Ta‘isi O.F. Nelson and Sir Maui Pomare Samoans and Māori Reunited

ABSTRACT

This paper unearths the friendship between Samoan nationalist leader Ta‘isi Olaf Frederick Nelson and Māori politician Sir Maui Pomare during the early period of New Zealand's administration of Samoa. It examines the role this friendship played – especially as a line of communication between the Samoan protest movement or Mau, of which Nelson was a leader, and the highest echelons of the New Zealand government – in those years of fraught relations between Samoa and New Zealand. It also explores the significant historical connections that were made, or remade, through this friendship. The relationship between these two men brought Polynesian peoples together in new ways and also directly linked Parihaka, a 19th-century Māori community known for its non-violent resistance against European colonialism, with the later Samoan Mau.     

Powerful State,Powerless Mediator: The United States and the Peace Efforts of the Palestine Conciliation Commission, 1949–51

The Arab–Israeli War of 1948 produced complex questions that needed to be solved to obtain peace. Whereas the Arab states suffered humiliating defeats, Israel was the undisputed winner, expanding and solidifying its power. For the Palestinians, the outcome was catastrophic. Between 600,000 and 760,000 Palestinians fled, becoming refugees on the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and in surrounding Arab states. Palestinian society collapsed and Palestine became divided between Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, leaving the borders undecided. The Palestinians’ dreams of statehood were crushed. After the war, Israel used diplomacy to achieve its goals, defending the post-war status quo to preserve its expanded territory and resisting the return of Palestinian refugees. Through its membership in the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), established by the United Nations (UN) in 1948 to solve these problems, the United States was deeply involved in the negotiations. The United States became the informal, yet undisputed leader of the PCC, thus, it would seem, empowering it with the muscles of a superpower. After three years of struggling for peace the PCC had toadmit failure. Knowledge about these negotiations gives important insights into how mediators approached the conflict and shows that power asymmetry may explain why the belligerents could not obtain peace.     

How Constitutional Concerns Framed the US Contribution to the International Human Rights Regime From Its Inception, 1947–53

The United States has been reluctant to agree to binding international human rights instruments ever since the very first meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1947. This article explores structural causes for that reluctance. Internal government papers show that US government officers worried that a human rights treaty might expand federal jurisdiction at the expense of the jurisdiction of the United States' constituent states and could provide an opening for judicial activism by the courts. These concerns made domestic political sensitivities more acute and raised principled questions about the desirability of pushing domestic reforms through international law-making. US representatives made repeated efforts to ensure that an international bill of rights was drafted as an aspirational declaration rather than a legally binding treaty. They also proposed clauses designed to delay or limit the domestic effects of any agreement, while reassuring the US Senate that domestic power balances would not be disturbed. Constitutional concerns thus framed the United States' contribution to the creation of an international human rights system from the very beginning.     

The United Kingdom and the Negotiation of the 1969 New York Convention on Special Missions

During 1968–9, members of the United Nations, meeting in the Legal Committee of the General Assembly, negotiated a Convention on Special Missions, sometimes known as the New York Convention, setting out the privileges and immunities of ad hoc embassies between states. The negotiation was part of a process through which the UN sought to clarify the status and rights of official representatives, so that diplomacy could function with security and certainty. This article looks at the role of one leading power, the United Kingdom, in the talks. It explores how British interests were defined, the tactics used to secure them and how London came to terms with pressure from other states to redefine its approach. The focus is on the overall political thrust of the British negotiating position, as formulated mainly by the Foreign Office, rather than the detailed talks on such thorny issues as tax avoidance and diplomatic property. The article shows that, while London was keen to see a codification of diplomatic law, cold-war considerations made it less than enthusiastic about an upsurge in the number of special missions that the New York Convention might encourage.     

A Colonial Expedition? French Soldiers’ Experience at the Dardanelles

As many French soldiers as ANZACs fought at Gallipoli. Their preconceptions had more to do with colonial campaigning than with the dominant French experience of the Great War — mass mobilisation to defend the nation on home territory. Moreover, a significant proportion of the troops at the Dardanelles were colonial. Yet the French soldiers discovered at Gallipoli a ‘front’ that was part of the mutual siege that ringed Europe and that bore more than a passing resemblance to the front in France. The article explores the experiences and perceptions of the French soldiers facing this paradox.     

