Mesrob Vartavarian
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Mesrob Vartavarian
Mesrob Vartavarian

Mesrob Vartavarian obtained a BA and MA in History at UCLA and a PhD in History at the University of Cambridge. He began his career as a scholar of military labor markets in colonial South and Southeast Asia but has since shifted his research focus to African state formation, ethnic conflict, and elite politics. Vartavarian uses an interdisciplinary approach in his writings, combining historical methods with political economy, anthropology, and comparative sociological theory. He has published numerous articles in academic journals and is the author of a forthcoming monograph on the history of wealth concentration in South Africa with Ohio University Press. Vartavarian has held a visiting fellowship at Cornell University and has taught at the University of Southern California, Harvard University, and Tufts University. He is currently completing a visiting lectureship at the University of California, San Diego and beginning work on a new book project comparing the consolidation of authoritarian regimes in Uganda and Rwanda. In addition to academic publishing, Vartavarian writes numerous op-eds for digital media and is frequently interviewed by African studies think tanks.

 

Publications

Monographs:

  • “Privileged Minorities: A History of Wealth Concentration in South Africa” (Athens: Ohio University Press, forthcoming).

Journal Articles, Review Essays, and Chapters in Edited Volumes:

  • “Oligarchs and Enforcers: Political Economies of State Violence in Kenya, c. 1900-1990.” In Myles Osborne and Charles Thomas, eds., Colonial Legacies in African Militaries (Athens: Ohio University Press, chapter submitted for review).
  • “Military Instrumentality in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe.” The Journal of African History 65, no. 2 (2024): 279-281.
  • “Letting Subalterns Speak: Localising the Sharpeville Massacre.” Journal of Southern African Studies 50, no. 1 (2024): 185-187.
  • “Praetorian Variations: The United States and Military Politics in Thailand and the Philippines.” Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia 37 (2024).
  • “Reversible Comparisons: Policing Criminality and Criminal Policing in South Africa.” Sociology Lens 37, no. 2 (2024): 301-309.
  • “Entangled Oligarchies: Structure, Agency and Rent Seeking in South Africa.” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 93, no. 4 (2023): 562-578.
  • “Commanding Disorder: Rebellion and Repression in Apartheid South Africa.” Journal of Southern African Studies 49, no. 2 (2023): 329-336.
  • “Black Soldiers of the Apartheid State: Pawns, Agents, Neither or Both?” Journal of Southern African Studies 48, no. 5 (2022): 943-944.“Evolving Bilateralisms: US Security Partnerships in Northeast Asia.” The Journal of Asian Studies 81, no. 1 (2022), 199-205.
  • “Circulating Soldiers: Asian Military Labor across the American Pacific.” The Journal of Asian Studies 80, no. 4 (2021): 1119-1124.
  • “Disaggregating Colonialism: Recent Trends in Philippine Muslim Studies.” The Journal of Asian Studies 80, no. 1 (2021): 227-238.
  • “Warriors and Colonial Wars in Muslim Philippines Since 1800.” In Farish A. Noor and Peter Carey, eds., Racial Difference and the Colonial Wars of 19th Century Southeast Asia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021): 243-271.
  • “Praetorian Network Politics in the Philippines.” International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter 84 (2019): 14-15.
    “Parsing People’s War: Militias and Counterinsurgencies in the Philippines.” Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia 25 (2019), also published in Pavin Chachavalpongpun, ed., At the Crossroads: Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia (Kyoto: Kyoto University Center for Southeast Asia, 2021): 361-363.
  • “Warriors and States: Military Labour in Southern India, circa 1750-1800.” Modern Asian Studies 53, no. 2 (2019): 313-338.
  • “Imperial Ambiguities: The United States and Philippine Muslims.” South East Asia Research 26, no. 2 (2018): 132-146.
  • “Rodrigo Duterte and the Philippine Presidency: Rupture or Cyclicity?” International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter 80 (2018): 10-11.
  • “Pacification and Patronage in the Maratha Deccan, 1803-1818.” Modern Asian Studies 50, no. 6 (2016): 1749-1791.
  • “An Open Military Economy: The British Conquest of South India Reconsidered, 1780-1799.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 57, no. 4 (2014): 486-510.
  • “Warriors and the Company State in South India, 1799-1801.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37, no. 2 (2014): 212-224

Book Reviews:

  • Paul Naylor. From Rebels to Rulers: Writing Legitimacy in the Early Sokoto State. Journal of West African History (forthcoming).Samar Al-Bulushi. War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror. International Affairs 101, no. 3 (2025): 1159-1161.
  • Michaela Collord. Wealth, Power, and Authoritarian Institutions: Comparing Dominant Parties and Parliaments in Tanzania and Uganda. International Affairs 100, no. 6 (2024): 2692-2694.Mbongiseni Buthelezi and Peter Vale, eds., State Capture in South Africa: How and Why It Happened. International Affairs 100, no. 3 (2024): 1344-1346.

    Michael Cardo, Harry Oppenheimer: Diamonds, Gold and Dynasty. Business History (digitally published, 2024, issue publication forthcoming).

    Jennifer M. Miller, Cold War Democracy: The United States and Japan. Social Science Japan Journal 25, no. 2 (2022): 373-376.

  • David P. Fields, Foreign Friends: Syngman Rhee, American Exceptionalism, and the Division of Korea. The Journal of Asian Studies 81, no. 1 (2022): 216-217.
    Reo Matsuzaki, Statebuilding by Imposition: Resistance and Control in Colonial Taiwan and the Philippines. Journal of American-East Asian Relations 28, no. 4 (2021): 383-386.
  • David Bourchier, Illiberal Democracy in Indonesia: The Ideology of the Family State. International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter 76 (2017): 23.
  • Elizabeth A. Eldredge, Kingdoms and Chieftains of Southeastern Africa: Oral Traditions and History, 1400-1830. African Studies Quarterly 16, no. 2 (2016): 104-105.
  • Moses E. Ochonu, Colonialism by Proxy: Hausa Imperial Agents and Middle Belt Consciousness in Nigeria. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies 39, no. 1 (2016): 148-150.

Other Publications:

  • “Bipartisan Core, Multiparty Periphery: South African Politics in a Post-Majoritarian Era.” Democracy in Africa, July 17, 2024.
  • “Extrajudicial Policing in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Democracy in Africa, June 20, 2024.
  • “Oligarchic Dialectics: Power Elites in Contemporary South Africa.” Democracy in Africa, April 19, 2024.
  • “Enforcing Alliances: Containing China in East Asia.” Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia, April 2, 2021.
  • “Structure and Agency in Thai Military Politics.” Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia, December 12, 2020.
  • “Thongchai Winichakul and the Chronopolitics of Memory in Contemporary Thailand.” Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia, November 3, 2020.
  • “Populism Blindsided: America, Duterte, and the Philippine Military.” The Diplomat, June 11, 2020.
  • “Contagion and the Thai State.” Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia, April 5, 2020.
  • “Siam Patched: A Potential Solution to Thailand’s Current Political Impasse.” Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia, February 27, 2020.
  • “Limited Democracy: Elites and Subalterns in Contemporary Philippine Politics.” Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia, February 15, 2020.
  • “A Tale of Two Warlords: Andal Ampatuan, Rodrigo Duterte, and the Philippines’ Mutating Politics.” Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia, November 29, 2019.

 

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