The War & Diplomacy Podcast: From the Centre for War and Diplomacy at Lancaster University

In this podcast, Dr Thomas Mills, Senior Lecturer in Diplomatic and International History at Lancaster University and Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy is joined by Jussi Hanhimäki, Professor of International History and Politics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. The pair discuss Jussi’s latest book, Pax Transatlantica: America and Europe in the Post-Cold War Era, published by Oxford University in 2021, as well as the broader global significance of the US-UK relationship analysing more recent events and points of crisis. Pax Transatlantica offers a wide-ranging exploration of what Jussi Hanhimäki calls the transatlantic community in the fields of security, economic and politics in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Both the podcast and book cover the impact of Brexit, the presidency of Donald Trump, and the coronavirus pandemic on transatlantic relations.

Jussi was previously a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington, DC. He also received the Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 2002 and was elected Finland Distinguished Professor in 2006. His previous books include, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, published by Oxford University Press in 2004, The United Nations: A Very Short Introduction, published in 2012, The Rise and Fall of Détente: American Foreign Policy and the Transformation of the Cold War from 2013 and edited collections on international terrorism and documents of the Cold War.

Dr Marco Wyss, Reader in International History and Security at Lancaster University and a Deputy Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy, is joined by Dr James Rogers, Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at SDU and History Hit Warfare podcast host, on the topic of “Drones: From ‘Precision Warfare’ to Today’s Battlefields”. Drone warfare, perceived to be a relatively modern addition to the battlefield, transcends the threats of war on the ground but brings with it new threats to security and the potential for drone genocide. This podcast discusses the prominence of drones on today’s global battlefields, covering topics such as the evolution of drone development and their early practicality, as well as the future of air power and combat. In doing so, it traces the history of drone warfare to the early twentieth century, to the conceptualisation of precision bombing by the US in the First World War.

Dr James Rogers is Associate Fellow within The London School of Economics and Political Science’s foreign policy think tank (LSE IDEAS). He is also currently Special Advisor to the UK Parliament’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drones, Advisor to the United Nations, a UK MoD Defence Opinion Leader, and NATO Country Director of the NATO SPS funded Vulnerabilities of the Drone Age project. He has previously been a Visiting Research Fellow at Stanford University, Yale University, and the University of Oxford. He is the Co-founder and Co-Convenor of BISA War Studies, the War Studies section of the British International Studies Association. James is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow within the Cornell Tech Policy Lab at Cornell University. His forthcoming publication, Precision: A History of Warfare, with Manchester University Press, is out at the end of 2022.

The Centre for War and Diplomacy at Lancaster University and the British International History Group co-hosted ‘The Falklands War at 40: Voices of the Conflict’ on Thursday 26 May 2022, attended by staff and students, alongside members of local history groups, and the general public. This event brought together researchers and curators, joined by a Falklands veteran and Lancaster alumnus Major General Chip Chapman, to discuss working with voices of the conflict forty years on. A recording has been made into a podcast for the War and Diplomacy podcast series.

The panel was chaired by Professor Gaynor Johnson, Professor of International History at the University of Kent, Honorary Researcher at the Centre for War and Diplomacy, and Conference Officer of the British International History Group. Panellists included: Mr John Beales, a doctoral student at Keele University and Imperial War Museums, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Major General Chip Chapman, a platoon commander in 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment (2 PARA) in the Falklands campaign. Dr Peter Johnston, Head of Collections and Research at the Royal Air Force Museum, responsible for developing the museum’s research and collection strategies, and exhibitions. Professor Helen Parr of Keele University, author of Our Boys: The Story of a Paratrooper (Penguin, 2019), a history of the Parachute Regiment in the Falklands. Professor Tony Pollard of Glasgow University, a leading archaeologist working on sites of conflict from across history, and heading a new investigation into the landscape of the Falklands War.

Dr Stephanie Wright, lecturer in Modern European History at Lancaster University and Dr Regina Mühlhäuser, Senior Researcher at the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Research and Culture discuss what the history of sexual violence perpetrated by the German Wehrmacht in the Second World War can tell us about sexual violence in current wars, including the war in Ukraine. This podcast grapples with the challenges of studying the history of sexual violence, especially given the paucity of sources and the fact that many victims were shamed into silence. In conversation, Stephanie and Regina highlight the importance of being attentive to which stories of sexual violence we are willing to listen to, and which ‘constellations’ or ‘narratives’ of rape are given priority in historical and media accounts of particular wars.

