Officials In London Research Articles

Aeolian Geographies, Daily Life, and Empire Building in the English Caribbean

Knowledge of daily winds—gained from prolonged residence in the region—shaped life in the seventeenth-century English Caribbean. As colonists gathered, recorded, and deployed knowledge about breezes, winds, and gales, they learned the peculiar aeolian geographies of the Caribbean. In this maritime space, wind distorted distance. It took longer to sail one direction than the other. This article charts how colonists gradually adapted their economic, social, and material worlds to the rhythms of the winds. They came to realize that winds dictated sailing times, routed travel, scheduled commerce, and informed how and where colonists built structures, especially fortifications. It took even longer, though, for officials in London to grasp winds' power over daily life in—and the geography of—the Caribbean. Lack of lived experience in the Caribbean initially stymied metropolitan efforts to understand the region's climatic realities. Through continued correspondence with island residents throughout the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, metropolitan officials learned the importance of aeolian knowledge to maritime affairs. As it circulated in letters, reports, and maps, this knowledge became crucial to the commercial and military success of the British Empire, especially as that empire expanded in the eighteenth century.

Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe

Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe

‘Was the Cold War Avoidable? Did the West Seek to Win It?: A Contribution to the Debate’

ABSTRACT This article tackles two of the major questions in later twentieth-century international history, the origins and the end of the Cold War. Historians traditionally assumed that Moscow was determined from the outset to Sovietise Eastern Europe, once liberated from Nazism, and that this made the later confrontation with the Western powers inevitable. It will be shown here that the idea to install Moscow-friendly regimes in a Europe destroyed by war had been formulated by Kremlin officials already a decade earlier. The article also argues that the Western alliance became comfortable with the status quo it had previously denounced, and that it was reluctant to upset the East-West equilibrium of later years. In the aftermath of 1989, several Western politicians have claimed the laurels of victory over Communism, but it was the Soviet bloc countries who liberated themselves, despite pleas of officials in London, Washington, Paris, and Bonn to slow down or even suspend their reforms.

‘Test Now, Stop HIV’: COVID-19 and the idealisation of quarantine as the ‘end of HIV’

The emergence of COVID-19 precipitated varied responses from public health officials in London, England. In April 2020, clinicians at 56 Dean Street sexual health and advice clinic in central London described social isolation as ‘a unique window of opportunity’ to ‘break the chain’ in HIV transmission. This was followed by critical responses within HIV prevention circles. Drawing from these responses, this article examines the implications of the clinic’s ‘Test Now, Stop HIV’ campaign by asking how has the early COVID-19 pandemic reshaped institutional responses and strategies to end HIV transmission in England? We assess how campaign messages developed between April and May 2020. We analyse materials related to the campaign, including the clinic’s Twitter account, the campaign website, and journalism in mainstream media. Based on this information, we discuss three themes: testing and issues of access; the biopolitics of testing; and the idealism of quarantine. We draw on sociology, cultural theory and science and technology studies to describe how the ‘end of HIV’ was constructed through the link between COVID-19 and HIV. We suggest the campaign reinscribes historical perceptions of abstinence and quarantine as idealised HIV prevention strategies, and thus fails to address safer sex in the time of Coronavirus.

Dominion Imaginings: Commemorating WWI in Australian, Canadian and New Zealand Official Painting

ABSTRACT During the First World War, many belligerent nations commissioned official art to celebrate and preserve their experience of the conflict. This article explores the creation of the Australian, Canadian and New Zealand official war paintings; in particular, by tracing the emergence, development and fate of each collection, the article examines the process of memory-making and the politics at play in the commemoration of the war in art. It argues that while the collections were born from similar ideas circulating among dominion officials in London, these manifested themselves in markedly different ways under each war art program.

