The racial politics of criminal jurisdiction in the aftermath of the Anglo-American ‘destroyers-for-bases’ deal, 1940–50

Monopolists and Freebooters by O.H.K. Spate. London and Canberra: Croom Helm, 1983, Pp.xxi + 426, 28 maps, 19 plates; £29.95.

John Hawkes worth: Eighteenth‐Century Man of Letters by John Lawrence Abbott. Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. Pp. xvii + 241, frontispiece; £16.90.

The Papers of William Penn. Volume 1:1644–1679 edited by Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981. Pp.xv + 703; $28.50.

Settlements, Trade and Politics in the 17th Century Gold Coast by Ray A. Kea. Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins University Press, 1982. Pp.475; £23.50.

White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis by David W. Galenson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Pp.xii + 291; £22.50.

Forced Migration: The Impact of the Export Slave Trade on African Societies edited by J.E. Inikori. London: Hutchinson University Library for Africa, 1982. Pp.349, bibliography, index, maps and tables; £12.95 (cased), £5.95 (paper).

Tide of Empires: Decisive Naval Campaigns in the Rise of the West. Volume II, 1654–1763 by Peter Padfield. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982. Pp.ix + 270, maps and illus.; £12.50.

A Great and Necessary Measure: George Grenville and the Genesis of the Stamp Act 1763–1765 by John L. Bullion. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1982. Pp.xv + 317; £18.

The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution 1763–1789 by Robert Middle‐kauff. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. Pp.xvi + 696, maps and portraits; £15.

Liberty and Empire: British Radical Solutions to the American Problem 1774–1776 by Robert E. Toohey. London: University of Kentucky Press, 1978. Pp.xiv + 210; £12.

Evangelicals United: Ecumenical Stirrings in Pre‐Victorian Britain, 1795–1830 by Roger H. Martin. Studies in Evangelicalism, No. 4. Metuchen, New Jersey and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1983. Pp. ix + 230. NP.

Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies by Michael Craton. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1982. Pp. 389, maps and illus.; £25.

Readings in Caribbean History and Economics: An Introduction to the Region edited by R. M. Delson. New York: Gordon and Breach, Science Publishers, Inc., 1981. Pp.xxi + 336; $35.

Tubbo: ‘The Great Peter's Run’ by Paul de Serville. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982. Pp.256; £19.50.

The Precious Gift (Tuhfat al‐Nafis) by Raja Ali Haji Ibn Ahmad; translated and annotated by Virginia Matheson and Barbara Watson Andaya. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1982. Pp.xix + 476, maps and illus.; £29.50.

A Collection of Treaties and Other Documents Affecting the States of Malaysia 1761–1963 edited by J. de V. Allen, A. J. Stockwell and L. R. Wright. London, Rome, New York: Oceana Publications Inc., 1981.2 vols. Pp. xviii + 504, 683; $85.

Young Logan Campbell by R.C.J. Stone. Oxford University Press/Auckland University Press, 1983. Pp.287, illus.; £18.

Jack in Port: Sailortowns of Eastern Canada by Judith Fingard. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. Pp.ix + 292, illus.; £9.25

City of Blood Revisited: A New Look at the Benin Expedition of 1897 by Robert Home. London: Rex Collings, 1982. Pp.xv + 141, maps and illus.; £8.75.

British Imperialism and African Response: The Niger Valley, 1851–1905 by A. D. Nzemeke. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1982. Pp.379, maps and tables; DM 58.

John X. Merriman: Paradoxical South African Statesman by Phyllis Lewsen. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982. Pp.xii + 431, maps and illus.; £31.

Black People and the South African War 1899–1902 by Peter Warwick. African Studies Series No. 40, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pp.256; £25.

British Economists and the Empire by John Cunningham Wood. London: Croom Helm, 1983. Pp.299; £15.95.

Social Engineering in the Philippines; The Aims, Execution and Impact of American Colonial Policy, 1900–1913 by Glenn Anthony May. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980. Pp.xxvii + 268, photographs; £16.95.

