Kevin M. Levin, "Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth" (UNC Press, 2019)

The reason for Great Britain’s war against China in the First Opium War (1839-42) is often taken as a given. British merchants wanted to “open” trade beyond the port of Canton (Guangzhou) and continue dealing in the lucrative commodity, opium. Historian Stephen R. Platt’s book, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age (Knopf, 2018) proves that the path to war was not so simple. Internal rebellions weakened the Qing military and stretched resources thin. British themselves debated the merits of the Canton system that restricted all Western foreigners and their trade in China to a single port. Some Qing officials considered opium a wholly domestic issue while others considered how best to resolve opium smuggling–by legalizing opium or ejecting foreigners from Canton. Platt traces the narratives of figures who played significant roles in the mounting conflict and identifies lynchpin moments when the history of China and the West could have turned out much differently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

24 Sep 20181h 1min

We have all seen pictures of the “Big Three” (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin) at their historic meeting Yalta in February 1945. The three leaders command the viewer’s attention, naturally, but in the background of the various versions of that photo are other important figures. One can glimpse George Marshall in some. Foreign ministers Eden and Molotov appear in others. American Admirals King and Leahy are there. And so is a U.S. Army Air Force general named Larry Kuter. Not exactly a household name, Kuter was an enormously influential figure, who richly deserves this excellent biography written by airpower expert, Brian Laslie: Architect of Air Power: General Laurence S. Kuter and the Birth of the U.S. Air Force (University Press of Kentucky, 2017). Dr. Laslie is the Deputy Command Historian at NORAD and US Northern Command and the author of another noteworthy book on the U.S. Air Force: The Air Force Way of War: U.S. Tactics and Training after Vietnam (2015), which I can also recommend. Laslie kept encountering Kuter’s name or photo as his work took him to Air Force bases and installations around the world and began to ask questions. Kuter was the co-author of AWPD-1, the first American plan for air war and a strong proponent of daylight, precision strategic bombing. He commanded American forces all over the world, served immediately under Harold George in the postwar Air Transport Command, which gave him responsibility, among other things, for the Berlin Airlift in 1948. He set up the United States Air Force Academy; he commanded NORAD; in retirement, he worked with Pan Am on the 747 project. And there was much more to Kuter’s story, as you can read in Laslie’s book after you enjoy our conversation here. Listeners might also be interested in the author’s blog, Balloons to Drones.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

14 Sep 201839min

In the 6th century CE, the Roman emperor Justinian embarked upon a series of wars that seemed to herald the restoration of the Roman empire in the western Mediterranean. In his book Rome Resurgent: War and Empire in the Age of Justinian (Oxford University Press, 2018), Peter Heather recounts the campaigns of Justinian’s armies and the factors that made them possible. As Heather explains, the Roman imperial state in the 6th century was one focused mainly upon the waging of war, though for all of the revenue expended upon its armies the eastern Romans had experienced a series of defeats at the hands of their Sassanian Persian rivals to their east. Soon after Justinian took the throne, however, the eastern Roman armies enjoyed a series of successes thanks to the leadership of his most successful commander, Belisarius. While these victories helped define Justinian’s stature as emperor, maintaining them ultimately proved the greater challenge, one that Justinian’s successors were unable to accomplish. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

10 Sep 201858min

N.A.J. Taylor and Robert Jacobs,’s edited volume Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Nuclear Humanities in the Post-Cold War (Routledge, 2017) developed out of a special journal issue of Critical Military Studies organized on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Taylor and Jacobs have gathered a subtly interwoven set of papers that together offer a distinctly post-Cold War perspective Hiroshima and Nagasaki—not just the bombings, but their long, continuing aftermaths. At various levels of granularity and expansiveness, the contributors present a diverse set of approaches and findings in what the editors describe as the “exciting new field of Nuclear Humanities.” The contributions to this volume are arrayed along five “pathways” laid out by the editors in their introduction: “testimony from lived experience;” “memorialization and commemoration;” “ordinary people’s resentment, suffering, and forgiveness;” the long-term and universal effects of nuclear weapons; and the transdisciplinary exchanges that characterize Nuclear Humanities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

