Thesis advisor: Stephen J. Pope / Transitional justice responds to injustices and violations of human rights following a period of repressive rule or civil war. This dissertation argues that the needs of post-conflict societies are best served by local, participatory approaches to transitional justice. In the case of Guatemala, it was essential for the nation to embrace its common religious narrative as a resource for rebuilding the republic. The Guatemalan Catholic Church worked to build peace out of the ashes of state sponsored terror. It demonstrated the prophetic role of the Church by offering a collective voice condemning those in positions of authority for their neglect of the basic human rights of the majority of Guatemalans. The CEG also highlighted the reconciliatory function of the Church by promoting forgiveness and reconciliation within the public square. This experience calls for theological ethical reflection on how the Catholic Church could best serve the needs of civil society in the wake of nearly forty years of political violence. Responding to the need for critical theological reflection, this dissertation proposes a transformationalist understanding of the relation of love to justice for transitional justice. It draws its inspiration from a selective reading of Augustine and Augustinian scholarship. An Augustinian approach to transitional justice brings together the high moral ideas of love, justice, forgiveness, and peace while at the same time acknowledging the ever-present reality of sin and human weakness. It attempts to transform a post-conflict society into a moral community whose citizens are on a journey toward the destination of temporal peace. It realizes that we may never reach our destination of temporal peace, but we can glimpse it from afar. This dissertation offers the following ten Augustinian insights as a framework for a theological approach to transitional justice. 1) Charity is the motivating force for transitional justice and the pursuit of socio-political reconciliation; 2) Charity transforms our understanding of justice from noninterference and retribution to rehabilitating and reconciling; 3) Transitional justice ought to be contextual, paying attention to the unique concerns of a given post-conflict society; 4) Distinguishing, without bifurcating, the ends of the temporal and celestial commonwealths offers a positive, but not naïve, evaluation of the Church’s potential to be an instrument of social transformation; 5) Post-conflict societies need to foster conditions that allow for pluralism and social cohesion through civic friendship; 6) Post-conflict societies must develop social practices to train citizens in the civic virtues of love, justice, and friendship; 7) Transitional justice requires an ethical retrieval of the truth through the healing of memory; 8) Transitional justice upholds the moral obligation to admonish and correct sinful social behavior; 9) Transitional justice ought to foster the just and prudential protection of society through the use of coercive force on behalf of society’s most vulnerable citizens; and 10) Post-conflict societies need to cultivate and sustain an ethos of active hope that, far from inducing political passivity, promotes civic engagement. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: James Cronin / This paper examines the esoteric and essentially negativist character of international reaction to the Spanish Civil War. While the mass of the foreign public, (specifically in the United States, Britain, and Ireland), remained apathetic, several interest groups became deeply involved in the conflict. Analysis of the reasons why each group became interested, the methods they used to win supporters, and the effectiveness of those methods in shaping the historical legacy of the war constitutes the bulk of the paper. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of the Roman Catholic Church and the Communist Party in Britain and the United States. The inquiry concludes with an analysis of the historical trends which have erased the Spanish Civil War from the popular consciousness even while it remains vital to specific political constituencies. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2004. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Thesis advisor: Seth Jacobs / The most decisive campaign of the American Civil War was waged in neither Virginia, nor Pennsylvania, nor along the Mississippi River, but rather in Great Britain. Northern military advantages in the prosecution of the war effort could have been completely negated by a serious diplomatic setback in Great Britain. In order to win the Civil War, the North had to prevent Great Britain from entering the conflict. British intervention (which would have also included France), whether in the form of actually entering the war on the side of the South, official recognition of the Confederacy, foreign mediation, or a call for an armistice followed by peace negotiations, would have been a diplomatic disaster for the North and a fatal blow in its attempt to re-unify the nation. Military setbacks on the battlefield were not nearly as threatening as diplomatic setbacks abroad. The North had greater manpower, a stronger and more balanced economy, an industrial infrastructure, and a better equipped army; yet, in order for these advantages to translate into military victory at home, the North first needed to ensure that the domestic conflict did not spread to an international war. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2003. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Analisa-se na primeira parte desta tese a estrutura de composição do Historiarum Liber, obra de maturidade em que Tácito se propõe a relatar a história romana a partir do conturbado ano 69 d.C., o chamado ano dos quatro imperadores. Por meio de requintes na composição narrativa, em que se utiliza de toda uma gama de artifícios retóricos, o autor traça um vasto painel daquilo que considerou execrável nos romanos, bem como daquilo que procurou exaltar como boa forma de governo. Detém-se nos aspectos históricos do ano 69 e apoia-se nos aspectos literários para narrar a época pós-Nero, momento em que o poder se divide entre o senado e o exército. Dessa maneira, do que chegou a nós, o Historiarum liber propõe reflexão acerca das formas de governar, já apontando uma decadência daquilo que Tácito julgava como a força do Império. Na segunda parte, apresenta-se o texto estabelecido por Henri Goelzer para a editora Les Belles Lettres, com nossa tradução a latere, acrescida de notas de cunho gramatical, histórico e literário. / We analyze in the first part of this thesis the structure of composition of the Historiarum Liber, a work of maturity in which Tacitus intends to report the Roman history considering the agitated year of 69 d. C., the so called year of four emperors. Through strategies of refinement in the narrative composition, in which he uses a variety of rhetorical sources, the author pictures an ample frame of those things he considered abominable in Romans, as well as of those things which he tried to exalt as a good form of government. We dwell on the historical aspects of the year 69 and consider the literary aspects so as to narrate the post-Nero age, a moment in which the power is divided between the senate and the army. This way, taking into account what survived in history, the Historiarum liber proposes a meditation on the strategies of government, while pointing to the decadence of that which Tacitus judged as the strength of the empire. In the second part, we present the text established by Henri Goelzer for the French editor Les Belles Lettres, with our translation a latere, added by notes of grammatical, historical and literary nature.

