Domestic Struggles Research Articles

Social Conflict and Outgroup Sentiment in South Korea: Evidence from the Yemeni Anti-Refugee Campaign

AbstractResearch on attitudes toward immigrants and refugees largely focuses on intergroup conflict and related threats imposed by outgroup members. This study shifts the analytic focus to intragroup conflict: a domestic struggle among natives over how to handle recently arrived refugees and on their perception of foreign workers in general and Muslims in particular. By exploiting an exogenous variation in the interview timing of a nationally representative survey conducted in South Korea, a “new immigration destination,” this study offers a causal estimate (local average treatment effect) of domestic societal conflict on outgroup attitudes. Results from regression discontinuity (RD) analysis show that in its aftermath—immediately following the completion of a controversial e-petition sponsored by the anti-refugee group demanding that the government extradite asylum seekers—the public opinion of Korean adults toward foreign workers and Muslims became more, not less, favorable. Heterogeneous treatment effects are also found across two respondent-level characteristics: cosmopolitan identity and relative deprivation. Specifically, the focal relationship is more pronounced among individuals who identify less with cosmopolitan citizenship and among those who are more relatively deprived.

Social Structures of Accumulation in a Semiperiphery Country

This article claims that the world-system approach can serve as a mediating force in understanding the social structure(s) of accumulation (SSA) dynamics in Turkey. The argument for using the world-system approach has two complementary supports. First, the Turkish SSAs are driven by the capitalist world economy. As such, the author focuses on Turkey’s Westernization efforts and dependency on core countries and international organizations under their control. Second, domestic struggles and political decisions related to the Turkish SSAs are not limited to the main variables of the SSA theory, such as labor-capital conflict, profit rate, and economic crises. Thus, the author shows that phenomena such as the religion-secularity conflict, the struggle between anti-imperialism and anticommunism, and military interventions are crucial in SSA formations. In support of this argumentation, the author discusses the regulationist and neoliberal SSAs in Turkey. JEL Classification: J50, J08, B51, P16

Legal Entanglements: Law, Rights, and the Battle for Legitimacy in Divided Germany, 1945–1989 by Sebastian Gehrig

Reviewed by: Legal Entanglements: Law, Rights, and the Battle for Legitimacy in Divided Germany, 1945–1989 by Sebastian Gehrig Sarah Colvin Legal Entanglements: Law, Rights, and the Battle for Legitimacy in Divided Germany, 1945–1989. By Sebastian Gehrig. New York and Oxford: Berghahn. 2021. xiii+327 pp. $145; £107. ISBN 978–1–80073–083–0. Sebastian Gehrig has written a detailed, scholarly, and very useful account of the legislative debates and tensions in East and West Germany during the Cold War: that is, at a time when the political legitimacy of the competing German states depended not least on their perceived adherence to international legal standards. This new study opens out a novel and important perspective on the 'two Germanies' not as merely divided, but as importantly and complexly entangled in the context of their shared national history. Among other things, Gehrig meticulously unpicks the entangled intricacies of East and West German citizenship law, offering crucial historical background for those seeking to understand the debates around Federal German citizenship laws and (right-wing) identity politics now. Law and rights, Gehrig demonstrates, were a key element in the Cold War battle for legitimacy between East and West Germany, even while the competing ideologies of the two states meant that terms such as citizenship and human rights had different meanings, which shifted over time. Consideration is also given to how post-war decolonization and the global development of nation states impacted on conceptions of law, rights, and the state, and how East Germany's branding of West Germany [End Page 515] as neo-fascist and neo-colonial accompanied the GDR's diplomatic efforts to be recognized in Africa as a nation state. In the context of the overarching narrative of legislative developments and entanglements, Gehrig offers fascinating micro-stories on issues such as the legal and political manoeuvring that drove the outlawing of the West German Communist Party (KPD) in 1956, or the domestic struggles over Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik in the early 1970s. In 1973 both Germanies were accepted into the United Nations, and Gehrig's study charts the establishment of international human rights norms in both Germanies, at least in theory. In the GDR, the author comments, 'legal realities remained a different matter' (p. 225); though the same could conceivably be said of the FRG, whose treatment of its prisoners from the domestic terrorist groups in the mid-1970s drew letters of protest to the Federal German government from Amnesty International (Gehrig does address problematic aspects of West German counter-terrorism measures in the 1970s, but not the highly controversial treatment of accused and convicted members of the terrorist groups in West German prisons). Gehrig notes that in East Germany citizens' rights were not absolute or basic, but contingent on individuals' participation in the socialist project. Crime in the GDR failed to abate in the way it was supposed to as socialism developed, Gehrig notes; but again, the problems of penal law and practice are not part of his study. Nelson Mandela rather famously wrote that 'no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails', and it would have been extremely interesting to see the penal codes and practices of the two Germanies contextualized in this otherwise comprehensive study. It remains, however, an admirable piece of work that not only does a very significant amount of meticulous groundwork, but provides new and fascinating perspectives on and insights into East and West Germany after 1945, and tracks the after-effects of that time to the present day in ways that should inflect thinking on citizenship and identity now. Sarah Colvin University of Cambridge Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association

