Imperial Past Research Articles

Russia and Turkey: A Roller Coaster Relationship between Securitization and Cooperation

Understanding perceptions of Russian and Turkish foreign policy from their imperial past up to the present day constitutes a continuing puzzle for historians and policy practitioners alike. Now, because of their ambitious ideological posturing and power projections, the need to examine some of the most-discussed features of Moscow’s and Ankara’s respective approaches to foreign policy has arisen anew. What is novel and significant is to address how the emergence of the individual efforts of Russia and Turkey to secure a greater global role for themselves reflects a new modus vivendi whereby they continue cooperating, despite serious conflictual areas between them.

A Way to Read Herodian: Narrative Patterns and their Function in History of the Empire (on C. S. Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire)

A Way to Read Herodian: Narrative Patterns and their Function in History of the Empire (on C. S. Chrysanthou, Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire)

Politics, power & partnerships: the imperial past and present of international education and development (BAICE presidential address 2022)

ABSTRACT This paper explores the complex relationship between academic researchers working in the area of ‘International Development and Education’ and foreign intervention in the Global South. I make the case for stronger definitional links between ‘colonialism’ and ‘development’. In this, I pay attention to how ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ sides of colonial strategy operated symbiotically and evidence parallel occurrences in Post 9/11 Western-led military/development activities. Drawing on ‘education’ examples, I reflect on our fields entanglements in the messy politics, partnerships and funding regimes of our unequal global order and the ways that we, as both researchers and practitioners, become ‘implicated’. I also explore sites of counter-hegemony that span similar timeframes, including my engagements with popular education in social movements in Colombia, and make the case for a radical educational internationalism.

“Poscolonial Moment” in Foreign Policy Discourse: the Casus of “Global Britain”

The article explores interrelation between the postcolonial discourse and modern British foreign policy, designated as a “postcolonial moment” in the strategic thinking of the political establishment. It is noted that the withdrawal from the EU has again attracted public and academic attention to the imperial past, which is sometimes regarded not only as a possible reason for Brexit, but also as a starting point for design of the country’s foreign policy under the new conditions (the idea of “Global Britain”). The post-imperial discourse in the modern British political environment is analyzed within several aspects: how it affects the strategic reasoning of the elite circles, specific trends in dealing with the former colonies, and postcolonialism components in the new foreign strategy (case of “Indo-Pacific tilt”). Proceeding from the paradigm of postcolonial constructivism, the article shows that the issues of imperial heritage still remain an important aspect in British foreign policy identity, but in the context of strategic planning it takes on new meanings. Firstly, the political establishment continues to search for a new international role and appeals to the former colonies as a resource of their foreign policy (whether it is economy, strategy, or image). Secondly, distancing themselves from the rhetoric of the colonial past, they refer to “common history” and identity as the world politics see the formation of a polycentric system. This trend is reflected in the challenge of building new long-term alliances through “patient diplomacy.” The “Global Britain” discourse, due to its direct connotation with the postcolonial past, becomes undesirable for both the ruling political elite and the opposition.

Rethinking re-carving: revitalising Roman portraits in the third century

Research on the re-use of Roman material culture has often focused on repurposed architectural elements or re-carved portraits, and new approaches have increasingly focused on culture, context and memory with praxis, agency meaning, materiality, and reception as key issues. Sculpted portraits have been key players in the scholarly discourse beginning with the portraits of Rome’s ‘bad emperors’ such as Caligula, Nero, and Domitian reconfigured as a result of damnatio memoriae in the first century. The third century, however, proves to be a critical moment that witnesses a shift towards affirmative interventions that seek to refurbish and access the positive and legitimising aspects of the original images. Portraits are now redacted from likenesses of ‘good emperors’ such as Augustus, Hadrian, and Trajan to invoke the venerable authority of the imperial past. Private portraiture in the third century also provides evidence for secondary interventions not motivated by denigration but by the prestige of re-use. In a funerary context, the reconfiguration of portraits could confer ancestral honour and status. Ultimately the reuse of portraits, both imperial and private, can be read as highly creative revitalising acts of positive recycling. On cover:Late Roman wall, the portion immediately south of the West Gate (Porta Oea) with re-used blocks from first-century mausolea (Drawing by Francesca Bigi) and Tombstone of Regina from South Shields (Arbeia) (Tyne and WearArchives and Museums/ Bridgeman Images). E-ISSN (online version) 2611-3686 ISSN (print version) 0065-0900

