William Calley just passed away - yet more than half a century after the My Lai Massacre Americans still struggle to come to terms with this atrocity. In this (long) thread - about American amnesia and historiographical containment - I explain why: 1/

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1818105513336274990

In December 1969, the journalist Jonathan Schell, who covered the war in Vietnam, wrote an impassioned reflection on the significance of the My Lai photos, which had then only just been published:
2/

I am writing a book about a single photograph taken during the worst massacre in U.S. history - one that few people have ever heard of. In March 1906, American forces killed more than 1000 local Muslims, including women and children, at Bud Dajo in the southern Philippines. I have blurred the image here, but it is a restored version of an original print I discovered in a U.S. archive. There was in fact no less than three photographers present at Bud Dajo, though this is the most iconic image - taken with an old-fashioned 4x5 glass plate camera.

The definition of Orientalism captured in a single tweet... 'If you want to read a book on Britain today by someone who truly knows every tube station in London and has interviewed many Beefeaters, I highly recommend...'

Dear Britain: If you want to understand why Cecil Rhodes has become so central to the identity politics and current culture-war of the right - to the point that the BBC is openly whitewashing his legacy (in the name of 'balance') - here is a thread:
1/
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan… 2/ I wrote this as a review of @PriyaSatia's book, 'Time's Monster', which does a great job of explaining how history and notions of 'balance' has always been part of the imperial project.

If anyone is interested in trying to understand the politics behind the current celebration of the British Empire, I wrote a review of @PriyaSatia's book, which explains why this is not simply 'nostalgia' but rather a continuation of an imperialist worldview 1/

https://twitter.com/KimAtiWagner/status/1396379231379206146

2/

I commend Nigel Biggar for finally coming out and being open and honest about his defense and celebration of white supremacist and arch-imperialist, Cecil Rhodes. The fact that this is based on a blatantly disingenuous misreading of the historical facts is another matter...

After today's important announcement regarding new rules for flying the Union Jack, I can finally reveal the playbook behind the Government's plan to revive national pride in Britain. Been sitting on this for a while, so really excited to share - a LONG thread! /1 /2

This is just a reminder, if any was needed, that violence was *not* incidental but rather central to the British Empire and the imperial project more broadly. Since @NigelBiggar has yet again written a deeply flawed piece of Empire apologia, it's time for another thread - /1 Biggar's article in @IrishTimes contains numerous inaccuracies, to put it nicely, but I shall focus just on what he says about violence and it’s role in the Empire. /2

irishtimes.com/opinion/presid…

So this just dropped:

This is a really interesting read about the potential trauma of writing the history of atrocities etc:
newrepublic.com/article/161127… This has been on my mind ever since I first wrote about human trophies and now that I've moved on to atrocity-photography - my biggest concern, however, has not been about my own well-being but about my inability to adequately do justice to the suffering I describe...

Since @NigelBiggar is once more rallying to the defense of Cecil Rhodes' statue in Oxford, and @DanielJHannan presumably is not far behind, it might be worth taking a closer look at who Rhodes actually was... /1 Rhodes’ modern-day supporters insist that he was a great man whose memory should be honoured, and that removing his statue would be tantamount to the erasure of history. Rhodes was furthermore no racist, we are told. /2

I wrote a review of @PriyaSatia's important book, 'Time's Monster: History, Conscience and Britain's Empire':

kim-ati-wagner.medium.com/review-of-priy…

@alexvtunzelmann @profdanhicks @pdkmitchell @Sathnam @DalrympleWill @DavidOlusoga @corinne_fowler @thehistoryguy @redhistorian Reading this book has helped me make sense of some of the more puzzling aspects of the current debates of the legacies of the British Empire: Why is it perceived as objectionable merely to study the colonial past of British heritage, or to point out basic facts about imperialism?

As 2020 is coming to an end, you can either read a dozen Quilette articles or letters in The Times - or even throw in a PragerU video for good measure - insisting the British Empire was 'Overwhelmingly a force for good' and that 'wokery' is erasing history... Or you can avail yourself of the critical and deeply researched work of actual scholars. Here are my recommendations for Christmas gifts this year - for anyone seriously interested in the history of the British Empire and its legacies:

@PriyaSatia 'Time's Monster'

My initial reaction to @SimonClarkeMP's inane take on British history was despondency, but my students convinced me it's worth engaging - so here is a thread, since this really is a beautiful illustration of the right's historical illiteracy: 1/

https://twitter.com/SimonClarkeMP/status/1270326461422088194

Yes, our history is indeed complex - but that has nothing to do with how long a nation state (not sure which one exactly) has existed - the history of the US, for instance, is no less complex than that of Britain...2/

A brief thread on Gilley et al. The one thing to keep in mind is that at the most basic level they have no qualifications or expertise in the fields to which they claim to be contributing. This is not about freedom of speech, it’s about basic academic standards. 1/ Gilley is a political scientist whose actual research focuses on modern China - which begs the question why @RLPGBooks thought he was the right person to edit a series on 'Anti-Colonialism'...2/

We often hear this question in debates about the Empire: 'Is there a single positive thing to be said, in your view, about the British Empire?'

The answer is no - I'm a historian, not a food-critic or a film-reviewer. And no-one would ask the same question about Nazi Germany. This exact wording was, btw, Michael Buerk's first question to @NadineElEnany on *that* episode of the Moral Maze. Her answer was brilliant...

Why are studies of the violence of decolonization and counterinsurgency so often analytically thin and chronologically limited? At most there's a throw-away reference to earlier colonial conflicts; but mostly its about post-1945 politics, tactics and individual actions. No study of, for instance, American violence in Vietnam or the 9/11 Wars is really complete without due consideration of the deep (cultural) history of the Indian Wars and Philippines etc. In my opinion.

I am about to go through the proofs of a chapter I wrote back in 2016 on subaltern resistance and the issue of both agency and perspective is so important when writing/teaching Western imperialism. 1/

https://twitter.com/CJSlaby/status/1257890757186392072

While it's crucial for us to produce a counternarrative, and not merely replicate the conventional Eurocentric perspective, we also have to be cautious about notions of 'victim-hood' and 'agency' and 'resistance' - subalterns (broadly conceived) were not uniformly heroic... 2/

Hi Ben – since you feel the responses to your tweet yesterday were unfair, I’ll try once more. 1/

https://twitter.com/bennewmark/status/1255157114890326016

The framing of your script is deeply flawed because it locates the cause of ‘conflict’ in what you describe as ‘incompatible visions’ and ‘misunderstanding and resentment’ when the answer is really, and indisputably, genocidal settler-expansion. 2/

My Uni just ended face-to-face teaching and is moving everything online from tomorrow - this is the right call! I'd rather be accused of panicking and being a 'snowflake' than taking any unnecessary risks. And I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong... And since I've got 40 third-year students worrying about their dissertations, 10+ first-year PhDs worrying about their upgrade, and another 40 second-year students worrying about other assessments, I'll be focusing on supervision and assistance in planning, research and writing.

1/ I'm always quick to share my successes here on Twitter, so here is a few words on the rejection for a book-proposal I just received from a major academics publisher.

There were three readers reports: The first was overwhelmingly positive and strongly encouraged publication. 2) The second had some nice things to say about certain parts of the proposal, but overall was not convinced by the framing and pointed out a number of omissions from my sample-historiography - and suggested rejection.