Master of Arts / Department of History / Marsha L. Frey / The diplomatic corps employed by Oliver Cromwell and Charles II from 1649 to 1660 differed greatly. This study will focus on the top three diplomatic ranks: ambassador, envoys and residents and will exclude agents and chargé d′affaires. The lesser ranks have been excluded for several reasons primarily because biographical information does not exist for many of them and as lesser diplomats their missions were not significant and often lasted only a matter of days. This prosopographical examination of the twenty-four diplomats employed by Charles II and Oliver Cromwell provides insight into their similarities as well as their differences. After examining the twenty-four, one from each side will be further researched. In matters of religion, Cromwell predictably sent Protestants. Charles also sent Protestants, but did send Roman Catholics, especially to Catholic courts. Despite the age difference between Cromwell and Charles II, age did not separate their diplomats. The average age of Cromwell’s and Charles’ II diplomats was both forty years. In matters of education, those who went to college had a tendency to choose the Puritan-influenced Cambridge for the Commonwealth and Protectorate and Oxford for the Royalists. The area a diplomat was from shows that the diplomats from north chose the side of the Commonwealth while those from London and south chose the Royalist side. Royalists had a higher percentage of military service and a higher percentage of Parliamentary service. Although more Commonwealth and Protectorate diplomats had a university education, the Royalists had a higher percentage of master’s degrees and the study of the law. When looking at a diplomat’s position in a family, the Commonwealth diplomats had a greater chance of being the oldest son, while the Royalists tended to be younger sons. This information is valuable because it expands the commonly held historiographical image of the typical Royalist and Commonwealth supporters and illustrates the differences between the general support and each sides diplomatic corps.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Sue Zschoche / As the world enters the centennial of World War I, interest in this war is reviving. Books, television shows, and movies are bringing the war into popular culture. Now that all the participants of the war have passed away a change is occurring in in American memory. The transition from living to non-living memory is clearly visible in museums, one of the main ways history is communicated to the public. Four museums are studied in this paper. Two exhibits built in the 1990s are in the 1st Infantry Division Museum at Fort Riley, Kansas, and the Chemical Corps Museum in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The other two exhibits are newer and are the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, Missouri and the Cantigny 1st Infantry Division Museum in Wheaton, Illinois. Findings reveal that exhibits become more inclusive over time to civilian bodies, wounded bodies, and the specific image of “Americans killing Germans bodies.” However, even though there is change some things are turning into myths. The icon of the American soldier as a healthy and strong man willing to sacrifice his life for the country is still a major theme throughout all the exhibits. Finally, there are several myths that America has adopted from its allies. The icons of the bandages over the eyes from the chemical attacks and the horrors of the trenches are borrowed, to a certain extent, from America’s allies. The Americans were only in the war for a limited time and borrowed cultural memories to supplement their own. The examination of the four museums is important because this transition will happen again and soon. Museums must be conscious of the changes occurring during this transition in order to confront the challenges.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Mark P. Parillo / Throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, American society sought to record the stories of World War II veterans before they passed on. The United States Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2000 in order to collect stories not only from World War II veterans, but also from veterans of all wars. Although many similar programs existed before this one, this initiative stimulated the interest of communities all over the country to conduct oral history projects of their own. As a result, the availability of veterans’ accounts improved for scholars as well as for the general public. Along with veterans’ interviews, many collections include donated letters, diaries, and memoirs. Many of these institutions have posted their materials on the internet, thus giving easier public access to the sources. The increased availability of veterans’ accounts has shifted the question from, “What was the World War II veterans’ experience?” to “How do the veterans reflect on their experience?” This study analyzes the memories of World War II veterans who have documented their experiences at two separate times in their lives. It examines wartime letters and diaries written by soldiers as well as, oral histories conducted after the war. This study compares three veterans’ memories over time and the influence of collective memory on their remembrances. This case study finds that although these three veterans had very different experiences, they all reflected on their experience in similar ways. The veterans’ immediate accounts were straightforward and without introspection, while their later accounts included interpretation and analysis of their experiences. Although the details in each narrative are unique to the veteran, the overall tone and meaning of the memory constructed in their oral histories followed the meaning presented in the American collective memory of the war.