A "Civilised Amateur": Edgar Holt and His Life in Letters and Politics

Now largely forgotten, Edgar George Holt (1904–1988) was a leading journalist and public relations officer in the middle decades of twentieth–century Australia. This article examines his prominent journalistic career in the 1930s and 1940s, his presidency of the Australian Journalists' Association, and his work as the Liberal Party of Australia's public relations officer from 1950 to the early 1970s. The article explores the evolution of his cultural and political views, considering how a literary aesthete and poet came to be at the forefront of the 1944 newspaper strike and then an important player in Australian conservative machine politics and the emerging industry of political public relations.     

The 1922 Anglo-Iraq Treaty: A Moment of Crisis and the Role of Britain’s Man on the Ground

The article offers a fresh perspective on the critical significance of ratifying the Treaty of Alliance between Great Britain and Irak (the 1922 Anglo-Iraq Treaty) for British policy on Iraq, and for that country’s evolution from mandated territory to independent state. In contrast with existing accounts, it considers the treaty primarily in the context of domestic tensions over Britain’s future role. The strength of the ‘Quit Mesopotamia (subsequently Iraq)’ movement in Britain meant that Iraqi failure to ratify could have led to British withdrawal from Iraq, with far-reaching implications for the region. The article also reveals for the first time the considerable contribution to securing ratification made by the British representative on the ground, the High Commissioner, Sir Henry Dobbs. He took full advantage of distance to make decisions and act in line with his own, not London’s approach. The source for these new perspectives is Sir Henry Dobbs’ recently discovered letters and private papers—never previously available to historians.     

SIR JOHN BOWRING: THE IMPERIAL ROLE OF A LIFELONG RADICAL

Sir John Bowring was active in a number of different fields in British domestic affairs until he got into financial difficulties following the recession of the late 1840s. He then accepted from Palmerston the life-line of the post of consul in Canton, though he didn't enjoy it much. In 1854 he became governor of Hongkong, where his liberal ideas brought him into conflict with the local expatriate community. He played a key role in the events leading to the First Opium War, but perhaps his most positive achievement was the so-called Bowring treaty with Siam, which changed that country's commercial orientation for a hundred and fifty years.     

Crossing the Line: Richard Casey Re‐Visited

Sir John Kerr's dismissal of the Whitlam government ensured that he became Australia's most controversial Governor‐General and the one seen to have taken vice‐regal powers to their limit. While this is understandable, Kerr's notoriety has obscured a wider appreciation of the significant activism and even intrusiveness which characterised Richard Casey's 1965–1969 term as Governor‐General. This article draws on Casey's extensive diaries to paint a broader picture of the man and to examine his activist view of the role. Casey's version of the vice‐regal role is almost certainly at the extreme end of any Australian vice‐regal activity spectrum, and is consistent with patterns in his overall career.     

Britain and the abdication of Reza Shah

On the eve of the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in the Second World War, Sir Reader Bullard, the British minister in Tehran, urged on his government the desirability of removing the Iranian ruler, Reza Shah, from office. Association with the ‘universally detested’ shah, whom he described as a ‘greedy ignorant savage’, was detrimental to Britain's interests and its war effort. In the weeks that followed the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran, Bullard continued to press for and to shape the ultimate British decision to force Reza Shah to abdicate and go into exile. Yet, this was not always Bullard's view of Britain's relationship with the Iranian ruler. When he presented his credentials 20 months earlier, Bullard described it as his ‘urgent duty’ to win Reza Shah's favour. Nor did Bullard's insistence that Britain depose the Shah initially find favour with the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, his Middle East staff at the Foreign Office, or with Churchill. This article traces the evolution of Bullard's own view of Reza Shah and the developments that led the Foreign Office, initially eager to win Reza Shah's favour and even ready to offer Reza Shah a ‘substantial bribe’ for his cooperation, to take steps to topple Reza Shah from the throne.     

Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Activities in Iran during the Second World War

This article deals with the exile of Husayn ibn Ali, ex-sharif of Mecca and ex-king of the Hijaz, in Cyprus (1925–1930). It was not politics, but the adversities of everyday life that shaped the ex-king’s stay in the British colony. Loss of prestige, estrangement, uncertainty about the future, lawsuits, financial problems and the death of his wife contributed to failing health which ultimately led to his relocation to Amman. A special, perhaps unique feature of Husayn’s enforced residence in the island is that the power which exiled him also granted him asylum. This article examines his living conditions, experience with and image in the local community, relations with his sons as well as his dealings with British authorities. In this way the progressive isolation and marginalization of an ex-monarch in exile becomes evident.     

Legitimite et droit de resistance au xxe siecle: La conscience religieuse et la guerre civile espagnole

SUMMARY

In the early nineteenth century, English common law did not recognize absolute slavery within Britain's borders. Nevertheless, slavery did exist in a number of British colonies. In 1807, thanks to the impassioned efforts of the Anti-Slavery Society, the British Parliament made the slave trade illegal. The Slavery Abolition Bill was passed by both Houses of Parliament and it received royal assent on 29 August 1833, but it did not come into force until 1 August 1834. On that date slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire. Yet, despite this ban, there were many exceptions to its automatic application throughout the imperial possessions. A loyal servant of the Crown, the colonial judge Sir John Jeremie (1795–1841), conducted a personal campaign against slavery and racism in the colonies of the British Empire. His reflections, based on the reality of daily colonial life, offered a technical rather than doctrinaire contribution to the success of the anti-slavery cause. Jeremie was to pay a high price for his ideas, however, owing to deep-rooted prejudices and the strong economic influence of the powerful caste of slave traders. His Four Essays on Colonial Slavery was published in 1831. This work had considerable influence on British parliamentary debates, and it was strongly attacked by supporters of slavery. As a jurist and legal practitioner, during his cursus honorum (as lawyer, colonial judge and ultimately his appointment as Governor of Sierra Leone), Jeremie brought a practical perspective in writings to the debates which animated the Westminster Parliament, even after the approval of the Abolition Act. Despite the slave trade being abolished in the British Empire, slavery per se continued to be legal in some form for many decades to come. Hence, the issue of slavery continued to be a subject with which Jeremie was associated for the remainder of his life. Another interesting historical source is Jeremie's correspondence with Members of Parliament and the British government. This constitutes a lively exchange with London and testifies to the enlightened and progressive foreign policy vision of this active member of the Anti-Slavery Society. Sir John Jeremie was also interested in migration and integration-related issues, as can be seen from primary sources such as letters and dispatches. The wide variety of his correspondence bears testament to the battle he fought until his death.     

The Impact of the Dardanelles Campaign on British Policy Towards the Arabs: How Gallipoli Shaped the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence

In 1915, Britain negotiated a deal to persuade the Arabs to join the Allies in the fight against the Ottomans. The Hussein-McMahon correspondence between the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Arthur Henry McMahon, and Sharif Hussein of Mecca was the vehicle for that negotiation. In exchange for opposing the Ottomans, Sharif Hussein demanded an Arab independent area that stretched from the Mediterranean to modern day Iraq and from the Indian Ocean to Syria. The British accepted. Elie Kedourie's argument that McMahon was influenced by the Ottoman army deserter, Muhammad al-Faruqi, has thus far provided historians with the primary detailed reasoning for the British acceptance of Hussein's demands. This article will suggest that insufficient emphasis has been given to the failure of the Allied campaign at Gallipoli, which was a significant reason behind the British desire to negotiate a deal with the Arabs.     

F.L. McDougall and the Origins of the FAO

This article evaluates the role of Frank Lidgett McDougall, Australian economist, businessman and public servant, in the creation of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). It traces McDougall's development from an advocate of preferential trade within the British Empire to his embrace of a broader, more internationalist, concept of nutrition. By the mid-1930s, McDougall's advocacy of policies to improve nutrition worldwide through "marrying health and agriculture" led to the Australian government's advocacy of such policies in the League of Nations. McDougall was successful in persuading Australian policy makers that proposals to improveworldwide nutritional levels were also in Australia's best interest, by increasing demand for Australian agricultural exports. Finally, McDougall's significant personal role in the establishment of the FAO is assessed as the culmination of his career as a major behind-the-scenes architect of public policy.     

