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This thesis reads Mark's story of Jesus from a postcolonial perspective. It proposes that Mark need not necessarily be treated in an oversimplified polarity as an anti- or pro-colonial discourse. Instead it may probably be treated as a postcolonial discourse, i. e., as a strategic essentialist and transcultural hybrid discourse that accommodates and disrupts both the native Jewish (nationalistic and collaborative) and the Roman colonial discourses of power. This thesis shows that Mark accommodates itself into a strategic third space in between the variegated native Jewish and the Roman colonial discourses in order to enunciate its own voice. As a mimetic, ambivalent and hybrid discourse it mimics and mocks, accommodates and disrupts both the native essentialist and collaborative as well as the Roman colonial voices. The portrait of Jesus in Mark, which I presume to be encoding also the portrait of a community, exhibits a colonial/ postcolonial conundrum which can neither be damned as pro- nor be praised as anti-colonial in nature. Instead the portrait of Jesus in Mark may be appreciated as a strategic essentialist and transcultural hybrid, in which the claims of difference and the desire for transculturality are both contradictorily present and visible. In showing such a comindrumic portrait and invoking a complex discursive strategy Mark as the discourse of a subject community is not alone or unique in the Greco-Roman world. A number of discourses-historical, creative novelistic and apocalyptic-of the subject Greek and Jewish communities in the eastern Mediterranean under the iniperizini of Rome from the second century BCE to the end of the first century CE exhibit very similar postcolonial traits which one may add to be not far from the postcolonial traits of a number of postcolonial creative writings and cultural discourses of the colonial subject and the dominated post-colonial communities of our time.

This thesis examines the role played by America and its native inhabitants in John Locke's Two Treatises of Government. It begins by examining the large collection of travel books written by explorers to the new world in Locke's library. Locke uses the information from these sources selectively, employing those facts which support his view of natural man and ignoring those which do not. His reasons for using the Indians in his Two Treatises goes beyond simply providing empirical evidence. Locke, steeped in the colonial zeal of his patron, the Earl of Shaftesbury, is, particularly in the chapters on property and conquest, arguing in favour of the rights of English colonists. While it has been recognized that Locke's political philosophy reflects the domestic political needs of Shaftesbury, very little has been written in previous scholarship about the Earl's colonial aims. Locke, as secretary to both the Lords Proprietors of Carolina and the Council of Trade and Plantations, was immersed in the colonial questions of his day. Following in the steps of Hugo Grotius, whose notions of property and war were shaped by his employment In the East Indies Company, Locke uses natural law to defend England's colonization of America. His chapters on property and conquest delineate a very English form of settlement. By beginning property In a very specific form of labour, namely agrarian settlement, and denying the right to take over land by virtue of conquest, Locke creates the means by which England can defend its claims in America with regard to both other European powers and the native Indians. The strength of this argument Is demonstrated by the extent to which it was used by ministers, politicians and judges in the early years of the American republic. In particular, Thomas Jefferson's powerful attempts to transform large groups of nomadic Indians into settled farmers can be traced back to Locke's ideas of the natural state and civil society.

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This dissertation engages with processes of social and spatial organisation of the Brao, a Mon-Khmer language-speaking ethnic group whose approximately 60,000 members reside mainly in the provinces of Attapeu and Champasak, in the southern-most part of Laos; and Ratanakiri and Stung Treng, in the northeastern-most part of Cambodia. Divided broadly into eight different sub-groups—the Jree, Kavet, Hamong, Ka-nying, Lun, Umba, Kreung and Brao Tanap—the Brao are, historically, swidden cultivators whose livelihoods were, and often remain, heavily dependent on fishing, hunting and the collection of various forest products, and who have particular ways of organising spatially, with concomitant rules and norms, including spatial taboos. Over the last number of centuries, various powers have tried to dominate the Brao and Brao spaces, including the Khmer, Lao and Siamese, followed by the French, Japanese, Vietnamese, Americans, Lao (royalist and communist), Khmer (royalist and communist), and the present-day Lao and Cambodian governments working together with international development agencies. These various groups, including those typically considered to be precolonial and postcolonial, are theorised in this thesis as representing different forms of colonialism, each with particular objectives and implications for the Brao. This dissertation examines these various forms of colonialism and their effects on the Brao over history. The role of the international border between Lao and Cambodia in constituting Brao 'places of resistance' is also examined. I demonstrate how differing forms of colonial domination have had varying impacts on the Brao; through effecting social and spatial change that in turn impact—amongst other things—Brao places. These places are constituted with meaning by the Brao, and are closely linked to their identities. All forms of colonialism have spatial repercussions, and frequently include processes of (re)territorialisation and attempts to rescale the spatial systems of dominated groups like the Brao. However, colonial powers are never omnipotent or fully successful. Their efforts are frequently resisted, even if negotiation, compliance and other nuanced responses are important. Overall, human agency is crucial for determining the outcomes of attempts to dominate.

Federal Indian Superintendent Arthur W. Vowell was a long serving administrator, who managed the Canadian government’s relationship with Aboriginal people in British Columbia between 1889 and 1910. This research challenges the thesis that policy and practice were necessarily symmetrical by arguing bureaucracy operated as a distinct form of power in British Columbia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I argue that the power exercised by department bureaucrats was not manifested in centralized top-down organization and micro-management by Ottawa, but instead evolved through the subjective, dispersed activities and daily decision making of individual bureaucrats. Drawing on department correspondence, and other evidence derived from a study of the life of Indian superintendent Arthur Vowell, this study seeks to understand how Indian affairs bureaucracy functioned. This understanding is developed through the particular lens of Arthur Vowell’s administrative activities and their role in the larger context of the colonial project in British Columbia. / Graduate / 2016-12-23