Pub Date : 2023-07-26DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2023.2241373
Freddy Foks
{"title":"British Culture after Empire: race, decolonisation and migration since 1945","authors":"Freddy Foks","doi":"10.1080/13619462.2023.2241373","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2023.2241373","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45519,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary British History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44880840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-23DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2023.2238636
Emily Robinson
{"title":"Penguin books and political change: Britain’s meritocratic moment, 1937-1988","authors":"Emily Robinson","doi":"10.1080/13619462.2023.2238636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2023.2238636","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45519,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary British History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48233943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-21DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2023.2237309
Alice Byrne
ABSTRACT There are grounds for considering the creation of the British Council in the interwar period as a manifestation of post-World War One internationalism and the search for a ‘new diplomacy’. Yet, as an arms-length body established by the Foreign Office (FO), it was expected to support not supplant traditional diplomats. If the creation of a body dedicated to cultural relations did indeed represent a new departure for British diplomacy, to what new destinations did it hope to carry that diplomacy? Focusing on the first decades of the Council’s existence, this article shows that the British Council’s growing commitment to cultural internationalism did not prevent it from continuing to function as a vector for British cultural propaganda. It also argues that the transition to Commonwealth did not diminish a commitment to the Empire, and shows the importance of recognising the tensions at work within the model of cultural internationalism adopted by the Council given that development would represent an increasingly significant proportion of its work from the 1960s onwards.
{"title":"The British Council and British cultural diplomacy 1934-1959: a new form of diplomacy?","authors":"Alice Byrne","doi":"10.1080/13619462.2023.2237309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2023.2237309","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT There are grounds for considering the creation of the British Council in the interwar period as a manifestation of post-World War One internationalism and the search for a ‘new diplomacy’. Yet, as an arms-length body established by the Foreign Office (FO), it was expected to support not supplant traditional diplomats. If the creation of a body dedicated to cultural relations did indeed represent a new departure for British diplomacy, to what new destinations did it hope to carry that diplomacy? Focusing on the first decades of the Council’s existence, this article shows that the British Council’s growing commitment to cultural internationalism did not prevent it from continuing to function as a vector for British cultural propaganda. It also argues that the transition to Commonwealth did not diminish a commitment to the Empire, and shows the importance of recognising the tensions at work within the model of cultural internationalism adopted by the Council given that development would represent an increasingly significant proportion of its work from the 1960s onwards.","PeriodicalId":45519,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary British History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45100202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-19DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2023.2237316
Thibaud Harrois
ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to study the evolution of Britain’s involvement in the EU’s foreign and security policy in order to highlight the reasons that led the issue to be left out of talks on the post-Brexit future relation. The paper argues Europeanisation or de-Europeanisation largely depends on the degree of politicisation of issues both in the EU, the EU-27 and in the UK. As long as foreign and security issues remained relatively low key, the UK was able to enjoy the magnifying effect of its participation in the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and contributed to the decision-making process in order to successfully influence EU policies. Politicisation of foreign and security issues was due both to developments in EU-led or national initiatives and to the reaction they provoked in the UK. The EU insisted the UK was to be considered as a ‘third country’ and stressed the need for future cooperation to be institutionalised. On the contrary, in the UK, public distrust against a putative European ‘super state’, led successive governments to avoid any formal commitment to new EU initiatives.
