Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Sometimes ascribed to Mark Twain, this bonmot sounds like an increasingly banal truism. But it should give us food for thought and the possibility to ruminate what uses history can be put to in the light of current affairs. And by this…

The current presidential election in the United States is a cause of mixed feelings. As someone with family and friends in and from the U.S., the popularity of Donald Trump’s divisive, rambling, and often deranged campaign is a source of anxiety and frustration. As a historian of modern American politics and foreign policy though, it…