British policy in the Cretan Question (1893–1913): prioritizing between diplomatic and economic affairs

This article investigates British policy fluctuations regarding the Cretan Question from 1893 to 1913 by examining Great Britain’s participation in the European Concert, as well as its plans to achieve an economic foothold in Crete. Running parallel, these two factors expose the critical factors determining British policy through an analysis of the development of British international relations in the Levant and the fulfilment of the City’s investment plans in Crete. Moreover, the examination of British policy regarding the Cretan issue helps explain why and to what degree London shifted from a soft to a hard-line exercise of power towards the key aspects of the Cretan problem. The article closes by suggesting that Britain’s main priority was to avoid diplomatic isolation over the Eastern Question, while maintaining closer relations with Russia, and re-entering the arena of the Eastern Question.     

Democracy,nationalism and (lack of) sovereignty: the complex dynamics of democratisation in unrecognised states†

ABSTRACT. Unrecognised states are among the least likely candidates for democratisation: they tend to be driven by ethno‐nationalism, many are marked by the legacy of war and most are facing international isolation. Nevertheless, the claim to democracy has become a central part of their legitimising narrative. This article examines this apparent paradox and finds that neither ethno‐nationalism nor non‐recognition represents insurmountable barriers to democratisation. However, what we tend to find in these entities is a form of stagnated ‘ethnic democratisation’. These findings throw new light on the relationship between democracy and nationalism; they highlight the importance of (lack of) sovereignty; and they are used to evaluate Sammy Smooha's concept of ‘ethnic democracy’.     

‘An Obstacle,though not a Barrier’: the Role of International Law in Security Planning during the Pax Britannica

This article explores the role of international law in nineteenth-century British security planning, arguing that statesmen believed law could only influence state conduct rather than determine outcomes. As a result, statesmen crafted agreements to exploit the possibilities of international law while recognising its limitations. The article explores the functions of law, providing examples of how diplomats employed law to increase predictability in interstate relations, signal national interests, and strengthen mutual interests between countries. However, the role of war in the international legal system exposed flawed assumptions about the future of war, limiting the effectiveness of law.     

Free Trade Empire to Commonwealth of Nations: India,Britain and Imperial Preference, 1903–1932

This article examines the dialogue between British tariff reformers and Indian nationalists over the application of imperial trade preference in India from Joseph Chamberlain's 1903 Birmingham address to the 1932 Imperial Economic Conference. For both groups, this issue was a focal point to assess India's constitutional status and national participation within an emerging British Commonwealth and international system after the First World War. Specifically, it marked a comprehensive challenge to the orthodoxy of free trade and liberal empire seen increasingly as a determent to reconciling national prosperity and imperial unity. It is argued that prominent tariff reformers’ well-studied criticism of an ‘unpatriotic’ cosmopolitan free trade made them also sympathetic to longstanding Indian grievances that this fiscal policy exacerbated economic exploitation and racial discrimination. After 1919, Indian nationalists, including ‘historical economists’, utilized metropolitan advocacy for imperial preference to demand fiscal and political autonomy from Britain and national, as well as racial, equality in collective imperial decision. At the 1932 conference in Ottawa, India's voluntary and negotiated acceptance of preferential trade with Britain, beside the white self-governing Dominions, helped transform the British Commonwealth into an egalitarian organization recognizable after 1947.     

The Revolt against the West: Decolonisation and its Repercussions in British International Thought, 1945–75

It has been suggested that British intellectuals were either indifferent to decolonisation or sought to downplay its impact. As a consequence, historians of international thought have overlooked the extensive debates that occurred among scholars and intellectuals concerned with British foreign policy and international relations. This article addresses those debates, examining the responses of internationalist, Whig, realist, and radical thinkers to decolonisation and to what they thought to be the changes it brought about in contemporary world politics. It argues that far from being indifferent to decolonisation, many British students of international relations were deeply worried about what some called ‘the revolt against the West’, and that those concerned helped shape the distinctive character of British international thought in the formative period of the discipline of International Relations (IR).     

Golden age,apathy or stealth? Democratic engagement in Britain, 1945–1950

This article revisits democratic engagement in post-war Britain in a context of debates about political disaffection in the current period. The study systematically reanalysed volunteer writing in the Mass Observation Archive and represents a significant methodological advance on previous studies. Little evidence was found to support common existing interpretations: whether ‘golden age’ narratives of deference to authority, partisan alignment and high voter turnout or revisionist accounts of apathy. Instead, evidence was found of something akin to what Hibbing and Theiss-Morse call ‘stealth democracy’. Citizens thought democracy to be important and felt a duty to vote, but wished for government by experts in the national interest. This ‘stealth’ interpretation builds on existing studies of duty, populism and expertise in twentieth-century Britain. It helps to move discussion of democratic engagement after the Second World War beyond the binaries of self/collective and private/public, and to explain the paradox of high voter turnout in a context of hostility to party politics. It also promises to inform debates about declining political support in the current period.     

