Readings Flashcards
What’s Global History? (Sebastian Conrad)
Globalisation as an important process that most social sciences were interested in. Idea that we have to understand this phenomena and to understand it fully, we have to look at the history of the phenomena.
Integrated history → taking global processes as a context. A huge base and everything that happens is happening within this broader context. Not necessarily that it is interconnected but in a way, the integration still happens.
International History, the Cultural Turn and the Diplomatic Twitch (David Reynolds)
Point is that the cultural turn also expanded the horizon of possible topics in the history of IR. Instead of focusing only on the top-level decisions of the head of the state, etc. the cultural turn in IR brought other topics → cinema, literature exchanges.
More specifically, if we talk about IR, we used to focus on hard military or economic power but now with the Cold War, etc. we understand the impact of soft power on IR and relationships between countries, therefore understanding how history develops in these conflicts and how countries can have influences on others without military force.
Asked whether people are defined by their culture. In saying that culture has an impact on IR, does it have a defining element on humans? Did culture actually have an impact?
What is Global History Now? (Jeremy Adelman)
Global history encompasses a lot of things and brings people together but still divisive. Division between global, national and local history. Loss of these bottom up approaches when we focus on the global picture.
History as a tool for many governments → historians as ‘myth makers’ to agree to a version of history. Now, more ‘myth breakers’ to delve more into archives and distance themselves from this version of history.
When you think about it, there is no true history because everything is based depending on the historian, their perspective and their memory.
World War I (Michael S. Neiberg)
Need for an operational knowledge about the technologies, weapons, etc. Interesting to have this knowledge that we miss typically.
Author having a classical approach. Use of great battles that we already knew about before. Classical piece of military history.
Adopts a kind of broad approach. More top-down perspective focusing on decisions of generals. Not developing the idea fully but the history of emotions is here. Talking about excitement in the first weeks of the war but also suffering, injuries on human bodies at war, etc. Some things about soldiers’ experiences.
Death and survival in the Second World War (Richard Bessel)
Still Euro-centric but included the perspectives of Japan, Korea and China. Still largely centred around Europe.
Interesting that by studying the deaths in war, you can see dynamics of war. Importance given to suicide because we often tend to forget or overlook these consequences of the war, the famine, etc. Interesting to give importance to other dynamics. Case of women and men that disappeared from the war alongside the demographical view of the war. Important for society.
Hiroshima (John Hershey)
Humanising the stories of the individuals. American humanising the Japanese people and the article he is writing going to be read by Americans. Interesting to see how Japanese and Americans were not that different → some Japanese who spoke English and wore Americans. Mythification of the enemy but at the end it is just people who have common interests.
Ideology and the Origins of the Cold War (Engerman)
2 different ideologies. American liberalism with the roots dating back to Locke and Soviet ideology based on Marxist theories of capitalism.
At odds with determinism because USSR believed in laws of history where capitalism would eventually collapse and there would be a global revolution. US believed in liberal democracy and capitalism would spread all over the world. At odds with messianism because at the beginning, the 2 countries wanted to intervene and change this course of history.
Ideological confrontation that was extremely important in the Cold War years and at the beginning of the Cold War was not 100% inherited from the pre-Cold War structure.
Cinema and the Cold War: Dr Strangelove (Kubrick)
Accurately portrays insanity around the nuclear bomb and MAD. Hypothetical idea that the world could be destroyed and unsupervised with nuclear energy.
Political satire and commentary that was also very direct with nuanced ideas.
The Nuclear Revolution: A Product of the Cold War or Something More? (Craig)
Nuanced arguments and shows clearly that the nuclear competition was not the only important factor in the Cold War competition but at the same time also shows to what extent it was important.
The Perils of Limited Humanitarian intervention, Lessons from the 1990s (Valentino)
US as the source of power on the global stage and could intervene anywhere with a large military. Post-Cold War era.
Saying that the understanding of what the nature of civil war and ethnic conflict or genocide was changed in the 1990s. This was due to new scholarship but also in the fields of comparative genocide studies, international relations and ethnic conflicts, etc.
Humanitarian in ‘humanitarian’ war is paradoxical. Means can be humanitarian but the ends will not be.
Didn’t consider the colonial aspects of intervention → big countries helping small countries. In reality, exerting influence and making them a ‘puppet’ in some sense. Didn’t really focus on this concept of neo-colonialism or neo-imperialism.
The Gulf’s War Afterlife: Dilemmas, Missed Opportunities and the Post Cold War Order Undone (Helfont)
Showed discrepancies between the reality of the Gulf War and the US narrative
Primary sources are interesting because they range from official UN reports to security and policy reports. Also interview with a journalist who worked in Iraq.
UN Agency Report on the Humanitarian Situation in Iraq (Rowat)
Ability to collect data and broadcast this to the world and scholars working on the topic.
Data collected is often less biased because Iraqi data couldn’t always be trusted since it was always politically tainted.
In general, effects of economic sanctions more effective if there is large consensus in the population of what the government is doing. General sanctions are not nearly as effective as targeted sanctions on individuals → limited consequences and only serves to hurt the population who are already typically not in support of the events but are being punished for it.
