William Morris Hughes,Empire and Nationalism: The Legacy of the First World War

Despite the amplitude with which Prime Minister W. M. Hughes voiced Australian claims during the First World War, his conduct in the immediate postwar years shows that his nationalism remained consistent with an imperial and British standpoint. This proposition is illustrated with reference to Hughes' role in the 1921 imperial conference, the Chanak crisis, and his post-prime ministerial memoir. While obsessed with expedients to improve the speed and scope of intra-imperial communications and thus facilitate consultation, Hughes was concerned to ensure that Australia played a proper role in arriving at a consensus on the deep common interest that unified Britain and the Dominions. His lack of concern for extending the scope for independent action won by the Dominions during the war, his dismissive remarks regarding the British role in the League of Nations, and the vehemence of his communications with London in 1922, must all be seen within the context of an imperial loyalty that survived the war undiminished.     

Early international relations teaching and teachers in Australia: institutional and disciplinary origins

Drawing on the insights of the current literature concerned with the institutions which fostered and supported the emergence of the international relations (IR) discipline, this article reassesses the Australian contribution in the interwar years. From this period, teaching materials and surviving lecture notes, as well as documentation of Australian participation in the International Studies Conference, show that, contrary to the received view, academies and institutions supported a recognisable IR, albeit in its formative stages. Even by the early 1920s there was a developing awareness that ‘international relations’ was a discrete subject worthy of presentation in a specific curriculum. The Melbourne school initiated by William Harrison Moore exerted the greatest influence; an energetic pioneering effort in Sydney under H. Duncan Hall was not maintained after his departure. Law and history departments offered such courses, though their place in wider programs depended upon the contingencies of personalities and appointments. By the 1930s, IR teachers were familiar with the major methodological debates of the era in the UK and the USA. While consistent attention was devoted to international organisation, and ‘collective security’ had its champions, the predominant view, in the terminology of the ‘first debate’, was neither idealist nor realist.     

Photo Essay: The Rio Grande Borderland

The Rio Grande border of the United States and Mexico is over 1,000 miles long. This presentation of that border is by means of a photo essay interpreting the physical, economic, political, and cultural complex that has evolved. These photos were all taken in 1990 on a reconnaissance that followed both sides of the border for the entire distance from Ciudad Juarez and El Paso on the west to the Gulf of Mexico on the east. Numerous crossings of the border were made at official and non-official points. Informal field interviews were conducted on both sides of the border with government officials, agricultural workers, tourists, farmers, industrial managers, factory laborers, retirees, undocumented migrants, beachcombers, shoe-shiners in the plaza, sportsmen, clergymen, children, and loafers. The photos with an accompanying text are presented in an order that is conducive to a comprehension of the salient aspects of the physical and human geography and the complex social issues found in the borderland. The final photos and text are on the maquiladoras and the international interplay of history, markets, labor, and technology resulting in striking structural change.