‘Winning the Peace’: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, foreign technocrats, and planning the rehabilitation of post-war China, 1943–1945

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Jiayi Tao
Keyword(s):  
Technical Expertise ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Service Employees ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
Post War ◽  
Unequal Treaties ◽  
Nationalist Government

Abstract Through the lens of the multinational staff of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMCS), this article argues that a technocratic programme of reconstruction evolved in the Nationalist government's wartime efforts on post-war planning, which refashioned a cadre of foreign (semi-)colonial-era experts into technocrats serving a sovereign state. This episode, in which the weakened Customs Service reclaimed its significance for the Chinese state, occurred in China's wartime capital, Chongqing. After the abrogation of the so-called ‘unequal treaties’ with foreign powers in January 1943, China entered a post-treaty era, and the question of retaining long-serving foreign Customs Service employees perplexed Nationalist leaders. Eventually, China's huge post-war need for foreign expertise, networks, and imports led to a moderate staff reorganization of the CMCS, with foreign technocrats being kept on and other bureaucrats either shifted to advisory positions or being forced to retire. Technical expertise provided a new guise for the European and American presence in post-imperialist China. Taking the rehabilitation of coastal lighthouses as an example, this article demonstrates the significance of foreign technocrats to the Chinese state during the last phase of the Sino-Japanese War and in its immediate aftermath. In showing the ambition and preparations of the Nationalist government for a post-war era, this article corrects a narrative of an all-out collapse of the Nationalist government from the mid-1940s. The wartime evolution of the Customs Service further highlights the growing importance of technocrats in the decolonizing world.

scholarly journals Lessons from Sweden: How Australia Can Learn from Swedish Industrialised Building

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan William Maxwell ◽  
Mathew Aitchison
Keyword(s):  
High Standard ◽  
Building Industry ◽  
Construction Costs ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Building Systems ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Efficiency And Productivity ◽  
Living Cost

Over the past decade, Australia has witnessed increased interest in industrialised building, particularly in the production of housing. This has happened under many different banners, including: prefabricated, modular, transportable and offsite construction methodologies. This interest has grown from a combination of factors, including: increased rate of housing construction and density; rising property and construction costs; the desire for increased efficiency and productivity; and a concern for the quality and sustainability of building systems. Historically, Australia has played an episodic role in the emergence of prefab and transportable buildings since the colonial era, but it does not have a longstanding industrialised building industry. In this context, an analysis of the experiences of North American, European and Japanese examples, provides valuable insights. This paper focuses on Swedenäó»s approach to industrialised building and the lessons it holds for the emerging Australian sector. Sweden represents a valuable case study because of similarities between the two countries, including: the high standard of living, cost of labour, and design and quality expectations; along with geographic and demographic similarities. Conversely, stark differences between the national situation also co-exist, notably climate, business approaches, political outlook, and cultural factors. In the 1950s, Swedish companies exported prefab houses to Australia to combat the Post-War housing shortage, which also supplies a historical dimension to the comparison. Most importantly, Sweden boasts a longstanding industrialised building industry, both in terms of practice and theory. This paper will survey and compare the Swedish industry, and its potential relevance for Australia. Areas of discussion include: the relationship between industry and academy (practice and theory); the diversity of technique and methodologies and how they may be adapted; platform thinking (technical and operational); the staged industrialisation of conventional practices; and the importance of a socially, environmental and design-led practice of building.

scholarly journals An EU recovery programme for Ukraine? Towards a new narrative for EU—Ukraine relations?

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Success Stories ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Mixed Feelings ◽  
Elite Interviews ◽  
Post War ◽  
Shared Narrative ◽  
The Eu

