Episode #24: Foreign Policy, Part I
Images (CW): delegates at the UN Women’s Conference in Mexico 1975 // Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan // an International Women’s Year badge (Schlesinger Library) // Margaret Beckett (by Nick Sinclair) // logo by @3Dperson // illustration by Melissa McFeeters for Foreign Policy
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FOOTNOTES
Naoko Shimazu is a professor of history at Yale-NUS – read her article on ‘Diplomacy as Theatre: Staging the Bandung Conference of 1955’ in Modern Asian Studies, 48:1 (January 2014), pp. 225-252 here, and find out more about her work here;
Jocelyn Olcott is a professor of history at Duke University. Her book ground-breaking book International Women’s Year: The Greatest Consciousness-Raising Event in History was published by Oxford University Press in 2017 – buy it here. Read more about her work here and follow her on Twitter @jocelyn_olcott;
There is more information about the UN Decade for Women at www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/mexico.html;
Per Widén, an art historian at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, has studied the lack of knowledge of the Swedish Empire – read about his work here and follow him on Twitter @perwiden;
The Museum of Danish Resistance has a lot of information about the Nazi occupation of Denmark; Yad Vashem has more information about the rescue of the Danish Jews here;
Julian Jackson is a professor of history at Queen Mary University of London and made an excellent BA dissertation supervisor for Emma back in the mid-00s;
On 2 February 2019, Shrewsbury MP Daniel Kawczynski tweeted: “Britain helped to liberate half of Europe. She mortgaged herself up to eye balls in process. No Marshall Plan for us only for Germany. We gave up war reparations in 1990. We put £370 billion into EU since we joined. Watch the way ungrateful EU treats us now. We will remember.” Cue eye-rolls from historians;
Sally Alexander is a professor of history at Goldsmiths and a founding editor of History Workshop Journal - read her introduction to HWJ’s Virtual Special Issue: Psychoanalysis and History here (the issue includes Sally’s article ‘Women, Class and Sexual Differences in the 1830s and 1840s: Some Reflections on the Writing of a Feminist History’ from 1984);
The Swedish delegation to the Women’s Confernece in Mexico City included Prime Minister Olof Palme, labour market minister Anna-Greta Leijon and the PM’s wife, Lisbet Palme, who was a renowned child psychologist. The delegation stopped in Cuba on the way for a state visit, as shown in this photo:
Anna-Greta Leijon, Olof Palme and Fidel Castro - Havana, 1975
Find out more about Spare Rib and read some of its back issues here. The correspondent mentioned by Charlotte is Tsehai Berhane-Selassie, who went to the conference in Nairobi in 1985. Berhane-Selassie has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford – you’ll find more works by her here;
Cynthia Enloe is a professor of political science and a specialist in international development and gender studies at Clark University. We spoke about her in episode #11, which you can listen to here. Read more about her work here;
Kathleen Burk is a professor of history at University College London, and was Charlotte’s PhD supervisor. Find out more about her here;
Does Khaki Become You? is a book by Cynthia Enloe published in 1983; she also wrote an essay with the same title for the New Inernationalist in 1991 – read that here;
We talked about ‘British values’ in episode 16, which was all about Windrush and citizenship. Listen to it here;
Here’s the Swedish Foreign Office’s round-up of what happened when Sweden had a place on the UN Security Council 2017-2018. Sample quote: “As a principled member of the United Nations Security Council, Sweden took its cue from the foundation stones of international law, human rights, gender equality and a humanitarian perspective.”
Here’s the Nobel Prize biography of Dag Hammarskjöld, who was the UN Secretary General from 1953 until shot down over what was Northern Rhodesia in 1961. And here is Susan Williams’ book Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa (Hurst, 2016);
Sweden participated in and benefited from the Transatlantic slave trade – as shown by Chris Evans (University of South Wales) and Göran Rydén (Uppsala University) in ‘“Voyage iron”: an Atlantic slave trade currency, its European origins, and West African impact’ Past & Present (2018);
The Independent’s reviewer called Niall Ferguson’s Colossus “a wide-ranging, but deeply flawed, exploration of what US dominance means.” Let’s leave it at that;
When Emma took Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Lund 2001-2002, it was a tiny part of the Theology department, housed in a mouldy building and threatened by cuts. It now has its own centre;
Chris Fuller is an associate professor at the University of Southampton. His book, See It/Shoot It: The Secret History of the CIA’s Lethal Drone Program, was published by Yale University Press in 2017. Read more about Chris here and follow him on Twitter @DrChrisFuller;
Here’s an interview with Margaret Beckett, so far Britain’s only female foreign secretary – a role she held 2006-2007…
…and here is one with Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State 1997-2001, on what being a woman meant for her while in office;
Count the women in this photo taken at an informal meeting of EU foreign affairs ministers in Vienna on 31 August 2018! Sweden’s Annika Söder (State Secretary for Foreign Affairs) is in the top row; Portugal’s Ana Paula Zacarias (Secretary of State for European Affairs), Bulgaria’s Ekaterina Zaharieva (Deputy Prime Minister for Judicial Reform and Minister of Foreign Affairs), Austria’s Karin Kneissl (Federal Minister for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs), the EU’s Federica Mogherini (High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and Vice-President of the Commission) and Croatia’s Marija Pejcinovic Buric (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs) are all in the front row. As is the UK’s Jeremy Hunt. (BKA/Andy Wenzel)
Anna Lindh was a Swedish Social Democratic politician and Sweden’s foreign minister from 1998 until she was murdered in September 2003;
Olof Palme was Sweden’s Social Democratic prime minister 1969-1976 and from 1982 until he was murdered in 1986;
Penny Mordaunt has been the Secretary of State for Defence since May 2019;
Here’s what the Swedish government says about it’s Feminist Foreign Policy;
Charlotte wrote about Kate Osamor’s development aid paper for Renewal: read the whole article here;
Emily Baughan is a historian at the University of Sheffield – read more about her work here and follow her on Twitter @emily_baughan;
Anna Bocking-Welsh is a historian at the University of Liverpool – read more about her work here and follow her on Twitter @abiedoubleyou;
Tehila Sasson is a historian at Emory University – read more about her work here and follow her on Twitter @TehilaSasson;
The poem is ‘Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)’ by Muriel Rukeyser:
“I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.”
OUR RECOMMENDATIONS
Charlotte recommends Lyndsey Stonebridge’s Placeless People: Writings, Rights, and Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2018). Lyndsey is a professor of humanities and human rights at the University of Birmingham – read more about her here and follow her on Twitter @LyndseyStonebri;
Emma recommends Madness Visible by Janine di Giovanni (Bloomsbury, 2005). The essay she mentions is ‘Book of the Dead’, published by Granta in 2010 – read that here, and follow Janine on Twitter @janinedigi.
THE NEXT EPISODE…
…will be the second in our two-part series on mothering and motherhood. The second part of our foreign policy series will be available as episode #26 in a few weeks’ time.
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