Focusing upon American veterans' depictions of the US intervention in Vietnam and its aftermath, this thesis argues that bodies and issues concerning embodiment form the epicentre of these representations. Chapter One uses narratives by Ron Kovic, John Ketwig, Philip Caputo and others to illustrate that military training is a transformative process wherein the recruit's body serves both as index of, and vehicle for, his metamorphosis into a soldier. As these authors suggest, training inculcates a utilitarian attitude towards embodiment: the soldier's body is, primarily, a disciplined body whose value- and masculinity- resides in 'its' power to inflict injury upon the 'enemy'. As Chapter Two demonstrates, however, such machine-bodies (and the conceptualisation of embodiment which engendered them) were 'out of place' in-country. Veterans like W.O. Ehrhart, Nathaniel Tripp, Robert Mason, and Tim O'Brien portray the Vietnam environment as inherently threatening to the US soldier's corporeal integrity. Viet Cong and NVA strategies also disempowered the American soldier, challenging his faith in the innate superiority of the machine-body. Confronting injury further undermined the soldier's sense of corporeal invulnerability. Chapter Three considers the wounding, and treatment, of American casualties of Vietnam, arguing that narratives by Caputo, Kovic, and (ex-Navy surgeon) John Parrish 'recover' aspects of injury excluded from officially-sanctioned discourse. Chapter Four extends this scrutiny of wounding, exploring its interpretation both in-country and 'back home', and highlighting Kovic's depiction of injury and its consequences in Born on the Fourth of July (1976). Chapter Five demonstrates that encounters with irreparable corporeal damage are imbued with a sense of crisis: such wounding simultaneously demands and resists representation. Texts by O'Brien, Kovic and others are considered as 'trauma narratives' here, and a connection is made between writing-as-retrieval, and the potential of narrativisation to promote psychical recuperation, both for veterans themselves and also, perhaps, for US society generally.

This thesis is a social history of Bombay city in the first quarter of the twentieth century. It explores material changes in urban life consequent upon the impact of modernity and the varied range of contestations of the colonial order which they provoke. The first chapter outlines the specific nature of colonial modernism and shows its impact on the city's spatial forms and on its social relations. Representing a highly selective, power-driven, and essentially technological manipulation of modernity, it ensures distorted and differential outcomes within urban society. These conditions are considerably aggravated by the sudden impact of the First World War, the subject of the second chapter. The War increases material scarcities, worsens conditions of urban life, widens disparities between rich and poor, and intensifies colonial repression. At the same time, the crisis of war brings to the city the full potential of the revolution in communications which carries a modem discourse of civic rights. In the city, Homiman and sections of the bilingual urban intelligentsia rapidly vernacularize this discourse and diffuse it into new social contexts. This is perceived by the local colonial state as seriously threatening and subversive. The third chapter shows how Gandhi's anti-modernist rejection of the city leads to his attempts to control, and in some aspects reverse, this gathering urban momentum for an expansion in citizenship rights. The final chapter considers the new visions of urban citizenship expressed in the agitation for an expansion of civil and democratic rights, and in labour protest movements. This critical modernism looks to the future, rather than to the past, and acts as a force to humanise the city, presenting an alternative and potentially more radical challenge to the colonial state than the Gandhian movement.

While the general idea is to demonstrate how non-Western culture has been represented by a Western one, the particular aim of the thesis is to offer an analysis of twentieth century images of Turkey in the West mainly through the texts of thrillers and travel accounts. Since Turkey has generally been treated as a Middle Eastern country in terms of geography, culture and religion in those texts I have randomly selected, the negative images of Turkey and the Turks have been examined from a non-European point of view taking into account Michel Foucault's analysis interpreted by Edward Said. In order to provide a better understanding of the texts studied in the thesis, there is a brief presentation of the history and development of travel writing and popular fiction as distinct literary genres in the Introduction. Moreover, as the thesis demonstrates that there are a great number of direct or indirect references to historical representations of the Turks identified with the Ottomans, a chronological account of early images is made in the first chapter. These images can be summed up under such general headings as 'Lustful' and 'Terrible' Turks or a combination of both. The analysis of contemporary images of Turkey has been undertaken separately in ensuing chapters. While the images of violence are discussed in the second chapter, the images of the exotic which appear in the third, and the fourth chapter deals with first impressions of Turkey and the Turks. The thesis, which concludes with a discussion of the evolving process of Turkish stereotypes from verbal to visual towards the end of the twentieth century, suggesting that there are also other discourses in the media, particularly in the cinema worth examining as they also construct and perpetuate the negative image discerned in the selection of the texts.

