This thesis constructs an ethnography for the nineteenth century ǀXam Bushmen of the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, known primarily through a nineteenth century manuscript collection of oral narrative (the Bleek-Lloyd archive), which has, over the past twenty-five years, increasingly become the focus of scholarly attention, mined for insights about the cultural world of southern Bushman societies. It draws on the Bleek-Lloyd archive to produce a detailed ethnographic case study, focusing on the ideological and ontological concepts that underpinned the differentiation of ǀXam society. Firstly, the thesis situates the archive and ǀXam society within their particular environmental and historical contexts, providing valuable supplementary information that informs readings of the narratives. By producing a fully searchable transcription of the entirety of the archive, paying close attention to emic terminology, and examining the recurrence of thematic associations of this phraseology throughout the narratives, the analysis explores the constitution of ǀXam ‘personhood’ and examines the extent to which the ‘hunter-gatherer’ category forms a useful heuristic for understanding ǀXam society, with a particular focus on models of the ‘animic ontology’. The ǀXam deployed a series of positively and negatively evaluated traits in the creation of dimensions of authority, obligation, and social responsibility, embedded in particular social identities; central to these constructions and to the differentiation of these identities were the techniques and resources of ǀXam subsistence practices, salient in the production of admirable (socially-responsible hunters), reprehensible (antagonistic ‘beasts of prey’), and more ambiguous (ǃgi:tǝn ritual specialists) identities. Recognising this internal differentiation, the thesis outlines ǀXam ‘subsistence strategies’ and suggests they should be defined broadly to include their contacts and interactions with non-ǀXam groups, with domesticated animals, and with the novel material culture of the colonial period; these interactions were a consequence of their ‘hunter-gatherer’ strategies rather than a negation of them. Such strategies generated experiences that reinforced and reconstituted ǀXam ideological frameworks, incorporating the dynamics of the nineteenth century ‘frontier’ scenario and provided avenues for social change that ultimately led to the collapse of independent hunter-gatherer lifeways, and to the adoption of strategies that incorporated ǀXam individuals within rural and urban ‘Coloured’ populations of the Northern Cape; placing the ǀXam in a comparative colonial context, the thesis stresses the wider relevance of this particular ethnography for understanding hunter-gatherer engagements with food-producing, state-level societies.

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La Nouvelle-Néerlande, devenue New York à partir de 1664, est une société coloniale nouvelle, qui se construit tout au long des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Ce travail vise à analyser l'importance des relations de genre (normes, relations sociales entre hommes et femmes) dans la construction de cette société coloniale, et à envisager la façon dont ces normes et ces relation se construisent d'une part un ordre colonial au cœur de la construction de cette société nouvelle, d'autre part informent le fonctionnement des échanges marchands, notamment avec les populations amérindiennes. / New Netherland, then New York (from 1664 on) was a colonial society that was shaped during the 17th and 18th centuries. This dissertation shows the importance of gender, its norms and the social relations it led to, in the shaping of the society. Gender helped constructing the social order of the new society and was at the heart of the trading relations with Native American populations.