Esta tese volta-se para o exame de como a guerra civil angolana (1975-2002), já implicada durante a guerra de libertação contra o colonialismo português, imprimiu os termos a partir dos quais a construção de um estado nacional unívoco pôde ser concebido. Em diálogo com trabalhos que abordam a questão das formações nacionais como agenciamento entre diferenças, colocam-se como foco de análise as diversas narrativas sobre o conflito. A oposição entre MPLA e UNITA em Angola produziu duas formas opostas de universalização e de agenciamento de diferenças, formas estas, no entanto, igualmente direcionadas à representação de uma identidade nacional coesa. Diferentes categorias de diferenciação como etnia, oposição campo-cidade, raça e reivindicações ideológicas foram mobilizadas por cada lado de formas distintas em diferentes momentos do conflito, tanto na forma de autorrepresentações quanto na forma de contraposições via acusações. Categorias de diferenciação foram sendo produzidas no transcurso do conflito à medida que as estratégias dos atores iam informando suas agendas políticas. Nesse processo, os oponentes moldaram suas irreconciliações um em relação ao outro. Essa rede de narrativas conflitantes é mapeada de modo a compreender, ao mesmo tempo, sua transformação no que diz respeito ao modo de configurar as diferenças e sua contribuição para a formação da imaginação nacional angolana. A análise atenta para as inflexões operadas nos regimes discursivos em torno das principais questões que compuseram os diferentes momentos do conflito. / This dissertation analyzes how the Angolan civil war (1975-2002), already implied during the liberation war against Portuguese colonialism, set the terms based on which the construction of a univocal nation state could be conceived. In dialogue with the literature that approaches the issue of national formation as the handling of differences, this work assesses the different narratives on the conflict. The opposition between the MPLA and UNITA in Angola produced two different, opposed forms of universalizing and handling differences, which were nonetheless equally directed towards the representation of a cohesive national identity. At different moments during the conflict, each side resorted to different categories of differentiation such as ethnicity, the rural-urban divide, race, and ideological claims, in the form of both self-representation and contraposition through accusation. Categories of differentiation were produced throughout the conflict as the actors strategies informed their political agendas. In this process, the rivals molded their irreconciliations in relation to one another. This network of conflicting narratives is mapped out in order to understand both its transformation regarding how differences were configured and its contribution to the formation of an Angolan national imagination. The analysis focuses on the turning points of the discursive regimes concerning the main issues that made up the different moments of the conflict.

