It is the contention of this thesis that the activities of, and the influences on, the senior administrators based in the Castle and the Custom House in Dublin during the Great Irish Famine are an essential element to understanding the formulation and execution of Irish Famine relief policy. The principal aim of the study is to articulate the role played by these administrators in the formulation of relief policy. Emphasis is also given to the debates in the Cabinet over Irish relief policy and the influence of the administrators on those debates. The subject of the first chapter is the Science Commission. It examines in turn Peel's motivations for establishing the Science Commission, the chronology of events leading up to its establishment and the activities of the Commissioners both in England and Ireland. The second chapter concerns the Scarcity Commission established by Peel and Graham. It explores the motivations behind the selection of individual Commissioners and the relationships between the Commissioners. It also considers and contrasts the tasks that were officially assigned to the Commissioners and the limited use to which their conclusions were put by the Government. Chapters three and four deal with the Board of Works and in particular its influence on the formulation and administration of relief policy of Richard Griffith, Thomas Larcom, and Harry Jones. The activities of the Commissioners after the reconfiguration of the Board of Works by Act of Parliament in 1846 are examined and the fourth chapter seeks to establish in detail the political context surrounding-the decision to abandon relief by public employment as revealed in the Cabinet discussions at the time. The final chapter examines the actions of Edward Twisleton in Ireland during the Famine and his influence, or lack of it, on the formulation of relief policy. A detailed account is offered of the political context of the Poor Law Extension Act. Twisleton's relationships with both the Treasury and Clarendon, and the motives underlying his resignation in March 1849, are investigated.

No description available.

This thesis looks at how news shaped people's relationship to the world in Algeria under French rule. This territory operated under an uncertain legal status that made it both a part of France and a colony, and within it lived a society divided between European settlers and Muslim natives. Accounts of recent events helped Algerians determine what was domestic and what was foreign in a place where those two notions were highly contested. Colonialism did not close Algeria off from the world or open it up, instead it created a particular geography. In a series of case-studies taken from across Algeria, this thesis investigates a wide range of types of news: manuscripts, rumours, wire dispatches, newspapers, illustrations, songs, newsreels, and radio broadcasts. It focuses on the period in which Algeria's legal status as part of France was most certain, from the end of the conquest and the consolidation of Republican rule in the 1880s to the outbreak of the Second World War. In this period, authorities thought the influence of outside events on Algeria was a bigger threat than disturbances within. Because of this, state surveillance produced reports to monitor foreign news, and these form the backbone of this study. But state attempts to manage the flow of news had unintended effects. Instead of establishing effective censorship, authorities ended up spreading news and making it more politically sensitive. Settlers, supposedly the state's allies, proved highly disruptive to state attempts to control the flow of information. Through a social history of information in a settler colonial society, this research reconsiders the relationship between changes in media and people's sense of community. From the telegraph to the radio, new technologies worked to divide colonial society rather than tying it together, and the same medium could lead to divergent senses of community.

