Introducing the FUS Faculty: Fintan Hoey

Associate Professor, History

Ph.D. National University of Ireland
M.A. National University of Ireland

Office: Lowerre Academic Center, Office 8
Phone: +41 91 986 36 39
Email: fhoey@fus.edu

Fintan Hoey is a historian of modern Japan and of U.S.-Japanese relations, with research interests in nuclear proliferation, the Cold War in Asia and American diplomatic history.

His research monograph, Satō, America and the Cold War on U.S.-Japanese diplomatic and security relations during the tenure of Satō Eisaku, Prime Minister of Japan, 1964-1972, was published in 2015. This draws on recently released material from the Japanese Foreign Ministry Archive as well as US archival material and Satō’s diary. The book, the first major study in English, argues that Satō’s foreign policy was not motivated by a slavish adherence to Washington but from a realist appraisal of Japan’s security imperatives.

More recently his research has focused on nuclear proliferation, particularly Japan’s role in the emergence of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its attempts to secure full freedom of action in its pursuit of nuclear power technology. He is a member of several global research collaborations including, the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, the Nuclear Diplomacies collaboration of diplomatic historians and historians of science, and the Constitutional History of the NPT, a project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York which will provide expert briefings to the Treaty’s Review Conference.

In 2019 he was an SNF-funded fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC. He has held research appointments at Kyoto University and Rikkyo University, Tokyo and teaching appointments at Queen’s University Belfast and Maynooth University, Ireland.

In addition to teaching courses related to his research interests, his wider teaching interests include modern France, modern Ireland and the British empire. He is the co-founder and director of the Minor in Postcolonial Studies.

2024-2025 Courses

HIS 100	Western Civilization I: Ancient and Medieval	FALL 2024
This survey course is an introduction to the political, economic, social, and intellectual history of the west from the Neolithic to the voyages of discovery in the sixteenth century. Our knowledge and understanding of the past is contingent and contested. The course explores areas of contestation to give students a better understanding of the forces and events which shaped the ancient and medieval worlds and continue to shape the modern world. (It is recommended that HIS 100 be taken prior to HIS 101.)
HIS 199	Hiroshima: Japan's Nemesis and the World's Bomb	FALL 2024
On the morning of 6 August 1945 an entire city was almost entirely destroyed by an attack from a single plane. How humanity reached such a point of destruction and the ways people have dealt with this tragedy ever since are the focus of this course. Topics to be explored include Japan’s rapid modernization from the nineteenth century and its twentieth century military culture, scientific advances, the difficult decisions of wartime, popular memory and commemoration, Japan’s enduring ‘nuclear allergy’ and its effects on politics and popular culture, the prospect of imminent destruction throughout the Cold War and the continuing diplomatic standoffs regarding the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The course makes use of a variety of sources including texts, original documents, manga, films (including Japanese anime) and other media. Like all First Year Seminars, this course will cultivate the fundamental critical and academic skills necessary for succeeding at the university level.
HIS 273	Race and Empire in the American Experiment	FALL 2024
Two powerful and influential strands have dominated American history from pre-colonial times to the present: Race and Empire. This course uses these themes as lenses through which to view key aspects of U.S. history; the settlement and conquest of America, enslavement, the sectional crisis and the Civil War, the establishment of an overseas empire, efforts to build a multi-racial democracy, and the rapid growth of American power and its rise to global hegemon from the twentieth century up to the present day. (Not open to students who have taken HIS 273 History of the United States)
HIS 101	Western Civilization II: Modern	SPRING 2025
This survey course is an introduction to the political, economic, social, and intellectual history of the west from the scientific revolution to the present. Our knowledge and understanding of the past is contingent and contested. The course explores areas of contestation to give students a better understanding of the forces and events which have shaped the modern world.
HIS 275T	History of Modern Ireland: Union and Dis-union, 1798-1998	SPRING 2025
Ireland has undergone profound social, economic and political changes over the last two centuries. Its history has been largely defined, for better or worse, by its relationship with its larger neighbor, Britain. This course critically examines the contours and effects of this often troubled relationship which can largely be defined as the struggle between union and dis-union, that is, either strengthening or severing the link with Britain. Going beyond these constitutional issues it also examines wider social and cultural changes; the famine and its legacy, the land revolution of the late nineteenth century, emigration, the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy and Ireland’s delayed sexual revolution.
HIS 358W	Global Britishness	SPRING 2025
The concept of ‘Global Britishness’ began as loyalty to the colonial motherland on the part of Britain’s white settler colonies (Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand). This was transformed after the Second World War into a set of uneasy nationalisms by the 1970s. In recent years these ex-colonies have witnessed a re-identification with earlier concepts of Britishness (royal visits, war commemoration) at a time when the very concept of Britishness is perceived to be under threat from Scottish devolution (and possible independence) and Britain’s exit from the European Union. ‘Global Britishness’ presents a fascinating array of competing and intersecting identities across global, imperial and national lines. Students gain a greater understanding and awareness of; the processes and agencies of Britain’s imperial decline; the reactions to this among the various white settler colonies; the differences and similarities between these reactions; the practices of cultural and transnational history; and, contemporary legacies of the British Empire in the settler colonial world. (This writing-intensive course counts towards the Academic Writing requirements.)

