‘The Principles of Steam’: Political Transfer and Transformation in Japan, 1868–89

In the first decades of the Meiji period Japan started a deliberate modernization programme of state and society in which foreign models played a very important role. The speed with which foreign ideas concerning a constitution, a national assembly and popular rights were adopted and adapted is astonishing. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that this policy was not simply an elite matter, issued from above, but involved the general public as well. The various drafts of constitutions that have been found in village storehouses show political modernization had a broad social basis. European political history in the nineteenth century shows numerous instances of the rhetorical use of the foreignness of particular political models or ideas. Their foreign background made rejection or opposition easier. In Japan we meet a proud country that embarked on a course in which the adoption—and adaptation—of foreign political ideas and institutions was simply considered the proper thing to do. Japan became a perfect example of how political practices migrated, in the process were transformed in a national context and were used in political rhetoric.

Résumé:?Dans les premières décennies de l'ère Meiji le Japon commença un programme de modernisation de l'état et de la société dans lequel les modèles étrangers jouaient le plus grand rôle. La rapidité avec laquelle les idées étrangères sur la constitution, l'assemblée nationale et le droit surprend encore. Peut-être plus impressionnant encore est le fait que cette politique n'était pas le fait du pouvoir seul mais aussi celle du public dans son ensemble. Des propositions de constitutions ont été trouvées dans des archives villageoises qui démontrent bien le soutien populaire pour la modernisation. L'histoire européenne est aussi riche de nombreux exemples de l'utilisation rhétorique de modèles étrangers, leur origine étrangère facilitant également leur adoption ou le rejet. Dans le cas japonais l'adoption et l'adaptation de modèles étrangers furent plus simplement la chose à faire. Le Japon représente l'exemple ultime de la migration de pratiques politiques transformées par un contexte national.     

‘The Indian Gift’: A critical debate

In 1986 Jonathan Parry’s ‘The Gift, the Indian Gift and the “Indian Gift”’ claimed to overturn conventional understandings of Marcel Mauss, by arguing that market societies most idealize the distinction between gifts and commodities, and gift giving need not entail reciprocity. Based on an analysis of Hindu religious gifts, Parry proposed a broad framework for understanding how ideologies of exchange function in different economic and cosmological contexts. Thirty years later, this symposium considers the intellectual milieu in which The Indian Gift was written, and interrogates whether or not the work remains relevant to contemporary research and analysis. The symposium opens with a short introduction that provides some background to Parry’s essay and incorporates material from a recent interview with him. This is followed by critical comments on it by five influential thinkers on gift exchange: James Carrier, Chris Gregory, James Laidlaw, Marilyn Strathern and Yunxiang Yan. It ends with a short ‘revisionist’ note by Parry in which he tries to identify some of the limits of the Maussian approach for contemporary anthropology.     

The ‘Contest for Dominion’: Political Conflict and the Decline of the Lowther ‘Interest’ in Whitehaven, 1820–1900

Abstract

Wartime memories remain a strong undercurrent in British society but many of these myth/memories have been skewed by a strong southern-based perspective. One of the key requirements for the wartime population of Britain was that they carried on despite hardships and that morale was maintained. It has since entered the national consciousness that the people of Britain remained stoical throughout the war and that the community was strengthened by its shared wartime experiences. Recent historiography, however, has cast doubt on this belief, citing examples of putatively poor behaviour during the war. This article seeks to explore this myth/memory and, in a small way, to redress the North–South balance by using the experiences of wartime Tyneside as a case study.     

