No description available.

Following the first world exhibition, the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, exhibitions became routine events across the West that merged both education and entertainment to forward political and economic goals. For the most part scholars have taken the frequency, popularity, and propagandistic efforts of exhibitions at face value, viewing them as successful reassertions of the imperial, industrial, and technological superiority of Western nation-states. Though offering valuable insights into the cultural technologies of imperial rule, these works miss the complexities of imperial projects within specific temporal and geographical contexts. This manuscript traces the historical dynamics of India at exhibitions held in London during and after imperial rule: the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition, the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition, the 1924-25 British Empire Exhibition, and the 1951 Festival of Britain. In historicizing the exhibitionary administration and display of India over time, this study argues for a more complex reading of exhibitions in which displays invoked a mélange of meanings that destabilized as well as projected imperial hierarchies. It also examines the ways in which Indians administered, evaluated, and contested imperial displays. Rather than seamlessly reinforcing imperial dominance, exhibitions, located within specific historical contexts, emerged as contested, multifaceted, and even ambiguous portrayals of empires.

In a warm, dry grassland in southeastern Arizona dominated by C₄ grasses the only C₃ grass found was restricted to dry, exposed ridge crests within the hottest and driest part of the region. This was precisely the opposite of what one would predict from physiological and biogeographic considerations, which would lead one to expect a C₃ grass in this environment to be growing on cooler or moister areas that would mitigate the effects of the inhospitable climate. Cover of C₄ grasses was very low on these ridge crests, and increased downslope with the greater volume of water available to high values on the lower slopes and in washes. It was suggested that this C₃ grass, Stipa neomexicana, had a very high tolerance of water stress, but a very poor tolerance of competition, and was limited to unfavorably dry sites by its competitively superior C₄ neighbors. Most species, regardless of photosynthetic type, could not survive in the harsh ridge crest environment, which therefore offered a refuge from competition. The hypothesis of competitive exclusion was tested by removal experiments conducted at ridge crest, midslope and lower slope positions along the topographic gradient of decreasing Stipa neomexicana and increasing C₄ grass cover. The predictions made under this hypothesis were confirmed. The presence of competitors limited the growth of mature plants, flower production, seedling establishment and seedling survival. The beneficial effects of the removal of competitors increased downslope. Competition depressed estimated finite rates of population increase for Stipa neomexicana. This depression was most severe on the lower slope. It was concluded that increasing competition from C₄ grasses along the topographic gradient was responsible for restricting Stipa neomexicana to the unfavorable ridge-crest sites.

A major factor cited in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire is the emergence of nationalist ideologies and identities among the empire’s ethno-religious minority groups. Such arguments, however, often fail to recognize roles played by the Ottoman state itself in promoting – albeit unwittingly – politicizations of such constructs. By examining Ottoman educational policies during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909), it becomes evident that policies intended to contain, manipulate, or otherwise affect the conduct of ethno-religious minorities’ identities and/or politics actually promoted their particularization. Individualizations of ethno-religious identities in a pluralistic society like the Ottoman Empire thus exacerbated problems of resistance, fragmentation, and secession. This research thus examines Ottoman politics of education vis-à-vis the ethnic and religious minorities of the empire during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. While numerous studies have examined ways in which education fostered political cohesion when administered directly or through other governmental institutions, few have examined those examples when such policies failed – or even fostered fragmentation. In considering alternate cases, one quickly ascertains that while these cases may have been traumatic and far from uniform through time and over place, their eventual successes resided in the fact that they did foster loyalties on the basis of the universal ideal of a nation-state. By contrast, educational policies in societies lacking the nation-state as the ultimate ideal – and the nation as ultimate sovereign, might be said to have failed eventually. In ethnically, religiously, and linguistically pluralistic societies like the Ottoman Empire, evolved notions of citizenship were the best that could be aspired to without obvious alienations of particular groups. In such cases, increased involvements by the state – even when designed to enhance the loyalties of its citizens, could be seen as having catastrophic outcomes for multi-ethnic/-religious empires in the modern era of the nation-state. In short, this work maintains this observation as its primary thesis and seeks to foster an inquiry into its conduct and consequences with respect to the ethnic and religious minorities of the Ottoman Empire. This research draws upon unique primary materials written in Ottoman Turkish that were acquired from archives in Turkey. In sum, histories of Ottoman educational politics illuminate many of the failings of citizenship-fostering and/or nation-building educational agendas that would subsequently be enacted worldwide in pluralistic societies. Indeed, such examples were even apparent later as the Turkish Republic attempted to deal with its minorities. At a time when certain ideologies, religions, and nationalisms of the Middle East are characterized as malevolent, this collective experience from Ottoman educational history yields a powerful and cautionary lesson as to the potential ramifications of state policies geared towards controlling, co-opting, marginalizing, or otherwise manipulating political, religious, and/or other identity-based constructs.

