Lessons in possession: colonial resource geographies in practice on Vancouver Island, 1859–1865

This paper considers the establishment of a major sawmill at the head of the Alberni Canal on the west coast of the colony of Vancouver Island in the 1860s and the legacy of that enterprise in producing geographies of colonial possession. I argue that the institution of industrial forestry in the colony relied upon a conception of property rights that turned on the identification of civilized and savage space, holding that only particular kinds of labour and land improvement warranted claims of ownership. This ideology found official state sanction within the regimes of Western liberal law, was mapped onto the region around Alberni by a uniquely placed individual, and was eventually made durable through the practices of everyday life at settlement sites. In these ways, I show, colonial possession relied upon precedents within British imperial culture. However, I also argue that another geography of possession was put in place along the way. By eventually adopting a scheme wherein timberlands could be brought into production without being alienated by land speculators, the state enabled the actual practice of possession in crown territory that was previously claimed through general appeals to the British imperative to overturn its wild nature. Showing that the lessons learned at Alberni were re-applied in other parts of the region, I conclude by arguing that the historical geographies of industrial forestry reinforced crown possession of much of the Pacific Northwest. Ultimately, I claim that this story demonstrates the centrality of practice to possession, thereby highlighting an analytical space that might yield fruitful insights into the intensely situated and local nature of colonial territorial control.     

晚清时期英国在华租借地历史文化国际学术研讨会综述

在山东威海举办的“晚清时期英国在华租借地历史文化”国际学术研讨会上,来自世界各地的专家学者,以香港、威海两地特定时期的历史文化问题为主题,对近代英国在华租借地的历史事件、历史人物及相关研究进行了多方位的考察和讨论,丰富了晚清时期英国在华租借地研究的成果。     

‘Hong Kong is my Home’: The 1940 Evacuation and Hong Kong-Britons

Who were the Hong Kong British, and where did they live? This question sat at the heart of anguished and angry debates prompted by the colonial government’s edict in June 1940 ordering the evacuation to Australia of all women and children of ‘pure European descent’. In this article, I focus on thematic strands in the debate on Hong Kong British identity, such as race, class, legal domicile, reputation and migration, to explore the complex character of such British communities outside the Dominions. This article aims to characterise what it meant to be British in the wider empire, and deepen our understanding about the place of such communities in the picture of colonial migration.     

The Trade Goes,and the Flag Follows? British State Intervention and Natural Resource Extraction in Colombia, 1989–2010

During the 1960s, agents of the Colombian state began carrying out a counterinsurgency campaign against elements of the domestic population considered ‘subversive’. Subversion, according to US counterinsurgency manuals, largely translated to involvement in social organisation. As a result, trade unionists, political activists and human rights defenders in Colombia became aggressively targeted. While violence in Colombia's past has been widely documented, recent British involvement has not. The official justification for British military and police assistance, beginning in 1989, was within the context of the drug war. By drawing on a wide range of sources including newly declassified documents from the UK National Archives in Kew, this article posits that British counter-narcotics assistance was contentious in nature and ineffective in outcome. Meanwhile, this assistance lent structural and active support to the counterinsurgency conflict. In this light, the protection of British capital interest in Colombia – specifically that of British Petroleum – is analysed as a persuasive underlying motive for British military and police assistance. Finally, British Petroleum's private security strategy in Colombia is investigated as a case study in the utilisation of counterinsurgency, with the result of the near-total elimination of social organisation within its areas of operations.     

Multiculturalism as a New Form of Nationalism?

