Imperialism and nationalism: The Home Rule struggle and border creation in Ireland, 1885–1925

This article explores relationships between imperialism and nationalism, illustrated by their interactions in the struggle over devolved Irish ‘Home Rule’ and partition between 1885 and 1925. Ireland's partition border was primarily an imperial creation shaped by the prolonged, complex and unequal interactions between Irish nationalism and British imperialism. But partition was by no means an inevitable outcome of a mutually constitutive and ambiguous relationship where British imperialism had long characterised Ireland as a frontier zone but one within the core of empire. The Irish case serves as a reminder of the role of imperial arbitration in modern state and nation-building, and also in sowing the seeds of contemporary conflicts. This argument draws on the recent ‘re-discovery of imperialism’ and is advanced as a corrective to reading history backwards through the lenses of contemporary national states. It challenges the tendency to draw overly sharp temporal and spatial distinctions between imperialism and nationalism as rival ideologies and practices.     

Three Ideas of the University

What is a university? In the nineteenth century John Henry Newman famously spoke of “the idea of a university.” This phrase has dominated all discussions of the nature of the university since. Most contemporary writers are against any attempt to theorise the university in terms of a single idea. But against the now standard view that universities should only be characterised empirically as institutions that perform many different activities, I attempt to defend the idea of the university, not by reviving a single idea of the university but by suggesting that there are, at root, three ideas of the university. These are rival ideas, and strictly incommensurable, though they often exist together in a state of tension in actual universities. I call them the eternal, the immortal, and the immediate ideas of the university.     

Picture Perfect: Using Drone Technology and Photogrammetry Techniques to Map the Western Stone Forts of Ireland

The Western Stone Forts form some of the most spectacular archaeological monuments in Ireland and include well known sites such as Dún Aonghasa in Co. Galway and Cahercommaun in Co. Clare. The group comprises a number of heterogeneous forts characterized by their exceptionally thick and high stone walls and other distinctive architectural features such as terraces, steps, guard chambers, and chevaux de fries. It is clear, however, that they form a loosely defined group of monuments that have a broad chronological span ranging from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Medieval period. The aim of this project is to create a complete suite of high resolution three-dimensional models of the Western Stone Forts on the Tentative List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and assess the applicability of photogrammetry techniques to landscape studies and heritage management.     

Beyond Continents,Colours, and the Cold War: Yugoslavia,Algeria, and the Struggle for Non-Alignment

While historians are paying greater attention to the role of the post-colonial Third World in international affairs, there is a tendency to focus on North–South relations and the discourse of the 1955 Bandung Conference. Relying principally on Yugoslav and Algerian archival sources, this paper re-emphasises the dynamic historicity of ‘Third Worldism’ and the significance of ‘South–South’ connections. It explores the evolution of the Third World movement in the decade following Bandung, when smaller countries and non-state movements exerted greater influence while larger actors, such as India and China, quarrelled. The founding of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in 1961 represented a victory for smaller actors who took a more provocative and subversive approach to international relations, to the extent that NAM was a means for the weak to wage the cold war on their terms. Over the following half-decade, Non-Alignment supplanted Afro-Asianism as the primary organisational concept for the Third World, confirming that the Third World was a political project with a potentially unbounded membership rather than the expression of a non-Western, non-white identity.     

Fulbright's Middle East: A Senator's Influence on American Foreign Policy

This article examines Sen. J. William Fulbright's views of and impact on U.S. policy toward the Middle East, particularly the Arab‐Israeli conflict. It contributes to the literature on the history of U.S.‐Middle East relations and the role of Congress in foreign policy. While Fulbright was not always (or even most of the time) successful in shaping debate and policy along the lines that he advocated, at several crucial junctures, he did have an important influence on U.S. policy toward the region.     

School holidays: examining childhood,gender norms,and kinship in children's shorter-term residential mobility in urban Zambia

This article discusses a practice of child residential mobility in Zambia that is frequently overlooked in migration studies and difficult to capture through standard survey methods: the practice of ‘going on holiday’ to the homes of relatives during breaks in the school term. Drawing on child-centered and quantitative research, this article examines the multiple dimensions of ‘going on holiday’ for children living in a low-income urban settlement in Lusaka. Findings suggest that the practice was gendered and may map onto changing norms in schooling in Zambia. Within a context where resources are severely constrained, going on holiday may serve as one means for cultivating reciprocity, sharing the burden of care and household labor, and strengthening kin ties. This work further demonstrates the importance of using locally meaningful terms and practices in survey research where general questions about children's mobility may fail to capture the nature and extent of children's movements.