Neutrality and submarine warfare: Germany and Spain during the First World War

The Spanish government maintained official neutrality during the Great War because deviating from neutrality would supposedly endanger the nation’s already limited political and social stability and even threaten the survival of the monarchic regime. In August 1914 there were no direct Spanish interests in the conflict and no benefit to be obtained from any intervention by Spain, which was very weak in military terms and in the international arena. Nevertheless, Spain’s geographic location and its commercial dependence on the Entente made it especially vulnerable to the pressures of France and Great Britain, both of which attempted to take advantage of the services that Spain could offer in the economic war; Spain’s importance increased with the prolongation of the fight. Germany, in contrast, could not hope for more from Spain than its strict neutrality because of its highly important political and economic ties with the Entente and its defencelessness before England and France, from which Germany could not protect it. Because Germany could not wait for Spain’s participation next to her, the primary target of German diplomacy had to be to resist the influence of the Entente and maintain Spanish neutrality while preventing Spain from inclining towards favouring the Allies. To achieve this objective, Berlin fed, with vague promises, the idea that a Spanish collaboration would be rewarded with the annexation of some territories. On this basis, we can begin to study German–Spanish relations during the Great War, which came to be determined by incidents that were caused by the submarine war. The dependence on the Entente also helps to explain the last evolution of the relations between Germany and Spain, which could follow no other policy than that imposed by the final development of the war: taking up a position near the winners and distancing from, and nearly rupturing ties with, Germany. Using both Spanish and German documentation allows us to reach different conclusions that aim to contribute substantially to understanding the relationship between Spain and Germany during the Great War.     

Neville Chamberlain and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–9

Neville Chamberlain's role in the Spanish Civil War is a neglected subject in the history of the conflict. Yet he wielded considerable influence over Britain's Spanish policy. Like most Conservatives, his ideological sympathies lay more with the Nationalist forces led by General Francisco Franco than the besieged Republicans. At the same time, he deplored the intervention of Germany, Italy, and Soviet Russia and was strongly committed to the policy of non-intervention, which he genuinely believed had confined the Spanish conflict and prevented its escalation into a European conflagration. He was strongly opposed to granting belligerent rights to Franco unless foreign volunteers were withdrawn from Spain. He deplored the bombing of civilians in Spain, sought to help the many refugees caused by the war, and tried unsuccessfully on occasions to mediate an end to the conflict. The civil war was a considerable obstacle which threatened to undermine Chamberlain's appeasement of Fascist Italy, intended to weaken the Rome–Berlin Axis, and to constrain Germany in pursuit of general European appeasement. The Prime Minister's commitment to non-intervention in Spain, more the creation of the Foreign Office than his own, did no serious damage to British economic and strategic interests before June 1940.     

Review Article: Professional,Political, and Mercenary Soldiers

Since the late 1970s, most scholarship on the origins of the Zionist–Palestinian conflict has emphasised the actions and agency of the Palestinian Arabs and Zionists, with a focus on the period before 1914. It is argued in this article, however, that the expectation of and commitment to political independence on both sides, a defining feature of the conflict, did not emerge until 1918, and that the actions of the British government in Palestine during the final year of the First World War drove this fundamental shift. Following Britain's occupation of southern Palestine in December 1917, the British administration undertook an extensive propaganda operation in the country to advertise their backing for Arab nationalism and Zionism. This campaign was part of the British government's wider endeavour to mobilise support for the Allied war effort and British imperial expansion in the Middle East in the new age of nationality. It led, the article contends, to a war for national sovereignty over Palestine between two statist nationalist movements. Rather than emphasise British colonial agency at the expense of that of the Palestinian Arabs and Zionists, the article argues that this development derived from a complex interaction between the three parties within the context of radical changes in international politics.     

