Conclusion

Author(s):  
Diane Frost

The Kru communities of Freetown and Liverpool emerged in response to, and as a consequence of, British maritime interests. Kru were actively encouraged to leave their Liberian homeland and migrate to Freetown, where they came to constitute an important part of its maritime trade. The Kru formed a significant nucleus of Freetown’s seafarers, as well as the majority of ships’ labourers or ‘Krooboys’ that were recruited to work the West African coast. The occupational niche that the Kru eventually came to occupy in Britain’s colonial trade with West Africa had important social repercussions. The Kru were labelled as unusually competent maritime workers by shipowners and colonial administrators, and the Kru encouraged this label for obvious expedient reasons. The gradual build-up of the Kru’s dominance in shipping during the nineteenth century and until the Second World War contrasts sharply with their position in the post-war period. The breaking down of their occupational niche due to circumstances beyond their control had direct social consequences on the nature of their community. Whilst many Kru clubs and societies depended on seafaring for their very existence, the demise of shipping undermined such societies’ ability to survive in the face of increasing unemployment and poverty....

2000 ◽  
pp. 273-296
Author(s):  
Peter N. Davies

This chapter describes the reconstruction of Elder Dempster’s company structure and development after the Second World War. It states the company’s losses in terms of vessels and staff, and assesses the changes made in management and head office accommodation in order to allow Elder Dempster to meet the level of success it had achieved in the early 20th Century. The chapter also addresses the changing composition of the West African trade after the war, which included alterations in the determination of freight rates; the extension of the West African Lines Conference; and the intrusion of Scandinavian lines into the West African trade market. The chapter concludes with Elder Dempster’s purchase of the British and Burmese Steam Navigation Company Limited.


2000 ◽  
pp. 255-272
Author(s):  
Peter N. Davies

This chapter discusses the effects of the Second World War on the British shipping industry. It provides an analysis of the loss of seamen and vessels in comparison to the previous world war, and describes the subsequent trading conditions of West Africa. It also presents the establishment of the West African Co-Ordination Committee, formed by Elder Dempster, John Holt and the United Africa Company and comments on their actions made on behalf of the Ministry of War Transport in 1940.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
John Marsland

During the twenty years after the Second World War, housing began to be seen as a basic right among many in the west, and the British welfare state included many policies and provisions to provide decent shelter for its citizens. This article focuses on the period circa 1968–85, because this was a time in England when the lack of affordable, secure-tenured housing reached a crisis level at the same time that central and local governmental housing policies received wider scrutiny for their ineffectiveness. My argument is that despite post-war laws and rhetoric, many Britons lived through a housing disaster and for many the most rational way they could solve their housing needs was to exploit loopholes in the law (as well as to break them out right). While the main focus of the article is on young British squatters, there is scope for transnational comparison. Squatters in other parts of the world looked to their example to address the housing needs in their own countries, especially as privatization of public services spread globally in the 1980s and 1990s. Dutch, Spanish, German and American squatters were involved in a symbiotic exchange of ideas and sometimes people with the British squatters and each other, and practices and rhetoric from one place were quickly adopted or rejected based on the success or failure in each place.


1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Schildt

Little more than a decade after having lost the Second World War, the society of the western part of Germany, the Federal Republic, had changed fundamentally in the eye of the observer. The economic expert Henry C. Wallich was not the only one to speak of the ‘German miracle’. Not only had the previously achieved industrial standards long been regained and surpassed, but also a boom had set in – as in all of Western Europe – which came to an end only in the 1970s. Simultaneously, both economy and society had been modernised in the process of reconstruction. The transition to a new stage of modernity, ‘society in affluence’, was discussed animatedly. The emergence of new leisure lifestyles in particular was considered a mark of present times. However, in current reviews it is often forgotten that the West German society of the 1950s was to a far greater extent determined by continuity with the interwar period and by the consequences of the war and post-war years than a first glance at the spectacular novelties suggests.


Itinerario ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-38
Author(s):  
Ayodeji Olukoju

The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 and the collapse of French resistance to the German onslaught a year later were momentous events which had far-reaching implications for France, Britain, and their colonies. In West Africa, the war affected existing patterns of inter-state relations within and across the French/British imperial divides, which were further complicated for the British by the emergence of two blocs in the French colonial empire – Vichy and Free French. It was in this context that the West African Governors' Conference was created in 1940 to coordinate the war effort and to manage relations with the French colonies.


