Military Defeat Research Articles

How Dominant Narratives Rise and Fall: Military Conflict, Politics, and the Cold War Consensus

AbstractContemporaries and historians often blame the errors and tragedies of US policy during the Cold War on a dominant narrative of national security: the “Cold War consensus.” Its usual periodization, according to which it came together in the late 1940s and persisted until the late 1960s when it unraveled amidst the trauma of the Vietnam War, fits well with a common theory of change in ideas and discourse. That theory expects stasis until a substantial unexpected failure (in this domain, military defeat) discredits dominant ideas and unsettles dominant coalitions. However, systematic data reveal the standard history of this important case to be wrong. Based on a large-scale content analysis of newspaper editorials on foreign affairs, this article shows that the Cold War narrative was narrower than conventional accounts suggest, that it did not coalesce until well into the 1950s, and that it began to erode even before the Vietnam War's Americanization in 1965. To make sense of this puzzle, I develop an alternative theory of the rise and fall of the narratives that underpin and structure debate over national security. Rooted in the dynamics of public narrative and the domestic politics of the battlefield, the theory argues that military failure impedes change in the narrative in whose terms government officials had legitimated the mission, whereas victory creates the opportunity for departures from the dominant narrative. Process-tracing reveals causal dynamics consistent with the theory: failure in the Korean War, which might have undermined Cold War globalism, instead facilitated the Cold War narrative's rise to dominance (or consensus); and the triumph of the Cuban Missile Crisis made possible that dominant narrative's breakdown before the upheaval of Vietnam. This hard and important case suggests the need to rethink the relationship between success, failure, and change in dominant narratives of national security—and perhaps in other policy domains as well.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Acute Stress Disorder in the Roman Army: Lessons for Modern Armies

This study employs two case studies to examine the response of Roman legionnaires to severe military defeats in 380 B.C. and 216 B.C. It explores the influence of core culture and military culture on the vulnerability of soldiers to PTSD and ASD. This article is based on a cross-cultural framework developed by Rooyan and Nqweni (2012). The study demonstrates that cultural differences matter in the way that soldiers respond to traumatic events in combat.

Monotheism, the Incomplete Revolution: Narrating the Event in Freud's and Assmann's Moses

Monotheism, the Incomplete Revolution:Narrating the Event in Freud’s and Assmann’s Moses Ari Ofengenden (bio) Introduction The Man Moses and the Monotheistic Religion1 has traditionally been seen as the most speculative of Freud’s works. Freud wrote the book under the threat of rising Nazi power while suffering from cancer and knowing full well that it would be his last book. Interestingly, Freud does not choose to summarize his views on psychoanalysis, but boldly ventures into the field of biblical history, writing what he calls an “historical novel.” Bold but nevertheless writing in a defensive, almost neurotic style, Freud hedges his claims in a variety of ways, complaining about his own fading powers, highlighting the uncertainty of his findings even as he makes very audacious claims. Influenced by Dostoyevskian monologues, Freud positions himself as desperate narrator attempting the impossible, well aware of the speculative character of his undertaking. Freud’s historical novel was also inspired by his reading of Thomas Man’s “Joseph and his Brothers,” and undeniably reads like a serialized novel which breaks off at key points in order to heighten suspense. Freud’s audacious reconstruction of the story of Moses is by now well known. Moses was an Egyptian born priest or nobleman who lived at the time of the monotheistic revolution undertaken by Ikhnaton at 14 B.C.E. Ikhnaton violently negated polytheism, destroyed temples and statues of sacred Egyptian Deities, and was the first in human history to invent and call for the worship of an unseen, unified god by the name of Aten. Freud’s Moses was either a disciple or high priest of the new religion. However, the [End Page 291] monotheistic revolution ultimately met a reactionary backlash and Moses was forced to side with “Semitic tribes” temporarily residing in Egypt, becoming their leader, bringing them out of Egypt, and giving them a new God and new laws. At some point, Moses and his people then joined another group of people who resided in Meribah-Kadesh and who believed in “JHWH”—a local angry volcanic God. In something like a psychic compromise formation (that is, behavior and outcome which results from the conflation of opposing tendencies in a person), the two different groups claimed the story of exodus as theirs but also named their god JAHWE, attributing to him all the characteristics of the angry, spiteful, volcanic God. The people, however resent the discipline and exacting demands that come with this exclusive, unrepresentable God, and—after several attempts at revolt—finally murder “the great man” Moses. After the killing they repress both the man and his exacting monotheism. However, the repressed memory returns, and by the spiritual leadership of the prophets, JHAWA takes on once more the characteristics of Aten, a universal, omnipotent, unseen, ethical God. Consequently, the Jews2 take upon themselves unprecedented instinctual renunciations for at least three primary reasons. They do so first because their God could not be seen and worshiped in an orgiastic manner. Secondly they do so to maintain his omnipotence in the face of military defeat, loss of power, and exile. They blamed themselves for not following his exacting commandments and made their laws even stricter and harder to follow. Thirdly, the Jews remained in denial about killing the “great man,” leaving their unconscious guilt intact which in turn demands even more strident renunciation. Those who became Christians, Freud concludes, have implicitly accepted that they have killed Moses/God and have had the son Jesus atone for their guilt by his own death. Indeed, Freud rhetorically asks what sin other than murder is atoned by death. Those who stayed Jews, however, have tragically refused to accept their guilt for killing Moses/God, which has been sustained in a displaced form by the claim that they have killed the Christ, and indeed have been made to “pay a heavy penance for it.” Freud’s ethnogenesis of the Jewish people thus explains the essential features of Judaism and anti-Semitism as it presents three explanations for why the Jews took on new renunciations against sensual instinct. [End Page 292] Reception of Freud’s Moses The book, while often considered wholly speculative, has frequently been treated...

