Left History (E-Journal - York University)
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Defining the Civilian: The International Committee of the Red Cross’ Response to Crisis in Bosnia, 1992–1995
Full text linkThis article explores how the International Committee of the Red Cross defined non-combatants during the Bosnian War (1992–1995) and how those definitions contributed to a counter-narrative that disrupts familiar conceptualizations of the war as exclusively ethnic. Through an examination of Red Cross press releases, I argue that the Red Cross defined identity primarily based on individual experiences with violence and/or transnational constructions of vulnerability in war based on age and gender. This is largely in contrast to Western politicians and journalists who repeated the language of ultranationalist leaders and relied on ethno-nationalist categories to describe non-combatants. By examining the discursive practices of the Red Cross, historians have an opportunity to further understand why some communities and individuals experienced violence, and participated in the war, in ways counter-intuitive to the nationalist discourse
Walter Johnson, The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States (New York City: Basic Books, 2020)
Full text link“Recognition of Cuban Independence”: Henry Adams and Empire Building
Full text linkDrawing on the correspondence of Henry Adams (1838-1918), one of the keenest observers and commentators on US politics throughout the second half of the nineteenth-century, this paper examines a report he prepared on behalf of Senator James Donald Cameron (1833-1918) of Pennsylvania, a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, entitled “Recognition of Cuban Independence” (1896), to try and justify the right of intervention of the United States in the cause of Cuban independence. Centered on two major arguments, national interest and the existence of a government already in place on the island of Cuba, the document in question, which hitherto has not been subject to any major scholarly examination, embodies many of the principles Adams felt should have guided American foreign policy at the time, bringing to light the extent to which he was a firm believer in the “manifest destiny” of the United States to help Latin American colonies break away from their European rulers within the framework of the Monroe Doctrine
Social Unionism and the Popular Front: The Cambridge Union of University Teachers, 1935-1941
Full text linkMost studies of university faculty unions that formed during the interwar era argue that those bodies devoted themselves to a progressive social, economic, and political agenda (social unionism), rather than immediate workplace needs (bread-and-butter unionism). The few scholarly works that mention the Cambridge Union of University Teachers (CUUT)—created in October 1935 by instructors from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—emphasize the union’s orientation toward social issues. An affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, the CUUT never attempted to engage in collective bargaining or to set wages, hours, or other work conditions. But a careful examination of the CUUT’s early history reveals a more complicated legacy. The men, and a few women, who led the union embraced a multifaceted agenda: to link Local 431 to the larger community, including local teachers’ unions and other area labour groups; to support a national popular front social movement; and to secure fair employment and academic freedom for all college/university teachers in Cambridge. This article describes and analyzes the CUUT’s ideology and policies during the years 1935-1941, the union’s most active period, and the obstacles that it encountered both from within its ranks and from the corporatized institutions of higher education
Tariq Ali, The Forty-Year War in Afghanistan: A Chronicle For etold (London: Verso, 2022)
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