Abstract This introduction opens a special issue on ‘Languages and Concepts of European Civil Wars, 1917–39’. Drawing on case studies of Russia, Finland, Ireland, Austria and Spain, the issue examines civil war as a struggle over language and political identity. Its articles consider how historical actors used, contested or avoided terms such as ‘civil war’, ‘rebellion’ and ‘intervention’. From the perspective of language, civil wars appear as conflicts in which a ‘war of words’ could enable armed confrontation. Taken together, the articles show how language shaped the legitimization of violence, the construction of enemy images, the mobilization of emotions and the later memory of conflict. The special issue thus places language at the centre of the analysis, as a way of understanding how internal conflicts acquired political meaning.
Abstract In early modern England, reproductive care and the management of pregnancy formed a shared culture of practical knowledge in which everyday foods served simultaneous medicinal, nutritional and social functions. Within this framework, specific provisions, most notably cherries and sweet preserves, carried culturally legible therapeutic associations regarding the physical formation of the child and the health of the pregnant or postpartum body. While scholars have established that the circulation of food and medical knowledge built trust within economies of obligation, the distinct political weight of reproductive treatments in this wider gift economy has received less attention. This article argues that the provisioning of food to pregnant, labouring and postpartum bodies served as a recognized vehicle for political cultivation within early modern elite households. Drawing on family correspondence, printed medical texts and recipe collections, alongside drama, satire and visual culture, this article demonstrates how the therapeutic appropriateness of these gifts allowed dietary attention to function as political credit in networks tied to patronage and succession. By examining gifts given in response to a specific bodily condition, this article reveals how the unique stakes and public legibility of the pregnant body transformed intimate care into an intelligible measure of political competence.
Abstract The Austrian civil war was a four‐day conflict in 1934 between the largest left‐wing paramilitary, the Schutzbund , and government forces aligned with the largest right‐wing paramilitary group, the Heimwehr . The Schutzbund was quickly and brutally suppressed through the use of overwhelming force, armoured vehicles and even artillery deployment against civilian homes. But although the government victory was definitive, the Austrian civil war was fought over during and after its conclusion and had significant, far‐reaching consequences. The way in which a conflict was described was itself part of the political struggle over its meaning. The Austrian civil war was fought not only in the streets and towns but also through competing vocabularies that sought to define the conflict as rebellion, restoration of order, workers’ struggle or civil war. This article demonstrates how the newspapers of the time made active efforts to address the violence within an ideological framework which defined the Other as barbarous or savage.
Abstract The considerable efforts of the invading English to justify their activities and garner support during the Anglo‐Scottish wars of the 1540s are well known. Recent welcome attention to Scottish texts produced during the conflict has begun to correct a previous historiographical imbalance towards English materials. Part of this has been an emphasis on the range of techniques deployed by these authors to rebut English claims to suzerainty over Scotland. This article builds on this recent interest to argue that both extant Scottish texts – the Complaynt of Scotland (published probably in France c. 1550) and the Resonyng Between a Scots Merchant and an English (a manuscript survival from c. 1549) – went beyond rebutting an English case to suzerainty over Scotland to challenge the legitimacy either of past English rulers, the current house of Tudor or individual members of that dynasty. This was achieved in an identical manner to the ways in which later supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots, would issue the same challenge – through an emphasis on changes to the English royal house as a result of conquest as well as interrogating Henry VIII's matrimonial adventures. In the 1540s texts, these elements formed part of a broader case concerning English tyranny. Whilst neither text can be securely identified as part of a crown‐directed propaganda campaign, both reflected messages evident in the regime's pronouncements back to it. In this, and their recycling of historical materials, both texts point to a wider hinterland of now lost Scottish commentary.
Abstract During the early years of the Turkish Republic, the establishment of foreign missions, the assignment of new diplomats to these missions as well as the inheritance of experiences, diplomats, buildings and other assets from the Ottoman Empire were matters of major political concern. While the existing literature often attributes non‐career ambassador appointments to a shortage of diplomats, this article offers a different perspective. It argues that such appointments were not driven by necessity but, largely, were made on the basis of ideology and loyalty. Focusing on the 1920s and 1930s, and hence the years associated with the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), the article argues that the young state aimed both to establish a new cadre of diplomats loyal to the republic and to legitimate itself in international society by ensuring some continuity with the old, Ottoman diplomatic order. As a whole, the article sheds light on the dilemmas of a new, revolutionary state attempting to insert itself into an established international society.
