Journal articles on the topic 'Polish war envoys'

The study is а consideration of the Turkish vector in the diplomatic activities of the Ukrainian Hetmans in the 17th century based on the Ukrainian and the Turkic-Ottoman sources. The circumstances of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytshky’s residence in Bakhchisarai under the reigning of Sultan Mehmet IV, as well as making the agreement between the Ukrainian Cossack State and the Crimean Khanate have been investigated. In particular, the focuse has been made on the importance of diplomatic activities of Hetman Petro Doroshenko in the relations with the Ottoman Empire. The analysis of the Turkish-written sources also revealed the fact that from the time of the start of Hetman P. Dorosheko’s ruling the rise of the diplomatic relations between Chyhyryn and Istanbul has taken place. A series of envoys from the Turkish Sultan in 1169 resulted in Mehmed IV’s issuing an order on awarding P. Doroshenko with hetman’s authorities in regard of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. The Turkish side has been recognizing the hetman’s authority in Ukraine for a long period. The liberation of Ukraine from the Polish-Lithuanian occupation has become the result of the observing the terms and conditions of the agreement made with Hetman Petro Doroshenko, which were provided in the above said Ferman of Mehmed IV. In the war of the Ottoman Empire against the Polish and Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Moscow, Austrian and German soldiers, as well as the Ukrainian Cossacks (the latter ones were headed by Hetman Mykhailo Khanenko) have been engaged to combat on the Polish side. Despite such an alignment of the military forces, the Turkish Army together with the Cossacks headed by Hetman P. Doroshenko and the Crimean warriors succeeded in winning the battle. In the Turkish Army sources one can find some compliments addressed to the Ukrainian hetman, e.g. “the Pride of all the Christian Rulers, the Ruler of a Free Nation worshipping Jesus Crist”, which proves that, apart from the diplomatic recognition of the said hetman, the Ukrainian Cossacks have been highly respected, and that the Christianity has been treated with tolerance.

The Diplomatic Agent has great significance at the present time because of the protection and care of the interests of individuals and states have been provided by him. The diplomacy has become the basis for preparing the foreign policy of states, as through diplomatic relations states solve many problems of peace and war and other interests of states. For that many International Conventions and Agreements were concluded to regulate diplomatic relations and lay down the rules for diplomatic protection and immunities. The most important of these international Conventions is the Vienna Convention for Diplomatic Relations 1961. Which brought special privileges and immunities for Diplomatic Agents Due to the significance of the matter, the researcher attempted through the study to shed light on “International Immunities Diplomatic Envoys in International Agreements and Islamic Sharia” by discussing the concept of Diplomatic Envoys, their duties, and the international immunity in International Law and Islamic Sharia. Through highlighting the types of immunities and their scope in International Law and Islamic Sharia, it appears that the Islamic Sharia was long ahead before nations in enforcing immunities rules and international protection of Diplomatic Agents. Thus, it has been the best influence in the international direction to implement rules of diplomatic representation, making it international law. In my study, I followed the inductive analytical approach which is approach through which the texts mentioned in the international laws that regulate the international immunity of the diplomatic envoy are extrapolated and analyzed. The conclusion included the results and recommendations of the research.

The paper approaches the working environment and observations of Latvian envoy Ludvigs Ēķis in Romania from the autumn of 1939 when the Latvian Legation was opened in Bucharest until the summer of 1940 when the State of Latvia was liquidated. The main focus is on the Latvian-Romanian relations in this period of time, the Romanian foreign and economical policy and the reaction of Romanian statesmen and society to the events and processes of the first stage of World War: the policy of Soviet Union, Germany and Hungary, the Soviet-Finnish War and other conflicts in region and in Europe. The article is based on the materials stored in the State Archives of Latvia and particularly on Ludvigs Ekis’ reports. In a time when war was raging in Europe, Romania, too, was subject to considerable international pressure. Some similarities can be detected between the developments in this region and in the Baltic States.

In 1634 the Ottoman Emperor, Murad IV (r. 1623–1640), decided to lead a campaign against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He wanted to request military support from the Prince of Transylvania, György Rákóczi I (r. 1630–1648), but the prince tried to avoid it, because at that time he had been struggling with his political enemies, who endangered his rule in Transylvania. In the same year, the Habsburgs sent an ambassador (Johann Rudolf von Puchheim) to Constantinople, who tried to dissuade the Sublime Porte from leading a military campaign against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The idea of that mediation came from the former Vizier of Buda and at that time, the commander of the Ottoman army, Pasha Murteza, because he did not want this war either. Prince Rákóczi, Puchheim, Trzebiński (Aleksander, the Polish envoy) and Murteza all wanted to stall for time in relation to that campaign. In this article, the author investigates the aims and the problem-solving strategies of the Habsburg, the Transylvanian, the Polish and also the Ottoman elite in that situation. The war against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did not take place in the end, because Murad IV began a campaign against the Safavid Empire.

The Diary of Ivan Maisky, a diplomat, Soviet Envoy (later Ambassador) to the United Kingdom from 1932 to 1943 is one of the valuable sources on the interwar history of international relations and WWII. Maisky never saw his diaries returned to him after they had been confiscated at the time of his arrest in 1953. It was declassified by the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation and published in 2006-2009 with the commentaries of Russian scholars. The analysis of the Diary which contains unique details about Soviet-British relations casts new light on the roles of Great Britain and the USSR in the pre-war international crises and allows for a re-evaluation of the two powers’ efforts aimed at preventing or delaying the war. When the Diary is juxtaposed with the declassified British archive materials, the degree to which the British officials trusted the Soviet Envoy/Ambassador as well as the level of his awareness of the undercurrents of British politics become clearer. The authors argue that the Versailles System had failed by the mid-1920s and was replaced by the Locarno System based on the guarantees of Germany’s western borders. In the mid-1930s the Locarno System was in disarray despite British efforts to save it through concessions and the appeasement policy. The «Diplomat’s Diary» shows a struggle within the British elite between the supporters and the opponents of the appeasement policy linked with the search for a new configuration of the European system of security.

Russia's regular contacts with the Republic of Venice on the eve of the RussianTurkish war 1710-1713 resumed after almost a ten-year break. Before Sultan Ahmed III declared war, the Tsar sent two letters to the doge. They can be interpreted as a call to Venice to recognize the intermediate results of the Northern War and as an appeal to the republic's orthodox subjects to join Russia in the impending conflict. This episode is scarcely covered in Russian and international historiography. The connection of the envoys with the Prut campaign is also not covered in the literature. Therefore, it seems necessary to establish a connection between the two events, especially in changes in Russian foreign policy towards Venice.In March 1711, a Russian consul was sent to Venice to build support and attract volunteers for the opening theater of military operations in the Balkans. It is no coincidence that Dmitry Bozis became the first Russian consul in Italy. Being a prominent representative of the Greek community of the capital, he successfully extended his influence not only to the local Greeks but also to the Slavs of Dalmatia, who wanted to serve the Russian Tsar and fight the Turks. The outcome of the Prut campaign did not affect the consulate's work and the trade mission. Agents of the Russian government, who had commercial orders, were sent to Venice, and successfully fulfilled their mission. One of them was Count Savva Raguzinsky, an outstanding diplomat and successful commercial agent. His activities were relatively peaceful, although they still included political monitoring and legal intelligence.The resumption of bilateral relations caused by the Prut operation positively affected Russian-Venetian relations. Since the departure of the consul Bozis and the diplomatic agent Caretta, who had the authority to create a second Balkan "front" in the rear of the Sultan, after July 12, 1711, the Russian mission transformed into a commercial agency with broad diplomatic powers. These changes open a new, fruitful period in the history of bilateral relations between Russia and Venice.

In the summer of 1915, concerned about Italy’s entry into the war in alliance with the Entente powers yet encouraged by the victories of its armies on the Eastern Front, the German diplomacy attempted to encourage Sweden and Romania to abandon their neutrality in order to give a decisive blow to Russia. In several reports dispatched from Berlin, Alexandru Beldiman, the envoy to Germany who was also Romania’s representative in the Scandinavian countries, raised the possibility of Sweden’s entry into the war on the German side. After he had identified Russia as the common historical enemy of the two countries, the Romanian diplomat suggested forging an alliance under the leadership of Germany. A strong alliance was thought to ensure Sweden’s ascendancy in Finland and the Baltic states, and Romania’s supremacy in the East at the Black Sea. Although this plan was rejected by the liberal government, Beldiman’s initiative in a period of neutrality remains an alternative in the Romanian political circles to Entente supremacy.

AbstractThis article reexamines the diplomacy of Willy Brandt’sOstpolitik, focusing on two landmark achievements in 1970: the Moscow Treaty in August, and the Warsaw Treaty in December. On the basis of declassified US and German documentation, it argues that envoy Egon Bahr’s unconventional approach resulted in a poorly negotiated treaty with the Soviet Union that failed to address vital problems such as the status of Berlin. The outcome deepened political polarization at home and proved disconcerting to many West German allies; it also forced the four World War II victors—Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union—to save Brandt’sOstpolitikby grinding out an agreement on access to Berlin. By contrast, West German negotiations in Warsaw yielded a treaty more in line with West German expectations, though the results proved sorely disappointing to the Polish leadership. Disagreements over restitution payments (repacked as government credits) and the emigration of ethnic Germans would bedevil German-Polish relations for years to come. Bonn’sOstpolitikthus had a harder edge than the famous image of Brandt kneeling in Warsaw would suggest.

