Roundup: Talking About History

Winston Lord and Leslie H. Gelb: Nixon’s China Opening, 40 Years Later

Winston Lord, Henry Kissinger’s closest aide, accompanied him and President Nixon to all the China opening meetings. He later served as U.S. ambassador to China from 1985 to 1989. A full accounting of these events can be found in Lord’s State Department Oral History at the Library of Congress website. Leslie H. Gelb was diplomatic correspondent and columnist for The New York Times and is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Willard Sterne Randall: Our Founding Fathers Were Broke

Willard Sterne Randall is the author of six Founding Father biographies, including George Washington: A Life, Thomas Jefferson: A Life and, most recently Ethan Allen: His Life and Times, published by W.W. Norton. A former investigative reporter, he is a presidential scholar who participated in C-SPAN’s 2000 and 2009 rankings of the presidents.

Lewis L. Gould: Teddy, Teddy, Enough Already

Lewis L. Gould is Eugene C. Barker Centennial Professor Emeritus in American History at the University of Texas at Austin. His books include Theodore Roosevelt, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, and The William Howard Taft Presidency.When President Obama invoked the name of “Teddy” Roosevelt in his speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, in December, he seemed on safe ground in referring to his predecessor by that familiar nickname. In the world of the talking head and the political pro, everyone knows that Theodore Roosevelt was called “Teddy” by one and all. What better way to establish credentials as a keeper of the presidential heritage than to refer to “Teddy”? The cable news experts who commented on the president’s remarks had their own orgy of “Teddy” references. When done with the proper blend of authority and sophistication, the use of the nickname tells the audience that here is a person in the know. Since all these prominent pundits call him Teddy, then that must have been what he liked as well.

Michael D. Hattem: Academic Networking 2.0: Historians and Social Media

Michael D. Hattem is a doctoral student in the Department of History at Yale University. He received his Bachelor’s degree in History from the City College of New York. His work largely focuses on the political culture, intellectual history, and print culture of colonial New York City and the rest of the middle colonies.As the academic job market in history continues to shrink, networking has become something no tenure-track hopeful can afford to ignore. At the same time, the rise of social media has afforded historians with new and inventive ways to network with colleagues from around the world. Whether posting from conferences in real-time on Twitter, connecting with fellow historians on Facebook, or playing active roles in the blogosphere, younger historians are utilizing social media for both professional networking and scholarly development.

Jeremy Paxman: British Empire was an Amazing Thing

Jeremy Paxman's 'Empire’ starts on BBC One on Feb 27 at 9pmThe history of the British empire is full of amazing stories of adventure, of war, of greed and plunder, cruelty and courage, heroism and low cunning. It explains so much about who we are now, yet we increasingly pretend it never happened.It’s nothing short of a scandal that this history is not taught in schools. It may be unfashionable to say so, but building, securing and running an empire was the biggest international preoccupation of this country for generations.Imperial history explains both why Britain has a seat on the UN Security Council and the readiness of British prime ministers to commit British troops to overseas wars.But it goes much further, too. The empire reshaped our education system and redefined how we think of ourselves. It was the trigger for much post-war immigration, and anything that changes the very genetic make-up of the population can hardly be dismissed as superficial....

Tim Stanley: God Save the Queen ... Why the British Monarchy May Not Outlive Elizabeth

Tim Stanley blogs for The London Daily Telegraph and is the author of The Crusader: the Life and Tumultuous Times of Pat Buchanan. Last week marked the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the British throne. The government has already declared a four day public holiday in June, during which Her Majesty will lead a flotilla of a thousand boats along the Thames and a chain of fiery beacons will be lit across the United Kingdom. For a country in recession and at conflict with the European Union over its right to govern its own finances, this offers us a unique opportunity to reassert confidence and historical identity. The default British response to any crisis is to throw a good party. But enthusiasm for Queen Elizabeth’s anniversary hides the fact that the future of the monarchical institution is in question. Elizabeth II is very popular among her subjects, but her son and heir is not. The tension over the future of the throne raises an even bigger question in Britain: whether it’s appropriate for a 21st century democracy to maintain a monarchy at all. The British enthusiasm for Queen Elizabeth is about two things.

