In this thesis, I plan to investigate the role of the landscape in Thomas Southerne's play Oroonoko. Most scholarship on Oroonoko focuses on the relationship between Southerthne's play and Aphra Behn's novella of the same name. In particular, the scholarly conversation has focused on the way that Southerne white-washed Aphra Behn's character Imoininda. While this distinction is notable, my research, instead, will focus on the way these bodies—both white and black, colonizer and colonized—are framed by 18th century gardening rhetoric. This rhetoric provided naturally conceived tools for nurturing these bodies. I plan to argue that the language of the natural world used in the play demonstrates the role of landscape in the formation of British national identity. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / English / MA; / Thesis;

No description available.

Today, Belgium is an oft-cited example of a “fabricated state” with no real binding national identity. The events of 1787-1790 illustrate a surprisingly strong rebuttal to this belief. Between 1787 and 1790, the inhabitants of the Southern Netherlands protested the majority of reforms implemented by their sovereign Joseph II of Austria. In ten independent provinces each with their own administration and assembly of Estates, a resistance movement grew and its leaders eventually raised a patriot army over the summer of 1789. This force chased the imperial troops and administration from all the provinces except Luxembourg, allowing the conservative Estates and their supporters to convene a Congress at Brussels, which hosted a central government to the new United States of Belgium. By November 1790, however, infighting between democrats and conservatives and international pressures allowed Leopold II, crowned Emperor after his brother’s death in February, to easily reconquer the provinces. This thesis investigates the moment in which “Belgianness,” rather than provincial distinctions, became a prevailing identification for the Southern Netherlands. It tracks the transition of this national consciousness from a useful collaboration of the provinces for mutual legal support to a stronger, more emotional appeal to a Belgian identity that deserved a voice of its own. It adds a Belgian voice to the dialogue about nations before the nineteenth century, while equally complicating the entire notion of a nation. Overall, the thesis questions accepted paradigms of the nation and the state and casts Belgium and the Belgians as a strong example that defies the normal categories of nationhood. It examines how the revolutionaries—the Estates, guilds, their lawyers, the Congress, and bourgeois democratic revolutionaries—demonstrated a growing sense of “Belgianness,” in some ways overriding their traditional provincial attachments. I rely on pamphlet literature and private correspondence for the majority of my evidence, focusing on the elite’s cultivation and use of national sentiment throughout the revolution.

When William Carew (1689–1744) and Reginald Pole-Carew (1753–1835) unexpectedly inherited the Antony estates in the southwest of England, each invested in material culture to create, maintain and justify his distinction as a landowning member of élite society. Discourses around the uses of visual and material culture throughout the eighteenth century are usually framed in contrast: either the ostentatious collections of the hereditary nobility which denoted rank, wealth and power, or the status-seeking “middling sorts” who used luxury goods to paper over social and cultural gaps. In the space between these two social groups were the Carews (and a great number of landed gentry like them) who built relatively unpretentious country houses and who commissioned, collected and displayed luxury goods as statements of an identity not based on declarations of affluence, prestige, or social mobility. Using original, unpublished, archival research and testing the findings against historical and contemporary studies, the interdisciplinary approaches in this thesis will analyse the Carews’ uses of luxury goods – in country-house building, landscaping and portraiture– to cultivate an identity commensurate with their aims. Unpacking a strategy of distinction for each of William Carew and Reginald Pole-Carew offers a new perspective on eighteenth-century conspicuous consumption. The findings assert that what the Carews commissioned, collected and displayed fills a gap in current scholarship and must be integrated into any comprehensive understanding of the uses of luxury goods throughout the century.

No description available.

This thesis presents an interpretation of David Williams' (1738-1816) Lessons to a young prince (1790) ostensibly from a publisher-centric viewpoint. Through close analysis of its English-language editions it argues that Lessons has been consistently misattributed, misread, and otherwise taken out of context. The agglomeration of both contextual and particular factors contributed to this general negligence, but the most important factors were anonymity and the transformation of the text by the addition of a tenth lesson on Edmund Burke's Reflections, which altered the way Lessons was read by contemporaries in light of the revolution controversy. The thesis suggests that the explicit ad-hominen attack on Burke in the tenth lesson overshadowed what amounted to an implicit attack on Burke-in-transition towards Reflections contained in the original nine lessons. Using a significant body of previously unknown material to identify Williams' intended audience and the effects of anonymity, genre, and advertising on reader-response to Lessons, the thesis adds to existing knowledge about Williams' intentions and to the way his texts were read and understood by contemporaries. More particularly it underscores the importance of his publishers and charts their impact upon his text. The influence that Lessons' publishers had on the impact of the text, both intentional and unintentional had received no scholarly attention, and they are themselves, as publishers, understudied. However, as this thesis shows, their direct textual interpolations increased the satirical vigour of Lessons, whilst a sophisticated marketing campaign attempted to influence reader reception as well as sales. Indirectly, anonymity caused readers to superimpose the political sympathies of the publishers onto Lessons, which further pre-ordained the terms on which they were read.