European Colonial Rule, 1880–1940: The Impact of the West on India, Southeast Asia, and Africa by Rudolf von Albertini with Albert Wirz; translated by John G. Williamson. Oxford: Clio Press, 1982. Pp.ix + 581, maps and tables; £27.50.

WITS. The Early Years: A History of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and Its Precursors 1896–1939 by Bruce K. Murray. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1982. Pp.xvii + 389, photographs; R 10,00.

Verwaltung in einem afrikanischen Bauernstaat: das koloniale Französisch‐Westafrika 1919–1939 by Gerd Spittler. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1981. Pp.208, maps; DM38 (paper).

Peasant Movements in Colonial India: North Bihar 1917–1942 by Stephen Henningham. Australian National University Monographs on South Asia No. 9. Canberra: The Australian National University, 1982. Pp.xvi + 286; NP.

Peasant Movements in India 1920–1950 by D. N. Dhanagare. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983. Pp.xiii + 254, 6 maps; £12.

Readings in the Constitutional History of India 1757–1947 edited by S. V. Desika Char. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982. Pp.xcii + 789; £29.

The Transfer of Power 1942–7 (Constitutional Relations Between Britain and India) edited by Nicholas Mansergh and Penderel Moon. Vol. XI: The Mount‐batten Viceroyalty: Announcement and Reception of the 3 June Plan; Vol. XII: The Mountbatten Viceroyalty: Princes, Partition and Independence. London: HMSO, 1982–3. Pp.cxxiv + 1021; cvxi + 851, maps and illus.; £70 each.

The Commonwealth Experience. Vol. I: The Durham Report to the Anglo‐Irish Treaty. Vol. II: From British to Multi‐racial Commonwealth by Nicholas Mansergh: Revised edition. London and Toronto: Macmillan and University of Toronto Press, 1982. Pp.xii + 275 and 299; £35 (cased); also available in paperback.

European Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries by Woodruff D. Smith. Chicago: Nelson‐Hall, 1982. Pp.ix + 273; $20.95 (cased), $10.95 (paper).

Prime Ministers and Diplomats: The Making of Australian Foreign Policy, 1901–1949 by P.G. Edwards. Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Institute of International Affairs, 1983. Pp.240; $24.99.

Asia: The Winning of Independence edited by Robin Jeffrey. London: Macmillan, 1981. Pp.xv + 337, maps and illus.; £15 (cased), £5.95 (paper).

Sir Charles Arden‐Clarke by David Rooney. Rex Collings, London, 1982. Pp.222, maps and photos; £12.50.

The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire by John Gallagher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Pp.xxvii + 211; £16.

Britain, Europe and the World 1850–1982: Delusions of Grandeur by Bernard Porter. London: Allen and Unwin, 1983. Pp.xv + 173; £10.

Canada Since 1945: Power, Politics, and Provincialism by Robert Bothwell, Ian Drummond and John English. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 1981. Pp.xii + 489, illus.; £12.     

The ‘Other’ on the Other Side of the Ditch? The Conception of New Zealand's Disassociation from Australia

A growing body of work has explored the shared qualities of Australian/New Zealand history and trans-Tasman association. Without denying these links, this article considers New Zealand's simultaneous history of disassociation from Australia and investigates the contours and cultural content of disassociation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.     

The ‘everyday’ of banal nationalism – Ordinary people’s views on Italy and Italian

In 1995, Banal Nationalism set a new way to study nationhood. Away from the traditional concern with its historical origins (‘when’) and its substantialist features (‘what’), Banal Nationalism offered a systematic analysis of its reproduction (‘how’). Informed by social and discursive psychology, Billig pointed to the role played by familiar, unremarkable ‘little words’ (deixis) to explain the persistence and pervasiveness of the idea of a world divided into nations. The present article aims to expand Billig’s seminal study on the reproduction of nationalism, by incorporating an ‘everyday nationhood’ perspective, which attends more closely to human agency and contextual interaction. To give empirical substance to this move, the article relies on photo-elicitation group discussions and written essays collected in a vocational school in Milan, Italy, among an ethno-culturally diverse sample. By bringing the voices of people in as active producers of national meanings, the article offers a more complex picture of a world banally divided into nations. Both a national ‘we’ and a national ‘here’ emerge in fact as socio-spatially differentiated, fragmented and articulated at a plurality of scales, thus defying the logical linearity of banal nationalism, which unwittingly reproduces nations as singular, internally homogenous discursive entities. The article concludes by arguing for the need to complement the banal with the everyday in order to more fully capture processes of national reproduction in contexts of increasing ethno-cultural diversity.     

