Leslie Rogne Schumacher, Visiting Assistant Professor of History, published an article in Transatlantic Policy Quarterly for a special issue of the journal focused on the January 2024 expansion of the BRICS intergovernmental bloc. His article, “Old Crossroads and New Frontiers: BRICS+, the European Union, and the Mediterranean Sea,” shows how far-right European leaders and Mediterranean dictators have gained and maintained power by cultivating ties with authoritarian global powers like Russia and China.
Leslie Rogne Schumacher
Visiting Assistant Professor of History
Accomplishments
Leslie Rogne Schumacher, Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Director of the ICCAE at Wells, received news of his election as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society on February 20th. A mid-career award recognizing both outstanding academic accomplishment and potential, fellowship in the RHS is given for life and is second only to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in British historical honors. In Dr. Schumacher’s case, his election was first based on his recent monograph on the relationship between the British and Ottoman Empires in the late 19th century, a book that a leading scholar in the field has deemed “a required reader for graduate students working on the Middle East, Ottoman Empire, and Victorian foreign policy.” Second, the RHS elected him in recognition of his long record of work investigating the “Eastern Question,” the term used by modern Europeans to name their belief that the Middle East is a source of chaos–a topic on which another major scholar recently described Dr. Schumacher as a “renowned scholar.” Previously elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in recognition for his efforts in bringing together academic, government, and business communities to work on refugee affairs, Dr. Schumacher will be entitled going forward to use the postnominal “FRHistS” to indicate his membership in the RHS and eligibility for further RHS awards.
Leslie Rogne Schumacher was invited to submit an article to a special issue of Transatlantic Policy Quarterly. The issue focuses on the past, present, and future of the BRICS+ geopolitical bloc, and Dr. Schumacher’s article will cover the growing conflict between BRICS+ and the European Union in the Mediterranean region.
Leslie Rogne Schumacher, Visiting Assistant Professor of History, took part in a roundtable on the topic “The Historiography of the Black Sea, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean during the Long 19th Century” at the annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. He also accepted an invitation to perform a peer review for Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees.
Leslie Rogne Schumacher, Visiting Assistant Professor of History, contributed a chapter to the book, “Forced Migration: Exiles and Refugees in the UK and the British Empire, 1810s-1940s,” which is forthcoming from Brill. His chapter, based on documents he uncovered at the Maltese National Archives and titled “Seeking securo asilo: Malta’s Italian Refugee Crisis, 1815-1848,” recounts the untold tale of how Britain’s colonial administrators in Malta policed, documented, and managed the flow of Italian political refugees through the island during the era of Italian unification.
In October 2023, Palgrave Macmillan published Leslie Rogne Schumacher’s book, The Eastern Question in 1870s Britain: Democracy and Diplomacy, Orientalism and Empire. The result of nearly 20 years of research, it is the first monograph focused on the topic in over two generations and arguably the first written not just for a scholarly audience but also for students and the general public.
Leslie Rogne Schumacher, Visiting Assistant Professor of History, was consulted as a subject matter expert by War on the Rocks, a foreign affairs and national security magazine, for a special report on the recent spike in deaths among asylum seekers attempting to reach Europe via Mediterranean sea routes.
Leslie Rogne Schumacher, Visiting Assistant Professor of history, attended the 2023 annual meeting of Britain and the World, held at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA in mid-April. There, he served as chair for two panels: the first on 19th-century British exploration in the Artic and Madagascar, and the second on nationalist themes in 19th-century British print media. A former vice-chair of the organization and the outgoing communications and social media director, he passed the baton to his successor and the board thanked him for his service over the last decade.
Leslie Rogne Schumacher has accepted an invitation to contribute a chapter to the book Forced Migration: Exiles and Refugees in the UK and the British Empire, 1810s-1940s, which is edited by Andrekos Varnava, Yianni Cartledge, and Evan Smith and will be published by Brill next year. His contribution is entitled “Seeking securo asilo: Malta’s Italian Refugee Crisis, 1815-1848.”