Fighting for Trieste: nationalism and political violence at the edge of the Iron Curtain

Between 1945 and 1954, the Italian and Yugoslav governments staunchly disputed national sovereignty of Trieste and northern Istria. Although scholars have extensively studied the diplomatic dimension of what became known as the ‘Trieste question’, only a few have devoted attention to the Italian government’s aggressive strategy toward the city from 1945 to 1954. This article examines the Italian politics of nationalism in Cold War Trieste by investigating the interactions between the central government, the Allied authorities and the local political forces that either supported or opposed Italian territorial claims toward the city. Based upon the study of Italian as well as Allied governmental records, state-led propaganda and public press, this article suggests that the central government not only tolerated but also encouraged phenomena of local political violence to oppose the Communist threat and defy Allied occupation. This study ultimately proves the residual strength of nationalism as a political ideology and further elucidates the undisclosed relationship between right-wing movements and the central government during the early years of the Cold War.     

The Political Importance of Provincial Newspapers, 1903-1945: The Rowntrees and the Liberal Press

This article argues that the political importance of provincialnewspapers run by the Rowntree family in the Liberal cause declinedbetween 1903 and 1945. This decline is identified in changingattitudes to the funding of newspapers, and in the reasons forthose changes. Before the Second World War the Rowntrees consideredsubsidies to provincial newspapers vital, to keep the pressat the forefront of partisan campaigning, until at last it beganto pay its way. Yet such newspapers' eventually strong financescontrasted with their political weakness, as they appeared helplessto prevent the Liberal Party's electoral decline. After 1945the Rowntrees, in contrast to their earlier strategy, no longerconsidered the funding of newspapers a priority. Instead, theytargeted money directly at the strengthening of the LiberalParty, both in Parliament and in the party organization, insteadof at the press. This switch of strategy was the earliest exampleof a wider Liberal emphasis, from the 1940s, on improving parliamentaryrecruitment and party organization. The fading political importanceof the Rowntrees' newspapers and of the wider Liberal presswould lead to loss-making Liberal papers closing, while survivingones ceased to support the Liberal Party. Instead, the Liberalscame to depend on television and community politics.     

Political Modernity and Secularization: Thoughts from the Japanese Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Although some politics and international relations discourses continue to maintain that there is a causal link between secularism and political modernity, religious studies, anthropology, and history research over the past decade has been rather merciless in debunking this idea as one of the tropes of Western imperialism. This article considers at how Japanese political thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries engaged this trope, and how that engagement contributed to the particular relationship between religion and governance that emerged in the modern Japanese empire (1868–1945). The article argues that developments in the Confucian political thought of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1868), particularly in the works of Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728) and Aizawa Seishisai (1792–1863), contributed significantly to the capacity of Japanese thinkers and politicians to creatively engage the role of religion in Western imperialism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.     

2. CONFRONTING DEFEAT: CARL SCHMITT BETWEEN THE VICTORS AND THE VANQUISHED

Quoting a text on Tocqueville written by Carl Schmitt in 1946, Reinhart Koselleck hypothesized about the epistemological advantage of being vanquished in writing history. This essay analyzes Schmitt's intellectual and political positions in reaction to three successive defeats: the collapse of the German Empire in 1918; the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933; and the overthrow of the Third Reich in 1945. Schmitt was a German nationalist and, at least until Hitler's rise to power, an anti‐Nazi conservative, but he easily adapted to both the Weimar Republic in 1919 and National Socialism in 1933, two political turns that coincided with significant improvements in his academic career. He felt vanquished only in 1945, after his double imprisonment, the Nuremberg trial, and finally his retirement to Plettenberg. 1945 was a watershed that he symbolized through two metaphorical figures: the reactionary thinker of Spanish Absolutism Juan Donoso Cortés and Melville's literary character Benito Cereno. Thus, the case of Carl Schmitt does not confirm Koselleck's hypothesis, insofar as the most productive and creative part of his intellectual life does not fit into an awareness of being vanquished. Koselleck's statement deals with the gaze of the ruled, whereas Schmitt belonged to a different tradition of political thinkers interested in building domination and smashing revolution (Hobbes, Maistre, Donoso Cortés). He was a thinker of action, not of mourning. Defeat did not inspire, but rather paralyzed his thought.     

