Anne L. Foster (Indiana State University) and Petra Goedde (Temple University) Editors, Diplomatic History
Covid-19 has laid bare the tension between globalism and nationalism, the promise and limits of modern medicine, the persistence of inequality, legacies of imperialism and racism. We have witnessed human beings adapt with remarkable resilience, but also the toll the took on families and individuals beyond the threat of death and disease: isolation, job loss, financial insecurity, uncertainty.
As university teachers and mothers, we scrambled in the spring of 2020 to adjust our living and teaching. As foreign relations scholars and journal editors we were thinking about what all this meant for our work. And so we invited a group of scholars to reflect on this question: What has living through this pandemic revealed or changed about your conception of your scholarship?
We are happy to announce that the twenty-three short essays they wrote have just been published in the June 2021 issue of Diplomatic History, all of which are currently free to read and download online.
Professor Richard Toye (@RichardToye) of the Centre for Imperial and Global History interviews Professor Jürgen Zimmerer (@juergenzimmerer) of the University of Hamburg on the theme of contested German colonial history.
RT: You recently gave a fascinating interview on the theme of repressed/suppressed memories of German colonialism. One point you made is that because Germany had had its colonies taken away after World War I, it did not go through the same post-1945 decolonization process as other European countries; rather at that point it had to deal with the legacy of the Nazi era. But in spite of that – looking at the reactions to your interview on Twitter – it seems that in terms of current debates the UK and Germany, at least, have certain things in common. When you draw attention to German colonial crimes, some Germans say, in effect, “But why do you insist on dragging this up? After all, other empires were much worse than ours.” Something similar happens in Britain – usually people suggest that the French or the Belgians were worse than we were. Why do you think this “whataboutery” or “whataboutism” is so prevalent?
JZ: Your observation is correct. My references to the first decades after World War II were meant to explain why what I call “colonial amnesia” could take place. By that I mean the marginalisation or nostalgic idealization of German colonialism in public perception. For the post-war generation the “colonial” question was a British or French one, etc. not a German one. On the one hand, Germany had “lost” its formal colonies already in 1919 and, on the other hand, after 1945 the memory of World War II and the Third Reich took centre stage. Interestingly, what was discussed was neither the Holocaust, which became a matter of broad debate only in the 1980s, nor the German war crimes in the war of annihilation, which led to huge debates in the 1990s, but rather German suffering from the war and German resistance to Hitler.
Already at that time you could find references to the colonial crimes of others, particularly of the victorious powers, what you so poignantly called whataboutery. It was meant to deflect from German guilt and was used as an argument that the enforced De-Nazification was unjust, and that only Germans were being forced to undergo such a humiliating experience. Later on the argument was slightly modified. Now it read: We take responsibility for the Holocaust, and this is enough. We don’t engage with colonialism, like the German genocide of the Herero and Nama people, because we already deal with the Holocaust, and now the others should deal with colonialism first. Now Germany was the role model of coming to terms with the past, attempting to gain the moral high ground.
RT: This is very interesting. In the UK, perhaps it is the other way round. “We stood alone against Hitler in 1940; this is our trump card against all criticism.” However, there is some acknowledgement that some aspects of the British Empire were at least mildly problematic. People argue, however, that taking everything in the round these aspects were eclipsed by benefits, most usually the railways … In Germany, do people try to do the same thing, in other words to claim that although there were some downsides, the German Empire was beneficial to the colonised?
Dr Julia Irwin (USF) and Dr Marc-William Palen (Exeter)
The pandemic has raised important questions and challenges for historical research in both domestic and international archives, which graduate students of history feel particularly keenly. Stemming from this, we held an intensive one-week research workshop May 24-28 designed to assist graduate students at USF and Exeter in overcoming pandemic-related obstacles to archival research.
Participants joined in virtually from Austria, Italy, Germany, Exeter, and Tampa, FL. In addition to learning digital research strategies, this workshop provided students with an opportunity to participate in a virtual global exchange and to learn from renowned experts in their fields. At the end of the week, students who completed this workshop came away knowing: about the existence of many digital archives they can use for their research; how to think critically about these archives and their creation; how to navigate both online and in-person archives; and about the politics associated with funding and preserving the past. In consultation with Drs Irwin and Palen, students also developed concrete individualized research plans for their MA theses and PhD dissertations.