Through the investigation of the strategies and tactics the San Juan de Santa Cruz family used in local contexts, this study demonstrates how Spanish colonists were able to access the global economy. Beyond the construction of family and political networks, the brothers connected the peripheries of Manila- Acapulco, Veracruz, and Nueva Vizcaya in order to manage and expand their family business empire beyond the cores of Mexico City or the crown in Spain. Each chapter of the dissertation focuses on the local strategies employed by Francisco and Manuel in particular peripheries, and investigates the links created by the family between peripheral locations in an effort to access the global economy, avoiding core areas in the process. Relying on the conceptual language of Immanuel Wallerstein's world-system, but following a creative opening cracked by Andre Gunder Frank, this study posits a multi- polar world system in which there were multiple cores, namely Asia, Mexico, and Europe. Mexico is centered in this study as a core that controls aspects of Europe's access to the commanding Asian export economy. The role of peripheries within the Mexican core provides an opportunity to reevaluate the relationship of cores to peripheries, and illustrates the role of merchant- bureaucrats, located in the Americas, in the early modern world economy.

This thesis examines the connection between participation in the British empire and constructions of Scottish national identity, through investigating the activities of civil society organisations in Scotland, in particular missionary societies and the Presbyterian churches in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Though empire is commonly thought to have had a significant impact on Scots' adoption of a British identity. The process of how representations of empire were transmitted and understood at home has been little explored. Similarly, religion is thought to have played an important role in supporting a sense of Scottish identity. but this theme has also been little explored. This thesis, then, examines evidence of civil society activity related to empire, including philanthropic and religious, learned and scientific, and imperial propagandist activities. In order to elucidate how empire was understood at home through the engagement with empire by civil society organisations. Of these forms of organisation. missionary societies and the churches were the most important in mediating an understanding of empire. The pattern of the growth and development of the movement in support of foreign missions is described and analysed, indicating its longevity, its typical functions and membership, and demonstrating both its middle class leadership and the active participation of women. Analysis of missionar) literature of a variety of types shows that dominant discourses of religion, race. gender and class produced iconic representations of the missionary experience which reflected the values of middle class Scots. The analysis also demonstrates both that representations of Scottish national identity were privileged over those of a British identity, but that these were complementary rather than being seen as in opposition to each other. Through examining the public profile of the missionary enterprise in the secular press it is shown that these representations were appropriated in the secular sphere to represent a specific Scottish contribution to empire. The thesis concludes that the missionary experience of empire. embedded as it was in the institutional life of the Presbyterian churches, had the capacity to generate representations and symbols of Scottish national identity which were widely endorsed in both religious and secular spheres in the age of high imperialism.

This research is the first of its kind to explore the complexity of the Irish interaction with empire using one particular case study, British Cyprus during the period of the EOKA insurgency, 1955-59. There are three main areas of enquiry. Firstly, it traces the Twenty-Six County response to decolonisation in Cyprus. Ireland’s anti-colonial credentials have been cited frequently but all too fleetingly. No comprehensive study has been done on post-independent Ireland’s response to British decolonisation anywhere. Popular opinion and how it was reflected in the Irish press organs is examined to gauge if the response was an expression of a wider Irish anticolonial sensibility or a suitable peg upon which to hang Irish nationalist grievances. In dealing with the republican response to the EOKA insurgency, it reveals that no closer relationship was formed between active Irish republicans and foreign anticolonial insurgents than that which existed between the IRA and EOKA. Secondly, this work deals with the Irish institutional response to the Cyprus Question. The motivations behind the muted response by the Catholic Church and the more active response by the Church of Ireland are examined. In the field of Irish foreign policy, it covers the Irish government’s official response and the substantial role played by Irish delegates at the Council of Europe and at the United Nations on the Cyprus Question. Thirdly, this work analyses the Irish participation in British Cyprus during the period of the EOKA insurgency. In the latter half of the 1950s, Ireland continued to be far more involved in Britain’s colonial outposts than the hegemonic nationalist narrative then or since has acknowledged. This work serves as a corrective by providing an account of the Irish judicial and military contribution to law and order in Cyprus during the period of the EOKA insurgency. The research sheds light on neglected aspects of 1950s Ireland and enriches the existing literature on Ireland and Empire. It adds new depths to the existing body of material dealing with the Cyprus Emergency. The importance of the discoveries made by analysing the Irish interaction with the Cyprus Emergency adds weight to the concept of approaching British imperial history using the archipelagic or ‘fournation’ model. The following provides one piece of that particular jigsaw.