Gallantry on the Shankill road: the British ‘soldier-hero’ and state-media relations in Northern Ireland, 1969-1979

ABSTRACT

The study of the British ‘soldier-hero’ as a political and cultural icon after 1945 has been largely confined to literature concerned with the memory of historical figures. Rarely have scholars considered how post-war military deployments not only created contemporary soldier-heroes, but also transformed their place within politics and society as the moral interrogation of these wars threatened to encroach upon the prestige of these icons. This article examines how the soldier-hero interacted with one of Britain’s most contentious deployments, Northern Ireland, and how politicians sought to control narratives surrounding this figure to avoid public relations controversy in unusual political conditions.     

"The Big and the Small of it" Perspectives in Latin American-U.S.Relations

Linda B. Hall. OIL, banks, and Politics: The United States and Postrevolutionary Mexico, 1917–1924
Thomas F. O'brien. The Revolutionary Mission: American Enterprise in Latin America, 1900–1945     

The Weddell centenary and the problems of Antarctica

Most of the new industries established in Northern Ireland since 1945 have followed the traditional pattern of concentrating in the Belfast region. This has created serious problems in the remote rural fringes of the Province. To stimulate local initiative in these areas a Local Enterprise Development Unit (LEDU) was set up in 1971 aimed particularly at encouraging small manufacturing firms. Grants, loans, small factories and advice are made available to help small enterprises at all stages of growth and development. The scheme has had some notable successes but the level of local initiative has been disappointing and since 1974 the unstable political situation has reduced the amount of aid distributed and the number of jobs created.     

The Prophetic and the Limitation of Authority in Modernist Islam

ABSTRACT

The “prophetic”, as a central concept in modernist Islamic political philosophy, has been invoked to show that Islamic political philosophy takes into account the spiritual as well as the material world. However, this expansion of the prophetic had remained relatively silent as to the authority that is granted to experiencing individuals. This essay is a story of these reinterpretations the “prophetic” by three major Muslim thinkers – Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938), Ali Shari‘ati (d. 1977), and Abdolkarim Soroush (b. 1945). Writing in different periods and trying to respond to different questions, these authors engaged with the question of politics by reference to prophetic experience. I will explain their intellectual context, according to their cosmologies and their notions of language (participation vs. representation). Then, I will see how in different intellectual context, the force of a democratic notion of the prophetic was undermined by different reinterpretations.     

“翰林”、“盈”字款白瓷研究

本文在前人研究的基础上,通过对传世及出土文物进行梳理及查阅古文献资料,对“翰林”、“盈”字款白瓷的年代、产地及涵义等问题进行了探讨。“翰林”、“盈”字与唐代宫廷设置的翰林院及大盈库(百宝大盈库)有关,署这两种款识的白瓷是唐代邢窑专门为宫廷烧造的贡品,其年代当在开元以后,唐朝灭亡后不复烧造。其烧造地点在今河北省内丘县城关一带。“翰林”、“盈”字款白瓷是研究唐代邢窑生产性质及唐代社会政治、经济的重要实物资料。     

