This doctoral thesis considers the significance of Australian engagement with China within British imperial history between the late-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It sets out to explore the notion that colonial and early-federation Australia constituted an important point of contact between the British and Chinese Empires. Drawing on a long tradition of imperial historiography and recent advances in British World and Anglo-Chinese history, it utilises extensive new archival research to add a colonial dimension to the growing body of scholarship on the British Empire’s relations with Qing China. In doing so, it also seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the internal dynamics and external relations of Britain’s late-Victorian and Edwardian Empire. The following chapters centre around two overarching historical themes. The first is the interconnection between Chinese migration to Australia and the protection of British mercantile and strategic interests in the Far East as imperial issues. The second is the relationship between Australian engagement with China and the development of the idea of a Greater Britain. Each of these themes throws up a range of fascinating historical questions about the evolving character of Britain’s late-Victorian and Edwardian Empire, the inter-relation of its various parts and its ability to navigate the shifting winds of political and economic change. Taken together, they shed new light not only on Anglo-Australian, Anglo-Chinese and Sino-Australian history, but also serve to illuminate a series of triangular relationships, connecting the metropolitan, Far Eastern and Australian branches of the British Empire.

This thesis traces British colonial governance and the workings of the late colonial state from 1938 until the end of empire in the early 1960s in Cyprus, Kenya and Nyasaland. It proposes that colonial governance operated in place and time back and forth across a spectrum, typified by polarities of (i) 'soft' management and regulation of colonial populations in the 1940s, and (ii) 'hard' control exemplified by the use of harsh physical coercion in the 1950s, although both 'soft' and 'hard' approaches - and hybrid variants somewhere in between - were always, in truth, sides of the same coin. British colonial governance is examined through the filter of three approximate, although not rigidly linear, 'phases': (1) a 'soft' phase of development and welfare from 1938-45, during which the rhetoric of governance was distinguished by the language of benevolence, in the attempt to re-legitimise empire, (2) the post-war period from 1945-1950, when Britain played a leading role in establishing supranational institutions promoting universal human rights and also, and however reluctantly, extended a modified human rights regime to its colonies, and (3) the swing to 'hard' governance during emergency periods in Cyprus (1955-59), Kenya (1952-60) and Nyasaland (1959-60), during which Britain strove to resolve the dichotomy between competing domestic and international demands of (a) maintenance of empire, often through the use of coercive physical measures, and (b) promotion of universal human rights on the world stage. This was all played out, at least in part, as an albeit muted ideological confrontation between opposing post-war visions of global order - the very survival of the old imperial system pitched against the implicitly decolonising thrust of the universal human rights movement as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the European Convention on Human Rights (1950). This thesis argues that by 1959 and in part as a consequence of the cumulative political impact of allegations of human rights and other abuses during emergency periods, Britain could no longer reconcile these competing visions of colonial governance and world order, nor sustain its empire and colonial rule by force.

This dissertation explores the correlation between British colonial experiences in Ireland and India c. 1650 - 1800. While the traditional characterisation of Ireland as a settlement colony and India as primarily a mercantile colony would suggest diverse imperial encounters, a comparative analysis of the two shows significant similarities. Temporal and/or geographical distances notwithstanding, the study's thematic approach reveals recurring patterns regarding the relationships between colonisers and the colonised. The six chapters of this dissertation explore different elements of empire, concluding that comparable socio-political and agrarian principles were consistently implemented in both colonies. The first chapter explores history writing as a tool of historical appropriation and indigenous reconfiguration. The second looks at escalating legal responses to colonial violence and colonial jurisdiction's role in defining social norms; the third considers the evolving forms of punishment dealt to 'deviant' colonial subjects. The fourth chapter looks at similar processes of agrarian reconfiguration that revealed broader imperial attitudes towards landownership and the fifth one elaborates on the use of visual representations of empire as propaganda tools to shape public opinion. In the final chapter, selected experiences of the Irish in India illustrate examples of colonial subjects' collaboration in imperial expansion. By adopting a more heuristic and thematic approach to colonial experiences, this study adds to the growing literature that necessarily complicates the distinctions between metropole and periphery. It challenges the use of single points of reference which have routinely privileged the accounts and experiences of Britons in the scholarly analysis of cross-cultural and imperial interactions. Blending early modern and nineteenth-century experiences with regional and global history, the chapters address the history of emotions, law, material culture, economy, and politics to argue that processes of influence and transformation were indicative of a more layered and evolutionary development in response to colonial challenges. Such experimental approaches provide a more sustained understanding of the processes of continuity and change in Britain's imperial evolution.

