Remaking the Fighting Man. Martial Masculinity and the British Army’s Command Depots, 1915–1918

During the First World War, the British Army sought to avoid manpower wastage by setting up ‘Command Depots’ specialising in physical therapy for the wounded. The present article will argue that Command Depots restored military usefulness in tandem with the restoration of an appropriately martial masculine identity. Additionally, in contrast to recent studies that focus on non-compliance with authority, the article will also contend that in the case of Command Depots there is evidence to demonstrate a general approval of the system’s processes, with trainees being embraced as exemplars of masculine conduct in wartime.     

The enforcement problem in Resolution 2094 and the United Nations Security Council sanctions regime: sanctioning North Korea

This article deconstructs United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2094 through the preambulatory statements, objectives, obligations, and implementation and enforcement provisions of UNSC Resolution 2094. The article proceeds in three parts. First, it reviews the academic literature on UNSC sanctions and their application in the North Korean case. Second, it deconstructs UNSC Resolution 2094 according to the common structural components of international legal instruments to assess the level of congruence between the objectives of UNSC Resolution 2094, its enforcement mechanisms and outcomes. Third, it explores the weaknesses of UNSC Resolution 2094, focusing on the gap between the objectives and enforcement mechanisms found in the resolution. The inability of the UNSC sanctions regime to prevent North Korea reaching the cusp of becoming a nuclear weapons power is evidence of the international community's weak leverage over Pyongyang, a situation arising from the vulnerability of South Korea to a North Korean attack and the cross-cutting strategic priorities of China; the absence of economic linkages between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the primary sanctions-sender state in the USA; and North Korea's commitment to a nuclear weapons capability as the foundation of its medium-term economic development strategy, its institutional governance structure and associated ideological commitments.     

Visions/versions of the war: Ramón Pérez de Ayala and Juan Pujol on the Italian front

In 1915, the Spanish journalist Juan Pujol visited the Italian front. His reports appeared in ABC, and were later incorporated in his book In Galitzia and the Isonzo (1916). A few months later, the Spanish writer Ramón Pérez de Ayala visited the same territories. His reports appeared in El Imparcial (Madrid) and La Prensa (Buenos Aires), and were later published in his book Herman in Chains (1917). The poetics evident in the reports of both writers were clearly different, not only for ideological reasons (Juan Pujol supported the Central Empires; Pérez de Ayala favored the Allies), but also for discursive reasons: the reflexive and digressive culturalism of Pérez de Ayala, for example, contrasted vividly with the direct narrative of Juan Pujol. However, since both writers shared some stereotypes about war and used a common repertoire of rhetorical and stylistic strategies, there are significant similarities between their texts.     

Constructing and Enforcing the “Medicine Line”: A Comparative Analysis of Indian Policy on the North American Frontier

The national self-images of the United States and Canada have been shaped, in part, by their contrasting histories and mythologies of westward expansion and nation-building. Those narratives are most distinct with regard to government policies toward aboriginal peoples on either side of the 49th parallel, what Indians called “the medicine line.” The purpose of this article is two fold: (1) to specify and develop a three-part conceptual framework (consisting of the Turnerian discourse, the Lipset Thesis, and Borderlands Studies) for examining the history of the North American frontier and (2) utilizing a wide range of scholarly literature, to apply that framework in a comparative analysis of national policies toward Indians and First Nations in the post–Civil War/post–Confederation period on the Great Plains and Prairies. Several explanatory factors for cross-national difference will be identified and examined, including variance in geography and geology; demography, demographic trends, and political pressures in each country; the types of national political institutions and their impact on policymaking; and the types of forces deployed in the West (the Mounties and the US Army).     

‘The Standard Work in English on the League’ and Its Authorship: Charles Howard Ellis,an Unlikely Australian Internationalist

Charles Howard (‘Dick’) Ellis, born in Sydney in 1895 and a Great War veteran, was working as a journalist in Vienna and Geneva when he wrote one of the most comprehensive books of the time on the League: The Origin, Structure and Working of the League of Nations (1928). Dedicated to the progressive literary figures of the era and showing a particular debt to the writings of the British Labour left, Ellis argued that the internationalism of the age marked a necessary rejection of the anarchic conditions that brought forth the Great War. The League and its associated institutions constituted ‘the first step toward a world society’ that would facilitate the suppression and ultimate removal of the causes of conflict. A remarkable work in itself, this progressive volume was written by a member of British intelligence who had already made a reputation in this sphere and was to go on to hold very senior positions in the 1940s. The question is considered whether the ideas expressed were a product of Ellis's genuine beliefs, or whether they were a mask for his substantive professional role. The circumstances around the writing of this book are also reviewed in an attempt to answer this question, especially given the hitherto accepted scholarly view that Konni Zilliacus of the League Secretariat was the actual author.     

