Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

Derek Stark's thesis examines the diplomatic history behind the Cuban Missile Crisis. It focuses on how the crisis was packaged and delivered to its various constituents. The crisis was framed differently to the varying members of the administration of the governments involved, the allies of these nations, the members of the United Nations, and the populations of the countries through their media. Information pertaining to the crisis was being manipulated, not only through inaccurate testimonials that came from Washington after the fact, but during the crisis as well, as a conscious effort was being made to influence how the history would be interpreted. The thesis provides a clear-cut case of information-manipulation from the highest levels of the US government. Were President Kennedy's deceptions required to protect his own political position or were they needed for more valid reasons of international strategy? Stark's thesis includes the complex answer to this question.

In the fall of 1966, the Voice of Women, a Canadian-based, women's peace organization began participating in a humanitarian aid project to provide clothing for the victims of the Vietnam War. The intention of the project, began by another Canadian organization, the Canadian Aid for Vietnam Civilians, was to provide hand-made clothing and blankets to those most defenseless to the atrocities of the war: namely, Vietnamese children. What resulted was an assistance program to which the Voice of Women would dedicate more than ten years of its efforts and which would create a resurgence in an organization that had recently been shaken by several damaging events. What appeared to be simply women providing assistance to children in need was in fact an example of the result of maternal feminism at work. Not only did members of the Voice of Women utilize their roles and instincts as women and mothers to gain support from others for the knitting project; they also use these same roles and instincts as a means to make a strong political statement regarding the Vietnam War. This study will examine the mean by which the Voice of Women gained a great deal of support from both Canadian and American women. Likewise, it will analyze the role that maternal feminism played in the organization of a project that would prove to be a highly political and controversial endeavor.

A consistent theme throughout the Canadian historiography on the Korean War is that it is Canada's forgotten war. However, as evidenced by the newspaper editorials published during the first year and a half of the war, this was simply not the case. Editorialists were keen to disseminate their opinions about the war to the Canadian public. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a detailed examination of Canadian newspaper editorials pertaining to the Korean War between 1950 and 1951. This time period was the most active of the entire war, both on the battlefield, and with governments and organizations, where issues pertaining to the war were consistently discussed. Taking into account location, language, and political orientation, seven newspapers were selected to achieve a pan-Canadian understanding of the war: the Vancouver Province, Winnipeg Free Press, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Montreal Gazette, Le Devoir, and Halifax Chronicle- Herald . This thesis focuses on three major themes highlighted in the seven newspapers' editorials: the role Canada played in the war, the apparent threat of Communism, and attitudes regarding the United Nations. The English-language editorials generally argued that Canada should playa meaningful role in the Korean War, while editorials in Le Devoir raised some concerns. Furthermore, English-language newspapers were critical of the federal government's response to the war, and Canada's unprepared military, which were portrayed as leaving Canada vulnerable to Communist influence and attack. The threat of Communism was undeniable, though editorialists were unsure of its larger implications. The role the Soviet Union was playing in Korea, managing Communist China, and the influence of Communism in the United Nations were frequently debated in the newspaper editorials. In contrast to the standard historical argument that Canada has consistently been a strong supporter of the United Nations, some editorialists questioned how effective the UN could be in the Korean War. Others, however, believed the UN showed great promise. Opinion also varied as to whether the UN could dispel concerns that it was simply a renamed League of Nations, and, if it could move past this epithet, how would this be achieved. Finally, it was discussed whether the UN could even bring a lasting peace to the Korean peninsula.

