Saffron Walden has an excellent town archive. There are also other good primary sources. The argument of this thesis arose from these circumstances. The purpose of this study became an investigation of whether the artisan segment of society in a small English market town of the eighteenth century constituted a homogeneous group or whether marked differentiation occurred within that segment. The nature of the artisan segment of the town is examined from the perspectives of the economic, religious and social structures found there. Due consideration is also given to the way in which the town was governed and to the importance of its charitable organisations. The roles of literacy and the ability to be able to afford the security granted by fire insurance in the latter part of the century also turned out to be of critical importance. Life-course analysis for a number of artisans was also carried out permitting a prosopographical approach to be adopted where relevant. It is concluded that for an artisan in the eighteenth century in Saffron Walden a number of factors were vital in determining whether he would be successful. These included his initial family background and position within that family, the trade to which he was apprenticed, his likelihood of gaining patronage and thus access to the benefits that the town’s charitable institutions could provide, including a place at the Charity School, and his religious persuasion, particularly if he was a nonconformist or a Quaker. A man favoured in these ways might gain the appellation of ‘gentleman’. A less fortunate artisan might end his days as a pauper. Differentiation within the artisan segment in eighteenth century Saffron Walden indeed existed.

This thesis investigates Arthur Balfour’s policy towards Japan and the Anglo-Japanese alliance from 1894 to 1923. Although Balfour was involved in the Anglo-Japanese alliance from its signing to termination, no comprehensive analysis of his role in the alliance has been carried out. Utilising unpublished materials and academic books, this thesis reveals that Balfour’s policy on the Anglo-Japanese alliance revolved around two vital principles, namely imperial defence and Anglo-American cooperation. From the viewpoint of imperial defence, Balfour emphasised the defence of India and Australasia more than that of China. He opposed the signing of the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902 because it was not useful in the defence of India. The Russo-Japanese War raised the concern of Indian security. Changing his lukewarm attitude, Balfour took the initiative in extending the alliance into India to employ Japanese troops for the defence of India. Moreover, as an advocate of Anglo-American cooperation, Balfour made every effort to maintain good Anglo-American-Japanese relations. However, imperial defence and Anglo-American cooperation began to clash within the alliance during the Great War. Although the Siberian intervention was useful Japanese military assistance in the defence of India, America, who was not interested in India, hesitated to support it due to her suspicion against Japan. After the war, the alliance was still instrumental in defending India and Australasia, but its existence damaged the relations with America. Balfour tried to achieve both imperial defence and Anglo-American cooperation by developing the alliance into an Anglo-American-Japanese trilateral agreement with a military clause to revive a bilateral defensive alliance. But America and Japan did not support Balfour’s plan at the Washington Conference, and he had to accept the Four-Power Treaty without any military commitment.

Between 1833 and 1838 the diplomatic relationship between Britain and the Ottoman Empire underwent a radical change. The starting point for this transformation came when the army of the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II, suffered two consecutive heavy defeats at the hands of that of his rebel governor, Mehmed Ali Pasha; the first being in Syria, on 14 April 1832, and the second in Konya, on 21 December 1832. This last defeat of the Sultan rapidly escalated the matter into an international problem. All the very complicated diplomatic developments, which would continue right up to the Convention of London, 15 July 1840, started at the beginning of 1833. All of these are well documented historical facts in both Turkish and English literature. However, the unknown side of the story is what role Mahmud and his finest diplomats played in the process of resolving the Mehmed Ali problem using diplomacy. This role has been overlooked by the vast majority of scholars. This neglect ensues from a lack of knowledge of the Ottoman diplomatic effort in this process. The most obvious way to overcome this problem is to depart from the orientalist perspective, and use the Ottoman documents, which bear witness to Mahmud’s instructions to his diplomats and their reports from various European capitals of their progress and observations. When examining this intensive diplomatic period from the point of view of the Ottomans, it becomes clear that in fact Mahmud was not a Sultan who merely sat back smoking his water pipe and watched incidents unfold in his Empire’s lands; On the contrary, he had his own diplomatic plan, courage, motivation, resourcefulness and some capable diplomats who did their utmost to faithfully implement their sovereign’s diplomatic orders. Therefore, the highest priority of this thesis is to reveal in every aspect this stupendous and dramatic diplomatic struggle made by the Ottomans in this period. Bearing in mind the above stated points, this thesis attempts to contribute the academic literature on the Orientalism- which has been largely done in the field of cultural history- by looking at a specific example in the field of diplomatic history.