The domestic struggle for traditional medical knowledge rights.

In China, the local communities and various ethnic minorities still hold, sustain and develop traditional medicial knowledge (TMK), innovations, and practices within the original communities. TMK also has pharmaceutical option value, which has attracted interests in commercial use of TMK for pharmaceutical innovation in China. However, the increased use of TMK for non-traditional purposes might lead to a change in the customary treatment of TMK as common goods of relevant communities and peoples, and may lead to significant tension faced by both providers and users of TMK in China. We find there is a significant gap in literature analysing the phenonmenon of domestic biopolitics concerning TMK in China. Closely connected problem is the contradictory relationship between providers and users of TMK, especially between the indigenous and local communities, and corporate and industrial actors. Therefore, urgent research is needed to fill this literature gap.

Semantic Struggles in the Face of Crisis: ‘The West’ as Contested Key Concept in West German Parliamentary Debate (1973/74)

This article suggests to read West German parliamentary debate on the first oil crisis as a semantic struggle on the concept of the West. Drawing on latest research, the West is considered to be a narrated concept with its meaning being negotiated upon when being evoked. Even though the West does not refer to any empirical reality, it is not an arbitrary concept either. Rather it repeatedly presents itself in three ideal typical narrative forms: being the civilisational, the modern and the political narrative. As shown by the analysis of the parliamentary protocols of the winter 1973/74, West German parliamentarians applied all of these narratives. However, with the civilisational narrative being referred to only marginally and the modern narrative applied with consent, it was foremost the political narrative that led to parliamentary dispute. Whereas the conservatives interpreted the political narrative in terms of the Cold War geopolitics, the social-liberal government under Chancellor Willy Brandt tried to renegotiate the political narrative by shifting focus to the European integration process. In West German parliamentary debate, the oil crisis of 1973 henceforth functioned as a catalyst for expressing different interpretations of the concept of the West, and above all, the political West. Against the background of the Cold War, these different interpretations of the political narrative of the West reflected the domestic struggle on German identity.

Imperfect diagnosis: The truncated legacies of Zika testing.

When the Zika virus burst onto the international scene in the second half of 2015, the development of diagnostic tools was seen as an urgent global health priority. Diagnostic capacity was restricted to a small number of reference laboratories, and none of the few available molecular or serological tests had been validated for extensive use in an outbreak setting. In the early weeks of the crisis, key funders stepped in to accelerate research and development efforts, and the WHO took responsibility for steering diagnostic standardization, a role it had successfully played during the West Africa Ebola virus outbreak. Yet when the WHO declared the end of the Zika Public Health Emergency of International Concern in November 2016, diagnostic capacity remained patchy, and few tools were available at the scale required in the countries that bore the brunt of the epidemic, particularly Brazil. This article analyses the limited impact of global R&D efforts on the availability of Zika diagnostic options where they were most needed and for those most vulnerable: women who might have been exposed to the virus during their pregnancy and children born with suspected congenital Zika syndrome. The truncated legacies of testing during the Zika crisis reveal some of the fault lines in the global health enterprise, particularly the limits of ‘emergency R&D’ to operate in geopolitical contexts that do not conform to the ideal type of a humanitarian crisis, or to tackle technical issues that are inextricably linked to domestic struggles over the scope and distribution of biological citizenship. Diagnostic shortcomings, we argue, lie at the heart of the stunning transformation, in less than two years, in the status of Zika: from international public health emergency to neglected disease.

