The Journal of Research Institute for the History of Global Arms Transfer
Online ISSN : 2423-8546
Print ISSN : 2423-8538
ISSN-L : 2423-8538
Volume 2018, Issue 1
Displaying 1-12 of 12 articles from this issue
  • [in Japanese]
    2018 Volume 2018 Issue 1 Pages 1-2
    Published: January 23, 2018
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
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  • Important Considerations for Industry
    BENJAMIN COOMBS
    2018 Volume 2018 Issue 1 Pages 3-18
    Published: January 23, 2018
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    This article illustrates that the production of tanks by British industry during the Second World War provides important considerations for peacetime industry to produce heavy and complex machines on a commercially successful and sustainable basis. Notably, delays and shortages in material components must be minimized to avoid interrupting the rate of output. Spare parts have to be available in sufficient quantities to ensure continued performance once the equipment has left the factory and similarly the inspection regime on the assembly line has to be adequate to maintain the highest level of build quality. The continued production of older equipment may be necessary to avoid inactive workers and every effort should be made to ensure that the production process benefits from as much standardization, specialization and simplification as possible. Finally, there are significant risks of becoming too reliant upon production from overseas sources. This article discusses these considerations with case examples from the wartime period by using untapped information held within the archives of industry alongside the more traditional sources available in national repositories. Overall this analysis shows that the British process of manufacturing tanks under wartime conditions was not that different from the experiences of other Western Allies.
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  • S. WAQAR H. ZAIDI
    2018 Volume 2018 Issue 1 Pages 19-36
    Published: January 23, 2018
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
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    The interwar years mark the emergence of arms control both as a major foreign policy issue and also as a major topic of public and private debate and discussion in Europe and elsewhere. This paper examines two prominent, yet neglected, aspects of these discourses. Unearthing and exploring these two aspects points to the importance of assumptions about the nature and origins of science and technology in discourses surrounding arms control, as well as the politically contingent nature of many of the concepts used therein. The first aspect, the possibility of the convertibility of civilian science and technology to military use, was debated and discussed in relation to a wide range of industries, particularly aviation. This paper shows that although convertibility was used to support widely different positions in relation to arms control, arguments for its support rested on the same shared assumptions about the relationships between civilian and military technologies. The second aspect was a ‘militaristic perversion’ argument which sometimes built upon the first, often by internationalists and pacifists. The natural development of modern science and technology was a civilian one, it was argued, which would lead to beneficial effects including increasing peace and prosperity and even, in some cases, international integration. The military application was, on the other hand, a perversion which had twisted these sciences and technologies into an unnatural and harmful trajectory. This argument was used most often in support of reduced arms production and deployment, and for reduced military influence in certain industrial sectors.
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  • ANDREW DILLEY
    2018 Volume 2018 Issue 1 Pages 37-48
    Published: January 23, 2018
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
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    It is now three decades since P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins developed the concept of gentlemanly capitalism and deployed it to explain three centuries of British imperial expansion. Despite heavy criticism, especially in the early days, the concept has entered scholarly and broader public discourse. This article offers a critical appraisal of gentlemanly capitalism. It outlines how Cain and Hopkins make three distinct sets of claims about the evolution of the British economy, about the sociology of status, and about the relationship between socio-economic elites and the state. It argues that, notwithstanding the undeniably rich analysis Cain and Hopkins weave around the concept, gentlemanly capitalism relies on a series of conceptual elisions and elusions which ultimately curtail its explanatory power. The article suggests however that from this critical deconstruction of the various elements of gentlemanly capitalism a fruitful new research agenda emerges.
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  • Radio and the British World
    SIMON J. POTTER
    2018 Volume 2018 Issue 1 Pages 49-58
    Published: January 23, 2018
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
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    This essay considers the role of radio broadcasting in appealing to and reinforcing Britannic sentiment during the Second World War, and thus mobilising a united imperial war effort. Radio played on the bonds of sentiment in a particularly powerful fashion, because it addressed listeners intimately and with a sense of authenticity, and allowed rapid, regular, and direct communication with audiences over long distances. Imperial broadcasting structures established during the 1920s and 1930s were repurposed for war, under the leadership of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), but bringing in broadcasters (and state information and propaganda agencies) all around the British world. Many different producers, writers, artists, and experts helped broadcast Britishness during this period, appealing to Britannic sentiment in a wide variety of ways. Often they linked Britishness with liberty, democracy, and equality, even if this flew in the face of the realities of empire. The British connection was presented as a living and vital force, bringing people together despite divisions of race. Broadcasters also made a powerful appeal to ideas about a common history and set of traditions. The essay suggests that such themes offered a significant means of harnessing Britannic sentiment to the needs of war.
