The colonies of German New Guinea (GNG) and British New Guinea (BNG; from 1906 the Territory of Papua) experienced different paths of development due to the virtually opposite decisions made regarding commercial activities. The establishment of these colonies in the 19th century, and all of the major events and decisions relating to them up to 1914, were based on solely commercial motivations. This thesis examines the circumstances leading to the founding of GNG and BNG. It analyses the impact of government decisions and the growth of capitalist enterprises in East New Guinea during its first 30 years (1884–1914). This thesis argues that both the German and British governments were reluctant to become involved in colonisation. In the context of the political pressures prevailing in Berlin and London respectively, both governments succumbed but insisted that the cost of administering and developing the colonies was to be borne by others. The establishment costs of GNG were accepted by the Neu Guinea Compagnie (NGC) until 1899. It was a haphazard and experimental undertaking which was expensive financially and in human life. When the German government assumed administrative and financial control in 1899 the development of GNG had generally progressed in line with Chancellor Bismarck’s view that Germany’s colonies should be treated as economic enterprises. This was despite the bureaucratic form of government NGC had established. In contrast, there were claims that BNG was to be established on defence strategic requirements and to protect the indigenous Papuan population from non-British influences. This was fallacious posturing by the Australian colonies in order to attain control over the entire eastern sector of New Guinea and adjacent islands. The objective of the Queensland sugar planters was to procure cheap labour and for Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria to prevent the setting up of competitive agricultural industries. After Britain acquired southeast New Guinea, and the recruitment of Papuan and Melanesian labour into Australia had been outlawed, BNG was left to the gold prospectors, with no sustainable plantation industry taking place until Australia assumed administrative control over the Territory in 1907. Neither colony had any military significance. Both colonies shared a common European morality in administration. By 1914 GNG had become a commercially viable enterprise; BNG, now Papua, had failed to take advantage of the 1902–1912 boom in tropical produce. Given their similar size and geography, the economic performance of the two colonies should also have been similar. That this did not occur is beyond dispute. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, 2008

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The Council of Advice first emerged as a constitutional device for colonial rule in colonies captured by Britain during the wars against France between 1793 and 1814. The search for some new form of government for colonies of conquest had been necessitated by the difficulty generally experienced in assimilating formerly foreign colonies into the traditional British pattern of representation. Experience in Quebec between 1764 and 1791 had led to the gradual recognition of conciliar government as a workable substitute to bridge the gap between military rule and the grant of representative institutions. Between 1794 when a Council of Advice was first introduced in the island of San Domingo, and 1825, when the Cape of Good Hope was granted a council of this type, the composition, function and scope of such councils was gradually defined and elaborated. There was a continual interplay of precedent and example from one colony to another, facilitated by the growth of the Colonial Office in London during the early decades of the 19th Century. Councils of Advice were also introduced into some a-typical colonies of settlement, notably New South Wales, where the particular circumstances of the colony gave rise to the further development of the conciliar pattern of government, influenced by the practical experience in Quebec prior to 1791. Thus the Council of Advice at the Cape of Good Hope from 1825-1834 was but one example of an instrument of government which was being widely used in the British empire, and which was still developing in form and function during the period under consideration. The Council of Advice at the Cape reflects this fluidity. The composition of the council was altered on several occasions during the nine years of its existence; the degree of independence allowed to council members was a question which arose on several occasions, especially in relation to discussion of policy decisions taken in London; moreover, the council met at the discretion of the governor and four different men held this office during the period 1825-34, each with his own individual idea of the function and value of a council of advice. Preface, p. 1-2.

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The forests of the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, famous for their extent in antiquity, were described as severely damaged by misuse over the preceding centuries at the time of the British arrival on the island in 1878. The British colonial authorities sought to remedy this "degradation", and their success in doing so before their departure in 1960 has seldom been questioned. This dissertation examines this accepted history of the colonial period by utilizing archival, ethnographic, and physical data and focusing upon the British impact on the landscape as well as the relationship between the British authorities and the Cypriot people. This reappraisal suggests several points. The British approached the Cypriot forests with certain misunderstandings and misconceptions in 1878. They believed that the majority of the forested areas on the island were unregulated commons, which they were not. They further misread the landscape by assuming that its appearance, quite different from that of a humid and temperate biome, indicated degradation. Within these concerns of degradation, they misinterpreted the Cypriot rural economy by holding that shepherds and agriculturalists did not and could not mix. These misunderstandings of Mediterranean ecology, combined with prevailing ideas for good forest management and agricultural intensification, and hampered by inadequate budgets, resulted in policies that did not initially "return" the forests to any imagined state of past verdure, and may instead have been harmful in certain aspects. Yet the British officials did not behave according to traditional stereotypes of colonial rulers either. The actions of many of the colonial foresters were not solely driven by a desire for instant profit; instead the majority consistently attempted to maintain and ameliorate the forests both for indirect ecosystem benefits (which they recognized would be remunerative to the island as a whole, even if not immediately to the department) and direct benefits of timber production. The meticulous records in the archives display a concern with doing what was best for the forests and for the people, which inevitably led to conflicts as to what was "fair" for the forest and "fair" for the inhabitants, however defined. / text

This thesis traces the development of philanthropy as a tradition and movement within the United Kingdom and the British world, with attention to both the inner lives of philanthropists, and the social networks and organizational practices that underpinned the dramatic growth in philanthropic activity between the late 1750s and 1840. In contrast to studies that see philanthropy as primarily responsive to Britain's shifting public culture and imperial fortunes during the period, it argues that philanthropic change was driven by innovations in the internal culture and structures of intersecting commercial and religious networks, that were adapted to philanthropic purposes by philanthropic entrepreneurs. It frames the growth of philanthropy as both a series of experiments in effecting social change, within the United Kingdom and transnationally, and the fostering of a vocationally formative culture across three generations. Chapter one focuses on John Thornton, a prominent merchant and religious patron, reconstructing his correspondence networks and philanthropic practices, and revealing patterns of philanthropic interaction between mercantile and Evangelical clerical networks. Chapter two uses the reports and minutes of representative metropolitan societies and companies to develop a prosopography of more than 4000 philanthropic directors, mapping their nexus of interconnections in 1760, 1788 and 1800, and arguing for the importance of firstly Russia Company networks and later country banking networks for philanthropy. Chapters three and four offer an extended case study of the 'Clapham Sect' as an example of collective agency, reframing their influence within the philanthropic nexus, and, through a close reading of their published works, showing how as intellectual collaborators they developed a unique conception of 'trust' that informed their activism. Chapter five shows how philanthropists extended their reach transnationally, with case studies in Bengal, Sierra Leone and New Zealand, and chapter six addresses multiple paths by which philanthropy became intertwined with Empire and the globalizing world in the British imagination.

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