{"title":"The politicisation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in the British domestic debate on Brexit: a challenge to EU-UK foreign and security cooperation","authors":"Thibaud Harrois","doi":"10.1080/13619462.2023.2237316","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2023.2237316","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to study the evolution of Britain’s involvement in the EU’s foreign and security policy in order to highlight the reasons that led the issue to be left out of talks on the post-Brexit future relation. The paper argues Europeanisation or de-Europeanisation largely depends on the degree of politicisation of issues both in the EU, the EU-27 and in the UK. As long as foreign and security issues remained relatively low key, the UK was able to enjoy the magnifying effect of its participation in the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and contributed to the decision-making process in order to successfully influence EU policies. Politicisation of foreign and security issues was due both to developments in EU-led or national initiatives and to the reaction they provoked in the UK. The EU insisted the UK was to be considered as a ‘third country’ and stressed the need for future cooperation to be institutionalised. On the contrary, in the UK, public distrust against a putative European ‘super state’, led successive governments to avoid any formal commitment to new EU initiatives.","PeriodicalId":45519,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary British History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45814416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-18DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2023.2237310
Lauriane Simony
ABSTRACT In 1948, when Burma became independent, the British colonial administration left the country and was replaced by a British embassy and a British Council centre, in order to establish new diplomatic relations. Cultural diplomacy appeared as a good, informal way of furthering the embassy’s initial goal of promoting peaceful and preferential diplomatic relations between Burma and Britain after the colonial era. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the British Council offered English classes to the Burmese public and encouraged the development of academic partnerships between the two countries. Yet in 1962, a military coup led by General Ne Win overthrew Prime Minister U Nu’s democratically elected government and disrupted Anglo-Burmese relations. In the name of strict neutrality in foreign affairs, Ne Win’s Revolutionary Council restricted all foreign cultural missions’ actions in Burma, notably their ability to teach foreign languages to Burmese students, until the British Council was eventually forced to close down and transfer some of its remaining missions to the British embassy in 1967. Based on British Council archives gathered at the National Archives in London, this article examines a forced ‘diplomatic departure’, by focusing on the impact of the Burmese internal political crisis on Anglo-Burmese diplomatic and cultural relations.
{"title":"Cultural diplomacy in times of crisis: the British Council’s departure from Burma during the military dictatorship (1962-1966)","authors":"Lauriane Simony","doi":"10.1080/13619462.2023.2237310","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2023.2237310","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In 1948, when Burma became independent, the British colonial administration left the country and was replaced by a British embassy and a British Council centre, in order to establish new diplomatic relations. Cultural diplomacy appeared as a good, informal way of furthering the embassy’s initial goal of promoting peaceful and preferential diplomatic relations between Burma and Britain after the colonial era. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the British Council offered English classes to the Burmese public and encouraged the development of academic partnerships between the two countries. Yet in 1962, a military coup led by General Ne Win overthrew Prime Minister U Nu’s democratically elected government and disrupted Anglo-Burmese relations. In the name of strict neutrality in foreign affairs, Ne Win’s Revolutionary Council restricted all foreign cultural missions’ actions in Burma, notably their ability to teach foreign languages to Burmese students, until the British Council was eventually forced to close down and transfer some of its remaining missions to the British embassy in 1967. Based on British Council archives gathered at the National Archives in London, this article examines a forced ‘diplomatic departure’, by focusing on the impact of the Burmese internal political crisis on Anglo-Burmese diplomatic and cultural relations.","PeriodicalId":45519,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary British History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48180242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-17DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2023.2237312
Lori Maguire
ABSTRACT The British maintained a consulate in Hanoi throughout the Vietnam War, even though neither government officially recognised the other. Although these representatives were extremely restricted in their movements, they managed to remain remarkably well informed about the capital, the country, and the impact of the war. This article examines the valedictory despatches of three of the last consuls, who gave their final impressions of their post in the waning days of the conflict. The first diplomat, Daphne Park, wrote hers in 1970, when the war was still raging. The second despatch, by T.J. Everard, dates from 1973, year of the Paris Peace Accords that ended U.S. participation in the conflict. The third, from J.H. Fawcett, was sent in January 1975 as the complete defeat of South Vietnam neared. Each one provides a fascinating insight into a country, a war, and a period of great upheaval. They each reflect on, in very different ways at very different points, the evolution of the North Vietnamese people and their slow and uneven departure from war as they seek to rebuild the nation. They also illustrate the slow progression of the British consulate in Hanoi from MI6 outpost to a more conventional embassy status.