‘Unparalleled Opportunities’: The Indian Y.M.C.A.'s Army Work Schemes for Imperial Troops During the Great War (1914–1920)

The present article aims to contribute to the global history of the First World War and the history of ‘imperial humanitarianism’ by taking stock of the Indian Young Men's Christian Association's Army Work schemes in South Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The outbreak of the war was hailed by some American secretaries of the Y.M.C.A. working in India as presenting overwhelming opportunities for their proselytising agenda. Indeed, the global conflict massively enlarged the organisation's range of activities among European soldiers stationed in South Asia and for the first time extended it to the ‘Sepoys’, i.e. Indian and Nepalese soldiers serving in the imperial army. Financially supported by the Indian public as well as by the governments of Britain and British India, the US-dominated Indian Y.M.C.A. embarked on large-scale ‘army work’ programmes in the Indian subcontinent as well as in several theatres of war almost from the outset, a fact that clearly boosted its general popularity. This article addresses the question of the effects the Y.M.C.A.'s army work schemes had for the imperial war effort and tries to assess their deeper societal and political impact as a means of educating better citizens, both British and Indian. In doing so, the article places particular emphasis on the activities of American Y-workers, scrutinising to what extent pre-existing imperial racial and cultural stereotypes influenced their perception of and engagement with the European and South Asian soldiers they wanted to transform into ‘better civilians’.     

‘… For it was founded upon a Rock’: Gibraltar and the Purposes of Empire in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

In 1853–54, cholera in Britain forced the leadership at the tiny British fortress colony of Gibraltar to make a choice. Should the colony quarantine ships from Britain or leave the maritime frontier open to ships from the metropolitan centre of empire? The first choice secured imperial communication between London and the Rock, but it also jeopardised Gibraltar's land access to Southern Spain, as the failure to quarantine British ships would surely force Spanish authorities to close their border to protect against pandemic disease. Contrapuntally, the decision to protect Gibraltarian trade with Spain undermined any substantive claim to British ‘control’ over its colonial possession. The choice here was highlighted by Gibraltar's colonial governor, General Sir Robert Gardiner, who insisted that Gibraltar be governed as a British colony and kept open to the colonial centre at all costs, and Gibraltar's merchant community, a group that feared the economic consequences of a frontier closure at Gibraltar enough to favour keeping the Rock's quarantine policies in line with Spanish regulations rather than those set by Britain. As a result of this medical dispute, Gibraltar became a pivotal location, a metonym for a much broader conversation about the uses and purposes of Britain's overseas empire in the middle years of the nineteenth century.     

Tokelau 1852 Exodus

The images of Fiji (and the Pacific generally) that were both employed and consumed at the international exhibitions of the late-19th and early-20th centuries — together with the stereotypes associated with such representations — exhibited a continuity that can be traced back to earlier accounts and displays of Pacific Island peoples. While attempts were made at later exhibitions to shift the focus of displays away from tales of ‘savagery’ and ‘cannibalism’ to those of ‘progress’, ‘civilisation’ and even ‘modernity’, the apparent popularity of Fiji's displays — as evidenced in contemporary accounts — remained firmly located in the appeal of the already existing ‘idea’ of Fiji. This article focuses on the representation of Fiji at two British imperial exhibitions: the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition, and the 1924 British Empire Exhibition, and demonstrates that the ‘idea’ or ‘knowledge’ of Fiji that audiences brought to the exhibitions, and despite the best efforts of display organisers — usually representatives of the colonial administration — to reposition Fiji within the minds of the metropolitan audience, visitors — as always — saw what they wanted to and in so doing reconfirmed their ‘knowledge’ of Fiji.     

An enduring influence on imperial defence and grand strategy: British perceptions of the Italian Navy, 1935–1943

The Mediterranean was a vital artery of the British Empire. It was a strategic corridor, linking Britain to its Middle and Far East possessions and precious resources. Its control was a central tenet of British imperial strategy, yet by the mid-1930s, this faced a new challenge from Fascist Italy. The Italian Navy was central to expansionist aspirations and forced British reappraisals of the allocation of defence resources both in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. It therefore came to exert a generally under-appreciated influence on pre-war British imperial defence policy and war planning. Although consistently viewed as vastly inferior to the Royal Navy, it was still seen as an impediment to Britain's ability to deliver imperial defence across the globe, or conduct a worldwide war against multiple enemies. This view persisted even after important defeats were inflicted on it in 1940–1941, and continued right through to 1943. Awareness of the seriousness with which the British viewed Italian naval strength adds important context to debates about British strategy in the Far East and over Winston Churchill's preference for a ‘Mediterranean first’ strategy. Italian naval power played a greater role in shaping the Allied prosecution of the Second World War than is commonly accepted.     

