British Involvement Research Articles

Great Britain and the War of the Triple Alliance: The Lincolnshire Farmers Colonization Scheme to Paraguay and the Fourth Ally Thesis

This article challenges the fourth ally thesis, which argues that Great Britain was a crucial actor underpinning the combined forces of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay that defeated Paraguay in the 1864–70 War of the Triple Alliance. To date, the debate has focused on British involvement in the genesis and financing of the allied war effort. This article instead focuses on the postwar behavior of the British government, exploring its attitude to the 892 mainly English colonists of the failed 1872–73 Lincolnshire farmers emigration scheme to Paraguay. The British government's open hostility to the scheme and its lack of concern for the plight of the colonists offer new evidence suggesting that the War of the Triple Alliance was of little interest to British imperialism in general and to settler colonialism in particular.

Human rights and the righting of ‘historical’ wrongs: the Supreme Court’s judgment in Re McQuillan, McGuigan, and McKenna

This comment examines particular aspects of the Supreme Court’s judgment in McQuillan, McGuigan and McKenna, notably its reasoning and findings in respect of the investigative obligation emanating from the right not to be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment as it related to the case of the ‘Hooded Men’. Although the Supreme Court acknowledged that the subjection of the Hooded Men to the so-called ‘five techniques’ of interrogation in 1971 would, today, be characterised as ‘torture’, and in spite of new evidence linking named members of the United Kingdom (UK) Government to the authorisation of the ‘five techniques’, the court found that there was no basis for recognising the applicability or revival of UK authorities’ obligation to investigate under article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In this case commentary, I consider the court’s analysis and conclusions and reflect briefly on their significance in the context of an uninterrupted ‘history’ of British involvement in torture.

British involvement and epidemic diseases during the 1908 – 1914 Hajj Pilgrimage: Evidence from British Documents

This study examines the role of British involvement and the impact of epidemic diseases during the Hajj pilgrimage from 1908 to 1914. Drawing upon a comprehensive analysis of British documents, the research sheds light on the extent of British engagement and its repercussions on the spread and management of epidemics within the context of the Hajj. By exploring the documented evidence, including official reports and correspondence, this paper offers valuable insights into the British perspective and its influence on the dynamics of epidemic diseases during this critical period. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the historical interplay between colonial powers and the challenges posed by epidemic outbreaks during religious gatherings.

Infernal Tambopata. British Involvement in Twentieth Century Slavery in Peru and Bolivia

The Putumayo Atrocities (murder, torture, Slavery of indigenous rubber workers) committed by the British registered Peruvian Amazon Company are well known. The official response of the British Government was that there was no direct British involvement; they were an aberration. There is though much evidence that during the early years of the 20th century, other British rubber companies in the Amazon Basin used the enganche por deudas bonded labour system. This article, adopting a granular approach, examines the activities of one British company, the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate, concentrating on its barracas at San Carlos and Marte, between 1907 and 1913. Using unpublished sources (diaries, correspondence and company records) it reveals direct British involvement in slavery. It details ill-treatment of indigenous workers and demonstrates the human consequences of rubber exploitation.

Imperial Wine: How the British Empire Made Wine’s New World by Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre

Academic monographs about commodities generally distinguish themselves from the commercial genre by offering more than entertainment for the curious. Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York, 2014) and Erika Rappaport’s A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World (Princeton, 2017) wielded the might of significant economic and political research within their pages, even if the footnotes were neatly stowed out of sight at the back of thick volumes. Wine achieved scholarly recognition as an agent of historical development in David Hancock’s Oceans of Wine: Madeira and the Emergence of American Trade and Taste (New Haven, 2009) and as a social marker in Charles Luddington’s The Politics of Wine in Britain: A New Cultural History (New York, 2013), which is mainly about fortified wines. In her study of British involvement in the production and sale of wine in its settler colonies, Regan-Lefebvre looks at unfortified wine and seeks to show how British imperial vineyards had wide-ranging implications for the future of the metropole and its colonies. Wine became imbricated in colonial claims for legitimacy abroad and within gentrifying modes of consumption at home in Britain. If wine could speak, it would name innumerable aggressive entrepreneurs whose ambitions fueled an important surge in activity outside of Continental Europe.Regan-Lefebvre’s account shows how the modern consumer’s choice of an alcoholic beverage rested on centuries of canny merchant schemes, land grabs, and exploitation of Indigenous peoples. In five initial chapters, she sketches the large framework for her study, beginning with two key assumptions: The argument for making wine rested on a vision of civilizing the frontiers of empire, constituting the very foundation of British claims to legitimacy in lands occupied by Indigenous people; the simple fact of British attachment to alcoholic drinks made wine production a potent driver of commerce. Three principal arenas of action demonstrate these points early in the game, beginning with the Dutch invasion of South Africa, British settlement of Australia, and British cultivation of New Zealand grapes. Regan-Lefebvre gives passing attention to wine in India, Cyprus, Malta, and Canada. She manages to keep every thread of argument in view, showing how wine drinking (as opposed to the consumption of just port or claret) signified an elite but significant activity with a bright, if distant future.In truth, early wines from these places failed to satisfy knowing consumers. The most important off-stage player in this book is France, supplier of the finest wines to a tiny fraction of British consumers. Readers interested in this crucial point regarding Britain will appreciate Regan-Lefebvre’s careful inclusion of tariff legislation across the centuries. The determination to avoid commercial surrender to French supremacy in wine inspired a great deal of colonial entrepreneurial swashbuckling and ambition. Over time, the most knowledgeable vineyard owners grappled with learning more about French methods.Regan-Lefebvre recognizes the arrival of widespread middle-class wine drinking in the Victorian period as a major milestone and contemplates the long arc of commercial effort that made it possible. When tariffs were removed in 1860, she points out, the boost to wine drinking was part of a larger plan of “social engineering” (95). Encouraging the working classes (two-thirds of the British population at the time) to shift from spirits and beer to wine pointed to a new era of gentility, or so the planners hoped. As part of the sociological landscape of alcohol, Regan-Lefebvre reveals the serendipitous convergences leading to broad-based off-license distribution of wine, even if debatable quality earned it the name of “plonk.” She argues that without the boost of such imports, wine drinking could not have become a distinctly British activity, let alone compete with the ubiquitous and sizable consumption of beer.Regan-Lefebvre’s final three chapters about Britain after World War II and modern consumer culture could alone have countenanced a book-length study, particularly since fluctuations in quantity and quality suggest that this period witnessed a true turn to popular wine-drinking. Yet her larger and longer framework is devoted to exposing the power and importance of economic structures. Regan-Lefebvre showcases triumphant twentieth-century capitalism carrying New World wines into a twenty-first century of global mass consumerism. The existence of “affordable and approachable” New World wines is the shared product of imperialism, capitalism, and cultural gentrification (234). This book clearly proves that good commercial wine is one of the ways that the system convinces players that the game is worth playing, another form of the people’s opium that society is loathe to lose.

Expressly Orient? Britain’s railway-making in pre-colonial Egypt

Constructed in the 1850s with heavy British involvement, the Egyptian railway was the first to be built in a non-European Mediterranean territory. Britain – which neither financed nor owned this railway – nonetheless came to view it as a British possession. Originally envisioned as a highway for connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and India, the railway became a means unto itself in Britain’s drive for a foothold in Egypt. Taking place in a period of both expanding British influence in the Mediterranean and technological innovation, this article centres on the largely overlooked interconnectivity between the railway and Britain’s march to dominance in Egypt. To secure a railway, Britain systematically undermined Ottoman sovereignty in semi-independent Egypt. Britain’s efforts ranged from gunboat diplomacy to combating Ottoman legal reform intended to limit capital punishment, which Britain saw as a prerequisite to safeguarding its interests in Egypt. Moreover, Britain de facto supported the railway’s construction through mass Egyptian forced labour. Once in operation, the railway became a social site that produced de facto colonial racial hierarchies. Combined, the article shows how, decades before the 1882 British occupation of Egypt, the railway project irrevocably contributed to Britain’s gradual colonization of Egypt.

