Thesis (M.A. in National Security Affairs)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Donald Abenheim, Daniel J. Moran. Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-76). Also available online.

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This thesis addresses the affinities between rhetoric and architecture. It is an essay in cultural history prompted by the reading of a text: Leon Battista Alberti's famous, mid-Quattrocento treatise on architecture, De re aedificatoria. It is about the interrelation of rhetoric and architecture in the city in Italy between the Trecento and the Cinquecento. The argument is framed by the notion that the city is a duality involving material and discursive cultures. The built and the written city unites architecture and rhetoric as cognate cultural practices, a kinship which suggests that one can be read in terms of the other. Accordingly, this thesis proposes rhetoric as a tool for reading actual cities, and develops a model of rhetoric to apply to Italian medieval/Renaissancec ities basedo n a precedent found in De re aedificatoria. The thesis is arranged into two parts. The first involves a thorough reading of Alberti's treatise. Chapter One focuses on the analogy between rhetoric and architecture in his theory, arguing that De re aedificatoria demonstrates a comprehensive grafting of rhetoric onto architecture that goes beyond analogy. It further suggests that this interdisciplinary approach is a product of the humanist culture of which Alberti was a part. Chapter Two expands this reading by recognizing the long-standing history of association between rhetoric and architecture in literature, a history that has continued into modem discourse. That association is then discussed in general historical and cultural terms extrapolated from Alberti's text. These terms form the basis of case studies presented in the second part of the thesis. Given that rhetoric is integral to the design of the city, the second part of the thesis is a demonstration of two propositions: the first, that rhetoric is a useful way of reading actual cities; and the second, that rhetoric is a useful way of reading the history of actual cities. These propositions are explored in two thematically defined case studies. Chapter Three looks at the relationship between art and power in the urbanism of Florence from 1280 to 1560, with a brief comparative discussion of Herculean Ferrara (1471-1505). Chapter Four examines a rhetorical practice of intertextuality and textualauthority in the late-Quattrocento building projects of Pope Pius II at Pienza and Federico da Montefeltro at Urbino. Both Part One and Part Two are prefaced by introductions that establish the terms of the rhetoric used in this thesis. The Introduction to Part One offers an explanation in general theoretical terms of rhetoric's capacity to be an integrative public discourse. The Introduction to Part Two sketches a proposed rhetoric of the city which is applied comparatively in the case studies that follow. The thesis as a whole works to establish the coexistence of the built and written cities in history and to show how rhetoric is able to integrate them. It argues that rhetoric is an appropriate and flexible means of reading the complex interweaving of aesthetics and politics, memory, text, discourse and material culture, the real and the unreal, in the construction and articulation of the city

This thesis is divided into four chapters which examine the principal areas of British and Italian economic and diplomatic relations in the 1 930s. Chapter One provides an outline history of Britain's financial dealings with Italy from the mid 1920s until 1939, in particular the role of the Bank of England in helping to reform Italy's financial system through, for example, the encouragement of a stable, gold-based Italian currency and the establishment of a respected and independent central bank, the Banca d'Italia. It examines the attitude of British clearing and merchant banks to the financial crisis in Italy immediately prior to the Italian attack on Abyssinia/Ethiopia in 1935, and explains their opposition to the granting of any sizeable loan to Italy. Finally, it details the policies of successive British governments to Italy's financial position, especially prior to, during and after the Italo-Abyssinian war, 193 5-1936. Chapter Two provides an outline history of Italy's important coal trade with Britain up to the early 1930s and charts and explains the loss of Britain's Italian market to Germany and other competitors. It examines the impact of League of Nations sanctions on the coal trade and reveals that this impact has been exaggerated since colliery owners were faced with large Italian debts and long delays in payment and had already begun to lose faith in Italian buyers. Additionally, it demonstrates that the colliery owners' efforts to lift sanctions and recapture the Italian market were weak and ineffectual. Chapter Three confirms that the major oil companies, including the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum) and Royal Dutch Shell, were operating a global pricefixing and shipping cartel throughout the 1930s. It describes and analyses these companies' commercial activities in Fascist Italy, especially during the period of League sanctions against Italy. It confirms the vital significance of petrol and oil to the Italian economy and war effort and analyses some of the British government's motives in not introducing petrol sanctions. Chapter Four is concerned with British-Italian diplomatic relations mainly during the Abyssinian crisis. It examines the political divisions in the British and Italian governments over how to respond to the international crisis generated by the Italo-Abyssinian war. It demonstrates that the British government helped produce a sanctions policy which gave the appearance of severity when it was, in truth, only a legitimation of an effective commercial and financial embargo which British banks and companies had already imposed. The analysis of British-Italian diplomacy concludes that the Abyssinian crisis could have been handled very differently by Britain and contained both Italian and German aggression

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Although the donor portrait was extremely popular throughout Europe and mainland Italy during the late Middle Ages, the few art historians who have addressed the subject have concluded that the motif was not popular in fourteenth-century Venice. The political structures of Venice and its citizens’ supposedly innate abhorrence of public expressions of individuality in the Republic are often cited as reasons for the absence of individual donor portraits; the examples that have survived are commonly interpreted as direct reflections of state or communal values. This dissertation challenges these previous conclusions and poses the following questions: Was donor portraiture popular in Venice, and in what forms? And how did the appearance and function of donor portraits in Venice compare with those from Europe and Byzantium? The evidence examined here includes a catalogue of 83 examples dated approximately between 1280 and 1413. I have attempted to reconstruct the social, political, and physical environments for these examples, and for those images that have been lost through centuries of changing trends and political upheaval. Through case studies of donor portrait subjects from a cross-section of Venetian society, including doges, nobles, cittadini, confraternity groups, and patrician women, it becomes clear that such images were, in fact, popular in late medieval Venice and that they were mostly intended for public viewing. Furthermore, the fact that donor portraits are rarely mentioned in the extant documents suggests that such imagery was considered conventional and that it posed no significant threat to the ideology of the Venetian state. Further examination of these visual documents, and analyses of socio-historical developments in the period indicate that donor portraits in Venice, like similar portraits in Byzantium and mainland Italy, mainly reflect personal concerns about family, status, wealth, and salvation. Their physical appearance likewise suggests that these images were intended for display within the confines of city parishes and that ultimately, in this context, donor portraiture in late medieval Venice was no more likely to reflect state ideologies than donor portraiture in other parts of Europe. / Thesis (Ph.D, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2007-08-28 08:55:06.214

