Work Camps, Commerce, and the Education of the 'New Man' in the Romanian Legionary Movement

This article explores two aspects of the Romanian legionary movement's organization in the 1930s, namely work camps and commerce. These are placed in the context of the Legion's attempts to construct a ‘parallel society’ that challenged the hegemony of the state and the dominant class of Romanian politicians and Jewish capitalists. The Legion's work camps and commercial ventures played a crucial educational role within the movement. The work camps were regarded as ‘schools’ in which the legionary ‘New Man’ was to be created and nurtured. Through its commercial ventures, the Legion aimed to educate a new generation of ‘Christian’ entrepreneurs to win back the economic position which the Romanians had allegedly lost to Jewish traders. This new elite would thus replace the decadent Romanian political and commercial classes which the Legion regarded as devoid of national awareness. The success of the Legion's ‘parallel society’ provoked government counter-measures which culminated in the murder of the movement's leader, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, in 1938, and the fragmentation of the Legion. The article draws upon hitherto unused Romanian archival sources, as well as legionary memoirs and articles

'In Glasgow but not quite of it’? Eastern European Jewish Immigrants in a Provincial Jewish Community from c.1890 to c.1945

This article makes use of autobiographies and oral interviews in order to explore the lifestyles of the first generation of immigrants within one particular provincial Jewish community – the Gorbals in Glasgow – between 1890 and 1945. The experience of this generation of immigrants was characterised by diversity to an extent that was not true of the second generation. Thus, the community cannot be described in terms of either ‘assimilation’ or ‘separation’. Instead, an alternative description has been coined: ‘variegated acculturation’ in order to encompass the complexity of the lives of the immigrants

Reluctant allies? Iuliu Maniu and Cornellu Zelea Codreanu against King Carol II of Romania

Romanian legionary movement, to prevent the incumbent government falsifying the elections of December 1937. Thus far, the secondary literature on the history of interwar Romania has shed little light on Maniu's motives in signing the pact with Codreanu or on the nature and extent of Maniu's relations with the legionary movement in the 1930s. This article, which draws on previously unutilized Romanian archival sources, will examine the links between Maniu and the movement and argue that these extended well beyond the signing of the pact in 1937. It will conclude that Maniu and Codreanu were far from being 'reluctant allies' in their fight against government corruption and King Carol of Romania

Kundera and Ionesco on the Unmistakable Awareness of Being Minor

Deleuze and Guattari’s 1975 text, Kafka, pour une littérature mineure, posited a theory concerning some groups of literary texts including those of Franz Kafka. Their theory was nevertheless highly connected to their own historical and geographical context in France, and much less so with that of Kafka who had himself previously attempted to theorize small literatures. By looking at the context of Kafka and of two other writers who might be considered as belonging to minor literary contexts, I argue that theorists of minor literature tend to view minor literature in a positive way when their own cultural context is further from nation-state building. On the other hand, those writers who are writing from inside nation-building contexts tend to emphasize minor literature’s limits on literary production. Interestingly, Milan Kundera and Eugene Ionesco who had first-hand experience of nation-building contexts, but then moved to France and wrote in French, take more nuanced views of minor literatures as they are further removed in time and space from their original minor contexts

A history of violence: The shooting in Jerusalem of British Assistant Police Superintendent Alan Sigrist, 12 June 1936

Copyright @ 2010 The Author. This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below.This article provides a narrative of the shooting in Jerusalem by two Palestinian gunmen — Bahjat Abu Gharbiyah and Sami al-Ansari — in June 1936 during the Arab revolt in Palestine of a British police officer, Alan Edward Sigrist. Abu Gharbiyah and al-Ansari specifically targeted Sigrist because of his violence towards Palestinians — an issue that has not been discussed fully in the literature. This study measures, against the contemporary record, Abu Gharbiyah’s account of why he shot Sigrist, using the shooting as a case study to open up debates on the British use of official and unofficial violence to maintain colonial rule, alongside one on the response of local people to such violence. While recognizing the partisan nature of Abu Gharbiyah’s memory of events in Palestine, the article gives voice to the Palestinians, explaining how and why rebels fighting British rule and Jewish immigration to Palestine used violence. Following the analysis of the shooting of Sigrist, the article details more general torture by British forces as recalled by Abu Gharbiyah, setting this against the extant evidence to test the traditional notion that Britain used ‘minimum force’ in countering colonial disturbances, tying Sigrist’s behaviour to that of British troops and police in Palestine more generally. Thus, while the article is narrow in its focus it has broader implications for contemporary imperial and military history.Marine Corps University Foundation and Mr and Mrs Thomas A. Saunders