This thesis will argue that high levels of internal migration in Gilded Age America undermined the stability and growth of trade unions and labour-based parties. Most of the traditional ‘American Exceptionalist’ arguments which asserted a lack of class consciousness will be challenged. Significant weight will be given to the racial, ethnic, and gender divisions within the American working class as a source of relative organizational weakness. As archival sources reveal, however, despite their divisions, workers of all ethnic and racial groups drawn into wage-labour in the Gilded Age often displayed high levels of class consciousness and political radicalism through their actions, organizations, and hundreds of weekly labour papers. They also showed an awareness of the problems of frequent migration or ‘tramping’ in building stable organizations. Driven by the tumultuous conditions of uneven industrialization, millions of people migrated from state-to-state, country-to-city, and city-to-city at rates far higher than in Europe. A detailed analysis of the statistics on migration, work-related travelling, and union membership trends shows that this created a high level of membership turnover in the major organizations of the day—the American Federation of Labour and the Knights of Labour. Confronted in the 1880s with the highest level of migration in the period, the Knights of Labour saw rapid growth turn into continuous decline. The more stable craft unions also saw significant membership loss to migration through an ineffective travelling card system. The organizational weakness that resulted undermined efforts by American workers to build independent labour-based parties in the 1880s and 1890s. ‘Pure-and-simple’ unionism would triumph by the end of the century despite the existence of a significant socialist minority in organized labour.

Widespread popular fascination with America, and an appreciation of American culture, was not introduced by Hollywood cinema during the early decades of the 20th century, but emerged during the late-Victorian period and was driven by the popular press. By the 1880s, newspaper audiences throughout the country were consuming fragments of American life and culture on an almost daily basis. Under the impulses of the so-called ‘new journalism’, representations of America appeared regularly within an eclectic range of journalistic genres, including serialised fiction, news reports, editorials, humour columns, tit-bits, and travelogues. Forms of American popular culture – such as newspaper gags – circulated throughout Britain and enjoyed a sustained presence in bestselling papers. These imported texts also acted as vessels for the importation of other elements of American culture such as the country’s distinctive slang and dialects. This thesis argues that the late-Victorian popular press acted as the first major ‘contact zone’ between America and the British public. Chapter One tracks the growing presence of America in the Victorian press. In particular, it highlights how the expansion of the popular press, the widespread adoption of ‘scissors-and-paste’ journalism, the development of transatlantic communications networks and technologies, and a growing curiosity about life in America combined to facilitate new forms of Anglo-American cultural exchange. Chapter Two explores how the press shaped British encounters with American modernity and created a pervasive sense of a coming ‘American future’. Chapter Three focuses on the importation, circulation, and reception of American newspaper humour. Finally, Chapter Four unpacks the role played by the press in the importation, circulation, and assimilation of American slang. It makes an original contribution to a number of academic disciplines and debates. Firstly, it challenges the established chronology of Anglo-American history; America gained a significant foothold in British popular culture long before the twentieth century. Moreover, this was not a result of a forcible American ‘invasion’ but a form of voluntary transatlantic exchange driven by the tastes and desires of British newspaper readers. Secondly, it argues that America’s presence in late-Victorian popular culture has been underestimated by historians who have focused instead on domestically produced culture, engagements with Western Europe, and the cultural dimensions of Empire. Whilst the full extent of America’s significance cannot be mapped out in one study, this thesis establishes the extent of America’s cultural presence and makes the case for its insertion into future Victorian Studies scholarship. Thirdly, this thesis contributes to the growing field of press history. It maps out connections between British and American newspapers, exploring how the press served to move information between the old world and the new. Finally, this project acts as an early example of born-digital scholarship; a study conceived in response to the development of digital archives. As such, it contributes to discussions on digital methodologies and debates within the field of Digital Humanities. In particular, it demonstrates that digitisation allows researchers to research and write do new kinds of history; to ask new questions, make new connections, and develop new projects – to do things that we couldn’t do before.

