Showing papers on "Expansionism published in 2004"

Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East

Abstract: Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, the United States pledged to give increased economic and military aid to receptive Middle Eastern countries and to protect - with US armed forces if necessary - the territorial integrity and political independence of these nations from the threat of "international communism". Salim Yaqub demonstrates that although the United States officially aimed to protect the Middle East from Soviet encroachment, the Eisenhower Doctrine had the unspoken mission of containing the radical Arab nationalism of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom Eisenhower regarded as an unwitting agent of Soviet expansionism. By offering aid and protection, the Eisenhower administration hoped to convince a majority of Arab governments to side openly with the West in the Cold War, thus isolating Nasser and decreasing the likelihood that the Middle East would fall under Soviet domination. Employing a wide range of declassified Egyptian, British and American archival sources, Yaqub offers a comprehensive account of Eisenhower's efforts to counter Nasserism's appeal throughout the Arab Middle East. Challenging interpretations of US-Arab relations that emphasize cultural antipathies and clashing values, Yaqub instead argues that the political dispute between the United States and the Nasserist movement occurred within a shared moral framework - a pattern that continues to characterize US-Arab controversies in the 21st century.

Taiwan's Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895

Abstract: Until 300 years ago, the Chinese considered Taiwan a "land beyond the seas," a "ball of mud" inhabited by "naked and tattooed savages." The incorporation of this island into the Qing empire in the seventeenth century and its evolution into a province by the late nineteenth century involved not only a reconsideration of imperial geography but also a reconceptualisation of the Chinese domain. The annexation of Taiwan was only one incident in the much larger phenomenon of Qing expansionism into frontier areas that resulted in a doubling of the area controlled from Beijing and the creation of a multi-ethnic polity. The author argues that travellers' accounts and pictures of frontiers such as Taiwan led to a change in the imagined geography of the empire. In representing distant Iands and ethnically diverse peoples of the frontiers to audiences in China proper, these works transformed places once considered non-Chinese into familiar parts of the empire and thereby helped to naturalise Qing expansionism. By viewing Taiwan-China relations as a product of the history of Qing expansionism, the author contributes to our understanding of current political events in the region.

Friends or foes? diplomatic relations between italy and turkey, 1923–36

Abstract: Turkey's foreign policy and relations in the early Republican era, before and during World War II, has been subject to systematic and scholarly research, leading to numerous publications since the 1970s.1 Although no less significant than Britain, Germany, or the Soviet Union in shaping Turkish inter-war foreign policy and priorities, Italy does not seem to have received a similar degree of attention in this growing literature. Italy is usually treated in the works on Turkish foreign relations only as a threat that Turkey's foreign and strategic policy aimed to counter after 1934.2 Turkish diplomatic historiography generally tends to view Italian-Turkish relations on a continuum extending from the Tripolitanian War of 1911 to World War II. This view suggests that the Italian policy of expansionism was an ever-present menace to the new republic throughout the inter-war years.3 Indeed, Italian vocal claims on Turkey as well as Rome's bullying of its Adriatic neighbors in the early fascist era lends strong credence to this view. Most students of Italian foreign policy interpret Mussolini's policies as continuous with and similar to those of the liberal period. In other words, fascist Italy's foreign policy is portrayed as having inherited the expansionist policies of the past.4 However, it is also widely agreed that Mussolini's foreign policy was consistent only in its inconsistency.5 For instance, Marco Rimanelli defines Mussolini's diplomacy as fluid, constantly shifting according to the circumstances.6 Elements of both continuity and inconsistency in Italian foreign policy were also operative in Rome's relations with Ankara in the inter-war years. As a result, Italian-Turkish relations in this period oscillated between antagonism and friendship. Moreover, from time to time antagonism and friendship went hand in hand, which led the French diplomats to label ItalianTurkish relations "amiadversion" (amity-adversity).7 Turkish diplomatic historiography conventionally focuses solely on the element of adversity and fails to account for shifts or changes in the direction of amity in these relations. This approach inevitably overlooks, among other things, a period of "warmth" in Italian-Turkish relations between 1928 and 1932.8 Gradually improving relations between the two countries during this short period were characterized by rapprochement. The existing literature mentions this improved climate in Italian-Turkish relations in passing, if at all, or as a tactical move by Mussolini. This article pursues a number of aims. The first two are related to Italian-Turkish bilateral relations. Thus, it aims to offer an introduction to Italian-Turkish relations as

Imperial politics, imperial will and the crisis of US hegemony

Abstract: Under George W. Bush, the United States has chosen to revolutionize world affairs by abandoning successful forms of hegemonic governance, based on the institutionalization of collective economic and security regimes, in favor of militarism, or the pursuit of global domination through force. Starting from a critique of structuralist approaches, this paper examines the ideational transformation of the American right and situates it within the context of the US's emergence in 1991 as a unipolar strategic actor and as the core state in the newly globalized capitalist political economy. While these synchronous transformations considerably augmented America's autonomy, giving the US the opportunity to reconfigure the world system to its advantage, one must distinguish between the current imperial expansionism of the revived and expanded US national security state and earlier forms of US hegemonic rule. The aim: to account for a fundamental shift of the way in which the US has governed the capitalist world syste...

