Expanding the Australian Empire?: The Australian Council for the World Council of Churches,the Menzies Government and the New Hebrides in the late 1950s

In the late 1950s the Australian Council for the World Council of Churches (AC‐WCC) inspired primarily by the Presbyterian Church, undertook a concerted campaign to pressure the Australian government to assume a greater role in the affairs of the New Hebrides. The AC‐WCC wanted the Australian government to take over the United Kingdom's role in the administration of the Anglo‐French Condominium. It was motivated to undertake this campaign by the dismal social and economic conditions in the islands, the neglect of the British and French colonial authorities, and their failure to offer the indigenous people a way forward to self‐government. The high point of the campaign was a meeting between Robert Menzies, the Australian prime minister and a delegation from the AC‐WCC in early 1958. As a result of this meeting Australian ministers and officials, for the final time, gave extended consideration to expanding Australia's empire in the South Pacific to include the New Hebrides. This article examines the AC‐WCC's campaign, explores the Australian government's response, and analyses the outcome of this important episode in Australia's involvement in the colonial territories of the South Pacific.     

The Last of Australian Imperial Dreams for the Southwest Pacific: Paul Hasluck,the Department of Territories and a Greater Melanesia in 1960

This paper is a study of the vision held at the beginning of the 1960s by Paul Hasluck, the minister for external territories, and his department of the path to decolonisation for Melanesia. Faced by the ongoing West New Guinea crisis, Hasluck and his officials proposed to keep the western part of New Guinea out of Indonesian hands by expanding Australia’s empire, step by step, to include most of Melanesia. This greater Melanesian empire would eventually be guided to self-government. The proposal stood in a long line of ideas by Pacific-minded Australians going back for 100 years for an expanded Australian empire in the southwest Pacific. Consequently the Menzies cabinet’s rejection of Hasluck’s proposal was not just an important step towards changing its policy towards WNG; it marked the end to a century of Australian dreams and designs of a greater formal empire in the southwest Pacific.     

The secret life of Ian Fleming: spies,lies and social ties

This article explores the fascinating interactions and experiences of James Bond creator, Ian Fleming, with the real world of intelligence. It has long been known that Fleming worked in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War. However, accounts of his time there tend to portray him as a lowly and slightly eccentric administrator. Drawing on newly discovered archival materials, plus memoirs and histories, it is argued here that Fleming was a respected and influential figure in the great game of espionage for some three decades. During the war, he was a central cog in the machinery of naval intelligence, planning operations, working with partners in American intelligence and liaising with secret Whitehall departments, including the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. Before and after the war, he was involved in a range of intelligence networks, often using journalistic cover to hide his clandestine connections. Throughout his life, his social circle was a ‘who’s who’ of spies and saboteurs, including CIA Director Allen Dulles. In short, he straddled the state-private divide. Taken together, these dealings with real intelligence paved the way for and gave veracity to his fiction, which continues to shape public perceptions of intelligence to this day.     

‘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.     

Energy and water resource simulations for U.S. geography undergraduates

This paper describes environmental systems games developed for energy and water resource use designed to be adaptable from high school to undergraduate use. Two of the games are computer simulations with adjustable levels of difficulty that can be done in a computer lab or as a homework assignment. The third is a peer-to-peer roleplayer game designed for an immersive in-class simulation. For the energy and the peer-to-peer water games, we describe (1) the overall strategy or story line adopted, (2) the manner in which the game is played by students in a classroom setting, (3) the use of scientific literature in conceptualizing and parameterizing the game, and (4) possible game extensions. Preliminary data from use at the undergraduate level shows that the games are very well-received by students and, consistent with other research on quasi-experimental simulations, likely enhance learning outcomes.     

al‐Khafaji reinterpreted: New insights on Umm an‐Nar monuments and settlement from Bat,Oman

Al‐Khafaji is a central and well‐known point on the early third millennium BC map of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bat, in the Sultanate of Oman. For years, Kasr al‐Khafaji (“Tower 1146”) has been understood as an Umm an‐Nar (ca. 2800–2000 BCE) monument standing amid a contemporary village. However, recent excavations by the Bat Archaeological Project (BAP) reveal that the entirety of the known site—monument(s) and settlement—is situated on an anthropogenic clay mound that elevated it meters above the surrounding landscape. This paper presents the results of BAP's recent excavations, emphasising the social spaces created by architecture of various functions and scales. It also considers the implications that this new interpretation of al‐Khafaji may have for how the relationship between Umm an‐Nar towers and settlement should be understood. The paper closes with a discussion of Umm an‐Nar tower function and social meaning, concluding that the Khafaji monument(s) likely served a symbolic and possibly performative role in Umm an‐Nar society that was perceived as separate from Umm an‐Nar settlement.     

Measuring Complex State Policies: Pitfalls and Considerations,with an Application to Race and Welfare Policy

Welfare policy is multidimensional because of the political compromises, competing goals, and federalist structure underpinning it. This complexity has hindered measurement and, therefore, the comparability of research on race and welfare policy. This paper describes a measurement strategy that is transparent, replicable, and attuned to matching the assumptions of statistical models to the policy process. We demonstrate that this strategy leads to more nuanced conclusions regarding the relationship between minority caseloads and the flexibility of state welfare policies. The strategy and recommendations are adaptable to research agendas that scholars bring to the comparative study of welfare in the U.S. states, countries, or other units—and to other complex policies enacted in federal systems.