Foreign Soil Research Articles

Sweet Freedom’s Plains: African Americans on the Overland Trails, 1841–1869. Race and Culture in the American West Series. By Shirley Ann Wilson Moore

Sweet Freedom’s Plains is a long overdue contribution to African American history and westward expansion. Shirley Ann Wilson Moore’s ground-breaking study, gleaned from a vast array of archival, primary, and secondary sources, is refreshingly powerful and captivating. Oral histories of descendants and photographs add to the depth of this study. Beginning with the earliest known Africans in what becomes the United States, Moore skillfully weaves black history into the fabric of westward migration. Free and enslaved men and women are included, expanding the history of both. Her three themes, “experiences and skills of African Americans in the jumping-off places and along the trails…black perceptions of the journey, and … African American’s expectations of the West and their new communities” (p. 5) are soundly demonstrated throughout, to the point that all of this previously neglected history makes the mind whirl. Moore writes of how African Americans faced decidedly different experiences before, during, and after they arrived at their destination, if indeed they did arrive. As with others who traveled west, they faced a plethora of problems. Freedoms and human decency extended to whites were not always available to black travelers, especially those who were slaves. Once at their destination, they also had to contend with circumstances that limited their success. Restrictions, prejudices, and abuses, as well as the difficulties of starting life anew on foreign soil, served as barriers for black overlanders. And yet, despite hurdles that should have been unsurmountable, stories of victory included in Sweet Freedom’s Plains speak to the determination and grit of the many African Americans whose place was vital and inclusive in westward expansion. From the triumphs of slaves who worked their way out of bondage and then purchased freedom for others, to enterprising free men and women whose purpose became to help others achieve succeed as they did, the history is enthralling.

Uncle Sam's Policemen: The Pursuit of Fugitives across Borders

This well-written volume explores how American law regulated the movement of accused criminals across the globe. Filled with interesting stories and acute insights, it shows the potential of a closely defined topic to illuminate the broader history of the United States. Katherine Unterman argues that the Founders originally defined the United States as a land of asylum, welcoming the fugitives of the world. Over time, officials aimed to secure runaway defendants by negotiating treaties of extradition with other nations, first in western Europe and later Latin America and the Caribbean. In particular, bankers sought a means to retrieve the growing number of defalcating clerks, who fled across the border with stolen funds. As a consequence of this development, Unterman contends, rules governing extradition reflected the priorities of financiers rather than public needs. Lacking a national police force such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (fbi, not founded until 1908), bankers of the 1880s and 1890s employed private detectives such as the Pinkertons to conduct international manhunts. Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court granted such investigators broad authority to catch and return fugitives. The key case involved Frederick Ker (Ker v. Illinois, 1886), an embezzling bank clerk who fled to Peru. Obtaining Ker's trust, a Pinkerton agent arrested the “boodler” and rendered him to the United States without obtaining proper authority from the Peruvian government. The Supreme Court upheld this abduction, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment did not protect U.S. citizens on foreign soil.

Islanders in the Empire: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawaii

In the early 1900s, workers from new U.S. colonies in the Philippines and Puerto Rico held unusual legal status. Denied citizenship, they nonetheless had the right to move freely in and out of U.S. jurisdiction. As a result, Filipinos and Puerto Ricans could seek jobs in the United States and its territories despite the anti-immigration policies in place at the time. JoAnna Poblete's Islanders in the Empire: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawai'i takes an in-depth look at how the two groups fared in a third new colony, Hawai'i. Using plantation documents, missionary records, government documents, and oral histories, Poblete analyzes how the workers interacted with Hawaiian government structures and businesses, how U.S. policies for colonial workers differed from those for citizens or foreigners, and how policies aided corporate and imperial interests. A rare tandem study of two groups at work on foreign soil, Islanders in the Empire offers a new perspective on American imperialism and labor issues of the era.

