Negotiating the caliphate: British responses to pan-Islamic appeals, 1914–1924

This paper considers two aspects of historiography about the 1967 Arab–Israeli War – American and Soviet foreign policy in the region – to better appreciate the Soviet role in the outbreak of hostilities, as well as how the war concretized the US–Israeli ‘special relationship’ and weakened American–Arab relations. Relying especially on research from the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library and Foreign Relations of the United States, this paper argues that Soviet officials had little interest in pursuing measures to prevent war during the pre-war crisis because the situation promised to undermine American interests in the region.     

Australia and the Baltic States, 1919–1945

Praised by international organizations, Estonia and Slovenia have long been considered among the most successful post-communist states. Estonia quickly transformed itself into one of the most liberal economies in the world, whereas Slovenia opted for a social justice-oriented market economy. Still, the roots of their success coincide in that consensus played a crucial role. We argue that the public sphere was never as repressed in Estonia and Slovenia during the communist period as it was elsewhere. Distinct national identities continued to be formed and re-formed by intellectuals during the decades of communist rule, who assumed roles as political leaders when the transition started. Consensus based on these national identities legitimized reform policies for the entire decade of the 1990s.     

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.     

Discordant Allies: Trans-Tasman Relations in the Aftermath of the ANZUS Treaty, 1951–1955

Contrary to popular belief, the conclusion of the 1951 ANZUS Treaty did little to encourage an immediate closer political relationship between Australia and New Zealand. The Tasman powers disagreed on major strategic issues and cooperation was minimal (and in some cases entirely absent). Focusing on the development of trans-Tasman relations between 1951 and 1955, this article examines Australian and New Zealand views pertaining to the scope and implementation of the ANZUS Treaty, proposals for the Five Power Staff Agency in Southeast Asia, the “United Action” proposal during the 1954 Indochina Crisis and the “Operation Oracle” project during the 1954–1955 Quemoy–Matsu Crisis. This article advances the conclusion that Australia and New Zealand mainly disagreed on these issues due to competing views about their respective political relationships with the United States and Britain. In other words, in the immediate post-treaty period, closer trans-Tasman political relations were ultimately hindered by strong divisions over accepting the United States instead of Britain as the cornerstone of their respective foreign policies.     

The German Question and the International Order, 1943–48

In this article, I address two salient issues in IR trust research: first, I introduce a longitudinal, content analysis to measure foreign policy trust. Second, I provide an in-depth analysis of how recent crises affected German political elites’ trust of the United States. I begin with a brief conceptual sketch of foreign policy trust and argue that treating it as a trusting discourse is a useful way to bridge the micro–macro gap. Next, I introduce a content analysis to measure trust, present coding rules and discuss advantages and problems of the approach. The empirical section consists of data generated from coding German Bundestag speeches and newspaper op-eds from 2000 through 2014. By disaggregating the data to specify who trusts whom and regarding which issues, I propose the following: First, there is a significant decline in trust among the traditionally pro-American German center-right politicians. Second, there is a steady decline in trust in the United States as a state entity, as opposed to strongly fluctuating trust in different U.S. presidents. Third, the NSA crisis directly affected German elites’ trust in the bilateral security partnership, an area where trust was stable even during the Bush presidency.     

The Limits of International Society: Understanding China’s Response to Nuclear Breakout and Third Party Non-Compliance

Abstract

Despite warnings of unchecked nuclear proliferation and the potential for state-sponsored WMD terrorism, official statements and consistent diplomatic activities show that China remains resolutely committed to a patient and peaceful strategy for dealing with third-party non-compliance and nuclear breakout. Although it has adopted more stringent national controls and has signed up to an ever-increasing array of international non-proliferation agreements, China prevents the decisive application of the enforcement mechanisms available to the UN Security Council, and is highly critical of non-proliferation initiatives that attempt to bypass these mechanisms. To put it another way, China is resolutely opposed to nuclear non-proliferation with teeth, preferring to keep the regime muzzled. This article examines the rationale behind China’s approach to this issue, drawing on the English School’s interlinking concepts of international system, international society, and global society to help explain China’s advocacy of peaceful non-proliferation and the resulting tensions in its relationship with the United States and other parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).     

Peeresses,Parliament and prejudice: the admission of women to the House of Lords, 1918–1963

SUMMARY

In this article Duncan Sutherland examines a subject that has been almost entirely ignored by British constitutional historians, the admission of women to the House of Lords. There had always been hereditary peeresses, their status as peeresses did not confer the right to sit in the House of Lords. The womens' suffrage movement had ignored the issue, and attempts to use the right of women to sit as MPs in the Acts of 1918 and 1919 to entitle peeresses to sit in the Lords failed. So did subsequent attempts to have them admitted by legislation: the political parties did not see it as an important issue, and it was inextricably mixed up with the wider question of general reform of the House of Lords. Only after the creation of life peerages, after 1958, were women admitted to the House, and even then the hereditary peeresses had to wait until 1963 for admission. The article concludes by considering the kinds of arguments advanced for continuing the exclusion of women. The long delay, in light of the feebleness and inconsistencies of the case for continuing the exclusion of women, seems to indicate the low importance that the political Establishment attached to the issue.     

