William Tell Militarism: The Swiss Model for Canada’s ‘Citizen Army’

Following Confederation in 1867, Canadians needed to move forward from their dependence on British imperial defence. Canadian militiaman Richard John Wicksteed was first to recommend adopting the model of the Swiss Army, a multi-ethnic, rifle-wielding citizen force powerful enough to ensure Swiss neutrality although surrounded by militaristic European powers. General Officer Commanding Edward Thomas Henry Hutton later proposed the Swiss model for a Canadian ‘National Army,’ echoed by Militia Minister Frederick Borden. In 1917, Colonel William Hamilton Merritt was the final advocate, drawn especially to the notion of equality in Switzerland’s universal military training programme. By this time, however, the Great War had changed concepts of Canada’s military needs from a reliance upon the defence-oriented citizen soldier to a more highly trained, expeditionary military force.     

An Opportunistic Anglophobe: Charles J. Haughey,the Irish Government and the Falklands War, 1982

This article examines Irish taoiseach (prime minister) Charles J. Haughey’s involvement with the Falklands War of 1982; a hitherto neglected subject related to a defining episode in the history of Great Britain in the post-war era. Specifically, it focuses on Haughey’s relationship with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher during the depths of this crisis and the immediate diplomatic and political fallout between the British and Irish governments in the aftermath of the Falklands War. At the heart of this article is the argument that Haughey’s modus operandi during the Falkland War was motivated by a blend of political opportunism and cynical anglophobia.     

Understanding the British Empire

In the immediate post-war period and during the early cold war, Britain regularly defended Switzerland's interests against the two emerging superpowers: the Soviet Union and especially the United States. This advocacy was not, however, altruistically motivated. In light of their experiences during the Second World War, British policy-makers could still see the benefits of a neutral Switzerland. But more importantly, the relatively wealthy Swiss were willing to pay for British support and a neutral Switzerland implied other financial, political, and strategic advantages. When there were no such advantages, London abstained from defending Berne. In the case of the negotiations leading to Switzerland's informal participation in the Western strategic embargo against the Eastern Bloc, Whitehall did not stand up to defend Swiss neutrality against US might. Yet this article demonstrates that even if the British had been willing to help the Swiss in their dealings with the Americans, they would have lacked the power to prevent Washington from imposing its will. Britain's power continued to decline after the war, and advocacy for Switzerland could only be successful if the Swiss position was acceptable to the United States.     

Britain,Empire and the Origins of the Cold War Youth Race

The Soviet politicization of international youth during the inter-war and wartime years was identified by British policy-makers as a most serious threat to British imperial power. Asserting the significance of and interplay between colonial youth and imperial ideology in the politics of the cultural Cold War, this article thus examines how the British conceptualized and sought to compete in the Cold War ‘youth race’ between 1945 and 1949. While funding was the most obvious disadvantage, this article argues that Britain’s fatal weakness was its inability to escape the consequences of colonialism, including the tendency to rely on repressive legislation.     

An unholy alliance: Swiss citizenship between local legal tradition,federal laissez-faire,and ethno-national rejection of foreigners 1848–1933

This article traces the development of the federal structure of Swiss citizenship between the founding of the federal state in 1848 and the entrenchment of a restrictive naturalisation and establishment policy in the interwar period. Considering the difficult integration of foreign residents through naturalisation in the past and present in Switzerland, the author examines the causes for the granting and refusal of Swiss citizenship. She shows that the development of and arrangements for access to Swiss citizenship cannot be reduced only to notions about the Swiss nation or national interests. They are the result of a permanent process of political negotiation and coordination between the federation, cantons and local authorities; owing to its importance in social assistance matters, local citizenship constituted an impediment to naturalisation until well into the twentieth century. In contrast, the federation and certain cantons like Zurich, Basle and Geneva had sought since the 1880s to reduce the strongly increasing number of foreign residents by liberalising naturalisation. The outbreak of the Second World War put an end to these endeavours. With the rise of a ‘new right’ since 1900, the setting up of the Central Office of the Foreign Police in 1917, and the institutionalisation of the authorities' ‘fight against foreign infiltration’, Swiss nationality law became ethnicised. Cultural ‘assimilation’ into the ‘particularity of Swiss society’ was now regarded as a precondition for becoming a Swiss citizen. The new federal rejection of foreigners thus joined with the traditionally restrictive policy of local authorities in an unholy alliance that began to breach only in the 1980s.     

