Australia's Campaign for Security Council Membership

The United Nations Security Council has global responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It is therefore essential for Australia to nominate periodically for non-permanent membership, and 2013–14 was the earliest feasible opportunity available to the Rudd government. Australia's uneven record of participation in the United Nations over the last decade and a half was an impediment to election, but recent renewed commitment to international law and upgraded multilateral engagement, among other factors, strengthened the case for election. Australia was elected in the first round of voting, principally due to effective political leadership and the sustained campaign organised by diplomatic officers. Membership will enable Australia to participate actively in discussion of issues on the Council's agenda and to lead discussion of two or three additional subjects.

联合国安理会负有维护国际和平及安全的责任。因此澳大利亚有必要定期提名为非常任理事国,2013—14年对陆克文政府是最早的机会。过去十五年中澳大利亚参与联合国事务颇不均衡,这不利于其当选。而最近它对国际法的重新关注、对多边关系的提升则有助于其当选。澳大利亚主要由于有效的政治领导和外交官坚持不懈的努力而在第一轮投票中当选。有了成员国资格,澳大利亚就能积极参与安理会的讨论,并领导两三个附加议题的讨论。     

“世家”解

“世家”——世世永祭之庙。西周以来,礼制规定诸侯五庙——始祖庙、高祖庙、曾祖庙、祖庙、父庙。后四者为亲庙,前一庙为始庙。亲庙每世一迁,四世之后即行毁轶,不再祭祀;而始庙则世世永祭,因此得称“世家”。孔子受世世祭祀、陈涉被明令置守冢三十家,因此他们均享有世世永祭之庙,他们都被列入了“世家”。     

“骊”二题

内容提要:近年,国内许多报刊报道,西汉时一支被称为“第一军团”的罗马军团落脚于中国永昌的“骊”,率领“第一军团”来到中国的是克拉苏的长子普布利乌斯。本文就“第一军团”和“克拉苏长子”两个问题展开论述,提出了自己的观点。关键词:骊第一军团克拉苏长子中图法...     

We have tailored Africa: French colonialism and the ‘artificiality’ of Africa’s borders in the interwar period

After the First World War, the discourse and methods used to determine and define boundaries changed radically. In Europe, the territorial agreements of 1919-20 put forward an ideal of territorial homogeneity, a concept based on the ideal correspondence of state, nation and territory. Meanwhile, in Africa, the French colonizers were also reconsidering their spatial arrangements along the same lines. In this context, the expertise of the social sciences became crucial in defining territory and therefore in political decision-making. At the same time, prominent representatives of the new colonial sciences were responsible for developing and disseminating the idea of the 'artificiality' of African boundaries. This new generation of experts on French colonization considered the borders of Africa to be scars left behind by the old and arbitrary colonial order, which they wished to see replaced by a more humanistic rule. Their discourses, however, offered a vision of Africa based on the continent's exceptional character. In essence, Africa was considered as a continent defined principally along ethnic territorial lines, a logic excluding any political definition of territory. This discourse contributed to redefining the continent as something radically other.     

La Greffe Générale: the voice of French facially injured soldiers

Like the combatants on the frontline, the wounded soldiers of the First World War wrote and published newspapers during the sometimes lengthy periods of time they spent in hospital. La Greffe Générale is the journal written by and for facially injured combatants treated at the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris. Throughout the eight issues released between December 1917 and July 1918, the voices of these men can be heard. While the surgeons’ perspective prevails in most remaining documents to do with French maxillofacial wards, La Greffe Générale gives an insight into the experiences of injury and treatment from the point of view of the wounded and convalescent combatants. The specific challenges faced by facially injured men are reflected in their writings, as this article shows. At the same time, their newspaper is in itself an attempt to respond to some of these issues. Ultimately, the patients’ publication reveals how gueules cassées, as French disfigured veterans came to be known, tried to collectively cope with their changed lives. The ethos reflected in, and fuelled by, La Greffe Générale played, this article argues, a significant part in the later constitution of the facially disfigured men’s organisation, the Association des Gueules Cassées.     