Music, archives, and colonial encounter in the Cold War: a case study from British Guiana

ABSTRACT How did musical activity intersect with imperialism and colonialism in the Cold War period (1948–89)? While musicologists have started to explore this question, most current research has focused on the role of the U.S.A. rather than declining European powers, and has frequently foregrounded those efforts at engagement and exchange that Christina Klein has termed ‘Cold War Orientalism’. With reference to the archival records of one Cold War colonial encounter in British Guiana, this article reveals a more disturbing strain of postwar cultural relations, one in which efforts at rapprochement were obstructed by imperial powers, and in which colonial cultural voices were denied or dismissed. At the same time, the article considers the surprising case of a British communist musician – Alan Bush – who, in spite of these barriers to encounter, was able to attempt a form of cultural hybridity in his opera The Sugar Reapers (1962–1965). Ultimately, this article demonstrates the importance of interpreting cultural artefacts like Bush’s opera as musical embodiments of complex colonial connections, and of exploring more deeply those Cold War encounters in which the imperial past was painfully present.

Decolonial interventions in the postwar politics of Japanese education: Reassessing the place of Shinto in Japanese language and moral education curriculum

Much of postwar politics in Japanese education has revolved around the tensions between conservative’s retrogressive desire for the imperial past on the one hand and the liberal-left’s progressive agenda on the other. The former demands a return to the teaching of traditional (Confucius) family values, patriotism and Shinto-inspired reverence (awe) towards the universe, while the latter demands teaching for rational, critical minds deemed essential for democratic citizenship. This binary structure of political contestation is increasingly problematized by the emerging political sensibilities around the ecological crisis and eco-feminist critique of human exceptionalism, hype-separation between human and nature and ontological individualism. The chapter demonstrates how the new ecological and decolonial literature demands a fundamental rethinking of the postwar politics of Japanese education, in particular, in relation to the place of Shinto—the Japanese indigenous belief system—in school curriculum. It exposes the limitations of the postwar liberal-left discourse which has reduced Shinto to nothing but the conservatives’ retrogressive desire to ‘return.’ The chapter concludes, drawing on Chen’s (2010) notion of de-cold-war politics, that the Cold War framing of education policy debate must be overcome to unleash the decolonial and ecological potentials of Japanese education towards addressing the pressing sustainable challenges today.

Agnotology and a Monstrous Ignorance: Race and Curriculum Policy in England

This article discusses, through the theory of agnotology, the persistent ignorance as to how Britain became multiracial, multicultural and multifaith in a post-imperial age, the origins of a racist imperial curriculum and the hostility to changes in the school curriculum which would provide a clearer understanding of the imperial past, and the efforts of teachers, schools, and many others to move towards the creation of a socially and racially just society.

Dimitris Stamatopoulos, ed. Imagined Empires: Tracing Imperial Nationalism in Eastern and Southeastern Europe

Dimitris Stamatopoulos, ed. <i>Imagined Empires: Tracing Imperial Nationalism in Eastern and Southeastern Europe</i>

Japan's foreign policy in the settlement of territorial disputes

Territorial disputes are a key element of Japanese security, directly aff ecting Tokyo's relations with all three of its closest neighbors: China, Russia and South Korea. Because of its complex history of repeated invasions as well as militaristic expansion, Japan has accumulated a tangled legacy of confl icts and disputes with its neighbors over the three contiguous territories, namely Senkaku, Dokdo, and the Kuril Islands, claiming or disputing sovereignty over them. The disputes discussed in the article are a direct result of Japan's involvement in World War II and the often ambiguous language used in treaties and other documents signed at the end of it. The article presents Tokyo's position based on Japanese documents and the positions of Beijing, Seoul and Moscow based on the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration and the San Francisco Peace Treaty. The author illustrated her arguments with maps. During the analysis physiographic and historical approaches were used. The author's examination of these disputes provides a clear picture of how the changing security environment has aff ected the position of Japan and its neighbors over time. In the 2000s, Tokyo introduced a special term — territorial diplomacy "redogayko" which goal was international recognition of the legitimacy of Japanese sovereignty over disputed territories. The Ministry of Foreign Aff airs of Japan conducts an active policy to inform the world community about the rights of Tokyo to the Senkaku Islands, Takeshima, and the socalled "Northern Territories". During the analysis of the positions of the concerned countries the author concludes that Japan successfully defends the ownership of the Senkaku Islands, but so far has no proper results with Dokdo and the Kuril Islands. Russia's attitude to these disputes cannot be passive. First, Moscow is a direct party to one of them. Second, South Korea and China are basing their arguments on Japan's imperial past and, like Russia, on World War II documents.

