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This essay builds on Walter Johnson's "On Agency" to reflect on how the concept of the liberal subject as agent has been understood in Euro-American and Japanese intellectual discourses on Asia and especially Japan. It begins with a discussion of "the subject" in Orientalism and Liberalism and its entanglements with historicist and imperialist understandings of a progressive "West" and laggard "East," as well as the travels of Orientalist discourse from Europe to Asia. It then considers how postcolonial interventions as well as Foucault's critique of the liberal subject have stimulated a rethinking of the self-constituting agent of choice and ends with thoughts on how a multiply spirited notion of the subject may offer suggestions for conceptualizing an alternative agent of action and social responsibility who refuses the self-importance of a singular subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews four new books, each of which assesses the prospects of contemporary democracy in the face of wide-ranging crises—from the legacies of settler colonialism to the resurgence of right-wing nationalism—and finds possibilities for democratic renewal in aesthetic orientations and practices. Taken together, Jason Frank's The Democratic Sublime (2021), Andrés Fabián Henao Castro's Antigone in the Americas (2021), Michael Steinberg's The Afterlife of Moses (2022), and Elisabeth Anker's Ugly Freedom s (2022) suggest that the aesthetic turn in democratic theory most closely associated with the work of Jacques Rancière has been decisive. But if democratic theorists now fully embrace the centrality of creativity, performative assembly, and affective attachment and aversion to democratic renewal, they do not fully agree on the more fundamental question of whether democracy is a stable form that has aesthetic features or whether it is constitutively aesthetic—in other words, whether its people comes into being in moments of materialization with no prior referent. If contemporary political theorists... have found better prospects for the revitalization of democratic politics in collective performance and creative resistance than in... legal and political institutions, this shows how seriously... democratic thought has come to take democracy's aesthetic dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This forum, curated by Michael Goebel (Freie Univ. Berlin), brings together twelve historians who draw on their own areas of specialization to rethink how we conceptualize the history of nationalism in our present moment of reactivated and often militant nationalist rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neither the idea that Britain 'stood alone' in 1940, nor that the British war was a 'people's war', were at all common during the Second World War. If anything was thought to be 'alone', it was the empire, though the more common view was that the empire always had allies. 'People's war' was a rare synonym for 'total war' and was sometimes used in an internationalist sense of a war of many peoples, and as the sort of war Britain should be, but was not, fighting. However, from 1945 a national 'alone' came into usage, for example by Churchill; but only from the 1960s was it a commonplace in history books. 'People's war' became more widely used in histories written in the 1960s, which defined it in a national progressive sense, although the term did not become common until the 1990s. Both ideas were essentially the creations of historians, who nationalised the history of what was an imperial and internationalist war, often turning it into a radically different domestic story focused on a national Home Front (ignoring the many imperial home fronts), a story which marginalised the military, foreign and political history of the war, and indeed the social history of the military as well. Historians later assumed that 'alone' and 'people's war' represented wartime nationalist ideologies, and wrote about them critically. Yet until recently they did not recognise that it was the very particular nature of the histories written in the 1960s which had generated these terms, and which embodied very particular analyses of British history and of the Second World War. The paper ends by arguing that much greater understanding is needed of the core assumptions which lie beneath the historiography of twentieth-century Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We live at a time of heightened nationalism on the political right and left, from the mobilization of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States and Europe, to promoting Palestinian liberation. This article, focusing on Lenin's work concerning imperialism, shows the importance, yet shortcomings of foregrounding the nation in calling for social transformation. The piece reads Lenin's contributions on imperialism, highlighting his understanding of strategy and the dual nature of nationalism, in light of debates within Critical Theory more generally. As I argue, Lenin offers insights for Critical Theorists, particularly on the place of nationalism within transformative political projects, as well as on the dynamics of capitalist accumulation and territorial acquisition. Lenin's work on imperialism draws our attention to the idea that only by mobilizing beyond the state/society binary—which many Critical Theorists and activists reify, sometimes unintentionally—can we explore the nature of emancipatory political action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the nationalist preoccupations underpinning Robert Southey's three-volume History of Brazil (1810–1819), maintaining that there are important links between his historiographical practices and his rethinking of British imperialism in relation to the challenges raised by the Peninsular War and Napoleonic France. It argues that Southey's rejection of many of the discourses associated with European encodings of the imperial frontier—such as climatic determinism, sentimental and stirring descriptions, and conquest narratives—forms part of the emergence of a new legitimatory style of British national historiography. While Southey deflates sublime or heroic tales of discovery and conquest, he nonetheless naturalizes the European experience in Brazil via a latent Anglocentric subtext, simultaneously co-opting the hegemonic tendencies of Spanish/Portuguese