The article examines an episode from the everyday life of Soviet diplomats during the Great Patriotic War. The reports of one of the leaders of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Andrei Vyshinsky on diplomatic receptions in November 1941-1942 are analyzed. These receptions took place in Kuibyshev, where employees of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, headed by Vyshinsky, were temporarily evacuated. Reports on them have been preserved in the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation and are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. They were sent by Vyshinsky to Moscow in the name of Stalin and Molotov. The sources identified by the author of the article, together with memoirs, make it possible to reveal various aspects of the culture of everyday life of Soviet diplomats who were temporarily in Kuibyshev. First, they give an idea of the participation of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in festive commemorations (anniversaries of the October Revolution), which were one of the components of the ceremony for the representation of power. Secondly, the recordings of Vyshinsky's conversations, reflected in his reports, contain important information about the moods of representatives of the diplomatic corps, in particular, ambassadors and envoys of the member states of the anti-Hitler coalition. It was used by the Soviet leadership in solving foreign policy tasks during the most difficult period of the war.

This article adopts a unique angle to analyze China’s Middle East policy in “Chasing the Rising Red Crescent: Sino-Shi’i Relations in the Post-Cold War Era.” With the end of the Cold War and the political renaissance of Islam, the author argues that China’s strategic approaches towards the Middle East have changed fundamentally. The rise of China on the Middle East coupled with the strategic ascendancy of Shi’i Islam in the Middle East invites a strategic window for the emerging architecture of global geopolitics and world economy. The aim of Lee’s study is to make clear the historical trajectories and evolving strategic calculations in China’s Middle East policy and its global implications by reviewing Sino-Shi’i relations in general and introducing Chinese strategic interactions with Iran, Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas in particular. Since the establishment of zhongguo zhongdong wenti teshi [Chinese Special Envoy for Middle Eastern Affairs] in 2002, China’s economic presence and political clout in the Middle East including the Shi’i region have been advanced obviously. Sino-Shi’i relations in the post-Cold War era, thus, should be seriously examined not only for understanding China’s strategic perceptions of the Middle East but also for explaining the pattern of Chinese foreign behaviours, as well as for expecting the impact of China’s rising in the region and its geopolitical implications for the future of China-U.S. relations

The building an edifice for the Legation of Norway in Warsaw, in the years 1946 to 1949, remains one of the most important events in the Polish-Norwegian relations that took place after the Second World War. Alfred Danielsen, a Norwegian envoy in Warsaw, was the main initiator and organizer of the project. In sections I and II, we find a short biography of Danielsen. It includes the first major actions – such as purchasing of the burnt-out premises at Chopin Street 2A and information about how the building works were started. Another section refers to the problem of adding extra plots of land situated at Chopin Street 4, and the way Danielsen resolved this issue with the Warsaw authorities. The next two sections refer to the building process, implemented according to the Norwegian Building Committee guidelines. Finally, the last section describes the repair works in 1949 and moving of the Legation to its own building.

I draw the historical background with the question of how the city has for centuries been communicating with visual signs with its so different external sovereigns. After general remarks, I focus on the ruler’s relationship with the city during the Teutonic Knights’ era, as the example serving the Teutonic castle in Gdansk, from the beginning of its construction to the story of its demolition.
 The Teutonic castle was built, according to the message of Wigand of Marburg, during the time of Grand Master Dietrich von Altenburg around 1340. Unlike the dating, its form disappears in the darkness of history. Archaeologists have proven the existence of a castle complex consisting of the main castle and two baileys on the site of the former castle of the Pomeranian dynasty of Samborids. The convent house: a square with sides of about 53 m, had four residential wings grouped around the courtyard, three towers at the corners, and a high guard tower.
 The article then deals with the castle as a kind of a protagonist of the drama in the war for symbols, developing in four scenes. The first took place after the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, when the town paid homage to Polish King Władysław Jagiello, but in the autumn of 1410 it returned to the rule of the Teutonic Order. In the following months, the city authorities reacted negatively to the attempt of the Grand Master Henry von Plauen to raise taxes. Mayors and members of the City Council: Konrad Letzkau, Arnold Hecht, and Bartholomew (Bartholomäus) Gross, were invited to the Teutonic Knights’ Castle in spring 1411 under the pretext of negotiations, and there they were murdered in unclear circumstances. The town responded by burying both mayors, and probably Gross as well, in the ambulatory of St Mary’s Church, (possibly) in St Hedwig’s Chapel belonging to the Letzkau family. The tombstone (nowadays destructed after the fire of 1734), which preserved anti–Teutonic sentiments, became an attraction for visitors, and was excluded from the normal burial practice of St Mary’s Church in the early modern times.
 Another part of our dispute occurred in 1453, when the Gdansk delegates complained at the Reich’s conciliatory assembly in Vienna about the Gdansk Commander forbidding to continue the construction of the tower of St John’s Church. On this basis, Olaf Asendorf constructed a theory on the general prohibition of building high towers in the Teutonic state, the so-called turmverbote. However, we have no proof that such a ban existed in any form, and apart from two other messages from Elbląg and Kaliningrad, former Königsberg, we cannot trace this kind of regulation in the written sources. On the other hand, none of the towers dominating the panorama of Gdansk was built before 1457. It was only after the transition to Polish sovereignty that the construction of the towers of St John’s Church, St Catherine’s Church, St Mary’s Church, and the Town Hall tower continued. The case from 1453 fits the hypothesis of fighting with the Order with the use of the city’s symbol, but this is rather a hysterical reaction of the economically and politically weakened corporation, which tries to enforce the city’s obedience by prohibiting the further construction of the tower of St John’s Church.
 The events of the Thirteen Years’ War (1454–1466): Gdansk was to throw off the yoke of the Teutonic Knights’ power and voluntarily surrender to the power of the Polish monarchy together with the guarantee of maximum privileges, are the backdrop to the next stage of our battle with the use of symbols. Most probably in February 1454, a decision was made to demolish the fortress, which could potentially become the seat of the new ruler, thus threatening the autonomy of the city. During the negotiations between the Gdansk envoys and Casimir IV Jagiello in February and March 1454 in Cracow, the delegates secretly sent the following letter to the City Council: ‘ Those of the seats [castles of the Teutonic knights] that were demolished are to remain destroyed, but we are not [allowed] to continue the demolition of these castles without consulting or informing the Lord King and the Estates. Hence, good friends, if you have not destroyed them, we advise you in all your power that you are to dismantle them the sooner the better, before we are back home, because the Lord King is “drooling” at the thought of Gdansk’. In the original hern conynge henget de lunge sere up Danczik is an idiomatic Lower German term, literally meaning King hangs his lung [to occupy the castle], so he cares a lot about it. This is what happened. Just like in Elbląg, Toruń and Bartoszyce and partly in Królewiec, the municipal authorities thoroughly demolished the Teutonic Castle.
 As early as in 1857, August Lobegott Randt noted, without mentioning the source, that when the star vaults over the main hall of the Artus Manor were unfastened in 1478–1481, pillars from the Teutonic Castle were used; this theory was taken up by almost all later literature. A whole range of other relics in various places in Gdansk made of sandstone or granite, together with the latest finding in St Mary’s Church from 2020, are now connected with the Castle. This theory fits perfectly with the considerations of political iconography. In the Artus Court, the first monumental building completed after the Grand Permit of 1457, architectural details from the former seat of the supreme authority are placed, since it is where the elites of the new republic meet.
 Together with the demolition of the Castle, the knowledge of its silhouette was lost. Only indirectly does the image give us a fascinating iconographic message, which for me is the fourth episode of the ‘battle with the use of images’. In the painting ‘The Ship of the Church’ from the Artus Manor, destroyed in 1945: a representation of a ship armed with cannons symbolizing the community of Gdansk, in one corner rather a small depiction of a castle can be seen. It shows the main tower, the evidence of which was proven by the 2002 archaeological researches. Its unusual spire evokes obvious associations with the Flemish–Brabantine belfry towers: free–standing towers or towers inscribed in town halls or cloth halls being symbols of urban self–government. What is the function of the representation of the Teutonic castle in the painting? Who was its author and fundator? According to Adam Labuda’s interpretation, it is the pendant to the painting ‘Siege of Malbork’, lost in 1945 – of almost identical dimensions, stylistically similar – and seems to be the work of the same painter. Together with the latter, it conveys the story of the battle for the gained independence of Gdansk, a powerful and rich city, united in religion and under the sceptre of the King. It is possible that the paintings were executed in connection with the would–be visit to the city of Jan Olbracht in 1501, or another entry of Alexander I in 1504. But what remains a puzzle is the function of a Teutonic castle with a Flemish helmet in the painting. Was it only related to the possible Dutch origin of the artist, or was it a political message, wishful thinking of the founders: an allusion to Gdansk as an independent city?
 The article on its first level interprets a non–existent building which has become the protagonist, the pretext, and the background of the multi–act drama of ‘the battle with the use of images’. More generally, it states the entanglement of Gdansk art and architecture in politics as a characteristic feature of this metropolis through all epochs. Yet above all, I would like to thank Małgorzata Omilanowska, the one to whom we dedicate this volume, because without her initiative I would never have started teaching in this fascinating city and thus researching its art history.