Who is in control of the international monetary system?

Although the financial and economic crisis did not directly hit the international monetary system, it has lead to the rethinking of the overall architecture that underpins the world economy. Can the current system of floating currency blocs with dollar‐based trade and reserves withstand the strains of the global adjustment ahead? It is time to consider alternatives. This article argues that the existing system needs to evolve into a multicurrency one in which a number of international currencies, ideally representing the main trading areas, have the function of storing value and providing the unit of measure. A multicurrency system would respond more flexibly to the demand for liquidity and would provide a way to diversify the accumulation of reserve assets. It is also more appropriate for the increasingly multipolar world economy. The article discusses how in today's larger and more integrated world economy the dependence on the dollar as the basis of both trade flows and financial reserves has become excessive, creating some fundamental imbalances. However, while the rationale for change is clear, the current system is locked in a form of stable disequilibrium where the status quo carries the lowest risk for most players in the short‐term. Any abrupt move away from the dollar could trigger trade flow disruption and exchange value losses. Policy cooperation should keep the imbalances under control and manage the transition to a more stable system. The system will evolve, albeit gradually. Looking at the steps taken by some countries, notably China, there is the gathering impression that this decade is one of transition, rather than a ‘Bretton Woods moment’. Any reshaping will have to bring in the views of the ‘rising powers’, China in particular, and their concerns about the limitations of the existing system and the increasingly asymmetric burden of adjustment that it imposes.     

The question of ‘the political’ in critical geopolitics: Querying the ‘child soldier’ in the ‘war on terror’

After two decades of scholarship on ‘critical geopolitics’, the question of whether it is largely a discursive critique of prevailing knowledge production and geopolitical texts or critique with an implicit, normative politics of its own remains open. These positions are not incommensurate, and much scholarship on critical geopolitics does both. This paper analyzes critical geopoliticians' concern with this question in the present historical moment and probes the possibility of a post-foundational ethic as the basis for ‘the political’ in critical geopolitics and beyond. Empirically, this paper explores these theoretical tensions within ‘critical geopolitics’ by tracing the disparate fates of two young men, both child soldiers at the time of their capture. ‘Child soldier’ is an unstable category subject to geopolitical valence and stigma during the ‘war on terror’. The deployment of extra-legal tactics and spaces of violence, such as those faced by detainees at Guantanamo Bay, point to the rise of biopolitics combined with geopolitics, illustrating the intersection of sovereignty and governmentality as important political fodder for critical geopolitics two decades after its inception. The stories of Canadian Omar Khadr, one of the youngest prisoners at Guantanamo and the only citizen of a Western state still held there, and Ismael Beah, a rehabilitated soldier who fought as a boy from Sierra Leone, illustrate too how geographical imagination strongly shapes access to provisions of international law and the victimized status of ‘child soldier’ in particular.     

Dithering over Darfur? A preliminary review of the international response

The extreme violence against civilian communities in the Sudanese province of Darfur has coincided with the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. This article makes a preliminary assessment of the international response to Darfur to see how it compares to the denial and delay of ten years ago. The slow evolution of the international community's response is charted from early Chadian efforts at mediation in 2003, the eventual involvement of the UN Security Council in July 2004, the increasing role of the African Union and the US government's conclusion in September 2004 that the violence constitutes genocide. The international community has certainly been too slow and divided in its response in the face of competing political priorities. There were also significant misgivings about a US-led military intervention and considerable Sudanese intransigence and diplomatic skill. Nevertheless, there are important signs that key parts of the United Nations and the international community have worked with a definite post-R wanda consciousness. Important developments have also been made in combining humanitarian and political negotiation while a committed African Union is now in a position to make a real difference. Although late to gather force, international political will and US leadership have been strong. But, like many tragedies before it, Darfur shows that political will is not enough. The choices facing even the most wilful politicians still remain intensely difficult and 'doing something' is not as easy as most NGO press releases imply.     

