Army Of Occupation Research Articles

Nigerian Security Forces and the Management of Internal Conflict in the Niger Delta: Challenges of Human Security and Development

The Nigerian Armed Forces personnel have over the years maintained a trackrecord of effective peace keeping campaigns in the world. The role Nigeria playedin especially crises ridden Sierra Leone and Liberia can not be overemphasized.Paradoxically though, this record does not seem to be playing out in their securityand crisis operations in the country. Analysts would quickly make reference toUmuechem, Odi and recently, the military bombardment of Ijaw communities inGbaramatu Kingdom in Warri South West Council of Delta State. Some studieshave shown that at the end of most of those operations, the military stay behind as“armies of occupation”. This paper therefore, raises a number of questions whichinclude: how effective and to whose benefit have measures adopted (like aerialbombardment) in the management of internal crisis by security forces in Nigeriabeen in recent times (1999-2011)? Is it not an indirect call for military interregnum,when democratic regimes authorize the rolling out of war machines by the militaryagainst the civilians? Are the military forces fully trained in surveillance and othernon-combative skills of security maintenance? This study intends to consider anumber of options available for the country to adopt and solve crisis situationswith minimal collateral damage. These options include good governance, genuinenational dialogue, adequate surveillance of the Niger Delta creeks, blocking of thesources of small and light weapons importation and sale of illegally bunkered crudeoil into the international market.

Nigerian Security Forces and the Management of Internal Conflict in the Niger Delta: Challenges of Human Security and Development

The Nigerian Armed Forces personnel have over the years maintained a trackrecord of effective peace keeping campaigns in the world. The role Nigeria playedin especially crises ridden Sierra Leone and Liberia can not be overemphasized.Paradoxically though, this record does not seem to be playing out in their securityand crisis operations in the country. Analysts would quickly make reference toUmuechem, Odi and recently, the military bombardment of Ijaw communities inGbaramatu Kingdom in Warri South West Council of Delta State. Some studieshave shown that at the end of most of those operations, the military stay behind as“armies of occupation”. This paper therefore, raises a number of questions whichinclude: how effective and to whose benefit have measures adopted (like aerialbombardment) in the management of internal crisis by security forces in Nigeriabeen in recent times (1999-2011)? Is it not an indirect call for military interregnum,when democratic regimes authorize the rolling out of war machines by the militaryagainst the civilians? Are the military forces fully trained in surveillance and othernon-combative skills of security maintenance? This study intends to consider anumber of options available for the country to adopt and solve crisis situationswith minimal collateral damage. These options include good governance, genuinenational dialogue, adequate surveillance of the Niger Delta creeks, blocking of thesources of small and light weapons importation and sale of illegally bunkered crudeoil into the international market.

In living memory: Mapping the landscape of Greenham and Crookham Commons

Greenham and Crookham Commons in West Berkshire, UK, are geographic places identifiable on satellite images and survey maps. This article complicates simple physical mappings of the Commons by analysing the mental maps that emerge from the recorded memories of 12 elderly participants engaged in a ‘reminiscence project’. Originally part of a community sound installation, the recordings provide insights into lives lived in and around the Commons from the early 20th century to the present day. Following a chronological structure linked to the geographical features of the Commons, the article examines myths and stories associated with these shared spaces as they were transformed by time, history and ageing. Early childhood memories of the landscape of the Commons create a virtual cartography that brings to the fore experiences of daily life and practices of space belonging to earlier generations. These memories are set in stark contrast to the memories of the US army occupation of the Commons, and of the anti-nuclear protests that made them famous. Considering these virtual cartographies enables reflections on the relationship between memory, space and landscape over time as well as on the unique ways in which old age may alter conceptions of space in shared reminiscences.

Murray Archibald Jackson

After a period as a medical officer in the Australian army of occupation in Japan, Murray Archibald Jackson came to the UK in 1947 to study for the MRCP at...

How Spanish Were the Spanish Netherlands?

It is a firmly held belief that, from 1555 until 1700, the successive Habsburg sovereigns of the so-called Spanish Netherlands usurped the authority of the territory and maintained their power only by means of an army of occupation. Although recent research has thoroughly revised this antiquated analysis, it continues to live on until the present day. This article illustrates how stereotypes of Spanish usurpation were established at the beginning of the nineteenth century, both in the scholarly and popular literature, and demonstrates that, in the Spanish Netherlands, there was no ‘absolutism’ or ‘occupation’ on the part of the Habsburg authorities. On the contrary, after the separation from the rebellious provinces and the creation of the Dutch Republic, the Southern Netherlands were able to benefit from relative autonomy, at least when it came to domestic issues.

