Contesting Foreign Policy: Disagreement between the Ottoman Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of War on the Shatt al-Arab Dispute with Iran, 1912–13

The Shatt al-Arab question has been the subject of several studies, most of which concentrate on the internationalization of the subject. However, few, if any, works have analyzed how this territorial dispute was perceived within Ottoman bureaucratic circles. When the Ottoman Empire reinstated a constitutional monarchy in 1908, the Ottoman–Iranian border dispute regarding the Shatt al-Arab had to be readdressed, with international players involved in the process. Considering the role of foreign factors, this study focuses on the contesting interests of the Ottoman Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of War on the Shatt al-Arab question (1912–13) and considers how these interests shaped foreign policy in the process of negotiating a resolution.     

The role of Finland in the Swedish national and war economies during Sweden's period as a great power

The primary goal of this article is to present anti-Semitism as the underlying reason for the rejection of Israel-Jakob Schur's PhD dissertation at the University of Helsinki and at Åbo Akademi University in the late 1930s. The article analyzes the different stages of the processes and the ideological background and motives underpinning the rejections. Schur's antagonists were right-wing professors, some of whom sympathized with National Socialism and/or maintained contacts with eminent German anti-Semitic ideologues. The article analyzes the rhetoric of the written statements, which contain ideas of Christian anti-Semitism as well as other anti-Jewish stances. Moreover, the article demonstrates that Schur was regarded as an alien element in the Finnish academe, and the topic of his research – circumcision – was considered non-national from the perspective of Finnish science.     

Soziale Stadtentwicklung in Berlin

Abstrakt Sp?testens seit es in den Problemquartieren mehrerer franz?sischer St?dte zu andauernden Unruhen kam, rückte die soziale Entwicklung in den Stadtteilen auch in Deutschland vermehrt ins Bewu?tsein von Politik und Bev?lkerung. So hat sich die neue Bundesregierung zum Bund-L?nder-Programm „Soziale Stadt“ bekannt und führt es zun?chst weiter. Dipl.-Geogr. Ute C. Bauer sprach mit Dipl.-Ing. Kurt Nelius, Stadtplaner im Referat I A, Stadtentwicklungsplanung und Bodenwirtschaft in der Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, über die Schwierigkeiten in den Quartieren der Stadt und Ans?tze zu ihrer L?sung.     

Megaliths and mobility in south-western Sweden. Investigating relationships between a local society and its neighbours using strontium isotopes

Investigation of human movement in the past has been a confounding issue in archaeology. Direct measurement of past mobility has recently become feasible, however, through the application of strontium isotope analysis to human skeletal remains. In this study, we examine the question of changes in residence and place of origin among the inhabitants of the landscape of south-central Sweden. We focus specifically on the area known as Falbygden where an extraordinary concentration of megalithic tombs from the Neolithic preserves the skeletal remains of many individuals. Falbygden is also an unusual area in terms of its geology and stands as an island of sedimentary rocks in the midst of a larger region of igneous and metamorphic formations. This unusual geology is also reflected in the strontium isotope values of Falbygden and its inhabitants. We compare the isotopic ratios in human and faunal samples from Falbygden and the surrounding area and identify non-local individuals. Our study concludes with a discussion of the possible places of origin of non-local individuals and the social mechanisms that may be responsible for their change of residence.     

Book reviews

ESSAYS ON SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: By Karl Mannheim—Edited by Paul Kecskemeti, Routledge and Kegan Paid, 1953. 319 pages.

ISRAEL BETWEEN EAST AND WEST—A study in human relations: By Raphael Patai. The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 5713–1953. 24 pages, illustrated.

THE NEMESIS OF POWER—The German Army in Politics, 1918–1945, by John W. Wheeler‐Bennett. London, Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 829 pp.

CENTRAL EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY AND ITS BACKGROUND—Economic and political group organisation. By Rudolph Schlesinger. (Routledge and Kegan Paul) London, 1953. pp. 402. Price, 30s. (stg.)

MOTURIKI—A pilot project in community development, By Howard Hoyden. Published under the auspices of the South Pacific Commission. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1954. 42s.

THE HISTORIAN'S CRAFT: Marc Bloch. Manchester University Press, 1954. Pp. xxi Plus 197. 12/6.