The tragic Andrée balloon expedition of 1897 serves as a haunting reminder of the dangers posed by ice drift during polar exploration. This paper examines Andrée’s initial decision after his balloon flight to march towards Cape Flora in Franz Josef Land, despite its much greater distance compared to the Sjuøyane archipelago. The rationale behind this choice remains unclear, but potential factors include stored supplies, the demonstrated winter survival in Franz Josef Land and the scientific interest in unexplored regions. By analysing historical accounts and employing scenario analyses, this study contributes to a better understanding of Andrée’s perception of ice drift and its impact on their ill-fated journey. The paper explores major forces affecting ice drift, reviews the historical development of understanding ice drift in the area, and presents an analysis of Andrée’s understanding and decision-making. The overall conclusion is that Andrée probably was unaware of the substantial deflection to the right of the direction of the wind that ice drift in the Arctic on average is characterised of due to the Earth’s rotation (the Coriolis effect). Without this deflection, the decision to march towards Cape Flora would have made sense under the assumption of continued northerly winds.

After the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, the Turkish state started to produce a new official history of the event as a narrative of popular resistance against a military coup for the sake of democracy. This narrative with a religious aura was supported by “democracy watch” meetings and new commemoration days, museums, and monuments across Turkey. It was based on four concepts, symbolized by the Rabia sign: one nation, one homeland, one flag, and one state. However, the use of the Rabia sign has fallen from grace recently, creating a critical gap or “glitch” in the mnemonic infrastructure. This paper offers a visual categorization of July 15 monuments across Turkey and positions them in the historiography of Turkish national monuments. Finally, Rabia monuments are analyzed as a case study to show part of the complex (trans)national narratives of the “New Turkey.”

The frigid geographical environment in the Arctic has shaped the exploration attribute of the polar cruise shipping network. In this study, the typical characteristics and special structure of the Arctic adventure cruise shipping network are investigated by using the network analysis method based on the data of 172 adventure cruise itineraries in the Arctic. It is found that the Arctic adventure cruise itineraries are dominated by 8–17 days of medium itineraries, and the ratio of one-way itineraries to round-trip itineraries is about 1:1. There are differences in the centrality of different ports, forming two core ports Reykjavík and Longyearbyen and a sub-core port Kangerlussuaq. The overall contact strength of the Arctic adventure cruise shipping network is low. Under the joint influence of such factors as centrality and contact strength, the Arctic constitutes the dual-core clusters of Iceland and Svalbard Islands and a sub-core cluster of Greenland.

Haddis Alemayehu’s classic novel ፍቅር እስከ መቃብር (Fikir iske Mekabir, Love until Death, 1958 Ethiopian Calendar, 1965/6 Gregorian Calendar), is lauded by critics as a pioneering realist and modern novel in the Amharic literary tradition. My aim in this article is to scrutinize this take by examining the novel’s narrative temporalities and modes through a dialectical lens. This leads me to argue that the novel’s realism is marked by contradiction and fluidity. Specifically, the emergence of realism in Fikir iske Mekabir is accompanied by its breakdown while the realist narrative mode is accompanied by the traditional narrative modes of epic and hagiography (or, gedl). This hitherto unexamined textual and intertextual quality of Haddis’s novel reveals new insights into its thematic content regarding modernity, tradition, and social reproduction under the old Ethiopian order.

This paper is a study of the intersection between aviation and diplomacy in the semi-autonomous Indian state of Jodhpur in the final decades of British colonial rule in India. Jodhpur's Maharaja Umaid Singh established a major international aerodrome, patronized one of India's first flying clubs and collaborated with British authorities to make aviation laws for the Indian states. He would also serve in the Royal Air Force during the war and placed Jodhpur state's aviation resources at the disposal of the king-emperor. This paper argues that Jodhpur was able to leverage its aviation resources to wield substantial influence both within and beyond the British Empire through both war and peace. An analysis of Jodhpur's engagement with aviation diplomacy is also revealing of some of the limitations as well as possibilities for the deployment of science diplomacy frameworks, especially in non-Western contexts.

This article traces histories of the Kru in West Africa from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, arguing that divergent identities of fifteenth- to eighteenth-century Kru canoers became unified when that unified identity was necessary for maintaining political, economic, and cultural autonomy during and after the slave trade. In conjunction with earlier multilingual work on the Kru mariners of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this article seeks to place the narrative of Kru identity and labor in a larger context of maritime history across the region at large. This article argues that the Kru relied on longstanding maritime traditions from localized groups to capitalize on the need for work and cash in a capitalist economy driven by growing European imperialism. The historical narrative of Kru maritime power shows how local and global identities in Atlantic Africa shifted in response to exploitation, blurring the lines between response and resistance.

When is state coercion for the provision of public goods justified? And how should the social surplus of public goods be distributed? Philosophers approach these questions by distinguishing between essential and discretionary public goods. This article explains the intractability of this distinction, and presents two upshots. First, if governments provide configurations of public goods that simultaneously serve essential and discretionary purposes, the scope for justifiable complaints by honest holdouts is narrower than commonly assumed. Second, however, claims to distributive fairness in the provision of public goods also turn out to be more complex to assess.

The Arctic region is commonly seen as a territory of international dialogue and cooperation. This perception is largely due to the science diplomacy efforts that are largely being contributed by universities, scientific centres, research teams and individual scholars. This paper discusses the Arctic science diplomacy initiatives proposed by Russia’s northernmost federal university. Of particular interest is the case of establishing in the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation of national biological monitoring network – the initiative supported by the government-funded mega-grant programme. Our analysis suggests that two pillars of science diplomacy – “science for diplomacy” and “diplomacy for science” – can be successfully combined within the framework of one project. Evidence is provided of the pursuit of national interests being not a limiting factor but rather a driver in the process of promoting diplomatic collaborations in science, serving as a third science diplomacy pillar. Significant progress towards ensuring peace and harmony in the Arctic and sustaining international dialogue on science-based responses to global challenges has been achieved through science diplomacy initiatives proposed by Northern (Arctic) Federal University (NArFU). The authors confirm that most effective tools for establishing good neighbourly relations in the Arctic and promoting international cooperation are offered by scientific discussion.