Waqar Zaidi
Biographic Data
| ID | 223121 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Waqar Zaidi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Waqar |
| FAMILY NAME | Zaidi |
| SIGNATURE | ZAIDI W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lahore University of Management Sciences |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1056-6676 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Introduction: Civil aviation in the Global South
International audience
US aid for Thai Civil Aviation, 1947–1959
Thailand's aerial geostrategic importance led the United States to offer a generous air aid programme in the 1950s. The US funded the refurbishment of airfields across the country: the extension and hardening of airstrips, and the construction of new tarmacs, terminal buildings and navigation equipment. They also provided technical training to Thai nationals. The leading US international airline Pan American Airways helped modernize Thai Airways.…
The Pugwash scientists’ conferences, Cyrus Eaton and the clash of internationalisms, 1954–1961
This paper examines the contest between Canadian American industrialist Cyrus Eaton and the Pugwash scientists’ leadership for influence over the early Pugwash scientists’ conferences. Eaton's activism has generally been dismissed in the historical literature as ineffective, naive and too uncritical of the Soviet Union. This paper argues that he was genuinely committed to international peace and security, that Eaton shared with Pugwash scientists…
Aerial Social Spaces and State Power
This article suggests that aerial networks can be usefully conceptualized as broad "aerial social spaces" that can (and often do) extend, produce, and reproduce state power. They are not easily created: their creation and maintenance require large resources both on land and in the air. The same aerial network can be embodied in multiple aerial social spaces that produce and reproduce state power in different ways. This article highlights two such…
Peace and Power in Cold War Britain: Media, Movements and Democracy, c. 1945–68 by Christopher R. Hill
Reviewed by: Peace and Power in Cold War Britain: Media, Movements and Democracy, c. 1945–68 by Christopher R. Hill Waqar Zaidi (bio) Peace and Power in Cold War Britain: Media, Movements and Democracy, c. 1945–68. By Christopher R. Hill. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Pp. 320. Hardcover $114. In 1957, soon after the accident at the Windscale nuclear reactor, and amidst a government attempt to downplay the incident, the news program Under Fir…
The Rarified Air of the Modern: Airplanes and Technological Modernity in the Andes, by Willie Hiatt
Fascism, Aviation and Mythical Modernity, by Fernando Esposito
Fernando Esposito’s book explores the centrality of aviation to inter-war fascist ideology. Using the notion of ‘mythical modernity’, Esposito argues that fascism used aviation and aviators in order to spread and strengthen itself in inter-war Germany and Italy. He introduces fascist mythical modernity as an attempt to order society around a sacral, absolutised transhistorical nation. Its vision was modern in that it envisaged a society which was…
Stages of War, Stages of Man: Quincy Wright and the Liberal Internationalist Study of War
American legal scholar Quincy Wright's 1942 A Study of War was a milestone in the study of warfare, and a monumental text in the history of liberal internationalism and the social sciences. Yet, it was quickly forgotten, and neglected ever since. This paper seeks to recover Study by elucidating its historical significance, and placing it within the intellectual and institutional contexts of its time. Study, I argue, encapsulated both an interwar …
Aviation Will Either Destroy or Save Our Civilization’: Proposals for the International Control of Aviation, 1920—45
Proposals for the internationalization of civil aviation and the formation of an international air force blossomed in Britain, France and the United States between 1920 and 1945. The proposals were promoted by liberal internationalist constituencies in these three countries and reveal an enthusiasm for technocracy and technology within liberal internationalism. Aviation, internationalists argued, was too dangerous and held too much potential to b…
A Blessing in Disguise: Reconstructing International Relations Through Atomic Energy, 1945-1948
Even as it was being waged, the Second World War was seen by many in Britain as a unique rupture in the global system of international relations. It provided, many believed, the opportunity for its reconstruction into a stable, peaceful, and lasting form. Histories of thinking on and planning for this reconstruction during and after World War Two have traditionally focused on the United Nations Organization and associated agencies. 1 This paper h…
