A “Hindu Mystic” or a “Harrovian Realist”? U.S., Australian, and Canadian Representations of Jawaharlal Nehru, 1947–1964

2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Ellen Graham ◽  
Alexander E. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Global Profile ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru

This article analyzes how officials from the U.S., Australia, and Canada represented Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s psychology in diplomatic contexts between 1947 and 1964. Nehru was the representative of a newly sovereign state, whose people were often stereotyped as mystical, spiritual, and irrational. In this article, we show how Nehru was constructed as “irrational,” “primitive,” “effeminate,” and racially resentful by Western diplomats. He was, conversely, also seen as a “Harrovian realist” or “transplanted Englishman” with an attendant air of “superiority.” Cold War imperatives gave these ambivalent cultural and psychological projections a special salience, particularly as each confronted the implications of Nehru’s non-alignment and his global profile as a proponent of Third World nationalism. The ambivalent representations of Nehru that we trace within U.S., Australian, and Canadian foreign policy-making also reveal a shared belief in the “Anglosphere”—the purported transnational unity of white, English-speaking nations—was sustained beyond the decline of the British Empire. Nehru’s “Britishness” demonstrates how he could be tethered to the English-speaking world while simultaneously being seen as its irrational, non-white Other. This ambivalent connection helped to re-draw the boundaries of the transnational Anglosphere in the era of decolonization and to define Cold War assumptions about race, rationality, and foreign policy.

scholarly journals No Bargaining Chips, No Spheres of Interest: The Yugoslav Origins of Cold War Non-Alignment

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svetozar Rajak
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
Global Initiative ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru ◽  
Instrumental Role

This article reevaluates the origins of Yugoslavia's instrumental role in the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and elucidates the roots and conceptualization of Tito's strategic reorientation toward nonalignment. Yugoslav foreign policy became truly independent only after Yugoslavia was expelled from the Soviet fold. The article shows that Belgrade began searching for a “third way” earlier than is acknowledged in the relevant historiography. The search began when, faced with the distinct threat of a Soviet invasion in the early 1950s, Yugoslavia became all but formally incorporated into the Western alliance. Based on previously unknown or inadequately researched documents from the Yugoslav archives, the article demonstrates that Josip Broz Tito's trip to India and Burma in December 1954, particularly his first encounter with India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, played a key role in shaping Tito's principles of active peaceful coexistence and noncommitment and in transforming them into a global initiative. The article highlights the well-defined political and philosophical rationale behind the principles that became embedded in the concept of non-engagement and, later, nonalignment.

The Foreign Policy Mechanism of the Union Of South Africa and the Development of its Diplomatic Relations (1910–1948)

2020 ◽  
pp. 74-86
Author(s):  
Alexandra Arkhangelskaya
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
The Political ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
Economic Evolution ◽  
Local Elite ◽  
History Of

The history of the formation of South Africa as a single state is closely intertwined with events of international scale, which have accordingly influenced the definition and development of the main characteristics of the foreign policy of the emerging state. The Anglo-Boer wars and a number of other political and economic events led to the creation of the Union of South Africa under the protectorate of the British Empire in 1910. The political and economic evolution of the Union of South Africa has some specific features arising from specific historical conditions. The colonization of South Africa took place primarily due to the relocation of Dutch and English people who were mainly engaged in business activities (trade, mining, agriculture, etc.). Connected by many economic and financial threads with the elite of the countries from which the settlers left, the local elite began to develop production in the region at an accelerated pace. South Africa’s favorable climate and natural resources have made it a hub for foreign and local capital throughout the African continent. The geostrategic position is of particular importance for foreign policy in South Africa, which in many ways predetermined a great interest and was one of the fundamental factors of international involvement in the development of the region. The role of Jan Smuts, who served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and from 1939 to 1948, was particularly prominent in the implementation of the foreign and domestic policy of the Union of South Africa in the focus period of this study. The main purpose of this article is to study the process of forming the mechanisms of the foreign policy of the Union of South Africa and the development of its diplomatic network in the period from 1910 to 1948.