"Leviathan Is A Skein Of Networks": Translations Of Nature And Culture In Moby-Dick

Abstract: I. Moby-Dick emerges at a point of crucial historical transition in several areas of American life. By the mid-nineteenth century, the growth and global expansion of the nation’s economy following the War of 1812, and the pugnacious expansionism exemplified by the Mexican War and the ideology of manifest destiny, were giving way to signs of strain and impending civil discord: 1850 and 1851, the years during which Melville wrote his novel, were the years of the doomed compromise between opponents and proponents of slavery. The oceans provided a space in which these contending currents met and mingled. 1 Echoing contemporary politicians and apologists, Moby-Dick’s narrator rhapsodizes about the contributions made to America’s economy and the dissemination of its influence by the vast whaling fleet which, at the apogee of the industry, spanned the planet. 2 The tensions aboard the Pequod, condensed into the malignant figure of the White Whale, therefore embody contemporary strains and threats produced by industrialization, at both the natural and the cultural levels. Cesare Casarino has enumerated the vicissitudes of globalizing industry that were enacted on the “factory floor” of the whaleship: an epochal shift from mercantile to industrial capitalism, an ensuing redefinition of the relationship between labor and capital, and the unpredictable effects of intimate and extended interaction amongst a radically “international, multiethnic, multilingual and especially multiracial labor force.” 3 Moreover, the catastrophic fate of the Pequod, suggesting the transience and fragility of these economic and social transactions, uncannily anticipated the collapse of the sperm whale fishery as well. For the middle of the century was also a turning point for whaling: during these years “Californian fever” began to take labor away from the centers of the

Higher Education and Policy-making in Twentieth-century England

Abstract: Foreword PART I: SYSTEM MAKING 1. Preludes 2. Early decades: 'Unequal and inadequate' 3. 1940s: 'A new crispness' PART II: VALUES 4. Truscot: 'The universities' speaking conscience' 5. Postwar: 'A ferment of thought' 6. Moberly: 'The status quo and its defects' 7. 1950s: 'Modern needs' 8. Ashby: 'The age of technology' PART III: A NATIONAL PURPOSE 9. 1960s: 'Expansionism' 10. Final decades: 'Painful transformation' 11. Pressures and silences

Militarism, Criminal Justice, and the Hybrid Prison in England and Wales

Abstract: JULIA SUDBURY'S COMPELLING ARTICLE ANALYZES THE COMPLEX INTERRELATIONSHIP between militarism, the neoliberal globalization of capital, and the transnational expansion of the prison-industrial complex. The analytical connections she makes between multinational corporations, U.S. empire building and the devastated, criminalized lives of women in particular directly challenge the mystifying liberal fog that has descended on much of the academic debate around prisons. She also challenges critical scholars to think about developing new tactics, strategies, and links in order to repudiate the deeply embedded popular and political discourses that extol the prison behemoth as a mechanism of social defense operating in the public interest. These discourses mystify the institution's role as a place of punishment and pain for the poor and powerless, especially women, and black and other minority groups. Sudbury's analysis is theoretically stimulating and politically provocative in demanding a reappraisal of our thinking about prisons, particularly in the aftermath of September 11 and the war in Iraq. My response builds on the insights in the article to shed light on some recent developments in England and Wales. It does this by focusing on four areas: the expanding prison, the issue of private prisons, the militarization of the criminal justice system, and strategies of resistance. The Expanding Prison As Sudbury indicates, modern penal institutions are deeply implicated in the management of an inequitable and divided social order through detaining increasing numbers of the socially and economically marginalized. In England and Wales, the expanding prison is literally and metaphorically the big house of the poor while, as ever, the powerful operate beyond the law's reach as successive governments have pursued an anti-statist strategy with respect to the non-policing of their destructive and detrimental activities (Sim, 2000). The country is now the prison capital of Western Europe. This process began in the early 1980s when Margaret Thatcher's first Conservative government initiated the biggest prison-building program seen in the 20th century. This expansion continued over the next two decades (despite the occasional drop in the numbers inside), to the point that the average daily prison population reached an all-time high of 74,960 in March 2004. Projected figures indicate the population could rise to over 109,000 by the end of the decade (Prison Reform Trust, 2003). Other data provide further evidence of the stark reality of penal expansionism. In 2002, the courts sentenced 111,600 people to immediate custody and 186,500 to community punishments. Both figures were "the highest on record" (Home Office, 2004: 2). Taken together, they raise serious issues about "the continual recycling of the same individuals and groups between prisons and communities, [which] creates a damaging but self-sustaining process" (Matthews, 2003: Abstract). As in the USA, the prison in England and Wales has become a punitive space for the disproportionate detention of black people in general and black women in particular. In 2001, the incarceration rate for white people was 170 per 100,000 of the population. This compared with 1,140 per 100,000 for black people, 536 per 100,000 for Chinese and other groups, and 166 per 100,000 for South Asians (Home Office, 2003a: 106; 113). At the end of June 2002, 22% of the male population and 29% of the female population came from ethnic minority backgrounds. In addition, foreign nationals made up 11% of the prison population. In terms of drugs, and again running parallel with Sudbury's argument, 28% of sentenced female British nationals were imprisoned for drug offenses. This figure rose to 84% in the case of female foreign nationals (Home Office, 2003b: 114). Once confined, black and other minority groups experience a range of inequalities based on skin color (Commission for Racial Equality, 2003). …

