Thinking globally about history
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Archival Reflections—Dewi Sukarno Goes to London, or How to Handle an Indonesian VIP during Konfrontasi
Article | June 22, 2020

Archival Reflections—Dewi Sukarno Goes to London, or How to Handle an Indonesian VIP during Konfrontasi

Archival Reflections

A single folder of British Foreign Office records (FO 371/180366) held at the National Archives in Kew details the private visit to the UK by the third wife of Indonesian President Sukarno, Dewi, in June 1965. British officers, determined to make a good first impression on Dewi to soften her bellicose husband, quickly found themselves attending to out-of-the-ordinary tasks: scrambling to find a “young enough” companion for having tea with Dewi, infiltrating a wedding reception to gather information on her, and even disposing of an unwanted gift that Dewi brought for none other than Queen Elizabeth II.

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INTERVIEW—Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Dominic Sachsenmaier on China, geopolitics, and global history post-COVID-19
Article | June 22, 2020

INTERVIEW—Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Dominic Sachsenmaier on China, geopolitics, and global history post-COVID-19

Toynbee Coronavirus Series—A global historical view of the coronavirus pandemic: Interview with Dominic Sachsenmaier.

"The concept of ‘deglobalization’ has been gaining currency during the past five years, and already before 2020 there was a corresponding pressure on some aspects of international academic life, particularly the humanities. For instance, Sino-Western collaborations in the academic sector came under much pressure—both from an increasingly authoritarian government in China and from a Western public that increasingly felt threatened by greater Chinese academic influence. What I observe right now is that there are a growing number of voices that see any kind of collaboration with China as highly problematic, if not altogether endangering the academic ethos and a supposedly intact academic community. What I am concerned about is that if this type of deglobalization—of which Sino-Western collaboration patterns are only one element among several—continues, we could potentially witness a return to regionalism in the humanities." Toynbee Prize Foundation President Dominic Sachsenmaier on China's global role, the academy, and deglobalization trends post-COVID-19.

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INTERVIEW—Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Dipesh Chakrabarty on zoonotic pathogens, human life, and pandemic in the age of the Anthropocene
Article | June 17, 2020

INTERVIEW—Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Dipesh Chakrabarty on zoonotic pathogens, human life, and pandemic in the age of the Anthropocene

Toynbee Coronavirus Series—A global historical view of the coronavirus pandemic: Interview with Dipesh Chakrabarty.

"Many Earth system scientists, evolutionary biologists, and Anthropocene scholars have been reminding us that the global economy is destroying bio-diversity and that, on human scales of time, biodiversity is a non-renewable resource that is critical to the flourishing of all life, including ours. It is time we debated the kind of civilization humans would want to live in. The Cold War battle between capitalism and socialism is well and truly dead. But that does not mean that the question of debating capitalism has lost any of its importance." Dipesh Chakrabarty on the pandemic, zoonotic pathogens, migrancy, and globalization in the age of the Anthropocene.

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Toynbee Coronavirus Series—Global History Forum: Jeremy Adelman, Or Rosenboim, Jamie Martin, Cindy Ewing, and Akita Shigeru
Article | June 16, 2020

Toynbee Coronavirus Series—Global History Forum: Jeremy Adelman, Or Rosenboim, Jamie Martin, Cindy Ewing, and Akita Shigeru

Toynbee Coronavirus Series—A Global Historical View of the Pandemic: Forum

Living through historically unprecedented times has strengthened the Toynbee Prize Foundation's commitment to thinking globally about history and to representing that perspective in the public sphere. In this multimedia series on the COVID-19 pandemic, we will be bringing global history to bear in thinking through the raging coronavirus and the range of social, intellectual, economic, political, and scientific crises triggered and aggravated by it.

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INTERVIEW—Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Erez Manela on the WHO, smallpox eradication, and the need for renewed internationalism
Article | June 15, 2020

INTERVIEW—Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Erez Manela on the WHO, smallpox eradication, and the need for renewed internationalism

Toynbee Coronavirus Series—A global historical view of the coronavirus pandemic: Interview with Erez Manela.

"Out of inertia, the US remains the biggest contributor, but diplomatically and politically it doesn’t care. What replaces it are organizations like the Gates Foundation, which in some ways, though not all ways, represents a return to the inter-war period, when the leading spender on global health was the Rockefeller Foundation. You can say all sorts of bad things about the WHO, but the one thing the WHO does is it gives some sort of voice to small nations and was designed to do precisely that." Erez Manela on the concept of global health, the WHO, smallpox eradication, and the need for renewed internationalism amid the pandemic.

