China in Fiji: displacing traditional players?

A widely held perception in Oceania is that China has taken the opportunity of Western sanctions against Fiji's military-led regime to expand its influence in Fiji. Observers and media in the region were alarmed by the sudden increase of China's pledged aid to Fiji shortly after the 2006 military takeover. They are concerned that China has a well-calculated strategy of displacing traditional Western players in Fiji, most notably Australia and New Zealand. Such concern is not well founded. While China does have multiple interests, including strategic interests, in Fiji, there is no clear evidence to suggest that China aims to displace the traditional players there. China's growing influence in Fiji is part of China's global rise. Both Australia and New Zealand are committed to Fiji and the South Pacific as a whole. Given its substantial interests in Australia and New Zealand, it is not in China's interest to increase its influence in Fiji at the cost of its relations with these two traditional players.     

The Port Hamilton (Geomundo) Incident (1885–1887): Retracing Another Great Game in Eurasia

This paper traces a much overlooked historical event, whose impacts threatened to upend the status quo in the Far East and potentially escalate the Anglo-Russian rivalry in Eurasia. With the occupation of Port Hamilton (Geomundo) by a hegemon, Britain, Korea was catapulted into the centre stage of the international system, where it garnered unprecedented attention from major powers. It was also during this period that neutralisation was contemplated both within and without Korea. By exploring this incident through contemporary neutralisation discourse, this work illustrates neutralisation's role in providing an analytical framework to assess the geopolitical importance of this incident in international relations. After suffering a crushing defeat in the Crimean War, Russia was forced to modify its designs in the Mediterranean and adjust itself to a new regional order. Since its room for manoeuvre was constrained by its chief rival, Britain, the Russian government was forced to tread more cautiously in European geopolitics and to refrain from military means in advancing its interests there. Similarly, the British offensive on Geomundo thwarted Russian expansion into the Far East and denied Russia access to the Pacific, allowing Britain to repeat the feat that it had achieved in the Crimean War.     

From Revolution to Dissolution: The Quai d'Orsay,the Banque Russo-Asiatique,and the Chinese Eastern Railway, 1917–1926

This article explores the use made of Christianity during the Second World War and the dilemmas created for the Allies by Stalin's religious record. It is particularly concerned with the way in which Christianity appeared for a while to become a bridge between East and West, with the explicit promise of continued post-war co-operation. However, in the immediate aftermath of the war, Anglo-American policies in particular switched from using Christianity to rehabilitate the adverse image of the Soviet regime to what had been the inter-war policy of using religion to demonise it. Inter-war demonisation held up the Soviet Union as a model not to be emulated. Post-war demonisation pointed to the Soviet Union as an expansionist threat bent on world domination. The article examines Stalin's responses, and Allied perceptions of those responses, to the changes in Western religious policy and propaganda from the Second World War to the emergence of the cold war. The article seeks to show how both sides used religion for political purposes, but that in the final analysis Western reluctance to relinquish what was perhaps its most emotive means of indicting and containing Communism meant that Christianity, instead of becoming a bridge, became a divisive factor that contributed to both the onset of the cold war and public acceptance of it.     

The Scottish national Antarctic expedition (1902–04) and the founding of Base Orcadas

The history of the establishment of the scientific research station on Laurie Island, South Orkney Islands, is recounted. Its founding by the Scottish National Antarctic (Scotia) Expedition (1902–04) and the subsequent operation by Argentina resulted in it becoming the first all‐year‐round permanently‐staffed research facility in Antarctica. The networks of government and non‐government personnel involved in the rivalry between British and Scottish interests and aspirations and the transfer of the Laurie Island facility from the Scottish expedition to Argentine government control are investigated. The narrative is set against the background of the centennial celebrations of that transfer.     

The Australian 2016 Defence White Paper,great-power rivalry and a ‘rules-based order’: an imagined correspondence between Carr,Bull and Bell

This piece is an imagined email correspondence between three renowned international relations scholars, E. H. Carr, Hedley Bull and Coral Bell, who are discussing the Australian 2016 Defence White Paper. The purpose of such an exercise is to reflect on the ‘big-picture’ international relations questions posed by what might otherwise be thought of as a relatively technical defence policy document. In particular, the correspondence between the three focuses on the central importance of the White Paper’s assumptions of a ‘rules-based global order’ and the relationship between this order and US power. In their time, all three authors spoke directly to questions of power, law and order in their scholarly work, which had been deeply influenced, in all three cases, by periods spent working at the ‘coalface’ of these issues in government in Britain and Australia. As such, Carr, Bull and Bell have much to say about how Australia is positioning itself for a post-unipolar world.     

从冲突到和解:近代英美关系考察

近代是英美关系发展变迁的重要历史时期,在一个多世纪的时间里英美由战争、冲突逐步走向了接近与和解。在此过程中,国际体系及其变更、地缘政治、心理要素与文化制度的认同、新兴强国崛起和国家战略调整等诸多因素共同起到了重要的作用。作为英美历史性接近的结果,到19世纪末,英国启动了向美国“转让”世界霸权的进程。就深远影响来看,它还使美国开始更多地卷入欧洲事务和世界事务,并促成了20世纪国际关系中另一项重大事态的出现——美国世界霸权的逐步确立。     

The Not So Peaceful Civilization: A Review of Maya War

The first Maya encountered by Europeans in the early sixteenth century were exceedingly warlike, but by the 1940s the earlier Classic Maya (AD 250–1000) were widely perceived as an inordinately peaceful civilization. Today, in sharp contrast, conflict is seen as integral to Maya society throughout its history. This paper defines war, reviews the evidence for it in the Maya archaeological record, and shows how and why our ideas have changed so profoundly. The main emphasis is on the Classic period, with patterns of ethnohistorically documented war serving as a baseline. Topics include the culture history of conflict, strategy and tactics, the scope and range of operations, war and the political economy, and the intense status rivalry war of the eighth and ninth centuries AD that contributed to the collapse of Classic civilization. Unresolved issues such as the motivations for war, its ritual vs. territorial aims, and sociopolitical effects are discussed at length.     

A contested legacy: the Kennedy Committee revisited

The Kennedy Committee Report on Ireland's reformatory and industrial schools, published in 1970, is an important, though contested, milestone in the history of Ireland's childcare policy. The Committee found its genesis in Church/state conflict and conducted much of its work in the teeth of state and religious opposition. Its published report was watered down on the understanding that the state would act to curb the worst excesses of the system without the need for some of the more damaging discoveries reaching the public realm. Notwithstanding this the published report became the focus of political manoeuvring that stifled its potential effectiveness. Its legacy, therefore, is mixed, marking the beginning of the slow painful modernisation of the Irish childcare system whilst being an opportunity lost in terms of its potential to ameliorate the suffering of children detained in the system for a further three decades.