A Case of Diplomatic Symbiosis: France, Israel and the Former French Colonies in Africa, 1958-62
This article deals with the interesting three-way relationship between Israel, France, and the former French colonies in Africa located south of the Sahara during the years 1958–62. The main argument of the paper is that in French Africa Israel and France maintained a sort of symbiosis: by seeking its own self-interest, each side fulfilled a vital function for the other. France showed great patience with Israel’s attempts to penetrate its former colonies, more so than vis-a-vis any other countries. From Israel’s standpoint this was a great opportunity, since it granted Israel a kind of exclusivity over supplementing French aid in its former colonies: France removed possible competition and made the assistance that Israel could offer even more attractive to the Africans. For its part, Israel saw itself as being required, almost without exception, to obtain France’s consent of undertakings that it initiated in the African states. Therefore, if it was decreed that the new states in Africa were to receive assistance from other countries, then Israel was a convenient default, since it, more than any other country, showed sensitivity to the French interests there.
Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/51/1/145?rss=1
Between Empire and Nation: A Micro-Historical Approach to Japanese Repatriation and the Korean Economy During the US Occupation of Korea, 1945-6
After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, nearly a million Japanese people initiated a massive repatriation movement back to Japan from former imperial Japanese territories in Manchuria and Korea. Utilizing a micro-historical approach to examine Japanese repatriation in southern Korea, this article argues that repatriation unfolded through a three-phase process that demonstrated the historical agency of the Koreans and Japanese in the midst of US occupation controls. As the Japanese began to determine their own identity within a post-imperial nation-state system, they utilized ‘secret ships’ to move themselves and their possessions back to Japan. US searches of departing Japanese for money and assets reveal the micro-level processes of dismantling the Japanese imperial economy and creating separate national economies in Korea and Japan. As Japanese repatriates evaded the controls through creative counter-measures, the repatriation process itself and the development of the secret ship system created new economic connections between Japan and Korea. The fragments of the Japanese empire were reassembled into new postwar configurations that were dependent on individual choices being made at the ground level by the Japanese and the Koreans as they stood at the transition between empire and nation.
Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/51/1/124?rss=1
The Dark Side of Transnationalism Social Engineering and Nazism, 1930s-40s
This article introduces the special section on the history of social engineering and Nazism during the 1930s and 1940s. It sketches the object of social engineering, the historiographical debates surrounding it, the place of Nazism in this discussion and the role of transnationality. Moreover, it introduces the contributions and discusses questions for further research.
Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/51/1/3?rss=1
The Gospel of Enthusiasm: Salesmanship, Religion and Colonialism in Australian Department Stores in the 1920s and 1930s
This article considers the nexus between Christian religious practices and the emerging commercial institution of the department store in interwar Australia. It argues that interwar sales managers used religious ritual and language as transitional behavioural forms and as bastions of ‘authentic feeling’ in the face of mechanization, bureaucratization and rationalization. Drawing on the newly opened Coles Myer archive, it traces the attempts of managers and industrial welfare experts to mould salespeople to make them as effective as possible and to deal with the unintended consequences that arose from a perceived lack of authenticity and sincerity in the interactions between salespeople and their customers. It also examines how colonial ideology was woven into salesmanship training in interwar Australian department stores through the performance of store pageants and the writing of store histories.
Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/51/1/91?rss=1
Hitlers Africa in the East: Italian Colonialism as a Model for German Planning in Eastern Europe
Since Hannah Arendt’s essay on the ‘Origins of Totalitarianism’ in 1951, there has been a vivid scholarly debate about a nexus between Imperial Germany’s colonial endeavours in Africa and the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe. Some historians have gone so far as to draw a direct line from the colonial massacres of Windhoek to those committed at Auschwitz. Yet my article suggests a different answer to the question of historical continuities: in its plans for Poland and the Soviet Union, the Third Reich did not draw upon its own colonial past but looked to the undertakings of Fascist Italy in Africa for inspiration. Italy’s huge settlement project, with which it sought to produce the racially superior Fascist New Man, served as a model for Nazi Germany particularly in one crucial regard: in the organization and regulation of a new Volksgemeinschaft at the edge of the empire. These findings are of far-reaching significance for our understanding of both Italian Fascism and National Socialism. The still dominant image of Mussolini’s regime as an insignificant appendage to the superior Nazi state is inaccurate. Rather, modern social engineering of Italian Fascism acted as an ‘inspirational’ force on Nazi Germany, catalysing the evolution of Hitler’s dictatorship.
Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/51/1/61?rss=1
Engineering the European Volksgemeinschaft: Social Engineering, Pedagogy and Fascism in the case of the Swiss Alfred Zander
This article examines transnational social engineering through a biographical study of Alfred Zander, a Swiss member of a humanist and internationalist pedagogical movement known as New Education and later a founding member of Swiss fascism and a volunteer to the German Waffen-SS during the Second World War. The bridging concept that allowed Zander's seemingly contradictory transformation was his belief in the necessity of a return in the classroom, as in politics, to a previously existing ‘organic’ state: a Volksgemeinschaft. Zander's case suggests a broader view of social engineering as his stated goal and methods relied little on data and science. Moreover his case illustrates a unique directionality among transnational actors, that from a transnational methodology and rationale toward a transnational goal.
Quelle: http://jch.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/51/1/40?rss=1