The British Foreign Office and Israel: At a Crossroads in 1976

The article examines the complex relationship between the British Foreign Office and Israel. It argues that in 1976 was a year of transformation in the relationship as the Foreign Office shifted towards a more critical approach towards Israel following the resignation of the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson. It makes use of newly available documentary sources from the National Archives in London, which illustrate how the Foreign Office used the resignation of the widely perceived pro-Israel Wilson, and the arrival in power of James Callaghan, to quietly shift British policy towards the Arab–Israeli conflict to fall more into line with the policies of Britain's European Partners.     

Correspondence

Sir Tony Brenton, formerly British Ambassador to Moscow (2004-2008), considers in this article the Asian dimension of Russia. He considers the historical connections and importance of Asia (as opposed to Europe) in the development of Russia and the historical balance between Asian and European influence. This section pays particular attention to the development of Siberia and early encounters between Russia and China. He then examines shifting Russian attitudes towards Asia at significant moments in Russian history including the 19^th century (the Slavophile Movement), the Communist period, the post-Soviet 1990s and the current era under President Putin. The implications of the Ukraine crisis and the current relationship with China is studied. He concludes with a discussion of whether Russia is likely to see its future orientation as more towards China and Asia, and what implications Russia's deliberation about its future direction has for the western powers.     

Oil Politics and Tribal Rulers in Eastern Arabia: The Reign of Shakhbut (1928–1966)

This paper examines one of the least known chapters of Middle Eastern history, that of Abu Dhabi before the discovery of oil. It reassesses the reign of Shakhbut bin Sultan al-Nuhayyan (1928–1966), which has been of little interest to scholars. This article's analysis has two strands. First, it examines the nature of the emirate of Abu Dhabi before the advent of oil, and in doing so looks at the complexity of tribe–state relations. Based on a kind of modus vivendi with the tribes, Shakhbut's Abu Dhabi provides some clear examples of how remote areas of tribal societies were administered. The second part of the analysis concerns developments in the 1960s, in particular the discovery of oil in Abu Dhabi and the British decision to withdraw from the Gulf and end British protection of the sheikdom and other Trucial States. These profound changes overwhelmed Shaykh Shakhbut and caused his tribal state to lose its vitality. A particular emphasis is given to the anomalous relationship between Shaykhbut and the British authorities, brought about by the changing circumstances, that eventually led to his removal from power.     

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.     

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.     

List of books to review

Abstract

Gandhi and British India are dead but not forgotten. Since his assassination in early 1948, Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi has continued to be analyzed, scrutinized, vilified, popularized, and sanitized. In fact, in recent years there appears to have been, if anything, an increase in interest in Gandhi's life and ideas at both the popular and academic levels. The British rulers of India have met a similar fate, and the past decade or so, especially, has seen the growth of both scholarly and popular interest in the British Raj. Part of the reason for this “return” of the Raj as a subject for novels, television, movies, and popular and academic history may have had to do with the rise of Thatcherism in Britain. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher and the British Conservative Party were involved in an explicit attempt to resurrect what they understood as Victorian virtues and regain some of the lost glory of the nineteenth and early twentieth century Pax Britannica. Their project, to reassert Victorian values and resurrect imperial pride, not surprisingly, came at the very time when Britain was in the throes of national decline; in ethnic, racial, and economic terms, the empire on which the sun never set has come home to roost.     

Enlightenment by Fiat: Secularization and Democracy in Turkey

This essay examines the relationship between Indian and Australasian soldiers and colonial Egyptians from 1914–19. Drawing upon memoirs, letters, and the work of Nagib Mahfuz, I argue that the First World War reaffirmed British military rule in Egypt and also posed a danger to it in the form of disorderly soldiers. Because British officials feared the unruly conduct of their troops they promoted manly ideals of self-control to facilitate their control over Egyptian society. Uncontrolled spectacles of wartime violence were therefore critical to the ways in which the British Army deployed masculine behaviour in the service of the colonial state.     

National and Imperial Belonging in Wartime: The Tangled Knot of Australians and New Zealanders as British Subjects during the Great War

The Great War is considered nationally foundational in both Australia and New Zealand. Yet, as critics of this view point out, British subjecthood remained important and sometimes central to identity at this time. This article pulls two threads from this tangled knot of belonging at a time when identifying and regulating loyal populations was critical. Looking at evidence of those Australians and New Zealanders who served in imperial forces and organisations, and the implications of passport control from 1915, I suggest that the relationship between British subjecthood and national identification was not always easily managed, and was often cut across by gender. Indeed, there is evidence that one's identification as a British subject or an Australasian citizen was not always a matter of choice or positive, and sometimes these identities were antagonists. The significant tensions between British subjecthood and being an “Australian” or a “New Zealander” were especially heightened by the increasingly intimate relationship between governments and their people during the First World War.     

