Roundup: Talking About History

Timothy Daniels: Suharto’s Legacy

[Professor Timothy Daniels teaches anthropology at Hofstra University. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Indonesia and Malaysia.] Former President Suharto, long-time dictator of Indonesia, has passed away on January 27, 2008. He came to power during a shadowy “coup” in 1965 which resulted in the charismatic first president, Bung Sukarno, being unseated and imprisoned and in the massacre of thousands of people in what came to be known as the “year of living dangerously.” Bun

Heonik Kwon: The Ghosts of the American War in Vietnam

[Heonik Kwon teaches social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. His book, After the Massacre: Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and My Lai (University of California Press, 2006), received the Inaugural Clifford Geertz Prize of the Society for Anthropology of Religion, the American Anthropological Association. His new book is Ghosts of War in Vietnam (Cambridge University Press, 2008).] Abstract: The spiritual remains of the unknown war dead take on a vital presence in

Nick Turse: America's Forgotten Vietnamese Victims

[Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Nation, the Village Voice, and regularly for Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, i

Charles H. Brunie: Milton Friedman on how anti-Semitism played a role in causing the Great Depression

[Mr. Brunie spent almost four decades at Oppenheimer, has been on the board of the Manhattan Institute almost since its founding, and is a member of City Journal’s publication committee.] ... Milton once told me: “Anti-Semitism may have been a factor in causing the depression of the 1930s, especially the 1929–1932 part, when the money supply declined over one-third. One of the governors of the Fed kept a very gossipy diary,” Milton explained. “In it, he noted he had had lunch with J

Brantly Womack: The United States and Sino-Vietnamese Relations

[Brantly Womack is Professor of Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia and author of China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry.] In 1944 President Franklin Roosevelt dispatched vice president Henry A. Wallace to meet with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and offer him the “return” of Indochina to China. Chiang wisely declined the offer. [1] Although the idea was as far from the history and realities of East Asia as a comet passing overhead, it was not without it

Boston Globe Editorial: The Multifaceted King (MLK)

The 1965 protests in Selma, Ala., were perhaps Martin Luther King Jr.'s greatest triumph. They pressured Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act within weeks. And yet one participant in the climactic march to Montgomery, Ala., noted that King appeared to be doing little: "He seemed to have his mind on something else all the time." Another recalled, "He seemed to be a kind of symbol, and an inspiring figure, but all the actual organizing and leadership was done by other people in hi

Nakazawa Keiji: The Hiroshima Legacy

[Nakazawa Keiji interviewed by Asai Motofumi, Translated by Richard H. Minear. Nakagawa Keiji is the creator of the original Barefoot Gen manga series. Four volumes are available in English. Asai Motofumi is President of the Hiroshima Peace Institute. Richard Minear is Professor of History, UMass Amherst and a Japan Focus Associate. He edited and translated Hiroshima: Three Witnesses.] In August 2007 I asked Nakazawa Keiji, manga artist and author of Barefoot Gen, for an interview.

Paul Krugman: Debunking the Reagan Myth

Historical narratives matter. That’s why conservatives are still writing books denouncing F.D.R. and the New Deal; they understand that the way Americans perceive bygone eras, even eras from the seemingly distant past, affects politics today. And it’s also why the furor over Barack Obama’s praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown. The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics. Bill Clinton knew that in 1

Mary L. Dudziak: Thurgood Marshall and MLK

[This passage is taken from Mary L. Dudziak, Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2008). Cross-posted at Balkinization.] Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday is celebrated today, and civil rights litigator Thurgood Marshall, were rivals in the 1960s, and are often thought of through the lens of conflict within the civil rights community. But there were important moments when the two came together. It was not just tha

Edwin Black: Why is the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Claiming It's Difficult to Search the Bad Arolsen Archive When It's Not?

