Development Of British Policy Research Articles

‘Amenable to Civil Power’: The Influence of the Periphery on British Policy on New Zealand, 1831 to 1837

ABSTRACT From 1831, the New South Wales government employee James Busby began lobbying to be appointed as British representative in New Zealand. Against a backdrop of official British reluctance to intervene in the country, Busby persuaded officials that the indigenous Māori population was not as threatening as was popularly believed in the early nineteenth century, and that its leaders could be persuaded to acquiesce to a more formal British presence in the country. Busby also argued (uniquely among settlers) that Māori chiefs could potentially act in a collective capacity as a form of rudimentary legislature, give the appropriate support. Busby became instrumental in the development of British policy on New Zealand from 1831 to around 1837, and in doing so, demonstrated the extent to which influences from the periphery of the Empire could inform and alter that policy. This article explores some of those core–periphery dynamics, and illustrates aspects of the process by which Britain’s stance on New Zealand evolved during this period in response to the reporting and activities of its official appointee to the country.

Centurions and Chieftains: Tank Sales and British Policy towards Israel in the Aftermath of the Six-Day War

Britain's attempt to distance itself from Israel as London sought to conciliate the Arab world in the aftermath of the Six-Day War has entered the historiography of Anglo-Israeli relations. A neglected aspect of the development of British policy towards Israel has been the intense debates among British decision-makers regarding the supply of tanks to Israel following the 1967 conflict. British reluctance to export the powerful Chieftain tank to Israel stemmed not only from an unwillingness to fuel an arms race in the Middle East, but also from a determination to protect ongoing and extensive British economic interests in the Arab world, especially oil supplies. In keeping with efforts to dissociate itself from Israel, Britain also sought to downplay, and even conceal from the Arab world, ongoing sales of the less sophisticated Centurion tank to Israel. In many ways, British policy towards Israel culminated in the decision during the 1973 Yom Kippur War to maintain an arms embargo to the region which, while not extending to all Arab countries, hit Israel especially hard as it desperately sought ammunition and spares for its Centurion tanks.

Economics, Diplomacy, and War: Britain and Bulgaria, 1936-38

This article explores the effects of organizational memory on decision making with particular reference to British foreign policy regarding trade with Bulgaria in the years immediately preceding the Second World War. It argues that British policy, in conjunction with that of other Allied powers, pushed Bulgaria into a state of economic dependence on Nazi Germany. Bulgaria desired neutrality but eventually had to succumb to the pressures of its economic lifeline and join the war on the side of the Axis powers. These British policies were heavily influenced by the institutional memory of Bulgaria as an enemy from the First World War. The particulars of the organizational structure of the British Foreign Office meant little change in policy would occur right up to the beginning of the war, in spite of the recognized strategic importance of Bulgaria becoming an Allied partner or, at least, remaining neutral. This structure also contributed to an ongoing cultural bias that further reinforced rigidity in British policy development.

Social Work with Children Affected by Domestic Violence

ABSTRACT The past decade has seen an increasing awareness of the emotional harm to children that can ensue from exposure to domestic violence. This article develops a framework for understanding social work responses, using an analysis of recent developments in British policy as an example. It is argued that to understand what these developments mean in practice we need to develop our analysis of the value perspectives underpinning them. Issues facing those charged with implementing these sometimes ambiguous policy and practice changes are discussed in three levels of intervention: the macro, the intermediate, and the 'street-level.' The article concludes by calling for closer collaboration between policy makers, practitioners and service users in the co-production of policy.

A killing in Tripoli (1843): principle and contingency and personal diplomacy

AbstractThis article examines the trial in 1843 and 1844 of Giovanni Battista Caruana, a Maltese, for the murder of a Jew in Tripoli. He was found guilty but was not executed because the victim's impoverished wife agreed to accept compensation. The case took place against the background of the British government's increasing impatience with what they saw as uncontrolled Maltese and Ionian communities, leading to the enactment of the Foreign Jurisdiction Act of 1844. It also demonstrated the importance of the individual authority of the Consul, Hanmer Warrington, and the extent to which consuls' personal objectives and opinions weighed on the development of British policy, and the extent to which Warrington's concern to uphold the law coincided with that of the Pasha of Tripoli, so that the case led to a close identification between the local government and the British consular representative.