The Soviet experience in Afghanistan: lessons to be learned?

This article examines the experience of the Soviet army's occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. It draws heavily on the report of the Russian General Staff, which gives a unique insight into the Soviet–Afghan war by senior Russian officers, many of whom served in Afghanistan. The author then places this analysis in the broader geopolitical context of Soviet expansionism from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s. And the author proceeds to ask: Did Afghanistan account for the demise of the USSR? Finally, the issue of whether there are parallels with the failure of the Soviet Union's invasion and the current problems facing the USA in Afghanistan is examined.

Mexico City, 1891

Mexico City, 1891 Jeffrey M. Pilcher (bio) Britannia may have ruled the waves during the Victorian age of empire, but upper-crust Britons were nonetheless enslaved to a legion of French chefs. With his headquarters at the Savoy, Auguste Escoffier served as proconsul to this army of occupation, some five thousand strong, in kitchens throughout the kingdom (Trubek 47). From strategic locations in castles, manors, hotels, and clubs, these troops laid down a merciless barrage of champagne bottles, canisters of foie gras, and waves of sauce financière. Resistance was futile. The English elite, like the aristocrats of Tsarist Russia and the robber barons of gilded-age New York, succumbed to this invasion with only a whimper of post-prandial contentment. In 1891, the renowned Parisian chef Sylvain Daumont disembarked in Mexico, determined to extend the culinary imperium to a land where France had recently suffered humiliating defeat. Three decades earlier, the sandal-clad troops of President Benito Juárez had upset the better-armed forces of Napoleon III in the battle of Cinco de Mayo (5 May 1862). Although French [End Page 41] soldiers eventually occupied the country and imposed the Austrian archduke Maximilian as emperor, Mexicans fought a successful guerrilla war, buoyed by their early victory, and restored the republic in 1867. Even as Daumont drilled his kitchen brigade, a popular army of resistance mobilized in working-class taquerías (taco shops) to reclaim the honour of Mexico's national cuisine. Regardless of their nationality, those who aspired to elite status in the late nineteenth century considered the mastery of French cuisine essential. Table manners derived from courtly rituals were purposely designed to intimidate middling folk, and the proliferation of manuals for proper behaviour testifies to the widespread fear of embarrassment from failing to distinguish between, say, a pastry fork and a grapefruit spoon. Censure was particularly intense within the exclusive clubs where elites socialized and forged class identity. The Reform Club, for example, with its kitchen presided over by chef Alexis Soyer, was a bastion of Liberal politics in Britain. The endless parade of banquet courses, like the enormous sideboards carved with images of hunt and harvest, symbolized European mastery over the landscape. But this was still an early consumer society, with hunger stalking openly in the streets. Many felt both guilt at their own indulgence and dismay over French cultural hegemony (Williams 17-48; Ames 67-73; Freeman 195-203). Mexican aristocrats were scarcely parvenus at the Victorian dinner party. France's first intervention, a naval occupation of the Veracruz customs house in 1838, had been popularly dubbed the "pastry war" when word spread that the claims included sixty thousand pesos for a French baker in Mexico City as compensation for eclairs and tartlets supposedly eaten by revolutionaries. The second intervention, the ill-fated court of Maximilian and Carlota, provided a model of continental refinement that was quickly taken up by Mexico's provincial elite, many of whom refurbished their estates in the style of European country manors. The infatuation with French banquets reached a pinnacle under the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911). Wealthy Mexicans, convinced that imported technology assured their future progress, rushed to buy the latest consumer goods as well. In 1881, they organized a Jockey Club in the House of Tiles, a magnificent edifice near the fashionable Alameda Park. General Francisco Zacarías Mena, a personal friend of President Díaz, administered the club's vast wine cellar, while a French chef oversaw the kitchen (Pilcher Mexican Identity, 62-66; Beezley Judas, 13-66; Macías-González 90-91; Tablada 264-65). The arrival of the celebrated Daumont seemed to vindicate these cosmopolitan aspirations. The Mexican representative in Paris, don Tomás de la Torre y Mier, had negotiated his appointment as personal chef for his brother, Ignacio, a bon vivant and son-in-law of the dictator. Daumont was a self-conscious artist who believed that a great chef should combine flavours by instinct, the way a musician uses sounds or a painter colours. Within a year of his arrival, he had to set out on his own, opening an eponymous restaurant just a block south of the Jockey...

Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women: Illegal Sex in Antebellum New Orleans (review)

Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women: Illegal Sex in Antebellum New Orleans. By Judith Kelleher Schafer. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009. Pp. 221. Cloth, $32.50.)Reviewed by Jennifer M. SpearFrom Manon Lescaut, Abbe Prevost's 1731 novel about a French prostitute exiled to Louisiana, through turn-of-the-twentieth-century Storyville, to today's Bourbon Street, New Orleans has had a long association with prostitution and other forms of sexualized commerce. Using the First District Court's pre-Civil War years of operation (1846-1862) as her timeframe, Judith Schafer's Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women focuses on an understudied era in this history, revealing the dynamics of the sex trade, as well as the lives of some of its more notorious practitioners and clients, during the middle of the nineteenth century.Once again, Schafer has proven herself an indefatigable researcher in the city's court records. As with her earlier book, Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 18461862 (Baton Rouge, LA, 2003), Schafer immerses herself in the trial transcripts from the First District Court, which opened its doors for the first time in 1846 and closed in 1862 during the Union Army occupation of the city. Because it was a trial rather than appellate court, there are no case reports for the First District, nor have these transcripts been indexed. Even with a subject index, Schafer's task would have been demanding, as prostitution itself was not during this era (brothelkeeping, however, was). In order to uncover evidence of illegal sex, Schafer read through more than two thousand trial transcripts, looking for women who were arrested for a variety of crimes, including being lewd and abandoned, vagrancy, assault, larceny, and cross-dressing. She also examined the entire run of the New Orleans Daily Picayune and several other newspapers for the same thirteen years. In addition to fleshing out the mostly dry trial transcripts with gossipy details (9), the newspapers also summarized the daily reports of the court's recorders, whose own books have been lost. Because court recorders were required to send only more serious offenses to the First District Court, many prostitutes' involvement with the law appear in these reports alone. While Schafer necessarily had to cast her net wide, she is careful to refer to her subjects as women (misbehaving) in public, rather than public women per se.Regardless of what crime provoked their arrest, most women were quickly released, perhaps after being assessed a minor fine or serving a short period of confinement in the workhouse, that could be imposed by court recorders. Even when prosecutors became involved, many cases never saw the inside of a courtroom. Prosecutors had a variety of reasons for dropping charges. Accusers might withdraw their charges, witnesses might foil to appear (especially if doing so required them to acknowledge that they had been in a house of ill repute), defendants might bribe or threaten their victims, or prosecutors might have insufficient evidence to secure a conviction. Schafer also argues that the women had the support of wealthy and powerful landlords, among them prominent philanthropist John McDonogh, who sought to keep their tenants out of jail and working to pay the rent. Cases that did make it into the courtroom frequently resulted in not-guilty verdicts. In one 1854 case, the defendant was found not guilty of brothel-keeping despite the testimony of several police officers, including the chief of police, against her. Even those who were found guilty often received trivial sentences (144). Instead of reading these numbers as prosecutors' overwhelming failure to convict offenders, Schafer instead argues that the system was used to tax, rather than seriously punish - let alone eradicate - prostitution. …

Alegrias e desventuras do paladar: a alimentação no Brasil holandês

O objetivo deste trabalho é desenvolver uma descrição histórica dos eventos relacionados à problemática do abastecimento alimentar durante a conquista de parte do Nordeste brasileiro, entre 1630 e 1654, pela Companhia das Índias Ocidentais holandesa, que revelou o modo de pensar dos conquistadores e permitiu demonstrar as dificuldades de subsistência no Brasil holandês e a precariedade do domínio político estabelecido. Durante o governo do conde Maurício de Nassau-Siegen, entretanto, os forasteiros maravilhados descobriram o sabor da fauna e da flora local que os colonos portugueses costumavam comer, e adotaram sem demora essas iguarias que eles utilizaram para elaborar imagens convincentes do poder conquistado. A descrição dos hábitos alimentares e dos problemas de abastecimento encontrados na documentação analisada permitiu apontar os parâmetros sócio-culturais que regiam aquela sociedade, favorecendo um enfoque bem documentado sobre a alimentação da época.

