Atomic Fatherhood: ‘Uncle Louis’, ‘Ike’ and the Electoral Politics of Paternalism in Canada and the United States, 1949–53

Louis St Laurent and Dwight Eisenhower came to power during one of the most intense periods of the Cold War. The Soviets had recently developed a nuclear bomb, touching off an arms race, while both the Canadian and American governments ran desperate investigations to purge their ranks of suspected communist sympathisers. St Laurent's victories in 1949, and again in 1953, as well as Eisenhower's in 1952, are often seen as inevitable. This interpretation is rooted in the fact that both men managed to stir overwhelming support from the hearts of their citizens. However, this viewpoint often fails to examine how their campaigns did this – through the projection of a reassuring, paternalistic image that spoke to hegemonic masculine norms in the era. Elaine Tyler May argues that the nuclear family, with the father at the helm, was seen as a form of ‘domestic containment’ against external ills. This article extends that theory upwards and explores how voters responded positively to the projection of a fatherly image from St Laurent and Eisenhower. At the same time, it examines how their campaigns actively deployed masculine image-making to discredit opponents and depict them as outside the hegemonic masculine ideal. By voting instead for St Laurent and Eisenhower, citizens could be reassured that their families would come under the protection of a calm father figure, who would guide the nation through the current period of intense instability.     

Fabio Luca Cavazza,the New Frontier and the opening to the left in Italy

This article focuses on the key role played by Fabio Luca Cavazza, founder of the publishing house Il Mulino, in the development of cultural relations between the US and Italy in the early Cold War by drawing on Cavazza’s personal papers, an as yet unexplored archival source. The Department of State and the Eisenhower administration opposed a government that included the Socialists. However, thanks to the special relationship he had with the ‘New Frontier’s men’, in particular Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Cavazza was able to revive the issue, showing how it was in line with Kennedy’s New Frontier policy.     

Friendly Relations: Situating Friendships Between Men and Women in the Early American Republic, 1780–1830

Men and women who became friends in the early American republic struggled with societal worries about the purity and chastity of their friendships. More so than other pairs of friends, heterosocial friends had to attend to how their friendships appeared to those around them. One of the most important ways of doing so was positioning a friendship in relation to spouses. In an era when marriage was the central structure for relations between men and women and fears of seduction and ruin were rampant, friends of the opposite sex needed to integrate their friendships within their marriages. This paper examines how men and women did so through the lens of their correspondence. Navigating a society without clear boundaries or rules for conducting a friendship between a man and a woman, individual pairs of friends improvised to create safe friendships in person and in letters. The careful intertwining of marriages and friendships they created demonstrates the way intimate social relationships were embedded in the social fabric of the early American republic.     

The Boundaries of Women's Power: Gender and the Discourse of Political Friendship in Twelfth‐Century England

The discourse of friendship was an integral part of political language and interaction in twelfth‐century England. Because the qualities that made a good political friendship – loyalty, wise counsel and generosity, among others – corresponded so closely to the criteria for successful lordship, historians often used the quality of a king's friendship as a signifier for the quality of his rule. Yet their treatment of women's political friendship was markedly different. The discourse of friendship therefore provides a window into the larger struggle over the representation of gender and rulership in twelfth‐century historical writing in England, reflecting chroniclers’ anxiety about female sovereignty. Twelfth‐century historians depicted women's participation in political friendship as acceptable only within certain circumscribed boundaries that corresponded to the sanctioned political roles for women in general. Otherwise, chroniclers attempted to efface the existence of women's political friendship, sometimes describing the same situations in different language depending on whether the main participant was male or female. Chroniclers also represented women as arbiters of friendship, showing men how better to conduct their relationships either through direct instruction or counter‐example. In both cases women reinforced male friendship, either by being excluded from it, or by demonstrating the correct way to carry it out.     

Trading Sentiments

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the relationship between commerce, cross-cultural friendship and empire in the published Voyages of Pacific salt pork trader John Turnbull. Turnbull published two versions of his Voyages, the first in 1805 and the second in 1813. Through exposing the variations between the two versions of his Voyages and analysing the reception of each text in the burgeoning periodical literature at the time, I explore how his commercially oriented critiques of cross-cultural friendship transformed into unbridled enthusiasm in the second reprint. I explain this shift as both a consequence of a shift in genre, from commercial voyaging to scientific voyaging, and as a reflection of two competing ideas of the relationship between friendship and commerce. The first version reflects a Smithian ideal, where friendship is excluded from commerce, while the second version shows a natural law conception of friendship as commercial imperialism in its ideal, and morally virtuous, form.     

