Andrea Benvenuti
Biographic Data
| ID | 5530853 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrea Benvenuti |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrea |
| FAMILY NAME | Benvenuti |
| SIGNATURE | BENVENUTI A |
| AFFILIATIONS | UNSW Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2483-2464 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 36 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Colombo Conference
Chapter 3 examines Nehru’s involvement in the April 1954 Colombo Conference and his reaction to an Indonesian proposal for an Asian-African conference to foster Afro-Asian coordination and reduce Cold War tensions. This chapter reveals that Nehru, who is generally viewed as a strong supporter of Afro-Asian internationalism, doubted that a large gathering of countries with disparate historical backgrounds, cultures and political traditions could p…
Nehru’s Visit to China
Nehru’s visit to China in October 1954 was crucial in advancing his vision of a neutralized Asia. As Chapter 7 explains, his talks with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai in Beijing reassured him that China was genuinely committed to peaceful coexistence. During the visit, he gained further evidence of Beijing’s commitment to the Five Principles and his concept of areas of peace. He also noticed a significant degree of convergence on various Cold War issu…
Bandung’s Aftermath
Chapter 10 reflects on the roles played by both Nehru and Zhou Enlai during the Bandung Conference’s proceedings and discusses their positive assessments of the conference’s outcomes. If Nehru felt vindicated in inviting China to Bandung, Zhou saw the conferences as an opportunity to advance China’s regional interests. That said, this chapter also shows that for all their high-minded and intoxicating rhetoric of Afro-Asian solidarity and peaceful…
Nehru's Bandung
This book sheds light on a neglected aspect of India’s Cold War diplomacy, starting with the role of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his Congress government in organizing the first Asian-African Conference in Bandung in April 1955. Andrea Benvenuti shows how, in the early Cold War, Nehru seized the opportunity accorded by the conference to transcend growing international tensions and pursue an alternative vision: a neutralized Asian “a…
Nehru’s Bandung moment
This article explores Jawaharlal Nehru’s role in convening the 1955 Bandung Conference. Drawing upon previously embargoed Indian and Western government records, it sheds light on a largely overlooked aspect of Nehru’s Cold War diplomacy. By doing so, it shows that Nehru did not attach, at least initially, much importance to Indonesia’s calls for an Asian-African conference. Only in late 1954 did he show more interest in the Indonesian proposal. T…
Much Ado about Little
Australian Prime Minister Edward Gough Whitlam has gone down in history as the man who ended two decades of Australian neglect of Asia. Having come to power with the ambitious goal of making a quantum leap in Australia’s regional engagement, Whitlam is widely credited with bringing his country closer to Asia. However, such a representation of Whitlam’s Asian diplomacy does not quite stand up to a careful examination of the historical record. Whit…
Italy, the Monti government and the euro crisis (2011-12)
Hailed initially as the country’s saviour for saving Italy from default, Mario Monti’s technocratic government (2011-13) ended in controversy and with its achievements questioned. Aware of this contested legacy, this article seeks to revisit Monti’s term in office and to assess his approach to the crisis that engulfed Italy and the eurozone in 2011-12. In doing so, it looks primarily at Monti’s European policy, but also briefly examines his domes…
Commonwealth Responsibility and Cold War Solidarity
Constructing Peaceful Coexistence
In the mid-1950s, Jawaharlal Nehru advanced an alternative approach to regional security, pursuing it enthusiastically. He held that employing diplomacy in accord with the ‘Five Principles’ of peaceful coexistence, regional governments could establish ‘areas of peace’ and achieve ‘collective peace’. China played an essential role in this process, becoming the lynchpin of Nehru’s regional strategy. Although mindful of China’s potentially subversiv…
With Friends Like These
A generation of scholars has depicted the premiership of Labor Party leader Gough Whitlam as a watershed in Australian foreign policy. According to the prevailing consensus, Whitlam carved out a more independent and progressive role in international affairs without significantly endangering relations with Western-aligned states in East and Southeast Asia or with Australia's traditionally closest allies, the United States and the United Kingdom. T…
Australia’s relations with the European Community in a historical perspective
In 2015, Australia and the European Union successfully negotiated a Framework Agreement. This agreement is an essential step in establishing a stronger Australia–European Union partnership and achieving closer bilateral cooperation. For years, negotiating such an agreement had proved impossible. In the 1970s, successive Australian governments showed interest in enhanced collaboration with the European Community, but the political climate for clos…
Between myth and reality
