Asserting State Authority through Environmental Monitoring: Venezuela in the Post‐Gómez Era, 1935–1945

In Venezuela, the task of consolidating the central state fell to Presidents Eleazar López Contreras (1936–1941) and Isaías Medina Angarita (1941–1945). This meant asserting fiscal control over the oil companies operating in the state of Zulia as well as appeasing restive working and middle classes. The government sought to exert power over both by moving towards a system of environmental monitoring of the petroleum industry. López Contreras was reluctant to apply real political pressure to the companies and accordingly environmental monitoring tended to be lax. Medina Angarita personally visited zulianos and made fiery speeches designed to assuage Venezuelan pride. What is more, he allowed the press to denounce the companies for their environmental abuse. Through his environmental monitoring efforts, Medina demonstrated to the companies that the state was a force to be reckoned with.     

后马哈蒂尔时代中马关系展望

后马哈蒂尔时代的中马友好关系不会出现逆转 ,主要根据是 :马来西亚新领导班底变动不大 ,将继续执行对华友好政策 ;中马关系具备继续发展的良好基础 ,继续发展对华友好关系符合马来西亚的国家利益 ;目前两国之间存在的问题不会成为后马哈蒂尔时代两国关系发展的重大障碍 ;一系列促进措施将产生积极效应。     

Immigration and Criminality: Australia's Post‐War Inquiries

The relationship between immigration and crime rates has long been a topic of robust debate in criminology and sociology, especially for scholars of the United States. Researchers in those fields have highlighted divergent factors to explain high arrest rates including the presence of ethnic gangs, media reporting, racial profiling, over‐policing of immigrant communities, and wider issues of social dislocation brought about by migration. By contrast, historians have given little consideration to the topic. This lack of historical investigation is particularly curious in studies of Australia's post‐war immigration given the political importance of the issue at the time. Immigration and criminality — or more precisely, whether immigrants committed more crime or worse crimes than the Australian‐born population — became a prominent topic of media coverage and political interest in the early 1950s. In fact, the question of migrants’ criminality was so important that it was the subject of the first research inquiries ever ordered by the Department of Immigration. Our article examines this research, explaining the impetus for the inquiries, their findings, and their historical significance. We conclude by outlining how this topic can illuminate new areas of inquiry in immigration history.     

Bringing the Revolution to the Countryside: Rural Health Programmes as State‐Building in Post‐1952 Bolivia

Bolivia's Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, MNR) took power in April 1952 via a popular social revolution. After 1952, the party implemented state‐sponsored modernisation projects, including extending rural public health programmes. The MNR used health programmes to change rural practices, cultivate political loyalty, and expand the state's political power. Yet rural indigenous communities were hardly passive recipients of these programmes. These communities often requested government services, and they borrowed the MNR's own political rhetoric to position themselves as worthy of state attention. Public health programmes increased access to rural health care, but they also allowed state officials and rural communities to negotiate the MNR's authority.