Historians have long been drawn to the story of Barbados and the tales of sugar, slavery, empire, and wealth that defined the colonial history of this small West Indian island lying on the southeastern margins of the Caribbean Sea. First settled by the English in 1627, it quickly developed into ‘one of the richest Spotes of ground in the wordell’ after the introduction of sugar cane agriculture in the early 1640s and, by 1660, had become one of the most valuable and influential colonial possessions in the western hemisphere. Barbados was famous in its own time, especially after Richard Ligon, a three year resident on the island from 1647 to 1650, wrote his popular A True and Exact History of the Iland of Barbados in 1657. In this work, he vividly described a range of topics that included the island’s exotic flora and fauna, the methods used to convert cane into sugar, the trials many experienced in adjusting to life in the tropics, and the arrival of enslaved Africans for a public eager to receive such information on the distant domains of a growing empire. Contemporary scholars followed Ligon with other works in which Barbados figured prominently, such as John Oldmixon’s The British Empire in America (1708) and two important natural histories by Hans Sloane (1708) and Griffith Hughes (1750). It also served as the setting for many popular works, including a brief poem by the well-known English bard Richard Flecknoe and Richard Steele’s famous newspaper serial ‘Inkle and Yariko. Academic interest in the island’s past has also remained high since the eighteenth-century, with historians consistently drawn to Barbados’ integral role in the development of sugarcane agriculture based on enslaved African labour and the influence this had on England’s imperial mission. As B.W. Higman explains: the colonial history of the Caribbean is commonly characterized by the intimate relationship of sugar and slavery…and the defining moment of that relationship is located in the sugar revolution, beginning in Barbados in the middle of the seventeenth century. It is the sugar revolution above all which has come to represent the vital watershed, starkly separating the history of the islands from that of the mainland, not merely in terms of agricultural economy, but in almost every area of life, from demography, to social structure, wealth, settlement patterns, culture, and politics. Higman’s quotation highlights the important work on the island’s past that has already been completed by modern historians, especially in regard to sugar, slavery, and their combined effects upon the economic and political relationships that dominated the planters’ lives. Richard Dunn, for example, notes that ‘we have detailed political and institutional histories of the several Caribbean colonies in the seventeenth centuries and excellent studies of Stuart colonial policy in the West Indies.’ Books such as those written by Dunn, Vincent Harlow, Gary Puckrein, Larry Gragg, Noel Deerr, Richard Pares, Carl and Roberta Bridenbaugh, Richard Sheridan, Russell Menard, and Hilary Beckles have successfully highlighted the importance of Barbados’ place within the sugar-producing Caribbean and have helped to contribute to the further understanding of the relationship between the development of the plantation complex, the growing power of the West Indian planter, and the forced enslavement of a large African population. Combined, these authors adequately cover most of the important events in Barbadian history, ranging from the early settlement period and the emergence of sugar to the emancipation of the enslaved in 1834. Nevertheless, gaps in the historiography still exist, leaving several significant periods of the island’s history under-analyzed and misunderstood. One such lacuna exists for the twenty-year period between 1680 and 1700, a vital two decades that represented great tragedy, violence, and change throughout the English empire from an ugly combination of rebellion, revolution, and war. These events profoundly influenced and altered the lives of the 66,000 people living on Barbados. Yet, many historians gloss over this period in favor of either the island’s early settlement period or later emancipation era. They often avoid the 1680s and 1690s by hastily contending that the two decades were a period of relative decline defined by a combination of low prices, limited supply, infertile soil, war, and disease. Historians often attempt to justify these assertions by pointing to two contemporary documents that, when read in tandem, appear to paint a dismal picture of island conditions during this era. The first of these is the 1680 census, a compilation of demographic statistics collected by each parish vestry at the request of Governor Sir Jonathon Atkins in 1679. Under intense suspicion from the Lords of Trade and Plantations for not following the proper protocol concerning colonial laws and for refusing to send requested information back to England, Atkins demanded the name, location, acreage, and labor force of every landowner living on the island. He also collected specific accounts of the militia, island fortifications, and emigration, while receiving tallies of the Anglican baptisms, deaths, and marriages that occurred in each parish. Many historians use these demographic statistics to draw important conclusions about Barbados, including the continuing consolidation of the island’s limited acreage by the elite, the wealthy’s dominance of politics and the military, the lopsided burial to baptism rate, the high number of white emigrants, and the near-complete replacement of indentured servants by enslaved Africans.

The recent popularity of mass-market New Zealand historical fiction coincides with the increasing vocality of particular cultural discourses that resist the influence of revisionist histories on dominant understandings of national identity. This thesis examines how the depiction of colonial history in four such novels legitimates and sustains hegemonic understandings of New Zealand as culturally European. The novels analysed are The Denniston Rose (2003) by Jenny Pattrick, Tamar (2002) by Deborah Challinor, The Cost of Courage (2003) by Carol Thomas, and The Love Apple (2005) by Coral Atkinson. The cultural context in which these books have been produced is situated within a history of nationalist discourses and Raymond Williams’s theorisation of hegemonic cultural processes is employed to explain how contemporary national culture continues to rely on colonial principles that sustain settler cultural dominance. Close analysis of the temporal and geographical settings of the novels reveals how the portrayal of history in these novels evades colonial conquest and the Māori cultural presence. A comparison of the historical and contemporary cultural significance of the spatial settings employed in these novels – the wilderness, pastoral, and colonial urban spaces – highlights how these settings tacitly communicate that New Zealand is culturally European. Nevertheless, the problematic cultural legacies of colonialism still haunt these novels. The way in which the narratives resolve these issues reveals that hegemonic New Zealand identity is reliant on a dehistoricised view of settlement and therefore perpetually vulnerable to the intrusion of Māori memory.

