Negotiating power and authority in the desert: the Arab Bedouin and the limits of the Ottoman state in Hijaz, 1840–1908

This article explores the techniques and strategies used by Ottoman authorities to control the Bedouin with a specific focus on the province of Hijaz between 1840 and 1908. Using primary sources from the Ottoman and British archives, it argues that the Ottoman Empire developed a ‘politics of negotiation’ towards the tribes in its attempt to secure cities and major pilgrimage and trade routes against tribal attack. The principal agents of the empire who made this negotiated governance possible were the amir of Mecca and the governor of Hijaz. As a result of this policy, imperial authorities had to give significant concessions to the tribes, and they thus incorporated them into the province's imperial order. When the Ottoman economy went through a crisis, as in the 1900s, negotiated governance and order faced great problems.     

John Stuart Mill on the Antipodes: Settler Violence against Indigenous Peoples and the Legitimacy of Colonial Rule

J.S. Mill's support for colonialism and empire has attracted recent critical attention in the context of debates about his status as a modern egalitarian liberal, and liberalism's historical justification for empire. While Mill defended imperialism for most of his life on the grounds that it brought progress and civilization to historically backward peoples, his later correspondence reveals that he became increasingly concerned that settler violence against subordinated populations, notably in New Zealand, India and the West Indies, undermined the civilizing mission. Mill had been a strong advocate for settler societies in Australia and New Zealand, but came to fear that colonial abuses of power over indigenous peoples would vitiate the utilitarian benefits of colonial self‐rule.     

Empire, Region, World: the International Context of Australian Foreign Policy since 1939

What have been the most important factors in international relations for Australian foreign‐policymakers over the last sixty years? Five broad themes stand out: the end of empire; Cold War dependency; the changing nature of security; economic development; and race and national identity. Cumulatively, and often in intertwined ways, these themes have amounted to little short of a revolution in Australia's place in the world since the Second World War. The challenges facing Australians have, as a result, been considerable. The international context in which Liberals have made foreign policy has been reshaping Australia as it has been reshaping the external environment.     

The Anzac Citizen: Towards a History of the RSL

This article examines the early years of the Returned Sailors’and Soldiers’Imperial League of Australia (RSSILA, later RSL). It argues that ideas of citizenship were pivotal to the world view and activism of the RSL as it sought to advance the interests and outlooks of its members. The RSL claimed that its members had served the nation and empire to such an extent that their citizenship status was enhanced, while that of those who had not served was diminished. This philosophy provided the underpinnings and justification for the RSL's campaigns for better pension rights, employment opportunities and access to land, often at the expense of those the RSL believed were of lower civic status through a lack of war service.     

Conservatives Divided: Defending Rhodesia Against Malcolm Fraser 1976-1978

Understanding the conflict between pro- and anti-Rhodesian government parliamentarians is the only way to understand how and why Australia struggled to formulate a coherent Rhodesia policy. It reveals the extent to which Malcolm Fraser had to struggle against his own party in this matter and adds needed nuance to this period. Fraser's opinion that Rhodesia was a racist and immoral project caused a schism in the Coalition parties. Despite Fraser's open antipathy towards Rhodesia, Rhodesia's interests in Australia were largely safeguarded. This reflects the reality that the Liberal and National Country Parties contained sizeable blocs of parliamentarians who openly and publicly saw Rhodesia as a fraternal country, not a dangerous pariah. They did not hold these beliefs passively and actively sought to resist any moves made by Fraser to damage Rhodesia and its interests. By following the development of Fraser's Rhodesia policy in the late 1970s the power of Rhodesia's allies in the Australian parliament becomes clear. Opposing Rhodesia was touted by Fraser as one of the greatest achievements of his government, yet the issue was divisive and caused bitter infighting.     

Facing the Inevitable: Britain's Entry into the European Community and Australia's Policy, 1970‐72

While Australia's response to Britain's 1961‐63 bid to join the European Community has been examined in almost every possible detail, Australian policy towards Britain's 1970‐72 application has drawn very little scholarly attention. This article therefore aims to fill this gap by drawing on newly released archival material from the National Archives of Australia in Canberra and the National Archives in London. In doing so, the article examines the impact of Britain's 1971‐72 application to join the EC on Australian policy and the Anglo‐Australian relations. It argues that while far from provoking the same widespread uproar as the Macmillan government's original application in 1961, Britain's final bid had important political and economic implications for Australian foreign policy.     

Australian‐Asian Sociability,Student Activism,and the University Challenge to White Australia in the 1950s

During the 1950s, staff, students and graduates of Australian universities were increasingly critical of the racial restrictions on immigration, and their activism contributed to a broader government and community reassessment of the White Australia Policy. Personal experiences of cross‐cultural interactions between Australian students and an increasing number of international students from Asia, including those sponsored by the Australian government's Colombo Plan, underpinned the university challenge to immigration policy. Tertiary curriculum offering new academic interpretations of Asian history and decolonisation also contributed to a growing awareness among university‐educated Australians of Asia, and fostered empathy for its peoples. The publications of the Immigration Reform Group extended this critique of White Australia, and were driven by a moral indignation towards a policy that affected individuals personally known to the critics.     

