This thesis analyses the philosophical origin and development of a discourse that presented Panama as an ordered, peaceful and internationalist nation after its independence from Colombia in 1903. Tracing back this discourse to 1878, this thesis argues that Panamanian political and intellectual elites adopted, elaborated and combined ideas of Positivism, Conservatism, and Progressivism to shape distinct processes of nation-building and visions of modernity in the Isthmus until 1931. Furthermore, this thesis will analyse the role of print-capitalism, material culture, schools, public speeches and events in the divulging of these ideas and the formation of Panamanian identity and nationalism. Following this line of thought, the chapters of this thesis will study the different strategies that Panamanian nation-builders used to promote their discourses of civic nationalism: the creation of a pantheon of professional heroes and the forgetting of a military past; the appropriation of suffering; the education policies that aimed at creating a pedagogical elite in charge of providing practical and moral education to Panamanians; and the promotion of an internationalism in schools and international conferences and organisations. The thesis explores the extent to which these strategies helped to overcome the challenges to the construction of the Panamanian nation posed by the presence and interventionism of U.S. military and authorities in Panamanian territory, the unexpected results of modernisation during and after the building of the Panama Canal, the international criticism of Panamanian collaborationism with the U.S. (especially after the latter intervened in Panama’s independence from Colombia), and international developments such as World War I. In doing this, this doctoral thesis attempts to contribute to the discussion regarding the creation of Panamanian identity and challenge the predominant arguments that sustain that either Panamanian national identity was solely founded on the precepts of Liberalism or that it was a fabrication of the U.S.

This study of the founding in 1823 of the London Mechanics’ Institution examines its constituency, catchment, and mandate to teach working men science and technology. To explain the Institution’s distinctive character, it is necessary to move beyond the flourishing patent/invention journalism, which provides one explanatory context, to the cheap literature disputes, debating society connotations, and Francis Place’s network. These radical associations show why George Birkbeck was quickly designated the ‘founder’, even though he was unknown to J. C. Robertson and Thomas Hodgskin when they proposed such an institute in the Mechanics’ Magazine. Birkbeck’s social standing would allay Establishment fears. An older historiography stressing middle-class social control is tested by analysing contemporary journals, newspapers and manuscripts. The first two volumes of manuscript Members’ Registers (1824-29), recording 8,343 names with occupations and addresses, have been transcribed and appended. These allow a comparison of members’ occupations with London trades generally and highlight diverse occupations within families. They also reveal family relationships between clerks and mechanics – important because clerks have been cited as a sign of middle-class invasion. Indeed the lack of any gross change in class composition suggests that there was no working-class exodus in these pre-Reform years. By statute two-thirds of the committee had to be working class. The encouragement of invention and student autonomy through mutual instruction classes, introduced by the Pestalozzian Charles Lane, points to a more humanitarian ethos, as do the lectures which (contra the learned societies) often presented science as negotiable rather than given. Iconic radical members are highlighted: Henry Hetherington (on the committee regularly from 1825-1830), William Lovett, James Watson, G. G. Ward, and P. O. Skene. Finally, the thesis analyses the committee’s relationships with controversial outsiders who rented the theatre, including Robert Owen, Eliza Macauley, William Cobbett, the Radical Reform Association, and the London Co-operative Society.

This thesis explores the intersections between Dutch and English East India Company (VOC and EIC) enterprise and early modern ethnography. Scholarship concerning both Companies has focused principally on the socio-economic side of Euro-Asian exchanges. In doing so, existing literature has failed to address the importance of ethnographic assumptions in shaping the worldviews of overseas agents. This study suggests a novel way of writing the cultural histories of these commercial-cum-political bodies from a comparative, transnational, and interdisciplinary perspective. It analyses VOC and EIC archives for what they reveals about perceptions of Others, categories of human difference, and approaches to cross-cultural interaction. Each of the three case studies examines a different aspect of Dutch and English involvement in cross-cultural contact in seventeenth-century South Asia – commercial dealings in Gujarat, diplomatic interactions at the Mughal court, and colonial encounters in Ceylon and Madras, respectively. A survey of the principal concepts and categories which structured early modern European ethnographic analyses precedes these discussions. Cultural assumptions about Asian peoples shaped Dutch and English enterprise in South Asia long before the advent of European imperialism. This thesis explores the indebtedness of Company writing to Renaissance ethnography, explains how cultural prejudice and distrust buttressed maritime aggression and fortification policies, and traces how new forms of discrimination based on skin colour became anchored in colonial governance. It also shows how VOC and EIC agents acculturated to their host environment in profound ways. Diplomacy involved adaptation to and incorporation into Mughal imperial culture. Commerce benefited from quotidian social interactions. Colonial governance drew on native participation and South Asian political traditions. While seventeenth-century cross-cultural contact should thus be understood within a power configuration that compelled Europeans to adapt, the way in which Company agents employed ethnographic concepts also points at discursive continuities with later imperial ideologies.