Jeff Biggers: A Mexican Immigrant’s Act of Honor

Jeff Biggers, author of “Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland,” is currently at work on a history of Arizona politics, “State Out of the Union: Arizona and the Final Showdown Over the American Dream” (Nation/Basic Books, 2012). More on his work can be found at: www.jeffbiggers.com.While Arizona’s single brief Civil War skirmish at Picacho Peak between the Texas-led Confederates and Union soldiers from California, on April 15, 1862, is annually taken out of mothballs for celebration, perhaps the state’s most enduring story of honor during the war remains one Mexican immigrant’s courageous act in the face of the Confederate occupation of Tucson.On Valentine’s Day in 1862, Jefferson Davis signed the territory of Arizona — in truth, southern Arizona, below the 34th parallel — into the rebel states as their westernmost capital. It took the Civil War to bring such long-sought territorial recognition, which came with competing claims and declarations. As the United States Congress dallied, Confederate sympathizers had first gathered in Mesilla, N. M., on March 16, 1861, and hastily claimed that the greater Arizona territory would not “recognize the present Black Republican administration.” A subsequent convention in Tucson elected a delegate to the Confederate Congress.

Vladimir Pastukhov: Vladimir Putin ... His Place in History

Vladimir Pastukhov is visiting fellow at St Anthony's College, Oxford and advisor to the Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. Twenty years ago I made my ‘debut’ as Russian political commentator with a text on Russia’s democracy movement.  My conclusion, written in October 1991, read as follows:  ‘There were times — and to some extent this is still the case today — when the democratic movement was showered with accolades that were not always fully justified. And the time is not far off when public opinion will just as arbitrarily begin to regard this very movement as an outcast.  However, its role ought to be assessed in terms of specific historical events. At a specific stage of Russia’s development, the movement faced very specific tasks and having successfully completed them, it reached the pinnacles of power. Nobody should have expected it to deliver what it was not, by definition, able to deliver. This movement did not have the potential to become the organizing force of civil society. Russia today faces different challenges and the movement has been forced to retreat from the political stage. We ought to accept this fact calmly.’  (Pastukhov, V. ‘Russia’s democracy movement: the path to power’. Polis, 1992, No. 1-2, p.

John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr: J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Spy? No. But a Communist Once? Yes.

John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr are contributing editors to Washington Decoded, and the authors of many books on the history of American Communism and Soviet espionage.The relationship of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to communism and Soviet espionage has been controversial subject since 1954, when the decision of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to decline renewal of his security clearance put the issue firmly into the public arena. Journalists and historians addressed the issue repeatedly in the decades that followed. Nothing fueled the liberal/left critique of the so-called “national security state” more than the supposed excesses of the US government in the Oppenheimer case, save the cases involving Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs.[1]

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: The Battle for China's Soul

Mr. Wasserstrom is the author of "China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know."In the early 1860s, a violent fight raged to determine the fate of a vast country. An insurrection had split it in two, leaving much of the southern half governed by men who claimed to be the leaders of a new state but were dismissed by their foes as illegitimate "rebels," outlaws who had given themselves fancy titles. The conflict involved legendary generals with names that schoolchildren still memorize, and it had not just local but international significance: In far-off London, debates raged over whether the British Empire should back the rebels, with whom some Britons felt a sympathetic bond.American readers might naturally assume that this description refers to our Civil War. In fact, I had in mind an Asian conflict, which may be little known to Americans today but which was far bloodier than the struggle that pitted Grant against Lee (tens of millions dead, compared with under a million). The insurgents with fancy titles in this case were the self-proclaimed "Kings" of the Taiping Uprising, a movement that at its apogee held sway over a territory roughly the size of Italy.

