The IGY and the ice sheet: surveying Antarctica

This paper considers the significance of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) for the development of new knowledge of the shape of the Antarctic bed surface and the ice sheet that covers it. It also situates the Antarctic geophysical work done during the IGY within a longer history that begins in the immediate post-WWII period and extends up to the 1970s. The paper pays particular attention to the US IGY seismic traverses, which were the centrepiece of US IGY activities in Antarctica. We argue that these traverses should be understood as part of a broader set of geopolitical, military and governmental strategies that the USA pursued through the IGY and afterwards. In this sense we agree with other students of Cold War science who suggest that the IGY was far from being the beginning of the end for geopolitics in Antarctica. Instead we demonstrate that US scientific activities in Antarctica during the IGY and after were a form of geopolitics in themselves.     

Great Britain and die International Economy: Changing Historical Perspectives

E.H. HUNT. British Labour History 1815–7014. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1981. Pp. 428; M.W. KIRBY. The Decline of British Economic Power Since 1870. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981. Pp. 205; DONALD N. MCCLOSKEY. Enterprise & Trade in Victorian Britain. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981. Pp. 211; SIDNEY POLLARD. The Integration of the Europe Economy Since 1815. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981. Pp. 109.     

'A question of loyalty': mussolinismo and the collapse of the Italian Fascist regime in 1943

The view of a largely monolithic, 'totalitarian' regime and society in Fascist Italy (which still carries a lot of conviction with an influential group of historians) has been challenged from a number of different viewpoints. The common denominator of this sceptical approach is that, in spite of whatever ideological intentions the Fascist leadership or movement had vis-à-vis the totalitarian transformation of Italian society, the regime failed in establishing deep,enduring structures of social control and active consensus. This article focuses on the Italian regime's (abortive) attempt to substitute the traditional web of allegiances which operated in Italian society with a new, unitary sense of loyalty to Fascism. The main problem identified here is what we may call mussolinismo – the growing tendency of the system to rely on Mussolini's personal decisions and initiatives, often in contradiction to the initial spirit of Fascism or to the views of prominent Fascist figures (Bottai, Balbo, Grandi, etc.). But the article also explores the reasons behind the apparent inability of the dissidents within the Fascist hierarchy to contemplate active opposition to Mussolini – something that happened only on the eleventh hour, in July 1943. Through examining the (often critical) views of important Fascist figures about the regime's political direction (nature of the regime, Axis alliance, etc.), a more complex sense of loyalty to the Duce personally emerges – a form of loyalty that remained non-rational and essentially tautological to the notion of loyalty to Fascism itself. This explains why, in the dramatic July 1943 Grand Council meeting, the vote against Mussolini could for the first time be contemplated in the face of total Fascist collapse as an act of repudiating Fascism as a whole. L'idea di che esistesse una coesione monolitico 'totalitaria' tra regime e società nell'Italia fascista (la quale è ancora di gran lunga diffusa in un gruppo influente di storici) è stata critica da diversi punti di vista. Il comune denominatore di un tale scettico è che, rispetto a qualsiasi motivazione ideologica che la classe dirigente fascista o il movimento stesso ebbe nel tentativo di trasformare la società italiana secondo un indirizzo totalitario, il regime fallì nel costruire strutture radicate e durevoli per ottenere il controllo sulla società ed ottenerne il dovuto consenso. Questo articolo è finalizzato all'analisi del tentativo fallimentare del regime fascista di sostituire la rete tradizionale di legami culturali e sociali esistente nel Paese con un sentimento nuovo ed unitario di lealtà verso il Fascismo. L'aspetto principale che viene posto in evidenza è quello che potremmo definire come mussolinismo , ossia, la tendenza crescente da parte del regime di dipendere sulle decisioni ed iniziative personali di Mussolini, spesso in contrasto con lo spirito ideologico iniziale del Fascismo, o perfino con le concezioni politiche di altri esponenti del regime (Bottai, Balbo, Grandi). L'articolo, inoltre, esplora le ragioni, al di là di una apparente incapacità, da parte dei dissidenti all'interno della gerarchia fascista ad intraprendere una opposizione attiva ai danni di Mussolini - un'opposizione che divenne realtà solo all'ultima ora, nel luglio del 1943. Attraverso un esame (spesso critico) delle visioni e prospettive che esponenti fascisti di primo piano ebbero sulla direzione politica del regime (natura del regime, partecipazione nell'Asse, etc.), emerge un sentimento di lealtà verso il Duce di gran lunga più complesso di quello che ci si potrebbe aspettare, e della natura prevalentemente personale - in breve, una forma di lealtà che rimase non razionale ed essenzialmente tautologica alla nozione di lealtà al Fascismo stesso. Tutto questo spiega perché, durante la drammatica riunione del Gran Consiglio del Fascismo del luglio 1943, il voto contro Mussolini poteva essere concepito, nel contesto del collasso generale del regime, come un atto di ripudio totale verso il Fascismo.     

