Peter Rainier was the longest serving commander on the East Indies station by some margin, and the longest serving commander of any of the navy’s stations in the long Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This thesis illustrates the issues that needed to be addressed on this station and considers how successfully Rainier dealt with them. It will also suggest that he remains so little known amongst the pantheon of British admirals of the Napoleonic era because the traditional measure of value of a naval commander is success in battle. Although Rainier had a reputation as a fighting captain, as a commander in chief he saw action only in combined operations. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that skill other than fighting battles is important. Rainier’s thorough knowledge of the station, his capacity to work with people over whom he had no authority, his ability to protect a rapidly expanding and wealth creating trade, and his administrative and financial professionalism, enabled him to play an important, if secondary, part in the establishment of the Second British Empire which, arguably, had a far greater impact on British history than all but the most seminal battle. The East Indies Station had a number of unique elements that heavily influenced the actions of its commander in chief. The two-way communication process between Rainier and the Admiralty could take a whole year. Its thirty million plus square mile area meant that communication and logistics within the station needed long term planning. It was still relatively unfamiliar to British navigators, and charting it was still in progress. The relationship between the admiral and the East India Company, the official government of British India, could make or break the success of both the navy and the Company. With his diplomatic skills and wide experience of the station, Rainier worked with its officials and army commanders to defend current British possessions in the East Indies and India, to extend them to such an extent that, by his return to Britain, they were the foundation of the second British Empire. During this period the centre of power on the station moved eastwards as the value of trade with China overtook that with India – Rainier had to take this into account when allocating his resources. The constraints on navigation and timing caused by the narrow channels in the East Indies and by the weather made it easier for enemy vessels to know by which route the British trade would travel. Rainier had to cover potential threats off Macao, through the Straits of Bali, Banda, Sunda and Malacca, in the Bay of Bengal, off Madras, around Ceylon and between Bombay and the Persian Gulf. When possible he had to cover the French naval base at Mauritius. With a limited number of vessels, of which some were always in need of repair, Rainier was often on the defensive. Acquisition of new colonies opened new trading routes which, together with his commitment to trade protection, led to a steady, if often unregulated, expansion in British trade. His attention to detail and his management skills also allowed him to establish an efficient logistics, victualling and financial operation. What Rainier achieved has to be seen in the context of the complexity of his station and the role of the East India Company. Then it stands far above the level of its absolute achievement. This thesis shows that Rainier’s organization and man management skills, unruffled nature, sound strategic judgement made him a “Safe Pair of Hands”, ideal for such a detached but important command.

This thesis examines the relationships between political power, corruption, and witchcraft in modern Indonesia through an analysis of the discursive construction of these concepts in Indonesian society. The subject is approached through an observation of how public discourses of corruption and sorcery are used by people in an instrumental way to talk about and understand political processes in the country. The central argument of the thesis is that Indonesian society experiences contemporary politics in a context that combines values and practices of political modernity and secular rationality with those of witchcraft, sorcery, and the occult. The thesis demonstrates how Indonesian politics has been transformed into a modern-secular democracy by juxtaposing traditionalism and modernism. Both are interconnected features of contemporary Indonesian modernity. The thesis focuses on corruption and sorcery discourses within the context of the political democracy that has been established in Indonesia following the collapse of the New Order state. There is currently a great deal of expectation that the system of democracy will promote public participation - in the sense that people become involved in political processes, that civil society becomes more effective and that the holders of state powers become more accountable - which should in turn curb corruption. Unfortunately, corruption appears to be pervasive within the new democratic polity, and both corruption and sorcery persist alongside the dynamics of political contestations and power struggles. In the light of continuing corruption practices, many groups of Indonesian society initiate anti-corruption movements by mobilizing social and political resources through collective action. Anti-corruption initiatives are taken by both state institutions and civil society associations, and seek to improve public governance and promote political reform. Nevertheless, non-state actors—NGOs and civil society agencies—appear to have become the major voices of public criticism against corruption and they have taken the lead in promoting anti-corruption reforms. These actors involve educated people from the urban middle classes: social and political activists, intellectuals, artists, poets, journalists, as well as religious leaders associated with Islamic organizations: the Nahdhatul Ulama (NU), the Muhammadiyah, and the Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI). It is argued that the ideas and practices of anti-corruption have found new spaces of expression under the new democratic system, and that Indonesian civil society and NGO activists are determined to continue their struggles to fight corruption for the betterment of the nation despite a great deal of opposition which is mostly political. They believe that the new system of political democracy will be much more beneficial for all Indonesian people if corruption can be eliminated from state agencies and political institutions.