An Engaging Remembrance: A Review of the American Battle Monuments Commission Website

Over 100,000 US military personnel died during World War I, with many of these deaths occurring directly on foreign battlefields. Public Law 389, enacted by the 66th Congress, as well as Public Law 360, enacted by the 80th Congress, allowed for a family’s repatriation of soldier remains to the United States for burial in a national or private cemetery. In 1919, however, the US War Department decided to establish permanent American military cemeteries in Europe and offered this option as an alternative to repatriation. To persuade family members to consent, the War Department needed to ensure these cemeteries were impressive and significant symbols of the American sacrifice on foreign soil; therefore, the War Department detailed a group of Army officers to serve as the Battle Monuments Board in 1921. Two years later, on March 4, 1923, Congress passed the Act for the Creation of an American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), which established one authoritative organization under Title 36 of the United States Code to control the construction of monuments and memorials to the American military in foreign countries.

No evidence that plant–soil feedback effects of native and invasive plant species under glasshouse conditions are reflected in the field

Summary Plant–soil feedback (PSF) may affect above‐ground higher trophic levels in glasshouse experiments, but evidence from field studies on the relevance of these multitrophic interactions for plant performance is lacking. Therefore, we examined whether PSF effects of several native and invasive plant species occur also in the field and influence plant damage by above‐ground herbivores. Root zone soil from an abandoned urban field was used as inocula for the PSF experiment. First, we grew eight urban grassland plant species (five natives and three invasive species) separately in a glasshouse, with soil biota communities conditioned by the respective species itself (‘home soil’) or by a mixture of all other species (‘foreign soil’). After 13 weeks, one cohort of the plants was placed on an urban field in Berlin to assess damage by naturally colonizing herbivores, while another cohort of the plants stayed in the glasshouse. We observed that the extent of the PSF effects differed between the field and glasshouse cohorts of plants. While we found positive PSF responses for five of the eight plant species in the glasshouse, we found no PSF effects in the field. Further, there was no trend that invasive or native species differed in the direction or extent of PSF responses. Concerning the leaf damage by herbivores of the field plants, we found no evidence that the soil history (home vs. foreign soil) affected the effects of above‐ground herbivores on the plants. Synthesis. We conclude that PSF effects are more likely to be found under glasshouse conditions. In the field, PSFs seem to play a minor role for the selected urban grassland species. More generally, our study highlights the need to focus on PSFs under natural conditions and in natural communities (including higher trophic levels), which is often overlooked in PSF research.

Fishermen and Little Fish: Migration and Hospitality in Maxine Beneba Clarke’s ‘The Stilt Fishermen of Kathaluwa’

In this article, we argue that Maxine Beneba Clarke’s tale ‘The Stilt Fishermen of Kathaluwa,’ in Foreign Soil (2014), is a provocative representation of migration in contemporary Australia. At a time in which the world is facing its largest migration since the Second World War and in which Australian border policy is making headlines around the world, Clarke’s tale is a powerful intervention in discourses of contemporary Australian identity and nationhood. We demonstrate that the tale is a subtle manipulation of what McCullough terms the ‘refugee narrative structure’ since it carefully undercuts the myth of a nation as a coherent narrative across time and space. By juxtaposing the tales of an illegal migrant and a volunteer case worker, and by setting the tale largely in a functioning detention centre, Clarke gives voice to the voiceless and draws parallels between individuals on different sides of the insider/outsider binary. The encounter that finally takes place between them implicates the reader very directly in discourses of contemporary migration and border policy.

The Psychology of Foreign Fighters

ABSTRACTThe recent influx of foreign fighters into Syria, particularly those aligning with the Islamic State, has brought renewed attention to the security threat posed by people who cross borders to participate in armed conflict. Although foreign fighters have rarely, if ever, constituted the majority of combatants in a war or insurgency, understanding their role is critical for conflict analysis and prevention. This review focuses on behavioral aspects of the foreign fighter phenomenon. Although other books and articles have focused wholly, or in part, on historical dimensions, the behavioral and social science literature on foreign fighters is much more limited. This review first explores the definitions of “foreign fighter” terminology, then analyzes what is known about their motivations and their pathways toward engaging in armed conflict on foreign soil. It examines recruitment strategies and the role of “radicalization” in feeding the transnational insurgent supply, and finally describes more specifically, the nature of foreign fighter involvement in more recent armed conflicts (e.g., Syria, Chechnya, Iraq, and Afghanistan), and speculates about the prospects for their future involvement.