This doctoral thesis presents a historical study of the diplomatic exchanges between the Japanese and the Korean embassy in the eighteenth century. Neighbourly relationships (J: kōrin, K: kyorin) were maintained between Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868) and Chosŏn Korea (1392-1910) for more than 250 years. The visitations of the Korean embassy, dispatched to congratulate a new Tokugawa shogun, were often seen as the symbol of their amicable and friendly relationship, and it is well known that the Koreans were cordially welcomed by the Tokugawa bakufu. Despite these neighbourly relations, the visitations of the embassy had a more pragmatic purpose. More complex political conditions and nature were immanent within and between the both states. In the diplomatic interaction, the officials in the two states had traditional and obstinately-held perceptions towards the counterpart hidden behind the pleasant gesture. In this thesis, I attempt to uncover what is associated with these neighbourly relations, by revealing the cultural awareness and consciousness of these two states in East Asia through detailed examinations of the historical sources. To find the notions behind the exchange, my thesis illustrates Japanese and Korean hua-yi awareness that came to light through the interactions between the Japanese and the Koreans. The Chinese hua-yi order, the concept of looking at the Chinese dynasties as the center, was said to dominate the East Asian order. From the Chinese point of view, Tokugawa Japan and Chosŏn Korea were barbaric and on the margins, but from the perspectives of the two countries, they certainly recognized themselves as the centers. On the basis of the dynamism of historical events, thoughts, and notions between Tokugawa Japan and Chosŏn Korea in the eighteenth century, this research will examine multi-layered perspectives of the individual Japanese and Koreans who played essential roles in diplomacy. How were those officials representing the two states aware of their peers, and how did these notions affect the modern history of the two countries? This question is consistently engaged in this thesis, and to answer it the research will be further explored.

This doctoral thesis presents a historical study of the diplomatic exchanges between the Japanese and the Korean embassy in the eighteenth century. Neighbourly relationships (J: kōrin, K: kyorin) were maintained between Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868) and Chosŏn Korea (1392-1910) for more than 250 years. The visitations of the Korean embassy, dispatched to congratulate a new Tokugawa shogun, were often seen as the symbol of their amicable and friendly relationship, and it is well known that the Koreans were cordially welcomed by the Tokugawa bakufu. Despite these neighbourly relations, the visitations of the embassy had a more pragmatic purpose. More complex political conditions and nature were immanent within and between the both states. In the diplomatic interaction, the officials in the two states had traditional and obstinately-held perceptions towards the counterpart hidden behind the pleasant gesture. In this thesis, I attempt to uncover what is associated with these neighbourly relations, by revealing the cultural awareness and consciousness of these two states in East Asia through detailed examinations of the historical sources. To find the notions behind the exchange, my thesis illustrates Japanese and Korean hua-yi awareness that came to light through the interactions between the Japanese and the Koreans. The Chinese hua-yi order, the concept of looking at the Chinese dynasties as the center, was said to dominate the East Asian order. From the Chinese point of view, Tokugawa Japan and Chosŏn Korea were barbaric and on the margins, but from the perspectives of the two countries, they certainly recognized themselves as the centers. On the basis of the dynamism of historical events, thoughts, and notions between Tokugawa Japan and Chosŏn Korea in the eighteenth century, this research will examine multi-layered perspectives of the individual Japanese and Koreans who played essential roles in diplomacy. How were those officials representing the two states aware of their peers, and how did these notions affect the modern history of the two countries? This question is consistently engaged in this thesis, and to answer it the research will be further explored.

The Best PhD Thesis in the Faculties of Architexture, Arts, Business & Economics, Education, Law and Social Sciences (University of Hong Kong), Li Ka Shing Prize, 2007-2008. / published_or_final_version / Humanities / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The Best MPhil Thesis in the Faculties of Architecture, Arts, Business & Economics, Education, Law and Social Sciences (University of Hong Kong), Li Ka Shing Prize, 2003-2005. / published_or_final_version / abstract / Music / Master / Master of Philosophy