The paper studies the ways in which international situation in June-July 1914 was covered by «Kiyevlianin», a daily influential newspaper published in Kyiv, then Russian Empire. This research focuses on the main international themes covered by the «Kiyevlianin» newspaper after assassination of Habsburg hair Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and until the Austro-Hungarian Note to Serbia was reported. The major focus of the study is international situation in the Balkans, especially the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, and Russian Empire’s Balkan policy. The author considers those days’ newspapers a valuable source for a historical research as they provided information while the events were ongoing, and their direction and outcomes were not known yet. The understanding of those days’ events by contemporaries may differ from later academic interpretations. For this reason, the study of these newspapers deepens our understanding of international situation before the Great War. The research has revealed that the Austro-Serbian conflict was only one of the numerous conflicts in the Balkans. The international situation on the peninsula dramatically changed after the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 in favor of Serbia, and the potential of further conflicts essentially increased. The reporters understood that any minor changes in the situation could trigger a new Balkan war. The major driving forces behind the Austro-Serbian conflict were “Great Serbian” idea, Serbia’s positioning as the “Piedmont” of Southern Slavs (at the expense of Austro-Hungary), and Russia’s Balkan policy. The latter was represented by the Russian envoy to Belgrade Nikolay Gartvig. According to him, backing of Serbia was caused by Russia’s geopolitical interests of anti-Austrian character. Russia’s backing in July 1914 prompted the Serbian regent Alexander not to comply with the Austro-Hungarian Note and to escalate the conflict. Thus, Russia’s pro-Serbian and anti-Austrian policy was the major factor which caused the war.

China today is a powerful state and an influential player in the global arena, as was demonstrated during the Syrian crisis, when China took a counterposition to the United States’ stance in Syria and supported the Assad regime. Beijing put a veto on the international resolutions related to the Syrian crisis and abstained from voting, as it did in the past when dealing with the crises in the region. In a move that marked a new page in China’s foreign policy, Beijing backed what was known as the sixpoint plan, calling for a ceasefire and settlement of the crisis through internal dialogue and proclaiming the inviolability of Syrian national sovereignty. In a subsequent move, China sent its envoy Li Huaqing (former Chinese ambassador to Syria) to Damascus to encourage the initiation of a dialogue between government forces and opposition. Following that, China sent Assistant Foreign Minister Zhang Ming (who had previously visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia and France) to the region to discuss ways of approaching the Syrian crisis. For the first time in its modern history, China renounced its policy of non-interference in crises outside its direct interests and immediate geopolitical space. The following paper will focus on China’s stance in the Syrian crisis (supporting its peaceful settlement and keeping equal distance from all the parties in the conflict) and the future of Sino-Syrian relations based on the common history of the two countries.

Successful development of mutual trade and economic ties between Russia and the Netherlands has been lasting for centuries. In ancient times, when both states were actively developing, vessels loaded with various goods were already cruising between their shores; while national leaders were building bilateral trade policy. The development of cooperation reached its peak during the time of Peter the Great, when the Russian Empire carried out industrialization by entering into a full-scale international industrial cooperation with its historical partner. Participation of the Russian state in the development of trade and economic relations with the Netherlands took different shapes depending on the current needs and capabilities of the country. However, specially authorized envoys who carried out their functions on the territory of the Netherlands played exclusively important role in it, whether they were representatives of the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Tsarist Russia in Rotterdam or the People's Commissariat for Foreign Trade in the pre-war years. October 1945, when the Trade Representation opened its doors in Amsterdam, marked the new chapter in the history of trade relations between two countries. Historical review of the activities conducted by the Trade Mission in one of the world's TOP economically developed countries of the world over the 75-year period is demanded for providing advice in respect to setting up of strategic plans for the development of foreign trade in terms of exports, deepening international industrial cooperation and faster adaptation to the requirements by foreign markets.

AbstractAnson Burlingame (1820-1870), often neglected or misunderstood today, was an ardently antislavery congressman from Boston whom Abraham Lincoln appointed minister to China in 1861. Burlingame developed a Cooperative Policy that advocated peaceful means while upholding China's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Chinese government subsequently appointed him China's first envoy to the Western powers. The first stop of the so-called Burlingame Mission was America, from March to September 1868. is article focuses on three topics: (1) How the mission's reception reflected the partisan struggle over Reconstruction and the push for racial equality. Republicans, the party of Reconstruction, proved sympathetic to the mission and to China, while the opposition Democrats were hostile. (2) How Burlingame presented Americans with a strongly favorable image of China to emphasize treating it with full respect and as a normal nation. (3) The Burlingame Treaty, the first equal treaty between China and a Western power after the Opium War, which sought to place China on a full and equal status in international affairs and to place Chinese in America on an equal footing with immigrants from other nations. Burlingame's friend, Mark Twain, wrote supportive articles.

This article provides an in-depth examination of the U.S. government's role in the case of Raoul Wallenberg, the courageous Swedish envoy who died mysteriously in the Soviet Union after being arrested by Soviet occupation forces at the end of World War II for unknown reasons. The article recounts how U.S. officials, particularly the diplomat Herschel V. Johnson, tried to alleviate the plight of Hungarian Jews after German forces occupied Hungary in 1944. A key part of this policy was their effort to work with Sweden in enlisting Wallenberg's help. The U.S.-Swedish relationship was never particularly close, and the mistrust that officials in each country felt toward the other side impeded any coordinated action. The article discusses the bureaucratic impediments on the U.S. side and highlights some of the obstacles that Johnson strove to overcome. The article builds on the report produced by the Eliasson Commission documenting the Swedish government's handling of the Wallenberg case. Although the Swedish authorities bore by far the greatest amount of blame for doing nothing in the face of Soviet stonewalling, Matz argues that U.S. officials also made significant misjudgments that may have exacerbated the situation.

This article examines the biography of the Bulgarian-born General Radko Dimitriev (1859–1918), who was convinced that the good of his homeland was inextricably linked with Russia and depended on good relations with it. For this good, he went to the overthrow of the monarch, but a decade later due to changes in the vector of Bulgarian policy was able to return home and become a hero. In 1913–1914, R. Dimitriev served as Bulgaria's envoy to Russia and tried to change the negative image of his country. With the outbreak of World War I, he joined the Russian army, and a year later in Bulgaria he was declared a deserter and a traitor. In 1918 he was executed by the Bolsheviks in Pyatigorsk, and in a few decades he became practically a symbol of friendship between the Bulgarian and Russian peoples, which led to retouching the circumstances of his death. The article traces the actions of the General and his motivation. Despite his Bulgarian origin, in 1914 he became nearly the main hero of the war in the Russian public space. The reasons for its popularity were not only in the im-portance of his victories, but also in the fact that R. Dimitriev was called the incarnation of A. V. Suvorov and M. D. Skobelev. The article shows what values, embodiments of which were these popular warlords, were characteristic this Bulgarian general. This is a personal part in the fighting, the care of soldiers, democracy in communication. Modern Russian military also has moved to a new paradigm of command, which, however, worked against their popularity among the soldiers. And at the same time, values of the commander of Suvorov's or Skobelev's types were insolvent in the conditions of revolutionary commotion, and R. Dimitriev lost control of the parts entrusted to it. Because of their gener-osity and love for Russia, he refused to take part in the Civil war that decided his death.The author declares absence of conflict of interest.

This article approaches the Romanian foreign policy stakes in the aftermath of the Stalingrad Battle as seen from the perspective of a comrade-in-arms country, Finland, which shared with Romania many of the assumptions, fears and anxieties with regard to the outcome of the war. The article is shaped in Stephen M. Walt’s understanding of balancing and bandwagoning, Romania and Finland choosing Germany over the Soviet Union mainly for the reason that the latter was perceived as the biggest security threat and the former as the only possible deterrent and support. The material focuses on the analysis of Eduard Hjalmar Palin’s diplomatic dispatches from Bucharest. On one hand, they were the main source of information for the Finnish decision-makers with regard to the Romanian international situation and its foreign and domestic policies. On other hand, Palin was an experienced diplomat, with excellent connections in the Romanian society and enjoyed access to confidential information in the governmental circles due to a Romanian-Finnish agreement of summer of 1941. We can see, for instances, cases when Ion and Mihai Antonescu confided to the Finnish envoy Führer Adolf Hitler’s statements which could affect the situation in Finland or help its leaders to take decisions. The article shows how divided Romanian governmental and opposition circles were, not only between but also among themselves. By reading these diplomatic reports, we could also acknowledge the widening split between the views of the two most prominent Romanian governmental leaders, Ion and Mihai Antonescu, thus complementing other sources of information already published. We can also learn about some peace plans of Romanian opposition groups, some of whom are little known from other documentary sources.

By the mid-1880s, Russia took over Central Asia and approached closely to the borders of Afghanistan. As a result of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–1880), Russia's southern neighbour assumed the status of a British protectorate and lost the right to an independent foreign policy. Against the backdrop of the ongoing Russian-British confrontation in Central Asia, Russian authorities felt an urgent need to obtain the reliable information on Afghanistan, but did not have an opportunity to send an envoy there and had to develop semi-legal intelligence activities and rely on the information obtained largely from local dwellers. Between 1882 and 1900, Russian Government opened four diplomatic offices to the north and west of the Afghan border: the Consulate in Kashgar (1882), the Political Agency in Bukhara (1885), the Consulate General in Khorasan (1889) and the Vice-Consulate in Sistan (1900). The aforementioned missions are united by the fact that their duties in addition to the issues related to the host territories, included information gathering about Afghanistan. However, the Afghan aspect of these diplomatic missions’ activities has not yet been reflected in any historical studies. The author has a plan for a thorough study of the issue and this article on the opening of the Russian Consulate General in the Iranian city of Mashhad being the first step on this way. On the basis of this research were the documents of the Foreign Policy Archive of Imperial Russia, the Russian State Historical Archive, as well as the source entitled “Siraj al-Tawarikh” in Dari.

