A Fleet in Being: The Rise and Fall of Italian Sea Power, 1861–1943

JAMES D. TRACY, ed. The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade 1350–1750. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. vi, 504.

K.N. CHAUDHURI. Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. xviii, 477.     

The Churchill–Roosevelt Bases of 1940: The Question of Heritage in their Adaptive Reuse

The US military bases in the British Western Atlantic colonies, negotiated between Churchill and Roosevelt and formalised in the 1941 Destroyers–Bases Agreement, were all abandoned by the 1990s. In the process of their reuse the question of heritage meanings arises. From existing thoughts on heritage in older military bases, the paper considers the legitimacy of recent (living memory) bases as heritage, by reference to various cases among which Malta is particularly persuasive. The Churchill–Roosevelt bases and their heritage potential are then reviewed. The paper examines the three principal naval/military bases involved, namely Argentia (Newfoundland), Bermuda and Chaguaramas (Trinidad), with respect to what heritage perspectives exist among redevelopment agencies and other concerned institutional actors. In all cases heritage constitutes a recessive if not contentious issue among the priorities of base reuse in now post‐colonial environments.