Kenya at war: Al-Shabaab and its enemies in Eastern Africa

Kenya's invasion of southern Somalia, which began in October 2011, has turned into an occupation of attrition – while “blowback” from the invasion has consolidated in a series of deadly Al-Shabaab attacks within Kenya. This article reviews the background to the invasion, Operation Linda Nchi, and the prosecution of the war by Kenya's Defence Forces up to the capture of the city of Kismayo and the contest to control its lucrative port. The second section discusses Al-Shabaab's response, showing how the movement has reinvented itself to take the struggle into Kenya. We conclude that while the military defeat of Al-Shabaab in southern Somalia seems inevitable, such a victory may become irrelevant to Kenya's ability to make a political settlement with its Somali and wider Muslim communities at home.

Reconnaissances1.27–71, ou la réponse d'un groupe judéo-chrétien de Judée au désastre du soulèvement de Bar-Kokhba

This article discusses two characteristics of the Jewish-Christian source inRecognitions1.27–71, namely its fierce opposition to sacrifices and its emphasis on the historical ties between the Jews and the land of Judea. There is reason to think that this document expresses the reaction of Jewish-Christians of Judaea to the disaster of the Bar-Kokhba uprising. On the one hand, they considered the military defeat and its consequences as a divine punishment for the rebels’ attempt to renew the sacrificial cult; and, on the other hand, they fought the paganisation of Judea by defending the historical right of the Jews to possess this land.

“In Everything Illegitimate”: Bastards and the National Family

“In Everything Illegitimate”: Bastards and the National Family

Russian Inequality on the Eve of Revolution

Careful handling of an eclectic data set reveals how unequal were the incomes of different classes of Russians on the eve of Revolution. We estimate incomes by economic and social class in each of the fifty provinces of European Russia. On the eve of military defeat and the 1905 Revolution, Russian income inequality was middling by the standards of that era, and less severe than is inequality today in China, the United States, and Russia itself. We note how the interplay of some distinctive fiscal and relative-price features of Imperial Russia might have shaped the now-revealed level of inequality.

The Defeated of the Greek Civil War: From Fighters to Political Refugees in the Cold War

In the fall of 1949, after the end of the Greek Civil War, the bulk of the defeated Greek Communist (KKE) fighters were covertly transported from Albania to Soviet Uzbekistan. This article addresses the covert relocation project, organized by the Soviet Communist Party, and the social engineering program intended to create a prototype Greek People’s Democracy in Tashkent. Drawing on Soviet and Greek Communist Party records, the article raises three major issues: first, the contingencies of postwar transition in the Balkans and the precarious status of the Albanian regime; second, the international Communist response to the military defeat of the KKE in 1949 and the competing visions of the Greek, Soviet, and Albanian parties regarding the future of the Democratic Army of Greece (DAG); third, the intentions of the KKE to establish military bases in Albania and the party’s ensuing effort to transform the agrarian fighters of the DAG into revolutionary cadres for a future victorious repatriation in Greece. Drawing these elements together, the article elucidates the relocation operation of 1949, positions the Greek political refugee experience within the postwar “battle of refugees,” and challenges the widespread historiographical assumption that the KKE immediately abandoned the prospect of a renewed armed confrontation.

