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The Nixon Doctrine, which devolved US troops from direct involvement in Asian conflicts but gave priority to military sales and economic assistance, was considered by some commentators to be an inefficacious foreign policy approach that did little to serve US interests in Asia during the Cold War. Using Singapore as a case study, this article demonstrates that Richard Nixon's foreign policy approach improved US-Singapore relations significantly from 1970 onwards. After a period of flirtation with the Soviet Union during 1968–72, Singapore came to be labelled a “good Nixon Doctrine country” by the US government in 1973. Through the sale of US military equipment and economic assistance, Singapore and the US cultivated bilateral ties that endured after the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam in 1973 and the fall of Saigon two years later.

This article investigates the uneven recovery of art post‐1945. The return of debates on modernism and the emergence of the neo‐avant‐garde showcase the lines of continuity across the zero hour of 1945 as well as the art foundations for radical political action in West Germany.

This article evaluates the extent that Aboriginal societies in early nineteenth century Australia were known by Europeans coming into early contact with them as Aboriginal nations rather than as tribes. The study demonstrates that early nineteenth century Evangelicals saw the Aboriginal societies that they encountered on the Australian frontier as nations because the Evangelicals’ view of the world was based on that found in their Bible, in which it is described how God had divided the world up into different nations. The article draws the conclusion that seeing Aboriginal people as nations was common among the Evangelicals. However, the practice of mapping and delineating individual Aboriginal nations was limited to a few Evangelicals, such as George Augustus Robinson and Edward Parker, who had acquired an intimate knowledge of Aboriginal culture.

The Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC) was established in 1968 through the initiatives taken by the Japanese and Australian business leaders. This article focuses on the ideas and activities of the Japanese and Australian business leaders in the establishment of PBEC, especially those of Nagano Shigeo and W.R.C. Anderson, both of whom devoted themselves to the establishment of PBEC, while cooperating with each other. The central questions posed are: how and why Nagano and Anderson came to consider it desirable to establish an economic institution in the Asia Pacific region in the mid‐1960s; how and why those ideas were refined and transformed into the establishment of PBEC; what approaches business leaders in other countries took towards Pacific cooperation and how the Japanese and Australians adjusted different interests of people in other countries in organising PBEC. Finally, the article assesses the role played by PBEC in the development of economic cooperation in Asia and the Pacific and insists that it should help set up foundations for the subsequent organisations of regional economic institutions such as the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

This article evaluates proposals in the late 1920s for the creation of an Aboriginal State in either a part of the Northern Territory or South Australia. In the proposals for an Aboriginal State, Aborigines were to own their own land, live according to their own customs, govern themselves, and have Aboriginal Members of Parliament representing them in the Federal Parliament. The study analyses the intellectual foundations of the proposals in the political organisations of the Maori of New Zealand. It examines Aboriginal people’s ambivalence to the idea, which arose out of their bitter experience of living through previous plans made supposedly for their benefit by white society.