The West India Royal Commission of 1897 advanced a number of recommendations intended to lift the West Indies out of their depressed condition and to shape their future economic development. This thesis examines the efforts made to implement those recommendations and the extent to which they influenced economic progress in the colonies of Barbadoes, British Guiana, The Windward and Leeward Islands. Particular attention is directed towards the recommendation that the labouring populations be encouraged to settle on the land as small proprietors. This proposal provided for the welfare of the largely Negro populations of the colonies, but it also threatened to upset the plantation dominated nature of the agriculture economy. The Royal Commission believed that peasant land ownership could be extended only through the introduction of government schemes of land settlement. The considerations which underlay the success or failure of such schemes and of peasant proproetorship in gneral constitute the central theme of the thesis. Other aspects of the economu which are examined affected planter and peasant alike. Freight connections, choice of crops, methods of cultivation, availability of markets, and access to expert advice were considerations which determined the success of both plantation and peasant proprietary. The Colonial Office role in the development of these colonies was limited and for the most part initiative rested with the colonies themselves. Questions of crop selection, or of the location for a settlement scheme, could only be decided by local experts. Furthermore, Joseph Chamberlain, the most influential Colonial Secretary of the period, as far as the West Indies were concerned, clearly believed in delegating responsibility to the local official. Nevertheless, when appropriate, the Colonial Office did play an active part. Its influence over shipping contracts was considerable, whilst the survival of the valuable Imperial Department of Agriculture, established in consequence of a recommendation of the Royal Commission, was entirely due to Colonial Office determination in the face of Treasury resistance.

The thesis examines the relationship between public health and questions of housing and poverty, in Melbourne, 1888- 1918. It is concerned with the way that with certain groups of people - local council workers, tenants of houses referred to as ‘slums’, and the owners of those houses - represented their experiences. And it seeks to place those representations in the context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century concern about the ‘housing problems’. It compares the public rhetoric of the housing reformers and politicians with letters written to the Melbourne City Council by landlords and tenants, and in doing so seeks to show that there were a whole range of housing ‘problems’ not addressed by the public discourse. (For complete abstract open document)

