Indigenous Youth and Decolonial Futures: Energy and Environmentalism among the Diné in the Navajo Nation and the Lepchas of Sikkim,India

In India and the United States, Lepcha and Diné youth are articulating decolonial futures that diverge from past aspirations. Rather than demanding big infrastructure such as dams or power plants, Indigenous youth forward decolonial visions that reimagine the landscape and energy technologies. In this article, we suggest that Lepcha and Diné activists are articulating a youthful decolonial futurity—a vision for the future where their generation and the ones to follow can flourish in their own territories and on their own terms. We propose youthful decolonial futurity as a prefigurative politics specific to Indigenous youth, who view their activism as integral to creating a future where their communities have more control over decision-making processes and their ancestral territories. What emerges is a consideration of the role of Indigenous youth in building a language and politics of decolonisation against the roles of power brokers, elites, and naysayers.     

Refusing Reform,Reworking Pity,or Reinforcing Privilege? The Multivalent Politics of Young People’s Fun and Friendship within a Volunteering Encounter

This paper analyses initiatives which took British young people from ethnic minority and disenfranchised backgrounds to volunteer in sub-Saharan Africa. It asks whether decolonial possibilities can be seen in the politics of youthful fun and friendship amid a practice undeniably driven by interpenetrating neocolonial logics, where enrolment in helping “needy” others is seen as a means to “improve” working-class and racially marked youth. The paper argues that volunteers’ investments in leisure constituted a politics of refusal towards how they were acted upon as objects of concern. More ambivalently, playful, friendly interactions between British and African youth disrupted relations of charitable pity and signalled desires for solidarity and equality, but cannot be claimed as fully decolonial. At times, fun also re-entrenched neocolonial and other oppressive relations. Overall, the paper demonstrates that a close reading of the multivalent, affective politics of young people’s fun and friendship can reveal much about the reproduction or subversion of contemporary neocolonial logics that operate both within and beyond the borders of postcolonial Britain.     

YOUNG ACTIVISTS IN MUDDY BOOTS

The Swedish youth organization Fältbiologerna was founded in 1947 with the mission to inspire learning about nature through outdoor activities. Since then, the members have stayed true to their slogan ‘keep your boots muddy’ through engaging in bird watching and forest excursions; however, in the late 1960s and early 1970s – a period that environmental historians refer to as the ‘ecological turn’ – the organization’s activities were extended to also include political activism. Fältbiologerna increasingly evolved into a fertile terrain for young environmentalists. In this article, we explore how this Swedish branch of modern environmental youth activism came about. Based on a close reading of the members’ journal, Fältbiologen, between 1959 and 1974, we identify four key characteristics that were communicated in the journal during the years of study: adventurous, knowledgeable, influential, and radical. We demonstrate that Fältbiologerna took an increasingly radical position and began to engage in environmental debates and actions, while still holding on to ideals of learning through spending time in nature. Participation in these different activities shaped the young members into environmentalists.     

‘This Community Which Nobody Can Define’: Meanings of Commonwealth in the Late 1940s and 1950s

Assessments of early postwar understandings of the power and potential of the Commonwealth have suggested the body either failed to shield the British public from a sense of national decline or that it comforted them that there was no need to worry about decolonisation because the organisation enabled the maintenance of British authority by other means. However, historians and political scientists who provided public comment on the present and future of the body in the late 1940s and 1950s complicate such assessments, wracked as they were by a profound uncertainty over what the Commonwealth could achieve. Their sense of uncertainty was not derived from a pessimistic reading of the tangible events and processes of the period that we might today assume blunted commentators’ faith in Commonwealth cohesion, such as Britain’s relationship with Europe, neutralism, apartheid, or even Suez. Instead, uncertainty over the Commonwealth’s capacity to realise a latent potential supposedly rooted in its members’ willingness to work together was rooted in something more elemental, namely sustained uncertainty regarding the nature of the body’s connections and functions. The body was judged an abstraction, a nascent and unparalleled experiment whose bonds were extensive yet impossible to measure. Its perceived opacity rendered it neither a cause for concern nor a salve to a wounded British morale.     

The Origins of Exercise ALCORA, 1960–71

Over the course of the 1960s, Portugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa, hard-pressed by African nationalist movements and international opinion, grew closer together, realising that their common enemies could only be defeated by a common stance. The most important attempt to meet the threat to white political domination in Southern Africa was Exercise ALCORA, a military understanding negotiated, in secret, in October 1970. From then until the Portuguese Revolution in 1974, regular meetings of the representatives of the three countries’ armed forces pooled intelligence and defined new strategies for the on-going conflicts in Rhodesia, Angola, and Mozambique, and put in train plans for future, larger-scale clashes. This article examines the origins of ALCORA, charting the process by which Lisbon, Salisbury, and Pretoria came together despite considerable obstacles. It highlights the importance of domestic factors, notably in South Africa, ALCORA's senior partner. There, the murder in 1966 of Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd led to a circumstance wherein leading figures of the regime enjoyed much greater freedom in the definition of policy than before. One beneficiary was Defence Minister P. W. Botha who, with the army's backing, would develop a total strategy against what was perceived as a total threat. Exercise ALCORA was a key component of this strategy.     

