The Berlin West Africa conference of 1884–85 revisited: A report

The Blackwell Dictionary of Historians edited by John Cannon with R.H.C. Davis, William Doyle and Jack P. Greene. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Pp.xiv + 480. £50.00.

Atlas of the British Empire, with Foreword by Norman Stone, edited by C.A. Bayly. Hamlyn Publishing Group/Amazon: London, 1989. Pp.256; illus. £25.00.

The First Imperial Age: European Overseas Expansion c. 1400–1715 by G.V. Scammell. London: Unwin Hyman, 1990. Pp.xix + 281; maps. £30.00 (hardback); £10.95 (paperback).

The History of Architecture in India: From the Dawn of Civilisation to the End of Raj by Christopher Tadgell. London: A.D.T Press, 1990. Pp.IX + 336. £65.00.

Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 1700–1900 by Susan Bayly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Pp.xv + 504. £40.00.

A Dictionary of Modern Indian History, 1707–1947, by Parshotam Mehra. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985 (reprinted 1987). Pp.xiii + 823; £25.00.

Navies, Deterrence, and American Independence: Britain and Seapower in the 1760s and 1770s by Nicholas Tracy. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1988. Pp.207. £21.80.

The Imperial Challenge: Quebec and Britain in the Age of the American Revolution by Philip Lawson. Montreal and Kingston: McGill‐Queen's University Press, 1989. Pp.x + 192. £29.65.

History's Anthropology. The Death of William Gooch by Greg Dening. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988. Pp.xix + 122; maps and illus.

Thomas Clarkson: A Biography by Ellen Gibson Wilson. London: Macmillan, 1989. Pp.xiv + 269. £35.00.

The Caribbean in Europe; Aspects of the West Indian Experience in Britain, France and the Netherlands. Edited by Colin Brock. London: Frank Cass, 1985. Pp.ix + 243. £20.00 (hardback).

The Transformation of Theology, 1830–1890. Positivism and Protestant Thought in Britain and America by Charles D. Cashdollar. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989. Pp.xii + 489. $35.00.

Social Welfare, 1850–1950: Australia, Argentina and Canada Compared edited by D.C.M. Platt. London: Macmillan, 1989. Pp.xii + 208. £35.00.

Scientist of Empire: Sir Roderick Murchison, Scientific Exploration and Victorian Imperialism by Robert A. Stafford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp.xii + 293. £30.00 (hardback).

Stanley: The Making of an African Explorer by Frank McLynn. London: Constable, 1989. Pp.410; maps and illustrations. £17.95.

Baden‐Powell, by Tim Jeal. London: Hutchinson, 1989. Pp.xxi + 670. £18.95 (hardback).

Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume XII: 1891–1900 edited by Francess G. Halpenny and Jean Hamelin. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990. Pp.xxix + 1305. £48.50; $78.00.

The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895–1905 by Aaron L. Friedberg. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988. Pp.xvii + 321, maps. $14.95 (paperback).

Lost Children of the Empire: The Untold Story of Britain's Child Migrants by Philip Bean and Joy Melville. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989. Pp. ix + 177; illus. £12.95 (hardback).

The History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Volume III: The Hongkong Bank between the Wars and the Bank Interned, 1919–45; Return from Grandeur by Frank H.H. King. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp.xxxviii + 705; maps and illus. £60.00.

Menzies and Churchill at War by David Day. London: Angus &; Robertson, 1987. Pp.xi + 271. £12.50.

Documents on Australian Foreign Policy 1937–49, Vol. VII: 1944, edited by W.J. Hudson. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1988. Pp.lvi + 749; illus. AS39.95.

Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan by David Gilmartin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Pp.xii + 258. $32.00.

The Expedient Utopian: Bandaranaike and Ceylon by James Manor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp.xiii + 338. £30.00.

Britain, the United States, and the End of the Palestine Mandate, 1942–1948 by Ritchie Ovendale. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press for the Royal Historical Society, 1989. Pp.332. £37.50 (hardback).

Palestine and the Arab‐Israeli Conflict by Charles D. Smith. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. Pp.viii+ 308; maps. £10.99 (paperback).

Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare: The Malayan Emergency 1948–1960 by Richard Stubbs. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989. Pp.xiv + 286. £25.00.

Britain and the Korean War by Callum MacDonald. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Pp.vii + 112; map. £17.50 (hardback); £8.95 (paperback).

The Politics of Africa's Economic Stagnation by Richard Sandbrook with Judith Barker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Pp.xvi + 180; maps. £17.50 (hardback); £7.95 (paperback).     

The Persian–Portuguese Encounter in Hormuz: Orientalism Reconsidered

In 2015, the quincentennial commemoration of the Portuguese arrival on the island of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf (1515–1622) revealed the underlying presupposition among Iranians that the Portuguese presence on the island was the harbinger of a long-term pattern of western imperialism. This analysis questions the accuracy of this narrative by advancing a new interpretative framework that does not reduce the holding of Hormuz to simply another dark episode of European colonial history. Circumscribed and limited in aim and reach, Lusitanian activities on Hormuz cannot be brought under the generic rubric of “orientalism,” which is embedded in European colonial tradition, and which, by extension, buttresses Iranian nationalist sentiment about the Persian–Portuguese entanglement. This research demonstrates that Portuguese objectives diverged from the eighteenth and nineteenth century rationalist scientific traditions of the British, French and Germans professing a civilizing mission as a rationale for colonial policies. Whereas the Portuguese operated from a worldview that combined profit, dynastic pride and religious rhetoric, the Portuguese mission to Hormuz was not guided by a grand discourse of civilizing the “other.” While there was a complex interplay of commercial interests and brutal methods on this strategic entrepôt, Portuguese ambitions in Hormuz were confined and elusive, and at best a matter of tribute-taking. The present paper charters some of these complex interactions.     

The Agency Houses: British Mercantile Enterprise in the Far East c. 1780–1920

Abstract

This article explores the use of flax for fibre in Croatia. It concentrates on traditional flax growing and processing techniques being revived through The Flax Project. Traditional flax varieties utilised in Croatia, together with ongoing research to find the most suitable flax cultivars for the Croatian climate today, are discussed. Locally produced flax was widely used to make folk costumes and household linens. The stages of turning the processed flax fibre into linen cloth are described, including spinning, weaving, decorative techniques, bleaching, dyeing, and pleating through to its aftercare including washing, ironing, storage and related issues of conservation.     

Anglo-American Rivalry in the Middle East: The Struggle for the Buraimi Oasis, 1952–1957

Some French writers, most notably Jean-Baptiste Duroselle and André Tardieu, have argued that French strategic interests during the early decades of the twentieth century had been seriously harmed because, alone among the Great Powers of Europe, France lacked a ‘diaspora’ in the United States. As a result of this, they have claimed, France had no advocacy group prepared to defend the interests of the European ‘kin state’ at a time when France’s great rival, Germany, was amply endowed with a sizeable demographic presence in the United States, willing to speak out in defence of Germany and its foreign policy. Moreover, a second large European diaspora had become established in the United States, whose numbers would swell after the mid nineteenth century: the Irish. Not necessarily committed to promoting German interests, the Irish-Americans did militate strongly and consistently against British interests, such that by the time France and Britain had become close security partners preceding and during the First World War, what worked against British interests would also work against French ones. This article constitutes a critical examination of the Duroselle-Tardieu thesis regarding France's allegedly ‘missing’ diaspora, and cautions against attributing too much geo-strategic influence to either the German-American or Irish-American ‘lobby’.