History and International Relations

[published in Routledge's "Philosophy and Method in the Social Sciences" series]

This study starts from a simple premise:  human practices are a fundamental constituent — arguably “the” fundamental constituent — of social reality.  It then poses the following question:  What would social scientists’ research look like if they took this insight quite seriously?

That, of course, would depend on what practices are in fact like:  what their generic features are, how they are constituted, how they might be identified and characterised and explained, how they function in concrete contexts, how they might change across time and space.  These are the kinds of questions that this book tries to tackle, insisting that their answers hold important implications for the effective practice of social science.

The book thus attempts to build a philosophical infrastructure for the empirical study of practices in the social sciences and humanities.  At the same time, it also tries to explore the implications of this ontology of human practices for issues in social theory and in the philosophy of the social sciences.  The book thus stands at the intersection of the philosophy of social science, social theory, and the social sciences.

Taming the Imperial Imagination marks a novel intervention into the debate on empire and international relations, and offers a new perspective on nineteenth-century Anglo-Afghan relations. Martin J. Bayly shows how, throughout the nineteenth century, the British Empire in India sought to understand and control its peripheries through the use of colonial knowledge. Addressing the fundamental question of what Afghanistan itself meant to the British at the time, he draws on extensive archival research to show how knowledge of Afghanistan was built, refined and warped by an evolving colonial state. This knowledge informed policy choices and cast Afghanistan in a separate legal and normative universe. Beginning with the disorganised exploits of nineteenth-century explorers and ending with the cold strategic logic of the militarised 'scientific frontier', this book tracks the nineteenth-century origins of contemporary policy 'expertise' and the forms of knowledge that inform interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere today.

From the book cover:

‘Focusing on the shifting parameters of “knowledge communities,” this impressive book situates Afghanistan and the Afghan frontier in a multi-layered and evolving set of British Imperial and colonial policies and practices during the nineteenth century. It is essential reading for all students of modern Afghanistan and for those concerned with colonial knowledge formations and the history of imperialism.’
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Professor of History, James Madison University


‘According to Edward Said, “From travelers’ tales ... colonies were created.” In recent years scholars have explored the details of the dialectical relationship between colonial knowledge and imperial policy. In Taming the Imperial Imagination, Martin Bayly continues the work begun by Christopher Bayly on British information gathering in India, pushing the investigation north of the Durand Line into Afghanistan. Bayly reconstructs the images of Afghanistan upon which British officials drew in crafting their policy decisions. After discussing the work of the founding figures, he tracks the emergence after 1830 of a more unified concept of the Afghan polity. This book is an important contribution to the histories of British imperialism and Anglo-Afghan relations and to the rehistoricization of the International Relations discipline.’
George Steinmetz, Charles Tilly Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan

ABSTRACT (does not appear in published version):

As others have noted, the concept of governmentality has by and large been used to study politics in the national context. Indeed, this is almost exclusively how Foucault himself used it. Yet the concept has lent itself quite naturally to the study of world order and international governance. Moreover, as Foucault’s remarkable lectures of 1977-8 (Sécurité, Territoire, Population: STP) reveal, the international realm plays an important, even constitutive, role in the development of governmentality, both as historical rationality/practice and as technical concept.

A careful examination of the historical record shows that the influence runs in the other direction, too. The rise of governmental rationalities and practices, particularly in Europe, had an enormous and lasting impact on the nature and history of international relations. Engaging with STP, and particularly with its early chapters on “apparatuses of security”, this chapter seeks to sketch important features of governmental practices and rationalities as these first emerged in the international sphere. It begins by emphasising aspects of Foucault’s treatment of governmentality which to this point have received little sustained attention. Together, these emphases point to important limitations of conventional understandings of governmentality in the secondary literature, in IR and beyond.

The chapter then goes on to examine certain recurrent features of the rationalities and practices of European international politics in the period 1815-48, in an effort to demonstrate that these aspects of governmentality are already in full evidence in the era of the so-called Concert of Europe. Indeed, from the time of their emergence, the practices and problems of government and security dominated European international politics as widely, as intensely, and as early as ever they did the national sphere.