The Shipping Conference System,Empire and Local Protest in Singapore, 1910–1911

This article analyses local opposition in Singapore in 1910–11 to the shipping conference system and the responses of a powerful group of British shipowners and the Colonial Office. The conference, a cartel agreed among shipowners, divided monopoly profits among its members and a small group of London-based merchant houses. We suggest that the concerns of Singapore anti-conference protestors, backed by the governor of the Straits Settlements, counted for little in official London circles when weighed against the vital role of shipping in the British Empire. Even in 1967 the strength of the empire and British shipping was still apparent when the Singapore government refused to support local mercantile opposition to the Far Eastern Freight Conference.     

大农业不是英国农业和经济衰落的原因——与徐正林和郭豫庆同志商榷

18世纪中期以后英国大农业的兴起和发展,从历史实际看,不仅没有导致英国农业的衰落,相反使英国农业进入了一个黄金时期;不仅没有削弱英国工业发展的基础,相反有利于工业资本的积累和农村人口向城市的流动,极大地推动了英国工业化的发展。英国丧失工业霸主地位、走向相对衰落,有着复杂的、多方面的原因,不能简单地归因于大农业。在吸收国外的研究成果时,盲目照抄,或根据某种需要而随意剪裁历史的做法,都是不可取的。     

Russia and the Re-opening of the Polish Question, 1801–1814

At the end of the eighteenth century, the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople was a religious leader of global stature, exercising direct authority over millions of Christians in the Ottoman Empire and a primacy of honor in the wider Orthodox ecumene. By the 1830s, however, the Patriarchate confronted a new international order that was broadly hostile to its claims. Tensions became particularly bad between the Patriarchate and the British government as both sides asserted their right to control religious affairs on the Ionian Islands, a British-administered protectorate lying off the western coast of Greece. A dispute over who had the power to regulate family law in Ionia escalated in the late 1830s into a minor international incident, with the British government demanding that the Ottoman government depose the reigning patriarch, Grigorios VI. These demands sparked a broader discussion among all the Great Powers as to what the legitimate bounds of the Patriarchate's authority might be. One of the more striking aspects of the incident was the determination of the Powers not to recognize any ‘Orthodox Pope’ in international affairs, illustrating the impact of the modern state system on transnational religious organizations beyond the borders of Europe.     

The Foreign Enlistment Act,International Law,and British Politics, 1819–2014

Foreign enlistment has made headline news in the current Syria crisis and with the rise of the terror group ISIS. The problem is an old one. How can states prevent their citizens from joining foreign forces? Whatever the motives of volunteers, states have usually reacted with the implementation of domestic laws in the hope of gaining a grip on the situation. Britain has one of the oldest pieces of legislation in place, the so-called Foreign Enlistment Act. Dating back to 1819, the history of the Act is largely unexplored. An analysis of British state practice related to the Act brings a history to light which reaches far beyond the domestic sphere where the Act is firmly placed today. The article shows that the Act originated in the realm of foreign policy, shaping legal concepts, such as non-intervention, recognition, and neutrality in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century the Act was increasingly discussed in domestic policy, where current debates on foreign enlistment also take place. Thus, the article examines the changing role of the Foreign Enlistment Act in the context of 200 years of British domestic and foreign policy, illustrating how this domestic legislation shaped the understanding of concepts in international law.     

关于毛泽东\"超英赶美\"思想演变阶段的历史考察

“超英赶美”是毛泽东在中国开始进入社会主义经济建设时期形成的重要思想,它对中国的社会主义现代化建设产生了巨大而深远的影响。根据毛泽东“超英赶美”思想发展变化的特征,可把其划分为提出、号召、降温压缩、二次膨胀和终止等五个阶段。     

Wandering scholars? Academic mobility and the British World, 1850–1940

At the Allied Colonial Universities Conference, held in London in 1903, delegates from across the universities of Britain's settler empire professed the existence of a British academic community, defined not by location, but by shared culture, shared values and shared ethnicity. This article examines the extent to which these claims reflected actual patterns of academic mobility in the settler empire between 1850 and 1940. By mapping the careers of the 350 professors who served at the Universities of Sydney, Toronto, and Manchester during this period, it concludes that, between 1900 and 1930 especially, there existed a distinctly British academic world within which scholars moved frequently along different migratory axes. Though not as united, extensive and uncomplicated as that in which the 1903 Conference delegates believed, this world nonetheless shared more in common with their vision of an expansive British academic community than it did with the image of an unconnected and isolated periphery that has characterised portrayals by subsequent university historians.     

The social selectivity of migration flows affecting Britain's larger conurbations: An analysis of the 1991 census regional migration tables

Little is known about the social composition of migration affecting British cities, despite the currently high political salience of this issue. This is principally because of the very limited availability of reliable city‐scale data on such migrant characteristics as occupation and income. This paper uses the Regional Migration Tables from the 1991 Census to document the migration of labour force members to and from Britain's larger conurbations, distinguishing six main Social Groups defined on the basis of occupation. It is found that all eight areas were net losers of economically active people, that all six Social Groups were generally contributing to these net losses and that, in every case except London, there was a strong positive relationship between social status and the rate of net out‐migration to the rest of Britain. This latter case suggests the need for further work, which would benefit from the more detailed migration datasets that are promised from the 2001 Census.