Reconciliation after Civil Wars with Paul Quigley and James Hawdon
Greetings all! today I would like to welcome Drs. Paul Quigley and James Hawdon to the show. Paul is Director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies and the James I. Robertson, Jr. Associate Professor of Civil War History in the History Department at Virginia Tech. He is the author of Shifting Grounds: Nationalism and the American South, 1848-1865, the editor of The Civil War and the Transformation of American Citizenship, and is currently writing a book about Preston Brooks, the South Carolina congressman who caned Senator Charles Sumner in 1856. Paul serves on the board of the Society of Civil War Historians, the editorial board of the journal Civil War History, the board of the Smithfield-Preston Foundation, and the historians advisory board of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond. Jim is director of the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention and interim chair of the Department of Sociology at Virginia Tech. Broadly speaking, His research investigates the role of communities in promoting, deterring, and reacting to violence. His most recent work focuses on how communities are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, they are co-editors of Reconciliation after Civil Wars: Global Perspectives, which we will be discussing today. And not for nothin’…but this volume features four (that’s right!!) Rogue Historian veterans including Robby Colby, Hilary Green, Niels Eichorn, and Ann Tucker. They clearly have great taste in historians :)
So we cast our net widely and take on reconciliation themes globally and across time from the 19th to the 21st centuries. We discuss:
How this volume is the child of a 2016 conference in Arlington, Virginia featuring keynote addresses from historian Caroline Janney and Speaker of the Rwandan Parliament Joseph Sebarenzi
What reconciliation really means in contrast to reunification
How taking a global perspective helps us understand the process of reconciliation
Truth and Reconciliation commissions and the example of post-Apartheid South Africa
Civil Wars in a modern context: Colombia, Rwanda, and Côte d’Ivoire
Reconciliation in the 20th century: Italy, Francoist Spain, and post-Soviet Russia
David Blight’s Race and Reunion (you knew I would bring up this book, right?)
Heritage not Hate
Moving past the animosity narrative
Monuments and reframing reconciliation
Alternate memories and what that means for reconciliation
United we heal…divided we reconcile (a meaningful way to wrap up the convo)
Have a listen…
I wish we had time to break down each and every essay…but we certainly do touch on all the major themes. My best advice is to get the book (now out in paperback!!) and keep the conversation going here on on the Socials. AND…don’t forget to subscribe to The Rogue Historian Podcast and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts or your favorite app so you never ever ever ever miss a show. That would be dumb.
With compliments,
Keith