Civilian Control and the Constitution

1956 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 676-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel P. Huntington
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Basic Principle ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
American Constitution ◽  
The Military

“Civilian control of the military is a basic principle of the American Constitution”; so runs the commonplace. It is the thesis of this article that the cliché could hardly be more inaccurate, for actually the American Constitution in the twentieth century obstructs the achievement of civilian control. It is well known that civil supremacy was a major concern of the Framers. They provided for it in the only form in which they knew it. But civilian control in the eighteenth century is very different from civilian control in the twentieth century: the Constitution which was expertly designed to provide for it then, for this very reason, frustrates it now. In presenting this thesis, it is necessary: (1) to show how the meaning of civilian control has changed over the intervening years; (2) to describe the Framers' concept and show how it was embodied in the Constitution; and (3) to demonstrate how the provisions which they thought would guarantee it impair its effectiveness today.

Organizing Warfare and Diplomacy in Western India, 1778–83

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Manu Sehgal
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The Political ◽  
Western India ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Critical Component ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
The Military

This chapter examines the origins of a distinctive system of organizing military conquest in the final quarter of the eighteenth century. It seeks to de-centre the study of politics and military contestation by looking at the war against the Marathas (1778–82) from the vantage point of the region most directly affected by it—the western peninsular territory of the Bombay presidency. The advantage in shifting the focus away from the politically dominant Bengal presidency allows identification of a critical component in the political economy of conquest—the transfer of political authority from a civilian council to the commander of a military force. This shift in political power was essential to the success of the EIC regime of conquest even as it became a perennial source of conflict within the governing structures of the Company state. The debate and dissension that accompanied the deployment of military force both enabled the success of the machine of war and characterized the creation of a distinctive early colonial ideology of rule that subverted civilian control of the military.

The Many Lives of Franz von der Trenck

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 34-57
Author(s):  
Rita Krueger
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Life Narrative ◽  
Fault Lines ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Military ◽  
Rape In War

Baron Franz von der Trenck might not now be a household name, but in the eighteenth century, he was notorious for the blood-curdling excesses of the soldiers under his command and an approach to war on behalf of Queen Empress Maria Theresa that appeared to defy the tenets of the age. As one biography described, “The thirty-eight year lifespan of the pandur general Franz Baron von der Trenck was a symphony of violence and death.” On the other side of the Prussian-Austrian conflict, Friedrich von der Trenck was iconic in different ways, with a career that careened from the military under Frederick II, to prison, and lastly to the guillotine in Paris. In service to their monarchs and in pursuit of personal advancement, security, and adventure, the Trenck cousins collided with each other at various points, demonstrating what it meant for nobles to be both architects and victims of fame, reputation, and slander. After Franz's death in prison, Friedrich, for his own reasons, had a hand in shaping the reputation of his cousin as a larger-than-life military man with an affinity for particular types of violence. However, Friedrich was not the only curator of Franz's legacy and others took part during and after Franz's life in the adulteration and appropriation of his life narrative. As a military man, Franz von der Trenck weaponized his own reputation, but its plasticity continued far after his death because he served as a stand-in for a variety of cultural inquiries, anxieties, and hopes beyond military practices and the laws of war. The subtexts of those narratives reveal particular cultural fault lines salient not just in the eighteenth century but also long after, including the constructed, imaginary boundary between the civilized and uncivilized in time and geography. Legends about Trenck drew on tropes about an uncivilized past through the ostensible space between a cultured European center and a wild Slavic or Turkic periphery. The boundary of civilization was not the only theme threaded through stories about Trenck. The nature of his violence was condemned by many and featured in his downfall, but there was also a subterranean admiration for a man who appeared to glorify war as an essential, formative masculine adventure and who romanticized the transgression of rape in war. Beginning with Friedrich and resonating still in twentieth-century nationalist iterations of Trenck is the idolization of a figure who seemed to transcend the petty morality or narrow-mindedness of those who judged him.

The Gallic Singularity and the Royal Mistress

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
Christine Adams
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Realm

The relationship of the French king and royal mistress, complementary but unequal, embodied the Gallic singularity; the royal mistress exercised a civilizing manner and the soft power of women on the king’s behalf. However, both her contemporaries and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians were uncomfortable with the mistress’s political power. Furthermore, paradoxical attitudes about French womanhood have led to analyses of her role that are often contradictory. Royal mistresses have simultaneously been celebrated for their civilizing effect in the realm of culture, chided for their frivolous expenditures on clothing and jewelry, and excoriated for their dangerous meddling in politics. Their increasing visibility in the political realm by the eighteenth century led many to blame Louis XV’s mistresses—along with Queen Marie-Antoinette, who exercised a similar influence over her husband, Louis XVI—for the degradation and eventual fall of the monarchy. This article reexamines the historiography of the royal mistress.