The Engagement Pendulum: Australia’s Alternating Approach to Irregular Migration

This paper examines the Australian federal government’s use of regional engagement to stop irregular migration. It shows that Australia’s policy elites have long debated whether regional cooperation is useful or necessary for stopping irregular migration. The debate among policy elites bears little relationship to the academic and ideological controversy over Australia’s “engagement” with Asia. Rather, this controversy is defined by pragmatism and operates akin to a pendulum, with an action–reaction cycle occurring where governments seek alternative approaches to what they perceive as the failures of their predecessors. This paper shows that the governments who have championed Asian engagement have been no more willing to seek a regional approach to irregular migration than those who seem to downplay engagement. Differing perspectives on regional cooperation is an important and largely under-examined aspect of Australia’s broader national debate about irregular migration. Given the significance of this issue to Australian politics, it also serves as an important case study in the wider context of Australia’s relationship with and attitudes towards the Asia-Pacific.     

The Dead Hand of the Treasury: The Economic and Social Development of the Trucial States, 1948–60

This paper addresses an aspect of British policy in the Trucial States that has received scant scholarly attention. It examines British attempts to promote economic and social development in the Trucial States, and places this policy within the context of British attitudes towards the economic development of the colonial empire. During the 1950s Britain's interest in the Arabian Peninsula expanded, in notable contrast with the rest of the Middle East. One aspect of this expanded role was British efforts to improve the economic and social conditions prior to the discovery of oil in Abu Dhabi in 1958. British officials on the ground were concerned to improve the lot of the population of these impoverished shaikhdoms for a combination of political and strategic and ethical reasons. This article shows that attempts to introduce a modicum of economic and social development in the Trucial States were hindered by the Treasury's refusal to provide adequate funds, and because of inherent problems in finding suitable development projects. Nonetheless, the plans put in place during the 1950s did provide the foundations for subsequent development programmes, which, in turn, drastically expanded as a result of oil wealth.     

Fifty Years of the OECD and Forty Years of Australian Membership

The Country Party leader Jack McEwen said that Australia would join the OECD “over my dead body” and it did not do so until 1971, the year he retired from politics. Since then Australia has taken part in what is a complex “network of networks” linking over 40,000 senior public servants from many of the most influential states via some 200 committees spanning a wide range of policy areas. Yet Australian scholars have paid little attention to the OECD and to its effect upon Australia. Our essay is a first step in remedying this gap. Using both archival sources and interviews with public servants, we examine Australia's reasons for taking up OECD membership and assess its impact on policymaking since, the most obvious of which has been upon policy learning. We also ask about Australia's impact on the OECD.     

The Reappraisal of the White Australia Policy against the Background of a Changing Asia, 1945–67*

This paper is concerned with the way in which Australian policy‐makers approached the problem of “White Australia” in the years 1945–67. It makes extensive use of original archival material to show how Australia's increasing engagement with Asia in the 1950s and 1960s exercised a direct influence on officials within the Department of Immigration. In response to Australia's changing geopolitical circumstances and the international community's increasing hostility towards racism during this period, Immigration Department officials persuaded the government to introduce a series of piecemeal adjustments which were specifically designed to placate Asian and world opinion. Although cautious, these changes nevertheless involved a corresponding reassessment of the policy's racial assumptions. By accepting in the late 1960s that certain Asians were capable of being integrated into the Australian community, policymakers had discarded the previously inviolable belief that all non‐Europeans were unassimilable by virtue of their race. The White Australia Policy, though not entirely defunct by the end of the decade, was nevertheless crumbling under the weight of Australia's new circumstances.     

Uncertain Climate: The Recent History of Drought Policy in Australia

In 2002 Australia experienced widespread drought, with over 70 per cent of the country experiencing serious to severe rainfall deficiencies for the period April to October. During this period images of parched landscapes were frequently shown on television, and the Farm Hand drought appeal launched, with the backing of business, to raise funds to assist drought–affected farmers. Since 1992, Australia has had in place a National Drought Policy based on principles of self–reliance and risk management. This policy reflects the neo–liberal economic policy approach, which has dominated Australian policy since the 1980s. Severe drought tests the will of policy makers to hold to this policy line as agrarian sentiments are stirred and political pressure is brought to bear to change policy settings. This article describes the history of drought policy in Australia and the challenges facing policy makers.     

Attitudes towards German Immigration in South Australia in the post-Second World War Period, 1947-60

Considering the reaction against Germans in Australia during and after the First World War, it is surprising that German immigration to Australia was permitted again soon after the Second World War and even subsidised by the Australian government. Just seven years after the second war fought with Germany within a generation, Australia signed a five-year agreement to permit Germans to immigrate. This article examines the extent of the Australian public's acceptance of this policy during the period from 1947 to 1960. It concentrates on the state of South Australia where some of the earliest settlers in the colony had been of German origin, where their behaviour and achievements had been praised in historical writings about the colony, and where German immigrants may, therefore, have been viewed more positively. Yet there was some suspicion towards and discrimination against Germans in South Australia after 1945. Negative stereotypes of Germans were apparent in comments made by politicians and in press reports. However, these fears were minor and faded even further when more Germans arrived in Australia.     

