Sir George Clarke's Career at the Committee of Imperial Defence, 1904–1907

1975 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 555-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gooch

Not much is generally known about the career of Sir George Sydenham Clarke as first secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence other than his arrival at Whitehall in 1904 and his departure under something of a cloud three years later. Yet Clarke's career is in many respects worthy of study. He can lay strong claim to being the first defence ‘bureaucrat’, and as such his career served to establish a pattern into which his successors had to fit themselves. His activities during his three years of office do much to illuminate the methods by which strategic decisions were reached and demonstrate the obstructions that beset the professional civil servant in such a milieu. The influence of the committee which he served has been the subject of considerable analysis and comment; Clarke's personal disposition helps to explain die remark of one scholar that, for a body occupying its influential position, the CID achieved relatively little.1 Finally, the manner of Clarke's going illustrates the political strength of the navalist lobby and of Sir John Fisher at a crucial time in the making of defence policy.

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-210
Author(s):  
Ziad Hafez

This article focuses on the political narrative in Lebanon before and after the Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006. It revolves around the subject of national unity as a sine qua non condition for success for the Lebanese resistance led by Hezbollah. A major consequence of the narrative on national unity is the need to build a modern state and establish a cohesive defence policy. The paper also examines the impact of the war on Lebanon's economy and on its relations with the rest of the world (the USA, France, Syria, Arab countries, and Iran).


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 82-112
Author(s):  
Lyudmila Lutsevich

<p><em>My Confession</em> (1829) of P.&nbsp;A.&nbsp;Vyazemsky, one of the most important historical, literary and autobiographical documents of the 19th century, has never been the subject of independent study. Its focus of attention is the period of the Prince&rsquo;s civil service in Warsaw, which predetermined not only the formation of his ideas of liberalism and constitutionalism, but also the collapse of his career as a civil servant in 1821. The article makes an attempt to identify the main formal-meaningful constants of<em> My Confession</em>. As a result of the study, the immediate motif and reasons for the prince's resort to confession, his addressee, the main goal and discursive practices are identified. The author of the article states that <em>My Confession</em> does not contain religious connotations; its main content is the consistent presentation of events, facts, thoughts, feelings (in the form in which they appear in the mind of the Prince almost a decade later), as well as the exposure of the libels of ill-wishers and the restoration of a good name. It is noted that the general autobiographical confessional strategy of Vyazemsky determines both the author&rsquo;s repentance of the political &ldquo;errors&rdquo; of liberal youth and the exposition / propaganda of liberal views due to active auto-citation; at the same time, the fundamental attitude towards veracity is combined with the so-called &ldquo;Political correctness&rdquo; (allowing conscious silence about certain events, facts, persons in order to avoid knowingly lying).</p>


Author(s):  
Martin Loughlin

This chapter examines Carl Schmitt’s contribution to political jurisprudence. It approaches the issue through the concept of politonomy, a concept first alluded to by Schmitt but which he never developed. Politonomy seeks a scientific understanding of the basic laws and practices of the political. The chapter situates Schmitt within the German tradition of state theory and shows that his overall objective was to build a theory of the constitution of political authority from the most basic elements of the subject. It suggests that Schmitt occupies an ambivalent position in political jurisprudence and that this is because of his distrust of the scientific significance of general concepts. To the extent that he acknowledged the existence of a ‘law of the political’, this is found in Schmitt’s embrace of institutionalism in the 1930s and later in his account of nomos as the basic law of appropriation, division, and production.


Author(s):  
Ross McKibbin

This book is an examination of Britain as a democratic society; what it means to describe it as such; and how we can attempt such an examination. The book does this via a number of ‘case-studies’ which approach the subject in different ways: J.M. Keynes and his analysis of British social structures; the political career of Harold Nicolson and his understanding of democratic politics; the novels of A.J. Cronin, especially The Citadel, and what they tell us about the definition of democracy in the interwar years. The book also investigates the evolution of the British party political system until the present day and attempts to suggest why it has become so apparently unstable. There are also two chapters on sport as representative of the British social system as a whole as well as the ways in which the British influenced the sporting systems of other countries. The book has a marked comparative theme, including one chapter which compares British and Australian political cultures and which shows British democracy in a somewhat different light from the one usually shone on it. The concluding chapter brings together the overall argument.


