robert Schuman, in his "Testimony on Adenauer", confirms this: "When in May 1950, the French government offered to the European nations to sit down, without discrimination between victorious and defeated countries, with equal rights and obligations, for a work of joint cooperation guaranteed by mutual control, this truly political revolution required Franco-German reconciliation. Even before consulting our friends and allies, we asked Chancellor Adenauer. If he had said no, Europe and European integration could not have existed. Our expectations were not disappointed[2].” Three years earlier, at a solemn ceremony, Konrad Adenauer had already had the opportunity to address Robert Schuman in front of a Franco-German audience, emphasising that it was he, Schuman, who had "definitively put an end to the Franco-German history full of atrocities thereby creating a lasting friendship between the two peoples". He said: "You, Mr Schuman, took the initiative for this great work and began to build it. That is why we are deeply grateful to you.” The Chancellor concluded by insisting that "it was Monsieur Schuman who laid the foundations for a good and lasting understanding between France and Germany and for a European future, that Europe owed its survival to his action[3].”
Topic:
Treaties and Agreements, History, and Regional Integration
Political Geography:
Europe, France, and Germany

4. The violent legacy of fascism: Neofascist political violence in Italy, 1969–88

Author:
Stefano Costalli, Daniele Guariso, Patricia Justino, and Andrea Ruggeri
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
We still have limited knowledge about the long-term effects of fascism on European democracies. European countries experienced cycles of violence between the 1960s and 1980s. Can such violence be explained by legacies of mobilization during fascism? We study whether and how the Italian fascist experience of the 1920s affected political violence during the 1970s and 1980s. We created an original dataset of conflictual events at a subnational level in Italy. Using zero-inflated negative binomial regressions, we find that local membership of the fascist party in 1922—before the institutionalization of the fascist regime—predicts neofascist political violence at the provincial level more than 40 years later. New windows of opportunity facilitate the resurfacing of local fascist legacies: in the months when a new Minister of Interior is appointed, we observe higher levels of neofascist violence in provinces where the early presence of the fascist party was stronger.
Topic:
Terrorism, History, Fascism, Conflict, and Violence
Political Geography:
Europe and Italy

5. The Long‐​Run Effects of Immigration: Evidence across a Barrier to Refugee Settlement

Author:
Antonio Ciccone and Jan Nimczik
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Some 280 million people around the world are first‐​generation immigrants; in Organisation for Economic Co‐​operation and Development countries, first‐​generation immigrants make up around 14 percent of the population. The economic effects of immigration have become better understood in recent decades. A new focus of research on the effects of immigration is its long‐​run impact on productivity, wages, and income. We contribute to this research by examining the long‐​run economic effects of the arrival of refugees in what would become West Germany after the end of World War II (WWII) in 1945. This period was characterized by one of the largest population movements in modern times. Between 1945 and 1949, millions of people from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and eastern parts of prewar Germany were displaced westward. When the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was founded in 1949, these refugees made up around 15 percent of the country’s population.
Topic:
History, Immigration, Refugees, Resettlement, and World War II
Political Geography:
Europe, France, Germany, and United States of America

6. The Economic Effects of the English Parliamentary Enclosures

Author:
Leander Heldring, James A. Robinson, and Sebastian Vollmer
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
In 1808, the English agriculturist Arthur Young stumbled on something interesting. He noticed that the adjacent Cambridgeshire parishes of Childersley and Hardwicke in England had startlingly different economic outcomes, even though they were divided only by a hedgerow. In Hardwicke, wheat yields were 16 bushels per acre, whereas in Childersley, on the other side of the hedgerow, they were 24 bushels per acre—50 percent higher. What could explain the difference? It wasn’t economic fundamentals, because Childersley consisted of similar soil. Rather, Young attributed the difference to the fact that the land in Hardwicke remained in “common field” while the land in Childersley was enclosed.
Topic:
Agriculture, History, Economy, Enclosure, and Parliament
Political Geography:
Europe and England

7. The Vagaries of the Sea: Evidence on the Real Effects of Money from Maritime Disasters in the Spanish Empire

Author:
Adam Brzezinski, Yao Chen, Felix Ward, and Nuno Palma
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The Columbian voyage of 1492 marked the beginning of three centuries in which vast amounts of monetary silver were shipped from America to Spain. During that time, Spain’s money supply was subjected to the vagaries of the sea. Maritime disasters that resulted in the loss of silver‐​laden ships gave rise to random contractions in the amount of money that arrived in Spain. We studied these maritime disasters to obtain estimates of the causal effects of changes in the money supply on economic output and prices.
Topic:
Imperialism, History, Economy, and Maritime
Political Geography:
Europe and Spain

