Sean Carey: Britain's worst gift - an island to America
[Dr Sean Carey is Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (CRONEM), Roehampton University.]
Reciprocity – "the obligation to give and the obligation to receive" - as the French sociologist, Marcel Mauss, noted in his hugely influential work 1923 work Essai sur le don, is the basis of social life.
Mauss observes that gifts and hospitality (which often involve considerable material sacrifice) are imbued with moral purpose simultaneously engaging the "honour" of both giver and receiver.
They create and sustain relationships – sometimes equal, sometimes not -- and are, as he puts it, almost "magical" in their effects. "The objects are never completely separated from the men who exchange them," he says.
It’s a proposition that’s hard to argue with - think of the importance attached to the exchange of Christmas presents among family members.
But Mauss’ theory is not simply relevant to an analysis of seasonal gift-giving but can also shed some light on important aspects of recent international foreign policy.
A good example concerns the manner in which the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia was handed to the US for use as a military base in order to keep the "special relationship" on track in a secret Cold War deal by Labour's Harold Wilson.
But how did this come about? In his famous speech to the South African parliament in Cape Town in 1960 ex-UK premier, Harold Macmillan, declared that the old map of the British Empire had to be redrawn – and quickly."The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact," he said. But even as it looked towards a post-imperial future the old colonial power was still able and willing to indulge in some last-minute trickery to tie up a few loose ends.
Arriving in London a few years after Macmillan’s speech, the negotiating team led by Mauritius’ first Prime Minister, Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, was dumbfounded to be told by Foreign Office officials independence would only be secured if he agreed to cede the islands of the Chagos Archipelago - integral to its territory since 1814 - to Britain...
Read entire article at Newstatesman (UK)
Reciprocity – "the obligation to give and the obligation to receive" - as the French sociologist, Marcel Mauss, noted in his hugely influential work 1923 work Essai sur le don, is the basis of social life.
Mauss observes that gifts and hospitality (which often involve considerable material sacrifice) are imbued with moral purpose simultaneously engaging the "honour" of both giver and receiver.
They create and sustain relationships – sometimes equal, sometimes not -- and are, as he puts it, almost "magical" in their effects. "The objects are never completely separated from the men who exchange them," he says.
It’s a proposition that’s hard to argue with - think of the importance attached to the exchange of Christmas presents among family members.
But Mauss’ theory is not simply relevant to an analysis of seasonal gift-giving but can also shed some light on important aspects of recent international foreign policy.
A good example concerns the manner in which the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia was handed to the US for use as a military base in order to keep the "special relationship" on track in a secret Cold War deal by Labour's Harold Wilson.
But how did this come about? In his famous speech to the South African parliament in Cape Town in 1960 ex-UK premier, Harold Macmillan, declared that the old map of the British Empire had to be redrawn – and quickly."The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact," he said. But even as it looked towards a post-imperial future the old colonial power was still able and willing to indulge in some last-minute trickery to tie up a few loose ends.
Arriving in London a few years after Macmillan’s speech, the negotiating team led by Mauritius’ first Prime Minister, Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, was dumbfounded to be told by Foreign Office officials independence would only be secured if he agreed to cede the islands of the Chagos Archipelago - integral to its territory since 1814 - to Britain...