scholarly journals Theorizing a More-than-Human Diplomacy: Assembling the British Foreign Office, 1839-1874

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Dittmer

This article emphasizes the more-than-human nature of foreign policy formation and diplomatic practice, as found in an examination of nineteenth-century Parliament Select Committee testimony regarding the intersection of everyday bureaucratic practice and the material context of the British Foreign Office. These records indicate both how the changing world of diplomacy at this time (including new states and communication technologies) materially impacted the Foreign Office, as well as the affective atmosphere experienced by its employees, through an excess of paper. Debates over how the new Foreign Office ought to be built reveal concerns about the circulation of paper, bodies, light and air in a drive for efficiency. These historical materialities speak to our understanding of contemporary changes occurring within the world of diplomacy, including the rise of digital technologies and the new skills needed among diplomats, as well as inform our understanding of the exercise of power within assemblages.

Author(s):  
Asle Toje

We do not want to place anyone into the shadow, we also claim our place in the sun.” In a foreign policy debate in the German parliament on December 6. 1897 the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Bernhard von Bülow, articulated the foreign policy aspirations of the ascendant Wilhelmine Germany. This proved easier said than done. In 1907, Eyre Crowe of the British Foreign Office penned his famous memorandum where he accounted for “the present state of British relations with France and Germany.” He concluded that Britain should meet imperial Germany with “unvarying courtesy and consideration” while maintaining “the most unbending determination to uphold British rights and interests in every part of the globe.”...


2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-563
Author(s):  
Josip Glaurdić

Could the Western foreign policy makers have done anything to prevent the violence accompanying the breakup of Yugoslavia? The answer to that question largely depends on their level of awareness of what was happening in the South Slavic federation in the run-up to war. This article analyzes a string of newly declassified documents of the British Foreign Office related to the February 1991 visit of a high-level British political delegation to Yugoslavia, together with interviews with some of the meetings’ protagonists. These declassified documents and interviews offer a unique snapshot in the development of the Yugoslav crisis and Britain’s policy in the region. They give us a clear picture of the goals and strategies of the principal Yugoslav players and show us what the West knew about the true nature of the Yugoslav crisis and when. The article’s conclusions are clear. Yugoslavia’s breakup and impending violence did not require great foresight. Their cause was known well in advance because it was preannounced—it was the plan of the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milošević to impose a centralized Yugoslavia upon the other republics or, if that failed, to use force to create a Greater Serbia on Yugoslavia’s ruins. Crucially, British policy at the time did nothing to dissuade Milošević from his plan and likely contributed to his confidence in using violence to pursue the creation of a new and enlarged Serbian state.


1968 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rose Louise Greaves

The Anglo-Russian Convention, signed at St. Petersburg on 31 August 1907, contained provisions relating to Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet. The text of the agreement would seem to suggest that the matters adjusted were purely local in character—an arrangement arrived at between two countries settling problems in far-away frontier regions. But the Anglo-Russian Convention was of much greater significance. It represented a change not only in Anglo-Russian relations, but in Britain's fundamental European policy. It also meant that the role of the Government of India, which had often been a powerful factor in the determination of foreign policy in the nineteenth century, became less significant. It seems highly probable, too, that in the years when Sir Edward Grey was Foreign Secretary (December 1905 to December 1916—holding office for a longer consecutive period than any other Foreign Secretary in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, the next being Castlereagh, 1812–22) the permanent staff of the Foreign Office exercised more influence and had a more decisive voice in the conduct of the country's foreign policy than they ever had before of have had since.


1977 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 308-330
Author(s):  
Alan Brier ◽  
Lynton Robins

The work presented in this paper arises from a study of foreign policy formation in the British Labour Party and its behaviour towards the issue of British membership of the European Economic Community.1


Author(s):  
Nile Green

Global Islam: A Very Short Introduction looks at the methods used by individuals, organizations, and states to spread multiple versions of Islam around the world. Since the late nineteenth century, publications, missions, congresses, and pilgrimages have contributed to the communication and evolution of Islam. At the start of the twentieth century, the infrastructure of European empire allowed for the widespread communication of Islamic beliefs. During a period of secularism in the mid-twentieth century, global Islam became more accessible and, in some cases, more political. How have today’s broadcasting and smartphone technologies changed the face of global Islam? Will communication technologies reconcile the contradictions between variations of the faith, or will they create new ones?