The thesis contends that there is a dominant strand of thinking driving the prevailing metanarrative of American global hegemony. This strand, constructed here as Ameritocracy, taps into three interconnected and fundamental principles concerning the nature of America: that American values are universal, terminal and providential. However, this notion of American universality is contradicted by a troubling parochialism, one that reveals religious, racial and cultural particularities generated from American identity, and from the mythic, providential origin story of America. The thesis expands on the theory of Ameritocracy, its historical derivation and theoretical antecedents, and its application within the soft power realm of Hollywood film. Ameritocracy finds its apotheosis in the popular blockbuster films of the unipolar era. The global aspirations of the blockbuster conflate with the universality of the medium, and thereby function as the perfect conduit for expounding the presumed universality of the American nation, promoting and proselytising on behalf of American primacy, using Ameritocratic arguments to legitimise and normalise U.S. hegemony. Analysis of blockbuster texts reveals that the notions of universality they embed are often partial and particular, featuring an obfuscation of definitions, between ideals and interests, between ends and means, and between the universal and the American.

In the early 1990s, English Heritage conducted a series of pilot studies in Cornwall through the Cornwall Archaeological Unit, examining historic industrial mining complexes as a means to conserve and manage a growing number of individual historic sites and monuments. During these studies, a discrete methodology for conducting Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) modelling has been developed. Models such as these have been presented in an assortment of scholarly publications and have been applied in portions of Europe and New Zealand. With few exceptions, the English Heritage HLC model has not been applied in the United States. Rather, the United States’ National Park Service has provided guidance on the identification, evaluation, and documentation of historic mining sites and landscapes. The present study incorporates social history, archival evidence, and the physical setting of the San Francisco Mining District (SFMD) and associated boom towns in Beaver County, southwest Utah, into a Geographic Information System (GIS) in an effort to apply HLC modelling. Minor comparisons are drawn between the SFMD and mining districts in the United States, United Kingdom, and New Zealand. Several advantages of the HLC methodology for the SFMD include the creation of population, building and archaeological databases that may be applied to the GIS for better management of the resources on a broader scale.

By the penultimate decade of the nineteenth century, the Dukes of Hamilton, premier peers of Scotland, had amassed a superb collection of fine and decorative art. This outstanding collection was dispersed in two series of sales in 1882 and 1919, and the family’s principal seat, Hamilton Palace, ten miles south of Glasgow, was demolished in the 1920s and ′30s. Many of the most significant items are now in the great museums, galleries and libraries of the world or in important private collections. This study will begin by identifying the causes of the 12th Duke of Hamilton’s financial difficulties and the chain of events leading to the dispersal of the collection, with a comparative analysis on the backgrounds of the earlier enforced sales of Fonthill Abbey (1822), Wanstead House (1822), Strawberry Hill (1842), and Stowe (1848). It will continue with a thorough investigation of selected principal beneficiaries, what they acquired and why. These will include Christopher Beckett Denison; various members of the Rothschild family; William Dodge James; the 5th Earl of Rosebery; Sir Michael Shaw-Stewart; and the 5th Earl of Carysfort. A survey of the records of certain national museums and galleries will establish the involvement of the museum sector in the dispersal of the collection, with a review of these institutions’ acquisitions. Finally, this study will consider the extent to which North American collectors benefited from the sales through the international art trade between 1880 and 1930, culminating in an account of the purchase of the Hamilton Palace interiors by the New York dealers, French & Co., and their subsequent acquisition by the newspaper magnate and collector William Randolph Hearst. This research will add a new perspective to the understanding of the break-up of this renowned collection, and of the loss to Scotland’s material culture and heritage. It will contribute to current scholarship on nineteenth-century house sales and increase current knowledge of the socio-economic causes and effects of such events. The question of who benefited from the Hamilton Palace sales will be a new and original area of research within History of Collecting studies, contributing to a fuller appreciation of British collecting between 1880 and 1930 and of the international art trade and market from 1880 to the present day.

This thesis will argue that from early in the Cold War Britain developed a propaganda apparatus designed to fight the Cold War on an ideological front, and that in the period from 1945 to 1951 the role of propaganda grew from being an adjunct to foreign policy to become an integral part of British Cold War strategy. Britain was the first country to formulate a coordinated response to communist propaganda. In January 1948, the Government launched a new propaganda policy designed to 'oppose the inroads of Communism, by taking the offensive against it. ' The development of this anti-communist propaganda policy will be the main focus of this thesis. It will also be shown that from the earliest stages in the development of Britain's response to communist propaganda, the degree to which such activities could be coordinated with United States Government was a primary consideration. It will be shown that cooperation and eventually coordination of propaganda activities with the United States Government became a defining feature of Britain's anticommunist propaganda policy. This was particularly the case following the launch of the American 'Campaign of Truth' in 1950. Faced with a formidable and highly organised communist propaganda machine officials in both Britain and America came to realise the value of a unified response. As both nations developed their own policies for offensive anti-communist propaganda, cooperation became an increasingly important element, as Britain and America sought to 'shoot at the same target from different angles. ' The thesis is comprised of an introduction and conclusion and four chapters covering: the origins of British and American anticommunist propaganda policies, 1945-1947; launching Britain's new propaganda policy, 1948; building a concerted counter-offensive, cooperation with other powers, 1948-1950; 'Close and continuous liaison. ' British and American cooperation, 1950-1951.

