Given the centrality of African empire to Spain’s history in the first half of the twentieth century, the process of decolonization which followed appeared to have little impact on the Spanish metropole. This article argues that humanitarianism, particularly Catholic humanitarianism, was one of the few ways in which the impact of decolonization was felt within Spain. A new generation of international humanitarian NGOs emerged at the end of the 1950s and grew rapidly throughout the 60s and 70s, including the organisation that came to be known as Manos Unidas. These NGOs sought to place the decolonized world at the heart of Spanish society. But Spanish humanitarians avoided, as far as possible, both Spain’s contested domestic politics and the messy contemporary realities of Spanish decolonization. Instead, Catholic humanitarianism offered a vision of the world, and Spain’s place within it, which could appeal across the political spectrum. It promoted a positive vision of Spain as a modern, developed country by contrasting the consumerist abundance of domestic society with the poverty of the Third World. No longer a semi-peripheral country or a recipient of aid, now Spain could define itself against the Third World; as modern, developed, and humane.

This article discusses the Macao boundary question, a significant diplomatic issue between China and Portugal from the 1860s to the 1920s. It analyses the various obstacles that prevented the delimitation of the Macao border requested by the Portuguese from taking place. Lack of documentary evidence to support the Portuguese’s occupation of Macao, the domestic opinion, and local commercial interests of Xiangshan County, Guangdong, constituted essential obstacles. Meantime, it discusses the link between China’s increasing awareness of the concept of sovereignty in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the boundary question, contemporary Chinese foreign relations with Portugal, Great Britain, and the United States, as well as the disagreement between the central and provincial governments in China regarding the boundary question. The article further argues that based on the occupation principle in international relations, the Portuguese in reality obtained what was negotiable, although a written agreement was not concluded when the nine meetings on the boundary issue were finished. The Chinese acquiescence led to the prolonged Portuguese occupation of Taipa and Coloane. The Macao boundary question reveals the delicate historical relationships between China and Portugal and illustrates the complex nature of international relations.

Soviet-German relations were very conducive for both countries after the Rapallo Treaty was concluded in 1922. There were some signs of difficulties during the Great Depression but they did not influence the willingness of Berlin and Moscow to cooperate. After Adolf Hitler came to power, however, the deterioration of bilateral relations of the two countries became apparent. Finally, at the turn of 1934, a wave of official Soviet declarations on starting cooperation with the ‘peace-loving’ capitalist countries against the aggressor within the framework of the collective security system took place. The article’s aim is to explain whether or not the British Cabinet took notice of these speeches and what attention it paid them. It is important to determine how the British diplomats interpreted these declarations and what was the justification for their viewpoints. Previously, London had tried to separate Germany from the USSR. Hence, the question as to the British government’s understanding of the new situation arised as do the potential steps taken on the international scene once German-Soviet cooperation ceased to exist at the end of 1933. The deterioration of Soviet-German relations had the potential to influence British diplomacy, which was devoted to the idea of collective security.

Going beyond the conventional focus on the British blockade of Germany in the First World War, this essay situates blockades in a broader transnational history of waging war on civil populations. From the early twentieth century through the Second World War, blockade strategies evolved as part of a global circulation of ideas and practices on how wars might be won by starving, bombing, and demoralizing the enemy’s urban masses. The Allied blockade and German U-boat campaigns were connected, as each side learned from the other’s attacks on the civilian food supply. Moreover, the ‘lessons’ of 1914–18 shaped blockade strategies for the next war not only among Europeans, but also among the Japanese and Americans in the Pacific. For Japanese planners, who investigated European home fronts in the First World War, the transnational lessons were largely defensive. The island nation adopted dynamic programs of imperial food self-sufficiency. Yet in the Second World War, Japan experienced a devastating collapse in food supply, precipitated by perhaps the most successful blockade in history—the Allied blockades of Japan’s food and raw material supplies from Asia that culminated in Operation STARVATION. The prospect of mass starvation, I argue, helped persuade Japanese leaders to surrender.

In 1951, the largest cohort of Japanese exchange students in history arrived in the United States. Between 1949 and 1952, around 787 Japanese nationals received Government Aid and Relief in Occupied Areas (GARIOA) scholarships, intended to cultivate a learned group of people to spread American ideas in Japan. The purpose was to provide Japanese university graduates with first-hand experience of US democracy; earning advanced degrees was secondary. The Army produced elaborate orientations and films to explain this goal to GARIOA recipients, who were among the only Japanese able to travel abroad and attend US universities. Because students found Army materials insufficient in preparing them for the challenges of studying and living in the United States and because they wanted to use the GARIOA program to their own ends, they wrote their own handbooks. A prime example is A Handbook for Japanese Students Going to America (Beikoku seikatsu sama zama), 1956, by the Exchange Student Association (Beikoku ryūgakusei kai). This article argues that Army orientations and student handbooks described Occupation-era educational exchange from two different perspectives and helped both groups to achieve their version of success and to engage in a larger conversation about the political role of exchange students in Cold War diplomacy.