Results by Title   
42 books about Treaties
Sort by     
 

The Alternate Route
Thomas Graham
Oregon State University Press, 2017
Library of Congress JZ5725.G73 2017 | Dewey Decimal 327.1747

Eventual achievement of nuclear disarmament has been an objective and a dream of the world community since the dawn of the Nuclear Age. Considerable progress has been made over the decades, but this has always required close US-Russian cooperation. At present, further progress is likely blocked by the return of Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency and the toxic US-Russia relationship.
 
The classic road toward nuclear disarmament appears to be closed for the foreseeable future, but there may be another route. In the last fifty years, well-conceived regional treaties have been developed in Latin America, the South Pacific, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. These arrangements have developed for many and varied political and security reasons, but now virtually all of the Southern Hemisphere and important parts of the Northern Hemisphere are legally nuclear-weapon-free. These regional nuclear weapon disarmament treaties are formally respected by the five states recognized under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as nuclear weapon states: the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China—often referred to collectively as the P-5 states.
 
Variations of these regional treaties might eventually be negotiated in the Middle East, Northeast Asia, and South Asia, setting aside the P-5 states until the very end of the process.  With regional agreements in place around the globe, negotiation among the P-5 states would be all that stands between the world community and the banishment of nuclear weapons, verifiably and effectively worldwide. By the time this point is reached, Russia and the United States might be able to cooperate.
 
Essential reading for policy advisors, foreign service professionals, and scholars in political science, The Alternate Route examines the possibilities of nuclear-weapon-free zones as a pathway to worldwide nuclear disarmament.
Expand Description

American Indian Treaties: A Guide to Ratified and Unratified Colonial, United States, State, Foreign, and Intertribal Treaties and Agreements, 1607-1911
David DeJong
University of Utah Press, 2015
Library of Congress KIE19.D45 2015 | Dewey Decimal 342.730872

When it comes to American Indian treaties, the American polity too often forgets the realities of history. Prevailing perceptions are often not only inaccurate but also premised on outright falsehoods. Treaty-making was profoundly influenced by tribal conceptions of diplomacy. Colonial and early U.S. treaties especially were clothed in ritual, metaphor, and covenants that emphasized the sacred nature and purpose of diplomacy and represented a time when tribal nations were equal partners. To understand the nature and meaning of tribal treaties one needs to read them and recognize their sacred pledges and meaning, which are still relevant today.

This volume examines intertribal treaties and treaty-making and provides understanding of both the agreements and the diplomatic protocols in which they were enmeshed. It summarizes colonial Indian treaty discourse, intertribal treaties and diplomacy, the different eras of ratified and unratified U.S. treaties, foreign and state treaties with Indian nations, and the Indian agreements that followed the cessation of official treaty-making. It provides extensive lists of over 1,500 Indian treaties from all tribal diplomatic eras and includes dates, participants, purposes, and references. 


Expand Description

Assessing Trade-Offs in U.S. Military Intervention Decisions: Whether, When, and with What Size Force to Intervene
Bryan Frederick
RAND Corporation, 2021
Library of Congress JZ6368.F74 2021

In this report, the authors create a framework that can be used to rigorously consider the trade-offs involved in U.S. military intervention decisions following the outbreak of a war or crisis. This framework can provide a better understanding of the relationships between intervention timing, intervention size, and intervention outcomes to inform future debates about whether, when, and with what size force to undertake a military intervention.
Expand Description

Azerbaijan's Geopolitical Landscape: Contemporary Issues, 1991–2018
Edited by Farid Shafiyev
Karolinum Press, 2019

Being located between the Black and Caspian seas, Azerbaijan has always been the juncture of Eurasia—with a traditional reputation as a crossroads between the north-south and east-west transport corridors—and the traditional ground for competition between numerous regional and global players, using both soft and hard power. With its vast hydrocarbon energy reserves, Azerbaijan is a country of particular importance in the South Caucasus. The region’s complex geopolitics have immensely influenced Azerbaijan’s foreign policy strategy. With the dissolution of the USSR, Azerbaijan, as a new state with fragile security, found itself in a complicated situation surrounded by regional powers like Iran, Russia, and Turkey. This book focuses on several major foreign policy issues faced by the Republic of Azerbaijan since it regained its independence in 1991. These major issues include the conflict with Armenia and related matters, the relationship with the West, as well as the complexities arising from its relationship with Russia and its ties to Muslim countries, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Expand Description

Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania, and the First Nations: The Treaties of 1736-62
Edited by Susan Kalter
University of Illinois Press, 2006
Library of Congress KF82022006 | Dewey Decimal 342.7308720261

British colonial relations with the native peoples of eastern North America

This is an annotated edition of the treaties between the British colonies and Indian nations, originally printed and sold by Benjamin Franklin. Last published in 1938, Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania, and the First Nations makes these important treaties available once again, featuring a simpler, easier-to-read format, extensive explanatory notes, and maps. A detailed introduction by Susan Kalter puts the treaties in their proper historical and cultural context. 

This carefully researched edition shows these treaties to be complex intercultural documents, and provides significant insight into the British colonists’ relationship with native peoples of North America. They also reveal the complexity of Benjamin Franklin’s perceptions of Native Americans, showing him in some negotiations as a promoter of the Indian word against the colonial one. Finally, the treaties offer an enormous wealth of linguistic, aesthetic, and cultural information about the Iroquois, the Delawares, and their allies and neighbors.

Expand Description

British Extraterritoriality in Korea 1884 – 1910: A Comparison with Japan
Christoph Roberts
Amsterdam University Press, 2021

Filling an important gap in extraterritoriality studies and in the history of Anglo-Korean relations, this benchmark study examines Britain’s exercise of extraterritorial rights in Korea from 1884 until Korea’s formal annexation by Japan in 1910. It shows how the treaty provisions—which provided for Britain’s ideal extra-territorial regime—were influenced by Britain’s considerably greater experience in Japan beginning in 1859. The caseload proved miniscule in the absence of any large British commercial or maritime presence. Nevertheless, it provides an insight into extra-territoriality’s operation outside major commercial centres and ports. Britain’s protection of Chinese interests in Korea in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War, 1894–1895 is also covered.
Expand Description

Carving Up the Globe: An Atlas of Diplomacy
Malise Ruthven
Harvard University Press, 2018
Library of Congress G1046.F1C3 2018 | Dewey Decimal 327.20223

Where do you draw the line? In the context of geopolitics, much hinges on the answer to that question. For thousands of years, it has been the work of diplomats to draw the lines in ways that were most advantageous to their leaders, fellow citizens, and sometimes themselves. Carving Up the Globe offers vivid documentation of their handiwork. With hundreds of full-color maps and other images, this atlas illustrates treaties that have determined the political fates of millions. In rich detail, it chronicles everything from ancient Egyptian and Hittite accords to the first Sino-Tibetan peace in 783 CE, the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, and the 2014 Minsk Protocol looming over the war in Ukraine.

But there is more here than shifting territorial frontiers. Throughout history, diplomats have also drawn boundaries around valuable resources and used treaties to empower, liberate, and constrain. Carving Up the Globe encompasses these agreements, too, across land, sea, and air. Missile and nuclear pacts, environmental treaties, chemical weapons conventions, and economic deals are all carefully rendered.

Led by Malise Ruthven, a team of experts provides lively historical commentary, which—together with finely crafted visuals—conjures the ceaseless ambition of princes and politicians. Whether they sought the glory and riches of empire or pursued hegemony, security, stability, and GDP within the modern international system, their efforts culminated in lines on a map—and the enormous real-life consequences those lines represent and enforce.

Expand Description

Coalition Politics and Cabinet Decision Making: A Comparative Analysis of Foreign Policy Choices
Juliet Kaarbo
University of Michigan Press, 2013
Library of Congress JZ1305.K33 2012 | Dewey Decimal 327.1

Every day, coalition cabinets make policy decisions critical to international politics. Juliet Kaarbo examines the dynamics of these multiparty cabinets in parliamentary democracies in order to assess both the quality of coalition decision making and the degree to which coalitions tend to favor peaceful or military solutions. Are coalition cabinets so riddled by conflict that they cannot make foreign policy effectively, or do the multiple voices represented in the cabinet create more legitimate and imaginative responses to the international system? Do political and institutional constraints inherent to coalition cabinets lead to nonaggressive policies? Or do institutional and political forces precipitate more belligerent behavior?

Employing theory from security studies and political psychology as well as a combination of quantitative cross-national analyses and twelve qualitative comparative case studies of foreign policy made by coalition cabinets in Japan, the Netherlands, and Turkey, Kaarbo identifies the factors that generate highly aggressive policies, inconsistency, and other policy outcomes. Her findings have implications not merely for foreign policy but for all types of decision making and policy-making by coalition governments.

Expand Description

The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon
Brian E. Vick
Harvard University Press, 2014
Library of Congress DC249.V45 2014 | Dewey Decimal 940.2744

Convened following Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, the Congress of Vienna is remembered as much for the pageantry of the royals and elites who gathered there as for the landmark diplomatic agreements they brokered. Historians have nevertheless generally dismissed these spectacular festivities as window dressing when compared with the serious, behind-the-scenes maneuverings of sovereigns and statesmen. Brian Vick finds this conventional view shortsighted, seeing these instead as two interconnected dimensions of politics. Examining them together yields a more complete picture of how one of the most important diplomatic summits in history managed to redraw the map of Europe and the international system of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Congress of Vienna investigates the Vienna Congress within a broad framework of influence networks that included unofficial opinion-shapers of all kinds, both men and women: artists and composers, entrepreneurs and writers, hosts and attendees of fashionable salons. In addition to high-profile negotiation and diplomatic wrangling over the post-Napoleonic fates of Germany, Italy, and Poland, Vick brings into focus other understudied yet significant issues: the African slave trade, Jewish rights, and relations with Islamic powers such as the Ottoman Empire and Barbary Corsairs. Challenging the usual portrayal of a reactionary Congress obsessed with rolling back Napoleon’s liberal reforms, Vick demonstrates that the Congress’s promotion of limited constitutionalism, respect for religious and nationality rights, and humanitarian interventions was influenced as much by liberal currents as by conservative ones.

Expand Description

The Constitution’s Text in Foreign Affairs
Michael D. Ramsey
Harvard University Press, 2007
Library of Congress KF4651.R36 2007 | Dewey Decimal 342.730412

This book describes the constitutional law of foreign affairs, derived from the historical understanding of the Constitution's text. It examines timeless and recurring foreign affairs controversies--such as the role of the president and Congress, the power to enter armed conflict, and the power to make and break treaties--and shows how the words, structure, and context of the Constitution can resolve pivotal court cases and leading modern disputes. The book provides a counterpoint to much conventional discussion of constitutional foreign affairs law, which tends to assume that the Constitution's text and history cannot give much guidance, and which rests many of its arguments upon modern practice and policy considerations.

Using a close focus on the text and a wide array of historical sources, Michael Ramsey argues that the Constitution's original design gives the president substantial independent powers in foreign affairs. But, contrary to what many presidents and presidential advisors contend, these powers are balanced by the independent powers given to Congress, the Senate, the states, and the courts. The Constitution, Ramsey concludes, does not make any branch of government the ultimate decision maker in foreign affairs, but rather divides authority among multiple independent power centers.