Pachymeres on the ‘Amourioi’ of Kastamonu

Abstract

In a recent article Professor Cl. Cahen pointed out various problems resulting from the history of the region of Kastamonu, which on account of its remoteness from the political centres attracted little attention from the chroniclers. One of the problems is the incompatibility of the narratives of the oriental sources and the writings of the Byzantine historian George Pachymeres with respect to some events of the reign of the Seljuk Sultan Masud II: Pachymeres while referring to the history of Kastamonu produces a certain Ali Amourios, his brother Nasir ed-din <inline-graphic href="splitsection4_in1.tif"/>—a person of lesser importance—and their father, whom he also names Amourios. The same Amourios and his sons are also mentioned by Nikephoros Gregoras, who, however, passes over in silence the sons' names.     

Burma's ‘saffron revolution’ and the limits of international influence

The demonstrations in September 2007 were the most significant civil protests seen in Burma since the ill-fated pro-democracy uprising of 1988. The military government's brutal response to the latest unrest prompted an unprecedented level of diplomatic activity and a rare consensus on the need for political change. Since then, however, efforts to resolve the crisis have withered away, underlining the international community's inability over the past 20 years to make a significant impact on the situation in Burma. Neither the principled approach of some countries and organisations, nor the more pragmatic attitude adopted by others, has persuaded the regime to abandon any of its core positions. Indeed, by demonstrating the international community's continuing disagreement over Burma, and the limited policy options available, the lack of concerted action since the protests has probably encouraged the regime's obduracy and increased its confidence that it can survive external pressures. An appreciation of the generals’ threat perceptions may help the international community to understand the regime's intransigence, but it is still difficult to see what policies can be effective against a government that puts its own survival before accepted norms of behaviour and the welfare of its people. Real and lasting change will have to come from within Burma itself, but the events of 2007 suggest that this is a distant prospect.     

‘The essential weaknesses of the December 1979 “Agreement”’: the White House and the implementing of the dual-track decision

Very few NATO decisions may have entailed for the Alliance as much a laborious political and diplomatic process as that taken in December 1979. After its adoption, under Carter, the dual-track decision had to be implemented over the early years of the Reagan administration, when the US President’s abhorrence of détente was so deep and vocal to jeopardise the arms control progress upon which the fulfilment of the negotiating track of that NATO decision depended. The analysis carried out in this article focuses on the US government’s deliberations and choices. Its aim is to discuss how and to what extent the US Cold War security priorities did need to be complemented with those singled out by European NATO allies, especially when those allies were able to convey to Washington the message that arms control remained a political necessity for them.     

The new ‘Pacific Century’ and the rise of China: an international relations perspective

The re-emergence of the ‘Pacific Century’, or ‘Asia-Pacific Century’, discourse centred on the rise of Chinese power raises important questions in the discipline of international relations (IR). These questions relate to the conceptualisation of the Pacific Century discourse, its application to the contemporary empirical case, and its relationship and amenability to IR theories. In order to address these questions, the article subjects the concept of a ‘Pacific Century’ to critical analysis through the synergy of three pertinent ‘debates’. First, it creates a novel analytical framework to define and codify the parameters of the Pacific Century debate; a discourse that has until now remained diffuse and inchoate. Second, it engages with the present ‘great debate’ in IR between the traditional/rationalist and critical/reflectivist approaches, applying them in juxtaposition to the notion of a ‘new’ Pacific Century, led by China. Thirdly, then, the article speaks to the ‘rising China’ debate, which currently captivates commentators both in academic and policy-making circles. The article explores how the ‘Pacific Century’ concept is a compound of both ideational and material factors: it is at once both a political/ideological project and a reified intellectual frame of reference. Through this multidimensional analysis, the article aims to shape the re-emerging debate on the Pacific Century, affirm the enduring value of the term, and demonstrate the efficacy of IR theories in deconstructing conceptual problems.     