South Africa and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–6

The Italo-Ethiopian War led to an extensive debate in the Union of South Africa about the future of the League of Nations’ system of collective security. The different political and social groupings in the dominion interpreted the meaning of the war for the Union from a diversity of perspectives. The Italian aggression in East Africa reverberated in the context of concurrent debates about the Union's position in relation to the British Empire. These debates were influenced by the tensions between Afrikaners and English-speaking South Africans but also by disagreement within the Afrikaner community about South African policies vis-à-vis the British Empire. The Afrikaner-dominated Union Government had to navigate between its commitments to the League on the one hand and criticism from the extreme nationalist Afrikaner opposition on the other, which claimed that South Africa's sovereignty was diminished by Britain's leading role in the League. As a mandatory power in South West Africa, the Union was also concerned to sustain League principles in order to safeguard its sub-imperialist aspirations on the continent. The public debates were strongly influenced by a discourse on ‘civilisation’, which not only reflected ambiguous views of the status of Ethiopia as a member of the League of Nations, but also raised questions about the stability of white hegemony in a segregationist state.     

Command,Leadership, and Doctrine on the Great War Battlefield: The Australian,British, and Canadian Experience at the Battle of Arras,May 1917

Abstract

The experience on the Somme in 1916, and the unprecedented losses suffered in the attempt to break through the German defences, forced the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to re-evaluate its attack doctrine. James Edmonds, the of?cial historian of the British army in the Great War has stated, ‘It is not too much to claim that the foundations of the ?nal victory on the Western Front were laid by the Somme offensive of 1916’. Gary Shef?eld reaf?rmed this view more recently: ‘The battle of the Somme was not a victory in itself, but without it the entente would not have emerged victorious in 1918’. Historical assessments of the Somme campaign are divided regarding the success and/or failure of the battle, but it is clear that the experience spurred efforts to correct the problems encountered in 1916. Infantry tactics, weapons, training, artillery, machine guns, command and control, communications, and support services were all adapted based on the lessons learned at the Somme. Only seven months after the catastrophic losses suffered on 1 July, the BEF embarked on it next major offensive at Arras. This article will examine the ?ghting on one day of the Arras offensive to analyse the evolution of the British Empire method of attack. On 3 May 1917 Haig ordered an attack by First, Third, and Fifth Armies astride the Scarpe River. At 0345 hours fourteen British, Canadian, and Australian divisions launched an assault against German positions in the Drocourt-Quéant Switch and Hindenburg Line. By the end of the day all British divisions has been repulsed while the Australians maintained a toehold in the German line. Only the Canadians were able to capture and hold their objective. This article will argue that command and the application of doctrine made the difference between success and failure on that day.     

‘The Futurist mountains’: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's experiences of mountain combat in the First World War

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's first experience of active combat was as a member of the Lombard Battalion of Volunteer Cyclists and Motorists in the autumn of 1915, when he fought in the mountains of Trentino at the border of Italy and Austria-Hungary. This article examines his experience of mountain combat and how he communicated aspects of it both to specialist, Futurist audiences and to the general public and soldiers, through newspaper articles, manifestos, ‘words-in-freedom’ drawings, speeches and essays written between 1915 and 1917. Marinetti's aim in all of these wartime writings was to gain maximum support for the Futurist movement. Thus, he adapted his views to suit his audience, at times highlighting the superiority of the Futurist volunteers over the Alpine soldiers and at others seeking to distance Futurism from middle-class intellectualism in order to appeal to the ordinary soldier. Marinetti interpreted the war's relationship with the natural environment through an exclusively Futurist lens. He sought to ‘futurise’ the Alpine landscape in an effort to reconcile the urban and technophilic philosophy of his movement with the realities of combat in the isolated, rural and primitive mountains of Trentino.     

From Universalism to Nationalism: Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

Abstract

During the period from 1914 to 1915, prior to Italy’s entry into the First World War, Freemasonry was a powerful force in Italian public life with a strong presence in every part of the nation and in the most vital organs of the State (parliament, public administration, the armed forces). Between them, the Grand Orient and the Grand Lodge of Italy counted 25,000 members and more than 500 lodges. Freemasons played a critical role in the campaign to mobilize Italian public opinion and political parties in support of Italy’s intervention in the war as an ally of France and Great Britain. To do so, they abandoned the movement’s traditional cosmopolitan and pacifist stances and adopted instead the objectives of the nationalists, a shift that would be consolidated during the war. Nonetheless, from 1917 onwards Italian Freemasons joined their counterparts in other European countries to press for the creation of a League of Nations to promote a new post-war universal order premised on the peaceful coexistence of independent and democratic nations. In examining the initiatives taken by Italian Freemasons in this period, this article focuses on the principles that inspired them, the language they adopted and the forms of communication and mobilization they used.     

They think it’s all over. The face of victory on the British frontier

Abstract

The re-conquest of southern Scotland by the army of the Emperor Antoninus Pius was a political act intended to secure his position on the throne. For this event, he took the acclamation ‘Conqueror’. His soldiers erected large stone slabs to mark their construction of the new frontier and decorated several with triumphal scenes. In these sculptures the soldiers portrayed themselves not only as victorious conquerors but also engineers and builders, celebrating not only the success of their emperor but their own community of soldiers.