8. Free Association and the United Nations

Author:
Rachael Johnstone
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Since 1945, most States, on achieving independence, seek admission to the United Nations. This is a shortcut to international recognition on the world stage and secures their statehood against future challenge. Although in theory States do not require formal recognition from other States to come into existence, it is desirable. Rather than seeking recognition and/or expensive diplomatic relations with dozens of other States, admission to the UN puts to bed any doubts about the nation’s existence as a State once and for all. Membership is available to States in Free Association (FA States). UN Members each hold a seat on the General Assembly with an equal vote (irrespective of population or economy). The General Assembly controls the UN budget and elects Member States to other major UN bodies (e.g., ECOSOC, Human Rights Council and Security Council). Membership of these bodies allows States to influence UN focus and policy. A small, new Member State may not desire or have the capacity to seek a seat on these bodies directly, but it can engage in “vote-trading” to promote its interests within the broader system. The General Assembly is also a crucial diplomatic forum in which Member States build trust and alliances with one another.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, International Organization, United Nations, History, and Free Association
Political Geography:
Europe and Denmark

9. Climate resilience and Cook Islands' relationship of Free Association with Aotearoa / New Zealand

Author:
David J. Kilcullen
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
On 1 January 2020, the Cook Islands was removed from the OECD Development Assistance Committee’s List of Official Development Assistance (ODA) Recipients. Having been assessed as a “high-income status country”, this re-classification rendered the Cook Islands ineligible for OECD development assistance. It was unfortunate timing. The Covid-19 pandemic hit a few months later and caused a significant contraction in the tourism sector on which the Cook Islands is economically dependent. The result was, by the government’s own description, a “severe recession” with a total contraction of -21.6% of GDP in 2020/ 2021. Thus, only months after being recognized as having a sufficiently high income as to no longer warrant OECD development-assistance, the Cook Islands lost nearly a quarter of its GDP. This was especially significant for a country that is particularly susceptible to climate change and weather-related hazards. The Cook Islands is made up of 15 coral atolls and volcanic islands. Over 90% of the residents of the 12 inhabited islands live within one kilometer of a coastline. In addition, its already modest population of just under 15,000 people is rapidly decreasing (down from approximately 17,500 in 2016), undermining social and economic resilience to shocks. Despite notable economic growth in the years preceding Covid-19, greater infrastructure and other investment remains essential to brace the country for future climate-related changes. A question thus arises as to the benefits of Free Association in circumstances where the former colony faces crises.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Climate Change, History, and Resilience
Political Geography:
Europe, Denmark, New Zealand, and Cook Islands

10. Rhodes Must Fall: The Legacy of Cecil Rhodes in the University of Oxford

Author:
Emma Day
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Oxford Centre for Global History
Abstract:
On 9 June 2020, more than a thousand people gathered in central Oxford demanding that Oriel College remove the statue of imperialist and mining magnate, Cecil Rhodes. Congregating in defiance of the Covid-19 pandemic, protesters drew renewed attention to the long-standing struggle to decolonise education and tackle institutional racism at British and South African universities. They also knelt with fists raised for over nine minutes in tribute to George Floyd, a man whose recent murder at the hands of Minneapolis police marked only the latest atrocity in a long history of racialised violence in the United States. Amid the local and global reckonings over race and racism taking place in the wake of Covid-19 and Floyd’s murder, the 2020 Rhodes Must Fall protest marked the latest iteration in a fight to remove Rhodes from campuses that began over five years earlier.1 In 2014, after completing his master’s degree at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa, Ntokozo Qwabe won a Rhodes scholarship to study a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) degree at Keble College, University of Oxford. Qwabe arrived in Oxford amid growing calls for the removal of the statue of Rhodes back home. UCT students argued that Rhodes’s monument embodied the pervasive white privilege at the university, and that tackling those problems required removing his oppressive figure from campus. On 9 March 2015, students accelerated their demands for change. Political science student Chumani Maxwele hurled excrement at Rhodes’s statue. Others occupied UCT offices and posted the hashtag #RhodesMustFall to publicise their campaign on Twitter. One month later, UCT removed Rhodes’s statue from campus, inaugurating the Rhodes Must Fall movement. Although Rhodes fell in Cape Town, he remained standing at the University of Oxford. The abundance of tributes to Rhodes at the university may have surprised South African students arriving in Oxford, left wondering why Cecil Rhodes still enjoyed such an outsized public representation at one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious universities. Moreover, with Oxford’s own issues of institutional racism rooted in colonialism and slavery, South African students questioned why the many monuments to Rhodes did not provoke anger among Oxford’s staff and student body. After demanding that Rhodes fall in Cape Town, and asking, why not in Oxford, Qwabe brought the anti-colonialist movement to his new university.
Topic:
Imperialism, Capitalism, History, and Cecil Rhodes
Political Geography:
Europe and England

