Interwar Crises and Europe’s Unfinished Empires

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew G. Stanard
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
World War ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

The period 1914–45 represents the height of European overseas empire even as seeds were sown hastening imperialism’s demise. Colonies were ‘unfinished empires’ in the process of becoming, although frequent resorts to violence in the colonies indicated the limits of Europe’s grasp. Although many emerged from the First World War dubious about European so-called civilization, the civilizing mission survived and flourished, suggesting Europe’s enduring self-confidence. Development became a dominant discourse while the Great Depression quickened colonial exploitation. Emigration and settlement on expropriated lands slowed relative to Europe’s rapid expansion in the 1800s, yet formal colonialism proceeded apace, with few exceptions. Development and exploitation led to forced or voluntary migration of colonial subjects on a large scale. Cold War ideological competition was ‘exported’ to much of the colonial world. Non-Europeans used networks to claim their rights and attack European colonial rule, and they and the colonies influenced Europe, which developed various ‘colonial cultures’.

scholarly journals The Austro-Hungarian occupation regime in Serbia and its break-down in 1918

Balcanica ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 107-133
Author(s):  
Dimitrije Djordjevic
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Economic Exploitation ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World

This paper discusses the occupation of Serbia during the First World War by Austro-Hungarian forces. The first partial occupation was short-lived as the Serbian army repelled the aggressors after the Battle of Kolubara in late 1914, but the second one lasted from fall 1915 until the end of the Great War. The Austro-Hungarian occupation zone in Serbia covered the largest share of Serbia?s territory and it was organised in the shape of the Military Governorate on the pattern of Austro-Hungarian occupation of part of Poland. The invaders did not reach a clear decision as to what to do with Serbian territory in post-war period and that gave rise to considerable frictions between Austro-Hungarian and German interests in the Balkans, then between Austrian and Hungarian interests and, finally, between military and civilian authorities within Military Governorate. Throughout the occupation Serbia was exposed to ruthless economic exploitation and her population suffered much both from devastation and from large-scale repression (including deportations, internments and denationalisation) on the part of the occupation regime.

'Legends have a tenacious life': Ernst Thälmann, the First World War and memory in the GDR

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (17) ◽  
pp. 5-25
Author(s):  
Norman Laporte
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Years ◽  
World War ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Party Line ◽  
First World ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Socialist Unity

Despite Ernst Thälmann's prominence in the German Democratic Republic's official antifascist narrative, there was no 'scholarly' biography of him until 1979. The reasons for this shed light on the political culture of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) and its history-writing arm, the Institute of Marxism-Leninism – especially in the regime's early years under Walter Ulbricht. The refusal to falsify Thälmann's relatively conventional war record by the SED's appointed biographer, party veteran Rudolf Lindau, was a refusal to expunge his own party history from official memory. As a founding member of the International Communists of Germany (IKD), which was close to Leninism during and immediately after the war, Lindau did not want to contribute to myth-making which failed to account for the actual wartime antimilitarism of his own proto-communist grouping. The feud was part of wider debates in the SED about the nature of the November Revolution and the origins of the German Communist Party (1918), which ultimately identified the Spartacist tradition as the party's official heritage. Of course, Lindau could not change the party line; but he was given very considerable latitude to disseminate his own views within party circles. He only came into conflict with the party leadership after being accused of building a 'platform' (i.e. taking collective action) in the early 1960s and even then met no serious sanction. In short, the SED was not the monolith of cold-war cliché. Instead, it tried to maximise the latitude given to old Communists from a diversity of party traditions.

Neutrality/Nonalignment and the United States

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Rakove
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
American Foreign Relations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
First World

For almost a century and a half, successive American governments adopted a general policy of neutrality on the world stage, eschewing involvement in European conflicts and, after the Quasi War with France, alliances with European powers. Neutrality, enshrined as a core principle of American foreign relations by the outgoing President George Washington in 1796, remained such for more than a century. Finally, in the 20th century, the United States emerged as a world power and a belligerent in the two world wars and the Cold War. This article explores the modern conflict between traditional American attitudes toward neutrality and the global agenda embraced by successive U.S. governments, beginning with entry in the First World War. With the United States immersed in these titanic struggles, the traditional U.S. support for neutrality eroded considerably. During the First World War, the United States showed some sympathy for the predicaments of the remaining neutral powers. In the Second World War it applied considerable pressure to those states still trading with Germany. During the Cold War, the United States was sometimes impatient with the choices of states to remain uncommitted in the global struggle, while at times it showed understanding for neutrality and pursued constructive relations with neutral states. The wide varieties of neutrality in each of these conflicts complicated the choices of U.S. policy makers. Americans remained torn between memory of their own long history of neutrality and a capacity to understand its potential value, on one hand, and a predilection to approach conflicts as moral struggles, on the other.

