Le boxeur Georges Carpentier dans la presse franco-britannique de la Belle Époque

FR. A la veille de la Grande Guerre la boxe anglaise a pris, dans les sociétés anglo-saxonnes (États-Unis, Grande-Bretagne et Australie) et depuis peu en France, une dimension sociale et culturelle d’importance. Dans l’Hexagone alors qu’elle était au tournant du XIXème siècle une mise en scène illégale et inconnue du grand public, elle a connu en 10 ans une fulgurante ascension. Aussi, En 1914, elle est devenue sport roi non seulement à Paris mais également en province. Ce que l’on peut appeler « la Belle Époque de la boxe anglaise en France » est marqué par une corrélation entre les succès de cette pratique et l’avènement de la première superstar du sport tricolore : le boxeur Georges Carpentier. Né en 1894 à Liévin, dans les bassins miniers du Pas-de-Calais, le « gosse » embrasse la carrière de pugiliste à l’âge de 14 ans. Entre 1908 et 1914, au rythme de nombreuses et surprenantes victoires, sa popularité ne cesse de croître. Elle atteint son apogée dans les deux années précédant la guerre, particulièrement lors de probants triomphes face à la fine fleur pugilistique britannique. A l’occasion de matchs mobilisant les ressorts du nationalisme anti-anglais, ces affrontements poursuivent la longue inimitié historique entre la France et la « perfide Albion », tout en nourrissant et amplifiant la célébrité du jeune prodige. A l’aube du culte des vedettes et dans une métaphore évidente de la guerre, la presse franco-britannique n’hésite pas à l’élever au rang de « vengeur de Waterloo ». Puis, contre toute attente, à quelques mois de l’embrasement de la vieille Europe, augurant du nouveau jeu d’alliance militaire qui se dessine dans les salons de la diplomatie franco-anglaise, il devient dans ces mêmes journaux le « champion de l’Entente Cordiale ». *** EN. In the years preceding the Great War, English boxing occupied an important social and cultural role in Anglo-Saxon societies (United States, Great Britain and Australia) and came to gradually occupy a similar position in France. At the turn of the 19th century, it was still an illegal and obscure show to French audiences. However, in the course of the following decade, it was propelled to higher grounds: by 1914, it had become the king of sports, both in Paris and in the provinces. The “Belle Époque of English boxing in France" is characterized by the correlation between the success of the sport and the rise of the first French boxing superstar, Georges Carpentier. Born in 1894 in Liévin, in the coal mining basins of the Pas-de-Calais, the “kid” embraces the career of pugilist at the age of 14. Between 1908 and 1914, his popularity was on a constant rise thanks to numerous and surprising victories. His popularity climaxes in the two years preceding the war, largely thanks to multiple victories against the British pugilistic elite. Mobilizing nationalism fueled by anti-English sentiments, these boxing matches are presented as a natural extension of the long historical enmity between France and the "perfidious Albion", contributing to grow and amplify the young prodigy’s fame. At the dawn of celebrity worship, and in an obvious metaphor of the war, the Franco-British press did not hesitate to adorn him as the "Waterloo avenger". Then, against all odds, a few months before the dislocation of old Europe, the same newspapers transformed him into the "champion” of the Entente Cordiale, implicitly pulling in behind the new military alliances taking shape in the halls of Franco-British diplomacy. *** PT. Às vésperas da Grande Guerra, o boxe inglês assume uma dimensão sociocultural central nas sociedades anglo-saxônicas (Estados Unidos, Grã-Bretanha e Austrália). Isso ocorre também na França, onde, até a virada do século XIX, não passava de uma encenação ilegal desconhecida do público em geral. 10 anos depois, experimenta uma ascensão meteórica, tornando-se, em 1914, o rei dos esportes em Paris, mas também nas demais cidades francesas. O período da Belle Époque do boxe inglês na França é marcado por uma convergência entre o sucesso do boxe e o advento da primeira superestrela do esporte francês: o boxeador Georges Carpentier. Nascido em 1894 em Liévin, nas bacias mineiras do Pas-de-Calais, o “moleque”, como era chamado, abraçou a carreira de pugilista aos 14 anos de idade. Entre 1908 e 1914, tendo já acumulado diversas vitórias surpreendentes, sua popularidade não para de crescer, atingindo seu auge nos dois anos que precederam a guerra, com vitórias arrasadoras contra a nata do pugilismo britânico. Essas partidas, cenário de incitação ao nacionalismo antiinglês, passaram simultaneamente a consolidar a longa inimizade histórica entre a França e o “pérfido Albion” e a fama do jovem prodígio. Nos primórdios do culto às estrelas do esporte, a imprensa franco-britânica, lançando mão de uma óbvia metáfora bélica, eleva Carpentier ao ranking de “vingador de Waterloo”. Poucos meses antes do estremecimento da velha Europa, contrariando todas as expectativas e prefigurando o novo jogo de alianças militares que se perfilava nos salões da diplomacia franco-britânica, Georges Carpentier torna-se, nas colunas desses mesmos jornais, o “campeão da Entente Cordiale”. ***