The article examines Priscus’s account of the conflict that emerged between the leader of the Roman embassy, Maximinus, and the Hunnic envoy, Berichus. The barbarian got offended by the remarks concerning the lack of competence and influence of Aspar and Areobindus. A detailed analysis of this short passage – entailing the persona of Berichus himself, the reasons for his anger, and the possible explanations for Maximinus’s behaviour – can provide us with evidence regarding the political position of Aspar in the last years of the reign of Theodosius II. Most scholars use this example to illustrate Aspar’s falling out of favour and power; it is more likely, however, that the situation was actually more complex. The political struggle between Chrysaphius, a proponent of the policy of reconciliation with the Huns, and Zeno, the opponent of such policies, makes it far more probable that the government feared that their diplomatic effort might be hijacked by the opposing faction. Therefore, it was political differences – and not the failures in the war of 447 – that were the reason for Aspar’s falling out with the emperor. This would also mean that Zeno and Aspar shared similar views on how to solve the Hunnic problem, which would be the basis for their cooperation, resulting in the overthrowing of Chrysaphius and the crowning of Marcian in 450.

This article finds out the main internal and international political events and processes in the Kingdom of Romania in the first half of 1921 covered at the reports of the envoy, later the Ambassador, of the Republic of Austria Wilhelm Stork, much of which is introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. In writing the article, the authors used general scientific and special methods, including archival heuristics. According to the results of the study, it was stated that in the first half of 1921 the internal political situation in Romania looked tense, but controlled. At that time were taken measures to prevent events of internal strife, as was the case with the newly formed Communist Party, being controlled externally, fact, which drew the attention of diplomats. The Government, comprehending the inevitability of changes, carried out agrarian reform and streamlined church relations, while pursuing a consistent policy of Romanianization of the territories that were included in the kingdom after the First World War. At the same time, everything was done to get along with the neighbors, protecting themselves from misunderstandings with them and from the threat of being left alone in the case of a Bolshevik invasion. It has succeeded in either concluding relevant agreements, signing protocol of intentions or making significant progress during the negotiations. An example of such success was the Polish-Romanian agreement on a defense alliance and joint defense against the enemy from the east. The actions aimed at creating a defense alliance for protection against Hungary, in which other interested states were involved, seemed more consistent. One of the ways to consolidate the actions of diplomats was the conclusion in 1921 of marriages between members of the Romanian and Greek dynasties. This practice will continue with the marriage between a representative of the Romanian and a representative of the Serbian dynasty later more. The only thing that failed was to reach an agreement with Soviet Russia, respectively in two main tasks - to achieve recognition by the Bolsheviks of the inclusion of Bessarabia in Romania and the return of Romanian gold and foreign exchange reserves, the waste of which the Bolsheviks denied

The article is devoted to the role of tsarist doctors in solving several foreign policy issues in Russia during the reign of Peter the Great. It analyzes the activities of two doctors Robert Areskin and George Polikala. Areskin played a crucial role in Peter I 's communication with the Jacobites under deteriorating relations between Russia and England in 1717-1718. Polikala, in turn, assisted the Russian government in several interactions with the Ottoman Empire.Sources indicate that R. Areskin was the leading lobbyist for the idea of the Russian government supporting James III Stuart. With the help of his relatives, who actively supported the overthrown dynasty, Areskin negotiated with representatives of the Swedish King Charles XII and with other European diplomats during the second European trip of Peter the Great. The diplomatic scandal of early 1717 connected to the disclosure of another Jacobite conspiracy involving the official circles of Sweden affected Areskin's endeavors. During these events, the doctor's secret negotiations with representatives of a state at war with Russia became public. Despite the official assurances of Peter the Great and Areskin about their non-involvement in the activities of the opponents of King George I of England, negotiations with the Jacobites continued later, during the tsar's stay in France and Holland. Areskin remained the main initiator of these contacts even after Peter I returned to Russia, which only aggravated the problematic relations with England. However, the death of the tsar's doctor led to the fact that the "Jacobite intrigue" in Russia was over.Medic G.Polikala was involved in the activities of Russian diplomacy in Turkey. In particular, he had contacts with the Russian envoy in Istanbul, P.A. Tolstoy, and attempted to withdraw A. Cantemir from the territory of the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately, the information about Polikala's participation in Peter I's secret diplomacy events is sketchy.The article concludes that the tsarist doctors played an essential role in implementing the foreign policy initiatives of Peter I.

The contribution of livestock in the livelihood activities to the farmers' household income is critical to food security in Nigeria. Against there is a paucity of information on the assessment of livestock components in integration production systems. The study tries to investigate the livestock component in the crop-livestock production system in Ido Local Government Area (LGA) of Oyo State. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to elicit information from purposively selected 225 respondents with the Participatory Rural Appraisal method. Parameters measured were biodata, wealth status, average livestock holding/household (TLU), seasonality. Qualitative and quantitative data collected through questionnaire were transcribed into the Feed Assessment Tool (FEAST) Excel macro program (www.ilri.org/feast) and were analyzed with descriptive statistics. The respondents' categories (%) landless, small, medium and large scale were 10, 42, 30, and 18, respectively. The average livestock holding/household (TLU) values were 0.08, 0.33, 0.37, 4.96, 5.68, 14.40, 28.80, and 67.68 poultry, sheep, goat, indigenous (female dairy calves, male calves, dairy heifers, dairy lactating cows, and dry dairy cows), respectively. The average livestock species holding/household values of 121.53, 10.50, 5.00, and 15.20 for indigenous dairy cattle, WAD goat, WAD sheep, and indigenous poultry, respectively. The average area of land put to the cultivation of these fodders was 8.80, 2.40, 0.80, 0.80, 0.40, and 0.30, respectively. The contribution of livelihood activities to household income (%) was livestock (60), agriculture (20), business (10), remittances (5), labor (3), and others (2). It can be concluded that since Ido LGA is an oasis for crop and livestock production enterprises due to the available quality and quantity of feed resources -FEAST can assist the government in policy formulation. La contribution du bétail aux activités de subsistance au revenu des ménages des agriculteurs est essentielle à la sécurité alimentaire au Nigéria. Par contre, il y a un manqué d'informations sur l'évaluation des composants de l'élevage dans les systèmes de production d'intégration. L'étude tente d'étudier la composante élevage dans le système de production de cultures et de bétail dans la zone de gouvernement local d'Ido (le 'LGA') de l'État d'Oyo. Une technique d'échantillonnage à plusieurs degrés a été utilisée pour obtenir des informations auprès de 225 répondants sélectionnés à dessein avec la méthode d'évaluation rurale participative. Les paramètres mesurés étaient les données biologiques, l'état de richesse, la moyenne des exploitations / ménages, la saisonnalité. Les données qualitative et quantitatives collectées par le biais du questionnaire ont été transcrites dans le programme macro Excel de l'Outil d'évaluation de l'alimentation (le 'FEAST') (www.ilri.org/feast) et ont été analysées avec des statistiques descriptives. L'échelle était de 10, 42, 30 et 18, respectivement. Les valeurs moyennes des exploitations / ménages étaient de 0.08, 0.33, 0.37, 4.96, 5.68, 14.40, 28.80 et 67.68 volailles, ovins, caprins, indigènes (veaux laitiers femelles, veaux mâles, génisses laitières, vaches laitières en lactation, et vaches laitières séchées), respectivement. Les valeurs moyennes des espèces d'élevage / ménage sont respectivement de 121.53, 10.50, 5.00 et 15.20 pour les bovins laitiers indigènes, les chèvres WAD, les moutons WAD et la volaille indigène. La superficie moyenne des terres consacrée à la culture de ces fourrages était de 8.80, 2.40, 0.80, 0.80, 0.40 et 0.30, respectivement. La contribution des activités de subsistance au revenu des ménages (%) était l'élevage (60), l'agriculture (20), les affaires (10), les envois de fonds (5), la main-d'oeuvre (3) et autres (2). On peut en conclure que puisque la zone de gouvernement local d'Ido est une oasis pour les entreprises de production agricole et animale en raison de la qualité et de la quantité disponibles des ressources fourragères –le FEAST peut aider le gouvernement dans la formulation des politiques.

After the Second World War, Canadian parliamentarians showed growing interest in international students coming to Canada. The students became the subject of policy talk, which was shaped by powerful discourses emerging from the larger historical context. From 1945 to 1969, international students were seen as worthy recipients of Canadian aid, an idea that was premised on the belief that they were temporary visitors to Canada who would return to their home countries with both the skills they learned in Canadian schools and with an overall good- will towards Canada, a valuable commodity in the Cold War context. But after the Sir George Williams University affair of 1969, parliamentarians’ tone changed, and international student policy talk became suffused with discourses of fear and danger. In the years after 1969, international students were imagined as both politically and economically dangerous, an attitude that emerged as a reaction to student protest, but also re ected worries among some policymakers that Canada’s changing immigration system, and its move away from primarily Europeans sources for immigrants, was a threat to the stability of Canadian culture.RésuméAprès la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les parlementaires canadiens ont montré un intérêt crois- sant pour la venue au pays d’étudiants internationaux. Ces derniers devinrent un sujet de discussions politiques qui donna lieu à des discours émouvants alimentés par un vaste contexte historique. De 1945 à 1969, les étudiants internationaux étaient vus comme des récipiendaires dignes de l’aide canadienne. Cette idée s’appuyait sur l’impression qu’ils étaient des résidents temporaires au Canada et qu’ils retourneraient dans leur pays non seulement avec les com- pétences acquises dans les établissements d’enseignement, mais qu’ils af cheraient aussi leur bienveillance envers le Canada, une valeur inestimable dans un contexte de Guerre froide. Cependant, après l’affaire de l’Université Sir George Williams, en 1969, le ton des parlemen- taires canadiens a changé. Les discussions politiques sur les étudiants internationaux furent teintées par des idées de peur et d’appréhension. Après 1969, on imagina les étudiants inter- nationaux comme dangereux sur les plans politique et économique. Cette attitude fut une réaction aux protestations étudiantes, mais re était également les préoccupations de certains politiciens face aux changements du système d’immigration qui ne privilégiait plus les étu- diants venus d’Europe, ce qui présentait une menace à la culture canadienne.