Abstract
This article examines the longstanding rivalry of Rome and Parthia, which began as an unintended consequence of Crassus’ decisive defeat at Carrhae in 53 BCE. It synthesizes the accounts and opinions of numerous Graeco-Roman writers from the Augustan Age to late antiquity in order to help illustrate the new and interconnected post-Carrhae world and its legacy. The rivalry of the Romans and Parthians became a primary focus of their foreign policies and drastically expanded their perceptions of the world in which they interacted. Even after the fall of the Parthians to the rebellious Sassanid Persians in the 220s CE, the Romans continued to find their three-century-long rivalry with the Parthians of interest and relevant to the changing world of late antiquity.

Recent scholarship on John Stuart Mill has illuminated his arguments about the normative legitimacy of imperial rule. However, it has tended to ignore or downplay his extensive writings on settler colonialism: the attempt to create permanent “civilized” communities, mainly in North America and the South Pacific. Mill defended colonization throughout his life, although his arguments about its character and justification shifted over time. While initially he regarded it as a solution to the “social problem” in Britain, he increasingly came to argue that its legitimacy resided in the universal benefits—civilization, peace, and prosperity—it generated for humanity. In the final years of his life Mill seemed to lose faith in the project. Finally recognizing the prevalence of colonial violence and the difficulty of realizing his grand ambitions, yet refusing to give up on colonization altogether, his colonial romance gave way to a form of melancholia.

This article offers a fresh critique of the work of political scientists and historians who have propagated the Eurocentric history of democracy. The paper argues that such work can be dissected and critiqued along several key lines: their reliance on a distinctly patriarchal discourse riddled with prejudices; the assertion that one can understand the history of democracy via the etymology of the word itself; and the deeply Eurocentric
roots of the study of democracy’s past embedded in the canon of Western political thought. The paper concludes by calling on contemporary political scientists and political historians concerned with the history of  democracy to be careful in re-iterating this deeply flawed history of democracy and to instead work towards a history of democracy that retrieves the silenced histories and the forgotten democratic moments that lay behind the roar of Western power.

After conquering large swaths of Syria and Iraq, the IS undertook an aggressive sectarian campaign in which they not only enacted horrific violence against the Shia people, but also damaged or destroyed several key Shia mosques and shrines. Drawing on Social Movement Theory (SMT), this article analyzes the response by various Shia nonstate actors—militia leaders, religious clergymen, populist preachers, and seminal poets. It argues that they used the IS threat to Shia holy sites to develop and deploy a mobilization frame that has come to be referred to as the “shrine protection narrative.” The article also documents the manifold consequences of the shrine protection narrative: it underpinned a mass recruitment drive that saw tens of thousands enlist; it legitimized foreign Shia militias to enter the conflicts in both Syria and Iraq; it justified the formation of entirely new militias who declared the centrality of shrine protection to their mandate; and it mobilized them to enact political violence. In doing so, this article extends existing studies of SMT to demonstrate that “sacred spaces”—and particularly the need to protect religious sites from specific threats—can serve as a powerful mobilization frame towards political violence.

Transportation proved a major instrument in the hands of the colonial government in Nigeria to attain their objective of making the colony an export-based economy. Enormous tons of goods left the country through the transport network that connected the produce centres with the coasts. One of the means of transportation that played a very important role in the trend was the railway. A lot of literature exists on the effects of the railway transport on the Nigerian colonial economy. Some serve as eulogy while others are more critical. This work attempts a holistic approach towards discussing the colonial infrastructural development in Nigeria. However, special attention is given to the development of the railway lines across the colony. The subject is discussed in themes and the paper adopts the secondary source of data collection