‘The Constructive Use of Abundance’: the UN World Food Programme and the Evolution of the International Food-Aid System during the Post-War Decades

This article studies the expansion of multilateral economic development aid in the early 1960s by exploring the history of the United Nations (UN) World Food Program. It analyses the pivotal role played by key development economists within the UN Secretariat, such as Hans Singer, alongside US policy-makers in the Kennedy administration in framing and directing the debate on multilateral food aid. It specifically argues that this period marked a shift in how food aid was perceived and utilised by donor and recipient countries - as well as international organisations like the UN and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Ultimately, what began in the 1950s as a bilateral method to feed the hungry through the disposal of surplus agricultural commodities evolved into an international food-aid system by the 1960s centred on the utilisation of surplus agriculture for economic development. This change showcased both the common goals and competing interests of US and UN policy-makers as food aid now joined the wider debate on various doctrines of development.     

‘How Time Flies’: Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the 1960s

Recent histories of human rights have identified the 1970s as the most decisive epoch in the birth of the modern rights era. These works have tended toward a parenthetic dismissal of the period 1948–70 as years of interregnum, of marginal impact to the ‘breakthrough’ moment which followed. This article argues for a more complex periodisation, and reclaims the importance of the 1960s. Far from an undifferentiated abyss, the two decades between the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the 1968 International Human Rights Year held their own shifts, integral to the evolution of modern human rights. A crucial transition in the status of the UDHR occurred across the mid-1960s, roughly aligned with the terminal years of liberal post-colonialism. Through a comparison of two hitherto neglected events in the history of human rights, the fifteenth and twentieth anniversary commemorations of the UDHR, in December 1963 and 1968, this article traces the trajectory of that transition. These commemorations, concentrated moments of explicit reflection on the meaning of human rights, encapsulated the gulf between the early and the late 1960s. In the space of five years, any vestigial consensus on the vision enunciated in 1948 was obliterated.     

Mission Impossible: UN Special Representative Gunnar Jarring and His Quest for Peace in the Middle East

On 23 November 1967, Gunnar Jarring, a Swedish diplomat, was appointed the United Nations Special Representative to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Security Council had decided to launch a peace effort in the Middle East following the Six-Day War in June 1967. Israel had won a sweeping victory, and the Arab states had suffered a devastating loss. After the war, Israel controlled a territory almost three and a half times the size of the country itself. But what should be done with these newly conquered territories? Should Israel be allowed to keep them? Over the course of some three and a quarter years, Jarring shuttled between the representatives from the three countries involved in the peace endeavour: Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. (Syria refused to participate.) Despite his arduous efforts, he failed miserably to produce viable progress in the Arab-Israeli conflict.     

Constructing Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century China: the Negotiation of Reciprocity in the Sino-Spanish Treaty of 1864

Since the Republican era, the unequal treaties that China was forced to sign became the basis for the articulation of a narrative of humiliation that has continued to the present day. These treaties, which represented a threat to Chinese sovereignty and were a display of the might of Western powers, have several features in common: they imposed extraterritoriality; included the most-favoured-nation clause; and fixed indemnities or disproportionate concessions. However, the Sino-Spanish Treaty of 1864 was to a certain extent unusual, as it not only guaranteed privileges to Chinese merchants and citizens visiting the Spanish colony of the Philippines, but even went as far as to grant China a most-favoured-nation clause. Through a comparative analysis of the 1864 Sino-Spanish Treaty and the circumstances under which it was negotiated, this article will argue that far from simply being an exception that proves the rule, this treaty offers a glimpse into the need for a more flexible and wider narrative surrounding mid-nineteenth-century China international relations. In an attempt to contribute to the dereification of the West and a better understanding of Chinese agency in the mid-nineteenth century, this narrative needs to be more inclusive of the peripheral powers.     

The Holy War in Syria: Cemal Pasha and the Ottoman Plan to conquer Egypt in the First World War

This article aims to analyse the importance of the Egyptian campaign to Ottoman policy in the First World War. It seeks to add to our knowledge of the Ottoman war experience by putting the focus on the empire’s preparations for conquering Egypt and by giving priority to understand the aims of the expedition. The expedition itself is placed within the context of the jihad policy adopted at the beginning of the war and which sought to put an end to the Entente’s colonial domination of Muslim countries. The Ottomans’ propaganda initiatives in support of the measures were meant to motivate support among the Syrian population through the idea of holy war.