Be Part of the Story: A popular geopolitics of war comics aesthetics and Royal Air Force recruitment

This paper provides an analysis of images associated with the British Royal Air Force's recent ‘Be Part of the Story’ war comic-styled military recruiting campaign. Set around literatures in popular geopolitics, the paper builds on the concept of comic book visualities to suggest that the ‘Be Part of the Story’ images reproduce longstanding war comics conventions, and coherently represent the complex, relational and spatially disparate battlespaces of the present. The paper, firstly, provides a detailed history of war comics as they have mediated war to publics, and argues that war comics should figure more strongly in future studies of popular geopolitics. Secondly, it argues that more than simply part of a pervasive ‘cultural condition’ of militarization, military recruitment is a vital medium through which states and militaries view, and choose to represent their role in the world. Lastly, it demonstrates that ‘Be Part of the Story’ reproduces the violent visions, metaphors and cultural designations integral to state-centric narratives of global politics, and specifically, spatial principles inherent to network-centric warfare.     

Constituencies of conflict and opportunity: Land rights,narratives and collective action in Darfur

Grievance-based narratives are a primary component of civil wars. While present among the general population affected by conflict, the variants held by the segment of the population most proximate to the armed factions – constituencies – play a primary role in the development and conduct of a conflict. Such narratives can coalesce around specific volatile issues and enable non-combatant constituencies to participate in the conflict through the use of specific 'legalities' or legal precepts. These legalities facilitate the engagement of sets of collective action that are opposed to those derived by constituencies of the opposing side. However such constituencies and their narratives are also where potential opportunity resides for peace-building, both during and subsequent to hostilities. This article looks at the case of Darfur to examine these ingredients, with a focus on land rights as the volatile set of issues around which narratives have developed. In Darfur, opposed narratives which maintain how and why groups claim and deserve access to land and territory, and how groups were unjustly displaced or excluded from lands (and hence power), became solidified and acted upon prior to the conflict to become a primary driver in the current war. In certain cases however narrative change has led to interaction between members of opposed constituencies for the purpose of exploring cooperative arrangements.     

Toyotomi Hideyoshi's effort of retreat and the ending of the East Asian War

Abstract

During the second stage of the East Asian War, Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豐臣秀吉 hopefully sought to make an honorable exit, but the Choson 朝鮮 formulated a unique diplomatic strategy that brought the Ming to the battlefield, and there was no way for Toyotomi Hideyoshi's retreat and attempts at peace talks to be successful. In the end, the war concluded with Toyotomi Hideyoshi's death from illness and the retreat of the Japanese army in defeat, and the international order established between China and Korea was maintained.     

The historical narrative of the Wanli Korean campaign in the Qing Official Ming History

Abstract

The Ming History (明史 Mingshi) by Qing official historians took more than 90 years to complete, and Wan Sitong's 萬斯同 Draft Ming History (明史稿 Mingshi gao), Wang Hongxu's 王鴻緒 Draft Ming History, and the Ming History palace edition overseen by Zhang Tingyu 張廷玉 were the most important histories of the Ming over its different stages of compilation. Wan Sitong gave much attention to the writing of history in the biographies from the Wanli Korea Campaign, Wang Hongxu did not give them much attention, and Zhang Tingyu repudiated and even negated them. In Zhang Tingyu's Ming History, the Annals of Shenzong (神宗本紀 Shenzong benji) set the tone of repudiating the Korea campaign. Due to their clan, the Bozhou Campaign (播州之役 Bozhou zhiyi), or the Liaodong Incident (遼東事變 Liaodong shibian), nearly none of the Ming generals from the eastern expedition to Korea were given biographies due to their participation in the Korean War. The History of the Choson (朝鮮傳 Chaoxian zhuan) gives a negative evaluation that denies or undervalues relevant people and battles. On the one hand, this was due to the influence of historical sources. Due to Yang Gao’s 楊鎬 responsibility for defeat in the Battle of Saerhu 薩 爾 滸 之 役, the compilers of the Veritable Records of Ming Shenzong (明神宗實錄 Ming Shenzong shilu) followed the account of Ding Yingtai 丁應泰 in their records and denied the accomplishments of Yang Gao and the Ming army in Korea. On the other hand, due to real political needs, as the commanders of the eastern expedition to Korea later became the military rival of the Later Jin in Liaodong, an attitude of denial had to be adopted against them to create legitimacy for the Qing dynasty. These were the two main factors that determined the way in which the Qing official Ming History wrote the history of the Wanli Korean War.     