International Science and Local Conditions on the Ground: The Agricultural Sciences and Baltic German Identity, 1845–1905

Questions of how agricultural science would be defined, who would conduct the research, where investigations and teaching would take place, and whose interests it would serve became significant issues in the Baltic provinces in the nineteenth century. The Baltic German elite made repeated efforts to bring scientific agricultural practices into the region and to build institutions that would disseminate them in ways that suited local interests. While previous studies have defined Baltic German endeavors in the agricultural sciences as successes, this study focuses on the frustrations, cultural complexities, ideological controversies, and even violence that came with efforts at agricultural modernization.     

Yitzhak Rabin,the Ambassador to Washington, 1968–73: A Diplomat and Policy Maker

Rabin differed considerably from the average ambassador – a representative receiving and issuing reports. He viewed himself not only as a diplomat, but as capable of shaping policy with respect to both the Arab–Israeli conflict and the relationship with the United States. During his term as ambassador to Washington he displayed sober realism with regard to the political, and to some extent the military, reality – the very realism that was absent from the government that sent him.     

The Ambiguous Role of the Popular,Society and Public Order Police in Sudan, 1983–2011

This article addresses a number of obscurities surrounding the role of the various Sudanese police units often referred to as the ‘religious police’ or ‘morality police’. These include the Popular Police, Society Police and Public Order Police. Although these units have often been analysed as agents of ‘Arabization’, ‘Islamization’ and the cultural domination of peripheral groups by the hegemonic northern riverain faction within the state, this article focuses instead primarily on the intra-northern debate over these units, which is suggestive of a variety of internal crises the northern government will need to resolve in the wake of secession. It contends that the Sudanese government has never resolved the ambiguity over whether these units function as local crime fighters or as guardians of religious morality. Although a number of analysts argue that the Sudanese regime has become less ideological and thus scaled back the morality police, this ambiguity remains highly relevant today, to the extent that it causes divisions within the security forces and even the government itself. The article further identifies the centrality of the debate over the public order units to the period of self-questioning that has characterized the ‘post-Islamist’ phase in Sudanese politics. It discusses the ambiguous social status of these units, who have been represented as guardians of urban Sudanese culture by their champions and a threat to it by their detractors.     

Peace Pedagogy and Interpretative Frameworks of Distrust: State–Society Relations in the Colombian Peace Process

The Havana Peace Accords of 2016 sought to end five decades of internal conflict in Colombia. As well as disarming the FARC, they promise to bring state institutions to abandoned regions and enable citizen participation. However, there is an obstacle to this which has consistently been overlooked by Juan Manuel Santos' government: a chronic distrust in the state dating back to colonialism. This article draws on ethnographic research with the Colombian government's ‘peace pedagogy’ team, tasked innovatively with educating citizens about the Havana Accords and incorporating them in the co-production of peace. It shows that citizens' learning about state policies, and reception of state efforts to shape that learning, are filtered through pre-existing perceptions of the state: in Colombia, interpretative frameworks of distrust. This ethnography illuminates state–society relations in the Colombian peace process, offering implications for ongoing implementation of the Accords, and posing questions for other countries in transition, arguing that historically-constituted perceptions of the state should be taken into account when communicating government policies to society.     

The sword,the pen,and the uterus: multidirectional feminist culture and the Argentine dictatorship of 1976–1983

During the period 1982–1999, a cohort of feminist cultural activists highlighted parallels between the political, gendered, racial, and linguistic frameworks used to justify state violence in Argentina of 1976–1983 and in Germany of 1933–1945. Their cultural works indicate the transnational aspects of Argentina’s failures of modernity, and the parallel responsibilities to trauma memory assumed by women and Jews as marginalized members of society, who consequently emerge as both local and transnational agents of democratization. A number of scholars have noted Argentine writers’ and playwrights’ adoption of Holocaust cultural constructs to represent the 1976–1983 dictatorship, yet these cultural contributions have not yet been studied from the combined perspectives of post-Holocaust and post-dictatorship feminist scholarship. By providing a gendered analysis of “Holocaust multidirectionality” within a global arena of “postmemory,” this article shows the convergence of the two terms in the cultural production of women who remember, represent, and transmit the experience and meaning of the Argentine military dictatorship.     

How to be a Girl: Consumerism Meets Guidance in the Australian Women’s Weekly’s Teen Segments, 1952–1959

In 1952, when Australian teenagers were beginning to emerge as their own distinct social and consumer group, the Australian Women’s Weekly introduced a column specifically targeted at teens. “Youth Sums Up” was intended for both boys and girls, but by 1954 it had developed into For Teenagers, a monthly lift-out aimed predominantly at girls, which became Australia’s first version of a national teen girl magazine. In this article, I examine the ways in which the Weekly used its teen segments and lift-outs to mould teenage girls into the 1950s feminine ideal, and to sell the products that reflected the attitudes and values of the time to this new and powerful young market. I also demonstrate that while the Weekly’s teen segments promoted a traditional femininity, some of its teen girl readers publicly rejected these notions within the pages of the magazine, giving us a broader understanding of teenage girls, girl culture, and what is usually defined as a purely conservative decade.