Tag: International Order

The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941–2000 – A CIGH Seminar with Brad Simpson (19 Nov.)

Published on by CIGH Exeter

We are delighted to welcome Professor Bradley Simpson (University of Connecticut). He will be discussing his new book The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941–2000 (Oxford University Press, Oct. 2025). His talk is jointly convened by the Centre for Histories of Violence and Conflict and the Centre for Imperial and Global History.

Wednesday 19 November 2025, 2:30pm-4pm

Amory B310 and on Teams

Abstract: The idea of self-determination is one of the most significant in modern international politics. For more than a century, diplomats, lawyers, scholars, activists, and ordinary people in every part of the globe have wrestled with its meaning and implications for decolonization, human rights, sovereignty, and international order. This talk will examine self-determination as a century-long contest between contending visions of sovereignty and rights whose meaning has often emerged not just from the United Nations and great power diplomacy but from the claims of peoples, places, and movements on the margins of international society.

Click here to read the book’s introduction for free until 1 December.

Bio: Brad Simpson is Professor of History at the University of Connecticut. He teaches and researches twentieth century U.S. foreign relations and international history, and has an interest in US-southeast relations, political economy, human rights and development. His first book, Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968 (Stanford 2008) explores the intersection of anti-Communism and development thinking in shaping U.S. Indonesian relations. He is also founder and director of a project at the non-profit National Security Archive to declassify U.S. government documents concerning Indonesia and East Timor during the reign of General Suharto (1966-1998). This project will serve as the basis for a study of U.S.-Indonesian-international relations from 1965 to 1999, exploring how the international community’s embrace of an authoritarian regime in Indonesia shaped development, civil-military relations, human rights and Islamic politics.

The Post-Colonial People’s War: The Legacy of Maoism

Published on by CIGH Exeter

A Timeless Strategy? A 1991 English translation of Mao Zedong’s On Guerrilla Warfare

Tom Harper

1935 was not a good year for Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  Having almost been wiped out by the encirclement campaigns waged by the Chinese Nationalists (KMT) of Chiang Kai Shek and barely surviving the Long March to Shaanxi Province, one could be forgiven for thinking that the days of Chinese communism were numbered.      Even fewer could have predicted that nearly fourteen years later, Mao, with his nationalist foes now vanquished to the island of Formosa, would be standing in Tiananmen Square declaring the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Much of the reversal of the CCP’s fortunes can be attributed to the ideology and strategies formulated by Mao and his German educated strategist, Zhu De, which combined Marx’s theories on communist revolution with traditional Chinese texts such as The Water Margin and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to a context far removed from Marx’s prognosis for revolution.  [2]    These ideas would form a significant part of China’s contribution to the post-colonial world and influenced both guerrilla movements across the globe and the counter insurgency planners that sought to defeat them. These strategies also would influence the thinking behind Chinese foreign policy during and after the Cold War. Continue reading “The Post-Colonial People’s War: The Legacy of Maoism” →