<p>Currently, one of the most dramatic threats to human security is constituted by internal armed conflicts. In 1998, violent conflicts took place in at least 25 countries. Of these armed conflicts, 23 were internal, engaging one or more non-State armed groups. A crucial feature of internal conflicts is the widespread violation of humanitarian law and human rights by armed groups, from rebel groups to private militias. This thesis aimed at identifying various ways of promoting a better implementation of the Geneva Conventions and its Protocols by NSAGs in the Great Lakes Region.</p>

This examination criticises some of the main textual efforts within the self-identified politiography of Algeria that have attempted to help make the last twenty years of violent conflict in Algeria intelligible to Western audiences. It attends to the way in which particular representations of Algerian violence were problematised within, and cross-problematised with, prevailing international security discourses and practices, especially the concurrently emergent litterature on civil wars and armed humanitarian intervention. Unsatisfied with general international response to the conflict in Algeria in the 1990s, particularly the major massacres of 1997 and 1998, this study questions how certain problematisations were used to understand the violence and how those renderings contributed to the troubled relationship between the representation of mass violence in Algeria and international efforts to intervene against it. As a study in politiography, the primary object of analysis here is not the entire discursive field of Algerian violence but rather select yet influential scholarly texts within the genre of late Algerian violence. While these works helped co-constitute the broader discursive formations of Algerian violence that enabled its own representation as such, this examination does not necessarily address them vis-à-vis unique, superior or competing representations drawn from the traditionally privileged sites of initial discursive production of international security. The primary method of critique here is deconstructive in so far as it simply uses the texts — their arguments, their evidence and their archival logic — against themselves. Borrowing insights from currents in recent neopragmatist thought, this study seeks to reverse engineer some of the more dominant international problematisations of Algerian violence, so as to unearth the deeper politics of naming built into specific representations of Algeria and more generic frameworks of international security. After first exploring the conflict’s contested political and economic etiology (chapter three), as well as its disputed classification as a civil war (chapter four), this study closely examines the interpretations of the most intense civilian massacres, those that occurred between August 1997 and January 1998 (chapters five and six). How these representations resulted in the threat of (armed) humanitarian intervention are of particular concern (chapter seven), as are the ways in which foreign actors have attempted to historically contextualise Algeria’s alleged tradition and culture of violence (chapter eight). The aim is not to produce — though it cannot but help contribute to — a new history or account of the politics of the Algerian conflict and its internationalisation. The intent is first to underscore the inherent yet potentially auspicious dangers within all problematisations of mass violence. Secondly, it is to advocate for ironic forms of politiography, given the politics always-already embedded within acts of naming, particularly when it comes to questions of mass violence. A politiography that is able to appreciate the contingency of representation and intervention, and so underscores the need for a more deliberately and deliberative ethical and democratic politics of representation in the face of atrocity.

This thesis analyzes the political career of Oran M. Roberts during the critical period from 1850 to 1873. Through a reassessment of Roberts's extensive personal papers in the context of modern historical scholarship, the author explains how Roberts's political philosophy reflected the biases and prejudices typical of his era, as well as his own material interests and ambitions. Topic areas covered include Roberts's position on the Compromise of 1850, his constitutional philosophy, his involvement in the secession movement in Texas (including his service as president of the state secession convention), his military career during the Civil War, his participation in Presidential Reconstruction, his views on Congressional Reconstruction, and his role in the process of "redemption" in Texas.

The study of Civil War prisons is relatively new within the broader study of the Civil War. What little study there is tends to focus on bigger prison camps. It has been established in the historiography that prisoners suffered across the divided nation, but it has not been ascertained how the decisions and policies of the government, as well as the role of the press in those decisions, effected the daily lives of Civil War prisoners. Belle Isle, a Confederate Prison, and Point Lookout, a Union prison, will be analyzed for key differences to provide a fuller picture of life inside a Civil War prison camp, as well as how the press and government affected that daily life. It was discovered that the role of the government and the press was heavily influential in the lives of Civil War prisoners, leading to much suffering.