Many scholars today are incorporating Indigenous perspectives into their work. Historians, however, are lagging behind through their heavy reliance on colonial archives to present the histories of Indigenous peoples. Most have ignored Indigenous peoples' own histories of colonialism. Using British Columbia as a case-study, this thesis argues for the inclusion and validation of a range of Indigenous historical expressions within the BC historical archive. Its larger goal is to encourage the deconstruction of professional historical practice and, at a broader level, encourage a more flexible definition of history. / Graduate

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / My starting point for this thesis was the absence of a foundation history of Australian wine growing conducted by an historian rather than researchers in other disciplines or the media. I have used existing work on wine history in New South Wales from 1788 to 1901 alongside a significant body of new research to create an historical argument suitable for incorporation into more broadly-themed narratives of Australian history and to inform studies of wine growing in other academic fields. My main argument is that although wine growing proved of little economic value in colonial primary production compared with nation-building commodities - such as pastoralism, wheat growing and gold - advocates of the cultivation of wine grapes believed wine growing embodied beneficial, even transformative, cultural value so they persisted in attempting to create a ‘civilizing’ industry producing a ‘civilized’ drink despite lacklustre consumption of their product and very modest profits. Several times, from 1788 to 1901, these advocates spoke out or wrote about wine and wine growing as capable of creating order in a wild or ‘savage’ landscape and within a settler society shaped culturally by shifting adaptations to both imported and ‘native’ influences in agriculture as well as alcohol production, consumption and distribution. While the methodological framework employed here falls mainly within cultural and economic history, sociological theories have contributed to findings on causation. The result is a comprehensive narrative of colonial wine growing in New South Wales enriched by links to key developments in Australian colonial history and with reference to wine growing in other British colonies or former territories.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / My starting point for this thesis was the absence of a foundation history of Australian wine growing conducted by an historian rather than researchers in other disciplines or the media. I have used existing work on wine history in New South Wales from 1788 to 1901 alongside a significant body of new research to create an historical argument suitable for incorporation into more broadly-themed narratives of Australian history and to inform studies of wine growing in other academic fields. My main argument is that although wine growing proved of little economic value in colonial primary production compared with nation-building commodities - such as pastoralism, wheat growing and gold - advocates of the cultivation of wine grapes believed wine growing embodied beneficial, even transformative, cultural value so they persisted in attempting to create a ‘civilizing’ industry producing a ‘civilized’ drink despite lacklustre consumption of their product and very modest profits. Several times, from 1788 to 1901, these advocates spoke out or wrote about wine and wine growing as capable of creating order in a wild or ‘savage’ landscape and within a settler society shaped culturally by shifting adaptations to both imported and ‘native’ influences in agriculture as well as alcohol production, consumption and distribution. While the methodological framework employed here falls mainly within cultural and economic history, sociological theories have contributed to findings on causation. The result is a comprehensive narrative of colonial wine growing in New South Wales enriched by links to key developments in Australian colonial history and with reference to wine growing in other British colonies or former territories.