Donors and the Global Sportive “Civilizing Mission”: Asian Athletics, American Philanthropy, and YMCA Media (1910s–1920s)

Itinerario ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Stefan Hübner
Keyword(s):  
Social Deficits ◽  
World War ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Sports Events ◽  
Success Stories ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

This article focuses on changes in American philanthropy during the Progressive Era and the Young Men’s Christian Association’s (YMCA) domestic promotion of its global sports program during the 1910s and 1920s. Since the American YMCA’s foreign department was entirely dependent on donations, philanthropists’ demands concerning efficient and scientific methods to fight the causes of social dysfunction needed to be addressed. YMCA and Christian progressive media thus presented clear-cut success stories about spreading Western sports. Oft-repeated topoi included the superiority vis-à-vis local practices of Western scientific and rational approaches to public health and leisure, and a knowledge transfer to local elites, meaning that indigenization would prevent a permanent “donation drain.” During the First World War, Asian sports events were communicated as a peaceful contrast to the European battlefields. Following the war, YMCA writers turned Asian athletes into a vanguard among non-Western athletes, now promoting the YMCA’s experience gained in this region as a guarantee to donors that an expensive expansion of its sportive “civilizing mission” would lead to similar achievements on a global level. By the late 1920s, the YMCA had completely “de-Orientalized” its earlier coverage of Asian social deficits to emphasize its own efficiency.

The British Cabinet and the Ministry of Defense

1949 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-82
Author(s):  
Henry Donaldson Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Air Force ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
World War ◽  
Governmental Organization ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Cohesive Group ◽  
Important Trend ◽  
Armed Services ◽  
First World

The announcement in October, 1946, that in future a single Minister of Defense will sit in the British cabinet, and that the ministers of the three armed services will no longer be of cabinet rank, marks the culmination of a long and important trend in Britain's governmental organization. It is also of interest as the present British answer to advocates of a merger of the Navy, Army, and Air Force. To see the full meaning of this step, it is necessary to refer to two closely related problems of long standing: the question of the size of the cabinet and that of what is broadly known as imperial defense.From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the British cabinet, originally ten or eleven in number, increased to about fourteen or fifteen in the 1870's and 1880's. By the end of the century, however, increase of governmental services and multiplication of departments raised the normal size of cabinets to nineteen or twenty, and after the first World War to twenty or even twenty-two. Since the cabinet as such functions as a committee, it has been frequently pointed out that the present size is too large for prompt and decisive deliberation; and the experience of two great wars has shown without question that large-scale planning and the coördination of the innumerable interlocking aspects of a national war effort require a much smaller and more cohesive group. The existence around the premier of an inner circle of three or four ministers, among whom many of the most important decisions are made, is as old as cabinet government, but cannot be satisfactory for modern needs.

scholarly journals Scientists of the State, Science of the State, and the State: Austrian and German Public Lawyers in the Short 20th Century Part 1: The Age of Catastrophe, 1914-1945

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-131
Author(s):  
Roman Puff
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
World War ◽  
Regime Changes ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Biographical Sketches ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First World

ABSTRACT Between the First World War and the end of the Cold War, Germany and Austria, whose legal cultures were highly interdependent in terms of persons, conceptions, and institutions, saw eleven or twelve fundamentally different regimes, depending on the interpretation of Austria’s status from 1938-45. Lawyers often ensured the legal functioning of these regimes and legitimized their existence. This again affected their notions of law, legality, and justice, and of the principles underlying these concepts, as well as their personal preferences and societal roles. Based on the analysis of about two hundred biographical sketches of Austrian and German lawyers, mostly from the field of public (international) law, of about 2,500 contributions to the leading “(Österreichische) Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht” from 1914 to 1945, and of the respective legal history-literature, this contribution analyzes the relation of Austrian and German lawyers to their respective states and regimes, and outlines the typical patterns of how they were affected by regime changes and how they reacted to them. Proceeding from this analysis, in the second part of this study, the relation between lawyers and the state until the end of the cold war will be illustrated and it will be shown that some typical patterns in the lawyers’ reaction to regime changes can be identified. Also the impact the state-lawyers-relation had on the development of Austria and Germany to stable, functioning democracies will be outlined.

