The scholarship of Laurence Badel focuses on modern diplomatic practices, women’s roles in diplomacy and international relations, and the relationships between diplomacy, economic actors, and European integration, while also contributing to the historiography of international relations and offering reflexive perspectives on the field as a discipline.[1] This article offers a significant and methodologically innovative contribution…
Tag: France
Jervis Forum Review 178: Bartoux on Pelopidas, ed., Nuclear France
Historians of the nuclear age face a significant challenge in drawing lessons from the past. The absence of nuclear war to date has, thankfully, limited the field of empirical evidence about the effects of deterrence. However, this invites retrospective rationalization: over the years, some scholars have interpreted this absence as proof of the success of…
Jervis Forum Review 164: Leutzsch on Grandpierron, Nostalgic Virility as a Cause of War
Matthieu Grandpierron’s Nostalgic Virility as a Cause of War: How Leaders of Great Powers Cope with Status Decline deals with the theoretical development and empirical verification of the concept of “status-seeking and nostalgic virility.” It does so by comparing the impact of “virile” phrases and concepts as indicators of discursive strategies as well as factors…
The Jervis Forum Roundtable 17-14 on Porch, Defeat and Division
It isn’t always easy to explain to people why you have decided to dedicate part of your career to the study of the military history of France in the Second World War. Many Americans dismiss the subject altogether as a story of defeat from which they cannot possibly learn anything of value. For many Frenchmen…
Jervis Forum Article Review 184: Payne on Anderson, “Push and Pull on the Periphery”
“We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.”[1] So remarked J. R. Seeley, in an influential set of lectures that were delivered at the University of Cambridge and subsequently published in the 1880s. Though the focus of his comment was those leaders who…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-49 on Ross, Liquid Empire
Corey Ross’s environmental history of imperialism emphasizes the efforts by the administrators and engineers of a few European powers (Britain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, above all) to exploit the multiple uses of water to serve their social, political and ideological ends. These states, as he puts it, “did more than just govern the manipulation…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-2 on Mattiacci, Volatile States in International Politics
How do we understand seemingly inconsistent behavior in foreign policy? This is the question Eleonora Mattiacci takes on in Volatile States in International Politics. In International Relations (IR) scholarship, the focus tends to be on consistent change : either towards conflict in terms of escalation or towards cooperation in terms of reconciliation. Seldom do scholars…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-51 on Haglund, Sister Republics: Security Relations between America and France
It is a great pleasure for me to introduce David Haglund’s Sister Republics: Security Relations between America and France. As a citizen of both nations, and one who has done some research on the question, I find the topic fascinating. The book covers a large expanse of time, considering the evolution of the subject since…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 93: Daniels on Meijer, Awakening to China’s Rise
On both sides of the Atlantic it has become fashionable to criticize the China policies of the West over the last few decades as having been “naïve.”[1] Confronted with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s self-confident, often abrasive and confrontational style of foreign policy, the West’s hopes of “Wandel durch Handel” (change through trade)—one of the main…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 86: Tønnesson on Moir, Number One Realist
Bernard B. Fall (19 November 1926–21 February 1967) was born in Austria, moved with his family to France after the 1938 Anschluss, lost his parents in the Holocaust, and joined the French Maquis at the age of 16. He thus earned experience with guerrilla warfare, including political mobilization and the assassination of collaborators with a…