Ermenilerin Tehcir Edilmesi Kararında Etkili Olan Faktörler ve Maraş-Zeytun Ermenilerinin Tehciri

Osmanlı Devleti, XX. yüzyıla girerken siyasî, ekonomik ve askerî yönden sıkıntılar içerisindeydi ve yüzyılın başında önce Trablusgarp daha sonra Balkanlarda ağır kayıplar verdi. Osmanlı Devleti'nin Balkan savaşları sonucunda Balkanlardaki topraklarını kaybetmesi bağımsızlıklarını elde etmek isteyen Anadolu Ermenilerini heyecanlandırdı(1) ve onların devlete bağlılık duygularını zayıflattı. Bunun sonucunda meselâ Zeytun Ermenileri, Birinci Dünya Savaşı'nda seferberlik emrine uymayarak Osmanlı ordusuna asker göndermediler, aksine silâhlanıp dağlara çıktılar ve Osmanlı Devleti'nin düşmanlarıyla işbirliği yaparak devlete meydan okudular. Kafkasya'da da benzer bir durum yaşandı ve Osmanlı Devleti'nin Almanya tarafında savaşa girmesini fırsat bilen Taşnak Komitesi, Anadolu Ermenileri adına Rusya ile anlaştı. Bu anlaşmaya bağlı olarak Osmanlı ordusunda silâh altına alınan Ermeniler Rus tarafına geçtiler ve küçük çeteler hâlinde örgütlenip Osmanlı ordusuna karşı Rus ordusunun ileri ucunda görev aldılar. Ermenilerin bir kısmının bu ihaneti, Osmanlı hükümetinin savaşın bütün hızıyla devam ettiği bir anda bütün Ermenilerin sadakatinden şüphe duymasına sebep oldu(2).

Las dagas del ejército altoimperial en <i>Hispania</i>

This paper is the first diachronic study of daggers in the Roman Army of occupation in Hispania (Spain and Portugal), dated between the 1 st century BC and the 3 rd century AD. The fifty seven specimens that are currently known are analysed, together with a smaller number (eight) of the remains of their sheaths, as no further examples have been found subsequently. After the wars of conquest, although they did not vary too far from the fashions that were in favour at any time, the products in the Iberian Peninsula were noticeably different from those in the vast area of the Limes , which was in the vanguard. The daggers of the first century had neither precedents nor continuity.

Recasting Race after World War II: Germans and African Americans in American-Occupied Germany (review)

Reviewed by: Recasting Race after World War II: Germans and African Americans in American-Occupied Germany Annette F. Timm Recasting Race after World War II: Germans and African Americans in American-Occupied Germany. By Timothy L. Schroer. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2007. ISBN 978- 0-87081-869-1. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 295. $34.95. African American troops made up about 10 percent of American soldiers in the United States Forces, European Theater (USFET) during the four years of direct occupation of post-World War II Germany (p. 2). Timothy L. Schroer’s book explores how the presence of these soldiers transformed the rhetoric and practice of racism both in Germany and within the American military itself. It provides a refreshingly trans-Atlantic perspective that revises our tendency to view the occupation as a one-way process of “Americanization.” Schroer argues that past accounts have over-emphasized the continuities in post- World War II German racism, and he insists that the demise of Nazism in 1945 “marked an important change in the history of thinking about race” (p. 3). That Nazi crimes were committed under the explicit banner of racial ideology, Schroer insists, forced postwar Germans to transform publicly expressed (if not privately held) racial sentiments and provided American reformers with considerable ammunition in their quest for civil rights. Racial segregation within the U.S. military, after all, contradicted the Allies’ stated intent to destroy racial prejudice in a denazified and democratized Germany. Schroer sets out to historicize whiteness in occupied Germany, insisting that racism must be understood as a culturally constructed code of conduct that found expression not only in the continued segregation of black troops but also in the policing of white German women. Schroer’s account takes the reader through various moments of German-American contact during the four years of direct occupation. With excursions into topics like the German reaction to “black” Jazz and spiritual music, the heart of the book is an exploration of German and American fears about romantic and sexual contacts between black soldiers and white Fräuleins. German women’s desperate need for food and material goods, available in abundant supply from all American GIs, all but erased the boundary between prostitution and “legitimate” love affairs. Given these conditions, women were particularly susceptible to the “allure of the exotic racial Other” (p. 145), which was dramatically enhanced by the unquestioned and entirely novel political and economic power that black GIs held over defeated German men. While Schroer’s argument that the women’s whiteness “counterbalanced” the power of masculinity and created “something like a level playing field for white women and black men engaged in sexual relationships” (p. 143) is not entirely convincing, it is beyond doubt that the issue of fraternization highlighted the subordinate role of blacks in the U.S. army. The harsher treatment of women involved in inter-racial relationships (they were far more likely to be subjected to forcible VD examinations and confinement in prison-like hospital wards) angered black soldiers who viewed restrictions on their sexual choice as clear evidence of the hypocrisy of racially segregating a force whose goal was denazification. Meanwhile, USFET commanders hesitated to eliminate segregation in the occupation army primarily because they were uncomfortable with the prospect of mixed-race social functions. The specter of black GIs dancing with white women was a more powerful justification for continued segregation than dubiously supported arguments about the inferior effectiveness of black units. By 1948, continued pressure from reformers who argued that “a Jim Crow army could not stamp out Nazi race hatred” (p. 44) helped prompt an executive order from President Truman that began the process of desegregation. Schroer is careful not to overemphasize this victory. He points out that while explicit discussions of biological racial differences all but [End Page 1325] disappeared from public rhetoric in occupied Germany, and eventually from U.S. military policy discussions, they were replaced with a gendered rhetoric of morality that was almost as powerful as scientific racism had been in defining the boundaries between groups. There are frustrations for the reader in this book. A beautifully crafted introduction is followed by chapters that are organizationally...

