East China Sea or South China Sea,they are all China's Seas: comparing nationalism among China's maritime irredentist claims

Much has been made over the past few years of China'vs ambitions of regaining control of its irredentist claims in the East and South China Seas. While some of this speculation focuses on the massive amounts of money the People's Republic of China (PRC) has funneled into its naval modernization program, other analysts are more interested in the drivers behind the increasingly popular sentiment that the country must “reclaim” its lost territories. The Chinese Communist Party can ill afford to ignore the voice of an already disenchanted population if it hopes to stay in power, particularly in regard to matters of national pride. As a result, in dealing with China's irredentist claims, nationalism in particular can be a powerful ideological factor in shaping the nation's foreign policies. This is especially apparent in the case of irredentism, where nationalism can often override diplomatic and strategic imperatives. This paper addresses the question of how does the nationalist discourse vary between two territorial disputes, the East and South China Seas. It uses discourse analysis to examine developing trends among online social media and news sites. This in turn allows for the construction of a framework of how nationalism develops among both elite and grassroots audiences.     

From a cosmopolitan to a fascist land: Adriatic irredentism in motion

This article explores Adriatic irredentism, a complex political, cultural, and social movement, by specifically analyzing the unique role it played in the legitimization of Italian territorial claims over “language frontiers” such as Trieste and its hinterland. Through a close reading of first-hand sources, it examines how Italian irredentist intellectuals, public press, and associations purposefully utilized anti-Slav and anti-German arguments to shape public perception of both the Italian nation as well as Trieste’s Italian identity or “Italianità.” Although recent historiographical interpretations have emphasized continuities in local understandings of “Italianità,” this article examines the discontinuities in the debate over its identity. It suggests that although Italian identity was first conceived as an expression of cultural and linguistic autonomy within the broader intellectual framework of Adriatic multi-nationalism, this idea gradually vanished amidst the structural crisis triggered by the Ausgleich or Compromise of 1867 and then inexorably faded on the eve of the Great War. Thus, notions of Italian national identity took an exclusionary and sometimes xenophobic meaning that was publicly used by a wide set of political actors to justify the territorial reincorporation of the “unredeemed” land within the borders of the new Italian state. The fascist regime, especially, utilized Italianness to further its aggressive and chauvinist agenda toward the Adriatic borderland. Consequently, Italian language and culture became instruments as well as symbols of repression and imperialism that were used to fulfill the regime’s ambitions of “fascistization” of the Slavic population living in the region.     

The evolution of nationhood in twentieth century Europe: lessons from the Northern Adriatic borderlands

This article is a short introduction for a special edition on Italian nationhood. The articles that comprise the special edition are the following: From a cosmopolitan to a fascist land: Adriatic irredentism in motion; Erecting fascism: nation, identity, and space in Trieste in the first half of the twentieth century; Building Italianità in northern Adriatic: The case of population from Pola.     

Common Asianist intellectual history in Turkey and Japan: Turanism

This article proposes that Turanism played similar roles in Turkey and Japan in terms of forming a common Asianist thought, which can also be considered an anti-Western intellectual notion. Central Asia was depicted as irredenta, and Turanists in each country dreamed of independence for Turan-origin people in the region. Some of them even took action, as seen in the examples of Imaoka and Enver Pasha. Russia, as a member of the West, was othered in both countries. Togay, as a Russian Turkic-origin thinker, believed that Japan was a Turan-origin country, which had potential to dispose the Russian influence on Turkic people, which could enable their independence. Apart from Russians, Han Chinese played the villain's role due to the Mongolian, Manchurian, and East Turkestan questions. Turanism, which has been almost forgotten today, formed a common Asianist intellectual root in Turkey and Japan in the first half of the twentieth century.     

Global South rhetoric in India’s policy projection

While an on-going statist project tries to portray India as a ‘rising power’ in world politics, the fact remains that India’s global projection continues to be heavily fashioned by the Global South rhetoric. Such rhetoric is inclusive of irredentism and contestation with western norms and ideals along with cooperation leading to a complex process of interactions shaping up the global order. For countries like India being claimant to the status of ‘civilisational state’, the strong urge for autonomy along with the self-perception of national and cultural greatness is shared by the elite along with a sense of strategic importance. Such identity formation, however, reduces and sometimes obliterates the gaps between ‘internal’ and ‘external’, bringing into academic scrutiny the whole range of policymaking and to what extent it matches the state rhetoric.     

Kakaя это дружба/what kind of friendship is this? Russia’s “Crimean Syndrome”

Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea without the consent of Ukraine was a rare case of a state taking territory from a state with whom it previously enjoyed friendly relations. The paper seeks to explain the causes and consequences of this annexation by examining theories of democratic peace, constructivism and irredentism. In 1971, political scientist Myron Weiner published an article “The Macedonian Syndrome” in the journal World Politics (vol. 23, no. 4, 665–683). In particular, the paper examines the applicability of Weiner’s theses to Russia’s 2014 attempt to annex Crimea from Ukraine. While Weiner’s theory helps to explain Russia’s moves, his theory can be updated to consider the consequences of those moves. Russia attempted to justify its annexation by transposing the concept of friendship from Ukraine itself to a piece of its territory – Crimea. This transposition rested on a false dichotomy between Ukraine and Crimea, and Russia’s failure to live up to its international commitments to respect Ukrainian borders brought swift consequences in the form of Western sanctions.