In March 1976, around 2000 women from forty countries arrived at the Palais des Congr & egrave;s in Brussels to participate in the first International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women. Explicitly positioning themselves against the United Nations-led 'International Year of the Woman', the organizers and participants of the tribunal proclaimed a global sisterhood - to be achieved through the sharing of personal experience and by testifying against the litany of patriarchal crimes committed against women. In this article, I analyse the proceedings of the Brussels Tribunal to recover a fractious episode of the transnational feminist movement of the 1970s. I argue that by examining how the participants navigated their deep-seated feminist disagreements, the Brussels Tribunal complicates our understanding of the politics of sisterhood and identity politics in the international women's movement. I also explore the controversies surrounding the event and the revolt against the organizers to understand how the anarchic sensibilities and praxis of the participants were productive for generating an alternative feminist vision.
Abstract Published by Cambridge University Press in 2025, Thomas Gidney's monograph An International Anomaly examines the conditions under which Ireland, India and Egypt acceded to the League of Nations, despite the absence of full sovereignty. This Forum section features review essays by Jake Hodder and Susan Pedersen as well as a response from the author.
Abstract This article examines how British rule disrupted precolonial socio‐cultural systems, reshaping patterns of criminality in Northern Nigeria in the period between 1900 and 1930. Focusing on property and economic offences, it utilizes archival records, colonial reports and oral traditions to reconstruct local experiences. While colonial officials represented crime in terms of disorder or moral decline this article argues that property and economic crimes evolved not from deviant behaviour, but as adaptive responses to structural disruptions by British colonial rule. As the discussion will show, the imposition of new taxation, monetization and legal systems reconfigured economic life and social relations. Colonial regulatory efforts redefined certain activities as criminal and thus reshaped the criminal landscape. By relating criminality to processes of disruption and adaptation, this article repositions crime as a lens for understanding the social consequences of colonial rule. It also contributes to broader historiographical discussions on agency, transformation and everyday responses in colonial Africa.
Abstract This article examines the poll tax (Ottoman Turkish cizye ; Arabic jizya ) levied on non‐Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire, not as a fixed, one‐dimensional tax item within the Ottoman fiscal system but as a multi‐layered administrative instrument organized around obligation, exemption and remission. It examines how, from its reorganization in 1691 until the end of the late eighteenth century, the poll tax helped regulate relations between the state and its non‐Muslim subjects and served objectives such as the registration of subjecthood, the maintenance of security, the encouragement of settlement and service provision. From this perspective, the 1691 poll tax regulation is interpreted as an administrative measure that responded to the central treasury's growing need for cash, with particular emphasis on strengthening individual liability and document‐based supervision. The article demonstrates that exemption and fiscal relief practices did not disappear after this reorganization; instead, they were repositioned as flexible means of calibrating fiscal liability. Drawing primarily on archival materials, alongside contemporary normative sources and existing scholarship, the analysis shows that the poll tax in Ottoman governance formed a field of administrative coordination that extended well beyond mere revenue collection.
Abstract This article examines the transpacific experiences of Ho Kim Tong (1888–1952), a businessman and member of the Chinese community in Hawaiʻi, to illuminate overlooked dimensions of Pan‐Pacific internationalism in the early twentieth century. It traces how Ho operated at the intersections of athletic, political and intellectual networks – from managing the Honolulu All‐Chinese Baseball Team to facilitating the 1920 United States congressional visit to China and hosting Chinese delegates at Pan‐Pacific conferences in Honolulu. His trajectory highlights the significance of the Chinese diaspora in Hawaiʻi in shaping cross‐Pacific exchanges during a formative moment of ‘citizen diplomacy’. In particular, Ho's interactions with Chinese ‘scholarly diplomats’ – intellectuals educated in modern disciplines who engaged in non‐governmental forms of diplomacy – underscore the porous boundaries between elite and community‐based internationalism. The article argues that while Hawaiʻi functioned as a crucial crossroads for Pan‐Pacific visions, this internationalist stage often relied on the ‘backgrounding’ of the islands. Ultimately, the article situates these exchanges within broader tensions between internationalism and nationalism, reframing 1910s and 1920s Hawaiʻi as a key node where non‐state actors enacted national agendas through the fragile promise of transpacific unity.
