Episodes

  • Andrew G. Walder, "Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China's Southern Periphery" (Stanford UP, 2023)

    Andrew G. Walder, "Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China's Southern Periphery" (Stanford UP, 2023)
    Mar 9 2025
    Guangxi, a region on China's southern border with Vietnam, has a large population of ethnic minorities and a history of rebellion and intergroup conflict. In the summer of 1968, during the high tide of the Cultural Revolution, it became notorious as the site of the most severe and extensive violence observed anywhere in China during that period of upheaval. Several cities saw urban combat resembling civil war, while waves of mass killings in rural communities generated enormous death tolls. More than one hundred thousand died in a few short months. These events have been chronicled in sensational accounts that include horrific descriptions of gruesome murders, sexual violence, and even cannibalism. Only recently have scholars tried to explain why Guangxi was so much more violent than other regions. With evidence from a vast collection of classified materials compiled during an investigation by the Chinese government in the 1980s, Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China's Southern Periphery (Stanford UP, 2023) reconsiders explanations that draw parallels with ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, Bosnia, and other settings. It reveals mass killings as the byproduct of an intense top-down mobilization of rural militia against a stubborn factional insurgency, resembling brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in a variety of settings. Moving methodically through the evidence, Andrew Walder provides a groundbreaking new analysis of one the most shocking chapters of the Cultural Revolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
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    1 hr and 26 mins
  • Margaret Peacock, "Frequencies of Deceit: How Global Propaganda Wars Shaped the Middle East" (U California Press, 2025)

    Margaret Peacock, "Frequencies of Deceit: How Global Propaganda Wars Shaped the Middle East" (U California Press, 2025)
    Mar 8 2025
    On June 8, 1967, Egypt's most famous radio broadcaster, Ahmed Said, reported that Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces had defeated the Israeli army in the Sinai, had hobbled their British and US allies, and were liberating Palestine. It was a lie. For the rest of his life, populations in the Middle East vilified Said for his duplicity. However, the truth was that, by 1967, all the world's major broadcasters to the Middle East were dissimulating on the air. For two decades, British, Soviet, American, and Egyptian radio voices created an audio world characterized by deceit and betrayal. In Frequencies of Deceit: How Global Propaganda Wars Shaped the Middle East (University of California Press, 2025), Dr. Margaret Peacock traces the history of deception and propaganda in Middle Eastern international radio. Dr. Peacock makes the compelling argument that this betrayal contributed to the loss of faith in Western and secular state-led political solutions for many in the Arab world, laying the groundwork for the rise of political Islam. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Janam Mukherjee, "Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2015)

    Janam Mukherjee, "Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2015)
    Mar 6 2025
    The years leading up to the independence and accompanying partition of India mark a tumultuous period in the history of Bengal. Representing both a major front in the Indian struggle against colonial rule, as well as a crucial Allied outpost in the British/American war against Japan, Bengal stood at the crossroads of complex and contentious structural forces - both domestic and international - which, taken together, defined an era of political uncertainty, social turmoil, and collective violence. While for the British the overarching priority was to save the empire from imminent collapse at any cost, for the majority of the Indian population the 1940s were years of acute scarcity, violent dislocation and enduring calamity. In particular there are three major crises that shaped the social, economic and political context of pre-partition Bengal: the Second World War, the Bengal famine of 1943, and the Calcutta riots of 1946. Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire (Oxford UP, 2015) examines these intricately interconnected events, foregrounding the political economy of war and famine in order to analyze the complex nexus of hunger, war and civil violence in colonial Bengal at the twilight of British rule. NBN Host: Sohini Majumdar teaches history at University of San Francisco and Santa Clara University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Christian Gerlach, "Conditions of Violence" (de Gruyter, 2024)

    Christian Gerlach, "Conditions of Violence" (de Gruyter, 2024)
    Mar 6 2025
    Mass violence comes not only from states, but also from people. By analyzing mass violence as social interaction through survivor accounts and other sources, Conditions of Violence (de Gruyter, 2024) presents understudied agents, aims and practices of direct violence and ways of action of those under persecution. Sound history – examining the noises of mass violence and persecution – is particularly telling about such practices. This volume shows that violence can become socially hegemonic, and some people claim a freedom to kill as a political right. To scrutinize indirect violence, which is often imperialist in character and claims many victims, the book proposes the concept of conditions of violence. These conditions are produced by definable groups of actors and foreseeably harm definable groups (which differs from the anonymous and static ‘structural violence’). This is exemplified in a case study concerning famines in World War II and another on COVID-19 as mass violence. Less global in character, other case studies in this volume deal with Rwanda, Bangladesh/East Pakistan and the Soviet Union. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
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    39 mins
  • Jack Dempsey, "Warriors for Liberty: William Dollarson & Michigan's Civil War African Americans" (Michigan Civil War Association, 2024)

