‘A Million Little Bonds’: Infidelity,Divorce and the Emotional Worlds of Marriage in British Women’s Magazines of the 1930s

This article examines infidelity discourse within women's magazines of the 1930s. Marking a departure from existing studies that have explored representations of ideal marriage, it uses discussions of marital breakdown as a lens through which to consider conceptualisations of love within marriage. It demonstrates how, in the interwar period, notions of mutual emotional investment were used to reinforce marriages that were deemed to be in breakdown. Muddying the perceived binary between individuals and the institution of marriage, this research highlights how the latter could be bolstered, rather than challenged, by recourse to the emotional worlds of spouses.     

Atlantic Families: Lives and Letters in the Later Eighteenth Century. The Pen and the People: English Letter Writers 1660–1800

ABSTRACT

This article concerns the protest of an Aboriginal Australian man, Anthony Martin Fernando, who during an international gathering of Rome Catholics in the Jubilee year of 1925 handed out flyers outside St Peter's Cathedral in Rome. By protesting against conditions for Aboriginal people in Australia, Fernando brought the question of settler colonialism in Australia directly and in person to the Roman Catholic community arriving from around the world. Where the Vatican's ethnographic exhibition of that year rehearsed the more usual representation of injustices towards Australia's indigenous people as integral to an unruly nineteenth-century colonial frontier, Fernando aimed to link Australian settler colonialism with the British world in the present – a world he characterized as yet to be brought to account for its actions towards colonized peoples, particularly the Aborigines of Australia. The audacity of that protest, as well as the literal presence of an Aboriginal man living by himself on the streets of interwar Europe, forces us to reconsider Aboriginal Australian activism in the twentieth century. It requires firstly a more genuinely transnational account of the history of indigenous politics in Australia, and secondly a more dynamic account of the diversity of often-ephemeral forms of black political activism carried out within and beyond colonial settings in the modern era.     

‘The Most Interesting Work a Woman can Perform in Wartime’: The Exceptional Status of British Women Pilots during the Second World War

This article deals with the women pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War. It argues that the same cultural factors that successfully won these women equal pay during the war also undercut their ability to have a long-term impact. The article encompasses prewar flying communities as well as efforts after the war to create a permanent reserve of women pilots for the RAF.     

‘Fear of Giving Offence Makes Me Give the More Offence’: Politeness,Speech and Its Impediments in British Society,c.1660–1800

ABSTRACT

In the period c.1660–1800, there was an unprecedented interest in the spoken word in Britain, and for those who aspired to be polite, a new emphasis upon the sounds of their speech. But what did this mean for the lives of those who stammered, stuttered or had a lisp? How far were speech impediments experienced or viewed as disabilities? This article argues that in their quest for polite manners and refinement, the socially ambitious were prepared to invest time and money upon improving their speech. This created demand for the services of speech specialists, a new occupational group who forged their identity during this time. The consequences of their advertising techniques, which suggested that speech impediments could and should be overcome, are explored. Finally, this article examines how polite society set standards for listening and responding to the sounds of people with speech impediments.     

‘The Talke of the Towne’: News,Crime and the Public Sphere in Seventeenth-Century London

This article reconsiders ideas of the public sphere in the seventeenth century, by focusing on how public opinion is shaped by the movement of information between media and between receivers. It contends that the scholarly preoccupation with a public sphere viewed exclusively in terms of politics obscures the fact that contemporaries did not distinguish between politics and subjects such as crime in their newsgathering. Examining the case study of James Turner, a burglar in the 1660s who became a cause célèbre in London and beyond, this article shows how crime news were eagerly exchanged, informing discussions and constructing public opinion.     

The Left and Indonesia’s 1960s: the politics of remembering and forgetting

Abstract

This article examines a pivotal decade in the recent history of Indonesian society: the 1960s. It examines the context within which the Left came to be decisively, and violently, defeated as a social and political force. It then studies the consequences of this defeat for Indonesia’s subsequent historical trajectory. The article also suggests that history‐writing anywhere is nothing less than the politics of remembering (and forgetting). What is at stake in these exercises is ultimately tied up with the legitimacy of entire social orders and systems of power. Thus, in Indonesia, the trauma of 1965 and its aftermath banished, from the collective memory of Indonesians, the political role of the Left – except in the form that runs through New Order‐era discourse on Indonesian communism. For Indonesians born or raised after 1965, the ‘communist treason’ became, arguably, the most critical element of the grand narrative of post‐colonial Indonesian history, which was so important in legitimising New Order authoritarianism. The current inability of Indonesian society and its elites to acknowledge and confront the reality of the horrors of the 1960s might prove to be a major impediment to a more genuine and substantive democratisation process.     