The Role of the Upper Extremity Neuromusculoskeletal Evaluator at Peace and at War

The Role of the Upper Extremity Neuromusculoskeletal Evaluator at Peace and at War

John Steinbeck and Japan

John Steinbeck, the 1962 Nobel Laureate, was one of the greatest writers in American history. Small wonder that he has been very popular in Japan as well as in other parts of the world. Japanese people have read Steinbeck with keen interest and pleasure since his works, together with those of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, started being introduced to Japan right after World War II. In the Japan of those days, everything American was new and highly valued; we were drastically Americanizing ourselves, absorbing whatever the occupation army either offered or forced upon us. We had not had democracy no freedom of speech or thought, to say nothing of freedom of the press before or during the War. We were at last liberated from every fetter when we were defeated. While very few books were available, we read hungrily whatever was published here and abroad, and those books brought into the country by GI's. Those who read The Grapes of Wrath, for instance, were deeply impressed to learn that there were days when hundreds and thousands of people were stricken with hunger and poverty even in the affluent society of America. In the 1950s, Hemingway was more popular in Japan than any other world-famous writer. A collection of his complete works in Japanese translation was first published in 1956, and a new translation was published in 1974. The Japanese version of Faulkner's collected works began to appear in 1970, though it took more than twenty years to complete the collection. As for Steinbeck's works, all of his novels and short stories were translated

Transformations of the officer corps in Hungary (1900-1940)

Transformations of the officer corps in Hungary (1900-1940)

Order or Justice: The Denshawai Incident and British Imperialism

AbstractOn the afternoon of 13 June 1906 five British officers entered the Egyptian village of Denshawai to go pigeon shooting. An intended sporting event quickly turned into an altercation that resulted in casualties among both the British army of occupation and the villagers of Denshawai. This incident represented a turning point in the British occupation, a point in which the British officials in Egypt were faced with the decision to pursue order or justice and chose order. Concerned with growing nationalist sentiment, Egyptian officials seized upon the Denshawai incident as an opportunity to make an example of the consequences of resistance and confirm the strength of British rule. Their decision ultimately undermined this strength by inflaming public opinion in both Great Britain and Egypt. As a result of Denshawai, British imperialism in Egypt was painted in stark relief and found wanting.

The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History (review)

