The Suez Crisis of 1956 as a moment of transnational humanitarian engagement

Abstract

The Suez Crisis of 1956 is generally seen in historical research as a moment both of Great Britain’s imperial decline and of Egyptian and Arab political self-determination in the Middle East. Yet the humanitarian aspect of this crisis is still neglected, even though it provoked important humanitarian engagements from different sides, Arab as well as Western. By focusing on the Red Cross and the Red Crescent Movement, this article investigates not only motives, forms and structures of humanitarian relief, but also analyses the successes and difficulties of transnational co-operation between Western and non-Western agencies with a special focus on the application of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Finally, the article addresses the political dimension beyond concrete forms of help by arguing that the Suez Crisis attested to both the persistence of post-colonial structures and the institutionalisation of new, transnational patterns of co-operation.     

The Great War,the child’s body and the American Red Cross

Abstract

This article examines the child-relief activities of the American Red Cross in Hungary in the aftermath of the Great War, offering an insight into the workings of humanitarianism in interwar Europe. A close look at this one Central European ‘playground’ of transatlantic intervention helps us understand the logic and the underlying political, economic and ideological motives behind Allied humanitarian aid to ‘enemy’ children. Analysis of the ways in which the war’s aftermath affected children, their bodies and their relief throws light on the relationship between violent conflicts, children in need and humanitarian intervention. The article looks particularly at the role of the child’s damaged body and its photographic representation, making it what Cathleen Canning calls an ‘embodied experience of war’. Exploration of the humanitarian discourse around the suffering child helps us identify the humanitarian reaction to the unforeseen social consequences of wartime confrontation. The article argues that the harmed body of the ‘enemy child’ served to mobilise transnational compassion that challenged the war’s deeply anchored ‘friend–foe’ mentality. The child turned into a means of configuring and translating human suffering beyond ideological and political borders. At the same time humanitarian child relief helped to further consolidate asymmetric international power relations.     

American Red Cross posters and the cultural politics of motherhood in World War I

Scholars have long held that World War I markedly impacted women's participation in the public sphere as questions of appropriate wartime participation for women arose. Posters were an important tool for communicating notions of feminine citizenship and patriotism during the US involvement in the war. In this article, I explore the influence of the US involvement in World War I on social constructions of white femininity and citizenship through their portrayal in American Red Cross posters produced between 1914 and 1919. These posters offer a distinct visual documentation of the cultural shift in the portrayal of, and the insistence on, white women's – particularly nurses’ – responsibilities during wartime. I argue that the sentiments and language of the newly splintered women's movements were co-opted into the service of the war and were further emboldened with religious sentiments. American Red Cross posters called upon women to enact their presumed innate nurturing tendencies, and by extension, their feminine citizenship, at both the home and warfronts. In this way, the labor of the private sphere was drawn into the service of the war but without fully admitting women into the public sphere.     

A Parliamentary Victory: The British Labour Party and Irish Republican Deportees, 1923

After the 1918 general election the Labour Party became the official opposition party at Westminster. In response to the growing Irish republican campaign to establish an independent Irish state the Labour Party had to re-assess its relationship with Irish nationalism. The Labour Party was now acutely conscious that it was on the verge of forming a government and was concerned to be seen by the British electorate as a responsible, moderate and patriotic government-in-waiting. Although it had traditionally supported Irish demands for home rule and was vehemently opposed to the partition of Ireland, the Labour Party became increasingly wary of any closer relationship with extreme Irish nationalism which it believed would only damage its rapidly improving electoral prospects. Therefore the Labour Party supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 even though it underpinned the partition of Ireland and sought to distance itself from any association with Irish republicanism as the new Irish Free State drifted into civil war. In early 1923 the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) alighted upon the new issue of the arrest and deportation without trial, to the Irish Free State, of Irish republicans living in Britain who were obviously British citizens. The attraction of this campaign for the Labour Party was that it enabled the party to portray itself as the defender of Irish people living in Britain without having to take sides in the Irish civil war. In addition the Labour Party was able to present itself as the protector of civil liberties in Britain against the excesses of an overweening and authoritarian Conservative government. One of the main reasons the issue was progressed so energetically on the floor of the House by the new PLP was because it now contained many Independent Labour Party (ILP) ‘Red Clydesiders’ who themselves had been interned without trial during the First World War. Through brilliant and astute use of parliamentary tactics Bonar Law's Conservative government was forced into an embarrassing climb-down which required the cobbling together of an Indemnity Bill which gave tory ministers retrospective legal protection for having exceeded their authority. By any standard, it was a major achievement by a novice opposition party. It enhanced the party's reputation and its growing sophistication in the use of parliamentary tactics benefited it electorally at the next election which led to the first Labour government.     