Agostinho Neto

Agostinho Neto was an Angolan medical doctor who was born in the agricultural hinterland of Luanda City in 1922 and died in a Moscow hospital in 1979. He had been assimilated into Portuguese colonial society by gaining a school education at a Methodist mission station where his father was the minister, and he proceeded to university studies in Lisbon. There his radical politics fell foul of the dictatorial police, and after a spell in prison he escaped, via London, to become an itinerant political exile in Africa. There he became a guerrilla commander leading small bands of soldiers who fought a gainst both a Portuguese conscript army and rival political movements seeking independence for Angola. In 1974 the Portuguese colonial empire imploded, and Neto found himself leader of the largest nationalist movement in Luanda, the Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola; MPLA). On November 11, 1975, he became Angola’s president as the last Portuguese governor-general sailed away on a gun-boat under cover of darkness. Neto’s four years in the presidential palace were not happy ones. Rival political movements not only challenged his legitimacy but also made unholy military alliances with South Africa, Congo, and the United States. He also alienated his domestic constituents, and when they attempted a coup d’état he rounded on them with all the ferocity that he had experienced himself when being persecuted by the Portuguese political police. His health rapidly deteriorated, and two years later he was flown to Moscow, albeit too late, to seek a cure.

Deterrence and Restraint: Do Joint Military Exercises Escalate Conflict?

Multinational military exercises are among the most notable demonstrations of military cooperation and intent. On average, one is initiated every 8.9 days. But it has often been argued that joint military exercises (JMEs) increase the risk of war. Using a relational contracting approach, we claim that formal military alliances mediate the effect of JMEs. Exercises and alliances serve complementary functions: The former allows targeted responses to military provocations by adversaries, while the latter provides institutional constraints on partners and establishes a partnership’s overall strategic limitations. In combination, alliances dampen the conflict escalation effects of exercises, deterring adversaries while simultaneously restraining partners. We test this theory using a two-stage model on directed dyadic data of JMEs from 1973 through 2003. We find that JMEs in general do not escalate conflict, and that JMEs conducted with allies in particular reduce the probability of conflict escalation.

Anglo–Vietnamese diplomatic relationship in the seventeenth century: the case of the English East India Company

Drawing on primary materials from the English East India Company (EIC) archives in the British Library (London, UK), this article investigates the early diplomatic encounters between England and Vietnam (Tonkin and Cochinchina) in the seventeenth century. Previous studies have mostly focused on the English trade in Vietnam in that period and their diplomatic missions from the late eighteenth century to 1858 but partly neglected their diplomacy in their first connections with Vietnam (1614–1705). This article thus investigates how the EIC adapted its gift-giving diplomacy to the diverse and shifting political landscape of the Tonkin and Cochinchina kingdoms. While the Trịnh Lords in Tonkin severely limited diplomatic and trade exchanges with EIC agents and other European traders, the Nguyễn Lords in Cochinchina welcomed relations with EIC representatives as it served their ambition to facilitate trade and establish military alliances with other powerful actors in the region.

Threats at Home and Abroad: Interstate War, Civil War, and Alliance Formation

In the current era, many of the military threats that state leaders face come from domestic and transnational nonstate actors. Military alliances are recognized as an important policy strategy to counter military threats, but existing research has primarily been focused on threats from other states and has difficulty uncovering a consistent relationship between external threat and alliance formation. We argue that this discrepancy arises from the failure to recognize that many threats are not external to the state. We contend that alliance formation is motivated both by external threats from other states and by internal threats that make civil conflict more likely. Moreover, we argue that leaders design alliance obligations differently when faced with internal threats. An empirical analysis of alliance formation from 1946 to 2009 shows that while external threats motivate the formation of defense pacts, internal threats encourage the formation of consultation pacts. Internal threats with the greatest potential for internationalization also encourage the formation of neutrality/nonaggression pacts. This research deepens our understanding of how states design security policies to deal with the threats posed by nonstate actors, a salient concern of leaders in the twenty-first century, and helps us to understand the variety of alliance obligations that we observe.

Military Alliances and Public Support for War

How do military alliances affect public support for war to defend victims of aggression? We offer the first experimental evidence on this fundamental question. Our experiments revealed that alliance commitments greatly increased the American public's willingness to intervene abroad. Alliances shaped public opinion by increasing public fears about the reputational costs of nonintervention and by heightening the perceived moral obligation to intervene out of concerns for fairness and loyalty. Finally, although alliances swayed public opinion across a wide range of circumstances, they made the biggest difference when the costs of intervention were high, the stakes of intervention were low, and the country needing aid was not a democracy. Thus, alliances can create pressure for war even when honoring the commitment would be extremely inconvenient, which could help explain why democratic allies tend to be so reliable. These findings shed new light on the consequences of alliances and other international legal commitments, the role of morality in foreign policy, and ongoing debates about domestic audience costs.

POLITICAL DOWNLINE AND NCHINDAISM IN THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

The study focuses on the gambit of capitalism (political downline) and its relationship with the theory of Nchindaism. It provides an understanding to the exploitative mechanics of capitalists on the less developed and predicts the pendulum from Western controlled capitalism to military alliances where Western countries are elbowed from masters to actors and the possible collapse of the United Nations (UN). It targets: derivation, connotation, motives, manoeuvre/repercussions of capitalism, its drift, insight of Nchindaism & International Relations theories. The study is realised with primary, secondary and tertiary data under the ambit of qualitative methodology. Our findings reveal that the myth of None-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and the abusive application of Veto Rights by the Big Five within the UN Security Council (UNSC) catalysed nuclear polarisation leading to the regress of Western capitalism and the emergence of ideological military alliances. It argues that as long as the notion of state sovereignty is built on mutual respect, equality and none-interference in internal affairs, state’s capabilities and defence mechanics shouldn’t face restrictions from others or organisations if it doesn’t deter human rights and welfare. It concludes that since the evolution of science is a free gift from nature and growth of the human mind, education on nuclear responsibility should take preference rather than the myth of limitation to its development or acquisition.

An Analysis of Some Aspects of Co-evolutionary Development of Jet Fighter Generations in the Second Half of the 20th Century

The importance of studying developmental dynamics of global aircraft pool is unquestionable: this knowledge allows a substantive analysis of the history of development of aircraft engineering. At the same time, introducing for consideration some a priori notions such as e. g. “aircraft generations” allows to more fully demonstrate an interrelated development (co-evolution) of aircrafts and social institutions. This article considers as an example of co-evolution the opposition between jet fighter parks of the Warsaw Pact countries and NATO in 1954–1989. The dynamics of the development of jet fighter parks are examined and the causes of some of its characteristics are explained. Thus, it is shown that the Cold War as an opposition of two political and military alliances has been spurring the quantitative and qualitative development of fighter aircrafts. The end of the Cold War was one of the factors that slowed down the development of fighters. The results of this works clearly demonstrate that the development of aircrafts is inseparable from global social processes.

16. Defence

This chapter takes a comparative state-centric approach to illustrate the core issues of defence in Europe. The chapter reviews the influence of history, size, and geography on defence in Europe. It assesses the external threats facing European countries, including territorial threats from neighbouring countries such as Russia, energy security, and cyber security, and the ways in which these threats are perceived in Europe and in European states. It then shows how states respond to these threats, examining differences between European countries in terms of their strategic culture, defence capabilities, and military alliances. Efforts to build defence cooperation between countries are examined, including NATO and the emergence of common defence policies at the EU level.

Political-military alliances in shaping the security of Poland in 1918-1939

Poland was forming allied relations in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century due to the state’s weakness, mainly in military and economic terms. The Polish state’s situation regarding political and military security guarantees on the part of other subjects of the international community was neither stable nor advantageous during that period. That was influenced, among others, by the following phenomena: changes in the international arena that were unfavorable for the Second Republic of Poland, diplomatic activities of Germany and the USSR aimed at revising the borders of the Polish state, political and military rapprochement between the USSR and Germany in the area of economic and military cooperation, conciliatory and ineffective international policy of the Western powers (mainly the French Republic) towards Germany in the late 1920s, impermanence and low effectiveness of bilateral agreements and declarations concluded by Poland with its eastern neighbor – the Soviet Union and its western neighbor – Germany, ineffectiveness of the political-military alliances concluded by Poland with France, Romania, and the United Kingdom, and significant disproportions between Polish and German and Soviet industrial and military potential, combined with the inability of the western powers to fulfil their allied obligations in practical terms.