Incursões Militares Unilaterais em Solo Estrangeiro e a Sua Legitimidade: O Caso Líbio de 2013

Em 1945, a Proclamação Truman, um ato unilateral do governo dos Estados Unidos da América, levou ao rápido surgimento de um costume internacional que, em 1958, transformou-se em uma convenção e, em 1969, foi reconhecido pela Corte Internacional de Justiça como o direito dos Estados de explorarem economicamente as suas plataformas continentais. O presente trabalho examina os efeitos da Doutrina Bush, outro ato unilateral dos EUA, no âmbito do Direito Internacional Público, em decorrência dos atentados do 11 de setembro de 2001. A pesquisa gira em torno de um caso concreto: a captura de Abu Anas al-Liby, um cidadão líbio que foi interceptado na porta de sua casa, em 05 de outubro de 2013, na cidade de Trípoli, território da Líbia. O fato aconteceu através de uma operação conjunta, que contou com a participação da CIA – Agência Central de Inteligência, do FBI – Agência Federal de Investigação e de militares do Comando Delta, um grupo de elite das Forças Armadas dos EUA – Estados Unidos da América, sob alegação de que o alvo tinha ligações com o grupo terrorista Al Qaeda. Após a captura, al-Liby foi levado para interrogatório em um navio de guerra no Mediterrâneo e, depois, foi apresentado a uma Corte Federal de Nova York para ser julgado pelos atentados que, em 1998, mataram centenas de pessoas nas Embaixadas dos EUA, no Quênia e na Tanzânia. O Estado líbio negou ter concedido qualquer autorização e queixou-se de violação de soberania. O presente trabalho possui importância, no contexto da Península Ibérica, devido ao fato de que Portugal e Espanha estão hoje potencialmente inseridos na agenda terrorista do Estado Islâmico do Iraque e Al-Sham (ISIS), grupo que, em 2014, declarou seu intento de recuperar todos os territórios que pertenceram ao Islão, anúncio que vem sendo considerado o mais significativo desenvolvimento do jihadismo internacional desde o 11 de setembro. A partir desses elementos, o artigo investiga se existe algum direito capaz de legitimar incursões militares unilaterais em solo estrangeiro. Como resultado, pode-se dizer que está em curso uma formação acelerada de costume internacional.

Intertemporal Versus Spatial Externalities in Counterterror Policy Games

This paper studies a dynamic game between two national governments that fight a common terrorist organization that is seeking to mount a transnational terror campaign. It is the first examination that combines the temporal externalities associated with a sustained campaign with the spatial externalities that occur when the effects of one government’s counterterror policy spill over into another country. We consider two types of noncooperative behavior; one in which national authorities are sensitive to the reactions of the terrorists on foreign soil and another in which they are insensitive. It is shown that foreign terrorist sensitivity is preferred to insensitivity. Moreover, unilaterally accounting for terrorist reactions on foreign soil can be preferred to full policy coordination between governments. This then feeds into policy recommendations as to when each nation finds it desirable to coordinate transnational counterterror policy.