Nazi Leaks and Intrigues in Second World War Ankara: the Plot to Send Herbert Melzig to a Concentration Camp

This article excavates one of the stranger episodes that took place in the transnational microcosm of the German expatriate world in Ankara and Istanbul during the Second World War. ‘Professor’ Herbert Melzig's story, the ‘Melzig affair’, illustrates how this microcosm, with its very different constituent members - Jewish and non-Jewish refugees from Nazism, German pro-Nazi expatriates, and an extensive embassy and Nazi Party network - acted as a conduit in German–Turkish relations, albeit one that produced unexpected results. This ‘Melzig affair’ sheds new light on the German presence in Second World War Turkey as well as the so-called German ‘exile on the Bosporus’ as it has been (re-)constructed and used in recent years; it also contributes to our understanding of Turkish foreign policy during the Second World War, especially regarding Turkey's reluctance to join the war on Hitler's side. At the end of the Melzig affair stood the ‘leaking’ of an internal Ministry of Propaganda memorandum. It prepared the ground for further leaks of this nature and was one of the turning points of public opinion in Turkey against the Third Reich.     

The curious case of Catherine Mary Hewitt and U.S. Major General of Volunteers John Fulton Reynolds: bodies,mourning the dead,and religion in the era of the American Civil War

ABSTRACT

At the time of his death at the Battle of Gettysburg, General Reynolds was the highest-ranking Union officer killed in the American Civil War. The return of the General’s body from the battlefront represented an uncommon feature of a war noted for its industrial scale and for the casualties it produced. How loved ones grieved Reynolds illustrates mourning practices among middle- to upper-class women in the Civil War North and underscores the centrality of death in nineteenth-century America. The death of Reynolds also occasioned the introduction of Reynolds’s sisters to the General’s secret fiancée, a Roman Catholic convert. Writers have attributed the clandestine nature of the engagement, and the General’s reluctance to introduce his fiancée to family, to Catherine Hewitt’s Roman Catholicism. But Catholics in the North received greater accommodation in mainline Protestant society than previously imagined, and the many kindnesses that the Reynolds family showed Hewitt point to an increasing acceptance of Catholics among Protestants in established social settings. Finally, Reynolds’s loved ones mourned him in religious and Victorian overtones, but it is not altogether clear that for them religion functioned as the predominant paradigm from which they elicited a transcendent meaning of the General’s death. In this local context, the responses of Reynolds’s loved ones to his death suggest the waning of religious belief in the era of the American Civil War.     

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.     

Objects of war: the response of the Imperial War Museum,London, to the First and the Second World Wars

SUMMARY: This paper analyses the interpretation and treatment of material culture by the Imperial War Museum (IWM) following the First and the Second World Wars. It finds that in the inter-war years the IWM presented its collection within a framework of hybrid value based on the material link between the objects of war and the events from which they originated. However, following the Second World War a different system of value was enacted. The authorities in this period steered collecting towards models and dioramas as a means of placing greater emphasis on the institution’s informative role.     

Review of Archaeological Research in Angola

This article examines the historical processes that shaped the development of archaeological practice in Angola during the Portuguese colonial period and the aftermath of political independence. Using published works, unpublished reports, and photographic records, we examine the research themes, actors, scholars, and institutions that influenced archaeological research in the country. We also used documents and museum collections in Angola and Portugal to create a GIS database of Angola’s archaeological findings. This study highlights the events, personalities, and priorities that motivated earlier investigations, and the geographical distribution of prehistoric sites. We hope this study will be a resource for guiding future archaeological research in Angola.

     

Tricky business: Swiss perceptions of informal imperialism in China in the 1920s

This article analyzes the role that commercial interests played in Swiss perceptions of informal imperialism in China during the 1920s. Commercial interests were the driving force behind the establishment of Swiss relations with China in 1918 and Swiss rejections of Chinese demands to abolish extraterritoriality in the 1920s. Swiss commercial relations with China were deeply rooted in the social, economic, and political institutions and processes developed by informal imperialism in China. During the Chinese antiforeign agitation in the 1920s, the Swiss press criticized the unequal treaties as an example of imperialism in China but ignored Switzerland’s participation in it. This discrepancy between the official and media perceptions of Swiss commercial interests in China was caused by the fact that Switzerland’s dependence on privileges connected to the unequal treaties clashed with Swiss national mythology, which was based on neutrality and anti-imperial narratives. Moreover, the negligible importance attributed to Swiss trade with China and the increasing focus on the nationality of foreign companies in China allowed the Swiss media to ignore Swiss commercial interests in China. As a result, Swiss complicity in informal imperialism was downplayed by the Swiss press, which ignored the importance of Swiss commerce to Sino–Swiss relations.     