In 1947, the United States of America launched the European Recovery Programme to support the post-war reconstruction of Europe. The Marshall Plan, as it became known after U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, was one of the major success stories of US foreign policy in the twentieth century. The notion of an EU Recovery Programme for Ukraine provoked interest – and division in Ukraine. The enlargement of the EU in 2004 and 2007 demonstrated the EU’s capacity to mount grand economic and political projects. However, since then, the EU has faced difficulties exerting influence and constructing a coherent narrative of its role in the European neighbourhood and the wider world. Would a more transformative aid and development programme for its Ukrainian neighbour offer an opportunity for the EU as well as Ukraine? In this article we use a series of elite interviews conducted across Ukraine in 2016-17 to explore how such a notion is understood. We find that Ukrainian elites have mixed feelings about existing EU aid programmes; many respondents resented the conditions the EU imposes, but nor do they want or expect aid to be given unconditionally. Whilst many aspire for Ukraine to reach EU standards of law and prosperity, Ukrainian elites favour self-help in their efforts to forge a stable sovereign state. Both the EU and Russia are understood as metonymies – as standing for two sets of values and geopolitical futures – and neither quite fit what Ukrainians seek. We conclude that whilst a Marshall Plan-style action could have benefits, it is not desired as a basis for a shared narrative and basis of cooperation and development.

The Philippine Komiks: Text as Containment

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soledad S. Reyes
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Era ◽  
Complex Series ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
Post War

AbstractIn its 80 years of existence, the Philippine komiks has provided more than fun and entertainment to its millions of readers. A large number of series, especially in the American colonial era, problematized taken-for-granted realities shaped by the people's colonial experience. The post-war years witnessed the production of more serials which mirrored the complex series of transformations that Philippine society has undergone.

scholarly journals Truman's New Deal: Point Four and the Genesis of Modern Global Development

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Ray Winterhalt
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Technical Expertise ◽  
Policy Initiative ◽  
Global Development ◽  
Inaugural Address ◽  
Political Reaction ◽  
Post War ◽  
Point Four Program ◽  
The Cold War

This paper examines the geo-political reaction to President Harry S. Truman’s 1949 Inaugural Address, wherein he catalyzed post-war global development in the form of his Point Four program. Truman proposed sharing American scientific and technical expertise, ostensibly aimed at reducing or eliminating poverty in the developing world. Newspaper accounts and analysis of internal CIA documents reveal domestic and international responses to the policy initiative. Predictably, these responses mostly varied along early Cold War ideological lines. Examining Truman’s plan and other anti-communist American policies in the late 1940s reveals that although global development may have been a laudable effect of the plan, the primary aim was to prevent communism from spreading to countries viewed as vulnerable to subversion. The Cold War imperatives behind the plan seem to have been either implicitly assumed or ignored in the historiography. A brief sampling of Cold War historians shows a lack of explicit attention to Truman’s initiative.

“The Yalu River Era of Developing Asia”: Japanese Expertise, Colonial Power, and the Construction of Sup'ung Dam

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Stephen Moore
Keyword(s):  
Adverse Effects ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Technical Expertise ◽  
Development Programs ◽  
Infrastructure Projects ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Yalu River

Through investigating the construction of one of Japan's largest infrastructure projects during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), this article examines the formation of a technocratic regime of colonial development expertise that was an important pillar of Japanese imperial rule and continued to have powerful effects throughout postwar Asia. It analyzes how a particular form of technical expertise and the wider discourse of “Scientific Japan” as the modernizer of Asia were legitimated and naturalized, as well as how they operated as a system of colonial power. Japan and other East Asian regimes after the war continued to invoke forms of technocratic expertise with origins in the colonial era as part of their state-led development programs, often with adverse effects on their populations. Thus this article concludes that there is a continuing need to critique, historicize, and denaturalize such regimes of expertise invoked by networks of bureaucrats, businessmen, engineers, and experts.

The Chinese Nationalists and the Unequal Treaties 1924–1931

1987 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 793-819 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund S. K. Fung
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Chinese Nationalism ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
Political Differences ◽  
Unequal Treaties ◽  
First World ◽  
Treaty Status

The movement to abolish the unequal treaties was the cause célèbre of Chinese nationalism after the First World War. It was an extension of the late Qing movement to retrieve the rights and interests (shouhui liquan yundong) that had been lost to the powers over the decades. Whereas the quintessence of the late Qing campaign was economic nationalism and the means it employed peaceful, the post-war drive was highly political and at times accompanied by a degree of violence. The Chinese determination, strengthened by Germany's and Austria's relinquishment of their treaty status, was a bond that united the whole nation from Beijing to Guangzhou (Canton) despite their domestic political differences.