Postcolonial hauntings in riverine London: conviviality and melancholia

ABSTRACT In his 2000 book, Between Camps, and its 2005 follow-up, Postcolonial Melancholia, Paul Gilroy described postcolonial melancholia—a failure to mourn the loss of imperial prestige—and conviviality—the messy and banal navigation of fractally complex but increasingly less meaningful lines of difference in the city—as two opposing but related characteristics of the British urban experience at the dawn of the century. Nowhere is this more evident than in the neighbourhoods of riverine East London, whose identity and urban morphology have been shaped by the river running through them, upriver to the heart of the imperial metropolis and downriver to Britain’s extensive colonies and postcolonies. In these long-standing arrival quarters, the structure of feeling includes two elements in tension with each other: a mode of lament expressing a form of morbid attachment to the perceived greatness of the imperial age, whose ghostly afterlife is etched in the monumental architecture of London’s boroughs and inscribed in the names of its streets and buildings; and a fragile emergent form of convivial coexistence that finds resonance in alternative narratives of the imperial past. Gidley’s article addresses these issues through data from long-standing research engagement with Bermondsey and Deptford on the southern shore and with Barking on the northern shore of the Thames.

About the war in Ukraine: the price of democracy

The article analyzes the political motives of Ukrainian resistance to Russian invasion and aggression. First of all, it emphasizes the falsification of history by Russian propaganda, its use of history as a political instrument, the destruction of the traumatic memory of the recent imperial past and the glorification of the “glorious centuries-old” imperial history in modern Russia. This determines the difference in the structure of the historical memory of Russians and other former peoples of the empire, and the recent memory of the tragic imperial past is the leading factor in the choice of the Ukrainian and Moldovan peoples for their political destiny. The article also shows that this choice, as well as the desire for truth, freedom and rights, determines these peoples’ slow but sure progress toward democracy. These choices and aspirations are at the same time a determining factor in the ability of the Ukrainian people to resist Russian armed aggression. Instead, the so-called “civilizational” links between the former peoples of the empire, with which Russia tries to justify its aggression, are actually a cover for its desire for political dominance. The article also outlines the importance of Ukrainian resistance for European democracies, calling for their unconditional support. The war in Ukraine is a challenge for them, because no matter what problems democracies around the world are facing today, they will remain actors of their own history only if they provide support to all those who resist the destruction of the minimum of rights and freedoms that define democracy. Using Kant’s work «Perpetual Peace» as an example, the article also shows that the cessation of war for the sake of cessation of war, which is often called for today, will not contribute to the establishment of peace. It will leave grounds for the renewal of war, which the aggressor, if he will not change its political essence, will always be able to use it again.

Will Türkiye Find Herself a Place in the New World Order?

Türkiye has been a challenging actor in the regional and global politics since the early 2010s, which relies on its imperial past and soft power. This paper argues that Türkiye has embraced a conventional foreign policy principle, pursuing the balance of power, to adapt to the new multipolar world in the contemporary period, which can be defined as “the new nineteenth century.” The country can only exploit its power and resilience to the utmost extent after realizing its limitations to accomplish its regional and international foreign policy goals. Then, it might emerge as a dependable crisis mediator and a significant player in world politics.