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VIDEO—Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Selçuk Esenbel on the pandemic and living with nature
Article | June 12, 2020

VIDEO—Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Selçuk Esenbel on the pandemic and living with nature

VIDEO—Toynbee Coronavirus Series—A Global Historical View of the Pandemic: Historians' Statements.

We spoke with Toynbee Prize Foundation Trustee Selçuk Esenbel, Professor of History at Boğaziçi University and the founding Director of the Asian Studies Center at the same institution. She earned her PhD in Japanese history at Columbia University, and her research interests center on Japan and the world of Islam, Japanese pan-Asianism, and modernization in Japan and Ottoman Turkey. Esenbel has received numerous awards, including the Order of the Rising Sun.

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The Philippine Revolution constructs ‘Asia’ and Civilization from the periphery
Article | June 12, 2020

The Philippine Revolution constructs ‘Asia’ and Civilization from the periphery

In tracing the intellectual genealogy of the Philippine nation, Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz excavated what turned out to be far more complex theoretical and historical bases to the construction not only of the Filipino, but also of Asia, race, and a concept of place that could challenge imperial claims of rightful sovereignty. Her book Asian Place, Filipino Nation: A Global Intellectual History of the Philippine Revolution, 1887-1912 investigates precisely what ground the Philippine nation built itself upon intellectually, excavating its neglected cosmopolitan and transnational Asian moorings in particular, in order to reconnect Philippine history to that of Southeast and East Asia. It also recovers the “periphery” of the discourse of Pan-Asianism, which was built on material aid and the fantasy and affect of transnational anti-colonial Asian solidarity. The book seeks to make that periphery legible to the center and to expand our discursive, East Asia-centric understanding of Pan-Asianism more generally.

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VIDEO—Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Priscilla Wald on structural inequality and contagion
Article | June 5, 2020

VIDEO—Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Priscilla Wald on structural inequality and contagion

VIDEO—Toynbee Coronavirus Series—A Global Historical View of the Pandemic: Historians' Statements. 

We sat down with Priscilla Wald, R. Florence Brinkley Distinguished Professor of English at Duke University. She teaches U.S. literature and culture from the mid-18th to mid-20th centuries. Her research centers on the narratives of medicine, science, science fiction, the environment, and law. Her most recent book, Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative, examines the idea of contagion and its evolution, at the intersection of medicine and myth.

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Toynbee Coronavirus Series—Global Historians Analyze the Pandemic: Glenda Sluga, Jie-Hyun Lim, Lauren Benton, and Hsiung Ping-chen
Article | May 21, 2020

Toynbee Coronavirus Series—Global Historians Analyze the Pandemic: Glenda Sluga, Jie-Hyun Lim, Lauren Benton, and Hsiung Ping-chen

Toynbee Coronavirus Series—A Global Historical View of the Pandemic: Historians' Statements. 

Living through historically unprecedented times has strengthened the Toynbee Prize Foundation's commitment to thinking globally about history and to representing that perspective in the public sphere. In this multimedia series on the COVID-19 pandemic, we will be bringing global history to bear in thinking through the raging coronavirus and the range of social, intellectual, economic, political, and scientific crises triggered and aggravated by it.

Read more about `Toynbee Coronavirus Series—Global Historians Analyze the Pandemic: Glenda Sluga, Jie-Hyun Lim, Lauren Benton, and Hsiung Ping-chen`
Archival Reflections—Transatlantic Material Culture Research in Spain and the Americas
Article | May 11, 2020

Archival Reflections—Transatlantic Material Culture Research in Spain and the Americas

Reflections from the archives: The colonization of the Americas created a level of diversity not seen before by European powers. Not only did Iberians intermix with native populations, but also with African slaves. As the viceroyalties became increasingly ethnically complex, authorities created a socio-racial hierarchy in an attempt to establish a sense of order. Given my professional background, I noticed the critical role that clothing—and the regulation of such items—played in the struggle to assert status in the public sphere. 

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OP-ED—Toynbee Coronavirus Series: At war with the virus, no battles to win, only a future to lose by Glenda Sluga and Madeleine Herren
Article | May 4, 2020

OP-ED—Toynbee Coronavirus Series: At war with the virus, no battles to win, only a future to lose by Glenda Sluga and Madeleine Herren

Toynbee Coronavirus Series: A Global Historical View of the Pandemic

If we are stuck with analogies of war, then these same histories warn us not only that we cannot wait for the pandemic to be “over”, but also that during each major war extensive political and social movements supported intertwined national and multilateral responses to the global dimensions of health and economic challenges. But where invocations of war, of battles against the virus enemy, might offer comfort precisely because they posit a moment of victory—a V-Day—the intersecting global challenges of pandemic, capitalism and planetary destruction we now face allow us no such complacency.

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