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  • Shoichi Watanabe
    2018 Volume 2018 Issue 1 Pages 59-83
    Published: January 23, 2018
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
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    This paper aims at surveying the deployment of the British policy of military assistance in South Asia from the post-war period to the end of the 1960s. In the process of decolonisation, the British government kept groping for whether her presence in South Asia could be maintainable in the post-war period. When India and Pakistan separately achieved independence in 1947, Britain had them decide to remain as a member of the Commonwealth succeedingly after independence. The intention was for both the maintenance in the sterling area based on dealings of sterling balances and the Commonwealth’s defense against the expansion of communism.
     When maintaining the Commonwealth’s relationship with South Asian countries, Britain set forth the parity (equal principle) in arms supply, but the arms supplied to India and Pakistan were mainly not the latest, but the used ones. Britain’s influential power, which could secure India as her monopoly market, disappeared in the early 1960s. On the other hand, refraining from the military intervention to South Asia at the end of World War II, the United States sought to strengthen military aid to Pakistan gradually during the military convention. This cooperation also reinforced Anglo-American ties dependent on the formation of the Baghdad Pact in the face of the strained states of the Middle East.
     When the vulnerability of India’s defense system appeared in the course of Indo-China border conflicts, India’s urgent request for arms also became a touchstone of Britain and the United States from both sides of international orders in South Asia and their financial burdens. They could not fully respond to strengthen India’s defense system at the Nassau Conference in December 1962, and then encouraged India to purchase the MIG-21 fighter from the then-Soviet Union. As India’s non-alignment policy urged in the 1950s disappeared, in turn, the logic of the Cold War was strengthened. Finally, when Britain and the United States ceased their military aid at the second Indo-Pakistan War in 1965, it symbolised the breakdown of the British military aid policy in South Asia, the aims of which were to solve Kashmir’s issues by treating India and Pakistan with parity.
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  • Katsuhiko Yokoi
    2018 Volume 2018 Issue 1 Pages 85-106
    Published: January 23, 2018
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
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    The Indian military system was developed under the control of the British Empire. The Indian Navy, Army and Air Force were dependent on the arms transfer from Britain until the 1950s. Postindependence India was also in no position to be ‘self-sufficient’ in defence equipment. India acquired a substantial number of defence weapons and equipment from European countries, mainly from the Soviet Union. Since its independence, the country has faced a hostile security environment externally. It has been involved in several military confrontations with Pakistan and China. To address these challenges and strengthen its military capabilities within a short time, India had to depend on the Soviet Union for licensed production, which was a key component in the development of its indigenous defence capabilities.
     By focusing on the relationships between the military assistance India received during the Cold War, arms transfer to post-independence India and the indigenisation of the Indian defence industry, this paper examines the three following related subjects in sequence: (1)After the Second World War, mainly since the 1960s, the US and the Soviet Union started economic and military assistance to third-world countries on a large scale. First, we examine the aim and scale of such assistance to India. A close relationship existed between military assistance and arms transfer during the 1960s and 1970s.
    (2)The worsening Sino-Indian relations from 1961 onward provided a strong impetus to the military modernisation of India. The natural priority of the new government after independence was to build its industrial capacity and defence industry. We examine how military assistance contributed to the establishment of India’s indigenous defence industry.
    (3)The industrial and military development of Bangalore in the 1960s and 1970s was based on a diverse military–industrial–research complex. From this point of view, it is important to elucidate the relationship between Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and research institutes of aeronautical engineering, including the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institutes of Technology.
