The story of Thomas Day’s attempt to educate a young girl according to the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with the aim of marrying her, has often been referred to as a footnote in Enlightenment history. However, the girl chosen by Day, Sabrina Sidney, has never been placed at the centre of any historical enquiry, nor has the experiment been explored in any depth. This study places Sabrina at its centre to investigate its impact on her and to examine the intellectual and societal debates that informed Thomas Day’s decision to educate a wife. This thesis argues that Sabrina Sidney was in a constant state of construction, which changed depending on a myriad of factors and that constructions of her were fluid and flexible. These constructions were both conscious and unconscious and crucially, they were created as much by Sabrina as by those around her. This research concludes that placing minor historical figures to the centre of historical enquiry fundamentally changes the histories of which they are a part and that it is possible to use a variety of sources to construct a rich and detailed biographical study that offers a new perspective on the English Enlightenment.

The five texts contained in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 114 (c. 1420-50) are seminal to understanding the centrality of asceticism in medieval English devotional literature. This thesis addresses the ways in which Douce 114 can be comprehended as a ‘whole book’ and as such outlines a transformation from extreme bodily mortification (in its first text) to the mortification of mind (in its last). It suggests that the manuscript was envisioned as a spiritual tool, its contents designed to be read in order, and that the central theme of asceticism is a hermeneutical device which guides the (Carthusian) reader’s spiritual development. The introduction provides a history of Christian asceticism while the first chapter contextualises attitudes to the phenomenon in late-medieval England. Chapters two and three examine the themes of Passion devotion and imitatio Christi in the Life of Elisabeth of Spalbeek, chapter four addresses the nature of embodiment and earthly purgatory in the Life of Christina Mirabilis, and chapter five examines the inherent problem of misguided bodily imitation of spiritual exemplars in reference to the Life of Marie of Oignies. In conclusion, chapter six argues that the Life of Catherine of Siena and Henry Suso’s Seven Points of True Love and Everlasting Wisdom, which emphasise the transcendence of bodliness, clarify the true inwardly ascetical nature of the preceding texts.

Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-71), Anglican theologian and philosopher, hastypically been remembered as a Kantian agnostic whose ideas led to those of Herbert Spencer. This thesis provides a critical challenge to this picture, and offers a thorough revisioning of Mansel's theology in context. First, concerning misrepresentation, I argue it was Spencer himself who, having had a youthful relationship with Mansel's sister Katherine, developed a prejudice against him, distorted the reception of his work, and promoted the caricature image of Mansel as an unwitting agnostic and "Kantist". With the help of Liberals such as Goldwin Smith and Leslie Stephen, Spencer's portrayal has stuck. I refute this picture and offer an alternative reading of Mansel. Second, concerning personalism, I show that Mansel was essentially a theistic personalist, indebted to the traditions of Bishop Browne, Bishop Butler, and Scottish common sense philosophy. Mansel represents a mid-Victorian example of "IThou" philosophical theology, grounded in the religious practice of Christian prayer. Mansel's theistic personalism had much in common with Newman's theology, and I explore the ways in which Newman's Grammar of Assent was written in response to Mansel's Bampton Lectures. Third, concerning politics, I argue that Spencer's distorted picture of Mansel as a Kantian agnostic served the political interests of partisan Liberals, and was aggressively spread by them because of Mansel's own Tory commitments. Located in context, Mansel, is here interpreted with reference to key personal relationships and personal networks, including his connection with leading Tories, such as Lord Carnarvon and Benjamin Disraeli. Crucially, I interpret his controversies with Frederick Denison Maurice and John Stuart Mill with reference to the political events of 1859 and 1865. These controversies were simultaneously religious and political, and receive a careful contextual reading.