The Politics of Provisioning: Feeding South Asian Prisoners During the First World War

During the First World War, the German and British Governments supplied culturally appropriate rations and secured special facilities for food preparation and consumption for South Asian prisoners of war whose loyalty both governments sought. The food provided in POW camps to South Asians serves as an index of the political status of colonial subjects at a moment when the future of European empires was far from certain. The British Government’s approach to feeding its South Asian servicemen held by the enemy thus reveals this population’s place within Britain’s wartime national and imperial imaginary and in its post-war planning.     

Remembrance Diplomacy by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the UN, 1976–2015

This article investigates how the successive mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have worked to institutionalize their collective memory of the nuclear bombings in the United Nations since 1976. Increased institutionalization of the memory in the UN can serve to influence the value system shared by diplomats engaged with nuclear disarmament by making remembrance activities surrounding that memory obligatory. With their moving testimonies, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have primarily promoted Hiroshima and Nagasaki remembrance in the UN by tapping into the moral authority traditionally credited to survivors or witnesses of atrocity. They have been largely successful in achieving institutionalization; however, UN institutionalization of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remembrance does not automatically transform into a global collective memory without also being accepted at the national level.     

War Time Hysteria, 1917: Senator Miles Poindexter, ‘American-ness’ and the Strange Case of Colonel Carl Reichmann*

When, on 6 April 1917, the United States entered into the First World War, a wave of anti-German sentiment captured the nation. The Army was not immune from accusations of subversion. In 1917 Senator Miles Poindexter accused a high ranking officer named Carl Reichmann of being in league with Germany. Despite the support from officers such as Hugh Lennox Scott and John J. Pershing, Reichmann was not permitted a promotion to general or service in France. Although most senators supported the promotion, Poindexter was able to prevent a vote on the subject using internal Senate rules. The resulting notoriety Poindexter gained made him a viable Republican candidate in the 1920 election. Although the military did not prevail over Poindexter — thereby continuing the constitutional expectation of military subservience to the civil government — the forces sent to France were without a commander who had gained a scholarly understanding of modern warfare well before the actual conflict.     

“A Success in Every Particular”: British August First Celebrations in Canada and America and the Black Quest for Unblemished Commemorations,While Critiquing July Fourth, 1834–1861

British August First celebrations were an important day of the year for Blacks in North America. Elite and aspiring organizers attempted to use the holiday as a sight of excellence. Partakers understood they were watched closely during commemorations and that their slightest imperfections could be magnified to unreasonable proportions. Thereby, Blacks felt it was essential to present themselves in near “perfection” to prove that they could be “upstanding citizens.” This article asserts that the standard of outright excellence Blacks attempted to execute on August First was neither achievable nor performed by Whites at celebrations like July Fourth. While Whites could be the notorious offenders of uncivilized and imperfect behavior, First celebrations were to be as the Liberator proclaimed an “array of virtue, loveliness, moral heroism, and true piety.” In all, when Blacks utilized the power to assemble, it was viewed more as a potential site of lawlessness and subversion, despite their efforts.     

Defending Empire at the United Nations: The Politics of International Colonial Oversight in the Era of Decolonisation

This article argues that, although anti-colonial delegations to the 1945 San Francisco Conference did not succeed in bringing all colonial territories under the umbrella of international trusteeship, the threat of expanding international oversight shaped the relationship between colonial governments and international organisations in powerful ways. By focusing on how the UN Special Committee on Non-Self-Governing Territories evolved as a de facto supervisory system for dependent territories, this article considers the ways that representatives at the United Nations defined dependency and self-government and explores the crusade that colonial governments led to justify imperialism in the post-war world. Through a consideration of the diplomatic actions of France, Great Britain and Belgium, this article explores the ways that colonial empires jointly mobilised to defend colonialism at the level of the United Nations. In the face of evolving supervisory mechanisms at the United Nations, the French, British and Belgian delegations joined forces in an attempt to expose some of the inherent contradictions in UN policy towards dependent populations, and to make the case that subject populations living in independent territories often endured worse conditions than those living in formal overseas empires.