Special Care Notice This paper discusses trauma and violence inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania through the process of colonisation. Content within this paper may be distressing to some readers. Introduction The decimation of the First Peoples of Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) was systematic and swift. First Contact was an emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually confronting series of encounters for the Indigenous inhabitants. There were, according to some early records, a few examples of peaceful interactions (Morris 84). Yet, the inevitable competition over resources, and the intensity with which colonists pursued their “claims” for food, land, and water, quickly transformed amicable relationships into hostile rivalries. Jennifer Gall has written that, as “European settlement expanded in the late 1820s, violent exchanges between settlers and Aboriginal people were frequent, brutal and unchecked” (58). Indeed, the near-annihilation of the original custodians of the land was, if viewed through the lens of time, a process that could be described as one that was especially efficient. As John Morris notes: in 1803, when the first settlers arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, the Aborigines had already inhabited the island for some 25,000 years and the population has been estimated at 4,000. Seventy-three years later, Truganinni, [often cited as] the last Tasmanian of full Aboriginal descent, was dead. (84) Against a backdrop of extreme violence, often referred to as the Black War (Clements 1), there were some, admittedly dubious, efforts to contain the bloodshed. One such effort, in the late 1820s, was the production, and subsequent distribution, of a set of Proclamation Boards. Approximately 100 Proclamation Boards (the Board) were introduced by the Lieutenant Governor of the day, George Arthur (after whom Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula is named). The purpose of these Boards was to communicate, via a four-strip pictogram, to the Indigenous peoples of the island colony that all people—black and white—were considered equal under the law. “British Justice would protect” everyone (Morris 84). This is reflected in the narrative of the Boards. The first image presents Indigenous peoples and colonists living peacefully together. The second, and central, image shows “a conciliatory handshake between the British governor and an Aboriginal ‘chief’, highly reminiscent of images found in North America on treaty medals and anti-slavery tokens” (Darian-Smith and Edmonds 4). The third and fourth images depict the repercussions for committing murder, with an Indigenous man hanged for spearing a colonist and a European man also hanged for shooting an Aborigine. Both men executed under “gubernatorial supervision” (Turnbull 53). Image 1: Governor Davey's [sic - actually Governor Arthur's] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic - actually c. 1828-30]. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (Call Number: SAFE / R 247). The Board is an interesting re-imagining of one of the traditional methods of communication for Indigenous peoples; the leaving of images on the bark of trees. Such trees, often referred to as scarred trees, are rare in modern-day Tasmania as “the expansion of settlements, and the impact of bush fires and other environmental factors” resulted in many of these trees being destroyed (Aboriginal Heritage Tasmania online). Similarly, only a few of the Boards, inspired by these trees, survive today. The Proclamation Board was, in the 1860s, re-imagined as the output of a different Governor: Lieutenant Governor Davey (after whom Port Davey, on the south-west coast of Tasmania is named). This re-imagining of the Board’s creator was so effective that the Board, today, is popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines. This paper outlines several other re-imaginings of this Board. In addition, this paper offers another, new, re-imagining of the Board, positing that this is an early “pamphlet” on crime, justice and punishment which actually presents as a pre-cursor to the modern Australian true crime tale. In doing so this work connects the Proclamation Board to the larger genre of crime fiction. One Proclamation Board: Two Governors Labelled Van Diemen’s Land and settled as a colony of New South Wales in 1803, this island state would secede from the administration of mainland Australia in 1825. Another change would follow in 1856 when Van Diemen’s Land was, in another process of re-imagining, officially re-named Tasmania. This change in nomenclature was an initiative to, symbolically at least, separate the contemporary state from a criminal and violent past (Newman online). Tasmania’s violent history was, perhaps, inevitable. The island was claimed by Philip Gidley King, the Governor of New South Wales, in the name of His Majesty, not for the purpose of building a community, but to “prevent the French from gaining a footing on the east side of that island” and also to procure “timber and other natural products, as well as to raise grain and to promote the seal industry” (Clark 36). Another rationale for this land claim was to “divide the convicts” (Clark 36) which re-fashioned the island into a gaol. It was this penal element of the British colonisation of Australia that saw the worst of the British Empire forced upon the Aboriginal peoples. As historian Clive Turnbull explains: the brutish state of England was reproduced in the English colonies, and that in many ways its brutishness was increased, for now there came to Australia not the humanitarians or the indifferent, but the men who had vested interests in the systems of restraint; among those who suffered restraint were not only a vast number who were merely unfortunate and poverty-stricken—the victims of a ‘depression’—but brutalised persons, child-slaughterers and even potential cannibals. (Turnbull 25) As noted above the Black War of Tasmania saw unprecedented aggression against the rightful occupants of the land. Yet, the Aboriginal peoples were “promised the white man’s justice, the people [were] exhorted to live in amity with them, the wrongs which they suffer [were] deplored” (Turnbull 23). The administrators purported an egalitarian society, one of integration and peace but Van Diemen’s Land was colonised as a prison and as a place of profit. So, “like many apologists whose material benefit is bound up with the systems which they defend” (Turnbull 23), assertions of care for the health and welfare of the Aboriginal peoples were made but were not supported by sufficient policies, or sufficient will, and the Black War continued. Colonel Thomas Davey (1758-1823) was the second person to serve as Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land; a term of office that began in 1813 and concluded in 1817. The fourth Lieutenant Governor of the island was Colonel Sir George Arthur (1784-1854); his term of office, significantly longer than Davey’s, being from 1824 to 1836. The two men were very different but are connected through this intriguing artefact, the Proclamation Board. One of the efforts made to assert the principle of equality under the law in Van Diemen’s Land was an outcome of work undertaken by Surveyor General George Frankland (1800-1838). Frankland wrote to Arthur in early 1829 and suggested the Proclamation Board (Morris 84), sometimes referred to as a Picture Board or the Tasmanian Hieroglyphics, as a tool to support Arthur’s various Proclamations. The Proclamation, signed on 15 April 1828 and promulgated in the The Hobart Town Courier on 19 April 1828 (Arthur 1), was one of several notices attempting to reduce the increasing levels of violence between Indigenous peoples and colonists. The date on Frankland’s correspondence clearly situates the Proclamation Board within Arthur’s tenure as Lieutenant Governor. The Board was, however, in the 1860s, re-imagined as the output of Davey. The Clerk of the Tasmanian House of Assembly, Hugh M. Hull, asserted that the Board was the work of Davey and not Arthur. Hull’s rationale for this, despite archival evidence connecting the Board to Frankland and, by extension, to Arthur, is predominantly anecdotal. In a letter to the editor of The Hobart Mercury, published 26 November 1874, Hull wrote: this curiosity was shown by me to the late Mrs Bateman, neé Pitt, a lady who arrived here in 1804, and with whom I went to school in 1822. She at once recognised it as one of a number prepared in 1816, under Governor Davey’s orders; and said she had seen one hanging on a gum tree at Cottage Green—now Battery Point. (3) Hull went on to assert that “if any old gentleman will look at the picture and remember the style of military and civil dress of 1810-15, he will find that Mrs Bateman was right” (3). Interestingly, Hull relies upon the recollections of a deceased school friend and the dress codes depicted by the artist to date the Proclamation Board as a product of 1816, in lieu of documentary evidence dating the Board as a product of 1828-1830. Curiously, the citation of dress can serve to undermine Hull’s argument. An early 1840s watercolour by Thomas Bock, of Mathinna, an Aboriginal child of Flinders Island adopted by Lieutenant Governor John Franklin (Felton online), features the young girl wearing a brightly coloured, high-waisted dress. This dress is very similar to the dresses worn by the children on the Proclamation Board (the difference being that Mathinna wears a red dress with a contrasting waistband, the children on the Board wear plain yellow dresses) (Bock). Acknowledging the simplicity of children's clothing during the colonial era, it could still be argued that it would have been unlikely the Governor of the day would have placed a child, enjoying at that time a life of privilege, in a situation where she sat for a portrait wearing an old-fashioned garment. So effective was Hull’s re-imagining of the Board’s creator that the Board was, for many years, popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines with even the date modified, to 1816, to fit Davey’s term of office. Further, it is worth noting that catalogue records acknowledge the error of attribution and list both Davey and Arthur as men connected to the creation of the Proclamation Board. A Surviving Board: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales One of the surviving Proclamation Boards is held by the Mitchell Library. The Boards, oil on Huon pine, were painted by “convict artists incarcerated in the island penal colony” (Carroll 73). The work was mass produced (by the standards of mass production of the day) by pouncing, “a technique [of the Italian Renaissance] of pricking the contours of a drawing with a pin. Charcoal was then dusted on to the drawing” (Carroll 75-76). The images, once outlined, were painted in oil. Of approximately 100 Boards made, several survive today. There are seven known Boards within public collections (Gall 58): five in Australia (Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney; Museum Victoria, Melbourne; National Library of Australia, Canberra; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; and Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston); and two overseas (The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of Cambridge). The catalogue record, for the Board held by the Mitchell Library, offers the following details:Paintings: 1 oil painting on Huon pine board, rectangular in shape with rounded corners and hole at top centre for suspension ; 35.7 x 22.6 x 1 cm. 4 scenes are depicted:Aborigines and white settlers in European dress mingling harmoniouslyAboriginal men and women, and an Aboriginal child approach Governor Arthur to shake hands while peaceful soldiers look onA hostile Aboriginal man spears a male white settler and is hanged by the military as Governor Arthur looks onA hostile white settler shoots an Aboriginal man and is hanged by the military as Governor Arthur looks on. (SAFE / R 247) The Mitchell Library Board was purchased