The Limits of the Shanghai Bridgehead: Understanding British Intervention in the Taiping Rebellion 1860–62

This article discusses the rationale behind British intervention in the Taiping civil war in China and the episode’s wider significance for understanding nineteenth-century British imperial expansion. I argue that the most productive way to understand the shape of the limited British intervention in the war is through analysing the relative strength of distinct bridgeheads of British interest in China. British interests in Shanghai grew rapidly in the Taiping period and helped to draw in intervention against the Taiping armies when they attacked the port in 1860 and 1862. The strict limitation of this intervention, which did not result in any imperial expansion in China, was a result of the consistent underperformance of the wider British trade with China. Without a growth in this trade, the expense of an extensive intervention and its potential consequences could not be justified. The episode suggests that analyses of local conditions and the strength of local ties to metropolitan resources are important for understanding the wider pattern of British imperial expansion.     

Ensuring Benevolent Neutrality: The British Government's Appeasement of General Franco during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

This article examines the development of British non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Previous studies have focused heavily on pro-rebel or anti-Republican sentiments among British officials in London and abroad, and often apply the term ‘malevolent neutrality’ to the motives behind the policy. However, utilising records from the National Archives as well as private papers, this article evaluates British non-intervention within the context of appeasement and demonstrates a clear link between the two policies. By examining British neutrality through the lens of appeasement, this study will enhance our understanding of British diplomacy in the 1930s and the links between non-intervention in Spain and the growing threat of fascism in Europe. It argues that the British Government adopted and maintained a policy of strict neutrality in order to avoid an escalation of the conflict and to place itself in a better position from which it could establish a good relationship with whichever side emerged victorious. As it became increasingly clear that the rebels were going to overthrow the Republic, the British Government began to tacitly appease General Franco in an attempt to avoid a hostile Spain in the build up to the Second World War.     

The history of silver refining in New Spain, 16c to 18c: back to the basics

The refining of silver ores in New Spain was defined by the chemical nature of the silver ore. Argentiferous galena (lead sulphide) could only be refined by smelting (36% silver produced), irrespective of silver content, and amalgamation (64%) could only be applied to the silver sulphide ores. Both processes were transferred from Europe, but amalgamation was transformed by local expertise from a recipe of limited application to an industrial-scale solution for refining sulphidic silver ores. Its implementation shaped the environmental history of colonial silver refining in the New World. Mercury was consumed mainly through its chemical conversion into calomel, with minimal emissions of volatile mercury. Waste silt and liquid mercury in the soil and waterways were its main legacy. Smelting created a greater impact on the environment of New Spain, via lead in lead fumes as the main heavy metal issued to the air, and its depletion of woodlands. This article argues that a technical analysis of period refining practices in New Spain reorients our understanding of Spain’s imperial relations with its New World colonies, of the role of local knowledge in a global economy of silver production, and of environmental issues in colonial history. It thus speaks to the problem of unpacking the complex web of relations that composed early European imperialism, in which were enmeshed commodities such as silver, cotton and sugar.     

The rediscovery of the Spanish Republic of Letters

This article provides a reappraisal of the history of proyectismo. Scholars have employed the concept to categorise early eighteenth-century Spanish authors and reforms, and have thereby severed them from their historical context. This article explores the imperial origins of this political culture by shedding light on the generation of knowledge in early eighteenth-century diplomatic and imperial spaces. The article focuses on the overlooked thinker Álvaro José Navia-Osorio y Vigil, Marquis of Santa Cruz de Marcenado (1684–1732) – long considered to be a proyectista – and his appeal to the Spanish Republic of Letters to assist him in his project for a universal dictionary; an enterprise that predated Chamber’s Cyclopedia and Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. Marcenado’s contributions to the establishment of Spanish intellectual connections with foreign thinkers were, moreover, symptomatic of the political approach of early eighteenth-century ilustrados – transterritorial, transnational, and transversal thinkers who drew on the peninsula’s ties with the Flanders and Italy to revitalise the intellectual life of Spain. These thinkers recovered the study of Muslim Spain, and envisioned the establishment of councils and academies in Mexico and Peru. The Spanish Enlightenment, then, originated in the early eighteenth-century from their rediscovery of the Spanish Republic of Letters.     

The Politics of Provisioning: Feeding South Asian Prisoners During the First World War

During the First World War, the German and British Governments supplied culturally appropriate rations and secured special facilities for food preparation and consumption for South Asian prisoners of war whose loyalty both governments sought. The food provided in POW camps to South Asians serves as an index of the political status of colonial subjects at a moment when the future of European empires was far from certain. The British Government’s approach to feeding its South Asian servicemen held by the enemy thus reveals this population’s place within Britain’s wartime national and imperial imaginary and in its post-war planning.     