Mainstream Media’s Obsession with Africa

Mainstream Media’s Obsession with Africa

‘The real power must be in the base’ – Decentralised collective intellectual leadership in the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City

The ongoing commodification of housing and urban space in Europe has led to the formation of a burgeoning housing movement, consisting of large anti-eviction networks in Southern Europe, as well as tenants’ unions and right-to-the-city networks in Central and Northern Europe. These different forms of housing activism have become increasingly connected at the transnational level, primarily due to the work of the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’. Consisting of activist groups from over 20 different countries, this coalition facilitates mutual exchange, organises collective campaigns and has begun engaging in institutional advocacy at the European Union level. It steadily expands in size and tactical repertoire, aiming to develop a more unified transnational strategy for attaining affordable and self-determined living space across Europe. Drawing on the writings of Antonio Gramsci, this article makes the case that the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’ increasingly performs the function of a ‘collective intellectual’ that organises a transnational struggle against neoliberal hegemony. Based on qualitative analyses of documents, interviews and field notes, it demonstrates that the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’ exhibits a counter-hegemonic perspective that opposes neoliberal capitalism as a whole and manages to facilitate mutual solidarity across different activist communities explicitly on the basis of class struggle. At the same time, instead of organising a democratic centralist political project the ‘European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City’ pursues a more decentralised approach to collective intellectual leadership that prioritises domestic struggles, yet also lacks a cohesive long-term strategy.

Time's Monster: History, conscience and the British Empire by Priya Satia

Reviewed by: Time's Monster: History, conscience and the British Empire by Priya Satia Angus Mitchell Time's Monster: History, conscience and the British Empire By Priya Satia. London: Allen Lane, 2020. The essential thesis of this illuminating and timely study unpacks the complicity between historians and empire. Priya Satia considers how history as a formation of knowledge is instrumentalised to both shape and defend the reputation and conscience of liberal progress and the violent excesses of colonial power. She sets out to challenge historical traditions and unearth motive forces of history sustaining imperialism and capitalist realism. In making this argument she exposes, often in deeply unsettling ways, the ethical confusion at the core of British imperial thought and the Enlightenment concepts of universal human experience. Since her first monograph, Spies in Arabia (2008), Satia has established herself as a historian of extraordinary insight and intellectual originality. In that book, she considered the rise of Britain's covert empire in the Middle East and the role of a group of scholar-spies "who thought with and through history" (9). In her second book, Empire of Guns (2018), about the Quaker gunmaker, Samuel Galton, she looked at how the pre-eminence of British industrial capitalism was built upon an arms industry that fuelled growth and expansion and placed the industrial-military complex at the epicentre of Britain's economy. In Time's Monster, Satia revisits some of her earlier arguments to interrogate the relationship between time, history and conscience. Who has the right to make and shape history? How can we think beyond the limits of history? How has the "Great Man" harnessed his sense of hubris and atonement to historical discourse to justify his motives, actions and crimes? The title also has echoes in Antonio Gramsci's axiom: "The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters." Beginning with analysis of the emergence of history from "the eschatological structures of religious belief" (27) and the Enlightenment view of history as the narrative of progress, the argument moves into the confrontation between imperialism and anticolonial nationalisms. Theories of history proliferated during the nineteenth century. Historians were both public moralists and soothsayers. In the twentieth century, as history and secrecy were increasingly entangled, so an "occultist" element was pioneered by Gertrude Bell and T.E. Lawrence through the fusion of intelligence-gathering and archaeology. It is no coincidence that many of the principal architects of empire from the late nineteenth century lived parallel lives as historians. Historymaking and history-writing became inextricable. A comparative element to this study is achieved through analysis of those who stood up to empire: the antihistorical narratives of the subaltern sensibility. Poetry became an important conveyor of counter histories able to inspire people to act against the grain. The imagination of Urdu, Ghandar and Irish poets sought a new matrix of temporality. There is a recurring and sublime metaphor throughout this book of the moon glimpsed through prison bars, an image that crystalises that unending struggle of the downtrodden to break through the blockade of colonial time. Both coloniser and colonised were forced to come to terms with the violent elimination of certain categories of people in the name of evolutionary progress and the structural racism of the imperial imagination. In unpacking historical difference, Satia builds on the Subaltern Studies collective, notably the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty and Ranajit Guha. If historians such as Thomas Macaulay, James Mill and J.R. Seeley are identified as early exemplars of historians who built the liberal illusion of progress, Satia reserves a different criticism for E.P. Thompson. He is upended for his narrow focus on the domestic struggle of the English working class and adopting an "ostrich position vis-á-vis the empire" (260). Thompson's father had made an important anticolonial intervention with The Other Side of the Medal (1925), exposing a "policy of terrorization" (247) underscoring British rule in India. His son, however, steered the British Left away from imperial engagement, thus draining precious energies away from the broader anticolonial struggle. This review was written as Britain's recent defence policy was announced—Global Britain in a Competitive...