In mid-November 2011, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi tendered his formal resignation to President Giorgio Napolitano. It was a humiliating ‘political exit’ for the controversial Italian leader who had been the dominant figure in Italian politics since the mid-1990s. With Italy in the throes of an unprecedented financial crisis, Berlusconi’s squabbling centre-right coalition had appeared increasingly incapable of dealing with the economic emerge…
A Matter of Preference
The Cold War in South Asia
The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States and the Indian subcontinent, 1945–1965." Asian Studies Review, 40(2), pp. 306–307
The External Relations of the European Union
Meanwhile, the reaction of the French press to the Polish strikes was mixed. Perhaps the most remarkable attitude was that of L'Humanit, the French Communist Party's (PCF Parti communiste franais) national newspaper. The French Communist Party's attitude to the Polish crisis was indeed perplexing. In the 1980s, the PCF was the most pro-Soviet Communist party in Europe. It is true that after the publication of The Gulag Archipelago (1974), the PCF…
EU‐Australia Relations at Fifty
This article critically examines the Australia‐EU relationship over the past five decades or so. A narrow formulation of Australia's national interests has become transformed into a broader engagement, with an increasingly regionalised and multilateralised common agenda. The article argues that the relationship changed because of a number of factors. The first is Australia's changing relationship with the UK as interlocutor and market. The second…
The Eisenhower Administration and the Decolonization of Singapore
In the mid-1950s, as decolonization gathered pace across Asia, political turbulence and left-wing unrest gripped the tiny island of Singapore. Strategically located at the heart of Southeast Asia, Singapore was Britain’s largest military base east of Suez and the linchpin of its security system in the Far East. It played multiple functions, not only serving to underpin British colonial policy and regional influence, but also helping bolster Weste…
Anachronism refuted or irrefutable? A reply to James Cotton
Additional informationNotes on contributorsDavid JonesDavid Jones is an Associate Professor in the School of Political Science and Intenational Studies at University of QueenslandAndrea BenvenutiAndrea Benvenuti is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at University of New South Wales
Menzies' Asia policy and the anachronistic fallacy
A powerful orthodoxy exists in the academic literature devoted to the history of Australia's post-1945 international relations. It maintains that suspicion and condescension permeated the attitude of the Menzies government (1949–66) towards Asia. Accordingly, Menzies’ regional policies not only prevented Australia from engaging meaningfully with its Asian neighbours, but they also ended up antagonising them. This article critiques this view and i…
Australia, the ‘Marshall experiment’ and the decolonisation of Singapore, 1955–56
As decolonisation gathered pace in Southeast Asia, Singapore became a source of considerable concern to the Robert Menzies government. Britain's hold on its colony appeared increasingly precarious as political turbulence gripped the island. With a predominantly Chinese population, Singapore was considered susceptible to communist China's propaganda and subversion. By relying on previously classified Australian and British diplomatic documents, th…
Difficult Partners
This article aims to make a long overdue re‐examination of Indo‐Australian relations in the early Cold War years. By drawing on available secondary sources, it reassesses the existing literature on Australian engagement with Asia. In so doing, it seeks to understand the reasons why the Menzies government found it so difficult to forge a close partnership with India. Canberra's rather frosty relations with New Delhi during the Menzies‐Nehru years …
Opportunity or Challenge? Australia and European Integration, 1950-57
This paper examines Australia's approach to Western European integration in the 1950s. While superficially supportive of steps towards greater Western European cooperation, the Menzies government had an ambivalent attitude towards the integration process. Ministers and officials in Canberra recognised the importance of a strong and prosperous Western Europe, but the formation of a tightly knit Continental grouping also posed a number of major cha…
Myth and Misrepresentation in Australian Foreign Policy
The prevailing orthodoxy in the academic literature devoted to the history of Australia's post-1945 international relations posits that a mixture of suspicion and condescension permeated the attitude of the governments headed by Robert Menzies (1949–1966) toward the Asia-Pacific region. Menzies's regional policies, according to this view, not only prevented Australia from engaging meaningfully with its Asian neighbors but also ended up antagonizi…
Engaging Southeast Asia? Labor's Regional Mythology and Australia's Military Withdrawal from Singapore and Malaysia, 1972–1973
This article draws on previously classified Australian and British archival material to reevaluate Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's foreign policy. The article focuses on the Whitlam government's decision in 1973 to withdraw Australian forces from Malaysia and Singapore—a decision that constitutes a neglected but defining episode in the evolution of Australian postwar diplomacy. An analysis of this decision reveals the limits of Whitlam'…
The Five Power Defence Arrangements and the reappraisal of the British and Australian policy interests in Southeast Asia, 1970–75