"Kwale", a European rendering of Ukwuani has often been used to refer to Ukwuani people of the Western Niger Delta of Nigeria or their territory. The people, who are largely a mixture of Benin and Igbo origins, did not live in isolation in pre-colonial times. Rather, they maintained relations with their neighbours such as the Aboh, Isoko, Urhobo, Itsekiri, Ijo, Benin, Enuani and Ika. Existing works on the Ukwuani, albeit few, place too much emphasis on aspects of traditions of origin and socio-political organisations. This article focuses on another neglected aspect of Ukwuani history by focusing attention on another vital theme-inter-group relations. Specifically, Ukwuani political and diplomatic as well as economic and trade relations with their proximate neighbours in pre-colonial times are examined in this study. This is from the point of view of strategic considerations and the implications of such intercourse with regard to geographical proximity and survival needs rather than sheer group identity or inclinations to legends of common origins. It concludes that contrary to the contention that inter-group relations in the pre-colonial era thrived more among monarchies or centralised states, the Ukwuani example shows that so called stateless or fragmented pre-colonial African states, were equally involved in mutually beneficial trans-border intercourse.

"The article revisits the “Santa Catarina incident”, the famous episode of the first Portuguese ship captured by the Dutch in Asian waters, placing it within the broader context of Luso-Dutch rivalry in the Malay world, particularly the Straits of Singapore and Malacca. Through a careful analysis of European sources, the author assesses the broader consequences of this event and the ensuing international implications. After 1603, the VOC directors and the regents of the Dutch Republic were alerted to how profitable the policy of freebooting and despoiling the enemy could be, while the Portuguese authorities of the Estado da Índia became aware of their vulnerability in the face of geographical constraints. There is also a discussion of the legal defence of the Dutch interests as presented by Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist who has frequently been upheld as the “father of modern international law”. What becomes very transparent in the course of the present account is how important the Macao merchants really were to the Estado da Índia, how far their networks of trade spanned deep into Southeast Asia, and how, despite suffering a number of severe setbacks as a result of VOC freebooting activities, they managed to recuperate from these blows with amazing agility and perseverance.

You can download this paper from
http://www.icm.gov.mo/RC/TextPE.asp?No=11&ID=555"

This paper deals with the background, role players, sequence of events, geopolitical considerations and history of the Angolan War which took place from 1975 to 1990 between the Soviet Union and its allies & proxies on the one hand, and the Republic of South Africa and its allies on the other. It also has a section presenting a rebuttal of previously published material on this subject, and a section on disinformation techniques used in and by the Soviet Union.

This  article  demonstrates  the  emerging  significance  of  concepts  pertaining  to  culture  and civilisation  in  imagining  the  global  political  economy  (GPE).    It  focuses  on  how  certain  Russian thinkers  and  officials  employ  such  concepts  to  critique  American  hegemony,  to  consolidate  and
defend Russia’s statist political apparatus, and to obtain legitimacy for Russian state conduct both at home and abroad.  Russian debates over Eurasianism, civilisational difference and geopolitical identity were common in the 1990s and have filtered into Putin era Russian state discourse about Eurasian  political  and  economic  integration  initiatives.    Historicist  analysis  of  world  orders,  a method inspired by the work of Robert Cox, is employed here to understand how ntersubjective
ideas  derived  from  previous  epochs  are  mobilised  and  transformed  by  social  and  political  actors for  contemporary  political  projects.  Organic  intellectuals  of  the  Russian  state  articulate  and legitimise  state-sanctioned  difference  in  an  era  in  which  once  widely  presumed  integrative globalisation and American hegemony are being questioned.

