John Howard and the ‘Anglospherist’ reshaping of Australia

The conceptual category of the Anglosphere never found explicit currency in John Howard's narrative when he was prime minister. While in office, he ostentatiously avoided ‘putting Australia into a particular sphere – Anglo or otherwise’. This article suggests instead that his endeavour to reshape Australia drew on an Anglospherist perspective. The reshaping of Australia he undertook when he won office rested on two pillars of Anglospherism: the rejection of multiculturalism and the alignment to countries with ‘shared values’ in Australia's external relations. The article traces how these two Anglospherist precepts found actual implementation in Howard's re-framing of ‘Australian multiculturalism’ and re-conceptualisation of ‘Australia's engagement with Asia’.

约翰·霍华德担任总理期间,英语圈的说法在他的叙述里并不通行。在他的官方官样文章里,他明确地避免把澳大利亚放进特定的圈子——英语圈也好,别的圈也好。霍华德在职的时候重塑澳大利亚的努力,其实是基于英语圈的视角。他赢得竞选时要重塑澳大利亚的事业,有两个英语圈的支柱：拒绝多元文化;对外关系中优先“持共同价值观”的国家。本文研究了霍华德如何将这两个英语圈思路落实到对“澳大利亚多元文化”的重新塑造、对“澳大利亚与亚洲关系”的重新思考中的。     

Securing the “Interests” of the South: John Mitchel,A.G. Magrath,and the Reopening of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Traditionally scholars have downplayed the importance of southern calls to reopen the transatlantic slave trade in the 1850s. Those who have paid serious attention to this effort see it as another endeavor by aristocratic planters to enshrine their social, economic, and political power in the antebellum South. The advocates were, as one puts it, “no champions of the common white man.” Two Irish-American leaders who supported the reopening, John Mitchel and Andrew Gordon Magrath, complicate this view of the attempt as just a planters’ plot. Their actions and opinions indicate that some proponents did see importing African slaves as something that would benefit all whites and not just the elite, and, as a result, protect the overall “interests” of the South. Mitchel and Magrath's support of Ireland and Irish immigrants and their opposition to British power influenced their positions on the matter.     

The exorcist? John Gray,apocalyptic religion and the return to realism in world politics

This review article discusses John Gray's new book, Black mass: apocalyptic religion and the death of utopia, against the background of the evolution of Gray's thought and in the context of contemporary world politics. In particular, it examines his account of the role of apocalyptic religion in world politics and his claim that to manage this we need to revert to the insights of political realism in international affairs.     

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 Most Churlish of Celebrities’: George Eliot,John Cross and the Question of High Status

Published in 1885, John Cross's biography of his late wife, George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals, was written with the intention to ‘make known the woman as well as the author’ (John Cross, ed., George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals, cabinet edn, 3 vols (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1887), I, v). Yet, ironically, the biography is renowned precisely for the lack of insight it affords readers into the private life of George Eliot. Why did Cross make a promise that he could not keep? My essay attempts to answer this question by examining George Eliot's Life in the context of the fame culture of the late nineteenth century. I suggest that it is possible to read Cross's unwillingness in the Life to make Eliot more ‘available’ to her public as a reaction against the sorts of publicity which, throughout the 1870s, had pushed Eliot's persona into a celebrity arena. George Eliot's Life represents Cross's effort to preserve Eliot's high professional reputation by emphasizing her distance from celebrity culture and her status as a female sage. Through close examination of the reviews of the biography, I identify the contemporary attitudes that made stressing Eliot's greatness appear urgent to her biographer and, paradoxically, so unpopular with the general public. I call attention, in particular, to changing expectations about the relationship between public figures and their audiences as well as the purpose and content of famous Lives. ?1.?Leon Edel, ed., The Diary of Alice James (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1982), pp. 40–41.      

In Search of “Equitability”: Sir John Cadman,Rezā Shah and the Cancellation of the D’Arcy Concession, 1928‒33

From 1928 to 1932 the Pahlavi regime of Iran negotiated with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) to revise the D’Arcy Concession. These negotiations, conducted by ‘Abd al-Hosayn Teymurtāsh and the chairman of APOC Sir John Cadman, ended in failure when Rezā Shah unilaterally cancelled the D’Arcy Concession in November 1932. This article argues that “equitability” was the goal of the negotiations. An agreement was ultimately impossible to reach, due to differing ideas on either side regarding what was equitable, changes in the international oil economy and instability within Iran itself, leading to an unequal agreement in April 1933 that confirmed APOC’s long-term security but served only the short-term needs of Iran.     

Citizenship,the Nation and the Race: China and the International Opium System, 1912–1931

This article analyzes China’s attempts to participate in and use the negotiations about reforming the international opium control system in the interwar period. China had a contentious relationship with the international opium control system from its creation in the International Opium Convention of 1912 through the League of Nations opium control system of the 1920s and 1930s. The Chinese government wanted to gain acceptance for China as a modern state no longer in need of tutelage from the international community. They also wanted to portray the Chinese people as a modern race as a way of undermining colonial opium monopolies, which made a disproportionate amount of their profits from sales to Overseas Chinese. While they were not fully successful in either of these efforts, China did manage to win some support, drawing the United States into closer agreement with China’s positions. Engagement with the international system also had a considerable impact on China’s domestic opium politics and its broader diplomatic relationship with the major powers.