Applied History and Contemporary Policymaking

School of Statecraft

Robert Crowcroft

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350177031
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

Robert Crowcroft has assembled a world-class, international cast of outstanding scholars and international figures to produce a stimulating collection of essays on applied history and policy making. With contributors such as Philip Bobbitt, Margaret MacMillan, and Jeremy Black, this collection of essays addresses some of the most important geopolitical challenges confronting the world today. From reconstructing collapsed political regimes to security competition in the China Seas and the evolution of Salafi-Jihadi ideology, it explores a range of statecraft, policy, and strategy. The essays span a number of policy areas and historical problems, tackling important questions about what historians do (and should do), and considering the nature and limits of historical judgement. With some examining how applied history can be used to rethink contemporary challenges, others explore how it has been used and abused in the past. Making a splash in intellectual debate by making a definitive case for Applied History, this book demonstrates that a knowledge of the past, and the insight it provides, is imperative to effective statecraft.

Table of contents

• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: For all time: History, statesmanship and the primacy of experience
• Chapter 3: The Whig way of war: The origins of Anglo-American strategy-making
• Chapter 4: Carthage can now defeat Rome: Political order, seaborne commerce and the projection of power in Barbon and Montesquieu
• Chapter 5: Globalization and world order: Economic integration and the implications for global power, 1846–1914 and 1989–2021
• Chapter 6: Applying history to an anomalous historical case: The rise of China
• Chapter 7: Nation-Building as Applied History: Lessons from the United States in Afghanistan
• Chapter 8: Applied history and contingency planning: Whitehall and the British War Book, c. 1911–39
• Chapter 9: ‘Longhaired theoreticians’ and long-term thinkers: The use of history within the British Foreign Office during the Second World War
• Chapter 10: Problems left over from history: British officials and three diplomatic challenges
• Chapter 11: Clio’s role in construing the US Constitution
• Chapter 12: Learning from military history
• Chapter 13: Beware of war: Lessons from the past
• Chapter 14: Serving history hot: On contemporary history
• Chapter 15: When reason replaces wisdom: How the neglect of history and statesmanship has diminished political science
• Select Bibliography
• Index