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Charles Sanders / The power of historical memory is readily apparent in the United States of America. Ask any descendent of veterans that served in war, and a plethora of reasons behind their willingness to fight will follow. As with any conflict, the enduring legacies of the war‘s aftermath are not always clear until years after the fact. Memory of the American Civil War took several different routes before finally settling on the "spirit of reconciliation" that came to dominate American society in the post-war era. In the South, the "Lost Cause" began to take hold with former Confederates attempting to justify their defeat and change the historical record to excuse their actions. As the winner in the war, the North did not need to come up with justification as to why they fought—they had secured the Union and destroyed the divisive institution, slavery. Gradually over time, Northerners and Southerners celebrated their veterans while simultaneously promoting reconciliation between the two sections. As a result, any emancipationist legacy from the end of the Civil War was relegated to irrelevancy in American society as Jim Crow settled in within the South for the next hundred years. Memory of the American Civil War continues to have lasting impact upon modern American society, especially with the sesquicentennial celebrations of the war‘s major battles. Lesser known, and yet equally as important, is the memory of the American Revolution. As with the "Lost Cause", the American Revolution experienced its own reconstruction with equal parts forgetting and remembering. Emerging from this "reconstruction" was what became known as the American identity. Thirteen disparate colonies became a solid monolith of Americanism in the reconstructed views of the Revolution, instead of the divided thirteen colonies they truly were. This thesis argues that the "Lost Cause" and spirit of reconciliation that permeated the post-war United States after the Civil War followed a tradition of desiring unity above all else at the expense of minority groups such as African Americans and Native Americans, that began with the American Revolution.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Sue Zschoche / In 1942, the U.S. Army and Navy announced the creation of their respective women’s military services: the WAAC/WAC and the WAVES. Although American women had served alongside the military in past conflicts, the creation of women’s military corps caused uproar in American society. Placing women directly into the armed services called into question cultural expectations about “masculinity” and “femininity.” Thus, the women’s corps had to be justified to the public in accordance with American cultural assumptions regarding proper gender roles. “Fashioning Femininity for War: Material Culture and Gender Performance in the WAC and WAVES during World War II” focuses on the role of material culture in communicating a feminine image of the WAC and WAVES to the American public as well as the ways in which servicewomen engaged material culture to fashion and perform a feminine identity compatible with contemporary understandings of “femininity.” Material culture served as a mechanism to resolve public concerns regarding both the femininity and the function of women in the military. WAC and WAVES material culture linked their wearers with stereotyped characteristics specifically related to contemporary meanings of “femininity” celebrated by American society, while at the same time associating them with military organizations doing vital war work. Ultimately, the WAVES were more successful in their manipulations of material culture than the WAC, communicating both femininity and function in a way that was complementary to the established gender hierarchy. Therefore, the WAVES enjoyed a prestigious position in the mind of the American public. This dissertation also contributes to the ongoing historiographical debate regarding World War II as a turning point for women’s liberation, arguing that while the seeds of women’s liberation were sown in women’s wartime activities, those same wartime women were firmly convinced that their rightful place was in the private rather than the public sphere. The war created an opportunity to reevaluate gender roles but it would take some time before those reevaluations bore fruit.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Mark P. Parillo / Detachment 101's experiences provide a microcosm view of the evolutionary nature of warfare, and also demonstrates the understanding of Fourth Generational Warfare concepts by the Detachment.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Charles W. Sanders, Jr. / This thesis examines the reasons Union soldiers voted overwhelmingly for Abraham Lincoln in the presidential election of 1864. This thesis bridges the gap between the emerging disagreements within the historiography of the soldier vote in 1864. The disagreements thus far deal with the role of emancipation in the Union soldier’s decision-making process versus the role of other issues, particularly whether or not the war effort should have been continued on to ultimate victory. By extension, the argument also deals with whether or not Union soldiers adhered to the Republican Party’s ideology in making their decision. Through analysis of primary sources including Union soldiers’ letters and diaries, the answer that emerges is that Union soldiers adhered to Republican ideology as outlined by Republican campaign materials as well as their party platform in making their decision for president. This thesis ultimately concludes that a focus on any one reason or another that soldiers chose Lincoln misses the larger picture.