The First Genocide: Carthage, 146 BC

Abstract: Some features of the ideology motivating the Roman destruction of Carthage in 146 BC have surprisingly modern echoes in 20th-century genocides. Racial, religious or cultural prejudices, gender and other social hierarchies, territorial expansionism, and an idealization of cultivation all characterize the thinking of Cato the Censor, like that of more recent perpetrators. The tragedy of Carthage, its details lost with most of the works of Livy and other ancient authors, and concealed behind allegory in Virgil’s Aeneid, became known to early modern Europeans from briefer ancient accounts rediscovered only in the 15th century, as Europe’s own expansion began.

Expansion and Restriction: Competing Pressures on United Kingdom Asylum Policy

Abstract: Analysis of asylum policy in the United Kingdom thus requires examination of the complex interaction between domestic and international pressures, between legislative and judicial action, and between expansionism and restrictionism. In Part I, this paper considers the history of asylum in the UK through the 1990s, looking at the changes that occurred over the 20th century, and the international legal obligations at the core of the UK's asylum policy. The paper specifically addresses Britain's new commitments to European Union asylum policies, and the ways in which Britain's overall relationship with the EU affects Britain's domestic asylum policy. In Part II, the paper examines the two most significant recent changes in UK asylum law, namely the passage of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act of 2002, and the passage and implementation of the Human Rights Act in 1998. Finally, in Part III, the paper situates each of these major developments in the wider context of the various forces for expansion and restriction, in the UK and Europe. The paper concludes by examining the balance that may be struck as these forces interact.

Japanese geopolitics and the mongol lands, 1915-1945

Abstract: The northernmost border of Japan's informal empire were the Mongol lands and Manchuria. For nearly a century this region lay on the borders between an expanding Russia and a retreating China and was a major area for Japanese ambitions on the Asian mainland. Japan's interest in the Mongol lands (including Manchuria) was spurred by general strategic, economic and ideological factors, and was justified by an academic discourse on geopolitics. Geo-political socialisation was carried out in respective areas and Mongol nationalism was drawn into these affairs. This paper examines the reasons for Japan's interest in these areas, and the arguments used to justify this expansionism.

The Emigrant Experience

Abstract: How can we survey more than three centuries of British emigration in terms of the ‘emigrant experience’? Clearly there was change over time, as well as varying experiences according to region of origin and by class, as well as by destination. Emigration played a crucial part in the creation of British identity, and in modern doubts about its validity. It did not reflect British Society, it acted upon it.1 From the perspective of the Scottish Highlands and Islands, and from that of Ireland, this is an obvious point to make, but it has been made less often in relation to Britain as a whole. Why? One answer is that the nature of just what Britain represented was problematic over all of its history. Perhaps that is why it is necessary to study emigration in a British context, as Britain was about expansionism, Britain was about imperialism, Britain was about an assumption of civilising mission by those who presented themselves as its representatives. Emigrants from Britain did not always share these ideas, although sometimes they did. By the early twentieth century, as Eric Richards has pointed out, there were British commentators who wanted to distinguish between emigration and colonising, with the latter the province of the true Briton in the British Empire, and the former the resort of the unfortunates who turned their backs on their British birthrights to disappear into the vastness of what was almost always America.2