Constructing national identity in Canada's capital, 1900–2000: Confederation Square and the National War Memorial

Ottawa's Confederation Square was initially planned to be a civic plaza to balance the nearby federal presence of Parliament Hill. A century of federal planning, with the direct involvement of Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King, repositioned it as a national space in the City Beautiful style. Recent renovations have improved its pedestrian amenity and restored much of the original plan by French urban designer Jacques Gréber. The square contains the National War Memorial and the National Arts Centre, yet is a weak public space due to weak edge definition, animation, and spatial enclosure. The war memorial design was selected in a 1925 international competition won by Britain's Vernon March. The Great War monument was not installed until the 1939 Royal visit, and Mackenzie King intended that the re-planning of the capital would be the World War II memorial. However, the symbolic meaning of the Great War monument gradually expanded to become the place of remembrance for all Canadian war sacrifices. The National War Memorial is more successful as a symbolic object than Confederation Square is as a public space, yet both have evolved into important elements of the Canadian capital's national identity.     

冷战时期苏联对尼泊尔的经济和技术援助

20世纪50年代中期,出于对抗美国在南亚地区的战略影响,苏联与尼泊尔建立了外交关系,对尼援助计划也随之启动.由于受本国经济基础和意识形态等因素的影响,苏联对尼援助的主要领域是工业及其相关产业,对尼援助的主要目的就是扩大其在南亚的战略影响,防止尼泊尔加入西方阵营,同时希望孤立中国以及在尼泊尔培养一个亲苏政权.     

从红军到八路军细节历史的再现——读两本同名书《抗日的第八路军》

两本同名著作《抗日的第八路军》皆精彩地描述了长征的开端、强渡大渡河之战、长征中的妇女、红军和西安事变等细节情况,反映了红军改称八路军前后的相关史实,展示了延安精神的一个侧面。     

Modern witnesses: foreign correspondents, geopolitical vision, and the First World War

The First World War was the first modern, mediated conflict. In this paper I argue that British correspondents on the Western front attempting to accurately witness the war encountered a crisis of representation and visuality. They occupied a particularly unstable position between the many sites and points of view within a cubist landscape of shattered geographies and unstable boundaries. Their writings, though rich in masculinist and nationalistic accounts of heroism, also contain a newer perspective characterized by the failure to fit these older narratives into the inhuman, incomprehensible spaces of modern war.     

东北地下抗日斗争述论

1931年至1945年日本侵占我国东北期间,大小不等的地下抗日组织在东北各大中小城市的秘密战线进行抗日斗争。大体可分为四个系统：共产党地下抗日组织、国民党地下抗日组织、无党派地下抗日组织、以无党派人士为主而各党派人士参加其中的地下抗日组织。上述地下抗日组织的斗争目标是一致的,但其工作内容和活动方式则不尽相同,有侧重情报的,有侧重支援配合抗日武装部队的,有侧重抗日宣传和积蓄力量、潜伏待机的,有组织、发展实力,准备武装抗日的,有专事某项活动的,有各项工作兼做的。他们在危险的环境中,在敌人的残酷镇压下,不屈不挠,展现了中华民族优秀儿女的高风亮节。东北地下抗日人员虽然属于不同的政治派别,持有不尽相同的政治信仰,在如何进行抗日地下斗争方面的见解、方法也不尽相同,但大敌当前,他们有着同样的战斗任务——抗日救国,怀着同样的爱国心,因此,在关键时刻和生死关头,相互救助,手足情深。     

论罗唐战争的性质及其双方的交往

本文利用中韩现存史料以及新发现的金石墓志资料,探讨了罗唐战争期间(669—676)、战后双方的交往,交往的性质,中韩学界对其的评议等问题。认为战争的终结是在新罗积极抵抗,唐朝军事目标转移及罗唐双方通过交涉前提下达成的一种妥协,应该说双方没有严格意义上的胜者或败者,但双方都达到了预期的目的。