The Challenge to ‘Informal’ Empire: Argentina,Chile and British Policy-Makers in the Immediate Aftermath of the First World War

From the late nineteenth century, both Argentina and Chile were integral parts of Britain’s ‘informal’ empire in Latin America. It has been suggested by historians that this ‘informal empire’ came to an end around the mid-twentieth century. By analysing contemporary sources from within the British government and the findings of later economic historians, it is the purpose of this article to contest this viewpoint. It will instead argue that the end of ‘informal’ empire in these countries was a direct consequence of the First World War, and that the decline in British influence in the region was registered by British policy-makers much earlier than has previously been argued.     

‘Our Bantustans are Better than Yours’: Botswana,The United States,and Human Rights in the 1970s

Many historians have upheld the 1970s as the ‘breakthrough’ decade for human rights. Botswana was a notable beneficiary of the efflorescence of these principles, especially as human rights gained greater prominence in the foreign policy of the United States (US). From 1966 to 1980, the government of Seretse Khama upheld one of the strongest human rights records of any African state, using it to acquire vital economic aid and psychological encouragement from the West. This study of US–Botswana relations is significant for showing the capacity of an underdeveloped and vulnerable state, surrounded by white minority regimes, to use internationalist ideals to improve its prospects for greater security and prosperity. The research also reveals the limits of Botswana's approach, particularly when the US could not align its strategic interests in Africa with its professed value for human rights. Botswana was therefore exceptional in perceiving its geopolitical priorities as closely tied to its integrity as a self-proclaimed model for non-racial democracy in Southern Africa. The article helps to show how the 1970s human rights movement was not just a Western one or an American one, but a truly transnational one, with unique, though often underappreciated, contributions from those in Africa.     

The State and Financialization of Public Land in the United Kingdom

There exists an influential and growing political‐economic literature on the treatment of land—urban and rural—as a financial asset. But this literature pays little attention to the role of the state, beyond its obvious significance in the formalization of tradable property rights. In particular, the issue of the state's own land, i.e. public land, has been afforded scant scrutiny. Has the state, like other actors, increasingly come to treat the land it owns as a form of financial asset? And if so, how, and with what implications? This article addresses these questions by way of an empirical focus on the history of the UK public estate since the beginning of the 1980s.     

The Rush–Bagot Agreement: Canada–US Relations in Transition

In 1817, Great Britain and the United States concluded the Rush–Bagot Agreement to prevent a naval arms race on the Great Lakes. Despite frequent transgressions to the agreement, by the 1920s, the agreement was heralded internationally as a model to emulate. The predominant scholarly focus on the agreement in the nineteenth century fails to explain why a broken agreement in one century was praiseworthy in the next. This article argues that the twentieth-century narrative of the agreement is of critical important to explaining the agreement’s impact on Canada–US relations. Through the lens of three stages of Canadian political leadership, this article demonstrates that the Rush-Bagot Agreement shifted from a rigid compact to a symbolic agreement that not only reflected but aided the transition toward one of the most unique security relationships. The article concludes that this extant agreement reinforces the prevalent notion of the “undefended border” in Canada–US relations.     

But There Was No War: The Impossibility of a United States Invasion of Canada after the Civil War

The notion that the United States threatened to invade the Canadian colonies after the Civil War persists to this day. Alleged British and Canadian support for the Confederate States angered Washington so much that Canadians feared military action. This menace started the Confederation movement that created the Dominion in 1867. This article argues otherwise by pointing to the careful diplomacy during the war—and rapid changes afterwards—each worked against the threat of a war. Tensions rose and fell with events such as the Trent Affair of 1861 and the St. Albans Raid of 1864, but each country otherwise sought to avoid trouble. Neither side deployed troops to the border during the war. After Appomattox, Union soldiers headed north but only to return home. Demobilization, combined with military deployments to the former Confederacy and the West, and resolute diplomacy afterwards, further prevented conflict. Not even the Fenian raids of 1866 and 1870 could disturb the peace.     