from J.W. Beattie in May 1919 for £30 (Morris 86), which is approximately $2,200 today. Importantly, the title of the record notes both the popular attribution of the Board and the man who actually instigated the Board’s production: “Governor Davey’s [sic – actually Governor Arthur] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic – actually c. 1828-30].” The date of the Board is still a cause of some speculation. The earlier date, 1828, marks the declaration of martial law (Turnbull 94) and 1830 marks the Black Line (Edmonds 215); the attempt to form a human line of white men to force many Tasmanian Aboriginals, four of the nine nations, onto the Tasman Peninsula (Ryan 3). Frankland’s suggestion for the Board was put forward on 4 February 1829, with Arthur’s official Conciliator to the Aborigines, G.A. Robinson, recording his first sighting of a Board on 24 December 1829 (Morris 84-85). Thus, the conception of the Board may have been in 1828 but the Proclamation project was not fully realised until 1830. Indeed, a news item on the Proclamation Board did appear in the popular press, but not until 5 March 1830: We are informed that the Government have given directions for the painting of a large number of pictures to be placed in the bush for the contemplation of the Aboriginal Inhabitants. […] However […] the causes of their hostility must be more deeply probed, or their taste as connoisseurs in paintings more clearly established, ere we can look for any beneficial result from this measure. (Colonial Times 2) The remark made in relation to becoming a connoisseur of painting, though intended to be derogatory, makes some sense. There was an assumption that the Indigenous peoples could easily translate a European-styled execution by hanging, as a visual metaphor for all forms of punishment. It has long been understood that Indigenous “social organisation and religious and ceremonial life were often as complex as those of the white invaders” (McCulloch 261). However, the Proclamation Board was, in every sense, Eurocentric and made no attempt to acknowledge the complexities of Aboriginal culture. It was, quite simply, never going to be an effective tool of communication, nor achieve its socio-legal aims. The Board Re-imagined: Popular Media The re-imagining of the Proclamation Board as a construct of Governor Davey, instead of Governor Arthur, is just one of many re-imaginings of this curious object. There are, of course, the various imaginings of the purpose of the Board. On the surface these images are a tool for reconciliation but as “the story of these paintings unfolds […] it becomes clear that the proclamations were in effect envoys sent back to Britain to exhibit the ingenious attempts being applied to civilise Australia” (Carroll 76). In this way the Board was re-imagined by the Administration that funded the exercise, even before the project was completed, from a mechanism to assist in the bringing about of peace into an object that would impress colonial superiors. Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll has recently written about the Boards in the context of their “transnational circulation” and how “objects become subjects and speak of their past through the ventriloquism of contemporary art history” (75). Carroll argues the Board is an item that couples “military strategy with a fine arts propaganda campaign” (Carroll 78). Critically the Boards never achieved their advertised purpose for, as Carroll explains, there were “elaborate rituals Aboriginal Australians had for the dead” and, therefore, “the display of a dead, hanging body is unthinkable. […] being exposed to the sight of a hanged man must have been experienced as an unimaginable act of disrespect” (92). The Proclamation Board would, in sharp contrast to feelings of unimaginable disrespect, inspire feelings of pride across the colonial population. An example of this pride being revealed in the selection of the Board as an object worthy of reproduction, as a lithograph, for an Intercolonial Exhibition, held in Melbourne in 1866 (Morris 84). The lithograph, which identifies the Board as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines and dated 1816, was listed as item 572, of 738 items submitted by Tasmania, for the event (The Commissioners 69-85). This type of reproduction, or re-imagining, of the Board would not be an isolated event. Penelope Edmonds has described the Board as producing a “visual vernacular” through a range of derivatives including lantern slides, lithographs, and postcards. These types of tourist ephemera are in addition to efforts to produce unique re-workings of the Board as seen in Violet Mace’s Proclamation glazed earthernware, which includes a jug (1928) and a pottery cup (1934) (Edmonds online). The Board Re-imagined: A True Crime Tale The Proclamation Board offers numerous narratives. There is the story that the Board was designed and deployed to communicate. There is the story behind the Board. There is also the story of the credit for the initiative which was transferred from Governor Arthur to Governor Davey and subsequently returned to Arthur. There are, too, the provenance stories of individual Boards. There is another story the Proclamation Board offers. The story of true crime in colonial Australia. The Board, as noted, presents through a four-strip pictogram an idea that all are equal under the rule of law (Arthur 1). Advocating for a society of equals was a duplicitous practice, for while Aborigines were hanged for allegedly murdering settlers, “there is no record of whites being charged, let alone punished, for murdering Aborigines” (Morris 84). It would not be until 1838 that white men would be punished for the murder of Aboriginal people (on the mainland) in the wake of the Myall Creek Massacre, in northern New South Wales. There were other examples of attempts to bring about a greater equity under the rule of law but, as Amanda Nettelbeck explains, there was wide-spread resistance to the investigation and charging of colonists for crimes against the Indigenous population with cases regularly not going to trial, or, if making a courtroom, resulting in an acquittal (355-59). That such cases rested on “legally inadmissible Aboriginal testimony” (Reece in Nettelbeck 358) propped up a justice system that was, inherently, unjust in the nineteenth century. It is important to note that commentators at the time did allude to the crime narrative of the Board: when in the most civilized country in the world it has been found ineffective as example to hang murderers in chains, it is not to be expected a savage race will be influenced by the milder exhibition of effigy and caricature. (Colonial Times 2) It is argued here that the Board was much more than an offering of effigy and caricature. The Proclamation Board presents, in striking detail, the formula for the modern true crime tale: a peace disturbed by the act of murder; and the ensuing search for, and delivery of, justice. Reinforcing this point, are the ideas of justice seen within crime fiction, a genre that focuses on the restoration of order out of chaos (James 174), are made visible here as aspirational. The true crime tale does not, consistently, offer the reassurances found within crime fiction. In the real world, particularly one as violent as colonial Australia, we are forced to acknowledge that, below the surface of the official rhetoric on justice and crime, the guilty often go free and the innocent are sometimes hanged. Another point of note is that, if the latter date offered here, of 1830, is taken as the official date of the production of these Boards, then the significance of the Proclamation Board as a true crime tale is even more pronounced through a connection to crime fiction (both genres sharing a common literary heritage). The year 1830 marks the release of Australia’s first novel, Quintus Servinton written by convicted forger Henry Savery, a crime novel (produced in three volumes) published by Henry Melville of Hobart Town. Thus, this paper suggests, 1830 can be posited as a year that witnessed the production of two significant cultural artefacts, the Proclamation Board and the nation’s first full-length literary work, as also being the year that established the, now indomitable, traditions of true crime and crime fiction in Australia. Conclusion During the late 1820s in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) a set of approximately 100 Proclamation Boards were produced by the Lieutenant Governor of the day, George Arthur. The official purpose of these items was to communicate, to the Indigenous peoples of the island colony, that all—black and white—were equal under the law. Murderers, be they Aboriginal or colonist, would be punished. The Board is a re-imagining of one of the traditional methods of communication for Indigenous peoples; the leaving of drawings on the bark of trees. The Board was, in the 1860s, in time for an Intercolonial Exhibition, re-imagined as the output of Lieutenant Governor Davey. This re-imagining of the Board was so effective that surviving artefacts, today, are popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines with the date modified, to 1816, to fit the new narrative. The Proclamation Board was also reimagined, by its creators and consumers, in a variety of ways: as peace offering; military propaganda; exhibition object; tourism ephemera; and contemporary art. This paper has also, briefly, offered another re-imagining of the Board, positing that this early “pamphlet” on justice and punishment actually presents a pre-cursor to the modern Australian true crime tale. The Proclamation Board tells many stories but, at the core of this curious object, is a crime story: the story of mass murder. Acknowledgements The author acknowledges the Palawa peoples: the traditional custodians of the lands known today as Tasmania. The author acknowledges, too, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation upon whose lands this paper was researched and written. The author extends thanks to Richard Neville, Margot Riley, Kirsten Thorpe, and Justine Wilson of the State Library of New South Wales for sharing their knowledge and offering their support. The author is also grateful to the reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript and for making valuable suggestions. ReferencesAboriginal Heritage Tasmania. “Scarred Trees.” Aboriginal Cultural Heritage, 2012. 12 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.aboriginalheritage.tas.gov.au/aboriginal-cultural-heritage/archaeological-site-types/scarred-trees›.Arthur, George. “Proclamation.” The Hobart Town Courier 19 Apr. 1828: 1.———. Governor Davey’s [sic – actually Governor Arthur’s] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic – actually c. 1828-30]. Graphic Materials. Sydney: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, c. 1828-30.Bock, Thomas. Mathinna. Watercolour and Gouache on Paper. 23 x 19 cm (oval), c. 1840.Carroll, Khadija von Zinnenburg. Art in the Time of Colony: Empires and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-2000. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2014.Clark, Manning. History of Australia. Abridged by Michael Cathcart. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997 [1993]. Clements, Nicholas. The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania. St Lucia, Qld.: U of Queensland P, 2014.Colonial Times. “Hobart Town.” Colonial Times 5 Mar. 1830: 2.The Commissioners. Intercolonial Exhibition Official Catalogue. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Blundell & Ford, 1866.Darian-Smith, Kate, and Penelope Edmonds. “Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers.” Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers: Conflict, Performance and Commemoration in Australia and the Pacific Rim. Eds. Kate Darian-Smith and Penelope Edmonds. New York: Routledge, 2015. 1–14. Edmonds, Penelope. “‘Failing in Every Endeavour to Conciliate’: Governor Arthur’s Proclamation Boards to the Aborigines, Australian Conciliation Narratives and Their Transnational Connections.” Journal of Australian Studies 35.2 (2011): 201–18.