19世纪70年代的英国农业危机及其影响

１８７３年,资本主义世界爆发了一次空前严重的世界性经济危机,它标志着自由资本主义发展到顶点并开始向垄断资本主义过渡,从而使１９世纪７０年代成为资本主义发展史上具有转折意义的关键时期。英国这个在资本主义世界一直处于中心地位的国家,在这次危机中未能幸免,...     

Reluctant collaborators: Argentina and Chile in Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year, 1957–58

This paper suggests that Argentine and Chilean participation with the Antarctic section of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957–58 can be characterized as ‘reluctant collaboration.’ It then reflects on the implications of the nature of South American involvement for the history of the Antarctic section of the IGY, especially as it led to the negotiation of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. During the initial planning stages of the IGY, both Argentina and Chile worried that proposals for widespread scientific research in the Antarctic continent would interfere with their contested claims to political sovereignty in the region. Yet despite their initial skepticism, Argentina and Chile found themselves swept along by the current of international scientific co-operation of the IGY, which persisted into the Antarctic Treaty negotiations of 1959. Within the limited options available, Chile and Argentina were able to negotiate an outcome that was not altogether unfavorable to their political interests. At the same time, their collaboration helped to legitimize both the IGY and the subsequent Antarctic Treaty.     

The geographical and ethical origins of neoliberalism: The Walter Lippmann Colloquium and the foundations of a new geopolitical order

Observers tend to overlook the early neoliberalism that derived from the “Lippmann Colloquium” organised in Paris in 1938. Analysis of the discourse produced and books published at this founding moment shows that neoliberalism was then presented as a geopolitical doctrine aimed at redressing the spatial fragmentation of the world into States. The means to achieve this, according to this first neoliberalism, was by implementing what, in 1978, M. Foucault called “governmentality”: a multiscalar political system based on the submission of territories to the transnational discipline of a multilateral free division of labour. This thinking was very similar to the convictions of a number of political leaders who, from the 1940s onwards, were involved in creating a new international order uniting Western Europe and the United States, the foundations of which had many similarities with the principles of the first neoliberalism.     

Screw Threads on the SS Xantho Engine: a Case of Standardisation in 19th Century Britain

A former RN gunboat horizontal trunk engine taken from the SS Xantho (1848–1872) in 1985 was totally disassembled by May 2004. All the threads on the engine were examined and the majority were found to be British Standard Whitworth (BSW). This provides material evidence of the spread of standardisation at a time when the Royal Navy commissioned the first mass-produced marine engines and fitted them to the 'Crimean War Gunboat' types. The study also provides a pointer to the use of screw threads as a diagnostic tool in maritime archaeology.
© 2004 The Nautical Archaeology Society     

White Women and Men of Colour: Miscegenation Fears in Britain after the Great War

This article examines miscegenation fears in Britain in the period after World War I, noting three dominant discourses: that miscegenation leads inevitably to violence between white and black men (focusing on the 1919 race riots), that these relationships involve sexual immorality (analysing the 1920 ‘Black Horror on the Rhine’, a case involving a white woman, a Chinese man and drugs and a trial of a white woman for killing her Egyptian husband) and that miscegenation has ‘disastrous’ procreative consequences. It is suggested that miscegenation stood as one British boundary marker, separating the nationally acceptable and the nationally threatening. The parties concerned – the ‘primitive’ man of colour, the white woman of a ‘low type’ and the ‘misfit’ offspring – were each pathologised in terms of their deviant sexuality. Yet interracial relationships did not decrease, quite the contrary. The move in Britain towards a more racially mixed community began in the years after the Great War, when certain white women made choices against the norms of respectable femininity.     