Distinguishing between different ways of thinking about antisemitism, this study concentrates on those theories that understand antisemitism as a uniquely modern phenomenon. Covering the period from the mid-19th century to the present day, it first examines the work of Marx and Nietzsche and then moves on to those theorists who wrote in the immediate aftermath of the holocaust and concludes with the postmodern writings of Bauman and Lyotard. It argues that these critical theories of antisemitism all relate the emergence of antisemitism to modern forms of political emancipation and questions the impact of the holocaust upon this body of thought. The study argues that the fluidity and open-endedness by which the early writers characterise modernity - most notably the ambivalence within modernity itself between the possibility of full emancipation and barbarity - comes to be replaced by an increasing pessimism that sees antisemitism as modernity's only possible outcome. It argues that this change is accompanied first by increasing the centrality of antisemitism to modernity, and also by defining more rigidly the concepts by which antisemitism is explained, most noticeably, the concept of "the Jews". This study argues that as a result of these interrelated developments, critical theories replicate many of the assumptions of the antisemitic worldview identified in the early works. By calling for a cautious and critical return to these earlier ways of explaining antisemitism, the study concludes by pointing to an approach that remains within the tradition of critical theory, but which re-establishes the critical distance between ways of accounting for antisemitism and the phenomenon itself - one in which the "Jewish question" is de-centred, the explanatory concepts reopened to question and the promise of emancipation reinvigorated.

This dissertation analyses the effect of the rise of Japan on the ‘British world’ during the early twentieth century, from the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) to the outbreak of the First World War. Victory over Russia in 1905 transformed Japan’s international position, elevating it to the rank of a Great Power, and allowing it to become an increasingly significant actor in East Asia and the Pacific. As its presence expanded, so did the scope for interaction with the British imperial system, bringing Japan into closer, and often frictious contact with Anglophone communities from the China coast to western Canada. This dissertation seeks to analyse that process, and assess its significance both for the changing nature of the Anglo-Japanese relationship, and the evolution of the British imperial system. By incorporating sources from Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the China coast within a single study, this dissertation integrates disparate historiographies that have taken either the imperial metropolis or the colonial nation as their object of study. It reaches three primary conclusions. First, it demonstrates that the imperial ‘periphery’ came to play an increasingly central role in how the British relationship with Japan was construed. Second, it showcases that a sense of external pressure from Japan, often interpreted in racial as much as geopolitical or commercial terms, became a prominent factor in how colonial elites came to redefine their position in a wider British world. Third, it shows that diverging racial views, in particular, came to constitute a structural problem in the management of the AngloJapanese relationship. The following study opens with an analysis of British assessments of the Russo-Japanese War, and proceeds to scrutinise several contexts in which Japan’s rise presented new forms of competition and rivalry: the British ‘informal empire’ in China; Japanese immigration to North America; and naval defence in the Pacific. Finally, it examines how these new controversies, in turn, forced the Anglo-Japanese alliance to evolve. As such, this dissertation aims to shed new light on both on the internal dynamics of the British imperial system, and its changing position in the world.

This thesis is a study of the international dimensions of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan from before its outbreak in October 1947 till the Tashkent Summit in January 1966. By focusing on Kashmir’s under-researched transnational dimensions, it represents a different approach to this intractable territorial conflict. Concentrating on the global context(s) in which the dispute unfolded, it argues that the dispute’s evolution was determined by international concerns that existed from before and went beyond the Indian subcontinent. Based on new and diverse official and personal papers across four countries, it foregrounds the Kashmir dispute in a twin setting of Decolonisation and the Cold War and investigates the international understanding around it within the imperatives of these two processes. In doing so, it traces Kashmir’s journey from being a residual irritant of the British Indian Empire, to becoming a Commonwealth embarrassment and its eventual metamorphosis into a security concern in the Cold War climate(s). A princely state of exceptional geo-strategic location, complex religious composition and unique significance in the context of Indian and Pakistani notions of nation and statehood, Kashmir also complicated their relations with Britain, the United States, Soviet Union, China, the Commonwealth countries and the Afro-Arab-Asian world. The thesis begins with British anxieties regarding independent India’s international identity that arose in 1945-47 and covers the international involvement in the first Kashmir conflict (1947-49). Next, it undertakes a survey of the initial American attitude to India (1945-47) and situates the early American approach to Kashmir (1947-49) in that light. The thesis then shows the transformation of Kashmir from being a Commonwealth concern to becoming an American affair (1949-53). Further, it traces the dispute’s transition from the prism of Western pact-politics to that of Subcontinental package proposal (1953-61). The thesis ends with comparing the last Anglo-American intervention in Kashmir (1962-63) with its Soviet counterpart (1965-66).

Having suffered a 'century of humiliation,' a ruinous war with Japan and a highly divisive civil war, China was looking for answers to the problems that had plagued it prior to the Revolution. Politicians, philosophers and film directors of the 1940s had played a key role in identifying exactly what the social problems facing China were. Following the Revolution in 1949 the newly victorious Communist Party of China would show the country what the solutions were. Whilst Mao's desire to reconstruct Chinese culture has been well documented, less attention has been given to the way in which propaganda was used in a highly integrated way to present this message to the people through a variety of different mediums. This thesis focuses on the use of specific 'Model Workers' to identify and examine the way in which poster propaganda and the cinema were used to further the Party's goals of national unity, cultural reform and the construction of a socialist state prior to the start of the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s.