“Bordering on Treason”? Sir Raphael Cilento and Pre‐Second World War Fascism in Australia

Sir Raphael Cilento died on 16 April 1985 at the age of ninety‐two. The notice in the Canberra Times spoke of Cilento's “worldwide” reputation in tropical medicine, his contribution to the public health service in Queensland, and his role with the United Nations in the immediate post‐war years. In short, he was an “eminent son of Australia”. But Sir Raphael Cilento's halo has been tarnished by his persistent eugenicist beliefs and his later association with the anti‐Semitic League of Rights. There were also lingering allegations and rumours about his apparent pre‐war association with Fascism. Without the evidentiary “smoking gun”, this association has occasionally been alluded to by scholars but never fully examined. Drawing on an unreleased, previously classified security file, this article addresses this question in Cilento's life. Through an examination of what the security service and military intelligence knew of Cilento's activities, the article argues that Cilento was at best an active fellow traveller and at worst a card‐carrying Fascist who narrowly escaped internment.     

Jan Christian Smuts (1870–1950) in Context: An Answer to Mazower and Morefield

This article engages with the recent scholarship of Mark Mazower and Jeanne Morefield regarding the South African and Commonwealth statesman Jan Christian Smuts (1870–1950), and in particular with their contention that Smuts was preoccupied with issues of racial superiority, and that this was his main motivator in matters of politics, both internationally and domestically. However, during his lifetime Smuts did not see the ‘Native question’ in the form in which it manifested from the 1950s onwards. It is therefore unfair and inaccurate to over-emphasise the racial question when writing about Smuts. Any historical account of Smuts must keep at least one eye on what Smuts could not have foreseen and must place Smuts in the context of his own time. Progression from smaller to greater wholes – one white nation instead of two language sections; a united South Africa instead of divided colonies and republics; membership of self-governing Dominions in a single British Commonwealth, and membership of international organisations, in particular the League of Nations, and later the United Nations – these were the ends to which Smuts’ energies were unreservedly devoted throughout his career. This is the correct lens through which to view Smuts’ liberal credentials.     

Post‐war Iraq: an assessment

Sir Terence Clark is a Council Member of the Society. He retired from the Diplomatic Service after a distinguished career spent mainly in the Middle East, where he was Ambassador to Iraq and Oman. He is the author of many articles in specialist journals and co‐author of Oman in Time (2001). On 18 June 2003, Sir Terence, together with Sir Harold Walker, Chairman of the Society, spoke to the Society about the situation in Iraq as it then appeared. The following is an edited and updated version of Sir Terence's talk.     

‘This is a Prison…A Death in Life’: Reza Shah’s troubled exile on the Island of Mauritius

Reza Shah, the feared and powerful master of Iran for nearly two decades, spent the last years of his life in lonely exile, on the island of Mauritius, then in South Africa. His life in exile was hardly a happy one. The place and conditions of his exile were dictated not by himself but by the British, and the relationship between the two remained uneasy. Britain’s handling of Reza Shah – the degree and freedom and choice they were prepared to allow him and his family – were determined by the exigencies of war. Reza Shah sought to loosen the bonds of British control. In Tehran, his son and successor, Mohammad Reza Shah, also played a role. He used what leverage he had with the British to help ease the conditions of his father’s exile, while he endeavored to protect Iran’s interests under a difficult foreign occupation. The push-and-pull of cross-purposes entailed by this triangular relationship defined Reza Shah’s life in exile in both Mauritius and Johannesburg. This article examines the Mauritian period of his exile.     

A Tale of Two Galloways: Notes on the Early History of UNRWA and Zionist Historiography

A famous quote, ‘Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die’, attributed to an UNRWA official called ‘Ralph Galloway’, is examined. The real author was Lt. General Sir Alexander Galloway, who was briefly an UNRWA official in Jordan during 1951–52. Galloway's career is reviewed along with the circumstances of his brief tenure with UNRWA. He clashed with the Jordanian government over control of the organization during a period of economic crisis and was eventually fired at their request. Galloway's statement was made to visiting American clergy but Zionist writers recopying earlier sources lost Galloway's identity. The historiography of the quote is discussed along with the implications of Galloway's true identity for understanding the history of UNRWA.     