‘The Charlatanry of the Learned’: On the Moral Economy of the Republic of Letters in Eighteenth-Century Germany

The notion of charlatanism is central to the social workings of the eighteenth-century republic of letters. Starting with Johann Burkhard Mencke's famous treatise The Charlatanry of the Learned, this paper traces how accusations of academic and scientific misconduct put in terms of ‘charlatanry’ initially helped to produce the new species of the erudite ‘charlatan’. Facing a growing complexity of scientific culture, this new frame of meaning, structured by numerous examples of scientific misconduct, offered a way of mapping the world of learning. But besides its cognitive impacts, the discourse of charlatanry allowed the creation of symbolic boundaries, which determined decisions as to the affiliation or non-affiliation to this recently forming scientific community by separating honourable from dishonourable scientific personae. Speaking of charlatanry therefore always implied a social distinction as much as a scientific one. The discourses on charlatanry also mirror differentiations within the scientific field. At first dominated by a critique built on courteous or bourgeois values, the scientific field later developed its own criteria of appraisal, such as authorship, originality, transparency, etc. Attracting the attention of a growing public sphere, the explicit verbalization of claims which were not related to the value system of a republic of letters primarily concerned with the production and distribution of knowledge finally led to a more implicit moral economy of science.     

‘Bloomers’ and the British World: Dress Reform in Transatlantic and Antipodean Print Culture, 1851–1950

The ‘bloomers’ are rarely considered beyond their 1851 origins in the United States and subsequent appearance in Britain. This article expands dress reform scholarship by analysing print culture elsewhere in the British world, specifically Australia and New Zealand. The colonial press manufactured controversy over this fashion – a perceived transgression of gender norms – even though antipodean women rarely sported the outfit. This article focuses on the dress reform lectures and writings of Amelia Bloomer, Caroline Dexter and Dr Mary Walker. While certain continuities resurfaced alongside the bloomer-like rational dress popularised in the bicycling culture of the 1890s, dress reform was largely deemed far less controversial by the turn of the twentieth century.     

Beyond the ‘feminization of masculinity’: transforming patriarchy with the ‘feminine’ in contemporary Japanese youth culture

Contemporary Japanese society has seen the emergence of aesthetically conscious young men who employ ‘feminine’ aesthetics and strategies as ways of exploring and practising new masculine identities. In this paper, I explore the significance of this emerging trend of male beauty by observing and analysing the expressions, strategies and intentions of those young men who have taken to aesthetically representing themselves in these ways. This cultural trend is often described as the ‘feminization of masculinity,’ echoing the gendered articulation of rising mass culture in terms of the ‘feminization of culture,’ which acknowledges aspects of the commercialization of masculine bodies in Japan of the 1990s onward. While this view successfully links important issues, such as femininity, beauty, and the gendered representation of the self in a broader context of capitalist culture, it does not sufficiently convey a sense of agency in the young men's lively practices of exploring and expressing new masculine values and ideals. Rather than viewing ‘feminization’ simply as a sign of commodification, I argue that these young men strategically distance themselves from conventional masculinity by artificially standing in the position of the ‘feminine’, where they can more freely engage in the creation of alternative gender identities. From this point of view, the use of the phrase ‘feminization of masculinity’ often implies a fear and anxiety on the part of patriarchy over the boundary‐crossing practice that seriously challenges the stability of gendered cultural hegemony. Moreover, such anxiety driven reactions easily merge with nationalist inclination, as those threatened tend to seek the consolidation of patriarchal/hegemonic order by eliminating ambiguities and indeterminacy in cultural/national discourse. I conclude that the cultural hegemony of contemporary Japan could better sustain itself by incorporating non‐hegemonic gender identities, which would allow it maintain an open space for critical imagination and effectively diffuse an obsessive and ultimately self‐destructive desire for transparency/identity.     

