The Field Artillery Revolution and the European Military Balance, 1890–1914

ABSTRACT

This article centres on the introduction of the French 75mm light field gun, and its impact on the European military balance in the two decades before the First World War. It argues that the 75mm (and particularly its new recoil-absorption mechanism) dramatically accelerated the rate of fire and gave France a major military advantage over Germany between c. 1899 and 1906. Subsequently the application of the new technology to howitzers and heavy artillery enabled Germany to redress the balance. On the eve of war, however, Germany's leaders feared a new round of French and Russian emulation, and this fear influenced their policy in the July 1914 crisis. The article also examines the failure to forestall the quick-firing revolution at the First Hague Peace Conference; the new technology's role in the First Moroccan Crisis; its dissemination across Europe and the Franco-German competition to amass reserves of shells.     

1992年联合国环境与发展大会评析

联合国环境与发展大会是继1972年联合国人类环境大会后国际环境保护史上的又一个里程碑事件。大会的召开与20世纪80年代后期世界范围的环保主义高潮有着直接的联系。在预备会议和正式会议上,南北国家代表围绕全球可持续发展的几个主要焦点议题产生了分歧并展开了激烈的辩论。会议取得的主要成果表现在两个方面:一是确立了世界各国在可持续发展和国际合作的一般性原则。二是制订了可持续发展和国际合作的战略措施。     

Population: action for a new decade

This 48-page supplement reports on the world popultion situation and on the International Conference on Population held in Mexico City in 1984. Included are summaries of Conference recommendations, the text of the Mexico City Declaration on Population and Development, a World Population Chart, and reports on population studies. The main task of the 1984 Population Conference was to review the 1974 World Population Plan of Action and approve steps to update some of its goals in line with new issues that have emerged in recent years. The preamble to the 1984 recommendations states that the basis for an effective solution to population problems is socioeconomic transformation. It is noted, however, that even in the absence of socioeconomic development, family planning programs can have an impact on fertility levels. This report futher describes the debate on disarmament, abortion, economic policy, and occupied territories that took place in Mexico City. Also included is a glossary of terms used in population studies and a discussion on how the United Nations determines its demographic projections.     

The Signing of the Sino-Iranian Treaty of 1920

This article looks at the efforts China and Iran made towards strengthening themselves and their search for independence and integrity after the First World War. Since the nineteenth century, the two countries had been in a similar situation, under pressure from treaties and rivalries with European powers. The change of the world order brought about by the 1914–18 war created an opportunity for China and Iran to claim back their rights, such as ending extra-territoriality. After the war, the Fourteen Points drawn up by the American president, Woodrow Wilson, gave hope for China and Iran to maintain their independence and integrity. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, China and Iran made both gains and losses. China was unable to solve the Shandong Problem but became one of the founding members of the League of Nations, while Iran did not get access to the Peace Conference but obtained Britain’s assurance of independence and integrity by signing the Anglo-Iranian Treaty of 1919, and then joined the League of Nations. China and Iran attempted to bring about cooperation between Asian countries, and therefore signed a treaty in 1920. The significance of the treaty was that the two countries agreed not to grant extra-territoriality to each other, which was what both countries were seeking to achieve at that time.     

South African War (1899–1902) Memorials in Britain: A Case Study of Memorialization in London and Kent

Abstract

Mass public commemoration of war dead is often held to be a twentieth-century phenomenon, with its genesis in the Great War. This article argues for a pre-history occasioned by commemoration of the South African War (1899–1902) that built on shifts in the form and function of war memorials that had begun in the middle of the nineteenth century.     

The south pacific ‘experiment’: Reflections on the origins of regional identity

Abstract

When colonial administrators decided to encourage a sense of unity among the members of the emergent élite of their Pacific Island territories in the late 1940s, they regarded their project as novel. Rather than a sense of tapping a pre‐existing affinity, it seemed that what was being attempted was social engineering on a grand scale. The first South Pacific Conference of Pacific Island representatives held at Nasinu, Fiji, in April‐May 1950, was seen by European officials and observers as an ‘experiment’.