Spyros Tsoutsoumpis, associate lecturer and researcher at the Centre for War and Diplomacy at Lancaster University is joined by Dr Umit Kurt, research fellow at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute/Polonsky Academy in Jerusalem. Joining Spyros and Umit to talk about the Armenian Genocide in Aintab are Professor Janet Klein and Dr Max Bergholz. Professor Janet Klein is an expert in the field of Ottoman Studies and the author of an outstanding monograph on Kurdish tribal militias, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone. Dr Max Bergholz from Concordia University, Canada, is an associate professor and the author of Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Nationalism, and Memory in a Balkan Community. 

Dr Thomas Mills, Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University and Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy is joined by Patrick Salmon, Chief Historian at the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development office. In his seventeen years in office, Patrick has published a number of volumes in the flagship series, Documents on British Policy Overseas, including works on German unification at the end of the Cold War and UK/South Africa relations during the era of apartheid. He also has expertise on Scandinavia and has published works including Scandinavia and the great powers 1890 to 1940, and Scandinavia in British policy during the twilight war, 1939 to 1940. His latest book is entitled The Control of the Past: Herbert Butterfield and the Pitfalls of Official History, published by University of London Press (2021). Mills and Salmon discuss this recently published work, looking at Patrick’s experience and expertise as well as his motivation for researching this topic.

This podcast discusses the merger of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not only has Winfried extensively worked on this topic but it has also become a contentious historical issue in recent years as archival material has become available thirty years after the event. Heinemann and Wyss question whether the merger of the two Germanies and their armed forces after the end of the Cold War was in fact a merger, a hostile takeover or something in between with the transferral of East German personnel into the Bundeswehr.

Colonel Professor Winfried Heinemann has extensively researched the diplomatic history of NATO, post-World War II German military history (in both the East and West), and especially the military resistance against Hitler. His most recent book is Operation “Valkyrie”: A Military History of the 20 July 1944 Plot (De Gruyter Studies in Military History, 2021).

This special episode marks the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Boroughbridge and the execution of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, in 1322. This was the bloody end of a civil war that scarred one of England’s most troubled and turbulent reigns, that of Edward II. Dr Sophie Ambler is the Deputy Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy and author of The Song of Simon de Montfort: England's First Revolutionary and the Death of Chivalry (2019); Dr Andrew Spencer is Fellow and Senior Tutor of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and has published extensively on the nobility, politics and constitution of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England; Dr Paul Dryburgh is Principal Record Specialist at The National Archives, and has been at the forefront of new research into the records and government of the era for nearly twenty years. Paul, Andrew and Sophie are part of a team of researchers – from the The National Archives and the Universities of Lincoln, Cambridge and Lancaster– involved in a new collaborative research project: ‘A State within a State? The making of the Duchy of Lancaster, c.1066-1422’.

This special episode of the War & Diplomacy Podcast Series is a recording of an event that was hosted on 16 June 2021. This discussion, led by the Deputy-Director Dr Thomas Mills, highlights aspects of Alistair Burt's career as an MP and a minister in the Foreign Office.  The conversation details several notable diplomatic events that took place during his tenure in office.

About Alistair Burt:

Recently appointed Pro-Chancellor of Lancaster University, Alistair Burt was a member of parliament for over 30 years, representing the constituencies of Bury North and North East Bedfordshire. He served in the government of Margaret Thatcher as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Kenneth Baker and in John Major’s government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Social Security. Having returned to parliament in 2001, he served in various opposition roles, including Assistant Chief Whip and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.

Following the 2010 election, Alistair Burt was appointed by David Cameron to serve as a minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with responsibility for the Middle East and North Africa. After a period as a minister in the Department of Health, he was appointed by Theresa May in 2017 as a Minister in both the FCO and Department for International Development, again with responsibility for the Middle East and North Africa region.