    Jack Dempsey, "Warriors for Liberty: William Dollarson & Michigan's Civil War African Americans" (Michigan Civil War Association, 2024)
    Mar 4 2025
    Michigan's African Americans played critical roles in winning the Civil War and setting millions of fellow Americans forever free. The 1st Michigan Colored Infantry Regiment, more than 1,500 strong, helped overwhelm their enemies on the battlefield. Alongside the soldiers, civilian Black men and women contributed in previously unrecognized ways to defending and extending human liberty. One such unsung hero, William Dollarson, escaped from brutal slave conditions in Natchez, became a conductor on the Underground Railroad in Detroit, and joined the staff of Michigan's preeminent general in fighting the Confederacy in Maryland and Virginia. This first-ever complete recounting coincides with the 160th anniversary of the Michigan regiment mustering into the U.S. Army. Warriors for Liberty: William Dollarson & Michigan's Civil War African Americans (Michigan Civil War Association, 2024) sheds unprecedented light on the heroism, patriotism, and fortitude of Michiganders of African descent during this tumultuous era in American history. Aided by extensive research and fresh scholarship, this volume is a breakthrough study of compelling depth and majesty. Included is a first-person account by victims of the 1863 Detroit riot that spurred greater sacrifice by Michigan's people of color in the cause of saving the Union and of emancipation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
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    39 mins
  • John Coakley ed et al., "The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World: Maritime Predation, Empire, and the Construction of Authority at Sea" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)

    John Coakley ed et al., "The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World: Maritime Predation, Empire, and the Construction of Authority at Sea" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)
    Mar 4 2025
    In the early modern period, both legal and illegal maritime predation was a common occurrence, but the expansion of European maritime empires exacerbated existing and created new problems of piracy across the globe. The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World (Amsterdam UP, 2024) addresses these early modern problems in three sections: first, states' attempts to exercise jurisdiction over seafarers and their actions; second, the multiple predatory marine practices considered 'piracy'; and finally, the many representations made about piracy by states or the seafarers themselves. Across nine chapters covering regions including southeast Asia, the Atlantic archipelago, the North African states, and the Caribbean Sea, the complexities of defining and criminalizing maritime predation is explored, raising questions surrounding subjecthood, interpolity law, and the impacts of colonization on the legal and social construction of ocean, port, and coastal spaces. Seeking the meanings and motivations behind piracy, this book reveals that while European states attempted to fashion piracy into a global and homogenous phenomenon, it was largely a local and often idiosyncratic issue. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
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    49 mins
  • Victoria Khiterer, "Jewish Pogroms in Kiev During the Russian Civil War, 1918-1920" (Edwin Mellen, 2015)

    Victoria Khiterer, "Jewish Pogroms in Kiev During the Russian Civil War, 1918-1920" (Edwin Mellen, 2015)
    Mar 1 2025
    Jewish Pogroms in Kiev During the Russian Civil War discusses how anti-Jewish violence began during the revolution and civil war 1917-1920 raising questions of responsibility of civil and military authorities and the antisemitic propaganda spread by official mass media as well as deliberate exploitation of antisemitism for political purposes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
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    1 hr and 24 mins
  • Matthew Hughes, "Britain's Pacification of Palestine" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

    Matthew Hughes, "Britain's Pacification of Palestine" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
    Feb 28 2025
    In this complete military history of Britain's pacification of the Arab revolt in Palestine, Britain's Pacification of Palestine (Cambridge UP, 2019), Matthew Hughes shows how the British Army was so devastatingly effective against colonial rebellion. The Army had a long tradition of pacification to draw upon to support operations, underpinned by the creation of an emergency colonial state in Palestine. After conquering Palestine in 1917, the British established a civil Government that ruled by proclamation and, without any local legislature, the colonial authorities codified in law norms of collective punishment that the Army used in 1936. The Army used 'lawfare', emergency legislation enabled by the colonial state, to grind out the rebellion. Soldiers with support from the RAF launched kinetic operations to search and destroy rebel bands, alongside which the villagers on whom the rebels depended were subjected to curfews, fines, detention, punitive searches, demolitions and reprisals. Rebels were disorganised and unable to withstand the power of such pacification measures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
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    1 hr and 28 mins