{"title":"The diplomatic departure from limbo: three valedictory despatches by British consuls in Hanoi during the period of the Vietnam War","authors":"Lori Maguire","doi":"10.1080/13619462.2023.2237312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2023.2237312","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The British maintained a consulate in Hanoi throughout the Vietnam War, even though neither government officially recognised the other. Although these representatives were extremely restricted in their movements, they managed to remain remarkably well informed about the capital, the country, and the impact of the war. This article examines the valedictory despatches of three of the last consuls, who gave their final impressions of their post in the waning days of the conflict. The first diplomat, Daphne Park, wrote hers in 1970, when the war was still raging. The second despatch, by T.J. Everard, dates from 1973, year of the Paris Peace Accords that ended U.S. participation in the conflict. The third, from J.H. Fawcett, was sent in January 1975 as the complete defeat of South Vietnam neared. Each one provides a fascinating insight into a country, a war, and a period of great upheaval. They each reflect on, in very different ways at very different points, the evolution of the North Vietnamese people and their slow and uneven departure from war as they seek to rebuild the nation. They also illustrate the slow progression of the British consulate in Hanoi from MI6 outpost to a more conventional embassy status.","PeriodicalId":45519,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary British History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44951572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-17DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2023.2237314
A. Rodd
ABSTRACT The United Kingdom’s trade policy of ‘Commonwealth Preference’, long treasured by Australians and New Zealanders, was phased out half a century ago as Britain shied from the expense of remaining a world power, and sought the practical benefits of commercial integration in the European Economic Community. In the context of the 2016 referendum, leading Brexit supporters resurrected memories of Britain’s erstwhile trade with Commonwealth partners, disingenuously presented as an alternative to the country’s most profitable markets in Europe. This article examines the substance of the current Conservative government’s purported British re-engagement with the Commonwealth states of the Pacific, be it Australia and New Zealand or small Pacific Island states, in fields including trade, aid, strategic relations and diplomacy more broadly.
{"title":"British diplomatic re-engagement in the Pacific: more than just words?","authors":"A. Rodd","doi":"10.1080/13619462.2023.2237314","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2023.2237314","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The United Kingdom’s trade policy of ‘Commonwealth Preference’, long treasured by Australians and New Zealanders, was phased out half a century ago as Britain shied from the expense of remaining a world power, and sought the practical benefits of commercial integration in the European Economic Community. In the context of the 2016 referendum, leading Brexit supporters resurrected memories of Britain’s erstwhile trade with Commonwealth partners, disingenuously presented as an alternative to the country’s most profitable markets in Europe. This article examines the substance of the current Conservative government’s purported British re-engagement with the Commonwealth states of the Pacific, be it Australia and New Zealand or small Pacific Island states, in fields including trade, aid, strategic relations and diplomacy more broadly.","PeriodicalId":45519,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary British History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48205533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-03DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2023.2217106
Robert S. G. Fletcher, Benjamin Mountford
ABSTRACT In 1935, a Joint Parliamentary Committee at Westminster reported on ‘The Petition from the State of Western Australia in Relation to Secession’. The culmination of a process triggered by a 1933 referendum, when two-thirds of West Australians voted to secede from the Australian Commonwealth, the Joint Committee famously resolved that Western Australia’s petition was ‘not proper to be received’. Not for the last time in British history, a referendum result promising sweeping constitutional change collided with the practicalities of its implementation. But while Western Australia’s secession movement foundered, it nonetheless sparked a series of debates around London’s obligations to overseas Britons, Britannic identity, and the future of imperial relations. While previous scholarship has for the most part focused on the local and national dimensions of Western Australian secession, this article examines it as a window onto the complex political partnerships that comprised Britain’s interwar empire. It makes the case for the movement’s imperial significance and offers the first substantive investigation of its influence on interwar imperial affairs. It argues that West Australian secession deserves more serious consideration than it has traditionally been awarded, not only as a local and national question, but above all as an imperial issue.