Politics and Headhunting among the Formosan Sejiq: Ethnohistorical Perspectives

Memories of headhunting, and ritual re‐enactments of those former violent practices, are still politically meaningful in contemporary Oceania and Southeast Asia. The case of the Sejiq of Taiwan illustrates how such practices were transformed and eventually terminated as a result of colonialism and the incorporation of formerly stateless peoples into new political institutions. Headhunting was once an expression of the sacred law of Gaya, as both a reinforcement of territorial boundaries and a way of settling legal disputes within communities. It expressed tensions in a ‘reverse dominance hierarchy’ by which some men tried to consolidate political power, but were usually deterred by a strong egalitarian ethos. During the period of Japanese administration (1895–1945), new technologies made headhunting more efficient, but it became more difficult for this formerly egalitarian people to avoid the political coercion of would‐be leaders. Contradictions between headhunting as the implementation of Gaya and headhunting as a consolidation of political power — itself viewed as a violation of that Law — eventually led to the abandonment of headhunting. Local leaders found new ways to seek political power, including in the ritual re‐enactment of the very same practices used by their ancestors, but continue to be resisted by ordinary people with an egalitarian ethos.     

木山捷平的《长春五马路》

《长春五马路》是木山捷平一生中最后一部长篇小说,小说描写了主人公即作者本人1945年8月-1946年8月在长春度过的难民生活,主观上描写了思乡之情,客观上真实地再现了长春当时的混乱与动荡,以及中国人的大度与友好,是长春人应该了解的一部小说。     

From enemy to opponent: the politics of delegitimation in the Italian Christian Democratic Party (1945–1992)

Abstract

This article reconstructs the dynamics of delegitimation of political opponents in the Italian Christian Democratic Party (DC), which had a relative majority and almost uninterruptedly led Italy’s governments from 1945 to 1992. The DC built its strategy of delegitimation on two levels, an ideological-religious one and a systemic one, which were only partly interdependent and overlapping. In almost half a century, the DC aimed its rhetoric and politics of delegitimation mainly at those opposition parties it considered as anti-establishment, that is, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), and the form of delegitimation changed a great deal over this period. However, it is possible to grasp a specific dynamic: from a rigid form of delegitimation, from time to time it became possible to legitimate (at least in part) the opposition parties at different times and in different ways, depending on the changes in the political sphere and in society. It was a process full of contradictions and ambiguities within which the political enemy gradually gave way to becoming a political opponent.     

The "Trial" of Lee Benson: Communism, White Chauvinism, and The Foundations of the "New Political History" in the United States

Lee Benson was one of the first American political historians to suggest a “systematic” revision of traditional political history with its emphasis on narrow economic class analysis, narrative arguments, and over‐reliance on qualitative research methodologies. This essay presents Benson's contributions to the “new political history”—an attempt to apply social‐science methods, concepts, and theories to American political history—as a social, cultural, and political narrative of Cold War‐era American history. Benson belonged to a generation of ex‐Communist American historians and political scientists whose scholarship and intellectual projects flowed—in part—out of Marxist social and political debates, agendas, and paradigmatic frameworks, even as they rejected and revised them. The main focus of the essay is the genesis of Benson's pioneering study of nineteenth‐century New York state political culture, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, with its emphasis on intra‐class versus inter‐class conflict, sensitivity to ethnocultural determinants of political and social behavior, and reliance on explicit social‐science theory and methodology. In what follows, I argue that The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy has its roots in Benson's Popular Front Marxist beliefs, and his decade‐long engagement and subsequent disenchantment with American left‐wing politics. Benson's growing alienation from Progressive historical paradigms and traditional Marxist analysis, and his attempts to formulate a neo‐Marxism attentive to unique American class and political realities, are linked to his involvement with 1940s radical factional politics and his disturbing encounter with internal Communist party racial and ideological tensions in the late 1940s at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.     

The Kuriles: the Geo-political Spanner in the Geo-economic Works

The sovereignty of the bleak Kurile islands, off northern Japan, has long been the subject of a bitter stand-off between Russia and Japan. This has not only prevented their signing a post-1945 Peace Treaty but has retarded the flow of official financial assistance and corporate investment funds across the few hundred kilometre-wide Sea of Japan. As a result the reconstruction of the Russian Far East has been made more difficult, thus exacerbating the economic and social hardship there. Examples like this should cause us to reflect on the dangers of making simplistic explanations about the spatial organisation of economic activity as well as the need to rediscover political geography.     