Publications:

Books:

Satō, America and the Cold War. US-Japanese Relations, 1964-1972. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Journal Articles:

‘The ‘Conceit of Controllability’: Nuclear diplomacy, Japan’s plutonium reprocessing ambitions and U.S. proliferation fears, 1974-1978.’ History and Technology, 31 no. 1 (2021): 44-66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2021.1882126.

‘Japan and Extended Deterrence. Security and Non-proliferation.’ Journal of Strategic Studies 39, no. 4. (2016): 484-501. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2016.1168010.

‘The Nixon Doctrine and Nakasone Yasuhiro’s Unsuccessful Challenge to Japan’s Defense Policy, 1969-1971.’ The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 19, no. 1 (2012): 52-74. https://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187656112X651308.

Book chapters:

‘Imai Ryūkichi: Japan’s Nuclear Diplomat,’ in Science Diplomacy and its (Postwar) History: A handbook. Edited by Maria Rentetzi. Brepols Publishers, 2025 [in press]

‘How to Make Friends and Alienate People: Japan, Korea, and the U.S. in the Trump Era,’ in Divided America, Divided Korea: The US and Korea During and After the Trump Years. Edited by David P. Fields and Mitchell P. Lerner. Cambridge University Press, 2024.

‘Non-Nuclear Japan? Satō, the NPT, and the US Nuclear Umbrella.’ In Negotiating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Origns of the nuclear order.Edited by Liviu Horovitz, Roland Popp, and Andreas Wenger. London: Routledge, 2017.

Other Publications:

‘Japan and the NPT: From Target to Champion.’ Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, 2020, Carnegie Corporation of New York NPT Constitutional History Consortium. Policy Background Brief.

Books and articles Reviews:

H-Diplo Article Review 1003 on Kitamura. “Runaway Orientalism: MGM’s Teahouse and U.S.-Japanese Relations in the 1950s” and on Nishikawa. “The Origin of the U.S-Japan Dispute over the Whaling Moratorium.” November 2020. https://hdiplo.org/to/AR1003.

H-Diplo Article Review 979 on Aldous. “The Anatomy of Allied Occupation: Contesting the Resumption of Japanese Antarctic Whaling, 1945-52.” September 2020. https://hdiplo.org/to/AR979.

‘Review by Fintan Hoey,’ H-Diplo Roundtable XXI-23 on How to Reach Japan by Subway: America’s Fascination with Japanese Culture, 1945-1965 and on Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America, 13 January 2020, https://hdiplo.org/to/RT21-23.

‘Review by Fintan Hoey,’ H-Diplo Roundtable XXI-19 on Jennifer M. Miller. Cold War Democracy: The United States and Japan, 9 Dec. 2019, https://hdiplo.org/to/RT21-19

‘Review of The Korean War: An international history by Wada Haruki’ International History Review 13, no. 1. Published online 12 September 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2016.1227550.

‘Review of Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism? by Paul Midford’ International History Review 37, no. 5 (2015): 1104-1105 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2015.1057971.

Review of Historical Dictionary of United States-Japanese Relations by John Van Sant, Peter Mauch, and Yoneyuki Sugita. H-US-Japan, H-Net Reviews. August 2009. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=23063.

Works in Progress:

Controlling the Uncontrollable: America’s Failed Quest to Prevent the Nuclear Future, Monograph

Checked Hegemon: U.S. non-proliferation policy and the challenge of the Global South. [peer reviewed article] (2022)

Japan and NPT: Nuclear Weapons and Energy Security, The Constitutional History of the NPT, Carnegie Corporation of New York Research Corporation [book chapter] 2022

Awards and Honors:

FUS Excellence in Teaching award, 2013; 2021

Swiss National Science Fund, Scientific Exchange – Research Visit, research funding, 2019

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, visiting fellow, 2019

Society for Historians of America’s Foreign Relations/Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, Summer Institute on Nuclear Weapons History, 2013, selected participant