Thomas Bender: What's Been Lost in History

Thomas Bender is a professor of history and university professor of the humanities at New York University. This essay is adapted from a talk at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association.I want to pose a question to historians, as a profession: Did we make a decision in the past that has had consequences, presumably not positive ones, for our present and future? The question invites looking backward as a way to think about the future. Were there possibilities we missed? Did we lose part of ourselves sometime in the past?The question is related to the plea recently made by the president and the executive director of the American Historical Association to consider nonacademic as well as academic careers as proper outcomes of doctoral education. This issue is forcing serious thinking not just in history, but in the humanities generally. And it affects not just our professional lives, but our lives as citizens.

Jonathan Freedland: Enemies Within ... Even in 1940, At its Finest Hour, Britain Was Not United on the Side of Good Against Evil

Jonathan Freedland writes a weekly column for the Guardian. He is also a regular contributor to the New York Times and the New York Review of Books, and presents BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series, The Long View.The Americans have 1776, the French have 1789 and we have 1940. The date is not official for us the way it is for them; it marks no formal founding of a nation or republic. But the events of that year — specifically, Britain’s lonely stand against the Nazi menace — have acquired the status of a creation myth, the heroic and finest hour in which modern Britain was born.Our children study the second world war in school and when we vote for our Greatest Briton we choose the hero of 1940, Winston Churchill. When David Cameron deployed his quasi-veto in Brussels in December, the headline-writers and cartoonists instantly reached for 1940 and the image of the solitary Tommy: ‘Very well, alone.’ Meanwhile, an unlikely Twitter sensation, with more than 200,000 followers, is RealTimeWWII, providing 140-character updates of what happened on this day and at this hour in 1940.

Andrew Roberts: How the Queen Saved and Soothed Britain

Mr. Roberts, a historian, is author most recently of The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (Harper, 2011).Queen Elizabeth II acceded to the British throne 60 years ago this week. The Commonwealth will mark the occasion with celebrations throughout the year, but many republicans claim that the queen has made no genuine difference to the history of her country. Is that so?The past six decades haven't been easy for the United Kingdom, and were it not for the monarchy there is no telling what social and political unrest might have dominated. To celebrate the good times properly, it's important to recall the perilous ones, and what might have happened had the queen not been, in the words of the historian John Grigg, "a bastion of stability in an age of social and moral flux."

Paul Bew: What Did Churchill Really Think About Ireland?

Paul Bew is professor of politics at Queen’s University Belfast, and an Independent (cross bench) member of the House of Lords. He has just published Enigma: A new Life of Charles Stewart Parnell (Gill and Macmillan 2011).Winston Churchill made his first public appearance in Ireland in 1878. In 1877 Disraeli had sent his family into a form of internal exile – the Duke of Marlborough was appointed viceroy in Dublin Castle and his son Randolph decided to act as his aide. Randolph’s wife Jenny – proud mother of cherubic Winston – painted his portrait and placed it on public display at a Dublin exhibition, to the joy of the local press.He also learned his first political lesson. His nanny warned him against the dangers posed by the Fenians, reasonable advice as in 1882 republican assassins murdered Lord Frederick Cavendish, the incoming chief secretary, in the nearby Phoenix Park.Churchill’s relationship to Ireland is encapsulated for many by a few famous phrases – his celebrated reference to the integrity of the quarrel of the dreary steeples in Fermanagh and Tyrone, and his sharp critique of de Valera and neutrality in the fight against Hitler. But what did Churchill really think about Ireland?..

Susana Ferreira: The Rebranding of 'Baby Doc' Duvalier

Susana Ferreira is a freelance journalist based in Haiti.On Jan. 30, more than a year after former "President for Life" Jean-Claude Duvalier returned to Haiti, a Port-au-Prince judge concluded his lengthy investigation into the ex-dictator's brutal, 1971-86 rule. Supreme Court Magistrate Carvès Jean had at his disposal reams of documents, human rights complaints, testimony from torture victims, copies of checks, international bank transfers and diary entries from former political prisoners at the notorious Fort Dimanche prison. Yet while Jean ruled that Duvalier should be tried on financial corruption charges — for the hundreds of millions of dollars allegedly plundered from Haiti's national coffers — he decided the statute of limitations on Duvalier's crimes against humanity had expired.