This workshop was supported by generous funding from USF World, the USF History Department, and Exeter’s College of Humanities and Global Partnerships.
Participants and Speakers
Convenors: Dr Julia Irwin (USF) and Dr Marc-William Palen (Exeter)
USF Graduate Student Participants: Patrick Horan; Tamala Malerk; Scott Miller; Alexander Obermueller; Sophia Paschero; Paula Peck; Doug Ponticos; Alaina Scapicchio; Ashley Wessel
Exeter Graduate Student Participants: Ken Clayton; Maria Teresa Marangoni; Iona Ramsay; Marlen von Reith
Speakers: Dr Richard Ward (Exeter); Dr Stacey Hynd (Exeter); Dr Darcie Fontaine (USF); Dr Bob Nicholson (Edge Hill, UK); Dr Matthew Connelly (Columbia University, NYC); Richard Immerman (Temple University, Philadelphia)
On 8 June 2020, protestors in Bristol pulled down the statue of Edward Colston, slave-trader, dragged it through the streets, and threw it in the canal. While the protests in Bristol were largely peaceful, there were some conflicts in London and elsewhere, resulting in injuries to a small number of police personnel. In response, Home Secretary Priti Patel said that ‘tearing down of the statue was “utterly disgraceful”, adding that “it speaks to the acts of public disorder that have become a distraction from the cause people are protesting about”. Professor Ian Cook, Department of Geography, Exeter, captured the range of voices on the topic in his film Colston Falls. During these debates, members of the Decolonising Working Group in History, University of Exeter, pooled their knowledge to produce this collectively written essay on how statues of historical figures have been literally ‘de-platformed’ and the various physical and ethical solutions that have been found to deal with such toppled statues.
Last week, we were dismayed to find that the government of UK is proposing to close off the debate with a new law that will sharply raise the penalties for damaging memorials. We responded by submitting evidence to the Parliamentary Committee deliberating on the matter, working in collaboration with colleagues in Law and Geography. We are generally critical and wary of the ‘extremely wide ranging’ Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill, which in our opinion, combines a raft of highly risky and unncessary provisions together with ones that are less controversial. There are other published criticisms of the Bill. Here, for purposes of this post, we are particularly concerned with the way one tiny section of the Bill, tucked into a mammoth text of more than 300 pages, proposes to close off debate on the place of public memorials in present-day Britain.
This is the section in question.
46 Criminal damage to memorials: mode of trial (1) In Schedule 2 to the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 (offences for which the value involved is relevant to the mode of trial), in paragraph 1 (offences under section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971), in the first column, for the words from “any offence” to the end substitute “— (a) any offence committed by destroying or damaging property by fire, and (b) any offence committed by destroying or damaging a memorial (see section 22(11A) to (11D)).” (2) In section 22 of that Act, after subsection (11) insert— “(11A) In paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 “memorial” means— (a) a building or other structure, or any other thing, erected or installed on land (or in or on any building or other structure on land), or (b) a garden or any other thing planted or grown on land, which has a commemorative purpose.
(11B) For the purposes of that paragraph, any moveable thing (such as a bunch of flowers) which— (a) is left in, on or at a memorial within the meaning of subsection (11A), and (b) has (or can reasonably be assumed to have) a commemorative purpose, is also to be regarded as a memorial. (11C) For the purposes of subsections (11A) and (11B)— (a) references to a building or a structure include a reference to part of a building or part of a structure (as the case may be), and (b) something has a commemorative purpose if at least one of its purposes is to commemorate— (i) one or more individuals or animals (or a particular description of individuals or animals), or (ii) an event or a series of events (such as an armed conflict). (11D) It is immaterial for the purposes of subsection (11C)(b)(i) whether or not any individuals or animals concerned are or were (at any material time)— (a) living or deceased, or (b) capable of being identified.” (3) The amendments made by this section do not apply in relation to offences committed before it comes into force.
