Decades of Turbulent Decolonization After WW2 Launched With The Dutch-Indonesian Wars of 1945-49
The Dutch–Indonesian War was one of the first postwar struggles that followed the Japanese surrender in September 1945, which left a power vacuum in the colonial Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). The infant nation didn’t have a normal standing army but was a fragile coalition of various forces involved in the struggle: the Indonesian nationalists who immediately proclaimed an independent republic, remaining Japanese troops, and revolutionary student groups. Pitted against them were the Dutch forces, which arrived in 1946, and tried to restore its colony.Today’s guest is Marc Lohnstein, author of “The Dutch-Indonesian War 1945-49.” We discusss how the nationalists were defeated by Dutch and Dutch-led local forces in urban areas, but how their guerrillas evaded Dutch troops in the jungle hills and swamps.While mostly forgotten, this war is one of many such conflicts in the turbulent years of decolonization.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
31 Aug 202344min
Could the Pacific War of WW2 Have Been Entirely Avoided if Not For U.S. Diplomats in Over Their Heads?
It’s November 1941. Japan and the US are teetering on a knife-edge as leaders on both sides of the Pacific strive to prevent war between them. But failed diplomacy, foiled negotiations, and possible duplicity in the Roosevelt administration thwart their attempts.Drawing on now-declassified original documents, today’s guest, Dale Jenkins, author of “Diplomats & Admirals” reveals the inside story of one fateful year, including:How the hidden agendas of powerful civilian and military leaders pushed the two nations toward warThe miscommunications, misjudgments, and blunders that doomed efforts at peaceChina’s role in the US ultimatum that triggered the attack on Pearl HarborWhy the carrier-to-carrier showdown at Coral Sea proved a fatal mistake for JapanHow courageous US navy pilots snatched victory from defeat at the Battle of MidwaySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
29 Aug 202345min
The WW2 Pacific Theatre of January-May 1942: When Japan Was Omnipotent and America Was a Fearful Underdog
After the devastating Japanese blows of December 1941, the Allies found themselves reeling with defeat everywhere in the Pacific. Although stripped of his battleships and outnumbered 10:3 in carriers, the US Navy commander-in-chief Admiral Ernest J. King decided to hit back at Japan’s rapidly expanding Pacific empire immediately, in an effort to keep the Japanese off-balance.On February 1, 1942, Vice Admiral Bill Halsey led the US Pacific Fleet carriers on their first raid, using high-speed hit-and-run tactics to strike at the Japanese, at a time when most of the Japanese carrier fleet was in the Indian Ocean. Halsey’s aggressive commitment inspired its American participants to invent the mythical “Haul Ass With Halsey” club. The last of the 1942 US carrier raids in March 1942 would form a defining moment in the Pacific War, prior to a new phase of high-seas battles between the opposing fleets.To discuss this overlooked era is Brian Herder, author of “Early Pacific Raids 1942: The American Carriers Strike Back.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
24 Aug 202340min
The History of America’s Ice Obsession: Why The U.S. Loves Frozen Drinks and Ice Rinks
Ice is everywhere: in gas stations, in restaurants, in hospitals, in hotels via noisy machines, and in our homes. Americans think nothing of dropping a few ice cubes into tall glasses of tea to ward off the heat of a hot summer day. Most refrigerators owned by Americans feature automatic ice machines. Ice on-demand has so revolutionized modern life that it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always this way—in fact, the national obsession with ice can be traced back to a Bostonian merchant who, 200 years ago, figured out how to get Caribbean bartenders addicted to serving their drinks cold.Today’s guest is Amy Brady, author of “Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks.” She shares the strange and storied two-hundred-year-old history of ice in America: from the introduction of mixed drinks “on the rocks,” to the nation’s first-ever indoor ice rink, to how delicacies like ice creams and iced tea revolutionized our palates, to the ubiquitous ice machine in every motel across the US. But Ice doesn’t end in the past. Brady also explores the surprising present-day uses of ice in sports, medicine, and sustainable energy—including cutting-edge cryotherapy breast-cancer treatments and new refrigerator technologies that may prove to be more energy efficient—underscoring how precious this commodity is.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
22 Aug 202342min
Introducing Mark Vinet's New Show: Historical Jesus