“The Race Leapt at Sauteurs”

Introductionin march 2012, atop a hill on Balliceaux island St Vincent and Grenadines, Belizean-born Garifuna healer Lucia Ellis gave thanks for being alive. Balliceaux is an inhospitable place, devoid of fresh water, natural shelter and consumable plant life. In July 1796, British forces interned 4,776 prisoners on this desolate island, which was hours away from St Vincent even on a frigate. An epidemic swept through camp and only 2,248 prisoners were still alive by March 1797, when they were exiled to Central America. Lucia, like Garifuna people of Central America and diaspora today, descends from these survivors.1Lucia spoke during a pilgrimage to Balliceaux, which was organised by St Vincents Garifuna Heritage Foundation. The participants included Garifuna and Caribs from St Vincent and Grenadines, Belize, Honduras and United States, as well as non-indigenous Vincentians and academics from Caribbean, North America and Europe.2 Indigenous Vincentians shared stories of discrimination they endured St Vincent. I grew up Barbados, half an hour by plane from St Vincent. Legend has it that Africans from a wrecked slave ship bound for Barbados escaped St Vincent and became ancestors of today's Garifuna people. Nevertheless few Barbadians know of Garifuna or think much about Barbados's pre-colonial history as part of an indigenous system of life, yet Barbados and St Vincent share a genocidal history that forms a key basis of modern statehood. This essay is about Garifuna/'Carib' people between 1492 and late eighteenth century. Most of analysis centres on sub-archipelago of southeastern/Lesser Antillean islands that was their ancestral territory, known early colonial period as Carib bees, Charaibes, Caraibes and Caribes. 3 The Lesser Antilles' histories of enslavement and colonisation fit 1951 United Nations definition of genocide as an attempt to destroy, whole or part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.*The late Michel-Rolph Trouillot observed that the word history offers . .. an irreducible distinction and yet an equally irreducible overlap between what happened and that which is said to have happened . . . The ways which what happened and that which is said to have happened are or are not same may itself be historical. s For Trouillot, a full grasp of a historical event's meaning requires exploration of its two-sided historicity, made up of the materiality of sociological process (historicity 1) [which] sets stage for future historical narratives (historicity 2).61 examine 'two-sided historicity' of three acts of annihilationist violence committed between 1493 and 1797 by (in order of occurrence) Spanish, French and British against indigenous Lesser Antillean people.I explore these three incidents as acts of genocide (historicity 1), as well as material for a genocidal historical narrative (historicity 2), which is a version of history that seeks to complete work of original act of genocide, even if that may not be intention of those who repeat narrative. These three encounters were part of imperial Europe's 'Carib archive', which transformed defeat of even smallest Carib contingent into a moment representing annihilation of Carib people in whole or part. The translation of military defeats into widely recognised symbols of racial annihilation helped colonial authorities to dispossess descendants of Caribbean aboriginal people of legal claims to redress or rights based on Carib ancestry.Taino activist Jorge Estevez condemned historians' 'paper genocide'. . . With stroke of their pens, legacy of my ancestors was wiped out.7 This paper illustrates that genocidal anti-Carib narratives survive because a diverse range of agents who engage publicly with past reproduce them - historians, of course, but also filmmakers, visual artists, poets and government officials. …

Grounded in the Body

The personification of Jerusalem as female in Lamentations is often the entry point for interpretive engagements with the book. Although Daughter Zion metaphorically represents the physical city, the figure is most often interpreted as a poetic means of portraying the suffering and distress of the human inhabitants of the city. Descriptions throughout are dominated by images of human suffering and degradation, and the struggle to come to terms with the trauma of military defeat and destruction. The book is, in its essence, anthropocentric. Does this mean, however, that these poems are limited only to an anthropocentric reading? Drawing on Bakhtinian dialogics, this paper explores the possibility of reading Lamentations 2 from another perspective. Taking its cue from Lamentations’ opening image of the widowed city seated (on the earth?), the discussion explores the metonymic potential of reading the embodied language of the text as a site of engagement with the other-than-human world. Through an excess of seeing, Lamentations 2 is read alongside Jer. 4:5–31as a means of retrieving the voice of another (non-human Other) in the text.