British Involvement in the Korean War: The Special Relationship as a Framework for Involvement

This paper considers Britain’s involvement in the Korean War. It argues that Britain’s developing relationship with the United States predicated their involvement. To substantiate the argument that Britain entered the war because of their relationship with the United States, I briefly outline the economic context of Britain’s decline situated in the economic historiography surrounding this period. I also explore the trend of imperial and international decline through the words of several principle historic actors of the time. With this context established, I will outline the elements of Britain’s special relationship with the United States. These elements will show why Britain’s engagement in the Korean War was essential to the solidification and longevity of the special relationship, and more broadly the survival of Britain itself. Together, these sources will bolster my argument that British involvement in the Korean War was based on American interests and highlight how the centering of the interests of Americans—not Koreans—fostered a lack of collective British mythology surrounding the war and contributed to its forgotten nature.

Baptists, Race and Empire, 1792–1914

ABSTRACT This article compares the stances on race and empire of four British who featured in the overseas missionary movement in this period. William Ward of the Serampore Mission brought some elements of his early political radicalism into his attack on Hinduism as a system of priestly oppression. The writer and BMS secretary Edward Bean Underhill blamed the Jamaican plantocracy for the plight of the former slaves after emancipation, and defended black Jamaicans against racist attacks on their character. In contrast, Herbert Sutton Smith, a BMS missionary on the Congo from 1899 to 1910, wrote a book about his years at Yakusu that is full of racial stereotypes. Finally, Joseph Booth, a Baptist from Derby who began his own self-supporting mission in Malawi in 1892, became an outspoken critic of British involvement in the region, while still retaining a theoretical hope that Queen Victoria would intervene on behalf of exploited Africans.

The British Council, English Language Teaching and Britain’s struggle for educational influence in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, 1955–69

The present article addresses British efforts at using English Language Teaching (ELT) to bolster its position among a broad range of Gulf residents, from sheikhs to students. During a time in which the British image in the Arab world was often discredited, policymakers believed that the English language was one commodity capable of overcoming prevailing negative attitudes. Through an analysis of British Council files for the Persian Gulf, this article examines the successes and failures which attended British efforts to use English language expertise to forge new contacts and to develop a new role in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar. It shows that there was rising demand for ELT across the trio of states. In Qatar and, especially, Bahrain, this demand helped Britain to enhance its presence within the education sector and thus help to maintain a form of British involvement in the years following withdrawal. Kuwait proved a more difficult nut to crack; but even here, a revamped ELT effort from 1969 gave British observers encouragement that the English language was among the country’s trump cards in its effort to maintain favourable relations with its former client.

The people's broadcasters

The people's broadcasters

The Politics of Exploitation and Oppression, British Colonization, and Chinese Involvement in Zimbabwe

In an analog philosophy by Lobengula of the chameleon and the fly, he unveiled the British occupation of Zimbabwe, which I equally translated or is similar to the 21st-century Chinese involvement in Zimbabwe. In understanding the exploitative nature of colonial and post-colonial politics, the research offered a comparative analysis of the British and Chinese involvement in Zimbabwe. The post-colonial economic colonization neo-colonialism, similar to dependency theory proponents, found the African continent under exploitation and oppression in her post-independence. The researcher utilized qualitative research of documentary review, online sources, and virtual ethnography to unveil and enrich the study phenomenon.

A Close Examination of Edward Fry and His Report on British Parliamentary Proceedings Pertaining to the Opium Wars and Subsequent Government Policies

This paper analyzes Edward Fry’s 1876 report on parliamentary proceedings pertaining to the opium trade. In the report, Edward Fry criticized British involvement in the Opium Wars and subsequent opium trade by arguing that Britain should not force the import of opium into China because it was destroying the health and welfare of Chinese citizens. Instead, Fry suggested that the British Empire should assume responsibility by outlawing the sale of opium and refunding the opium farmers in China and India. Edward Fry was not advocating for the end of British presence in China, but he was promoting British imperialist rhetoric and ideology with the goal of extending western influence in China especially through the reputation of missionaries. Although Fry’s report condemned British involvement in the Opium Wars and their support of the trade, he still supported British imperialism in China. This paper provides a brief biography on Edward Fry and discusses his anti-opium stance, his predominant view on the opium trade during the 1870’s, and how these events reflected deeper colonial trends.