The diploma thesis aims on introducing the "Chronicle of the Kopp family", a personal writing found in the inheritance of Pilsen teacher Vaclav Kopp (1876-1951). The thesis also intends to integrate this work into contexts of the ego-documents research; introductory article therefore touches the matters of personal sources as a subject of a research interest. The main text of the thesis is further divided into four chapters. The first chapter presents the story of Vaclav Kopp's life and also focuses on the history of his family. The following chapter deals with the analysis of the source and it particularly wants to emphasize the overall change of its character. The third chapter is a pivotal part of the thesis. It discusses topics contained in the "Chronicle" with intent to look into the everyday life of the author and into his intellectual world. In the last chapter, the work of Vaclav Kopp is compared with the memoirs of another Pilsen citizen - Luisa Pernerová-Zykmundová and with other personal sources from Pilsen of the same time period. Conclusion then summarizes the findings and it points out the importance of the investigated work and offers the possibility of its further use. A list of sources and bibliography is appended, as well as a large number of pictorial attachments.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T15:14:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese Alcineia Rodrigues dos Santos.pdf: 2107648 bytes, checksum: 02d1f969d2c15d06a421febc4a845a41 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-05-03 / The beginning of this research lies at the wish of understanding the relation among the population from the region of Seridó, the death and the dead when cholera morbus, smallpox and yellow fever‟s epidemic outbreak exterminated part of the population from that region, causing deep modifications in the funeral culture. Thus, our aim is to analyze how this epidemic impact contributed to a changing action towards people‟s funeral habits and attitudes concerning death and the dead in Seridó as from 1850. During the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, the attitudes of the inhabitants from the Province of Rio Grande do Norte regarding life‟s finite limit were based on the familiarity between the living and the dead, which led to a relation characterized by rituals after the death and the burial inside churches. This procedure was largely used by the Catholic Christians and it allowed a close contact between the dead and the living because when the congregation was inside the church they would walk around, sit and pray on the grave. The impact of the epidemic was fundamental to change the funeral culture. The diseases were responsible for a high mortality rate and consequently the burial inside the churches turned out being unfeasible because there was no time enough to the bodies‟ decomposition. As a result, the hygienist discourse that, under European influence, struggled against the ad sanctos burial was enhanced in order to prevent from other diseases and in favor of public hygiene. Under this perspective, a secularizing process takes place in Seridó, alike other Brazilian regions such as in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. It is this process we want to comprehend, based on official documents produced by the Presidents of the Province and Municipal Counties, wills and parochial obituary registers, besides visual resources like ground plans, photographs and videos, so that the secularized cemeteries of the region are analyzed. / Esta pesquisa surgiu a partir do desejo de compreender a relação que a população do Seridó manteve com a morte e com os mortos no momento em que os surtos epidêmicos de cólera-morbo, varíola e febre amarela grassaram na região, provocando modificações na cultura fúnebre. Assim, nosso objetivo é analisar como o impacto dessas epidemias, que atingiram esse espaço a partir de 1850, contribuiu para a ação transformadora sobre os costumes fúnebres e as atitudes da população para com a morte e os mortos. As atitudes dos habitantes da capitania do Rio Grande do Norte quanta à finitude da vida tinham como eixo central, durante toda a extensão do século XVIII e a primeira metade do século XIX, a familiaridade entre vivos e mortos, relação definida pelos rituais efetivados no momento pós-morte e pelas inumações no interior das igrejas. Essas inumações, utilizadas pelos cristãos católicos, permitiam o contato direto entre vivos e mortos: os fiéis que frequentavam as igrejas passavam, sentavam-se e faziam suas orações sobre as sepulturas. O impacto das epidemias nas transformações na cultura funerária foi fundamental. As doenças provocavam alto índice de mortalidade, tornando inviável o enterramento no interior das igrejas, uma vez que não havia tempo suficiente para a total decomposição dos corpos. Logo, constituíram-se em um dos elementos catalisadores do discurso higienista, que há tempos lutava, sob influência europeia, contra o enterramento ad sanctos, com base na prevenção de males e a favor da higienização pública. Dentro dessa conjuntura, o Seridó, a exemplo de outras regiões brasileiras, como São Paulo e o Rio de Janeiro, iniciou o processo de secularização da morte. É esse processo que pretendemos compreender, tendo como base o uso de documentação oficial produzida pelos Presidentes de Província e os de Comarcas Municipais, testamentos e registros paroquiais de óbito, além de recursos visuais, como plantas baixas, fotografias e vídeos, para análise dos cemitérios secularizados da região.

In my thesis, I would like to concentrate on a lifestyle of nobility at castle Sychrov in the 19th and 20th century. Thesis would be compiled as a project for pupils of a primary school and lower secondary school. The first part would be focused and theoretically would relate to the concept of regional history and a brief history of the castle Sychrov. The following section will be focused to didactic part of the project and concepts of object and project-based learning. In the theoretical part I also focus on the new concept "The Big Six historical thinking concepts", which participates in the development of historical thinking of pupils. The last part will be focused on the actual realization of the project with the pupil.

Working and unmarried women could have a life which married women had not. Instead of marriage, they built their social and family life on friendship. They lived with each other, payed rent together, discussed domestic issues such as cleaning and household labour. They also talked about love, and passion, and how to find a friend to share their life with. This particular group of unmarried women did not solely arrange friendship out of practical purposes but also of emotional and social bonds. This study focuses on the teacher Maja Beskow in Umeå and her diaries and correspondence with and about her friends from the year 1896 to 1923. What did they say about friendship? What aspects of life could be found within the friendships?

The submitted thesis deals with the function of private minority schools of Central School Foundation and destiny of their teachers in South Bohemia between 1880 and 1918. In the first chapters it takes down circumstances of the rise of Central School Foundation and the school laws of the second half of the 19th century, which was important for primary schools and their teachers. Decision points of this work are chapters about private minority schools of Central School Foundation and their teachers. In this part, the work is based on the sources from National Archive in Prague and States district archives in South Bohemia (school chronicles and documents). The chapter about private minority schools of Central School Foundation takes down these schools from their opening to transfer into public administration and later support of Central School Foundation to their public schools. The chapters about teachers of Central School Foundation mapping their problems as employee private association, their financial and living conditions and their provision in case of old age and illness. Key words: Central School Foundation, South Bohemia, national minority schools, teachers, the turn of 19th and 20th century.

