Colonial Past in Italian Relations with the Former African Colonies

The subject of article is influence of the colonial past on the relations of former metropole, namely Italy, with its former colonies in Africa. The question is considered in the context of the fact that the British, French or even Portuguese colonialisms definitely left interstate entities. In other words, they continue to considerably influence the relations with their former African colonies. Italian one, in its turn, left nothing like the Commonwealth of Nations, the International Organisation of La Francophonie or the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. However, by 2021 even in relations with each individual former colony of Rome in Africa (Eritrea, Somalia and Libya), it was replaced by the current agenda. Only in the case of Eritrea, which emerged as a result of Italian rule, there is probability, that in the nearest future the colonial past will affect its relations with Italy. Somalia, and especially Libya, which had been a reminder of the need to repair colonial damage for more than half a century, ceased to exist as single states. As a result, the long-ended colonialism ceased to be vital for their relations with the former metropole in a positive and negative way. Moreover, the author highlights that for any former colony, not only in Africa, or a country with big Italian community, Rome did nothing comparable with at least the Dutch Language Union. It means, that the elimination of any trace of Italian colonialism from international affairs is related not only to its weakness, but also to the lack of efforts made by modern Italy.

NEW UZBEKISTAN-NEW GOOD-NEIGHBORLY RELATIONS: NEW STEPS TOWARDS THE COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS, PEACE AND STABILITY

The article analyzes the issues of cooperation of the new Uzbekistan on the issue of a new good-neighborliness. The author attaches great importance to the relevance of studying the logical coherence of relations between the peoples of Central and South Asia in the historical, political, economic, educational, spiritual and cultural spheres. Proposals and recommendations were put forward to promote the rich legal heritage among the general public. Recently, there are more and more positive cases of good-neighborly relations between States. Mutual assistance, cooperation, during the pandemic, especially in the days of trials, is a very important process for the peoples of Central Asia. In particular, in this regard, much attention is paid to the study of the culture and art of the peoples of Uzbekistan and Central Asia, mutual enrichment, research on this region shows the importance and significance of this article

“A Fundamental Human Right”? Mixed-Race Marriage and the Meaning of Rights in the Postwar British Commonwealth

This article explores the removal or exclusion in the late 1940s of people in interracial marriages from two corners of the newly formed Commonwealth of Nations, Australia and Britain's southern African colonies. The stories of Ruth and Sereste Khama, exiled from colonial Botswana, and those of Chinese refugees threatened with deportation and separation from their white Australian wives, reveal how legal rearticulations in the immediate postwar era created new, if quixotic, points of opposition for ordinary people to make their voices heard. As the British Empire became the Commonwealth, codifying the freedoms of the imperial subject, and ideas of universal human rights “irrespective of race, color, or creed” slowly emerged, and claims of rights long denied seemed to take on a renewed meaning. The sanctity of marriage and family, which played central metaphorical and practical roles for both the British Empire and the United Nations, was a primary motor of contention in both cases, and was mobilized in both metaphorical and practical ways to press for change. Striking similarities between our chosen case studies reveal how ideals of imperial domesticity and loyalty, and the universalism of the new global “family of man,” were simultaneously invoked to undermine discourses of racial purity. Our analysis makes a significant contribution to studies of gender and empire, as well as the history of human rights, an ideal which in the late 1940s was being vernacularized alongside existing forms of claim-making and political organization in local contexts across the world.

The Booker Prize and Post-Imperial British Literature

In the particular and peculiar case of the Booker Prize, regarded as the most prestigious literary award in the United Kingdom (as measured by economic value to the author and publisher, and total audience for the awards announcement), the cultural and economic valences of literary prizes collide with the imperial history of Britain, and its after-empire relationships to its former colonies. From its beginnings, the Booker prize has never been simply a British prize for writers in the United Kingdom. The Booker’s reach into the Commonwealth of Nations, a loose cultural and economic alliance of the United Kingdom and former British colonies, challenges the very constitution of the category of post-imperial British literature. With a history of winners from India, South Africa, New Zealand, and Nigeria, among many other former British colonies, the Booker presents itself as a value arbitrating mechanism for a majority of the English-speaking world. Indeed, the Booker has maintained a reputation for bringing writers from postcolonial nations to the attention of a British audience increasingly hungry for a global, cosmopolitan literature, especially one easily available via the lingua franca of English. Whether and how the prize winners avoid the twin colonial pitfalls of ownership by and debt to an English patron is the subject of a great deal of criticism on the Booker, and to understand the prize as a gatekeeper and tastemaker for the loose, baggy canon of British or even global Anglophone literature, there must be a reckoning with the history of the prize, its multiplication into several prizes under one umbrella category, and the form and substance of the novels that have taken the prize since 1969.

