Maintaining Modernity

2018 ◽  
pp. 169-205
Author(s):  
Michitake Aso
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Industrial Agriculture ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
World War ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
Indochina War

Rubber trees helped structure the violent transition from empire to nation-state during nearly thirty years of conflict on the Indochinese peninsula. Chapter 5 focuses on the struggle over plantations that took place in Vietnam and Cambodia between 1945 and 1954. During the First Indochina War, plantation environments served as a key military battleground. In the fighting that took place immediately after the end of World War II, many plantation workers, encouraged by the anticolonial Việt Minh, attacked the rubber trees as symbols of hated colonial-era abuse. Slogans placing the culpability of worker suffering on trees show how plantation workers often treated the trees themselves as enemies. Despite their colonial origins, plantation environments were important material and symbolic landscapes for those seeking to build postcolonial Vietnamese nations. French planters claimed to struggle heroically against nature, Vietnamese workers saw themselves as struggling against both nature and human exploitation, and anticolonial activists articulated struggles against imperial power structures. Industrial agriculture such as rubber was vital to nation-building projects, and by the early 1950s, Vietnamese planners began to envision a time when plantations would form a part of a national economy.

Die Europäische Union: eine neue Supermacht mit imperialen Ambitionen?

2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (139) ◽  
pp. 247-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Jürgen Bieling
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Europäische Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Military Conflicts ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
International Role ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The Eu

Recent theoretical conceptions of imperialism may be useful correctives against idealising and harmonising views of international interdependency and co-operation. Analytically, however, they are not necessarily helpful. In terms of the EU, they do not really comprehend its particular international role. Despite improved financial and military capacities, the EU represents not yet an imperial power. Instead, it still pursues a rather hegemonic foreign policy approach due to internal economic restrictions, fragmented political sovereignty and the historical experiences of beneficial economic and political co-operation after World War II. Eventually, however, it remains an open question, whether the multilateralist, law-based and co-operative posture of the EU will prevail even under conditions of economic crisis and further military conflicts in the adjacent neighbourhood.

scholarly journals Esoteric Theravada Buddhism in Burma/Myanmar

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 55-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niklas Foxeus
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Theravada Buddhism ◽  
World War ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Asian Nation ◽  
Insight Meditation ◽  
The Government

The achievement of independence in 1948 was in many ways a watershed in Burma’s history. At this time, a variety of Buddhist movements emerged that were part not only of a ‘Burmese Buddhist revival’, in which even the government was involved, but also a general re-enchantment of Asia. In the period following World War II, projects of nation-building and further modernization were implemented in many newly independent Asian nation states. The theories of modernization adopted by the rulers had presupposed that a new, rationalized and secularized order that had set them on the path of ‘progress’ would entail a decline of religion. However, instead there was a widespread resurgence of religion, and a variety of new, eclectic religious movements emerged in Southeast Asia. In the thriving religious field of postcolonial Burma, two lay Buddhist movements associated with two different meditation techniques emerged, viz.; the insight meditation movement and the concentration meditation movement. The latter consisted of a variety of esoteric congregations combining concentration meditation with esoteric lore, and some of these were characterized by fundamentalist trends. At the same time, the supermundane form of Buddhism became increasingly influential in the entire field of religion. The aim of the present article is to discuss how this supermundane dimension has reshaped the complex religious field in Burma, with particular emphasis on the esoteric congregations; to present the Burmese form of esoteric Theravāda Buddhism, and to situate the fundamentalist trends which are present in these contexts.

Turning Tropical

2018 ◽  
pp. 130-166
Author(s):  
Michitake Aso
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Disease ◽  
Human Biology ◽  
Industrial Agriculture ◽  
Pasteur Institute ◽  
World War ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Rubber Plantations ◽  
Colonial Society ◽  
Ecological View

Rubber plantations necessitated extensive medical studies of human biology and diseases. Researchers at the Pasteur Institute carried out numerous studies of mosquitoes and plasmodia, and to a lesser extent other pathogens, among plantation workers. Race served as an important analytic category for these researchers even as anthropologists were beginning to question the coherence of racial categories. Chapter 4 investigates the racialized society that the architects of industrial agriculture imagined they were creating. It also discusses the interactions in Indochina between the burgeoning tropical sciences and government and transnational capital, focusing on human disease environments to examine how “rubber science” was applied to the surrounding countryside. If plantations were microcosms of the global colonial society, they were also laboratories where solutions to colonial problems were worked out. Tropical agronomy, geography, and medicine, linked by an ecological view of climates and soils, helped naturalize racial distinctions for the colonizers. Yet the colonial subjects who were the targets of these projects did not act in ways that race makers expected. While these subjects could not control the discourse of race, they could appropriate it for their own ends, and they attempted to do so before the outbreak of World War II.

Mapping the Pilgrimage Network

2021 ◽  
pp. 58-88
Author(s):  
Marion Grau
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Local Officials ◽  
Religious Meaning

This chapter outlines the author’s approach to research and method, as well as the scope and timeline of participant observation. The redevelopment of the Norwegian pilgrimage network comes on the heels of the post–World War II European efforts to build transregional and transnational peace. Historic pilgrimage routes become part of this network but are slow to begin in Protestant contexts. In contemporary pilgrimage, embodiment and relations to other pilgrims are central ingredients. It is through physical relations to landscape and people that sacred, transforming encounters are sought. Ritual creativity features strongly in how such encounters are facilitated by pilgrim priests, hosts, government, local officials, artists, and scores of volunteers. Religious meaning-making and secular nation-building are closely intertwined in these efforts to lift up and preserve, if not stage, local heritage. A consistent ambivalence is the overlap between pilgrims and tourists, and questions of spirituality and consumption. As Norway’s population has become more diverse religiously and ethnically, actors continually adjust the pilgrimage network to the needs of a changing population and a wide range of social issues.