This thesis is an historical account based on primary sources in Australia and Britain. It seeks to explain why Anglo-Australian relations underwent radical change during the 1960s and why the ties of empire which had once bound Australia and Britain, became, for all practical purposes, inconsequential by the early 1970s. It is the main contention of the thesis that this radical change can be broadly attributed to what has been described as Britain's turn to Europe. In the 1960s Britain's foreign, defence and trade policies underwent a profound revision as Britain endeavoured to redefine its emerging post-imperial role. British policy-makers gradually turned away from an imperial and global focus and their orientation became increasingly more European. This process of reorientation can be seen principally in the series of policies implemented by successive British governments during the 1960s and early 1970s: the three applications for EEC membership between 1961 and 1972 and the decision taken in 1967-68 to withdraw from east of Suez. Both the EEC applications and the withdrawal from east of Suez brought about an irreconcilable conflict of interest between the two countries. The relationship suffered under the strains imposed by Britain's reassessment of its imperial policy-making. This thesis explains how Australia perceived these challenges, the manner of its response to them and the policies successive Australian governments implemented to minimise their impact. The thesis argues that, anxious not to antagonise Britain for fear it would drift further away, Australian policy-makers avoided too confrontational a stance. They gradually accepted the developing new realities and sought to diversify their country's trading options away from its traditional markets in Britain towards the Asia-Pacific region, while also cautiously redefining its strategic priorities in Asia.

The present thesis deals with the Namibian liberation struggle against the South African regime, by focusing on the relationship of solidarity between SWAPO and East Germany. It provides an original perspective of the German-Namibian history between 1978-1990, by using the life stories of Lucia Engombe and Stefanie Lahya Aukongo. They are Namibian women who, according to the pact of solidarity, lived on the brink between Namibia and East Germany, becoming in this way witnesses of the historical upheavals that have changed the global order. Then, this thesis makes use of Child No. 95. My German-African Odyssey – the autobiography of Lucia Engombe – and Kalungas Kind: meine unglaubliche Reise uns Leben – the autobiography of Stefanie Layha Aukongo – as sources to investigate the complexities of that period. The global lives of Lucia Engombe and Stefanie Lahya Aukongo allow the combination of macro and micro history and bring out new facets, which otherwise would remain in the shadow. Through the deconstruction of their life narratives, in fact, the big narrative of the global history become fraught with new meanings, bringing out the power of microhistories. This thesis shows how individual autobiographies can be meaningful to history, and how global history can be reconciled with micro-history through the story of global lives, which provide new and unprecedented points of view.