This research problematizes how the military, political and ideological conflict which took place between Ottoman and Spanish Empires in 16th century, as well as how self-images of the two international actors were socially constructed and what the sociohistorical background behind this phenomenon was at that time. Historical span of this analysis covers the period between Ottoman conquest of Rhodes (1522) where the first yet latent seed of the conflict was sown and Battle of Alcazarquivir (1578) where the final yet indirect impact of the Ottomans over Spain came to an absolute end. Alexander Wendt's constructivist IR theory, Fernand Braudel's classification of history, Herfried Münkler's model of empire, Edmund Husserl's “lebenswelt” and George Herbert Mead's infamous distinction between “I and me” constituted the main conceptional corpus of this study. This study also aims to combine the intellectual mindsets of history and IR disciplines. Thereby, Introduction chapter criticized the current praxis of history writing (especially in Turkey) and evaluated the current literature. Conceptual Framework chapter described the theoretical elements of this analysis. Chapter of Historical and Social Definitions defined what each historical “social kind” meant in their respective era. Analytical Framework chapter showed the interplay between theoretical framework and historical substance, then Conclusion chapter discussed what the conflict meant as “histoire conjoncturelle” in respect to the larger “histoire structurelle” of civilizational clash in the Mediterranean Basin as well as it summarized the outcomes that were reached by this thesis.

The status of ‘international law’ is examined critically. In the first section, the basis of (national) legislation is described. This consists of an inquiry into a credible meaning of ‘natural law’. It is focused on the question whether universal principles exist and, if so, of what kind. Section 2 deals with the issue of enforcement. National legislation invariably realizes this, but this is not obvious at the international level. Section 3 deals with human rights. It is discussed whether their presence points to the existence of ‘international law’. To this end, a possible reason for these rights to have developed is expounded.

En este trabajo se ofrece un actualizado estado de la cuestión sobre un asunto poco conocido: el papel desempeñado por la diplomacia alemana en la política exterior española entre el Sexenio Democrático y la guerra hispano-norteamericana. Sobre la base de un nutrido número de obras procedentes de la historiografía española y alemana, se pretende analizar los fines ideados y los medios empleados por los sucesivos gobiernos españoles a fin de estrechar los lazos diplomáticos con el naciente imperio alemán. Se demuestra la continuidad de los gobiernos españoles del Sexenio y la Restauración, así como la perfecta inserción de España en el engranaje diplomático de Bismarck.

This project provides an updated state of the art on a little known issue: the role played by German diplomacy in Spanish foreign policy between the Glorious Revolution (1868) and Spanish-American war (1898). Based on a large number of works from the Spanish and German historiography, the project expects to analyze the ends and the means used by the different Spanish governments in order to deepen diplomatic ties with the nascent German empire. It shows not only the existing continuity in Spanish governments from the Revolution to the Restoration, but also Spain’s calculated place in Bismarck’s diplomatic system.

Regardless of theoretical perspective, hierarchy is an ever present focus of international Relations, especially in terms of empire or hierarchy. Due to the structural impact of the Industrial Revolution since the late 18 th century, it has become possible for one to find differences concerning the definition and behavior of hegemonies. This paper identifies three types of empires in history-classic, European and modern-based on the outcome and appearance of power as demonstrated by the hegemon or dominant power. Looking towards the future, China indeed stands out. Nonetheless, China needs to respond to the following questions in its rise onto the world stage: (a) whether to conform to the assumptions of parity and overtake, or reduce the power differential with the incumbent hegemon (the United States); (b) to be in possession of a power vacuum (for example, East Asia) that can serve as a geopolitical foundation; (c) to use force effectively to demonstrate and increase its international status, but prevent from being dragged into unnecessary mudslides; (d) to come up with grand strategies characterized by long term vision instead of great power strategies aimed only at catching up. This paper adopts the approach of paradigm shift and China as the case study, and seeks to understand its strategic choices and potential influences in the world in the near future.