Esta dissertação consiste na análise da evolução da política de segurança do governo colombiano entre 2008 e 2016 para lidar com as FARC, conjuntamente com a análise da evolução das preferências de atores políticos domésticos e internacionais que compuseram uma representação da sociedade colombiana e de suas relações internacionais em momentos-chave desta transição. As preferências destes atores foram agrupadas em tipos ideais: a favor da exclusividade do combate militar ou de negociações que, informalmente reunidas, formam coalizões multiníveis em prol de uma ou outra diretriz. O objetivo foi identificar qual sustentação política possibilitou uma ruptura na política de segurança colombiana antes exclusivamente voltada ao combate e que se direcionou para o início de negociações dado que, diferentemente das duas rupturas anteriores, esta não foi resultado de uma escolha direta da população nas eleições presidenciais. A hipótese sustentada na pesquisa é que mudanças contextuais ocorreram simultaneamente nos âmbitos doméstico e internacional e que ambas foram igualmente necessárias para o sucesso desta transição. Estas mudanças contextuais geraram também uma mudança de narrativa da promoção da imagem da Colômbia como um Estado frágil para a de um país em franco desenvolvimento. A contribuição a que esta pesquisa se propõe é romper a barreira de análise destes dois âmbitos tratados na literatura primordialmente de forma cindida, impondo um empecilho para a compreensão desta política que é simultaneamente doméstica e internacional, impedindo uma maior compreensão dos mecanismos causais da sua evolução. Esta análise simultânea permitiu identificar um descompasso entre o entusiasmo internacional com a negociação e um cenário doméstico polarizado com preferências conflitantes. Os elementos que a pesquisa encontra como determinantes para esta transição são que este conflito, que fora intensamente internacionalizado, ter passado por um processo de \"renacionalização\" e também de estagnação em um confronto de baixa intensidade, redistribuindo os custos e os pesos dos atores politicamente determinantes. Em relação aos atores políticos, a pesquisa identifica que foram necessários para a transição: o presidente colombiano e as FARC, o Congresso colombiano, EUA e Venezuela. O apoio direto da mídia, da opinião pública e da União Europeia não teriam sido necessários, mas são importantes para a consistência política e para o sucesso na implementação da negociação e do processo transicional. / This work is an analysis of how the Colombian security policy to deal with FARC evolved between 2008 and 2016 and an analysis of how evolved the preferences of domestic and international political actors that composed a representation of the Colombian society and its international relations around key moments of this transition. The preferences of those actors were grouped in two ideal types: in favor of the military combat versus those favoring negotiations. Informally united, those actors formed multilevel coalitions in favor of one of those preferences. The goal was to identify which was the political support that enabled a radical change in the Colombian security policy from the military combat to negotiation considering that, differently from the two preceding political changes, this was not the result of a direct popular choice through presidential elections. The hipotesis sustained in this research is that contextual changes happened both in the domestic and international spheres and that both were necessary to enable this policy transition. Those contextual evolutions also generated the change of the main Colombian political narrative, from the promotion of the Colombian image as a fragile State to the one of a country in full development. This work contributes to break the analytical barrier between the domestic and international spheres, treated mostly as separated parts in the academy, which constitutes a barrier to the comprehension of this policy that is simultaneously domestic and international, demanding a double level analysis to understand its causal mechanisms. This simultaneous analysis enabled the identification of a large imbalance among the constant international enthusiasm and many conflicting preferences at the polarized domestic sphere. The factors that the research finds as determinant to this transition were the fact that this conflict that was intensely internationalized passed by a process of \'renationalization\' and by a process of stagnation at a low intensety confrontation redistributing the operational and political costs and also the relative relevance of the intervening political actors. Regarding these political actors, the research identified that the Presidency, FARC, Colombian congress, USA and Venezuela were necessary to the policy transition. The direct support from the Colombian population, the media and the European Union were not necessary, but were important to the political consistency and will be crucial to the success of the transitional process.

This thesis consists of a close reading of the representation of the Spanish Civil War in selected novels of Juan Marse (1933-) and Claude Simon (1913-). It explores how this representation, ultimately, reveals the traces of their different intellectual contexts. The initial comparison questions whether Marse's representation of the Spanish revolution in Barcelona implies, like Simon's account, a negative representation of the concept of political engagement and a similar historical pessimism. It goes on to discuss how this negative view is shaped by the writers' respective historical contexts and aesthetics. Secondly, since, to varying degrees, the novels studied make the reader critically aware of processes of narrativisation and representation, and of issues of narrative reliability and authority, the thesis explores the extent to which their representations of the Civil War are 'anti-realist'. In order to do so, it initially locates the question of 'realism' or 'anti-realism' in the texts within a wider theoretical framework: that of the critique of realism within poststructuralist French theory after Barthes. The latter debate over referentiality in literary realism also underpins ongoing critical debates over the status of history as a text. This thesis, thirdly, considers whether both writers' representations of the Civil War and of historical processes suggest a particular attitude towards the writing of history, namely whether and to what extent Simon's and Marse's representations of the war problematize the relationship between their historical referent - the events of the war and/or its aftermath - and its narration and interpretation. In particular, it asks whether Marse's texts involve the kind of rejection of progressive historical 'meta-narratives' which is implicit and explicit in Simon's representation of the Civil War, but also whether Simon's texts do, in fact, not simply undermine this model of historical causality but posit an alternative, anti-progressive historical telos.