Expand Description

Double Eagle and Rising Sun: The Russians and Japanese at Portsmouth in 1905
Raymond A. Esthus
Duke University Press, 1988
Library of Congress DS517.7.E88 1988 | Dewey Decimal 952.031

The Russo-Japanese War and the peace conference that followed it at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, marked a turning point affecting not only the history of participants but the future of East Asia and the world.
The 1905 Portsmouth Conference, mediated by President Theodore Roosevelt, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize, brought to an end a war in which Japan won spectacular victories on land and sea. Although the peace settlement fell far short of public expectations in Japan, she gained supremacy in Korea and a sphere of influence in South Manchuria as a consequence of the treaty. Nevertheless, the treaty reflected the military stalemate in Manchuria. Roosevelt wanted a balance of power to emerge from the war, and his hope was realized in the peace process.
Raymond Esthus, drawing on the records of six nations, provides a detailed and panoramic account of the 1905 conference from the perspectives of both the Russians and the Japanese participants, depicting the powerful personalities of Roosevelt and the Russian Sergei Witte, as well as Tsar Nicholas II and the Foreign Minister Komura Jutaro. It is a story of verbal duels, tests of will, and moments of high personal courage. If there was no clear-cut victor at the conference, Roosevelt emerged as a worldwide hero of the cause of peace.
Expand Description

Elder Brother and the Law of the People: Contemporary Kinship and Cowessess First Nation
Robert Alexander Innes
University of Manitoba Press, 2013
Library of Congress E78.S2I56 2013 | Dewey Decimal 306.830899707124

Faith in Paper
Charles E. Cleland
University of Michigan Press, 2011
Library of Congress KF8205.C54 2011 | Dewey Decimal 346.77043208997

Faith in Paper is about the reinstitution of Indian treaty rights in the Upper Great Lakes region during the last quarter of the 20th century. The book focuses on the treaties and legal cases that together
have awakened a new day in Native American sovereignty and established the place of Indian tribes on the modern political landscape.
 
In addition to discussing the historic development of Indian treaties and their social and legal context, Charles E. Cleland outlines specific treaties litigated in modern courts as well as the impact of treaty litigation on the modern Indian and non-Indian communities of the region. Faith in Paper is both an important contribution to the scholarship of Indian legal matters and a rich resource for Indians
themselves as they strive to retain or regain rights that have eroded over the years.
 
Charles E. Cleland is Michigan State University Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Curator of Anthropology and Ethnology. He has been an expert witness in numerous Native American land claims and fishing rights cases and written a number of other books on the subject, including Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan's Native Americans; The Place of the Pike (Gnoozhekaaning): A History of the Bay Mills Indian Community; and (as a contributor) Fish in the Lakes, Wild Rice, and Game in Abundance: Testimony on Behalf of Mille Lacs Ojibwe Hunting and Fishing Rights.
Expand Description

Fallout: Nuclear Diplomacy in an Age of Global Fracture
Grégoire Mallard
University of Chicago Press, 2014
Library of Congress JZ5675.M35 2014 | Dewey Decimal 327.1747

Many Baby Boomers still recall crouching under their grade-school desks in frequent bomb drills during the Cuban Missile Crisis—a clear representation of how terrified the United States was of nuclear war.  Thus far, we have succeeded in preventing such catastrophe, and this is partly due to the various treaties signed in the 1960s forswearing the use of nuclear technology for military purposes.

In Fallout, Grégoire Mallard seeks to understand why some nations agreed to these limitations of their sovereign will—and why others decidedly did not.  He builds his investigation around the 1968 signing of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which, though binding in nature, wasn’t adhered to consistently by all signatory nations. Mallard looks at Europe’s observance of treaty rules in contrast to the three holdouts in the global nonproliferation regime: Israel, India, and Pakistan. He seeks to find reasons for these discrepancies, and makes the compelling case that who wrote the treaty and how the rules were written—whether transparently, ambiguously, or opaquely—had major significance in how the rules were interpreted and whether they were then followed or dismissed as regimes changed. In honing in on this important piece of the story, Mallard not only provides a new perspective on our diplomatic history, but, more significantly, draws important conclusions about potential conditions that could facilitate the inclusion of the remaining NPT holdouts. Fallout is an important and timely book sure to be of interest to policy makers, activists, and concerned citizens alike.
Expand Description

Fish in the Lakes, Wild Rice, and Game in Abundance: Testimony on Behalf of Mille Lacs Ojibwe Hunting and Fishing Rights
Edited by James M. McClurken
Michigan State University Press, 2000
Library of Congress KFM5905.6.H85F57 2000 | Dewey Decimal 346.7760469549

On 13 August 1990 members of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe filed a lawsuit against the State of Minnesota for interfering with the hunting, fishing, and gathering rights that had been guaranteed to them in an 1837 treaty with the United States. In order to interpret the treaty the courts had to consider historical circumstances, the intentions of the parties, and the treaty's implementation. The Mille Lacs Band faced a mammoth challenge. How does one argue the Native side of the case when all historical documentation was written by non- Natives? The Mille Lacs selected six scholars to testify for them. Published here for the first time, Charles Cleland, James McClurken, Helen Tanner, John Nichols, Thomas Lund, and Bruce White discuss the circumstances under which the treaty was written, the personalities involved in the negotiations and the legal rhetoric of the times, as well as analyze related legal conflicts between Natives and non- Natives. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor delivered the 1999 Opinion of the [United States Supreme] Court.

Expand Description

Friends, Foes, and Future Directions: U.S. Partnerships in a Turbulent World: Strategic Rethink
Hans Binnendijk
RAND Corporation, 2016
Library of Congress UA23.B4984 2016 | Dewey Decimal 355.0310973

Report evaluates strategies for dealing with U.S. partners and adversaries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East in a time of diminishing defense budgets and American public preference for a domestic focus. The three proposed strategies are to be more assertive, to be more collaborative, or to retrench from international commitments. Each strategy is constrained and a balance will need to be struck among them that varies from region to region.
Expand Description

The Game of Conservation: International Treaties to Protect the World’s Migratory Animals
Mark Cioc
Ohio University Press, 2009
Library of Congress QL82.C56 2009 | Dewey Decimal 591.568

The Game of Conservation is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable examination of nature protection around the world.

Twentieth-century nature conservation treaties often originated as attempts to regulate the pace of killing rather than as attempts to protect animal habitat. Some were prompted by major breakthroughs in firearm techniques, such as the invention of the elephant gun and grenade harpoons, but agricultural development was at least as important as hunting regulations in determining the fate of migratory species. The treaties had many defects, yet they also served the goal of conservation to good effect, often saving key species from complete extermination and sometimes keeping the population numbers at viable levels. It is because of these treaties that Africa is dotted with large national parks, that North America has an extensive network of bird refuges, and that there are any whales left in the oceans. All of these treaties are still in effect today, and all continue to influence nature-protection efforts around the globe.

Drawing on a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, Mark Cioc shows that a handful of treaties—all designed to protect the world’s most commercially important migratory species—have largely shaped the contours of global nature conservation over the past century. The scope of the book ranges from the African savannahs and the skies of North America to the frigid waters of the Antarctic.

Expand Description

Greening the Alliance: The Diplomacy of NATO's Science and Environmental Initiatives
Simone Turchetti
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Library of Congress GE50.T86 2018 | Dewey Decimal 304.2091821

Following the launch of Sputnik, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization became a prominent sponsor of scientific research in its member countries, a role it retained until the end of the Cold War. As NATO marks sixty years since the establishment of its Science Committee, the main organizational force promoting its science programs, Greening the Alliance is the first book to chart NATO’s scientific patronage—and the motivations behind it—from the organization’s early days to the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Drawing on previously unseen documents from NATO’s own archives, Simone Turchetti reveals how its investments were rooted in the alliance’s defense and surveillance needs, needs that led it to establish a program prioritizing environmental studies. A long-overlooked and effective diplomacy exercise, NATO’s “greening” at one point constituted the organization’s chief conduit for negotiating problematic relations between allies. But while Greening the Alliance explores this surprising coevolution of environmental monitoring and surveillance, tales of science advisers issuing instructions to bomb oil spills with napalm or Dr. Strangelove–like experts eager to divert the path of hurricanes with atomic weapons make it clear: the coexistence of these forces has not always been harmonious. Reflecting on this rich, complicated legacy in light of contemporary global challenges like climate change, Turchetti offers both an eye-opening history of international politics and environmental studies and a thoughtful assessment of NATO’s future.
Expand Description

His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire
Sugata Bose
Harvard University Press, 2010
Library of Congress DS481.B6B68 2011 | Dewey Decimal 954.035092

The man whom Indian nationalists perceived as the “George Washington of India” and who was President of the Indian National Congress in 1938–1939 is a legendary figure. Called Netaji (“leader”) by his countrymen, Subhas Chandra Bose struggled all his life to liberate his people from British rule and, in pursuit of that goal, raised and led the Indian National Army against Allied Forces during World War II. His patriotism, as Gandhi asserted, was second to none, but his actions aroused controversy in India and condemnation in the West.

Now, in a definitive biography of the revered Indian nationalist, Sugata Bose deftly explores a charismatic personality whose public and private life encapsulated the contradictions of world history in the first half of the twentieth century. He brilliantly evokes Netaji’s formation in the intellectual milieu of Calcutta and Cambridge, probes his thoughts and relations during years of exile, and analyzes his ascent to the peak of nationalist politics. Amidst riveting accounts of imprisonment and travels, we glimpse the profundity of his struggle: to unite Hindu and Muslim, men and women, and diverse linguistic groups within a single independent Indian nation. Finally, an authoritative account of his untimely death in a plane crash will put to rest rumors about the fate of this “deathless hero.”

This epic of a life larger than its legend is both intimate, based on family archives, and global in significance. His Majesty’s Opponent establishes Bose among the giants of Indian and world history.

Expand Description

Louis Horst: Musician in a Dancer’s World
Janet Mansfield Soares
Duke University Press, 1992
Library of Congress JX4165.D4 | Dewey Decimal 341.2

From his musical beginnings as a piano player in gambling houses and society cafés, Louis Horst (1884-1964) became one of the chief architects of modern dance in the twentieth century. How a musician untrained in dance came to make such a mark is told here for the first time in rich detail.
At the center of this story is Horst's relationship with Martha Graham, who was his intimate for decades. "I did everything for Martha," Horst said late in life. Indeed, as her lover, ally, and lifelong confidante, he worked with such conviction to make her the undisputed dance leader in the concert world that Graham herself would later remark: "Without him I could not have achieved anything I have done." Drawing on the conversation and writings of Horst and his colleagues, Janet Mansfield Soares reveals the inner workings of this passionate commitment and places it firmly in the context of dance history.
Horst emerges from these pages as a man of extraordinary personality and multifaceted talent: a composer whose dance scores, such as the one for Graham's Primitive Mysteries, became models for many who followed; a concert pianist for American dancers such as Doris Humphrey and Helen Tamiris, as well as their German counterparts; an editor and writer whose advocacy for American dance made him a leading critic of his time; and, above all, a teacher and mentor whose work at the Neighborhood Playhouse, the Bennington School of Dance, American Dance Festival, and Juilliard helped shape generations of dancers and choreographers.
Richly illustrated, sensitive to intimate detail and historical nuance, this comprehensive biography reveals the raison d'etre underlying Horst's theories and practices, offering a wealth of insight into the development of dance as an art form under his virtually unchallenged rule.
Expand Description

Making the Modern Middle East: Second Edition
T.G. Fraser, Andrew Mango, and Robert McNamara
Gingko Library, 2018
Library of Congress DS63.F63 2017 | Dewey Decimal 956.03

A century ago, as World War I got underway, the Middle East was dominated, as it had been for centuries, by the Ottoman Empire. But by 1923, its political shape had changed beyond recognition, as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the insistent claims of Arab and Turkish nationalism and Zionism led to a redrawing of borders and shuffling of alliances—a transformation whose consequences are still felt today.
           