Slavonic and East European Review, 1922–2022

Slavonic and East European Review, 1922–2022 Simon Dixon (bio) This year marks the one-hundredth anniversary of this journal, launched in June 1922 as the Slavonic Review, renamed Slavonic (and East European) Review in 1928, and known since 1931, when the brackets were silently dropped, under its current title, commonly abbreviated to SEER. The centenary offers a natural opportunity to reflect on the journal's achievements and vicissitudes and to glance forward to challenges ahead.1 Except for the war years, 1941–44, when the numeration was maintained but SEER was published without British involvement in the United States, it has been edited in London at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). A constituent part of King's College from 1915 until 1932, when it became an independent Senate Institute, SSEES struck some outsiders as one of the more inward-looking institutions in the British higher education system before its merger with University College London (UCL) in 1999.2 However, both the School and its cosmopolitan staff developed in counterpoint with the turbulent history of the region they studied and with changes in academic life in the world beyond. The same is true of the Review. Conceived as 'the joint product of British and American [End Page 1] Slavonic scholars, and of representative Slavs in every field of intellectual effort',3 the journal relied from the outset on the fluctuating international collaborations highlighted in this article. Since the journal's lifespan has so far fallen into two distinct parts, the article's final section focuses on the years after 1950, when SEER became an academic periodical among a growing galaxy of specialist competitors. But I begin in the aftermath of the peace settlements of 1919–20, when Slavonic studies gained unprecedented prominence in Europe and the United States, and when the Review first appeared as a hybrid combining scholarly articles with politically committed contributions inspired by the shared Liberal vision of its two principal founders, R. W. Seton-Watson* (1879–1951) and Sir Bernard Pares* (1867–1949). Scholarship and political activism, 1922–40 In presenting their new journal as a multi-disciplinary miscellany, studded with essays and documents on contemporary affairs, Pares and Seton-Watson ran against a swelling tide of academic professionalization originating in Germany. In their own subject — history — France's Revue historique (1876), the English Historical Review (1886) and the American Historical Review (1895) had all been established in the wake of the Prussian Historische Zeitschrift (1859) as bastions of a 'scientific' method designed to supplant the romantic effusions of 'men of letters'.4 Nevertheless, the transition was neither universal nor smooth.5 And it was especially uneven among historians who sympathized with the 'oppressed' nationalities of the Habsburg Empire and rejoiced in their new-found statehood after 1919. Barely a decade after collaborating with Seton-Watson in British intelligence, the émigré Polish Jew Lewis Namier* (1888–1960) published The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (1929), a work whose very title signalled the author's determination to privilege what he called 'sociological' analysis over teleological narrative.6 By contrast, Seton-Watson and his Liberal friends remained faithful to a heroic vision of national emancipation, granted as a reward for moral courage. Warning against the spurious claims to objectivity of 'colourless' history that 'gave [End Page 2] no clue to the author's party allegiance or ulterior motive', Seton-Watson insisted in his 1928 Creighton Lecture that 'no historian who is worth his salt can altogether avoid taking sides in the tremendous controversies of Authority and Reason, of Tradition and Liberty, of unquestioning faith and sceptical inquiry'.7 Harold Temperley* (1879–1939) might have agreed. Though he launched the austerely professional Cambridge Historical Journal in 1923 and checked his contributors' references at the Public Record Office, Temperley never wholly suppressed the romantic streak that inspired his fascination with the Serbs, the Hungarians and the Slovaks. Having partly overcome his initial mistrust of academic interventions in affairs of state — 'Oh these Professors', he wailed to Seton-Watson in 1909, 'how they fail in politics' — Temperley went on to play a minor part in the peace settlement ten years later.8...