From Where Does the Red Tory Speak? Phillip Blond,Theology and Public Discourse

Abstract

This article examines the role of theology in the public discourse of Phillip Blond. For one whose professional and academic training has been in Christian theology, Blond appears surprisingly reluctant to declare the theological roots of his political convictions. It is possible that this is an entirely pragmatic strategy, concerned not to alienate a largely secular audience, although this may be self-defeating if critics suspect some kind of sleight of hand. Yet it also fails to identify the sources of the traditions and practices which will actually inform a renewed political and cultural economy of virtue. Blond's diffidence towards declaring his theological stance contrasts with other traditions such as public theology, which argues that coherent and convincing Christian speech in public must always be prepared to put itself to the test of public scrutiny. Such transparency and accountability implies a respect for, but not necessarily a capitulation to, the insights of secular reason.     

Red Tory and Blue Labour: More Theology Needed

Abstract

Phillip Blond's Red Tory project has been widely credited with influencing the policies of the Conservative Party under David Cameron, and especially Cameron's "Big Society" thinking. Maurice Glasman has, meanwhile, been a key voice in rethinking Labour Party policy in the post-Blair/Brown years—the so-called Blue Labour programme. Both make space for religion, and Christianity in particular, within the core narratives of their projects and both have sought to build alliances with church bodies. The two projects are united in their critique of liberal assumptions, and this leads to significant congruences between them. Yet the place of Christianity and religion in their thinking is surprisingly different, reflecting the political genealogy of their projects in Burkean Toryism on Blond's part and Alinskian Community Organizing on Glasman's. Nevertheless, the attacks which both have suffered at the hands of social and economic liberals suggest that their ideas have traction. Both, however, are deficient in that their focus on communities as sources of virtue refuses to acknowledge that Enlightenment liberalism has any virtues to its credit. This is fundamentally a theological, rather than just a political, error, since it fails to capture the essential both/and embedded in Christian orthodoxy and the importance of corrective perspectives in Christian practice this side of the eschaton.     

THE SHELBY FOREST SITE IN SOUTHWEST TENNESSEE AND EARLY MISSISSIPPIAN RED-FILMED POTTERY IN THE CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI VALLEY

Abstract

The Shelby Forest site in southwest Tennessee is an Early Mississippian component characterized by Varney Red Filmed ceramics. Comparison to other sites in the Reelfoot Lake area of west Tennessee and the Upper St. Francis Basin of Missouri and Arkansas allows refinement of the direction, timing, and characteristics of influences from these areas northeastward to American Bottom and southward into the Yazoo Basin of Mississippi. Subsequent influences from the Cahokia area into the southern Yazoo Basin and northeast Louisiana are also discussed.     

槐梦南柯《红楼梦序词》

《红楼梦》是宽政六年末（1795年初）传入日本的,而最早的日译诞生在将近100年后的1892年。这一年4月,森槐南在《城南评论》上发表了《红楼梦》第一回楔子部分的译文,题为《红楼梦序词》,署名“槐梦南柯”。这篇译文的产生并非偶然,它是在清朝首届驻日公使馆员们向日本文人学者大力推介《红楼梦》的背景下诞生的,同时也与坪内逍遥否定劝善惩恶的小说写作传统,提倡写实主义的日本近代文坛的变革遥相呼应。本文重点考察这篇译文的翻译背景、徒用底太、翻译风格、翻译目的等问题．     

遵义会议前中共中央高层权力的转移:对毛泽东领导权威形成的历史考察

斯大林和共产国际鉴于中共中央屡屡出现的"路线错误",以留苏学生担纲改组了中共最高领导层。以博古为首的临时中央,是"国际路线"不折不扣的执行者。第五次反"围剿"的失败,使"国际路线"的正确性受到怀疑,"国际派"内部也顿生罅隙。毛泽东在长征途中争取了"国际派"成员张闻天、王稼祥的支持,在政治局中结成"小三人团"。红军湘江惨败后,中央最高"三人团"的威信直落谷底,出现严重的信任危机。在红军存亡之际,毛泽东提出新的进军路线,得到多数人的赞同。周恩来继张、王之后,转向毛泽东一边,瓦解了最高"三人团"的最后抵抗。由此,中央的实际权力开始转到了"小三人团"的手里,为遵义会议的召开和改组中央领导机构,做好了组织上的铺垫。