This is a preview of the new Parthenon Podcast Network show "Historical Jesus," hosted by Mark Vinet. This show explores the question of who was Jesus Christ and why did he inspire such admiration, fervor, and devotion? Join Mark as he unravels the truth, myth, legends, and mysteries surrounding this Titan of History.Subscribe to Historical Jesus:Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3rgGPbrSpotify: https://sptfy.com/OjwsDiscover more episodes of Historical Jesus:The Bible: https://apple.co/44ChqHL / https://sptfy.com/OjwTOld Testament: https://apple.co/3pxYqeM / https://sptfy.com/OjwURoots of Christianity: https://apple.co/3rkq8Mz / https://sptfy.com/OjwXWhat is Religion?: https://apple.co/43eaorH / https://sptfy.com/OjwYSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
20 Aug 202310min
Leyte Gulf: The Largest Naval Battle in History and the Downfall of the Japanese Navy
The WW2 battle of Leyte Gulf was the largest naval encounter in history and probably the most decisive naval battle of the entire Pacific War, and one that saw the Imperial Japanese Navy eliminated as an effective fighting force and forced to resort to suicide tactics.Leyte was a huge and complex action, actually consisting of four major battles. And much of the accepted wisdom of the battle has developed from the many myths that surround it, myths that have become more firmly established over time, such as the “lost victory” of the Japanese advance into Leyte Gulf that never happened. To explore this battle is today’s guest, Mark Stille, author of “Leyte Gulf: A New History of the World’s Largest Sea Battle.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
17 Aug 202346min
Britain Controlled the Globe by Farming Out Colonial Governance to the East Indian Company and other Corporations
How did Britain – an island nation the same size as Oregon – manage to control most of the world through its colonial empires? The answer is that it didn’t, at least not directly. Britain farmed out control to its imperial holdings by granting land rights to joint-stock corporations. And many of them, like the East India Company, were sovereign nations in all but name.Across four centuries, from Ireland to India, the Americas to Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all the business of corporations. Corporations conceived, promoted, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British and colonial society were invested, quite literally, in their ventures. Colonial companies were also relentlessly controversial, frequently in debt, and prone to failure. The corporation was well-suited to overseas expansion not because it was an inevitable juggernaut but because, like empire itself, it was an elusive contradiction: public and private; person and society; subordinate and autonomous; centralized and diffuse; immortal and precarious; national and cosmopolitan—a legal fiction with very real power.Breaking from traditional histories in which corporations take a supporting role by doing the dirty work of sovereign states in exchange for commercial monopolies, today’s guest, Philip Stern (author of Empire, Incorporated) argues that corporations took the lead in global expansion and administration. Whether in sixteenth-century Ireland and North America or the Falklands in the early 1980s, corporations were key players. And venture colonialism did not cease with the end of empire. Its legacies continue to raise questions about corporate power that are just as relevant today as they were 400 years ago.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
15 Aug 20231h 13min
How the Monroe Doctrine Led to America Occupying Cuba, Panama, Hawaii, and Haiti
Following the Napoleonic Wars, a tidal wave of independence movements hit the Western Hemisphere. The United States was afraid that expansionist powers—namely Britain, France, Germany, and Japan—might extend their empires into these regions, threatening the growth of fledgling republics in the Americas. This kicked off a century of American launching well-intentioned but bloody imperialism in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, with the annexation of Hawaii, the Spanish-American War, and military occupations of Cuba, Haiti, Panama, and other countries as a firewall against European expansion.Only after making these preemptive incursions to restore order and support democracy in its “mortal combat” against imperialism, as Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan put it, did the U.S. get bogged down in interventionist quagmires.Today’s guest is Sean Mirski, author of “We May Dominate the World: Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus.” Mirski examines a lost chapter of American foreign policy, the century following the Civil War in which the United States carved out a sphere of influence and became the only great power in modern history to achieve regional hegemony.By understanding what drove the United States’ behavior, it offers a window into the trajectory that other regional powers—including China, Russia, and Iran—may take in the coming decades.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
10 Aug 202347min
