Women in Britain in the nineteenth century were expected to fulfill the traditional roles of wife and mother as determined by British society. Over the course of the nineteenth century, these ideals evolved, but the core functions of wife and mother remained at the center. Woman's participation outside the household was limited. British women travelers during the nineteenth century found themselves in many different environments. By examining samples of women's travel narratives from various locations in the Empire, this study analyzes the daily lives of British women in the Empire and determines that, while maintaining their roles within the private sphere as wives and mothers, women's activities in the colonies were less restricted than they would have been in Britain. / by Katie Wernecke. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

This research examines the career of Robert Searle, an English privateer, that conducted state-sponsored attacks against the Spanish and Dutch in the Caribbean from 1655 to 1671. Set within the Buccaneering Period of the Golden Age of Piracy (1650-1680), Robert Searle’s personal actions contributed to the rise of the English in the Caribbean to a position of dominance over Spain, which dominated the region from 1492 until the 1670s. Searle serves as a window into the contributions of thousands of nameless men who journeyed to the Caribbean as a member of Oliver Cromwell’s Western Design Fleet. These men failed in their endeavor to take Hispaniola from the Spanish, successfully invaded Jamaica, and spent the next fifteen years securing England’s largest possession in the region, transitioning Jamaica from a military outpost to a successful plantation colony. These men, including Searle himself, have been overshadowed in the history of English Jamaica by more well-known figures such as Sir Henry Morgan, the famed “Admiral of the Buccaneers.” Searle and his compatriots pursued the objectives of the core in London throughout the contested periphery of the Caribbean region. These goals were first framed as the complete destruction of the Spanish Empire in the Americas and later as achieving trade between Jamaica and Spain’s American colonies. The examination of Robert Searle through the core-periphery relationship between the metropole and the Caribbean illustrates how the totality of his actions contributed to the rising English position in the Caribbean. Ultimately, Searle and his fellow privateers proved vital to Spain conceding to England the rights of trade and formal recognition of their colonies in the region with a series of succeeding Treaties of Madrid.

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William III, Prince of Orange, ascended the throne of England after the English Glorious Revolution of 1688. The next year, the American colonists rebelled against colonial administrations in the name of their new king. This thesis examines William's perception of these rebellions and the impact his perception had on colonial structures following the Glorious Revolution. Identifying William's modus operandi—his habit of acceding to other's political choices for expediency until decisive action could be taken to assert his true agenda—elucidates his imperial ambitions through the context of his actions. William, an enigmatic and taciturn figure, rarely spoke his mind and therefore his actions must speak for him. By first establishing his pattern of behavior during his early career in the Netherlands and England, this project analyzes William's long-term ambitions to bring the Americas under his direct control following the 1689 rebellions and establish colonial administrations more in line with his vision of a centralized English empire.

This thesis is a study of British colonial policy in southern Afiica in the 1 gill centwy. More specifically it looks at how British imperial policy, in the period 1875 to 1881, played itself out in two British colonies in southern Africa, Wlder the direction of a British imperial agent, William Owen Lanyon. It sets Lanyon in the context of the frontiers and attempts to link the histories of the people who lived there, the Africans, Boers and British settlers on the one han~ and the histories of colonial policy on the other. In doing so it also unravels the relationship between Lanyon and his superiors in London and those in southern Africa. In 1875 Owen Lanyon arrived in Griqualand West, where his brief was to help promote a confederation policy in southern Africa. Because of the discovery of diamonds some years earlier, Lanyon's administration had to take account of the rising mining industry and the aggressive new capitalist economy. He also had to deal with Griqua and Tlhaping resistance to colonialism. Lanyon was transferred to the Transvaal in 1879, where he was confronted by another community that was dissatisfied with British rule: the Transvaal Boers. Indeed, in Pretoria he was faced with an extremely difficult situation, which he handled very poorly. Boer resistance to imperial rule eventually came to a head when war broke out and Lanyon and his officials were among those besieged in Pretoria. In February 1881 imperial troops suffered defeat at the hands of Boer commandos at Majuba and Lanyon was recalled to Britain. In both colonies Lanyon was caught up in the struggle between the imperial power and the local people and, seen in a larger context, in the conflict for white control over the land and labour of Africans and that between the old pre-mineral South Africa and the new capitalist order. He made a crucial contribution to developments in the sub-continent and it is remarkable that his role in southern Africa has thus far been neglected. / History / D.Litt. et Phil. (History)

This thesis is a study of British colonial policy in southern Afiica in the 1 gill centwy. More specifically it looks at how British imperial policy, in the period 1875 to 1881, played itself out in two British colonies in southern Africa, Wlder the direction of a British imperial agent, William Owen Lanyon. It sets Lanyon in the context of the frontiers and attempts to link the histories of the people who lived there, the Africans, Boers and British settlers on the one han~ and the histories of colonial policy on the other. In doing so it also unravels the relationship between Lanyon and his superiors in London and those in southern Africa. In 1875 Owen Lanyon arrived in Griqualand West, where his brief was to help promote a confederation policy in southern Africa. Because of the discovery of diamonds some years earlier, Lanyon's administration had to take account of the rising mining industry and the aggressive new capitalist economy. He also had to deal with Griqua and Tlhaping resistance to colonialism. Lanyon was transferred to the Transvaal in 1879, where he was confronted by another community that was dissatisfied with British rule: the Transvaal Boers. Indeed, in Pretoria he was faced with an extremely difficult situation, which he handled very poorly. Boer resistance to imperial rule eventually came to a head when war broke out and Lanyon and his officials were among those besieged in Pretoria. In February 1881 imperial troops suffered defeat at the hands of Boer commandos at Majuba and Lanyon was recalled to Britain. In both colonies Lanyon was caught up in the struggle between the imperial power and the local people and, seen in a larger context, in the conflict for white control over the land and labour of Africans and that between the old pre-mineral South Africa and the new capitalist order. He made a crucial contribution to developments in the sub-continent and it is remarkable that his role in southern Africa has thus far been neglected. / History / D.Litt. et Phil. (History)