The Mouvement du 23 Mars and the dynamics of a failed insurgency in the Democratic Republic of Congo

This article analyses the link between the decision by the Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23) to occupy the city of Goma in November 2012 and the group's demise a year later in the hands of the revamped Congolese national army supported by the Intervention Brigade of the United Nations. The article argues that the military defeat of the M23 presents peace stakeholders in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Great Lakes region with a valuable opportunity. The rebels' defeat emboldens the Congolese national army and the Intervention Brigade with regard to their ability to take on insurgent groups while raising the cost of continued rebellion for the latter and their potential backers. Although not a panacea for peace in the Great Lakes region, this turn of events should contribute towards stemming the tide of recurring rebellions in the DRC while paving the way for peaceful political engagements among Congolese socio-political stakeholders, on the one hand, and between the DRC and its eastern neighbours, mainly Rwanda and Uganda, on the other hand.

Contested Commemorations: Republican War Veterans and Weimar Political Culture by Benjamin Ziemann (review)

Reviewed by: Contested Commemorations: Republican War Veterans and Weimar Political Culture by Benjamin Ziemann Stefan Goebel Contested Commemorations: Republican War Veterans and Weimar Political Culture. By Benjamin Ziemann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 313. Cloth $99.00. ISBN 978-1107028890. Soon it will be twenty years since Cambridge University Press launched the series Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare with the publication of Jay Winter’s Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning (1995). Focusing on the efforts of the bereaved to come to terms with the experience of loss, Winter’s monograph was essentially a study of the emotional legacy of World War I—with the politics left out. Yet in this latest addition to the burgeoning series, Benjamin Ziemann foregrounds the agency of war veterans and the political dimension of their commemorative practices in the aftermath of World War I, which suggests that the pendulum of interpretation might be swinging the other way. If this is indeed the case, it is not made explicit in Ziemann’s excellent new book, for the author has a different agenda. Contested Commemorations takes issue principally with another seminal work, Fallen Soldiers by George Mosse (1990), which argues that the war’s legacy of “brutalization” had played into the hands of extremist forces that thus managed to instrumentalize the memory of the world war. A congenial discourse to rightwing politics, war commemoration eventually became subsumed in rehearsals for fascism in Germany. Ziemann effectively demolishes the idea of a German special path in commemorative affairs. Stressing the multivocal and highly contested nature of war remembrance in the Weimar Republic, he argues that historians of the Weimar Republic have exaggerated the prevalence of nationalist veterans, on the one hand, and the weakness of the republican settlement, on the other. Ziemann draws our attention to one of Weimar’s “eminent organisational success stories” (67): the much neglected republican veterans’ associations, above all the Reichsbanner Black-Red-Gold and, to a lesser extent, the Reichsbund of disabled war veterans. Numerically much stronger than the rightwing veterans’ leagues, these officially nonpartisan but de facto Social Democratic organizations represented a powerful alternative voice that campaigned for peace, international reconciliation (notably with French veterans), and the defense of the republic. The bulk of the literature on war commemorations has focused on the building and ritualistic use of war memorials. While Ziemann discusses the aborted project of a national memorial (Reichsehrenmal), he also considers a vast range of other media and modes of memory such as personal testimony, official histories, visual images, military insignia, and signifying practices. Ziemann attaches particular importance to the performance of memory—although he takes a less radical performative turn in the substantive chapters than the introduction implies. Successful though the Reichsbanner was in recruiting members (some 2.75 million in 1925) and in establishing local branches (5,618 within just months after its establishment in 1924), the [End Page 454] veterans’ performative celebration of republican citizenship was ultimately marred by several “systematic ambivalences” (270). Even though they were moderate pacifists who aimed for international reconciliation, members of the Reichsbanner cultivated a distinct military style, something that their French counterparts found off-putting. Moreover, there was no place for women in this exclusively male league, apart from occasional guest appearances of Ehrenjungfrauen during flag consecrations. In addition, the Reichsbanner’s socialist rhetoric of class alienated a vast army of potential supporters, especially Catholic workers. The organization’s underlying problems were thus of its own making. There is a further inherent ambivalence in the Reichsbanner commemorations that deserved more emphasis in this study. Republican veterans devised their own language and practices of war commemoration, yet without involving the bereaved: they remembered the war, yet had little to say about death. The slogan “no more war” and calls for reconciliation with the former enemies must have been little consolation for those who were in mourning. Republican veterans regarded the war as futile and interpreted the military defeat as a moment of political liberation from a corrupt and oppressive regime of Etappenschweine. In essence, they remembered the war in order to learn the lessons of the past. These were activists in the heat of...

