This thesis considers the place of workers’ adult education in the world of the British labour movement, and what impact it may have had on worker-students as citizens. It concentrates on three voluntary working class adult education organisations – the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), The National Council of Labour Colleges (NCLC), and the Co-operative. The WEA delivered an impartial, non sectarian, non-political programme of education in the liberal arts and humanities with the support of universities and Local Education Authorities. The NCLC promoted a programme of Marxist education, and accepted support only from working class organisations, predominantly trade unions. The Co-operative wished to develop ‘Co operative character’ through education as a means to building a ‘Co-operative Commonwealth.’ This thesis explores the extent to which each organisation made an impact in Yorkshire between the wars. It does this in a variety of ways; by analysing the diversity of thought on socialism and democracy in the intellectual world of the labour movement during the inter-war era; presenting a historiographical context of workers’ adult education in Yorkshire from the nineteenth to the twentieth century; evaluating the Co operative’s success at establishing a Co-operative Commonwealth through education; exploring the relationship between the trades councils of Yorkshire and the three adult education organisations; researching the biographies of municipal public students known to have been worker-students; analysing the value of workers’ adult education from the perspective of the regional press; and studying the lived experience of workers’ adult education from the perspective of worker-students, tutors and administrators. The resounding theme that emerges by the end of the thesis is how working class adult education was connected consistently with democracy – that workers’ adult education, whatever form it took, supported a democratic model of active participatory citizenship based on idealism, as well as ethical and moral interpretations of social democracy.

This thesis is based on a wide range of primary and secondary sources and explores British policy towards the development of the Albanian national movement and the parallel demise of the Ottoman Empire. It pursues three major objectives. Firstly, it argues that during the period under discussion (1876-1914) Britain had only a limited involvement in the Albanian Question because of a lack of any major interest in Albania. This changed only during the various political crises and wars in the Balkans. In the context of such events, the British aimed to maintain the status quo in the region and secure their interests in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas, mainly by preserving Ottoman rule. There was a significant difference between Liberal, Gladstonian views towards the Balkans and Albania, and Conservative views, which were mainly created by Disraeli. British Liberalism had a long-standing influence on the way the Ottomans and the Albanians were viewed and showed partiality towards Christians in the region. The Albanians did not fit neatly into this Liberal framework, namely due to their multi-religiosity and a certain liberal partiality towards Christians. Secondly, this thesis argues that although Albanian nationalism was born in the early nineteenth century, it only grew significantly after 1878 as a result of the changes that were introduced by the San Stefano Treaty and the Congress of Berlin. Given the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, Albanian nationalist leaders believed that the Porte could not offer Albania sufficient protection against the territorial desires of neighbouring Balkan states like Greece, Montenegro and Serbia. Albanians therefore hoped to win British support and protection against the aggressive designs of their neighbours. The third major objective is to analyse the role of the Albanian insurrections in 1908, 1909, 1911 and 1912, and other important events in the lead-up to the fall of the Ottoman Empire. This thesis argues that Albania achieved independence due to a number of interlinking factors: as a result of Albanian nationalism, as a consequence of the Balkan Wars, as a result of the fall of the Ottoman Empire and lastly also as a consequence of British involvement, as shown during the conference of London in 1912 where an Albanian national state was finally created.

This thesis examines how ideas about citizenship emerged out of the mutually constitutive relationship between the ‘everyday’ state and society in the specific region of Maharashtra, western India. By concentrating upon Maharashtra between the 1930s and 1950s, it looks to provide new perspectives upon the construction of citizenship in India during this formative period, thereby complementing, building upon and re-contextualising recent scholarship that has been principally interested in deciphering the repercussions of independence and partition in the north of the subcontinent. This thesis suggests that the reasons why Maharashtrians supported the reorganisation of provincial administrative boundaries on linguistic lines were intrinsically linked to ideas and performances of citizenship that had emerged in the past few decades at the local level. Despite the state’s interactions with its citizens being theoretically based upon accountability, objectivity and egalitarianism, they often diverged from these hyperbolical principles in practice. Because local state actors, who were drawn from amongst regional societies themselves, came to be subjected to pressures from particular sub-sets, groups, factions and communities within this regional society, or shared the same exigencies and sentimental concerns as its ordinary members of the public, the circumstances in which citizenship was conceptualised, articulated and enacted within India differed from one location to the next. Perceptions of the state amongst ordinary Indians, and their sense of belonging to and relationship with it were thus formulated in the discrepant spaces between the state’s high-sounding morals and values, and its regionally specific customs and practices on the ground.