scholarly journals De n.v. Vlaamsche Deposito- en Leenbank. Het Leenbank. Het financiële luik van de zuilvorming in dienst van het Vlaams-nationalisme

2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 246-266
Author(s):  
Luc Vandeweyer
Keyword(s):  
Banking System ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Nineteen Thirties ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Savings And Loan ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
First World

Het financiële luik van de zuilvorming in dienst van het Vlaams-nationalisme Vanaf 1930 was er in het arrondissement Aalst een spaar- en leenbank actief die uitdrukkelijk positie koos binnen de Vlaams-nationalistische sfeer. Die ideologische profilering was zo sterk dat de bank in 1937 bereid was de partij, het Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond (VNV), financiële middelen te bezorgen. Deze bank was een uitvloeisel van het organisatienetwerk dat in het arrondissement Aalst was opgericht vanaf het einde van de 19de eeuw en dat zich afzette tegen de katholieke partij. Deze politieke stroming stond bekend als de ‘daensisten’. Onder invloed van de collaboratie met de Duitse bezetter tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog gingen de daensisten grotendeels over naar het Vlaams-nationalisme. Deze kringen vonden het noodzakelijk een eigen Vlaams bankwezen te ontwikkelen. Dat was onder meer nodig om de eigen sociale organisaties en bedrijven financieel te ondersteunen. Omwille van de versnippering en onder invloed van de grote depressie van de jaren dertig kreeg dit Vlaams-nationalistische bankwezen nooit een grote omvang. ________De n.v. Vlaamsche Deposito- en Leenbank. The Financial segment of compartmentalisation in the service of Flemish NationalismFrom 1930 a savings and loan bank operated in the district of Alost, which specifically selected a position within the Flemish Nationalist atmosphere. That ideological profile was so strong that the bank was prepared to provide financial means to the party of the VNV (Vlaams Nationaal Verbond) in 1937. This bank was founded as a consequence of the organisational network that had been set up in the district of Alost from the end of the 19th century, and that set itself apart from the Catholic Party. This political movement was known as the ‘Daensists’. Under the influence of their collaboration with the German Occupiers during the First World War the ‘Daensists’ mostly transferred to the Flemish Nationalists. These groups considered that it was essential to develop their own Flemish Banking system. This was required among other things to provide financial support to their own social organisations and enterprises. Because of the fragmentation and under the influence of the Great Depression of the nineteen-thirties this Flemish Nationalist Banking system never achieved a major expansion.  

Serial Forms

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Pettitt
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Historical Past ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First World

Serial Forms: The Unfinished Project of Modernity, 1815–1848 proposes an entirely new way of reading the transition into the modern. The first book in a three-part series which will take the reader up to the end of the First World War, Serial Forms looks at the rapid expansion of print in London after the Napoleonic Wars. It shows how the historical past and the contemporary moment are emerging into public visibility through serial newsprint, illustrations, performances, shows, and new forms of mediation and it suggests that the growing importance and determining power of the form of seriality is a result of the parallel and connected development of a news culture alongside an emergent popular culture of historicism. Pettitt’s attention to the increasingly powerful cultural work of seriality in this period offers a fresh new way of thinking about print, media, literary and art history, as well as political, historical and social categories. The argument of Serial Forms rests on historical and archival material but the book also offers a philosophical and theoretical account of the impact of seriality. This first volume sets out the theoretical and historical basis for the subsequent two volumes in the series, which move out of London to encompass continental Europe and the imagination of the global. Serial Forms proposes fresh and frame-shifting analyses of familiar texts and authors, such as Scott, Byron and Gaskell, and sets out to change our thinking about new experiences of time and place in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The politics of international co-operation: neutrality and crisis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Hilson
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
First World War ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

This chapter explores the debates over the meanings of co-operation in the ICA and its members during the inter-war period, tracing their evolution from the end of the First World War throughout the 1920s and 1930s, as the ICA struggled to respond to economic and political challenges of the Great Depression and its aftermath. While many members staunchly defended the principle of co-operative neutrality against those who would align the movement with left or right, the crisis also highlighted the need for the co-operative movement to develop its own ideology and programme, especially if co-operation were to realise its idealistic ambitions to defend peace and democracy. The chapter examines how the ICA responded to the challenges of Bolshevism and Nazism, and considers especially the role of representatives of the Nordic countries, not only in defending political neutrality, but also shaping an idealistic vision of co-operation, based on the legacy of the Rochdale Pioneers.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document