Reviewed by: The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History David Cherry The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History. By Pat Southern. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2006. ISBN 1-85109-730-9. Maps. Photographs. Illustrations. Figures. Appendix. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 381. $85.00. For the nonspecialist, Southern's almost encyclopedic survey of the history and customs of the Roman army will serve as a sound and up-to-date introduction. Nothing, it seems, has escaped her attention: the strengths and weaknesses of the surviving sources; the history of Roman political life, including the functions of the elected officials in the time of the Republic; the structure and organization of the army; its tactics, operational concepts, weapons, and logistics; the nature of the late imperial army; great Roman generals and famous battles; even "Further Directions of Research on the Roman Army" (pp. 326–29). At the same time, there is little here that is really new or likely to be of much interest to specialists in the field. An unabashed admirer of the Roman army, Southern has little to say about its well-documented brutality. She seems cheerfully unaware of the argument, most eloquently advanced in Benjamin Isaac's brilliant study, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), that, in many parts of the empire, the Roman military functioned largely as an army of occupation, whose principal mission was to control the local population, not to protect it. And while Southern demonstrates an enviable ability to make sense of the artifact record, her approach to the written sources is, at times, less sure-handed: it is, for example, methodologically indefensible to maintain that the figures Polybius supplies (2.23–24) for the number of men capable of bearing arms in 225 B.C. ought to be "taken at face value", because "there is neither supporting evidence nor any contemporary contradictory claim" (p. 49). Inevitably in a work that covers so much ground, complex historical questions, like the function of the Roman frontiers, are sometimes given a less [End Page 209] nuanced treatment than they deserve. To say that the purpose of establishing frontiers "is ostensibly to avoid having to go to war" (p. 182) is, at best, unhelpful. In North Africa (as in some other parts of the empire), there was no meaningful, external threat to the security of the regions that lay behind the frontier-lines. Finally, it is necessary to insist that, the book's title notwithstanding, this is decidedly not a social history of the Roman army. Southern has more to say about decorations and medals than about soldiers' families. David Cherry Montana State University Bozeman, Montana Copyright © 2007 Society for Military History

La accion medico-social contra el paludismo en la Espana metropolitana y colonial del siglo XX (review)

Reviewed by: La acción médico-social contra el palu-dismo en la España metropolitana y colonial del siglo XX José A. Nájera Esteban Rodríguez Ocaña, Rosa Ballester Añón, Enrique Perdiguero, Rosa María Medina Doménech, and Jorge Molero Mesa . La acción médico-social contra el palu-dismo en la España metropolitana y colonial del siglo XX. Estudios sobre la ciencia, no. 32. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2003. 488 pp. Ill. €32.69 (softcover, 84-00-08184-6). Malaria control in Spain during pre-DDT times deserves closer attention than it has received, for it followed a health-care development approach, in contrast to the more favored specific campaigns. In 1937 Lewis Hackett recognized that this provided the "general advantages arising out of well-organised medical assistance—healthy looking children, a lowered death rate, and the absence of falciparum. The trouble is malaria does not disappear."1 Nevertheless Spain was one of the first European countries to enter the WHO registry of malaria eradication, in 1964. Rodríguez Ocaña and his collaborators did a very broad investigation of rather dispersed documents to trace the development of malaria control through the troubled Spanish history of the first half of the twentieth century, showing how [End Page 187] Gustavo Pittaluga, a disciple of Giovanni Battista Grassi, who had come to Spain in 1903, managed to organize malaria control on the lines of the Italian school, before the bonifica integrale dominated the field in Mussolini's time. The first chapters describe the organizational and political steps. Malaria in Spain was not only rural but, in contrast to Italy or Holland, affected mainly poor areas far from the capital, owned by large landowners who were far better represented in Parliament than their exploited workers. Although there were early efforts to address local problems (Rio Tinto, Servicio Técnico de Paludismo in Cataluña, the Ebro delta, Alto Aragón), there is an obvious contrast between locust control, well established since the late nineteenth century, and that of malaria, not fully set up until the 1920s. A period of social tension in 1917–20 created a general concern for health problems, and in order to show the social concerns of the monarchy, the first central antimalaria organization was created. It is interesting to follow the continuity of the technical orientation of the antimalarial efforts (guided throughout by Pittaluga and his school, particularly Sadí de Buen), through the changes from a liberal government to a dictatorship, a return to liberalism, a republic alternating between Left and Right, and a civil war. This continuity may have been due to the peripheral location of the problem and its recognized complexity, but above all to the scientific prestige of Pittaluga's school, the support of the Malaria Commission of the League of Nations (where both Pittaluga and de Buen were very active), and the backing of the Rockefeller Founadation. Even after the end of the war and the establishment of Franco's military dictatorship, the basic organization continued, facilitating the later introduction of DDT. The basis of the antimalaria organization (chapter 3) was a network of dispensary-laboratories that provided free diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up, and various vector control measures adapted to the local epidemiology, including minor sanitation and technical advice to major engineering works. These dispensaries helped to set up the rural health system in the early 1930s, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation. One of the book's strengths is its inclusion of information about malaria control in the Spanish colonies, as well as in Spain itself. Activities in Spanish Morocco were dominated by the perceptions (often archaic) and power of the military, at war from 1921 to 1926 and later acting rather as an occupation army, mistrusting the local population. Although the civil government tried to follow an official policy of agricultural development incorporating some antimalaria activities, the lack of financial support, bureaucratic obstacles, the lack of civil-military collaboration, and the uncooperative attitudes of the colonization companies led to poor success. In Spanish Guinea, action was pushed by the interests of plantation owners and their demand for a labor...