John Foster Dulles,Illness, Masculinity and US Foreign Relations, 1953–1961

In the last two decades, scholars have increasingly looked to understand the way that socially constructed norms and values have influenced the course of international diplomacy. Yet while much work has been produced on areas such as gender, far less has been written on the way that perceptions of illness affected the way that leading policymakers saw themselves, their allies, and their respective roles in the world. This article, by focusing on former US secretary of state John Foster Dulles, looks at the influence that perceptions of illness had on US foreign relations during the 1950s. First, it argues that US perceptions of British and French weakness – as typified by the ill-health being suffered by those nations’ respective leaders – shaped American responses to the diplomatic crisis that erupted over the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Second, it highlights the substantial changes that took place in US policy when first President Eisenhower, and then subsequently Secretary Dulles, were stricken down by severe illness. In doing so it demonstrates how a better understanding of the relationship between illness, emotions and masculinity can help historians to better understand the course of Cold War foreign relations.     

The Presidential Manipulation of Inherited Wars of Choice: Barack Obama's Use of Nixonian Methods as Commander in Chief

Despite their apparent differences, both Richard Nixon and Barack Obama secured their party's nominations and ultimately the presidency partly due to their manipulation of contentious and inherited “wars of choice.” The wars in Vietnam and Iraq provided the political and cultural circumstances that made Nixon and Obama credible “peace candidates” in 1968 and 2008 respectively. Having championed their opposition to the wars to gain the presidency, both men continued the conflicts throughout their first term and subsequently utilized these conflicts to help secure a second term in office, declaring “victory” as part of their re-election campaigns. This study examines the manner in which Obama, like Nixon, benefited as president from an inherited “war of choice” and adopted Nixonian methods to maximize his chances for re-election in 2012.     

Presidential Leadership of Congressional Civil Rights Voting: The Cases of Eisenhower and Johnson

Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson presented dramatically contrasting styles of leadership in their relationships with Congress. Yet each was successful in securing passage of monumental civil rights legislation in very different political environments. Focusing on the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we show that both Eisenhower and Johnson attracted support from the opposition party's faction at the far end of the ideological spectrum while retaining support from his own party's dominant faction. The analysis suggests that it is not the president's leadership style alone that produces legislative results, but a proper mixture of leadership style and the political environment.     

Civility,Male Friendship,and Masonic Sociability in Nineteenth‐Century Germany

Largely neglected by historians who assume that its heyday passed in Europe with the demise of the Old Regime, Freemasonry in fact became a mass phenomenon among German (and French as well as American) middle‐class men in the nineteenth century. Masonic secrecy made possible a form of sociability which allowed men to experience intimate relations with each other. Within the lodge, men could experience the emotional drama of the rituals while, both in public and in the family, men increasingly sought to comply with the ideal of a man ruled by reason. Masonic rituals entailed the implicit message that the most important presupposition for civility, moral improvement and a ‘brotherhood of all men’ was male friendship.     

Searching for the Right Balance? Managing Foreign Policy Decisions under Eisenhower and Kennedy

Foreign policy decision making during a U.S. presidential administration's tenure in office is dynamic. The evolution model of decision making suggests that Presidents will use three structures to make decisions: a formal interagency process, and informal process based in a small group of senior advisers, and a confidence–based process where the President seeks often-private advice from the advisers he trusts the most. This essay goes beyond the evolution model by focusing on how Presidents and their senior advisers continually re-evaluate decision making, often concluding that the process needs major restructuring. Pressures to change are typically institutional; however, whether meaningful changes in the process are actually implemented depends on the President's idiosyncratic decision style. Case studies of Eisenhower (a preference for a formal style) and Kennedy (a preference for an informal style) illustrate how both men contemplated significant changes in their decision making process, but neither could ultimately implement them.     

