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have an opportunity in Arabia. Strategically: Afghanistan is well placed for offensive action against India. Strategically: Arabia is well placed, from our point of view, for defence. Tactically: Afghanistan is difficult to attack. Tactically: Arabia is open to our attack from every quarter save the north. Politically: Afghanistan is difficult to control. Politically: Arabia can be controlled and influenced fully, if we only see that no other Power shapes her policy. This we have every right to insist upon. Geographically: Afghanistan is well placed to rally round her elements hostile to ourselves. Geographically: Arabia is ideally placed to divide those elements, the more so if we are installed in Baghdad.’
Lessons of history This document has tremendous modern political significance. Such a clear-sighted assessment of the nature of Afghanistan is at odds with the recent American and British joint military operations there. In 1917 Britain clearly remembered her failed wars with Afghanistan from the 19th century. The observation here in 1917, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, that ‘Turkey ceases to be a power on which the hopes of the Moslem world were placed’ is of interest again with the current struggle between the religious and secular interests in Egypt today. The ‘agitation’ in Mohammedan countries is once more present from the Northwest Frontier to Syria, and indeed in North Africa. Finding such documents of significance is the key to providing successful research collections.
‘It is the responsibility of all policy makers to try and bring some historical perspective’
We take a structured approach to collection building, identifying scattered and fragmented material, collecting it together, arranging and describing it with the idea of providing a complete sequence of material that was not previously known or unified.
According to the kinds of material we find, we may make a collection of series of political or administrative reports, identify material appropriate to geopolitical boundary studies, collect material for a background work on development or country history, or
16 Research Information FEBRUARY/MARCH 2016
choose a topic that we retrospectively decide is important, such as the treatment of ethnic minorities in the Balkan states, or the rise of Zionism, or the history of Arab dissident movements. We often include maps where boundary issues are being examined, or where the maps are crucial – for example in Land Legislation In Mandate Palestine. One aspect of the current Arab-Israeli dispute is over where Israeli settlements are sited. Occasionally a set of maps can stand on its own, such as Historic Maps of Bahrain.
When choosing a theme for a collection we first consider whether the British archives will be a strong source for information, and
reasonable terms and thus to take advantage of their own abundant resources.
‘While the U.S. Government were thus publicly cooling off towards Musaddiq, the Soviet government were warming up. Towards the end of June it became known that Mr Molotov had offered to negotiate with the Persian Government on frontier differences between the two countries.’
Moving east
Having based our publications in the history and development of the Middle East, due to the unique nature of British involvement there, we have since branched out to provide research collections on the Far East and for the Caucasus and Russia, where Britain had consulates.
Korean War
secondly whether the theme has modern political relevance and will be useful to an academic or governmental community. When we first considered creating a series of political reports on Iran, we looked for themes of international interest. The British archives were a strong resource, as the British government was a direct participant. There was the occupation of Iran by Britain during WWII, with its huge oil resources and jointly owned refineries; the USA was trying to get some leverage there, and Russia shares a border with Iran. In this following document we can see a wonderful example of the necessity for judging carefully one’s speed of diplomacy and not overplaying one’s hand. Extract from Iran Political Diaries 1881–1965,
Volume 14, Political Report for July to September 1953: ‘July saw a radical alteration in US policy towards the Government of Dr. Musaddiq. Some time previously Musaddiq had asked President Eisenhower for extensive American financial help. The President replied that the United States Government could not consider giving this help, so long as the Persian Government refused to settle the oil dispute on
In commissioning research into Korea, it can be seen from the documents that the history and status of Korea was dependent upon the rivalries between, and the comparative strengths of, the three countries that lie adjacent to Korea – Russia, China and Japan. After the Second World War, the vacuum caused by the elimination of Japan from this equation meant that the Soviet Union, the USA and Communist China now vied for influence in Korea, and the post-1945 division of the peninsula into North and South Korea, and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, are symbols of that rivalry.
The entrenchment of the division between the Communist North and the non-Communist South, and their respective supporters in the Soviet bloc and the capitalist West, is the central issue from the armistice in 1953 to the final report in this collection in 1970.
This document below is one upon which the reader must bring critical judgement to bear; it reads like an eyewitness report and one has to wonder how the British could be so certain – did they have a spy in the court? Extract from Korea: Political & Economic Reports 1882–1970, Volume 4: Extract from despatch No. 86 dated 10 October 1895, from Seoul to Peking concerning the fate of the Queen of Korea: after the China–Japan war the Queen of Korea was opposed to the faction that favoured Japanese interests, and a plot was hatched to assassinate her: ‘Civilians… guarded by Japanese officers and soldiers, with a number of soldiers in Korean uniform… [took] possession of the King and the Crown Prince while others made for the Queen’s sleeping room… The Queen ran off down a corridor, but was pursued and knocked down,
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