Histories of neutrality and collaboration in the Second World War tend to focus on Europe. Yet, considering these dynamics in Asia is essential to understand the conflict as a truly global event. My book Neutrality and Collaboration in South China: Macau during the Second World War looks at a small enclave that remained neutral throughout […]
Read MoreThe First World War was a war of empires that started in the Balkans and ended in the Middle East. Yet, some historians still see this war as a mostly European story. Mapping the different fronts of the war together challenges this perspective: I wrote The Last Treaty, in part, to understand why war historiography […]
Read MoreWW2 Comparative History from BelowWritten by Claire Andrieu Unlike the objects of its title, the subject of this book did not fall from the sky. I did not set out to write a comparative history of the reception of downed airmen in Britain, France and Germany during World War II. The story of When Men […]
Read MoreIt is sometimes overlooked that many thousands of women served alongside men in the British armed forces during the Second World War. Over the conflict, some 600,000 women were absorbed into the three British women’s auxiliary services – the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, the Auxiliary Territorial Service, and the Women’s Royal Naval Service. These servicewomen […]
Read MoreConsult any dictionary of slang and you’ll find a definition something like this: a letter sent to a man (usually in uniform) by his girlfriend, fiancée or wife announcing the end of their relationship. Urban legend adds a further twist. A Dear John doesn’t just sever an unwanted romantic connection. It announces that the sender […]
Read MoreAmerica’s hasty extrication from its war in Afghanistan was anything but smooth, and now the world’s leading superpower’s two-decade misadventure there has ended with a shocking, humiliating defeat. Even as the world contemplates the implications of this seemingly improbable outcome, the post-mortem proceeds in earnest. What went wrong? After two decades of nation building, a […]
Read MoreIn every bookshop in the English-speaking world, works on military history occupy at least half of the shelves devoted to ‘History’. I helped to create two of...
Read MoreSo said former CIA Director R. James Woolsey to the House Armed Services Committee in 1999, channeling what had become a consensus about Iraq in the U.S. foreign policy establishment by the end of the 1990s: that Saddam Hussein could no longer be contained because he was fixated on shedding sanctions and inspections, rebuilding his […]
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