An Interpreter or two: defusing NATO’s Siberian pipeline dispute, 1981–1982

For much of 1982, NATO was seen as an alliance in crisis once more. The introduction of martial law in Poland and the subsequent US decision to introduce sanctions created a considerable rift, as many of Washington’s partners resented the measures and the threat that these sanctions posed to the construct of a natural gas pipeline connecting Siberian energy reserves to consumers in Western Europe. Beset by problems, two of the Alliance’s members, the UK and Canada, saw a possible role as an intermediary between the two sides of the intra-alliance dispute. Both British and Canadian efforts to mediate the problem faced clear obstacles, but the fact that officials in London and in Ottawa saw a role for themselves as an interpreter sheds new light on the common assertion that the Siberian pipeline question divided the USA from its Western European allies. British and Canadian thinking reflected a paradox that, at once, viewed the transatlantic rift as one between the USA and the rest of the allies, while also seeing themselves as distinct from that binary.

Toward a New Moral Understanding of the Tudor Conquest of Ireland

The English conquest of Ireland during the sixteenth century was accompanied by extreme violence. Historians remain divided on the motivations behind this violence. This article argues that the English violence in Ireland may be attributed to four main factors: the fear of foreign Catholic intervention through Ireland; the methods by which Irish rebels chose to fight; decisions made by English officials in London to not fund English forces in Ireland at a reasonable level while demanding that English officials in Ireland keep Ireland under control; and the creation of a system by which many of those who made the plans never had to see the suffering they inflicted. The troops who carried out the plans had to choose between their own survival and moral behaviors that placed their survival at risk.

British Attitude Towards Southern Kurdistan between 1917 and 1919

To undertake a historical study on the political, military, economic and diplomatic positions of the British representatives in Iraq and the region in general during the transformation from Ottoman rule to a new, independence-seeking political unit of Iraq, after the First World War, it is important to examine the perspectives of the British civil and military authorities and their plan toward the Kurdish districts of the Mosul vilayet, especially southern Kurdistan and protecting the northern frontier of Iraq. Although detailed studies of British post-war strategy towards Iraq have already been undertaken by Western and Eastern historians, much of the historical work that has been done on the British view and their attitude towards southern Kurdistan in general and the local government in Sulaymaniyah in particular, tends more to use imperfect narrations writing from the standpoint of ideological, ethic and political interests. Therefore, through an exhaustive use of British official archives, and analysing original British unpublished documents from various departments of government, this study attempts to objective understanding of the attitude of British officials in London, India and Iraq, toward the future of southern Kurdistan. This study consists of two main sections, the first section examines the situation of southern Kurdistan in the course of World War I. The second one investigates the beginning of the emergence of the Anglo - Kurdish political relations, as well as an analysis of the official position of British representatives toward the local government in Sulaymaniyah. This study rests upon official British and unpublished documents found in the British National Archives, British Library and Parliamentary Archives in London and the Middle East Centre at Oxford University and others were relied upon.

Toward a New Moral Understanding of the Tudor Conquest of Ireland

The English conquest of Ireland during the sixteenth century was accompanied by extreme violence. Historians remain divided on the motivations behind this violence. This article argues that the English violence in Ireland may be attributed to four main factors: the fear of foreign Catholic intervention through Ireland; the methods by which Irish rebels chose to fight; decisions made by English officials in London to not fund English forces in Ireland at a reasonable level while demanding that English officials in Ireland keep Ireland under control; and the creation of a system by which many of those who made the plans never had to see the suffering they inflicted. The troops who carried out the plans had to choose between their own survival and moral behaviors that placed their survival at risk.

Ensuring Benevolent Neutrality: The British Government's Appeasement of General Franco during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

ABSTRACTThis article examines the development of British non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Previous studies have focused heavily on pro-rebel or anti-Republican sentiments among British officials in London and abroad, and often apply the term ‘malevolent neutrality’ to the motives behind the policy. However, utilising records from the National Archives as well as private papers, this article evaluates British non-intervention within the context of appeasement and demonstrates a clear link between the two policies. By examining British neutrality through the lens of appeasement, this study will enhance our understanding of British diplomacy in the 1930s and the links between non-intervention in Spain and the growing threat of fascism in Europe. It argues that the British Government adopted and maintained a policy of strict neutrality in order to avoid an escalation of the conflict and to place itself in a better position from which it could establish a good relationship with whichever side emerged victorious. As it became increasingly clear that the rebels were going to overthrow the Republic, the British Government began to tacitly appease General Franco in an attempt to avoid a hostile Spain in the build up to the Second World War.

