23 September 2026 New Diplomatic History Network 7th Conference Old and New Diplomacies of Peace and War Bizkaia Aretoa, Bilbao (Basque Country, Spain) 27–29 May 2027 We are living in times of war.…

Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth, Beyond the Ocean. France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2026. £26.99. Reviewed by Jerem…

Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, Archival Research for International Relations. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2026. $145. Reviewed by Jeremy Black While designed for graduate students and early …

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Amos C. Fox, Maneuver is Dead: Land Warfare in the Twenty-First Century. London: Bloomsbury, 2026. £85. Reviewed by Jeremy Black Thoughtful books on war are central to diplomatic history, for diplo…

Valerie Hudson and Benjamin Day, Foreign Policy Analysis: Classic and Contemporary Theory, 4th ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2026. £34.99. Reviewed by Jeremy Black Having recently published a book The Na…

Brendan Simms, The Return of the Great Powers. London: Basic Books, 2026. £25. Reviewed by Jeremy Black Puffed widely on its covers, this is a book that is problematic from its first paragraph wher…

Latest issue: Vol. 8, No. 1 (June 2026) Table of Contents Articles Megan Armknecht Violations and Inviolability: The 1815 Kozlov Affair and Diplomatic Households in Early U.S.-Russian Relations Emm…

The historical record of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and its successor, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has been a mixed one. In general, scholars of Cold War history have had difficulty in getting the balance right with the CSCE. Its significance has been both over- and underestimated, especially its contribution, or its irrelevance, to the largely peaceful end of the Cold War and how transnational human rights activism and institutionalized multilateral diplomacy contributed to it.

In January 1799, in a passionate article titled “Foreign Influence,” James Madison attempted to persuade US citizens that British influence presented an im

Saori Katada and Kei Koga, Japan’s Grand Strategy Liminal Power in an Uncertain World. Oxford Studies in Grand Strategy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2026. Pp. xviii and 283. £99. Reviewed by J…

Abstract. This article re-dates Federico da Montefeltro’s investiture into the Order of the Garter to early 1475 and reframes it as Aragonese-brokered dipl

Mustafa Aksakal, The War that Made the Middle East. World War One and the End of the Ottoman Empire. Princeton University Press, 2026. £28. Reviewed by Jeremy Black This vigorous book is an engaged…

Hal Brands, The Eurasian Century. Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World. W. W. Norton and Company, 2025. £22.99. Reviewed by Jeremy Black High marks for ambition, but lower for ac…

A. Wess Mitchell, Great Power Diplomacy. The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2025. £30. Reviewed by Jeremy Black Blurbed on the back by …

J. Franklin Jameson, The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement, 100th Anniversary Edition with a new foreword by Michael A. Blaakman and Sarah Barringer Gordon. Princeton: Princeton U…

Thomas Barfield, Shadow Empires. An Alternative Imperial History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023, £30.00. Reviewed by Jeremy Black The vexed nature of empire is best handled by an unde…

22 March 2026 Scoping ‘New Diplomatic History’ in Asia CALL FOR PROPOSALS DEADLINE: 30 March 2026 The New Diplomatic History Network (NDHN) was established in 2011 as a collaborative, i…

This article examines how sovereignty and treaties functioned as colonial instruments during the British occupation of Java (1811–1815). The British East India Company imposed the language of sover...

From the First World War until the height of the Cold War, actors from the decolonizing world sought to build connections with international peace movements. These efforts produced new networks and pr...

Ronald Angelo Johnson is Ralph and Bessie Mae Lynn Endowed Chair of History and Associate Professor at Baylor University. This interview is based on his new book, Entangled Alliances: Racialized Fr…

by Jeremy Black In discussing strategy there can be a misleading tendency to focus on prominent strategic thinkers but without offering due contextualisation. For the latter, in assessing strategy,…

by Wiebke Denecke A government bombing the capital of another state. A national delegation leaving the UN General Assembly protesting a resolution against an aggressive state. A church community ex…

Trevor Burnard and Andrew O’Shaughnessy, Republic and Empire. Crisis, Revolution, and America’s Early Independence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025 Reviewed by Jeremy Black Books like this a…

NDH Aix-en-Provence Program Sciences po AixAix-en-Provence22, 23, 24 May 2025 The World and Europe: Diplomatic Transfers, Networks, Representations and Practices 6th Conference of the New Diplomati…

by Kenneth Weisbrode After sharing an essay I recently wrote about diplomatic memoirs, I heard from a reader who pointed out that I had written explicitly about setting but not so about place. He w…

International conference, November 19-21, 2025, hosted at the gta Institute (ETH Zurich) and CDHM (Geneva Graduate Institute). Organised by Andreas Kalpakci, Charlotte Rottiers, and Davide Rodogno.

Josephine Baker’s Secret War by Hanna Diamond. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2025. xvii + 326. Reviewed by Jeremy Black This study of the wartime role of the entertainer Josephine Baker …

26 May 2025 Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo Organizers: Erica Moretti, Jacopo Pili, Simon Unger Pius XII and Decolonization: Catholicism in North Africa and the Levant, 1939-1958  10–11 Nov.…

No More Napoleons. How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One Andrew Lambert Yale University Press, 2025. £25.00, 571 pp Reviewed by Jeremy Black Bold in its thesis, self-confidence,…