“The Worst of all Worlds:” Oil Sanctions and Italy's Invasion of Abyssinia, 1935–1936

Italy's invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 caused a crisis for the League of Nations. League members imposed limited sanctions against Italy and debated at length the imposition of an embargo on oil shipments to Italy, which came to stand as a symbol of the League's determination to punish the Italian aggressor. The British government conducted a detailed investigation to determine whether or not an oil sanction could compel Italy to abandon its invasion. Although Italy imported the vast majority of its oil, British and League experts concluded that an oil embargo would not succeed. Even if the League instituted a comprehensive embargo amongst its members, Italy could still have secured sufficient supplies from non-members, particularly the United States, which could not legally prevent American companies from trading with Italy. Italy could also have secured additional supplies through third-party transshipments. An additional ban preventing Italy from using League tankers to carry its purchases would not have succeeded either, although the various sanctions together would have increased Italy's costs to import oil and the amount of pressure on its gold reserves. In spite of the technical difficulties involved in implementing an embargo, the British Cabinet continued to support the idea for domestic political reasons; it needed to placate the British public that considered it vitally important to put into practice the League's collective security rhetoric. The League's unwillingness to impose an oil sanction and its evident failure to prevent Italy's conquest of Abyssinia discredited the League and its collective security provisions.     

The Spirit of Ulysses? Ideology and British Appeasement in the 1930s

The British government's appeasement of fascism in the 1930s derived not only from economic, political, and strategic constraints, but also from the personal ideologies of the policy makers. Widespread guilt about the terms of the Versailles Treaty and tensions with France created sympathy for German revisionism, but the Cabinet properly recognized that Nazi Germany represented the gravest threat to peace in the 1930s. Fear of war and the recognition that Britain would have to tolerate peaceful change underlay attempts to appease the dictators, culminating in the Munich agreement in September 1938. After Munich, continued German belligerence, the Kristallnacht, and British intelligence assessments indicating that Hitler was prepared to attack the Western powers led to a reassessment of appeasement. The British government gave security guarantees to several European countries, seeking to deter future aggression and to lay the groundwork for a successful war against Germany should it prove necessary. While most of the British elite detested communism, anti-communist views did not govern British policy; security considerations required Soviet support in Eastern Europe, and Britain and France made a determined effort to secure Soviet support for the Peace Front.     

Out of Africa? The Gallimberti Affair and Anglo-Italian Relations, 1949–1950

Abstract

The Peace Treaty of 1947 required Italy to renounce sovereignty over its former colonies. Italy and Britain, although NATO allies, bitterly disputed the disposition of Tripolitania and Eritrea. The Italian government sent agents to Tripoli and Asmara to influence local populations in favour of its policy of independence for both regions. The agents ran espionage operations: developing networks of agents, purloining documents, bribing officials, and channeling illegal funds to local political parties. Dr Matteo Gallimberti, the Italian agent in Tripoli, faced accusations that he was embezzling funds. After he committed suicide in January 1950, local British military authorities discovered the full range of his illegal activities. Rather than publicly embarrass the Italian government, British Foreign Office officials coerced concessions from the Italian government in exchange for keeping the potential scandal concealed. The affair demonstrates the fractious nature of Anglo-Italian relations within the framework of the NATO alliance and the respective foreign policy-making elites' differing and self-interested approaches to development and security issues in Africa.     

Reintegrative Shaming, Procedural Justice, and Recidivism: The Engagement of Offenders' Psychological Mechanisms in the Canberra RISE Drinking-and-Driving Experiment

Advocates of restorative justice (RJ) hypothesize that the diversion of criminal cases to RJ conferences should be more effective in lowering the rate of reoffending than traditional prosecution in court processing because the conferences more effectively engage the psychological mechanisms of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice. This study uses longitudinal data from the drinking-and-driving study in the Australian Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) to evaluate the long-term impact of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice on support for the law and on later recidivism as assessed through the use of police records and by self-report. Analysis first suggests that there is no direct effect of experimental condition on later recidivism. However, it further suggests that both traditional court-based prosecution and RJ conferences increase support for the law and lower the rate of future reoffending when they engage the social psychological mechanisms of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice and thereby increase the legitimacy of the law. Hence, the results argue for the potential value of procedures such as the RJ conference but indicate that those procedures will only achieve their objectives if they are effectively designed and implemented.