World History

Thawra Epilogue: Islamic Revolution and Gulf Wars

30 Aug 2024
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the first of a two-part epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the Iranian Islamic Revolution’s huge impact across the...

Thawra Ep. 16 – Siege of Beirut

30 Jul 2024
Today’s installment traces a massive defeat for the Palestinian Revolution: Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and brutal siege of Beirut. Under severe pressure and isolated in the wake of Egypt’s normalization with Israel, the PLO...

Thawra Ep. 15 – Black September

17 Jul 2024
Today’s installment addresses the Palestinian Revolution’s project in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan—leading up to the 1970 conflict with the Jordanian state and the violent expulsion of PLO guerrillas during Black September. Then, Egypt and Syria...

Thawra Ep. 14 – The Palestinian Revolution

07 Jul 2024
Today’s installment covers the rise of the Palestinian Revolution and then its explosion after the Arab defeat in the June War of 1967 with Israel. Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation and Palestine, and...

Thawra Ep. 13 – Revolutionary Arabia

19 Jun 2024
Today’s installment covers the armed left-wing revolutionary movements that challenged British imperial power across Southern Arabia, with the National Liberation Front taking over South Yemen and Dhufari rebels in Oman waging a liberation war against...

Thawra Ep. 12 – Origins of Saudi Reaction

09 Jun 2024
Today’s installment tells the story of Saudi Arabia, a country whose reactionary, US-aligned trajectory was throughout the 1950s and 60s challenged by labor strikes, dissident currents, rebellious princes, and an anticolonial oil minister. But Saudi...

Thawra Ep. 11 – Ba’ath Seize Power

23 May 2024
Today’s installment tells the story of the destruction of the two giant revolutionary projects of 1958: the union of Egypt and Syria under Nasser’s United Arab Republic and Iraq’s July Revolution that brought Qasim alongside...

Thawra Ep. 10 – Iraqi Revolution, Communist Power

11 May 2024
Today’s installment tells the story of Iraq’s 1958 July Revolution: a Free Officers’ coup overthrew the imperialist-aligned Hashemite monarchy and brought nationalist Abdul-Karim Qasim to power alongside a surging Communist Party. Revolutionary currents soon turned...

Thawra Ep. 9 – Palestine on the Road to Revolution

03 May 2024
Today’s installment covers the creation of a Palestinian national liberation movement throughout the 1950s by a people dispersed by the Nakba: organizations, alliances, and theories of change assembled in the universities, cities, and refugee camps...

Thawra Ep. 8 – Origins of the Arab New Left

26 Apr 2024
This is a compact introduction to the Movement of Arab Nationalists, which in the 1950s built a presence that stretched across the region, from Beirut and Jordan to Cairo and the Gulf—becoming a truly powerful...

Thawra Ep. 7 – United Arab Republic Against Eisenhower

10 Apr 2024
Today’s installment lays out the the US’s Eisenhower Doctrine, which in 1957 inaugurated a new era of imperialism in the Middle East; the Ba’ath Party driving Syria and Egypt into the United Arab Republic, a...

Thawra Ep. 6 – Cold War Heats Up

02 Apr 2024
Today’s installment lays out the intensification of the Cold War across the Middle East. Western imperialist powers attempted to recruit Arab countries to the Baghdad Pact, a Middle Eastern NATO. Nasser rallied the Arab masses...

Thawra Ep. 5 – The Struggle for Syria

23 Mar 2024
Today’s installment lays out the early years of a struggle for Syria that would decisively shape the Arab world: the fight for independence from France, the first (CIA-backed) coup of 1949, and the rise of...

Thawra Ep. 4 – From the Nakba to Nasser

11 Mar 2024
Today’s installment lays out the politics surrounding the Zionist settler colonial destruction of Palestine, the Nakba of 1948, and the ground-shifting event that followed in its wake: the Nasser-led 1952 Egyptian Free Officers Movement coup...