———. “The Proclamation Cup: Tasmanian Potter Violet Mace and Colonial Quotations.” reCollections 5.2 (2010). 20 May 2015 ‹http://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_5_no_2/papers/the_proclamation_cup_›.Felton, Heather. “Mathinna.” Companion to Tasmanian History. Hobart: Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, 2006. 29 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/M/Mathinna.htm›.Gall, Jennifer. Library of Dreams: Treasures from the National Library of Australia. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2011.Hull, Hugh M. “Tasmanian Hieroglyphics.” The Hobart Mercury 26 Nov. 1874: 3.James, P.D. Talking about Detective Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.Mace, Violet. Violet Mace’s Proclamation Jug. Glazed Earthernware. Launceston: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, 1928.———. Violet Mace’s Proclamation Cup. Glazed Earthernware. Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 1934.McCulloch, Samuel Clyde. “Sir George Gipps and Eastern Australia’s Policy toward the Aborigine, 1838-46.” The Journal of Modern History 33.3 (1961): 261–69.Morris, John. “Notes on a Message to the Tasmanian Aborigines in 1829, popularly called ‘Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816’.” Australiana 10.3 (1988): 84–7.Nettelbeck, Amanda. “‘Equals of the White Man’: Prosecution of Settlers for Violence against Aboriginal Subjects of the Crown, Colonial Western Australia.” Law and History Review 31.2 (2013): 355–90.Newman, Terry. “Tasmania, the Name.” Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006. 16 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/T/Tasmania%20name.htm›.Reece, Robert H.W., in Amanda Nettelbeck. “‘Equals of the White Man’: Prosecution of Settlers for Violence against Aboriginal Subjects of the Crown, Colonial Western Australia.” Law and History Review 31.2 (2013): 355–90.Ryan, Lyndall. “The Black Line in Van Diemen’s Land: Success or Failure?” Journal of Australian Studies 37.1 (2013): 3–18.Savery, Henry. 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All history of this area and the general talk and all of that is that 1973 was a turning point and the Aquarius Festival is credited with having turned this region around in so many ways, but I think that is a myth ... and I have to honour the truth; and the truth is that old Dicke Donelly came and did a Welcome to Country the night before the festival. (Joseph in Joseph and Hanley)In 1973 the Australian Union of Students (AUS) held the Aquarius Arts and Lifestyle Festival in a small, rural New South Wales town called Nimbin. The festival was seen as the peak expression of Australian counterculture and is attributed to creating the “Rainbow Region”, an area with a concentration of alternative life stylers in Northern NSW (Derrett 28). While the Aquarius Festival is recognised as a founding historical and countercultural event, the unique and important relationships established with Indigenous people at this time are generally less well known. This article investigates claims that the 1973 Aquarius Festival was “the first event in Australian history that sought permission for the use of the land from the Traditional Owners” (Joseph and Hanley). The diverse international, national and local conditions that coalesced at the Aquarius Festival suggest a fertile environment was created for reconciliatory bonds to develop. Often dismissed as a “tree hugging, soap dodging movement,” the counterculture was radically politicised having sprung from the 1960s social revolutions when the world witnessed mass demonstrations that confronted war, racism, sexism and capitalism. Primarily a youth movement, it was characterised by flamboyant dress, music, drugs and mass gatherings with universities forming the epicentre and white, middle class youth leading the charge. As their ideals of changing the world were frustrated by lack of systematic change, many decided to disengage and a migration to rural settings occurred (Jacob; Munro-Clarke; Newton). In the search for alternatives, the counterculture assimilated many spiritual practices, such as Eastern traditions and mysticism, which were previously obscure to the Western world. This practice of spiritual syncretism can be represented as a direct resistance to the hegemony of the dominant Western culture (Stell). As the new counterculture developed, its progression from urban to rural settings was driven by philosophies imbued with a desire to reconnect with and protect the natural world while simultaneously rejecting the dominant conservative order. A recurring feature of this countercultural ‘back to the land’ migration was not only an empathetic awareness of the injustices of colonial past, but also a genuine desire to learn from the Indigenous people of the land. Indigenous people were generally perceived as genuine opposers of Westernisation, inherently spiritual, ecological, tribal and communal, thus encompassing the primary values to which the counterculture was aspiring (Smith). Cultures converged. One, a youth culture rebelling from its parent culture; the other, ancient cultures reeling from the historical conquest by the youths’ own ancestors. Such cultural intersections are rich with complex scenarios and politics. As a result, often naïve, but well-intended relations were established with Native Americans, various South American Indigenous peoples, New Zealand Maori and, as this article demonstrates, the Original People of Australia (Smith; Newton; Barr-Melej; Zolov). The 1960s protest era fostered the formation of groups aiming to address a variety of issues, and at times many supported each other. Jennifer Clarke says it was the Civil Rights movement that provided the first models of dissent by formulating a “method, ideology and language of protest” as African Americans stood up and shouted prior to other movements (2). The issue of racial empowerment was not lost on Australia’s Indigenous population. Clarke writes that during the 1960s, encouraged by events overseas and buoyed by national organisation, Aborigines “slowly embarked on a political awakening, demanded freedom from the trappings of colonialism and responded to the effects of oppression at worst and neglect at best” (4). Activism of the 1960s had the “profoundly productive effect of providing Aborigines with the confidence to assert their racial identity” (159). Many Indigenous youth were compelled by the zeitgeist to address their people’s issues, fulfilling Charlie Perkins’s intentions of inspiring in Indigenous peoples a will to resist (Perkins). Enjoying new freedoms of movement out of missions, due to the 1967 Constitutional change and the practical implementation of the assimilation policy, up to 32,000 Indigenous youth moved to Redfern, Sydney between 1967 and 1972 (Foley, “An Evening With”). Gary Foley reports that a dynamic new Black Power Movement emerged but the important difference between this new younger group and the older Indigenous leaders of the day was the diverse range of contemporary influences. Taking its mantra from the Black Panther movement in America, though having more in common with the equivalent Native American Red Power movement, the Black Power Movement acknowledged many other international struggles for independence as equally inspiring (Foley, “An Evening”). People joined together for grassroots resistance, formed anti-hierarchical collectives and established solidarities between varied groups who previously would have had little to do with each other. The 1973 Aquarius Festival was directly aligned with “back to the land” philosophies. The intention was to provide a place and a reason for gathering to “facilitate exchanges on survival techniques” and to experience “living in harmony with the natural environment.” without being destructive to the land (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). Early documents in the archives, however, reveal no apparent interest in Australia’s Indigenous people, referring more to “silken Arabian tents, mediaeval banners, circus, jugglers and clowns, peace pipes, maypole and magic circles” (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). Obliterated from the social landscape and minimally referred to in the Australian education system, Indigenous people were “off the radar” to the majority mindset, and the Australian counterculture similarly was slow to appreciate Indigenous culture. Like mainstream Australia, the local counterculture movement largely perceived the “race” issue as something occurring in other countries, igniting the phrase “in your own backyard” which became a catchcry of Indigenous activists (Foley, “Whiteness and Blackness”) With no mention of any Indigenous interest, it seems likely that the decision to engage grew from the emerging climate of Indigenous activism in Australia. Frustrated by student protestors who seemed oblivious to local racial issues, focusing instead on popular international injustices, Indigenous activists accused them of hypocrisy. Aquarius Festival directors, found themselves open to similar accusations when public announcements elicited a range of responses. Once committed to the location of Nimbin, directors Graeme Dunstan and Johnny Allen began a tour of Australian universities to promote the upcoming event. While at the annual conference of AUS in January 1973 at Monash University, Dunstan met Indigenous activist Gary Foley: Gary witnessed the presentation of Johnny Allen and myself at the Aquarius Foundation session and our jubilation that we had agreement from the village residents to not only allow, but also to collaborate in the production of the Festival. After our presentation which won unanimous support, it was Gary who confronted me with the question “have you asked permission from local Aboriginal folk?” This threw me into confusion because we had seen no Aboriginals in Nimbin. (Dunstan, e-mail) Such a challenge came at a time when the historical climate was etched with political activism, not only within the student movement, but more importantly with Indigenous activists’ recent demonstrations, such as the installation in 1972 of the Tent Embassy in Canberra. As representatives of the counterculture movement, which was characterised by its inclinations towards consciousness-raising, AUS organisers were ethically obliged to respond appropriately to the questions about Indigenous permission and involvement in the Aquarius Festival at Nimbin. In addition to this political pressure, organisers in Nimbin began hearing stories of the area being cursed or taboo for women. This most likely originated from the tradition of Nimbin Rocks, a rocky outcrop one kilometre from Nimbin, as a place where only certain men could go. Jennifer Hoff explains that many major rock formations were immensely sacred places and were treated with great caution and respect. Only a few Elders and custodians could visit these places and many such locations were also forbidden for women. Ceremonies were conducted at places like Nimbin Rocks to ensure the wellbeing of all tribespeople. Stories of the Nimbin curse began to spread and most likely captivated a counterculture interested in mysticism. As organisers had hoped that news of the festival would spread on the “lips of the counterculture,” they were alarmed to hear how “fast the bad news of this curse was travelling” (Dunstan, e-mail). A diplomatic issue escalated with further challenges from the Black Power community when organisers discovered that word had spread to Sydney’s Indigenous community in Redfern. Organisers faced a hostile reaction to their alleged cultural insensitivity and were plagued by negative publicity with accusations the AUS were “violating sacred ground” (Janice Newton 62). Faced with such bad press, Dunstan was determined to repair what was becoming a public relations disaster. It seemed once prompted to the path, a sense of moral responsibility prevailed amongst the organisers and they took