Applied History and Contemporary Policymaking

Description

Robert Crowcroft has assembled a world-class, international cast of outstanding scholars and international figures to produce a stimulating collection of essays on applied history and policy making. With contributors such as Philip Bobbitt, Margaret MacMillan, and Jeremy Black, this collection of essays addresses some of the most important geopolitical challenges confronting the world today. From reconstructing collapsed political regimes to security competition in the China Seas and the evolution of Salafi-Jihadi ideology, it explores a range of statecraft, policy, and strategy.
The essays span a number of policy areas and historical problems, tackling important questions about what historians do (and should do), and considering the nature and limits of historical judgement. With some examining how applied history can be used to rethink contemporary challenges, others explore how it has been used and abused in the past. Making a splash in intellectual debate by making a definitive case for Applied History, this book demonstrates that a knowledge of the past, and the insight it provides, is imperative to effective statecraft.

Robert Crowcroft is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary History at the University of Edinburgh, UK

Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
Robert Crowcroft
2. For All Time: History, Statesmanship, and the Primacy of Experience
Robert Crowcroft
3. The Whig Way of War: the Origins of Anglo-American Strategy-Making
Giselle Donnelly 4. Carthage Can Now Defeat Rome: Political Order, Seaborne Commerce, and the Projection of Power in Barbon and Montesquieu
Paul A. Rahe 5. Globalisation and World Order: Economic Integration and the Implications for Global Power, 1846-1914 and 1989-2021
Graeme Thompson
6. Applying History to an Anomalous Historical Case: the Rise of China
Kori Schake 7. Nation-Building as Applied History: Lessons from the United States in Afghanistan
Jeremi Suri 8. Applied History and Contingency Planning: Whitehall and the British War Book, c. 1911-1939
Francesca Morphakis 9. “Longhaired Theoreticians” and Long-Term Thinkers: the Uses of History within the British Foreign Office during the Second World War
Andrew Ehrhardt 10. Problems Left Over from History: British Officials and Three Diplomatic Challenges
Peter Ricketts 11. Clio’s Role in Construing the US Constitution
Philip Bobbitt
12. Learning from Military History
Jeremy Black
13. Beware of War: Lessons from the Past
Margaret MacMillan 14. Serving History Hot: on Contemporary History
Charlie Laderman
15. When Reason Replaces Wisdom: How the Neglect of History and Statesmanship has Diminished Political Science
Steven F. Hayward
Bibliography
Index

“This excellent volume should be on the desks of historians and the bedside tables of all decision-makers!” —Brendan Simms, Professor in the History of International Relations, University of Cambridge, UK

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