Resisting Homosexual Law Reform in Britain in the 1950s: the Passions of Earl Winterton*

The Sixth Earl Winterton was an eccentric who is too easily dismissed as a homophobe and bigoted critic of the reforms proposed in the Wolfenden Report. But his outbursts in the Parliament against homosexuality point to his personal concerns for British masculinity and to an alternative understanding of masculinity that has received scant attention in the assessment of gay law reforms initiated by Wolfenden. Sociologists insist that the main function of homophobia is the maintenance of heterosexuality and patriarchal homo‐society. In this article I examine Winterton's arguments in their historical context, not to understand “homosexualism” which affronted him, but for what they say between the lines about British manliness, identity, intimacy and friendship. Winterton's is one version of a masculine self that experienced being cut adrift and betrayed by the cultural and political shifts which the Wolfenden Report both signified and embodied. I think now, after studying the history of sex, we should try to understand the history of friendship, or friendships. That history is very, very important (Michel Foucault, 1982). 1     

Russian hegemony and Islamic resistance: Ideology and political organization in Dagestan 1800–1930

Administrative reforms within the Ottoman bureaucracy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries resulted in many educated men joining the civil service. Süleyman Nazîf's father served in the Ottoman power structure for many years, but Süleyman Nazîf himself, despite being appointed to important political posts, gave them up to continue his career as a poet, writer, journalist and patriotic political commentator. Like many high-ranking Ottomans, he was exiled to Malta by the British after Turkey's defeat in the First World War. Süleyman Nazîf has also left an indelible mark on the literary milieu of his time because of his ready wit and wry humour.     

Reza Shah’s journey into exile

On September 16, 1941, three weeks after British and Soviet troops invaded Iran in the Second World War and occupied the country, Reza Shah abdicated the throne in favor of his son, quit Iranian soil and boarded a British ship to go into exile. The British refused to allow Reza Shah to choose his own place of exile (South America) and sent him to the island of Mauritius. This article examines British thinking that resulted in the choice of Mauritius as the place of exile. It traces Reza Shah’s journey across Iran as he prepared to leave the country; details the composition of the large party of family and staff that accompanied him; provides an account of Reza’s Shah’s reminiscences and reflections at this difficult and emotion-laden moment when he was forced to surrender power, and describes the ‘stooped and aged man’ he had become. It ends with the arrival of the ship carrying Reza Shah and the royal party in Mauritius.     

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and the Turks

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was a pioneer of higher education for the Muslims of India after political power passed to the British in the nineteenth century. He was a leader who foresaw with clarity that Hindus and Muslims were bound to seek separate national destinies after the British left India. After the collapse of their own empire, the Indian Muslims aligned themselves with the Ottoman Turks and Sir Syed therefore deliberately chose Turkish models for educational, cultural and even sartorial reform. He was loyal to British rule in India mainly because, though it subdued all Indians, it simultaneously prevented the Hindu domination of Muslims.     

UNDERSTANDING JAPANESE DEMOCRACY IN A POPULIST AGE

In this article, Sir David Warren, who was British Ambassador to Japan from 2008 to 2012, lays out the historical background to modern Japan, its political and economic structures (and international relationships); explores why we tend not to think of Japan as affected by the populism that we see in other Western democracies; and asks why Japan still presents itself as such a ‘different’ country.     

Judicial Interaction on the Latham Court: A Quantitative Study of Voting Patterns on the High Court 1935-1950

This article examines voting patterns in two sub-periods of the Latham Court (1935-1940 and 1940-1950), where voting is defined as a decision (and associated judgements) by the Justices participating in the disposition of a particular case. There are two main findings. First, from 1935 to 1940 there was a clear four-Justice core consisting of Justices Sir George Rich, Sir Owen Dixon, Herbert Vere Evatt and Sir Edward McTiernan. Over this period, both Chief Justice Sir John Latham and Justice Sir Hayden Starke were outside the core. Second, with the retirement of Justice Evatt, and appointment of Justice Sir Dudley Williams in 1940, the decision-making structure of the Court changed. From 1940 to 1950 there was a loose five-Justice core consisting of Chief Justice Latham, Justices Rich, Dixon, McTiernan and Williams with Justice Starke on the outside. The article argues that observed voting patterns can be explained in terms of personal relationships and ideological differences between the Justices.