Philip Bobbit, a scholar with an unfortunate name, is a leading American interpreter of the changing patterns of interstate behavior, post 9/11. He is a nephew of Lyndon B Johnson and holds a doctorate both in History and Constitutional law, and if there is anyone eminently qualified to write about statecraft in the modern world it is this scholar. I had come across quite a few references to the book, The Shield of Achilles:War, Peace and the Course of History and decided to order the ...
Barack Obama's speech on race and racism has quite honestly triggered an avalanche of interest in the whole issue of slavery. I recently bought Marcus Rediker's The Slave Ship: A Human History and having read this wonderful book would like to share my thoughts with the bloggers on this site. Dr Rediker is currently the Professor of History at the University of Pittsburg and has taken his Ph D from the University of Pennslyvania. He is a noted maritime historian an...
In 1857, exactly 150 years ago, soldiers of the then Bengal Army rose in rebellion against the English rukers of India. Historians have been debating the outbreak of 1857 ever since. However on the occasion of the 150 anniversary of the Mutiny several tourists from England, particularly the great great grand son of General Havelock and other members of the familires of the descendents of the Engish officers who faught against the Indian troops, wanted to pay homage to their ancesors at their ...
Walter Reed (1851-1902) was a remarkable researcher in the field of medicine and deserves to have his name memorialised in a fitting manner. As an army doctor he woeked with great alacrity in the relentless wars of extermination that the US military waged against the native first peoples of the North American continent. He worked in Cuba after the Spanish American war. He was the first to discover that Yellow Fever was caused by vectors and this discovery enabled the US troops to operate wit...
Ever since the USA under George W Bush with his neo conservative acolytes embarked on a major misadventure in the Middle East, particularly Iraq, there has been a number of books explaining/justyfying this horrendous tranformation form a vibrant, if clumsy hegemon to a ruthless blood letting power in the near east. Niall Ferguson with his fashionable right of center political views is one historian who has written about this change in the basuic structure of USA after the collapse of the USSR...
One of the nice aspects of being a historian is that the past provides a whole range of parallels which illumine and help us understand the present. It has become almost a cliche to state that Islamic Terrorism is the biggest scourge of this era, in much the same way medieval Europeans looked upon the Mongols. Surprisingly the language used to describe the phenomenon of Jehadi liberation idelogy evokes the same kind of apoclyptic exuberance which was once used to describe such horrors as the...
Captain James Cook was an intrepid explorer of the eighteenth century. His name is associated with the "discovery" of Australia, New Zealand, the Pitt Cairns, Antartica and of course, Hawai'i. In the Hamilton Library of the University of Hawaii, Manoa, is preserved the journals and documents of the voyages of Captain Cook. He was killed on the island of Kaui in a bizzare episode made all the more strange by the intervention of two anthropologists, Marshall Sahlins and Obessyekke. Mistaken to ...
Historians like to tell stories, true stories that spring from the materials that have survives from the past. Putting the events together in a seamless web of narrative involves great intellectual and physical effort. And when you read a really good historical work based on exhaustive archival research you get the feeling of drifting into another world altogether. That is why someone said:The past is a foreign country. The twentieth century has seen a number of great historians: Fernand Brau...
In the wake of the attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers on 9/11 the US Congress enacted the Patriot's Act. The curtailment of civil liberties and the assumption of the power of internal espionage by the Federal Government, now hotly contested, are the hallmarks of the Act. However this was not the first time that such draconian legislation has been enated in US history. Even before the sinking of USS Lusitania by German U- boats in 1915, the Administration of Woodrow Wilson had take...
It has become fashionable to call the USA an empire. Whatever the term may mean to radicals and conservatives the fact remains the both groups do not see the present international overreach of the USA as imperial. I have some trouble accepting such generalities because they obcure certain hard ground realities. A better mway of phrasing the question would be: Does the USA have the stamina to be an imperial hegemon of the 21st century. With the war in IRAQ going nowhere and no exit strategy in...
On November 4 2004 the fate of the world will be sealed. It would be an unmitigated disaster for the US and the world if the present incumbent is elected. I have spoken a moment too soon. Was he ever elected to begin with. The polls in Florida conducted under Jeb were flawd and had the counting proceeded in accordance with procedure I am sure Al Gore would have been the President and not Bush Jr. This is not the time to dwell on the past, think of the future. This Friday tne Debat...
The news from Iraq is very disturbing. The land where civilization began is now slowly becoming a desolate wasteland. In his address to the American Congress Prime Minister ALlawi maintained that the War is now winding down and that conditions for a free and fair elections exist in Iraq, barring 3 provinces. This view is needlessly generous, and there is no tinge of reality in it. Iraq and its civil society has completely fragmented into a whole range of tribal. ethnic and sectarian groups a...