This thesis fills a significant gap in secondary literature on the role of Jewish refugee soldiers from Germany and Austria, who served in the British army during the Second World War, 1939-45. It goes further than any previous specialised works in this area by examining the social issues surrounding the refugee soldier's experiences in the army, such as their relationship with British soldiers and their personal attitudes towards the policies of the War Office. There are few surviving documentary sources specifically detailing the service of refugees. To compensate this there has been an emphasis on the gathering of oral testimonies. These interviews, conducted by the author, provided the opportunity to analyse crucial issues left unanswered within other documentary sources, principally the underlying theme of the refugees' religious and national identities. This study examines the development of the refugees' identities from their experiences under Nazi rule, to their service In the British army and eventual naturalisation as British citizens. The thesis is organized into eight chapters. Each analyses key moments and dilemmas experienced during the refugee servicemen's army service. This study demonstrates the dynamic interplay that existed between the refugees' own sense of self, and that which was held by the government in power. It also examines the perception of refugees held by British born soldiers and the general civilian population. These interactions were crucial in determining the lives of these men. The thesis concludes by illustrating that the refugees' Jewish and national identities altered considerably as a consequence of their wartime experiences, and that the British War Office largely remained needlessly suspicious of the refugee soldiers throughout much of the war.

In this interdisciplinary thesis I will be arguing that new configurations of state discrimination have outrun the vocabularies of liberal multiculturalism and secularism. These `majoritarianisms' are parasitic on the creeping foreclosure of secular spaces and identities from which emergent antiracist and antifascist struggles can be mounted. State multiculturalism in Britain and India has been instrumental in fertilising the sectarian soil in which the secular has decomposed. They have patronised cultural separateness only to make capital from the isolation of ethnic blocs from mainstream society by expressing exasperation at the reluctance of minorities to `integrate'. The faith and ethnic communities consolidated under the multiculturalist `management' of diversity have grown bereft of a political culture with which to interrogate the racist state. The privileging of cultural consciousness has been at the expense of political consciousness and an understanding of how discrimination cuts across cultural lines. The crisis of the secular is therefore simultaneously also a crisis of citizenship. The thesis opens with chapters that draw on sociological research and political commentary to assess the differing forms of majoritarianism and crises of citizenship in Britain and India respectively. In the third chapter I approach these issues through the prism of postcolonial theory using Gayatri Spivak's rehabilitation of responsibility as a collective right (2003) to arrive at a contemporary expression of political education. In the final two chapters I apply these principles to bring the multicultural and the secular into `productive crisis' in Indian and British contexts by circumventing the orthodox divisions that characterise intellectual approaches to anti-racism and antifascism. I argue that there is a role for a modified understanding of multiculturalism in the recovery of the secular. I conclude therefore that renewing secular culture is predicated on the Left's ability to reaffirm the reciprocity between political consciousness, citizenship and struggles for racial, ethnic and religious equality.

The purpose of the thesis is to reinterpret Lord Wellesley's forward policy in India, with particular reference to his dealings with the Marathas, and to consider its motivation and the reasons for its failure. Lord Wellesley was the product of his age and environment. He was a colonial with ambitions to play a major role in metropolitan affairs. At the time of his appointment as Governor General of India the most important aspect of metropolitan concerns was the war with France, so that a major element in his policy was the protection of India from French interference. His policy was formed before he reached India, and had as its motivation, not only fear of the French, but fear of aggression by the Indian rulers, with or without French support. This fear derived from a conviction that Indian rulers were totally untrustworthy; only treaties permitting British control of their affairs (subsidiary treaties) could be effective to preserve peace in India. A balance of power between the Indian states, which was thought to have existed five years earlier, had been destroyed. Lord Wellesley succeeded at Mysore and Hyderabad, but failed with the Marathas. His primary target had been the Pune state, which was emphasised in the autumn of 1800 by conditional orders given to Arthur Wellesley to occupy Pune in certain circumstances. These did not occur and he retired. Meanwhile a new treaty had been concluded with the Nizam which was intensely provocative to the Marathas. It involved the British in protecting the Nizam's territory from all comers, including the Marathas who had legitimate claims on the Nizam. Their pursuit of them was liable to lead to war at some point and the British obligation made Lord Wellesley's forward policy towards them irreversible. The Peshwa of Pune was driven from Pune by Holkar and concluded the Treaty of Bassein with the British. This further provocation of the Marathas led to war with Sindhia and the Raja of Berar. The war was short lived and peace treaties were concluded with the Maratha chiefs separately by Arthur Wellesley who had been granted plenipotentiary powers in Western India. His policy was one of conciliation, not as Lord Wellesley's conquest. As a result the British failed to dominate Sindhia. Holkar now arrived on the scene and after abortive diplomatic exchanges war was declared on him. Lake the Commander-in-Chief failed to conquer Holkar, and Arthur Wellesley took no direct part in the war. Sindhia was sympathetic to Holkar and elements of his army, and, later, Sindhia himself, joined him. Lake's failure and Arthur Wellesley's divergent policy led to Lord Wellesley's failure to dominate the Marathas and, therefore, his failure to bring peace to India by conquest.