The Anti Empire Project with Justin Podur

After the Cossack Coup, a power struggle between rivals leads to Reza Khan rising to the top. He defangs an American financial mission, jails and executes his rivals, plunders the tribes, makes a personal bank, and becomes not only Shah, but in Gholi Majd’s words, “the largest private landowner… in all likelihood in the recorded … <a href="https://podur.org/2026/04/02/interwar-8-the-rise-of-the-first-reza-shah-pahlavi/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Interwar 8: The rise of the first Reza Shah Pahlavi"</span></a>

The 1919 Anglo-Persian Agreement made every Persian government that followed unviable. Britain wanted Iran to be a colony, but couldn’t find a viable collaborator in the Qajjar Shahs or the Majlis. So, in 1921, they used one of their favorite moves: they organized a coup to overthrow a government they had installed and supported. The … <a href="https://podur.org/2026/03/12/interwar-7-reza-khan-and-the-cossack-coup-of-1921/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Interwar 7: Reza Khan and the Cossack Coup of 1921"</span></a>

Iran’s Constitutional Revolution was in 1905, but the British are there and bent on colonizing it. The struggles of the last of the Qajjar Shahs, the British occupation during WWI, and the British imposition of the hated Anglo-Persian agreement of 1919, which no Iranian government can survive…

In the aftermath of the Easter Rising of 1916, the Irish Revolutionaries regrouped. We trace their path through armed struggle against Britain, negotiation, the formation of the Dail and its role. The larger than life characters including Michael Collins and events like Bloody Sunday. How England’s first colony fought the Empire between the world wars.

In the early morning of January 3, 2026, the US bombed Venezuela and kidnapped its president and its first lady. As of Day 1 of the war, Venezuela’s government is intact and popular mobilizations are calling for their president’s return. Trump has said that the US will run Venezuela and take its oil. Some insights … <a href="https://podur.org/2026/01/04/aer-153-venezuela-war-begins-with-maduros-kidnapping/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "AER 153: Venezuela War Begins with Maduro’s Kidnapping"</span></a>

Our last episode of 2025. Did you know that Amanullah’s decision to wage war for Afghanistan’s independence from the British Empire had everything to do with Amritsar and the struggle underway in India in 1919? Some details on this war that you may not have heard, including the British besieging Peshawar, displacing whole towns full … <a href="https://podur.org/2025/12/28/interwar-4-the-anglo-afghan-war-of-1919-amanullah-wins-independence/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Interwar 4: The Anglo-Afghan War of 1919: Amanullah wins Independence"</span></a>

Using Anita Anand’s book, The Patient Assassin, among other sources, we tell the story of India from 1919 to the 1920s, including the massacre at Amritsar, the Malabar Uprising of 1921, Bhagat Singh, Gandhi, and of course Udham Singh. Ghadar and the Indian revolutionaries. We won’t be back to India again until the 1930s, so … <a href="https://podur.org/2025/11/29/interwar-3-india-1919-massacre-at-amritsar-uprising-in-malabar/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Interwar 3: India 1919: Massacre at Amritsar, Uprising in Malabar…"</span></a>

1919 was the year of strikes in North America. How general strikes in Winnipeg and Seattle shook the North American rulers, even though both were contained.

Jon Elmer joins. We discuss the beginning of the third Ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Reading the first two chapters of Michael Hudson’s Superimperialism, we study the transformation of the world financial system after World War I. That transformation is driven by a surprising decision by the US to insist on repayment of its loans to its allies, which in turn leads the allies (UK and France) to insist on … <a href="https://podur.org/2025/10/11/interwar-1919-1931-episode-1the-looting-system/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Interwar 1919-1931 episode 1:The Looting System"</span></a>

A final roundup of critics of the Treaty of Versailles, including some big names.

Yves Engler is a lifelong Palestine activist – fighting Canada’s complicity in the Gaza genocide – who is running for leadership of Canada’s New Democratic Party. We talk about the platform of policies that Yves is presenting in the run for the nomination, including Land Back, Anticolonization, Anti-Imperialism, and Socialism.

The second-last episode on the Treaty of Versailles 1919 is about Keynes’s critique of the treaty, the Economic Consequences of the Peace. What he got right, what he got wrong, critics of him at the time, and the impact of his book on the way the Interwar period unfolded.

Was the treaty too hard on Germany? German, English, and American reactions after 1919.

Details of how Ataturk foiled the imperialists’ final plans to partition Anatolia. Once he secured Turkey, he modernized it and it became a model that other Central Asian countries tried to emulate (with varying degrees of success). Here’s why this secular leader is still revered in Turkey a century later.

On November 2, 1917, England’s foreign secretary sent a letter to an English Baron, declaring that the land of Palestine, which was in the process of being taken militarily from the Ottoman Empire by England, would be given to the Jewish people as their homeland. Known to history as the Balfour Declaration, the first draft … <a href="https://podur.org/2025/08/16/civ-1919-treaty-of-versailles-10-england-gives-palestine-to-the-zionists/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Civ 1919 – Treaty of Versailles 10: England gives Palestine to the Zionists"</span></a>

Carl Zha joins for our occasional Kung Fu Yoga series where we talk about India and China. Trump’s slapped new tariffs on India and given China another break. We go back to the Independence era, talk about Import Substitution Industrialization vs Export-Led Growth, the Chip War, the short India-Pakistan war a few months ago, and … <a href="https://podur.org/2025/08/14/aer-150-kung-fu-yoga-with-carl-zha-on-the-new-trump-tariffs/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "AER 150: Kung Fu Yoga with Carl Zha on the new Trump Tariffs"</span></a>