edwebbempireseminar

The Osage Nation itself owns 3.5% of the historic reservation.

policies by the US government, which owed a fiduciary duty to the Osage people, frequently undercut that promise. Congress capped how much of their own money Osages could access, courts appointed White men to oversee Osage financial affairs, and US politicians undermined Osage leadership. Over generations, this shifted power — and money — from the Osage Nation to White settlers.

the Yellow Peril illustrations of the 19th century that shaped racist measures like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Across these movements, illustrators formalized Chinese influence as fictitious characters—ghosts, apes, Godzilla communists, Uncle Sam-eaters—neglecting the reality of what actually met the eye: exploited workers, opportunity-seeking immigrants, new markets for Western enterprise interests, etc.

Such visual shorthands are useful but also dangerous. They mirror the way America is depicted from the other side. China Daily’s political cartoons fanatically use Uncle Sam or the Statue of Liberty in any opportunity to portray American hypocrisy, in the same fashion as Soviet media did during the Cold War.

Every photo montage or threatening Maoist rendering of Xi promotes a simplified narrative of China and authoritarian horror.

The Chinese government has implemented an extremely comprehensive surveillance regime, especially in colonized areas such as Tibet and Xinjiang. Increased reporting on this topic has given way to a sub-branch of visuals characterizing China as a mass-surveillance state. Imagery of security cameras, facial recognition frames, and dramatically posed or saluting soldiers are among the usual suspects that are superimposed on a red background with the five gold stars of the Chinese flag.

These images also emphasize the technological aspect of surveillance over the human. Global tech runs on human power, from Facebook’s Philippines-based monitoring centers to the estimated 2 million workers who maintain China’s own firewall. It takes people to scrutinize and interpret behavior even if it has been filtered by artificial intelligence, to identify keywords for monitoring online, to decide whether an action crosses a line, and to choose what the punishment will be for crossing it

when the toll of COVID-19 on American lives became too real to ignore, U.S. coverage expanded to show its impacts in hospitals, schools, the workplace, and the home. As a result, we witnessed innovations in how we could tell these stories visually. The attitude went from “look at them” to “this is us.” Editors, photographers, and illustrators were obligated to consider how subjects would be depicted with respect, honesty, and care.

Authoritarianism can be treated as a threat to Chinese life, rather than a Chinese threat to the United States. To take China seriously means taking seriously the pain and deaths of the people in Wuhan alongside anxieties about how Xi’s leadership or surveillance affects the West. The focus must shift to processing life under the circumstances created by authoritarian rule, rather than reproducing the illusions spun by headline culture. It should center the people affected themselves. How might they reflect on China’s issues? How might we portray those views?

Mr. Modi has approached Indian Muslims, the world's largest minority and its largest Muslim minority, in much the same way that Mr. Orban envisions a racially and religiously pure Hungary

Mr. Orban asserted that mixed-race countries "are no longer nations: They are nothing more than conglomerations of peoples" and are no longer part of what he sees as "the Western world."

Romanians may be more concerned about Mr. Orban’s racial remarks than his territorial ambitions, described by one Romanian Orban watcher as a "little man having pipe dreams.”

Mr. Orban shares Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi's resentment of perceived historical wrongs that need to be rectified irrespective of international law and the consequences of a world whose guardrails are dictated by might rather than the rule of law.

Mr. Orban left no doubt that his definition of the Hungarian motherland included Transylvania and other regions in the Carpathian Basin beyond Hungary's borders that ethnic Hungarians populate.

Mr. Orban implicitly suggested a revision or cancellation of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which deprived Hungary of much of its pre-World War I territory.

So far, Mr. Orban’s support of Russia has isolated him in Europe with the de facto demise of the Visegrad 4 or V4 in its current form in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine and the threat of an economic recession.

Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger has pledged to use his current six-month presidency of the European Council to return the Visegrad 4 to the roots of its founding in 1991 as the four countries emerged from communism: respect for democracy and a commitment to European integration.

it wasn’t until living in the United States that he reflected upon what it meant to be Black

Ndiaye’s rapid elevation from the director of a humble national monument to the head of France’s education ministry marks a leap of faith by Macron, who described Ndiaye as an example of universalism and equal opportunity when they appeared together at an elementary school in Marseille last month. Having survived a recent reshuffling of the president’s cabinet, Ndiaye has moved from managing the Porte Dorée Palace, an institution with around 100 employees and an annual budget of 15 million euros, to leading the country’s largest public institution, with more than 1.2 million employees, an annual budget of more than 55 billion euros, and the responsibility of educating more than 12 million public school students

France operates a highly centralized public education system, with the education ministry managing the nation’s schools from Paris. Ever since waves of immigrants arrived after World War II, during a period the French refer to as the “30 glorious years” of rebuilding and economic expansion, schools have been perceived as imparting certain ideals about French citizenship. Even slight changes to the curriculum may be put under the microscope. 