Book Reviews

Book Reviews Nadia H. Barsoum FROM SHEIKHS TO SULTANISM: Statecraft and Authority in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Publishers C. Hurst Limited, Feb 25, 2021, 432 pages. Muhammad bin Salman Al-Saud and Muhammad bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the respective princely strongmen of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have torn up the old rules. They have spurred game-changing economic master plans, presided over vast anti-corruption crackdowns, tackled entrenched religious forces, and overseen the mass arrest of critics. In parallel, they also appear to have replaced the old ‘sheikhly’ consensus systems of their predecessors with something more autocratic, more personalistic, and perhaps even analytically distinct.These are the two wealthiest and most populous Gulf monarchies, and increasingly important global powers--Saudi Arabia is a G20 member, and the UAE will be the host of the World Expo in 2021–2022. Such sweeping changes to their statecraft and authority structures could well end up having a direct impact, for better or worse, on policies, economies and individual lives all around the world. Christopher M. Davidson tests the hypothesis that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now effectively contemporary or even ‘advanced’ sultanates, and situates these influential states within an international model of autocratic authoritarianism. Drawing on a range of primary sources, including new interviews and surveys, ‘From Sheikhs to Sultanism’ puts forward an original, empirically grounded interpretation of the rise of both MBS and MBZ. [End Page 82] SYRIAN REQUIEM: The Civil War and Its Aftermath, by Itamar Rabinovich, Carmit Valensi 2021, 288 pages, Publisher NJ Princeton University Pres- 288 pages. “The Syrian crisis is not over yet but the period of full-fledged civil war in that country appears to be drawing to a close, and it is now possible to view this calamity with some perspective. This short book will address the following questions about the conflict: How and why did quiet demonstrations in Southern Syria develop into a brutal civil war? Why did the political opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad remain weak and divided? How did radical Jihadi Islamists take over the main military opposition to the Syrian regime? How did the Syrian conflict become a main arena of the Saudi-Iranian regional rivalry? What explains the ambivalent Western attitude towards the Syrian rebellion? How did US policy under the Obama administration evolve and why did both Obama and Trump decide not to make a major investment in it? How stable is the status quo? And how could the conflict re-erupt in a different form? According to Rabinovitch, the Syrian regime and its supporters (including the Russians and the Iranians) have indeed emerged as victors, but it’s a limited victory at best. The Syrian state under Assad controls only about 60 percent of the national territory and the potential for renewed violence is considerable. Assad’s continued survival has come at the cost of deep dependency on Iran and Russia; his is now, arguably, a vassal state. This means that the country will remain in crisis for the foreseeable future, even if the full-scale civil war phase has come to an end. In his last chapter, Rabinovich recommends policy options for the U.S.” [End Page 83] IRAN RISING: The Survival and Future of the Islamic Republic by Amin Saika, Publisher NJ Princeton University Press, 344 pages. When Iranians overthrew their monarchy, rejecting a pro-Western shah in favor of an Islamic regime, many observers predicted that revolutionary turmoil would paralyze the country for decades to come. Yet forty years after the 1978–79 revolution, Iran has emerged as a critical player in the Middle East and the wider world, as demonstrated in part by the 2015 international nuclear agreement. In Iran Rising, renowned Iran specialist Amin Saikal describes how the country has managed to survive despite ongoing domestic struggles, Western sanctions, and countless other serious challenges. Saikal explores Iran’s recent history, beginning with the revolution, which set in motion a number of developments, including war with Iraq, precarious relations with Arab neighbors, and hostilities with Israel and the United States. He highlights the regime’s agility as it navigated a complex relationship with Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, survived...