Alistair Burt stood down from parliament at the 2019 election, having had the Conservative whip withdrawn in September of that year for his opposition to Brexit policy, only for it to be restored the following month. Alongside his current role at Lancaster, Alistair is a Council member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a Distinguished Fellow at the Royal Institute for Strategic Studies.

In 1939, South Africa entered World War II on the side of the Allied powers, although not without internal opposition. The German government capitalised on these domestic rifts and secretly engaged the leaders of the pro-fascist Ossewabrandwag in order to encourage sedition across South Africa and intercept naval intelligence- ultimately to undermine the strategic importance of the Cape of Good Hope for Allied efforts. To this end, a complex network of spies was dispatched to collect intelligence to send back to the Reich by way of coded messages to Axis diplomatic agents stationed in Mozambique. These spies and their tactics are the focus of Dr Evert Kleynhans' new book, Hitler’s South African Spies (Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2021). In this podcast, Dr Kleynhans and Dr Marco Wyss, Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy, discuss the role of intelligence in South Africa during the Second World War, the impact these spies had on the outcome of the war, and how research into this field continues to develop.

Dr Evert Kleynhans is a senior lecturer in the Department of Military History at the Faculty of Military Science of Stellenbosch University. He lectures undergraduate and postgraduate modules on the evolution of warfare, African military history, and low-intensity conflict in Africa since 1945. His research interests include South African participation in both World Wars, insurgency and counterinsurgency in Africa, and the broad historical impact of climate and terrain on warfare. Dr Kleynhans formerly served as an officer in the South African National Defence Force, whereafter he was appointed as the archivist, and later director, of the Records, Archives and Museums Division of North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa. His book, Hitler's South African Spies: Secret Agents and the Intelligence War in South Africa, was published by Jonathan Ball Publishers this year and is available through reputable booksellers.

Papal calls to crusade were some of the most influential texts in the medieval West: key messages, crafted at the papal court, that were disseminated and preached across Christendom to mobilise men and women of every level of society to take up the crusading cause. These calls were a dynamic element of a crusading society, in which all Christians were responsible for the fate of the Holy Land and could support the crusading movement by bearing arms or offering prayers. How were these calls crafted? How were they interpreted, reshaped and shared by the people of Christendom? In this episode, Dr Sophie Ambler, Deputy Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy, talks to Dr Thomas Smith about his work investigating papal calls to crusade – both their production and their later life, once they were released ‘into the wild’.

Dr Smith is an expert in ecclesiastical and crusading history in the central Middle Ages. After completing his doctorate at Royal Holloway, he was Scouloudi Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research and then Leverhulme Study Abroad Fellow at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. After two years at Trinity College, Dublin, he was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Leeds, before joining the History Department at Rugby School in 2019. His early work explored papal policy and financing in relation to the crusading movement, in a number of articles and his first book: Curia and Crusade: Pope Honorius III and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1216-1227, published with Breopls in 2017. He has since undertaken important work in the forensic investigation of various documents related to the crusades, from papal bulls, to letters and chronicles, published across a host of articles in journals such as Historical Research, Viator, Crusades, and the Journal of Ecclesiastical History. He is currently completing his second monograph, on the Letters of the First Crusade, forthcoming with Boydell and Brewer, as well as working with Dr Susan Edgington on a new edition of a neglected chronicle of the First Crusade, traditionally attributed to Bartolf of Nangis.

Select works by Thomas Smith:

• Curia and Crusade: Pope Honorius III and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1216–1227 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017)
  
• ‘Audita tremendi and the Call for the Third Crusade Reconsidered, 1187–1188’, Viator, 49.3(2020 for 2018), 63–101
  
• ‘How to Craft a Crusade Call: Pope Innocent III and Quia maior (1213)’, Historical Research, 92(2019), 2–23
  
• ‘The Dynamism of a Crusade Encyclical: Pope Honorius III and Iustus Dominus (1223)’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 74 (2018), 111–42
  

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

The series of conflicts known as the Wars of the Roses tore through fifteenth-century England: the houses of Lancaster and York and their supporters fought over notions of good governance and the right to wear the crown, while vast swathes of the population took up arms in rebellion or on the battlefield, or lived in fear of rampaging armies. What can historians deduce about popular involvement in the Wars, including in key events such as the Battle of Towton (1461)? How can the treatment of prisoners and the battlefield dead at the battles of Wakefield (1460) and Tewkesbury (1471) reveal concepts of chivalry and military ethics? And how did those in power – from Edward IV, to Margaret of Anjou and Richard III – seek to manage popular fears? In this podcast, Dr Gordon McKelvie discusses his research on these topics with Dr Sophie Ambler, Deputy Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy.