Dissertação(Mestrado)-Universidade Federal do Rio Grande, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação Ambiental, Instituto de Educação, 2009. / Submitted by eloisa silva (eloisa1_silva@yahoo.com.br) on 2012-07-23T20:56:43Z No. of bitstreams: 1 brbara milene silveira machado.pdf: 319587 bytes, checksum: 1af9a3519352352dc3687ea0421bd889 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Bruna Vieira(bruninha_vieira@ibest.com.br) on 2012-07-25T00:07:24Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 brbara milene silveira machado.pdf: 319587 bytes, checksum: 1af9a3519352352dc3687ea0421bd889 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-07-25T00:07:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 brbara milene silveira machado.pdf: 319587 bytes, checksum: 1af9a3519352352dc3687ea0421bd889 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / A presente dissertação de Mestrado em Educação Ambiental teve como foco de estudo os discursos referentes à Educação Ambiental nos livros didáticos de História para a 5ª série (EF 8 anos) ou 6º ano (EF 9 anos). O estudo buscou responder, a partir da analise de três obras mais pontuadas pela avaliação do MEC, a seguinte questão: Como os livros didáticos de História produzem conhecimento acerca da Educação Ambiental no ensino fundamental brasileiro? Esse estudo teve como referencial teórico norteador os estudos de Foucault, Benjamim e Guattari. Com essa pesquisa buscou-se, além dos discursos sobre a Educação Ambiental, evidenciar a forma de apresentação que os conteúdos históricos buscam atender: uma forma linear e evolutiva dos acontecimentos que abarcam os fatos de maneira homogênea (História Global) ou uma história que busca os acontecimentos singulares, que provocam fendas na linearidade das abordagens tradicionais (História Geral). Considerando-se que a abordagem dos conteúdos produz subjetividade acerca dos fatos históricos e do meio ambiente, a partir desses referencias percebeu-se que a história volta-se para a globalização dos fatos mediados por transmissão de informação que pouco estimula valores e reflexões acerca do presente e da Educação Ambiental. / This Master in Environmental Education dissertation has as study focus the discourses related to Environmental Education in history school books for the 5th (elementary school of 8 years) or 6th (elementary school of 9 years) grades. In this study we seek to answer the following question: How do history school books produce knowledge about Environmental Education in Brazilian elementary school teaching? The theoretical references for the study were the studies of Foucault, Benjamin and Guattari. We analyzed three books appointed by the Ministry of Education with the best scores in their evaluations. With this research we sought, besides the discourses about Environmental Education, to demonstrate which form of presentation the historical contents try to meet: a linear and evolutionary form of the events which encompasses the facts in a homogeneous way (Global History) or a history that looks for the singular events, which provoke gaps in the linearity of the traditional approaches (General History). We consider that the approach of the contents produces subjetivity about the historical facts and the Environmental. By sketching these references, we perceive that history turn itself towards the globalization of the facts mediated by transmission of information, that do not stimulate values and reflections about the present and about Environmental Education.

This thesis examines the construction and contestation of Anglo-Canadian identity from the end of the War of 1812 until Confederation in 1867. It argues that the conflict between English- and French-speakers in the Canadas was by no means inevitable but a function of the institutional and political circumstances of the time. It seeks to complicate the picture of the British in Canada by demonstrating that they were a diverse community of different groups, institutions and religions that only through struggle and the incentives of party politics were able to unify themselves into a single culture. The development of party politics not just coincided with the creation of Anglo-Canadian identity but played a fundamental role in creating it. Through the burgeoning newspaper industry, the Reform and Tory parties spread their ideas of what it meant to be British, loyal and Canadian to a widespread English-speaking audience. Canadian history in this period is better understood not in the traditional dualist framework of British against French but as the complex interactions of many different groups, including the English, the Scots, the Irish Protestants, the Irish Catholics, the Americans and the French-Canadians. The thesis seeks to deconstruct the terms ‘British’ and ‘loyal’. Both terms were appropriated by various individuals and groups seeking to gain benefits by defining themselves as such. Until the early 1830s, attempts were made to include certain classes of French-Canadians within the broader British polity and identity. The 1837 rebellions marked the ‘othering’ of French-Canadians. Meanwhile the Upper Canada rebellions presented an enemy in the United States and a new strain of anti-Americanism, separate to that of the loyalists, was developed. By 1849, the moment of the rebellion losses crisis, the fundamental tenets of the Anglo-Canadian identity had been established: anti-Americanism, a concern about French political influence and a sense of kinship with English speakers across the province of United Canada. These three periods are shown to have played a crucial role in the development of an anglophone identity that encompassed the whole of United Canada.