China and the United Nations: from exclusion to veto power. From 1947 to 1971 the People's Republic of China was excluded from the United Nations, while the Chinese seat (including in the Security Council) was occupied by Taipei. This evident paradox strongly reduced the ability of the United Nations to mediate international conflicts and undermined the authority of the international body. The book analyses the events that for over 20 years prevented to resolve the question of the Chinese representation and discusses how eventually the impasse was resolved in 1971

The relations between Turkey and Yemen have a deep-rooted history dating back to 1600s. During the era of the Ottoman Empire the common history of these two societies living under the same roof is not limited to only the official documents or historical books. Moreover most of these documents and works introduce Yemen and the existence of the Ottoman Empire in Yemen. However further to that, when we look from the Turkish perspective, we see a new Yemen phenomenon. This article aims at introducing the “Yemen phenomenon in Turkey”. On this purpose, the manner of handling the Yemen subject in the Ottoman and Turkish press, in the Turkish school books, the Turkish literature and the public language as well as in the official documents and historical books was researched.

H. G. Wells was one of the most influential writers of the first half of the twentieth century. Most famous today as a founder of modern science fiction, he was once known throughout the world as a visionary social and political thinker. Questions of global order were central to his work. From the opening decade of the century until the close of the Second World War, he campaigned tirelessly for the creation of a world state, characterised by universal peace and justice. Yet scholarship on Wells has paid insufficient attention to the complex and conflicted nature of Wells’s early views about how to build a world state, and in particular the tensions between his advocacy of a New Republic, formed by the unification of the English-speaking peoples, and his support for liberal imperialism. In this essay I analyse the development of this key theme in Wells’s political thinking. I demonstrate how his views on race, empire, and Anglo-American union shifted over time, show how his political arguments connected to his underlying views about social explanation and language, and highlight how his interpretation of the United States had a profound influence on his ideas about world order.

History of Africa starts with probing foundation of Africans, which is indistinguishable from snooping on beginning of humanity. The name “Africa” to the Greeks means ‘without-cold’; to the Latin it means ‘sunny’; and to the Egyptians it means ‘Motherland’. Research has shown that the seven ancestral mothers of Europe have strong links to at least one of the three clans that also exist in Africa today. This substantiates further that modern citizenry have their origins in ancient Africa. Amongst others, Homo ergaster of West Turkana and Kenya have proven to be the remains of about 1.5 million years ago. More so, the anatomy of Homo sapiens dating to roughly 160 thousand years ago is exclusive among hominine species that appeared first in East Africa., This has been established by extensive researches within the Institute of Human Origins confirming the human lineage through time. Further, probe into the farthest and notable clans and tribes reveals there are seven ancient African Tribes: Maasai, Berbers, Sandawe, African Pygmies, Hadza, Nama, and San (Bushmen). These tribes have unique genetic features as well as languages that are not closely associated with any others in existence today.
Astonishingly, all these tribes are still around and practising their ancient traditions. While this book’s aim is primarily to reflect on Africans’ activities before 1800; it’s imperative to state briefly, the link between the past and the present African structures occasioned by colonization which dramatically changed the face of Africa.  The expansion of Islam Caliphate led to a rise within the Arab slaves traffic that reached a crescendo in the 19th Century. This presaged the forced transport of African people and cultures to the New World within the Atlantic slave traffic, and therefore beginning of the European scramble for Africa. The colonization of Africa lasted from the late 1800s till the commencement of African independence agitations and movements in 1951.Libya became primarily the first former colony to become independent. Modern African history is rife with revolutions and wars as a result of the growth of recent African economies and democratization of governance across the continent. European authorities drew new political boundaries which divides established traditional governments and cultural groups. This transformed the ancient history to produce this day Africa.
Keywords: Diplomatic relations, bilateral relations, democratizing, African renaissance, foreign policy in Africa, Big Brethren Ghana, Big Brethren Kenya and neo-imperialist Kenya.