This fully revised and updated second edition of Making the Modern Middle East traces those changes and the ensuing history of the region through the rest of the twentieth century and on to the present. Focusing in particular on three leaders—Emir Feisal, Mustafa Kemal, and Chaim Weizmann—the book offers a clear, authoritative account of the region seen from a transnational perspective, one that enables readers to understand its complex history and the way it affects present-day events.
Expand Description

The Murder of Joe White: Ojibwe Leadership and Colonialism in Wisconsin
Erik M. Redix
Michigan State University Press, 2014
Library of Congress E99.C6R295 2014 | Dewey Decimal 977.00497333

In 1894 Wisconsin game wardens Horace Martin and Josiah Hicks were dispatched to arrest Joe White, an Ojibwe ogimaa (chief), for hunting deer out of season and off-reservation. Martin and Hicks found White and made an effort to arrest him. When White showed reluctance to go with the wardens, they started beating him; he attempted to flee, and the wardens shot him in the back, fatally wounding him. Both Martin and Hicks were charged with manslaughter in local county court, and they were tried by an all-white jury. A gripping historical study, The Murder of Joe White contextualizes this event within decades of struggle of White’s community at Rice Lake to resist removal to the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation, created in 1854 at the Treaty of La Pointe. While many studies portray American colonialism as defined by federal policy, The Murder of Joe White seeks a much broader understanding of colonialism, including the complex role of state and local governments as well as corporations. All of these facets of American colonialism shaped the events that led to the death of Joe White and the struggle of the Ojibwe to resist removal to the reservation.
Expand Description

Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy
Michael R. Auslin
Harvard University Press, 2004
Library of Congress DS881.45.A97 2004 | Dewey Decimal 327.5207309034

Japan's modern international history began in 1858 with the signing of the "unequal" commercial treaty with the United States. Over the next fifteen years, Japanese diplomacy was reshaped to respond to the Western imperialist challenge. Negotiating with Imperialism is the first book to explain the emergence of modern Japan through this early period of treaty relations.

Michael Auslin dispels the myth that the Tokugawa bakufu was diplomatically incompetent. Refusing to surrender to the West's power, bakufu diplomats employed negotiation as a weapon to defend Japan's interests. Tracing various visions of Japan's international identity, Auslin examines the evolution of the culture of Japanese diplomacy. Further, he demonstrates the limits of nineteenth-century imperialist power by examining the responses of British, French, and American diplomats. After replacing the Tokugawa in 1868, Meiji leaders initially utilized bakufu tactics. However, their 1872 failure to revise the treaties led them to focus on domestic reform as a way of maintaining independence and gaining equality with the West.

In a compelling analysis of the interplay among assassinations, Western bombardment of Japanese cities, fertile cultural exchange, and intellectual discovery, Auslin offers a persuasive reading of the birth of modern Japan and its struggle to determine its future relations with the world.

Expand Description

The New Sovereignty: Compliance with International Regulatory Agreements
Abram Chayes and Antonia Handler Chayes
Harvard University Press, 1998
Library of Congress KZ1301.C48 1995 | Dewey Decimal 341.37

In an increasingly complex and interdependent world, states resort to a bewildering array of regulatory agreements to deal with problems as disparate as climate change, nuclear proliferation, international trade, satellite communications, species destruction, and intellectual property. In such a system, there must be some means of ensuring reasonably reliable performance of treaty obligations. The standard approach to this problem, by academics and politicians alike, is a search for treaties with "teeth"--military or economic sanctions to deter and punish violation.

The New Sovereignty argues that this approach is misconceived. Cases of coercive enforcement are rare, and sanctions are too costly and difficult to mobilize to be a reliable enforcement tool. As an alternative to this "enforcement" model, the authors propose a "managerial" model of treaty compliance. It relies on the elaboration and application of treaty norms in a continuing dialogue between the parties--international officials and nongovernmental organizations--that generates pressure to resolve problems of noncompliance. In the process, the norms and practices of the regime themselves evolve and develop.

The authors take a broad look at treaties in many different areas: arms control, human rights, labor, the environment, monetary policy, and trade. The extraordinary wealth of examples includes the Iran airbus shootdown, Libya's suit against Great Britain and the United States in the Lockerbie case, the war in Bosnia, and Iraq after the Gulf War.

The authors conclude that sovereignty--the status of a recognized actor in the international system--requires membership in good standing in the organizations and regimes through which the world manages its common affairs. This requirement turns out to be the major pressure for compliance with treaty obligations. This book will be an invaluable resource and casebook for scholars, policymakers, international public servants, lawyers, and corporate executives.

Expand Description

The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948: A Documentary History
Eran Kaplan
University of Wisconsin Press, 2011
Library of Congress DS125.O75 2011 | Dewey Decimal 956.9404

In 1880 the Jewish community in Palestine encompassed some 20,000 Orthodox Jews; within sixty-five years it was transformed into a secular proto-state with well-developed political, military, and economic institutions, a vigorous Hebrew-language culture, and some 600,000 inhabitants. The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948: A Documentary History chronicles the making of modern Israel before statehood, providing in English the texts of original sources (many translated from Hebrew and other languages) accompanied by extensive introductions and commentaries from the volume editors.
    This sourcebook assembles a diverse array of 62 documents, many of them unabridged, to convey the ferment, dissent, energy, and anxiety that permeated the Zionist project from its inception to the creation of the modern nation of Israel. Focusing primarily on social, economic, and cultural history rather than Zionist thought and diplomacy, the texts are organized in themed chapters. They present the views of Zionists from many political and religious camps, factory workers, farm women, militants, intellectuals promoting the Hebrew language and arts—as well as views of ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionists. The volume includes important unabridged documents from the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict that are often cited but are rarely read in full. The editors, Eran Kaplan and Derek J. Penslar, provide both primary texts and informative notes and commentary, giving readers the opportunity to encounter voices from history and make judgments for themselves about matters of world-historical significance.


Best Special Interest Books, selected by the Public Library Reviewers

Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians
Expand Description

Our Friends the Enemies: The Occupation of France after Napoleon
Christine Haynes
Harvard University Press, 2018
Library of Congress DC256.8.H39 2018 | Dewey Decimal 944.061

The Napoleonic wars did not end with Waterloo. That famous battle was just the beginning of a long, complex transition to peace. After a massive invasion of France by more than a million soldiers from across Europe, the Allied powers insisted on a long-term occupation of the country to guarantee that the defeated nation rebuild itself and pay substantial reparations to its conquerors. Our Friends the Enemies provides the first comprehensive history of the post-Napoleonic occupation of France and its innovative approach to peacemaking.

From 1815 to 1818, a multinational force of 150,000 men under the command of the Duke of Wellington occupied northeastern France. From military, political, and cultural perspectives, Christine Haynes reconstructs the experience of the occupiers and the occupied in Paris and across the French countryside. The occupation involved some violence, but it also promoted considerable exchange and reconciliation between the French and their former enemies.

By forcing the restored monarchy to undertake reforms to meet its financial obligations, this early peacekeeping operation played a pivotal role in the economic and political reconstruction of France after twenty-five years of revolution and war. Transforming former European enemies into allies, the mission established Paris as a cosmopolitan capital and foreshadowed efforts at postwar reconstruction in the twentieth century.

Expand Description

The Political Economy of Regional Peacemaking
Edited by Steven E. Lobell and Norrin M. Ripsman
University of Michigan Press, 2016
Library of Congress JZ5538.P758 2016 | Dewey Decimal 327.172

In The Political Economy of Regional Peacemaking, scholars examine the efficacy of trade agreements, economic sanctions, and other strategies of economic statecraft for the promotion of peace both between rival states and across conflict-ridden regions more generally. In the introduction, Steven E. Lobell and Norrin M. Ripsman pose five central questions: (1) What types of economic statecraft, including incentives and sanctions, can interested parties employ? (2) Who are the appropriate targets in the rival states—state leaders, economic and social elites, or society as whole? (3) When should specific economic instruments be used to promote peace—prior to negotiations, during negotiations, after signature of the treaty, or during implementation of the treaty? (4) What are the limits and risks of economic statecraft and economic interdependence? (5) How can economic statecraft be used to move from a bilateral peace agreement to regional peace?

The chapters that follow are grouped in three sections, corresponding to the three stages of peacemaking: reduction or management of regional conflict; peacemaking or progress toward a peace treaty; and maintenance of bilateral peace and the regionalization of the peace settlement. In each chapter, the contributors consider the five key questions from a variety of methodological, historical, cultural, and empirical perspectives, drawing data from the Pacific, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The conclusion expands on several themes found in the chapters and proposes an agenda for future research.

Expand Description

The Political Economy of Transitions to Peace: A Comparative Perspective
Galia Press-Barnathan
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009
Library of Congress JZ5538.P76 2009

Much attention has focused on the ongoing role of economics in the prevention of armed conflict and the deterioration of relations. In The Political Economy of Transitions to Peace, Galia Press-Barnathan focuses on the importance of economics in initiating and sustaining peaceful relations after conflict.

Press-Barnathan provides in-depth case studies of several key relationships in the post-World War II era: Israel and Egypt; Israel and Jordan; Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia; Japan and South Korea; Germany and France; and Germany and Poland. She creates an analytical framework through which to view each of these cases based on three factors: the domestic balance between winners and losers from transition to peace; the economic disparity between former enemies; and the impact of third parties on stimulating new cooperative economic initiatives. Her approach provides both a regional and cross-regional comparative analysis of the degree of success in maintaining and advancing peace, of the challenges faced by many nations in negotiating peace after conflict, and of the unique role of economic factors in this highly political process.

Press-Barnathan employs both liberal and realist theory to examine the motivations of these states and the societies they represent. She also weighs their power relations to see how these factor into economic interdependence and the peace process. She reveals the predominant role of the state and big business in the initial transition phase (“cold” peace), but also identifies an equally vital need for a subsequent broader societal coalition in the second, normalizing phase (“warm” peace).  Both levels of engagement, Press-Barnathan argues, are essential to a durable peace. Finally, she points to the complex role that third parties can play in these transitions, and the limited long-term impact of direct economic side-payments to the parties.

Expand Description

The Politics of Genocide: From the Genocide Convention to the Responsibility to Protect
Jeffrey S. Bachman
Rutgers University Press, 2022
Library of Congress KZ7180.B33 2022 | Dewey Decimal 345.0251

Beginning with the negotiations that concluded with the unanimous adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on December 9, 1948, and extending to the present day, the United States, Soviet Union/Russia, China, United Kingdom, and France have put forth great effort to ensure that they will not be implicated in the crime of genocide. If this were to fail, they have also ensured that holding any of them accountable for genocide will be practically impossible. By situating genocide prevention in a system of territorial jurisdiction; by excluding protection for political groups and acts constituting cultural genocide from the Genocide Convention; by controlling when genocide is meaningfully named at the Security Council; and by pointing the responsibility to protect in directions away from any of the P-5, they have achieved what can only be described as practical impunity for genocide. The Politics of Genocide is the first book to explicitly demonstrate how the permanent member nations have exploited the Genocide Convention to isolate themselves from the reach of the law, marking them as "outlaw states."
Expand Description

The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11
John Yoo
University of Chicago Press, 2005
Library of Congress KF5060.Y66 2005 | Dewey Decimal 343.7301

Since the September 11 attacks on the United States, the Bush administration has come under fire for its methods of combating terrorism. Waging war against al Qaeda has proven to be a legal quagmire, with critics claiming that the administration's response in Afghanistan and Iraq is unconstitutional. The war on terror—and, in a larger sense, the administration's decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty and the Kyoto accords—has many wondering whether the constitutional framework for making foreign affairs decisions has been discarded by the present administration.

John Yoo, formerly a lawyer in the Department of Justice, here makes the case for a completely new approach to understanding what the Constitution says about foreign affairs, particularly the powers of war and peace. Looking to American history, Yoo points out that from Truman and Korea to Clinton's intervention in Kosovo, American presidents have had to act decisively on the world stage without a declaration of war. They are able to do so, Yoo argues, because the Constitution grants the president, Congress, and the courts very different powers, requiring them to negotiate the country's foreign policy. Yoo roots his controversial analysis in a brilliant reconstruction of the original understanding of the foreign affairs power and supplements it with arguments based on constitutional text, structure, and history.

Accessibly blending historical arguments with current policy debates, The Powers of War and Peace will no doubt be hotly debated. And while the questions it addresses are as old and fundamental as the Constitution itself, America's response to the September 11 attacks has renewed them with even greater force and urgency.

