This thesis considers some of those who were killed in politically-motivated attacks, often referred to as ‘terrorism’, which took place during Italy’s anni di piombo. Six works written by victims’ children will be used as a lens through which to examine the collective memory and the victims’ place therein. In recent years, there has been a shift in the way that this period of Italian history - the anni di piombo – has been remembered. Where previously the perpetrators of the violence of those years dominated public discourse, in the last decade the principal narrative has become more victim-centred. The biographical works written by victims’ children have inevitably contributed to this change in the memory narrative. The techniques employed in their writing in order to change the existing public image of their fathers will be analysed in this thesis, along with certain themes that recur throughout the six works and broader victim-centred discussion of this period. Analysis begins with a thorough outline of the political and historical context of the anni di piombo, including case studies of two of the most famous victims of this period and a consideration of the written works of some of the former terrorists. Following this preliminary contextualisation, each of the six books and their authors will be studied in detail to provide a foundation for the analysis contained in the final three chapters. The themes examined in the second half of the thesis are second-generation writing, forgiveness and commemoration. Using these themes as a framework, a rigorous investigation of the place that the victims hold in collective memory; the role their children’s writing has played in shaping and maintaining their public image and the longer-term impact that these changes can be seen to have had within a broader societal and political perspective is undertaken. On the basis of this study, it is evident that the victims’ place in the collective memory of the anni di piombo has changed dramatically since that period of violence concluded. The victims’ children have been very significant in enacting this change and their writing has placed them in a position from which they can continue to exert influence and promote a victim-centred approach to history.

Warfare has long been associated with Scottish Highlanders and Islanders, especially in the period known in Gaelic tradition as ‘Linn nan Creach’ (the ‘Age of Forays’), which followed the forfeiture of the Lordship of the Isles in 1493. The sixteenth century in general is remembered as a particularly tumultuous time within the West Highlands and Isles, characterised by armed conflict on a seemingly unprecedented scale. Relatively little research has been conducted into the nature of warfare however, a gap filled by this thesis through its focus on a series of interconnected themes and in-depth case studies spanning the period c. 1544-1615. It challenges the idea that the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century was a time of endless bloodshed, and explores the rationale behind the distinctive mode of warfare practised in the West Highlands and Isles. The first part of the thesis traces the overall ‘Process of War’. Chapter 1 focuses on the mentality of the social elite in the West Highlands and Isles and demonstrates that warfare was not their raison d'être, but was tied inextricably to chiefs’ prime responsibility of protecting their lands and tenants. Chapter 2 assesses the causation of warfare and reveals that a recurrent catalyst for armed conflict was the assertion of rights to land and inheritance. There were other important causes however, including clan expectation, honour culture, punitive government policies, and the use of proxy warfare by prominent magnates. Chapter 3 takes a fresh approach to the military capacity of the region through analysis of armies and soldiers, and the final thematic chapter tackles the conduct of warfare in the West Highlands and Isles, with analysis of the tactics and strategy of militarised personnel. The second part of this thesis comprises five case studies: the Clanranald, 1544-77; the Colquhouns of Luss and the Lennox, 1592-1603; the MacLeods of Harris and MacDonalds of Sleat, 1594-1601; the Camerons, 1569-1614; and the ‘Islay Rising’, 1614-15. This thesis adopts a unique approach by contextualising the political background of warfare in order to instil a deeper understanding of why early modern Gaelic Scots resorted to bloodshed. Overall, this period was defined by a sharp rise in military activity, followed by an even sharper decline, a trajectory that will be evidenced vividly in the final case study on the ‘Islay Rising’. Although warfare was widespread, it was not unrestrained or continuous, and the traditional image of a region riven by perpetual bloodshed has been greatly exaggerated.

Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) is remembered as one of Russia's most influential and celebrated filmmakers. Over the course of his career he released seven feature films: Ivan’s Childhood (1962); Andrei Rublev (1966, USSR release 1971); Solaris (1972); Mirror (1975); Stalker (1979); Nostalghia (1983); and The Sacrifice (1986). Drawing on a history of post-war Soviet cinema, this thesis brings his films into contact with the concepts outlined in Gilles Deleuze’s two radical books on film: Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Deleuze's Cinema books provide a system of classifications – what he calls a taxonomy or geology – of cinematic images. While their primary focus is on Western-European and American cinema, this thesis re-conceives Deleuze’s approach to film outside of that narrow context. My approach is informed by the specific historical, cultural, and industrial contexts of Tarkovsky's films, establishing the first sustained encounter between Deleuze and post-war Soviet cinema. In doing so, I offer a fresh perspective on Deleuze’s cinema concepts by re-conceiving the division between his 'movement-image' and 'time-image' in the context of the post-war Thaw, the development of the Soviet space programme, Stagnation, and the escalation of nuclear threat following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