The attempt to forge a sense of regional unity was seen as pushing against the perceived gulf between Melanesian and Polynesian cultures and as expecting too much in the way of conference skills from ‘undeveloped’ societies. But the ‘experiment’ was considered necessary for other important post‐war goals. Although the Nasinu conference is to be seen broadly as an experiment in the promotion of trusteeship, or ‘native welfare’, principles, there was by no means agreement on its ultimate purposes. For some it offered the best (if risky) chance of minimising United Nations interference in the continuation of colonial control, for others a way of ensuring the demise of empire by serving the needs of self‐determination. Finally, the promotion of a sense of region among Pacific Islanders was seen by some as part of an experiment in keeping the region from Communist influence.     

论《大公报》和平裁兵言论的民本主义倾向

作为20世纪20年代主导性政治化的和平裁兵思潮,对社会政治生活的影响至为深远。《大公报》这一时期的言论也充分表达了,其对于和平裁兵的热诚期盼,并带有明显的民本主义倾向。首先,《大公报》主张实现的真正意义上的主武从之政治,与儒家以君为本位、依靠圣君贤相为民作主的民本思想相碰撞;其次,导源于战争一触即发的裁兵呼声始终是以出民水火、解民倒悬作为该报的首要出发点;再次,《大公报》主张废除私兵与实现军队国家化,将爱民与重民有机地结合在一起,尤其是看重民众对于社稷江山的捍卫作用,正是“民惟邦本”意识的体现。     

Stuck on disarmament: the European Union and the 2015 NPT Review Conference

The quinquennial Nuclear Non‐Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference represents a highly important event from the perspective of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Though not a party to the treaty itself, the EU has made a consistent effort since the 1990s to coordinate the positions of its member states and achieve higher visibility in the NPT review process. The aim of this article is to examine the role of the EU in the 2015 NPT Review Conference deliberations. Drawing on on‐site observations, statements and in‐depth research interviews, it argues that the recent institutional changes notwithstanding, the influence of the EU as a distinct actor in the NPT context remains very limited, and the EU's common position is in bigger disarray than ever before. This year's Review Conference demonstrated the widening rift between the member states, in particular in the area of nuclear disarmament and the related issues. The inability to maintain a coherent common position limits the EU ‘actorness’ and impedes its striving for relevance in the NPT forums. The dynamics outlined in this article further highlight the limits of the EU CFSP in security matters in which the national positions of individual member states are as divergent as in the case of nuclear disarmament.     

The Boer War and the Media (1899-1902)

The South African War that broke out in October 1899 was bothvery old and very new. It was a traditional war, the last ofthe old-fashioned British imperial wars, with cavalry playinga significant part. But it was also a very modern war, for instancein the British Army's use of railways to subdue the Boers inthe early months of 1900, or the use of trench warfare by theBoers along the Modder river. It was disturbingly new in theway that it changed in the autumn of 1900 from a war betweenarmies to a guerrilla war against a civilian population, mostdistastefully so in the British concentration camps set up tohouse Boer women and children. Above all, it was a distinctlycontemporary war in its impact on the media, especially thenewspapers, and in the interaction between the media and thoseparticipating in the fighting. It was a significant war, farbigger than originally expected, and was therefore big news.The British Army, ill-prepared for the original Boer invasionof Natal, at first numbered 75,000 troops. In the end, the Britishand imperial forces totalled 450,000 with contingents from Canada,Australia, New Zealand, and India. The British lost 22,000 men,13,000 of them from disease. The Boers lost about 7,000 in thefield, while another 27,000 (many of them very young children)are estimated to have died in the concentration camps. Therewere also about 20,000 black and ‘coloured’ Africanswho died in concentration camps, though this was little reportedat the time. So it was a major episode in British military history.The impact on British opinion of the relief of Ladysmith andespecially of Mafeking in 1900 was quite overwhelming. In afrenzy of ‘jingo’ celebration, the verb ‘mafficking’entered the language. In these circumstances, the consequencesof the Boer War on the media and its representation of war wereinevitably massive.     

