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.

The thesis aims to provide a comprehensive survey of history and activities of ladies´ society called Ludmila. This society left its mark on the history of the city by its charitable activities, which aided the poor school children, and by establishing and funding schools for girls and a boarding school for girls in České Budějovice. The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first two chapters generally outline the social, cultural and political milieu in České Budějovice, the legislation and ladies´societies in the Czech lands in the period 1850-1950. The third chapter deals with formation of the society Ludmila and its statutes. The fourth chapter presents an analysis of its structure and biographies of its members, including a short profile of Jana Zátková, the chairman of this ladies´society. The fifth chapter treats the activities of the ladies´ society and the closing part of the thesis describes the imposed dissolution, which put an end to beneficial activities of ladies´ society called Ludmila in 1950.

This dissertation deals with not fully explored area of daily life, a personal hygiene. The main period which this work dwells on is the turn of the 19th and 20th century but sometimes I need to go further to the past when the fundamentals of the personal hygiene were laid. The work tries to devone the conditions of the hygiene which were influenced by sociocultural as well as scientific and technical factors. It also studies the personal hygiene including care of body, hair, teeth, cosmetics and body scent alike. Among these topics belong linen and clothes. One of the highlighted aims is revealing the function of spas (especially modern balneology) and up-and-coming physical education and sport in the increasing standarts of the personal hygiene. The heuristic base is composed of contemporary specialized literature and press as well as memoirs and encyclopeadias.

In this diploma thesis, we are focusing on the historical development of the locative case and its variety in Russian language, especially in 19th and 20th century Russian. Based on our knowledge from the theoretical part we analyzed samples from national corpus of Russian language. Words, which can use the second locative case, were divided into three groups. We found out that approximately during 1930's appeared evidence of change in use of the local case ending. This is described by the results from the analysis of the lexemes of the first group, where is the use of the second locative obligatory. We also found out, that in the group, where use of locative endings varies, there are some tendencies to distinguish the meaning of the lexemes with the local case endings. In the third group, where the local case endings distinguish meaning of the word, we can claim that there are evidence of the tendencies to unify meaning of the nouns in the local case. Therefore, the choice of the ending does not strictly determine the meaning of the word. Keywords Declension; noun; Russian; second locative; 19th century; 20th century; corpus linguistics

in English Dissertation deals with the freak show culture in Prague and the Czech lands in a broader context of the modern discourses of dis/ability and the imaginations of the collective body of the Czech nation. Exhibitions of "Lilliputians", "Giants", "Siamese twins" and other "extraordinary" bodies are analyzed here as a part of the history of an international entertainment culture in the 19th-century Europe. The emphasis lays on the turn of the century, the decade that witnessed rash development both of the capitalist entertainment industry and the expert disciplines that dealt with the "ab/normal". I claim, that the popularity of freak shows in this period rested in their ability to articulate fears and ambitions of their visitors, both in their individual embodied experience and their imaginative belonging, notably their belonging to the collective body of the Czech nation. In four case studies, I focus on individual freak figures and analyze how the intersections of different axes of difference - ethnicity, gender, class - within the representation of "the extraordinary", coproduced certain notion of social order and power hierarchies that were closely intertwined with the imagined collective body of nation.

The thesis derives from my bachelor thesis "The Motif of Dream in Selected Czech 19th century Fiction (Zeyer - Mácha - Erben)", which is focused on dreams in fiction literature, mostly on selected Czech authors of the 19th century. This diploma thesis will be devoted to Jakub Arbes and Svatopluk Čech, Czech authors of the second half of the 19th century. In the titles selected, the accent will be put on the importance of the motif of dream and the possibilities of their usage in the plot. The thesis will also consider the diversity and concepts of the literary motif in question. This work should be comparative (in the international sense), and will also consider both the common and the variating elements of dreams in chosen literary texts. Attention will be paid to the analysis of dreams, the activity of dreaming itself and the symbols used. The entire work will be based on traditional concepts of dream in psychology and psychoanalysis (Carl Gustav Jung, Sigmund Freud), but also will keep in mind the fictional nature of literary "dreams". Due to that, it will also stem from the so-called fictional worlds theory, which is in current naratology described eg. in the book "How to Do Fiction with Words" by Jiří Koten.

The third part of a guide which lists photographs taken by Leipzig missionaries in what are now Kenya and Tanzania, mainly between 1890 and 1940.

This volume is a guide unpublished written material, ethnographic artefacts, pictures and maps in the archive of the Herrnhut (Moravian) Mission relating to Ghana (1737-68), South Africa (1737-44, 1792-c. 1960) and Tanzania (1891-c. 1970).

The first two parts of a guide which lists approximately 3,500 photographs taken by Leipzig missionaries in what are now Kenya and Tanzania, mainly between 1890 and 1940.

This volume is a guide to the files relating to Northern Tanzania and Southern Kenya in the archive of the Leipzig Mission, with the exception of personnel files and the papers of individual missionaries. Most of the material relates to the period 1885-1950.