The earliest attempts of France and England to colonize North America were disappointments. The sixteenth century saw French attempts to colonize the St. Lawrence Valley (1541-3) and Northern Florida (1562-5) and English attempts to colonize Roanoke Island (1585-7). In all three cases, the venture's hopes of finding valuable resources or the Northwest Passage were not realized and colonization was not achieved. This dissertation will examine four major types of difficulties the French and English faced in Canada, Virginia and Florida in the sixteenth century. They are challenges of environment and adaptation; internal conflicts such as rivalry and mutiny; challenges of Amerindian relations and, finally, challenges of transportation and communication. The struggles of these abandoned colonies will be compared with those of permanent colonies such as Jamestown, Quebec, Port Royal, Hispaniola and New Spain. Particular emphasis will be placed on the early struggles of Samuel de Champlain in Canada and John Smith in Virginia. It will be demonstrated that these were standard challenges of colonization for successful and unsuccessful colonies alike and that they could be overcome eventually with enough effort, experimentation, men and materials. France and England did not stop their earliest North American colonization projects because the task was too difficult. Rather, there appeared to be no worthwhile reason to waste resources or to battle rival powers such as Spain to hold these territories at this time.

This work examines morale in the Canadian Army overseas from 1939 to 1943. Canadian soldiers began arriving in the United Kingdom in December 1939 and were not committed to battle, with the exception of the one-day raid on Dieppe, until July 1943. Throughout most of their time in the British Isles, Canadian soldiers were kept out of combat, which presented difficult and unprecedented problems of morale and discipline. Their long-term presence in Britain, separated from their loved ones and peaceful civilian lives in Canada, exacerbated these problems. Around 500,000 Canadian soldiers spent time in Britain during the war, which represented approximately 4% of the overall Canadian population in 1939. Therefore, the experience of this large microcosm of Canada's population also serves as an indicator of the mentality of Canadians generally on the eve of the war and during the early war years. Nevertheless, historians have paid little attention to this representative cross-section of the Canadian population. The present work examines the manner in which the army tried to ameliorate morale problems, and finds that a highly developed sense of Canadian identity in the soldiers overseas necessitated the provision of specifically Canadian measures to maintain their morale. The maintenance of strong institutional and familial ties with Canada also facilitated improved morale overseas. This study examines various themes related to Canadian nationalism, identity, and citizenship in a demographically small portion of the population. It draws conclusions based on their experiences that have national pertinence and therefore provides new insight into the overall Canadian experience of the Second World War.

The orchestral conductor Heinz Unger (1895-1965) was born in Berlin, Germany and was reared from a young age to follow in his father's footsteps and become a lawyer. In 1915, he heard a Munich performance of Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde conducted by Bruno Walter and thereafter devoted the rest of his life to music and particularly to the dissemination of Gustav Mahler's music. This doctoral dissertation is conceived as a contextual biography that explores the manner in which the strands of German Jewish identity converge and are negotiated by a musician who, as a consequence of persecution, lived a sizeable portion of his life in a Double Diaspora (in the Jewish Diaspora as well as exiled from his European home) yet never cut the ties to a German Jewish tradition informed by the strains of a European cultural heritage. It is a work that discusses the process of Jewish emancipation in Central Europe and in so doing sheds light on the complex issues of ethnicity, "race," nationalism, secularization, and culture and thought as they developed in the modern period and impacted upon Europe and beyond in the first half of the twentieth century. In tracking Heinz Unger's many movements and activities around the world and covering his eventual emigration to Canada, the work simultaneously probes the manner in which European cultural values manifested themselves in disparate parts of the world. It is also a detailed examination of the values that Mahler's oeuvre represents and of one musician's negotiation of these sites of meaning by way of his commitment to Gustav Mahler's music. The first three chapters serve as an extended introduction that in turn surveys Jewish identity in the Diaspora, constructions of Jewish music and their meaning, and the specific cultural significance of Mahler's music in a German Jewish context. The following five chapters are cast as a biography of Heinz Unger (based on the Heinz Unger Fonds at Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario) that explores the manner in which the German Jewish musician understood and expressed his dual identity by way of his allegiance to music.