The Images of China and Britain in the Syrian Media

China and Britain have contrasting images in the official and unofficial Syrian media. By analysing relevant news stories, this study reveals that China’s involvement in the Syrian crisis as covered by the Syrian media is usually limited to governmental affairs, while Britain’s involvement covered by the Syrian media, especially the “revolutionary” outlet, figures in a relatively wider range of diverse nongovernmental happenings including activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the media. Most importantly, the study finds that the “revolutionary” outlet Enab Baladi is apt to present Chinese involvement as negative, but presents British involvement as positive, while the government-backed news agency SANA portrays a completely positive image of China and a fundamentally negative image of Britain.

Empire on Edge: The British Struggle for Order in Belize during Yucatán's Caste War, 1847–1901

The Caste War (1847–1901) of Yucatan stands not only as a long-lasting Indigenous struggle but also as an armed conflict with a significant international dimension, particularly Britain's indirect involvement. Rajeshwari Dutt's fascinating book contributes to the growing scholarship on the Caste War by examining the participation of Belize (then the colony of British Honduras) in this violent confrontation between the Mexican state and groups of Maya insurgents. Through sustained attention to records in Belize, the United Kingdom, and Mexico, Empire on Edge illuminates the intricacies of British imperial rule in the Caribbean and the practical limits of colonial control on the edge of empire during turbulent times. It further shows how the fluid frontier between Mexico and Belize became, in the second half of the nineteenth century, a space of trade and illegal contraband as well as a site of uneasy cultural and racial accommodations.Empire on Edge is a remarkable book, well written and engaging, that might be of interest to specialists in this understudied country and to those interested in the history of colonial governance, borderland conflicts, refugees' culture, and diplomatic relations. Moreover, as the author herself acknowledges, “this book argues for a deeper and more sustained examination of the intersection between British imperial history and Latin American history” (p. 9n10).This book's major innovation is analyzing the paperwork (writings, reports, instructions, and correspondence) of a group of officials, representatives, and bureaucrats to understand the tensions and challenges of imperial rule in a colonial backwater. Dutt uses colonial paperwork not only to reconstruct Belizean efforts to control its northern border with Mexico but as a window into everyday life in this area, particularly for those at the margins of society—“brown, black, indigenous, refugee, laborer, fugitive” (p. 14). However, other important issues beyond territorial control—such as commodity production and foreign companies' involvement in the war—are much less explored by Dutt. We cannot forget that the tensions and struggles in this liminal and marginal zone were the result of both unfinished colonial projects and global capitalist pressures over massive tropical forest resources. The political control of the territory was, therefore, intrinsically linked to the effective governance of logging camps of logwood, chicle, and mahogany. In this regard, the mapping and colonization of the border between Mexico and British Honduras faced severe environmental constraints and technical challenges that would deserve further research. Unfortunately, the vital role of the material conditions in setting frontier dynamics in a heavily forested land is only considered in passing in this book.Empire on Edge is organized into an introduction, six chapters that proceed in chronological order, and a brief conclusion. Chapter 1 traces the intense economic exchanges between Maya groups and Belizean merchants and tradesmen along the disputed Río Hondo during the early years of the war. It shows that despite the brutality and extreme violence that characterized the war early on, borderland business activity and trading were carried out as usual and even intensified. Chapter 2 turns to the analysis of the thousands of war refugees—both Hispanic and Maya—and their settlement in the northern part of Belize between 1853 and 1861. Triggered by the Caste War, Belize increasingly became a multiethnic society characterized by conflicting interests and interethnic alliances. In this new demographic context, race was prominently used—although with limited success—as a tool of social differentiation and control by colonial authorities.Chapters 3–5 move to the strategies deployed by colonial authorities in Belize to control and protect the frontier with Mexico and the relative failure of these strategies over time. In the 1860s and 1870s, despite Belizean desires and attempts to impose order, the border remained an area of kidnappings, Indian raids, illegal trade, and unregulated timber extraction. An essential part of the problem from the very beginning of the war was that the imperial government refused to send ground troops or additional economic resources to Belize. Chapter 6 explores the pacification of Belize's northern frontier during the 1880s and 1890s. By then, the Mexican state has already imposed internal control over its territory in the Yucatan peninsula and British involvement in the Caste War has ended. Finally, the book's conclusion briefly examines the aftermath of the Spencer-Mariscal Treaty signed between Mexico and Britain in 1893.