“When you have even the smallest commitment to the United States, they think you talk on behalf of Americans,” the Senegalese-born French politician said in a recent phone call. “The French are fascinated by America, but at the same time they are very careful about being under U.S. influence. They want to think that their culture is different from the community-oriented model of the United States.”

“What’s confusing is that you had in the previous government a line of assertive secularism that was very opposed to any conversation on race, which in the French context is very delicate,” Belin said. “Macron has demonstrated a willingness to tackle some of the most difficult elements of the French colonial period, moving the conversation forward on Algeria and Rwanda. He is a modernizer for France’s history, but not particularly avant-garde on racial justice and postcolonial matters.”

Nathalie Heinich, a French sociologist, said that she thought Ndiaye’s report for the Paris Opera demonstrated “a sociological misunderstanding of an actual problem” that should be addressed by reducing socioeconomic inequalities. She felt that Ndiaye’s analysis had been influenced by his time living in the United States, with its multicultural social model, “which tends to reduce individuals to their belonging to collective entities.”

Somewhat controversially, for France, he has referred to systemic racism in housing, employment, and in police relations with the Black and immigrant communities. But compared with U.S. academics plowing similar terrain, his views are relatively moderate

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a hard-left political figure who placed third in the presidential race in April, scorned the new cabinet when it was announced in May but singled out Ndiaye as an “audacious” choice—echoing the Revolution-era words of Georges Danton, who called for “audacity, more audacity, always audacity.”

Some role models whom Ndiaye has referenced over the years—Frantz Fanon, Césaire, and Léopold Sédar Senghor—were Black French colonial authors who in one way or another turned to politics.

Amidst the polarization of the Erdoğan era, what is striking in this book is the authors’ efforts to weave together the conflicting strands of Turkish political history into a coherent narrative. Illustrating Ernst Renan’s argument about the role of forgetting in nation-building, this account glosses over the depth of the divisions and hostility between rival historical actors, presenting them as all working side by side toward a common national goal

The book places added emphasis on the harsh terms imposed on Germany at Versailles. Prefiguring the later treatment of Al Qaeda terrorism, the intention appears not so much to justify Nazism, but rather to present injustice as the causal force behind violence and cruelty in world politics.

the Holocaust instead appears here as one among several examples of Western barbarity

The foundation of the UN is immediately followed by a discussion of Israel under the heading “Imperial Powers in the Remaking of the Middle East.” (80-81) The Palestine problem, students learn, is the principal cause of conflict in the region. It began when the Ottoman Empire, “the biggest obstacle to the foundation of a Jewish state,” grew weak, leading to the creation of Israel.

Next comes a discussion of the post-war financial order and the International Monetary Fund. Students learn that “the IMF’s standard formula, which recommends austerity policies for countries in economic crises, generally results in failure, chaos and social unrest.” (81-83) An excerpt, which students are then asked to discuss, explains how the IMF prescribes different policies for developed and developing countries.

only in the context of the Cold War origins of the EU does the book engage in any explicitly religious clash-of-civilizations style rhetoric. The idea of European unity is traced back to the Crusades, while a quote about the centrality of Christianity to European identity appears under a dramatic picture of Pope Francis standing with European leaders. (112) The next page states that the EU’s treatment of Turkey’s candidacy, coupled with the fact that “all the countries within it were Christian” had “raised questions” about the EU’s identity.