«Due to the absence of His Eminence».
The government of the diocese of Naples during the exile of cardinal Giuseppe Maria Capece Zurlo (1799-1801) ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Among the most famous victims of the first Bourbon Restoration after the fall of the Neapolitan Republic of 1799, there was, without doubt, the old cardinal Giuseppe Maria Capece Zurlo, archbishop of Naples (1782-1801). On the basis of unpublished archival sources, the author attempts to reconstruct carefully the period of Capece Zurlo’s exile in the abbey palace in Loreto of Montevergine and its serious consequences for the government of the archdiocese of Naples, temporarily entrusted to the pastoral care of Vincenzo Maria Torrusio, bishop of Capaccio and vicar general cum omnimoda potestate. In the present research also illustrates how the forced resignation of Capece Zurlo and the appointment of his successor had caused an attrition of the diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of Naples and the Holy See in the early nineteenth century.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tra le vittime più illustri della prima Restaurazione borbonica dopo la caduta della Repubblica Napoletana del 1799 vi fu, senza dubbio, l’anziano cardinale Giuseppe Maria Capece Zurlo, arcivescovo di Napoli dal 1782 al 1801. Sulla base di fonti archivistiche inedite, l’autore tenta di ricostruire accuratamente il periodo dell’esilio di Capece Zurlo nel palazzo abbaziale di Loreto di Montevergine, rivelatosi carico di conseguenze per il governo dell’arcidiocesi di Napoli, temporaneamente affidata alle cure pastorali di Vincenzo Maria Torrusio, vescovo di Capaccio e vicario generale cum omnimoda potestate. Nel presente studio, inoltre, viene evidenziato come le forzate dimissioni di Capece Zurlo e la nomina del suo successore avessero contribuito a logorare le relazioni diplomatiche tra il Regno di Napoli e la Santa Sede agli albori del XIX secolo.

Rumours have circulated for many years that British forces took a more active role in the Vietnam conflict, than simply flying humanitarian missions. Concrete evidence has until now been lacking. Details of at least one episode, involving flights by British aeroplanes over Laos in the second half of 1962, when the Geneva Accords (July 1962) had imposed a no-fly zone over Laos. These missions were apparently undertaken at the request of the United States. Notes taken from the logbook of the navigator on these flights, plus his recollections, provide concrete details of these flights.

In this article, we conceptualize and demonstrate how historical International Relations (IR) can be employed to critically engage with the populist uses of history at present. In this endeavour, we focus on myths as analytical nodal points. We revisit the rich interdisciplinary literature on myths to conceptually connect historical research that unsettles myths with political critiques of myths in terms of their naturalizing effects at present. We also expand the critical agenda of historical IR research into targeting the prevalent historical myths of Self and Other that are employed to promote antagonism in contemporary politics. We illustrate the potential that historical IR research holds in illuminating and debunking the contemporary populist uses of history through the case of the relations between Europe and the Ottoman Empire and its relationship with present-day anti-Western populism in Turkey. Via the notion of myth, we combine a critical discourse analysis of the ample historical references in Erdoğan's populist discourse with original historical analysis of the varied interactions between the Ottoman Empire and European states in the period invoked in those references.

This article aims to analyze how history has been used as a political discourse by the current ruling elites of Turkey in the post-2010 period. In doing that, the article first defines what the politicization of history is and locates the Justice and Development Party’’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) perception of history within the broader conservative political movements in Turkey. Then, the article focuses on the discourses of some AKP politicians and pro-AKP journalists to show how the AKP has been using history as a discourse to create a binary opposition between the Unionist/CHP mentality and the AKP mentality and to label the latter as the source of all current political troubles of Turkey.

During the final quarter of the twentieth century, the democratic peace thesis - the idea that democracies do not fight one another - moved to the centre of scholarly and political debate throughout the Western world. Much of this work traces its origins to the European Enlightenment, and especially on Immanuel Kant. However, this historical narrative misses much of the subsequent discourse about democracy and war. In this essay I focus on some prominent, though now largely forgotten, strands of political thinking in the United States and Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, I dissect fin de siècle debates about democracy, empire, race, and interstate conflict. Section I delineates four popular visions of peace that circulated during the nineteenth century: structural-liberal, radical-liberal, socialist, and republican. Section II introduces what I call the ‘democratic war thesis’ and the ‘democratic empire thesis.’ The former identified the linkages between democratic political structures and inter-state conflict, the latter suggested that vast empires could co-operatively govern the world and abolish war.  Section III anatomises the racial peace thesis, which was propounded by a range of prominent figures,  including Andrew Carnegie, Cecil Rhodes and H. G. Wells. They argued, from different points on the political spectrum, that the 'Anglo-Saxon race' held the key to perpetual peace.

