Date:
The Junta that Never Was: Counterinsurgency Experts in a Post-Imperial World
WSP Seminar with Katya Maslakowski
Thursday, February 2nd at 12:15 pm
CGIS S-050, 1730 Cambridge St.
Throughout much of the twentieth century, the British Army was considered the most successful proponent of humane counterinsurgency warfare in the world. This talk argues that this reputation was the result of a cadre of self-described counterinsurgency experts who rose to professional prominence among the growing field of military strategists in the 1960s. At the end of empire, the focus of their expertise shifted from imperial subjects to the growing unrest in the British metropole. This talk demonstrates how their intervention helped justify and shape the militarization of police and the targeting of trade unionists, public protesters, and immigrants as subversive elements within the British populace.
Katya Maslakowski is a Raphael Morrison Dorman Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow in the Weatherhead Scholars Program and a historian of modern Britain, the British Empire, and science and technology studies. She obtained her PhD in history from Northwestern University in 2022. Following her time at the Weatherhead Center, Katya will join the University of Southern Mississippi as Assistant Professor of History in the School of Humanities.