Finding one's footing on foreign soil: A composite vignette of elite athlete acculturation

ObjectivesThe focus of this manuscript is the challenges associated with newcomer athlete acculturation within a sport system. The research question was as follows: What acculturation challenges do immigrant athletes have to work through as they attempt to integrate into new sport environments and facilitate their athletic careers within shifting cultural dynamics? DesignThe research was framed as a critical acculturation project (see Chirkov, 2009a, 2009b). The project aligns with broader calls in sport research for innovative qualitative approaches that reveal the complexity and multifaceted aspects of acculturation. Using creative non-fiction (e.g., a composite vignette), this project sought to illustrate the fluidity of acculturation, based on athletes' stories. MethodsConversational interviews were gathered and an interpretive thematic analysis was performed. The data were then developed into a composite vignette to illustrate the fluidity of the athletes' acculturation experiences. ResultsThe acculturation vignette revealed four major themes: (a) navigating the Canadian Sport System without local support, (b) adjusting to new sport programs and training approaches, (c) dealing with cultural differences in Canadian athletes' mindsets, and (d) searching for balance. ConclusionsThis project reveals how immigrant elite athletes experience continuous acculturation. These fluidities are best captured through emerging methodological approaches, where acculturation can be storied as non-linear.

Dynamic Mathematical Model Framework of Complex Utility and Logistics System Interactions Using Object-Oriented Approach for Forward Operating Bases

Forward operating bases are temporary military contingency bases established to support and facilitate tactical operations on foreign soil. Operational and logistical inefficiencies, excessive resource demands, and increased costs are some of the issues caused by poor initial planning of contingency bases. In this article, a modeling method is introduced to increase planning capabilities for base camps using an object-oriented approach. The model addresses issues faced by the Department of Defense related to unexpected second-, third-, and higher-order effects observed on base camps, determined to be caused by the interactions between the base camp utility systems. The model is based on a coupled mathematical system of equations that captures the relationships between various base camp subsystems and their respective inputs and outputs. Subsystems are objectified and their various inputs and outputs are parameterized to solve the system of equations simultaneously each time there is a change in base camp design.

Dysplacement and Southern History

Dysplacement and Southern History Barbara J. Fields (bio) Toward the beginning of his extraordinary book, a boeing 747 pilot (and former historian-in-training) introduces the term place lag, a counterpart to jet lag. Pilots rarely experience jet lag, Mark Vanhoenacker maintains, because they keep their watches and cell phones, as well as their schedules of eating and sleeping, attuned to the home time zone. They experience place lag regularly. If place lag were a term in common use, he reflects, “the next time I walked down a street in Tokyo and a van blaring political announcements for a municipal election went past, or I stood in a food market in São Paulo and saw a dozen fruits I did not know how to name or eat, or the skies opened in Lagos and I saw rain the likes of which I would never see in Massachusetts, I could blink and say to my companion, who would nod and smile in recognition: ‘I have place lag.’” In what must count as heresy for an airline pilot, he suggests that some cities “should never be joined by a nonstop flight” because they are “so different in sensibility, culture, and history.”1 Vanhoenacker defines place lag as “the imaginative drag that results . . . from the inability of our deep old sense of place to keep up with our airplanes.”2 Novelists and other fiction writers understand that deep old sense and the need of human beings for it. A story would be “unrecognizable as art, if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else,” Eudora Welty insisted in her celebrated essay about place in fiction, even while she rejected the concept of “‘regional’ writing.” “The very notion of moving a novel brings ruder havoc to the mind and affections than would a century’s alteration in its time.” While it is a commonplace that the Mississippi River is a [End Page 7] main character in Huckleberry Finn, that does not mean that Mark Twain was a regional writer or a purveyor of local color. Twain would probably have agreed with Eudora Welty in dismissing regional as an outsider’s careless and condescending term.3 William Faulkner once remarked, “I’m inclined to think that my material, the South, is not very important to me”—a startling claim, on the surface. What he meant was that what is important in human history, being universal, may be written about any place. But, in order to write about any other place, he would need to know that other place—its people, its landscape, its history—as well as he knew the South, since he did not “have time in one life to learn another one and write at the same time.”4 Not long after I read Vanhoenacker’s Skyfaring, I learned from my sister that the French language has a word—dépaysement—for place lag. John Crowe Ransom could have been speaking of place lag when he identified nostalgia as “the complaint of human nature . . . when it is plucked up by the roots from the place of its origin and transplanted in foreign soil, or even left dangling in the air.” But he was speaking of something beyond place lag when he attributed to the voice of progress the advice, “Do not allow yourself to feel homesick; form no such powerful attachments that you will feel a pain in cutting them loose; prepare your spirit to be always on the move.”5 He was speaking (though without using the term) of dysplacement, the subject of the present meditation. Place lag or dépaysement is an individual sense of disorientation at being removed from familiar or home country. Dysplacement—the prefix signifies “faulty,” “difficult,” “abnormal,” or “bad,” as in dyspepsia, dyslexia, or dystopia—is the destruction of place itself: the loss of a sense of identification with other persons through a shared connection to a geographical place. When dysplacement sets in, “[t]he conception of a place lodged in time and space, in which people share many of the same things, remember the same things,” loses purchase, [End Page 8] leaving in its wake a “country of exiles,” in William...