As the text of the proposed law says, this provision ‘strengthens the courts’ sentencing powers in relation to criminal damage to memorials’. It does so by amending the Magistrate’s Courts Act 1980 and the Criminal Damage Act 1971, increasing the maximum penalty from the existing 3 months’ imprisonment to 10 years, making it an offence more severe than most offences of sexual and physical violence. Women readers, please read that again. A statue of a dead slave trader is worth more than your bones.
Secondary Supervisor – Dr Stacey Hynd (University of Exeter) and Ms Anne Archer at BT Archives. Mr James Elder will provide cover for Anne Archer prior to her anticipated return from Maternity Leave shortly after the start of the studentship.
Applications are invited for a PhD studentship on race, ethnicity and telecommunications in the British empire from 1850 to the present at the University of Exeter in partnership with BT Archives (London). The studentship is awarded by the Science Museum and Archives Consortium under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme.
This project is a systematic study of the Black, Middle Eastern and South/East Asian people who worked for the British domestic and overseas telecommunications services from the 1850s to the present.
It examines their working experiences and their significant contributions to the construction, operation and technological development of telegraphic and telephonic services – questions largely overlooked by historians. By close and critical study of a wealth of underexplored texts, images and other sources in BT Archives, PK Porthcurno Museum of Global Communications and other collections, as well as the engagement with retired and active telecommunications workers, this project aims to plug this historiographical gap and contribute to the decolonizing of histories of telecommunications in Britain and its empire.
It will also raise the profile of significant materials within British telecommunications archive collections.
The student will produce a highly original piece of historical research and contribute to the enrichment of BT Archives’ catalogue (by providing context and other details to records) and to its physical displays and related activities in telecommunications heritage.
The project focuses on the following questions, but the student will be encouraged to pursue other, related questions that reflect their particular areas of expertise and strengths of the research materials:
Federal Building in Chicago. Architect: Henry Ives Cobb .Location: Dearborn, Adams and Clark Streets and Jackson Boulevard. Built: Between 1896 and 1905. Demolished: 1965.
From liberation as the fine art of losing to investigating the ‘Tartarian Empire’ conspiracy theory, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history.
Lori Lee Oates Memorial University of Newfoundland
It has long been established by historians such as Christopher Bayly and scholars of post-colonialism such as Leela Gandhi that theosophy was an important nineteenth-century intellectual current. Bayly, for example, credits theosophy with diffusing the Bhavagad Gita throughout India and bringing it to the attention of the wider world. However, what has been less well-established is how those ideas were moving across international lines or the links between theosophy and empire.
My recently published article in The International History Review drew on new primary sources to demonstrate that the Theosophical Society was actively building print networks to expand and move their occult philosophies across the globe. The article paid closer attention to how theosophical texts were moving internationally than previous research. It also demonstrated how Theosophical Society leaders were using expanding imperial networks such as steam ships, telegraphs, and international banking to grow the society across the globe.
In a widely criticised interview with Sky News on 25 April 2021, the IT billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates Jr. responded to a question whether he supported sharing the ‘recipe’ of the Sars-COV-2 or Covid-19 vaccines with manufacturers worldwide, with an emphatic: ‘No.’ No, he said, because there ‘are only so many vaccine factories in the world, and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines.’ Moving the production of a vaccine from Johnson and Johnson’s to a factory in India was already novel, he said, and could only happen because of ‘our grants and our expertise.’ Intellectual property was not holding back anything in this case, he said, because it wasn’t as if there were ‘idle vaccine factories with regulatory approvals, that make magically safe vaccines.’
It would appear from this account that most of the world was a place empty of funds and expertise, waiting for the largesse of saviours such as Bill Gates Jr. and appropriate guidance to be able to protect their own health in a scientific and safe way. Looking at the story of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine with some more attention, however, produces some rather more complicated stories.
On 23 November 2020, an Oxford University-based research team led by Dr Andrew Pollard declared a breakthrough in developing an effective vaccine against Covid-19. The team had been working furiously for months, backed with UK government funding and public donations. Oxford University then announced a permissive protocol for licensing COVID-19 related IP to third parties under ‘these exceptional circumstances.’ Of the 5 points of guidance offered to organisations seeking licences to use Oxford University’s IP (or recipe for vaccine), one was: ‘The default approach of the University and OUI regarding (1) will be to offer non-exclusive, royalty-free licences to support free of charge, at-cost or cost + limited margin supply as appropriate, and only for the duration of the pandemic, as defined by the WHO.’
