John Brobst

John Brobst, associate professor, joined the faculty at Ohio University in 2000. Originally from California, he was born and grew up in Livermore, about 30 miles east of San Francisco. He received his B.A. from the University of Kansas, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Brobst specializes in the history of the British Empire and modern international relations. His research and writing focus on problems of imperial defense and grand strategy. He is particularly interested in great power politics in Asia and the Middle East; military thought and theory; Anglo-American relations; and the history of oil and energy security. He is the author of The Future of the Great Game: Sir Olaf Caroe, India’s Independence, and the Defense of Asia (University of Akron Press, 2005), and is currently completing a book about sea power and globalism in the Indian Ocean during the later stages of decolonization in the 1960s and 70s. His articles, essays, and reviews include contributions to Middle Eastern Studies, Orbis, and Geopolitics among a number of other journals, collections, and reference works. He has supervised numerous theses and comprehensive fields in both imperial and international history, and regularly offers graduate seminars on imperialism, world history, and foreign policy analysis. His lecture courses include: Oil, the Persian Gulf, and World Power; Afghan Wars and the Great Game in Asia ; History of Sea Power (with emphasis on the Indo-Pacific context); Churchill’s Britain; Rise of the British Empire; and Fall of the British Empire.