“I’m awfully fed up with being a prisoner”* Australian POWs of the Turks and the Strain of Surrender

Nearly 200 Australians were captured and held as prisoners of war (POWs) by Ottoman Turkish forces during the First World War. They have largely been overlooked in Australian history and memory of the conflict with the result that little is known of their time in captivity or of its wider ramifications. In examining the emotional impact of their capture and imprisonment, this article offers intimate insights into how these Australian POWs felt about their captivity, from the moment of surrender until long after the war had ended. The humiliation of capture and confinement at the hands of a culturally, religiously and linguistically different enemy and the restrictions imposed by wartime imprisonment exacerbated the prisoners’ private feelings of shame and failure, feelings that were publicly reinforced in the aftermath of the war as the two dominant narratives of the conflict—the heroic Anzac fighter and the Turks as the honourable enemy—excluded or, at best, marginalised their experiences. Such analysis tells us much about the psychological dimension of wartime captivity, and adds to our understanding of the legacy of this POW experience.     

Proxy agents,auxiliary forces,and sovereign defection: assessing the outcomes of using non-state actors in civil conflicts

Abstract

This article interrogates the role of non-state armed actors in the Ukrainian civil conflict. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it seeks to identify the differences between the patterns of military intervention in Crimea (direct, covert intervention), and those in the South-East (mixed direct and indirect – proxy – intervention). It does so by assessing the extent of Russian troop involvement and that of external sponsorship to non-state actors. Second, it puts forward a tentative theoretical framework that allows distinguishing between the different outcomes the two patterns of intervention generate. Here, the focus is on the role of non-state actors in the two interventionist scenarios. The core argument is that the use of non-state actors is aimed at sovereign defection. The article introduces the concept of sovereign defection and defines it as a break-away from an existing state. To capture the differences between the outcomes of the interventions in Crimea and South-East, sovereign defection is classified into two categories: inward and outward. Outward sovereign defection is equated to the territorial seizure of the Crimean Peninsula by Russian Special Forces, aided by existing criminal gangs acting in an auxiliary capacity. Inward sovereign defection refers to the external sponsorship of the secessionist rebels in South-East Ukraine and their use as proxy forces with the purpose of creating a political buffer-zone in the shape of a frozen conflict. To demonstrate these claims, the article analyses the configuration of the dynamics of violence in both regions. It effectively argues that, in pursuing sovereign defection, the auxiliary and proxy forces operate under two competing dynamics of violence, delegative and non-delegative, with distinct implications to the course and future of the conflict.     

Battlefield Outcomes and Rebel Cohesion: Lessons From the Eritrean Independence War

This article uses data from the Eritrean war for independence to refine existing theories of rebel fragmentation. The author argues organizational performance affects the emergence of factional infighting within rebel organizations in unique and novel ways. While battlefield losses increase the likelihood of internal fragmentation, so do battlefield gains. The implication is battlefield stalemates possess unique properties that promote organizational cohesion in war, a relationship this study refers to as “cohesive stalemates.” The article extends an emerging literature on the internal politics of insurgent groups that has linked the coherence of rebel organizations to rebel losses.     

How Can Weak Insurgent Groups Grow? Insights From Nepal

How can insurgent groups that are militarily far weaker than the state survive and grow? Influential accounts drawing on Kalyvas' “control-collaboration” model argue that limited state reach can make this possible by allowing rebel groups to carve out pockets of control where they can elicit collaboration. I suggest that this account is inadequate. Even states with limited reach are likely to transfer sufficient forces to rebel-affected areas to establish at least partial control. Weak rebels therefore often face the challenge of building capacity without local control to begin with. I identify two broad factors that can make this feasible: first, strong pre-existing rebel networks, which facilitate collaboration through solidarity, norms of reciprocity, and social incentives; and second, counterinsurgency policies and practices that fail to exploit the opportunities that control offers for incentivizing collaboration and shaping political preferences. These arguments are grounded in a fieldwork-based case study of insurgency processes in a hamlet of Rolpa, Nepal.     

(Non)-lethality and war: tear gas as a weapon of governmental intervention

This article attempts to think through the relationship between lethality and war through the object of tear gas from its invention to contemporary uses. First, I examine the way in which tear gas migrates from a zone of lethal/non-lethal conceptual indistinction, to one where the same rationalities operate but the intent of their use is opposed in relation to life and death. Second, from this biopolitical distinction, I trace its use in the governing of colonial populations and populations under occupation, and its recent weaponisation in “domestic” spaces. These contemporary uses of tear gas, I argue, can be seen as what Sloterdijk would call “atmosterror” which contribute to blurring the lines between war and peace.     

抗日民主根据地革命美术活动及其特点

抗日民主根据地的革命美术工作者,始终坚持为抗战服务和为人民群众服务的政治方向,深入人民群众和抗战生活之中,不断地学习民族传统和探求中国风格,创作了很多具有浓郁民族特色并被人民群众所喜闻乐见的优秀美术作品,充分发挥了美术这一教育人民、打击敌人的艺术武器的作用。他们的美术创作不是在与时代隔绝的象牙塔中完成的,而是直接投身于斗争,投身于群众活动的结晶。他们既是画家,同时也是革命家、对敌斗争的英勇战士。     

War and pieces

There is increasing recognition among human geographers that conceptualising the spatiality of peace is a vital component of our collective disciplinary praxis. Within this emergent literature, this paper seeks to position anarchism as an ethical philosophy of nonviolence and the absolute rejection of war. Such an interpretation does not attempt to align nonviolence to any particular organised religious teaching, as has recently been advocated by some geographers. Instead, the paper argues that the current practices of religion undermine the geographies of peace by fragmenting our affinities into discrete pieces. Advancing a view of anarchism as nonviolence, the paper goes beyond religion to conceptualise peace as both the unqualified refusal of the manifold-cum-interlocking processes of domination, and a precognitive, pre-normative and presupposed category rooted in our inextricable entanglement with each other and all that exists. Yet far from proposing an essentialist view of humanity or engaging a naturalised argument that reconvenes the “noble savage”, the paper contextualises the arguments within the processual frameworks of radical democracy and agonism in seeking to redress the ageographical and ahistorical notions of politics that comprise the contemporary post-political zeitgeist.     

正统法律思想确立时期的形态及成因散论

正统法律思想指中国古代制度构建所依凭的思想基础。第一部分将对正统法律思想初成时内部诸元素的内涵和历史渊源分别做一些分析和解读,包含法律与君权、礼、天、德的关系,并在此过程中对儒、道、法三家的法律观做简单的梳理。第二部分将从中华文化发源地的自然环境出发,以农耕和征战为立足点,论述正统法律思想形成的根本原因。     

Incentives to Rebel,Bargaining, and Civil War

To fully understand the effects of factors that encourage rebellion, we must differentiate between the way such factors influence mass decisions to join an ongoing rebellion and the way they influence the level of concessions offered by the government. We analyze a three-player bargaining model that allows us to do so. Our results indicate that governments tolerate a greater risk of conflict with their chosen concessions when any conflict that does occur is likely to take the form of a limited, rather than popular, rebellion. We demonstrate that rebellions are more likely to be popular when the general populace is relatively dissatisfied with the status quo and when the government is relatively incapable of putting down rebellions. Widespread poverty and low state capacity might therefore be associated with a lower likelihood of conflict, but a greater probability that the general populace will participate in any conflict that does occur.