Institutions,informality, and influence: explaining nuclear cooperation in the Australia-US alliance

ABSTRACT

Nuclear cooperation has been a consistent feature of the Australia-US alliance. In the 1950s and 1960s, Canberra explored transferring US nuclear weapons to Australian forces operating in Southeast Asia. Since the 1960s, Australian governments have supported hosting joint facilities that contribute to America’s ability to execute global nuclear operations. And Australia has regularly invoked the nuclear umbrella as part of the alliance. We explain the key sources of nuclear cooperation in the alliance by leveraging realist and institutionalist theories of alliance cooperation. While realism explains limits to US nuclear commitments in the 1950s, institutional explanations are more relevant in pinpointing the sources of nuclear cooperation and in explaining why Australia has often achieved its policy preferences as the junior partner.     

‘Germanje’: Dutch empire-building in Nazi-occupied Europe

ABSTRACT

Recent historiography on Nazism has taken what has been coined ‘the imperial turn’. The key issue at stake is to what extent Germany’s expansionist policy between 1939 and 1945 could be considered a variant of the more general historical phenomenon of (modern) imperialism. Over the course of the last two decades, all sorts of continuities and parallels between traditional European colonialism and Nazi imperialism have been analysed. In these studies, a top-down approach is prevalent, concentrating on ‘Berlin’, Nazi politics and leaders. This article chooses a different perspective, bringing actors of a lower level to the fore. The focus is on the Dutch contribution to the Nazi policy of ‘Germanization’ of the occupied East. Between the summers of 1941 and 1944, over five thousand Dutch civilians voluntarily left their homeland to be employed in the so-called German occupied eastern territories. Although their contracts were often temporary, they were seen (and saw themselves) as the first group of ‘pioneers’ of a giant colonizing project. This article investigates the Dutch organizations coordinating their recruitment and employment, and zooms in on the expectations and experiences of individual recruits. With the Dutch case as an example, the article points at the broader historical context of the Dutch efforts. At the same time, it shows that this junior partner of the German had his own colonial agenda. The incompatibility of both agendas inevitably led to false expectations, caused a general sense of disillusionment on both sides and led to many frictions ‘on the spot’.     

Prehistoric Ceremonial Warfare: Beginning of Institutionalized Violence

Sadly, aggression is still one of the most common features of human behaviour; it is an instinct to promote and survive our own genes against the genes of others. Human intraspecific aggression has gradually become part of human culture over the last 40,000 years and has been institutionalized in various forms of social activities. Particularly in the post-glacial period, the level of social relations has developed dramatically in the context of population growth and the growth of human communities. In the time of Neolithic and Chalcolithic European agricultural populations, the motive of control over farming land became highly important. Also the control of main means of production and social power was increasingly maintaining the intragroup competition and aggression. Thus, violence was employed within the community in order to obtain and maintain individual or collective social status, but also against other communities in an effort to protect property and territory. Particularly the intracommunity aggression was soon transformed into variety of different formal ways of symbolic fighting, which usually did not lead to the unwanted death of a defeated member of the community. The symbolic struggle between members of the community as well as the defense against external aggression were gradually formalized in the form of introduction of specialized weapons designed for combat between people and creation of fortifications. During the Neolithic period a new phenomenon arose in human culture: warfare.     

Dewey’s concept of experience for inquiry-based landscape drawing during field studies

The epistemological and educational philosophy of John Dewey is used as a theoretical basis to analyze processes of knowledge construction during geographical field studies. The experience of landscape drawing as a method of inquiry and a starting point for research-based learning is empirically evaluated. The basic drawing skills are acquired through an online drawing course. The main aim is to foster the self-organized acquisition of relevant skills to explore, describe and reflect on subjective mental and linguistic concepts in relation to scientific landscape models. The results, based on an evaluation of the students’ drawings, their responses to questionnaires and a review of students’ “reflective notes”, indicate that the approach motivated students to learn about the processes which formed the landscape and that the students perceived the method of inquiry after Dewey as a way to overcome cognitive dissonance.     

The Revisionist Union and Britain: From declarations of “loyalty” to the employment of “methods of bullying”

The nature of British rule in Palestine, as it settled down after the approval of the Mandate in 1922, had its critics among the Zionist ranks. Using original sources, this paper examines the attitudes of the leadership of the Revisionist Union (RU) towards the British from the first quarter of the 1920s till the mid-1930s. Unlike the later paramilitary organizations, the Revisionist founders, convinced, in their own words, of the common interests shared with the British Empire, had no intention of terminating the British presence, but sought to transform it in order to serve Zionism’s objectives. While official Zionism preferred backstage diplomacy, the RU pursued a different strategy – appealing directly to the masses and making its cause as public and vocal as possible. Eventually, the RU’s strategy combined the principle of pro-British orientation with merciless criticism of Palestine policies on the ground. As far as the British were concerned, the Colonial Office was at best willing to tolerate a set of proposals they saw as unrealistic. Once these started to actively erode the integrity of British policy in the region, unsolicited “enthusiasm” was reclassified as dangerous “extremism.”     

Criminalization of Homicide in Early Modern Denmark (16th–17th Centuries)

This article explores the criminalization of homicide in early modern Denmark, 16th–17th centuries. Criminalization is here defined, primarily, as the harshening of penalties for homicide in law and practice. The article shows that a process of criminalization took place that contributed to a pacification of the population (demonstrated by a decrease in homicides) but also engendered practices of resistance and evasion which were reminiscent of a medieval feud culture. The attitude towards homicide was for a long time ambivalent, not just among the lower classes but at all levels of society. Criminalization and pacification were mainly products of state-building through harsher punishment and the formation of a more reliable legal system. This top-down process meshed with the broader population’s demands for justice and security.