This study demonstrates the flexible nature of relations between “peripheral” polities imperial “core” polities. The decentralized nature of the Mongol and Iroquois confederacies enabled them to dictate terms during negotiations with the Ming dynasty or British, respectively, giving them a higher degree of agency in their relations. Comparing the experiences of the Mongols and Iroquois provides a better understanding of how indigenous confederacies acted and reacted under similar circumstances. Likewise, this study aims to demonstrate the capacity for “peripheral” confederacies to resist, selectively adapt, and negotiate with “core” empires. / Confederacy in action -- Iroquois historiography -- Mongol historiography -- Social structures and foundation myths -- "Relative" relations. / Department of History

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Bibliography (leaves 281-294). / vi, 294 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / by Mandy Dyson / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 1998?

This thesis investigates the ways in which British and French imperial heroes involved in the exploration, conquest or administration of Mrica between 1870 and 1939 were selected, packaged and promoted to the various sections of the public of their respective countries. It seeks to unveil the commercial, political and personal interests that lay behind the imperial hero-making business. This research analyses the hidden mechanisms, as well as the reasons that led to the appearance of a new type of hero in the context of the 'new' T Imperialism and the 'Scramble for Mrica': private connections, political lobbies (especially colonial advocates and nationalists), commercial interests (journalists, writers, biographers, hagiographers, publishers, film-makers) and personal ambition, the combination of which underpinned the creation and success ofheroic reputations. The first part of the thesis investigates the process through which imperial heroes progressively became widely known in their homelands, and how it was facilitated by the technical and social improvements of the Second Industrial Revolution. Drawing upon a wide variety of printed and manuscript sources, it shows the ever-increasing commercial success of imperial heroes throughout the period, analyses how they could serve political ends, and explains the values for which 'they were held up as examples. The second part examines the case studies of two military commanders in times of Anglo-French rivalry in Africa (the Sirdar Kitchener and Major Marchand before, during and after the Fashoda confrontation of 1898), in order to compare the modalities of the development of these legends, and the different backdrops against which they took shape. This thesis is the first to combine quantitative evidence (such as print run figures) and qualitative sources (such as police records) to demonstrate conclusively the prevalence and complexity of the hero-making process brought about by the conquest of Mrica, and to evaluate the reception of these heroic myths among the public.

This thesis discusses the British government's decision to maintain colonial rule in Hong Kong beyond 1997 between 1967 and 1979. After the 1967 riots, the Labour and Conservative governments started considering the negotiation of Hong Kong's future in the 1980s. Their views on Hong Kong's future evolved from the Labour's uncertainty, to Conservative's optimism, and finally to Labour's attempts to erase the 1997 deadline and to retain Hong Kong as a colony permanently. Factors taken into their considerations included Cold War, decolonisation, China's policies on Hong Kong, and Britain-Hong Kong relations. Both Labour and Conservative insisted on preserving British sovereignty over disputed colonies such as Hong Kong, the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar regardless of the worldwide decolonisation. Besides, their eagerness to contain Communism and maintain Britain's international status, and Hong Kong's strategic and psychological value in Cold War outweighed the deficiencies of Britain-Hong Kong relations and China's unpredictable policies. Therefore, Labour and Conservative governments intended to run Hong Kong as a colony perpetually rather than decolonise it as did in other colonies. To achieve this goal, the British government adopted a reform-oriented colonialism. It empowered the Hong Kong government to deliver social reforms to improve the colony's living standard, which were used to prepare a colony's decolonisation. After the 1967 riots, although Governor David Trench implemented this colonial idea regarding Hong Kong's future, he remained as a housekeeper and only looked for the short term. Succeeding Trench in 1971, Murray MacLehose established a responsive colonial administration and delivered the Conservative's long-term strategy--to widen the living standard between Hong Kong and China--to deter China from recovering the territory. Notable reforms were on government-people relations, housing, education, social welfare and medical and health services. By 1974, the Labour government followed and modified this strategy to justify British colonial rule in Hong Kong domestically and internationally. In this process, Hong Kong was able to design its social reforms, to counter Britain's interests and to reshape its relations with Britain into a partnership. Yet Britain delegated Hong Kong to do so only to remain ultimate control rather than decolonised it. In other words, delegation of power and improvement of living standard were Britain's tools to retain its colonial rule in Hong Kong perpetually. Colonialism and decolonisation were thus interrelated.

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Between 1880 and 1930, the British Empire's vast infrastructural developments facilitated the incorporation of large parts of the globe into what Immanuel Wallerstein and others have called the capitalist 'world-system'. Colonial literature written throughout this period, in recording this vast expansion, repeatedly cites imperial infrastructures to make sense of the various geographies in which it is set. Physical embodiments of empire proliferate in this writing. Railways and trains, telegraph wires and telegrams, roads and bridges, steamships and shipping lines, canals and other forms of irrigation, cantonments, the colonial bungalow and other kinds of colonial urban architecture - all of these infrastructural lines break up the landscape and give shape to the literature's depiction and production of colonial space. In order to analyse these physical embodiments of empire in colonial literature, this thesis develops a methodological reading practice called infrastructural reading. Rooted in a dualistic, yet connected use of the word 'infrastructure', this reading strategy works as a critical tool for analysing a mutually sustaining relationship embedded within these literary narratives. It focuses on the infrastructures in the text, both physical and symbolic, in order to excavate the infrastructures of the text, be they geographic, social or economic - namely, the material conditions of the world-system that underpinned Britain's imperial expansion. This methodology is applied to a number of colonial authors including H. Rider Haggard, Olive Schreiner, William Plomer and John Buchan in South Africa and Flora Annie Steel, E.M. Forster, Edmund Candler and Edward Thompson in India. The results show that the infrastructural networks that circulate through colonial fiction are almost always related to some form of anti-imperial resistance, manifestations that include ideological anxieties, limitations and silences, as well as more direct objections to and acts of violent defiance against imperial control and capitalist accumulation. In so doing, the thesis demonstrates how this literary-cultural terrain and the resistance embedded within it has been shaped by, and has in turn shaped, the infrastructure of the capitalist world-system.

Friendly societies and fraternal associations were self-governing convivial clubs that provided members with mutual aid in case of sickness or death. Over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they blossomed around the English speaking world, attracting millions of members. Combining archival research and quantitative methods, this thesis is the first multi-national economic history of the friendly societies and fraternal associations. How effective were these organisations as insurers? Were they able to overcome the problems of moral hazard and adverse selection? Were they significant in generating 'social capital'? How were they affected by the emergence the welfare state?

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