Going Dutch: British private developers and the discovery of European property markets 1970-1975

ABSTRACT This contribution investigates the arrival of British developers on Dutch soil during the 1970s from a transnational perspective. Doing so will not only reveal how British expertise and financial strength led to a maturation of the Dutch property market, but will also shed a new light on the economic, cultural and political ties between two European trading partners. There is much academic and public debate today about the invasion of global cities by foreign property investors, yet empirical investigations of historical predecessors to the current situation are virtually non-existent. This contribution puts Britain’s business relationship and interactions with Europe and the Netherlands central. This will reveal why British developers became interested in European property in the first place, how they viewed the market and its players based on national characteristics and stereotypes, and why British involvement eventually became heavily contested on the local level. This will lead to a more comprehensive and multifaceted narrative of British involvement in overseas property affairs during a period of growing rapprochement between Britain and the EEC, and adds to our understanding of both Anglo-European relations and local sentiments towards international influences in a more general sense. The focus of the article lies on attitudes and mindsets, as these ultimately facilitated the transnational flows of capital and knowledge exchange.

Empires of the Mind: The Colonial Past and the Politics of the Present. By Robert Gildea (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2019) 366 pp. $24.95

Gildea’s Empires of the Mind makes a cogent argument that empire has molded the present and continues to shape the future of our planet. As a British historian of France, well known for his work on the Occupation and collective memory, Gildea is well placed to explore how the long-term networks of the two great nineteenth-century global empires of Britain and France were kept in place over the long term by cajoling, bargaining, and force where necessary.The opening chapters set out—if in an inevitably schematic form—the construction and crisis of the British and French empires to 1945. The ensuing chapters about the “Imperialism of Decolonisation” are the historical crux of the book, synthesizing, in a big-picture way, the research by Elkins, Shepard, and others that has put paid to the “twin myths of a peaceful transfer of power by the British to former colonial authorities and of the French Empire defending itself by violence” (95).1 Gildea makes an eloquent case for the ways in which decolonization became a cover for the restoration of dependency through “cronyism, bribery and bullying” (103).The new postcolonial “empires” were not national affairs, but subtler alliances between states and multinational companies. From the disaster of Franco–British involvement in Suez in 1956, the more coercive forms of neo-colonialism gradually gave way to economic muscle, in what Gildea calls the “global financial republic” (117). Moreover, as they simultaneously ceded sovereignty to a supranational Europe and saw increased flows of people from the former colonies, both Britain and France succumbed to hysteria about metropoles becoming colonized “in reverse.” But anti-racists and people of color themselves pushed back against this discrimination, creating alliances and changing mentalities throughout the 1980s. Most disheartening in Gildea’s sweeping view of this history is his suggestion that a brief “multicultural moment” of the late 1990s was swept away by the interlocking challenges that marked the dawn of the twenty-first century. Islamism and its obverse, the “War on Terror,” installed seemingly intractable and atrociously violent conflicts across the world. The overthrow of dictatorships in the “Arab Spring” of 2011 sparked a winter of civil wars, refugee flows, and xenophobic reaction in Europe, helping to bring a new anti-cosmopolitans to power.In the end, however, what interests Gildea most are the divergent courses of France and Britain. His book begins as a parallel history of empires, but it shifts into a kind of prehistory of Brexit, tracing the emerging logics of resurgent British imperialism through wartime propaganda, decolonization, Europe, immigration, and globalization. France is more a touchstone and point of comparison. Gildea asks why France took a decisive shift away from empire and toward Europe while Britain drifted backward to insularity and imperial nostalgia. Much of the answer is focused on Emmanuel Macron, as a Gaullist-Napoleonic contrast to Britain’s feckless political leaders. Although Gildea gives voice to critics of Macron’s dirigisme, in the end, he puts his money down on a France “with its eyes resolutely on the future against a Britain “trapped in the past” (254). Gildea once characterized the French as “Children of the Revolution,” but such a revolutionary legacy seems largely absent from this book.In drawing its opposition between France and Britain, the book leaves in the background the larger global context in which colonial pasts are reframed. The new frontiers of data, and the climate crisis that will surely transform the geopolitics of the planet, figure little among the challenges that Gildea sees as shaping future forms of empire. Curiously, he makes slight reference to Russia and China, which may well offer better cases for “empires of the mind” pursued through cyberwarfare, information control, and media manipulation, backed by brute force where necessary.The book retains a vigor of ideas and directness of voice from its origin as a lecture series. Unfortunately, however, it is littered with niggling errors, particularly regarding details familiar to specialists of empire: Anghor Wat for Angkor Wat, Khalifat movement for Khilafat movement, Ishqlal party for Istiqlal party, “Allalahu Akbar” for “Allahu Akbar,” among others. Nonetheless, Gildea deserves congratulations for a bold venture to uncover the imperial histories needed to understand our present predicament.