Edwin Meese: The Gipper’s Principles for Governing Still Apply Today

Edwin Meese III was attorney general of the United States and is a founding member of the policy board of the Carleson Center for Public Policy.As the years pass, Ronald Reagan’s stature continues to grow, and it has reached the point where all sorts of people quote him to support their policies or candidacies.Last year, during the contrived "crisis" over a possible national default, California Sen. Barbara Boxer evoked the Gipper to justify raising taxes: "I find myself these days quoting Ronald Reagan. ‘The full consequences of a default,’ he said, ‘or even the serious prospect of a default by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate.’ "

Joseph Tartakovsky: Dickens v. Lawyers

Joseph Tartakovsky is a law clerk at the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.TUESDAY is the bicentenary of the birth, in Portsmouth, England, of Charles Dickens, literature’s greatest humanist. We can rejoice that so many of the evils he assailed with his beautiful, ferocious quill — dismal debtors’ prisons, barefoot urchin labor, an indifferent nobility — have happily been reformed into oblivion. But one form of wickedness he decried haunts us still, proud and unrepentant: the lawyer.Lawyers appear in 11 of his 15 novels. Some of them even resemble humans. Uriah Heep (“David Copperfield”) is a red-eyed cadaver whose “lank forefinger,” while he reads, makes “clammy tracks along the page ... like a snail.” Mr. Vholes (“Bleak House”), “so eager, so bloodless and gaunt,” is “always looking at the client, as if he were making a lingering meal of him with his eyes.” Most lawyers infest dimly lighted, moldy offices “like maggots in nuts.” (No, counselor, writers dead since 1870 cannot be sued for libel.)

Elliot Perlman: Race and the Liberation of Dachau

Elliot Perlman is the author of, most recently, the novel The Street Sweeper.Some six or seven years ago I happened to see an Academy Award-winning documentary, "The Last Days," directed by James Moll and with Steven Spielberg as executive producer. It was of interest to me because, like the novel I was then writing, it dealt with the Holocaust and tangentially with the role of African American troops in World War II.

Emily Redman: Fiat Lux, or Who Invited Thomas Edison to the Tea Party?

Emily Redman is a PhD candidate in the history of science at the University of California at Berkeley who, when not distracted by enviro-political issues of yore, studies the history of mathematics education reform in the twentieth-century United States.The planet is in the spotlight somewhat literally these days. Arguably interchangeable locutions of global warming, climate change, or "solar variations" have made headlines in the past decades—yes, those same decades that brought us An Inconvenient Truth and extreme storms. The underlying science has effectively bisected Washington, with the left and right offering partisan legislation aimed at the decidedly nonpartisan climate. Yet despite circular debates on Capitol Hill, options are being proffered to Americans for their fight to protect the global environment.Efforts from Capitol Hill, you say? Given American's conflicted relationship with the regulatory powers of Washington, this fight is unsurprisingly politicized. Where the battlegrounds lie, however, is at once surprising and historically awkward.

Mark Feldstein: Was Nixon Gay?

Mark Feldstein, the Richard Eaton professor of broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland, is the author of Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture. Richard Nixon was many things — crafty, criminal, self-pitying, vengeful, paranoid. But gay? According to a book to be released Tuesday, “Nixon’s Darkest Secrets,”the former president and his best friend, Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, had a relationship of a “possibly homosexual nature.” But author Don Fulsom, a former radio reporter who covered the White House from Lyndon Johnson’s presidency to Bill Clinton’s, provides scant evidence for this claim. No new White House tapes. No love letters, incriminating pictures or diary entries. No recently declassified government documents.