The Trans-Saharan Railway and the Politics of Imperial Expansion, 1890–1900

The trans-Saharan railway scheme was the dominant, if intermittent, theme of French African expansion in the last 20?years of the nineteenth century. Behind political and economic arguments for the scheme lay a hidden agenda—the promotion of Algerian railway interests. Its revival in 1890, after a ten-year interval, was driven by a need to safeguard returns on railway investments, threatened by the growing political influence of the Radicals. Success in a campaign on its behalf was dependent on reinvigorating empire-building in tropical Africa, a function performed by the Chad plan, which also provided the required territorial configuration for a trans-Saharan railway. Subsequently, interest shifted from West Africa to the Sahara where efforts to promote railway construction through exploitation of the Tuat question stood greater chances of success. Saharan expansion was delayed for almost a decade by the obstinacy of the Algerian generals and the timidity of governments in France, before finally being resolved by a fait accompli. However, political circumstances at home, and the emergence of new railway competition in the Sahara, prevented the railway companies from reaping the full reward for their efforts. On the map, if not in any practical sense, a territorially unified French African empire had been completed by 1900, whose origins can be traced directly to the activities of the railway lobby.     

Branding the United Nations: The Adoption of the UN Insignia and Flag, 1941–1950

Abstract

This article contends that the symbols of the United Nations (UN) have played a vital role in establishing the organization’s identity and in protecting its personnel. The design and usage of these emblems developed in a number of steps in the 1940s and early 1950s, a process dominated mainly by Americans. Although private admirers of the UN originated a number of serviceable and aesthetically pleasing designs, products mainly of their own self-initiative, the emblems chosen by the UN were prepared by professional designers, starting with an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) team operating under the aegis of the U.S. State Department. The author compares this process to product ‘branding’, and he also sees it as reflecting a longstanding claim to predominance in the internationalist project by technical specialists. In the 1940s, this dynamic revealed itself in rivalry between an elite of liberal internationalist technocrats and ‘populist internationalists’, the former coming to determine the character and choice of UN emblems. Members of the OSS design team had backgrounds in advertising and – not surprisingly – produced a logo-like design. The ultimate product of this process, a UN flag, was adopted in 1947, but it was treated by early UN bureaucrats like a protected trademark of the UN, at least until popular pressure-driven by an outpouring of mass emotion at the time of the Korean War – forced its release for broader public use.     

The Politics of Empire: Douglas Hailsham and the Imperial Policy of the National Government, 1931–38

While the majority of high-profile imperialists were excluded from Britain's National Government during the 1930s, at least one leading imperialist of the era, Douglas Hogg, first Viscount Hailsham (1872–1950), was at the heart of British policy-making. Although historians have largely overlooked the multifaceted contribution of this leading Conservative to inter-imperial affairs, as a senior cabinet minister he made significant interventions in Britain's policy towards both India and Ireland. He was, both publicly and privately, at the forefront of attempts to resist Irish violations of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty and, at the same time, became one of the government's leading advocates of a progressive solution to India's constitutional development. The article demonstrates that the simplistic image of Hailsham as a diehard reactionary requires significant modification. His approach was characteristically underpinned by a belief in the sanctity of existing agreements and pledges—whether or not he intrinsically approved of them.