Humanities / Master / Master of Philosophy

This thesis, for the most part, is a discussion of the Indian press discussing the policies of the Government of India. I believe that, within the limits set by its sources, it is an attempt at a comprehensive understanding of the Indian press in the 1870's. We have so far only a very few general statements of the subject and as they cover a much longer period, they are necessarily sketchy. There are a few articles dealing with particular aspects of the subject, but they are necessarily incomplete. In dealing with this subject, I have derived great benefit from my study of what are called Part B Proceedings of the Government of India, now preserved at New Delhi. These records were not considered important enough to be sent to London, but they give details of circulation, editorship etc. of the Indian papers which are new and unexplored. Together with that I have studied the 'native newspaper reports' compiled by government translators, which give a total picture of the Indian press. This series of documentation has also not been used intensively by researchers so far. In addition to these two kinds of records, I have tried to understand the implementation and effects of official policy by examining the relevant volumes of proceedings, private papers, local reports, especially those kept now in Calcutta, and old sets of newspapers preserved in India and England. It has been my attempt to show that a study of the Indian press in the 1870's helps us in an important way to understand this missing decade of Indian history. There were no exciting events in this period, but there was an important process. The government by a flow of legislation touched Indian life at different levels over wider areas than before. The local, regional societies, spread over the subcontinent were stirred up. Although there were considerable variations in the reactions, there was a new awareness among Indians of the government, and in a certain sense a new feeling of common purpose. This was something broader and less articulate than nationalism; it was something more political and precise than the cultural discussion of the earlier decades of the century. I have tried to understand this diffuse phenomenon, by examining the public discussions round official policy which came to a definable focus in the decade. Thus the attempt to persist with the income tax provoked a unified outburst in India. The Indian and the Anglo-Indian press were at one and there was support for them from sections of the British press as well. It has been said that the Indian zamindar and the British planter were the people behind this agitation but the documentation shows that ordinary people were affected just as much and resented this new imposition. A second theme for discussion was the expansion of municipal government. The Government of India was concerned not merely with better sanitation but also with new methods of raising local taxes. In certain areas like Bombay and Calcutta, the Indian public attempted to turn this to political advantage but from much of the country the reaction was once again of resentment against a new attempt on the purse of the ratepayer. A third theme which was concerned with revenue was the controversy regarding the import duties on cotton. These duties which were thought to be protecting the infant Indian textile industry and earning good revenue for the Government of India were removed at the instance of Manchester. Public reactions in India were sharp and the country rallied to the mill-owners of Bombay. These mill-owners however retained their unimpeded progress to prosperity, and were unaffected by the change. A fourth major controversy in this decade came over wftat was called the Baroda affair. The Gaekwar of Baroda, an altogether unworthy ruler, attempted to poison, or so it was alleged, the British Resident at his court. He was tried by a judicial commission, and deposed. This caused intense annoyance to the public which had little doubt that the G-aekwar was worthless, but would not have him removed because he was an Indian prince. A fifth topic for discussion was provided by the criminal procedure bill of 1873. Through this the government attempted to tighten up its administration of justice. Most men in India however saw in it a reinforcement of the police and the magistrate who were their natural antagonists. In this lively debate the Indian public reassessed as it were the whole system of justice and found it wanting. Lastly by passing the vernacular press act in 1878 the government attempted to control the Indian language papers. For the first time it acknowledged how seriously it was taking the criticisms in the Indian press. This in turn obliged the Indian papers to take stock of the situation, and see how far they had strayed from the earlier discussions of culture. The stage was thus set for the tensions of the nationalist decades.

This thesis does not attempt to trace British policy in Canada in the late eighteenth century, nor to discover the springs of that policy in other parts of the Empire or in Europe. It is only incidentally concerned with many of the statutes and ordinances pertaining directly to Canada, for their import was not always understood by the French-Canadians in the way that they were intended in London or even in Quebec; likewise, the military phases of the dispute between Great Britain and the American colonies, and even the invasion of Canada in 1775-76 have been most summarily treated. The vast volume of secondary material upon the late eighteenth century in Canada deals almost exclusively with these subjects, either justifying British policy, attacking it from the point of view of the modern French-Canadian, or attempting to reconcile these divergent views. Instead, this thesis attempts to disoover the effects of the transfer of authority from French to British hands, in so far as that transfer affected the population of Canada in 1760. It is thus primarily concerned with the reactions of one generation of French-Canadians to the substitution of British for French rule, and to the economic and social changes that they encountered as a result. The fact that these reactions were frequently negative or else rested upon an erroneous conception of the policy of the British government has often led to the conclusion that they were either negligible or non-existent. [...]

During the Protectorate period (1912-1956), the vast majority of Moroccan mines were privately owned. The investors were mainly French. This general picture is in agreement with the fact that Morocco was under the domination of France and consequently a privileged field for French investors. However two major events do not fit into the above description. The first occurred in 1921 : the creation of the Office Chérifien des Phosphates, a public company which had the monopoly of the exploration and the exploitation of Moroccan phosphate. The second occurred in 1928 : the creation of the Bureau de Recherches et de Participations Minières, a public body which acquired one third of the only Moroccan coal mine, and obtained afterwards shares of several mines and directed oil exploration in Morocco. In order to integrate these two events into the global development of the Moroccan mining industry it will be shown that these authoritarian measures on the part of the State were taken because it was necessary to find a way of bypassing the international constraints bearing on Morocco at the beginning of the Protectorate period. European countries did not object to French domination over Morocco as long as French investments would not be favoured against those of other countries. Therefore the open-door regime was established in Morocco. In the twenties, the French Government and the Protectorate administration were increasingly worried by the growing influence of foreign investors and by the very slow rate of development of the Moroccan mining industry. Therefore, as French interests could not be favoured directly, because of the open-door regime, the only solution was to reinforce the power of the State. From the thirties onwards, French investors were in a dominant position and no longer needed State intervention in order to protect them. Consequently, the role of the Bureau de Recherches et de Participations Minières was reduced to that of a public fund which only invested in those sectors which were not considered as profitable by private investors.

