Join us in person or online for a seminar with Professor Christopher Capozzola.
Merchants of Death: The Nye Committee and the Business of the War, 1934–1936
“Merchants of Death” tells the story of the longest and most in-depth U.S. Congressional investigation into the arms trade. Chaired by North Dakota senator Gerald P. Nye, the two-year inquiry explored the influence of the munitions and banking industries over U.S. entry into the First World War—as well as their profits during the war. Situating the investigation in an international context, the talk links these events to new scholarly approaches to the history of U.S. foreign relations, business history, and the politics of populism in the Republican Party.
15 July 2026, 11am AEST
Burwood: C2.05.01
Waurn Ponds: IC1.108
Zoom: Click here.
Christopher Capozzola is the Elting E. Morison Professor of History at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches courses in political and legal history, war and the military, and the history of international migration. He is the author of Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (2008) and Bound by War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America’s First Pacific Century (2020).
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