NOMANSLAND: The British Colonial Office and the League of Nations Mandate for German East Africa, 1916–1920

1993 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Callahan
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
East Africa ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
British Colony ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
German East Africa ◽  
The Many ◽  
New System

One of the many problems facing the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 was the future of the conquered German and Turkish territories in Africa, the Pacific, and the Middle East. Widespread anti-imperialist sentiment in Europe and the United States opposed direct annexation of the possessions, but wartime agreements and the security interests of the Allies prevented returning the conquered areas to their former rulers. In particular, many British leaders wanted to ensure that Germany could never again attempt world domination and were convinced that the restoration to Germany of its overseas possessions would pose a “grave political and military menace” to Britain's vital maritime connections with South Africa and India. After a long, often acrimonious debate, the Conference agreed on a compromise that placed the former German colonies and Ottoman provinces under the supervision of the League of Nations. This solution gave the Allies control of their acquisitions as “mandates” within a framework of international accountability. Great Britain received the most mandates, including Germany's largest colony of German East Africa. For the British leaders who had always advocated transforming German East Africa into a British colony, the new system seemed to make little practical difference. For the colonial officials in London and at the highest levels of colonial administration within the conquered possession, however, the mandates system presented serious problems and was not simply a disguise for annexation.

Counterterrorism Between the Wars

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary S. Barton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Independence Movements ◽  
Second World ◽  
The U.S

This is a book about terrorism, weapons, and diplomacy in the interwar years between the First and Second World Wars. It charts the convergence of the manufacture and trade of arms; diplomacy among the Great Powers and the domestic politics within them; the rise of national liberation and independence movements; and the burgeoning concept and early institutions of international counterterrorism. Key themes include: a transformation in meaning and practice of terrorism; the inability of Great Powers—namely, Great Britain, the United States, France—to harmonize perceptions of interest and the pursuit of common interests; the establishment of the tools and infrastructure of modern intelligence—including the U.S.-U.K. cooperation that would evolve into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance; and the nature of peacetime in the absence of major wars. Particular emphasis is given to British attempts to quell revolutionary nationalist movements in India and elsewhere in its empire, and to the Great Powers’ combined efforts to counter the activities of the Communist International. The facilitating roles of the Paris Peace Conference and League of Nations are explored here, in the context of the Arms Traffic Convention of 1919, the Arms Traffic Conference of 1925, and the 1937 Terrorism Convention.

Response to James Lebovic's review of Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1169-1170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Jervis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bright Side ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Cold War

Among the many issues raised by James Lebovic's perceptive review are two that strike me as crucial: the relationships between intelligence and social science and those between intelligence and policymaking. The first itself has two parts, one being how scholars can study intelligence. Both access and methods are difficult. For years, diplomatic historians referred to intelligence as the “hidden dimension” of their subject. Now it is much more open, and Great Britain, generally more secretive than the United States, has just issued the authorized history of MI5 (see Christopher Andrew, Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, 2009). Since the end of the Cold War, the CIA has released extensive, if incomplete, records, and the bright side (for us) of intelligence failures is that they lead to the release of treasure troves of documents, which can often be supplemented by memoirs and interviews. But even more than in other aspects of foreign policy analysis, we are stuck with evidence that is fragmentary. In this way, we resemble scholars of ancient societies, who forever lament the loss of most of the material they want to study.

Imperial Vision, Colonial Prisons:

2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mira Rai Waits
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Moral Reform ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Built Form ◽  
British Rule ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
New System

Prison construction was among the most important infrastructural changes brought about by British rule in nineteenth-century India. Informed by the extension of liberal political philosophy into the colony, the development of the British colonial prison introduced India to a radically new system of punishment based on long-term incarceration. Unlike prisons in Europe and the United States, where moral reform was cited as the primary objective of incarceration, prisons in colonial India focused on confinement as a way of separating and classifying criminal types in order to stabilize colonial categories of difference. In Imperial Vision, Colonial Prisons: British Jails in Bengal, 1823–73, Mira Rai Waits explores nineteenth-century colonial jail plans from India's Bengal Presidency. Although colonial reformers eventually arrived at a model of prison architecture that resembled Euro-American precedents, the built form and functional arrangements of these places reflected a singularly colonial model of operation.