This thesis is primarily a cultural history of abortion in the early medieval West. It is a historical study of perceptions, rather than the practice, of abortion. The span covered ranges from the sixth century, when certain localised ecclesiastical initiatives in the form of councils and sermons addressed abortion, through to the ninth century, when some of these initiatives were integrated into pastoral texts produced in altogether different locales. The thesis uses a range of predominantly ecclesiastical texts – canonical collections, penitentials, sermons, hagiography, scriptural commentaries, but also law-codes – to bring to light the multiple ways in which abortion was construed, experienced and responded to as a moral and social problem. Although there is a concerted focus upon the ecclesiastical tradition on abortion, a focus which ultimately questions how such a tradition ought to be understood, the thesis also explores the broader cultural significance of abortion. Early medieval churchmen, rulers, and jurists saw multiple things in abortion and there were multiple perspectives upon abortion. The thesis illuminates the manifold and, occasionally, surprising ways in which abortion was perceived in relation to gender, sexuality, politics, theology and the church. The history of early medieval abortion has been largely underwritten. Moreover, it has been inadequately historicised. Early medieval abortion has been rendered strangely familiar because it has been approached through alien concepts and assumptions, whether pre-medieval, later medieval or modern. Through vigilance against conceptual dangers, a thoroughgoing and sometimes microscopic approach to reading and contextualising early medieval sources, and an interest in bringing the history of abortion into conversation with other areas of early medieval historiography, the thesis seeks to historicise perceptions of and responses to abortion in the early medieval West.

This thesis is a comparison of ethnicity in Viking Age England and Normandy. It focuses on the period c.950-c.1015, which begins several generations after the initial Scandinavian settlements in both regions. The comparative approach enables an investigation into how and why the two societies’ inhabitants differed in their perceptions of viking heritage and its impact on ethnic relations in this period. Written sources provide the key to these perceptions: genealogies, histories, hagiographies, charters and law codes. The thesis is the first study to juxtapose and compare these sources and aspects of Viking Age England and Normandy. The approach to ethnicity is informed by the social sciences, especially Fredrik Barth’s Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The emphasis here is on ethnic identity as a social construct and as a product of belief in group membership. In particular, this investigation treats ethnic identity separately from cultural markers such as names, dress, appearance, and art. In doing so, it presents a new perspective in discussions of assimilation after Scandinavian settlement. For the purpose of analysis, ‘ethnicity’ has been divided into three strands: genealogical, historical and geographical identity. Sources from England and Normandy are compared within each of the three strands. The thesis demonstrates the development of a single ‘viking’ group identity in Normandy, which was defined in distinction to the Franks. In England, on the other hand, ‘viking’ and ‘Scandinavian’ identities held various meanings and were deployed in diverse situations. No single group laid exclusive claim to viking heritage, nor completely rejected it. Ultimately, it is argued that viking identity was used as a tool in political and military conflicts. It was not an expression of association with Scandinavian allies, but most often was used as a more local means of distinction within England and Normandy.

The thesis explores the linked history of the dynamic precolonial handicraft textile industry of Northern Nigeria and the failure of British colonial efforts to capture the cotton harvest for export. During the nineteenth century, Northern Nigeria was politically organised into two major Muslim states: Borno and the Sokoto Caliphate (1804-1900). This vast area of savanna, lying between Lake Chad and the upper Niger, became the British Protectorate Northern Nigeria between 1900 and 1914. Following the creation of the Caliphate in 1804, textile production expanded considerably during the century, with its products being sold over most of West Africa by Hausa merchant networks centred on the city of Kano, which was the largest industrial and commercial centre in tropical Africa. After the proclamation of the British Protectorate, the powerful British Cotton Growing Association attempted to make Northern Nigeria a vast new centre of cotton cultivation. However, most of the cotton cultivated in the area was absorbed by the looms of local weavers benefitting primarily local textile production rather than the export market. Conflicts between the colonial government and market forces, together with the efficiency of local weavers, became important factors in shaping the cotton campaign. The thesis examines how local textile production became a dynamic industry in the nineteenth century and remained so in the early colonial period. My analytic approach is then to consider not a general political economy, but the contours of its economic and social structure, showing how power and benefits occurred in production.

Music is a familiar presence in the story of early American popular politics. But what motivated its political use? And how was its political function understood? To answer these questions I highlight a distinctively conservative strain of American musical thought and action and trace its development from the early national period through to the end of the Civil War. Doing so runs against the grain of an existing literature that typically explains political music in the United States as an inevitable by-product of democratisation. Here I show instead that conservative elites also used music specifically to militate against the dangers of a mass political party system. A string of conservative Americans – from Federalist elites to Whig party politicos, social reformers, and Confederate women – all shared both scepticism of unchecked popular democracy and belief in music's capacity to mitigate its excesses. To their minds, music could inject a sense of propriety and refinement into public life, cast an air of patriotism and respectability over partisan political participation, and harmonise a fractious society in support of elite values. The identification of this trend challenges modern notions of music’s inherently emancipatory or democratising qualities and complicates recent attempts to promote political and patriotic songs as unproblematic entry points into the early American popular mind. It suggests, I argue, that the impetus for music’s political presence in early American political culture was driven as much from above as it was from below, and that elitist ideals were central to the popular practices of American politics.