scholarly journals The Syrkus couple and the global cause of modernism

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 494-508
Author(s):  
Martin Kohlrausch
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Nation State ◽  
World War ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
New Nation ◽  
The Impact

This article discusses the role of modernist architects in Poland during the first half of the twentieth century. The article argues that against the background of economic catching-up processes and the establishment of a new nation state and capital, modernist architects could enter into a close relationship with the modernising state. This relationship could partially survive World War II, albeit under different auspices. By employing the example of Poland’s foremost modernist architect Szymon Syrkus and his wife Helena, and their extensive correspondence with other Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne architects, the article discusses, moreover, the impact of the deep breaks coming with the rise of authoritarian regimes in the 1930s, the coming World War and the Holocaust, and finally the establishment of communist regimes on modernist architects.

scholarly journals Old homes and new homelands: imagining the nation and remembering expulsion in the wake of the Mali Federation's collapse

Africa ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Rodet ◽  
Brandon County
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Internal Boundary ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Railway Workers ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
International Border ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractThis article examines concepts of ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ for migrants and citizens in the twilight of empire. It focuses on the ‘cheminots refoulés’, railway workers with origins in the former French Sudan (today's Republic of Mali) who were expelled from Senegal shortly after both territories declared independence, and other ‘Sudanese’ settled in Senegal, sometimes for several generations. Using newly available archives in France, Mali and Senegal, and interviews with formercheminotsand ‘Sudanese migrants’ on both sides of the border, this article seeks to historicize memories of autochthony and allochthony that have been constructed and contested in postcolonial nation-building projects. The Mali Federation carried the lingering memory of federalist political projects, but it proved untenable only months after the Federation's June 1960 independence from France. When member states declared independence from each other, the internal boundary between Senegal and the Sudanese Republic became an international border between Senegal and the Republic of Mali. In the wake of the collapse, politicians in Bamako and Dakar clamoured to redefine the ‘nation’ and its ‘nationals’ through selective remembering. Thousands ofcheminotsand ‘Sudanese migrants’ who had moved to Senegal from Sudan years (or decades) earlier were suddenly labelled ‘foreigners’ and ‘expatriates’ and faced two governments eager to see them ‘return’ to a hastily proclaimed nation state. This ‘repatriation’ allowed Republic of Mali officials to ‘perform the nation’ by (re)integrating and (re)membering the migrants in a nascent ‘homeland’. But, having circulated between Senegal and Sudan/Mali for decades, ‘Sudanese migrants’ in both states retained and invoked memories of older political communities, upsetting new national priorities. The loss of the Mali Federation raises questions about local, national and international citizenship and movement in mid-century West Africa. Examining the histories invoked to imagine postcolonial political communities, this article offers an insight into the role that memory has played in constructing and contesting the nation's central place in migration histories within Africa and beyond.

Suriname’s Constitutional Limits

2020 ◽  
pp. 241-271
Author(s):  
Ruben Gowricharn
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
World War ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
The Republic ◽  
International Power ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Turmoil

This chapter outlines the major forces that have shaped the constitutional development of the Republic of Suriname. These forces include the transplant of population and legal institutions during the colonial era; the post-World War II shift of the international power balance in favour of decolonizing colonies as manifested in the right to self-determination; and domestic forces, including trade unions and media, that protected the constitution from being suspended or undermined in periods of political turmoil. Based on the experience of Suriname, it is argued that constitutional development in small postcolonial societies is highly constrained due to the transplant of European legal institutions and corresponding expertise.

A New Shahrazad

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-386
Author(s):  
Andrew Amstutz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Middle East ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
British India ◽  
World War ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
History Of

Abstract In 1945, Mahmooda Rizvia, a prominent Urdu author from Sindh, published a travel account of her journey across the Arabian Sea from British India to Iraq during World War II. In her travel account, Rizvia conceptualized the declining British Empire as a dynamic space for Muslim renewal that connected India to the Middle East. Moreover, she fashioned a singular autobiographical persona as an Urdu literary pioneer and woman traveler in the Muslim lands of the British Empire. In her writings, Rizvia focused on her distinctive observations of the ocean, the history of the Ottoman Empire, and her home province of Sindh's location as a historical nexus between South Asia and the Middle East. In contrast to the expectations of modesty and de-emphasis on the self in many Muslim women's autobiographical narratives in the colonial era, Rizvia fashioned a pious, yet unapologetically self-promotional, autobiographical persona. In conversation with recent scholarship on Muslim cosmopolitanism, women's autobiographical writing, and travel literature, this article points to the development of an influential project of Muslim cosmopolitanism in late colonial Sindh that blurred the lines between British imperialism, pan-Islamic ambitions, and nationalism during the closing days of World War II.

The German Military Occupation of Italy and the War against Civilians

Modern Italy ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Pezzino
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Research Group ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Military Occupation ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
World War ◽  
Italian Regions ◽  
Cultural Conditioning

The article presents the results of a research group which has, over the last few years, carried out a careful contextualization of the massacres of civilians in four Italian regions (Apulia, Campania, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna) during World War II. The research enables us to go beyond references to the irrationality of evil, the unchangeable core of violence in human nature or terror as an end in itself, which do not contribute much to an analytical interpretation. The aim has been to place these massacres in a more precise historical context by reconstructing the power structures, the logic and the cultural conditioning which made them possible, the behaviour and aims of the various protagonists, the complex evolution of the survivors’ memories and the ways in which the community memory has been taken up, or expelled, by the anti-Fascist paradigm of Republican Italy.

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