American propaganda and Ireland during world war one: the work of the Committee on Public Information

Soon after America entered the war in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson established the Committee on Public Information (CPI) which used the tools of propaganda and persuasion to fight the war in the US and in allied, enemy and neutral foreign countries. This article examines the CPI’s work in relation to Ireland and Irish issues during the First World War. Among the questions examined are: What was the nature of the CPI’s Irish work between 1917 and 1918? What does it reveal about first, the CPI and second, Wilson’s view of Irish-American loyalty during the war? Why did the CPI’s British and Irish services become involved in Irish military recruitment? Was there any contact between the CPI officials in London and their British counterparts in the Ministry of Information to co-ordinate the push to encourage Irishmen to enlist? How did the CPI negotiate a space for its messages in post-rising Ireland where home rulers, republicans, unionists and British authorities pursued their respective agendas? The article seeks to add an American dimension to the narrative of Ireland and the First World War and examines themes relating to Anglo-American co-operation on the Irish question and diasporic identity.

“I want a Packet to arrive”: Making New York City the headquarters of British America, 1696–1783

“I want a Packet to arrive”: Making New York City the headquarters of British America, 1696–1783 Rohit T. Aggarwala (bio) One of New York City’s key distinctions in the late colonial period was its role as the headquarters of the British Army in America, almost continuously from 1755 to 1783. It is clear that the army’s presence gave Manhattan a far greater exposure to British officialdom than other colonial American cities, and influenced both its social and cultural development as well as its political evolution. How the city was chosen for such a role has been less clear. Most historians mention that New York held a strategic location that London officials had long appreciated; thus, they imply but do not assert that a geopolitical decision placed the headquarters in New York. In fact, however, this focus on broad geographical forces, and on London officials, obscures the very significant story behind how the headquarters came to be in Manhattan.1 This is because New York’s role was not shaped by theory but by several individual experiences of how the city served the British generals. Although some London bureaucrats did imagine New York as a logical headquarters for British America, their ideas were consistently rejected by political leaders and had no direct influence on where the army was based. Instead, each person who held the title of “Commander-in-Chief of His [End Page 7] Majesty’s Forces in North America” chose where to base his operations, and each was—in theory at least—unbound by his predecessor’s decisions. The reasons they chose New York varied with their needs. During the Seven Years’ War, they were driven by Manhattan’s location as the terminus of the transatlantic packet ship. After that, a combination of personal preference and community specialization helped keep the headquarters in New York. While geopolitical analysis did lead to the Army’s return to New York in 1776, the analysis turned out to be flawed. The decisions of the commanders-in-chief reflect many of the forces that geographers and economists identify as the reasons cities form, why they locate where they do, and how and why they prosper. The most powerful forces are transportation costs, through which geography affects prices and the availability of goods; communications advantages, through which geography affects knowledge; and agglomeration economies, through which proximity improves economic performance.2 Historian William Cronon noted the power of “second nature,” through which man-made conditions, such as infrastructure investments, economic logic, and even habits shape human activity with the same power as natural geography.3 Others have observed the power of government to lure—or drive—people to capital cities and places of military investment.4 All of these proved relevant to Manhattan’s case in the final years of British control. But New York’s career as the British headquarters reminds us that while these forces certainly shape urban geography, they do so only through human interpretation and action. Because people are not always rational, nor always perfectly informed, their specific priorities, knowledge, [End Page 8] and interpretations shape how geographic reality is perceived and thus how they act on it. The British generals who placed their offices in New York in the late colonial period were not responding to the city’s theoretical or comprehensive advantages, but to the way the city’s location served their very immediate needs. As such, this episode helps illuminate not only a moment in the city’s history but also the power—and limitations—of geography as an independent force. “The Government is in the Crown” Long before the 1750s, New York had been imagined as a potential capital for all of continental British America. In these imaginings, it was indeed geopolitics that drove decision-making. The Board of Trade—the body in London intended to coordinate colonial policy—noticed that Manhattan was centrally located among the mainland colonies, had a border with the Iroquois and French, and had a government directly appointed by the Crown. This led them to identify New York as the obvious place to house an administration overseeing the entire continent. The board held firmly to...