Transforming an Empire: The Ottoman Empire’s Immigration and Settlement Policies in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

The Ottoman Empire's immigration and settlement policies were redefined in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a result of the population movements caused by the rise of nationalism, wars and territorial losses. With changing demographics and the acceptance of a new citizenship concept by the Tanzimat Edict in 1839, the millet system which had previously secured the multi-ethnic and multi-religious nature of the empire for centuries was challenged. The central argument of the paper is that the Ottoman state responded to these challenges by supporting a liberal migration and settlement policy in an institutionalized and highly complex structure through the pioneering Ottoman Migration Commission. Although certain restrictions later took place due to internal and external factors such as a changing economic, social and political climate, the institutionalized settlement and migration policy proves that a multi-dimensional system was developed in response to the challenges of a dissolving and yet transforming Empire.     

From Heroes to Whingers: Changing Attitudes to British Migrants, 1947 to 1977

Shifts in attitudes towards British migrants from the late 1940s to the late 1970s chart the development of a non-British Australia. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, British migrants were accorded a special prestige based on a belief that Australia and Britain had fought to defend shared imperial British values. Although British migrants protested at hostel conditions, public sympathy remained on the side of the migrants. The rise of the Whingeing Pom stereotype around 1960 reflects the declining weight of British wartime experience and a strengthening of the idea of an independent non-British Australia. The 1970s saw the ending of British preference, and the debate surrounding British activism in Australian trades unions raised the question of whether British migrants were now merely an ethnic group within a multicultural Australia.     

“Leavening British Traditions”: Integration Policy in Australia, 1962–1972

During the period 1962–72 integration replaced assimilation as official government policy in dealing with migrants in Australia. Migrants were now encouraged to incorporate themselves into the dominant Anglo‐Celtic society but also to retain elements of their own culture. The policy emerged in response to the unravelling of Britishness and the incremental dismantling of the White Australia policy as the twin pillars of Australian national identity. The “new nationalism”, which stressed a more independent and home grown Australian image, arose as a possible replacement to British race patriotism towards the end of this period. At the same time whiteness was also broken down.     

帝国研究视角下的苏联解体研究

苏联的建立与演进,似乎都与"帝国"有复杂的关联性。其前身——俄罗斯帝国是典型的陆上帝国。苏联成立后坚持反帝立场,但之后逐渐演变成为一个"社会帝国主义"国家。其标志就是形成了核心—边缘的帝国结构体系,以苏联统治中枢莫斯科及俄罗斯为核心,向外形成了三层边缘地带,其中第一层是苏联的加盟共和国,第二层是中东欧华约成员国,第三层是在亚洲和美洲的经互会成员国。苏联解体实际上是"帝国终结"历史的一个组成部分,是一次迟来的非殖民化,也是人类历史发展的自然进程。这方面的具体原因至少有以下三个:其一,苏联领导人对当时局势的认识及判断和采取的对策及政策;其二,边缘地区民族主义产生了重要的动员和发动作用;最后,"帝国的负担"成为难以承受的现实负担。     

War or peace/war and peace

This article critically discusses several perspectives on the question of war and peace and finds them all inadequate. It argues that empire building induces war, international law is impotent against imperial powers, and national liberation struggles degenerate into local wars. The article argues for a new class perspective which challenges the civilian militarists and Zionists who control U.S. policy.     

Australia and Japan's Return to International Society: Negotiating Allies and the Afro-Asian Bloc, 1952–56

In December 1956, Japan gained membership of the United Nations, marking a significant milestone in Japan's return to international society. In approximately five years since the San Francisco Peace Treaty took effect in April 1952, this had been a difficult diplomatic issue for the Australian government. This article examines how the Australian government dealt with this issue by focusing upon the intersection of Australia's policy towards Japan and Japan's status as a member of the emergent Afro-Asian bloc. This article argues that Japan's engagement with the rest of the bloc was a rising factor in Canberra's consideration of Japan's place in the world, thereby helping revisit the orthodox historiography of Australia–Japan relations during the early Cold War era which often overemphasises rapid growth of bilateral trade.     

“a carefully weighed plan with adequate safeguards for us”: Economic Policy and the Coordination of Australian-US Approaches to Japanese Aggression, 1939-41

The historical narrative of Australia's foreign and defence policy-making during the Pacific War tends to foreground the years 1941–42, characterising them as the turning point when the government realised that Britain alone could no longer protect Australia's regional security interests and turned to the United States of America for its salvation. This article makes a contribution to the alternative view, arguing that Australia was looking to the US well before Prime Minister John Curtin's famous “looks to America” proclamation. It does so with a focus on Australia's thinking and policy towards the engagement of the US in the years 1939-41, arguing that the coordination of its economic policy with the US, rather than seeking insight into high-level strategic planning, offered the nation the greatest opportunity to tie its security interests in the Asia-Pacific region with those of the US. In exploring the role of economic policy in Australia's preparation for war, this article offers new insight into the maturation of Australia's foreign policy apparatus.