What is often described today as neo‐nationalism or nationalist populism today arguably looks like the old nationalism. What is emerging as genuinely new are the identity‐based nationalisms of the centre left, sometimes called “liberal nationalism” or “progressive patriotism.” I offer my own contribution to the latter, which may be called “multicultural nationalism.” I argue that multiculturalism is a mode of integration that does not just emphasise the centrality of minority group identities but argues that integration is incomplete without remaking national identity so that all can have a sense of belonging to it. This multiculturalist approach to national belonging has some relation to liberal nationalism. It, however, makes not just individual rights but minority accommodation a feature of acceptable nationalism. Moreover, accommodation here particularly includes ethno‐religious groups in ways that are difficult for radical regimes of secularism. For these reasons, multicultural nationalism unites the concerns of some of those currently sympathetic to majoritarian nationalism and those who are prodiversity and minority accommodationist in the way that liberal nationalism (with its emphasis on individualism and majoritarianism) does not. It therefore represents the political idea and tendency most likely to offer a feasible alternative rallying point to monocultural nationalism.     

Living with Hollywood: British film policy and the definition of ‘nationality’

Focusing upon how a ‘national’ film has been historically defined in Britain, this article traces the history of legal definitions of a ‘British’ film and identifies some of the issues around nationality that these have raised. The article begins with a discussion of the introduction of quotas for ‘British’ films in the 1920s and the adoption of the Eady levy as a means of providing production finance to ‘British’ films in the post-war period. It then goes on to examine the introduction, in response to EU regulations governing the film industry, of a ‘Cultural Test’ for ‘British film’ in 2007 and to consider the way in which eligibility for tax reliefs has depended upon a film qualifying as ‘British’. In assessing whether the Cultural Test may be regarded as constituting a ‘break’ in British film policy in terms of a shift from economic to cultural objectives, the article not only indicates the manner in which cultural and economic objectives have been brought into alignment but also identifies how the definition of the ‘national’ for the purposes of tax relief has been designed to encourage ‘transnational’ Hollywood production within the UK. In doing so, the article also indicates how ‘national’ discourses and practices have continued to inform and structure the economic and cultural dynamics of contemporary ‘British’ cinema as well as engaging with, rather than necessarily standing in opposition to, ‘transnational’ and globalising trends.     

‘The Weary Titan Staggers under the Too Vast Orb of its Fate’. Post-Federation Australia and the Problem of Imperial Defence

This article investigates an under-studied aspect of the British/Australian defence relationship in the immediate post-Boer War period. The essential nature of the Australian Imperial Force was not an accident of 1914. Rather, as this article will show, the form, style and structure of the force that fought at Gallipoli was set in stone more than a decade before that famous name entered the popular Australian lexicon.     

The Commonwealth and the Oath of Allegiance Crisis: A Study in Inter-War Commonwealth Relations

Recent historical treatment of Anglo-Irish relations in the 1930s has overlooked the complex nature of the legal disagreements between the two countries during that period. This article provides an account of some of the fundamental points of legal disagreement between the countries. It explains how differences of opinion as to the structure of intra-commonwealth constitutional relations led to conflict between the British government and that of the Irish Free State, with particular reference to the oath of allegiance crisis. It considers how other commonwealth countries saw these points of conflict. It concludes with a re-appraisal of the roles of Lord Hailsham and de Valera in Anglo-Irish relations, as examples of differing attitudes towards the commonwealth relationship.     

Sir Edward Grey,Germany, and the Outbreak of the First World War: A Re-Evaluation

ABSTRACT

Historians have variously condemned British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey for contributing to the escalation of the July Crisis of 1914, and praised him as an heroic advocate of peace. Addressing this conundrum, this article first assesses historiographical debates around the significance of Grey's policy towards Germany in the events that led to the outbreak of the First World War. It then traces Grey's foreign policy vis-à-vis Germany on the one hand, and the Entente on the other. Finally, it provides an innovative analysis of Grey's policy from the vantage point of Berlin, arguing that in July 1914 decisions taken by the governments of other countries escalated the crisis and were taken regardless of Grey's position. The article concludes that current historiography overestimates British agency in July 1914 and that Grey was not as important to the outcome of the crisis as both his critics and his defenders have claimed. His actions could not change the minds of those on the continent who were bent on war.