Empire‐nation: national and imperial discourses in England

When the states of England and Scotland combined in 1707, conditions were created whereby English nationalism could merge into British nationalism. With the expansion of empire, English nationalism was expressed through imperial‐national discourses allowing English nationalists to claim non‐English space when articulating what might be best understood as an Anglo‐British nationalism. Accordingly, such discourses largely ‘hid’ what one might now understand as ‘English nationalism’ within a ‘British’ discourse of empire. The case of England illustrates that imperial discourses can become intimately bound up with the ‘national’ discourse of the nations at the core of the imperial structures. Accordingly, it is here argued that imperial and national discourse are not necessarily opposed to each other, but are able to feed into each other, affecting the manner in which ideas of the nation and empire are conceived and articulated.     

Colonial Australia,the 1887 Colonial Conference,and the Struggle for Imperial Unity

ABSTRACT

For historians interested in the settler colonial world, one of Professor John Darwin’s most important interventions has been to argue for the reintegration of the dominions into the wider history of the British empire. In re-engaging with the history of Britain’s white settler colonies in North America, Australasia, and South Africa, Darwin’s work has sought to emphasize the place of the dominions in relation to the rise and fall of the British world system, as well as their value as vantage points from which to consider imperial and global history more generally. In this regard, Darwin’s systemic approach has encouraged a more dynamic conception of ‘British world’ history – one deeply embedded in a series of overlapping imperial, regional, and international contexts. This article focuses on a particular moment in imperial history where some of the internal dynamics of the late-Victorian British world system, and the changing place of the settler colonies within it, were brought into sharp relief: the 1887 Colonial Conference. It argues that we might look to the conference as a valuable window onto the impact of Anglo-Australian relations upon the wider struggle for imperial unity in the 1880s.     

The Queen’s Dolls’ House within the British Empire Exhibition: encapsulating the British imperial world

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, designed by Edwin Landseer Lutyens and unveiled to the public in 1924 at the British Empire Exhibition. The Dolls’ House epitomised the characteristics of Britain as a nation and an empire through its English exterior and British world objects within. Marginalised in academic discourses and regarded as a plaything, this article brings the Dolls’ House back to discourses of British material and visual culture as well as Lutyens scholarship. To this end, it analyses how the design and contents of the House encapsulated the British imperial world and materialised Britain’s position in the postwar world.     

The China of Tomorrow: Japan and the Limits of Victorian Expansion

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the literature on the mechanisms, rhetoric, and limits of mid-Victorian expansion by asking how far late Tokugawa Japan was subject to forms of British imperialism. In September 1862 a British merchant was murdered on the high road between Edo and Kyoto; a year later, a British fleet bombarded Kagoshima in retaliation. By engaging with John Darwin’s concept of the ‘bridgehead’, this article examines the circumstances in which a lonely death on the frontiers of British commerce could be transformed into a Victorian ‘outrage’. It considers what we stand to gain by bringing an imperial history perspective to bear on what remains, for most imperial historians, a largely forgotten conflict. In positing Yokohama as a bridgehead that could gain only fitful purchase in London, it asks new questions about the conduct of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ and the fault lines of mid-Victorian expansion; the place of Japan in British political imaginaries; the nature of informal empire; and the discourses buffeting British expansion in the turbulent 1860s.     

The Imperialism of Internment: Boer Prisoners of War in India and Civic Reconstruction in Southern Africa, 1899–1905

During the course of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, over 9,000 captured Boers were sent abroad to India as prisoners of war. Using hitherto unexamined sources, this article explores how, during their internment and repatriation, British officials and administrators across the empire collaborated in a concerted attempt to transform the imperial enemy into colonial collaborator. This involved a necessarily intercolonial effort to conduct a successful programme of ‘re-education’ capable of cultivating ‘white’ British virtues in preparing Boer POWs for their future rights and duties in reconstructing Southern Africa upon their repatriation. In so doing, the government of India and other colonial officials across the empire thus recapitulated their ideal of Britain’s imperial project in the Boer POW camps. Highlighting the intercoloniality of this process, India’s viceroy, Lord George Curzon, played as prominent a role as did the War Office, or South Africa’s soon-to-be pro-consul, Lord Alfred Milner. The microcosmic imperialism of Boer internment thus reveals a great deal about the nature and structure of power within the British Empire, and emphasises the value of an intercolonial or transcolonial perspective in examining the complex, global consequences of the Anglo-Boer War.     

