Thesis (M.A.)--Rowan University, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Biography.

John Dwyer (1856-1934) was a London docks foreman who emigrated to Australia in 1888. Leaving his London employment on his 'own accord', Dwyer embarked upon a quest for recognition - recognition of his rights as a worker and his identity as an individual. Dwyer and his family arrived in New South Wales to be greeted by the economic depression of the 1890s, and state and employer mobilisation against organised labour and working class radicals. Dwyer was soon reduced to scraping together a living as a boarding house manager in Sydney's poorest districts, as he helped organise the Active Service Brigade, which agitated on behalf of the unemployed. Dwyer's surviving papers - twenty-one boxes of correspondence, manuscripts, minutes, handbills, tracts and newspaper clippings, plus several other volumes - document the life of a working class political radical and autodidact who embraced temperance, and who was fascinated by new ideas in religion and science - Darwinism, Theosophy and occult spiritualism. This thesis places Dwyer in the context of the intense ideological ferment of new ideas in politics, theology and science that characterised the period 1890-1914. Ideas that aggressively challenged the old certainties, and which Dwyer embraced in his project to 'change the face of the world.' Changing the world contested with the need to endure its conditions. Theosophy and temperance appealed to Dwyer's notion of duty, and an instinct to rationalise the social and economic roles he seemed unable to escape. The fragmented nature of his papers, and stop-start bursts of public activism - in politics, theosophy and temperance - reflect the tension between an urge to fight, to understand, to create - struggling against the daily demands of making a living and feeding a family. The thesis explores Dwyer's relationship with fellow radicals and workers, the labour movement and members of Sydney's social and political elite - men and women who shared and contested with his vision. Dwyer's complex and at times apparently contradictory values can be found amongst radicals and labourites alike - for example, William Lane, W.G. Spence and Bernard O'Dowd. Nor was Dywer's interest in theosophy or the occult as unusual as it might seem to modern readers. Dwyer's papers provide important insights into dilemmas that have challenged historians: the problem of alienation, the role of the individual in the historical process, the nature of working class radicalism. Issues often analysed in theoretically abstract terms, or at a broad level of historical inquiry, across a national or class-wide scale. Broad analyses of social forces or ideologies tend to distort their historical impact and meaning, failing to capture the complex relationship of phenomena such as class or ideology with individual experience. Working from Dwyer's experience, this thesis argues that it is possible to build a complex picture of working class life in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Australia.

John Dwyer (1856-1934) was a London docks foreman who emigrated to Australia in 1888. Leaving his London employment on his 'own accord', Dwyer embarked upon a quest for recognition - recognition of his rights as a worker and his identity as an individual. Dwyer and his family arrived in New South Wales to be greeted by the economic depression of the 1890s, and state and employer mobilisation against organised labour and working class radicals. Dwyer was soon reduced to scraping together a living as a boarding house manager in Sydney's poorest districts, as he helped organise the Active Service Brigade, which agitated on behalf of the unemployed. Dwyer's surviving papers - twenty-one boxes of correspondence, manuscripts, minutes, handbills, tracts and newspaper clippings, plus several other volumes - document the life of a working class political radical and autodidact who embraced temperance, and who was fascinated by new ideas in religion and science - Darwinism, Theosophy and occult spiritualism. This thesis places Dwyer in the context of the intense ideological ferment of new ideas in politics, theology and science that characterised the period 1890-1914. Ideas that aggressively challenged the old certainties, and which Dwyer embraced in his project to 'change the face of the world.' Changing the world contested with the need to endure its conditions. Theosophy and temperance appealed to Dwyer's notion of duty, and an instinct to rationalise the social and economic roles he seemed unable to escape. The fragmented nature of his papers, and stop-start bursts of public activism - in politics, theosophy and temperance - reflect the tension between an urge to fight, to understand, to create - struggling against the daily demands of making a living and feeding a family. The thesis explores Dwyer's relationship with fellow radicals and workers, the labour movement and members of Sydney's social and political elite - men and women who shared and contested with his vision. Dwyer's complex and at times apparently contradictory values can be found amongst radicals and labourites alike - for example, William Lane, W.G. Spence and Bernard O'Dowd. Nor was Dywer's interest in theosophy or the occult as unusual as it might seem to modern readers. Dwyer's papers provide important insights into dilemmas that have challenged historians: the problem of alienation, the role of the individual in the historical process, the nature of working class radicalism. Issues often analysed in theoretically abstract terms, or at a broad level of historical inquiry, across a national or class-wide scale. Broad analyses of social forces or ideologies tend to distort their historical impact and meaning, failing to capture the complex relationship of phenomena such as class or ideology with individual experience. Working from Dwyer's experience, this thesis argues that it is possible to build a complex picture of working class life in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Australia.

