Roundup: Historians' Take

Eric Zencey: Mr. Soddy’s Ecological Economy

[Eric Zencey, a professor of historical and political studies at Empire State College, is the author of “Virgin Forest: Meditations on History, Ecology and Culture” and a novel, “Panama.”] INNOVATIVE and opaque instruments of debt; greedy bankers; lenders’ eagerness to take on risky loans; a lack of regulation; a shortage of bank liquidity: all have been nominated as the underlying cause of the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression. But a more perceptive, and more tro

Jill Lepore: I.O.U. ... How we used to treat debtors

ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF FINANCE about how America used to treat debtors. It took more than an argument to abolish the institution of debtors’ prison. Parliament didn’t ban the imprisonment of debtors until 1869. Imprisonment for debt was abolished in New York in 1831; the rest of America soon followed. What was already replacing it in the late eighteenth century was something that has become a mainstay of American life: bankruptcy. Eighty-six hundred Americans filed for bankruptcy in 1946; nearly t

Nasir Khan: Will Obama Vacate Iraq?

[Dr Nasir Khan is a peace activist. He is the author of Development of the Concept and Theory of Alienation in Marx’s Writings 1843-44 (1995) and Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms: A Historical Survey (2006). He has his own blogs at http://nasir-khan.blogspot.com and http://sudhan.wordpress.com through which he can be contacted.] On February 27, 2009 President Barack Obama delivered his muc

Paul Krugman: Making Banking Boring

... Recently, the economists Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef circulated a paper that could have been titled “The Rise and Fall of Boring Banking” (it’s actually titled “Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry, 1909-2006”). They show that banking in America has gone through three eras over the past century. Before 1930, banking was an exciting industry featuring a number of larger-than-life figures, who built giant financial empires (some of which later turned out t

David Lewis Schaefer: Naïveté Invites Aggression

[Mr. Schaefer is professor of political science at College of the Holy Cross.] ... Mr. Obama's flight to arms control demonstrates the persistence of a dangerous illusion of the 20th century -- the notion that reducing a democratic nation's armaments is a means of mitigating the threat of war. Here's some of the history: - Beginning in 1906, Britain cut back an ambitious program of naval construction, begun under a previous administration, in the hope of thereby avoidin

Gordon Taylor: How Obama did in Turkey

One treads carefully in the Turkish presence. Turkey is no joke.--Jan MorrisIt's a tough audience, the Turkish parliament. Say the wrong thing and you'll quickly discover the disadvantages of growing a mustache. The abo

Ira Chernus: Requiem for the War on Terror

[Ira Chernus is professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. He can be reached at chernus@colorado.edu.] This is the way the Global War on Terror (also known, in Bush-era jargon, as GWOT) ends, not with a bang, not with parades and speeches, but with an obscure

Timothy Garton Ash: Confucius can speak to us still - and not just about China

[Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist.] When I was a young child, China was, for me, a vaguely comical Chinaman with a wispy moustache, dressed in an embroidered silk robe and conical hat, exclaiming in a funny accent: "Confucius, he say ..." Later, it was black-and-white photos of a Mao-period sculpture of a pre-revolutionary rent-collection courtyard, shown me by an enthusiastic English schoolmaster. Then it was the naively misinterp

Lisa Keller: When watching the Sun needed a permit

Lisa Keller is the author of Triumph of Order: Democracy and Public Space in New York and Londonand associate professor of history at Purchase Coll

Tom Engelhardt: Filling the Skies with Assassins

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited

Alex Keyssar: Did we really need to bailout AIG?

[Alex Keyssar is the Stirling Professor of History and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.] For many, many months now, officials in Washington have been telling us that the government must use taxpayer dollars to rescue huge financial institutions - like banks and AIG - because, otherwise, the world's financial system and the global economy will collapse. As a civilian with no expertise in international finance, I can't claim to have any evidence that those

Dean Baker: Hands off Social Security

[Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy. He also has a blog on the American Prospect, "Beat the Press", where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues.] As a result of incredible economic mismanagement and the greed and incompetence of the financial industry, the country is in the worst downturn since the Great Depression. In this colla

Juan Cole: Obama ... The US is not, and Never will be, at War with Islam

President Barack Obama conducted a state visit of the Turkish capital of Ankara on Monday, visiting the mausoleum of the Republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Attaturk and addressing parliament. The Turkish officer corps, which had been declining to attend parliament sessions because of the presence of a pro-Kurdish party, put aside its reservations and attended to hear Obama.

Stanislao G. Pugliese: Earthquake at the Door

[Stanislao G. Pugliese is a professor of European history at Hofstra University and the author of the forthcoming “Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone.”] THE wolves came at night, crazed by the scent of lost sheep without shepherds and bodies buried beneath the rubble. In the early hours of Jan. 13, 1915, an earthquake had rocked the rugged Abruzzo region of Italy. In Pescina, birthplace of the writer Ignazio Silone, 3,500 of the town’s 5,000 residents had perished in a matter o

Julian E. Zelizer: A surprising model for Obama's presidency

[ Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism," will be published this fall by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely on current events.] While pundits have compared President Obama to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, less attention has been paid to anot

Daniel Pipes: Does Turkey Still Belong in NATO?

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] Smack on its 60th anniversary, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization finds itself facing a completely novel problem – that of radical Islam, as represented by the Republic of Turkey, within its own ranks.Ankara joined NATO in 1951 and shortly after Turkish

Dick Howard: Obama and the World Outside

SOURCE: La Vie des Idees [Dick Howard is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His many books include Selected Political Writings of Rosa Luxemburg (1971) From Marx to Kant (l985), The Birth of American Political Thought (1989), and The Specter of Democracy (2002).] ... Obama recognizes that there is a “world” outside of the United States and its unilateral will, and distinct from the “global” universe of finance cap

Linda Kerber: The Historians' Amicus Brief in the Iowa Gay Marriage Case

[Linda Kerber is a professor of history at the University of Iowa.] As the justices of the Iowa Supreme Court considered Varnum v. Brien, they had before them the trial record in the Iowa District Court for Polk County, the briefs submitted by the lawyers for both sides and two dozen "friend of the court," or amicus, briefs offering information that judges might find useful in shaping their opinion. One of those briefs came from 23 professors of law and histor

Alan Brinkley: The New Deal, Then and Now

[Alan Brinkley is the Twentieth Provost and the Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University in the City of New York.] Well before Barack Obama’s election, the New Deal was emerging as an instructive model for those trying to understand, and address, what is now known as the “worst financial crisis since the 1930s.” But is the New Deal in fact a useful model for our own troubled times? In some respects, the New Deal – and in particular its first hundred days

A. Tom Grunfeld: The Dalai Lama and the Nobel Prize ... Correcting a Misunderstanding

[A. Tom Grunfeld is a Professor of History at Empire State College and is the author of many works, including The Making of Modern Tibet.] As many readers of this blog doubtless realize, everything having to do with Tibet is subject to mythologizing. That the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on behalf of Tibetan independence is one of these myths. This notion gets mentioned in the Western press routinely, and it sometimes even shows up in comments by academic s