1969 ◽  
Vol 89 ◽  
pp. 87-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. C. McCail

The Cycle of sixth-century epigrams edited by Agathias Scholasticus is the subject of a recent article by Mr and Mrs A. Cameron (JHS lxxxvi [1966] 6 ff.), who argue cogently that it was published in the early years of Justin II, and not the later years of Justinian, as has hitherto been supposed. Ca. also suggest identifications for many of the poets and imperial officials who figure in the Cycle. They do not, however, exhaust all the identifications that can be made, and some of those suggested by them require amplification or correction. Furthermore, Ca.'s view of the dating of the Cycle leads them, it seems to me, to underestimate its Justinianic character. The following observations are offered without prejudice to the merit of Ca.'s article as a whole.Among the Cyclic poets, only Julian the ex-Prefect of the East stands in close relationship to the political life of the age. His involvement in the Nika insurrection of 532 is attested by historical sources and, as Ca. claim (13), by two epigrams of the Anthology. The latter, however, contain difficulties passed over by Ca. In the first place, of the two epigrams on the cenotaph of Hypatius, only AP vii 591 is certainly from Julian's pen; vii 592 is unattributed in the Palatine MS., a fact which Ca. omit to mention. (It is absent from the Planudean MS.) The state of affairs in P is no accident, vii 591, though eulogising the dead man and alluding openly to the casting of his corpse into the sea, is moderate in tone, and would have caused no more offence to Justinian than Procopius's published account of the affair.


1913 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. McIlwain

At the meeting of the Political Science Association last year, in the general discussion, on the subject of the recall, I was surprised and I must admit, a little shocked to hear our recall of judges compared to the English removal of judges on address of the houses of parliament.If we must compare unlike things, rather than place the recall beside the theory or the practice of the joint address, I should even prefer to compare it to a bill of attainder.In history, theory and practice the recall as we have it and the English removal by joint address have hardly anything in common, save the same general object.Though I may not (as I do not) believe in the recall of judges, this paper concerns itself not at all with that opinion, but only with the history and nature of the tenure of English judges, particularly as affected by the possibility of removal on address. I believe a study of that history will show that any attempt to force the address into a close resemblance to the recall, whether for the purpose of furthering or of discrediting the latter, is utterly misleading.In the history of the tenure of English judges the act of 12 and 13 William III, subsequently known as the Act of Settlement, is the greatest landmark. The history of the tenure naturally divides into two parts at the year 1711. In dealing with both parts, for the sake of brevity, I shall confine myself strictly to the judges who compose what since 1873 has been known as the supreme court of judicature.


Utilitas ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin J. Moore

Though John Stuart Mill's long employment by the East India Company (1823–58) did not limit him to drafting despatches on relations with the princely states, that activity must form the centrepiece of any satisfactory study of his Indian career. As yet the activity has scarcely been glimpsed. It produced, on average, about a draft a week, which he listed in his own hand. He subsequently struck out items that he sought to disown in consequence of substantial revisions made by the Company's directors or the Board of Control. He also listed items that achieved publication (mostly only in part) as parliamentary papers and they amount to about ten per cent of his drafts. The two lists, published in the most recent volume of his Collected Works, reveal, at the least, the ‘political’ despatches from which he did not seek to dissociate himself. The despatches were not entirely his work and authorship in the conventional sense may not be assumed. They were the product of an elaborate process, in which many hands were engaged. At worst, they were his work in much the same way that an Act of Parliament is the work of the Crown Solicitor who drafts the bill. At best they were his as are the drafts of a civil servant who believes in policy statements that he prepares for his political masters. The greatest English philosopher and social scientist of the nineteenth century was, in his daily occupation, an employee. His Company was charged with initiating policies for the Indian states and they were subject to the control of a minister of the Crown.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-106
Author(s):  
Khaled Elgindy

This essay looks at the hearing held by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in April 1922 on the subject of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, as well as the broader congressional debate over the Balfour Declaration at that crucial time. The landmark hearing, which took place against the backdrop of growing unrest in Palestine and just prior to the League of Nations' formal approval of Britain's Mandate over Palestine, offers a glimpse into the cultural and political mindset underpinning U.S. support for the Zionist project at the time as well as the ways in which the political discourse in the United States has, or has not, changed since then. Despite the overwhelming support for the Zionist project in Congress, which unanimously endorsed Balfour in September 1922, the hearing examined all aspects of the issue and included a remarkably diverse array of viewpoints, including both anti-Zionist Jewish and Palestinian Arab voices.


1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Pergami

The Italian Reform Act (Law 180) has been considered one of the most revolutionary Mental Health Acts in Western countries and has been the subject of considerable attention since its promulgation in May 1978. Interest in the Italian model of community psychiatry has been reflected in the number of articles, special supplements and letters, published in noteworthy European and American journals. However, for a better understanding of the meaning of Law 180 (now part of Law 833 concerning general health measures) the political and sociocultural climate surrounding the enactment of the Italian Mental Health Act should be considered.


PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (5) ◽  
pp. 1800-1805
Author(s):  
Diamela Eltit

Violence as a public and private practice is a constant. Furthermore, it belongs in the political axis since political institutions measure, plan, and distribute it, inscribing and administering it according to their productive and programmatic interests.Violence is adaptable and acquires different forms and formats, which range from the most concrete corporeal reality to the infliction of punishment on the symbolic and emotional registers of the subject. It is mobile but enduring, adjusting to the emergence of new social subjects. The enduring struggle against violence resituates and changes it, bringing about the penalization of practices considered abusive, such as long workdays, certain school regulations, or the beating of women.


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