Before Midnight

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahul Sagar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru

This chapter examines ideas about war, peace, and international relations over the century preceding independence, of which there were many more and in greater depth than widely supposed. It outlines how and why Indians first began to articulate views on the subject, and subsequently analyses these ideas. It proposes that, contrary to the opinion of some scholars, Indians thought carefully about the nature of international relations. Most importantly, it emphasizes the plurality of views on the subject, and explains how and why proponents of pragmatism in foreign relations came to be sidelined in the period immediately preceding independence. Several of the personalities developing notions of what a foreign policy for India should involve as of the early twentieth century, including India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, became important actors in formulating and implementing foreign policy post-independence.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Manu Bhagavan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Nuclear Science ◽  
External Relations ◽  
Political Conversation ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru ◽  
United Nation

The introduction presents India’s role in the Cold War by providing a background of India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Also briefly discussed are a summary of the United Nation and the role India played in political conversation, topics, and events such as human rights, India’s role as a peacemaker, involvement in the development nuclear science, and politics. The introduction then outlines India’s approach to the Cold War and explains the book’s thematic sections. Part I focuses on the interplay of a bifurcated subcontinent with the polarized superpowers. Part II accentuates India’s peacekeeping aspirations. Part III discusses the domestic economic and political developments that were deeply intertwined with external relations, ideologies, and interventionism during the Cold War. Lastly, in light of all three portions, the book assesses India’s multifaceted role in the Cold War.

The origins of Canada’s feminist foreign policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Chapnick
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
International Community ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
The Government ◽  
A Minor

In January 2019, a leading Canadian foreign policy blog, OpenCanada.org, declared that “[u]nder the government of Justin Trudeau, Canada has embraced a feminist foreign policy—gradually at first, and with fervor over the past year.” Although critics have debated the policy’s effectiveness, the embrace, if not also the fervor, was indisputable. By 2019, the Trudeau government’s second foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, was proclaiming Canada’s feminist approach to international relations openly and regularly. The international community had also noticed. This article investigates the origins of the new Canadian foreign policy “brand.” It finds that, contrary to popular thinking, the prime minister himself played at most a minor role in the initiation of what became a full-fledged transformation of Canada’s global image.

scholarly journals Reconsidering the Grenada revolution

1995 ◽  
Vol 69 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 121-126
Author(s):  
Jay R. Mandle
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Government

[First paragraph]Caribbean Revolutions and Revolutionary Theory: An Assessment of Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada. BRIAN MEEKS. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1993. ix + 210 pp. (Paper n.p.)The Grenada Invasion: Politics, Law, and Foreign Policy Decisionmaking. ROBERT J. BECK. Boulder: Westview, 1993. xiv + 263 pp. (Cloth US$ 49.95)The Gorrión Tree: Cuba and the Grenada Revolution. JOHN WALTON COTMAN. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. xvi + 272 pp. (Cloth US$ 48.95)These three books might be thought of as a second generation of studies concerned with the rise, rule, and destruction of the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) in Grenada. The circumstances surrounding the accession to power in 1979 of the government led by Maurice Bishop, the nature of its rule, and its violent demise in 1983 resulted in the appearance during the mid-1980s of an extensive literature on the Grenada Revolution. Some of these works were scholarly, others polemical. But what they all had in common was the desire to examine, either critically or otherwise, something which was unique in the historical experience of the English-speaking Caribbean. Never, before the rule of the New JEWEL Movement (NJM) in Grenada, had a Leninist party come to power; never had a violent coup initiated a new political regime; never had a Caribbean government so explicitly rejected U.S. hegemony in the area; and never, before October 1983, had a government experienced quite so dramatic a crisis as that in Grenada, one which resulted in the killing of the Prime Minister and numerous others of his supporters.

scholarly journals Une ouverture sur le monde: la nouvelle politique étrangère canadienne du gouvernement Chrétien

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kirton
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Important Change ◽  
Pierre Trudeau ◽  
Strategic Process ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
Liberal Government ◽  
The Government ◽  
Substantial Change

