The idea of a return to Asia reflected the growing economic and strategic influence of the Asia Pacific region, particularly in the light of the failure of Western markets and the continuing rise of Chinese economic power. Europe too has begun to reconsider the state of its relations with East Asia. This view has gained a high level of support from European Asia-watchers and politicians, not least the EU High Representative herself. In the 1990s, the EU launched a ‘new strategy’ towards the East Asian region, and participated in the establishment of the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM) in 1996. This chapter examines this apparently renewed European approach to Asia, within the context of inter-regional relations through the ASEM framework, and as a European tool for the collective management of external relations with Asia. It is argued that weak institutional structures combine with a rise in the number of bilateral agreements and contentious intra-regional dynamics within Asia and Europe, thereby diluting the effect of any EU pivot. Inter-regionalism should thus be regarded as an issue and process-led form of managing foreign policy, rather than a general narrative for understanding relations among regions today.

This chapter discusses avant-garde Japanese fashion and the countercultural use of the body as a critical site of resistance in Japan. Focusing on the young Japanese designers who turned against a homogeneous, collectivist culture to create various subcultures by using style as a social statement in the 1970s, this chapter presents the popular kawaii culture as a colourful and fluffy protest against the humdrum, everyday life of the corporate employees (sarar?man) working for Japanese conglomerates, who represented the values and norms of Japanese society in the 1970s. Alongside this protest, this chapter also presents the deconstructive fashion of the Comme des Garçons company and its designer, Rei Kawakubo. As of the 1970s, Kawakubo engaged with the politics of the body and identity and countered the aesthetic discourse and repressive values imposed by the fashion world through dress patterns and fashion photographs that presented women with an imaginary ‘ideal’ body. These two oppositional fashion statements challenged different power hierarchies (in Japanese society and in the fashion world), while addressing issues of class and gender.

Over the past 15 years, Brussels’s partnership with Tokyo has become more goal-oriented and has acquired a certain strategic dimension. EU and Japanese leaders, along with many observers, admit that so far the potential for bilateral co-operation continues to exceed the achievements. This chapter examines the evolving EU–Japan strategic partnership, focusing on the relationship’s politico-security dimension. The discussion explores the motivations of both sides to strengthen ties, the factors that improve and inhibit co-operation and the main joint initiatives and policies. ‘New’ opportunities for co-operation are found to have emerged, in particular in the maritime security domain, while some of the ‘old’ constraints have receded, such as those associated with Japan’s international security role, and the EU’s approach to Asia beyond the ‘China only’ dimension. The geopolitical environment of both Europe and the Asia-Pacific is also undergoing major shifts, and longstanding structural limitations affecting the roles of the EU and Japan in each other’s neighbourhoods persist. All this suggests that the search for a more effective and genuinely strategic partnership is positioned to continue, while the outcome remains more, rather than less, uncertain.

This chapter presents the avant-garde and subversive advertising design that operated on the margins of the newly emerged advertising industry. This was created for the new consumer culture of the 1960s alongside the new national style that was created for the 1964 Olympic Games and the 1970 Expo. This era, following the economic miracle, was known as the first golden age of graphic design and advertising in postwar Japan. The subversive graphic design is presented by means of two innovative advertising campaigns: the Fuji-Xerox campaign and the Parco campaign. These campaigns were created during the 1970s by two major art directors, Suzuki Hachir? and Ishioka Eiko, who transformed advertising design by blurring the boundaries between commercial and subversive styles. Their campaigns encapsulated the new critical spirit (including ecological, feminist, and anti-institutional concerns) at the heart of the period's mainstream consumer culture. These campaigns are presented in the context of subversive, countercultural Japanese graphic design as well as of the mainstream commercial and national advertising posters of the same era.

The Sea Adventure formed part of the English Parliament’s response to the Irish rebellion, and involved raising an amphibious force to challenge the Catholic rebels in areas far from the reach of the Dublin government. David Brown’s chapter reconstructs the events of the summer of 1642 as the Sea Adventurers’ fleet pillaged the south and west coasts. He reveals the importance of existing mercantile networks, especially in Munster, and the way in which ‘piratical’ colonial practices could easily be transferred to the Irish coast, with destabilising consequences, not least for loyal Catholics such as the earl of Clanricarde.

The sources selected for this section illustrate various aspects of the material life of anchorites in their cells. They include evidence for the size, design and furnishing of the reclusory; the provision of food and other necessities, including the role of servants; and patronage in a range of forms, from occasional and customary gifts to bequests in wills, and from a variety of patrons, ranging from ordinary local people to nobles such as Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII.

Since 2003 the EU and China have acknowledged their strategic partnership, and have slowly but steadily built on it to develop one of the most structured relationships between two global powers in the world today. The re-emergence of China is a major driver of change in the ongoing transformation of the international system, and the EU–China strategic partnership is an important dimension in both Chinese and European foreign policies. As major trading entities, China and Europe have a significant effect on each other. China’s re-emergence and growing influence are, however, affecting Europe’s relative position in the global distribution of capabilities, and also pose a challenge to Europe’s governance outlook and to its very identity. In the wake of the great recession, friction has increased in the economic and trade relationship of China and the EU, which is the fundamental link between them. While they have many common interests, they are also competitors – and increasingly so. The future relationship between the EU and China is bound to be a difficult balancing act between competition and co-operation – at best an enlightened calibrating of national interests and global governance ambitions within a complex and transforming international environment.

The ties that bind Australia and New Zealand to the nations of Europe are many and varied, but what does the European Union mean to Australia and New Zealand? More importantly for the purposes of this volume: what do Australia and New Zealand mean to the EU? These questions are difficult to answer. Relations between the EU and Australia and New Zealand have been marked not only by deep cultural commonalities and shared policy concerns but also by policy differences, asymmetry (given the huge discrepancies in market size) and even, at times, indifference. The rapid development of the Asia-Pacific, particularly China, adds another dimension to the EU’s economic and strategic engagement with these outposts of ‘the West’.This chapter thus aims to clarify the EU’s relations with Australia and New Zealand, highlighting the main points of both commonality and contention. The focus is on specific key policy areas, including agricultural subsidies, climate change, regional security and human rights. The picture that will emerge is of a relationship that is strong but not unproblematic; historically rooted and of great contemporary resonance.

Military officers were an integral part of Britain’s imperial expansion in the eighteenth century. Colonial knowledge was one aspect of a knowledge network that helped drive military innovation and adaptation. In the place of formal education, British military personnel read books broadly related to their profession. Military history was popular in the first half of the century, as officers basked in the reflected glory of Marlborough. Mid-century military defeat, however, brought a new focus on continental military theories and treatises. At the same time, military personnel frequently visited the sites of past military campaigns. In this sense, officers learnt quite literally from the terrain on which battles, campaigns and wars had been fought. In combination, military print culture, colonial knowledge and terrain were the components of a military web, a collection of knowledge networks which catalysed the transmission and exchange of military knowledge throughout the empire. These were the means by which knowledge about war was generated and transmitted, and it is to these that we must look in order to understand British military success and failure in the eighteenth-century empire.

A selection of sources that traces the progress of an anchoritic vocation from its first stirrings up to formal profession and enclosure. The sources span the full chronological range of the volume, from twelfth to sixteenth century, and include legal and administrative documents, liturgy and less formal works of guidance.