This article draws upon more than 15 years of ‘participant-observation’ with international efforts to regulate the global trade in small arms and light weapons to examine: the overall trajectory, major successes, and shortcomings of international efforts to deal with the negative consequences of the proliferation and misuse of small arms and light weapons; and the role, scope, and impact of expert knowledge and policy-relevant research in shaping ‘global public policy’. By focusing on the specific role and experience of the Small Arms Survey project, a research-based NGO that played a high-profile role in these efforts, it outlines the general conditions that shape the prospects for academic research and analysis to influence global public policy both through agenda setting and framing, and through highlighting policy solutions. It also underscores the constraints upon the uptake of policy-relevant research, including epistemic uncertainty and governmental receptiveness. It concludes with some observations on the overall role of expert knowledge in the shaping of global public policy, and on the trajectory of international efforts to tackle small arms proliferation and misuse.

View full abstract

This article surveys the origins and development of War Studies at King’s College London from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. While in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the growth of military studies at King’s was sporadic, the two world wars, the Cold War and post-cold war conflicts drove the rapid expansion of War Studies. This article describes how the department has changed from one focused on military history and strategic studies to one that tackles a range of contemporary security issues from many analytical perspectives and methodological approaches. It concludes with some personal observations about the challenges faced by the Department of War Studies as a scholarly community and as a collective research effort.

View full abstract

The Imperial Japanese Navy asked in 1934 for a drastic revision of the Washington system of naval arms control, eventually leading Japan to withdraw from the system in late 1936. Given the arms race and the tensions that ensued with the United States, the rejection of arms control was a decisive step on Japan’s road to the Pacific War. Why did the Japanese government embrace the navy’s strategic requirements and take such a risky decision? The present article first shows that to disengage from arms control was strategically rational for the navy as an institution. It was its duty to oppose arms control if the latter jeopardized national security, which was the case in the mid-1930s. If the navy perfectly played its role, it should not have been able to impose its view about arms control on the government. Japanese leaders should have prioritized diplomacy, not power politics. This undue political influence of the navy came from dysfunctions in civil-military relations dating back to the early Meiji era.

View full abstract

This article clarifies the activities of Takata & Co. during the Sino-Japanese War by investigating its transporting of ‘contraband of war’ from Britain to Japan.
　While the first ship was transporting this contraband, the war broke out. The British government commanded the ship’s captain to land war materials and explosives at a Singapore port. The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) ordered Takata & Co. to send a representative to Singapore. At the time, a second ship transporting contraband of war was on its way to Japan, so the IJN ordered Takata & Co. to take on the war materials and explosives landed by the first ship.
　Various plans were tried. For example, the ship did not sail on the China Sea but took the South Seas, and the ship was camouflaged to appear as another ship. Takata & Co. carried out more than just the role of a simple contractor transporting war materials and explosives. For instance, it made a secret agreement that it would offer a prize to the ship’s captain when the vessel reached Japan safely. It was important that Takata & Co. was entrusted by the IJN with shipping war materials and explosives. Moreover, Takata & Co. was a significant intermediary between the Japanese government (IJN and the Foreign Office) and the ship’s owner.
　When the IJN imported war materials and explosives from Britain, most were made by Sir W.G. Armstrong Whitworth & Co. Ltd. (Armstrong Co.), but the order pretended to come from Jardine Matheson & Co., or Takata & Co. Also, Yamanouchi Masuji, the central figure from the beginning of the Kure Arsenal’s construction, was close with Andrew Noble (Armstrong Co. Chairman), and this worked well when dealing with war materials and explosives made by Armstrong Co.
　Thus, Takata & Co. played an important role in transporting contraband of war from Britain to Japan, as the IJN negotiator intended. As a result of its activities, Takata & Co. became an agent of the Armstrong Co. soon after the Sino-Japanese War.

View full abstract

This article explores how members of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) deployed various types of firearms in the settlement complex they created for Guaraní Indians, called “Missions” or “Reductions,” under Spanish rule from 1609-1767. Located in the Río de la Plata region (in present day southwestern Paraguay, northeastern Argentina, southern Brazil, and Uruguay), the main purpose of these missions was to spread Christianity among local inhabitants. The close proximity between the Jesuit-Guaraní Missions in Spanish territory and Portuguese Brazil caused continuous invasions of Portuguese slave and fortune hunters from São Paulo, called Bandeirantes, particularly during the decades of 1620 to 1630. In order to protect their flock of sheep from the attack of ferocious wolves, the Jesuits devised a means of self-defense by force of arms.
　The first section of this article describes the historical development of the discussion among the Jesuits concerning countermeasures against the Bandeirantes. The general assembly of Jesuit Paraguayan Province adopted a resolution to permit armed opposition to the Portuguese slave hunters. The second section examines the arguments of the Society’s upper ranks in Rome, who found the general resolution of Paraguayan Province difficult to accept. Several instructions from the Society’s Superior General showed anxiety over the Province’s radical stance. However, the Paraguayan Jesuits were consistent in their commitment to take up arms for self-defense. Disobeying the instructions from Rome, the Jesuits in the Río de la Plata began training their Indians charges in European military techniques, implementing defensive measures in the Missions, and amassing various types of military equipment by different means.
　The main objective of this article is to reconstruct the specific manner by which the Jesuits secured military equipment through an integrated analysis of multiple historical documents. In conclusion, this article demonstrates the following three points. (1) The Spanish Governor in Asunción, the present capital of Paraguay, sent firearms on several occasions. (2) The Paraguayan Jesuits themselves purchased weapons by using their own money. (3) The Jesuits also built several forges in the Missions in order to produce firearms, and received Spanish specialists who taught Guaraní Indians how to make different types of weapons. This is the outcome of the collective involvement of the Jesuits in the Río de la Plata.