Those Who Dared: A Reappraisal of Britain's Special Air Service, 1950–80

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the United Kingdom embarked upon a policy of rapid demobilisation, reducing its armed forces from a wartime high of 5 million in 1945 to just 375,000 by 1963. Yet in these same years it faced conflict in Palestine, Malaya, Korea, Kenya, Cyprus, Oman, Aden, and Egypt, to name just a few trouble spots where British soldiers were sent. To account for the shortfall between the availability of soldiers and the need, the armed forces turned in part to Special Force units, particularly the army's Special Air Service (SAS). As British formal control receded throughout the world, so the SAS became ever more active. In so doing, it played an integral - if often misunderstood - role in contemporary British history. This paper examines the rebirth of the Special Air Service in post-war Britain and re-evaluates its role from 1950–80.     

‘Cultivating the African’: Barclays DCO and the Decolonisation of Business Strategy in Kenya, 1950–78

While there is a great deal of recent research on the response of British business to decolonisation and a wide range of literature examining the alleged ‘neo-colonial’ relations between business and state in the post-colonial period, few studies of business attempt to straddle the awkward periodisation defined by the official hand-over of political responsibility. Barclays Bank DCO embarked on its decolonisation strategy in Kenya in anticipation of political and economic change and continued to follow that same strategy after the formal transfer of power from London to Nairobi. The article demonstrates the precise nexus of political and commercial reasons for Barclays’ approach in Kenya and outlines its successes and failures in responding to political and economic change in a newly emerging nation. In so doing, it emphasises that this particular British business, while not always in complete control of events on the ground, was more than a victim or beneficiary of circumstances about which it knew little and could do less. Rather, Barclays was an active participant in the process of decolonisation, reorganising and adapting its business model and employment structure to suit the times in Kenya.     

Reluctant Humanitarians: British Policy Toward Refugees in Kenya During the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–1940

Following the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, several hundred Eritrean deserters from the Italian army and several thousand Ethiopian officials, soldiers, and civilians fled to Kenya. British officials on the border, in Nairobi, and in London found themselves deeply conflicted over how to deal with these refugees. Sheltering refugees was costly, and it antagonised the Italians whose friendship (or at least neutrality) the British hoped to win in Europe and in eastern Africa. But vocal critics in London watched for any signs of mistreatment or forced repatriation of the refugees. Government officials themselves expressed a revulsion at the possibility of turning away or repatriating refugees who feared for their lives. Because of this humanitarian sentiment, Kenya sheltered the refugees until the liberation of Ethiopia, much to the dismay of government officials.     

Toads and Informers: How the British Treated their Collaborators during the Cyprus Emergency, 1955–9

ABSTRACT

During the Cyprus Emergency the British administration made considerable use of both Cypriot and Turkish collaborators as policemen and civil servants. Most were able to sink back into the safety of their own ethnic community after the Emergency, but some had become pariahs and had to look to the departing British for succour. They were the small group of Greek Cypriots who actively collaborated with the British against EOKA (National Organization of Cypriot Fighters), and the even smaller group of Turkish Cypriots who worked with them against the Turkish underground organisation, TMT. This article uses newly released archival materials to explore the history of these collaborators, asking questions about their recruitment, their actions, and the risks and dangers they faced. Evidence emerges as to how the British rewarded and subsequently treated these collaborators, how those who applied for asylum fared, and what happened to them once they arrived in Britain.     

From the Mountains to the Sea—Ki Uta ki Tai: Ecological Enclosure,Interconnection, and Subjectivity in the Commons

This paper explores the ways in which the affective and material dimensions of the commons come together to produce commoner subjectivities. Threats of enclosure can draw attention to the ways in which subjectivity reproduction is dependent on an environment which enables embodied acts of care. Using the example of the East Otago Taiāpure and Waikouaiti Mātaitai, a form of customary fisheries management in New Zealand, this paper illustrates the limitations of the institutionalised commons in its capacity to create an effective caring and protective space. Historical colonial transformation of the landscape and contemporary industrial activities have resulted in an “ecological enclosure” of the area, threatening the health of the ecosystem and its ability to encourage Māori subjectivities, specifically, kaitiakitanga, a relational responsibility to care for the physical and social environment.     

Saved by the Civil War: African ‘Loyalists’ in the Portuguese Armed Forces and Angola's Transition to Independence

ABSTRACT

The article examines the trajectories of ‘loyal’ African troops in Angola before and after the demise of Portugal's authoritarian regime in 1974. It starts by placing the ‘Africanisation’ drive of the Portuguese counterinsurgency campaign in a historical perspective; it then explores the rocky transition from colonial rule to independence in the territory between April 1974 and November 1975, describing the course of action taken by the Portuguese authorities vis-à-vis their former collaborators in the security forces. A concluding section draws a comparison between the fate of Portugal's loyalists in Angola and the one experienced by similar groups in other ex-Portuguese colonies. The choice of Angola has the advantage of allowing us to look into a complex scenario in which the competition amongst rival nationalist groups, and a number of external factors, helped to produce a more ambiguous outcome for some of the empire's local collaborators than what might have been otherwise expected.     

But I'm Just an Artist!? Intersections,Identity, Meaning,and Context

This article revisits the complex intersections of identity and meaning in the context of a world in which cosmopolitanism is increasingly questioned. The role of the artist with regard to activism and cosmopolitan flows becomes difficult to navigate but important to probe. Findings drawn from fieldwork indicate that the artist is highly conflicted; often ephemerally aligned with various social movements that may or may not be related; and in a constant state of self‐negotiation and identity formation that are highly dependent on local context. Intersectionality may be a useful frame to reconceptualize the artist as a relationally connected set of constantly shifting identities rather than an assumed category, as sometimes portrayed. Key to this is an appreciation of the role of the observer in this process. Singapore is envisioned as a place of intersecting identity; so, too, are the artists within it, caught between local context and global currents.