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / After years of selecting, editing, omitting, reducing and correcting what would become printed as over fourteen thousand pages of devotional literature for a young Methodist movement in the wake of the English Evangelical Revival, John Wesley pronounced his A Christian library: consisting of extracts from, and abridgments of, the choicest Pieces of practical divinity which have been published in the English tongue in fifty volumes (1749-1755) an underappreciated treasure and an overtaxing expenditure. Taking their lead from Wesley’s comments, scholars and historians of Wesley studies and Methodism have neglected to take a closer look at the ways the library may have been successful. This study argues that despite being initially a marketing disappointment and an expensive liability, John Wesley’s Christian library was influential in helping to shape the spiritual lives of “serious readers” within Methodism, particularly from 1752-1778. In the preface to the Christian library, Wesley revealed his standard for measuring the influence of the Library. However, despite offering a premature and partial assessment of the library in his journal entry at the end of 1752, providing some public responses to criticisms of the library in 1760 and again in the early 1770s, and writing some personal letters that recommended the library to others in the 1780s, Wesley did not publish an evaluation of what he believed the Christian library had accomplished during his life. Thus, based on the collaborative evidence gathered from the personal accounts of early Methodist preachers and the final address of Francis Asbury to American Methodists, this study makes the case that Wesley’s Christian library had a substantial positive influence on Methodism.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Mark Parillo / America forged a successful way of war that relied on adaptation, and this trait was not simply an adjunct to industrial might as a reason why the Allies won World War II. An American penchant for organization and corporate management allowed for mass production of war material, which clearly contributed to Axis defeat. However, to claim that the Axis Powers were merely overwhelmed by an avalanche of weapons and supply is reductionist. This dissertation contends that adaptability was as much an American way of war as mass production and overwhelming firepower. The particular nature of American adaptability and its contribution to Allied victory are exhibited in the Army’s use of animal power during a conflict synonymous with mechanized warfare and advanced technology. The application of pre-modern technology in a modern, machine-driven war was not archaic. On the contrary, the nature of American adaptability allowed the Army to move forward by retreating down a culturally constructed hierarchy of modernity and employing the traditional mode of animal transportation. The Army’s technological regression from motors to mules in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and China-Burma-India during World War II is the focus of this work. Americans possessed material abundance in campaigns across Western Europe and the Central Pacific in 1944 and 1945, as German and Japanese prisoners attested. Mountains of artillery shells, fuel, and food, however, did not exist in the backwater “sideshows.” American military success on the periphery was not due to material abundance, nor to a greater sense of determination. America won the backwater campaigns because the nature of American adaptability was cultivated over the centuries and converted from a way of life to an American way of war.

Doctor of Philosophy / Security Studies / Dale R. Herspring / Since the late 1970s Saudi Arabia has experienced transnational terrorism in sporadic waves whose character has evolved over time. While most of the literature on these waves of terrorism focuses on religious extremism this dissertation argues that terrorism in Saudi Arabia, although framed in religious terms, is not the result of religious factors alone, but more importantly a function of external variables. Taking the role of religious extremism into consideration, this dissertation underlines the importance of external factors on the mobilization of transnational terrorist groups throughout the Islamic world and particularly in Saudi Arabia. It argues that religious extremist terrorism cannot be examined in isolation from the context of the developments that ignite it and revolutionize its doctrine. This dissertation examines three key regional political developments – the Iranian revolution, the 1990 Gulf war, and the 2003 Iraq war – together with terrorist violence in their aftermath to show how the significant political events transformed extremist worldviews from passive to violent to organized terrorism. Though the character of these three political events and the terrorist acts that they unleashed differ widely in context, scope, and character, there are common threads among all three that illuminate how different dynamics contribute to the evolution of transnational terrorist mobilization. The dissertation identifies how the development of a politico-religious ideology, shaped and revolutionized by the presence of political crises, became a driving force behind much of the terrorism following these major political events. By exploring the interplay of popular perceptions, political entrepreneurs, and state responses, this dissertation seeks to better understand the complex dynamics involved in the evolution of transnational terrorism in Saudi Arabia.