Dr Gordon McKelvie is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Winchester, where he is also a convenor for the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Research. He has worked extensively on political society and warfare in England in the long fifteenth century. Following various journal articles and chapters, his first book was published with Boydell and Brewer in 2020: Bastard Feudalism, English Society and the Law: The Statutes of Livery, 1390 to 1520. This examines the effectiveness of new laws on social relations and how ‘bastard feudal’ ties facilitated many of the rebellions and acts of noble violence in the long fifteenth century. Dr McKelvie’s new research considers both the role of chivalry and martial ethics in the Wars, and the importance of managing popular emotions – principally fear and hatred – for use as weapons of military strategy.

Dr McKelvie’s book Bastard Feudalism, English Society and the Law: The Statutes of Livery, 1390 to 1520 is available from Boydell and Brewer. You can learn more about this research in his blog for the Boydell and Brewer website.

In a recent article for The Conversation, marking the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Tewkesbury, Dr McKelvie discusses: ‘Wars of the Roses: How the French meddled in this very English conflict’.

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

Dr Nathaniel Powell discusses France's Wars in Chad: Military Intervention and Decolonization in Africa with Dr Marco Wyss of the CWD.

Dr Powell completed his PhD in International History and Politics from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva in 2013. His research focuses on the postcolonial relationship between France and its former African colonies, particularly on the question of military interventions. He has published on various facets of the history of French military interventions in Africa in the Journal of Cold War Studies, African Security, Les Temps Modernes, International History Review, as well as in media outlets such as Foreign Affairs, War on the Rocks, and The Conversation. His current research looks at the role of French intelligence and security assistance in the political trajectories of newly independent African states in the 1960s and 1970s. He is also working on a book project focusing on Western support for Mobutu's Zaire in the 1970s.

Nat’s most recent publication, France's Wars in Chad: Military Intervention and Decolonization in Africa, is published by Cambridge University Press. 

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

In this episode, Dr Anaïs Waag (University of Lincoln) talks to the CWD's Dr Sophie Ambler about some of the thirteenth century's most notable women, and how their letters illuminate their role in diplomacy, warfare, and the commemoration of battle. From civil wars to crusades, royal women like Berenguela and Blanche of Castile and Eleanor and Marguerite of Provence played a vital part in securing peace treaties – but also in raising and leading armies and celebrating the military feats of their families. Drawing from the evidence of their letters, Dr Waag asks whether these women worked within a gendered language of power, and explains how a comparative study of their careers invites us to revise our understanding of how royal rule operated in medieval Europe.

Dr Waag is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of History and Heritage at the University of Lincoln. She specialises in gender studies and women's history in medieval Europe, taking a comparative perspective to examine how female power was formally and publicly expressed in England, France and the Iberian Peninsula. Her publications include 'Gender and the language of politics in thirteenth-century queens' letters', published in Historical Research, 'Rethinking battle commemoration: female letters and the myth of the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa', in the Journal of Medieval History, and most recently 'The Letters of Eleanor and Marguerite of Provence in Thirteenth-Century Anglo-French Relations', in the series Thirteenth Century England.

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

In this interview, Dr Marco Wyss from the CWD and Prof Mark Bradley discuss the Vietnam War from the perspective of the Vietnamese, the United States' role as a guarantor of human rights, and ongoing work in the history of the Global South.

Prof Mark Bradley is a Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor of International History and the College, the Deputy Dean of Division of the Social Sciences Faculty, the Director of the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, and a Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago.  Prof Bradley is the author of The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (2016), Vietnam at War (2009), and Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam (2000), which won the Harry J. Benda Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. He is the co-editor of Making the Forever War (2021), Familiar Made Strange: American Icons and Artifacts after the Transnational Turn (2015), Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars (2008), and Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights (2001). His work has appeared in the American Historical Review, Journal of American History, the Journal of World History, Diplomatic History, and Dissent.

