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.     

BRITAIN AND YEMEN: THE END OF BRITISH RULE IN SOUTH ARABIA THROUGH THE EYES OF A YOUNG POLITICAL OFFICER

This article publishes for the first time selections of the private correspondence (placing them in their historical context) of John G. T. Shipman (1939–2016), who took up his position as assistant adviser in the Eastern Aden Protectorate at the end of 1962 just as the first signs of political and social change were appearing in South Arabia. He served from this position in different parts of the Eastern Aden Protectorate until 1967. Shipman's correspondence allows for an unmediated appreciation of how people on the ground experienced the historical events at the time, including the British withdrawal in 1967, and highlights the extent of their own grasp of the goings-on when contrasted with the historical record. In this sense, the scope of this article is to allow the voice of one of the many British colonial officials to directly narrate their encounters during the last five years of British colonial rule over southern Arabia. The perceptive eye of a young political officer coupled with the ephemeral character of his handwritten correspondence, which providentially survived for more than five decades although it was never intended for publication, offers a fresh insight into the political and social life of the Eastern Aden Protectorate.     

‘Strong,United and Independent’: the British Foreign Office,Anglo–Iranian Oil Company and the internationalization of Iranian politics at the dawn of the Cold War, 1945–46

This article challenges traditional accounts of the 1946 Cold War Crisis in Iran by moving beyond Soviet–American confrontation to focus on British policy. In contrast to the United States, Britain was a major stake-holding power in Iran due to the valuable holdings of the Anglo–Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). By comparing the reactions of the AIOC and Foreign Office, continuity between the events of the 1946 Crisis and later developments in the Mosaddegh premiership becomes apparent. Soviet interference in Azerbaijan prompted great concern from representatives in Iran, but the central Foreign Office pursued a more cautious policy. Only concerns relating to the growth of domestic Iranian communism in the form of the Tudeh Party and the threat this entailed to the British concession prompted the Foreign Office and AIOC to take measures rendering them partially complicit in the internationalization of Iranian politics, setting an important precedent for future action. This article evaluates the policy-making process and its impact on Anglo–Iranian relations by utilizing records from the UK National Archives, British Petroleum Archive and diplomatic personal papers.     

The Baltic states,Finland, and British economic expectations in the early 1920s

Abstract

After the First World War, the Baltic states — not Finland — attracted the British as a bridge to Russian markets. The article deals with the rank of these states in British economic expectations. It is shown that whereas the Baltic states were highly prioritized, in 1920, by 1926 the British preferred Finland as a more trusworthy trading partner than Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The article thus shows how the rank of the Baltic states and Finland changed in British expectations when all of these states were seen as markets in and of themselves.     

Mixed electoral systems in Britain and the Jenkins Commission on electoral reform

Mixed electoral systems seek to combine elements from different voting methods so as to maximise the numbers of individually accountable constituency MPs, while achieving more proportional outcomes in terms of parties' representation. This paper looks in detail at two kinds of mixed systems: variants of the Additional Member System; and AV Plus (or SV Plus). We examine how they would have operated in British conditions during the 1990s—how ballot papers would be structured, how voters respond to them and what electoral outcomes would have resulted. Both approaches offer good prospects for achieving a consensus amongst electoral reformers on an alternative to first-past-the-post elections. We also show how the Jenkins Commission's proposals can be located within the broader development of 'British AMS' by the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. In addition, we quantify the main impacts of the policy choices which the Commission made in designing the proposed system to be submitted to a referendum. The British case will be a key one for the wider debate in political science about the endogenisation of voting system changes within party systems.     

Studying British government: reconstructing the research agenda

This article seeks to place the study of British government in a broader context by exploring the potential contribution of an anti-foundational epistemology. We seek to 'reinvent' a self-conscious, sceptical and tentative approach rooted in philosophy and history. The first section defines the Westminster model and the family of linked narratives: traditional sceptics, social science, radical theory, new public management. The second section outlines an anti-foundational epistemology, focusing on the notions of traditions, narratives, decentering and dilemmas. The third section applies this approach to one prominent school of thought about British government: policy networks. We argue that an anti-foundational approach will decenter networks, shifting the locus of analysis from the institutions to individuals, and focus on dilemmas to explain how networks change. Finally, we conclude there is no essentialist account of British government, only complex and diverse narratives, and no tool kit for solving problems, only lessons drawn from many stories.     

