The Counterinsurgent Imagination: A New Intellectual History

In this seminar Joseph MacKay presented his book “The Counterinsurgent Imagination: A New Intellectual History” (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Counterinsurgency, the violent suppression of armed insurrection, is among the dominant kinds of war in contemporary world politics.

How did it arrive at its present form, and what generated these others, along the way? Spanning several centuries and four detailed case studies, “The Counterinsurgent Imagination” unpacks and explores this intellectual history through counterinsurgency manuals. 

Speaker:

Joseph MacKay is a Research Fellow in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. His research focuses on historical international hierarchies, at both the micro and macro levels, as well as on a variety of IR-theoretic and qualitative methodological issues.

The seminar was moderated by Niklas Bremberg, Senior Research Fellow at the Europe Programme, Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI).