Administering Empire. Business Diplomacy in Early Modern Sweden: The Cases of Abraham Cabiljau and the Gothenburg Company

The article illustrates the importance of business diplomacy practised by free agents, who navigated and negotiated between northern European empires for widespread commercial, legal and administrative developments. Abraham Cabiljau’s career is an example from the early modern Swedish empire, which stands on the threshold of a new era. In the Swedish empire, Cabiljau was involved in several different sectors, from military recruitment to the development of state accounting and administration of international trade. He represents the Swedish empire’s vast economic relationships with international merchant networks operating in a broad spectrum of military and commercial arenas. The Swedish empire was economically dependent on the financial resources of the merchants in Amsterdam, and economic prosperity was not the sole contribution of these merchants. The education, knowledge and connections provided by Cabiljau greatly enhanced the administration and organisation of Sweden’s international trade by importing a new legal mindset and organisational culture. In return, northern mining resources and Baltic commerce were alluring for Dutch merchants. We argue that the modelling of international organisations was an essential part of Swedish economic development. However, the first Swedish trading companies remained an experimental attempt to transplant the Dutch East India Company (VOC) model to Sweden. Individuals like Cabiljau represent key actors who ignited, taught and promoted commercial law development in Sweden, on which international commerce was later built upon, with long-lasting impacts.

Baroness Emma Orczy’s Divided Loyalties in the 1910s and 20s

The aim of this article is to examine the ambivalent attitudes of the British-Hungarian popular writer Baroness Emma Orczy towards involvement in the Great War. In the 1910s Orczy participated in British military recruitment drives, whilst also maintaining cultural ties with her homeland of Hungary. The questions this study attempts to answer are: what kind of strategies of identification did Orczy employ in order to come to terms with supporting both the Allies and the Central Powers? And: whether through her contrasting stances the operation of a hybrid identity can be captured.

Popular Religious Traditions, British Military Recruitment and the Social Construction of Masculinity in Colonial Haryana

It is generally assumed that colonial institutions and ideologies shaped the contours of masculinity in British India. This paper explores endogenous factors and attempts to supplement as well as contest such approaches and interpretations which claim that masculinity in India was a colonial construction. The emphasis is on folk traditions, religious customs, qaumi (folk) tales and physical culture akh???s (gymnasia) among the Jats in colonial Haryana,1 which went into the making of dominant masculinity in this region. The paper draws upon vernacular language materials and newspapers to analyse the different ways in which the socially endogenous forces constructed this masculinity. It argues that a complex interaction of popular religious traditions, qaumi narratives, military recruitment, marital caste designation, ownership of land, superior caste behaviour and strong bodily physique came to ideologically link and construct dominant masculinity in colonial Haryana.

Militarizing antimilitarism? Exploring the gendered representation of military service in German recruitment videos on social media

This article analyzes the gendered representation of military service in the German YouTube series Die Rekruten (DR) (The Recruits), a popular web series produced on behalf of the German armed forces (Bundeswehr) for recruitment purposes, which accompanies 12 navy recruits during their basic training. The article is situated within research on masculinity and the military, in particular military recruitment. It supplements current scholarship by studying a previously neglected case that is of particular interest given Germany’s antimilitarist culture, which should make military recruitment and military public relations more difficult. The article asks how military service is represented in DR, what its discursive effects are, and what role (if any) masculinity plays in this process. We find support for recent feminist research on military masculinities (including in military recruitment) that emphasizes ambiguity and contradiction. What distinguishes the construction of military masculinity in DR from, for example, recruitment advertisements in the United States or the United Kingdom is its markedly civil character. This not only broadens the military’s appeal for a more diverse audience but also increases the legitimacy of the military and its activities. It does so by concealing the violence that has for the past two decades also been a very real part of what the Bundeswehr does.

The Achilles Heel of Recruiting Women: Perceived Gender Equality as a Key Determinant of the Military’s Employer Attractiveness Among Women

The German Bundeswehr, like other NATO forces, seeks to recruit more women in order to improve its gender balance and to meet its personnel needs. However, previous research on military recruitment has paid little attention to women. Given that the (German) military is still a male-dominated organization, we argue that women’s opinion regarding the realization of gender equality in the military may very well be the Achilles heel of recruiting women. Based on the assumption that women value gender equality in the work environment, we test the hypothesis that women are more attracted to the military as a (potential) employer, the more they think the military has achieved gender equality. A multivariate analysis of nationally representative survey data from Germany from 2019 provides empirical evidence to support this hypothesis. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Adolescent Thyroid disorders and Risk for Type 2 Diabetes in Young Adulthood

CONTEXT Thyroid hormones play a key role in systemic metabolism, yet the relationship between thyroid dysfunction and risk for type 2 diabetes is unclear. OBJECTIVE To assess type 2 diabetes risk in adulthood among adolescents with thyroid disorders. DESIGN AND SETTING A nationwide, population-based study of Israeli adolescents who were examined before military recruitment during 1988–2007, and were followed until December 31, 2016. PARTICIPANTS 1,382,560 adolescents (mean age 17.3 years). INTERVENTIONS The diagnosis of thyroid disorders was based on recent thyroid function tests. Data were linked to the Israeli National Diabetes Registry. Cox proportional hazard models were applied. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Type 2 diabetes incidence. RESULTS During a mean follow-up of 18.5 years, 1.12% (69 of 6,152) of adolescents with thyroid disorders were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes vs. 0.77% of adolescents without thyroid disorders. The HR for type 2 diabetes was 2.3 (95%CI, 1.8–2.9) among those with thyroid disorders, after adjustment for sex, birth-year, BMI and sociodemographic confounders. The increased diabetes risk was observed in both men and women, presence or absence of obesity, in the absence of other health conditions, and was associated with different types of thyroid disorders. It was also similar when the outcome was defined as type 2 diabetes diagnosed at or before the age of 30 years (HR 2.3; 95%CI, 1.5–3.5). CONCLUSIONS Thyroid disorders diagnosed in adolescence are a risk factor for early-onset type 2 diabetes in both men and women.

“Join the Army. Become the Power of China” – Multimodal Metaphors in Military Recruitment Advertising – “The Power of China”

Military recruitment advertising, as a type of authoritative political video advertisement, demonstrates a country’s military culture. This paper will provide a brand-new perspective in researching Chinese military culture from the approach of multimodal metaphor. Currently, a multimodal analysis of military recruitment advertising in terms of short video clips does not exist, and most of the existing multimodal studies have focused on Western mainstream media, whereas media with Chinese characteristics have remained mostly untouched by research. With Forceville and Urios-Aparisi’s (2009) Multimodal Metaphor Theory (MMT) as a theoretical basis, and the newly-released recruitment advertising “The Power of China” as the research object, this paper utilizes the MIPVU and ELAN image tagging software to identify and analyze the multimodal metaphors in “The Power of China” under the framework of MMT.