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

In this episode, Simon Collis CMG interviewed by the CWD's Nic Coombs discusses his experiences in the Middle East as former British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Qatar.  Simon discusses the craft of diplomacy giving fascinating insights into warfare in the region, religious strife, human rights and the role of the diplomat in representing their country's interests.

Simon Collis CMG joined the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office in 1978 and after studying Arabic has served mainly in the Middle East and South Asia.  In addition to his ambassadorial appointments, he was British Consul-General in Dubai and in Basra.  Simon has also served in Tunis, New Delhi and Amman.

Nic Coombs is also a former member of HM Diplomatic Service principally working in or on the Middle East.  He has served in Amman, and twice in Riyadh.  Nic has particular interests in Saudi Arabia, salafism and sectarianism, and the practice of diplomacy.  He was a Teaching Fellow in PPR at Lancaster University and is a member of the CWD.

For more information on the CWD including events, research and news see: lancaster.ac.uk/cwd

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

 The Pilgrims Society was an elite dining club which developed an important role in the broader political relationship between the US and Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. Dr Stephen Bowman talking with the CWD's Dr Tom Mills depicts the Pilgrims and their activities as an early form of what we now refer to as public diplomacy.

Dr Stephen Bowman, is a Lecturer in British Political History at Stirling University. Stephen works primarily on political and economic relations between the United States and Great Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and was the winner of the Transatlantic Studies Association's Donald Cameron Watt Prize in 2013.  He has published a number of journal articles and in 2018 published his first book, The Pilgrims Society and Public Diplomacy, 1895-1945,  which is the topic of the podcast.

'The Pilgrims Society and Public Diplomacy, 1895-1945 - Edinburgh Studies and Anglo-American Relations' by Dr Stephen Bowman, is published by Edinburgh University Press.

Checkout the CWD website for details of events, our research and news: lancaster.ac.uk/cwd

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Follow us on Twitter - @CWDlancaster

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014).

Dr Flavia Gasbarri (King's College London) and Dr Marco Wyss (Lancaster University) discuss the Cold War in Africa, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s. Dr Gasbarri examines the United States' role in the conflict, and how the end of the Cold War affected US foreign policy in Africa.

About the guest:

Dr Gasbarri is co-Chair of the KCL Africa Research Group and a member of the KCL Centre for Grand Strategy. She completed her PhD in War Studies at King's College London in 2014, with a project entitled "The United States and the end of the Cold War in Africa, 1988-1994".  After the end of her doctoral studies, Dr Gasbarri also worked at the Joint Services Command and Staff College (JSCSC) in Shrivenham, and at the Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS), where she was Academic Tutor for the British Armed Forces (both at junior and senior level). Her book entitled US Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War in Africa was published this year in Routledge’s ‘Cold War History’ series (edited by Arne Westad and Michael Cox). The book can be bought directly from Routledge, Amazon, or any other respectable bookseller.

Checkout the CWD website for details of events, our research and news: lancaster.ac.uk/cwd

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014)

Prof Winfried Heinemann and Dr Marco Wyss discuss Operation Valkyrie (the unsuccessful assassination attempt of Adolf HItler in 1944) and the legacy of military resistance against Hitler. 

About the guest:

Colonel Professor Winfried Heinemann has spent his career at the Center for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr in Potsdam, where he worked in editorial, research, and leadership positions. There, he notably carried out extensive research on the diplomatic history of NATO, post-World War II German military history – in both its Eastern and Western variants – and, especially, the military resistance against Hitler. Currently, he is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Cottbus University, serves as the associate and book reviews editor of the International Journal of Military History, and is an Honorary Researcher of our Centre for War and Diplomacy.  His new book, Operation Valkyrie: A Military History of 20 July 1944 (in German, but an English edition is forthcoming in 2021) through Amazon, the publisher (de Gruyter Oldenbourg), or any respectable bookseller.

Music credit: Kai Engel, 'Flames of Rome', Calls and Echoes (Southern's City Lab, 2014)