This thesis examines the Influenza A/H5N1 virus in action through an ethnographic study focused on the entwined concepts of risk and modernity. The objective is to explain why the response to the virus has been challenged in Indonesia. Concerned with policy formulation, and everyday practice, the thesis argues that assemblages of historical, political, institutional and knowledge‐power processes create multiple hybrid constructions of risk and modernity, which challenge technical responses based on epistemological positions and institutional arrangements that do not allow for such hybridity. The thesis is organised into four sections. The first section (chapters 1 – 3) introduces the virus and its terrain, outlines a constructivist position, and argues that conceptually risk and modernity have multiple, dynamic, power‐laden forms. The second section (chapters 4 – 6) contrasts constructions of risk and modernity among the actors and networks responding to the emergence, spread and persistence of the H5N1 virus, with the constructions of affected people in Indonesia. The third section (chapters 7 – 9) investigates the multi‐directional processes that occur when ‘global' policies and practices encounter ‘local' social and political settings, and vice versa, through three empirical case studies of the response to H5N1 in Indonesia between 2005 and 2010. The final section (chapter 10) provides a set of reflections and conclusions. Given the conceptual plurality of risk and modernity, and the multiple overlapping interacting hybrid constructions that have been empirically demonstrated in the case of H5N1, it is concluded that reductive, science‐based, governmentally‐orientated responses which treat nature as a matter of separate, fixed identity do not allow for such hybridity. The virus in action in Indonesia shows that any divide between nature and society is artificial and deceiving. Technical disease control responses need to incorporate understandings which accept the dynamics of culture, politics, and power.

No description available.

Master of Arts / Department of History / David A. Graff / On December 7, 1941 the Japanese Empire launched a surprise attack on the United States at the Pearl Harbor naval base in the territory of Hawaii. The following day President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on Japan, and America was suddenly an active participant in a global war that had already been underway for over five years. World War II pitted the Axis (Japan, Germany, and Italy) against a coalition of allied nations that were united primarily by fear of Axis totalitarianism. Typically referred to as the Allies, the alliance’s most powerful participants included the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. However, many other nations were involved on the Allied side. Smaller European countries such as Holland, Belgium, and Poland fought with armed forces and governments in exile located in London after their homelands had been overrun by the Germans in 1939 and 1940. China had been at war with Japan since 1937. After the United States entered the war, allied action resulted in the creation of different, localized military coalitions between 1941 and 1945. These coalitions presented Allied leaders with unique problems created by the political, geographic, military and logistical issues of fighting war on a global scale. The earliest coalition in which the United States was involved was known by the acronym ABDACOM, short for the American, British, Dutch, Australian Command. ABDACOM’s mission was the defense of the Malay Barrier, which stretched from the Malay Peninsula through the Dutch East Indies to New Guinea, and the protection of the Southwest Pacific Area from Japanese invasion. In its brief two-month existence the ADBA coalition in the Southwest Pacific Area failed to prevent the Japanese from taking the Malay Barrier, Singapore, Burma and the islands between Java and the Philippines. This was due not to one overriding problem, but to a combination of planning, command, and logistical problems, compounded by the distance of Allied production and training centers from the front lines. These problems can be traced from the late 1930s to the dissolution of ABDACOM at the end of February 1942. Historians have often overlooked the underlying causes of the United States’ first foray into coalition warfare in World War II. To better understand why the Allied forces succumbed to the Japanese onslaught so quickly, one must look at political, military and economic relations between the United States and its allies prior to the onset of hostilities in 1941. Domestic political realities combined with international diplomatic differences kept the United States from openly preparing for coalition action until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The ensuing military coalition suffered from numerous deficiencies in command structure and logistics. Though pre-war planning existed within each of the Allied governments, the lack of cooperative action gave the Japanese military an insurmountable military advantage over the members of the ABDA coalition. Given the limited scope of this paper the focus will be on American participation in ABDACOM. The other countries involved will be included insomuch as they help to fill out the story of the United States and its first coalition effort in World War II. The story of the ABDACOM coalition is one of perseverance, creative planning, and deep stoicism in the face of overwhelming odds. The short life of the coalition gave planners in Washington, D.C. and London time to sort out potential conflicts between the Allies.

