Zwischen Zustimmung und Ablehnung: Hồ Chí Minh Antikolonialismus in der Komintern

Between approval and rejection: Hồ Chí Minh’s anticolonialism in the CominternThis paper discusses Hồ Chí Minh’s political conviction of Leninist Communist ideas with regard to anticolonialism. Moreover, it examines his position within the Comintern and the Indochinese Communist Party due to his specific interpretation of anticolonialism. It will be argued that reactions to his position depended on the predominant ideological principles.

Epilogue

At the outset of this book, I asked the question “Who is a Pole?,” and the reader might have noticed with growing irritation that throughout its pages I have not really answered it. Frankly, I think that from an academic perspective, this is impossible to do. In my personal view, a Pole is somebody who identifies as a Pole, usually has been born in Poland or brought up by people who were, and has developed a strong feeling towards this country. It does not necessarily have to be love, but for sure it is neither hate nor indifference, it is a feeling which makes one care for the country’s history and fate. I am convinced that nobody else can tell this person that she or he is not a Pole, producing “evidence” such as following the “wrong” religion, political conviction, worldview, or lifestyle, or featuring the “wrong mixture” of blood and genes. I regard such lines of argument as an absurd form of modern paganism....

Humanism and Empire

For more than a century, scholars have believed that Italian humanism was predominantly ‘civic’ in outlook. Often serving in communal government, fourteenth-century humanists like Albertino Mussato and Coluccio Salutati are said to have derived from their reading of the Latin classics a rhetoric of republican liberty that was opposed to the ‘tyranny’ of neighbouring signori and of the German emperors. In this groundbreaking study, Alexander Lee challenges this long-held belief. From the death of Frederick II in 1250 to the failure of Rupert of the Palatinate’s ill-fated expedition in 1402, Lee argues, the humanists nurtured a consistent and powerful affection for the Holy Roman Empire. Though this was articulated in a variety of different ways, it was nevertheless driven more by political conviction than by cultural concerns. Surrounded by endless conflict—both within and between city states—the humanists eagerly embraced the Empire as the surest guarantee of peace and liberty, and lost no opportunity to invoke its protection. Indeed, as Lee shows, the most ardent appeals to imperial authority were made not by ‘signorial’ humanists, but by humanists in the service of communal regimes. The first comprehensive, synoptic study of humanistic ideas of Empire in the period c.1250–1402, this volume offers a radically new interpretation of fourteenth-century political thought, and raises wide-ranging questions about the foundations of modern constitutional ideas. As such, it is essential reading not just for students of Renaissance Italy and the history of political thought, but for all those interested in understanding the origins of liberty.

“Why Can't I Have the Vote?”

The First World War came at a crucial time when British women's suffrage campaigns were gathering momentum throughout the country. The culmination of the movement during these years, in spite of various social and political differences, enhanced female solidarity and political consciousness to a considerable degree. Hectic political activism also witnessed a phenomenal rise and propagation of an exclusive and extraordinary women's culture. The onset of the Great War however, struck a fatal blow to such an unprecedented female camaraderie and political conviction. My proposed chapter traces and gathers evidences in women's verse written during this time period extending from the pre-war years of the suffrage movement to the early years of the post-war demobilisation correlating them with some of the major developments in women's socio-political history of the period.

‘The far-off hills of the imagination’: W.R. Rodgers and the Second World War

According to most accounts of the literary history of Northern Ireland, the flourishing of poetry during the late 1960s marked a radical departure from the creative stagnation of the preceding decades; Heaney, Mahon, Longley, and others sought to establish poetic roots in a relatively barren landscape. In this essay I challenge such preconceptions by exploring aspects of a loosely-formed coterie of poets who lived and wrote in Northern Ireland during the Second World War. Perhaps the most popular figure within this group was the Presbyterian minister W.R. Rodgers, whose neo-romantic idiom and Audenesque ideas received many favourable reviews throughout Britain and Ireland. Focusing on Rodgers, I identify the central concerns which united an otherwise diverse group of writers: left-wing political conviction and a desire to see radical social change. In Rodgers's poetry, this theme is communicated through his repeated use of the symbol of the airman.

Howard Brenton’s Transmutation from Political Theatre to Absurd Theatre

Of all the contemporary dramatists, Howard Brenton is surely the most prolific, marked by breadth and variety,his plays mainly tackling moments of great political upheavals of the time. Many of his plays are turned out at speed as quickresponses to events in public life. Brenton, as a man of political conviction, exposes contemporary consciousness. The theatreserves as a platform for his political revolt expressive of disillusionment at the failure of socialism. Following the trend ofBrechtian Epic Theatre, Brenton used the basic principles in matters of setting, characterization, empathy and dramaticstructure and the techniques of socialist realism creating a fable with characters capable of change showing the light ofdawn in the darkest night. He evolved a large-scale ‘epic’ theatre dealing in complex political issues, an attempt to constitutea British Epic theatre. Since 1965, Brenton committed himself to a career as a playwright with his first play Ladder of Foolstill the recent play Drawing the Line (2013), he has widely moved through different phases of his career as a politicaldramatist with the portrayal of England in terms of a violent political landscape. But of late, there is transmutation frompolitical theatre to absurd theatre. In his recent play Drawing the Line Brenton faces an epic task himself in distilling theturmoil of India-Pakistan partition into two hours on stage. He makes the audience realize the absurdity of decisions made bythe intelligent principled political leaders that end up in tumultuous violence and conflicting demands.

The people behind the political headlines

Political journalism plays a central role in all democratic societies. But the way political journalists fulfil this role varies from country to country. To better understand the role of political journalists in different democracies, this article explores which features of political journalism are universal and which characteristics vary cross-nationally. Comprehensive surveys among political journalists in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain ( N = 425) show that political journalists are more often male and higher educated than the general population of journalists. Their political conviction is however less towards the left. Despite structural homogenization, the role conceptions and feelings of autonomy of political journalists vary between countries with different historical relations between media and political systems and different traditions of journalistic professionalization.