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ID:
158945
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| Summary/Abstract |
The fact that the extensive anti-corruption struggle that has consumed China since 2013 is highly political is widely accepted and understood. But the question is precisely what political strategy it is directed at – that of bolstering the position of the current supreme leader, Xi Jinping. Or for the preservation of the Party itself. There is a huge difference between these. The first simply means in effect the replacement of one corruptible elite by another. The second means a titanic struggle to change the Chinese communist party culture of power, and to make it enduring and sustainable.
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| 2 |
ID:
158949
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This article publishes for the first time selections of the private correspondence (placing them in their historical context) of John G. T. Shipman (1939–2016), who took up his position as assistant adviser in the Eastern Aden Protectorate at the end of 1962 just as the first signs of political and social change were appearing in South Arabia. He served from this position in different parts of the Eastern Aden Protectorate until 1967. Shipman's correspondence allows for an unmediated appreciation of how people on the ground experienced the historical events at the time, including the British withdrawal in 1967, and highlights the extent of their own grasp of the goings-on when contrasted with the historical record. In this sense, the scope of this article is to allow the voice of one of the many British colonial officials to directly narrate their encounters during the last five years of British colonial rule over southern Arabia. The perceptive eye of a young political officer coupled with the ephemeral character of his handwritten correspondence, which providentially survived for more than five decades although it was never intended for publication, offers a fresh insight into the political and social life of the Eastern Aden Protectorate.
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| 3 |
ID:
158946
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Piracy has been endemic in the South China and surrounding seas for centuries. There is a long history of piracy waxing and waning depending on the political and economic situation in the region. There have been differing levels of piracy on the South China Coast and the seas around the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In the Sulu and Celebes Seas as well as off the coast of Aceh, there are examples of piracy used as a tactic by groups also engaged in terrorism. Piracy has periodically been suppressed by a strong naval power in the region. The growth and projection of Chinese naval power to control the South China Sea to the extent of the ‘nine dash line’ has suppressed piracy on the China Coast and in the South China Sea, but had limited impact on the Straits of Malacca and the seas around Borneo and Mindanao.
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ID:
158950
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The aim of the article is to explore and illustrate some “dynamics of transition” across some six decades of British protection of the Brunei Sultanate, 1906-1967, with particular reference to the interaction of traditional administration and the new system of governance of a Residency, especially in the part of Tutong district that was home to the Dusun/Bisaya ethnic minority.
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| 5 |
ID:
158951
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This article, written by Prateek Joshi in close collaboration with Colonel Narender “Bull” Kumar, discusses the development of the conflict over the Siachen Glacier between India and Pakistan. It sets out the Siachen Conflict in the broad framework of the Great Game and explains the crucial role of Colonel Narender “Bull” Kumar's Siachen expeditions in rekindling this old flashpoint in High Asia. Based on Colonel Kumar's two expeditions to the Siachen Glacier region, namely the Teram Kangri expedition in 1978 and the Siachen expedition in 1981, it discusses the perspectives regarding the dispute and its relation to reviving a consciousness of the Great Game. The first perspective discusses Colonel Kumar's expeditions in light of the Indo-Pak conflict as these two visits became the precursor to Operation Meghdoot, following which the Indian Army occupied the Siachen Glacier in 1984. The second perspective discusses a crucial cartographic blank which was filled only after Colonel Kumar's Siachen expedition.
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| 6 |
ID:
158948
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Russia's military intervention in Syria (2015-present) has ensured the Assad regime's survival to date. Why though has Russia succeeded in achieving its objective? This article provides an analysis of Russia's involvement in the Syrian civil war in comparison to the Soviet Union's military debacle in Afghanistan (1979-89). Accordingly, by avoiding the USSR's mistakes in Afghanistan, this article posits that Russia has not become entangled in a protracted conflict in Syria. In Syria, Russia has militarily intervened to buttress the Assad regime, not to reorganize the host government's leadership and assume control over the war effort. Meanwhile, Syrian opposition forces lack concerted international support and Russia has allies that are assisting the embattled Syrian government. Lastly, Russia intends to ‘freeze’ the Syrian civil war in place by (i) pressuring opposition forces to submit and other countries to re-embrace Damascus in a diplomatic forum, (ii) endorsing Syria's claim to sovereignty, and (iii) relying upon a small military presence to deter others from destabilizing Assad's rule.
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| 7 |
ID:
158947
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| Summary/Abstract |
Thomas and Lucy Atkinson were pioneering explorers of the Russian, Siberian and Central Asian Steppe in the 1850s. They both wrote books about their journeys which were feted in their own time, and in particular Lucy Atkinson was one of the first women to describe travels in this region in her 1863 work Recollections of Tartar Steppes and their Inhabitants. Thomas Atkinson was also an accomplished painter, and his sketches of the steppe were highly sought after in the period. However, these two trail-blazing explorers have been largely forgotten today. How do we explain this anomaly? Is there any reason we ought to know more about the Atkinsons? Why have they fallen from public view? Did they add to the knowledge of the physical world or to ethnography? This article will try to put their journeys and their achievements into some kind of context and, hopefully, make the case for a reassessment of their contribution to the history of exploration.
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