Doğu Türkistan’da Güçler Savaşı: 1931 Kumul Ayaklanması

Eastern Turkestan is an area that has witnessed a lot of occupations and rebellions from large to small scale throughout history. In 1911, the Qing Dynasty was overthrown as a consequence of domestic struggles in China, and Eastern Turkestan was impacted by this situation. After thisevent, the people in Eastern Turkestan were governed by a governor-general, and exposed to arbitrary changes since it was not controlled by a central authority. The Kumul rebellion, which started in 1931 during the period of Chin She-jen, began as a consequence of these changes by the governor-general who had seized power. Although the initial trigger of the rebellion was provoked by a Muslim girl’s seduction from a Chinese official, the rebellion over time, turned into a power struggle between a lot of groups that wanted to establish dominion over the region. These power struggles were not limited to the Kumul Region but spread to the Uighurs who were living in the southern regions, and resulted in the establishment of an Islamic state in Eastern Turkestan although it was called by an another name. For this reason, the Kumul Rebellion is an important example in terms of the balance of power which emerged in the region and from seeing what the mistakes in administrative practices could cause.

The Global Politics of Anti-Racism: A View from the Canal Zone

Abstract During World War II, when Axis theories of racial supremacy became purported antonyms to Allied values, leaders of “non-white” countries gained a new framework for challenging a global order grounded in racialized notions of fitness for self-government. But the story is more complex than a sole focus on the international sphere allows, as those leaders who adopted anti-racist rhetoric to challenge their disadvantaged position in international politics were sometimes architects of racial hierarchy at home. This article examines how anti-racist struggles within Panama and the Canal Zone mapped onto the anti-imperialist project of a racist Panamanian state. Scholars of race and international relations have highlighted the challenges that anti-imperialist struggles posed to racialized criteria for international legitimacy, on the one hand, and the impact of geopolitical conflict on domestic struggles for racial equality, on the other. The view from the Canal Zone reveals the interplay between those two phenomena. Foregrounding Latin America in a history of the global politics of anti-racism precludes escape into binary visions of a world divided between colonizers and colonized, a racist Global North and an anti-racist Global South, or a tidy color line that splits humanity in two.

Reflections of a Rapporteur

The locus of U.S. foreign policy plays second fiddle to its surroundings. “Main State,” an eight-story brutalist building in downtown Washington, is larger but plainer—less awe-inspiring—than the national shrine that sits across Constitution Avenue. That memorial, cut from Georgia marble, belongs to Old Abe and dominates the western edge of the National Mall. Its proximity and prominence are suggestive of a story that, until recently, had not been widely told: Our national past, as Faulkner would say, is not even past. It permeates the present, as domestic struggles regarding human rights, like Lincoln's Civil War, provide the bearings for American…

Norms, Mobilization and Conflict: The Merowe Dam as a Case Study

AbstractThis article investigates dynamics of mobilization over environmental and human rights norms in the context of undemocratic governments. We test the suggestion in norm diffusion theories that the success of domestic struggles in this context depends on the level of internalization of norms brought about by international pressure. We find that the internalization (or lack thereof) of global norms by the Government of Sudan does not explain its recognition of environmental justice claims in this case. Furthermore, the various litigation efforts pursued by affected people outside Sudan did not influence their campaign. However, a combination of the political climate in the country and a unique political interplay between the government and a distinct group of the affected people may have led to the singular success of their campaign. We use a combination of discourse analysis, legal analysis, norm mapping, and semi-structured interviews to reach conclusions.