Working from recently declassified Australian and British government files, this paper examines the archival evidence on policy thinking in London and Canberra towards the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) during the period 1970–75. The article argues that one of the main reasons for the Heath government's decision to deploy a token military force in Southeast Asia as part of a multilateral defence arrangement with Australia, New Zealand, Ma…
Tradition, myth and the dilemma of Australian foreign policy
For a middle power with a relatively short history of framing a self determined foreign policy, Australia has actively sought to engage with both its immediate region and the wider world. Elite agreement on this external orientation, however, has by no means entailed consensus on what this orientation might involve in terms of policy. Consequently, two, often conflicting, traditions and their associated myths have informed Australian foreign poli…
Between myth and reality
In mid-November 2011, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi tendered his formal resignation to President Giorgio Napolitano. It was a humiliating ‘political exit’ for the controversial Italian leader who had been the dominant figure in Italian politics since the mid-1990s. With Italy in the throes of an unprecedented financial crisis, Berlusconi’s squabbling centre-right coalition had appeared increasingly incapable of dealing with the economic emerge…
Nehru’s Bandung moment
This article explores Jawaharlal Nehru’s role in convening the 1955 Bandung Conference. Drawing upon previously embargoed Indian and Western government records, it sheds light on a largely overlooked aspect of Nehru’s Cold War diplomacy. By doing so, it shows that Nehru did not attach, at least initially, much importance to Indonesia’s calls for an Asian-African conference. Only in late 1954 did he show more interest in the Indonesian proposal. T…
Australian reactions to Britain's declining presence in Southeast Asia, 1955–63
This article examines Australia's long-held doubts about Britain's willingness and ability to maintain a significant military presence in Southeast Asia, where Australia's main strategic interests lay. The article argues that Australian concerns long predated the Wilson government's attempt to disengage from east of Suez in the mid-1960s. In doing so, it shows that the Menzies government had since the mid-1950s become increasingly concerned about…
Shifting Priorities
For the best part of two centuries, the defence of the Australian continent was almost entirely dependent on the global supremacy of the British navy. The decline of British sea power, particularly in the years after the Second World War, was therefore highly unwelcome in Australia, and brought recurring difficulties in the Anglo‐Australian relationship. Most scholarship to date has focused on the two symbolic moments of British capitulation in A…
Menzies' Asia policy and the anachronistic fallacy
A powerful orthodoxy exists in the academic literature devoted to the history of Australia's post-1945 international relations. It maintains that suspicion and condescension permeated the attitude of the Menzies government (1949–66) towards Asia. Accordingly, Menzies’ regional policies not only prevented Australia from engaging meaningfully with its Asian neighbours, but they also ended up antagonising them. This article critiques this view and i…
Myth and Misrepresentation in Australian Foreign Policy
The prevailing orthodoxy in the academic literature devoted to the history of Australia's post-1945 international relations posits that a mixture of suspicion and condescension permeated the attitude of the governments headed by Robert Menzies (1949–1966) toward the Asia-Pacific region. Menzies's regional policies, according to this view, not only prevented Australia from engaging meaningfully with its Asian neighbors but also ended up antagonizi…
The Heath Government and British Defence Policy in Southeast Asia at the End of Empire (1970-71)
This article examines the rationale behind the Heath government's 1970 decision to negotiate a Five Power Defence agreement with Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia and to maintain a small British military contingent in Southeast Asia as a part of this new politico-military framework. It argues that while its overriding foreign policy concern was to end Britain's problematic relationship with the European Economic Community and to make…
Australia’s Battle against the Common Agricultural Policy
The aim of this article is to offer a different interpretation of Fraser Government’s diplomacy towards the European Community. In particular, it will be argued that, although Fraser’s European policy was unsuccessful, this was not principally his fault since no matter what sort of approach he adopted, no major result could have been obtained from Brussels. Second, this article will argue that Fraser clearly understood the EC’s internal political…
Shifting Priorities
For the best part of two centuries, the defence of the Australian continent was almost entirely dependent on the global supremacy of the British navy. The decline of British sea power, particularly in the years after the Second World War, was therefore highly unwelcome in Australia, and brought recurring difficulties in the Anglo‐Australian relationship. Most scholarship to date has focused on the two symbolic moments of British capitulation in A…