Thawra Ep. 3 – The Post-Colonial Arab State System

04 Mar 2024
Today’s installment is a comprehensive overview of the Middle Eastern Arab state system that crystalizes with the end of British and French colonial rule.

Thawra Ep. 2 – Birth of Arab Nationalism

27 Feb 2024
Today’s installment lays out 20th century anti-colonialism, including Iraqi, Syrian, and Palestinian Great Revolts, the birth of Arab nationalism, Islamic resistance, Ba’athism, and communism.

Thawra Ep. 1 – Europe’s Imperial Juggernaut

21 Feb 2024
Today’s installment sets the stage: European imperialism in the Arab Mashriq from the late 18th century through the early 20th.

Introducing Thawra

01 Feb 2024
Introducing Thawra, a miniseries on 20th century Arab politics. Over the coming 16 episodes, host Daniel Denvir and historian Abdel Razzaq Takriti delve into the history of the diverse political radicalisms and revolts that have...

Transcript: How Capitalism Remade Homophobia

28 Jun 2023
Read the transcript here: https://jacobin.com/2023/06/capitalism-homophobia-history-christopher-chitty-sexual-hegemony.

The Fall of OPEC w/ Giuliano Garavini

18 Jun 2023
Featuring Giuliano Garavini on his book The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the Twentieth Century. The second in a two-part series on the 20th-century history of petrostates, petrocapitalists, and the world system.

The Rise of OPEC w/ Giuliano Garavini

11 Jun 2023
Featuring Giuliano Garavini on his book The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the Twentieth Century. The first of a two-part series on the 20th-century history of petrostates, petrocapitalists, and the world system.

Sexual Hegemony w/ Max Fox and Chris Nealon

25 Mar 2023
Featuring Max Fox and Chris Nealon on the late Christopher Chitty’s book Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System.

Conspiracy of Equals w/ Laura Mason

17 Oct 2022
Featuring Laura Mason on her book The Last Revolutionaries: The Conspiracy Trial of Gracchus Babeuf and the Equals. Mason discusses Babeuf’s call to abolish property, his radically egalitarian conspiracy against the Directory government, and the...

Transcript: China Boom w/ Ho-fung Hung

16 Aug 2022
Transcript of the first part of Dan’s two part interview with sociologist Ho-fung Hung on Chinese political economic history from the 18th century to 2008: why capitalism took off in England and then elsewhere but...

Before the West w/ Ayşe Zarakol

28 Apr 2022
Ayşe Zarakol on her book Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders. How centuries of Asian empires from Genghis Khan to Timur and the early Ming Dynasty through the Ottomans and...

China Boom w/ Ho-fung Hung

18 Mar 2022
Part one of a two-part interview with sociologist Ho-fung Hung on Chinese political economic history from the 18th century to 2008: why capitalism took off in England and then elsewhere but not in China; and...

The Dawn of Everything w/ David Wengrow

10 Nov 2021
Astra Taylor interviews archaeologist David Wengrow on The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, his new book co-authored with the late David Graeber.

Big Ship Capitalism with Laleh Khalili

30 Apr 2021
Dan interviews Laleh Khalili on Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula. The Suez Canal, the colonial roots of contemporary maritime trade, Aden dock worker radicals, why Dubai is not...

David Harvey on Capital

20 Jun 2018
View Transcript

The Right to Have Rights Part II

04 May 2018
This is part two of Dan’s interview on Hannah Arendt’s notion of “the right to have rights.” This episode covers a lot, including why we must fight not only to expand the democratic political community...

The Right to Have Rights Part I

01 May 2018
What are rights worth when government denies people the very right to have rights? Political theorist Hannah Arendt recognized this loss of “the right to have rights” as millions of refugees found themselves without a...

Bhaskar on the Bolsheviks

27 Dec 2017
At the close of the centenary of the Russian Revolution, Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara discusses his new article on the Bolsheviks and what we can learn from and blame on them—and also what might be...

Peace Can Happen in Korea with Tim Shorrock

05 Dec 2017
View Transcript