A ‘lantern in the dark night’: the origins and early development of China’s SIGINT service

This article explores the origins and early development of China’s Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) service, using data released officially since the mid-1980s. Born from revolutionary crisis in the late 1920s, the Red Army’s SIGINT service was founded in 1931, an offshoot of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s development of wireless communications. Though the USSR provided some training assistance, the formative early development of the service relied more on indigenous resources: the training of teenage novices in underground facilities in Shanghai and the Central Soviet and the use of equipment that was self-made, illicitly procured or seized on the battlefield. In the years that followed, Red Army SIGINT – much respected by CCP/Red Army leaders – survived defections and cryptographic obstacles to play a major role in the defence of the Central Soviet against Guomindang encirclement. As military defeat became inevitable, SIGINT also helped to facilitate the successful Red Army retreat that became the historic Long March.

Surrendering to the Big Picture: Historical and Legal Perspectives on Accountability in the Democratic Republic of Congo Following the Defeat of the March 23 Movement

<p class="p1">It remains to be seen whether the past few months will mark a genuine turning point in the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as the rebel faction March 23 Movement (M23) announced the end of its 20-month insurgency against the government on 5 November 2013. News of the rebel group’s surrender following its political and military defeat signals an important moment of hope and renewed prospects of peace and stability in a region prone to protracted armed conflict. However, long-term stability in the country and in the region will require a multi-faceted process consisting of comprehensive accountability for human rights violations that have been committed by all parties to the conflict. In this article, I will first lay out the historical context of the fighting and the root causes of conflict present long before M23’s entrance onto the scene as a splintered rebel faction so as to understand M23’s place within the country’s history of protracted violence. Next, I will explain the violations of international humanitarian and human rights law committed by all possible parties, including rebel and government groups, as well as individual criminal responsibility and corporate liability. Lastly, I will chart the pathways of criminal and social accountability at various levels of international and domestic justice systems to see how the DRC may continue to build long-term local stability in the eastern parts of the country by addressing the question of accountability for international crimes. This brief analysis aims to provide a broader understanding of a complex conflict beyond the defeat and disarmament of M23, albeit a key group in a region of contentious cross-border conflict.

Ending Ethnic Civil Wars: By Negotiations or by Military Defeat? Lessons on security from Sri Lanka

At the beginning of 21st century (ethnic) civil wars have been proliferate all over the world. Many ethnic conflicts – for example the conflict in Sri Lankan between the Sinhalese majority government and the guerrilla fighters of the Tamil minority – are characterized by constant efforts for conflict resolution interspersed with renewed violence, with cycles of military escalation and de-escalation. Also, they are marked by the helplessness of the international actors, who profess their interest in a resolution and try to mediate between the contending parties. But they are rarely successful – why? I assume that the most important question in war and peacetime is whether security is possible to achieve to prevent the security dilemma escalating. In many Asian and African countries people perceive politics and security in ethnic terms. Thus how a party defines security is of decisive importance concerning whether a conflict can end in peace or will be solved militarily. Within an exclusive security concept, security can only persist if the other is annihilated or oppressed by military means, while inclusive security concepts can achieve security by special arrangements, peace agreements or security guarantees. Third parties, who are engaged in mediating violent conflicts, have to keep in mind that it is the elusive balance of these security schemes which determine successful negotiations and at least a permanent solution. To reach a lasting peace it is not sufficient for external actors to provide security; in the long run, they must transform exclusive into inclusive security concepts.

