‘The Internationalism of Islam’: The British Perception of a Muslim Menace, 1840–1951
Abstract This article assesses British perceptions of a Muslim menace to imperial security between 1840–1951. These ideas had a long life. They rarely stood in the first rank of imperial concerns, but sometimes in the second. Over this period, British ideas of an Islamic menace focused first on the political self-consciousness of all Muslims than on subterranean bodies which tried to bind masses and elites for political ends, and moved to nationalist movements with a narrow popular base, and finally to those with a mass base. Between 1915 and 1924, fear of a pan-Islamic menace significantly affected British strategic and imperial policy. These ideas involved the interaction of observation, intelligence, perception, learning, fear, ignorance and uncertainty. Their study illuminates the evolution both of British intelligence and of its ideas about the political self-consciousness of its subjects, and the threat that posed to its rule, particularly about the nature and power of colonial nationalism.
Regional security complex theory and insulator states: The case of Turkey
concepts such as ‘hearts and minds’. Instead, Buzan explains that ‘the nature of security defies pursuit of an agreed definition’.69 Likewise, for Ken Booth, the challenge of defining security in this contested form is that it ‘is a condition, like health or status, which defies easy definition and analysis’,70 so, the provision of security might be described most simply as the ‘absence of threats’.71 Hence, security can be ‘life threatening’, but can also be ‘life altering’, and is consequently a relative concept.72 When using this meaning, the threat of something as seemingly trivial as a tax increase in an affluent 64 Ibid., 485. 65 Buzan, People, states, and fear, 10. 66 Steve Smith, “A Conceptual Overview of Security in a Globalizing World” (presented at the International Studies Association, Honolulu, 2009), http://convention2.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/7/0/8/7/p708 78_index.html#citation, (accessed April 3, 2011). 67 Lake and Morgan, Regional orders, 21. 68 Ibid. 69 Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda For International Security Studies In The PostCold War Era., 2nd ed. (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), 16. 70 Ken Booth, Theory of world security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 97. 71 Ibid., 100. 72 Ibid., 101.
Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1985
Tracing its origins from shortly after the World War I, this book presents a portrait of fascism in the 1930s. It reassesses Mosley's career, describes the reasons for internment in 1940 and the effect it had on leading fascists, exposes the famous Britons who subscribed to fascism, reveals the ominous re-emergence of the tradition after 1945, and explains its remarkable persistence into the l980s.