This thesis challenges the customary approach of studying the latent ethnic conflict in Latvia exclusively through the prism of post-Soviet studies, looking for the causes of societal disaccord in Latvia’s recent past as a Soviet Socialist Republic, when numerous traumas were induced on the eponymous nation, from the deportations of 1940 which robbed the nation of its intelligentsia, to Russification policies that threatened the very existence of the Latvian language and culture, and to mass labour immigration that radically changed the country’s demography and ethnic composition. While recognising that this approach has its own merits, this thesis focuses on another important factor contributing to the present ethnic discord, namely the historical development of the idea of the Latvian nation, especially vis-à-vis ethnic minorities, who have always been present in significant numbers on Latvian territory through the course of modern history. More often than not, the interwar period of Latvian independence and nation-building is discarded by political scientists as bearing purely symbolic meaning and having no real impact on the present. This thesis challenges this widespread assumption and argues that, on the contrary, both the genesis of the idea of the Latvian nation and its interwar experience of statehood are vital to understanding the present-day dynamics. My thesis encompasses the period of Latvian history from the mid-19th century, when Latvians’ national awakening began, to 1940, when the country lost its independence as a result of Soviet annexation. The aim of this thesis is three-fold: first, to challenge the widespread (and historically inaccurate) assumption prevalent in modern Latvia that the idea of the civic nation is something intrinsically alien and unsuitable, imposed on Latvia from above; secondly, to examine the long-forgotten original contributions made to the concept of civic nationalism, and to the whole universalist-particularist dilemma, by Latvian thinkers at the beginning of the 20th century, and to place them in the wider framework of European interwar history and nationalism studies; thirdly, to identify the key issues in majority-minority relations that contributed to the eventual deterioration of minority rights in Latvia prior to World War Two, and, to a certain extent, to the demise of parliamentarian democracy in 1934. These issues (divided into three principal clusters: citizenship, language, and education) are then compared to the remarkably similar challenges faced by Latvian society since 1991.

Identity and its different constructions - national, social and personal, for example - are increasingly recognised as fundamental to understanding current and historic cultures. The reflexive relationship of identity issues with sartorial expression is a key concept within dress, fashion and textile studies. This thesis contributes to that growing body of knowledge by developing an understanding of how specific eighteenth century Scotswomen and their families related to their garments, thus bringing together contemporary study methods and understandings of identity with historic manifestations. This study of identity is embedded within an object-study methodology, following investigative practice and cataloguing methods currently used within the international museums community. This assists the secondary purpose of the thesis, which is to highlight a breadth of largely unpublished main garment objects within Scottish public and private collections. The intimate study of these objects has revealed stories of how daily life interacted with personal taste and style, purchase methods, garment use and international markets for individuals connected to Scotland. This has contributed material understanding to wider academic research areas, most importantly the everyday lives of eighteenth century Scotswomen, issues of identity within Scotland, and how European fashion trends were adopted or adapted by individuals outside of the major fashion centres of London and Paris. Study of the garments has involved stylistic analysis of their textiles and of their construction, connecting them to other extant and depicted garments from British and international collections. Thus providing material evidence of international styles in the eighteenth century, and matching two items in a rare example of extant main garments evidencing duplication in the eighteenth century handmade clothing industry.