The British Military Withdrawal from Southeast Asia and its Impact on Australia's Cold War Strategic Interests
The impact of Britain's withdrawal on Western strategic interests in Cold War Asia constitutes the focus of this article. In particular, the article provides an analysis of the problems and the challenges which confronted Australia in its response to the Wilson government's controversial decision to pull out of Southeast Asia. While the US reaction to Britain's disengagement has been examined in some detail, Australian and New Zealand responses t…
Issues in Australian Foreign Policy July to December 2005
Three important sets of issues dominated the Australian foreign policy agenda in the second half of 2005: the seemingly never-ending, and often highly charged, question of Australia's place and role in Asia, the management of the US-Australian alliance, and a recrudescence of Islamic terrorist attacks, both close to home and further afield. Firstly, Australia's possible exclusion from the inaugural East Asian Summit (EAS), scheduled to take place…
‘Layin’ Low and Sayin’ Nuffin’
This article examines the problems and challenges which confronted the Australian government in its response to Britain’s second attempt to join the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1967. While an adequate body of literature exists on Australia’s policy towards Britain’s first application to the EEC (1961–63), the Australian government’s response to the 1967 bid has been completely ignored by historians. This article, therefore, aims to make …
A Parting of the Ways
The question of the British military withdrawal from Southeast Asia in the context of Anglo-Australian relations constitutes the focus of this article. The article explores the impact of the British withdrawal on the Anglo-Australian relationship and examines the problems and the challenges that confronted the Australian government in its response to the Wilson government's contentious decision to disengage from Southeast Asia. It argues that, un…
Tradition, myth and the dilemma of Australian foreign policy
For a middle power with a relatively short history of framing a self determined foreign policy, Australia has actively sought to engage with both its immediate region and the wider world. Elite agreement on this external orientation, however, has by no means entailed consensus on what this orientation might involve in terms of policy. Consequently, two, often conflicting, traditions and their associated myths have informed Australian foreign poli…
Australian reactions to Britain's declining presence in Southeast Asia, 1955–63
This article examines Australia's long-held doubts about Britain's willingness and ability to maintain a significant military presence in Southeast Asia, where Australia's main strategic interests lay. The article argues that Australian concerns long predated the Wilson government's attempt to disengage from east of Suez in the mid-1960s. In doing so, it shows that the Menzies government had since the mid-1950s become increasingly concerned about…
Facing the Inevitable
While Australia's response to Britain's 1961‐63 bid to join the European Community has been examined in almost every possible detail, Australian policy towards Britain's 1970‐72 application has drawn very little scholarly attention. This article therefore aims to fill this gap by drawing on newly released archival material from the National Archives of Australia in Canberra and the National Archives in London. In doing so, the article examines th…
The Heath Government and British Defence Policy in Southeast Asia at the End of Empire (1970-71)
This article examines the rationale behind the Heath government's 1970 decision to negotiate a Five Power Defence agreement with Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia and to maintain a small British military contingent in Southeast Asia as a part of this new politico-military framework. It argues that while its overriding foreign policy concern was to end Britain's problematic relationship with the European Economic Community and to make…
The British are “Taking to the Boat”
This article examines the strategies pursued by the Australian Liberal-Country Party coalition governments of Robert Menzies and Harold Holt in their quest to secure a continuing British military presence in Malaysia and Singapore. It focuses on the first eighteen months of the Wilson premiership (October 1964–March 1966) when Labour's thinking on the future of Britain's defence role east of Suez was still fluid and had not yet crystallised into …
Engaging Southeast Asia? Labor's Regional Mythology and Australia's Military Withdrawal from Singapore and Malaysia, 1972–1973
This article draws on previously classified Australian and British archival material to reevaluate Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's foreign policy. The article focuses on the Whitlam government's decision in 1973 to withdraw Australian forces from Malaysia and Singapore—a decision that constitutes a neglected but defining episode in the evolution of Australian postwar diplomacy. An analysis of this decision reveals the limits of Whitlam'…
The Five Power Defence Arrangements and the reappraisal of the British and Australian policy interests in Southeast Asia, 1970–75
Working from recently declassified Australian and British government files, this paper examines the archival evidence on policy thinking in London and Canberra towards the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) during the period 1970–75. The article argues that one of the main reasons for the Heath government's decision to deploy a token military force in Southeast Asia as part of a multilateral defence arrangement with Australia, New Zealand, Ma…