Mobile sovereignty: The case of ‘boat people’ in Australia

State sovereignty, in terms of the organisation and expression of political authority by nation states, is traditionally interpreted as a political container that is being weakened by increasing human and non-human mobilities. However recent research indicates that states are themselves becoming more mobile as executive bodies move and sovereign spaces are tactically reduced and expanded to intercept and control global mobilities. While challenging dichotomous notions of mobility and sovereignty, such research frames the movements of governments, territory and sovereign agents as the tactics of already established states. This paper builds on extant research by drawing on both a mobile ontology and Giorgio Agamben's theory of sovereignty to examine how mobilities constitute modern state sovereignty. To do so I examine Australian sovereignty and the related material and symbolic exclusion of asylum seekers arriving by boat. My analysis finds that mobilities, in terms of material movements and their representation, are essential to the construction of Australian sovereignty and the position of maritime asylum seekers as its outsider and limit identity. Through their mobile interception and management, and their representation as mobile ‘others’, maritime asylum seekers are used to create sovereign borders between specific types of movement; between ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ (im)mobilities. I argue that this form of state sovereignty is disarticulated from space and follows populations who construct territories as being ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ of the Australian state as they move.     

Who speaks for Islam?: ‘authenticity’ and the interpretation of Islamic law in America's war on terror

Recognising that America's response to the events of 11 September would do well to maintain a sharp distinction between the ‘war on terror’ and a war ‘against Islam’, this article argues that American diplomatic rhetoric would benefit from an explicit effort to engage ‘frameworks of legitimacy’ within Islam, including the terms of Islamic jurisprudence and Islamic legal debate. The article examines the merits of such an approach in the context of several recent diplomatic dilemmas, including the Jyllens-Posten cartoon controversy. It concludes with an assessment of the American (domestic) political environment within which this approach tends to encounter its most ardent critics.     

‘Why can't I get married?’—Denmark and the ‘Twenty-four year law’

Jackson (2000) proposes a 'rematerialization' of social and cultural geography. He argues for the grounding of geographical analysis in the concrete world of actual physical objects. Examining the work of Jackson (2000) and Miller (1987, 1998) this paper interrogates this return to the physical. In particular, this paper argues that current articulations of physicality rely on a universal metaphysics of matter--positing matter as a universally undifferentiated conditionality. This reliance is problematic in that it signifies an essentialist dichotomy between the objective (the material) and the subjective (the textual). Also this dichotomy necessitates a linear dialectics of matter subjugating the material to the determinative action of form. In subjecting Jackson's notion of rematerialization to a critical philosophical reading, the aim is to disturb the unquestioned metaphysical implications of this return. Indeed it is to suggest that a rematerialization of social and cultural geography must account for the wayward expressiveness of matter--its representative and active capacities outside its relation with the subject.     

‘‘The Acceptable Face of the Unintelligible’: Intermediality and the Science Play’

Abstract

The limitations of the ‘science-in-theatre’ genre is explored and the concept of the intermedial science play is introduced as an alternative to conventional science plays. How the science-in-theatre play dampens the mediality of the stage in order to establish a specific contract with its audience in order to realize what Carl Djerassi calls ‘didactic realism’ is considered. By virtue of the dramatic form and the didacticism it establishes, the science-in-theatre play limits the means by which audiences may encounter and enjoy responding to science. In particular, when staging concepts from the postclassical sciences, the intermedial science play offers artists and spectators new approaches to the sciences of infinities, complexity and emergence whilst also establishing a new, interactive contract with the audience based on forms of pedagogy associated with the thinking of Jacques Rancière. Using the media theory of Peter Boenisch and others, intermediality is identified as more than the mere presence of multimedia, but in terms of the effects it produce on the sensorium of the spectator.