Erez Manela

Bio

Erez Manela (马雪松) is the Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History at Harvard University, where he teaches international history and the history of the United States in the world. He is Director of Graduate Programs at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (where in 2022-23 he is also serving as Acting Center Director) and co-chair of the Harvard International and Global History Seminar (HIGHS). In addition, he co-edits the book series on Global and International History at Cambridge University Press. 

He is the author of the prize-winning book The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (2007) and co-editor of four collaborative volumes: The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (2010), Empires at War, 1911-1923 (2014), The Development Century: A Global History (2018), and The Anticolonial Transnational: Imaginaries, Mobilities, and Networks in the Struggle against Empire (2023). He has published numerous scholarly articles, including notably “A Pox on Your Narrative: Writing Disease Control into Cold War History” (2010). 

His current work examines the global discourse about World War II as a “race war” and how it shaped visions for the postwar international order. He also has a longstanding interest in the conceptual and methodological aspects of writing international history resulting, inter alia, in a recent article on “International society as a Historical Subject” (2020).

Manela has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the American Council of Learned Societies, among others, and was a Burkhardt Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Selected Publications

Books

• The Anticolonial Transnational Imaginaries, Mobilities, and Networks in the Struggle against Empire (co-editor). Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023. Coming soon.
• The Development Century: A Global History (co-editor and contributor). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
• Empires at War, 1911-1923 (co-editor). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
• The United States in the World: Foreign Perspectives, American Historical Association, 2012.
• The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (co-editor and contributor). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.
• The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Recent Articles and Chapters

• “From the Jaws of Retreat: Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the Persistence of American Ambition,” Foreign Affairs 101:1 (Jan/Feb 2022)
• “Visions of One World,” in The Cambridge History of America and the World, vol. III. Cambridge UP, 2021.
• “The Wilsonian Uprisings of 1919,” in David Motadel, ed. Revolutionary World: Global Upheaval in the Modern Age. Cambridge UP, 2021.
• “Foreword: Plotting the Anti-Colonial Transnational,” in Michele Louro et al., eds., The League Against Imperialism: Lives and Afterlives. Leiden UP, 2020.
• “International Society as a Historical Subject,” Diplomatic History 44:2 (April 2020).
• “Asia in the Global 1919: Reimagining Territory, Identity, and Solidarity,” Journal of Asian Studies 78:2 (May 2019).
• “Wilson and Lenin,” Diplomatic History 42:4 (Sept. 2018).
• “Smallpox and the Globalization of Development,” in Stephen Macekura and Erez Manela, eds., The Development Century: A Global History. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
• “The Politics of Smallpox Eradication,” in John R. McNeill and Kenneth Pomeranz, eds., The Cambridge World History, Vol. VII: 1750-Present. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
• “Global Anti-Imperialism in the Age of Wilson,” in Ian Tyrrell and Jay Sexton, eds., Empire’s Twin: U.S. Anti-imperialism from the Founding Era to the Age of Terrorism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015.
• “The Fourth Policeman: Franklin Roosevelt’s Vision for China’s Global Role,” in Wu Sihua et al., eds., 開羅宣言的影響與意義 / The Significance and Impact of the Cairo Declaration. Taipei: Chengchi University Press, 2014.
• “The Great War as a Global War: Imperial Conflict and the Reconfiguration of World Order, 1911-1923,” Diplomatic History 38, No. 4 (Sept. 2014), 786-800 (co-authored with Robert Gerwarth). Revised version in Thomas W. Zeiler et al., eds., Beyond 1917: The United States and the Global Legacies of the Great War. Oxford University Press, 2017.
• “Globalizing the Great Society: Lyndon Johnson and the Pursuit of Smallpox Eradication,” in Francis Gavin and Mark Lawrence, eds., Beyond the Cold War: Lyndon Johnson and the New Global Challenges of the 1960s. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Media

• Islamismism: How should Western intellectuals respond to Muslim scholars?, The New Yorker, 2010
• The Tug of War: Woodrow Wilson and the power of the Presidency, The New Yorker, 2013
• Video Lecture: World War I and Legacy of President Woodrow Wilson, C-SPAN, 2018
• Woodrow Wilson and ‘the Ugliest of Treacheries,’ The New York Times, 2019
• The main public health tool during 1918 pandemic? Social distancing, The Harvard Gazette, 2021
• From the Jaws of Retreat: Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the Persistence of American Ambition, Foreign Affairs, 2022