imperialism, and representing Britain as a benign colonial power divorced from the violence and cruelty associated with those regimes. As Southey's Brazilians progress towards independence from Portugal, they are invested with more refined moral sensibilities and peculiarly 'British' national qualities, making their drift towards emancipation a vindication of a superior British colonial culture. Southey thus uses Brazil as a complex geopolitical space with which to examine a number of his most pressing national concerns, including his fears regarding French imperialism, his residual support for anti-slavery and emancipatory movements, his faith in British expansionism and missionary interventionism, his understanding of the British national character, and his endorsement of new models of ethnic and civic nationalism pioneered in South America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution builds on the assumption that the largely unregulated employment of force practised by Europeans outside of central Europe in the last decades before World War I, between 1914 and 1918, for the first time developed its full destructive potential in a catastrophic war between industrialized Western countries. It focuses on justifications for war and intervention in the three decades before World War I, differentiating between orderrelated and ontological justifications. Both categories of reasons were used to justify violent measures in the context of Western imperialism and nationalism before the war, leading to an ever more permissive ius ad bellum regime. What was generally being treated as a unified regime of the use of force (ius ad bellum and in bello) was in fact a complex and increasingly unstable Western-dominated discursive practice differentiating between the objects of violence through various argumentative techniques. European and US international lawyers and politicians differentiated between the use of force between, first, the great powers (core); second, between themselves and other sovereign states in their respective strategic and economic zones of influence (semi-periphery) and, third, between violence and war vis-à-vis peoples living on territories that they did not recognize as independent sovereign states (periphery). This differentiation followed the projection of military and economic power in the context of Western imperialism. Only by taking these underlying discursive structures into account, the legal debates around aggression and extreme violence also during World War I and in Versailles can arguably be fully understood. Despite various attempts to ban or institutionalize interstate violence after 1919, both order-related and ontological justifications for the use of force remained an influential discursive structure of 20th century international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonial and settler colonial dispossession is performed through various forms of violence, justified by cultural, historical, religious and national imperatives. In this paper, I define one of these forms of violence as the occupation of the senses, referring to the sensory technologies that manage bodies, language, sight, time and space in the colony. This paper analyses the parades, marches and festivals performed in the Palestinian city space of occupied East Jerusalem; shares the slogans, chants and graffiti used by Israeli civil, religious and nationalist entities; and explores what is lived, seen, heard, felt and smelled by the colonized to uncover the political violence implicated in the occupation of the senses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at Latin American responses to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, with a particular focus on national politics and international relations. According to the author, Latin American governments and citizens attempted to use the crisis to alter U.S. policy towards Cuba and towards their own countries. The author notes that responses to the crisis varied considerably from country to country despite the unified appearance presented by a 1962 emergency resolution of the Council of the Organization of American States (OAS). It is suggested that Latin American responses to the crisis illustrate the Cold War political dynamics of the region. Topics discussed include nationalism, pan-Latin Americanism, imperialism, and insurgency.

This article examines what motivated the dominions to make such a sustained and costly contribution to the war effort of the British empire during the First World War. With particular reference to Australia, it argues that imperial loyalty, now discounted as anachronistic, was the dominant ideology. Not only did it inspire the initial generous support for the British war effort but, for many Australians, the empire's cause invested with meaning the battle losses which were proportionately the highest of any dominion army. The Gallipoli campaign of 1915 is now celebrated as having given birth to the foundational narrative of the young Australian nation, but at the time this embryonic nationalism too was positioned within the framework of imperial loyalty. Moreover, with the conservative forces dominating federal politics after the divisive debates about conscription in 1916 and 1917, 'loyalty' became entrenched as the litmus test of political reliability. Hence, while Australia's Prime Minister W. M. (Billy) Hughes aggressively asserted the rights of the dominions to a new and more independent role within the imperial relationship in 1918 and 1919, this agenda for change found little support at home. It is therefore ahistorical to see the First World War as the birth of Australian nationalism in the sense that the term is understood today. Rather, imperial loyalty was affirmed by the British victory as the dominant ideology and proved able to accommodate the growing sense of national singularity that the war fuelled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the British Empire's response to the Armenian genocide during the early 20th century. It examines the British government's desire to demonstrate that its imperial responsibilities included the enforcement of human rights, the nationalism among Muslims in Ottoman Turkey that British efforts fostered, and the convergence of human rights and geopolitics. The article also discusses the history of British defense of human rights in the Ottoman Empire.