11. Robert Maxwell’s Expectations Gap: Regulation and Reputation in the British Communications Industry, 1981-91

Author:
Charlie Harris
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Oxford Centre for Global History
Abstract:
During Robert Maxwell’s turbulent lifetime, the world knew him as one of the most successful businessmen in Britain, presiding over a publishing and media empire in direct competition with that of Rupert Murdoch. In 1991, Robert Maxwell died – at which point the world discovered that he was, in fact, far beyond bankrupt. As banks called in their huge loans, accountants found that his empire boasted £2 billion in debt. When he drowned, various auditors and authorities were close to catching him in an enormous fraud. Maxwell had stolen around £460 million from his employees’ pension funds and committed extensive stock fraud in order to manipulate the share prices of his empire. Accusations of fraud and mismanagement dogged Maxwell’s career, but to little effect. Beginning with a single publishing house, he built a media empire. His rivalry with Rupert Murdoch – and perhaps his emotional state, which was notoriously volatile and competitive – drove him to expand at an unsustainable pace, which he supported with confidence trickery and enormous loans. His debts quickly outstripped his assets. Desperately scrambling to repay the loans, he turned to stock fraud and his employees’ pension funds. Still desperate for capital six months before his death, Maxwell floated his largest-ever venture – Mirror Group Newspapers – which successfully attracted £250 million in investment, despite the destitution of its parent company. Public autopsies concluded that the blame lay not just with Maxwell, but with advisers, regulators, and complicit financial institutions. Maxwell killed himself (though some still speculate he was murdered) shortly before a scheduled meeting that would have uncovered his fraud. Maxwell did not leave his family destitute, but they no longer had immediate access to the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed. His sons continued working in the City of London. His daughter, Ghislaine Maxwell, continued to circulate in high society. Her crimes are now better known than her father’s; she is famous for her work as Jeffrey Epstein’s right-hand woman, procuring victims (often under-age) for Epstein’s “prostitution ring” (something of a misnomer, as the term implies consent). Both scandals implicated some of the most powerful figures of their day, and in both cases, th
Topic:
Communications, History, Capitalism, Industry, and Robert Maxwell
Political Geography:
Britain and Europe

12. Exposure to War and Its Labor Market Consequences over the Life Cycle

Author:
Sebastian T. Braun and Jan Stuhler
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
Abstract:
With 70 million dead, World War II remains the most devastating conflict in history. Of the survivors, millions were displaced, returned maimed from the battlefield, or spent years in captivity. We examine the impact of such wartime experiences on labor market careers and show that they often become apparent only at certain life stages. While war injuries reduced employment in old age, former prisoners of war postponed their retirement. Many displaced workers, particularly women, never returned to employment. These responses are in line with standard life‐cycle theory and thus likely extend to other conflicts.
Topic:
History, Displacement, World War II, Welfare, Prisoners of War, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

13. Café Evropa: European commemoration of the Shoah and the fight against anti-Semitism

Author:
Barbora Jehličková
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Europeum Institute for European Policy
Abstract:
A debate on the European commemoration of the victims of the Shoah and the fight against anti-Semitism took place as part of the Café Evropa debate series. What is the path to a Czech national strategy to fight anti-Semitism and is a European culture of Shoah remembrance possible? You can read a summary of the outcomes of the individual guests in the report written by our intern Barbora Jehličková.
Topic:
History, Culture, Holocaust, Memory, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
Europe and Czech Republic

14. European Communities in South America and the Global Total Wars of the 20th Century: An Interview with Dr. María Inés Tato

