James Stafford

James Stafford teaches history at Columbia. His first book, The Case of Ireland, was published in 2022.

From The Blog

Trump’s Hammer

7 April 2025

Last Wednesday, 2 April, Donald Trump’s ‘liberation day’, marked a new departure. There’s not even a pretence at playing by the rules anymore. This was a carnival of trade discrimination: open, delirious, triumphant. The husk of the WTO system, chewed up for decades by termites of all shapes and sizes, has been whacked with a large hammer. It is unlikely to be replaced by an orderly transition to geopolitically aligned trading blocs. Some of the United States’ closest allies are now being hit with the biggest tariffs.

Steampunk Terminators: Europe’s Holy Alliance

James Stafford, 20 March 2025

On the​ third morning of his ill-fated occupation of Moscow, Napoleon Bonaparte woke up in the Kremlin to find the city on fire. The isolated blazes set by the retreating Russian armies had spread overnight and were now threatening to leap across the Moskva river to consume the palace. A Russian policeman, hidden in the Kremlin’s arsenal, was caught trying to set light to the ...

Pieces about James Stafford in the LRB

Intimated Disunion

Colin Kidd, 13 July 2023

The unionist fondness for Union Jacks does not preclude violent resistance to the British state when its policy conflicts with the interests of Protestant Ulster. Under the auspices of the Ulster Covenant ...

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