Sovereign nations and global markets: modern British Conservatism and hyperglobalism

In this article we seek to trace through the major stands of British Euroscepticism and concentrate, in particular, on the importance of a powerful 'hyperglobalist' Eurosceptical strand within British Conservatism. We investigate the British Conservatives' recent divisions over European integration, against the background of the party's increasingly marginal status in British party politics. The piece also draws on findings from two recent surveys of the attitudes of British parliamentarians to European integration, carried out by the Members of Parliament Project for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). We explore how Conservative divisions of opinion are related in part to particular understandings of globalisation and regionalisation and attempt to show how globalist ideology has unexpectedly re–emphasised and bolstered the traditional nationalism of the Tory party and caused an increasingly hostile attitude amongst many British Conservatives towards the European project as it is presently constituted. We also examine recent attempts to map British Conservative Euroscepticism on to continental varieties using a mixture of ideological positioning and party system (Taggart 1998), arguing that this ignores the extent to which British Eurosceptics advance unique (in EU member state terms) hyperglobalist (rather than isolationist or protectionist) arguments in objecting to further European integration.     

On The Possibility and Desirability of a Theory of Modernisation

Abstract

The verb “modernize” has a valuable use for which it is not easy to find a substitute. The political leaders and intellectuals of most developing countries desire to transform their country. They wish to see transformations in their economy, usually in their political system and educational system; often, also, in family life and in religious and cultural matters. Usually, the model for their reforming efforts is some other country more economically developed than their own; not necessarily a single country, but possibly a number of countries, each of which offers certain features to be imitated. British leaders, for instance, have recently become aware of a need to modernize many aspects of British life. Most commonly the model is America, but sometimes Scandinavian or other European countries.     

Obstructive all the way? British policy towards German unification 1989–90

British policy towards German unification has been judged to be at best reluctant, at worst obstructive. This article seeks to revise that perception, using documents from the Federal Chancellor's Office and the author's interviews with British and German diplomats and politicians. It distinguishes between the rhetoric of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the policy of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The latter played a leading role in the Two Plus Four talks that resolved the external issues involved in German unification, and made a particular contribution to devising the formula for the termination of Four Power Rights over a unified Germany.     

La Chambre introuvable et les principes du régime parlementaire

Summary

Discussions of British policy towards Poland and the Polish question in the years before the first Partition have recently been provided by Michael Roberts and by Hamish Scott. They have given both a narrative and an analysis of British diplomacy and foreign policy in the decade after the end of the Seven Years’ War. It is the purpose of this paper to suggest the resonance which British policy (and the lack of it) and opinion on Poland had for contemporary understanding of the British political system and political culture itself.1 The implications for Britain of the first Partition of Poland were ominous and unsettling for the British polity, and would challenge both diplomatic practice and political prejudices and commonplaces.     

The Exceptional Case of the British Military Bases on Cyprus

As is widely known, Cyprus was the place used as springboard for all the US–British air operations in the region surrounding it, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and so on. However, neither the Republic of Cyprus, nor the breakaway regime in the north of the island had anything to do with that. The logistical hub for those activities were the so-called Sovereign British Military Bases conceded to Britain in the 1960 Zurich Agreement in return for the independence Cyprus gained in the same year. Cyprus is the only place on the planet where the United Kingdom maintains as a legacy of British colonial rule sovereign military bases and a military presence secured as a result of a multilateral treaty of guarantee far surpassing those rights that the United Kingdom had managed to have recognized in the installation of military bases in Burma, Malta and Ceylon. Nevertheless, two things are very remarkable: why has the United States, despite its numerous other facilities in the Near East, preferred those bases for its activities? Why have the British clung on to their bases in Cyprus – in spite of the retreat of British forces from so many bases originally built by the United Kingdom in so many places around the world since 1960, although in comparison with other overseas garrisons still left of the British Empire, the one in Cyprus is the biggest and the most expensive to maintain? The article tries to illuminate the background of this paradox. It examines, based on primary and secondary sources from several countries, the historical evolution and regime of the UK Sovereign Military Bases on Cyprus, which constitute an exceptional case in both international relations and international law. It argues that the operation of the British bases in Cyprus has been exceeding the legal framework determined by the Treaty of Establishment and hardly complies with the British obligation to decolonize the entire territory of the island of Cyprus as well as the right of the Cypriot people to self-determination.     

Bringing the British back in: Sephardim,Ashkenazi anti-Zionist Orthodox and the policy of Jewish unity

This article analyses the British role in establishing and maintaining a Jewish–Arab demarcation line by means of a policy of Jewish unity and by enabling Ashkenazi Zionist control of the Yishuv. In the first part, it analyses British policy towards the local Sephardi as well as the local Ashkenazi anti-Zionist Orthodox communities, both of which for different reasons did not neatly fit into the Jewish/Zionist–Arab binary. I argue that the British followed a policy of Jewish unity at the inception of the Mandate which they upheld repeatedly against Ashkenazi anti-Zionist Orthodox efforts and which by 1936 had created a truism enforcing a binary understanding of the conflict. In the second part, this article analyses the ways in which these communities presented themselves vis-à-vis the British. I argue that despite different strategies of maximizing their influence, both communities foundered on the existing power configurations.     