Identification of Suitable Limit States from Nonlinear Dynamic Analyses of Masonry Structures

Performance-based earthquake engineering, developed over the last decades for the design and assessment of other structures, can also be applied for masonry structures if the particularities of masonry are incorporated into the procedure. According to this methodology, structural performance can be assessed according to damage states which are identified through displacement/damage indicators. While various methods for the identification of limit states from the results of nonlinear static analyses exist, the identification of damage states from the results of nonlinear dynamic analyses is still uncertain. This article investigates a number of criteria allowing to identify the attainment of significant limit states from the results of time history analyses, in terms of appropriately identified response quantities. These criteria are applied to five building prototypes and their results are compared. A comparison with the limit states derived from nonlinear static analyses is also made.     

Reduction Factors for Seismic Design Spectra for Structures with Viscous Energy Dampers

A simple mathematical expression is proposed to estimate spectra reduction damping factors for seismic design of systems with viscous dampers. The expression is obtained from the ratios between ordinates of uniform hazard spectra associated with two different return intervals (50 and 125 years), corresponding to sites with different types of soil within the Valley of Mexico. The expression proposed depends on the dominant period of the soil, and on both the vibration period and damping ratio of the structural system. Values of the damping factors proposed here are comparable to those recommended by different authors and seismic design building codes.     

“The white hands ‘damn them … won't stick’”: labor scarcity and spatial discipline in the antebellum iron industry

This essay seeks to broaden the empirical basis for the concept of spatial discipline by investigating how and why the geographical mobility of skilled iron workers was constrained in the United States during the decades preceding the Civil War. Drawing on neo-Marxist labor theory, the author finds that the paradoxical demands of industrial capitalism for a highly mobile labor force that would also stay in place created particularly acute tensions in the iron industry, where skilled labor was critical to the implementation of new technologies. Recent theoretical developments in legal and labor history help explain why the transition from master-and-servant relations to employment at will in the early nineteenth century heightened tensions in the iron industry and spawned a tremendous range of disciplinary strategies. After modeling managerial strategies as a continuum of coercion, the author presents a series of illustrative examples from the North and South.     

Marine trophic levels targeted between AD 300 and 1500 on the Georgia coast,USA

The marine trophic levels targeted during Swift Creek (AD 300–700) and Savannah (AD 1200–1500) occupations at the Cathead Creek site (9Mc360) and at two sites from the Kings Bay Locality (9CAM171a, 9CAM177), coastal Georgia, USA, differ in a consistent temporal and spatial pattern. Vertebrate and invertebrate remains from these three coastal sites contain similar suites of estuarine animals. However, Swift Creek peoples at these distinct hydrological settings obtained more biomass from fishes and less from molluscs compared to the subsequent Savannah occupants. The two Swift Creek faunal collections are less rich, more diverse, and more equitable than the two subsequent Savannah collections regardless of location. Furthermore, the mean trophic level is higher in the Swift Creek collections compared to the Savannah ones at both locations. These observations apply to both biomass and Minimum Number of Individuals. These differences likely are defining characteristics distinguishing the Swift Creek and the Savannah economies. More research is needed to determine the extent to which these temporal and spatial patterns are attributable to environmental and cultural variables.     

An inquiry into the causes for the multiple goals of the United States Antitrust Law from a historical perspective

It is not the case as Robert Bork claims that the U. S. antitrust law had only one goal—maximization of consumer welfare of efficiency—at the very beginning and should have been kept that way for its later development. Partly because of the fighting among different interest groups as well as spokesmen of different regions at the 51st Congress, the Sherman Antitrust Act came out as a legislation with multiple goals, which were also taking shape under the influence of the Republican idea of balance of power, the liberal belief in property rights, the freedom of contract of classic economics, and the price theory of neoclassic economics. In more than a hundred years after that, the U.S. antitrust law has shifted the center of its goals as a result of the change of regulatory regimes with different emphases such as market function, economic stabilization, social concern, and economic efficiency during different periods. From a historical perspective, it is beyond dispute that the U.S. antitrust law has had multiple goals instead of only one. __________ Translated from: Shixue Yuekan 史学月刊 (Journal of Historical Science), No.6, 2004