The Olympic Movement has a constantly expanding mandate which has seen it venture into many fields other than simple staging of the Olympic Games. For example, it has extended its mandate into the equal representation of women in sport, but more importantly, this thesis examines its new mandate of building peace through sport, which is contained in the Olympic Charter’s 2nd Fundamental Principle of Olympism. It has also indirectly influenced the production of the UNGA Olympic Truce Resolutions, by calling on the UN to revive the ‘concept of ekecheiria’. However, the Olympic Truce Resolutions are frequently flouted, and more often than not, by the Host Nation itself, including the UK and the USA in recent years. This thesis examines a possible solution to this failing, which is the Olympic Truce Resolutions codification into a binding Treaty where states and the entire Movement are party to it. This thesis recognises that there is the inherent problem in this, in that the Olympic Movement is not comprised of states. Its core actors are the International Olympic Committee, National Olympic Committees, and International Sporting Federations (and to a lesser extent OCOGs). Hence this thesis submits the novel concept of Olympic Singularity, eight unusual features that amplify the EU doctrine of the specificity of sport on the Olympic playing field. These eight cumulative features unite to allow the Movement to be co-signatories to the Truce Treaty, alongside states. It also enables the Movement to govern the Truce Treaty and any sanctions thereof. Again, this is because of the features of Olympic Singularity, the most notable of which is that the Movement is unusual because of its universal singular webbed framework which necessitates its consideration as a single powerful organ capable of action on the international stage equivalent to states. Olympic Singularity justifies the Movement’s special treatment before law, in the form of an atypical international law subject, in that it unites independent actors into one organ, enabling them to have capacity on a par with those reserved to states and international governmental organisations. This would only take the form of governing and sanctioning a Truce Treaty. This thesis examines precedent for this in that the ancient Olympic Games were governed by a single state who dispensed real sanctions for the breach of ekecheiria. It also examines in a case study, South Africa which shows that the end of apartheid was assisted by the UN and the Movement uniting and using sport by way of a binding international Treaty, ICAAS 1985. Hence the capacity of the state system was required alongside the recognition of all involved that it was a Treaty.

The Persian Gulf represents a vital, yet unexplored region of the East India Company’s sphere of influence. By considering the Gulf as an important space of interaction between the Company and successive Persian regimes, a new relationship can be revealed. From the Company’s foundational action in assisting Shah Abbas I in the capture of Hormuz in 1622, to the creation of a fleet by Nader Shah in the 1730’s, the Company’s experience with Persia represents a different angle on wider trends in Company history. The Company’s factory at Bandar Abbas was a nexus for Indian Ocean trade, as well as the living quarters for a small community of Europeans, whose lives and livelihoods depended on the recognition of rights granted by successive Persian Shahs in the Farman; a legal document of great influence and longevity, originally granted by Abbas I, which lasted for more than a century.

My thesis seeks to address the continuity, change and the syncreticism of ideas regarding post-mortem existence in the wake of the Reformation. Prior to reform, the late Medieval world view of the afterlife was very straightforward. One either went to Heaven via Purgatory, or straight to Hell. In the exempla literature of the period, ghosts were seen to provide evidence of the purgatorial system. However, this doctrine was dismantled by reformers who rejected Purgatory wholesale. Reformers then put forth a multiplicity of eschatologies which included various strands of mortalism, none of which allowed for the possibility that the dead could return to the living. In theory therefore, the ghost should have disappeared from the mental landscape, yet it not only survived, but it thrived in Protestant culture. This raises three key questions which are absolutely central to this thesis. Firstly: by what mechanisms did commitment to ghosts continue in lay and elite discourses in early modern England, when religious authority denied the possibility of their existence? Secondly: what opportunities were there to incorporate ghosts into Anglican or wider Protestant belief? Finally: Why would many Protestant elites want to elide the doctrinal problem of their existence and assert that ghosts existed? The ghost must have served a purpose in a way that nothing else could. It is therefore the purpose of the thesis to examine the shifting role of the ghost in early modern Protestant England.

This thesis poses a simple but intriguing and powerful question. Can Pope Leo IX (1049-1054) continue to be described as a reforming or reform-minded pope? The approach taken rethinks Leo and rethinks reform and the analysis of each, taken together, leads to a fresh evaluation of what Leo did and how he went about it. This thesis focusses on his pontificate and is not a full life biographical portrait. The historiographical background of the last one hundred and thirty years is comprehensively analysed. This analysis shows that the descriptor of reform has been applied to Leo consistently over that period but that only one attempt has been made to define reform. This thesis puts forward a new definition of reform which is used to provide a framework for evaluation and for clarifying the answer to the thesis question. Leo’s extant papal letters and other sources provide the basis for a new and full analysis of what Leo actually did in his Synods. This analysis shows that Leo used his Synods for complex and multi-faceted purposes. These purposes were not so much to push a reform agenda but more to resolve disputes, to deal with simony and to deal with very many issues related to Church governance. Leo’s letters are also used to analyse afresh the reasons for his many journeys. The analysis shows that Leo’s journeys were undertaken for multiple reasons and were not specifically related to the long standing view that the journeys relate to Leo’s attempt to Europeanise the papacy. Finally the letters are utilised to ask questions of Leo’s overall policy approach to papal governance. This analysis puts forward new ideas about the team in the papal office and reveals a complex landscape of influences. Taken together these strands of analysis show a complex picture and highlight a new perception of Leo and that the long held premise of seeing Leo through the single prism of reform confuses and obscures the real nature of his policy approach and his pontificate. The conclusion of this thesis is that Leo can no longer be accurately described as a reforming pope but rather as an important one who was both a conservative and traditionalist. The implications of this for the grand narrative of the history of eleventh century Europe are considerable. The roles of the other principal actors need to be thought out afresh; the notion of reform itself needs to be reconsidered and the antecedents of the so-called Gregorian reform fall to be re-evaluated.