For Mothers,Peace and Family: International (Non)‐Cooperation among Italian Catholic and Communist Women's Organisations during the Early Cold War

In July 1955, women from around the globe gathered in Lausanne, Switzerland for the World Congress of Mothers organised by the social‐communist Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF). On the third day of four days of proceedings, an Italian housewife named Clotilde Cassigoli delivered an impassioned speech calling on women to unite across the divides of the Cold War, and cooperate to ensure that their children and grandchildren would not have to know the horrors of war she had witnessed in Florence at the end of the Second World War. Her plea ultimately went unheeded. This article analyses the national and international activities of Catholic and communist women's organisations between 1945 and 1956 to expand understandings of women's political involvement during the Cold War. My examination of the Italian case will show that during this era cooperation between the politically opposed women's groups was only possible in a limited framework. By interpreting the associations’ discourse of motherhood and peace through a Cold War lens, I show that the Italian women's leaders were successful at advancing their own objectives and making inroads into the homes of more Italian women while they simultaneously constructed a divisive Cold War international women's movement.     

Allies at the End of Empire—Loyalists,Nationalists and the Cold War, 1945–76

ABSTRACT

The wars of decolonization fought by European colonial powers after 1945 had their origins in the fraught history of imperial domination, but were framed and shaped by the emerging politics of the Cold War. Militia recruited from amongst the local population was a common feature in all the counter-insurgencies mounted against armed nationalist risings in this period. Styled here as ‘loyalists’, these militia fought against nationalists. Loyalist histories have often been obscured by nationalist narratives, but their experience was varied and illuminates the deeper ambiguities of the decolonization story, some loyalists being subjected to vengeful violence at liberation, others actually claiming the victory for themselves and seizing control of the emergent state, while others still maintained a role as fighting units into the Cold War. This introductory essay discusses the categorization of these ‘irregular auxiliary’ forces that constituted the armed element of loyalism after 1945, and introduces seven case studies from five European colonialisms—Portugal (Angola), the Netherlands (Indonesia), France (Algeria), Belgium (Congo) and Britain (Cyprus, Kenya and southern Arabia).     

The Dog and Cat Massacre of September 1939 and the People's War

During the first week of the Second World War around 400,000 companion animals in London alone were killed at their owner's behest. This was not a state directive. Little is known of this event although details of what was called at the time the pet ‘Holocaust’ or ‘Cat and Dog Massacre’ were not suppressed. Far from the Home Front of the Second World War in Britain being a ‘People's War’, as popularly described, in different ways the animal–human relationship was prominent. The massacre – and subsequent animal–human relationships – tends to undermine the notion of both a positive and exclusively human ‘People's War’.     

From sedition to patriotism: performance, place, and the reinterpretation of American ethnic identity

Between the two World Wars, many Americans changed their attitudes toward ethnic minorities and their place within American civic culture. States such as Wisconsin, with its dense concentration of diverse immigrant groups, came under especially harsh fire during the Great War, only to be celebrated 20 years later as microcosms of a pluralist democracy. Although much has been written about this profound transformation of American ethnic identity from the perspective of «official culture», or those governing élites in power, less is known about the role of immigrant communities themselves in this change. Examination of the intertwining of ideology with the social manifestations of cultural performance in one Wisconsin community provides a way to interpret the elusive experience of ordinary people. In the case of two interwar Swiss American cultural performances, a view of ethnic culture emerges that sought to refashion a more inclusive definition of what it meant to be American. In the process of redefining their own identity, third generation Swiss strategically used such performance-based memory work. Their efforts not merely reflected, but shaped a discourse of ethnicity between the wars that became decreasingly antagonistic and gradually more open to ethnic and cultural difference.     

