In the aftermath of declaring independence, Americans were forced not only to create a new political order, but also to consider the role of religion in that new order. In the years leading up to the drafting of the federal constitution, Massachusetts and Virginia established very different church-state models. While Massachusetts attempted to reconcile its religious culture with revolutionary principles by maintaining the Congregational establishment at the same time as providing a certain level of religious liberty, Virginia was unable to maintain a similar settlement under the sustained attack of dissenters and rationalists, and formally separated church and state in 1786. The presentation of a new, stronger federal government presented new challenges and opportunities for those with an interest in church state affairs. A consolidated, rather than a confederated, national government threatened to undermine government at state level and the provisions contained in the respective state constitutions. Debates over religious provision, religious tests and religious liberty in the federal ratification contest illuminated broader concerns about the relationship between state and federal government in the new nation, and contemporary perceptions of the specific role each level of government should be required to fulfil. These questions were briefly revisited once again when the states were asked to approve a new Bill of Rights that protected the religious settlements of the American states and the religious liberty of the American people at federal level. This thesis explores the intersection of religion and politics: the complexities of the church-state debate, the vitality of religious expression in political discourse and the development of religious themes in American political thought, from the drafting of the first state constitutions to the ratification of the Bill of Rights with particular attention to the contrasting experience of Massachusetts and Virginia.

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This study of the political history of the Asociacibn General de Profesores de Chile, the first successful trade union organisation among primary school teachers in Chile, has two fundamental aims: (1) to provide an empirical study of the political bheaviour of a salaried lower middle class sector during a time of apparent social revolution, caused by a crisis in the economic relations between Chile and the world market, a "crisis in the mode of dependency"; and (2) to subject prevailing theories about the role of the middle sectors as a whole in Latin America to a critical empirical examination, by measuring their model of the period against the actual political behaviour of a sector of the salaried lower middle class. Where the second is concerned, I hope it demonstrates that the theories of Johnson, ECLA, Petras and Jose Nun are misconceived, at least in the case of Chile. All these writers envisage the "middle sectors" as playing a latent conservative role: most of them suggest that during this era, the "middle class" manipulated popular desires for reform to provide backing for its own demands for a share in political power, enhancing its own economic position as a result. The history of Chilean primary school teachers during this period shows no signs of latent conservatism (many of the union's activists were close to the I.W.W.) and suggests that far from manipulating the lower classes, this sector was turning to the organised working class as a source of political ideas and even of political leadership. The study also illustrates the instability and inconsistency of this sector's political behaviour during a period of revolution, particularly the disjunction between its support and enthusiasm for each of the self-styled "revolutionary" coups of the era and the manifest reformism and pacifism of its own declared ideology.

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This thesis attempts to describe the historical development and contemporary status of the rural lower class inhabiting the Cauca valley in Western Colombia, South America. Put at its briefest, this history is one that encompasses a trajectory beginning with slavery, passing through a century of social existence as free peasants, and gradually terminating in the twentieth century with the proletarianization of those peasants as they become landless manual labourers on sugar plantations and large commercial farms. The research involved in this work includes both archival investigation of historical sources, and anthropological field-work. Some fourteen months were spent living in a small area at the southernmost extremity of the valley where "participant observation" was carried out. The thesis is broadly descriptive in aim; no specific hypothesis has been advanced or refuted. While the historical section coi. siders events from a fairly wide point of view, the ethnography is far more detailed and tends to concentrate on peasant economics and social organization . The final chapter is concerned with beliefs and the changing ideology of production, and stands as a summary for most of the preceding chapters. The theme that runs throughout most of the work is the process whereby landed peasants become rural wage labourers, since this is not only the major component in the valley's history but is also the single most important factor influencing peasant life today. Consequently the ethnography focusses on some of the main effects this process has on the remaining peasantry, and their reactions and attitudes towards their being cast into a totally distinct mode of production and way of life.

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