The Pre-Roman Iron Age in Britain and Ireland (ca. 800 B.C. to A.D. 100): An overview

Those communities that lived in Britain and Ireland ca. 800 B.C. to A.D. 100 represent particularly well-researched examples of the complex agrarian, nonurban, societies with high population densities that characterize the Pre-Roman Iron Age across temperate Europe. This paper provides a critical introduction to the extensive recent literature on the Pre-Roman Iron Age in Britain and Ireland. Evidence from the large number of salvage excavations and surveys, the application of a wide range of analytical techniques, and important changes in interpretative frameworks are transforming understandings of this period. After reviewing these developments, a chronological account of the period is outlined which attempts to integrate these new results. This suggests that current interpretations of social processes across Iron Age Europe in terms of state formation, urbanization, and core-periphery relations with Mediterranean civilization need revision.     

The last outpost of Empire: Rockall and the Cold War

This paper is about what can be seen at sea. It considers the historical geography of a site at the geopolitical axis of the British Empire and the Cold War. It focuses on a hitherto unacknowledged historical reference point: the last territorial expansion of the UK, which laid claim to the tiny islet of Rockall, lying some 300 miles west of the Scottish mainland. Rockall was annexed in September 1955 because it was situated within radio-electrical range of a test site for Britain's first nuclear missile, the American-made ‘Corporal’. As a ‘tactical’ nuclear missile designed for potential deployment in Eastern Europe, the Corporal was a central part of NATO defence policy in the 1950s. Crucial to its development was a testing station in the Outer Hebrides, from which the guided missile could be fired and its ballistic trajectory tracked over the North Atlantic. Occupying an area only 83 feet across and 100 feet wide, Rockall represented a strategic vantage point for the rival gaze of Soviet intelligence. Following Paul Virilio's argument that the logic of war is less about scoring territorial or material victories than about securing ‘the “immateriality” of perceptual fields’, this paper details the ceremonial annexation of Rockall and the subsequent transformation of the Hebridean seascape into a vast topography for military surveillance. This final expansive moment of British imperialism was legitimated by symbolic and rhetorical strategies tying Rockall to both earlier geographical exploration and the science of natural history.     

A Vast Inland Empire and the Last Great West: remaking society, space and environment in early British Columbia

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a new order was imposed on the land and inhabitants of present-day interior British Columbia. From one perspective this was a story of human progress and improvement – the advance of colonizing Europeans into lands that they considered underutilized and unproductive and that they sought, often successfully, to bring within the growing orbit of global trade and world capitalism. Yet for many people and creatures the story of resettlement was far from a story of progress. In relatively short order – less than a century – the grasslands of interior British Columbia were swept and transformed by many of the most powerful currents of western modernity. The results of this transformation were uneven and often deeply inequitable. By the late nineteenth century native peoples had been dispossessed and struggled to survive on small resource-poor Indian Reserves; a few corporate and family-owned cattle ranches controlled the best range leaving small-scale immigrant ranchers with more or less marginal land; and many types of grassland had been heavily overgrazed. This paper explores these darker sides of European resettlement in present-day interior British Columbia by emphasizing the role of ranching in colonial resettlement, by describing the stratified rural society that ranching, in part, produced, and by revealing the different ways that cattle and ranches interacted with natural and economic processes to remake an environment.     

The India-Iran-Pakistan Triad: Comprehending the Correlation of Geo-economics and Geopolitics

Historically, India’s policy on Iran has been a balancing act between securing its interests as a counterweight to Pakistan, and ensuring its continued partnership with the US and other regional players. Yet confusion in India’s Iran policy became evident when Iran’s nuclear program began to draw international attention in the 1990s. More recently, India has attempted to reach out to Iran, reigniting trade relations and initiating new plans. Growing Indo-Iran relations are however a worrying sign for Islamabad, which is attempting a simultaneous expansion of ties with Tehran while continuing to resolve outstanding disputes. The central argument of this paper is that India’s relations with Iran are best understood through the prism of the intertwining of geo-economic and geopolitical considerations. Analysis has often separated these two factors, but there is evidence that a synergy exists – and that it is particularly visible when the Pakistani element is introduced. Often emphasising historical and cultural affinity, India and Pakistan have each sought politically and economically viable relations with Iran. Yet their bilateral political calculations and the current economic challenges have prompted a nuanced policy based on a careful balancing of geo-economics and geopolitics.