The Spanish American War’s ‘Most Durable Hero’: Admiral Pasquale Cervera and Popular Heroic Values in the United States, 1898–1909

The United States honored a host of military heroes during the Spanish American War including Pasqual Cervera y Topete, the enemy admiral who had experienced a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Santiago Bay, Cuba (3 June 1898) at the hands of US naval forces. Over the course of the war and in the year that followed, American public opinion of the admiral became positive and increasingly laudatory. By late 1899, Life Magazine, followed by other popular publications, claimed that Cervera was a better war hero then Admiral George Dewey and other American officers who had been wildly celebrated for their wartime heroics. The enemy admiral’s heroic rise was possible because of a fundamental change in the relationship between the press and the nation’s war heroes that sped up each champion’s ultimate decline. In the late nineteenth century Americans sought chivalrous, selfless men of action for their heroes. As journalists began covering each war hero’s daily life as they did other celebrities, however, they discovered character flaws in the nation’s homegrown champions. This examination of Cervera’s gradual rise as an American hero through his death in 1909 includes an overview of the American hero-making process and lifecycle and how celebrity journalism shortened the reign of most war heroes. After identifying the complicated set of values the nation sought in its war heroes at the end of the century, this study will also explain why journalists considered naval heroes as better representatives of those cherished ideals than those from the Army (including volunteer Theodore Roosevelt) until well after the end of the war. Roosevelt was honored as a hero during the war and won the 1899 New York gubernatorial election largely because of his wartime popularity, but was not considered selfless because of his clear political ambitions. American hero-worship of Cervera developed slowly, was considerably more subdued than the public enthusiasm displayed for America’s native-born champions, and was undoubtedly bestowed, in part, as a criticism of the failure of American heroes to live up to the heroic narrative created for them by reporters and biographers. Cervera’s ranking as Life’s ‘most durable hero’ of the war, while seemingly nonsensical, begins to make more sense when the Spanish admiral is reconfigured as a national cultural hero instead of an American military champion. Despite his enemy status, Cervera came to epitomise important military values of the day, because of the rapid decline of the nation’s American-born war heroes brought about by celebrity journalism.     

The US debate on NATO nuclear deterrence

NATO's nuclear deterrence posture has since the late 1950s involved risk‐and responsibility‐sharing arrangements based on the presence of US nuclear weapons in Europe. Since 1991 gravity bombs, deliverable by US and allied dual‐capable aircraft, have been the only type of US nuclear weapons left in Europe. Although many other factors are involved in the alliance's deterrence posture and in US extended deterrence—including intercontinental forces, missile defences, non‐nuclear capabilities and declaratory policy—recent discussions in the United States about NATO nuclear deterrence have focused on the future of the remaining US nuclear weapons in Europe. The traditional view has supported long‐standing US and NATO policy in holding that the risk‐ and responsibility‐sharing arrangements based on US nuclear weapons in Europe contribute to deterrence and war prevention; provide assurance to the allies of the genuineness of US commitments; and make the extended deterrence responsibility more acceptable to the United States. From this perspective, no further cuts in the US nuclear weapons presence in Europe should be made without an agreement with Russia providing for reductions that address the US—Russian numerical disparity in non‐strategic nuclear forces, with reciprocal transparency and verification measures. In contrast, four schools of thought call for withdrawing the remaining US nuclear weapons in Europe without any negotiated Russian reciprocity: some military officers who consider the weapons and associated arrangements unnecessary for deterrence; proponents of ambitious arms control measures who accept extended deterrence policies but view the US weapons in Europe as an obstacle to progress in disarmament; nuclear disarmament champions who reject extended nuclear deterrence policies and who wish to eliminate all nuclear arms promptly; and selective engagement campaigners who want the United States to abandon extended nuclear deterrence commitments to allies on the grounds that they could lead to US involvement in a nuclear war.     