Such an approach is not unprecedented. In the 1950s polio epidemics swept through the globe, and in the midst of outbreaks two rivaling vaccines were developed by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, both without patent. When asked about this, Jonas Salk famously remarked ‘Would you patent the sun?’. It seems that the decision for the Salk vaccines lack of patent might have been a practical one, as it would not have been possible by contemporary standards, regardless of Salk’s moral stance. Sabin’s decision was an openly political one: the vaccine was a result of international collaboration between researchers of the two opposing sides of the Cold War, and this scientific exchange was greatly celebrated at the time. Of course, Gates is right that a lack of patent doesn’t automatically mean immediate access and capability of vaccine production everywhere in the world. It took years for many countries, in war-ravaged European states, up to half a decade to establish infrastructure, skill and procure materials (including live animals) for domestic vaccine productions of the Salk vaccine. However, many others had the capability, while standards of production were developed by the WHO, and this, in the end, dampened the dire global vaccine shortage in both the short and long run. More importantly, the lack of patent did not hinder national or global vaccination efforts.
From opening secret Northern Ireland files to undoing the myth of Australia’s peaceful settlement, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history.
Crowd outside meeting of Te Kotahitanga (the kupapa Maori parliament) at Papawai, 1897. Richard Seddon, Prime Minister of New Zealand is front row, third from left
David Thackeray (Exeter) and Amanda Behm (York) have been awarded a Research Project Grant by the Leverhulme Trust for their project ‘Parliamentary Empire: British Democracy and Settler Colonialism, c.1867-1939’, which will run from 2021-24. We will shortly be advertising two funded PhD studentships and will be holding a conference at Westminster, which is planned to lead to a special issue of Parliamentary History. The project team are interested from hearing from colleagues working on topics in this field.
Our project examines the role of parliament and the parliamentary idea in civic life in the UK and the British settler colonial world. While we might take for granted constitutional history as the bedrock of historical and civic education across imperial countries from the mid-nineteenth century until 1945, our project proposes a more daunting problem. At the heart of constitutional history lay a reverence for parliament, which found its most celebrated expression in Walter Bagehot’s 1867 description of the Commons as a ‘mirror’ of the British nation, expressing the popular will, educating the people politically, hearing grievances, and legislating.
Yet for all its studied neutrality, parliamentarianism emerged and remained as a cipher at the heart of British imperial politics. In that ‘golden age’ of constitutional history writing, there simmered widespread anxieties about the ability of parliament to mediate the body politic while confronting questions of an expanding electorate and votes for women. Equally significant was the ferment pitting settler colonial groups against the legislative and moral claims of their fellow imperial subjects across a vast transoceanic space.
By exploring how a range of constituencies through and beyond the settler colonies appealed to values of British parliamentarianism, we shed new light on the connected debates about democratic governance and political inclusion that characterised the emergence of nations within a fractious British Empire. The late nineteenth century witnessed a flourishing of local parliaments, parliamentary debating societies, petitions to parliament, and women’s parliaments. This culture was not confined to ‘overseas’ Britons and masculine settler colonists. Maori parliamentary movements, in particular, indicate how indigenous peoples could adopt and adapt the practices of British parliamentary culture to seek redress and assert notions of sovereignty. Women’s mock parliaments, which spread across Britain and the settler colonies, satirised transimperial parliamentary culture and highlighted women’s exclusion from national bodies.
We look forward to exploring how being ‘parliamentary’ was central to diverse claimants’ appeals for political inclusion and authority as they contested ‘British’ values and appealed particularly to those supposedly on the fringes of the political nation, such as working men, women, indigenous peoples, and foreign and intra-imperial migrants. Our focus is on how ideas of ‘British’ parliamentarianism were performedand contested: how some forms of popular parliamentarianism such as debating societies could promote reverence for the Westminster model while others rejected parliament as an adequate ‘mirror’ of nation and empire. These challenges to, and alternative models of, parliament’s role in public life shine new light on the transnational flow of ideas and networks which continue to connect and divide the British Empire through its tumultuous redrawing.
Imperial & Global Forum 
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