A primeira tradução da Bíblia em língua portuguesa foi composta a partir de meados do século XVII, em regiões específicas do sudeste asiático sob o domínio da Companhia Holandesa das Índias Orientais. O principal responsável por seu processo de elaboração foi João Ferreira A. dAlmeida (c. 1628-1691), natural do Reino de Portugal, mas residente entre os holandeses desde a juventude. A primeira edição de sua tradução do Novo Testamento foi impressa em Amsterdam, no ano de 1681, ao passo que os livros do Antigo Testamento foram publicados somente a partir do século XVIII, em Tranquebar e Batávia. O ambiente em que foi idealizada essa pioneira versão bíblica portuguesa é caracterizado substancialmente pelo confronto teológico católico-protestante, a princípio intra-europeu, mas potencializado nas Índias Orientais seiscentistas a partir da expansão marítima e comercial holandesa sobre regiões antes sob influência dos reinos ibéricos. Ao lado da própria tradução bíblica, essa conjuntura marcada por conflitos em torno da definição da ortodoxia cristã testemunhou também a produção de uma extensa e singular literatura de polêmica religiosa em língua portuguesa, assinada não só pelo próprio Almeida, mas também pelos missionários católicos que se opuseram à sua obra e doutrina no Oriente. Com isso, o principal escopo deste trabalho é desvendar o significado dessa tradução das Escrituras Sagradas do cristianismo em sua peculiar historicidade, isto é, tendo em vista a relação intrínseca de sua materialização com um contexto de agudos embates religiosos. Perante as resoluções estabelecidas no Concílio de Trento (1545-1563) contra a proliferação de versões bíblicas não autorizadas, esse ato de tradução em si, naquela conjuntura, além de edificado sobre a definição protestante sola scriptura¸ se revelou também resultante de postura radicalmente anticatólico-romana. Enfim, sem perder de vista os movimentos históricos estruturais que perpassam a constituição deste objeto peculiar da Idade Moderna, as diferentes seções deste texto devem convergir para se aprofundar a compreensão histórica de uma tradução da Bíblia amplamente reconhecida e estimada, ainda hoje, em todo o mundo lusófono. / The first Portuguese translation of the Bible was done during the second half of the seventeenth century in specific regions of Southeast Asia under the rule of the Dutch East India Company. The main person responsible for this translation was João Ferreira A. d\'Almeida (c. 1628-1691), who was born in the Kingdom of Portugal, although he had lived among Dutch missionaries since he was a young man. The first edition of his New Testament translation was published in Amsterdam in 1681, yet the Old Testament books were published only after the mid-eighteenth century in Tranquebar and Batavia. The environment in which this pioneering translation of the Bible was designed is substantially characterized by the Catholic-Protestant theological quarrels, originally intra-European, yet amplified in the East Indies over the seventeenth century due to the Dutch maritime and commercial expansion into regions formerly under the influence of the Iberian kingdoms. Besides the Portuguese Bible translation, this context characterized by conflicts on the definition of Christian orthodoxy noted the production of an extensive and unique literature on religious controversy in the Portuguese language, produced not only by the translator himself, but also by Roman Catholic missionaries who stood up against his work and teachings in the East Indies. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to reveal the historical-religious significance of the Portuguese translation of the Holy Scriptures in its peculiar historicity, considering the intrinsic relationship between its meaning and the surrounding milieu of acute religious conflicts. Taking into consideration the resolutions passed by the Council of Trent (1545-1563) against the proliferation of unauthorized Bible versions, the act of translation by itself, in this context, emerged as the result of a position at the same time Modern, Protestant, and anti-Catholic. Nevertheless, not losing sight of the structural historical movements that underlie the creation of this peculiar object of the Modern Age, the different sections of this work might converge in order to deepen the historical understanding of a Bible translation still widely acknowledged throughout the Portuguese-speaking world.