Author(s):  
Peter N. Davies

This journal reprints the history of the Elder Dempster company by Peter N. Davies, from 1852-1972, originally published in 1973. It includes an additional chapter, also by Peter Davies, on the history of the company from 1973-1989, covering its decline and final years. The purpose is to describe and analyse the economic history of the Elder Dempster shipping company and its predecessors, and provide an account of West African and British economic backgrounds. The journal is divided into five parts, each concerning a different era in the company’s history. Part 1 covers the formation of the African Steam Ship Company, which would eventually merge and become Elder Dempster; Part 2 covers the expansion of Elder Dempster and the partnership with Alfred Lewis Jones; Part 3 explores major historical events and their impact on Elder Dempster, including the Great War, the transition from war to peace, and the end of the Royal Mail group; Part 4 concerns the establishment of Elder Dempster Lines Limited, the emergence of successful rival companies, the Second World War and post-war reconstruction, and prediction for the company for the 1970s and beyond, as this part concluded the first edition of the history; Part 5 is a retrospective look at the 1970s and 1980s, and tracks the decline of Elder Dempster and the evolution of the Ocean Group.


2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 379-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Brown

Abstract In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Thomas Mann and Georg Lukács both sought to come to terms with the multifaceted role of philosophy in the catastrophe of fascism. The figure of Nietzsche is (re-)examined in Mann’s Nietzsches Philosophie im Lichte unserer Erfahrung (1947) and Lukács’ Die Zerstörung der Vernunft (1954). It is generally recognised that Mann’s lecture helped to shape the post-war Nietzsche reception in the West as much as Lukács’ treatise did in the East. In contrast, I argue that Mann’s and Lukács’s contributions have more in common than is generally acknowledged and, given Mann’s esteem in the field of Nietzsche studies, that these similarities call into question the general repudiation of Lukács’ Nietzsche-Bild. After sketching the phenomenon of partisanship in the reception of Nietzsche through the lens of Kant’s notion of a ‘Kampfplatz’, some of the key topoi of Lukács’ work are identified, highlighting the aforementioned similarities in content and methodology as well as the contrasts with Western academic approaches.


Itinerario ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-32
Author(s):  
Chris Bierwirth

Prior to the Second World War, the French government had been highhanded in its administration of the Levantine Mandates and severe in the treatment of Levantine immigrants in its West African colonies. This imperious behaviour would change abruptly in 1944. As part of their effort to rebuild French power, General Charles de Gaulle and the Comité Français de la Liberation Nationak (CFLN) sought to maintain France's longstanding position of diplomatic and cultural influence in the Levant, even after promising Lebanese and Syrian independence. With this in mind, French authorities grew more sensitive to the immigrant connection between Damascus and Dakar. In particular, the CFLN began to understand that complaints by Levantine immigrants in Afrique Occidentale Française (AOF) regarding their treatment by colonial officials had immediate repercussions on the French ‘mission’ in Syria and Lebanon. As a result, in the last year of the war – and at the direct instigation of the CFLN's representative in the Levant – sweeping policy changes were instituted to mitigate the treatment of Levantine immigrants in West Africa in order to restore France's prestige and position in the Middle East.


2000 ◽  
pp. 297-338
Author(s):  
Peter N. Davies

This chapter explores the underlying and long-term effects of the Second World War on the future of Elder Dempster and its relationship with West Africa. It focuses on the political and economic independence of West African colonies, and the resulting major changes in the structure and organisation of its trading areas, including the formation of independently owned shipping lines. The chapter describes the greater momentum of the establishment and extension of new ports at the end of the war, and reports the corresponding dramatic increase in West African trade. It concludes with an analysis of the decline in Elder Dempster’s share of West African trade, and provides a calculation of its profitability and success in the post-war era.


Author(s):  
Andrzej Szczepański

After the Second World War, according to various sources, there were between 3.5 and 4.5 million citizens of the former German Third Reich within the borders of Poland. According to the agreements of the so-called Big Three, made during the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, this population was to be resettled within the borders of post-war Germany. The mass deportation actions lasted from 1946 to 1949 and covered the vast majority of the population, but still about 200,000 people remained in their previous places of residence. In the following years of the existence of "People's Poland", they also gradually left the country, emigrating to the West. The primary objective of this paper was to attempt to characterize ethnic policy towards the German population in the post-war Poland. Over the years, the attitude of the state towards this group has fluctuated considerably, being characterized both by repressive measures and by the possibility of enjoying a relatively undisturbed existence.


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