This thesis is a study of the changing way in which part of the British Empire was being governed during a period of far reaching developments both in Britain and in the plantation colonies. The colonies referred to are the old British West Indian islands -- Jamaica, the Leewards group, Barbados, Dominica, St. Vincent, Grenada and Tobago -- and those colonies conquered by Britain during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in which sugar planting was carried on by means of slave labour. The dates chosen do not denote precise limits to the period. The Colonial Office had its unintended beginnings in 1801, in 1834 slaves were emancipated in the plantation colonies, and the central years for this study lie between these dates, certain themes are followed beyond them. In this area and period an account is given of the changing of government. This concerns the institutions within the colonies and those in Britain which had a direct part in the conduct of colonial affairs; it involves the purpose of the institutions, their form and their interrelationships. At the end or the 18th century the traditional way of governing the old plantation colonies was to leave internal government to those resident In the colony and to maintain virtually only sufficient authority in Britain to ensure the preservation of the system of trade and navigation. Under the old representative system the governor, in theory, possessed wide powers, in practice his authority was narrowly confined and the regular conduct of administration was beyond his control. Colonists had developed and adapted their institutions and powers so that they largely governed themselves. In Britain there was no desire to intervene in the internal affairs of the plantation colonies, nor was there the machinery to enable the executive to do so. The institutions which existed matched the contemporary concern to maintain the system of trade and navigation. Such colonial business that there was was executed by the department with the responsibility for the relevant service: there was no department with a general responsibility for the area of the colonies, nor was there any adequate method of coordinating the activities of the different ministers and boards involved with administration in the colonies.

The focus of the thesis is on labour, business, social and cultural history of Italian immigration to post WWII Toronto. In particular, this study addresses fundamental issues such as ethnic niching, unionization, urban proletarianization and entrepreneurship. From this perspective, this investigation addresses and analyses a list of key questions. How did a mass of former peasants, unskilled workers, artisans and merchants become urban wage-earners or small business entrepreneurs in an urban and Capitalist society? How did the process of unionization work? How did an economic ethnic niche develop? What role did 'ethnicity' play in the processes of both urban proletarianization and unionization as well as entrepreneurship? What made immigrant unionization and entrepreneurship successful or a failure? What other factors impinged on these processes? Lastly, what impact did these processes have on the host society? In addressing these questions the thesis focuses on the role played by a specific industry in enabling immigrants to find their place in the new host society. More specifically, the research has looked at the construction industry that, between the 1950s and the 1970s, represented a typical economic ethnic niche for the Italian community. In fact, tens of thousands of Italian males found work in this sector as bricklayers, labourers, carpenters, plasterers and cement finishers, while hundreds of others became small employers in the same industry. The analysis of the cultural and structural factors that were at the origin of the Italian niche of the construction industry is the central point of this study.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [152-159]).

This research project was designed to investigate the nature, development and impact of the Dublin nationalist press in the mid-nineteenth century. The prime focus was placed upon the period between 1842 and 1865 beginning with the foundation of The Nation newspaper that heralded a new era of Irish constitutional nationalism, and ending with the suppression of The Irish People, a revolutionary newspaper that fmnly established the presence of a long-term advanced Irish nationalist press. The overriding aim of the Dublin nationalist press was to overthrow the 1800 Act of Union and achieve political autonomy for Ireland. During this period the Famine occurred, an event which exerted a crucial impact on Irish nationalist thinking. Within this context, this thesis draws upon critical analyses of the journalistic and literary contents of the Dublin nationalist newspapers in order to assess their effect upon the development of Irish nationalism. The most influential newspapers in the Irish nationalist movement were published in Dublin, and it was the base from where the most important Irish nationalists conducted their political campaigns. Above all, a key aim of this thesis was to assess the role of the Dublin nationalist press in influencing and reflecting both the constructive and destructive nature of Irish nationalism. With this in mind, an emphasis was placed upon . the power of ideas articulated in the Dublin nationalist press, particularly the impassioned dynamics between constitutional nationalism and revolutionary nationalism. This research also focuses upon the thinking of the high-profile individuals who were involved with the Dublin nationalist newspapers, and the inspiration they gave to their contemporaries and future Irish nationalists. Based upon extensive newspaper and manuscript sources, this thesis establishes that what was written in the Dublin nationalist press during the mid-nineteenth century had a powerful and lasting effect on the development of Irish nationalism. Presenting the first defInitive analysis of the relationship between the Dublin nationalist press and the ideological development of Irish nationalism during the mid-nineteenth century, and providing in-depth critical analysis of the propaganda espoused by these newspapers, this thesis offers another much-needed contribution to the important but neglected area of the Irish nationalist press in the nineteenth century.