美国与联合国中国代表权问题

对致力于推动中美关系正常化的尼克松与基辛格而言,如何处理联合国中国代表权问题似乎颇为棘手。实际上,与北京改善关系是他们处理此问题的战略前提,如何避免美国国内保守阵营的攻击则是两人制定具体战术的出发点,至于蒋介石政权的反应则基本不在他们的考虑范围内。1971年中国成功恢复在联合国的合法席位,虽与尼克松政府的相关政策不无关系,但其根本原因则在于中国自身,即只要中国不发生内乱,任何力量都无法阻止其加入联合国的步伐。而只要北京不让步,台北当局被驱逐出联合国就是必然的结局。     

Orme Sargent,Ernest Bevin and British Policy Towards Europe, 1946–1949

Upon his appointment as Foreign Secretary in July 1945, it was widely expected that Ernest Bevin would make a clean sweep of the permanent officials in the Foreign Office. However, Bevin decided against staffing changes and eventually came to trust and even like these officials. This paper explores the relationship between Bevin and his Permanent Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office between 1946 and 1949, Sir Orme Sargent. Despite their initial concerns about one another in 1945, this relationship turned into one of mutual friendship by the time of Sargent's retirement in 1949. Both were driven by similar motivations in their conception of British foreign policy. They both believed that Britain was a Great Power and had a place in Europe. The congruence of views between them is clear in the examination of Anglo-French relations (culminating in the Anglo-French Treaty of 1947) and in the signature of the Brussels Treaty. This paper will show that while Bevin had a policy, so did his most senior advisor, and that the Foreign Secretary was not adverse to taking advice either. Beyond high policy, a close working and personal relationship developed between the two men.     

Ta‘isi O.F. Nelson and Sir Maui Pomare Samoans and Māori Reunited

ABSTRACT

This paper unearths the friendship between Samoan nationalist leader Ta‘isi Olaf Frederick Nelson and Māori politician Sir Maui Pomare during the early period of New Zealand's administration of Samoa. It examines the role this friendship played – especially as a line of communication between the Samoan protest movement or Mau, of which Nelson was a leader, and the highest echelons of the New Zealand government – in those years of fraught relations between Samoa and New Zealand. It also explores the significant historical connections that were made, or remade, through this friendship. The relationship between these two men brought Polynesian peoples together in new ways and also directly linked Parihaka, a 19th-century Māori community known for its non-violent resistance against European colonialism, with the later Samoan Mau.     

Nixon, Kissinger and the breakup of Pakistan, 1971

Based upon recently published American documents, this article examines the United States's policy towards the crisis which led to the breakup of Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh at the end of 1971. President Richard M. Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, deliberately kept this policy closely under their control and were guided more by geopolitical than by moral considerations. In particular, they were anxious to forge a new relationship with communist China and the contribution of the Pakistani president, Yahya Khan, in facilitating contacts between the US and China were greatly appreciated by the two men. Nixon's visceral dislike of the Indian prime minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi, also contributed to a degree of myopia and misperception regarding India's objectives and their possible consequences. As the conflict between the rebels in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) and the central government deepened and Indian involvement on the side of the rebels grew, Nixon and Kissinger saw another threat in the shape of Soviet military and moral support for India. An Indian victory would not only increase India's prestige and position vis-à-vis those of Pakistan, but tip the global balance of power towards the Soviet Union and away from the United States. Frantic diplomatic efforts, combined with scarcely veiled threats, finally succeeded in preventing the total disintegration of Pakistan, but there is some doubt as to whether this was likely in the first place and whether US policy was successful in relation to either China or the Soviet Union.     

‘Handle with care’: literature,archaeology, slavery

This article examines the relationship between literary and bioarchaeological approaches to slavery, and investigates how the methods and priorities of each discipline might inform each other in understanding what it was like to be enslaved. Both bioarchaeologists and creative writers have attempted to access the inner lives of enslaved people, yet there has been little interaction between them. This paper offers an account of a research project which brought together a literary scholar, two archaeological scientists and seven creative writers to explore how writing might not only communicate a history understood through archaeological evidence, but could itself inform approaches to that evidence. We discuss two key themes which emerged from the project: Conversation and Caring. These themes were crucial to the interdisciplinary process, as it was only through attention to our relationships with each other that we could begin to reassess the nature of material in each of our disciplines.     

What can the concept of friendship contribute to the study of national identity?

ABSTRACT. This article argues that understanding national identity requires a reappraisal of friendship as a political sentiment. Although studies of nationalism underscored the transformation of face‐to‐face interactions into ties between ‘distant others,’ they failed to acknowledge how sentiments of friendship may be involved. First, following theorising in political philosophy, the Aristotelian paradigm of civic friendship is conceptually applicable to modern civil society based on characteristics such as volition, commitment and sentiment. Second, feminist scholarship has delineated how an implicit discourse of male fraternity underlies the historical realisations of the modern social contract and mediates the notions of both patriotism and nationalism. Finally, networks of male associations and transformations in collective affection from small settings to large‐scale societies contributed to the magnification of a politics of friendship. Consequently, rather than viewing fraternal friendship as a relic of traditional societies, it should be studied as a unique aspect of modern nationalism.     