The research question that this thesis seeks to address is how contemporary liberal states, that are characterised by cultural diversity, should respond to cultural heritage. The argument of this thesis is that liberal states are fundamentally obliged to ensure that individuals have the greatest freedom possible to engage with their own cultural heritages. Cultural heritage and practices play a crucial role in the construction and maintenance of individual and group identity, and thus a response of non-intervention in cultural heritage provides the best means of respecting this significance. Although a government may not be sympathetic to certain ideas and ways of living, this does not give it a right to destroy or damage any cultural artifacts and objects, unless these objects or practices actively incite violence or harm to others, because doing so would necessarily violate the liberal proviso to abstain for interfering in conceptions of the good. Liberal states do not have an obligation to preserve a national heritage, nor do they have a duty to preserve a diversity of (minority) cultural heritages. However, contemporary nation-states – liberal and otherwise – will necessarily possess certain attributes of cultural heritage, such as a national flag, language, symbols etc., that are likely to reflect the experiences of a dominant, national group. While this acknowledgement entails a diversion from ideal liberal theory and poses problems for the cultural neutrality of the liberal state, I argue that it is in the liberal states’ interest to maintain some objects of cultural heritage as these have instrumental value in fostering an understanding of the shared political community and respect for liberal values. However, liberal governments are obliged to ensure that existing public heritage does not unduly discriminate against minority cultural groups; thus sustaining political neutrality. The liberal response that I have outlined thus attempts to sustain liberal values whilst remaining mindful of contextual issues such as power relations between and within groups, and the necessary constraints of contemporary statehood.

In my doctoral dissertation I explore the key role played by the eighteenth-century enlightened narrative of civilisation in the shaping of a Eurocentric/racist construction of the world. I do this by analysing how, in sources from the realms of moral philosophy and natural history, the intertwining discourses of luxury, sensibility, taste and climate that fuelled the narrative of civilisation created an understanding of human nature that made eighteenth-century scientific racism possible. The entire non-European world (the East, Africa and America) was presented as a space inhabited by unnatural bodies. Although Europe itself was not characterised as monolithic, (these writers saw a clear boundary between Northern and Southern Europe), the joint efforts of both moral philosophers and natural historians clearly distinguished Europe and the European body from the rest of the world. The Eurocentric/racist eighteenth-century construction of the world was so powerful in naturalising the European human and national prototype as a universal normative standard that it even found agents in other continents who were willing to argue that they too belonged to the European civilisation. Even those whom Europeans explicitly cast as inhabiting spaces unfit for the unfolding of civilisation, and thus as spaces where the European human prototype inevitably degenerated, might insist that they too conformed to the European human and national prototype. The idea of Europe as the centre of the world would not have triumphed had agents outside Europe not participated in its making. This was the case of the New Granadan Creoles, the founding fathers of the Colombian nation, who far from questioning the Eurocentric racist/lens of civilisation whereby European savants had dismissed the non-European world as inferior, instead reinforced it.

This thesis examines the historical geographies of piracy from around 1680 to 1730, a period in which the relations between pirates and the state changed dramatically. More specifically, the thesis aims to employ a distinctively geographical lens in the study of aspects of piratical and anti-piratical agency, focusing on four particular spatialities. Firstly, the thesis seeks to reanimate the pirate, to study their world through movement and mobilities, both real and imagined, to show how these mattered for the way pirates were rationalised by the state, and how their actual movements differed from those encoded in the notion of the ‘roving’ pirate. Secondly, this thesis shows how questions of space, power and politics played out aboard the pirate ship, attending specifically to certain spatial practices apparent among many pirates, whereby this thesis considers critically the extent to which politics was entangled with space in the life of the pirate afloat. Thirdly, it is suggested that the ‘mercantilist discourse’ that framed piracy as an existential threat to the development of the early-modern state and the accompanying changes to the institutional architecture and everyday practices of the state were underpinned by hitherto neglected geographies of power and representation. Finally, this thesis explores the dark and disturbing geographies of punishment visited upon the bodies of captured pirates. The prison, the gallows and the gibbet are shown to have been important sites in the move towards the social exclusion of the pirate, and it argued that this process of ‘othering’ was permeated with a distinctively geographical logic. These cuts each suggest new perspectives on the story of piracy and the ‘salt-water state’ in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century, foregrounding important patterns, practices and processes that gave distinctive shape to the lives, deaths and legacies of pirates.