Applied History Project

Speaker:  Leyla Tiglay, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

Rumors of an impending atomic experiment in Africa circulated in newspapers as early as 1956, four years before France conducted its first atomic test at the Reggane Testing Center in the Sahara in 1960. The late 1950s saw France's technological preparations, strained transatlantic relations due to complex nuclear alignments in Europe, and an unprecedented wave of anti-nuclear mobilization in decolonizing Africa. Using the French tests as a case study, this research aims to refine scholars and policymakers' understanding of how decolonization intrinsically influenced the formation of the current global nuclear landscape during this pivotal era in nuclear politics. 

Open to Harvard ID Holders Only: Admittance will be on a first come–first served basis. Coffee &Tea Provided.

Speaker: Nate Grau, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This seminar traces the evolution of France's Cold War counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine from the Second World War to France's 1954 defeat in Indochina. Grau reveals the underappreciated roles of civilian colonial reformers in this process, tracing a network of "Free French" policymakers circulating from Algeria to the French wars in Madagascar (1947–1948) and Indochina (1945–1954). In each of these revolutionary independence struggles, reformist plans to encourage economic growth and develop local state capacity became tools of counterinsurgent repression that only escalated inter-communal cycles of violence.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAud-qurjkpE9LULcdi7fEzEUmflmTOWvYC

Speaker: Barnaby Crowcroft, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

The historical debate over the British empire tends to be preoccupied with its role — whether for good or for ill — in spreading some form of "liberal modernity" throughout its territories. However, this has tended to neglect the much wider British practice of empire through alliance, treaty, and protection-style arrangements, which had little if any connection with liberal reform. This presentation will introduce this "other" British empire, discuss some of its primary locations, institutions, and motivating ideas and reflect upon its possible lessons for international and foreign policy.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcscOGgpj8rHNJuCVOSMvoqXABgfshFxBbn

Emily Whalen, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This presentation examines a period of direct U.S. participation in Lebanon's war, the eighteen months during which U.S. Marines were deployed in Beirut as part of a Multinational Peacekeeping Force (MNF).  Existing scholarship on the MNF intervention in Lebanon tends to focus on the infamous barracks bombing of October 1983, overlooking how the securitization and militarization of U.S. policy in Lebanon changed both the Lebanese state and the U.S. foreign policy process. Juxtaposing discussions in Washington with events on the ground in Beirut during the months preceding the barracks bombing, this presentation uses the intervention in Lebanon to cast light on the relationship between intentions and outcomes in U.S. foreign policy.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

Speaker: Carl Forsberg, Ernest May Fellowship in History & Policy, International Security Program

Two developments have defined Middle Eastern international politics in the 2010s: first, the Arab spring and its failures, and second, polarization between Iran and a coalition of Arab states allied with the United States. This seminar locates the historical logics behind these developments in the regional transformations of the 1970s. During that decade, the regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and imperial Iran collaboratively forged a diplomatic counterrevolution with U.S. support. Animated by a fear of alliances between the Soviet Union, revolutionary regimes, and the domestic left, these states advanced a new regional order designed to reinforce the security of authoritarian rule. The counterrevolutionary coalitions and strategies developed in the 1970s persisted after the Iranian Revolution, as U.S. allies pivoted to countering Iran and, more recently, the 2011 Arab spring.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

Speaker: Alexandra Tejblum Evans, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This presentation will evaluate U.S. policy toward Lebanon from 1981–1985, tracing the gradual expansion and rapid contraction of American efforts to stabilize a complex civil and regional conflict. By situating the United States' diplomatic and military interventions within a broader effort to strengthen American influence in the Middle East, it will demonstrate how the experience shaped the Reagan administration's perception of threat—and opportunity—in a moment of structural change. It will identify persistent barriers to U.S. interests in a vital region and shed light on how American leaders learn through crisis.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.