The village of Villagrande Strisaili, situated in central highlands of the island of Sardinia, Italy, is the subject of this ethnographic study of economic and cultural change. In Part I, a brief historical overview reveals that the pre-war society was largely subsistence based, with shepherding providing milk and cheese to sell on the market for cash. A strict division of labour and responsibilities by sex required mutual dependency of the male and female heads of a household, and supported local notions of gender equality. Part II examines the economic basis of and the restructuring of occupational opportunities in Villagrande today. Although shepherding and subsistence production continue to be important local activities, they are no longer the dominant forms of economic production and secure positions in government offices and institutions are now the preferred occupations. The profound cultural changes of recent decades is the focus of Part III. The notion of local culture, and of a distinctive local identity, is disappearing as cosmopolitan culture becomes localized through local acceptance. Contemporary villagers now create their sense of identity in terms of a wider reality, as defined by the powerful messages of the cosmopolitan system which are efficiently disseminated to villagers through the state educational system and the ubiquitous mass media. These cultural changes have unexpected consequences on the local culture and its reproduction to future generations.

Tourism is being promoted as an economic development strategy world-wide. It is seen as particularly suitable for creating employment in areas which lack alternative development options. This study examines the economic and socio-cultural impacts of tourism on Baunei, a community located on the eastern coast of Sardinia. The research shows that the type of tourism found in Baunei (i.e. locally controlled and small-scale) is providing benefits to local people without causing significant economic disruption or social conflict. The fact that residents are actively seeking to develop tourism in their area is perhaps the best indication that tourism is not acting as a disruptive force in Baunei.

By the beginning of the sixteenth Venice was an established maritime empire having achieved, not only the methodical restraint of the Ottomans' expansive aspirations towards European lands, but also solid control over the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas and the trade routes to the Levant. Internally Venice was a metropolis bustling with merchants, craftsmen, travellers and visitors, amongst whom a great number uf established foreigners. Nearly eighty per cent of the city's population was made up of these labouring poor, who contributed significantly to the economic stability and prosperity ofthe Republic, as they provided the workforce for many of its industries. Venice was home to the world renowned Arsena/e, the biggest 'factory' in medieval and early modern period. It was there where the great Venetian galleys were built, armed, and launched into water, contributing to the Republic's economic prosperity, commercial and territorial expansion, as well as its defensive purposes. This thesis focuses on two of the most distinct working class communities in the city, the shipbuilding craftsmen, commonly known as Arsena/atti, and the seafaring Greek community. Both these groups, the former in charge of building these vessels, and the latter serving in them as sailors and captains, or similarly employed in the . shipbuilding industry, were two of the most prominent working class clusters in late Renaissance Venice. This study will attempt to look into the way of life of the maritime folk outside their workplace, in order to assess their financial and social standing - taking into consideration the places in which they lived, their households, their [mances, the social networks which they formed, and their religious and charitable activities - at a time of considerable demographic, economic, and social adjustments for the city. The examination of the two groups, established in the same neighbourhoods and united under the same occupational activities, will show that despite any linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity, their situation in life was very similar, and demonstrative of the circumstances of the Venetian working classes as a whole. Keeping in mind that early modern Venice's papa/ani have been considerably neglected by contemporary scholarship, the ultimate objective of this thesis is to initiate a basic study on the socio-economic life of the lower classes in one of the most populous and celebrated cities in medieval and early modern Europe.

The Apostolic Order, a late medieval Italian mendicant order remains fundamentally little understood despite several centuries of research and writing devoted to their history. Much of the work done on the Apostolic Order (or Followers of Dolcino) has been focused on their leaders, taken as given the order’s heretical status, or presumed the marginalized status of those who supported the order. This thesis attempts to reconsider the order and its supporters by placing them as another mendicant order prior to the papal condemnation, and put forth the new perspective that the supporters were much like other medieval persons and became socially marginalized by the inquisitorial focus on the Apostolic Order. To support this theory, this thesis will compare the inquisitorial records of the Apostolic supporters found in Historia Fratris Dulcini Heresiarche and the Acta S. Officii Bononie—ab anon 1291 usque ad annum 1310 to those of another group of mendicants and supporters, the Beguins of Provence, which are found in Spirituali e Beghini in Provenza, Bernard Gui’s Le Livre des Sentences de L’inquisiteur Bernard Gui 1308-1323, and the martyrology in Louisa Burnham’s So Great a Light, So Great a Smoke: The Beguin Heretics of Languedoc. These two groups of data were compared using statistical analysis and network and game theory, and the results were that 1) the groups were similar; 2) most differences could be reasonably explained by the objectives of respective inquisitions or length of persecution prior to the inquisition. That these two groups are comparable suggests that there are patterns in mendicant supporter membership exemplified by Franciscan tertiaries and that the supporters of the Apostolic Order fit this pattern.