This article examines how English radicals reacted to the challenge of Irish nationalism in the mid nineteenth century. The Young Ireland, Fenian and Home Rule movements brought forth responses from across the spectrum of English radicalism, but scholars have neglected this topic, even as they have emphasized the importance of continental nationalisms for understanding English radicalism. This article, drawing on the radical press and manuscript sources, argues that a belief in the exceptional nature of the United Kingdom constitution, together with the growing importance of the imperial interest, convinced English radicals to reject Irish nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shih, Chih-yu. (2011) Assigning Role Characteristics to China: The Role State Versus The Ego State. Foreign Policy Analysis, doi: 10.1111/j.1743-8594.2011.00158.x This paper distinguishes and integrates national identity and national image through a deep role analysis. It argues that the meaning of China's rising rests upon the views of those who evaluate China's role playing. This role analysis mediates between international relations and Chinese foreign policy. It also mediates between China watchers and their China. The two dimensions of role-role taking and role making-generate four different discursive approaches to interpreting the rise of China, each in its own way associated with the affects of opportunity and threat. They are 'nation state,''civilization,''Tianxia,' and 'Asianism.' In response to the external view on the rise of China, Chinese narrators often take the Tianxia and nation state approaches as components of their conception of national role. These conceptions mediated by role-making and role-taking, evolve into four possible strategic focuses-national interests, imperialism, sovereignty and center-periphery. While this last strategic focus on role-taking has recently attracted enthusiastic response in China, it has been re-appropriated by social science concepts such as soft power and social capital that assume an egoistic role-making China is on the move. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review essay is presented that explores how historians have approached the imperial history of the United States. It explores issues related to power, global connections and space and discusses the relationship between the imperial history of the U.S. and the urban history of the U.S. Topics discussed include exceptionalism, nationalism, nation-states and forms of state control.

An examination of the reactions of Indians to the British Empire Exhibition suggests connections between the imperial languages of the nineteenth century and those of the twentieth, a bridge between the Victorian era of unquestioned dominance and emerging discourses of colonial development and ‘race relations’ that would gain ascendancy after the Second World War. The organization of the exhibition in India provides a key to understanding how ‘race’, formerly a marker of British self-confidence, was increasingly a subject of contestation and negotiation between Britain and colonized subjects, and illustrates how changes in ‘racial’ boundaries occurring in imperial culture were a response to challenges mounted by colonized people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the Houston Mount Everest Expedition of 1933, which resulted in the first successful air flights over Mount Everest. Rather than the story of the flights or their technical contributions, it focuses upon their political implications. Central to those implications was the project’s connection to Britain’s extreme right community. Several involved with the expedition were associated with Britain’s high imperialist, often pro-fascist, far right. Their participation in such a cutting edge project acts as one example of the modernist impulse of the far right tendency in the inter-war years. The expedition would provide an opportunity to use modern technology as a metaphor for national regeneration during a period when many saw Britain in steep decline. Some hoped it would make a strong statement to the indigenous people of that region. The flights were conducted in the spring of 1933 during the anxious debate over the future of India. To the far right, the idea of granting Indians even limited autonomy was abhorrent, and many hoped that such a feat of courage and technical prowess would convince Indians of British racial superiority and to abandon their struggles for independence. Others would interpret the meaning of the expedition in different ways, related to the extension of British power. The War Office was delighted with the potential for mapping any area of the earth and facilitating imperial control of contested territories. Still others on the far right were excited about the potential air survey and what air cargo would mean for the economic development of the Empire, linked to the extreme right dream of an autarchic imperial economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author reflects on Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse's "The Problem of Population and the Form of the American Novel," which is a continuation of their previous paper on Puritan captivity narrative. He questions the structural and normative relations among nationalism, cosmopolitanism, imperialism and gender and kinship. He also addresses the issue of the specifics of the cosmopolitan itineraries in domestic novels and their characters.