Author(s):  
Shefali Virkar

The recent, rapid global proliferation of the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has sparked an explosive increase in an already steadily-growing stream of scholarly and practitioner literature on the applicative potential of e-government initiatives for development. Attracted by the potential intrinsic to these innovative digital technologies, platforms, and applications, political actors across the world have adopted computer-based network-systems for strategic use in government; as a means of reforming inefficiencies in public administration, and in public service provision. This research chapter, through the delineation of an electronic property tax collection system, deployed in Bangalore, India, analyses and unravels the strategic actor interactions shaping similar e-government initiatives, globally; predominantly, through a detailed scholarly examination of prevailing actor behaviours, motivations, and interactions. The research presented herein considers, thus, not only the interplay of local contingencies and external influences acting upon the project, but also the disjunctions apparent within these relationships which inhibit the effective exploitation of ICTs in the given context.


1940 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quincy Wright

President Wilson asserted in 1917 that “neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its people.” In March, 1920, at its second session, the League of Nations Council affirmed that “the conception of neutrality of the members of the League is incompatible with the principle that all members will be obliged to cooperate in enforcing respect for their engagements.” In 1929 the British Foreign Office officially declared that “as between members of the League there can be no neutral rights because there can be no neutrals.” And in 1932 Secretary of State Stimson declared in reference to the Pact of Paris that “hereafter when two nations engage in armed conflict either one or both of them must be wrongdoers—violators of the general treaty. We no longer draw a circle about them and treat them with the punctilios of a duelist’s code. Instead we denounce them as law-breakers.”


1978 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reinhard R. Doerries

Since the early 1960s we have witnessed in West German historical writing noteworthy changes in the interpretation of the causes of the First World War and, therefore, of the meaning of that war for Germany. One is particularly struck by the refreshing debate which ensued among German scholars on Germany's war aims specifically and on Imperial Germany's foreign policy prior to the World War in general. The so-called captured German documents of the Foreign Office and other branches of the government were returned to Germany, and a younger generation of historians eagerly examined the newly available material. Remarkable, if at times controversial, studies were the result of the scholarly reexamination of the German imperial era. Yet, in all the commotion and controversy, there was one area of German foreign policy which conspicuously remained ignored or treated with astonishing marginality


2021 ◽  
Vol 06 (04(01)) ◽  
pp. 39-46
Author(s):  
Tetiana Halimon Tetiana Halimon

The priority vector of development of many countries of the world is digital transformation and creation of a hypercompetitive digital economy. The key trend of modern global economic development in all countries of the world is the rapid spread of information and communication, digital technologies and the development of the digital economy, which causes changes in the business environment, transaction methods and the level of connections between individual entities. The digital economy is an innovative dynamic economy based on the active introduction of innovations and information and communication technologies in all types of economic activities and spheres of society, which increases the efficiency and competitiveness of individual companies, the national economy and living standards. In the third wave of globalization, the digital economy plays an important role in the development of countries, the most important factor of which is information and knowledge, as well as ways to access them. Increasingly, the digital economy is intertwined with the traditional economy, making clear demarcations increasingly difficult. The main products of the digital economy are the same goods and services of the traditional economy provided by computer equipment and digital systems such as the global Internet. However, the rapid development of digitalization is becoming a source not only of new opportunities, but also of serious threats and problems for all segments of the population that need to be taken into account. That is, the digitalization of the economy and all spheres of public life, on the one hand, becomes a challenge and threat to established business models and successful strategies of behavior of enterprises in a market economy, on the other - opens new opportunities for improvement and competitive advantage. Digitalization has significant benefits for economic development. Benefits at the level of the whole society include: economic and social effect of digital technologies for business and society; improving the quality of life; increasing the productivity of all social labor; the emergence of new models and forms of business that can increase profitability and competitiveness; increasing the transparency of economic transactions and ensuring the possibility of their monitoring. Key words: digital economy, innovative activity, innovative development, competitiveness, scientific and technological progress, information and communication technologies, information society.


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