This thesis places the Democratic party at the centre of the Reconstruction narrative and investigates the transformation of the antebellum Democracy into its postbellum form. In doing so, it addresses the relative scarcity of scholarship on the postwar Democrats, and provides an original contribution to knowledge by (a) explaining how the party survived the Civil War and (b) providing a comprehensive analysis of an extended process of internal conflict over the Democracy's future. This research concludes that while the Civil War caused a crisis in partisanship that lasted until the mid-1870s, it was Democrats' underlying devotion to their party, and flexibility over party principle that allowed the Democracy to survive and reestablish itself as a strong national party. Rather than extensively investigating state-level or grassroots politics, this thesis focuses on the party's national leadership. It finds that public memories of the party's wartime course constituted the most significant barrier to rebuilding the Democratic national coalition. Following an overview of the fractures exposed by civil war, the extent of these splits is assessed through an investigation of sectional reconciliation during Presidential and Radical Reconstruction. The analysis then shifts to explore competing visions of the party's future during the late 1860s and early 1870s when public confidence in the Democracy hit its lowest point. While the early years of Reconstruction opened the party to the possibility of disintegration, by the mid-1870s Democrats had begun to adopt a stronger national party organisation. Through a coherent national strategy that turned national politics away from issues of race and loyalty and towards those of economic development and political reform, while simultaneously appealing to the party's history, national Democratic leaders restored public confidence in the Democracy, silenced advocates of the creation of a new national party, and propelled the party back to power in 1884.

This dissertation shows that during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) diverse Cubans organized to support the Spanish Second Republic, overcoming differences to coalesce around a movement they defined as antifascism. Hundreds of Cuban volunteers--more than from any other Latin American country--traveled to Spain to fight for the Republic in both the International Brigades and the regular Republican forces, to provide medical care, and to serve in other support roles; children, women, and men back home worked together to raise substantial monetary and material aid for Spanish children during the war; and longstanding groups on the island including black associations, Freemasons, anarchists, and the Communist Party leveraged organizational and publishing resources to raise awareness, garner support, fund, and otherwise assist the cause. The dissertation studies Cuban antifascist individuals, campaigns, organizations, and networks operating transnationally to help the Spanish Republic, contextualizing these efforts in Cuba's internal struggles of the 1930s. It argues that both transnational solidarity and domestic concerns defined Cuban antifascism. First, Cubans confronting crises of democracy at home and in Spain believed fascism threatened them directly. Citing examples in Ethiopia, China, Europe, and Latin America, Cuban antifascists--like many others--feared a worldwide menace posed by fascism's spread. Second, despite their recent anticolonial struggle against Spain, Cubans cared deeply about its fate for reasons of personal, familial, and cultural affinity. They interpreted the Republic as a "new" Spain representative of liberation and the Nationalists as seeking return to the "old" Spain of colonial oppression. Third, pro-Republican Cubans defined antifascism in Cuban terms. People of many different backgrounds and views united around a definition of antifascism closely related to their shared domestic political goals: freedom from strongman governance, independence from neocolonial control, and attainment of economic and social justice. Radical, moderate, and even largely nonpolitical individuals and groups in Cuba found in antifascism and support for the Spanish Republic a rallying cry with broad appeal that allowed them to strengthen solidarity at home and abroad. Cubans defined antifascism in both negative and positive terms, as a movement against fascism but also toward unity, democracy, sovereignty, and justice.

This dissertation brings together the history of law in postcolonial Nigeria with the history of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970), analyzing how wartime violence shaped crime and the ethics surrounding it. Using legal records from the Republic of Biafra’s courts, I examine how the secessionist state was governed, and how armed robbery and other criminal activities became means of survival there in the context of the fighting. These cases reveal how Biafrans and their government negotiated what kinds of survival tactics, many of them “criminal,” were permissible or ethical in the context of the war and the humanitarian crisis attending it. Biafra’s courts also became a space where individuals could assert themselves as moral actors in the face of political ataxia and enormous humanitarian strain. The war shaped Nigeria’s postcolonial experience profoundly. As in many conflicts, acts of violence and deception became ordinary – in some cases honorable – when surviving and winning the war trumped all other considerations. When the fighting ended in January 1970, the practices that Biafrans had used to endure the war did not end with it. In the years that followed, fraud and armed violence would become major features of life in reunified Nigeria. Biafra had declared independence in the name of preserving law and order, but the result of the war was to create conditions in which forms of illegality that would later become endemic – forgery, armed robbery, and the body of fraudulent activities known as “419” – could take root. For this reason, the Biafra War is an important episode in both the history of Nigeria after independence, and for the larger study of the dialectics of law and disorder in contemporary Africa.