Continuity and change in Angola: insights from modern history

Angola may be entering a pivotal moment, triggered by persistently low oil prices and its president José Eduardo dos Santos (the world's second longest‐serving president) signalling that he may step down in 2018. Will this result in continuity or change? This review article of six books on modern Angola shows that since 1820, significant dips in international commodity prices have marked moments of lasting political change in the country. They also show that the history of Angolan nationalism is one of deep divisions and that political loyalty and support were often more about survival or ambition than about ideology and ethnicity. Throughout modern Angolan history personalities, such as Agostinho Neto, Jonas Savimbi and José Eduardo dos Santos, have also played a critical role in determining the country's fortunes. The single greatest foreign influence on Angola might be Cuba's ‘internationalist solidarity’ of sending up to five per cent of its population to Angola between 1976 and 1991 in support of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA). Over a decade later, the Chinese also found that the MPLA government determined their partnership. This review article examines the strength of Angolan agency and how the drivers of change are complex, determined by personality politics, geopolitics, prestige, solidarity, cost–benefit analysis and timing.     

Border crossings and the remaking of Latin American Cold War Studies

This essay reviews the burgeoning literature on Latin America’s distinctive variant of the Cold War since about 2000. First, it examines a watershed of recent collaborations between Latin American area specialists and foreign relations scholars, which has dramatically transformed Latin American Cold War Studies. Then, it focuses on two of the more fertile veins in that scholarship: first, the notion that the region’s Cold War should be placed in a broader historical context, which scholars are increasingly referring to as Latin America’s “long Cold War,” and second, the long Cold War’s multivalent cultural dimension. If study of the Latin American Cold War has become something of a growth industry in the last 15 years, its leading edge may well be efforts to tease out the complex, power-laden cultural processes, relationships, exchanges, and institutional forms that antedated and shaped Latin America’s Cold War proper (c. 1947 to the early 1990s), and had consequences beyond the conflict’s denouement.     

Breaking the CMEA hold: Romania in search of a ‘strategy’ towards the European Economic Community, 1958–1974

ABSTRACT

This article analyses Cold War Romania’s conceptualization of its relations with the European Economic Community (EEC) and its struggle to influence the policy of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) towards the EEC in a way compatible with Bucharest’s interests. Addressing a significant historiographical gap, in a sense, this study investigates the origins of Romania–EU relations. Multi-archival in approach, it argues that the period between 1969 and 1974 represents the formative years of Romania–EEC relations. Exploring the political rationale behind Romania’s attitude towards the Common Market, the article finds that the country’s ‘strategy’ in this respect had three main characteristics: it was pragmatic, active and, to some point, adaptive; drawing heavily from Romania’s previous position, it took shape in the early 1970s; and, although it seemed to focus on the commercial aspects of relations, it reflected a far more complex interaction between the two political and social systems than previously acknowledged.     

South African Nuclear Development in the 1970s: A Non-Proliferation Conundrum?

ABSTRACT

The 1970s is often argued to be the era marking the beginning of the overall transformation of the international system and the nuclear order, following the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) entering into force in 1970. South Africa challenged this nuclear order from the outset. In addition to regarding the NPT as inherently discriminatory and hypocritical in allowing a difference between nuclear weapon ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, the South African apartheid regime felt threatened by Soviet expansionism into Southern Africa. Facing international condemnation and isolation due to its repressive domestic politics of racial segregation, and gripped in a war against Soviet- and Cuban-backed forces in Angola, the apartheid regime was quick to move from a decision to build one peaceful nuclear explosive device in 1974, to a formal decision in 1978 to design and develop a secret strategic nuclear deterrent. Using knowledge and skills acquired during a period of techno-nationalism and Western collaboration during the 1960s, South Africa was able to cross this threshold in a relatively short space of time, thereby signaling a clear departure from the nuclear non-proliferation regime that the five nuclear powers of the NPT were trying to establish.     

Reputation and responsibility in Australia's 2003 intervention in the Solomon Islands

This article reinterprets Australia's motives for its 2003 intervention in the Solomon Islands. The central argument is that considerations of Australia's international reputation have not been afforded sufficient importance in explaining the Howard government's decision to intervene. A primary concern for the Howard government was to bolster Australia's reputation in the ‘War on Terror’ vis-à-vis the USA and the international community more broadly by being seen to maintain order in its regional sphere of responsibility. The article establishes the historical basis for Canberra's claims to a special responsibility for the South-West Pacific region. It then demonstrates the close connection between Australia's responsibility for order in its region and the reputational norms that evolved during the early years of the War on Terror. These claims are substantiated through an analysis of the Solomon Islands crisis from June 2000 until the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands was deployed in July 2003.