Historical Fragments’ Mobile Echo

Transfers ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Bell ◽  
Kathy Davis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
The Third ◽  
Opium War ◽  
The Subject

Translocation – Transformation is an ambitious contribution to the subject of mobility. Materially, it interlinks seemingly disparate objects into a surprisingly unified exhibition on mobile histories and heritages: twelve bronze zodiac heads, silk and bamboo creatures, worn life vests, pressed Pu-erh tea, thousands of broken antique teapot spouts, and an ancestral wooden temple from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) used by a tea-trading family. Historically and politically, the exhibition engages Chinese stories from the third century BCE, empires in eighteenth-century Austria and China, the Second Opium War in the nineteenth century, the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the mid-twentieth century, and today’s global refugee crisis.

Part I: Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tilman Rodenhäuser
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Basic Principle ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Connected Group ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Contemporary Practice

Analysing the development of the concept of non-state parties to an armed conflict from the writings of philosophers in the eighteenth century through international humanitarian law (IHL) treaty law to contemporary practice, three threads can be identified. First, as pointed out by Rousseau almost two and a half centuries ago, one basic principle underlying the laws of war is that war is not a relation between men but between entities. Accordingly, the lawful objective of parties cannot be to harm opponents as individuals but only to overcome the entity for which the individual fights. This necessitates that any party to an armed conflict is a collective, organized entity and not a loosely connected group of individuals. Second, de Vattel already stressed that civil war is fought between two parties who ‘acknowledge no common judge’ and have no ‘common superior’ on earth....

Orphans of the Empire: Lhasa’s Chinese Community from the Qing Era to the Early Twentieth Century

Modern China ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 009770042096992
Author(s):  
Huasha Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Influence ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Chinese Population ◽  
Chinese Community ◽  
Academic Assessment ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

This article analyzes the transformation of Lhasa’s Chinese community from the embodiment of an expansionist power in the early eighteenth century to the orphan of a fallen regime after the Qing Empire’s demise in 1911. Throughout the imperial era, this remote Chinese enclave represented Qing authority in Tibet and remained under the metropole’s strong political and social influence. Its members intermarried with the locals and adopted many Tibetan cultural traits. During the years surrounding the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, this community played a significant role in a series of interconnected political and ethnic confrontations that gave birth to the two antagonistic national bodies of Tibet and China. The community’s history and experiences challenge not only the academic assessment that Tibet’s Chinese population had fully assimilated into Tibetan society by the twentieth century but also the widespread image of pre-1951 Lhasa as a harmonious town of peaceful ethnic coexistence.

Erosion of Civilian Control in Democracies: A Comprehensive Framework for Comparative Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402198975
Author(s):  
Polina Beliakova
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Intrastate Conflict ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Large N ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Comprehensive Framework ◽  
The Military ◽  
New Framework

Civilian control of the military is a fundamental attribute of democracy. While democracies are less coup-prone, studies treating civilian control as a dependent variable mostly focus on coups. In this paper, I argue that the factors predicting coups in autocracies, weaken civilian control of the military in democracies in different ways. To capture this difference, I advance a new comprehensive framework that includes the erosion of civilian control by competition, insubordination, and deference. I test the argument under conditions of an intrastate conflict—a conducive environment for the erosion of civilian control. A large-N analysis confirms that while intrastate conflict does not lead to coups in democracies, it increases the military’s involvement in government, pointing to alternative forms of erosion taking place. Further case study—Russia’s First Chechen War—demonstrates the causal logic behind the new framework, contributing to the nuanced comparative analysis of civil-military relations across regimes.

What Is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
David Lindenfeld ◽  
James Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century

The Land, People, and Problems of America in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Literature

1956 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Tudisco
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Spanish Literature ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
The Social ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
National Life

Twentieth-Century historians accept the fact that history can no longer be viewed merely as past politics; it must now embrace all aspects of national life and thought—total history. In the study of a colonial empire, the social scientist must seek his sources not only in the colony but also in the mother country. The enumeration and analysis of American themes in the literature of imagination of eighteenth-century Spain can open new panoramas to the student of history since these themes reflect the ideas of the peninsular Spaniard and might help explain the reactions which they caused in the colonies.

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