This doctoral thesis will examine how relations between the United States and Britain, and internal dynamics within each country, affected the nature and development of the two countries’ information strategies in a shared theatre of war. It examines the two governments’ distinct organisational cultures and bureaucratic structures in explaining the shape this took. Going beyond the policy level it considers how cultures and power relationships contributed to propaganda war planning. The research emphasises important changes in policy development and circumstance which, it is argued, despite the obvious power imbalance, situated Britain in a key position in the Anglo-American propaganda effort. The analysis draws on empirical research conducted in both countries. This fieldwork involved elite interviews focussing on the period of the ‘War on Terror’, including policymakers, key bureaucrats, intelligence personnel, contractors and military planners in both Britain and America.

This thesis considers images of the falling body after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, starting with Associated Press photographer Richard Drew’s photograph of a person falling to their death from the north tower of the World Trade Center. From this specific photograph, this thesis follows various intersecting lines in what I am calling a meshwork of falling-body images. Consequently, each chapter encounters a wide range of examples of falling: from literature to films, personal websites to digital content, and immersive technologies to artworks. Rather than connecting these instances like nodes, this thesis is more concerned with exploring lines of relation and the way the image moves along these lines. This thesis will argue that the falling-body image offers an alternative topology of the attacks: as enmeshed in the unfolding lines of life of web users, artists, directors and writers alike. In this way, this thesis outlines the ways we have lived with the image of falling, and the event itself, and how we continue to experience its unfolding consequences.

During the years between the Cold War and the Iraq War, neoconservatism underwent an important shift from a position sympathetic to realist thought to a position much closer to a particularly conservative form of liberal internationalism. This change has largely been ignored in the literature, and when discussed, simply attributed to new, more radical neoconservative actors replacing a more cautious cadre. This thesis utilises a ‘history of ideas’ approach to examine the evolution of neoconservative thought from an emphasis on stability and normality to one of ambitious transformation abroad and wide-ranging democracy promotion. It argues that this modification can be attributed to several material and ideational drivers. In material terms, the end of the Cold War and the ensuing decline of bipolarity in the international system in combination with the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001 were pivotal events in neoconservatism’s evolution. The former removed the primary constraint on the use of American power overseas, while the latter demonstrated, as far as neoconservatives were concerned, the cost to the US of inaction and restraint abroad. Ideationally, the advent of Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis, an embrace of liberal democratic peace theory, and a religious ‘turn’ in neoconservative thought, all contributed to the development of a neoconservative foreign policy much more sympathetic to ideas of democracy promotion and humanitarian intervention.

Dominican mass-migration to the United States only started in the 1960s but Dominican Americans are now a sizable minority and in 2014 they became the largest Latino group in New York City. This thesis examines fictional works by Dominican American writers who migrated to the United States from the early 1960s to the 1990s which explore the predicament of Dominican Americans before and after the consolidation of Dominican-American communities. The novels under scrutiny here were published in English between 1991 and 2012 by Julia Alvarez (b. 1950), Loida Maritza Pérez (b. 1963), Junot Díaz (b. 1969), and Angie Cruz (b. 1972) and present us with characters whose search for a ‘home’ and for ways in which to articulate their individual and collective identity are shaped by continuous negotiations between the traditional values of their country of origin and the potentially transformative opportunities afforded by their new country. I will show how these texts powerfully challenge homogeneity, marginalisation, mainstream ideologies, nationalism, and discrimination while questioning the economic, social, religious, patriarchal, educational, and political structures of both the Dominican Republic and the United States in order to formulate diverse modalities of belonging to what Julia Alvarez has called a new “country that’s not on the map” and establish their own distinct position as Dominican American writers.