Paradoxes of Press Freedom in Colonial West Africa

This article describes the shifts and contradictions in British approaches to the control of print media in colonial West Africa between the 1920s and 1940s. Well before the Colonial Office's post-war interventions to create an ‘enlightened and educated’ West African citizenry through mass education, decades of independent newspaper production in the region helped to shape independent and critical readerships. For the British, however, an upsurge in African nationalist journalism in the mid-1930s coincided with a perceived Communist infiltration of ‘British West Africa’ to make censorship and surveillance more palatable than before to colonial officials in London, in spite of the new emphasis on public relations.

The Global Pigeon

In 2002, Arnold Arluke queried the internal obstacles facing the progress of the sociological study of human-nonhuman animal relations. While we have seen an increase in sociological research in this area, there is still a clear and present misunderstanding and discounting of the importance of animals in sociology in general. The Global Pigeon should chip away at these barriers. While fundamentally a book about people’s interactions with pigeons, it is also about community, culture, race, class, identity, and environment. With the goal of understanding how humans negotiate or navigate social lives through relationships with animals, Colin Jerolmack chose to study pigeons in urban settings. While perhaps peculiar, the choice is what makes his book transcend disciplines. Jerolmack explains that we conceptualize city space as our space. We envision nonhumans in these areas only when controlled by us (i.e., gardens, parks, zoos). In reality, he notes that nonhuman life permeates all of our city space, no matter how hard we try to contain it. It is in this area of tension where he claims ‘‘we can begin to understand how the borders and contours of urban experience are shaped through cross-species encounters’’ (p. 16). Jerolmack spent three years in the field, investigating areas where pigeons are fed publicly and men who raise and fly pigeons. He conducted ethnographic case studies in New York City, Venice, London, and Berlin. His research was extensive historically, assuring full understanding of his settings. This approach allowed Jerolmack to unearth different types of interactions in diverse populations, though not for representative purposes. Indeed, pigeons are part of what Goffman (1983) calls ‘‘interaction order’’ in urban spaces, and he claims they do help shape our social lives. What we find in The Global Pigeon is that context matters. In New York, pigeonfeeding led to close relationships with pigeons for those who saw the task as a duty. For those who fed more spontaneously, pigeon-feeding often made people feel more connected to one another, even if only for brief periods in time. In Venice and London, pigeon-feeding was a cultural attraction that included vendors who relied on selling feed to make a living. Pigeons are so commonplace at the Piazza that they appear prominently in postcards and paintings. Ultimately it seemed for most that the only way to fully experience the Piazza or Trafalgar Square was through feeding the pigeons. The pigeons made these places feel authentic. Not everyone experienced pigeons this way. In fact, they are commonly equated with filth, and all three cities constructed pigeons as the bane of their cities, right up there with prostitution and other illicit activities. They were framed by officials in Venice and London as symbolic of disorder. In the end, Venetian and London officials pitted pigeons against human quality of life. These two cities could and did legislate against pigeon-feeding, though to differing degrees of success. In the end, many in Venice who saw pigeons as a nuisance and wanted to trim their numbers were compelled to support their existence. Through pigeon-feeding, Jerolmack discovered the various connections people made through interactions with pigeons. For some, relationships were melded with the birds. With others, human relationships ensued. Finally, feeding in some instances created a connection with space and location. The interactions solidified the authenticity of the place and the occasion. Jerolmack also investigates more intimate relationships between caretakers and their pigeons. For these men, the interactions helped develop self-esteem and establish a social self, community, and even national identity. In both New York and Berlin, men invested countless hours of hard work caring for pigeons despite dwindling numbers of caretakers. Some New York Flyers repeatedly spoke about the hard work and routinized care they provided, describing the work as 70 Reviews

