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Archives in financial institutions can often appear detached from reality, less relevant in reporting political facts and the documents mostly reveal redundant financial details. Yet financial institutions hold reliable primary information and their files contain insights of international historical relevance. Through the analysis of documents kept at the historical archive of the the Italian Bank for China (now in Archivio Storico UniCredit) it is possible to contextualize the bank's activity in the first half of the twentieth century in relation to historical facts of the first republic, China. In this article, the author unveils how the Banca Italiana per la Cina was involved in financial and political events concerning the Chinese and Italian governments. In the documents and correspondence written by the bank's management the facts are described with real perception of the situations. They reveal, using reliable sources, significant aspects regarding Sino-Italian relations during that historical period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Ireland has been a consistent contributor to peacekeeping since 1958 and examines how the nature of Irish participation has evolved. The maintenance of an effective UN forms a key objective of Irish foreign policy within which peacekeeping and a policy of military neutrality have come to play a central role. In 1993, Ireland revised the legal basis for participation. This brought about a fundamental change in policy, after which participation in peacekeeping not specifically of a police nature was permitted. Ireland displays evidence of both self-interest and altruism in relation to peacekeeping. Unlike many other European countries, it did not ‘withdraw’ from engagement during the 1990s. Despite greater clarity around decision-making processes in recent years, it is still difficult to discern a clear Irish policy strategy. Challenges identified for the future include the changing nature of UN peacekeeping, budget limitations and downsizing of the Defence Forces, legal obstacles to participation in non-UN approved missions, risk assessment, national caveats and a lack of clear doctrine. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is customary to argue that foreign policy is very much dominated by the executive, with parliaments wielding limited influence. However, with the exception of the US Congress, legislative‒executive relations in the realm of foreign and security policy have attracted remarkably little scholarly attention. Drawing on a principal‒agent framework, this collection scrutinises the conventional wisdom of ‘executive autonomy’ in foreign affairs, indicating that even though parliaments have arguably become more involved in foreign and security policy over time, any notions of parliamentarisation need to be treated with caution. While expectations of consensus in the name of the national interest continue to play an important role in foreign policy decision-making, the papers highlight the role of party-political contestation structuring parliamentary debates and votes in this increasingly politicised issue area. This introductory paper introduces the analytical framework and hypotheses guiding the contributions in this collection, summarises their main findings and suggests avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently, Australia's cricketing past has been coloured by an anglocentric bias. Australian cricket writers, players and administrators mainly have deemed Australian series with subcontinental countries of much lesser importance than Ashes contests. In surveying Australia's cricketing relations with the subcontinent from the 1880s until Australia's first fully fledged official tour of the region in 1959–1960, this paper seeks to redress this imbalance. The paper explores how initial cricketing relations were viewed within the prism of Australia's traditional cricketing ties with England. This did not alter with India's attaining official Test match status in the 1930s. Australian tours of India were confined to unofficial teams, and it was not until 1947–1948 that the first official exchange occurred. As this paper documents, the importance of subcontinental cricket tours increased after the war, as both Labor and Liberal Coalition governments encouraged the use of cricket to foster diplomatic ties at a time of increasing decolonisation and when Indian and Australian external relations were ideologically opposed. The governments' efforts were not fully supported by many Australian cricketers and administrators. While some, such as the Australian captain Ian Johnson, embraced cricketing diplomacy, many of his colleagues coloured these new cricketing worlds with old Australian prejudices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on understanding the different evolutions of business' associational paths in post-Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) Chile and Uruguay, offering an explanation at the crossroads of the institutional change and international trade literatures. The argument is that the different forms in which ISI institutions were transformed during the liberalisation period facilitated a greater mobility of factors to different degrees, triggering divergent enduring associational strategies on the part of business. The proliferation of narrow-based special benefits during the ISI fuelled preferences for the formation of sector-based coalitions oriented towards rent-seeking activities. Nevertheless, while ISI regulations were displaced in Chile during the military period, Uruguay followed a gradual process of layering of new rules alongside old ones. These diverging strategies, having different effect on established inter-sectoral regulatory distortions, propitiated alternative associational paths of local business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an