Medieval cartularies have been the focus of many studies in the past few decades. Rather than simply repositories for charter texts, cartularies are now regarded by those who study them as carefully curated collections of texts whose contents and arrangement reflect the immediate concerns and archival environment of the communities that created them. One feature of cartularies which has not received attention is the ‘growth’ of their manuscripts beyond the initial phase of creation. This growth refers not only to the addition of fresh gatherings but also to the piecemeal addition of texts into the available spaces, often in a haphazard order and by many scribes working across a number of decades. ‘Manuscript growth’ is not an uncommon feature of cartularies from the central middle ages, particularly from the thirteenth century onwards. As a phenomenon, however, it has not been recognised or studied, for the good reason that it is difficult to discuss haphazard manuscript growth in a systematic way. This thesis offers a new methodology which engages with multi-scribe contributions to ‘active’ cartularies. It takes a holistic approach which integrates the textual and ‘physical’ evidence of cartularies, and embraces all forms of scribal activity. By studying the growth of cartulary manuscripts, we can gain significant insights into the contemporary use and perception of these valuable objects. This thesis therefore takes a fresh look at the ‘genre’ of medieval cartularies through the eyes of the manuscript evidence itself, and what this can reveal about its medieval scribes and readers. Two manuscripts are taken as the basis of this study: the older cartulary of Glasgow Cathedral (AUL SCA MS JB 1/3) and the older cartulary of Lindores Abbey (in private ownership in Caprington Castle). Chapter 1 introduces the field of cartulary studies, with reference to new work in this area (particularly in relation to cartularies in France and England). Central questions in this field are introduced, such as the definition of a cartulary, their creation and function. It also discusses approaches to analysing complex codices and multi-scribe activity within other manuscript genres. In Chapter 2, a new methodology will be introduced for analysing manuscript growth. This involves rethinking our approach to some familiar elements of manuscripts: their codicology, binding history, the scribes, as well as the challenge of dating the various contributions to the cartularies. New concepts and terminology will be introduced (such as ‘relative dating’ and ‘series’) that have been developed in response to these two complex cartularies. By applying this new methodology, the creation and subsequent growth of each manuscript can be examined in detail in Chapter 3 (for Glasgow Cathedral’s cartulary) and Chapter 4 (for Lindores Abbey’s). It is shown that the contemporary experience of these two cartularies was as a collection of simultaneously ‘active’ units (either unbound or in temporary bindings), offering new scribes a choice of where to place their material. Chapter 5 draws together the analysis, and focuses on the initial creation of the cartularies, the nature of their growth by piecemeal additions, and the reasons for this growth. This reveals two communities that took an active approach to reading and extending their cartularies, treating these manuscripts as a shared space. The vexed question of ‘repeated’ texts within cartularies is reconsidered in this light. The analysis allows us to develop a deeper understanding of the cartularies’ function and the role of their scribes as primarily readers, whose interactions with the manuscript were responsive and dynamic. The institutional setting is also discussed. The thesis concludes by considering the implications of this study for our understanding of the function and typology of cartularies, their relationship to archives of single-sheet documents, and as sources for institutional identity, as well as the potential of the methodology to act as a starting point for studying scribal interactions and scribes as readers in other manuscript genres with multi-scribe growth.

The thesis, which is based on extensive archival materials, explores the origins of the on-going conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan by focusing on the emergence of the first Armenian Republic in 1918 and its territorial issues with Azerbaijan, in order to understand the factors which led to this conflict. It examines the background to the creation of the first Armenian Republic by researching the location of the ‘historical Armenian homeland’, the construction and reconstruction of the notion of the ‘Armenian homeland’, the aspects facilitating the way in which the ideology and strategy of the Armenian national movement developed, and the factors instrumental in the construction of the Armenian identity. The work provides a historical background to the Armenian claims to Garabagh and Nakhchyvan and analyses the ethnic, historical, economic, geographical and security arguments used by the first Armenian Republic to substantiate its vision of the territorial delimitation between Armenia and Azerbaijan with regard to these regions at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The thesis also considers the positions of the external powers involved in the South Caucasus vis-à-vis the Garabagh and Nakhchyvan issues and assesses the impact of their stance on the settlement of these conflicts.

European integration is a curious concept. There is stark disparity between some areas of policy that seemingly glide through the integration process, while others lag behind and despite decades of attempts, never reach the status of a fully-fledged area of European Union competence. Once such area is education. Through integration theories, political scientists have sought to explain how policies develop and are implemented at European level. This interdisciplinary study borrows the opposing theories of neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism with the aim of identifying the influence of the supranational and the strength of the state in the evolution of a European Union education policy. It seeks to pinpoint how education can be placed within the construction of Europe and the process of early European integration to determine the feasibility of these integration theories in explaining the journey of education policy in the European context. Historical methodology is adopted, based on archival research at the Historical Archives of the European Union, using documentary analysis to trace the history of activities and initiatives relating to education between 1945-1976. Collective biography methodology is adopted to give space to the role of states in driving the scope, direction and extent of integration based on domestic interests, while a case study implements methodological triangulation to stress-test the case of education. The study proposes that education is a complex case that does not slot neatly into a theory of integration. Education is multifaceted, a cultural – while at the same time – economic component: it is woven into the fabric of nation-states, it contributes to increasing global competitiveness, it diversifies across borders, and its development is attached to temporality and context. Despite suggestions that the state is diminishing in power, education serves as an example to demonstrate that the state is very much alive and at the centre of certain areas of policy development at European level.