Early Cold War era decolonization also provides an opportunity to celebrate Atatürk’s role as an anti-imperialist hero for Muslims and the entire Third World. (122-123) “Turkey’s national struggle against imperialism in Anatolia struck the first great blow against imperialism in the 20th century,” the authors write. “Mustafa Kemal, with his role in the War of Independence and his political, economic, social and cultural revolutions after it, served as an example for underdeveloped and colonized nations.” Atatürk himself is quoted as saying, in 1922, that “what we are defending is the cause of all Eastern nations, of all oppressed nations.” Thus, the book explains that “the success of the national struggle brought joy to the entire colonized Islamic world, and served as a source of inspiration to members of other faiths.” The section ends with quotes from leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and Habib Bourguiba about how Atatürk inspired them in their own anti-imperial struggles or was simply, in Nehru’s words, “my hero.” An accompanying graphic shows Atatürk’s image superimposed over a map with arrows pointing to all the countries, from Algeria to Indonesia, whose revolutions were supposedly influenced by Turkey’s War of Independence.

The authors also offer a balanced treatment of the fraught domestic politics during the period from 1945 to 1960 when Turkey held its first democratic election and experienced its first coup. (138-142, 144-146) They focus their criticism on the negative impact of U.S. aid, arguing that Washington intentionally sought to make Turkey economically and politically dependent, then sponsored a coup when these efforts were threatened.

Selçuk Bayraktar, the architect of Turkey’s drone program, said that as a student “I was obsessed with Noam Chomsky.” [16] During the 1980s and 90s, America sold Ankara F-16 jets and Sikorsky helicopters that were used to wage a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in southeast Anatolia. No one was more critical of this than left-wing scholars like Chomsky.[17] Now, Ankara is selling Bayraktar drones to Ethiopia, where they are being used to kill civilians and destroy schools in another violent civil war.

The narrative of national independence also helps smooth over Turkey’s Cold War domestic divides. Students are introduced to the ‘68 Generation and left-wing leaders likes Deniz Gezmiş as anti-imperialists protesting against the U.S. Sixth Fleet in support of a fully independent Turkey. (185-186)[9] In this context, Baskin Oran’s work is again cited, this time quoting Uğur Mumcu on the role of “dark forces,” presumably the CIA, in laying the groundwork for Turkey’s 1971 coup.

The book also offers a relatively neutral treatment of political activism during the ensuing decade, suggesting that rival ideological movements were all good faith responses to the country’s challenges. On this, the authors quote Kemal Karpat: “Both right and left wing ideologies sought to develop an explanation for social phenomena and a perspective on the future. A person’s choice of one of these ideologies was generally the result of chance or circumstance.” (202) Thus the authors imply that while foreign powers provoked or exploited these movements, the individual citizens who participated in them can be given the benefit of the doubt. Interestingly, the book takes a similar approach in discussing the 2013 Gezi protests: “If various financial interests and foreign intelligence agencies had a role in the Gezi Park events, a majority of the activists were unaware of it and joined these protests of their own will.”

Turkey’s real struggle in the 21st century, as in the 20th, is against dependence on foreign technology

a book which begins with a portrait of Atatürk ends with a photo of the Bayraktar TB2.

the book’s biases are less in the realm of wild distortion and more reminiscent of those that plague ideologically infused nationalistic history education in all too many countries

its exaggerated critique of European imperialism may be no more misleading than the whitewashing still found in some European textbooks

At moments, Contemporary Turkish and World History is better aligned with recent left-leaning scholarship than the patriotic accounts many Americans grew up reading as well

Throughout the 20th century, America defined itself as the world’s premier anti-imperialist power, all while gradually reproducing many of the elements that had defined previous empires.[11] Today, it often seems that Turkey’s aspirations for great power status reflect the facets of 20th century American power it has condemned most vigorously

Turkey’s marriage of power projection and anti-colonial critique have been particularly visible – and effective – in Africa. Ankara has presented itself as an “emancipatory actor,” while providing humanitarian aid, establishing military bases, selling weapons across the continent.[13] In doing so, Turkish leaders have faced some of the same contradictions as previous emancipatory actors. In August 2020, for example, members of Mali’s military overthrew a president with whom Erdoğan enjoyed good relations. Ankara expressed its “sorrow” and “deep concern.”[14] Then, a month later, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu became the first foreign official to meet with the country’s new military leaders. “Like a brother,” he “sincerely shared” his hopes for a smooth “transition process” back to democracy

Among the 1930s cultural and intellectual figures given place of pride are Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and John Steinbeck. Guernica is reproduced in an inset about Picasso, illustrating the artist’s hatred of war. (47) A lengthy excerpt from the Grapes of Wrath concludes with Steinbeck’s denunciation of depression-era America: “And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.”

certain themes dominate Contemporary Turkish and World History. At the center of its narrative is the struggle for global hegemony, in military, economic, technological and artistic terms