Debates about post-Westphalian forms of citizenship play a central role in contemporary political thought. I analyse a significant precursor to these debates, exploring fin de siècle conceptions of racial and imperial political membership. My argument has two main parts. First, I delineate different models of imperial citizenship: imperial-statist, institutional-imperial, racial-imperial, and isopolitan. Second, I dissect the notion of ‘isopolitan’ (or common) citizenship. Isopolity is a practice, derived from the ancient Greeks, in which independent states reciprocally grant citizenship rights to the members of other independent states, thus creating a loose form of political union. It was adapted at the turn of the twentieth century to theorise future Anglo-American relations. I examine the arguments of some prominent isopolitans, focusing on the constitutional theorist A. V. Dicey. ‘Anglo’ isopolitans challenged the isomorphic relationship between the territorial state, sovereignty and political membership. They did so through constructing a global white supremacist political vision.

This is a new piece that is published as chapter 2 in Duncan Bell, Reordering the World: Essays on Liberalism and Empire (Princeton University Press, 2016). The book collects together a selection of my essays on the history of political thought. This chapter has 4 main sections: (1) Languages of Empire; (2) Intertextual Empire: Writing Liberal Imperialism; (3) On Settler Colonialism; (4) The Tyranny of the Canon.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10755.html

Subject of the study is a little-known aspect of Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, namely, the propaganda campaign towards the German public from September 1938 until May 1940. Although there is a vast literature about appeasement, Chamberlain’s efforts to reach the German people by way of propaganda have so far received no attention from historians. The thesis reconstructs for the first time the history of British German-language propaganda dur-ing Chamberlain’s premiership. The evolution of the institutional framework, the changing strategies and the contents of this propaganda campaign are described in detail, offering a deep insight into the thinking of the British Government about German society and exposing a naive belief in the power of propaganda.
In the thesis a new methodological approach is adopted by integrating the study of high poli-tics at the diplomatic level with the study of the propaganda campaign towards a foreign pub-lic. Whereas conventional interpretations consider appeasement a foreign policy strategy con-ducted exclusively on the diplomatic stage between the two governments of Britain and Ger-many, the author maintains that appeasement has rather to be viewed as a policy consisting of two equal and complementary pillars. The first pillar was the well-known dual policy of deter-rence and conciliation directed towards the Nazi regime at a governmental level. The second pillar was the propaganda campaign directed towards the German public over the heads of the Nazi regime. The propaganda campaign, while on the whole reflecting Chamberlain’s foreign policy on the governmental level, seems to have been regarded by the British government as an additional deterrent element to the diplomatic pillar: Hitler was to be warned that he would risk serious opposition from his own people if he provoked war, and thus be induced to seek a peaceful solution to his territorial claims. In this sense, the propaganda campaign was a safe-guard for the conciliatory part of appeasement, namely, the readiness to consider favourably Germany’s legitimate territorial and economic claims.
The thesis identifies five phases during which Chamberlain attached varying degrees of im-portance to the propaganda instrument in his dealings with Germany. Thus, the significance of propaganda increased in direct relation to the deterioration of Anglo-German negotiations on the diplomatic level. The propaganda pillar even outlasted the outbreak of war and the col-lapse of the first pillar: After negotiations on an official diplomatic level had come to an end on 3rd September 1939, Chamberlain sought to continue his policy of goodwill towards the German people by means of propaganda in the hope to stir up a revolution against Hitler.
In the end, however, British propaganda proved to be a failure. The author identifies two rea-sons for this. The first was a lack of credibility, i.e. the discrepancy between the picture of events as presented in British propaganda, and the reality as experienced by the German pub-lic. The second, and even more important, reason was, however, a whole host of unrealistic British assumptions about the Nazi state and the character of the German people. In particular, the British political elite unconsciously transferred British democratic traditions onto Hitler’s totalitarian regime. Chamberlain’s propaganda was based on the premise that public opinion did carry some weight in the Third Reich and that the German people, even though living un-der a dictatorship, would cherish similar political ideals of democratic participation and a dis-like of Hitler as British subjects.

