Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Excavating The Past: Writing International Histories.

I went to the LA Times Festival of Books (April 13-14). I'll be posting my notes on the various panel discussions I attended.

The fourth panel discussion I attended was "Excavating The Past: Writing International Histories."

Here is an edited panelist biography via the LA Times website.

Ruby Lal is Professor of South Asian Studies at Emory University, Atlanta. Her fields of study include feminist history and theory, and the question of archive as it relates to writing about Islamic societies in the precolonial and colonial world. "Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan" is her latest book.

A third-generation journalist, Scott Martelle is currently a member of the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times. His newest book is "William Walker's Wars: How One Man's Private American Army Tried to Conquer Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras."

Priya Satia is a professor of British History at Stanford University. "Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution" is her newest book.  

And the following are my notes from the panel discussion: 
 
Ruby Lal. Nur Jahan (1600s) has been lost to history. She is a household name in South Asia, but she is known for her love story. People don’t know who she was. Why was she lost to history? She has coins minted under her name. She has portraits of her loading a musket, which is something women didn’t do.


Historians will generally look at certain texts when writing about individuals. Lai had no direct sources on Jahan's childhood. So to think about Jahan's childhood, Lai had to consider what types of books children were raised on at the time. She had to use parallel sources for context. For example, the Empress was married before her marriage to the Emperor, but there is only one sentence about this.

Lai has an emotional engagement with her subject as the right wing Hindu government is attempting to remove Jahan from history. Jahan was Muslim.

Scott Martelle. His books is about William Walker, who lived during the Filibuster Era. This was pre-Civil War. He invaded Mexico. He made himself President of Nicaragua, which lasted a year. Prior to all this, he was a doctor at the age of 17. He then became a lawyer, then shifted to being a newspaper editor (he was good at this). Then he decided to become an adventurer.

Walker had a PR person so those pieces of information aren’t that accurate. But those press releases can be used to come up with a timeline. Then the author, Martelle, had to look for collaborating articles.

Priya Satia. She is a historian who decided to look into the arms industry. She got into this story after coming across a story about a gun maker in Birmingham, UK. He was a Quaker in the 18th Century.

He got into a feud with other Quakers over his making of guns (1790s where the UK was fighting against France). His family had done this work for a century. He argued back at his fellow Quakers that it was all a matter of degree since they all supplied goods that were ultimately used in the arms industry.

Gun makers started to make 10,000s of guns, but that soon went to millions. Government officials would visit manufacturing locations to try to make things more efficient.

She was emotionally engaged in her subject, the gun maker. History is always about the present. Investment in present gun debates impacted her.