introduction to the following papers, which represent the results of a round table at the Nordiska Historikermöte 2004 in Stockholm. It discusses the renewed interest in the study of diplomacy and international politics. This revival during the past few decades is sometimes not more than a reinvention of the old diplomatic history. However, it is also influenced by the history of ideas, as elaborated by Anglo‐American historians, and modern cultural sociology. The history of diplomacy seen from the perspective of cultural transfer offers new insights into early modern diplomacy based on a new reading of well‐known material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, South Africa has sought to perform several roles on the world stage, such as the economic dynamo of Southern Africa, a diplomatic heavyweight representing the African continent, and a norm leader on the world stage as a so-called ‘middle-power’. Although South Africa's evolution and rise as an important player in global affairs has generated a welcome body of critical scholarly literature, comparatively little analysis has been allocated to understandinghownorm dynamics and the country's ever-evolving international identities have enabled it to construct and reconstruct its ‘interests’. Social constructivism is best suited for such an analysis because it can operationalise norms, commitments, identities, and interests, and it provides the epistemological tools to map the increasingly multilateral connections between global, regional, and domestic forums. By employing a rationalist approach to constructivism, this paper remedies the aforementioned gap in the literature by illustrating how South Africa constructs and reconstructs its identities and interests in relation to membership in international organisations (IOs). To that end, the paper examines the evolution of South Africa's participation in the African Union (especially ‘peacekeeping’ contributions) and the International Criminal Court. The paper concludes by assessing the theoretical implications and practical ramifications of the norm dynamics involved in South Africa's commitment to these two IOs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The positive role that external powers can play in the creation and maintenance of security in regions has long been ignored; external interference is generally perceived as detrimental to the ability of a group of states to function as a community. However, this paper argues that in the case of ASEAN, the presence of external actors allows the group to function as a community that also provides and ensures security. This paper furthers the debate regarding ASEAN's security functions. With international attention focused on the Asia-Pacific, there is a need to understand the context in which security is maintained in Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from the assumption that geostrategic and security interests alone are not sufficient to explain China’s foreign policy choices. It argues that ideas about what China’s role as an actor in the increasingly globalised international system should be, and about world order in general, have a deep influence on China’s foreign policy decision-making process. Taking the North Korean issue as a case study, the paper postulates that China is currently engaged in a search for a ‘new’ identity as a global player. China’s actor identity is composed of various partly contradictory role conceptions. National roles derived from China’s internal system structures and its historical past lead to continuity in foreign policy, while the ‘new’ roles resultant from China’s rise to global power require an adaptation of its foreign policy principles. In the case of its relationship with North Korea, China’s foreign policy is oscillating between the two roles of ‘socialist power’ – as thus comrade-in-arms with its socialist neighbour – and ‘responsible great power’, which leads to it being expected to comply with international norms, and thus to condemn North Korea’s nuclear provocations and related actions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the colonial discourse of the global population problem in Korea under Japanese rule (1910-1945). I consider the recent call of Alison Bashford to draw attention to the geopolitical and spatial dimensions of the colonial population discourse in the non-Western Japanese Empire and to interrogate global population from the perspective of East Asian imperialism in the twentieth century. By opening up the colonial archives on population through an examination of colonial state and pro-state magazines in Korea, such as Chōsen (Korea) and Chōsen oyobi Manchu (Korea and Manchuria), I demonstrate how metropolitan and colonial elites, including imperial and colonial state officials, politicians, intellectuals, physicians and so on, at pains to build Japan's empire, engaged in the debates on jinkō mondai (population problem) in 1920s and 1930s Korea. The details of the debate bring to light the ways in which the management of the population problem undergirded the complex issues of the peninsula and the empire at large, including emigration, Japanese settlement, the cultivation of Manchuria, the development of mining and heavy chemical industries, the Sino-Japanese War, Western imperial rule and the emancipation of the coloured populations/races. Further, I delineate how these details were deeply imbedded in the racialized struggle between the Japanese race/coloured races vs. the white race in the global governance of the population and territory in the final phase of Japanese imperial aggression. By going beyond the Western, Anglo-Saxon debates on population, this paper seeks to showcase how East Asian imperial power responded to the white, Western discourse of 'race suicide vs. the yellow peril'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]