Eisenhower, science advice, and the nuclear test-ban Debate, 1945–1963
Planning, Production and Reconstruction in Postwar Europe, Fourth Balzan Workshop, Birkbeck College, London, 26 June 2007
This was the fourth and final workshop of the Balzan Project on the history of European reconstruction after World War Two. The previous workshops had compared reconstruction in Western and Eastern Europe and reconstruction after World War One with reconstruction after World War Two, and had focused on the movement of populations and their relief and rehabilitation.1 This one focused on planning, particularly industrial, agricultural and urban pl…
The Janus-face of Techno-nationalism: "Barnes Willis and the "Strength of England
The Janus-face of Techno-nationalism:Barnes Wallis and the “Strength of England” S. Waqar H. Zaidi (bio) Barnes Wallis has long been the most famous British engineer of the twentieth century. Celebrated for his invention of the "Bouncing Bomb," used in the "Dam Busters" raid during World War II, he has been the subject of the immensely popular and still well-known British film The Dam Busters , released in 1955, and a major BBC television documen…
Aviation Will Either Destroy or Save Our Civilization’: Proposals for the International Control of Aviation, 1920—45
Proposals for the internationalization of civil aviation and the formation of an international air force blossomed in Britain, France and the United States between 1920 and 1945. The proposals were promoted by liberal internationalist constituencies in these three countries and reveal an enthusiasm for technocracy and technology within liberal internationalism. Aviation, internationalists argued, was too dangerous and held too much potential to b…
Aerial Social Spaces and State Power
This article suggests that aerial networks can be usefully conceptualized as broad "aerial social spaces" that can (and often do) extend, produce, and reproduce state power. They are not easily created: their creation and maintenance require large resources both on land and in the air. The same aerial network can be embodied in multiple aerial social spaces that produce and reproduce state power in different ways. This article highlights two such…
The Janus-face of Techno-nationalism: "Barnes Willis and the "Strength of England
The Janus-face of Techno-nationalism:Barnes Wallis and the “Strength of England” S. Waqar H. Zaidi (bio) Barnes Wallis has long been the most famous British engineer of the twentieth century. Celebrated for his invention of the "Bouncing Bomb," used in the "Dam Busters" raid during World War II, he has been the subject of the immensely popular and still well-known British film The Dam Busters , released in 1955, and a major BBC television documen…
Planning, Production and Reconstruction in Postwar Europe, Fourth Balzan Workshop, Birkbeck College, London, 26 June 2007
This was the fourth and final workshop of the Balzan Project on the history of European reconstruction after World War Two. The previous workshops had compared reconstruction in Western and Eastern Europe and reconstruction after World War One with reconstruction after World War Two, and had focused on the movement of populations and their relief and rehabilitation.1 This one focused on planning, particularly industrial, agricultural and urban pl…
Planning, Production and Reconstruction in Postwar Europe, Fourth Balzan Workshop, Birkbeck College, London, 26 June 2007
This was the fourth and final workshop of the Balzan Project on the history of European reconstruction after World War Two. The previous workshops had compared reconstruction in Western and Eastern Europe and reconstruction after World War One with reconstruction after World War Two, and had focused on the movement of populations and their relief and rehabilitation.1 This one focused on planning, particularly industrial, agricultural and urban pl…
The Janus-face of Techno-nationalism: "Barnes Willis and the "Strength of England
The Janus-face of Techno-nationalism:Barnes Wallis and the “Strength of England” S. Waqar H. Zaidi (bio) Barnes Wallis has long been the most famous British engineer of the twentieth century. Celebrated for his invention of the "Bouncing Bomb," used in the "Dam Busters" raid during World War II, he has been the subject of the immensely popular and still well-known British film The Dam Busters , released in 1955, and a major BBC television documen…
Eisenhower, science advice, and the nuclear test-ban Debate, 1945–1963