{"title":"‘Westralia shall be free!’: the secession of Western Australia and the state of the British Empire, 1933-1935","authors":"Robert S. G. Fletcher, Benjamin Mountford","doi":"10.1080/13619462.2023.2217106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2023.2217106","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In 1935, a Joint Parliamentary Committee at Westminster reported on ‘The Petition from the State of Western Australia in Relation to Secession’. The culmination of a process triggered by a 1933 referendum, when two-thirds of West Australians voted to secede from the Australian Commonwealth, the Joint Committee famously resolved that Western Australia’s petition was ‘not proper to be received’. Not for the last time in British history, a referendum result promising sweeping constitutional change collided with the practicalities of its implementation. But while Western Australia’s secession movement foundered, it nonetheless sparked a series of debates around London’s obligations to overseas Britons, Britannic identity, and the future of imperial relations. While previous scholarship has for the most part focused on the local and national dimensions of Western Australian secession, this article examines it as a window onto the complex political partnerships that comprised Britain’s interwar empire. It makes the case for the movement’s imperial significance and offers the first substantive investigation of its influence on interwar imperial affairs. It argues that West Australian secession deserves more serious consideration than it has traditionally been awarded, not only as a local and national question, but above all as an imperial issue.","PeriodicalId":45519,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary British History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48123888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-02DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2023.2216143
L. Fenton, P. Tinkler
ABSTRACT Cultural understandings of sexual abuse, sexual harassment and sexual assault have shifted considerably since the 1960s in the United Kingdom and more widely. This article investigates how changing discourses around sexual abuse, harassment and assault are navigated by British women in later life when they narrate experiences that occurred in their youth in the 1960s and early 1970s. It identifies six sites of youth that are relevant to understanding how women narrate experiences of sexual violence: home; school; local outdoor places; workplaces; heterosexual intimacies; independent travel. These sites are associated with different points on a ‘girl to woman’ register, tracing a pathway from the immaturity of girlhood, through the liminal state of young womanhood, into maturity. How interviewees positioned themselves on this register reflects how they understood their youthful selves in different sites, and their past experiences of unwanted sexual attentions. While gender inequality is understood to have limited women’s education and employment opportunities in youth, it is surprisingly absent from narratives of sexual violence. In attending to this absence, we argue that what is at stake for the women in how they navigate shifting cultural discourses is narrating a version of themselves that is agentic and morally responsible.
{"title":"Me Too? Re-encountering youth experiences of sexual violence in post-war England from the vantage point of later life","authors":"L. Fenton, P. Tinkler","doi":"10.1080/13619462.2023.2216143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2023.2216143","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Cultural understandings of sexual abuse, sexual harassment and sexual assault have shifted considerably since the 1960s in the United Kingdom and more widely. This article investigates how changing discourses around sexual abuse, harassment and assault are navigated by British women in later life when they narrate experiences that occurred in their youth in the 1960s and early 1970s. It identifies six sites of youth that are relevant to understanding how women narrate experiences of sexual violence: home; school; local outdoor places; workplaces; heterosexual intimacies; independent travel. These sites are associated with different points on a ‘girl to woman’ register, tracing a pathway from the immaturity of girlhood, through the liminal state of young womanhood, into maturity. How interviewees positioned themselves on this register reflects how they understood their youthful selves in different sites, and their past experiences of unwanted sexual attentions. While gender inequality is understood to have limited women’s education and employment opportunities in youth, it is surprisingly absent from narratives of sexual violence. In attending to this absence, we argue that what is at stake for the women in how they navigate shifting cultural discourses is narrating a version of themselves that is agentic and morally responsible.","PeriodicalId":45519,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary British History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46294965","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-25DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2023.2228207
Dane Kennedy
{"title":"Britain’s contested history: lessons for patriots","authors":"Dane Kennedy","doi":"10.1080/13619462.2023.2228207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2023.2228207","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45519,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary British History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42526344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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