Join us for a seminar with David Ekbladh, who will be visiting Deakin from Tufts University.

The Rover Boys of Reconstruction: International Foundations of the Pax Americana

The postwar planning that laid the foundations for postwar US hegemony after World War II is often treated as an exclusively American effort.  However, taking a wider view of the issues at play shows that critical elements were based on concepts and ideas generated in transnational debates funneled through the League of Nations and other institutions.  There was a close connection between Americans, the Geneva institutions, and a variety of international advocates comprising a “liberal international society.”  During the war these connections allowed a set of international figures to circulate around centers of power in the United States and shape critical components of the postwar order that would define the “Pax Americana.”  

David Ekbladh is associate professor of history and core faculty in international relations at Tufts University.  His books include, Beyond 1917: The United State and the Global Legacies of the Great War (with Thomas Zeiler and Benjamin Montoya) and the Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order, which won the Stuart L. Bernath Prize of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations and the Phi Alpha Theta Best First Book Award. His latest book, Plowshares into Swords: Weaponized Knowledge, Liberal Order, and the League of Nations will be published this year by the University of Chicago Press.  

(See here for a special offer for pre-ordering David’s new book – Plowshares into Swords.)

Join us at 11am, 3 August 2022 in person at Deakin Waurn Ponds (IC2.108), Deakin Burwood (C2.05.01) or online via Zoom.