The Nationalist government’s efforts to recover Chinese sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea after the end of World War Two

Utilizing substantial archival materials, this article examines the process through which the Nationalist government reasserted Chinese sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea, including China’s stationing of troops on Dongsha Island, Yongxing Island, and Taiping Island. Well-prepared militarily, economically, and diplomatically, the Nationalist government achieved this strategic goal after overcoming various difficulties including insufficient ships and funds, unfavorable weather and maritime conditions, and the obstruction of the French colonial government in Vietnam. The Nationalist government also sent technicians to survey the islands and map out the sphere of Chinese maritime territory in the South China Sea, and it built two weather stations. These actions were publicized on December 1, 1947. During this process, the government of the United States adopted a policy of acquiescence due to its close collaboration with China. When the French government occupied one of the Xisha Islands and attempted to take firmer action, the United States and Britain pressured France to make concessions to China, which led the French government to seek a diplomatic solution.     

The United States and the Question of the Greco-Turkish War, 1919–1922

Abstract

In the post World War II era, the strain in the trilateral relation between the United States, Greece and Turkey is one of the most disquieting and vexatious elements to emerge from American foreign policy. The so-called southeastern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is currently beset with tensions that threaten to impede its contributory role in NATO's overall defense strategy for southeastern Europe (if they have not already done so). In this political drama, the principal antagonists, Greece and Turkey, have a number of outstanding differences which on occasion have brought them to the precipice of war. As a result, the United States has intervened as the protagonist and consequently has become the recipient of the enmity of these two NATO allies for not recognizing their ‘special’ claims or interests. As in the characteristic classical Greek drama, the chorus of NATO partners offer a common chant: they are united in proclaiming that the current state of affairs seems to portend failure to the concerted effort to defend Western Europe.     

The power of the “Stockpile”: American aid and China’s Wartime everyday

ABSTRACT

This article argues that American and British narratives about the existence of a “stockpile” of Chinese goods had a powerful impact on US-China relations, China’s war effort, and China’s wartime everyday. Focusing on both the material and discursive construction of the so-called stockpile in the early 1940s, the work seeks to deconstruct a powerful symbol that was long used by both British and American officials (particularly in the US War Department) to delegitimize the Nationalist government’s war effort against Japan. Drawing on sources collected at archives in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan, the article seeks to rethink many commonly held assumptions about American aid and to reveal the powerful influence that the symbolic presence of the stockpile had in shaping Sino-American relations in the wartime period and beyond.     

The Spanish American War’s ‘Most Durable Hero’: Admiral Pasquale Cervera and Popular Heroic Values in the United States, 1898–1909

The United States honored a host of military heroes during the Spanish American War including Pasqual Cervera y Topete, the enemy admiral who had experienced a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Santiago Bay, Cuba (3 June 1898) at the hands of US naval forces. Over the course of the war and in the year that followed, American public opinion of the admiral became positive and increasingly laudatory. By late 1899, Life Magazine, followed by other popular publications, claimed that Cervera was a better war hero then Admiral George Dewey and other American officers who had been wildly celebrated for their wartime heroics. The enemy admiral’s heroic rise was possible because of a fundamental change in the relationship between the press and the nation’s war heroes that sped up each champion’s ultimate decline. In the late nineteenth century Americans sought chivalrous, selfless men of action for their heroes. As journalists began covering each war hero’s daily life as they did other celebrities, however, they discovered character flaws in the nation’s homegrown champions. This examination of Cervera’s gradual rise as an American hero through his death in 1909 includes an overview of the American hero-making process and lifecycle and how celebrity journalism shortened the reign of most war heroes. After identifying the complicated set of values the nation sought in its war heroes at the end of the century, this study will also explain why journalists considered naval heroes as better representatives of those cherished ideals than those from the Army (including volunteer Theodore Roosevelt) until well after the end of the war. Roosevelt was honored as a hero during the war and won the 1899 New York gubernatorial election largely because of his wartime popularity, but was not considered selfless because of his clear political ambitions. American hero-worship of Cervera developed slowly, was considerably more subdued than the public enthusiasm displayed for America’s native-born champions, and was undoubtedly bestowed, in part, as a criticism of the failure of American heroes to live up to the heroic narrative created for them by reporters and biographers. Cervera’s ranking as Life’s ‘most durable hero’ of the war, while seemingly nonsensical, begins to make more sense when the Spanish admiral is reconfigured as a national cultural hero instead of an American military champion. Despite his enemy status, Cervera came to epitomise important military values of the day, because of the rapid decline of the nation’s American-born war heroes brought about by celebrity journalism.     

