Patrick Iskandar was my best friend and also the most perfect and special person in the world. I would argue, in fact, that he was probably the easiest person to love in history. Patrick died unexpectedly four months ago, which is pretty much the worst thing ever, and undoubtedly the…

The Ideological and Material Basis of British Motivation in the First Opium War Brandon Heiblum Introduction Few episodes in Britain’s 19th century better represent the Victorian ethos than the Opium Wars, a manifestation of the era’s positions on white supremacy, political economy, and international relations. The moral precariousness of this…

Introduction Since World War II, intra-state war has eclipsed inter-state war as the leading source of armed conflict. More than seventy civil wars since 1945 have taken the lives of over twenty million people and displaced an additional sixty-seven million, often permanently damaging a countries’ economic infrastructure, social capital, and political…

Brandon Heiblum The American Civil War remains the unambiguous nadir of its historical trajectory, and it is ubiquitously understood that its result was the end of slavery and clear Union victory. Because this outcome is so ingrained into the national ethos and so formative to its modern character, there can…