When probing the Holocaust, the horrific experiences of survivors, the listener melts. We all melt at the enormity of the horror. Tattoos always trump the arcane questions of technology. But professionals who study the Holocaust beyond the blood and bones of mass murder know information technology was an indispensable behind-the-scenes factor in the original crime. Seventy-five years after Adolf Hitler came to power, information technology is again an indispensable behind-the-scenes factor, this

Giovanni Arrighi: The Five-Hundred Years’ Peace

[Giovanni Arrighi is Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. In addition to Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, his books include The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times.] One of the great myths of Western social science is that national states and their organization in an interstate system are European inventions. In reality, except for a few states that were the creation of European colonial powers (most notably, I

Mel Gurtov: A political scientist says it may be helpful if China and Japan set history aside in order to get along

[Mel Gurtov is Professor of Political Science and International Studies in the Hatfield School of Government, Portland State University, and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Perspective. His most recent books are Superpower on Crusade: The Bush Doctrine in US Foreign Policy and Global Politics in the Human Interest, both available from Lynne Rienner Publishers (www.rienner.com). He may be reached at mgurtov@aol.com.]

Mark Selden: Compulsory Mass Suicide, the Battle of Okinawa, and Japan's Textbook Controversy

For more than three decades, historical memory controversies have been fought over Japanese school textbook content in both the domestic and international arenas. In these controversies, Japanese textbook contents, which are subject to Ministry of Education examination and revision of content and language prior to approval for use in the public schools, repeatedly sparked denunciations by Chinese and Korean authorities and citizens with respect to such issues as the Nanjing Massacre, the comfort

Timothy Noah: Happy Birthday, Monicagate! An affair to forget.

The press loves anniversaries of big public events because they're predictable, a quality seldom found in the news. Coverage can be planned in advance. Stories can be written, laid out, and put to bed without any worry that later developments will compel revisions. Sputnik is turning 50? Let's cover it. The only thing it can possibly do while we're not looking is turn 51. Given this predisposition, I find it worth studying the rare instances when the press accords a significant anniversar

Ronald Radosh: Is the new biography of Joe McCarthy trustworthy?

[Mr. Radosh, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute and a contributing editor of the New York Sun, has written widely on Communism and anti-Communism.] During the past decade we have seen a bold new attempt to resurrect the reputation and stature of Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, whose Senate investigations into Communism in the 1950s led to the word “McCarthyism,” a term used ever since to describe those who smeared their opponents falsely, ruined their careers, and practice

Christopher Phelps: 40 years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., new studies emphasize his economic and social philosophy

[Christopher Phelps teaches 20th-century American history at Ohio State University at Mansfield.] We forget so much. We forget that he was hanging by a thread in 1968 at the time of his death, whose 40th anniversary we will mark in April. We forget that his moral authority had frayed, leaving his fund raising in free fall. We forget that in his final years, he faced not only a rising "white backlash" — the media term for white obduracy in the suburbs and working-class neig

Bruce Bartlett: The racist history the Democratic Party wants you to forget (Interview)

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Bruce Bartlett, the former deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy under George H.W. Bush. He was the former executive director of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and he also served in the Office of Policy Development at the White House under Ronald Reagan. He is the author of the new book, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past. FP: Bruce Bartlett, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Bartlett:

Andre Vltchek: The Suharto Legacy – As He Lay Dying

[ANDRE VLTCHEK: novelist, journalist, playwright and filmmaker. Editorial Director of Asiana Press Agency, co-founder of Mainstay Press, publishing house for political fiction. His latest novel - "Point of No Return" - describes life of war correspondents and cynicism of post-colonial arrangement of the world. Andre lives in Asia and the South Pacific and can be reached at: andre-wcn@usa.net] Jakarta~ At 4 PM on January 13, 2008, the main e

Ronald Radosh: America's 'Fascist Moment'

[Ronald Radosh is an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute; Prof. Emeritus of History at the City University of New York, and the author of many books, including "The Rosenberg File;" "Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964-1996," and most recently, "Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left."]For decades, the left has used the term "fascist" to attack just about anyone they disagre

Michael Ledeen: Fascism's liberal roots

[Mr. Ledeen, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of The War Against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now. How We’ll Win.] Jonah Goldberg, my buddy and boss at NRO, has written a fun book called “Liberal Fascism” that has a lot of people talking, and maybe even thinking. It’s a careful book, maybe even too careful. Jonah keeps on telling us that he’s not trying to make any sweeping generalizations. Despite the provocative title, he’s not say