The past is never dead. It's not even past
During the 1970s, relations between the US and China were transformed. Previously the two nations were cold war enemies. But Kazushi Minami argues that the ’70s saw Americans reimagine China as a country of opportunities, while Chinese reinterpreted the US as an agent of modernization, capable of enriching their country. Crucial to this process was […]
In 1937, American politics was gripped by President Roosevelt’s court-packing plan. Frustrated with what he perceived to be an aging, obstructionist Supreme Court, Roosevelt pressed Congress to expand the court from 9 to 15 members. Stepping into the ensuing maelstrom was Texas congressman Hatton Sumners, chair of the House judiciary committee, an ally of Roosevelt, […]
The historian Henry Adams once wrote that, “the American boy of 1854 stood nearer the year 1 than to the year 1900.” Changes during that period were indeed profound in Adam’s home town of Boston. And yet, for the majority of the city’s black men and women, life and work in 1900 were not that […]
Over the course of the academic year, student protests have roiled college campuses like at no other time in recent memory. Going further back, though, historians see plenty of parallels — as well as some key differences — with student protest movements focused on Vietnam (1960s/70s) and South Africa (1980s/90s.) Today we’re joined today by […]
Climate change and population growth are creating a new appreciation — and anxiety — around water infrastructure, both in the western United States and around the world. We’re joined today by Professor Erika Bsumek, whose new book, The Foundations of Glen Canyon, focuses on America’s second-highest concrete-arch dam. Not simply a massive piece of physical infrastructure, it is also […]
The Hapsburg Empire was founded in 1282 (or 1526, depending on who you ask) and lasted until 1918. Despite its increasingly antiquated and illiberal tendencies, it survived the reformation, the Thirty Years War, the Enlightenment, the Age of Revolution, the Revolutions of 1848, and the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 — but not World War I. […]
Political partisanship is not only a hallmark of US democracy today. There is also a long history of dysfunction and division as old as America. H.W. Brands’s new book, Founding Partisans, is a revelatory history of the Revolutionary era’s stormy politics, which includes a look at the nation’s earliest political parties — those of Hamilton and […]
Traditionally, we think about European power being built with ships and swords. However, new scholarship uncovers a more nuanced and complex picture. Today, 15 Minute History is joined by Mélanie Lamotte, Assistant Professor of History and French at the University of Texas at Austin. Lamotte is a historian of the French Empire whose work demonstrates […]
To kick off the new season of 15 Minute History, we talk to Yoav di-Capua, a Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of “No Exit Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Decolonization.” Professor di-Capua talks about French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1967 trip to Egypt and Israel on a quest […]
Several years ago, while visiting Jamestown, Virginia, I had an epiphany; this isn’t American history, it’s English history—these people were English, and the America they strived within was a space more than an entity. Of course, this all changed with the American Revolution. So for obvious reasons, Yorktown, not far from Jamestown, didn’t give this […]