the unprecedented step of reaching out to Australia’s Indigenous people. Dunstan claimed that an expedition was made to the local Woodenbong mission to consult with Elder, Uncle Lyle Roberts. To connect with local people required crossing the great social divide present in that era of Australia’s history. Amy Nethery described how from the nineteenth century to the 1960s, a “system of reserves, missions and other institutions isolated, confined and controlled Aboriginal people” (9). She explains that the people were incarcerated as a solution to perceived social problems. For Foley, “the widespread genocidal activity of early “settlement” gave way to a policy of containment” (Foley, “Australia and the Holocaust”). Conditions on missions were notoriously bad with alcoholism, extreme poverty, violence, serious health issues and depression common. Of particular concern to mission administrators was the perceived need to keep Indigenous people separate from the non-indigenous population. Dunstan described the mission he visited as having “bad vibes.” He found it difficult to communicate with the elderly man, and was not sure if he understood Dunstan’s quest, as his “responses came as disjointed raves about Jesus and saving grace” (Dunstan, e-mail). Uncle Lyle, he claimed, did not respond affirmatively or negatively to the suggestion that Nimbin was cursed, and so Dunstan left assuming it was not true. Other organisers began to believe the curse and worried that female festival goers might get sick or worse, die. This interpretation reflected, as Vanessa Bible argues, a general Eurocentric misunderstanding of the relationship of Indigenous peoples with the land. Paul Joseph admits they were naïve whites coming into a place with very little understanding, “we didn’t know if we needed a witch doctor or what we needed but we knew we needed something from the Aborigines to lift the spell!”(Joseph and Hanley). Joseph, one of the first “hippies” who moved to the area, had joined forces with AUS organisers. He said, “it just felt right” to get Indigenous involvement and recounted how organisers made another trip to Woodenbong Mission to find Dickee (Richard) Donnelly, a Song Man, who was very happy to be invited. Whether the curse was valid or not it proved to be productive in further instigating respectful action. Perhaps feeling out of their depth, the organisers initiated another strategy to engage with Australian Indigenous people. A call out was sent through the AUS network to diversify the cultural input and it was recommended they engage the services of South African artist, Bauxhau Stone. Timing aligned well as in 1972 Australia had voted in a new Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. Whitlam brought about significant political changes, many in response to socialist protests that left a buoyancy in the air for the counterculturalist movement. He made prodigious political changes in support of Indigenous people, including creating the Aboriginal Arts Board as part of the Australian Council of the Arts (ACA). As the ACA were already funding activities for the Aquarius Festival, organisers were successful in gaining two additional grants specifically for Indigenous participation (Farnham). As a result We were able to hire […] representatives, a couple of Kalahari bushmen. ‘Cause we were so dumb, we didn’t think we could speak to the black people, you know what I mean, we thought we would be rejected, or whatever, so for us to really reach out, we needed somebody black to go and talk to them, or so we thought, and it was remarkable. This one Bau, a remarkable fellow really, great artist, great character, he went all over Australia. He went to Pitjantjatjara, Yirrkala and we arranged buses and tents when they got here. We had a very large contingent of Aboriginal people come to the Aquarius Festival, thanks to Whitlam. (Joseph in Joseph and Henley) It was under the aegis of these government grants that Bauxhau Stone conducted his work. Stone embodied a nexus of contemporary issues. Acutely aware of the international movement for racial equality and its relevance to Australia, where conditions were “really appalling”, Stone set out to transform Australian race relations by engaging with the alternative arts movement (Stone). While his white Australian contemporaries may have been unaccustomed to dealing with the Indigenous racial issue, Stone was actively engaged and thus well suited to act as a cultural envoy for the Aquarius Festival. He visited several local missions, inviting people to attend and notifying them of ceremonies being conducted by respected Elders. Nimbin was then the site of the Aquarius Lifestyle and Celebration Festival, a two week gathering of alternative cultures, technologies and youth. It innovatively demonstrated its diversity of influences, attracted people from all over the world and was the first time that the general public really witnessed Australia’s counterculture (Derrett 224). As markers of cultural life, counterculture festivals of the 1960s and 1970s were as iconic as the era itself and many around the world drew on the unique Indigenous heritage of their settings in some form or another (Partridge; Perone; Broadley and Jones; Zolov). The social phenomenon of coming together to experience, celebrate and foster a sense of unity was triggered by protests, music and a simple, yet deep desire to reconnect with each other. Festivals provided an environment where the negative social pressures of race, gender, class and mores (such as clothes) were suspended and held the potential “for personal and social transformation” (St John 167). With the expressed intent to “take matters into our own hands” and try to develop alternative, innovative ways of doing things with collective participation, the Aquarius Festival thus became an optimal space for reinvigorating ancient and Indigenous ways (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). With philosophies that venerated collectivism, tribalism, connecting with the earth, and the use of ritual, the Indigenous presence at the Aquarius Festival gave attendees the opportunity to experience these values. To connect authentically with Nimbin’s landscape, forming bonds with the Traditional Owners was essential. Participants were very fortunate to have the presence of the last known initiated men of the area, Uncle Lyle Roberts and Uncle Dickee Donnely. These Elders represented the last vestiges of an ancient culture and conducted innovative ceremonies, song, teachings and created a sacred fire for the new youth they encountered in their land. They welcomed the young people and were very happy for their presence, believing it represented a revolutionary shift (Wedd; King; John Roberts; Cecil Roberts). Images 1 and 2: Ceremony and talks conducted at the Aquarius Festival (people unknown). Photographs reproduced by permission of photographer and festival attendee Paul White. The festival thus provided an important platform for the regeneration of cultural and spiritual practices. John Roberts, nephew of Uncle Lyle, recalled being surprised by the reaction of festival participants to his uncle: “He was happy and then he started to sing. And my God … I couldn’t get near him! There was this big ring of hippies around him. They were about twenty deep!” Sharing to an enthusiastic, captive audience had a positive effect and gave the non-indigenous a direct Indigenous encounter (Cecil Roberts; King; Oshlak). Estimates of the number of Indigenous people in attendance vary, with the main organisers suggesting 800 to 1000 and participants suggesting 200 to 400 (Stone; Wedd; Oshlak: Joseph; King; Cecil Roberts). As the Festival lasted over a two week period, many came and left within that time and estimates are at best reliant on memory, engagement and perspectives. With an estimated total attendance at the Festival between 5000 and 10,000, either number of Indigenous attendees is symbolic and a significant symbolic statistic for Indigenous and non-indigenous to be together on mutual ground in Australia in 1973. Images 3-5: Performers from Yirrkala Dance Group, brought to the festival by Stone with funding from the Federal Government. Photographs reproduced by permission of photographer and festival attendee Dr Ian Cameron. For Indigenous people, the event provided an important occasion to reconnect with their own people, to share their culture with enthusiastic recipients, as well as the chance to experience diverse aspects of the counterculture. Though the northern NSW region has a history of diverse cultural migration of Italian and Indian families, the majority of non-indigenous and Indigenous people had limited interaction with cosmopolitan influences (Kijas 20). Thus Nimbin was a conservative region and many Christianised Indigenous people were also conservative in their outlook. The Aquarius Festival changed that as the Indigenous people experienced the wide-ranging cultural elements of the alternative movement. The festival epitomised countercultural tendencies towards flamboyant fashion and hairstyles, architectural design, fantastical art, circus performance, Asian clothes and religious products, vegetarian food and nudity. Exposure to this bohemian culture would have surely led to “mind expansion and consciousness raising,” explicit aims adhered to by the movement (Roszak). Performers and participants from Africa, America and India also gave attending Indigenous Australians the opportunity to interact with non-European cultures. Many people interviewed for this paper indicated that Indigenous people’s reception of this festival experience was joyous. For Australia’s early counterculture, interest in Indigenous Australia was limited and for organisers of the AUS Aquarius Festival, it was not originally on the agenda. The counterculture in the USA and New Zealand had already started to engage with their Indigenous people some years earlier. However due to the Aquarius Festival’s origins in the student movement and its solidarities with the international Indigenous activist movement, they were forced to shift their priorities. The coincidental selection of a significant spiritual location at Nimbin to hold the festival brought up additional challenges and countercultural intrigue with mystical powers and a desire to connect authentically to the land, further prompted action. Essentially, it was the voices of empowered Indigenous activists, like Gary Foley, which in fact triggered the reaching out to Indigenous involvement. While the counterculture organisers were ultimately receptive and did act with unprecedented respect, credit must be given to Indigenous activists. The activist’s role is to trigger action and challenge thinking and in this case, it was ultimately productive. Therefore the Indigenous people were not merely passive recipients of beneficiary goodwill, but active instigators of appropriate cultural exchange. After the 1973 festival many attendees decided to stay in Nimbin to purchase land collectively and a community was born. Relationships established with local Indigenous people developed further. Upon visiting Nimbin now, one will see a vibrant visual display of Indigenous and psychedelic themed art, a central park with an open fire tended by local custodians and other Indigenous community members, an Aboriginal Centre whose rent is paid for by local shopkeepers, and various expressions of a fusion of counterculture and Indigenous art, music and dance. While it appears that reconciliation became the aspiration for mainstream society in the 1990s, Nimbin’s early counterculture history had Indigenous reconciliation at its very foundation. The efforts made by organisers of the 1973 Aquarius Festival stand as one of very few examples in Australian history where non-indigenous Australians have respectfully sought to learn from Indigenous people and to assimilate their cultural practices. It also stands as an example for the world, of reconciliation, based on hippie ideals of peace and love. 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