Gasparo Contarini’s Relazione of November 1525 to the Venetian Senate on the divergent dynamics of the Spanish and Portuguese world empires

This contribution seeks to present Gasparo Contarini’s diplomatic report (Relazione), made following three years in Venetian service in Spain between 1522–1525, to unfamiliar readers, as well as to elucidate its contents. It was a time when ground-breaking reports of the first global circumnavigation by Magellan/Elcano and conquests in the New World undertaken by Hernán Cortés were filtering back to the Spanish ruler, Charles V. Projects for the colonization of Brazil in neighbouring Portugal were afoot, as were attempts by other parties to reach the contested Spiceries by new routes. International juries were constituted to decide upon the division of the world’s spaces, culminating in the Treaty of Saragossa, and controversial maps were drawn up both to make sense of potentially new continents like the Americas, and to plead different cases at the upcoming tribunals. It is asked why such a polarized picture of successful Spanish and unsuccessful Portuguese imperial fortunes is provided by Contarini, at a time of great rivalry between Spain and Portugal, and it is suggested that Contarini – who did not personally travel to Portugal – may simply be following a rhetorical precedent fashioned by previous diplomats like Ca’Masser, Vincenzo Quirini and Pietro Pasqualigo. Historical, personal and documentary context (Contarini’s 400 dispacci, for example) is provided, and comparisons drawn to the letters and reports of other contemporary observers, like the Polish diplomat Jan Dantyszek at the Spanish court, as well as contemporary travellers and businessmen, like Jörg Pock in Lisbon.     

A portrait for the Mukama: Monarchy and empire in Colonial Bunyoro,Uganda

In September 1934 the ruler of Bunyoro, in the Uganda Protectorate, was presented with a signed portrait of King George V. It was a ceremony which immediately suggests the role of the imperial monarchy as a focus for the public performances which sustained the authority of colonial states, and evokes an image of an ‘ornamentalising’ British imperial vision of authority. Yet a detailed examination of the context of this gift suggests the ambivalence of British attitudes towards the idea of African ‘kingship’, and indicates the importance of African attempts to exploit the idea of kingship in pursuit of local agendas.     

Loyalty and Royalty: Gibraltar, the 1953 54 Royal Tour and the Geopolitics of the Iberian Peninsula

This article explores the 1953–54 Royal Tour and in particularthe planning and eventual reception of the Queen and her partywhen they arrived in Gibraltar. These events are consideredin terms of three overlapping contexts: the imperial, the colonialand the geopolitical. First, the Royal Tour marked not onlythe debut of a new Queen but also the realization that the BritishEmpire was beginning to fragment with the eruption of independencemovements in South Asia and the Middle East. Hence, its internationalitinerary bound the remaining empire symbolically together,but also served as a reminder of the ‘gaps’ thatwere beginning to appear. Second, the analysis considers howthe Royal Tour presented an opportunity for the local residentsof Gibraltar to ‘perform their loyalty’ to the newQueen and the British Empire. The focus on performance is significantbecause the article does not presume that ‘loyalty’is simply pre-given. A great deal of work was involved in realizingthe reception of the Queen's party in May 1954 against a backdropof a territorial dispute with Spain over the future legal statusof Gibraltar. The Royal Tour offered the possibility, therefore,of persuading the British and Spanish governments of the localresidents’ qualities including a continued loyalty tothe British/imperial Royal Family and indirectly to Britain.Third, the article underscores the significance of such loyalperformances by considering Spanish opposition to the Queen'svisit in the light of Franco's efforts to establish his country'santi-Communist credentials. The Royal Tour, and the Gibraltarleg in particular, are thus show to be an intense locus of performanceslinked to the politics of empire, colonial rights and anti-imperialism. Animated, happy faces gazing at the sights and decorations showbetter than words the true feelings of the people of the fortress-colonytowards their young, beloved Queen. One correspondent of a Britishnewspaper said that he thought the 27,000 servicemen and civilianson the Rock were so fervidly loyal that they would tear to piecesanyone discovered in their midst with evil designs, and thatwas sufficient guarantee of their Majesty's safety.¹