Framing the “Polar Silk Road” (冰上丝绸之路): Critical geopolitics,Chinese scholars and the (Re)Positionings of China's Arctic interests

China's release of a White Paper to document its Arctic Policy in 2018 has attracted widespread academic and popular commentaries. In particular, Beijing's ambition to build a “Polar Silk Road” (冰上丝绸之路) in the Arctic so as to link Asia and Europe via logistic and transportation networks have garnered intense ‘external’ speculations about whether China is using the initiative to gain geopolitical power and domination in the region. This paper however focuses on the under-researched dimension of how the idea of the Polar Silk Road is understood, debated and portrayed in the Chinese scholarly community. Specifically, by hinging on the conceptual and methodological tenets offered by framing theory, I seek to critically examine the representational themes and tropes that are mobilized by Chinese scholars in their discussions of the Polar Silk Road amidst China's increasing forays into the Arctic. Indeed, I argue that Chinese academic discourses about the Polar Silk Road evoke positive frames broaching a diversity of concerns (economic, environmental, diplomatic and so on) to not only justify but also defend China's ongoing interests and interventions in the Arctic region. By engaging in this study, this paper responds to critical geopolitics' call to pay nuanced attention to under-represented ‘non-Western’ geopolitical ideas, philosophies and traditions. Moreover, given the claim that the academic and foreign policy realms in China are intertwined in intimate and complex ways, the viewpoints of Chinese scholars thus becomes critical and relevant to understand insofar as they help to signal to the possible future developmental trajectories of China's approach in the Arctic (and beyond).     

In the Shadow of Globalization: The European Community and the United States in the GATT Negotiations of the Tokyo Round (1973–1979)

This article explores the trade negotiations between the United States and the European Community in the Tokyo Round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations, held in Geneva from 1973 to 1979. The article shows how the economic turbulence and the different domestic stances and policies toward the globalizing economy split the Western members of GATT into two camps. Countries, like France and the United Kingdom, less well equipped to face increased worldwide competition and the economic crisis were not keen on trade liberalization. Countries, like the United States and Germany, better equipped to face worldwide competition and in favour of policies that strengthened it, saw trade liberalization as the right path. Eventually, under US President Jimmy Carter's leadership and with the key support of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, the results of the Round reflected a vote in favour of liberalizing international trade. Thus, the Round was shaped by the globalizing economy but, at the same time, its results gave further impetus to the globalization wave that would reach full swing in the 1980s–1990s. The GATT talks took place in the shadow of globalization: while attempting to govern the process, also built it up.     

Studying the International,Serving the Nation: The Origins of International Relations (IR) Scholarship in Germany, 1912–33

This paper examines the dynamics of internationalist and nationalist political thought in the formation of International Relations (IR) scholarship in Germany during the early twentieth century. It argues that while liberal internationalism played a significant role in shaping the discipline, IR scholars were often devout nationalists and worked for their government rather than for international peace. German institutions for the study of IR, like their Anglo-American counterparts, were founded in the aftermath of the First World War. Celebrated during the 1920s as ‘bulwarks of democracy’, they were nationalised by the Nazi government, lost their academic profile and since then have been largely forgotten. This paper explains the origins of IR research at the Institut für Auswärtige Politik, based in Hamburg and directed by Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy, as well as at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik, led by Ernst Jäckh in Berlin. Formally inaugurated in 1923 and 1920 respectively, both institutions drew on pre-war intellectual traditions as well as wartime networks. In light of recent re-appraisals of inter-war IR scholarship in other countries, the German case offers new and important insights into the complex intellectual traditions of what has traditionally been oversimplified as a first ‘great debate’ between ‘idealists’ and ‘realists’.     

The exiles of the Risorgimento: Italian volunteers in the Portuguese Civil War (1832–34)

Abstract

Between 1832 and 1834 during the civil war against the partisans of absolutism in Portugal about a hundred Italians fought as volunteers in the Portuguese liberal army. These Italians were motivated to participate by a Romantic culture of war that was strongly rooted in the liberal nationalism of the Italian Risorgimento, but above all, the decision to fight as a volunteer abroad was the result of an international movement of political solidarity with Portuguese liberalism in the early 1830s with which the Italian liberals came into contact during their political exile in France and in Belgium. For the Italian, fighting as volunteers in Portugal proved to be a decisive political experience which deeply shaped their own political ideas of the nation that the volunteers would subsequently draw on in their different political and professional roles in Italy where they became ministers, diplomats and generals of the Kingdom of Italy.     

The center and the edge: Archaeology in Belize, 1809–1992

The archaeological history of Belize now spans, in a sense, 183 years. For all but the past quarter-century of that time, research in the country has ranged from sporadic to nonexistent. In recent years, however, forces both internal and external to Belize have brought about an explosion of fieldwork and reporting, as well as wide-ranging analyses, problem-focused studies, and the beginnings of placement of Belize in a theoretical frame. Review of the development of archaeological research in the country establishes a base on which to rest discussion of themes in current work, as well as the impact of Belizean data as regards changes in our assessment of Maya prehistory as a whole.