Reconstructing hierarchy as the key international relations concept and its implications for the study of Japanese national identity

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 507-518
Author(s):  
Michal Kolmaš
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World System ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
The West ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Hierarchical Relationship ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Post War

AbstractFor the last few decades, the discipline of international relations has been littered with anarchy. Since Waltz'sTheory of International Politics, it has been assumed that states are formally equal sovereign unitary actors operating in an anarchic world system and that their identities and interests are defined by the very existence of anarchy. This article shatters this conception. It offers a ‘hierarchical worldview’ in order to illustrate that the very concepts of state, sovereignty, and anarchy are discursive creations inherently tied to the practice of hierarchy. I use a case study of Japanese national identity to illustrate this practice. The narratives of Japan as an autonomous and sovereign state were inextricably linked to Japan's hierarchical relationship toward Asia and the West (pre-war) and the USA (post-war). Japan's sovereignty and autonomy were then formulated within the practice of hierarchy.

The French Colonial Service and the Issues of Reform, 1944–8

1995 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
James I. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
French Empire ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
Fourth Republic ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Post War ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Intellectual Elites

The problems of decolonisation in post-Second World War France have attracted renewed attention in recent years. A new generation of historians and political scientists has focused on why it was so difficult for the country's political and intellectual élites to accept the end of empire. This attention to the subjectivity of policy and opinion-makers has added a novel dimension to understanding how and why the end of the colonial era occurred with such difficulty and bloodshed for the French. This new orientation has largely displaced the old ‘Gaullist’ explanation for the failing of France's post-war regime, the Fourth Republic, in colonial policy. The older notion, articulated by General Charles de Gaulle himself during his twelve-year exile from political power between 1946 and 1958, blamed the unstable parliamentary coalitions and governing political parties of the era for the series of crises and disasters in colonial policy faced by a deeply fractured legislative regime. The rapid rise and fall of governments, the turnover of ministers, the constant governmental disputes on a range of questions, it was alleged, was the cause of inconsistent and weak policies incapable of meeting the succession of crises. The newer research, however, has demonstrated that the institutional problems of the Fourth Republic were not the key issue and that the essential problem lay with an inability of élites to recognise, accept and adapt to decolonisation worldwide. It has been shown that, far from having inconsistent or weak policies, the governing cadres of the Fourth Republic shared fundamentally similar concepts and goals in their determination to maintain the integrity of the French Empire. Yet this same historiography has focused on the political parties, pressure groups and shifting political landscape of French colonial policy while largely overlooking an important, though less obvious, player.

scholarly journals Historical Perspectives on Precarious Work: The Cases of Egypt and India under British Imperialism

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Bent
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

<p>The concept of precarious work is used by social scientists to describe work that is “uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker” (Kalleberg, 2009: 2). This paper argues that such work can take a variety of forms, beyond those seen in the transition from the stable post-WWII era to the neo-liberal era in the West. Egypt and India offer instructive case studies. Industrialisation (or lack thereof) in Egypt and India has been thoroughly documented by others. The purpose of this paper is to argue that these developments can be seen as the emergence of precarious, industrial working arrangements. This framework is useful for demonstrating that precarious work has come along with industrial development in a range of countries during different time periods. In this light, the stable employment arrangements characteristic of the post-war West were an anomaly. The global economic and social history of industrialisation is characterised by precarious working arrangements, as seen in colonial-era Egypt and India.</p>

Germany is No More: Defeat, Occupation, and the Postwar Order

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Southern States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This article focuses on a completely back lashed Germany after the Second World War. More people died in the Second World War than in any other conflict before or since. Particularly between the Elbe and the Volga, the Nazi war of extermination left a wasteland of death. This article traces the gradual transformations that came over Germany post 1945. After the ‘unconditional surrender’ of 8 May, 1945 — the formulation was initially coined for the defeated Southern states in the American Civil War — German territories came under the control of the four Allied Powers, creating an ambiguous legal status unprecedented in the history of modern international law. Divided into four major territories, each under the control of the allied forces, Germany was no longer a sovereign state. This article further traces the effects of the post-war era followed by the gradual embracing of democracy. The Cold War and the final descending of peace in the German territory winds up this article.

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