Die Rechtsbindung des Bundesnachrichtendienstes bei Auslandstätigkeiten

The essay analyses the authorization and the legal restraints on the extraterritorial activities of Germany’s foreign intelligence service (Bundesnachrichtendienst – BND). There has always been a discussion about whether intelligence operations abroad are suitable for statutory regulation at all. The current BND Act regulates the assignment of the BND and authorizes it to gather information by investigative measures on German soil, which may include interventions into basic rights. Nonetheless, the BND Act does not provide precise authorizations for extraterritorial activities. This essay discusses the requirement of a statutory authorization of intelligence collection abroad, which particularly depends on the extraterritorial applicability of basic rights. According to rather incoherent jurisprudence it remains an unsettled question whether–and if to what extent–German officials acting under cover on foreign soil are bound by basic rights without effective control over the relevant territory. To complete the picture, the article reviews the criminal liability of administrative officials collecting intelligence illegally under foreign law, and outlines under which circumstances data obtained extraterritorially can be introduced as evidence into administrative or judicial proceedings.

All Along the Watchtower: Forum Non Conveniens in International Aviation

Before filing suit, plaintiffs’ attorneys engage in a Conflicts of Laws analysis to find the jurisdiction with the most sympathetic law, and most likely to result in the largest possible judgment for their clients. Juries in the United States are perceived to be the most generous in awarding judgments; hence, aviation suits often are filed in U.S. courts, even when they involve injuries and death of foreign citizens on an aircraft flown by a foreign air carrier and crew that crashed into foreign soil. The concept of forum non conveniens remains among the most useful tools for defendants seeking to remove the case to a less generous jurisdiction.

Soil geochemistry changes induced by a foreign soil reconstruction project in Three Gorges Reservoir region of China

Fertile topsoil was added onto the surface of barren slope land in Three Gorges Reservoir region of China in an anthropogenic process known as the foreign soil reconstruction project. The main goal of this paper was to reveal the influence of anthropogenic activities on pedogenic processes and soil classifications. Chemical weathering indices and comparative analysis were applied to discuss changes in geochemical compositions and weathering features of purplish soils (Cambisols) before and after the project. Results showed that: (1) The foreign soil reconstruction project slightly altered the major element composition of topsoil and improved the soil structure. Although the distributions of major elements in the original topsoil, original subsoil, foreign topsoil and newly constructed topsoil were all similar to that in upper continental crust, newly constructed topsoil was the most similar soil. (2) The chemical index of alteration was more sensitive than the weathering index of Parker at indicating chemical weathering status of purplish soil. The chemical weathering status of newly constructed topsoil was higher than that of the original topsoil and lower than that of foreign topsoil. (3) Anthropogenic activities may provide a promising new thought for the anthropogenic soil classification system. The scope and subgroups of Anthrosols should be extended and strengthened. Or there may be a need to combine Anthrosols and Technosols orders to create a new soil order. The results may be used for optimizing soil mellowing engineering activities and enriching the soil classification system.

The brain metastatic niche.