State Preferences and International Institutions: Boolean Analysis of China's Use of Force and South China Sea Territorial Disputes

Abstract: Thanks to supercharged economic growth, coupled with abundant physical and human capital, as well as political clout as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, China is a rising great power on the world stage. Whereas the former China under its closed, mysterious, and communist ideology was characterized as a threat to Asian and world peace during the Cold War years, today, ironically, a more open and internationally engaged China again triggers the “China threat” rhetoric. Despite China's constant assurance of peaceable foreign policy intentions and claims that it will “never seek hegemony,” skeptics rebuke these as a mere smokescreen that covers an enormous forward thrust, evidenced, for example, by the expansionist moves toward islets in the South China Sea. On the one hand, whether aggressive moves qualified China as a threat is still debated. On the other hand, whether provocative actions would escalate into large-scale militarized conflicts that jeopardize regional stability constitutes the immediate concern.

Japanese Society and the 1931 Invasion of Manchuria

Abstract: In order to gain a full understanding of the forces behind the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, one must examine the Japanese social conditions and characteristics that formed the base for military support and produced a public eager for territorial expansion. The Japanese were a people closely united under the Emperor with a lengthy cultural history. They were quick to side with the military’s expansionist policy, which was to increase the country’s status on a world scale, rather than the government’s diplomatic policy, which appeared to uphold only the status quo that saw Japan as a subordinate power.

At the Frontier of Precision and Persuasion: The Convergence of Natural Philosophy and National Philosophy in John C. Fremont's 1842, 1843-44 Report and Map

Abstract: John C. Fremont introduces his 1842, 1843-44 Report and Map with a "Notice to the Reader" which raises immediately a number of issues critical to understanding how American expansionism presents exploration in the American West as a romantic yet wholly scientific project. Here, Fremont calls attention to the volume's form, emphasizing the methodological similarities between the assembly and construction of its maps and written narrative. These two conveyors of information work together to provide a complex vision of the American West, one composed of a combination of written and visual rhetoric. The impetus for the 1842, 1843-44 Report and Map, likewise, is a dual one: The report, or narrative, of this extended expedition, like the maps which illustrate it, will be strictly confined to what was seen, and to what is necessary to show the face and character of the country, and to add something to science while fulfilling the instructions of the Government, which chiefly contemplated a military topographical survey. A greater degree of popular interest might have been imparted to it by admitting a greater latitude of detail, but it was deemed best to adhere to the rigorous character of a report, and to present nothing, either in the narrative or in the maps, which was not the result of positive observation. (5-6, author's emphasis) The "Notice" shows that the expedition's primary goal is to undertake a military topographical survey, which would be utilized as American expansionist ideologies encouraged the military acquisition of geographic territories in the Americas. Though Fremont seems here to dismiss the "popular interest" that his report might (and did) garner, it must not be forgotten that he acted in the interest of the Topographical Corps, which directly involved the national government in the settling of the West. The "popular interest" of the report--since it is this popular interest that encourages American settlers to move into non-United States territories--was an undeniably critical component of a U.S. government project of territorial expansion. (1) Fremont's secondary goal, which he states almost simultaneously with his military orders, is to contribute "something" to science. This "something" seems to involve that which "show[s] the face and character of the country" without overstepping the "strictly confined" bounds of "what was seen" or positively and personally observed (5-6). Fremont's claim to restrict the Report to that which was "the result of positive observation" tells us that this government-sponsored work is essentially a work of empirical science, thus encouraging the perception of his Report as reliable and truthful. His expedition was not an exploration of virgin land: Fremont's route covered ground familiar to French, Indian, American, and Spanish trappers and traders, as well as many of those American settlers who had begun the great push of westward migration. Though familiar to many, this territory was not yet reliably mapped for the purposes of the United States government and its citizens. As Francois Brunet has persuasively argued, the primary service Fremont rendered as Lieutenant (later Brevet Capitan) of the Topographical Corps was to provide an incontestable representation of a region that was surrounded by myths and images, such as the "pyramidal" impression of national topography in which Jefferson believed, or the Buenaventura River described in hearsay (29; Allen 376). Fremont's assurance that his Report and Map presents factual and reliable information, gleaned not from myth or hearsay but from "what was seen," makes it a useful and practical text to future settlers. As a military employee and son-in-law of the unflagging promoter of mid-nineteenth-century expansionist fervor, Thomas Hart Benton, Fremont needed to create a reliable and accessible Report. Even while Fremont indicates that he confines himself to a minimal "latitude of detail" in his description, the success of his text explicitly involves the rhetorical conventions of literary style. …

Americanization and Resistance

Abstract: Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century the United States began an era of expansionism, supported ideologically by the notion of “Manifest Destiny.” Journalist John O’Sullivan, who argued that Providence granted the United States a divine mandate to spread from coast to coast, coined this term in 1845. The ideology of the United States possessing a Manifest Destiny ultimately provided justification for the Mexican War of 1846–1848.