Sovereignty over Islands in the Pacific

1941 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Orent ◽  
Pauline Reinsch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
British Empire ◽  
The United States ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Central Pacific ◽  
Commercial Aviation ◽  
Central Pacific Ocean ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Pacific

Recently, certain small uninhabited islands in the central Pacific Ocean have assumedsudden importance for the British Empire and the United States. Their value as landing places for commercial aviation and as strategic bases for air and naval forces is being increasingly recognized. Acquired during the past century by Great Britain and the UnitedStates, many of these islands have been the object of conflicting claims to sovereignty by the two nations. To clarify their status, it has been found desirable to review the past practice of these states and to examine those factors which were considered adequateto create sovereign rights over uninhabited islands in the Pacific.

The Historiography of the Activities of Francis Drake along the Pacific Coast of North America in 1579

1969 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-36
Author(s):  
Kenneth L. Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Coast ◽  
The United States ◽  
Northwest Coast ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many ◽  
Line Setting ◽  
The North Pacific ◽  
North Latitude

Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the world (1577-1581) marks the first certain approach of Europeans to what later became known as the Northwest Coast of America. Historical research on this voyage has stemmed from Great Britain and the United States. British scholars concerned with the subject as part of English maritime activity have included Richard Hakluyt, James Anthony Froude, E. G. R. Taylor, James A. Williamson and A. L. Rowse. The latest British scholar to inquire into the motives and events of the great voyage is Kenneth R. Andrews. These writers have generally given little space to Drake's experiences on the Northwest Coast. However, the late California scholar Henry Raup Wagner published a monumental study of the subject in 1926. This work and two volumes published by the Hakluyt Society provide most of the documents relating to the voyage.The pertinent passages describing Drake's activities in the North Pacific are as follows: From Guatulco [a village near Acapulco on the Mexicanwest coast] we departed the day following, viz. April 16.setting our course directly into the sea: whereon we sayled500. leagues in longitude, to get a winde: and between thatand June 3. 1400. leagues in all, till we came into 42. deg.of North latitude. ….The land in that part of America, bearing farther out into the West, then we before imagined, we were neerer on it than wee were aware; and yet the neerer still wee came unto it, the more extremitie of cold did sease upon us. The 5. day of June, wee were forced by contrary windes, to run in with the shoare, which we then first descried; and cast anchor in a bad bay, the best roade we could for the present meete with: where wee were not without some danger, by reason of the many extreme gusts, and flawes that beate upon us; which if they ceased and were still at any time, immediately upon their intermission, there followed most vile, thicke, and stinking fogges; against which the sea prevailed nothing, till the gusts of wind were againe remowed them, which brought with them, such extremitity and violence when they came, that there was no dealing or resisting against them.

Public Policy and World Anthropologies

2006 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Josiah Heyman ◽  
Evelyn Caballero ◽  
Alaka Wali
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Applied Anthropology ◽  
Modest Contribution ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many

Anthropology has long been involved with public policy, both in its formulation and its implementation, though often we have ignored our direct and indirect involvement. The historiography of anthropology and power has focused mainly on three core nations, Great Britain, France, and the United States (see Asad 1973, Hymes 1972, and Vincent 1990). Other parts of the world appear in these accounts as colonial possessions, or not at all. Attention is now turning to the many, diverse national traditions in anthropology, including both scholarly and applied anthropology (Baba and Hill 1997, Hill and Baba 2006, Ribeiro and Escobar 2006). This special set of papers in Practicing Anthropology is a modest contribution in this direction, examining the interactions of anthropology and public policy in three national settings: Peru, the Philippines, and Mexico.

V. Colonial Questions at the San Francisco Conference

1945 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 982-992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huntington Gilchrist
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
United States Government ◽  
The North ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Nations System ◽  
The North Pacific ◽  
Made In