“Can the president of the United States do whatever he likes in wartime without oversight from Congress or the courts? This year, the issue came to a head as the Bush administration struggled to maintain its aggressive approach to the detention and interrogation of suspected enemy combatants in the war on terrorism. But this was also the year that the administration’s claims about presidential supremacy received their most sustained intellectual defense [in] The Powers of War and Peace.”—Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times

“Yoo’s theory promotes frank discussion of the national interest and makes it harder for politicians to parade policy conflicts as constitutional crises. Most important, Yoo’s approach offers a way to renew our political system’s democratic vigor.”—David B. Rivkin Jr. and Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky, National Review

Expand Description

Prejudice in Politics: Group Position, Public Opinion, and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dispute
Lawrence D. Bobo and Mia Tuan
Harvard University Press, 2006
Library of Congress E99.C6B66 2006 | Dewey Decimal 305.897333077502

This book presents a sociological study of how and why racial prejudice against members of a minority group comes to shape what happens to important political claims and aspirations of the group. Lawrence Bobo and Mia Tuan explore a lengthy controversy surrounding the fishing, hunting, and gathering rights of the Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin. The controversy started in 1974, when two Chippewa Indians were arrested for off-reservation fishing, and persisted into the 1990s. It involved the efforts of the Chippewa to assert their traditional spearfishing rights, which met with angry, racially charged responses from whites.

Bobo and Tuan develop a "group position" perspective on racial attitudes that takes account of the complex interplay of racial stereotypes and negative group feelings as well as the vested interests, collective privileges, and political threats that form the basis of racialized political disputes. They explore whether theories that explain race politics in the case of black-white relations are applicable to understanding Indian-white relations. The book uses a carefully designed survey of public opinion to explore the dynamics of prejudice and political contestation, and to further our understanding of how and why racial prejudice enters into politics in the United States.

Expand Description

Semblances of Sovereignty: The Constitution, the State, and American Citizenship
T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Harvard University Press, 2002
Library of Congress KF4552.A43 2002 | Dewey Decimal 342.7302

In a set of cases decided at the end of the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court declared that Congress had "plenary power" to regulate immigration, Indian tribes, and newly acquired territories. Not coincidentally, the groups subject to Congress' plenary power were primarily nonwhite and generally perceived as "uncivilized." The Court left Congress free to craft policies of assimilation, exclusion, paternalism, and domination.

Despite dramatic shifts in constitutional law in the twentieth century, the plenary power case decisions remain largely the controlling law. The Warren Court, widely recognized for its dedication to individual rights, focused on ensuring "full and equal citizenship"--an agenda that utterly neglected immigrants, tribes, and residents of the territories. The Rehnquist Court has appropriated the Warren Court's rhetoric of citizenship, but has used it to strike down policies that support diversity and the sovereignty of Indian tribes.

Attuned to the demands of a new century, the author argues for abandonment of the plenary power cases, and for more flexible conceptions of sovereignty and citizenship. The federal government ought to negotiate compacts with Indian tribes and the territories that affirm more durable forms of self-government. Citizenship should be "decentered," understood as a commitment to an intergenerational national project, not a basis for denying rights to immigrants.

Expand Description

The Senate and Treaties, 1789-1817: The Development of the Treaty-Making Functions of the United States Senate During Their Formative Period
Ralston Hayden, Ph.D.
University of Michigan Press, 1920

In Senate and Treaties, 1789–1817, Ralston Hayden traces the early history of treaty-making within the United States Senate over the course of twenty-five years, beginning with the Senate’s first treaty negotiation. Hayden calls this era the “formative period in the history of the treaty-making functions of the Senate,” during which time the expectations of the Senate’s functions underwent great changes.
Expand Description

The Soviet Union and the Gutting of the UN Genocide Convention
Anton Weiss-Wendt
University of Wisconsin Press, 2017
Library of Congress HV6322.7.W44 2017 | Dewey Decimal 345.0251

After the staggering horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, the United Nations resolved to prevent and punish the crime of genocide throughout the world. The resulting UN Genocide Convention treaty, however, was drafted, contested, and weakened in the midst of Cold War tensions and ideological struggles between the Soviet Union and the West.

Based on extensive archival research, Anton Weiss-Wendt reveals in detail how the political aims of the superpowers rendered the convention a weak instrument for addressing abuses against human rights. The Kremlin viewed the genocide treaty as a political document and feared repercussions. What the Soviets wanted most was to keep the subjugation of Eastern Europe and the vast system of forced labor camps out of the genocide discourse. The American Bar Association and Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, in turn, worried that the Convention contained vague formulations that could be used against the United States, especially in relation to the plight of African Americans. Sidelined in the heated discussions, Weiss-Wendt shows, were humanitarian concerns for preventing future genocides.
Expand Description

Tradition, Treaties, and Trade: Qing Imperialism and Chosŏn Korea, 1850–1910
Kirk W. Larsen
Harvard University Press

Relations between the Choson and Qing states are often cited as the prime example of the operation of the “traditional” Chinese “tribute system.” In contrast, this work contends that the motivations, tactics, and successes (and failures) of the late Qing Empire in Choson Korea mirrored those of other nineteenth-century imperialists. Between 1850 and 1910, the Qing attempted to defend its informal empire in Korea by intervening directly, not only to preserve its geopolitical position but also to promote its commercial interests. And it utilized the technology of empire—treaties, international law, the telegraph, steamships, and gunboats.

Although the transformation of Qing-Choson diplomacy was based on modern imperialism, this work argues that it is more accurate to describe the dramatic shift in relations in terms of flexible adaptation by one of the world’s major empires in response to new challenges. Moreover, the new modes of Qing imperialism were a hybrid of East Asian and Western mechanisms and institutions. Through these means, the Qing Empire played a fundamental role in Korea’s integration into regional and global political and economic systems.

Expand Description

Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements: International Commitments in a System of Shared Powers
Glen S. Krutz and Jeffrey S. Peake
University of Michigan Press, 2011
Library of Congress KF5055.K78 2009 | Dewey Decimal 342.730412

“Krutz and Peake’s book . . . puts another stake in the heart of the ‘imperial presidency’ argument.”
—Lisa L. Martin, University of Wisconsin–Madison, American Review of Politics

 

“Krutz and Peake reach their conclusions as a result of carefully crafted examination that might be cited as a model of political analysis of this sort . . . As [they] introduce each chapter with a summary of the argument as developed and supported to that point, the reader can enter into and understand their discussion and argument at virtually any point in the book. In sum, Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements is a clearly written and important book that adds substantially to the existing literature on the presidency and on presidential-congressional relations.”
—Roger E. Kanet, University of Miami, International Studies Review

“One can only hope that this fine and challenging book starts an argument, or at least a dialogue, about presidential power in a post-Bush era. It merits the attention of presidency and congressional scholars, and those interested in the interaction of America’s political institutions.”
—Michael A. Genovese, Loyola Marymount University, Journal of Politics

Expand Description

Tribes, Treaties, and Constitutional Tribulations
By Vine Deloria, Jr., and David E. Wilkins
University of Texas Press, 2000
Library of Congress KIE1880.D45 1999 | Dewey Decimal 342.730872

"Federal Indian law . . . is a loosely related collection of past and present acts of Congress, treaties and agreements, executive orders, administrative rulings, and judicial opinions, connected only by the fact that law in some form has been applied haphazardly to American Indians over the course of several centuries. . . . Indians in their tribal relation and Indian tribes in their relation to the federal government hang suspended in a legal wonderland."

In this book, two prominent scholars of American Indian law and politics undertake a full historical examination of the relationship between Indians and the United States Constitution that explains the present state of confusion and inconsistent application in U.S. Indian law. The authors examine all sections of the Constitution that explicitly and implicitly apply to Indians and discuss how they have been interpreted and applied from the early republic up to the present. They convincingly argue that the Constitution does not provide any legal rights for American Indians and that the treaty-making process should govern relations between Indian nations and the federal government.

Expand Description

UNHCR’s Parallel Universe : Marking the Contours of a Problem
Marjoleine Zieck
Amsterdam University Press, 2010

The United States and International Law: Paradoxes of Support across Contemporary Issues
Lucrecia García Iommi and Richard W. Maass
University of Michigan Press, 2022
Library of Congress KF4581 | Dewey Decimal 341.0973

The United States spearheaded the creation of many international organizations and treaties after World War II and maintains a strong record of compliance across several issue areas, yet it also refuses to ratify major international conventions like the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Why does the U.S. often seem to support international law in one way while neglecting or even violating it in another?
The United States and International Law: Paradoxes of Support across Contemporary Issues analyzes the seemingly inconsistent U.S. relationship with international law by identifying five types of state support for international law: leadership, consent, internalization, compliance, and enforcement. Each follows different logics and entails unique costs and incentives. Accordingly, the fact that a state engages in one form of support does not presuppose that it will do so across the board. This volume examines how and why the U.S. has engaged in each form of support across twelve issue areas that are central to 20th- and 21st-century U.S. foreign policy: conquest, world courts, war, nuclear proliferation, trade, human rights, war crimes, torture, targeted killing, maritime law, the environment, and cybersecurity. In addition to offering rich substantive discussions of U.S. foreign policy, their findings reveal patterns across the U.S. relationship with international law that shed light on behavior that often seems paradoxical at best, hypocritical at worst. The results help us understand why the United States engages with international law as it does, the legacies of the Trump administration, and what we should expect from the United States under the Biden administration and beyond.

Expand Description

The United States and the Genocide Convention
Lawrence J. LeBlanc
Duke University Press, 1991
Library of Congress JX5418.L43 1991 | Dewey Decimal 341.778

In this definitive study, Lawrence J. LeBlanc examines the nearly forty-year struggle over ratification of the Genocide Convention by the United States. LeBlanc’s analysis of the history of the convention and the issues and problems surrounding its ratification sheds important light on the process of treaty ratification in the United States and on the role of American public opinion and political culture in international human rights legislation. Drawing on case studies of genocide committed since World War II, the author also confronts the strengths and weaknesses of international adjudication as a whole.
Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 in response to the atrocities committed by the Nazis before and during World War II, the Genocide Convention was finally made law by the United States Senate in 1988 contingent upon a series of “conditions”—known as the “Lugar-Helms-Hatch Sovereignty Package”—which, LeBlanc suggests, markedly weakened the convention. Through careful analysis of the bitter debates over ratification, LeBlanc demonstrates that much of the opposition to the convention sprang from fears that it would be used domestically as a tool by groups such as blacks and Native Americans who might hold the U.S. accountable for genocide in matters of race relations.
Expand Description

Wabanaki Homeland and the New State of Maine: The 1820 Journal and Plans of Survey of Joseph Treat
Micah A. Pawling
University of Massachusetts Press, 2017
Library of Congress E99.A13T748 2007 | Dewey Decimal 917.413043

In late September 1820, hoping to lay claim to territory then under dispute between Great Britain and the United States, Governor William King of the newly founded state of Maine dispatched Major Joseph Treat to survey public lands on the Penobscot and Saint John Rivers. Traveling well beyond the limits of colonial settlement, Treat relied heavily on the cultural knowledge and expertise of John Neptune, lieutenant governor of the Penobscot tribe, to guide him across the Wabanaki homeland. Along the way Treat recorded his daily experiences in a journal and drew detailed maps, documenting the interactions of the Wabanaki peoples with the land and space they knew as home.

Edited, annotated, and with an introduction by Micah Pawling, this volume includes a complete transcription of Treat's journal, reproductions of dozens of hand-drawn maps, and records pertaining to the 1820 treaty between the Penobscot Nation and the governing authorities of Maine. As Pawling points out, Treat's journal offers more than the observations of a state agent conducting a survey. It re-creates a dialogue between Euro-Americans and Native peoples, showing how different perceptions of the land were negotiated and disseminated, and exposing the tensions that surfaced when assumptions and expectations clashed. In large part because of Neptune's influence, the maps, in addition to detailing the location of Wabanaki settlements, reflect a river-oriented Native perspective that would later serve as a key to Euro-American access to the region's interior.

