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The present work utilizes both quantitative and qualitative techniques to extract the cognitive and affective elements of national identity from political discourse. However, a focus on national identity tends to depict the group as undifferentiated, obscuring the significant diversity which exists within the political community, at least in terms of how political objects are interpreted. Accordingly, another objective of this work is to investigate the diversity of interpretative schemes among different classes of individuals in the same political community. Another key argument is that discourses obscure undesirable political realities, domestic and international, at least temporarily. Apropos this thesis, the euro was sold by some elements of the ruling class in miraculous terms, as some sort of ‘savior’ that would solve all of Italy’s problems. This obscured the fact that only Italians, and not the euro, could lead to the real and sustained political and economic modernization that Italians desire. In the international sphere, the euro was sold as a policy that would help end Italy’s marginalization in Europe of second-class status (compared to the first-class status enjoyed by Germany, France, and the UK). This obscured the fact that the determinants of status in the international system are rooted in other variables, most of which have little to do with whether a country adopts a common currency like the euro. The case study to explore the validity of these arguments is the European Monetary Union (EMU), specifically, the links between national politics and EMU. Two countries were selected: Italy, which initially wholeheartedly supported EMU, and the UK, which overwhelmingly rejected the common currency from its inception in 1999. / Thesis (Ph.D, Political Studies) -- Queen's University, 2013-07-08 17:05:52.57

This is a study of the Italian Black Bands, one of the most famous units of mercenary infantry of the sixteenth century, and of their relationships with their employer, the Florentine republic, from the death of their founder and first commander Giovanni de'Medici (1498-1526) to their disbandment after the surrender of the army of the League of Cognac, of which they were part, at Aversa, near Naples, on 30 August 1528. In order to establish an adequate framework, the figure and the myth of Giovanni de'Medici - in memory of whom his men wore permanently the black bands of mourning - are examined at the beginning of the dissertation, and his role and place in the tactical and administrative developments that characterised the end of the Italian Wars reassessed. Particular attention has been paid to the analysis of the peculiarities of the Italian infantry at the end of the Italian Wars, such as its reliance on arquebuses rather than pikes and its specialization in assault and skirmish instead of shock tactics, and to the problems that these peculiarities created for states like Florence, which sought, unsuccessfully, to invert the pike-to-shot ratio and to transform the Black Bands from an expeditionary force into a defensive militia. Eventually, the last part of this thesis has been dedicated to the siege laid by the army of the League to Naples in 1528, one of the most important and less studied sieges of the sixteenth century, whose dramatic outcome shattered the residual hopes of the pro-French party after the battle of Pavia (1525) and made possible the establishment of Imperial hegemony in the greater part of the Italian peninsula. With this dissertation I have tried to outline the changes that the organization and command of large bodies of mercenary infantry brought about not only in Florentine military and foreign policy, but, more generally, in Italian military entrepreneurship, and to explain how these latter changes contributed to the general European trend that brought about the birth of the Tercios and other regimental structures.