The North American Folk Revival: Nation and Identity in the United States and Canada, 1945–1980

The Secret of the Totem. By Andrew Lang. Longmans, Green &; Co. London, 1905. 10/6 Net. By F. B. Jevons.

The Origin of Worship : A Study in Primitive Religion. By Rafael Karsten. An Academical Dissertation. Wasa: F. W. Unggren. 1905. viii., 143 pp. By R. R Marett. Bantu Folk Lore. By Matthew L. Hewat, M.D. Cape Town: T. Maskew Miller. By Bertram C. A. Windle.

The Czech Ethnographical Review, vol. xi. Published by the Society of the Cech Ethnographical Museum. Prague, 1905. By Francis P. Marchant.

Der Sagenkreis vom Geprellten Teufel. Von Aug. Wünsche. Leipzig Und Wien, Akademischer Verlag, 1905. By E. Sidney Hartland.

Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, herausgegeben von Albert Dieterich und Richard Wünsch. Gieszen: J. Ricker. I. Attis: seine Mythen und seine Kult, von Hugo Hepding. (1903.) M. 5. II. 2: De Mortuorum Iudicio, scripsit Ludovicu0s Ruhl. (1903.) M. 1.80. II. 3: De Poetarum Romanarum doctrina magica quaestdones selectae, scripsit Ludovicus Fahz. (1904.) M. 1.60.

The Little Black Princess : A True Tale of Life in the Never-Never Land. By Jeannie Gunn. Alexander Moring, Ltd.

Animism: The Seed of Religion. By Edward Clodd, London: A. Constable &; Co. 1905. By R. R. Marett.

Anthropos: International Zeitschrift für Völker- U. Sprachenkunde. Edited By P. W. Schmidt. Band I, Heft 1, 2. Salzburg: Zaunrith'sche Buch- Kunst- Und Steindruckerei. 15 kr. p. a. By Charlotte S. Burne.     

The effects of ageing and urbanisation on China’s future rural and urban populations

This paper estimates China’s future population and labour force by developing a novel forecasting model for population. It combines information about age-specific parameters on fertility and mortality for both rural and urban areas using information about rural–urban migration and the transformation of rural areas into urban ones. This model takes into account the effects of urbanisation on changes in the age structure of the Chinese population; and provides separate projections on the rural and urban populations. Our findings show that (i) the shares of people aged 65 and over, in China’s rural and urban populations, will double between 2010 and 2030; this implies that the ageing problem in rural areas will continue to be more serious than in urban areas; (ii) the rural labour force will shrink by 45 per cent, between 2010 and 2030, while the urban labour force will grow by 34 per cent; and (iii) China’s urbanisation rate will increase to 71 per cent by 2030.     

The United States,Great Britain,and the Creation of the Iranian Oil Consortium, 1953–1954

This article examines the attitudes of US, British, and Soviet policy-makers as they planned for the forthcoming peace during the Second World War. It charts how they moved from planning a ‘peace by dictation’ of the great powers, to planning one which would be based on a model of collective security involving all members of the United Nations alliance. The latter plan would reflect both the great powers’ special responsibilities for maintaining international peace and security and the stake which lesser powers had in such a venture. In addressing these historical developments the article employs two concepts familiar to International Relations scholarship, namely concert and hierarchy. It shows how the understandings which the principal post-war planners had of these concepts – and crucially of their inter-relationship - changed over time and the consequences of these changes. The article makes two core claims: firstly, that as post-war planning progressed, the attitudes of the Big Three towards the acceptable nature of the great power–lesser power hierarchy changed radically; and secondly, that the structure and nature of today's United Nations Organisation is in significant part a consequence of these changes.     

The other cold war: the United States and Greenland’s ice sheet environment, 1948–1966

During the early Cold War, no part of the Arctic was as important to the United States’ strategic interests as Greenland: situated on the shortest straight-line route between the industrial centers of the two superpowers, Greenland was integral to North American continental security. The US desire to control Greenland, however, was complicated by the island’s isolated geography, harsh climate and barren landscape. Between 1948 and 1966, US forces in Greenland were entrenched in the ‘other cold war’: the struggle with the ice sheet environment which threatened to impede American capabilities in the region. This paper explores the ‘other cold war’ through two case studies: US scientific efforts to understand and cope with polar whiteouts and the plastic deformation of ice. These case studies illuminate a struggle between two philosophical approaches to nature: a brash, aggressive approach which aimed to conquer the Greenland environment, and a more nuanced approach which aimed to collaborate with that environment. I show that the second approach won out as Greenland’s exceptional geography and environment forced the US military to reassess its relationship with nature: rather than striving for control over the island space, US military personnel ultimately chose strategic cooperation with that space.