Peace Conferences and the Century Of Total War: The 1899 Hague Conference and What Came After

The Hague Peace Conference of 1899 was unprecedented and momentous. Pressed by public concern about the arms race and its costs, the governments of all great and most lesser powers, suppressing their doubts about the possibility of achieving anything, convened in May 1899 to discuss the Tsar's draft proposals for general measures of disarmament and pacification. Although there was too much mutual suspicion for any progress with disarmament, the Conference opened up a new era in international relations: its multilateral treaty to encourage arbitration and its establishment of a permanent court to facilitate this may be seen as the germ of the International Court of Justice; and within a batch of measures designed to modernize the laws of war, the Hague Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, recapitulated at the second such conference in 1907, became the basis of our century's laws of war. Apart from those achievements, given the grand aims of the Conference and the public interest it generated, it can be seen as a prototype of all League of Nations and United Nations gatherings ever since.     

Cold War Conflicts and Cheap Cabaret: Sexual Politics at the 1975 United Nations International Women's Year Conference

In a widely read memoir, a Bolivian union militant signals the moment of her alienation from the nongovernmental organisation tribune of the United Nations’ 1975 International Women's Year (IWY) conference in Mexico City by describing her dismay when she encountered a group of women clamouring for sexual rights, reiterating a persistent narrative about a trade‐off between sexual rights and other forms of social justice.
Drawing on feminist performance theory, this article examines the political performances of three central figures at IWY – Domitila Barrios de Chungara, Betty Friedan and Mexican theatre director Nancy Cárdenas – to explore the ways that political performances rooted in distinct scenarios, or historical contexts, generated a confusion of meanings around campaigns for sexual rights.     

Review Article: Hot War,Cold War,New War

STANLEY KARNOW. Vietnam, A History. New York: Penguin, 1984. Pp. xi, 752. $10.95 (US); GABRIEL KOLKO. Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, The United States, and the Modern Historical Experience. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. Pp. xvi, 628. $25.00 (US); TIMOTHY J. LOMPERIS. The War Everyone Lost-and Won: America's Intervention in Vietnam's Twin Struggles. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1985. Pp. x, 192. $22.50 (US); R.B. SMITH. An International History of the Vietnam War: The Kennedy Strategy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. Pp. xii, 429. $25.00 (US); HARRY O. SUMMERS, Jr. On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. New York: Dell, 1984. Pp. 288. $3.95 (US).     

Review Article: Total War or Traditional War

MICHAEL ADAMS. Napoleon and Russia. London and New York, NY: Hambledon Continuum, 2006. Pp. xxiii, 596. $34.95 (US); ROY ADKINS and LESLEY ADKINS. The War for All the Oceans: From Nelson at the Nile to Napoleon at Waterloo. London: Little Brown, 2006. Pp. xxix, 534. £10.9g, paper; ALESSANDRO BARBERO. The Battle: A New History of Waterloo, trans. John Cullen. New York, NY: Walker & Company, 2005. Pp. xii, 340. $16.00 (US), paper; DAVID A. BELL. The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It. Boston, MA and New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2007; dist. Markham, ON: Thomas Allen. Pp. x, 420. $39.95 (CDN); CHARLES ESDAILE. Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803–1815. London: Allen Lane, Penguin, 2007. Pp. xvii, 621. $55.00 (CDN); ROBERT HARVEY. The War of Wars: The Epic Struggle between Britain and France, 1723–1815. London: Constable & Robinson, 2006. Pp. xxx, 962. £10.00, paper; FREDERICK W. KAGAN. The End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801–1805. Cambridge, MA: De Capo Books, 2006. Pp. xxiv, 774. $40.00 (US); MICHAEL V. LEGGIERE. The Fall of Napoleon: I: The Allied Invasion of France, 1813–1814. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xvii, 686. $35.00 (US); THIERRY LENTZ. Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire: II: L'effondrement du système napoléonien, 1810–1814. Paris: Fayard, 2007. Pp. 835. €30.00, paper; ADAM ZAMOYSKI. Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna. London: HarperCollins, 2007. Pp. xviii, 634. £25.00. Reviewed by Philip G. Dwyer     

Stanner's War

The Pacific War and its aftermath were a turning point in William Edward Hanley Stanner's career. Until then, he had struggled to establish himself as a scholar and seemed destined to stay, like many other Australian scholars, within the orbit of British academia and its colonial empire. Almost immediately after war had been declared, Stanner returned to Australia, working in various capacities and, in May 1942, commanding the North Australia Observer Unit. In October 1943, he was transferred to the Australian Army's Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs (DORCA). Members of the Directorate saw themselves at the forefront of progressive reform in Australian colonial policy. Stanner opposed what he considered the grandiose plans for a post-war Papua New Guinea that were hatched by the DORCA ‘boys’, as they called themselves. By the end of the 1940s, however, control over policy was firmly in the hands of the civil bureaucracy and the new Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck. Any influence that may have accrued to either Stanner or to the idealism of the ‘boys’ in the Directorate was lost.     

德国政界对第二次世界大战的历史反思

第二次世界大战结束后,德国,特别是联邦德国的政治家曾对希特勒和民族社会主义给德国和其他受害国人民带来的"灾难"进行过多种多样的反思和探讨。从总体上说,他们的认罪、道歉和赔偿的态度是比较真诚的,但不谐之音时时可闻,争论也非常激烈。政治家们对历史的认识,不仅与其个人修养、价值观和党派立场有密切联系,而且也与国内外的局势变化息息相关,并且往往表现出为现实政治服务的目的。历史反思与现实政治自始至终都是难分难解的。     

战与和的变奏——重庆谈判至政协会议期间的中国时局演变

重庆谈判至政协会议期间的中国时局演变,反映出战后中国面临的最重要问题,即战争还是和平,这是国人关注的主题。也是各种政治力量争执的焦点。国共两党虽然经过重庆谈判签订了“双十协定”,但由于并未解决军队和地盘这两个根本问题,因此仍然因为实际利益之争而发生了大规模武装冲突。其后,由于军事较量的相持,更由于外部环境的变化。国共实现了停战,并召开政协,讨论战后中国问题。但是国共停战的实现,缺少真正的内在动因。因此,在外部压力下实现的停战,其延续的环境十分脆弱。国共两党最终仍回复于战争,某些暂时的妥协只能是一时的“迂回”。并不妨碍双方实现其基本方针的决心与努力。在这样的形势下,所谓战与和的变奏,和不过是插曲。战才是主旋律。