El manual que el lector tiene en sus manos constituye una herramienta fundamental para estudiar la Ciencia Política y las Relaciones Internacionales. Recoge el trabajo del equipo docente de la Escuela de Política y Relaciones Internacionales de la Universidad Sergio Arboleda. El texto hace parte de una iniciativa institucional que busca promover publicaciones que faciliten el aprendizaje de los alumnos de pregrado y posgrado en diversos temas de su formación académica.

The production of imagined geographies is widely understood as a tool of colonial power. This paper, analyzing the writings of pro-revolutionary Italian patriots in the 1790s, argues that imagined geographies can also be used to subvert existing hierarchies and to renegotiate the relationship between centers and peripheries. Throughout the eighteenth century, European identity had been defined in antithesis to what was regarded as the uncivilized other—the Orient, but also the European South. After the French army invaded Italy in 1796, Italian patriots, who advocated the creation of a democratic republic in the Peninsula, started to reconsider the role of Italy and the Mediterranean Basin in the revolutionary process. They argued that it was in the Mediterranean that the Revolution would fight its most important battle. This was, of course, the battle for the liberty of navigation and commerce—against the British monopoly of trade—but also the battle of the “peoples of the South” against the “peoples of the North.” Challenging a long-established hierarchy of civilization, Italian patriots argued for the superiority of the South over the North. The peoples of the South were described as the promoters of international cooperation, freedom, and peace, whereas the peoples of the North were characterized by aggressive and exploitative attitudes. Both South and North, for them, were not geographical but cultural definitions—in fact, the South spanned from the Ottoman Empire to the Netherlands, including Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. Producing such a new imagined geography, Italian patriots reconceptualized the Revolution as a worldwide event that would eventually produce the emergence of a new peaceful global order based on the “southern spirit.” The creation of a worldwide federation of nation-states—including an Italian republic—would naturally follow.

This article examines the historical sociology that informs Andrew Linklater's Violence and Civilization in the Western States-Systems. On the sociological side, it critically assesses Linklater's use of Elias and Wight, arguing that his 'higher level synthesis' is internally incompatible. On the historical side, the article argues that the occlusion of the transnational interactions that, in great measure, drive historical development means that Linklater's analysis is inadequate for its stated purpose: to chart the development of civilising processes within the Western state-systems. When asked by a reporter what he thought of Western civilisation, Mahatma Gandhi is said to have replied that 'it would be a good idea'. Apocryphal or not, Gandhi's remark speaks to the 'dark side' of Western civilisation: its histories of imperialism and colonialism, authoritarianism and racism, genocide and mass warfare. In the contemporary world, these histories are under close scrutiny, both in the academy and the wider world. The former can be seen in the array of texts, from global history to postcolonial scholarship, which examines the interrelationship between the 'rise of the West' and the 'decline of the Rest'. 1 The latter can be seen in the malaise that infuses Western international order, whether this is found in its forums of governance, deepening levels of inequality, or in increasingly polarised debates over immigration, race, and sexuality. A transnational movement of anti-establishment groups, present in much of Europe and North America, is but one barometer of a general atmosphere of discontent that permeates Western international order. It is a brave individual who marches into this landscape arguing that the contemporary Western states-system is a singularly civilised order, the inheritor of advances made over several centuries. Yet this is the path chosen by Andrew Linklater. His trilogy of interventions into the shape and trajectory of modern international order (two books published; one to come) is nothing if not 'untimely' in that it cuts against the grain of trends within contemporary world politics, while simultaneously speaking