Metastasizing cancer cells that arrest in brain microvessels have to face an organ microenvironment that is alien, and exclusive. In order to survive and thrive in this foreign soil, the malignant cells need to successfully master a sequence of steps that includes close interactions with pre-existing brain microvessels, and other nonmalignant cell types. Unfortunately, a relevant number of circulating cancer cells is capable of doing so: brain metastasis is a frequent and devastating complication of solid tumors, becoming ever more important in times where the systemic tumor disease is better controlled and life of cancer patients is prolonged. Thus, it is very important to understand which environmental cues are necessary for effective brain colonization. This review gives an overview of the niches we know, including those who govern cancer cell dormancy, survival, and proliferation in the brain. Colonization of pre-existing niches related to stemness and resistance is a hallmark of successful brain metastasis. A deeper understanding of those host factors can help to identify the most vulnerable steps of the metastatic cascade, which might be most amenable to therapeutic interventions.

Giving birth in exile: motherhood as reterritorialization.

This paper explores the effects of exile on the subjectivity of pregnant migrant women through the lens of the processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. Having escaped the gaze of the parental superego, the subject's encounter with sexuality becomes possible. However, in addition to the emancipatory aspects of migration, we observe particular somatic-psychical effects on reproductive ability. These "exile" pregnancies are generally experienced as difficult and painful, laying bare a symptomatology that is as much psychical as somatic, and which highlights the cost of a desire for independence. In this context, where perinatal risks must be evaluated and treated through an interdisciplinary approach, a clinical accompaniment proves to be indispensable for the maternity to progress smoothly on foreign soil.

Zaangażowanie Polski w misje wojskowe Unii Europejskiej w Afryce w drugiej dekadzie XXI wieku

This paper is dedicated to the involvement of Poland in the European Union’s military operations in Africa in the 2010s. The development of military capabilities is not one of the European Union’s priorities. Nevertheless, the EU is an active participant of the international communities’ efforts to aid African states, including the use of armed forces. The vast majority of such EU missions have been undertaken in Africa. Despite the fact that this region is not a priority of Poland’s foreign and security policies, Poland has actively participated in such actions, primarily due to the peculiarities of contemporary security threats and Poland’s approach to the process of European integration. However, after initial experiences, Poland limited its involvement, due to the limited impact on the achievement of national objectives related to the EU Common Security and Defence Policy. This has been reflected in both official documents and political practice associated with deploying troops on foreign soil. The author sets forth a thesis that these limitations are too substantial, and that there are reasons for greater Polish involvement in the European Union’s military missions.

Spatial heterogeneity of plant-soil feedback affects root interactions and interspecific competition.

Plant-soil feedback is receiving increasing interest as a factor influencing plant competition and species coexistence in grasslands. However, we do not know how spatial distribution of plant-soil feedback affects plant below-ground interactions. We investigated the way in which spatial heterogeneity of soil biota affects competitive interactions in grassland plant species. We performed a pairwise competition experiment combined with heterogeneous distribution of soil biota using four grassland plant species and their soil biota. Patches were applied as quadrants of 'own' and 'foreign' soils from all plant species in all pairwise combinations. To evaluate interspecific root responses, species-specific root biomass was quantified using real-time PCR. All plant species suffered negative soil feedback, but strength was species-specific, reflected by a decrease in root growth in own compared with foreign soil. Reduction in root growth in own patches by the superior plant competitor provided opportunities for inferior competitors to increase root biomass in these patches. These patterns did not cascade into above-ground effects during our experiment. We show that root distributions can be determined by spatial heterogeneity of soil biota, affecting plant below-ground competitive interactions. Thus, spatial heterogeneity of soil biota may contribute to plant species coexistence in species-rich grasslands.

“Most Lives Make No Sense”: Interro(r)gating the Postmodern Subject in 9/11 Fiction

As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.—Wallace Stevens, “Adagia”In a frequently discussed scene in Don DeLillo's Falling Man, a physician tells the novel's protagonist abo...