5 Sep 20182h 2min

Today we are joined by Gerald Gems, Professor of Kinesiology at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, and the author of several books on sports history including Sport in American History: From Colonization to Globalization (2017), Sport and the American Occupation of the Philippines (2016), and Blood and Guts to Glory: A History of Sports (2014).  Gems is also the former president of the North American Society for Sport History, the former vice-president of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sports, and a former Fulbright Scholar. In Sport and the American Occupation of the Philippines: Bats, Balls, and Bayonets (Lexington Books, 2016), Gems explores the history of sport during the US occupation of the Philippines.  Based on extensive primary and secondary source research, Gems work uses hegemony theory to investigate how and why American colonizers imported ideas about sports to the Philippines, and in what circumstances Filipinos adopted, adapted, rejected these sporting practices.  He shows that American politicians, military planners, missionaries, and businessmen saw sports like baseball and basketball as essential for keeping soldiers physically and morally fit, while  teaching American values including capitalism, militarism, and work ethic.  Filipino sportsmen and women played some American sports, first baseball and later basketball, but on their own terms.  For many Filipino athletes, sports became a way to assert Filipino nationalism.  When they played basketball against US soldiers, they overcame American height advantages by developing a fast paced style and they likened their victories to the rapid strikes of Filipino guerrillas against the occupying forces. Gem’s work has resonance beyond the Philippines and will be interesting reading for scholars studying the translation of American ideas in similar colonial contexts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

14 Aug 201856min

In a break with protocol, I decided to interview a novelist rather than a military historian. Nick Dybek, a creative writing professor at Oregon State University has written a terrific novel, The Verdun Affair: A Novel (Scribner, 2018). It’s protagonist is Tom, an American living in France after World War I, having served as an ambulance driver for the American Field Service. He has the macabre task of gathering bones from the battlefield at Verdun, in preparation for the construction of ossuary there. Families come from all over France, looking for news, or perhaps the remains, of loved ones reported missing or dead during the war. One such pilgrim is Sarah, also American, looking for her husband, Lee, whom she is convinced still lives. You can learn more about the story in the interview (or go read the book!), which also details some of the remarkable historical research that Dybek conducted as he wrote. The sense of global catastrophe, the losses of grieving families, the search for meaning, the efforts to rebuild, all conjure the atmosphere of postwar Europe. Dybek’s descriptions of Verdun, of the battles on the Isonzo and in the Dolomites, the fascist violence in Italy reflect that careful research and teach the history of the period with greater impact than all but the best works of history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

14 Aug 201845min

Conventional wisdom has long held the position that between 1945 and 1949, not only did the United States enjoy a monopoly on atomic weapons, but that it was prepared to use them if necessary against an increasingly hostile Soviet Union.  This was not exactly the case, our guest John M. Curatola argues in his book, Bigger Bombs for a Brighter Tomorrow: The Strategic Air Command and American War Plans at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, 1945-1950 (McFarland & Company, 2016).  Curatola is a professor of history at the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  He presents the story of an ad hoc, frequently chaotic, strategic defense posture at the opening of the Cold War.  Inter-service rivalries, inter-agency bickering, and deficiencies in equipment, morale, and training all left the United States Air Force and the Atomic Energy Commission to pursue their own strategic plans, which Curatola notes were unrealistic, and in some cases, almost ludicrous. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

1 Aug 201851min

During the 17th and 18th centuries, Austria established itself as one of the dominant powers of Europe, despite possessing much more limited fiscal resources when compared to its counterparts. In The Sinews of Habsburg Power: Lower Austria in a Fiscal-Military State, 1650-1820 (Oxford University Press, 2018), William D. Godsey uses the financial support provided by one region of the Habsburg’s empire to understand how it maintained its status during a time of change in the nature of military power. As Godsey explains, the challenge was posed by the contrasting trends of a need for a larger standing army and the ability of the region’s economy to support it. In response to the demands placed on it, the Estates of the region – the assemblage of clerical, noble, and municipal leaders who implemented taxes for the monarchy – evolved to play a regular role in supplying the Habsburg armies with the resources it needed to operate. This evolution preserved the importance of the role the Estates played in the exercise of Habsburg power, one that was challenged occasionally by such events as the centralizing reforms of Emperor Joseph II but nonetheless persevered well into the 19th century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

17 Juli 201853min