Reexamining Taiwan’s South China Sea policy dilemma

While other claimants are directly involved in maritime territorial disputes and dialogues, Taiwan has stalled its momentum and kept its distance from controversy. The government in Taiwan has quietly retreated from the most legitimate and conventional role in the South China Sea in hope of gaining diplomatic support in the region. Many have wondered why Taiwan consistently shies away from the issues. Does the government in Taiwan realize its key role in the South China Sea has been further marginalized as a result? Over the last 2 decades, following democratization, various administrations in Taiwan only managed to imply that Taiwan may have a policy guideline on the South China Sea, but not a firm policy per se. With substantially less political weight in domestic political debates and fierce power struggles in Taipei, Taiwan’s South China Sea claim has unfortunately been left far behind general issues on the policy agenda, especially when the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is in power. Due to their relevance to the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan’s complicated relationship with it, the DPP does not want to attach its political efforts to South China Sea issues. This paper intends to review the effectiveness of political measures on South China Sea issues taken by various administrations in Taiwan and examine reasons why indecision has become mainstream in policy thinking on the territorial disputes.

Engaging the US in the Age of Trump: The Case for a New European Strategic Discourse

While the prevailing perception of EU Member States of NATO is that cooperation with the US under President Trump has become close to impossible, there is still no alternative to engaging. International solutions of consequence will hardly be sustainable without the US. How can EU/NATO Member States and the EU engage effectively with the US on workable international solutions? Policy is applied analysis that inevitably infers from theory in response to the question: what works? Therefore, policy is an intervention, as therapy uses the term, and theories are cognitive tools. Policy and therapy are comparable because both work through discourse to effect change by cognitive restructuring. Therefore, psychological theories offer cognitive tools for designing a strategic discourse as policy intervention. A model for cognitive behavioural therapy and a theory on identity can innovate theory and make policy more effective. Current US political controversies mainly boil down to conflicting US identity stories. Foreign policy issues are an extension of competing domestic group identities and derived domestic issues. The domestic political process does not consider foreign policy issues on their own merit. As a result, current US foreign policy of unilateral confrontation causes some serious risks and costs to US interests. The states now seen as adversaries, such as Russia and Iran, have comparable identity stories that are in a similar way dysfunctional. Stories of confrontation bestow assets in a domestic power struggle while undermining international solutions. A new European strategic discourse should avoid identity stories but seek cognitive restructuring of grand strategies by proposing within the EU/Russian Permanent Partnership Council a comprehensive multilateral conference on the new regional political order in Syria and Iraq. This proposal can emulate the most successful cognitive restructuring of a grand strategy ever, the process led by Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr in West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s leading to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Backsliding in judicial reforms: domestic political costs as limits to EU’s political conditionality in Turkey

ABSTRACT Judicial reform has been part and parcel of democratization process among countries preparing for European Union accession. The literature on EU enlargement, political conditionality conceptualizes the EU’s role in promoting rule of law and judicial reforms in its external neighbourhood, especially in the candidate states as largely positive. However, in the Turkish case, the EU’s political conditionality in judicial reform presents a mixed picture. This paper provides a qualitative case study with the aim to assess the conditions under which backsliding occurs. The paper’s main proposition is that this backsliding in judicial reforms and rule of law is due to the interplay of the relative weakness of the EU’s political anchor and the relative strength of the domestic struggles facing political elites. Judicial reforms emerge as a visible aspect of backsliding as it has become a key priority area for the EU. This paper assesses to what extent the changing pace and direction of judicial reforms have been driven by a mix of factors; the EU’s political conditionality as well as the domestic costs of adaptation.

Small State Anti-Fascism: Norway’s Quest to Eliminate the Franco Regime in the Aftermath of World War II

In the early postwar years Norway was among the most active in the campaign against Franco’s Spain, supporting the policy of keeping Spain out of the UN, and pushing for UN members to break off diplomatic relations with Spain. Within a few years the policy of ostracism was seen to fail as it appeared to strengthen rather than weaken the Franco regime. Spain was then gradually allowed into the warmth. Until the early 1950s Norway’s retreat from its 1946 position was very reluctant, and it was in 1949 the last Western European state to accept normalization. Spain retaliated with economic pressures, and by 1951 Norway had relented and joined in the general reestablishment of normal diplomatic relations, and in 1955 accepted the package deal that brought Spain into the UN. The article discusses the foreign policy concerns and the domestic political struggles that explain Norwegian policies, including the veto on Spanish NATO membership that was never given up.