О ВЛИЯНИИ ИСТОРИЧЕСКОГО НАСЛЕДИЯ НА СОВРЕМЕННЫЕ ИНДО-БРИТАНСКИЕ ОТНОШЕНИЯ

Today, India pursues a multi-vector foreign policy, maintaining its strategic autonomy and being one of the most important civilizational states in the world. At the same time, India is the object of foreign policy efforts of all leading players, including the UK, its former metropole. In this article, the author examines how London is trying to rely on cooperation with New Delhi to compensate for its withdrawal from the EU and, with India’s help, to forge a new role for itself in a changing world. However, despite the long diplomatic courting, problems of interpretation of the colonial period and issues of shared history remain a serious stumbling block in the bilateral relationship. The nostalgia over the imperial past has been fueling the excessive ambitions of the British politicians. In the author’s view, due to an overly positive attitude towards their imperial past, the British politicians, over-exaggerating their own importance, constantly underestimate the extent to which the world distrusts Britain. For the people of India, it is India that is at the centre of global processes today, and their country’s influence on everything that happens in the world is undeniable. India at the time of the British arrival was not only one of the oldest civilizations on the planet, but also a pearl of the medieval world with developed culture, architecture, art and literature, unique industries. From the first to the eleventh century AD, the Indian economy was the largest in the world. During 200 years of colonialism, India and Britain almost swapped places in terms of their GDP share in the world economy. Therefore, for Indians, the rapid growth of their country’s economy in the early 21st century is not a miracle, but merely a restoration of the old balance of power in the world, where India and China have been leaders for centuries. It is also symbolic that the post of the British Prime Minister in 2022 was taken by a politician of Indian descent. The author concludes that, having celebrated 75 years of Independence, India is looking to the future with justified optimism, while its former metropole is in a constant search for ways to restore its depleted power, again seeing special relations with India as one of its desired instruments

Антирелигиозные фильмы и борьба с антисемитизмом в 20-30-х гг. XX в. в Советском Союзе

During the late 1920s and early 1930s, there was a surge of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, which was considered the first immediate task since 1926. This wave of Judeophobia was attributed to the socio-economic situation, mistakes made by the state authorities, and chauvinism. While there were some common reasons cited in Soviet literature, anti-Semitism was primarily associated with the imperialist past, survivals, and counter-revolution. To combat anti-Semitism, the Union of Militant Atheists (UMA) was involved, as the fight against Judeophobia was seen as part of anti-religious work. The UMA used cinema as a propaganda tool to attract viewers through the use of anti-religious films. The article discusses the completion of the publication of M. N. Kefala, which consists of two parts. The first part contains a selection of seven works that cover the Jewish question, while the second part contains materials for a report on anti-Semitism. The fight against anti-Semitism continued until 1932, and the SVB included it in anti-religious propaganda. Methods and tools were developed, and results were achieved, as Judeophobia and distrust were squeezed out of public organizations into the daily sphere of activity due to pressure from the authorities.

The Balfour Conversations: British human rights activists and the call to reckon with implication

As the Great Power which initially authorized the Zionist settler-colonial project in historic Palestine, Britain has played a decisive role in the one hundred-year war against Palestinians. This essay analyses moments of encounter between Palestinians and British human rights activists, which is to say between those who relegate British imperial history to a definitive past and those who continue to live with the resilient structures of the British imperial past and the ongoing settler-colonial present. Paying attention to these moments of encounter is shown to offer a way of understanding Palestinian experiences of the past as an “ever-living present”. Furthermore, in what I call these “Balfour conversations”, when British subjects were being asked to apologize for Britain’s historic actions, I suggest that something akin to the Althusserian “hail” is at work. Through its attempt to understand the processes by which interpellation functions in this context, this essay explores how implication is frequently unacknowledged or denied through reactions of defensiveness, shock, and anger – responses which are also shown to be illustrative of collective “imperial dispositions”. Throughout the essay, I unpick how it is that British activists are structurally implicated, and something of what lies beneath these imperial dispositions, in order that different ways of acting within transnational solidarity relationships might be imagined possible.