Canadian Concerns of a Different Kind of Brexit: Britain’s First Application to the EEC and Canada’s Commonwealth Appeal

Recent debates on Brexit have made several attempts to connect the current situation with Britain’s first attempt to gain entry to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1961. In both 2016 and 1961, questions were raised about what role the Commonwealth would take and how the relationship with Britain would adapt to their then-entry and current exit of a union with Europe. This article seeks to examine how Canada reacted to Britain’s decision to enter the EEC and sheds light on the vociferous opposition it raised within the Commonwealth. Using both British and Canadian cabinet minutes and Commonwealth memoranda, the article follows the Canadian campaign against British entry to the EEC and its fervent defence of the Commonwealth as an economic-focused community. Ultimately, the Canadian-led protest against British entry into the EEC derived from a fear that Britain would drift from the Commonwealth towards Europe, leading to the complete dissolution of the economic bonds that tie the community together.     

History,Memory and Commemoration: The Iraqi Revolution of 1920 and the Process of Nation Building in Iraq

The Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920 was actually a series of local, mostly Shi‘ite, uprisings against the British forces which had occupied Iraq during the First World War. Even though it was squashed by the British, it has been established since then in the Iraqi collective memory as a war of independence and a formative event of Iraqi nationalism, symbolizing the unity of the Iraqi people, their solidarity and patriotic spirit. This article tries to show how the Great Iraqi Revolution was commemorated and remembered through time in order to provide better understanding about how Iraqis see themselves and their past.     

Settler Colonial Strategic Culture: Australia,AUKUS, and the Anglosphere

Australia's history as a settler colony within the British Empire fundamentally shapes its sense of security within the Indo-Pacific region. Australia has consistently looked outside of its region for security and sought partners on the explicit basis of political, cultural, and ethnic similarity. What role does Australia's history play in shaping its foreign policy? We argue that these choices in foreign policy are inextricable from Australia's history as a settler colony on the farthest reaches of the British Empire. The AUKUS Agreement (AUKUS) is an example of how Australia operates to preserve racial hegemony in the face of non-white threat — real or perceived. This research utilises critical discourse analysis to interrogate elite-level discourse around AUKUS to ascertain the dominant narratives that inform its creation, the issues it seeks to address in Australian security policy, how it is structured by historical narratives of security, and how it functions to structure those narratives going forward. This article seeks to participate in the growing push to decolonise International Relations by illuminating the way Australia is ontologically and epistemologically invested in the preservation of racial hegemony.     

Equal partners? The Information Research Department,SAVAK and the dissemination of anti-communist propaganda in Iran, 1956–68

This article examines how the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (I.R.D.) worked with SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence service, between 1956 and 1968. It explores how a mutual fear of the Soviet Union compelled both departments to work together to produce and disseminate anti-communist propaganda. As well as the publication of books, prominent Iranian journalists would be given stories that praised the Shah’s regime and discredited the Soviet Union. SAVAK figures were also invited to Britain by the I.R.D. to attend training sessions on producing propaganda. The ties between both agencies, however, meant SAVAK was able to persuade the I.R.D. to assist in the conception of anti-Arab Nationalist propaganda, something that contravened wider British foreign policy. Moreover, such an agency-led approach was rendered short-lived. By 1968, many of the SAVAK figures friendly to the I.R.D. were promoted and replaced by individuals less keen on working with the British.     

Passengers of Memory: Constructions of British Immigrants in Post-Imperial Australia

Based on broad research investigating British immigrants in post-Second World War Australia, this article examines various impacts of the passing of imperialism on this group, tracing how they have been "passengers" both of national memory in Australia and more recently of their own narratives. Arguing also that British migrants have been subject on occasion to postimperial forgetting, it is emphasised here that British migrants display heterogenous constructions and negotiations of identity that may reflect new departures.     

THE RAJ RECONSIDERED: BRITISH INDIA's INFORMAL EMPIRE AND SPHERES OF INFLUENCE IN ASIA AND AFRICA

This provides a detailed explanation of how the Indian Empire was organised and run. But its main purpose is to argue that the British Indian Empire was in fact much larger than historians of the Raj normally realise because the Empire should be taken to include the Gulf Arab states, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, the Aden Protectorate and the British Somaliland protectorate.     

Achievements of the British Colonial Service: A Retrospective View

This article looks back on the record of the British Colonial Service in Africa, with a particular focus on how it ran Zambia immediately prior to its independence in 1964. The author, a member of that service, argues that, for all their faults, British colonial administrators discharged their duties with dedication, skill and the welfare of the general population in mind. There is, he notes, a need for a better understanding of the positive effects of contact between cultures that British colonial rule engendered in societies such as Zambia.     