Монгольский вопрос в политике Коминтерна

The foreign policy course of Soviet Russia in the 1920–1930s was aimed at spreading the ideas of the world revolution and the struggle against international imperialism. In connection with the defeat of the revolutionary movement in Europe, the Asian direction of revolutionizing has become the most promising one. The Comintern acted as a kind of corridor for the ideas of the world revolution to the East, and China foremost. In the policy of the Comintern, Mongolia and the Mongolian question associated with its playing an important role in promoting revolutionary ideas using the national liberation movement of Mongolian peoples (panmongolism). Later, with the changing international situation and regarding the military threat from Japan, the Comintern concentrated its work on strengthening its own positions, in supporting the Left in the domestic political struggle, as well as on bilateral Soviet-Mongolian relations.

Florida's Civil War: Terrible Sacrifices by Tracy J. Revels

Reviewed by: Florida's Civil War: Terrible Sacrifices by Tracy J. Revels Jonathan M. Berkey Florida's Civil War: Terrible Sacrifices. By Tracy J. Revels. ( Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2016. Pp. xx, 197. $29.00, ISBN 978–0-88146–589-1.) Ask any Civil War buff about the conflict in Virginia, and he or she will share a great deal of information about the military campaigns and even some of the key domestic struggles in the state. Ask about the war in Florida, and you will likely receive a blank stare, although an especially sharp enthusiast might mention Fort Pickens or the battle of Olustee. Given how historians have thoroughly analyzed the Civil War, it is surprising how little attention the Sunshine State has received. Tracy J. Revels strives to remedy this situation in her study of Florida's wartime experience. Beginning with the secession crisis and ending with postwar military occupation, Florida's Civil War: Terrible Sacrifices explores how various segments of the state's population—including soldiers, Unionists, African Americans, and women—struggled to survive through four years of conflict. The initial chapters of Revels's study analyze Florida's response to the election of Abraham Lincoln and military events in the state through the end of 1862. By then, most of the significant coastal cities were under Union control, but Middle Florida remained unscathed and under Confederate control. A series of topical chapters follow on the battle of Olustee, slavery, Florida's contributions to the Confederacy—which included soldiers, salt, and cattle—and the experiences of Union- and Confederate-sympathizing women as well as refugees. The study concludes with an assessment of events between late 1864 and the beginning of Reconstruction. Two broad themes emerge from the author's analysis. The first is Florida's complicated relationship with the Confederacy. Revels implies that the Confederate government took the state for granted, eagerly accepting Florida's contributions of soldiers, salt, and beef while ignoring the state's pleas for men and supplies to defend it from Union raids. The second theme, Florida's status as a frontier state, informs much of Revels's analysis. She notes that a large swath of unsettled area in the state's interior and a preponderance of swamps and woodlands made partisan warfare easy and effective. Limited transportation routes hampered Union invasion plans and diminished Florida's attractiveness as a depot for Confederate blockade-runners. While Florida did not witness the sustained military campaigns of other Confederate states, Revels asserts that Floridians suffered immensely from dwindling food supplies, harsh taxation, and conscription measures. These conditions contributed [End Page 163] to the growth of Unionism, which, to a lesser extent, had been present in Florida at the war's outbreak. Revels's use of sources limits the effectiveness of her analysis. She makes a curious choice, given her focus on the social aspects of wartime Florida, to limit her use of archival sources. Her decision, which she acknowledges in the book's preface, limits the effectiveness of her approach to the topic. While this could be excused in a work of synthesis, her treatment of secondary sources falls short as well. Her analysis cites numerous sources on Florida history but fails to engage more modern studies that would place Florida's experience in a broader context. For instance, Revels's analysis of why Floridians enlisted in the Confederate army does not address recent scholarship such as Aaron Sheehan-Dean's work on soldiers' motivations. Revels's chapter on slavery—the most effective chapter in her study—discusses self-emancipation but makes few references to current literature on the subject. Florida's Civil War provides a serviceable introduction to the social factors that shaped the state's experience, but a more frequent use of archival sources and rigorous engagement with recent historiography would have enriched its analysis. Jonathan M. Berkey Concord University Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association