The groundwork for cooperation between Treat and Neptune had been laid during the 1820 treaty negotiations, in which both men participated and which were successfully concluded just over a month before their expedition departed from Bangor, Maine. Despite conflicting interests and mutual suspicions, they were able to work together and cultivate a measure of trust as they traveled across northern Maine and western New Brunswick, mapping an old world together while envisioning its uncertain future.
Expand Description

White Man's Paper Trail: Grand Councils and Treaty-Making on the Central Plains
Stan Hoig
University Press of Colorado, 2006
Library of Congress E78.G73H577 2006 | Dewey Decimal 323.19707809034

White Man's Paper Trail presents a poignant history of the U.S. government's attempts to peacefully negotiate treaties with tribes in Arkansas, the Dakotas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and Wyoming.
Stan Hoig shows how treaty-making - once considered a viable method of peaceably resolving conflicts - degenerated into a deeply flawed system sullied by political deceptions and broken promises.

White Man's Paper Trail illuminates the pivotal role of treaty negotiations in the buildup to the Plains Indian wars, in American Indians' loss of land and self-determination, and in Euro-American westward expansion.

Expand Description

READERS
Browse our collection.

PUBLISHERS
See BiblioVault's publisher services.

STUDENT SERVICES
Files for college accessibility offices.


SEARCH

ADVANCED SEARCH

BROWSE

by TOPIC
  • by BISAC SUBJECT
  • by LOC SUBJECT
by TITLE
by AUTHOR
by PUBLISHER
WANDER
RANDOM TOPIC
ABOUT BIBLIOVAULT
EBOOK FULFILLMENT
CONTACT US

More to explore...
Recently published by academic presses

                   


home | accessibility | search | about | contact us

BiblioVault ® 2001 - 2023
The University of Chicago Press

BiblioVault A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
Results
  • PUBLISHER LOGIN
  • ADVANCED SEARCH
  • BROWSE BY TOPIC
  • BROWSE BY TITLE
  • BROWSE BY AUTHOR
  • BROWSE BY PUBLISHER
  • ABOUT BIBLIOVAULT
  • EBOOK FULFILLMENT
  • CONTACT US
42 books about Treaties
The Alternate Route
Thomas Graham
Oregon State University Press, 2017
Eventual achievement of nuclear disarmament has been an objective and a dream of the world community since the dawn of the Nuclear Age. Considerable progress has been made over the decades, but this has always required close US-Russian cooperation. At present, further progress is likely blocked by the return of Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency and the toxic US-Russia relationship.
 
The classic road toward nuclear disarmament appears to be closed for the foreseeable future, but there may be another route. In the last fifty years, well-conceived regional treaties have been developed in Latin America, the South Pacific, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. These arrangements have developed for many and varied political and security reasons, but now virtually all of the Southern Hemisphere and important parts of the Northern Hemisphere are legally nuclear-weapon-free. These regional nuclear weapon disarmament treaties are formally respected by the five states recognized under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as nuclear weapon states: the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China—often referred to collectively as the P-5 states.
 
Variations of these regional treaties might eventually be negotiated in the Middle East, Northeast Asia, and South Asia, setting aside the P-5 states until the very end of the process.  With regional agreements in place around the globe, negotiation among the P-5 states would be all that stands between the world community and the banishment of nuclear weapons, verifiably and effectively worldwide. By the time this point is reached, Russia and the United States might be able to cooperate.
 
Essential reading for policy advisors, foreign service professionals, and scholars in political science, The Alternate Route examines the possibilities of nuclear-weapon-free zones as a pathway to worldwide nuclear disarmament.
[more]

American Indian Treaties
A Guide to Ratified and Unratified Colonial, United States, State, Foreign, and Intertribal Treaties and Agreements, 1607-1911
David DeJong
University of Utah Press, 2015

When it comes to American Indian treaties, the American polity too often forgets the realities of history. Prevailing perceptions are often not only inaccurate but also premised on outright falsehoods. Treaty-making was profoundly influenced by tribal conceptions of diplomacy. Colonial and early U.S. treaties especially were clothed in ritual, metaphor, and covenants that emphasized the sacred nature and purpose of diplomacy and represented a time when tribal nations were equal partners. To understand the nature and meaning of tribal treaties one needs to read them and recognize their sacred pledges and meaning, which are still relevant today.

This volume examines intertribal treaties and treaty-making and provides understanding of both the agreements and the diplomatic protocols in which they were enmeshed. It summarizes colonial Indian treaty discourse, intertribal treaties and diplomacy, the different eras of ratified and unratified U.S. treaties, foreign and state treaties with Indian nations, and the Indian agreements that followed the cessation of official treaty-making. It provides extensive lists of over 1,500 Indian treaties from all tribal diplomatic eras and includes dates, participants, purposes, and references. 


[more]

Assessing Trade-Offs in U.S. Military Intervention Decisions
Whether, When, and with What Size Force to Intervene
Bryan Frederick
RAND Corporation, 2021
In this report, the authors create a framework that can be used to rigorously consider the trade-offs involved in U.S. military intervention decisions following the outbreak of a war or crisis. This framework can provide a better understanding of the relationships between intervention timing, intervention size, and intervention outcomes to inform future debates about whether, when, and with what size force to undertake a military intervention.
[more]

Azerbaijan's Geopolitical Landscape
Contemporary Issues, 1991–2018
Edited by Farid Shafiyev
Karolinum Press, 2019
Being located between the Black and Caspian seas, Azerbaijan has always been the juncture of Eurasia—with a traditional reputation as a crossroads between the north-south and east-west transport corridors—and the traditional ground for competition between numerous regional and global players, using both soft and hard power. With its vast hydrocarbon energy reserves, Azerbaijan is a country of particular importance in the South Caucasus. The region’s complex geopolitics have immensely influenced Azerbaijan’s foreign policy strategy. With the dissolution of the USSR, Azerbaijan, as a new state with fragile security, found itself in a complicated situation surrounded by regional powers like Iran, Russia, and Turkey. This book focuses on several major foreign policy issues faced by the Republic of Azerbaijan since it regained its independence in 1991. These major issues include the conflict with Armenia and related matters, the relationship with the West, as well as the complexities arising from its relationship with Russia and its ties to Muslim countries, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.
[more]

Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania, and the First Nations
The Treaties of 1736-62
Edited by Susan Kalter
University of Illinois Press, 2006

British colonial relations with the native peoples of eastern North America

This is an annotated edition of the treaties between the British colonies and Indian nations, originally printed and sold by Benjamin Franklin. Last published in 1938, Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania, and the First Nations makes these important treaties available once again, featuring a simpler, easier-to-read format, extensive explanatory notes, and maps. A detailed introduction by Susan Kalter puts the treaties in their proper historical and cultural context. 

This carefully researched edition shows these treaties to be complex intercultural documents, and provides significant insight into the British colonists’ relationship with native peoples of North America. They also reveal the complexity of Benjamin Franklin’s perceptions of Native Americans, showing him in some negotiations as a promoter of the Indian word against the colonial one. Finally, the treaties offer an enormous wealth of linguistic, aesthetic, and cultural information about the Iroquois, the Delawares, and their allies and neighbors.

[more]

British Extraterritoriality in Korea 1884 – 1910
A Comparison with Japan
Christoph Roberts
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
Filling an important gap in extraterritoriality studies and in the history of Anglo-Korean relations, this benchmark study examines Britain’s exercise of extraterritorial rights in Korea from 1884 until Korea’s formal annexation by Japan in 1910. It shows how the treaty provisions—which provided for Britain’s ideal extra-territorial regime—were influenced by Britain’s considerably greater experience in Japan beginning in 1859. The caseload proved miniscule in the absence of any large British commercial or maritime presence. Nevertheless, it provides an insight into extra-territoriality’s operation outside major commercial centres and ports. Britain’s protection of Chinese interests in Korea in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War, 1894–1895 is also covered.
[more]

Carving Up the Globe
An Atlas of Diplomacy
Malise Ruthven
Harvard University Press, 2018

Where do you draw the line? In the context of geopolitics, much hinges on the answer to that question. For thousands of years, it has been the work of diplomats to draw the lines in ways that were most advantageous to their leaders, fellow citizens, and sometimes themselves. Carving Up the Globe offers vivid documentation of their handiwork. With hundreds of full-color maps and other images, this atlas illustrates treaties that have determined the political fates of millions. In rich detail, it chronicles everything from ancient Egyptian and Hittite accords to the first Sino-Tibetan peace in 783 CE, the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, and the 2014 Minsk Protocol looming over the war in Ukraine.

But there is more here than shifting territorial frontiers. Throughout history, diplomats have also drawn boundaries around valuable resources and used treaties to empower, liberate, and constrain. Carving Up the Globe encompasses these agreements, too, across land, sea, and air. Missile and nuclear pacts, environmental treaties, chemical weapons conventions, and economic deals are all carefully rendered.

Led by Malise Ruthven, a team of experts provides lively historical commentary, which—together with finely crafted visuals—conjures the ceaseless ambition of princes and politicians. Whether they sought the glory and riches of empire or pursued hegemony, security, stability, and GDP within the modern international system, their efforts culminated in lines on a map—and the enormous real-life consequences those lines represent and enforce.

[more]

Coalition Politics and Cabinet Decision Making
A Comparative Analysis of Foreign Policy Choices
Juliet Kaarbo
University of Michigan Press, 2013

Every day, coalition cabinets make policy decisions critical to international politics. Juliet Kaarbo examines the dynamics of these multiparty cabinets in parliamentary democracies in order to assess both the quality of coalition decision making and the degree to which coalitions tend to favor peaceful or military solutions. Are coalition cabinets so riddled by conflict that they cannot make foreign policy effectively, or do the multiple voices represented in the cabinet create more legitimate and imaginative responses to the international system? Do political and institutional constraints inherent to coalition cabinets lead to nonaggressive policies? Or do institutional and political forces precipitate more belligerent behavior?

Employing theory from security studies and political psychology as well as a combination of quantitative cross-national analyses and twelve qualitative comparative case studies of foreign policy made by coalition cabinets in Japan, the Netherlands, and Turkey, Kaarbo identifies the factors that generate highly aggressive policies, inconsistency, and other policy outcomes. Her findings have implications not merely for foreign policy but for all types of decision making and policy-making by coalition governments.

[more]

The Congress of Vienna
Power and Politics after Napoleon
Brian E. Vick
Harvard University Press, 2014

Convened following Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, the Congress of Vienna is remembered as much for the pageantry of the royals and elites who gathered there as for the landmark diplomatic agreements they brokered. Historians have nevertheless generally dismissed these spectacular festivities as window dressing when compared with the serious, behind-the-scenes maneuverings of sovereigns and statesmen. Brian Vick finds this conventional view shortsighted, seeing these instead as two interconnected dimensions of politics. Examining them together yields a more complete picture of how one of the most important diplomatic summits in history managed to redraw the map of Europe and the international system of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Congress of Vienna investigates the Vienna Congress within a broad framework of influence networks that included unofficial opinion-shapers of all kinds, both men and women: artists and composers, entrepreneurs and writers, hosts and attendees of fashionable salons. In addition to high-profile negotiation and diplomatic wrangling over the post-Napoleonic fates of Germany, Italy, and Poland, Vick brings into focus other understudied yet significant issues: the African slave trade, Jewish rights, and relations with Islamic powers such as the Ottoman Empire and Barbary Corsairs. Challenging the usual portrayal of a reactionary Congress obsessed with rolling back Napoleon’s liberal reforms, Vick demonstrates that the Congress’s promotion of limited constitutionalism, respect for religious and nationality rights, and humanitarian interventions was influenced as much by liberal currents as by conservative ones.

[more]

The Constitution’s Text in Foreign Affairs
Michael D. Ramsey
Harvard University Press, 2007

This book describes the constitutional law of foreign affairs, derived from the historical understanding of the Constitution's text. It examines timeless and recurring foreign affairs controversies--such as the role of the president and Congress, the power to enter armed conflict, and the power to make and break treaties--and shows how the words, structure, and context of the Constitution can resolve pivotal court cases and leading modern disputes. The book provides a counterpoint to much conventional discussion of constitutional foreign affairs law, which tends to assume that the Constitution's text and history cannot give much guidance, and which rests many of its arguments upon modern practice and policy considerations.