From Globalization to Militarization: The Crisis of American Hegemony

Abstract: Under George W. Bush, the United States (US) has revolutionized world politics by abandoning successful forms of hegemonic governance, based on the institutionalization of collective economic and security regimes, in favor of militarism—the pursuit of global domination through force. Starting from a critique of structuralist approaches, this paper examines the ideational transformation of the American Right and situates it within the context of the US’s emergence in 1991 as a unipolar strategic actor and as the core state in the newly globalized capitalist political economy. While these synchronous transformations considerably augmented US autonomy, giving the country an opportunity to reconfigure the world system to its advantage, a distinction must be made between the current imperial expansionism of the revived and expanded US national security state and earlier forms of US hegemonic rule. This accounts for a fundamental shift of the way in which the United States has governed the capitalist world system since 1945.

The Semolika Expedition of 1904: A Participant Account

Abstract: British imperialism in west Africa during the late nineteenth century is known to be the product of the interrelations between expansionist forces at the center of empire and those at the periphery on the one hand, and the relationship between the peripheral forces and African circumstances on the other hand. Expansionist forces at Whitehall included nationalistic sentiments and inter-European rivalry, economic considerations, and public reactions to these motivations. Of the expansionist forces at the outposts of empire, pressure from commercial interest groups and the activities of the men on the spot are notable.Indeed, the work of the military personnel on the outposts of empire was instrumental to British territorial annexations. As officers and non-commissioned officers to the colonial army of the West African Frontier Force (WAFF), the British personnel hailed from all rungs of society, and seconded from metropolitan regiments into active service in West Africa. Their motivations largely included economic interests, sport and adventure, while the African auxiliaries enlisted out of economic considerations. Naturally, the men on the spot were indispensable to British expansion, as they particularly constituted a reliable source of information for policymakers at home. They also subscribed with their superiors to the use of force to maintain political supremacy on the frontiers of empire. The men on the spot controlled the timing, pace, and extent of British military imperialism. However, they had to reckon with indigenous response, as their prerogatives met challenges in African interests and concerns, such as territorial inviolability and non-interference in their internal affairs. This interplay of military imperialism and African response is aptly demonstrated in the British encounter with the Semolika in Northern Nigeria.

U.S. Military Overseas Presence in the Northeast Asia-Pacific Region

Abstract: : Military presence overseas has been an important element of the United States National Security Strategy since World War II. The military's overseas basing has been a visible commitment to defend America's interests and its allies. This was particularly important to containing and deterring the spread of communism to foreign countries by the Soviet Union and other communist regimes. However with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-1991 the threat from communist expansionism has diminished and appears to have eliminated the core rationale for maintaining an overseas presence. To remove all of our forces and close our facilities in this region is not a practical solution. Such a policy change ignores the reality of our commitment to our allies and would negatively affect our ability to rapidly engage an adversary overseas. The more relevant issue confronting the Defense Department is whether or not our overseas bases could be reconfigured as power projection sites rather than static installations. Is it possible to reduce the overseas installation footprint by repositioning forces without degrading our military capabilities? Would a repositioning of forces have a detrimental impact on our relations with our Allies?

Bush Versus Kerry in French Cyberspace

Abstract: Department of Geography, UT-Austin, November 2004 ph. 512-232-1599; paul.adams@mail.utexas.edu [unpublished draft: do not copy or quote without the author’s permission] The Internet functions as a political forum--a space in which conflicting ideas about policy, governance, ideology and personal identity are discussed and debated. This paper considers the way the virtual space defined by the Internet was appropriated by French citizens to discuss and debate the US presidential election of 2004, and how French users of cyberspace engaged with each other’s ideas in several online virtual spaces. I demonstrate the ability of the Internet to promote the diffusion of certain constructions of the United States, American society and American leadership in particular. I also demonstrate contested perspectives on French society, culture, policies and leadership. This task reflects the firm belief that America’s greatest weakness is its inward orientation, a stance which coexists with military expansionism, bravado and opportunism. By publicizing and in effect amplifying foreign perspectives of the US, by “looking at them looking at us,” it may be possible to postpone the clashes that are inevitable between what Hubert Vedrine calls the