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.     

“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.     

Compensation,retraining and respiratory diseases: British coal miners, 1918–1939

By 1918, the British coal industry, like all industries, was facing the pressures of transitioning from a wartime to a peacetime economy. The pressures brought by a slowing economy would leave many coal miners, who possessed limited transferrable skills, harbouring deep concerns about their future employment. For those still in employment, concerns were increasing for workers’ health. Sharp increases in respiratory illnesses across the nation’s coalfields were now a major cause of disablement. Accompanying this was the almost inevitable possibility of unemployment, prompting major concerns among workers and trade unions. This article will explore how the nature of industrial relations across Britain’s coalfields changed during the interwar years in response to these challenges, and reveals how the government developed schemes to train disabled coal miners for work in other industries. The relationship between trade unions and the Ministry of Labour, and the incremental passage of legislation to address issues concerning workers’ occupational health in Britain’s coal mines will be examined. The onset of the Second World War ensured the coal industry was now central to the war effort. Recruitment was intensified accordingly. The improvement to working conditions underground, negotiated by trade unions, helped ensure that the workforce and the coal industry more generally were well-prepared for the challenges of the post-First World War economy, and the difficulties the Second World War would bring.     

Britain’s Place in the Contemporary World

This article offers a personal view of Britain’s place in the contemporary world, analysed in terms of five interlocking rings: the traditional three, i.e. relations with the United States, with Europe and the Commonwealth, to which are added the concepts of process and soft power.