When the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien was elected with its strong majority mandate in October 1993, there were few prospects of any substantial change in the long established liberal-internationalist foundations of Canadian foreign policy. As the government moves into the second half of its mandate, however, it is clear that important change has taken place. Both Pearsonian internationalism and Trudeauvian nationalism have been swept away as the central elements in Canadian foreign policy, in favour of an assertive globalism. Although many of these changes were introduced by the Mulroney government and flourished in its later years, under Chrétien the transformation has acquired new strength and speed. Yet because it is largely a reactive rather than strategic process, devoid of the vision which Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau brought into office, there mil continue to be periodic]'allures, difficult adjustments and opportunities missed.

scholarly journals Pierre Trudeau and Canada’s Pacific tilt, 1945–1984

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-150
Author(s):  
Greg Donaghy
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Pacific Region ◽  
New Work ◽  
International History ◽  
Pierre Trudeau ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
Foreign Policies

Canadian international history is currently enjoying an Asian moment. A handful of younger scholars have cast their attention eastward, generating exciting new work on Canadian relations with specific countries and regions across the Pacific region. This article draws on some of their work, as well as the author’s own long-standing research on Canada’s Department of External Affairs, to weigh the Pacific’s changing importance to Canada. The article argues that the domestic and foreign policies of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, elected in 1968, were truly transformational. Trudeau swept away the traditional hesitations and confining North Atlanticism that characterized the diplomacy of his postwar predecessors. Instead, he pursued a full-throttled policy of strategic engagement that repositioned Asia front and centre of contemporary Canadian foreign policy.

scholarly journals SKYHAWK, SKYSHIELD, AND THE SOVIETS: REVISITING CANADA'S COLD WAR

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-475
Author(s):  
ASA MCKERCHER ◽  
TIMOTHY ANDREWS SAYLE
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Full Account ◽  
The Past ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractFor the past two decades, Canadian international historians have largely missed the Cold War, or at least a significant portion of it. Certainly, there has been no shortage of studies of Canadian foreign policy featuring the bipolar struggle, and yet historians have largely confined their attention to Canada's admittedly crucial relationship with the United States, while Canadian–Soviet relations have been ignored. Indeed, in the historiography of Canada's Cold War international relations, the communist powers are largely missing. Hoping to challenge this limited focus, we frame our article around two Canada–US air defence exercises held in 1959 and 1960. While historians have viewed these exercises within the context of Canada's relationship with the United States, we highlight the wider Cold War framework in which Canadian policy was formed. After all, these exercises occurred during the mini-détente of the late 1950s and the collapse of the Paris summit in May 1960. As we demonstrate, the failure to take full account of the Cold War is a shortcoming of much of the writing on Canadian international relations, and so we offer an example of the need to take seriously Canada's foreign policy toward the communist bloc.

Engaging Southeast Asia? Labor's Regional Mythology and Australia's Military Withdrawal from Singapore and Malaysia, 1972–1973

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 32-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Benvenuti ◽  
David Martin Jones
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Its Region ◽  
The United States ◽  
Success Story ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The Cold War

This article draws on previously classified Australian and British archival material to reevaluate Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's foreign policy. The article focuses on the Whitlam government's decision in 1973 to withdraw Australian forces from Malaysia and Singapore—a decision that constitutes a neglected but defining episode in the evolution of Australian postwar diplomacy. An analysis of this decision reveals the limits of Whitlam's attempt to redefine the conduct of Australian foreign policy from 1972 to 1975, a policy he saw as too heavily influenced by the Cold War. Focusing on Whitlam's approach to the Five Power Defence Arrangement, this article contends that far from being an adroit and skillful architect of Australian engagement with Asia, Whitlam irritated Australia's regional allies and complicated Australia's relations with its immediate neighbors. Australia's subsequent adjustment to its neighborhood was not the success story implied in the general histories of Australian diplomacy. Whitlam's policy toward Southeast Asia, far from being a “watershed” in foreign relations, as often assumed, left Australia increasingly isolated from its region and more reliant on its chief Cold War ally, the United States.

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