July, 1914: countdown to war

The outbreak of the First World War was 'a drama never surpassed'. One hundred years later, the characters still seem larger than life: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, brooding heir to the Habsburg throne; the fanatical Bosnian Serb assassins who plot to murder him; Conrad and Berchtold, the Austrians who exploit the outrage; Kaiser Wilhelm and Bethmann Hollweg, backing up the Austrians; Sazonov, Russian Foreign Minister, trying to live down a reputation for cowardice; Poincare and Paleologue, two French statesmen who urge on the Russians; and not least Winston Churchill, who, alone among Cabinet officials in London, perceives the seriousness of the situation in time to take action. July 1914 tells the story of Europe's countdown to war through the eyes of these men, between the bloody opening act on 28 June 1914 and Britain's final plunge on 4 August, which turned a European conflict into a world war. The outbreak of war was no accident of fate. Individual statesmen, pursuing real objectives, conjured up the conflict - in some cases by conscious intention. While some sought honourably to defuse tensions, others all but oozed with malice as they rigged the decks for war. Dramatic, inevitably tense and almost forensically observed, Sean McMeekin's unique book retells the story of that cataclysmic month, making clear as never before who was responsible for the catastrophe. You will never think the same way again about the origins of the First World War.

Colonial Ambition, Common Sense Thinking, and the Making of Takoradi Harbor, Gold Coast

AbstractThroughout the 1920s, British officials in London and Accra dedicated considerable time and bureaucratic energy to the planning and construction of Takoradi harbor, an ambitious project that, they expected, would revolutionize the Gold Coast’s economic prospects. But by 1930, their efforts had created a structure beset with constructional defects, considerable flaws, and financial shortcomings. This article seeks to explain the sizeable gap separating Takoradi-envisioned from Takoradi-realized by examining the massive paper record compiled during the harbor’s planning and construction. Demonstrating that the structure was born largely from illusion, affect, and a particular version of “common sense” thinking, it encourages historians to not only give further attention to the detailed, and often overwhelming, corpus of blueprints, reports, and correspondence that such projects engendered, but to use them to reflect upon the ways in which colonial statecraft actually sought to limit, rather than expand, the knowledge it had at its disposal.

Subjects or Citizens? India, Pakistan and the 1948 British Nationality Act

Independence in the case of British India occurred at relatively short notice in August 1947, but tying up the loose ends of empire stretched over years. Under these circumstances, the realignment of subjecthood and citizenship necessitated by decolonisation was protracted, and raised complex questions about identity in both the new states of India and Pakistan and the former imperial power itself. This article thus takes as its focus the drawn-out process of disengagement that followed formal independence in relation to one case study: the various ways in which Britain sought to square the working of its 1948 Nationality Act with Indian and Pakistani citizenship legislation that took shape in the 1950s. India and Pakistan faced the common challenge of establishing who now belonged within their new borders. Britain likewise was forced to recalibrate its ideas about nationality and think afresh about the rights of its subjects in view of the new sets of relationships that now linked colonies, old dominions and the ‘mother country’ within the Commonwealth. In practice, applying the 1948 Act's provisions in relation to India and Pakistan became infused with anxieties about ‘race’, which surfaced repeatedly as British officials in London, Delhi, Karachi and consulates around the world sought to manage its operation to suit British interests.

Behind the Ordinance of Labourers: Economic Regulation and Market Control in London before the Black Death

The regulation of market activities, by both local and central authorities, has been studied in some detail, but the interrelationship between the two has received considerably less attention. This paper examines market regulations and their enforcement in London prior to the Black Death, including measures to control prices, wages, forestalling, product quality, etc. It argues that, although London officials were often obliged to enforce royal orders relative to market activities, the economic policies elaborated by the mayor and aldermen had a significant impact on those adopted by the Crown and applied throughout the realm, particularly on the Ordinance of Labourers of 1349.