Language, Monuments, and the Politics of Memory in Quebec and Ireland

CONTEMPORARY Ireland and Quebec each have centuries of complex language traditions in which Irish, English, and French have jostled in different ways at different periods of time. This article examines two sites--the 1909 Celtic cross at Grosse Ile, Quebec, and the 1903 Miss Erin monument at Kilrush, County Clare--to highlight ways in which texts at those sites were attempts to fix collective memory, but over the twentieth century have become a kind of fragmented conversation about language, famine, nationalism, and identity. At each site, stone structures soar over eye-level text panels that seem to display one single message in Irish, French, and English. Two of the three languages make visible a dual linguistic history in the surrounding cultural landscapes: French and English at Grosse Ile, Irish and English at Kilrush. But why the third language? Was there a French quartier in Kilrush, an Irish Gaeltacht tucked away on the small Canadian island? If not, why did the designers feature another language that few visitors to the sites could have read? If the purpose of monument building is to make a particular memory publicly visible and thus more enduring, do the three languages aid that attempt or conflict with it? Does their presence raise silent questions about conflicts of memory? If needs for a third language were clearer at the time of construction than now, do monuments fix or mark the passage of memory? These questions suggest that visual displays of language carry meanings beyond those apparent in the written words. The broader contexts of the messages may have been so well understood in the early twentieth century that more explicit notation was unnecessary or intentionally omitted, yet other meanings may be clearer and more visible now. IRISH MIGRATIONS TO QUEBEC Before the nineteenth century Irish people emigrated to Quebec mainly through military service. After the Napoleonic wars in 1815, food shortages and epidemics in Ireland sporadically spurred Irish migrations to the predominantly French-speaking Catholic region. Between 1815 and 1861 the Anglophone population of Quebec rose from 15 percent to 24.3 percent. In this period the Irish accounted for almost twice the number of newcomers as English and Scottish immigrants combined (Dickinson and Young 2000:112). The cholera epidemic of 1832 stimulated more Catholic emigration from Ireland than usual, but until the massive influx of Irish Catholics in the years of the Great Famine, most Irish immigrants to Quebec were English-speaking Protestants. In the decade of 1845-55, there were unprecedented challenges to Quebec's religious, linguistic, and cultural demographics as thousands of Irish Catholics poured into Quebec City, Montreal, and other regions along the St. Lawrence River. Catholic ecclesiastical institutions had been entrenched in Quebec society since the French settlements in the early seventeenth century; thus life was considerably less complicated for the Catholic population than it was under the restrictions of the Penal Laws in Ireland. Nevertheless, the financial and political interests of the English-speaking population had increasingly gained control in Quebec after 1760 when France ceded to Britain its remaining colonial holdings in the region. Unrest grew in Quebec as its French-based societal structures and institutions were increasingly challenged. In recognition of growing unrest in the thirteen colonies to the south, England gave concessions to French Canadians to ensure some measure of loyalty, and the 1774 Quebec Act was passed in England to institutionalize measures of cultural continuity for the French-speaking Catholics (Dickinson and Young 2000:55). (1) The precedence of this legislation linked the aspirations of Irish and French-speaking Canadians seeking more independence under British rule and subsequently influenced the development of British policy toward Ireland in the nineteenth century. …

Book Review: The Addicted Offender - Developments in British Policy and Practice

Book Review: The Addicted Offender - Developments in British Policy and Practice

A safe haven?: The development of British policy concerning unaccompanied refugee children 1933-93

Since the late 1930s, the British government has facilitated the arrival of varying numbers of unaccompanied refugee children through special arrangements with Non‐Governmental Organisations (NGOs). Recently, however, specific steps have been taken to prevent unaccompanied children, as well as adult asylum‐seekers, arriving in Britain. Little has been done to recognize children's particular needs in the refugee‐determination process. In the same period, children's settlement changed from being the sole responsibility of NGOs to being shared, with NGOs providing government‐funded services. Latterly, refugee settlement has been largely the statutory responsibility of local authorities; asylum‐seekers, including vulnerable children, have to compete with the indigenous population for resources.

Britain, the International Spectrum, and the Eastern Question, 1827-1841

We commemorated in 1988 the sesquicentennial of the Convention of Balta Limani, the ground-breaking Ottoman-British commercial agreement that set a pattern for Ottoman agreements with other powers in the years immediately following. The Convention sprang from British interests and from Ottoman needs during the 1830s in the Near East. My function is to sketch the general international background for the Convention, to look at the situation of the Ottoman Empire, at British foreign policy in the early nineteenth century, and in particular at the development of British policy in the Near East in the years from 1827 to 1841. A subtitle indicating the desirable breadth of view might read “From Navarino (1827) to Nezib (1839), and from Hercules’ Pillars to Hormuz and Herat.”

The development of British policy in the Southern Sudan 1899–1947

Generally speaking, it may be said that British policy in the Southern Sudan during the period under consideration passed through two main phases. Throughout the first phase, from 1899 to 1919, the policy of the Sudan Government towards the Southern provinces was apart from the maintenance of law and order and the provision of different forms of assistance to Christian missionary societies largely passive or laissez faire. During the second phase, following the Egyptian Revolution, on the other hand the Government became increasingly active and interventionist, especially as was the case with regard to native administration in the northern provinces after the rising of 1924 which was itself led by an officer of Southern (Dinka) origin. And although the geographical differences between the Southern and Northern provinces had always been an important fac.tor, the basic considerations which dictated the Southern policy of the British Government of the Sudan were, in both its stages, the colonial interests of the British Empire in the Sudan and East Africa.