‘The Key to India’: Troop Movements,Southern Africa,and Britain's Indian Ocean World, 1795–1820

Movements of people, goods, and ideas across the oceans of the world were the means by which British interests were cemented. This article focuses on one of those strategic and military transoceanic networks. It examines the pivotal role played by the Cape of Good Hope in supplying Britain's Indian Empire with troops: either recruited from existing garrisons or transferred in the case of security emergencies. Tracing the arcs of these connections, and understanding how and why they operated, helps to situate British networks of influence and interest in the Indian Ocean region. The views of people like Richard Wellesley and Robert Percival illuminate the political impulses and strategic considerations that circulated immediately before and after the British acquisition of the Cape. The evidence presented here contributes to our understanding of how the Cape fits into British Indian Ocean networks. In describing the close connection between the Cape and India, the article disrupts models of imperial networks that focus exclusively on London's relationship with colonial peripheries. And, finally, the article illustrates what it meant, in practice, to exert control and to sustain transoceanic networks and connections in the Indian Ocean in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.     

The European Impact on State–Religion Relations in Turkey: Political Islam,Alevis and Non-Muslim Minorities

Since Turkey's application for membership of the European Union (EU) in 1987, the EU has itself been a structural component of Turkey's political transformation. The European impact intensified after Turkey was granted the status of an official candidate at the EU's Helsinki Summit in 1999. Since then, Turkey has issued a series of reform packages with the aim of starting accession negotiations, which began in October 2005. These reforms have initiated a democratic regime that is structurally different from its predecessors in terms of its definition of political community, national identity and the territorial structure of the state. Among many other aspects of the current political transformation such as the resolution of the Kurdish problem and administrative reform, this article concentrates on how the European impact, which I label Europeanisation, has influenced state–religion relations in Turkey. Europeanisation has three major mechanisms that influence actors, institutions, ideas and interests in varying ways: institutional compliance, changing opportunity structures, and the framing of domestic beliefs and expectations. The article concentrates on how these mechanisms operate in the creation of a new regulatory framework of religion in Turkey.     

A Double-Edged Sword: Anglo-American ‘Special Relations,’ 1936–1981

C.A. MACDONALD. The United States, Britain and Appeasement, 1936–1939. New York: St Martin's Press, 1981. Pp. xi, 220. $22.50 (US); DAVID REYNOLDS. The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937–41: A Study in Competitive Co-operation. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Pp. xiii, 397. $28.00 (US); H.G. NICHOLAS (ed.). Washington Despatches, 1941–45: Weekly Political Reports from the British Embassy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981. Pp. xviii, 700. $40.00 (US); TERRY H. ANDERSON. The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944–1947. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981. Pp. xiv, 256. $18.00 (US); ROBERT M. HATHAWAY. Ambiguous Partnership: Britain and America, 1944–1947. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Pp. xi, 410. $25.00 (US); JOHN BAYLIS. Anglo-American Defence Relations, 1939–1980: The Special Relationship. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981. Pp. xxii, 259. $25.00 (US).     

‘Marriage’, ‘Massage', Metaphor and Gender in US–Iranian Relations During the 1960s

Abstract

Although they were allies, during the 1960s relations between the United States and Iran were fraught with tensions. For American policymakers, Iran was an important Cold War client and oil-supplier in a turbulent region. It was vital, therefore, to maintain a good relationship with the Shah of Iran. Indeed, United States policy was based in large part on American assessments of the Shah as an individual. This article seeks to assess how the language and metaphors used by American policymakers to describe and understand the Shah reflected and informed United States policy. Officials within the Kennedy and Johnson administrations viewed the Shah through a highly gendered lens that magnified perceptions of him as a weak, highly sensitive and irrational leader – characteristics deemed to be overly feminine. This article therefore contends that US policy towards Iran was influenced by gender stereotypes as policymakers lamented their reliance on the Shah, who they deemed to be insufficiently 'masculine'.     

The ‘Little Palaces’ of St James's: Ladies,Lords, and Political Association under the later Stuarts

Clubs, coffee houses, and taverns, the most widely studied sites of political gathering in later Stuart London, largely excluded women. This essay argues that places of ‘intermixed conversation’ which existed alongside them should also be taken into account, and considers several examples of regular, semi-private assemblies, chiefly hosted by elite women (including duchesse de Mazarin, Lady Pulteney, and Barbara Villiers, Lady Fitzhardinge) and frequented by both sexes for the overt purpose of card playing, which were also significant places of political association at this period.