Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History”
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
Cross-posted from The Globalist Magazine
How the 1888 elections decided the protectionist course of U.S. economic expansion for decades to come.
For most people alive today, Republicans have been the advocates of a free trade strategy for the United States, while the Democrats usually have sat on the fence.
The emergence of Donald Trump brings back the memory of when it was the other way around – when Republicans vehemently opposed open trade relations with the world, while Democrats advocated for free trade.
The year was 1888, the tail end of Grover Cleveland’s first administration (1885-89). He was the only Democrat to hold the U.S. presidency in the half-century since the Civil War. And because of his actions, it was the tariff question that overshadowed all other economic issues that year.
The “Great Debate” of 1888 over U.S. trade policy arose after Cleveland, in his December 1887 annual message to Congress, had voiced his support for freer trade.
Cleveland’s free-trade message created political waves, both at home and upon the shores of Great Britain. Continue reading “When Protectionism Dominated American Politics”
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
The post-Second-World-War liberal economic order has never looked more uncertain. Over the past few months, the long-dormant forces of protectionism, nationalism, populism, and xenophobia have been reawakened. Free trade is under attack, whether from Donald Trump’s protectionist presidential campaign or from the outcome of the Brexit referendum. Extreme nationalism is on the rise, not only in the US and the UK, but also in continental Europe and Asia. Trump climbed the GOP nomination ladder promising to put “America First,” resurrecting the isolationist mantra of the 1940s. The white supremacist, pro-apartheid killer of UK Labour MP Jo Cox was heard shouting “Put Britain First” as he stabbed and shot the 41-year-old anti-Brexit MP to death. Across the globe, foreigners have become the common target of racist hate crimes and extremist violence. Anti-Semitism is on the rise, as are Islamophobic attacks. Nowadays the cosmopolitan ideal – a global citizenry – appears to be more myth than reality.
It’s a difficult time to be an optimist. It doesn’t help that history is very nearly repeating itself. The Brexit referendum has hammered home how historical memory is far shorter and inaccurate than we might have feared. For example, nationalistic pro-Brexit Britons marked the centenary of the bloody Battle of the Somme this past weekend, either unaware or uncaring of the irony that the world war that wrought the same bloody battle arose largely because of extreme European nationalism, economic autarky, and disunity.
Granted, the current global crisis has many aspects that are unique to the 21st century. But there also many striking parallels between the situation today and the struggles that occurred during the global economic depressions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (These periods even had their fair share of international terrorism.) Now more than ever we need to be revisiting these earlier controversies over globalization and international conflict in order to find historical precedents, parallels, and lessons – so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes.
It would seem that the editors of the Financial Times agree. Continue reading “New @ExeterCIGH Book Featured in Financial Times”
Entrance of a gallery of the mine Khouribga. Photograph from an advertising Chérifien Phosphates Office 1952. EN ANOM. Aix-en-Provence: BIB AOM 4911 // Youssoufia Phosphates. – The achievements of the Office for his daily personal, Rabat: Morocco-Matin 1952.
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
The OUPblog has just posted a great reading list for scholars of the history of US foreign relations, in advance of the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). The list, some of which are below, includes blog posts, cutting-edge books, and the top five most-read Diplomatic History articles of 2015 (spoiler: one of them is mine). More than a few of the items on the list have an explicitly imperial history angle, including fresh-off-the-press books like Benjamin Coates’s Legalist Empire: International Law and American Foreign Relations in the Early Twentieth Century and Amanda Moniz’s From Empire to Humanity: The American Revolution and the Origins of Humanitarianism. Have a look! Continue reading “17 OUP-Recommended US Foreign Relations Histories That You Need to Read”
Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen
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