Aviation Will Either Destroy or Save Our Civilization’: Proposals for the International Control of Aviation, 1920—45
Proposals for the internationalization of civil aviation and the formation of an international air force blossomed in Britain, France and the United States between 1920 and 1945. The proposals were promoted by liberal internationalist constituencies in these three countries and reveal an enthusiasm for technocracy and technology within liberal internationalism. Aviation, internationalists argued, was too dangerous and held too much potential to b…
A Blessing in Disguise: Reconstructing International Relations Through Atomic Energy, 1945-1948
Even as it was being waged, the Second World War was seen by many in Britain as a unique rupture in the global system of international relations. It provided, many believed, the opportunity for its reconstruction into a stable, peaceful, and lasting form. Histories of thinking on and planning for this reconstruction during and after World War Two have traditionally focused on the United Nations Organization and associated agencies. 1 This paper h…
Fascism, Aviation and Mythical Modernity, by Fernando Esposito
Fernando Esposito’s book explores the centrality of aviation to inter-war fascist ideology. Using the notion of ‘mythical modernity’, Esposito argues that fascism used aviation and aviators in order to spread and strengthen itself in inter-war Germany and Italy. He introduces fascist mythical modernity as an attempt to order society around a sacral, absolutised transhistorical nation. Its vision was modern in that it envisaged a society which was…
Stages of War, Stages of Man: Quincy Wright and the Liberal Internationalist Study of War
American legal scholar Quincy Wright's 1942 A Study of War was a milestone in the study of warfare, and a monumental text in the history of liberal internationalism and the social sciences. Yet, it was quickly forgotten, and neglected ever since. This paper seeks to recover Study by elucidating its historical significance, and placing it within the intellectual and institutional contexts of its time. Study, I argue, encapsulated both an interwar …
The Rarified Air of the Modern: Airplanes and Technological Modernity in the Andes, by Willie Hiatt
Peace and Power in Cold War Britain: Media, Movements and Democracy, c. 1945–68 by Christopher R. Hill
Reviewed by: Peace and Power in Cold War Britain: Media, Movements and Democracy, c. 1945–68 by Christopher R. Hill Waqar Zaidi (bio) Peace and Power in Cold War Britain: Media, Movements and Democracy, c. 1945–68. By Christopher R. Hill. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Pp. 320. Hardcover $114. In 1957, soon after the accident at the Windscale nuclear reactor, and amidst a government attempt to downplay the incident, the news program Under Fir…
The Pugwash scientists’ conferences, Cyrus Eaton and the clash of internationalisms, 1954–1961
This paper examines the contest between Canadian American industrialist Cyrus Eaton and the Pugwash scientists’ leadership for influence over the early Pugwash scientists’ conferences. Eaton's activism has generally been dismissed in the historical literature as ineffective, naive and too uncritical of the Soviet Union. This paper argues that he was genuinely committed to international peace and security, that Eaton shared with Pugwash scientists…
Aerial Social Spaces and State Power
This article suggests that aerial networks can be usefully conceptualized as broad "aerial social spaces" that can (and often do) extend, produce, and reproduce state power. They are not easily created: their creation and maintenance require large resources both on land and in the air. The same aerial network can be embodied in multiple aerial social spaces that produce and reproduce state power in different ways. This article highlights two such…
Introduction: Civil aviation in the Global South
International audience
US aid for Thai Civil Aviation, 1947–1959
Thailand's aerial geostrategic importance led the United States to offer a generous air aid programme in the 1950s. The US funded the refurbishment of airfields across the country: the extension and hardening of airstrips, and the construction of new tarmacs, terminal buildings and navigation equipment. They also provided technical training to Thai nationals. The leading US international airline Pan American Airways helped modernize Thai Airways.…
Political science (13 works) · Law (10 works) · Sociology (8 works) · History (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Engineering (6 works) · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Art history (4 works) · Aviation (4 works)