“Out of the Blue”: The mirroring fallacy and the navies of today

In the 1960s, the Soviet Navy was quietly recapitalising and expanding. As détente collapsed in the late 1970s, western analysts panicked as the Soviet Fleet patrolled the world ocean, supported socialist revolutions around the world and established naval bases astride vital maritime chokepoints such as the Bab-al-Mandeb and the Suez Canal. But the signs had been there all along. Under the visionary leadership of Admiral of the Soviet Union Sergei Gorshkov, the USSR had hankered after sea power for a generation.

Sinologist, Traveller, Governor, Spy: The Lives and Legacies of Sir Cecil Clementi, 17th Governor of Hong Kong

Sir Cecil Clementi (金文泰) (1875-1947) arguably was the most scholarly and gifted of all Hong Kong’s 28 colonial governors. As a young official he quickly mastered Chinese and in 1904 published a scholarly translation of Zhang Ziyong’s (招子庸)(1786-1847)Cantonese Love Songs (粵謳), the laments of south China’s ‘flowerboat’ girls. He was also a tireless traveller and spy, undertaking an epic journey across China from Kashgar to Kowloon.

Transfer of Status Presentations

*Gabrielle Davies*, ‘Building the New Wales?: National Identities and the Politics of Post-war Reconstruction in Second World War Wales’

*Thomas Wang*, ‘Vitalizing the Heritage: Tradition and Conservatism in Cold War Britain, 1944-1990’

*Carys Howell*, ‘The 1956 Hungarian Refugee Crisis: Local, National and International Responses, 1956-1960’

Hallelujah Lulie Wondimu

I am a doctoral candidate interested in nationalism, democratization and security. My DPhil project explores the nexus between nationalism and citizenship in the Horn of Africa. I am researching how nationalist movements negotiate citizenship in multinational states, and what shapes and changes their conception of nationhood, statehood and self-determination. The research builds on my study as a MSc student in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) specializing on nationalism and democratization.

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