Origins of the norm against chemical weapons

The use of chemical weapons in Syria in August 2013 led to calls for a tough international response in order to uphold the norm against what is often portrayed as a particularly odious form of warfare. The condemnation of poison weapons has a long history and this article examines the origins of the international norm against their use. It focuses particularly on the proceedings of the first Hague Peace Conference and suggests that this represented the emergence of an important distinction between the customary norm against poison and poisoned arms, and a newly codified norm against the use of asphyxiating gas projectiles, which was primarily an attempt to limit the potential of new weapons technologies. However, psychological responses to the wide‐scale use of chemical weapons in the First World War underscored a deep revulsion to this form of warfare and blurred the distinction between gas projectiles and poison. While the Hague Conventions ultimately failed to avert the use of chemical weapons, the formation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol reaffirmed the norm against the use of poison in war and represented both a legal and moral condemnation of chemical and biological weapons that continues to be enshrined in international law today.     

Assembling Sovereignty: Canadian Claims to the Athabasca District Prior to Treaty No. 8

ABSTRACT

Recent Canadian legal scholarship has emphasised the centrality of treaties between the colonial state and First Nations in the assertion of Canadian sovereignty over Indigenous lands. Historical interpretations, meanwhile, would suggest that sovereignty, rather than asserted, is assembled over time. Historically, sovereignty is understood to be contingent and layered; it is assembled through a series of ‘detours, improvisations and tinkering.’ This paper looks at the historical circumstances of Canadian sovereignty in the Athabasca district prior to the making of Treaty No. 8 with the First Nations. British sovereignty claims to Rupert's Land and the Northwestern Territories (including the area that came to be known as the Athabasca district), were assembled through the practices and activities of the Hudson's Bay Company. These claims were transferred to Canada in 1869 and Canada hesitantly and quietly took measures to further assemble and express its sovereignty in these lands. Canada surveyed and inventoried the Athabasca district's resources, commenced exploratory work on petroleum resources, provided relief from famine, financially supported schools for Indigenous children, and established and enforced a system of law. By the time Treaty No. 8 was negotiated in 1899, Canada had thus taken a series of steps to assemble and express its sovereignty in the district. Rather than establishing, asserting or legitimating Canadian sovereignty, Treaty No. 8 may be better understood as another measure in the process of assembling it.     

One 6 and nine 0's

This article reports the proceedings of two population meetings: the UN meeting in New York and the Youth Forum. Representatives of UN Member States and 24 accredited nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) attended the 5-year review and appraisal of the Cairo Conference of 1994. A consensus on sex education was reached in the Special Summit. However, not all participants agreed on the relevance of the consensus in the summit for reasons that it is time-consuming and that there are more meaningful matters to be attended to. Meanwhile, in the Youth Forum held just before The Hague Forum of Governments, young people from all over the world were given the opportunity to express their opinions and say what they considered important to create a sustainable population and development. Their views were presented in a report to their national delegations and NGOs who will attend in The Hague. In the report, the youth stated that they hope their needs would be translated into practical national policies and legislation supporting young people's development and rights.     

Two Approvals from the 1931 Athens Conference: Anastylosis and International Collaboration for Architectural Conservation: New Evidence

The Athens Conference was an international meeting on architectural conservation, organized by the International Museums Office, an institution that belonged to the League of Nations, in October 1931. The discovery of official documents, such as the minutes and statements of participants, clarifies discussions for all nine sessions. This study addresses approvals of the restoration measure, anastylosis, and the worldwide safeguard for historic monuments. Furthermore, it argues that the Athens Conference was the first global meeting in the twentieth century to frame modern conservation principals in terms of a role model for archaeological interventions and global aids for architectural protection.     

‘Our Boys With the Maple Leaf on Their Shoulders and Straps’: Masculinity,the Toronto Press,and the Outbreak of the South African War, 1899

Abstract

Coverage of the South African War by the Toronto daily press at its outbreak in late 1899 was implicitly gendered. Placed within the context of nineteenth-century connections between manhood and war, claims of ineffective soldiering, poor shooting ability, and indecisive political action were also implicit attacks on the manhood and character of Canadian politicians at home and the Boer enemy in South Africa. Representations of soldiers, enemies, and politicians in the press also expose connections between war and gender and allow historians to question how war is sold and characterized to the nation through ideas about masculinity.     