No reference was made in the Dumbarton Oaks proposals to colonial questions, and this, the most important omission among the subjects covered in the Covenant of the League of Nations, brought forth immediate comment. There was, first of all, the problem of those territories held under mandate as part of the League of Nations system. They were all under the administration of members of the United Nations, except for the former German islands in the North Pacific, which were under mandate to Japan. If the new organization was to supplant the League, some formal changes would, in any case, be required.A second problem was the disposition of such territories as had been taken from Italy and would be taken from Japan. If the self-denying ordinances of the Atlantic Charter and the Cairo Declaration were to be taken literally, there would be territories to dispose of which could hardly be turned into colonies.Finally, the unfortunate experiences of many European states during the earlier years of the war in the Asiatic and Pacific territories under their control had caused a large amount of discussion of colonial questions. The belief had been voiced in various quarters that colonial administration needed modernizing, that self-government of the natives was not always their goal, and that colonial problems should be considered as international problems and not merely problems of individual colonial powers. Some of these powers looked upon the United States as the center of anti-colonial feeling, and even went so far as to suspect the United States Government of a desire to force changes on them. It was held by some groups in the United States that, as these colonies would be freed largely by American arms, the United States thereby would acquire some responsibility for their future. As the war situation improved and the colonial powers began to think about a peacetime future, they started to make tentative schemes for colonial reform which might avert any sort of outside intervention or internationalization. The British Colonial Development and Welfare Bill, the French proposal to unite all colonies in a “union” with the metropole, the Dutch proposal for a federalized state, all seemed related to the anti-imperial trend of the early days of the war.

The South Seas from the Deck of a Steamship

2021 ◽  
Vol 98 (3) ◽  
pp. 78-96
Author(s):  
Diana L. Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Pacific Ocean ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
The People ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Time Zones ◽  
The Pacific Ocean ◽  
The Many

The story of the people who sailed the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Hawai‘i, Samoa, and points beyond is well documented, yet historians have neglected the voyages themselves and what the travelers encountered on the five-day to five-week journeys to their destinations. Those who crossed the Pacific recorded their thoughts about the sea creatures they discovered, the birds that followed the ships, and the potential of American expansion to the islands. They gossiped about their shipmates, celebrated the change in time zones, and feared the sharks that swam near the vessels. The voyagers had little else to distract them from the many miles of endless water, so they paid attention to their surroundings: nature, people, and shipboard activities. The adventures on the ships enlivened their travels to the islands of the Pacific and proved to be an opportunity to expand their personal horizons, as well as their hopes for the United States.

Singing the Law

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Leman
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Global South ◽  
Law And Literature ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
Cultural Narratives ◽  
East African ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many

“Singing the Law” is about the legal lives and afterlives of oral cultures in East Africa, particularly as they appear within the pages of written literatures during the colonial and postcolonial periods. In examining these cultures, I begin with an analysis of the cultural narratives of time and modernity that formed the foundations of British colonial law. Recognizing the contradictory nature of these narratives (i.e., they both promote and retreat from the Euro-centric ideal of temporal progress) enables us to make sense of the many representations of and experiments with non-linear, open-ended, and otherwise experimental temporalities that we find in works of East African literature that take colonial law as a subject or point of critique. Many of these works, furthermore, consciously appropriate orature as an expressive form with legal authority. This affords them the capacity to challenge the narrative foundations of colonial law and its postcolonial residues and offer alternative models of temporality and modernity that give rise, in turn, to alternative forms of legality. East Africa’s “oral jurisprudence” ultimately has implications not only for our understanding of law and literature in colonial and postcolonial contexts, but more broadly for our understanding of how the global south has shaped modern law as we know and experience it today.

Life on the Hardened Border

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Miller
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Homeland Security ◽  
Aboriginal People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
Coast Salish ◽  
Local Responses ◽  
Security Officers ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Many

The many Coast Salish groups distributed on both sides of the United States-Canada border on the Pacific coast today face significant obstacles to cross the international border, and in some cases are denied passage or intimidated into not attempting to cross. The current situation regarding travel by Aboriginal people reflects the "hardening" of the border by United States officials following the events of "9-11." A bureaucratic environment has become increasingly hostile to the interests of Aboriginal groups in favor of security. In addition, the problems encountered by individual Aboriginal travelers at the border reflect a transformed American impression of Canada, now commonly treated politically and administratively as a state from which enemies of America are positioned to harm American interests. These new perceptions create an environment that enables Homeland Security officers to regard Aboriginal peoples who seek to cross the border as suspect, although they do so under legal conventions that allow passage of Aboriginal peoples. Officers then act on their own received, stereotypical notions of what a "real Indian" looks like, and deny passage to those they consider to be fakes. These border issues reflect a larger pattern of the denial of Aboriginal rights and challenges to tribal sovereignty by the American state and its citizenry. Data for this work comes from interviews with Coast Salish people and the case of a Coast Salish man who was detained and prosecuted for attempting to cross the border. A justice summit held in 2003 provides direct insight into official American approaches to the border as they concern Aboriginal people, while reporting by the Seattle Times reveals local responses to 9-11.

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