Author:
María Inés Tato and Salvador Lima
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Toynbee Prize Foundation
Abstract:
Total wars do not just affect the belligerent societies. The two global conflicts of the first half of the twentieth century had repercussions in neutral countries and colonial territories that could not escape of their economic and political impact. This was certainly most evident for the European diasporas in the South American region. How did overseas Europeans participate in the war effort? What were the tensions surrounding the mobilization? What were the effects on the relationship with the adoption countries? These are some of the questions that the authors of Transatlantic Battles. European Immigrant Communities in South America and the World Wars (Brill, 2022) address. The book was edited by María Inés Tato, researcher at the National Council of Science and Technic Research (CONICET), in Argentina, and director of the Group of Historical War Studies of the Institute of Latin American and Argentine History “Dr. Emilio Ravignani”, University of Buenos Aires. Under her coordination, this collective project gathered several historians from different backgrounds, including Juan Pablo Artinian, Norman Fraser Brown, Juan Luis Carrellán Ruiz, Hernán Díaz, Marcelo Huernos, Milagros Martínez-Flener, Germán Friedmann and Stefan Rinke. The main goal of the project was to explore how European communities in South America expressed the transnational nature of their national identities through enlistment in armies and the mobilisation of eco­nomic and cultural assets. As Tato says in the book’s introduction, these immigrants, and their families “had two homelands: they were attached to their countries of origin and, at the same time, exhibited strong connections with the societies they resided in, developing a complex identity that recognized their dual allegiance.” Transatlantic Battles should not be understood as an isolated piece of work, but as a contribution to a growing academic movement that, for the last twenty years, has attended to the global dimension of the twentieth-century total wars. Tato herself has published and directed several books on the subject, working closely with colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic.
Topic:
War, History, Diaspora, and Interview
Political Geography:
Europe and South America

15. Collaborators of the New Order—Fascists, Nationalists, Traitors, and Opportunists in occupied Western Europe: An Interview with David Alegre

Author:
David Alegre
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Toynbee Prize Foundation
Abstract:
Empires are not ruled only by force. Some degree of resignation or collaboration from local populations is needed. Despite its brief lifespan, the Third Reich was no stranger to this logic. In Western Europe, tens of thousands of European citizens took part in Nazi imperial policies of domination and spoilation, spurred on by fear of losing an unrepeatable opportunity and inspired by the dazzling triumphs of Hitler’s Germany. Such Nazi collaborators are the main subject of David Alegre’s most recent book, Colaboracionistas. Europa Occidental y el Nuevo Orden Nazi (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2022).Born in Teruel, Spain in 1984, this researcher and lecturer at the Autonomous University of Barcelona delves into collaborators’ experiences, their mental universes, their political strategies, and their stormy relations with the German Nazis, including the creation of volunteer units for war against the Soviet Union. Far from seeing themselves as mere pawns, the collaborators believed that close and loyal cooperation with the occupiers would be the fastest and most effective way to promote their personal interests and political projects. Marginalized by their convictions as traitors and persecuted by the Resistance, they would end up signing a blood pact with the occupiers, contributing to the plunder of their countries, and pushing their communities to the brink of civil war.
Topic:
Nationalism, History, Fascism, World War II, Interview, and Collaboration
Political Geography:
Europe and Western Europe

16. Book Review: Katharina Volk, The Roman Republic of Letters: Scholarship, Philosophy and Politics in the Age of Cicero and Caesar (Princeton University Press, 2021)

Author:
Sinem Akgül-Açikmese
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
Ancient Roman history creates a wide interdisciplinary field of study for academics, from politics and archaeology to sociology and art. Interpreting today’s world by making inferences from Roman history is the most important factor that encourages the academy to work in this wide field. In The Roman Republic of Letters: Scholarship, Philosophy and Politics in the Age of Cicero and Caesar, Katherine Volk examines the Late Roman Republic (63-43 BCE), unlocking details for readers and researchers that were previously overlooked. At the same time, Volk has brought together the subjects of philosophy, religion, politics, rhetoric and grammar in a way that contributes to intellectual history. We can confidently say that this book fills a gap in helping us understand the intellectual and philosophical debates behind the political upheavals of the late Republic and in comparing Roman politics and politics today.
Topic:
History, Book Review, Philosophy, and Roman Empire
Political Geography:
Europe and Rome

17. “Trying Not to Lose It” The Allied Disaster in France and the Low Countries, 1940

Author:
Richard J. Shuster
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Advanced Military Studies
Institution:
Marine Corps University Press, National Defense University
Abstract:
This article argues that the critical point of failure in the Allied catastrophe in France and the Low Countries in 1940 was a military plan that ignored key tenets of operational art and planning. In doing so, it points out that the Allies lacked a strategy oriented toward victory, failed to balance their operational factors of time, space, and force, and planned against a single potential enemy course of action. Together, these components set the conditions for a swift Allied defeat that shocked the world.
Topic:
History, Military Strategy, and World War II
Political Geography:
Europe and France