The Challenge of Selective Conscientious Objection in Israel

Whether refusal is an act of civil disobedience meant to challenge the state politically as a form of protest, or an action which reflects a deep moral objection to the policies of the state, selective conscientious objection presents the state and its citizens with a number of difficult legal and moral challenges. Appeals to authority outside of the state, whether religious or secular, influence both citizenship and the behavior of the government itself. As Israel raises funds to defend IDF officers from charges of human rights violations in the United Kingdom, it may find itself in need of a better defense against those citizens hesitant to be placed in harm's way, militarily and legally. At some point in the future it may find itself unable to field soldiers for whom service in the Occupied Territories is prohibited by inviolable secular or religious law. And for those who will continue to argue that they cannot abide service in an army of occupation, an expression sounded in 1968 by Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the moral crisis of an individual conscience rent between obligations to the state and obligations to self, will linger along with the pain of a conscience nurtured and then rejected by this democratic society.

Československo-západoněmecké obchodněpolitické a dopravněpolitické vztahy v období 1949-1967

Vznik obou německých států v roce 1949 vážně poznamenal hospodářské, zvláště obchodní a dopravní vztahy ve střední Evropě na celá desetiletí. Příslušnost Československa a Spolkové republiky Německo k různým vojenskopolitickým a hospodářskopolitickým, tedy i dopravnětarifním uskupením vytvořila určitý rámec, resp. limity vzájemných obchodněpolitických a dopravněpolitických vztahů.Vysvětlení zachování hospodářských a dopravních kontaktů obou států tkví jednak ve formě a obsahu uzavřených smluv. První smlouvy totiž uzavíraly britská a americká a francouzská vojenská okupační administrativa a tyto smlouvy nebyly vypovězeny. Naopak se tyto smlouvy staly vlastně základem, který nezpochybňovala ani jedna ze stran. Jednak se jednalo o geografickou blízkost, podobnou a současně se doplňující strukturu ekonomiky.Ve srovnání s předválečným vývojem byl československo-západoněmecký objem zbožního obchodu nesrovnatelně malý, resp. mizivý. Zatímco československý podíl zahraničního obchodu na obchodu Spolkové republiky nečinil ani jedno procento, západoněmecký podíl na obchodu Československa dosáhl 5-6 %.Základním prostředkem dopravního styku zůstala ve sledovaném období ještě železnice. Doprava se realizovala přes tři pohraniční stanice. Postupně se stabilizoval železniční provoz po stránce technické, provozní a tarifní.V oblasti vodní dopravy nedošlo po dobu studené války kromě období berlínské blokády k přerušení labské plavby. I když nebyla po roce 1945 dohodnuta nová plavební akta na Labi, nestala se tato skutečnost zásadní překážkou plavby na Labi. V praxi se uznávala internacionalizace Labe. Hamburk zůstal pro Československo nejvýznamnějším západoevropským námořním přístavem. Objem tranzitu i exportu a importu přes Hamburk postupně vzrůstal a dokonce v polovině padesátých let překročil předválečný objem. Význam Hamburku pro československý tranzit tkvěl na jedné straně v geografické blízkosti, v kvalitě poskytovaných služeb a v nabídce širokého obchodního spojení se světem a v neposlední řadě v úspoře deviz. Na straně druhé představoval československý tranzit přes Hamburk důležitý faktor nejen z hlediska hospodářského, ale i obchodněpolitického, neboť umožňoval rozvíjet hospodářskodopravní kontakty mezi Československem a Spolkovou republikou. Uzavření smlouvy o zřízení obchodních zastoupení a regulaci zbožového a platebního styku v roce 1967 předznamenalo navázání diplomatických vztahů na počátku sedmdesátých let a stabilizovalo vzájemné hospodářské a potažmo i dopravní vztahy.