Using a close focus on the text and a wide array of historical sources, Michael Ramsey argues that the Constitution's original design gives the president substantial independent powers in foreign affairs. But, contrary to what many presidents and presidential advisors contend, these powers are balanced by the independent powers given to Congress, the Senate, the states, and the courts. The Constitution, Ramsey concludes, does not make any branch of government the ultimate decision maker in foreign affairs, but rather divides authority among multiple independent power centers.

[more]

Double Eagle and Rising Sun
The Russians and Japanese at Portsmouth in 1905
Raymond A. Esthus
Duke University Press, 1988
The Russo-Japanese War and the peace conference that followed it at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, marked a turning point affecting not only the history of participants but the future of East Asia and the world.
The 1905 Portsmouth Conference, mediated by President Theodore Roosevelt, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize, brought to an end a war in which Japan won spectacular victories on land and sea. Although the peace settlement fell far short of public expectations in Japan, she gained supremacy in Korea and a sphere of influence in South Manchuria as a consequence of the treaty. Nevertheless, the treaty reflected the military stalemate in Manchuria. Roosevelt wanted a balance of power to emerge from the war, and his hope was realized in the peace process.
Raymond Esthus, drawing on the records of six nations, provides a detailed and panoramic account of the 1905 conference from the perspectives of both the Russians and the Japanese participants, depicting the powerful personalities of Roosevelt and the Russian Sergei Witte, as well as Tsar Nicholas II and the Foreign Minister Komura Jutaro. It is a story of verbal duels, tests of will, and moments of high personal courage. If there was no clear-cut victor at the conference, Roosevelt emerged as a worldwide hero of the cause of peace.
[more]

Elder Brother and the Law of the People
Contemporary Kinship and Cowessess First Nation
Robert Alexander Innes
University of Manitoba Press, 2013

Faith in Paper
Charles E. Cleland
University of Michigan Press, 2011
Faith in Paper is about the reinstitution of Indian treaty rights in the Upper Great Lakes region during the last quarter of the 20th century. The book focuses on the treaties and legal cases that together
have awakened a new day in Native American sovereignty and established the place of Indian tribes on the modern political landscape.
 
In addition to discussing the historic development of Indian treaties and their social and legal context, Charles E. Cleland outlines specific treaties litigated in modern courts as well as the impact of treaty litigation on the modern Indian and non-Indian communities of the region. Faith in Paper is both an important contribution to the scholarship of Indian legal matters and a rich resource for Indians
themselves as they strive to retain or regain rights that have eroded over the years.
 
Charles E. Cleland is Michigan State University Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Curator of Anthropology and Ethnology. He has been an expert witness in numerous Native American land claims and fishing rights cases and written a number of other books on the subject, including Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan's Native Americans; The Place of the Pike (Gnoozhekaaning): A History of the Bay Mills Indian Community; and (as a contributor) Fish in the Lakes, Wild Rice, and Game in Abundance: Testimony on Behalf of Mille Lacs Ojibwe Hunting and Fishing Rights.
[more]

Fallout
Nuclear Diplomacy in an Age of Global Fracture
Grégoire Mallard
University of Chicago Press, 2014
Many Baby Boomers still recall crouching under their grade-school desks in frequent bomb drills during the Cuban Missile Crisis—a clear representation of how terrified the United States was of nuclear war.  Thus far, we have succeeded in preventing such catastrophe, and this is partly due to the various treaties signed in the 1960s forswearing the use of nuclear technology for military purposes.

In Fallout, Grégoire Mallard seeks to understand why some nations agreed to these limitations of their sovereign will—and why others decidedly did not.  He builds his investigation around the 1968 signing of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which, though binding in nature, wasn’t adhered to consistently by all signatory nations. Mallard looks at Europe’s observance of treaty rules in contrast to the three holdouts in the global nonproliferation regime: Israel, India, and Pakistan. He seeks to find reasons for these discrepancies, and makes the compelling case that who wrote the treaty and how the rules were written—whether transparently, ambiguously, or opaquely—had major significance in how the rules were interpreted and whether they were then followed or dismissed as regimes changed. In honing in on this important piece of the story, Mallard not only provides a new perspective on our diplomatic history, but, more significantly, draws important conclusions about potential conditions that could facilitate the inclusion of the remaining NPT holdouts. Fallout is an important and timely book sure to be of interest to policy makers, activists, and concerned citizens alike.
[more]

Fish in the Lakes, Wild Rice, and Game in Abundance
Testimony on Behalf of Mille Lacs Ojibwe Hunting and Fishing Rights
Edited by James M. McClurken
Michigan State University Press, 2000

On 13 August 1990 members of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe filed a lawsuit against the State of Minnesota for interfering with the hunting, fishing, and gathering rights that had been guaranteed to them in an 1837 treaty with the United States. In order to interpret the treaty the courts had to consider historical circumstances, the intentions of the parties, and the treaty's implementation. The Mille Lacs Band faced a mammoth challenge. How does one argue the Native side of the case when all historical documentation was written by non- Natives? The Mille Lacs selected six scholars to testify for them. Published here for the first time, Charles Cleland, James McClurken, Helen Tanner, John Nichols, Thomas Lund, and Bruce White discuss the circumstances under which the treaty was written, the personalities involved in the negotiations and the legal rhetoric of the times, as well as analyze related legal conflicts between Natives and non- Natives. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor delivered the 1999 Opinion of the [United States Supreme] Court.

[more]

Friends, Foes, and Future Directions
U.S. Partnerships in a Turbulent World: Strategic Rethink
Hans Binnendijk
RAND Corporation, 2016
Report evaluates strategies for dealing with U.S. partners and adversaries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East in a time of diminishing defense budgets and American public preference for a domestic focus. The three proposed strategies are to be more assertive, to be more collaborative, or to retrench from international commitments. Each strategy is constrained and a balance will need to be struck among them that varies from region to region.
[more]

The Game of Conservation
International Treaties to Protect the World’s Migratory Animals
Mark Cioc
Ohio University Press, 2009

The Game of Conservation is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable examination of nature protection around the world.

Twentieth-century nature conservation treaties often originated as attempts to regulate the pace of killing rather than as attempts to protect animal habitat. Some were prompted by major breakthroughs in firearm techniques, such as the invention of the elephant gun and grenade harpoons, but agricultural development was at least as important as hunting regulations in determining the fate of migratory species. The treaties had many defects, yet they also served the goal of conservation to good effect, often saving key species from complete extermination and sometimes keeping the population numbers at viable levels. It is because of these treaties that Africa is dotted with large national parks, that North America has an extensive network of bird refuges, and that there are any whales left in the oceans. All of these treaties are still in effect today, and all continue to influence nature-protection efforts around the globe.

Drawing on a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, Mark Cioc shows that a handful of treaties—all designed to protect the world’s most commercially important migratory species—have largely shaped the contours of global nature conservation over the past century. The scope of the book ranges from the African savannahs and the skies of North America to the frigid waters of the Antarctic.

[more]

Greening the Alliance
The Diplomacy of NATO's Science and Environmental Initiatives
Simone Turchetti
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Following the launch of Sputnik, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization became a prominent sponsor of scientific research in its member countries, a role it retained until the end of the Cold War. As NATO marks sixty years since the establishment of its Science Committee, the main organizational force promoting its science programs, Greening the Alliance is the first book to chart NATO’s scientific patronage—and the motivations behind it—from the organization’s early days to the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Drawing on previously unseen documents from NATO’s own archives, Simone Turchetti reveals how its investments were rooted in the alliance’s defense and surveillance needs, needs that led it to establish a program prioritizing environmental studies. A long-overlooked and effective diplomacy exercise, NATO’s “greening” at one point constituted the organization’s chief conduit for negotiating problematic relations between allies. But while Greening the Alliance explores this surprising coevolution of environmental monitoring and surveillance, tales of science advisers issuing instructions to bomb oil spills with napalm or Dr. Strangelove–like experts eager to divert the path of hurricanes with atomic weapons make it clear: the coexistence of these forces has not always been harmonious. Reflecting on this rich, complicated legacy in light of contemporary global challenges like climate change, Turchetti offers both an eye-opening history of international politics and environmental studies and a thoughtful assessment of NATO’s future.
[more]

His Majesty’s Opponent
Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire
Sugata Bose
Harvard University Press, 2010

The man whom Indian nationalists perceived as the “George Washington of India” and who was President of the Indian National Congress in 1938–1939 is a legendary figure. Called Netaji (“leader”) by his countrymen, Subhas Chandra Bose struggled all his life to liberate his people from British rule and, in pursuit of that goal, raised and led the Indian National Army against Allied Forces during World War II. His patriotism, as Gandhi asserted, was second to none, but his actions aroused controversy in India and condemnation in the West.

Now, in a definitive biography of the revered Indian nationalist, Sugata Bose deftly explores a charismatic personality whose public and private life encapsulated the contradictions of world history in the first half of the twentieth century. He brilliantly evokes Netaji’s formation in the intellectual milieu of Calcutta and Cambridge, probes his thoughts and relations during years of exile, and analyzes his ascent to the peak of nationalist politics. Amidst riveting accounts of imprisonment and travels, we glimpse the profundity of his struggle: to unite Hindu and Muslim, men and women, and diverse linguistic groups within a single independent Indian nation. Finally, an authoritative account of his untimely death in a plane crash will put to rest rumors about the fate of this “deathless hero.”

This epic of a life larger than its legend is both intimate, based on family archives, and global in significance. His Majesty’s Opponent establishes Bose among the giants of Indian and world history.

[more]

Louis Horst
Musician in a Dancer’s World
Janet Mansfield Soares
Duke University Press, 1992
From his musical beginnings as a piano player in gambling houses and society cafés, Louis Horst (1884-1964) became one of the chief architects of modern dance in the twentieth century. How a musician untrained in dance came to make such a mark is told here for the first time in rich detail.
At the center of this story is Horst's relationship with Martha Graham, who was his intimate for decades. "I did everything for Martha," Horst said late in life. Indeed, as her lover, ally, and lifelong confidante, he worked with such conviction to make her the undisputed dance leader in the concert world that Graham herself would later remark: "Without him I could not have achieved anything I have done." Drawing on the conversation and writings of Horst and his colleagues, Janet Mansfield Soares reveals the inner workings of this passionate commitment and places it firmly in the context of dance history.
Horst emerges from these pages as a man of extraordinary personality and multifaceted talent: a composer whose dance scores, such as the one for Graham's Primitive Mysteries, became models for many who followed; a concert pianist for American dancers such as Doris Humphrey and Helen Tamiris, as well as their German counterparts; an editor and writer whose advocacy for American dance made him a leading critic of his time; and, above all, a teacher and mentor whose work at the Neighborhood Playhouse, the Bennington School of Dance, American Dance Festival, and Juilliard helped shape generations of dancers and choreographers.
Richly illustrated, sensitive to intimate detail and historical nuance, this comprehensive biography reveals the raison d'etre underlying Horst's theories and practices, offering a wealth of insight into the development of dance as an art form under his virtually unchallenged rule.
[more]

Making the Modern Middle East
Second Edition
T.G. Fraser, Andrew Mango, and Robert McNamara
Gingko Library, 2018
A century ago, as World War I got underway, the Middle East was dominated, as it had been for centuries, by the Ottoman Empire. But by 1923, its political shape had changed beyond recognition, as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the insistent claims of Arab and Turkish nationalism and Zionism led to a redrawing of borders and shuffling of alliances—a transformation whose consequences are still felt today.
           