A primeira tradução da Bíblia em língua portuguesa foi composta a partir de meados do século XVII, em regiões específicas do sudeste asiático sob o domínio da Companhia Holandesa das Índias Orientais. O principal responsável por seu processo de elaboração foi João Ferreira A. dAlmeida (c. 1628-1691), natural do Reino de Portugal, mas residente entre os holandeses desde a juventude. A primeira edição de sua tradução do Novo Testamento foi impressa em Amsterdam, no ano de 1681, ao passo que os livros do Antigo Testamento foram publicados somente a partir do século XVIII, em Tranquebar e Batávia. O ambiente em que foi idealizada essa pioneira versão bíblica portuguesa é caracterizado substancialmente pelo confronto teológico católico-protestante, a princípio intra-europeu, mas potencializado nas Índias Orientais seiscentistas a partir da expansão marítima e comercial holandesa sobre regiões antes sob influência dos reinos ibéricos. Ao lado da própria tradução bíblica, essa conjuntura marcada por conflitos em torno da definição da ortodoxia cristã testemunhou também a produção de uma extensa e singular literatura de polêmica religiosa em língua portuguesa, assinada não só pelo próprio Almeida, mas também pelos missionários católicos que se opuseram à sua obra e doutrina no Oriente. Com isso, o principal escopo deste trabalho é desvendar o significado dessa tradução das Escrituras Sagradas do cristianismo em sua peculiar historicidade, isto é, tendo em vista a relação intrínseca de sua materialização com um contexto de agudos embates religiosos. Perante as resoluções estabelecidas no Concílio de Trento (1545-1563) contra a proliferação de versões bíblicas não autorizadas, esse ato de tradução em si, naquela conjuntura, além de edificado sobre a definição protestante sola scriptura¸ se revelou também resultante de postura radicalmente anticatólico-romana. Enfim, sem perder de vista os movimentos históricos estruturais que perpassam a constituição deste objeto peculiar da Idade Moderna, as diferentes seções deste texto devem convergir para se aprofundar a compreensão histórica de uma tradução da Bíblia amplamente reconhecida e estimada, ainda hoje, em todo o mundo lusófono. / The first Portuguese translation of the Bible was done during the second half of the seventeenth century in specific regions of Southeast Asia under the rule of the Dutch East India Company. The main person responsible for this translation was João Ferreira A. d\'Almeida (c. 1628-1691), who was born in the Kingdom of Portugal, although he had lived among Dutch missionaries since he was a young man. The first edition of his New Testament translation was published in Amsterdam in 1681, yet the Old Testament books were published only after the mid-eighteenth century in Tranquebar and Batavia. The environment in which this pioneering translation of the Bible was designed is substantially characterized by the Catholic-Protestant theological quarrels, originally intra-European, yet amplified in the East Indies over the seventeenth century due to the Dutch maritime and commercial expansion into regions formerly under the influence of the Iberian kingdoms. Besides the Portuguese Bible translation, this context characterized by conflicts on the definition of Christian orthodoxy noted the production of an extensive and unique literature on religious controversy in the Portuguese language, produced not only by the translator himself, but also by Roman Catholic missionaries who stood up against his work and teachings in the East Indies. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to reveal the historical-religious significance of the Portuguese translation of the Holy Scriptures in its peculiar historicity, considering the intrinsic relationship between its meaning and the surrounding milieu of acute religious conflicts. Taking into consideration the resolutions passed by the Council of Trent (1545-1563) against the proliferation of unauthorized Bible versions, the act of translation by itself, in this context, emerged as the result of a position at the same time Modern, Protestant, and anti-Catholic. Nevertheless, not losing sight of the structural historical movements that underlie the creation of this peculiar object of the Modern Age, the different sections of this work might converge in order to deepen the historical understanding of a Bible translation still widely acknowledged throughout the Portuguese-speaking world.

This essay is initially motivated by the need to describe my research process on Péter Forgács’s Looming Fire, a multi-screen installation exhibited at Eye Filmmuseum in 2013. The artwork, based on Eye’s colonial film collection, seems a difficult object in moving image studies: audiovisual components inaccessible to the public, exhibition setup dissimilar from the neutralized movie theater, as well as the scarcity of detailed written reviews. The aim of the essay is thus to inquire what remains after this film-related exhibition: How to conceive an alternative analytical approach when films or videos are no longer autonomous, but part and parcel of an installation in the museum? Moreover, what insight can we gain on found footage filmmaking from a project at the same time artistic and museal?

No description available.

The air campaign conducted by the RAAF in the North-Western Area during the Second World War has been largely ignored by historians yet it contributed significantly to the outcome of the Pacific war. This thesis sets out to discuss the campaign by considering various factors that impacted on the RAAF in the lead up to and during the course of the Pacific war and their relevance to the campaign. It looks at the way air operations were conducted in the North-Western Area between 1942 and 1945 and describes the role played by the flying squadrons based in the area. Using primary sources such as operational record books, documents and files at archives and libraries and interviews with veterans and experts the thesis found that the campaign was conducted in several phases. It started with the defence of Darwin. In keeping with overall allied strategy the RAAF then went on an offensive into what was then the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) using medium and heavy bombers and mine laying sea planes flying from bases in Australia???s north west. The NEI was vital to the Japanese war effort as a source of essential raw materials such as oil, timber, and rubber. To defend this part of their new empire the Japanese had amassed large military garrisons on the islands. The vessels used to transport troops and materials became the most important targets for the RAAF???s bomber squadrons. As General MacArthur???s forces advanced along the north coast of New Guinea the North-Western Area based units conducted raids into the NEI to deceive the Japanese into thinking an invasion would be launched from Darwin. As the New Guinea campaign gained momentum the RAAF???s task was to protect its western flank, to prevent the Japanese from moving troops and aircraft east to the Philippines. The thesis concludes the campaign was successful because Darwin was defended, it denied the Japanese vital materials for the conduct of the war and it kept hundreds of aircraft and tens of thousands of troops away from the allied advance.