The Memory of Colonialism in Britain and France: The Sins of Silence. By Itay Lotem

Since the mid-1990s, an ever-growing number of publications have now made it commonplace to identify France as an example of a poorly managed colonial hangover. By contrast, whilst many signs tended to indicate that there was possibly also in Britain a ‘passé qui ne passe pas’, discussions of the imperial past and colonial memory were never framed as a meaningful tool for making sense of what was happening, despite all the racial, historical, and socio-political ramifications of the situation. It is therefore highly satisfying to see a book implicitly (at least in terms of its structure and chronological articulation) using the French trajectory to examine what has remained for a long time an unspoken aspect of British cultural and political life: the memory of the Empire, and how it emerged gradually as a meaningful discussion. Such an intervention is deeply needed at a time when British politicians can often exploit the benefits of uncritical engagement with the Empire, as exemplified by Boris Johnson arguing in 2014 that ‘The UK has bonds of history, language, law, family and customs across the world and we would be foolish not to make more of these at this time of profound global economic revival’ (Foreword to Tim Hewish, How to Solve a Problem like a Visa: The Unhappy State of Commonwealth Migration in the UK (Commonwealth Exchange)). How does this compare with the French context, where Itay Lotem rightly notes that both devoir de mémoire (Chapter 3) and the use of ‘memory as Republican critique’ (Chapter 4) have prevailed, opening spaces for debates which have been unheard of in the UK, notably under the convenient cover of a ‘convivial multiculturalism’ (Chapter 7)? Lotem’s book offers a fascinating overview of the profoundly different trajectories followed by the countries that built and ran the two largest colonial empires of the contemporary period when it came to engaging with, and reflecting upon, the cultural, political, and socio-cultural legacies of their attempt to create what they often called ‘Greater Britain’ or ‘la plus grande France’. At the heart of the book is the fundamental difference between what ‘silence’ means on each side of the English Channel. This is a matter of tradition as much as political circumstances, and is associated with the socio-cultural perception of what the imperial experience achieved, itself linked to how decolonization is remembered. Lotem articulates convincingly how each country has placed a different emphasis on the weight and significance of their colonial past, with memory appearing much more closely associated to political affiliation in the French case, as opposed to Britain where empire was first de-prioritized (Chapter 6), before the ‘tale of the imperial balance sheet’ (Chapter 10) took precedence. The book encompasses a wide range of sources to engage with this Protean, and exceptionally complex, question: interviews and engagement with media sources are a useful complement to the wide range of secondary material that appears in the bibliography. The careful charting of the processes through which empire came back to the fore in public discourse — and under different terms — represents a major contribution to our understanding of how French and British societies have grappled with their imperial past, now that they can no longer rely on their colonies to claim great power status.

»Learning from Las Vegas« Tianjin!

Abstract From the perspective of architectural research, globalization is often reduced to a merely recent phenomenon of construction firms and star architects operating worldwide today. This article argues for a global architectural history that examines the globally effective processes of exchange and circulation of capital, labor, and the increasingly unified standards of form, style, and material in building practice from a historical perspective as well: architectural globalization, therefore, can also be traced back, among other constellations, to a phase of an entanglement of the world that coincided with the height of European imperialism and colonialism around 1900. As a case-study serves in this essay the International Concession (Settlement) of Tientsin in China, where between ca. 1860 and 1945 altogether nine imperial powers from Japan, Europe (also the German Empire) and the USA developed their trading posts as veritable city quarters with representative architectures. Irony of history back-translated into present times: Today, these urban and architectural fragments from imperial pasts are being appropriated as an integral part of a veritable cultural heritage industry in which China itself, with the megacity of Tianjin, is now presenting itself as a global player, not least in the means of architecture and urban planning.

GLOBAL BRITAIN – BETWEEN “GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY” AND “SOFT POWER SUPERPOWER”

The aim of this paper is to analyse the new foreign policy focus of the British Government in a post-Brexit world. While the new approach, presented in the Parliament in 2021, known as “Global Britain in a competitive age”, may seem somewhat distant from the globalized world of the 21st century and more appealing to the imperialist past of the island nation, the truth can be far from that. Relations with the European Union may be colder than what they used to be, but the world does not end with the Mediterranean or the Urals. In this paper, I will attempt to answer the question regarding Britain’s place in the world and whether or not it is capable of displaying power while taking advantage of its old network of allies.

Beyond Needle and Thread

Beyond Needle and Thread