Canada’s Participation in the Imperial Military Bodies in the First World War

Introduction. The paper is devoted to the participation of Canada in the creation and activities of the Imperial War Cabinet and two Imperial War Conferences of 1917 and 1918 to explain the evolution of the foreign and political status of Canada as a part of the British Empire after the end of the War. Methods and materials. The paper is based on the British and Canadian Parliamentary Debates, Reports, Minutes of Proceedings and Meetings of the Imperial War Conferences 1917/1918 and the Imperial War Cabinet. To study them, it uses the method of historical criticism of sources. The author also uses the historical-genetic, comparative and the narrative methods to investigate the causes, the process of creating and activities of imperial military bodies for the unified management of the war. Analysis. The paper analyzes the reasons for the creation of imperial military organizations in the British Empire during the war. It reveals the organizational and functional differences between the two imperial military bodies: Cabinet and Conference. The author studies the activities of imperial military bodies during the war in detail, determines the role of the Canadian delegation in this process. The article analyzes the decisions of the imperial military bodies, reveals their domestic and foreign policy consequences for Dominion of Canada. Results. Canada’s active participation in the creation and activities of the imperial military bodies during the First World War was one of the factors in the transformation of the Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations, the formation of its own national identity, political and foreign independence within the Empire.

African Leadership in Human Rights: The Gambia and The Commonwealth Human Rights Commission, 1977–83

This article examines The Gambia’s campaign from 1977-83 for a new international mechanism to protect human rights in the Commonwealth of Nations. President Dawda Jawara’s crusade for a Commonwealth Human Rights Commission complicates the dominant scholarly interpretation of human rights history, which tends to dismiss or overlook African participation in the international human rights movement. The article explains The Gambia’s display of human rights idealism as a strategy to attract aid and legitimacy in the global arena. It also shows how The Gambia’s project was thwarted by the ‘Old Commonwealth’, including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Western member states worked together to surreptitiously weaken and defeat The Gambia’s initiative, while deflecting blame and counting on ‘New Commonwealth’ governments in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific to play the role of antagonist. Overall, the article contends the Commonwealth Human Rights Commission was killed because it threatened illusions and assumptions about the human rights movement that were convenient for western powers. With the use of archival sources from the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, this article spotlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of African and Global South actors in human rights history.

Borneo – trudna przeszłość, poplątane tożsamości. Indonezyjsko-malajska konfrontacja 1963–1966

Borneo, the largest of the Sunda Islands, was already divided during the colonial period. Its southern part belonged to the Dutch East Indies. To the north, there were the territories of North Kalimantan, part of the British Federation of Malaya. The President of the Republic of Indonesia, Ahmed Sukarno, supported anti-colonial movements around the world. Moreover, in 1962, Indonesia launched a military operation that attached West Irian, a Dutch overseas territory in the eastern tip of New Guinea. This operation gained international support.When Great Britain revised its Far East policy in the late 1950s, London gave independence to the Federation of Malaya, known as Malaysia since that time. From then on, the country was part of the Commonwealth of Nations. President Sukarno, remembering the success of the 1962 operation, considered newly established Malaysia to be only a new incarnation of English colonial politics. In April 1963, Jakarta began invading northern Borneo to annex these lands to Indonesia. The invasion met with strong resistance from the Commonwealth of Nations. After three years of struggle, the territorial status quo from before the conflict was re-established. The invasion and its high costs shook President Sukarno’s position. As a result, he was overthrown by General Suharto and the previously pursued policy of supporting anti-colonialism ended, although Indonesia remained a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, one of whose spiritual fathers was Ahmed Sukarno.