(in English): This thesis examines and tests the hypothesis whether political entity, in literature traditionally referred to as the "Aztec Empire", was actually an empire equivalent to European states of that age. Based on this hypothesis there are two objectives in this paper. The first one is to answer the question of what principles really stood on this political entity, how the relationships between the core of the empire and other provinces varied and what affected these relationships. The second objective is to examine the economic system of the Aztec empire because that was extensively intertwined with its political actions and influenced them. All three components of the Aztec economy are analyzed, thus supplying the Triple Alliance on its own (intensive agriculture, trade) and extracting tributes from conquered territories. Attention is also paid to the history of "Aztec empire" and its Mesoamerican context. The main sources are edited sources from early colonial times, depicting the situation before the arrival of Europeans and secondary literature, stemming mainly from ethnohistorical research.

The work aims to outline the fate of the Lebanese Druze community in the period in which they fell under the rule of the Ottoman Empire which is a period when the Druze, unlike today, enjoyed considerable political importance, which had been gradually lost. Regionally focused on Lebanese Emirate and its successor political formations, this work will also deal with the reasons for decline of their influence. The thesis is divided into several parts. The introductory chapter is devoted to familiarization with the Druze religion and social structure. The second chapter describes the period after the conquest by the Ottoman Empire and the peak of Druze power during the Macnid emirate. The third chapter deals with transition of control into Sunni and subsequently Maronite hands of the Shihab dynasty. The fourth chapter deals with the declining role of the Druze and increasing international interference and strengthening the position of Maronite. Last, the fifth chapter provides the context and describes the factors that led to the loss of privileged status of the Druze community.

<p>This is a dissertation about identity and governance, and how they are mutually constituted. Between 1838 and 1917, the British brought approximately half a million East Indian laborers to the Atlantic to work on sugar plantations. The dissertation argues that contrary to previous historiographical assumptions, indentured East Indians were an amorphous mass of people drawn from various regions of British India. They were brought together not by their innate "Indian-ness" upon their arrival in the Caribbean, but by the common experience of indenture recruitment, transportation and plantation life. Ideas of innate "Indian-ness" were products of an imperial discourse that emerged from and shaped official approaches to governing East Indians in the Atlantic. Government officials and planters promoted visions of East Indians as "primitive" subjects who engaged in child marriage and wife murder. Officials mobilized ideas about gender to sustain racialized stereotypes of East Indian subjects. East Indian women were thought to be promiscuous, and East Indian men were violent and depraved (especially in response to East Indian women's promiscuity). By pointing to these stereotypes about East Indians, government officials and planters could highlight the promise of indenture as a civilizing mechanism. This dissertation links the study of governance and subject formation to complicate ideas of colonial rule as static. It uncovers how colonial processes evolved to handle the challenges posed by migrant populations.</p><p>The primary architects of indenture, Caribbean governments, the British Colonial Office, and planters hoped that East Indian indentured laborers would form a stable and easily-governed labor force. They anticipated that the presence of these laborers would undermine the demands of Afro-Creole workers for higher wages and shorter working hours. Indenture, however, was controversial among British liberals who saw it as potentially hindering the creation of a free labor market, and abolitionists who also feared that indenture was a new form of slavery. Using court records, newspapers, legislative documents, bureaucratic correspondence, memoirs, novels, and travel accounts from archives and libraries in Britain, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, this dissertation explores how indenture was envisioned and constantly re-envisioned in response to its critics. It chronicles how the struggles between the planter class and the colonial state for authority over indentured laborers affected the way that indenture functioned in the British Atlantic. In addition to focusing on indenture's official origins, this dissertation examines the actions of East Indian indentured subjects as they are recorded in the imperial archive to explore how these people experienced indenture.</p><p>Indenture contracts were central to the justification of indenture and to the creation of a pliable labor force in the Atlantic. According to English common law, only free parties could enter into contracts. Indenture contracts limited the period of indenture and affirmed that laborers would be remunerated for their labor. While the architects of indenture pointed to contracts as evidence that indenture was not slavery, contracts in reality prevented laborers from participating in the free labor market and kept the wages of indentured laborers low. Further, in late nineteenth-century Britain, contracts were civil matters. In the British Atlantic, indentured laborers who violated the terms of their contracts faced criminal trials and their associated punishments such as imprisonment and hard labor. Officials used indenture contracts to exploit the labor and limit the mobility of indentured laborers in a manner that was reminiscent of slavery but that instead established indentured laborers as subjects with limited rights. The dissertation chronicles how indenture contracts spawned a complex inter-imperial bureaucracy in British India, Britain, and the Caribbean that was responsible for the transportation and governance of East Indian indentured laborers overseas.</p> / Dissertation