The aim of this research is to approach and analyse the manifestation and evolution of the idea of Rome as an expression of Roman patriotism and as an (urban) archetype of utopia in late Roman thought in a period extending from AD 357 to 417. Within this period of about a human lifetime, the concept of Rome and Romanitas was reshaped and used for various ideological causes. This research is unfolding through a selection of sources that represent the patterns and diversity of this ideological process. The theme of Rome as a personified and anthropomorphic figure and as an epitomized notion 'applied' on the urban landscape of the city would become part of the identity of the Romans of Rome highlighting a sense of cultural uniqueness in comparison to the inhabitants of other cities. Towards the end of the chronological limits set in this thesis various versions of Romanitas would emerge indicating new physical and spiritual potentials.

This thesis takes part in what some scholars have called a 'mini revolution.' Since Anders Winroth first announced in 1996 his startling discovery of what he calls the first recension of Gratian's Concordia discordantium canonum, commonly known as the Decretum, numerous articles have appeared examining some portion of the Decretum in light of Winroth's findings. But as productive as this 'mini revolution' has been, much work remains to be done. One such area ripe for investigation is Causae 16 to 20, where Gratian examines the extent to which the monastic order was subject to episcopal authority. Although a number of individual canons and Quaestiones have received competent scholarly attention, there exists no systematic study of Causae 16 to 20, whether of the first or second recension. My thesis then provides the first detailed examination of the composition and substance of the first recension of this portion of the Decretum. It consists of two chapters and a critical edition of the first recension of Causae 16 to 20, which is found in Appendix 1. Chapter one examines the process by which Gratian organized and constructed these Causae. It argues that Gratian composed the bulk of these Causae around the 3L, the Tripartita and Anselm's Collectio canonum. For C.16, the 3L served as the inspiration for all but one of the seven questions, while the Tripartita served as the starting point for Causae 17 and 20. The inspiration and making of C.18 came from the Tripartita and the 3L. While Anselm's Collectio canonum served as the starting point for C.19. Chapter two explores in detail the substance of Causae 16 to 20. It argues that as a whole these Causae reveal Gratian to be 'pro-monastic' in outlook, that is, his views on individual topics favour monks more often than not. It argues that this can be seen not only in the views which he held, but also in how he arrived at his conclusions. This chapter also argues that such an outlook did not mean that Gratian thought that monks and monasteries should always be free from episcopal control or that bishops had no positive role to play in the life of monks and monasteries.

In 1830, the US Congress passed the Indian Removal Act; within a decade, 65,000 of the South's original inhabitants had left the region. Two centuries later, historians still see removal as a pivot that transformed indigenous South into Cotton Kingdom. This dissertation tells a different story. Contrary to officials’ hopes, thousands of indigenous Southerners remained. This dissertation provides the first account of non-removal as a massive cross-regional phenomenon which affected not only indigenous Southerners, but also American officials, local residents, and continental dynamics of sovereignty, state development, and empire. Historians have tended to see an inescapable choice between assimilation and removal. This dissertation demonstrates that thousands of indigenous Southerners successfully carved out a third option, creating their own alternate routes to remain. By fleeing into impenetrable terrain or passing as white, many people avoided agents’ attempts to see and control them. Others cooperated with American officials, subverting state policies to remain hidden in plain sight. Because they sought to evade officials, many of these people simply do not appear in traditional archives, especially federal documents. This dissertation reinterprets these silences, reading them not as moments where nothing happened, but where indigenous Southerners took actions which statesmen could not see. In doing so, it reveals the world as officials saw it, but also the many blind spots that also marred their vision. This optic cautions against over-easy interpretations of the reach of the early nineteenth-century American state, demonstrating both its enormous capacities and its glaring weaknesses. Ultimately, this dissertation challenges understandings of removal a transition to American control over the South, and demonstrates that the line between nineteenth-century American expansion and sovereignty was not always an automatic one. Behind slaveholders' illusion of a binary racial universe lay an enduring indigenous world, often illegible to outsiders.

The aim of this work is to further research into the English army through the comparison of the previously under-utilised English military ordinances. These official army documents were issued to govern the host from the fourteenth century through to the sixteenth, a period notable for the development of a royal army that was centrally controlled and well organised. The ordinances are a manifestation of these processes which have not yet received the attention they are deserving of. This thesis will focus on the ordinances of four monarchs issued between 1385-1585 – Richard II, Henry V, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I – with consideration given to the intervening sets. This work will be based on a comparative analysis, examining each clause of the ordinances to consider its military repercussions and context to the campaign: asking why it exists and what role it performs. Crucially, this thesis will not consider the clauses in isolation, but will examine their chronological progression, fully considering what clauses have changed, been added or removed, and why. I find evidence for an ‘institutional memory’ of the clauses, showing how later sets were based on the experience of earlier ordinances. I discuss an overall trend towards increasing levels of centralising control and royal administration displayed throughout the sets. I argue that the ordinances reflect the patterns of service and aims of the soldiers and captains; a status quo that changes dramatically in the sixteenth century. This will fill a lacuna in the historiography of the English army, no work has yet compared the various ordinances across an extended timeframe, and furthermore, no-one has yet fully tried to understand the military consequences of the various clauses and their implications for how the English army functioned.

Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury was one of the most influential English ecclesiasts of the late twelfth century. He was also a prolific writer, whose writings are significant in their synthesis of Cistercian spirituality and monastic theology. His Liber de Sectis Hereticorum, composed in the 1170s whilst he was still a monk, is a unique example of an anti-heretical treatise produced in England before the rise of Wycliffe, and yet it has received far less attention than his other works. This thesis, for the first time, argues that heresy was an important issue to ecclesiasts in England at this time. Twelfth-century England was a keen observer of continental popular heresy. This perspective inspired debate about the theoretical prospect of heresy which was combined with an active concern for the faith across the country, and how heresy could be identified and confronted. Baldwin’s Liber was the most ambitious manifestation of this discourse which drew inspiration from a second key consideration. This was a recognition that the monasteries, and specifically the Cistercian order, had a special role to play in the Church’s struggle against heresy. The Cistercians’ involvement with heresy in the twelfth century came in the anti-heretical activities of some of its most famous members, and in the development of specifically Cistercian thinking on society, caritas, and humility, which inspired individuals both inside and outside the monasteries to expect the participation of monks in the Church’s affairs. This thesis demonstrates how Baldwin’s role as an anti-heretical polemicist provided a link between an ambitious new religious order and a country preparing for the unprecedented threat of heretical incursion.

My thesis approaches sixteenth-century European queenship through an analysis of the ceremonies and rituals accompanying the marriages of Polish and French queens consort: betrothal, wedding, coronation and childbirth. The thesis explores the importance of these events for queens as both a personal and public experience, and questions the existence of distinctly Western and Eastern styles of queenship. A comparative study of ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ ceremony in the sixteenth century has never been attempted before and sixteenth-century Polish queens usually do not appear in any collective works about queenship, even those which claim to have a pan-European focus. The thesis combats the stereotype of the cultural ‘otherness’ and political isolation of sixteenth-century Poland in relation to the ‘West’ through a comparison with France, considered a quintessentially ‘Western’ early modern state. Comparing the ceremonies of France, an absolute monarchy, and Poland, a ‘noble democracy’, exposes the complex impact of the system of government on royal ceremony. The comparison is especially viable since French and Polish queens consort were related to each other and married their husbands for political gain. The role of early modern queens was steeped in mystique and mythologised through ceremonies that transformed them into the virgin mothers of the coronation or the sexual objects of wedding poetry and pageant. But these queens were inherently political, spinning the thread that connected the realms of Europe. Armed with diplomatic protocol, titles, lands and objects, they brought alliances, their native culture and dynastic connections to European monarchs. The thesis suggests that the identities of these queens were often multiple and as they became daughters, wives, and often widows of European monarchs, they carried the imprint of their ancestors and relatives. The similarities between ceremonies were dictated by shared liturgy and the willingness of monarchs to follow European fashions and remain part of the shared royal culture. This by no means excluded local flavours from entering royal ceremony. Subtly distinctive customs, such as a traditional first meeting place, specific colour scheme, or preparation of a royal entry, were shaped by the practicalities of staging the royal ceremonies and addressed matters of legitimacy particular to every European realm.

This thesis explores the ways the British Civil Wars were remembered in England between the execution of Charles I in January 1649 and the return of the Purged Parliament in December 1659. While over the last decade the mental afterlife of Britain’s major domestic conflicts has become an area of significant scholarly interest, existing studies have focused almost exclusively on the period after 1660. This thesis redresses this imbalance and provides the first detailed study of the memorial culture of England’s republican interval. Uniquely, among studies of this kind, this thesis considers attempts to frame the public memory of the recent past, both by the governments and their opponents, alongside evidence of what diverse ordinary people actually were remembering. It broadens the field of study beyond the traditional focus on printed histories and memoirs, deploying a varied and innovative source base that includes court records, petitions, diaries, civic records, and material culture, as well as a wide range of printed texts. In so doing, it reveals the myriad ways that the events of 1642 to 1651 were remembered, the various purposes that these recollections served, and the diverse communities of memory that operated in 1650s England. These findings contribute to broader theoretical debates about the nature of early modern memory. By emphasising the sheer multiplicity of ways that the bloody recent past was perpetuated in the present, and the complexity of the relationship between public and personal scripts, this thesis presents a more complete and nuanced picture of the memory of catastrophic events in early modernity than has hitherto been articulated. Further, by situating the experience of 1650s England in relation to other post-civil war states, this thesis has been able to identify several similarities between the memorial culture of early modern England and those of post-civil war states in modernity.