A Failed Manipulation: The British,the Oudh Bequest and the Sh i Ulama of Najaf and Karbala

Between 1850 and 1903, the Oudh Bequest channelled over six million rupees from India, through British mediation, to the Shi i shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq. It has intrigued historians the way that this sophisticated British tool has exercised influence and control over the Shi i Ulama in Iran and Iraq. However, the British became directly involved in the distribution of the Bequest in 1903, on the eve of the Constitutional Revolution. In view of the ulama's growing involvement in Iranian politics, and gross corruption among the distributors, the British saw the Bequest as a means to enhance their influence over the ulama in Iran. The political usage of the Bequest was a subject of a prolonged debate within Bequest bureaucracy. Disagreements often stemmed from different priorities, determined by local considerations, of British authorities in Iraq, Iran and India. In 1912 the British took over the direct distribution of the Bequest, abandoning their expectations to use the Bequest as a ‘powerful lever’ in Iran, and shifting their focus to enhancing their prestige in Iraq itself and acquiring the goodwill of Shi is in India. These policies were renewed with greater vigour after the British occupation of Najaf and Karbala in 1917. Overall, these British attempts ended in dismal failure, showing that charity, however generous, cannot compensate for the need of religious leaders to maintain popular support by distancing themselves from foreign patronage and tutelage. Moreover, manipulation proved less powerful than broader historical processes such as the rising national and religious awakening against foreign powers.     

‘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.     

Art,Cold War Diplomacy and Commonwealth: Australian and Canadian Art at the Tate Gallery 1962–1964

This article analyses the formation, presentation and reception of two seminal exhibitions: Australian Painting: Colonial, Impressionist, Contemporary (1962–1963) and Canadian Painting 1939–1963 (1964). The presentation of these exhibitions at London’s Tate Gallery reflected the institution’s support for “old dominion” Commonwealth members. The exhibitions also highlight the differing visions of the Canadian and Australian governments concerning the relationship between art, diplomacy and politics during the Cold War. In Canada, Vincent Massey (Governor General 1952–1959) played a key role in ensuring that all forms of Canadian art were promoted internationally. Massey wanted to connect with the European and American avant-garde and to be part of a multiracial Commonwealth. This contrasted with the rather “old-fashioned” views of the Australian prime minister, Robert Menzies, and the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board. They supported a Commonwealth dominated by the “white dominions” and the initial exhibition plan for Australian Painting recalled previous British Empire art shows. The British response to the Canadian and Australian exhibitions is also discussed. British critics preferred the nationally identifiable “exotic” art found in Australian art to the transnational forms of international abstraction in Canadian art. Eventually, Australia “caught up” with Canadian cultural policy following the establishment of the Australia Council.     

Good Governance and Bermuda’s Public Access to Information Act

Abstract

This paper examines the context surrounding, and debates concerning, freedom of information-type legislation in the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda. It situates the law within a wider push by the British Government for good governance in the British Overseas Territories. It explores the expectation for more ‘open and transparent’ government held by international government organisations, the British Government, and the Bermudian electorate. It analyses the resultant political debates, which are framed by traditions of governance that encouraged secrecy and legacies of distrust between political parties formed soon after universal suffrage was introduced in the 1960s. It investigates the implementation of the Act in response to global, metropolitan and local pressures.     

Turkey's approach towards Israel in the 1950s: not merely following US policy

Within the context of Turkey's relationship with Israel, the 1950s are remembered largely as the decade when bilateral relations developed dramatically reflecting the US orientation of Adnan Menderes's foreign policy. On closer observation, however, one cannot fail to notice that there was more ebb than flow in Turkey's policy towards Israel which already assumed the double-faced profile (cold or reproachful in public/positive behind closed doors), which is usually associated with the next two decades. Drawing on substantial research in official US and British archives, this article explores the multiple considerations which informed the approach of the Menderes government towards Tel-Aviv. Crucially, it places the Turks’ approach within their broader Middle Eastern policy with the aim of showing that it was shaped not only by their relationship with their powerful ally, the United States, but also by the need to look after relations with neighbourly Arab regimes.     

Muhammad Reza Pahlavi and the Bahrain Question, 1968–1970

This paper examines the role of Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah of Iran, in the secret Anglo-Iranian negotiations over Bahrain from January 1968 to March 1970. Despite a clear strategic imperative for abandoning Iran's claim to Bahrain in the wake of the British withdrawal from the Persian Gulf, the Shah feared that such an act would be seen by the Iranian public as collusion with the British to surrender Iranian territory, thereby further eroding the Pahlavi monarchy's precarious legitimacy. Drawing on British official papers and Iranian oral histories and memoirs, this paper explores for the first time the story of these secret negotiations and the extent to which the Shah's diplomacy was constrained by domestic considerations.