Category: Imperial & Global History

Global Humanitarianism Research Academy 2019 Underway #GHRA2019

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Cross-posted from Humanitarianism & Human Rights

The Global Humanitarianism Research Academy (GHRA) is currently meeting for the fifth time for one week of academic training at the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz before continuing with archival research at the ICRC Archives in Geneva. In this context it is a great pleasure to announce that the GHRA is joined by a new partner, the Chair in International History and Historical Peace and Conflict Studies at the Department of History of the University of Cologne.

The Research Academy addresses early career researchers who are working in the related fields of humanitarianism, international humanitarian law, peace and conflict studies as well as human rights covering the period from the 18th to the 20th century. It supports scholarship on the ideas and practices of humanitarianism in the context of international, imperial and global history thus advancing our understanding of global governance in humanitarian crises of the present.

As in the last four years the GHRA received again a huge amount of applications from an extremely talented group of scholars from more than twenty different countries around the world. The selection committee considered each proposal carefully and has selected these participants for the GHRA 2019: Continue reading “Global Humanitarianism Research Academy 2019 Underway #GHRA2019” →

How the Century of Humiliation Influences China’s Ambitions Today

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Fall of an empire: matchlock-wielding Qing infantry battle British forces at the battle of Chinkiang during the First Opium War.

Tom Harper

The rapid economic and military ascent of China has been one of the major geopolitical developments over the past four decades, with the reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping entering its 40th anniversary this year. This has seen China go from a ramshackle, quasi-feudal empire into one of the Great Powers of the 21st century. [1] What has been the driving force behind this push has been China’s historical experiences, most notably those of the 19th and early 20th centuries, known to the Chinese as the Century of Humiliation (百年国耻), where China lost both its territory and its prestige to the imperial powers of the day. [2] These experiences have also been a tool in China’s relationships with the wider world as well as a unifying force within China, the legacy of which persists in the light of current tensions. Continue reading “How the Century of Humiliation Influences China’s Ambitions Today” →

Tracing the Origins of Early Feminism in the Arab World

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Al-Fatah magazine was the first Arab women’s periodical. First published on 20 Nov 1892.

Asma Char
University of Exeter

The 1938 and 1944 pan-Arab conferences in Cairo, Egypt, were the events that “cement[ed] Arab feminist consciousness” (Golley, 2004) and the feminist debate was to erupt in the Arab world from the 1950s onwards. Hadidi and Al-Qadi have since investigated pioneering women’s writing in Syria and acknowledge the existence of new-woman characters, but they argue that the phenomenon only appeared in fiction from the 1970s onwards. They write: “[the] new woman is a type of female character almost wholly absent in previous periods; she starts to appear in the novels of the 1970s, which opened up to collective concerns and constructed fictional worlds based on the political and social reality in Syria and the Arab world” (2008, 87). Arab women’s feminist struggle, however, appeared much earlier — within fin-de-siècle Arabic fiction.  Continue reading “Tracing the Origins of Early Feminism in the Arab World” →

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

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Usage de nouvelles mesures, Musée Carnavalet, Paris.

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From German dystopian tales of Brexit Britain to the enduring revolutionary dream of the metric system, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history. Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History” →

When is colonialism a genocide? The case of Indigenous women and girls in Canada

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Activists seeking justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) march down Toronto streets, 22 March 2018.

Lori Lee Oates

Canada’s treatment of Indigenous persons by white settlers and contemporary government institutions are issues that have increasingly come to the forefront of late. They are at the heart of questions around how we should govern in the modern world. These institutions were not built by Indigenous persons, and Canadians are increasingly recognizing that our government has often contributed to the poor health, safety, and economic outcomes experienced by Indigenous persons.

The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) inquiry in Canada recently sparked a debate over whether Indigenous persons in the country have suffered, and continue to suffer, from genocide. The inquiry came about in response to years of lobbying by Indigenous women, and was the fulfillment of a campaign promise on the part of the Trudeau government. The final report was released on 3 June, entitled Reclaiming Power and Place. Continue reading “When is colonialism a genocide? The case of Indigenous women and girls in Canada” →

Cold War Triangle: How Scientists in East and West Tamed HIV

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Renilde Loeckx. Cold War Triangle: How Scientists in East and West Tamed HIV. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2017. 192 pp. $29.50 (paper), ISBN 978-946270113-7.

Reviewed by Dora Vargha (University of Exeter) Published on H-Diplo (February, 2019) Commissioned by Seth Offenbach (Bronx Community College, The City University of New York)

Cross-posted from H-Diplo

Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=53143

Renilde Loeckx’s Cold War Triangle tells the story of an international scientific collaboration across the iron curtain that led to the development of HIV blockbuster drugs such as Viread and Truvada. It is as much a story of Cold War collaboration among scientists, as a story of collaboration between scientific institutions and pharmaceutical companies. In her introduction, Loeckx, a former ambassador of Belgium, sets out to bridge diplomacy and science to tell the story of Antonín Holy and Erik Le Clercq: the collaboration of a Czechoslovak and Belgian scientist with the American pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences. As Loeckx writes, the book is “about the human face of science, how scientists from three different cultures collaborated to create the complex drugs that saved millions of lives” (p. 15). Continue reading “Cold War Triangle: How Scientists in East and West Tamed HIV” →

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

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Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From tracing Kenya’s plundered cultural artefacts to calling U.S. detention centers “concentration camps,” here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history. Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History” →