Continuing from the account of Iran–South Africa relations in Chapter 3, this chapter looks in particular at the increasing importance of Iranian oil to South Africa in the wake of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, as a result of which, by 1978, Iran supplied over 90 per cent of South Africa’s crude oil imports. Because of its importance as a supplier of oil, not just to South Africa but also its neighbouring countries, Iran attained an influential position in Southern Africa during this period. Its influence was such that in 1977 and 1978, the United States and Britain asked the shah to help negotiate a settlement with the Ian Smith government to end the crisis in Rhodesia. The chapter explores Iran’s role in the crisis, not only its support of US-British initiatives, but also its outreach to Rhodesia’s revolutionary politicians, like Joshua Nkomo, who travelled to Iran and met with the shah several times during this period. As the chapter will show, Iran’s involvement was driven by concerns over the possibility of civil war spreading into neighbouring countries, and the implications of this for Iran’s Indian Ocean aspirations.

The period 2001–05 represents a landmark in Australia–China relations. During these years, the bilateral relationship deepened and broadened to an extent that few observers had foreseen. The foundation of the burgeoning relationship was undoubtedly the enormous expansion of trade. By 2005 China had emerged as Australia’s second-ranking trading partner and replaced the USA as Australia’s second largest merchandise export market. Bilateral trade continued to grow strongly, driven by China’s booming economy and its surging demand for Australia’s energy and mineral resources. In May 2005 the two countries began negotiations on a free trade agreement that, if concluded, would further bind the two economies. Underpinned by strong trade ties, bilateral political, security, and cultural relations also strengthened and broadened significantly. These were marked by increasingly frequent high-level visits in both directions, institutionalised dialogues on political, defence, and security issues, and greater people-to-people contacts. During the period under review both sides sought to elevate the relationship to a ‘strategic’ level.

This book studied under which conditions the EU and its Member States influence the accountability of transnational corporations that are based in developing and emerging states for their involvement in human rights violations. Five conclusions are drawn. First, there are identifiable corporate concerns about the competitive threat of such corporations. They form a barrier to strengthening the accountability of EU-based corporations. Second, regulation has been adopted only when the ‘perceived interests’ in the EU and its Member States outweigh these concerns. Such interests are vastly different at the EU level and Member State level. Third, regulators have tried to minimise the impact on the competitiveness of their corporations by ‘extending’ their human rights regulations internationally. Fourth, bilateral agreements contain obligations relating to human rights and can serve to contribute to the creation of a ‘thick’ transnational stakeholder consensus. Local litigation is an important element in this process. Finally, there are valuable options to bring cases against corporations from developing and emerging states in EU Member States courts.

Many interwar connections among German communities, as well as many that were much older, persisted into the postwar era as well.These continued to influence and inform people’s actions and fates. If Europe saw the greatest forced migration in human history, Germans’ migrations were not limited to Europe and many postwar migrations followed older patterns.Moreover, while a great many German communities were shattered by the war and the subsequent population transfers, in many cases older relationships were rehabilitated and older networks and connections persisted.Moreover, many people’s postwar actions mirrored prewar patterns.There was, for example, even more mobility, even more mixing in the postwar German nation-states, and a great many immigrants and refugees arriving in these states were German plus other things. Postwar and post-unification German history, like the periods before it, are aggregate histories made by Germans whose multiple subject positions have been defined outside as much as inside of the German nation-state.

Modern international relations theory purports to be universally applicable, but was inspired largely by the interstate politics of the West. From antiquity to the late nineteenth century, the international system of East Asia differed from those of the West on the four variables that international relations theory deems to be most important in shaping interstate politics: the balance of power, the regime types of most states, the role of trade, and the prevailing international norms. We therefore test international relations theory's claim to universality against the history of East Asia "before the West." We assess the extent to which the predictions of international relations theory fit the interstate politics of East Asia, focusing on cooperation under hegemony, the enforcement of order, international norms, trade relations, changes in the balance of power, changes in polarity, and state formation. We find several shortcomings that suggest profitable new avenues for improving international relations theory.