The ‘Welsh’ Pimpernel: Richard Llewellyn and the Search for Authenticity in Second World War Britain

ABSTRACT

Achieving worldwide success in 1939 with his bestselling novel, How Green Was My Valley, Richard Llewellyn became indelibly linked with a particular vision of Wales and Welshness. Yet, when it posthumously emerged that Llewellyn was not Welsh but an Englishman of Welsh parentage he faced accusations of fakery. Mapping Llewellyn’s military service in the Welsh Guards and work with the BBC, this article traces his complex negotiation of selfhood during the Second World War. By highlighting how Llewellyn was embraced as a cultural representative of transnational Welshness, it underlines the potential of dual identifications in underpinning constructions of wartime Britishness.     

‘Read for Victory’: Public Libraries and Book Reading in a British Naval Port City during the Second World War

In 1942, a library official in Portsmouth, UK appealed to the city’s inhabitants to ‘read for victory’, believing that they had a duty to use their reading time productively as part of their wartime activities. This article argues that long-standing desires among the country’s political and civic elites to encourage the nation’s readers to spend their leisure time prudently intensified during the Second World War. The public library service was utilised by civic leaders, library officials and publishing trade personnel to aid the country’s war effort. The article argues that negative attitudes regarding mass reading tastes remained largely static, despite recognition that the conflict drew people to the written word for relaxation and escapism. Using the naval city of Portsmouth as a case study, this article charts the activities of the city’s public library authorities and the borrowing habits of its readers to reveal that while many people borrowed books in order to distract themselves from the conflict, the city’s strategic importance ensured that many citizens also read in order to facilitate their preparedness for war service, whether that be on the home front or overseas. The article argues that while, in common with national trends, many of Portsmouth’s citizens used libraries to obtain books to help distract them from the war, many remained eager to make use of the service for educational purposes, unlike the majority of the nation’s library users, whose interest in this aspect of library provision rapidly waned as the war progressed. The article concludes that the public library service was viewed as a central plank in the war effort and that library officials worked continuously to ensure that it remained so.     

The representation of ‘Asia’, ‘occupational forces’ and ‘women’ against the backdrop of post‐war Japanese culture: from the system of censorship to the present

This paper is one of the attempts to show how each East‐Asian regional country’s memory of the war has been related to the post‐war literatures and movies restricted by the structure of the Cold War. In particular, this paper takes up the issue of how the structure of Japanese culture after World War II was heavily influenced by the Cold War. When Japan was under the Occupational Forces, Japanese writers and film directors settling on the subject matter of the war were not free from the strain of the systematic censorship by GHQ. Translating into mechanisms of their works using the body or woman (comfort woman) by squarely facing the facts of the East‐Asian history, this paper reconsiders the body of post‐colonial Japan.     

The Cultural Construction of the Girl “Teen”: A Cross-cultural Analysis of Feminine Adolescence Portrayed in Popular Culture

The social category of “teen” has become ubiquitous in Western English-speaking popular culture. Also, with the global success of cultural products from the United States of America, such as music, movies and television programs featuring teens, the word “teen” is being employed in other cultures and languages. However, a comparison of the girl teen—often portrayed as a vulnerable stage of human development—with other cultural representations of developing womanhood (the Japanese shoujo and the French jeune fille en fleur) shows the representation of the “teen” to be a construction of its cultural context and questions its universal applicability.     

The left‐wing movement in Malaya,Singapore and Borneo in the 1960s: ‘an era of hope or devil’s decade’?

Abstract

The 1960s was a period of Leftwing resurgence in the world. As Britain was disengaging from its empire, the ethnically plural societies she had generated within her protectorates and colonies in Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei threw up anti‐colonial movements that began struggling towards self‐determination and national independence. These movements manifested the ideologies of communism, socialism, nationalism and communalism. As British imperialism began planning its retreat, the competition for power among the local movements became intense. In Malaya, the largest of the five colonial territories, the communist party launched an armed rebellion in 1948 in the name of national liberation and independence, but made little headway. As Singapore and Malaya were closely linked and ruled, Britain introduced emergency rule in both territories. Most leftwing parties disappeared. Nationalist and communalist parties in Malaya emerged and eventually succeeded in securing national independence from Britain in 1957. Singapore was given a measure of limited self‐government in 1955, while Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei were gradually awakened towards self‐government. Leftwing parties re‐surfaced in Malaya, and in Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei in the 1950s and 1960s, and made some headway in parliamentary elections. This paper presents a historical account of their resurgence, which was however short‐lived.