The Confederate Heartland: Military and Civilian Morale in the Western Confederacy

Bradley Clampitt's The Confederate Heartland examines the morale of white civilians and Confederate soldiers from Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee in 1864 and 1865. By using an array of wartime letters and diaries, Clampitt claims that white Southerners in these states constructed a Confederate identity based on a shared sense of sacrifice and desire to protect their homes from invaders.Many historians argue that this region, which witnessed numerous Southern military defeats, is where the Confederacy lost the Civil War. However, Clampitt argues that members of his sample group were confident of an ultimate Confederate victory in early 1864. Those soldiers who reenlisted at this time “for reasons other than a renewed commitment were a minority,” writes Clampitt, although he fails to mention that the soldiers really had no choice about whether to extend their military service (27). Under the leadership of General Joseph E. Johnston, Confederates in the Army of Tennessee maintained high morale throughout the opening weeks of the Atlanta Campaign, the first substantial blow to their morale occurring when Johnston retreated at Cassville rather than attacking the enemy as he had promised. Optimism in the Southern ranks peaked, according to Clampitt, in June 1864 as a result of several battlefield victories.Like most historians of this subject, Clampitt relates that the removal of Johnston from command provoked disbelief and despondency in the ranks. Clampitt then astutely concludes that such emotions quickly gave way to a sense of cautious optimism about Johnston's successor, General John Bell Hood. Although the costly battles of late July 1864 and the loss of Atlanta proved damaging to morale, the subsequent march into North Georgia and Alabama buoyed spirits as soldiers anticipated attacking enemy supply lines and “liberating” Tennessee from Yankee oppressors.Hood's offensive into Tennessee led to the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864, which many Southern soldiers described as a particularly costly victory. The Federals retreated northward after the fighting, and the subsequent Battle of Nashville resulted in a disastrous, crushing defeat for Hood's army, which brought “near wholesale dejection” on the part of the heartland's soldiers and civilians (123). Clampitt believes that these two Tennessee battles, rather than the fall of Atlanta, effectively ended Confederate hopes for independence in the west, even though some diehards continued praying for independence.Confederate Heartland ends with a discussion of events in the opening months of 1865, including the reappointment of Joseph E. Johnston to command the western Confederate Army, the Hampton Roads Peace Conference, and Southern debates over arming slaves. Clampitt argues that there was no consensus on the issue of enlisting slaves, although those who supported the measure did so out of a willingness to sacrifice anything to achieve independence. The overall reaction to the war's end in April 1865, the author claims, included both disgust over submitting to the tyranny of Yankees and relief that the war had finally ended.Clampitt chose not to utilize a quantitative approach to his study, as it “threatened to drain the life from a very human subject,” but providing at least some background regarding the individuals in his sample group would have been helpful (4). How many of his soldiers volunteered in the war's earliest months? How many enlisted under the threat of becoming conscripts? What percentage of the soldiers and civilians he examined came from slave-owning households? How many members of his sample group had families far behind Confederate lines or in areas of the South occupied by Union armies?The author quotes at one point from the correspondence of Grant Taylor, described as a reluctant soldier who “enlisted in 1862 primarily to avoid conscription.” Clampitt claims that Taylor “was atypical of the soldiers cited here” (84). This might be true, but could there have been large numbers of men like Taylor in the numerous regiments of the Army of Tennessee raised in the spring of 1862? The author would have benefited from an examination of Steve Newton's Lost for the Cause: The Confederate Army in 1864 for its fine analysis and conclusions that morale and combat effectiveness varied considerably between different divisions in the Army of Tennessee.Desertion is mentioned occasionally in Clampitt's study, but only in an impressionistic way. He draws on the work of Mark Weitz to comment on desertion patterns among Georgia soldiers, but offers no similar analysis of troops from the states that are the main focus of his book. What impact could Federal incursions into Mississippi, for example, or the Confederate retreat from Tennessee after the Battle of Nashville, have had on desertion rates among troops from those states?The Confederate Heartland is a valuable addition to scholarship on Confederate morale. Hopefully this study will encourage additional work on an important topic.