La Nouvelle Orléans fut fondée en 1718 sur un sol qui est désormais connu pour être instable. En 1719, peu après sa construction initiale, la ville fut inondée. Le premier ouragan qui détruisit la ville date de 1722. D’autres tempêtes dévastatrices suivirent et imposèrent la reconstruction de cette ville naissante. Les colons français qui ont construit La Nouvelle Orléans n’avaient aucune expérience du climat de la Louisiane ni des tempêtes et inondations répétitives. Les dégâts liés aux catastrophes naturelles furent si fréquents que les premières décennies de l’histoire de la ville se résument au difficile travail de reconstruction. L’assistant de l’ingénieur de la ville, Adrien de Pauger, fut le premier à proposer un système de jetées qui aurait pu résoudre le problème de la formation des bancs de sable. Mais ses plans n’ont pas été mis en œuvre. Reconstruire une ville que les français venaient juste de fonder présenta un défi dès le début. Le déficit démographique engendra l’envoi de criminels et autres indésirables venant de France. Ces derniers finirent par jouer un rôle crucial dans la construction, puis la reconstruction de la ville. Ce projet examine les défis que les premiers Néo-Orléanais ont dû affronter, et leur adaptation nécessaire a un environnement inhospitalier. Malgré les nombreuses craintes que les habitants quittent leur ville afin de se réfugier dans des terres plus élevées, ou bien de retourner en France, ces derniers ont su montrer leur résilience et leur attachement a cette ville, de la même manière que cela s’est produit après l’ouragan Katrina en 2005. D’autres villes environnantes, comme La Balise, ont connu un sort différent. La Balise disparut après de nombreux ouragans alors que la capitale de la Louisiane de l’époque fût constamment reconstruite. Cette thèse traite des premières années de chaos et de destruction de La Nouvelle Orléans. Par ailleurs elle montre comment la ville a survécu aux nombreux ouragans, incendies et autres catastrophes, avant d’évoluer du statut d’une commune fragile à celui d’une ville robuste. / New Orleans, Louisiana, formerly La Nouvelle Orléans, was founded in 1718 on what is known today to be unstable land. Shortly after its initial construction, a flood in 1719 devastated the city. Several other strong storms quickly followed and forced reconstruction upon the nascent Crescent City. The French colonists who built La Nouvelle Orléans had no experience with either Louisiana’s climate or repetitive tropical storms and flooding. Damage from disasters occurred so frequently that the difficult work of reconstruction characterized the city’s first few decades. Assistant City Engineer Adrien de Pauger was the very first person to plan for a jetty system for the city. La Nouvelle Orléans could have benefited from solving its sandbars issues had this venture been conducted the way Pauger had envisaged. Rebuilding for a city that the French had just recently built presented a challenge from the start. The lack of population of the area generated the sending of criminals and other unwanted individuals from the mother country. These ended up taking an active part in the construction and reconstruction process. This research examines the early challenges confronting New Orleanians and their necessary adaptation to an inhospitable environment. Despite concerns that residents would leave their city to seek safer living conditions on higher land or move back to the home country as some did, early New Orleanians displayed a resilience similar to that found in the aftermath of Katrina. Other local settlements, such as La Balise, had a different fate and disappeared as a result of recurring hurricanes whereas the then capital of Louisiana always rebuilt after each disaster. The study will discuss the city’s early years of chaos and destruction, and how La Nouvelle Orléans struggled to overcome hurricanes, fires, and disease, before evolving from a fragile settlement to a stronger city.

Entre 1930 et 1945, l’Indochine connaît des bouleversements conduisant à un profond réaménagement de la politique coloniale française axée sur une projet identitaire novateur. Cependant, la Seconde Guerre mondiale et l’arrivée du régime de Vichy contribuent à modifier cette approche. Dirigée par l’amiral Decoux, l’Indochine vit à l’heure de la Révolution nationale métropolitaine. Fidèle exécutante du projet métropolitain de « régénérescence » nationale, l’Indochine sous Vichy se construit une identité fédérale sous autorité française et poursuit la construction d’une multitude d’identités nationales locales. Mais le contexte de la guerre donne à ce projet un but également utilitaire, à savoir conserver la fidélité des populations indochinoises face à l’irrédentisme siamois et les prétentions impérialistes japonaises. Embrigadant les populations, réprimant les opposants indochinois, mais aussi français, vantant un programme à la fois culturel, racial, scolaire, l’Indochine devient la fille fidèle du régime métropolitain. Cette comparaison peut également s’étendre par sa relation compliquée et conflictuelle avec un occupant japonais qui exerce sur la péninsule un contrôle et des pressions multiformes donnant lieu à une collaboration peu connue. Néanmoins, l’évolution du conflit, la promotion d’identités locales exclusives et les refus français de dépasser un cadre colonial aboutissent à l’émergence des premières fractures et à l’implosion de l’Indochine française. / Between 1930 and 1945, Indochina underwent upheavals leading to a profound reorganization of French colonial policy centred on an innovative project of identites. However, the Second World War and the arrival of the Vichy regime contributed to modifying this approach. Managed by admiral Decoux, Indochina was in step with the metropolitan national Revolution. Faithful performer of the metropolitan project of national " régénérescence ", Indochina under Vichy built itself a federal identity under French authority and pursued the construction of a multitude of local national identities. But the context of the war also gave this project a utilitarian purpose, namely preserving the loyalty of the Indochinese populations opposite the Siamese irredentism and to Japanese imperialist claims. Recruiting populations, repressing Indochinese opponents. It also saw the French, praise the elaborate a cultural, racial, and school program. Indochina thereby became the faithful daughter of the metropolitan Pétainist regime. This comparison can also be extended by its complicated and conflicting relation with a Japanese occupant who exercised control and multiform pressures on the peninsula, thus giving rise to a little known collaboration. Nevertheless, the evolution of the conflict, the promotion of exclusive local identities and the French refusals to exceed colonial limits resulted in the emergence of the first fractures that would lead to the implosion of French Indochina.