Despite exhortations to examine colonialism as a dynamic interplay between subjects and rulers, histories of German colonialism still largely tend to either study the structures of colonial rule in the colony or to map the politics and culture of colonialism in the metropole. This essay reviews recent books in the field of German colonialism that offer a diverse array of subject matter, chronologies, methodologies, and sources. Work re- viewed includes Sebastian Conrad on the transnational construction of German nationalism; Sandra Maß on the gendered implications of colonial heroes and black savage warriors in Weimar-era propaganda; Andrea Schultze on the Berliner Mission's land ownership in South Africa; and Karin Schestokat on German women travel writers in Cameroon. By means of a detailed analysis of each book, the reviewer suggests that the effort to connect colony to metropole—and especially, to trace the impact of the colonies on German metropolitan society and culture—might ultimately be a futile one; for the larger metropolitan constructions of 'race' emerged in the first place to prevent just such an exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, German naval and colonial agitation has been discussed as a late nineteenth-century development that signaled the cooption of many German liberals to a conservative policy of imperialism. This has been posited by many historians as antithetical to the true nature and objectives of political liberalism. Those few commentators that have noted the naval and colonial agitation of liberals during the early and mid-nineteenth century have argued that there was a period in which these imperialist pressures were subdued, when their end was heralded by the failure of the nationalist movements of 1848/49 to consolidate their nation-building project. Through an investigation of the Frankfurt National Assembly and the National Association of the 1860s it becomes apparent, however, that German liberal imperialism did not represent the distasteful invention of a somehow corrupted liberalism of the 1880s, nor did it cease to be a leitmotiv within liberal circles after 1849. Rather, German liberals, enamoured with the model of Britain as a global trading power and concerned with the economic repercussions of undirected emigration, had continuously argued for a German imperialist capacity throughout the nineteenth century as an integral part of any attempt to build a trading nation that could compete internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of historical understanding in nationalist discourses in colonial India. The author challenges the idea that modern history writing was state-centered and based on rational-positivistic methodology. Moreover, an examination of the relationship of rational-positivist history with romantic, popular history is presented. The author incorporates intellectual history with the history of nationalism and its culture. It focuses on colonial and emergent nations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The author of this article asks two main questions. First, what was the nature of the so-called medieval colonization in the eastern half of central Europe? Secondly, which factors decided that in the second half of the nineteenth and in the twentieth century, during the era of a rising modern nationalism and imperialism, colonization became the—not always conscious—tool of manipulation in the fight for so-called 'historic rights' in certain territories and the battle for the 'forging of nations'. In particular, in German historiography the myth of medieval colonization was born, which had very little in common with medieval reality. Even German peasants were supposed to have marched East, not in order to seek out better living conditions, as one Flemish song went, but to subject for Germany 'empty space' in the barbaric East. At the same time, the author presents the thesis that several ideas about the topic of medieval colonization developed under the influence of the colonization of North America, especially in California—contemporary to many of these German scholars. This found its expression in the terminology used, in numerous comparisons, and even in the fundamental suggestion that German law legitimized the German claim for almost the whole of central and eastern Europe. The basic conviction among German historians and politicians was that these territories should belong to the Empire under the same conditions as India 'belonged' to the English, and Algeria to the French. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses imperial policies and nationalism in the decolonization of Somaliland from 1954 to 1960. Impact of the historiography of decolonization; Context of decolonization of Somaliland; Influence of the British policy on the political and economic condition of Somaliland.

Examines the U.S. position on imperialism. Overall policy needs and concerns of the U.S. that reflect on its stance on imperialism; Changes in U.S. thinking on the imperial idea; Relationship between imperial idea and U.S. national identity.

Focuses on the influence of imperialism and nationalism on the modern history in India. Nature of late colonial state power; Analysis of the political negotiation and mass mobilization; Enhancement of the resource extraction.