‘Heart-Beguiling Araby’ on the Frontier of Empire: Early Anglo-Arab Relations in Transjordan

In 1920 the British government of Palestine sent six officers to establish a British presence in Transjordan. Lacking military and financial support, they could not possibly control a country populated by more than 200,000 tribespeople, many of them members of powerful tribal confederacies. The key to explaining why the British chose this unorthodox way to takeover a new territory lies in the special attitude towards Arabia entertained by the British following World War One. British policy derived from an alleged cultural affinity between the British and the ‘Bedouin’, coupled with a colonial tradition of attributing British administrators with a ‘natural’ ability to rule over natives. These two myths gave the British an inflated belief in their ability to rule local society. Drawing on official reports, private papers and local accounts, this article shows that the British grossly misunderstood local conditions and could not deal with the tribal communities that frustrated their attempt to assert British influence.     

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.     

Whose Land? Land Tenure in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Palestine

The present article aims to uncover the different meanings attached to land ownership in Palestine during the late Ottoman and British Mandate eras and to show how a ‘modern’ understanding of ownership was imposed on the local population, particularly the fellahin (peasants), without a consideration of their needs and traditions. Many widespread claims are challenged, first and foremost the one according to which, at the time of the partition of Palestine (1947), ‘over 70 percent’ of it did not ‘legally’ belong to the local Arab majority, but to the British Mandate power, an assumption that has had political, cultural and social ramifications that have lasted until the present day.     

Internationalization and democratization interconnected: the Swedish and Finnish parliaments debating membership in the League of Nations in 1920

In the aftermath of the First World War, constitutions of European states were widely democratized and parliamentarized, and similar turns were expected in international relations as a consequence of the creation of the League of Nations. This comparative analysis of Swedish and Finnish parliamentary debates on the League membership focusing on conceptualizations of the national versus international demonstrates how democratization and internationalization merged discursively. This happened to a greater extent than in the British parliament or the First Assembly of the League. Such entanglements followed from the interconnectedness of constitutional and foreign policy questions during preceding disputes on constitutional reform when Britain and Germany had provided competing models, the determination of the ministries to reconfirm national constitutional compromises by joining an international organization of democratic nations, an exceptional possibility for parliamentarians to debate foreign policy and willingness among the leftist oppositions to extend the democratization and parliamentarization of the constitutions to the field of foreign policy. After a turn from German to British political models and under a Bolshevik threat, British internationalist arguments found a positive reception among the Swedish Liberal–Social Democratic coalition and the Finnish bourgeois coalition as well as half of the redefined Finnish Social Democratic Party. Rightist and far-leftist opponents of the League were left to the margins as the membership was used to redefine the polities as internationally oriented democracies.     

PROJECTIONS OF EMPIRE: INDIA AND THE IMAGINED METROPOLIS

This article describes how the British first tried to come to terms with India and to rationalise their role by postulating that Indians were at a different stage of the development trajectory. It then considers the development of the debate on good governance and the way in which the Imperial idea found expression in an “architecture of possession” both in India, (especially Lutyens’ Delhi) and in Britain itself. Lastly it assesses the way in which post-Imperial London has evolved.     

Great Britain and the Norwegian constitution of 1814

SUMMARY

By the 1814 Treaty of Kiel, Norway was detached from Denmark and was to be given to Sweden. Prince Christian Frederik, heir to the Danish throne, was the Viceroy of Norway in 1814. He refused to accept the Treaty, and decided instead to establish Norway as an independent kingdom under his rule. To legitimize his claim, he called for elections to a constitutional assembly. This assembly began on 10 April 1814. The constitution which it approved was inspired by numerous sources. This article investigates the British influences upon it. It also considers how Britain's stance in the international diplomacy of the day affected the outcome. Norway did indeed enter a forced union with Sweden, but with its constitution almost intact. This constitution was underpinned by the separation of powers, which its originators associated with Britain, and was known to them from books by Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu (1689–1755) and Jean-Louis de Lolme (1740–1806). Many members of the assembly had knowledge of British politics, especially the vocal Count Wedel-Jarlsberg and Captain Peter Motzfeldt. Three draft constitutions manifested important British influences. The approved constitution also contained crucial borrowings from Britain, particularly on civil rights. The Norwegian political system scarcely resembled Britain's at that time, especially since the separation of powers was interpreted differently. Nevertheless, some aspects of parliamentary procedure derived from the British model.     

La procédure des Gravamina lors des sessions de la Diète hongroise

Summary

In 1791 there were published eight weeklies and one fortnightly in the British North American colonies which, in 1867 and the following years, united to form the Canadian confederation. The British newspapers served them all as principal sources of information about the events in Europe. The positive and sympathetic press reports in Great Britain relating to the momentous changes in Poland, which were introduced with the adoption of the 3 May 1791 Constitution by the Diet, were thus also ‘echoed’ in Canada. These ‘echoes’ notwithstanding, judging by the scope of press coverage, which started on 4 July 1791, as well as by some editorial comment, it can be concluded that there also existed a genuine interest in Canada about the progress of the peaceful Polish ‘revolution,’ which contrasted so sharply with the bloody strife in America and France.