18. France’s Foreign Policy towards Lebanon and its Discontents

Author:
Fadi Nicholas Nassar
Publication Date:
07-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
The pair focus on the current state of affairs in Lebanon, historical trends in French policy towards the country and the region, and more in the latest episode of Middle East Focus.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, History, and Regional Politics
Political Geography:
Europe, Middle East, France, and Lebanon

19. Importance of Maintaining and Strengthening NATO’s Nuclear Deterrence: A Historical Overview

Author:
Megi Benia
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Georgian Foundation for Strategic International Studies -GFSIS
Abstract:
Nuclear deterrence is a core pillar of NATO’s defense and deterrence policy. At the same time, the Alliance, which is not a formal party to any arms control negotiation, has a long-standing commitment to an active policy in arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation. The Alliance has been regularly conducting consultations in different fora - the North Atlantic Council, the Nuclear Planning Group and the Defense Planning Committee – to constantly address the ongoing challenges of the arms control architecture. Currently, NATO successfully maintains the balance between its nuclear deterrence and disarmament aspirations. However, it does not represent an easy task for the organization of 30 member states. Over the years, NATO has suffered from a serious nuclear identity crisis. Many Allies tried to increase the Alliance’s arms-control profile while others gradually opposed any further changes in this direction. The positioning of NATO in this regard has been constantly shaped by significant shifts in the international security environment. Despite the contested view on maintaining NATO’s nuclear deterrence, the Alliance managed to evolve as a nuclear alliance, effectively ensuring peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic area. Today, European security faces the biggest security challenge since World War II when one state wages an unprovoked and unjustified war against another sovereign and independent state on the doorsteps of NATO, threatening the world with the use of nuclear weapons. In this unprecedented environment, it is important for NATO to maintain and further strengthen its nuclear deterrence posture to ensure peace and stability for generations to come. Therefore, this article will demonstrate a historical overview of the evolution of NATO as a nuclear alliance and the importance of strengthened nuclear deterrence and conventional defense capabilities.
Topic:
Security, NATO, Nuclear Weapons, History, and Deterrence
Political Geography:
Europe

20. Inclusion and Exclusion in International Ordering: An Interview with Glenda Sluga

Author:
Glenda Sluga and Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Toynbee Prize Foundation
Abstract:
The image of two men, sitting awkwardly across each other in a solemn conference table, suddenly sprouted everywhere in my Twitter feed last winter. As a terrifying war erupted over competing visions of eastern Europe’s place in the international order, this somewhat surreal picture of the rulers of France and Russia conferencing offered little respite. It was precisely at this time that I had the pleasure to converse with the incoming Toynbee Prize Foundation President Glenda Sluga about her most recent monographThe Invention of International Order: Remaking Europe after Napoleon (Princeton University Press). As the so-called international order comes under increasing pressure in Ukraine and beyond, Sluga’s timely book invites us to engage with the “two centuries of multilateral principles, practices, and expectations” to understand the promises and limits of our contemporary arrangements (p. xi). It places the recent meeting between Macron and Putin in the context of the rise and consolidation of “a new professional, procedural, and bureaucratic approach to diplomacy, based on the sociability of men” (p. 6). After all, our modern notions of international “politics” or “society” were forged in the aftermath of a previous European-wide conflagration that had France and Russia at its helm: the Napoleonic wars. Sluga’s account does not aim to blindly celebrate nor to categorically condemn this modern political imaginary of international ordering. Others have dismissed the post-Napoleonic diplomatic constellation as reactionary or have lauded it as protoliberal. Sluga, above all, is interested in questioning it. She invites us to: reflect on for whom this order has been built; push against the ways it narrows our perspective; and grapple with its inner tensions and contradictions (p. 282). At the heart of the book, I would suggest, lies a concern about the paradoxical record of European modernity: a project that “has offered an expansive horizon of political expectations but delivered a voice only for some” (p. 7). By taking women, non-Europeans, and “non-state” actors seriously as political agents, she shows how bankers, Jews, or ambassadrices were ironically crucial in the making of a system that came to exclude them from the historical record. And, unsurprisingly, these exclusions lead to tensions that threaten to upend international order from within and without—from 1821, 1848, or 1853 to 2022. In our conversation, we attempt to make sense of these paradoxes, contradictions, and ambiguities of international ordering.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Politics, History, Exclusion, International Order, and Inclusion
Political Geography:
Europe