This fully revised and updated second edition of Making the Modern Middle East traces those changes and the ensuing history of the region through the rest of the twentieth century and on to the present. Focusing in particular on three leaders—Emir Feisal, Mustafa Kemal, and Chaim Weizmann—the book offers a clear, authoritative account of the region seen from a transnational perspective, one that enables readers to understand its complex history and the way it affects present-day events.
[more]

The Murder of Joe White
Ojibwe Leadership and Colonialism in Wisconsin
Erik M. Redix
Michigan State University Press, 2014
In 1894 Wisconsin game wardens Horace Martin and Josiah Hicks were dispatched to arrest Joe White, an Ojibwe ogimaa (chief), for hunting deer out of season and off-reservation. Martin and Hicks found White and made an effort to arrest him. When White showed reluctance to go with the wardens, they started beating him; he attempted to flee, and the wardens shot him in the back, fatally wounding him. Both Martin and Hicks were charged with manslaughter in local county court, and they were tried by an all-white jury. A gripping historical study, The Murder of Joe White contextualizes this event within decades of struggle of White’s community at Rice Lake to resist removal to the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation, created in 1854 at the Treaty of La Pointe. While many studies portray American colonialism as defined by federal policy, The Murder of Joe White seeks a much broader understanding of colonialism, including the complex role of state and local governments as well as corporations. All of these facets of American colonialism shaped the events that led to the death of Joe White and the struggle of the Ojibwe to resist removal to the reservation.
[more]

Negotiating with Imperialism
The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy
Michael R. Auslin
Harvard University Press, 2004

Japan's modern international history began in 1858 with the signing of the "unequal" commercial treaty with the United States. Over the next fifteen years, Japanese diplomacy was reshaped to respond to the Western imperialist challenge. Negotiating with Imperialism is the first book to explain the emergence of modern Japan through this early period of treaty relations.

Michael Auslin dispels the myth that the Tokugawa bakufu was diplomatically incompetent. Refusing to surrender to the West's power, bakufu diplomats employed negotiation as a weapon to defend Japan's interests. Tracing various visions of Japan's international identity, Auslin examines the evolution of the culture of Japanese diplomacy. Further, he demonstrates the limits of nineteenth-century imperialist power by examining the responses of British, French, and American diplomats. After replacing the Tokugawa in 1868, Meiji leaders initially utilized bakufu tactics. However, their 1872 failure to revise the treaties led them to focus on domestic reform as a way of maintaining independence and gaining equality with the West.

In a compelling analysis of the interplay among assassinations, Western bombardment of Japanese cities, fertile cultural exchange, and intellectual discovery, Auslin offers a persuasive reading of the birth of modern Japan and its struggle to determine its future relations with the world.

[more]

The New Sovereignty
Compliance with International Regulatory Agreements
Abram Chayes and Antonia Handler Chayes
Harvard University Press, 1998

In an increasingly complex and interdependent world, states resort to a bewildering array of regulatory agreements to deal with problems as disparate as climate change, nuclear proliferation, international trade, satellite communications, species destruction, and intellectual property. In such a system, there must be some means of ensuring reasonably reliable performance of treaty obligations. The standard approach to this problem, by academics and politicians alike, is a search for treaties with "teeth"--military or economic sanctions to deter and punish violation.

The New Sovereignty argues that this approach is misconceived. Cases of coercive enforcement are rare, and sanctions are too costly and difficult to mobilize to be a reliable enforcement tool. As an alternative to this "enforcement" model, the authors propose a "managerial" model of treaty compliance. It relies on the elaboration and application of treaty norms in a continuing dialogue between the parties--international officials and nongovernmental organizations--that generates pressure to resolve problems of noncompliance. In the process, the norms and practices of the regime themselves evolve and develop.

The authors take a broad look at treaties in many different areas: arms control, human rights, labor, the environment, monetary policy, and trade. The extraordinary wealth of examples includes the Iran airbus shootdown, Libya's suit against Great Britain and the United States in the Lockerbie case, the war in Bosnia, and Iraq after the Gulf War.

The authors conclude that sovereignty--the status of a recognized actor in the international system--requires membership in good standing in the organizations and regimes through which the world manages its common affairs. This requirement turns out to be the major pressure for compliance with treaty obligations. This book will be an invaluable resource and casebook for scholars, policymakers, international public servants, lawyers, and corporate executives.

[more]

The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948
A Documentary History
Eran Kaplan
University of Wisconsin Press, 2011

In 1880 the Jewish community in Palestine encompassed some 20,000 Orthodox Jews; within sixty-five years it was transformed into a secular proto-state with well-developed political, military, and economic institutions, a vigorous Hebrew-language culture, and some 600,000 inhabitants. The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948: A Documentary History chronicles the making of modern Israel before statehood, providing in English the texts of original sources (many translated from Hebrew and other languages) accompanied by extensive introductions and commentaries from the volume editors.
    This sourcebook assembles a diverse array of 62 documents, many of them unabridged, to convey the ferment, dissent, energy, and anxiety that permeated the Zionist project from its inception to the creation of the modern nation of Israel. Focusing primarily on social, economic, and cultural history rather than Zionist thought and diplomacy, the texts are organized in themed chapters. They present the views of Zionists from many political and religious camps, factory workers, farm women, militants, intellectuals promoting the Hebrew language and arts—as well as views of ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionists. The volume includes important unabridged documents from the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict that are often cited but are rarely read in full. The editors, Eran Kaplan and Derek J. Penslar, provide both primary texts and informative notes and commentary, giving readers the opportunity to encounter voices from history and make judgments for themselves about matters of world-historical significance.


Best Special Interest Books, selected by the Public Library Reviewers

Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians
[more]

Our Friends the Enemies
The Occupation of France after Napoleon
Christine Haynes
Harvard University Press, 2018

The Napoleonic wars did not end with Waterloo. That famous battle was just the beginning of a long, complex transition to peace. After a massive invasion of France by more than a million soldiers from across Europe, the Allied powers insisted on a long-term occupation of the country to guarantee that the defeated nation rebuild itself and pay substantial reparations to its conquerors. Our Friends the Enemies provides the first comprehensive history of the post-Napoleonic occupation of France and its innovative approach to peacemaking.

From 1815 to 1818, a multinational force of 150,000 men under the command of the Duke of Wellington occupied northeastern France. From military, political, and cultural perspectives, Christine Haynes reconstructs the experience of the occupiers and the occupied in Paris and across the French countryside. The occupation involved some violence, but it also promoted considerable exchange and reconciliation between the French and their former enemies.

By forcing the restored monarchy to undertake reforms to meet its financial obligations, this early peacekeeping operation played a pivotal role in the economic and political reconstruction of France after twenty-five years of revolution and war. Transforming former European enemies into allies, the mission established Paris as a cosmopolitan capital and foreshadowed efforts at postwar reconstruction in the twentieth century.

[more]

The Political Economy of Regional Peacemaking
Edited by Steven E. Lobell and Norrin M. Ripsman
University of Michigan Press, 2016
In The Political Economy of Regional Peacemaking, scholars examine the efficacy of trade agreements, economic sanctions, and other strategies of economic statecraft for the promotion of peace both between rival states and across conflict-ridden regions more generally. In the introduction, Steven E. Lobell and Norrin M. Ripsman pose five central questions: (1) What types of economic statecraft, including incentives and sanctions, can interested parties employ? (2) Who are the appropriate targets in the rival states—state leaders, economic and social elites, or society as whole? (3) When should specific economic instruments be used to promote peace—prior to negotiations, during negotiations, after signature of the treaty, or during implementation of the treaty? (4) What are the limits and risks of economic statecraft and economic interdependence? (5) How can economic statecraft be used to move from a bilateral peace agreement to regional peace?

The chapters that follow are grouped in three sections, corresponding to the three stages of peacemaking: reduction or management of regional conflict; peacemaking or progress toward a peace treaty; and maintenance of bilateral peace and the regionalization of the peace settlement. In each chapter, the contributors consider the five key questions from a variety of methodological, historical, cultural, and empirical perspectives, drawing data from the Pacific, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The conclusion expands on several themes found in the chapters and proposes an agenda for future research.

[more]

The Political Economy of Transitions to Peace
A Comparative Perspective
Galia Press-Barnathan
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009

Much attention has focused on the ongoing role of economics in the prevention of armed conflict and the deterioration of relations. In The Political Economy of Transitions to Peace, Galia Press-Barnathan focuses on the importance of economics in initiating and sustaining peaceful relations after conflict.

Press-Barnathan provides in-depth case studies of several key relationships in the post-World War II era: Israel and Egypt; Israel and Jordan; Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia; Japan and South Korea; Germany and France; and Germany and Poland. She creates an analytical framework through which to view each of these cases based on three factors: the domestic balance between winners and losers from transition to peace; the economic disparity between former enemies; and the impact of third parties on stimulating new cooperative economic initiatives. Her approach provides both a regional and cross-regional comparative analysis of the degree of success in maintaining and advancing peace, of the challenges faced by many nations in negotiating peace after conflict, and of the unique role of economic factors in this highly political process.

Press-Barnathan employs both liberal and realist theory to examine the motivations of these states and the societies they represent. She also weighs their power relations to see how these factor into economic interdependence and the peace process. She reveals the predominant role of the state and big business in the initial transition phase (“cold” peace), but also identifies an equally vital need for a subsequent broader societal coalition in the second, normalizing phase (“warm” peace).  Both levels of engagement, Press-Barnathan argues, are essential to a durable peace. Finally, she points to the complex role that third parties can play in these transitions, and the limited long-term impact of direct economic side-payments to the parties.

[more]

The Politics of Genocide
From the Genocide Convention to the Responsibility to Protect
Jeffrey S. Bachman
Rutgers University Press, 2022
Beginning with the negotiations that concluded with the unanimous adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on December 9, 1948, and extending to the present day, the United States, Soviet Union/Russia, China, United Kingdom, and France have put forth great effort to ensure that they will not be implicated in the crime of genocide. If this were to fail, they have also ensured that holding any of them accountable for genocide will be practically impossible. By situating genocide prevention in a system of territorial jurisdiction; by excluding protection for political groups and acts constituting cultural genocide from the Genocide Convention; by controlling when genocide is meaningfully named at the Security Council; and by pointing the responsibility to protect in directions away from any of the P-5, they have achieved what can only be described as practical impunity for genocide. The Politics of Genocide is the first book to explicitly demonstrate how the permanent member nations have exploited the Genocide Convention to isolate themselves from the reach of the law, marking them as "outlaw states."
[more]

The Powers of War and Peace
The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11
John Yoo
University of Chicago Press, 2005
Since the September 11 attacks on the United States, the Bush administration has come under fire for its methods of combating terrorism. Waging war against al Qaeda has proven to be a legal quagmire, with critics claiming that the administration's response in Afghanistan and Iraq is unconstitutional. The war on terror—and, in a larger sense, the administration's decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty and the Kyoto accords—has many wondering whether the constitutional framework for making foreign affairs decisions has been discarded by the present administration.

John Yoo, formerly a lawyer in the Department of Justice, here makes the case for a completely new approach to understanding what the Constitution says about foreign affairs, particularly the powers of war and peace. Looking to American history, Yoo points out that from Truman and Korea to Clinton's intervention in Kosovo, American presidents have had to act decisively on the world stage without a declaration of war. They are able to do so, Yoo argues, because the Constitution grants the president, Congress, and the courts very different powers, requiring them to negotiate the country's foreign policy. Yoo roots his controversial analysis in a brilliant reconstruction of the original understanding of the foreign affairs power and supplements it with arguments based on constitutional text, structure, and history.

Accessibly blending historical arguments with current policy debates, The Powers of War and Peace will no doubt be hotly debated. And while the questions it addresses are as old and fundamental as the Constitution itself, America's response to the September 11 attacks has renewed them with even greater force and urgency.