<p> From 1985 to 2015, local politicians like Kenneth G. Spillias, Jan Winters, and Nancy M. Graham reshaped downtown West Palm Beach. They promised to eliminate urban blight, and turned a crime-ridden area of the city into an upper-middle class entertainment zone frequented by wealthy pleasure-seekers from throughout Palm Beach County.</p><p> However, much of this transformation was an illusion. These politicians eliminated local taxpayers from the decision-making process by circumventing their votes, but subsequently taxed them to pay for the improvements. Furthermore, blight was not eliminated downtown, merely relocated to areas surrounding the entertainment zone. This resulted in ongoing tension between the mostly white patrons and business owners in the redeveloped area, and the primarily black residents in the dilapidated neighborhoods surrounding this development.</p>

Since the early twentieth century, manufacturers and distributors of toxic products have sought to discredit research linking their products with disease. At the same time they conducted research designed to demonstrate minimal risks associated with their products. Much of this activity came about by or through corporate retained attorneys, whose endeavors are the subject of this dissertation. Such attorney involvement has allowed for shielding undesired results through the court-sanctioned attorney right to secrecy. In many cases, this legal participation and even management of medical research has changed the topography of the medical literature, distorting it toward the null hypothesis for disease potential of the subject materials. This is because attorneys, whether they are defense or plaintiff, only sought credible evidence for their position at trial or in regulatory practice, not the advancement of science. Furthermore, the distortion is primarily one-sided, toward the defense of toxic substances. This results from the virtually unlimited financial backing defense lawyers have from large corporations, while plaintiff counsel are almost uniformly reluctant to spend their own money. To date, only limited historical accounts about this attorney effort have been published, largely because of the veil of secrecy created by attorney privileges. This dissertation seeks to look behind the veil to examine the full range of legal activities in case studies of five substances—silica, tobacco, asbestos, chromium, and benzene. These activities include lawyers identifying, hiring, and controlling experts, preparing contracts for research that limited public disclosure, managing research, editing final research papers, harassing opposing experts, and manipulating regulations and workers' compensation laws. This lifting of the veil is possible primarily through disclosures found in bankruptcies and legal proceedings, assets not normally considered by historians of science. The activities of lawyers in manufacturing science had varying degrees of success as they evolved over the course of a century. During the early decades of the twentieth century, attorneys were largely successful in limiting victims' recovery for silicosis and keeping it out of the public eye. Similarly, at first, cigarette and asbestos product manufacturers were successful in limiting litigation's effect on the bottom line. However, a growing number of public health advocates and plaintiff attorneys brought these controversies increasingly into the public legal arena, resulting in massive settlements by the tobacco companies and bankruptcies of many asbestos product manufacturers. The settlements and bankruptcies also provided a treasure trove of documents, many of which detailed extensive involvement of lawyers in the manipulation of medical research. To date, chromium and benzene manufacturers, as well as certain asbestos product manufacturers, have been more successful in limiting damage through lawsuits and regulations. In part this is because of the newest evolution in research tactics. During the last two decades of the twentieth century, "Litigation Support Firms" began undertaking an increasing amount of the attorney-managed research. These companies worked hand in hand with attorneys, as they transformed the peer reviewed medical literature on toxic substances by publishing carefully structured industry friendly research (and reviews of past research) in peer-reviewed, but often industry controlled, journals. Even when researchers have been free to publish their findings, the approval was often subject to final approval of a report exclusively provided to the client. Thus, the public articles rarely disclosed any hazard. On occasion the researchers published the same data in slightly altered forms in two to four publications, thus slanting the entire balance of the peer review literature. Attorney involvement in medical research is a fundamental problem in the production of medical knowledge. The ability to hide and manipulate science has delayed recognition of hazards such as silica, tobacco, asbestos, chromium, and benzene by decades. Today, it continues to skew the understanding of toxic substance diseases. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2016. / March 21, 2016. / asbestos, attorney, benzene, chromium, silica, tobacco / Includes bibliographical references. / Ronald E. Doel, Professor Directing Dissertation; Sherwood W. Wise, Jr., University Representative; James P. Jones, Committee Member; Michael Creswell, Committee Member; Kristine Harper, Committee Member.