评方东美对胡适的批评

胡适与方东美生前虽未订交但俩人相识.俩人相识却未进一步发展友谊,显然是因为学术立场相左,一个(胡)坚持自由主义的立场,一个(方)坚持文化保守主义的立场.但方东美对胡适的批评,不谈方法问题(大胆假设,小心求证),也不谈主义问题(多研究些问题,少谈些主义),而是集中在两个问题,一是中国文化的价值问题,二是中国哲学的性质问题.他在这两个问题上批评胡适,除了体现一个文化保守主义者对自由主义者的抗议外,是否合情合理合乎实际?这就是本文所要分析的.     

The Uses and Abuses of Amity in Mid-Tudor Diplomacy, 1542–1560

Abstract

Amity, an affective as well as pragmatic political relationship, was the primary mechanism of mid-Tudor foreign policy. It was often the first step toward a formal alliance, but it did not constitute a binding agreement in itself. In fact, political friendship’s inherent legal ambiguity allowed the Tudors to work around the strictures of existing international treaties when diplomatic circumstances changed and it became necessary to reevaluate relationships abroad. Amity’s flexibility could also limit its effectiveness as a collaborative partnership. This was especially the case if two parties challenged a consensus in the international community. In negotiating amity diplomats appealed to moral, affective, and contractual obligations simultaneously. They did not acknowledge any categorical difference between emotive personal friendship and utilitarian public amity. Rather, they asserted that loving friends at once promoted each other’s strategic advantage and growth in virtue. Friendship was ultimately grounded in mutual trust, which was established by personal encounters and reinforced through law and ritual. This essay considers the application of amity in Anglo-Imperial, Anglo-Schmalkalden, and Anglo-Scottish contexts in 1542–1560 as a basis for comparative analysis.     

Ferdinand Tönnies and Friedrich Paulsen: Conciliatory Iconoclasts

Ferdinand Tönnies’ Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, a work of global import and condensate of the history of ideas, was much influenced by the philosopher Friedrich Paulsen. The study of their friendship shows how these intellectuals chose to adopt and adapt paradigms of the European legacy—rationalism and empiricism on the one hand, rationalism and romantic historicism on the other—in achieving creative idiosyncratic syntheses of idealistic monism. Beyond the shared scientific agenda of monism, they were convinced of the vocation of intellectuals in social legislation, which Paulsen pursued through pedagogy, while Tönnies became a social activist. Their interest in forms of socialism, romanticism and pessimism had varying consequences due to the differences in temperament between the political realist Paulsen, whose choices were more expedient for career advancement, and the political idealist Tönnies. Their relationship is an instance of the specific rapport that Tönnies characterises as intellectual friendship.     

Leaving Vietnam: Nixon,Kissinger and Ford, 1969–1975. Part one: January 1969–January 1972

Some have suggested that Richard Nixon's narrow victory in the US presidential election of November 1968 was due to his persuading the Government of South Vietnam (GVN) to boycott the Paris peace talks for the settlement of the Vietnam War between the US government, that of the Democratic Republic of North Vietnam (DRV) and the representatives of the communist guerrilla movement in South Vietnam. This seems doubtful. The new president had abandoned the hawkish stance he had adopted when vice‐president in the Eisenhower administration and was anxious to bring the unpopular war to an end. The question was: how? The president, together with his influential National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, adopted a policy of ‘Vietnamization’, which involved the progressive scaling down of the US military presence and the handing over of responsibility for waging the war to the GVN. At the same time, the president recognized that too precipitate an American withdrawal and, above all, one which took place under the terms of an agreement which was too favourable to the communists, would have a deleterious effect upon its allies and its own position as a Great Power. In order to bring about a satisfactory agreement with the DRV, the US employed a twin strategy: secret talks between Kissinger and senior DRV representatives in Paris, coupled with veiled threats of an escalation of the war if the communists acted unreasonably and occasional displays of military strength, such as the incursion into Cambodia in 1970. Although it seemed, briefly, that there might be a breakthrough in Kissinger's secret negotiations with the DRV later in 1971, they broke down mainly as a result of the communists' insistence that the US in effect dismantle the South Vietnamese government for them. An angry Nixon secretly considered retaliation against the DRV to force it to modify its demands and publicly revealed the existence of the negotiations and much of their content to the American people in a speech on 25 January 1972. At the same time, however, he insisted that Vietnamization would continue.