Nul égalitarisme dans les hautes terres Wa : commensuration relative dans la parenté, le sacrifice et la guerre

The autonomy of the United Wa State Army of Myanmar today is said to be based on the egalitarianism of Wa communities in the past. The analysis of commensuration in kinship, sacrifice, and war challenges these portrayals of autonomy and egalitarianism. In the past, the making and taking of lives could not be measured in absolute terms but required situationally specific and relational commensuration. Since the 1960s, commensuration has intensified with modern technologies and communication networks, especially in the context of military government, enabling new scales and benchmarks for measuring social relations. Military organization and cultural authenticity are based on absolute measures and exact equivalences, at least in theory. In practice, the levelling of human lives is resisted in the social relations of para‐militarism, and in the cultural production of para‐nationalism. Assessing the scale and violence of measurement, the article describes how relations of autonomy and mutuality changed from sacrificial exchange in the past to para‐nationalist sacrifice today, without ever becoming ‘egalitarian’ in the strict sense of the term.

“A Good Deal of Free Advertising” despite her “Obscene Character”: Nuancing Media Portrayals of an Escaped Nun in the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras

This article examines the media coverage of the “escaped nun,” Edith O'Gorman, one of the few “escaped nuns” who had actually been a member of a religious community. She used her experiences in the convent to drive her career as a lecturer in the United States and abroad. Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis, this article examines US newspaper coverage of O'Gorman from the year of her escape in 1868 to a year after her death in 1929. By analyzing articles, advertisements and reviews of the escaped nun, this study traces a shift in how the American newspapers portrayed the former nun, initially largely depicting her in sensationalist and entertainment terms in the 1860s through 1880s to later placing her as part of a determined anti‐Catholic movement in the 1890s through 1910s. Unlike previous histories on anti‐Catholicism in this era, this study traces media coverage of an anti‐Catholic reformer in the general press, rather than only in the nativist press. This study nuances the history of anti‐Catholicism in the years after the American Civil War, particularly how Americans may have viewed the convent and escaped nuns.

War and Peace: Ogawa Takemitsu's Theological Engagement with State and Religion

The Manchurian Incident of 1931 marked a pivotal moment in the rise of Japanese fascism. During the period from this incident until the Pacific War's defeat, dissent from the state's control was not tolerated, leading to coercive measures in religious communities. The Christian community, rather than devising theological reasoning to resist the state's control, chose to align with the state emphasizing unwavering loyalty to the emperor. This paper aims to focus on Ogawa Takemitsu, who led Christian peace movements through post‐war organizations such as the “Christian Peace Association.” Reflecting on the state of Japanese Christianity during wartime, Ogawa deepened his theological contemplation on the church and state, war and peace, and sought to shape a new form of post‐war Japanese Christianity. Ogawa's peace movement, which distanced itself from the logic of the state that causes war and strived to build a peaceful community through transnational citizen solidarity, reminds us of the issues of the Japanese Constitution and pacifism that have been central themes in post‐war Japanese politics. It can also serve to re‐emphasize the meaning of a peaceful community to Japanese society, which continues to pursue constitutional revision aimed at becoming a war‐capable state.

Strangers on the ladder of the party‐state: Women in teaching in Nationalist Taiwan, 1940s–1980s

Abstract As the ruling party of a party‐state in China and Taiwan, the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang/Guomindang) built a close relationship with the teaching profession. Many teachers joined the party and there was a well‐trodden pathway from teaching into local representative politics and civil service. In the early 1950s when most teachers were men, the party's special relationship with teaching was consistent with a generally conservative approach to gender. Large numbers of women entered teaching from the late 1940s. This was a global trend but was accelerated in Taiwan by the unique form of coloniality on the island in the post war era. The government required teachers to be Mandarin‐speakers and favoured Mainlanders. Although Taiwanese women were still disadvantaged, Mainland women had some advantage over Taiwanese men. The rapid rise of women in teaching sparked a degree of resistance, which was in turn countered by rhetoric that feminised teaching. Despite such resistance, the party‐state's pathways from teaching into politics endured and facilitated the entry of a significant number of women into local electoral politics.

