Mapping the Nation for War: Landscape in Danish Military Cartography 1800–2000

The focus in this article is on the way the post eighteenth-century cartographic turn in military practices developed into a particular military perception of landscape that continues to set the standard of Danish topographical mapping. My argument is that the development of modern topographical maps is the result of a long process of military comprehension and measurement of the terrain in order to conduct field operations. The demand for spatial data for actual or potential military operations had a direct impact on the specifications of maps produced by the military, as landscape representation was adapted to meet operational demands and as lessons learned from war experience were incorporated. In this and other respects, the development of Danish topographical maps in and after the nineteenth century followed the general trend of European military mapping as regards methods and standards.     

Possibilities and pitfalls of the concept of national indifference

This introduction to the themed section ‘The history of national indifference. A critical appraisal’ explores the challenges and possibilities of the concept of national indifference. It starts from the premise that national indifference remains a very useful concept to avoid falling into teleological narratives of nationalism. The central argument is that national indifference needs to be theorized as a non-binary, relative concept that is not the complete opposite of national identification. Indeed, the contributions show that national indifference has gradations and can coexist with explicit, banal or everyday forms of nationalism, both among elites and ordinary people, both in and outside of East Central Europe, both before and after the Two World Wars. This central argument results from an engagement with three areas of debate surrounding the national indifference literature, which all relate to its (inadvertent) reproduction of binary understandings of nationalism: the dichotomous conceptualization of east versus west, nationalisation versus non-nationalisation and elites versus masses.     

Hegemony Contests: Challenging the Notion of a Singular Canadian Hockey Nationalism

ABSTRACT

Sports media, athletes, and the public alike have framed Canadian professional men’s hockey as an important symbol of the nation as a whole, while scholars have devoted considerable energy to pointing out that this celebrated hockey symbol tends to marginalize those in Canada who are not white, male, straight, and/or able-bodied. Yet various linguistic, racial, and ethnic minorities play and celebrate hockey in Canada, and indeed use hockey to express their own subordinated nationalisms. Their styles of play and the meanings they bring to the game have issued counter-hegemonic challenges to white, male, Anglo-Canadian hockey hegemony. Exploring the “hockey nationalisms” of Indigenous, Québécois, Acadian, and Central/Eastern European populations as case studies, this article argues for a reconsideration of Canadian hockey nationalism from below.     

Sex Trafficking to the Federated Malay States 1920–1940: From Migration for Prostitution to Victim or Criminal?

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the relationships between the colonial government in the Federated Malay States (FMS), international social movement organisations, the League of Nations and sex trafficking. While there is considerable scholarship on social movement organisations and the League of Nations, far less is known about the links between internationalism, colonialism and sex trafficking.

After the First World War, trafficking became the focus of social movement organisations and the League of Nations, but colonial regulation of prostitution and tolerated brothels complicated international responses to trafficking. Colonial administrators saw prostitution as an essential service, whereas feminist and international social movement organisations saw prostitution as an impetus for trafficking. This article engages with newspaper reports, colonial correspondence and Chinese petitions, archival material from social movement organisations, and reports by the Association of Moral and Social Hygiene, the League of Nations and the Chinese Secretariat to extend the literature on the historiography of trafficking and the British Empire.