This is a biography of Robert Jones, 1857-1933. He was a surgeon, and is credited with bringing orthopaedics from its quack past into its scientific present. This work explores Jones’ life and times, and examines whether he is entitled to the epithet ‘father of orthopaedics’. It looks at the history of bonesetting, the influences on Jones’ development and medical training, and some key moments in his career – notably his involvement in the building of the Manchester Ship Canal, the planning of Heswall Children’s Hospital, and the Great War. It argues that although there are other medical men who could have been credited with fathering orthopaedics, he is indeed the father – at least of orthopaedics in Britain, if not internationally. This version of Jones’ life begins with something of his biographer’s journey, before it explores what and who influenced Jones, and in turn what his legacy has been to the medical profession. The accompanying Critical Commentary explores whether or not it is possible to offer a definition of biography as a genre in the light of its history and purpose. It examines critical views, considers the mythology that grows up around historical figures, and also explains the rationale for the structure chosen for organising the material presented in this new biography of Robert Jones, Live and Limbs: Re-membering Robert Jones.

Lightless Mornings: A Fine Legacy represents a personal interrogation and historical account of my great-great -great grandfather, W.D. McCurdy’s use of forced labor in his coalmines and cotton plantations in the Black Belt region of Alabama during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Through personal research including interviews with other descendents of McCurdy, as well as scholarly research about the practice of convict leasing in Alabama, I explore dynamics of inheritance, economics, power, privilege, race, class, geography, history, family, and identity.

This thesis examines the lives of Senior Chief Koinange wa Mbiyu and his eldest son, Peter Mbiyu Koinange. It joins with the growing rise of biographical work within African Studies. It challenges the historical understanding of late colonial rule in Kenya and the role of official myth in pre- and post-independence historical narratives. Koinange wa Mbiyu was the patriarch of one of the most respected, wealthy, and politically influential Kikuyu families of Kenya's colonial and post-colonial period. His eldest son, Peter Mbiyu, received a prestigious education abroad and returned to Kenya where he became a prominent leader for African independent education African political action. Koinange and Peter bear frequent mention in academic discussions of collaboration, discontent, nationalism, and militancy in Kenya's colonial era. This thesis challenges the widely held narrative that Koinange and Peter embraced militant politics opposing colonial rule during the 1940s. While fitting larger understandings of decolonisation, it is not an honest depiction of the Koinange's political actions. As a result, this thesis is intentionally a work of revisionist history that looks to the profound changes in the culture and nature of colinal rule during the 1940s, rather than a political shift in the Koinanges. In addition to challenging the prevalent understanding of Koinange and Peter's political action, this thesis raises a number of areas - gender, wealth, elite and family dynamics, to name a few - where the Koinange family history would further illuminate the historical understanding of the colonial era. This thesis is a dual biography, crafted as a work of narrative history. It challenges a breadth of current scholarship, utilizing the largest collection of pre-Mau Mau archival records to date. This thesis engages with a number of historiographical challenges related to biography, the individual, the family, and the challenges of oral history shaped in the crucible of cultural crisis.

The main objective of this work is to expand knowledge about the history of the 1st Air Transport Squadron, from the time it was established in 1946 until it was disbanded in 1993. Findings are based on interviews, with former members of the transport squadron serving at Ostrava Mošnov Airport, which were directed using the oral history method. The work also takes information from available archive sources and literary sources. The distinctiveness of the topic (an elite air transport squadron entrusted with special purpose tasks within the army), which is put in historic context, is reflected in the text. However, the author places the greatest emphasis on the conditions of a professional soldier's everyday life. The author does not present definite conclusions, on the contrary, he endeavours to view the specific issue from various viewpoints. The soldiers serving with the air transport squadron are not portrayed as extraordinary supermen, but as men and women for many of whom serving with the air force was not simply satisfaction of their enjoyment of flying, but was also hard, demanding and, frequently, very dangerous work, which was not always undertaken for personal benefit, but because of their deep connection with their country, and which strongly affected not only their own lives but also...

This master's degree thesis, adhering to the genre of contemporary history studies, depicts the lifestory of Ivan M. Havel. Theoretically it is grounded in personalism, especially regarding to works of Ch. Mounier and M. Scheler and establishes as the primary point of reference the phenomena of individual personality, uniquely embedded into the surrounding social world. From this basic tenet the explanation is built towards the understanding of general categories, using the contexts and traditions, in which the personality had been engulfed. This thesis makes use of both oral history method and archival sources and documents study. Ivan M. Havel can be understood within enduring context of his family's intellectual, civic, political and entrepreneurial tradition, where several specific phenomena stand out. First the non-partisan spirituality, second the emphasis, laid of socially responsible conduct of business; third the stress, laid on achieving broad education, going beyond established domains and disciplines and fourth the sociability, spanning over all of these attributes. Ivan M. Havel's biography is therefore traced mainly within the period up to the 1989 year, since the childhood, deeply influenced by his grandfather H. Vavrečka, through his coming of age, spent close to the Šestatřicátníci literary...

This thesis is aimed at Václav Vokolek's life, particularly from the artistic and professional sides. Václav Vokolek belongs to a significant cultural family, which is also reflected throughout his whole life, not only in his work and priorities but also in the circle of his close friends. From the theoretical point of view, the diploma thesis is based primarily on a method of oral history because there were some summarising pieces of work about the Vokolka family created, however it concerned the older family members, not Václav Vokolka himself.