Questions of deception: contested understandings of the polls on WMD,political leaders and governments in Australia,Britain and the United States

The weapons of mass destruction (WMD) Saddam Hussein was said to possess were central to the justification the Australian Prime Minister gave for Australia's decision to go to war in Iraq. When no WMD materialised, poll data suggested that the public felt misled. But the same data suggested that support for both the government and the Prime Minister was unaffected. Among critics of the war, this generated a moral panic about Australian democracy and the Australian public—its commitment to the end justifying the means, its failure to receive a lead from the Labor Party, its widespread apathy. It also led to an intense debate about why the charge of not telling the truth had weakened public support for Blair and Bush but not for Howard. This article explores the concerns expressed by critics of the war in the face of polling that suggested that Australians were prepared to support a government and its leader that had misled them—deliberately or otherwise. It raises questions about the contrasts drawn between polled opinion in Australia, Britain and the United States. And it argues that the differences in the pattern of opinion across the three countries were not marked and that what had cost governments support were views about how the war was going, not the failure to find WMD.     

South Africa and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–6

The Italo-Ethiopian War led to an extensive debate in the Union of South Africa about the future of the League of Nations’ system of collective security. The different political and social groupings in the dominion interpreted the meaning of the war for the Union from a diversity of perspectives. The Italian aggression in East Africa reverberated in the context of concurrent debates about the Union's position in relation to the British Empire. These debates were influenced by the tensions between Afrikaners and English-speaking South Africans but also by disagreement within the Afrikaner community about South African policies vis-à-vis the British Empire. The Afrikaner-dominated Union Government had to navigate between its commitments to the League on the one hand and criticism from the extreme nationalist Afrikaner opposition on the other, which claimed that South Africa's sovereignty was diminished by Britain's leading role in the League. As a mandatory power in South West Africa, the Union was also concerned to sustain League principles in order to safeguard its sub-imperialist aspirations on the continent. The public debates were strongly influenced by a discourse on ‘civilisation’, which not only reflected ambiguous views of the status of Ethiopia as a member of the League of Nations, but also raised questions about the stability of white hegemony in a segregationist state.     

国联和平解决国际争端机制研究

一战期间,欧美相关政治力量在通过建立国际联盟(以下简称国联)和平解决国际争端维护世界和平上,达成共识并进行了相关的筹划。一战后召开巴黎和会,协约国在借鉴一战期间关于国联各种构想的基础上,建立了国联及其和平解决国际争端机制。但该机制并没有从根本上改变以往国际政治的结构,加之在自身设计上存在很多漏洞,使得国联和平解决国际争端机制在调处一战后国际争端中所发挥的作用有限。     

Re-designing military security in Europe: cooperation and competition between the European community and NATO during the early 1980s

Abstract

In the early 1980s, the member-states of the European Community (‘the Ten’) extended their foreign-policy cooperation into the field of security and disarmament. They advanced a proposal for a Conference on Disarmament in Europe within the framework of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe process. As disarmament was a preserve and priority concern of NATO, the move engendered both competition and cooperation between NATO and European Political Cooperation (EPC), that is, the mechanism the Ten used to elaborate common positions. This article analyses these dynamics by paying particular attention to the exchange of ideas between the two forums. It also shows the key role of some Western European governments in inspiring competition or promoting cooperation between the two organizations, and the rationales and drivers behind their actions. The article proves that Cold War concerns played a key role in this regard: the will to preserve European détente and the need to address domestic opinion critical of an escalation of the East–West confrontation motivated their initiative in the disarmament field. At the same time, concern that the Soviets might exploit divergences across the Atlantic prompted their attempts to secure NATO’s cohesion and project a strong image of unity.