National legitimacy and overseas Chinese mobilization

This paper examines the Chinese Nationalists’ overseas Chinese policies during the early War of Resistance and the early Cold War. The strategies, organizations and problems of huaqiao mobilization during the Anti-Japanese War set patterns for Cold War anti-Communist efforts. In both struggles, the Nationalists emphasized that they represented China's legitimate government and that support from overseas Chinese was part of a crusade dating back to Sun Yat-sen, the father of the nation. As mothers of the revolution, huaqiao were to remain loyal to Sun's legacy by backing Chiang. Southeast Asia, home to the majority of overseas Chinese, became the focus of Nationalist attention and is the most appropriate arena to examine the vicissitudes of huaqiao policies. Obstacles to huaqiao mobilization did not simply result from Japanese, then Communist, machinations. The Nationalists encountered difficulties due to overseas Chinese apathy and disunity. Further, the complex political environment of Southeast Asia, before and after decolonization, stymied mobilization. Nevertheless, after each military defeat, whether at the hands of the Japanese or the Communists, huaqiao support became more important, not for the material benefits they offered, but for the legitimacy they conferred.

Courses of Conflict: Transmission of Knowledge and War's History in Eastern Sri Lanka

After three decades of armed confrontations, the Sri Lankan civil war ended in May 2009 with the military defeat of the liberation tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). To sustain the war for so long, mechanisms of knowledge reproduction were used legitimizing violence and assuring the conflict's transmission across the generations involved in it. Drawing on ongoing fieldwork in the island's Eastern Province, this article addresses the processes through which Sri Lanka's war-history has been taught and learnt, empirically linking the multiple sites of knowledge transfer. It suggests a trajectory moving from the institutional (policy and textbooks) to the defiant (specific schools and armed movements) spaces of transmission, while comparing the attitudes, memories of violence and transmission strategies of educators, students and former combatants. The data are embedded within the broader discussions on social change and the cultural reproduction of war, a process illustrated with the help of a new concept: semantic alliances.

Se souvenir de l'Indochine L'écriture des femmes engagées dans l'armée française, entre mémoire de guerre et récit de voyage

Abstract From 1945 to 1954, France was at war in Vietnam. Many women who enlisted in the French armed forces after 1940 joined the French Far Eastern Expedition Corps and served well beyond Europe. In 1954, the French-Vietnam war ended in a double loss for French soldiers—a personal as well as a military defeat. With more women serving in and with the military after World War II, women's memories of military service also included the testimony of veterans of the war in Indochina. Many of these women recalled their personal war experiences, sometimes immediately afterward, sometimes many years after the conflict. These memories of women at war are a previously unexplored set of sources of historical memories of the French-Vietnam war, which up to now have been produced mainly, if not exclusively, by men. This study thus shows how feminine authors in the French military expressed their views, between memories of war and travel accounts.

ETNOPOLITOGENESIS CHINESE GIPERETHNOS AND FORECAST OF CHINE

The article gives the analysis of the political history ofChinaon the basis of the biosocial approach and the forecast of its development. The main fundamentals of this approach are: 1. Political and ethnogenetic are interrelated, which suggests the existence of a single process of ethnopolygenesis. 2. The success of the polity in the ethnic group depends on the level of its passionarity: from fractions passionaries (individuals such energy surplus) and sub-passionaries (such as energy-deficient individuals) in its composition. 3. At the heart of the phenomenon of passionarity is the phenomenon of heterosis: passionaries born in racial-anthropological mixed marriages. 4. An ethnos in its development goes through a series of age-phases – stable periods and dividing them phase transitions – unstable crisis periods, characterized by distemper (amplitudinous domestic conflicts). 5. The age range of phases and phase transitions of ethnogenesis and periods of crisis in some phases, similar in character to phase transitions are determined by a universal, invariant eras and types of polities regularity – numerical algorithm of ethnopolygenesis. 6. The distempers and major military defeats mainly are characteristic for unstable periods. 7. There are «reproductive» ages ethnos, in isolated populations of which many passionaries born. The passionaries is born especially a lot in one of the ages, and they form a new supethnoses that form the core of «subsidiary» ethnos. Year of this age is the starting point of reference of the subsidiary ethnos. 8. Several of successive ethnic groups in a particular area, linked by continuity anthropological and racial type and language and often continuity of culture, form the giperethnos. It is shown that the Chinese ethnogenesis developed generally in accordance with the numerical algorithm: distemper in the political history of Chine took place during the periods of unstable states of phase transitions and critical periods in phases. This same regularity is generally true of the major military defeats. It is shown that the Chinese are now in the second half of the stable phase of recovery. There is given the forecast of Chine on the basis of this conclusion. Conclusions of the article may be of interest for scientists involved in political forecasting and for politicians. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12731/2218-7405-2013-5-37