20世纪中日俄(苏)三国关系史分期问题试论

历史研究需要进行科学分期,由于所研究的对象不同,因而分期的标准也不尽相同。20世纪中日俄(苏)三国关系史可分为7个时期。1900-1917年为两强凌-弱时期;1917-1931年为三国关系初次变化时期;1931-1945年为战争笼罩三国时期;1945-1949年为三国关系特殊时期;1949-1960年为三国关系再次变化时期;1960-1972年为敌友关系相互转变时期;1972-1991年为三国关系终趋正常时期。     

Towards World Heritage. International Origins of the Preservation Movement 1870–1930

This article examines the negotiations in the years 1945–7 between Soviet and Swedish diplomats over the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who was arrested by the Soviets in Budapest on 17 January 1945. As is clear from both Soviet and Swedish archival records, including the recently de-classified encrypted Soviet diplomatic cables, the nature of the communication about Wallenberg went through a number of shifts, dividing the years 1945–7 into three periods. Despite in-depth reviews of both the Soviet and Swedish Foreign Ministry archives, no instructions from the political leaderships of Sweden and the USSR explaining these shifts have been identified. Why is it that we can distinguish changing patterns of communication despite the absence of corresponding instructions from the leaders of the two states? This article argues that dynamics inherent to the diplomatic dialogue itself go a long way to explain the shifting communication patterns. In order to make the case viable as well as communicable, Soviet and Swedish diplomats, short of authoritative guidance, were bound to ascribe meaning and purpose to the behaviour of ‘the other’ on the basis of analogical reasoning founded on their experiences from parallel matters on the Soviet–Swedish agenda.     

The Heroic Image of the Warrior in the First World War

Abstract

Sun Tzu asserts that true success is not winning every battle fought, but subduing the enemy’s will without fighting at all. The author asserts that the U.S. planning efforts for post-WWII Japan from 1942 to 1945 reveal a unique period where military and political planners actively pursued a greater understanding of the role an enemy’s will-to-fight plays in conflict. The historical record reveals an iterative — and often heated — discourse among experts in diplomacy, governance, political culture, anthropology, and military intelligence. Consequently, Allied commanders entertained and ultimately executed a war plan for the occupation of Japan with fewer forces and less fighting than called for by the alternative plan for invasion. The fundamental difference in the two plans — an assumed effect that safeguarding the Imperial Institution would have on the Japanese people’s will-to-fight. In the end, meaningful discourse enabled Allies to target the enemy’s will separately from their means, enabling conditions where subduing the Japanese will required the Allies not to fight.     

The historiography of hunger: changing views on the world food problem, 1945-1980

The author discusses changing views on the world food problem since 1945. "The extent of the problem has been a matter of debate as hunger cannot be directly measured; estimated minimum requirements for energy have been reduced since 1945 and the causes of malnutrition reappraised. World food production has kept up with population growth since 1945, as it has in all major regions except Africa. But when individual countries are considered, food output per head has been declining since 1961-5 in many countries in Africa and Asia. Food output has been increased in the developing countries by expanding the area under cultivation and by increasing yields." In addition the author concludes that "the Green Revolution has however not achieved early expectations and has had some adverse economic and social consequences. Because world food output per caput has risen considerably since 1945, some have argued that the world food problem is one of distribution, not production. Data on food output per caput suggest this is not always so."     

美国二战退伍军人的社会流动机制

第二次世界大战结束前后,战争遗留问题之一的退伍军人安置问题成为美国联邦政府难以回避的政治任务。如何安置退伍军人不仅直接关系到退伍军人自身的就业问题,亦关系到社会和政治稳定。有鉴于此,美国政府通过技术培训、文官录用优待、高等教育资助等主要途径,为二战退伍军人创造了社会流动机制,并有力地推动了这一机制的良性运行。这一机制的良性运行为二战退伍军人带来了经济效益、思想和组织效益、政治和社会效益,更表现出了政府主导、机会均等的特征。