View full abstract

This paper explores the aero-technology transfer from Germany to Japan during the interwar period. It aims to show that the comprehensive acquisition of German advanced aviation technology by the Japanese military and private companies in the 1920s was a crucial factor in enabling Japanese aero-technology to rapidly accomplish self-sufficiency in 1930s.
　When the First World War ended in 1918, the technological level of the Japanese air force and its aircraft industry was extremely inferior to that of Western countries. To modernize its aviation technology, the Japanese army and navy invited aviation missions and imported many aircraft from France and Britain in 1919-21. However, the military in Japan, one of the war’s victorious countries, also recognized that aviation technology in a defeated Germany, particularly its all-metal aircraft, was advanced and intended to transfer it to Japan just after the war.
　In 1922, engineers of the Japanese navy, the Sumitomo Co. and the Mitsubishi Co. were sent to Rohrbach and Dürener Metallwerke to master technology involving duralumin for the all-metal flying boat. Although the Versailles Treaty imposed many severe restrictions on the German aircraft industry, including a ban on production and exports, Rohrbach produced the latest flying boat for Japan in secret, and the Japanese financially supported this company even though it was a major member of the Allies.
　The Japanese army also highly appreciated Germany’s all-metal aircraft. In 1927, the Kawasaki Co. constructed the Japanese army’s first all-metal heavy bombers, under a license agreement with Dornier. In 1928, under an arrangement with Junkers, Mitsubishi produced Junkers K.51 all-metal, four-engine heavy bombers for the army as Ki-20 aircraft.
　In the 1920s, Japan’s military budget was controlled as a result of serious internal depression and the limitations of the Washington Conference disarmament treaty. However, the Japanese military and private companies kept putting much funding into its air force and aircraft industry and invited many German aviation experts to Japan. They contributed to the development of Japanese aviation technology and the cultivation of young Japanese aircraft designers.
　All of the above contributed to the rapid self-sufficiency of Japanese aircraft in the 1930s. In particular, the navy’s Type 96 land-based attack aircraft, constructed with the airframe technology of Rohrbach and Junkers, enabled Japan’s air force to do strategic bombing against China after 1937.

View full abstract

During World War I, Allied countries, including Japan, regulated trade with companies associated with their enemies. At the same time, free trade had critical importance for the economic and national survive of Japan, which lacked abundant natural resources. This paper explains how Japan joined a global network regulating trade with enemy-associated companies during WWI. Japan implemented naval contraband of war and trade embargoes on some goods in the beginning of the war, but after the promulgation of the British Trading with the Enemy (Extension of Powers) Act 1915 on 23 December 1915, Japan cooperated with the British endeavour to ban trade with enemy-associated companies. The Japanese government began to instruct Japanese traders and shipping companies not to trade with companies on the British Black List.
　The Japanese government issued an imperial ordinance regulating trade with enemy- associated companies in April 1917 based on the resolution of the Paris Economic Conference of the Allied in June 1916. The crucial reason that the Japanese government cooperated with the United Kingdom was the importance of maintaining trade with Allied countries, especially the British Empire. Japanese light industry, which was the country’s most profitable industry, imported natural resources mostly from the British Empire. At that time, British companies stopped trading with not only with enemy-associated companies but also companies suspected of having any relations with those companies. To continue to do business with British companies, Japanese companies had no choice but to cut all relations with enemy-associated companies and to follow British rules.
　Criticism of banning private trade was based on the grounds of humanism or moral conduct between ‘civilized states’. Before WWI, war had been thought of as a conflict between states. Life, property and other rights of civilians, even those with enemy nationalities, were to be protected. In the Privy Council which discussed the imperial ordinance, Miyoji Ito, a leading privy, pointed out that abusing enemy civilians by banning private trade was a significant change from Japanese policies during the Chino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars. This change marked an age of total war in which everything in a state was mobilised to support war, and there were no differences between combatants and non-combatants.

View full abstract

Since the 1990s onwards, there has been a proliferation of initiatives to agree to regional and ‘global’ instruments establishing common criteria for assessing arms transfer licenses. After a series of negotiations, the efforts culminated on 2 April 2013 with the adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) at the United Nations General Assembly. The First Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty (CSP1) was held in Mexico in August 2015, the Second Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty (CSP2) was held in Switzerland in August 2016, and the Third Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty (CSP3) is scheduled to be held in Switzerland in September 2017.
　While research abounds on the negotiation processes of conventional arms control agreements that have taken place since the 1990s and the roles of governmental and non-governmental actors in these negotiations, there is a striking absence of research on the implications of post-adoption processes and the roles of the wide range of actors in these processes. However, issues such as the rules of procedure for the Conference of States Parties (CSP), reporting mechanisms, and states parties' interpretation and implementation of the treaty have come under heated debate during the treaty's post-adoption processes, precisely because these issues seem to affect the treaty's transparency and effectiveness.
　This article seeks to analyse the key issues at the CSP2 and thereafter, including reporting mechanisms, possible violations of the treaty by States Parties and signatory states, the relationship between the ATT and the Human Rights Council (HRC), mandates and openness of subsidiary bodies of the CSP, and membership and roles of the voluntary trust fund (VTF). Through tracing the policy debates over the key issues, it also tries to indicate potential areas of major disputes at the CSP3. As one of the participants of the CSP process of the ATT, the author hopes to record this historic moment and to provide the basis for policy debates ahead of the upcoming CSP3 as well as for the future research on, and evaluation of, this process.

View full abstract