Covert Operations,British Views of Islam and Anglo-Sanusi Relations in North Africa, 1940–45

Recent scholarship has shown how conceptualisations of religion were not a given but the site of historical conflict in the creation of nation-states. In light of this insight, it is time to revisit the history of Britain's political engagement with the phenomenon of nationalism during the era of decolonisation. One important but under-studied case involves Britain's relationship with Muhammad Idris ibn al-Mahdi al-Sanusi (1889–1983) and the Sanusi brotherhood during the Second World War, a crucial phase in the evolution of Anglo-Libyan relations. Although the assessment of military exigencies and the calculation of strategic interests played an important part in determining Britain's attitude towards the Sanusi they do not tell the whole story. British support of Idris was also premised on the adaptability of the Sanusi Order and the probable reformulation of the role of Islam in the context of an emerging nation-state. By charting the evolution of the pro-Sanusi, pro-Idris case within British circles, this article highlights the interesting interaction between orientalism, religion and nationalism that shaped Anglo-Sanusi relations during the Second World War. While historians have long recognised the links between orientalism and formal imperialism there were also interesting connections between orientalism and nationalism that deserve equal consideration.     

France and the New World Order, 1940–1947

Using a number of archive sources concentrating on the Occupation years and the period just after the Liberation, this article throws light on the contribution of France to the ‘New World Order’, a concept normally thought of as ‘Anglo-Saxon’ or ‘Anglo-American’. Even in defeat, those looking forward to the reconstruction of France in the postwar period considered a number of approaches as to how a French state-oriented system would work in a world which would supposedly be dominated by American-style liberal capitalism.     

The Press and Public Diplomacy in Iran, 1820–1940

The under-appreciated role of the press as a tool of public diplomacy was rooted in its origins as a Qajar state project in the nineteenth century, but also cultivated by a shared impulse of Iranian journalists and statesmen to represent Iran effectively in the court of world opinion. Moreover, foreign governments often reacted to the Iranian press generally, not just the official newspapers and not just newspapers produced in Iran, as a forum though which to advance or protect their interests in Iran. The Pahlavi state integrated the press as part of a larger state-run mass communication policy in the 1930s that would eventually include new technologies such as radio, and retained public diplomacy as an essential purpose of the media. This study draws upon archival material, press accounts, and memoirs.     

Economic Consequences Of The German Occupation Of Norway, 1940–1945

Since the liberation from the German occupation of 1940–1945, the dominant national narrative has been of the far-reaching exploitation and destruction of the Norwegian economy by the occupant forces. The scholarly basis for this narrative was a book written by Odd Aukrust and Petter Jacob Bjerke in 1945. The narrative formed an important basis for the Norwegian variant of economic reconstruction following liberation and has also dominated historiography. However, Aukrust and Bjerve’s presentation of the bleak situation in 1945 was exaggerated and is, historically speaking, untenable. Another conclusion is that the German occupation initiated a 20-year period in which the Norwegian economy was less open and exposed to internal and external competition than in any other period subsequent to Norway entering the liberal age of free trade and free international capital transactions in the middle of the 19th century.     

Mediating culture in the Italian literary field 1940s–50s

This introduction lays out the scholarly and methodological context in which to situate the contributions to this special issue. By combining a rigorous scrutiny of hitherto untapped archival sources with a re-examined application of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of culture within the field of periodical studies and publishing history in Italy (1940s–50s), the studies illuminate the complex ways in which journals, periodical editors and the connected publishing houses negotiate cultural practice in a literary field increasingly dominated by the polarization of political discourse.     

Changes in Japanese strategy in 1939–1940 and the internationalization of the Sino–Japanese War

In the early stage of the Sino–Japanese War, Japan was trying hard to limit the conflict to within a scope where it could be resolved bilaterally between only the two nations involved. However, her actual behavior was in stark contrast to her wishful desire to be at peace with the United States, pushing the latter step by step instead in the direction of aiding China and thwarting Japan. Caught in a dilemma created as the United States abrogated the American–Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, and faced with the changes in the European situation, Japan’s policy makers were eventually pushed by their obsession with the “New East Asian Order” and by their yearning for the “Extended New East Asian Order” which was to include Southeast Asia, deciding to steer the Sino–Japanese War in the direction of “international resolution,” which was just an alternate route to the same goal sought by China. Subsequently, not only did Japan refuse to withdraw from China, she actually took one step further in an expansion southwards, trying to kill several birds with one stone. The war thus spilled over from China to encompass a much greater area. In this process, Japan’s diplomatic corps was often several steps ahead of the military, reflecting the carefully considered background in Japanese policymaking.     

Debating federal Europe in the British Parliament,c. 1940–49

Federalism, or the fear of it, worked as a catalyst in the British pre-referendum debate on Brexit in June 2016. In this paper, we focus on the pre-European integration context and ask what kind of an alternative federalism was seen to afford in British politics during and after the Second World War. We limit our discussion to parliamentary debates, which have only rarely been used as primary sources for studying European integration history. The British Parliament was one of the key political arenas for debates on foreign policy, not just in terms of informing the party lines but also guiding the public discussion. In the early part of the 1940s, the British federalist movement was able to generate political debate on the issue and gain the attention of many leading politicians. We argue that the approach to the use of the concept was politically charged but remained open to various context-based interpretations, which did not eventually lead to any concrete proposals. During the latter part of the 1940s, the majority of British MPs were open to different ways of creating unity in Europe. The emphasis on national sovereignty, however, continued. As a result ‘federalism’, attached to structures for unity, gave way to more pragmatic political solutions.     

1940年延安审干

本文作者高华先生为南京大学历史系教授,为中国现当代史研究领域的著名学者,尤以对延安整风的研究为世所重。高华先生于2011年12月26日因病去世,英年早逝。本刊择其延安整风研究之片段,刊发以示纪念。     

The “Zhanguoce” school's effort of wartime cultural reconstruction, 1940–1942

This article examines the Zhanguoce school's unique cultural, historical, and political thinking in the context of cultural transformation and a search for meaning during the Anti-Japanese War (1937–1945). The group was mainly composed of scholars who were born in the 1900s and educated in America and Europe. Keenly concerned for China's survival and influenced by the theories of Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee and Chinese Legalism, the group challenged the May Fourth intellectual legacy of positivism and evidential research, presenting in its place an amoral, militarist worldview, a culture-based global historical theory, and a state-centered political philosophy. The school attempted moreover to interpret world history in the light of the Chinese historical pattern. Their radical outlook was quite different from the contemporaneous trends of positivism and historical materialism, but they did attempt to provide an alternative ideology to guide China's wartime cultural reconstruction.