In 1919 the number of British officials employed by the Egyptian Government reached a peak of over 1,600, a substantial figure in relation to a colonial administration like the Indian Civil Service. However, due to the anomalous nature of Britain's occupation of Egypt, the workings of British administration there were left deliberately ambiguous. Thus although we have an extensive knowledge of imperial policy with regard to Egypt, we have little understanding of how British rule there actually functioned, certainly nothing to compare with numerous local studies of the Raj or Colonial Service at work. By studying the British administrators of the Egyptian Government, this thesis casts new light on Britain's middle years in Egypt, which saw formal imperial control succeeded by informal hegemony. We begin by analysing the Anglo-Egyptian administrative structure as a product of its historical development. We examine how well this muted style of administrative control suited conditions in Egypt and Britain's requirements there, considering the fact that by 1919 the British officials had become a major source of nationalist grievance. This loss of reputation caused the Milner Mission to select the British administration as a principal scapegoat in its proposed concessions. Moreover, it was the belief of certain leading officials that Britain's responsibility for Egyptian administration was no longer viable which finally helped precipitate the 1922 declaration of independence. The Egyptian Government now took actual rather than nominal control of its foreign bureaucrats, yet even in 1936, over 500 British officials were still employed in finance, security, and in technical and educational capacities. The changing role of these officials within an evolving mechanism of British control illuminates one of the earliest experiences of transfer of power this century.

Ahmednagar District, in Bombay Presidency, was affected - along with much of South India - by a major drought in 1876-78, leading to famine relief by the Government of Bombay and considerable emigration and mortality. Recent literature, however, has suggested that famine is a complex, human and long-drawn-out process, rather than a sudden, natural phenomenon. This thesis seeks to identify that process among poor peasants in Ahmednagar between 1870 and 1884. It does so by examining their factors of production - land, capital and, to a lesser extent, labour - as well as markets in credit and the cheap foodgrains they produced, in order to locate both their chronic food insecurity and forces increasing their vulnerability over time. In this context, emphasis is given to the relationship of the British colonial state to the peasantry. The agrarian policies and agendas of the Government of Bombay are explored with regard to peasant vulnerability. It is argued that it failed to invest in production and infrastructure, while forcing peasants into competitive markets in which they were ill-equipped to compete. Despite a laissez-faire philosophy, it intervened to first promote, then penalise, usurious moneylenders, reducing the availability of credit. It also taxed peasants directly through the inflexible ryotwari land revenue system. In the crisis, peasants were not treated as famine victims and discouraged from accepting relief. The state can therefore be said to have contributed to the process of famine. It is argued that the propriety of colonial famine policies - and especially of other policies in the agricultural sector that undermined peasant food security - was widely discussed at different levels within the British state, from assistant collectors in Ahmednagar to secretaries of state in London. Attention is given to the way these debates were conducted and the process of policy-making analysed, concluding that the colonial hierarchy made it difficult for officers to be responsive to local problems.

This work demonstrates the connections that exist in rhetoric and planning between the Irish plantation projects in the Ards, Munster , Ulster and the Jamestown colony in Virginia . The planners of these projects focused on the creation of internal stability rather than the mission to 'civilize' the natives. The continuity between these projects is examined on several points: the rhetoric the English used to describe the native peoples and the lands to be colonized, who initiated each project, funding and financial terms, the manner of establishing title, the manner of granting the lands to settlers, and the status the natives were expected to hold in the plantation. Comparison of these points highlights the early English colonial idea and the variance between rhetoric and planning.