Difficult Partners
This article aims to make a long overdue re‐examination of Indo‐Australian relations in the early Cold War years. By drawing on available secondary sources, it reassesses the existing literature on Australian engagement with Asia. In so doing, it seeks to understand the reasons why the Menzies government found it so difficult to forge a close partnership with India. Canberra's rather frosty relations with New Delhi during the Menzies‐Nehru years …
Opportunity or Challenge? Australia and European Integration, 1950-57
This paper examines Australia's approach to Western European integration in the 1950s. While superficially supportive of steps towards greater Western European cooperation, the Menzies government had an ambivalent attitude towards the integration process. Ministers and officials in Canberra recognised the importance of a strong and prosperous Western Europe, but the formation of a tightly knit Continental grouping also posed a number of major cha…
Myth and Misrepresentation in Australian Foreign Policy
The prevailing orthodoxy in the academic literature devoted to the history of Australia's post-1945 international relations posits that a mixture of suspicion and condescension permeated the attitude of the governments headed by Robert Menzies (1949–1966) toward the Asia-Pacific region. Menzies's regional policies, according to this view, not only prevented Australia from engaging meaningfully with its Asian neighbors but also ended up antagonizi…
Menzies' Asia policy and the anachronistic fallacy
A powerful orthodoxy exists in the academic literature devoted to the history of Australia's post-1945 international relations. It maintains that suspicion and condescension permeated the attitude of the Menzies government (1949–66) towards Asia. Accordingly, Menzies’ regional policies not only prevented Australia from engaging meaningfully with its Asian neighbours, but they also ended up antagonising them. This article critiques this view and i…
Australia, the ‘Marshall experiment’ and the decolonisation of Singapore, 1955–56
As decolonisation gathered pace in Southeast Asia, Singapore became a source of considerable concern to the Robert Menzies government. Britain's hold on its colony appeared increasingly precarious as political turbulence gripped the island. With a predominantly Chinese population, Singapore was considered susceptible to communist China's propaganda and subversion. By relying on previously classified Australian and British diplomatic documents, th…
The Eisenhower Administration and the Decolonization of Singapore
In the mid-1950s, as decolonization gathered pace across Asia, political turbulence and left-wing unrest gripped the tiny island of Singapore. Strategically located at the heart of Southeast Asia, Singapore was Britain’s largest military base east of Suez and the linchpin of its security system in the Far East. It played multiple functions, not only serving to underpin British colonial policy and regional influence, but also helping bolster Weste…
Anachronism refuted or irrefutable? A reply to James Cotton
Additional informationNotes on contributorsDavid JonesDavid Jones is an Associate Professor in the School of Political Science and Intenational Studies at University of QueenslandAndrea BenvenutiAndrea Benvenuti is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at University of New South Wales
EU‐Australia Relations at Fifty
This article critically examines the Australia‐EU relationship over the past five decades or so. A narrow formulation of Australia's national interests has become transformed into a broader engagement, with an increasingly regionalised and multilateralised common agenda. The article argues that the relationship changed because of a number of factors. The first is Australia's changing relationship with the UK as interlocutor and market. The second…
The External Relations of the European Union
Meanwhile, the reaction of the French press to the Polish strikes was mixed. Perhaps the most remarkable attitude was that of L'Humanit, the French Communist Party's (PCF Parti communiste franais) national newspaper. The French Communist Party's attitude to the Polish crisis was indeed perplexing. In the 1980s, the PCF was the most pro-Soviet Communist party in Europe. It is true that after the publication of The Gulag Archipelago (1974), the PCF…
A Matter of Preference
The Cold War in South Asia
The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States and the Indian subcontinent, 1945–1965." Asian Studies Review, 40(2), pp. 306–307
Between myth and reality
In mid-November 2011, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi tendered his formal resignation to President Giorgio Napolitano. It was a humiliating ‘political exit’ for the controversial Italian leader who had been the dominant figure in Italian politics since the mid-1990s. With Italy in the throes of an unprecedented financial crisis, Berlusconi’s squabbling centre-right coalition had appeared increasingly incapable of dealing with the economic emerge…
Political science (32 works) · Law (27 works) · Politics (23 works) · Sociology (22 works) · History (21 works) · Political economy (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Economics (16 works) · Australian History and Society (15 works) · Commonwealth, Australian Politics and Federalism (14 works)