Pressure for Indian independence had been building up throughout the early decades of the twentieth century, initially through the efforts of the Indian National Congress, but also later, when matters were complicated by an increasingly vocal Muslim League. When, in May 1940, Leo Amery was appointed by Winston Churchill as Secretary of State for India, an already difficult assignment had been made more challenging by the demands of war. This thesis evaluates the extent to which Amery’s ultimate failure to move India towards self-government was due to factors beyond his control, or derived from his personal shortcomings and errors of judgment. Although there has to be some analysis of politics in wartime India, the study is primarily of Amery’s attempts at managing an increasingly insurgent dependency, entirely from his metropolitan base. Much of the research is concentrated on his success, or otherwise, in influencing Churchill and diehard Conservatives, who wanted Britain to retain India at any cost, but also Labour colleagues in the coalition, who were much more closely aligned with Congress. Inevitably, Amery’s relationships with his two Viceroys, Lord Linlithgow and Viscount Wavell are central to this investigation. In different ways, his dealings with the dour, inflexible Linlithgow and the surprisingly radical, if irritable, Wavell varied between the cordial and the frosty, yet in both cases he regarded them with a considerable degree of intellectual snobbery. That said, the thesis demonstrates that he was unable to convince these colleagues in Delhi that the man on the spot did not always know best. For many years Amery had been irked by American opposition to his cherished principle of imperial preference, and their overall dislike of the perceived colonialism implicit in the British Empire. Once the USA had entered the war, transatlantic attempts to interfere in matters in India increased, further damaging Amery’s efforts to promote constitutional reform. It was all the more painful for him that his desire to counter these ideas was compromised by the need to appease American public opinion in the interests of the war effort. In making a balanced judgment on Amery at the India Office it is unwise to look only at his efforts to broker a constitutional settlement that ultimately foundered with the failure of the Simla conference in the summer of 1945. There is ample evidence of better outcomes in administrative and practical areas. From his early achievement in moderating the terms in which Congress could be prosecuted until his later successes in obtaining grain to alleviate famine he revealed a tenacity, and courage that could, on occasion, overcome the suspicion that he often generated amongst his peers.

The thesis presents an empirical view of episcopal power in England from 1066 to 1135. For simplicity’s sake, ‘power’ is defined as efficacy, or the ability to achieve one’s ends. No formal distinction is made here between ‘power’ and ‘authority’. The bulk of the thesis (Chapters 3-5) consists of three case studies: the first examines the political relationship between bishops, the papacy and the kings of England; the second looks at episcopal landholding; and the third considers disputes between bishoprics and abbeys. These case studies start by asking what bishops did: what their political goals were and the extent to which they achieved them. They then ask how bishops did what they did: what resources bishops deployed; why certain actions were possible; why certain strategies were or were not successful. By doing this it is possible to determine the nature of the power which bishops exercised. Three conclusions emerge: firstly, that episcopal power was highly dependent on royal power in this period; secondly, that the basis of episcopal power was often intangible (ideology or personality), rather than material (land or money); and thirdly, that episcopal power was inherently limited, in that bishops sometimes had very little freedom of action. Chapters 1 and 2 are not case studies. They are concerned with ideals of episcopal power. Chapter 1 shows that ideals of episcopal conduct and episcopal power (as expressed in contemporary hagiography) changed in eleventh-century England. It attempts to link these changes to historical developments in this period. Chapter 2 shows that these changing ideals were reflected in the narrative sources for the episcopate of Anglo-Norman England, but not in the reality of episcopal conduct, and that historians have often been misled by these narrative sources, reproducing a model of episcopal power which was little more than a monastic fantasy.

This study analyses the British and Turkish policies on the Cyprus issue from 1967 to 1980 and investigates whether there was any cooperation between the British and Turkish governments, as had previously occurred in the 1950s. The thesis shows that while Britain saw Turkey as an ally in its struggle to retain control of the island, and Anglo-Turkish relations were strong because their policies on Cyprus were very similar in the 1950s, this Anglo-Turkish cooperation diminished because of the divergence in their interests in the Cyprus problem within this timeframe. The thesis also demonstrates that there were different phases in Anglo-Turkish relations concerning the Cyprus problem between 1967 and 1980. In particular, relations between Britain and Turkey were extremely tense in 1974 because of the Turkish government’s decision to launch a military operation in Cyprus. The British and Turkish perspectives on the events in the Cyprus issue then diverged significantly. This situation also continued in the later period of the Cyprus problem which had a negative effect on the diplomatic relations between Britain and Turkey. The thesis also broadly analyses the Cyprus dispute between the years of 1967-1980. The policies of other important international actors, such as the United Nations and the United States, are also examined, because British and Turkish reactions to the policies of other actors upon the Cyprus issue also had an effect on Anglo-Turkish relations. In particular, the American position at the time of the major crises on the island, such as occurred in 1967 and 1974, had a significant impact on the British approach towards the Turkish policy on the Cyprus problem, and this is also examined in this study.