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  • Networks and Thinking about the League of Nations before the Great War
    Sakiko Kaiga
    2018 Volume 2018 Issue 1 Pages 107-126
    Published: January 23, 2018
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    This article provides the neglected background of the League of Nations movement and of its thinking about the causes of war and the conditions of peace. Previous research about the movement have focused on its activity during the First World War and the inter-war period, despite the fact that the post-war plan emerged from an older European intellectual tradition. The study, therefore, contextualises the pro-League movement into this rich legacy by exploring two broader contexts: the pre-war backdrop to the evolution of the movement and the history of ideas about war and peace up to the eve of the Great War. In the pre-1914 period, the future pro-League activists already had networks of influence that became the basis of the movement. Even though they drew upon the intellectual legacy going back more than several centuries, the problems they faced differed from those of their predecessors – the breakdown of the Concert of Europe and the rise of nationalism. These problems led the pro-Leaguers to not only develop fresh perspectives on the causes of war, but also conclude that a new world order should be established. By revealing the background of the pro-League movement, this article introduces the deep intellectual foundation that shaped the evolution of the League and that still influences today’s international relations.
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  • Employer petitions to the US Congress and the US Department of Labor
    Hideyuki Shimotomai
    2018 Volume 2018 Issue 1 Pages 127-147
    Published: January 23, 2018
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    It is generally taken for granted that the 1920s were a period of prosperity for the United States, defined by the attainment of significant economic development. The main contributors to the booming industry were immigrants from Europe, who had worked as unskilled and semi-skilled laborers. However, the Immigration Act of 1924, which is considered a landmark in the history of US immigration policy, limited the number of immigrants in its primary aim of restricting Southern and Eastern European immigrants. It is said that many employers were opposed to restricting immigration in the 1920s as they were concerned about labor shortages.
     This article clarifies the attitude of American employers at the time of the Immigration Act, analyzing the petitions and letters that employers sent to the US Congress and the US Department of Labor. Since the industrial world comprised the largest opponents of the proposed bill, American employers became highly engaged in fulfilling the immigration policy to the benefit of the American economy.
     The analysis yielded the following results. The attitude toward the immigration act and the circumstances of the individual enterprises differed on the basis of the industry and the scale of the enterprise. Since employers struggled in the recession following World War I, with the attendant high unemployment, it was difficult to support the immigration bills on the grounds that they would result in labor shortages. As a result, their concern shifted to the process and the system of immigration selection because they needed to secure the thorough the supply of labor, not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of assured quality. The request from the business world to improve immigrant selection gradually drummed up support from influential congressmen and immigration officials, especially the then Secretary of the Department of Labor, James J. Davis. Eventually, the “consular control system,” which the employers had sought for years, was embodied in the Immigration Act of 1924.
     It is well known that after World War II, US immigration policy actively accepted skilled human resources as a growth strategy. As seen above, immigration policy before World War II also sought immigrants for the benefit of the US economy. Another important issue, therefore, is to understand the relationship between the immigration policies of the pre- and post-World War II periods.
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  • Yuji Yamashita
    2018 Volume 2018 Issue 1 Pages 149-160
    Published: January 23, 2018
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    We held a meeting on March 8, 2017, at Meiji University with Benjamin Coombs to examine tank production in Britain from the 1920s to the 1930s. At this meeting, we discussed ways to collaborate with and organise research subjects for the Research Institute for the History of Global Arms Transfer of Meiji University. Subjects were composed of two parts: the first part was on British tank production and export during the 1920s to 1930s; the second was on how Japanese tank production was formed and the extent of British roles and influence. We started to collect secondary sources to survey British tank exports in the 1920s to 1930s.
     As for the first step, we focused on conclusions made by Harkavy and Krause. They aimed to grasp an overview of the arms transfer system and compare the pre-war and post-war era. Subsequently, we obtained references regarding British tanks. Consequently, we discovered that British tank development, production and export were wrapped in mystery. The volume and value of tank exports were vague and foggy, and it seemed as if the British Army did not develop any consistent tank production policy in the 1920s to 1930s. The situation of the British government’s regulations on tank exportation was also unclear. Finally, Vickers Ltd., which had no experience with tank development and production, became the sole player in the tank manufacturing industry in the 1920s.
     Therefore, to obtain primary sources, we conducted a broad survey at Vickers Archives, Cambridge University Library, and National Archives at Kew, London, to understand the facts of tank production and export. At these facilities, we researched, for example, Vickers’s decision making on tank exports; business concerns between Vickers, the British government and foreign governments; as well as the policy-making process of tank development and production.
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  • [in Japanese]
    2018 Volume 2018 Issue 1 Pages 161-164
    Published: January 23, 2018
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
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  • [in Japanese]
    2018 Volume 2018 Issue 1 Pages 165-168
    Published: January 23, 2018
    Released on J-STAGE: January 21, 2025
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS
    Download PDF (609K)
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