The study of Graeco-Persian relations is not new to academia, however, as much of our information is found within Greek literary texts, we are largely at the mercy of Greek bias concerning these relations. This thesis will present a detailed re-examination of the relevant sources to gain further understanding of Graeco-Persian relations, with a view to looking beyond Greek literary bias. This thesis proposes that the influence of the Persian Empire upon the Greeks was greater than is initially implied by our sources and I argue that in the majority of the contacts between Greek and Persian, Persia took control. The notable exception to this is the highly debated Peace of Callias, which forced Persia to offer concessions to the Greeks, but it should be noted that we have no record of possible Greek concessions to Persia, and so we must treat this topic with caution. This thesis expands our knowledge of Graeco-Persian relations by taking a view of the entire period of these relations, from initial contacts until the accession of Alexander the Great, allowing us to view more general trends throughout this period, rather than viewing shorter phases within the whole period.

This thesis examines Japanese postwar foreign policy, specifically regional policy, based on two hypotheses that are closely related: (1) There has been a growing interest among Japanese policymakers in Japan taking greater initiative independent of US policy, not only economically but increasingly in the political and even the security area. (2) Japan has been quietly pursuing definite strategies for enhancing its national interests, and this style of Japanese foreign policy has been effective for achieving its goals, given domestic, regional and international constraints imposed on it. The thesis offers detailed analyses, within the framework of IR and 1PE, on what has changed in Japanese policy, what has caused the changes, what Japan has achieved throughout the postwar period and how and why Japan's policy exhibits such a style. These themes arc examined by looking at Japan's regional policy in the postwar period in the historical context, as well as by studying three case studies, namely: (1) the ideological differences between the Japanese approach and the Washington and Post-Washington Consensus on economic development and systemic transition. (2) Japanese policy towards the East Asian financial crisis in 1997 and 1998 and (3) Japanese policy towards East Asian regionalism. Extensive interviews with Japanese policymakers, such as MOF and MOFA officials, and Japanese intellectuals arc used for investigating these case studies. The thesis makes the following original contributions to knowledge. Firstly, it advances the discussions about the nature of Japanese foreign policy, which has been the subject of academic controversy over the last few' decades, by shedding light on two related questions, namely (1) whether Japanese foreign policy can be characterised as reactive or strategic, (2) whether Japan's US priority' in foreign policy has meant that its East Asia policy is decided according to US relations, or whether East Asia has occupied an important position in Japanese foreign policy. Secondly, the thesis also advances the discussions about the style of Japanese foreign policy. This is still an underdeveloped subject theoretically and empirically, but could potentially lead to more extensive arguments including the nature of leadership. Thirdly , detailed narrative analyses of Japan's policies towards important events in the 1990s, which have not yet been subject to sufficient scholarly debate, despite their great potential to offer insight into Japanese foreign policy, make a significant empirical contribution to the study of Japanese foreign policy. Furthermore, these empirical discussions, which arc concerned with significant regional development in East Asia, contribute to the study of regionalism as well, given Japan's great economic influence on the region.

The thesis offers a social history of opium in colonial Assam by tracing the evolution of representations, perceptions and ideological positions on opium from local, national and transnational perspectives which enables a new mode of reading the province’s specific encounter with colonialism and nationalism. It studies Assam’s history through the prism of opium, particularly the interplay between state and society during the period 1828–1947, and focusses on three groups—addicts, peddlers and reformers—whose interaction defined the terrain of the opium question in order to challenge the economic and nationalist bias in the historiography. It interprets opium as a cultural commodity and social practice and reorients the framework of opium in India from export trade to domestic consumption, using opium addiction in Assam and the global prohibition campaign as the vantage point to explore the interplay between colonial policy, local dissent, nationalism and transnational factors in order to understand the role that opium played in shaping social, cultural and political discourses. The thesis highlights that the opium discourse epitomised the juncture where local phenomenon, national processes and transnational developments overlapped and produced a complex narrative of the intersection of notions of indolence, improvement and industry with modernities, resistance and localisms. As a social biography of opium in colonial Assam, the thesis addresses deficiencies in our understanding of opium in India as well as the wider historiography of opium and enables modes of interpreting Assam’s unique encounter with colonialism and nationalism while also providing a framework to understand the influence of transnational factors in determining local facts. The thesis signals the centrality of transnational perspectives to drug history and is, therefore, both an attempt at recovery of local perspectives and regional specificities in the context of Assam as well as the insertion of locality into the global history of opium.