Richard Maguire

Presenting the History of Africans in Provincial Britain: Norfolk as a Case Study

This article addresses the important topic of how we discuss the history of the African population in Britain in our public historical spaces. In recent decades historians have established that the African presence in Britain is long-standing and we have also accepted the importance of discussing the impact of the system of Atlantic slavery in our national history. In consequence, information about British involvement in the transatlantic slaving economy has entered school curricula, public historical spaces and public debate. This article suggests that we might want to revisit the presentation of this history as we gain more information about the African presence away from London and the major ports. It suggests that the story of Africans in the provinces is, perhaps, not best explained using the histories of large metropolitan centres and ports deeply entangled with slavery. It argues that the information from Norfolk indicates that we should explore an idea that different regions might have responded to the arrival of Africans in different ways and we might be best served by assuming that there was no such thing as a ‘model’ of British responses to this process. It suggests that we consider a presentation of the history of Norfolks African population that emphasizes integration, personal agency and the lack of antipathy towards Africans, and does not start from a default assumption of enslavement.

The use of weapons: Mass killing and the United Kingdom government's nuclear weapons programme

The government of the United Kingdom has participated in the development and deployment of nuclear weapons for over 60 years, an involvement beginning during the Second World War, when Winston Churchill’s government ran an atomic weapons venture codenamed Tube Alloys and was drawn, along with Canada, into the United States government’s Manhattan Project as a junior partner. These wartime links were severed in 1946, when the United States Atomic Energy Act prohibited the passing of classified atomic information to any foreign country, including Britain. Soon thereafter, a small group of ministers authorized an atomic weapons development programme that culminated in a successful atomic test during October 1952. This was overshadowed one month later, when American scientists carried out the world’s first thermonuclear explosion. Whereas atomic bombs, such as were used in the destruction of the citizens and cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, had boundaries to their destructive power, thermonuclear weapons did not, in theory at least. Sir William Penney, the leader of the UK government’s nuclear weapons programme, emphasized the importance of this technological transformation to senior civil servants in 1954, when he stated that: “In theory there was no limit to the size of explosion which could be produced by a bomb of this type.” The following years saw the UK government’s scientists groping towards the production of a thermonuclear bomb, a goal they finally achieved in 1957. The same year saw the UK Minister of Defence, Duncan Sandys, announce the basis of government military policy was now “the power to threaten retaliation with nuclear weapons.” From that date to the present, the threat to use thermonuclear weaponry, if deemed necessary, has remained at the core of the UK government’s military posture. John Baylis has argued that discussion of the history of the UK government’s nuclear weapons programme has been dominated by a focus on “political dimensions” and “strategic calculations.” The general thrust of argument to date has been based on an acceptance that “there were shared values, common perception of the Soviet threat, and a widespread consensus throughout the period in favour of Journal of Genocide Research (2007), 9(3), September, 389–410

From the Guest Editor. The Nuclear Weapon and Genocide: The Beginning of a Discussion

This special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research on nuclear weapons is published in the shadow of the untimely death of a scholar who was extremely keen to play a part in the project from the first moment he was asked to contribute to it. Eric Markusen, whose passing in January 2007 robbed the community of genocide scholars of a tireless campaigner, thoughtful academic, and thoroughly decent human being, considered that the moment was ripe for those working in this rapidly maturing field to turn their thoughts to the issue of nuclear weaponry. Unfortunately, the progression of his illness prevented him from writing the article he proposed for this volume and all we have is the abstract, entitled “The genocidal nature of nuclear war,” that he submitted in 2006. It had been intended that Eric’s article would open this volume, and by way of a tribute to him, although his death prevented us from receiving his finalized thoughts on this topic, his abstract is included as an appendix to this editorial, which will take the opportunity to discuss Eric’s ideas, for they provide, even in the briefest form, a significant contribution to the topic. This special issue seeks to promote a discussion that uses the knowledge, approaches and understandings gained from the field of genocide research to ask searching questions about the history of the world’s nuclear weapons programmes, along with the military, political and economic ideas underpinning the thinking about these weapons within the score of governments that now possess them. In doing so, it seeks to move beyond the long-standing dominance given in analysis of nuclear weapons policy to, what Lawrence Freedman has termed, “strategic, technological, political and economic factors.” A brief glance at the literature confirms that these themes have provided the focus for the majority of thought in this field. Central among these themes is the notion of strategic necessity, generally based on the argument that the nuclear option provides an essential element in a country’s defence, by deterring enemies from attacking. With the Cold War now assigned to the pages of history, the current catalogue of enemies for the governments in many nuclear weapons states is Journal of Genocide Research (2007), 9(3), September, 353–360