One of the main objectives of this thesis is not only to map the life of Czech sculptor Vladimir Astl, but also explore various inspirational sources he might have used when creating social oriented pieces. Those are critical in is work. Typical avatars of plastics with social context are Žízeň (Thirst), Smutek (Sadness) or Stará žena (Old Woman), all of them from the period of 1905 - 1910. The initial chapter shortly discusses social problem which existed during the verge of 19th and 20th century and immediately influenced increasing use of social topics in art. Next chapter elaborates on these topics in more detail and focuses on changes of French society which were closely tied to the occurence of ambitious ideas to build monuments celebrating work of men. This chapter also discusses sculpture in France in more depth with focus on labor-oriented pieces from August Rodin, Jules Dalou and Henri Bouchard. The work of mentioned sculptors was dedicated to monuments celebrating labour. These formed a common inspiration source for social related themes in Czech sculpture of the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Next chapter continues to describe the foreign social tendencies and introduces a Belgian sculptor Constantin Meunier who made a significant impact on Czech lands with his pieces being...

In 1878, Britain occupied Cyprus to protect imperial interests in the Near East and India, interests, both strategic and economic, that Russian expansion threatened and Ottoman weakness undermined. By 1912, Cyprus had become a pawn. The island had not been converted into the strategic, economic or political base to protect and extend British interests in the Near East. The policy of 1878 had failed because it was perceived rather than actual benefits that underlay the imposition of British rule. / The primary aim of this study is to present Cyprus as a failed case of imperialism. Historians have traditionally claimed that Cyprus was a strategic asset within the British imperial structure throughout British rule (1878-1960). That notion is challenged for the first phase of British rule – from the occupation of Cyprus in 1878 to when it was annexed in 1914 and then offered to Greece in October 1915. The approach is to situate the island within the British imperial imagination, which will help to understand why the island was occupied, and then to situate it within the British imperial structure after it was occupied to determine its place, value and viability. Understanding British politics and imperial policy is vital when trying to grasp the complexities of the imperial imagination(s) and the role of Cyprus within the imperial structure. This dissertation will show that perceptions generate reality and inform policy and that often these perceptions are imagined and exaggerated and thus, not based on evidence or reality. / This study will show that the British perceived Cyprus within two competing imaginaries that were at the heart of an imagined European spiritual identity: the Christian/Crusader/Holy Land tradition and that of Ancient Greece. The first tradition helps to explain why Cyprus was occupied; understanding the second provides one of the main reasons why the British failed in their imperial venture in Cyprus. Many British Conservative politicians and those that knew the Near East, through their imagined view of the Holy Land and their travels, diplomatic and military careers, situated Cyprus within the first tradition. They considered it strategically vital to the Levant and beyond to Armenia and Mesopotamia. Liberal leaders perceived Cyprus to be apart of Europe and, more significantly, within the unitary ideal of Modern Greece that the British had fashioned in continuum of the unitary ideal of Ancient Greece. Although the identity of the Cypriots was complex, the British imposed – unwittingly – modernity on the Cypriots. / Ultimately, it was the latter imagination that became dominant and with the failure of Cyprus to have a place within imperial strategy, it became a pawn to be parted to Greece with.

Human food consumption has changed from the late 19th century to the turn of the millennium, and so has the need for resources to sustain this consumption. For the city of Linköping, situated in southeastern Sweden, the environmental imprint of an average inhabitant’s food consumption is studied from the year 1870 to the year 2000. The average consumer is the driving factor in this study, since changes in food consumption have a direct influence on the environmental imprint. This thesis analyses the environmental imprint of human food consumption from a historical perspective, by applying two different methods. An analysis of the average Swedish food consumption creates the basis for a material flow analysis of nitrogen and phosphorus, as well as a study of the spatial imprint. Emissions of nitrogen and phosphorus into the hydrosphere have decreased over this period for the system of food consumption and production for an average consumer, while the input via chemical fertilizer has increased significantly. The efficiency of this system could be increased if for instance more phosphorus in human excreta would be reused within the system instead of large deposition and losses into the hydrosphere. The spatial imprint of human food consumption shows, given the changing local preconditions, that less space would be needed for regional production of the consumed food. However, the share of today’s import and thus globally produced food doubles this spatial imprint. The results of this study show not only a strong influence of the consumption of meat and other animal products on the environmental imprint, but also great potential in the regional production of food. In the context of an increasing urban population, and thus additional billions of people who will live at an increasing distance from the agricultural production land, concern for the direct effects of our human food consumption can be of decisive importance for future sustainable food supply.