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This thesis attempts to explore the influence that Duncan Sandys' experiences of the Second World War had on his policy preferences, and policy-making, in relation to British defence policy during his years in government. This is a significant period in British nuclear policy which began with thermonuclear weaponry being placed ostentatiously at the centre of British defence planning in the 1957 Defence White Paper, and ended with the British acquiring the latest American nuclear weapon technology as a consequence of the Polaris Sales Agreement. It also saw intense discussion of the nature and type of nuclear weaponry the British government sought to wield in the Cold War, with attempts to build indigenous land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, and where British nuclear policy was discussed in extreme depth in government. The thesis explores this area by focusing on Duncan Sandys and examining his interaction with prominent aspects of the defence policy-making process. It argues that Sandys sought to navigate his way through this period of uncertainty by drawing heavily upon his experiences of the Second World War, and that this method of policy-making should be seen as a nuclear belief system unique to the individual, and therefore critical in understanding how British policy-makers approached the Cold War at the highest levels of government.

Extraterritoriality – the extension of jurisdiction upon national subjects beyond the territorial limits of the metropolitan state – was a central part of the British presence in China from the arrival of larger numbers of British traders after 1757 through to 1943. This thesis explores the development of extraterritoriality and the exercise of jurisdiction in its criminal justice capacity. It asks: how can we understand the development of extraterritoriality as a system, as a set of practices and as a set of ideas? What were the main functions of consular jurisdiction? What challenges did extraterritorial jurisdiction face and how can we understand its demise? It demonstrates how extraterritoriality was constituted in the local, regional and global context, as well as putting it in comparative perspective. It shows how law was embedded in social and political processes, leading to its development, adaption and demise in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ending with its abolition in 1943. Through doing so it develops a number of themes that enrich the fields of legal history, colonialism and imperialism studies as well as treaty port China history.

This thesis will show that the concept of Great Yasa is not supported by the contemporary sources and that alternative approaches are needed to investigate law in the Toluid empire. While the concept of Yasa tends to reinforce the perception of Mongol law as being rigid, in fact, considerable room for flexibility and negotiation was embedded within the Mongol legal tradition. This flexibility can be seen in the traditional Mongol institution of the quriltai, an institution which was important not only in terms of the election of khans and taking various decisions, but also in legal terms. The principle of collegiality which was at its foundation was central to Mongol legal culture and its effects can be discerned in the Ilkhanate and the Yuan dynasty. While there was little political will on the part of the Mongol rulers to impose any particular legal practices, including Mongol customs, on the conquered populations, the principle of collegiality had a significant impact on how they dealt with legal matters, and how they and their officials interacted with Persian and Chinese legal traditions. In the many legal cases decided by conference, where many different stakeholders were present, can be seen the enduring effects of the principle of collegiality. The flexibility of the Mongol approach to law is also seen in the differences in the influence of Mongol law in Persia and China. While in China the eagerness of officials and judges to have the Qa'ans produce legislation led to significant mutual influence and the integration of several characteristics of Mongol law into Chinese legislation and into practice even on the local level, in Persia the restrained attitude of the qadis led to Mongol influence being significantly less marked, and coming about through cultural influence or imitation. In conclusion, Mongol law as seen in the Toluid empire was characterized by significant flexibility, which cannot be attributed simply to the failure or abandonment of Mongol legal traditions, since this flexibility was itself an influential and genuine expression of the Mongol steppe legal tradition.

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No description available.

The thesis investigates the way in which the world and its various aspects are presented in sources from the Neo-Assyrian empire, and how they relate to the ideology of kingship. The investigation follows a two-pronged approach, exploring natural landmarks such as watercourses, lakes, seas and oceans, as well as man-made landmarks in the form of cities and toponyms used to label the Assyrian and non-Assyrian worlds. These are analysed in the context of a wide range of textual and visual sources, including royal inscriptions and reliefs, archival documents such as correspondence and administrative texts, and scribal and literary compositions. While the role of geographical conceptions in shaping and promoting royal ideology forms the underlying theme of the research, this is contrasted where possible with perceptions of the world in administration, scholarship and literature. The result is a rich and multi-layered picture in which different ways of seeing the world emerge from different types of sources. The main chronological focus of the study is the reign of Sargon II (r. 721–705 B.C.). It was during this period that the world view presented in official documents underwent an important shift, from the traditional “four corners” model, in which seas and lakes defined the extent of the known world, to a world encircled by the “Bitter Stream” (marratu), a permeable barrier to lands beyond. The new model is closely linked to a literary source, the Babylonian Map of the World, for which a new date is suggested. The evolution of the “Bitter Stream” world view and the perceptions of other landmarks are placed in a wider historical, administrative, scholarly and literary context in order to elucidate broader patterns of influence and underline the connection between ideology and political reality.