Virility, fascism and regeneration in post‐Civil War Spain: On interpretations of literary Romanticism under the Franco regime

Abstract In the years immediately following the Spanish Civil War, the political culture of Falangism developed a deeply gendered regenerationist discourse, which proposed that regeneration would only be possible if the nation recovered its virile attributes. This article focuses on a case study that allows us to better understand this gendered conception of the nation in terms of virility: the discourse developed around the Spanish Romantic writers of the 1830s, a literary movement difficult to incorporate within conceptions of the virile nation. This gained prominence particularly because several centenaries associated with these writers occurred during the war and post‐war period.

Germans in Nigeria during the First World War: From Traders to Enemy Subjects

Abstract Drawing on extensive archival research in Berlin and Ibadan, this article makes an original contribution to the growing body of research that acknowledges the global features of the First World War. The article explores this wider subject by examining the wartime position and treatment of German civilians in Nigeria. In recent decades, there has been growing interest in wartime measures against enemy subjects, but developments in West Africa have attracted little scholarly attention thus far. The article begins by analysing German activities in the region before 1914, highlighting the prominent role of German merchants in the regional economy. It then traces various measures that the British colonial authorities adopted upon the outbreak of the war, as well as noting concerns about the role of German propaganda in provoking social and political unrest in Nigeria. The article covers the initial wartime restrictions on German companies as well as the internment and subsequent removal of German subjects from British West Africa.

Stalin's Great Game: War and Neutrality, 1939–1941 . By

Churchill and Russia: ‘A Resolve to Persevere Through Many Differences’

Abstract This article contends that Winston Churchill's tenure as Secretary of State for War was the most consequential period for his relationship with Russia. By helping to consolidate his views on the county's geopolitical position and of communism and providing a glimpse of a nation which was capable of democracy and neither inherently Tsarist nor Soviet, those years shaped his perceptions of modern Russia more than any other period. Such views later played a role in forming Churchill's approach to Anglo‐Soviet relations in the build up to the Second World War, and his insistence on co‐operation with Stalin. His experience of Russia's civil war is therefore necessary for understanding his views of the Soviet Union: he judged it relative to an ideal of modern Russia. Ultimately, the article supports the conclusion that the Grand Alliance with the USSR was the result of a complex evolution in Churchill's views of Russia and international politics, rather than simply sharing a common foe.

Internationalism as Encounter: Grassroots Diplomacy on the San Francisco‐to‐Moscow March, 1960–61

Abstract This article discusses the ‘Global March for Peace’ of 1960–61 – an initiative that took a group of activists from San Francisco to Moscow, crossing countries on both sides of the Cold War divide. While the general development of this march is well known, this article offers a fresh perspective in several ways. Drawing on a varied range of sources, it pays particular attention to the expectations, experiences and reflections of US activists who had strongly been involved in the march. Moreover, it uses the history of the march to examine different elements of internationalist practice and reappraises the march as an experiment in ‘grassroots diplomacy’, while also revealing the latter's intrinsic tensions.

Churchill and Australia: The Anxious Dominion

Abstract This article focuses on Winston Churchill's relations with three Australian prime ministers, Robert Menzies, Arthur Fadden and John Curtin, between 1940 and 1942. In doing so, the article reflects on the historiographical debate about Churchill and Australia during the Second World War and what Australia's dominion status meant at the time. In the interwar period, Australia generally resisted the efforts of Canada, South Africa and the Irish Free State to move quickly in the direction of greater autonomy. It is the argument of this article that Australia's outlook on its dominion status changed dramatically during the Second World War. Fear of invasion by Japan impelled its leaders to demand that it be treated as an equal with the right to a greater say in allied strategy and the disposition of its military forces. This outlook frequently placed the three Australian leaders at odds with Churchill, whom they resented as treating Australia like a colony. At the same time, Churchill's attitudes to Australia were paradoxical. Despite his firm views on imperial strategy and the proper role of Australia in supporting it, Churchill and his wartime government ultimately deferred to Australia's strongly expressed wishes and treated Australia as an independent country.