The current conflict in Syria and Iraq has attracted a large number of foreign fighters (FFs) from Western countries. The main question of this thesis is why these countries do not have a similar pattern for their proportions of FFs. This thesis explores this question in nine Western countries with varying proportions of FFs: Finland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, England, Canada, Australia, and America. Through a case study of Islamic State’s online FF recruitment campaign, it will be shown that common religious identity is the main part of the group’s recruitment message. However, comparing the identified countries on factors related to Muslims’ identity and integration uncovers that common Muslim identity itself is not capable of answering the question; instead, it is Muslims’ integration into their surrounding societies that correlates with proportions of FFs from identified countries. / Graduate / 0615 / 0616 / 0750 / mhashemi@uvic.ca

‘Sons of the soil’ conflicts seldom intensify above a low level of intrastate violence. Although frequent, they tend to remain small in scale, which has contributed to a lack of scholarly understanding about why some Sons of the soil conflict yet intensify more than others. Taking the role of the state into account, this study aims to investigate the causes for intensification in these conflicts. With a neoclassical realist approach, domestic factors behind the causal process of conflict intensification are unearthed, thereby investigating further the action-formation of the government threat perception. It leads the study to test the following hypothesis: A Sons of the soil conflict is more likely to intensify if the government misperceives the threat the conflict constitutes. Through a comparative process tracing analysis of Sons of the soil conflict intensity in Mali and Niger, 2006-2012, findings suggest that certain domestic factors at the state level cause a significant variation in the outcome. Actual low threats of Sons of the soil conflict may in fact be intensified due to state misperceptions.

A critical analysis of the film Remember the Titans, released in 2000, shows a preoccupation with nation and national identity through race and football. Set in 1971, it follows the desegregation and integration of a high school football team in Virginia. The film articulates a revisionist racial reconciliation reading of the Civil War based on white suffering and subsequent redemption. At its core it is a story about the progress of race relations and racism, framed as interpersonal relationships and segregation, in the United States.

The main theme of this thesis is the precise role of the navy department in the struggle to maintain the Union. However, naval operations themselves are not within the scope of this thesis. To what degree did the navy department assist in the successful prosecution of the war? What problems were faced by Welles in the purchase, charter, and construction of naval vessels? What was the relationship between the department and Congress? What evidence of fraud and corruption existed?

Previous civil war analyses have approached conflict as a single category with limited exceptions, and this thesis project assesses whether differentiating conflicts by their type and intensity using a local-level geo-referenced analytical approach produces differing results for sub-groups of conflicts. The conflicts are divided into 1) governmental hostilities, where the aim of the armed non-state group is to capture the state, and 2) territorial hostilities, where the aim of the armed non-state group is to capture increased autonomy or secession for a territorial claim. The conflicts are also differentiated by intensity into 1) low-intensity conflicts, with fewer than 1000 battle-related deaths per year, and 2) civil wars, with 1000 or more battle-related deaths per year. The results demonstrate that conflicts with differing insurgent goals and intensities of battle are correlated with markedly different factors. There are three factors – local population density, change in local rainfall, and statewide GDP growth – that are significant to both governmental and territorial hostilities but have opposite signs for the two sets. Only one variable – Polity IV scores – showed a consistently significant correlation for governmental and territorial hostilities. There are no factors that are significant to both low-intensity conflict and higher-intensity civil war. These findings suggest that approaching all conflicts as a single class, particularly at the local level, may not reveal significant differences in factors correlated with conflict. Modeling of local conflict will require differentiation of conflicts into salient sub-groups. For policymakers and practitioners, this research suggests that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach for conflict prevention but that strategies need to be targeted to specific types of conflict.

This thesis describes the difficulties of the Confederacy in dealing with prisoners during the Civil War.