The thesis is a contribution to two of the crucial problems of middle Byzantine history: the social and political structure of the provinces, and the explanation of the rapid fall of Asia Minor to the Turks at the end of the llth century. These problems are approached through a study of the Maeander region of western Asia Minor.Part one describes the geography of the region and shows it to have been a naturally fertile area, of great potential importance to the Empire. In the Roman period it had been very prosperous; the subsequent decline cannot be explained by geological or climatic factors. Part two surveys the archaeological evidence. The ancient city sites remained occupied at a sometimes very low cultural level through the early (7th -8th century) and middle (9th-llth century) Byzantine periods. A general move of settlements to apparently more secure sites with natural defences did not take place until the 12th-13th centuries in the face of the Turks. Up to the end of the llth century the city sites remained the focus of what was most active in the provincial society of the Maeander region. Part three looks at the region's elites. The strategoi and judges who ruled the theme of the Thrakesioi, which makes up the western two-thirds of the region, were outsiders appointed by the Imperial government in Constantinople and only in the region on short term appointments. Several major figures at the Imperial court owned land in the region but only as absentee landlords. When crisis came between 1071 and 1080 these outsiders abandoned the Maeander to the Turks. The church played an important role, but the resident local elite were a comparatively humble group, isolated from Constantinople, and lacking the influence to force the Imperial government into defending their interests.

The thesis, "Anti-Socialism in British Politics, 1900-1922," is an attempt to combine the approaches of intellectual and political history in explaining the development of Conservative Party politics at a crucial period of social and political change. It pays particular attention to the relationship between political thought and action through the medium of 'ideology.' It attempts to illuminate this process with an extended case-study of the ideological opposition to 'Socialism' between 1880s and 1920s; it then traces the impact of these ideas to the strategic calculations and policy programmes of the Conservative party. It concludes by arguing that the ideological character of inter-war Conservatism can be best understood by reference to its resistance to Socialism, and it is through this doctrinal prism that the transformation of the Party into one dedicated to protecting the interests of industrialists and the middle-class, suburban salariat can be best understood. The thesis examines the processes of ideological innovation and operationalisation by which these interests were appealed to, and also reveals the political constraints which prevented Conservatives making too overt an appeal to the property-owning classes. The first half of the thesis is concerned with various intellectual and ideological responses to 'Socialism'; the contents of these critiques are treated as interesting in their own right, but are also related to the demands of a wider political culture, particularly as they were constructed with political needs in mind. The second half examines the political impact of Anti-Socialism in British politics at local and national level after 1906. It concludes by arguing that the relationship between Conservatism and the free market, limited government ideal of 'liberal' Individualism was closer than sometimes argued, that 'Anti-Socialism' brought the two creeds together, but in the end it was the 'common sense' Conservative modification of the Individualist creed which dominated political rhetoric and helped overcome many of the hidden tensions present in creating a Party for the 'property-owning democracy.'

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 173-184).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [152]-[159]). Also available in print.

Despite the obvious importance of federation in the political and general history of Australia it has received surprisingly little attention from historians. The three major accounts of the federal movement by Deakin, Wise, and Quick and Garran, were all written during or immediately after the events narrated, by men who had participated in them; though each is a valuable primary document, all exhibit inevitable limitations of bias and concentration on those aspects of the subject best known to the author. The only full length academic study of the federal movement, H.L.Hall's, Victoria's Part in the Australian Federal Movement (London,1931), relies heavily on the earlier accounts, concentrates narrowly on one colony, and is generally disappointing. The excellent scholarly articles more recently published by Parker, Blainey, Bastin, Martin, McMinn, MacCallum et al have been concerned mainly with the reassessment of the role of a few key individuals, and discussion of the significance of economic factors in promoting federation. The general emphasis of the whole corpus of material available is on the domestic politics associated with the federal movement with particular reference to New South Wales and to the eighteen-nineties.

It is the contention of this thesis that the activities of, and the influences on, the senior administrators based in the Castle and the Custom House in Dublin during the Great Irish Famine are an essential element to understanding the formulation and execution of Irish Famine relief policy. The principal aim of the study is to articulate the role played by these administrators in the formulation of relief policy. Emphasis is also given to the debates in the Cabinet over Irish relief policy and the influence of the administrators on those debates. The subject of the first chapter is the Science Commission. It examines in turn Peel's motivations for establishing the Science Commission, the chronology of events leading up to its establishment and the activities of the Commissioners both in England and Ireland. The second chapter concerns the Scarcity Commission established by Peel and Graham. It explores the motivations behind the selection of individual Commissioners and the relationships between the Commissioners. It also considers and contrasts the tasks that were officially assigned to the Commissioners and the limited use to which their conclusions were put by the Government. Chapters three and four deal with the Board of Works and in particular its influence on the formulation and administration of relief policy of Richard Griffith, Thomas Larcom, and Harry Jones. The activities of the Commissioners after the reconfiguration of the Board of Works by Act of Parliament in 1846 are examined and the fourth chapter seeks to establish in detail the political context surrounding-the decision to abandon relief by public employment as revealed in the Cabinet discussions at the time. The final chapter examines the actions of Edward Twisleton in Ireland during the Famine and his influence, or lack of it, on the formulation of relief policy. A detailed account is offered of the political context of the Poor Law Extension Act. Twisleton's relationships with both the Treasury and Clarendon, and the motives underlying his resignation in March 1849, are investigated.