DÉTENTE 1914: SIR WILLIAM TYRRELL'S SECRET MISSION TO GERMANY

ABSTRACTBased on hitherto unused archival material, this article reconstructs the genesis of a clandestine mission to Germany by Sir Edward Grey's private secretary, Sir William Tyrrell, planned for the summer of 1914. The mission remained abortive, but it offers fresh insights into a growing sense of détente in Great Power relations on the eve of the First World War. Although the episode involved key officials in London and Berlin, the article emphasizes that, pace many recent scholars of the period, the Anglo-German antagonism was not the central concern of British policy-makers. Rather, relations between the two countries were a function of Anglo-Russian relations, and the revival of Russian power after 1912 provides the proper context to the attempts by British and German officials to place relations between their countries on a friendlier footing. The article thus also calls into question criticisms of the British foreign secretary as irrevocably ententiste, and provides an antidote to assumptions of the First World War as somehow inevitable.

Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (review)

Reviewed by: Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire Elizabeth M. Covart (bio) Keywords American Revolution, Treaties, Diplomacy, Jay Treaty, Law of nations, Political history Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire. By Eliga H. Gould. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Pp. 301. Cloth, $45.00.) In the Declaration of Independence, Americans articulated their desire to make the United States a sovereign nation “to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Law of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” Borrowing the title for his latest work from this preamble, Eliga H. Gould argues that the United States’ drive for European acceptance as an equal nation “played a role in making the American republic at least as important as the liberal and republican ideologies that have framed scholarship on the American Revolution since the Second World War.” Gould asserts that “the revolutionaries’ emphasis on peace through treaty-worthiness explains why Americans ultimately opted for a national union that could represent the ‘one people’ in the Declaration of Independence over a looser association” (11) under the Articles of Confederation. [End Page 721] Gould defines the characteristics of a “treaty-worthy” nation and chronicles the long journey of the United States to achieve that status throughout his six chapters. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the law of nations represented a system of treaties whereby the secular leaders of Europe and the Roman Catholic Church agreed that the governments under their authority would recognize the rights and liberties of other European nations. To be “treaty-worthy,” a sovereign had to participate in treaties and be able to enforce the provisions of those it signed. Treaty-worthy nations had the right to expect that other nations would respect their borders and trade rights in times of peace and would treat their citizens humanely in times of war. In theory, the law of nations applied to the overseas possessions and citizens of treaty-worthy nations. In actuality, all of the American colonies stood barely within the reach of the law of nations. According to Gould, the American Revolution occurred in part because Great Britain tried to place its North American colonies firmly within the jurisdiction of the law of nations. London officials saw America as a lawless land, a place where smugglers and pirates ruled the Atlantic waves and where backcountry Indian traders incited rebellion. Britain sought to stabilize governance in North America by imposing “a series of sweeping reforms” (91) to rid the continent of its multiple legalities. Great Britain strengthened its naval forces, admiralty courts, and customs collectors to rid American waters of lawless sailors. Additionally, the empire stationed ten thousand regulars in the trans-Appalachian west to check the power of seditious Indian traders. Gould contends that while Americans “accepted the ends that Britain’s reforms were meant to serve” (6, 107), they rejected the imposition of Parliamentary taxes to pay for them. Rather than submit to taxation without direct Parliamentary representation, many American colonists opted to declare independence and try to “replicate the order that Britain was attempting to produce” (6–7) on their own terms. Gould takes a long view of the American Revolution. He begins his narrative near the onset of the French and Indian War (1755) and concludes it with the Monroe Doctrine (1823). Gould sees the Revolution as an intellectual movement and expands the interpretation by asserting that “the American Revolution was never just a struggle for the right of Americans to govern themselves . . . it was also a struggle for dominion over others” (4). He insists that the Americans’ right to self-government and their prerogative to assert dominion over others came from entanglement [End Page 722] with Europe, not independence. Only when European sovereigns saw the United States as an equal did the law of nations protect American affairs from European interference. Obtaining equality with Europe did not prove easy. European countries gave little consideration to forging long-term peace and trade alliances with the Americans until after 1793. Before 1793, Europeans believed as Lord...