“Can the president of the United States do whatever he likes in wartime without oversight from Congress or the courts? This year, the issue came to a head as the Bush administration struggled to maintain its aggressive approach to the detention and interrogation of suspected enemy combatants in the war on terrorism. But this was also the year that the administration’s claims about presidential supremacy received their most sustained intellectual defense [in] The Powers of War and Peace.”—Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times

“Yoo’s theory promotes frank discussion of the national interest and makes it harder for politicians to parade policy conflicts as constitutional crises. Most important, Yoo’s approach offers a way to renew our political system’s democratic vigor.”—David B. Rivkin Jr. and Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky, National Review

[more]

Prejudice in Politics
Group Position, Public Opinion, and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dispute
Lawrence D. Bobo and Mia Tuan
Harvard University Press, 2006

This book presents a sociological study of how and why racial prejudice against members of a minority group comes to shape what happens to important political claims and aspirations of the group. Lawrence Bobo and Mia Tuan explore a lengthy controversy surrounding the fishing, hunting, and gathering rights of the Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin. The controversy started in 1974, when two Chippewa Indians were arrested for off-reservation fishing, and persisted into the 1990s. It involved the efforts of the Chippewa to assert their traditional spearfishing rights, which met with angry, racially charged responses from whites.

Bobo and Tuan develop a "group position" perspective on racial attitudes that takes account of the complex interplay of racial stereotypes and negative group feelings as well as the vested interests, collective privileges, and political threats that form the basis of racialized political disputes. They explore whether theories that explain race politics in the case of black-white relations are applicable to understanding Indian-white relations. The book uses a carefully designed survey of public opinion to explore the dynamics of prejudice and political contestation, and to further our understanding of how and why racial prejudice enters into politics in the United States.

[more]

Semblances of Sovereignty
The Constitution, the State, and American Citizenship
T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Harvard University Press, 2002

In a set of cases decided at the end of the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court declared that Congress had "plenary power" to regulate immigration, Indian tribes, and newly acquired territories. Not coincidentally, the groups subject to Congress' plenary power were primarily nonwhite and generally perceived as "uncivilized." The Court left Congress free to craft policies of assimilation, exclusion, paternalism, and domination.

Despite dramatic shifts in constitutional law in the twentieth century, the plenary power case decisions remain largely the controlling law. The Warren Court, widely recognized for its dedication to individual rights, focused on ensuring "full and equal citizenship"--an agenda that utterly neglected immigrants, tribes, and residents of the territories. The Rehnquist Court has appropriated the Warren Court's rhetoric of citizenship, but has used it to strike down policies that support diversity and the sovereignty of Indian tribes.

Attuned to the demands of a new century, the author argues for abandonment of the plenary power cases, and for more flexible conceptions of sovereignty and citizenship. The federal government ought to negotiate compacts with Indian tribes and the territories that affirm more durable forms of self-government. Citizenship should be "decentered," understood as a commitment to an intergenerational national project, not a basis for denying rights to immigrants.

[more]

The Senate and Treaties, 1789-1817
The Development of the Treaty-Making Functions of the United States Senate During Their Formative Period
Ralston Hayden, Ph.D.
University of Michigan Press, 1920
In Senate and Treaties, 1789–1817, Ralston Hayden traces the early history of treaty-making within the United States Senate over the course of twenty-five years, beginning with the Senate’s first treaty negotiation. Hayden calls this era the “formative period in the history of the treaty-making functions of the Senate,” during which time the expectations of the Senate’s functions underwent great changes.
[more]

The Soviet Union and the Gutting of the UN Genocide Convention
Anton Weiss-Wendt
University of Wisconsin Press, 2017
After the staggering horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, the United Nations resolved to prevent and punish the crime of genocide throughout the world. The resulting UN Genocide Convention treaty, however, was drafted, contested, and weakened in the midst of Cold War tensions and ideological struggles between the Soviet Union and the West.

Based on extensive archival research, Anton Weiss-Wendt reveals in detail how the political aims of the superpowers rendered the convention a weak instrument for addressing abuses against human rights. The Kremlin viewed the genocide treaty as a political document and feared repercussions. What the Soviets wanted most was to keep the subjugation of Eastern Europe and the vast system of forced labor camps out of the genocide discourse. The American Bar Association and Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, in turn, worried that the Convention contained vague formulations that could be used against the United States, especially in relation to the plight of African Americans. Sidelined in the heated discussions, Weiss-Wendt shows, were humanitarian concerns for preventing future genocides.
[more]

Tradition, Treaties, and Trade
Qing Imperialism and Chosŏn Korea, 1850–1910
Kirk W. Larsen
Harvard University Press

Relations between the Choson and Qing states are often cited as the prime example of the operation of the “traditional” Chinese “tribute system.” In contrast, this work contends that the motivations, tactics, and successes (and failures) of the late Qing Empire in Choson Korea mirrored those of other nineteenth-century imperialists. Between 1850 and 1910, the Qing attempted to defend its informal empire in Korea by intervening directly, not only to preserve its geopolitical position but also to promote its commercial interests. And it utilized the technology of empire—treaties, international law, the telegraph, steamships, and gunboats.

Although the transformation of Qing-Choson diplomacy was based on modern imperialism, this work argues that it is more accurate to describe the dramatic shift in relations in terms of flexible adaptation by one of the world’s major empires in response to new challenges. Moreover, the new modes of Qing imperialism were a hybrid of East Asian and Western mechanisms and institutions. Through these means, the Qing Empire played a fundamental role in Korea’s integration into regional and global political and economic systems.

[more]

Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements
International Commitments in a System of Shared Powers
Glen S. Krutz and Jeffrey S. Peake
University of Michigan Press, 2011

“Krutz and Peake’s book . . . puts another stake in the heart of the ‘imperial presidency’ argument.”
—Lisa L. Martin, University of Wisconsin–Madison, American Review of Politics

 

“Krutz and Peake reach their conclusions as a result of carefully crafted examination that might be cited as a model of political analysis of this sort . . . As [they] introduce each chapter with a summary of the argument as developed and supported to that point, the reader can enter into and understand their discussion and argument at virtually any point in the book. In sum, Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements is a clearly written and important book that adds substantially to the existing literature on the presidency and on presidential-congressional relations.”
—Roger E. Kanet, University of Miami, International Studies Review

“One can only hope that this fine and challenging book starts an argument, or at least a dialogue, about presidential power in a post-Bush era. It merits the attention of presidency and congressional scholars, and those interested in the interaction of America’s political institutions.”
—Michael A. Genovese, Loyola Marymount University, Journal of Politics

[more]

Tribes, Treaties, and Constitutional Tribulations
By Vine Deloria, Jr., and David E. Wilkins
University of Texas Press, 2000

"Federal Indian law . . . is a loosely related collection of past and present acts of Congress, treaties and agreements, executive orders, administrative rulings, and judicial opinions, connected only by the fact that law in some form has been applied haphazardly to American Indians over the course of several centuries. . . . Indians in their tribal relation and Indian tribes in their relation to the federal government hang suspended in a legal wonderland."

In this book, two prominent scholars of American Indian law and politics undertake a full historical examination of the relationship between Indians and the United States Constitution that explains the present state of confusion and inconsistent application in U.S. Indian law. The authors examine all sections of the Constitution that explicitly and implicitly apply to Indians and discuss how they have been interpreted and applied from the early republic up to the present. They convincingly argue that the Constitution does not provide any legal rights for American Indians and that the treaty-making process should govern relations between Indian nations and the federal government.

[more]

UNHCR’s Parallel Universe
Marking the Contours of a Problem
Marjoleine Zieck
Amsterdam University Press, 2010

The United States and International Law
Paradoxes of Support across Contemporary Issues
Lucrecia García Iommi and Richard W. Maass
University of Michigan Press, 2022

The United States spearheaded the creation of many international organizations and treaties after World War II and maintains a strong record of compliance across several issue areas, yet it also refuses to ratify major international conventions like the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Why does the U.S. often seem to support international law in one way while neglecting or even violating it in another?
The United States and International Law: Paradoxes of Support across Contemporary Issues analyzes the seemingly inconsistent U.S. relationship with international law by identifying five types of state support for international law: leadership, consent, internalization, compliance, and enforcement. Each follows different logics and entails unique costs and incentives. Accordingly, the fact that a state engages in one form of support does not presuppose that it will do so across the board. This volume examines how and why the U.S. has engaged in each form of support across twelve issue areas that are central to 20th- and 21st-century U.S. foreign policy: conquest, world courts, war, nuclear proliferation, trade, human rights, war crimes, torture, targeted killing, maritime law, the environment, and cybersecurity. In addition to offering rich substantive discussions of U.S. foreign policy, their findings reveal patterns across the U.S. relationship with international law that shed light on behavior that often seems paradoxical at best, hypocritical at worst. The results help us understand why the United States engages with international law as it does, the legacies of the Trump administration, and what we should expect from the United States under the Biden administration and beyond.

[more]

The United States and the Genocide Convention
Lawrence J. LeBlanc
Duke University Press, 1991
In this definitive study, Lawrence J. LeBlanc examines the nearly forty-year struggle over ratification of the Genocide Convention by the United States. LeBlanc’s analysis of the history of the convention and the issues and problems surrounding its ratification sheds important light on the process of treaty ratification in the United States and on the role of American public opinion and political culture in international human rights legislation. Drawing on case studies of genocide committed since World War II, the author also confronts the strengths and weaknesses of international adjudication as a whole.
Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 in response to the atrocities committed by the Nazis before and during World War II, the Genocide Convention was finally made law by the United States Senate in 1988 contingent upon a series of “conditions”—known as the “Lugar-Helms-Hatch Sovereignty Package”—which, LeBlanc suggests, markedly weakened the convention. Through careful analysis of the bitter debates over ratification, LeBlanc demonstrates that much of the opposition to the convention sprang from fears that it would be used domestically as a tool by groups such as blacks and Native Americans who might hold the U.S. accountable for genocide in matters of race relations.
[more]

Wabanaki Homeland and the New State of Maine
The 1820 Journal and Plans of Survey of Joseph Treat
Micah A. Pawling
University of Massachusetts Press, 2017
In late September 1820, hoping to lay claim to territory then under dispute between Great Britain and the United States, Governor William King of the newly founded state of Maine dispatched Major Joseph Treat to survey public lands on the Penobscot and Saint John Rivers. Traveling well beyond the limits of colonial settlement, Treat relied heavily on the cultural knowledge and expertise of John Neptune, lieutenant governor of the Penobscot tribe, to guide him across the Wabanaki homeland. Along the way Treat recorded his daily experiences in a journal and drew detailed maps, documenting the interactions of the Wabanaki peoples with the land and space they knew as home.

Edited, annotated, and with an introduction by Micah Pawling, this volume includes a complete transcription of Treat's journal, reproductions of dozens of hand-drawn maps, and records pertaining to the 1820 treaty between the Penobscot Nation and the governing authorities of Maine. As Pawling points out, Treat's journal offers more than the observations of a state agent conducting a survey. It re-creates a dialogue between Euro-Americans and Native peoples, showing how different perceptions of the land were negotiated and disseminated, and exposing the tensions that surfaced when assumptions and expectations clashed. In large part because of Neptune's influence, the maps, in addition to detailing the location of Wabanaki settlements, reflect a river-oriented Native perspective that would later serve as a key to Euro-American access to the region's interior.

The groundwork for cooperation between Treat and Neptune had been laid during the 1820 treaty negotiations, in which both men participated and which were successfully concluded just over a month before their expedition departed from Bangor, Maine. Despite conflicting interests and mutual suspicions, they were able to work together and cultivate a measure of trust as they traveled across northern Maine and western New Brunswick, mapping an old world together while envisioning its uncertain future.
[more]

White Man's Paper Trail
Grand Councils and Treaty-Making on the Central Plains
Stan Hoig
University Press of Colorado, 2006
White Man's Paper Trail presents a poignant history of the U.S. government's attempts to peacefully negotiate treaties with tribes in Arkansas, the Dakotas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and Wyoming.
Stan Hoig shows how treaty-making - once considered a viable method of peaceably resolving conflicts - degenerated into a deeply flawed system sullied by political deceptions and broken promises.

White Man's Paper Trail illuminates the pivotal role of treaty negotiations in the buildup to the Plains Indian wars, in American Indians' loss of land and self-determination, and in Euro-American westward expansion.

[more]




home | accessibility | search | about | contact us

BiblioVault ® 2001 - 2023
The University of Chicago Press