This thesis analyses the nation-building work that the Indian Army undertook during the military administration of Malaya, 1945-6. This was a two-part process, taking in military-led relief work and a political reform scheme. Historians have conducted little work on the Indian Army’s role in the British return to empire in Malaya, thus the army’s crucial and nuanced role has been overlooked. This limits the understanding of the army’s institutional development and role in Malayan nation-building between 1945-6. This thesis redresses this. It argues that the military administration of Malaya encapsulated the culmination of wartime changes to the role of the Indian Army fighting soldier. Whereas before the war the Indian Army found it expedient to keep its soldiers isolated from current affairs, British experience during the Second World War instead suggested that soldiers educated in current affairs could be very effective. Concurrently, British military leaders began to think on the role of the Indian Army and its men after the war. They concluded that the Indian Army’s soldiers could become catalysts of national political and social development, and initially identified this as a role for the army in post-war India. Furthermore, it was felt that the Indian Army could contribute both to the Commonwealth and United Nations ideals. The return to Malaya encapsulated these changes to the conception of the Indian Army soldier and was a practical expression and measure of these. The soldiers became agents of political change, imperial re-entrenchment and administration – which this thesis terms ‘soldier-administrators’. The Indian Army, it is argued, was deployed consciously as a nation-building force, using the new thinking on the role of Indian Army soldiers. In so doing, the Indian Army partook in targeted schemes for military relief, political reform and nation-building to try to build the new Malayan nation.

In the decade following the Asian-African Conference of 1955, the communist government of the People’s Republic of China took unprecedented interest in its relations with countries in the Middle East. China’s leaders formed particularly strong ties first with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt, then, beginning in 1958, with the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), which at that time was engaged in a bitter struggle for independence from France. The bonds that developed between China and Egypt and between China and Algeria were strengthened by a shared commitment of the governments of these countries to carry out “revolutions” that would challenge Western preeminence in global affairs and establish their own societies as independent voices on the world stage. The common ideological heritage of these three revolutionary countries allowed their leaders to forge connections that went beyond mere expressions of mutual support. Sino-Arab relations in the 1950s and 1960s cannot be explained by a realist narrative of attempts to exert power or influence through high-level diplomacy; rather, the evolving relationships between China and its Arab allies demonstrate how three countries could co-opt one another’s experiences to define and articulate their own nationalist identities on behalf of domestic audiences. This thesis pays particular attention to two constituencies that played a central role in mediating the development of Sino-Arab relations: Chinese Muslims and Arab leftists. Focusing on publications about Sino-Arab relations written by or intended for members of these two groups makes clear the manners in which domestic ideological concerns shaped the development of international relationships. Sino-Egyptian and Sino-Algerian relations between 1955 and 1965 were primarily symbolic. The perception of international amity gave journalists, policymakers, intellectuals, and religious figures free rein to expound their own distorted interpretations of Chinese and Arab society in order to promote their own ideological causes. These causes, which varied over the course of the decade, included the incorporation of Chinese Muslims into Chinese politics, the conferral of revolutionary legitimacy on Nasser’s government, the celebration of China as a champion of global revolution, the legitimization of the FLN, and the presentation of China as a fully anti-imperialist country in contrast to the Soviet Union. Each of these projects had in common the enduring goal of transforming how citizens of China, Egypt, and Algeria perceived their own national identity.

The planned language Esperanto achieved popularity in early twentieth century Japan, inspiring a national movement which was the largest outside Europe. Esperanto was designed to facilitate greater international and inter-cultural communication and understanding; the history of the language in Japan reveals a rich tradition of internationalism in Japan, stretching from the beginnings of the movement, in the wake of the Russo-Japanese war, through the end of the Pacific war, when, for a brief period, organised Esperanto in Japan ceased. Building upon existing studies of internationalism amongst elite opinion makers in Japan, this history of Esperanto reveals unexpected examples of internationalism amongst the broader Japanese public, a number of competing conceptions of the international world, and their realisation through a range of transnational activities. Esperanto was at once an intellectual phenomenon, and a language which could be put into immediate and concrete practice. The diversity of social groups and intellectual positions within the Japanese Esperanto community reveals internationalism and cosmopolitanism, not as well defined, static concepts, but as broad spaces in which different ideas of the world and the community of mankind could be debated. What linked the various different groups and individuals drawn into the Japanese Esperanto movement was a shared desire to make contact with, and help to reform, the world beyond Japan's borders, as well as a shared realisation of the vital role of language in making this contact possible. From radical socialists to conservative academics, and from Japanese diplomats at the League of Nations to members of rural communities in the deep north of Japan, although their politics often differed, Japanese Esperantists came together to participate in the re-imagining of the modern world; in doing so they became part of a transnational community, one which reveals insights into both modern Japanese history, and the nature of internationalism.