Slavery fiction in Britain

This article analyses significant examples of slavery fiction published in Britain by writers who have family links to Africa and the Caribbean. As children of immigrants who had come to Britain after World War II, Caryl Phillips, David Dabydeen, Fred D’Aguiar, Andrea Levy and Bernardine Evaristo shared the uncertainties of coming of age in a society that offered no space for their identities as individuals with roots in other continents. This article reviews some of their fictions and considers them as a group in their re-creation of British involvement in the slave trade and slavery. They refocus the lens of history and present the perspectives of African enslaved and free individuals in stories of human suffering but also of agency and resistance. These fictions reconstruct the role of slavery in the British past as they write against traditional abolition-oriented narratives of the nation.

Accountability, denial and the future-proofing of British torture

Abstract When powerful liberal democratic states are found to be complicit in extreme violations of human rights, how do they respond and why do they respond as they do? Drawing on the example of the United Kingdom's complicity in torture since 9/11, this article demonstrates how reluctant the UK has been to permit a full reckoning with its torturous past. We demonstrate that successive UK governments engaged in various forms of denial, obfuscation and attempts to obstruct investigation and avoid accountability. The net effect of their responses has been to deny the victims redress, through adequate judicial processes, and to deny the public adequate state accountability. These responses are not simply aimed at shielding from prosecution the perpetrators and those who have oversight of them, nor preventing political embarrassment. The various forms of denial and obstruction are also designed to ensure that collusion can continue uninterrupted. A core concern of intelligence officials and ministers has been to prevent any process that would lead to a comprehensive prohibition on involvement in operations where torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are a real possibility. The door remains wide open, and deliberately so, for British involvement in torture.

Az amerikai és a brit diplomácia szerepe az 1974-es ciprusi konfliktusban

The study examines the characteristics of American and British involvement in the 1974 events in Cyprus. Regarding the United States, it highlights the importance of Kissinger’s controversial foreign policy which prior to the coup d’état supported the plans of Greece, while after the Turkish intervention, backed the strategic ideas of Ankara. In case of Britain, the study examines the difference between British goals of intervention and actual possibilities for manoeuvring: it emphasises that even though London strongly opposed the change of the status quo formed in the 1960s, its practical interventionwas not able to prevent the coup against President Makarios or the subsequent Turkish intervention. The paper thus argues that the U.S. and British involvement played a major role in the events of 1974 in which the United States, directly or indirectly supported the nationalist ideas of regional powers, while the United Kingdom wishing to maintain thedelicate balance in the island had neither capacity to avoid the catastrophe nor viable suggestions to solve the existing disputes.