This study examines the role of African novelists as major sources of historiography of Africa, and the socio-cultural experience of its people. Although many African novelists have over the years reflected issues of social and political significance in their works, only a few scholarly works seem to have addressed this phenomenon adequately. A major objective of this dissertation then is to help fill this gap by explicating these issues in the fiction of Chinua Achebe, a great iconic figure in African Literature. Utilizing the conceptual and analytical framework suggested in C.T. Keto's, Africa-Centered Perspective on History (1989), the contexts, themes, structures and techniques of the following five novels were examined: Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). The novels were shown to be replete with cogent social and political insights which provide an accurate portraiture of African/ Nigerian history of the 19th and 20th Century. The study seeks to make a modest contribution to the steadily mounting body of Africa centered criticism of the African novel/fiction within the context of African social and political history. / African American Studies

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This thesis concentrates on two discrete contexts in which Jewish and imperial concerns converged: the Boer War and the British Mandate for Palestine. For Britain's Jews, the Boer War represented a rare and uncomfortable moment in which the Jewish Question achieved relative prominence. However the war also generated a different set of 'Jewish questions', leading the Anglo-Jewish establishment to refine its own understanding of patriotic and imperial duty. The case of Palestine, by contrast produced less straightforward and predictable outcomes. Ottoman entry into World War I, which prompted both British and Zionist considerations into the merits of a Jewish homeland as part of the imperial system, created an acute conflict for British Jewry's communal leadership. Although not negating the advantages of a British-Jewish Palestine either to the Empire or to Jews in need of refuge, its decision to oppose the Balfour Declaration privileged at some cost a distinctive reading of Jewish interests over a more obvious synthesis of national and sectarian goals. Despite continued objections to Zionism's ideological outlook and its pursuit of statehood, the Anglo-Jewish establishment located in the interwar development of a British-Jewish Palestine a means to advance both Jewish communal and imperial agendas. As the alliance between the Zionists and Britain unravelled in the final decade of the Mandate, British Jews eager to safeguard their position as well as their vision of Palestine's future would persist in defending this relationship. In its exploration of the evolution of Anglo-Jewish attitudes towards Britain, the Empire and Mandatory Palestine, this thesis aims to address both thematic and chronological gaps in the historiography of Anglo-Jewry. By drawing attention to the uniqueness of Anglo-Jewry's imperial connection to Palestine and to the domestic impact of British involvement, my work also contributes to scholarship on Zionism and the Mandate Finally, it offers a framework for considering the impact of, and relationship to, Empire of minority groups residing in Britain.

'On All Fronts' is a thesis focused on the EOKA insurgency in Cyprus (1955-1959), which aimed at overturning British rule and unifying the island with Greece. EOKA’s campaign was one of several insurgencies carried out against Britain in the two decades following the Second World War. This allowed British policymakers and soldiers to apply lessons learned in other colonies on the island. These lessons included pursuing a political solution in tandem with military operations, unifying command and control, improving intelligence capabilities, and increasing the number of police and soldiers on the ground. Cyprus also presented distinctive challenges. The insurgency was not inspired by communism, like many other anti-colonial struggles, but by right-wing nationalism. The campaign was also intimately linked to the strategic reorganisation undertaken by Britain after 1945. Retreat from India and Palestine increased the importance of the Middle East and Africa, making a presence in Cyprus central to Britain’s post-war plans. Finally, Cypriot demographics meant that the island’s Turkish minority (some eighteen percent) – supported by Ankara – opposed union with Greece. An ethnic-based civil war on the island was possible, as was a regional war between Greece and Turkey. British policy sought to avoid both of these potential conflicts while maintaining the strength of NATO and positive relations with both Athens and Ankara. Utilizing newly declassified papers from the British government, in conjunction with evidence from Greek-Cypriot sources, this study offers insights into the campaign from the perspective of both insurgent and counter-insurgent forces. Parallel to the military analysis, the thesis addresses the political aspect of the insurgency, demonstrating the deep connection in insurgency war between military operations and diplomatic negotiation. While counter-insurgency operations failed to destroy EOKA, the success of government forces created pressure for a diplomatic solution and highlighted the reality that there were insurmountable military and strategic obstacles to union with Greece.

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Exploration of the influence that politics may have on artists’ creativity has been undertaken by looking at selected works of Yugoslav film director Aleksandar Petrović. An attempt was made to identify thematic or stylistic motifs in his films that could be understood as reflections on the political context in which the work was made. One of the most common approaches to examine a work of one filmmaker, the auteur theory, has been modified into the theory of political auteur, to aid in identifying recurrent motifs and themes that artists introduce in their work as a reaction to the surrounding political reality. As Petrović worked in Yugoslavia during Socialism, this period was historicised in order to support the identification of ‘political motifs’ in his films. The period between 1965 and 1973 is taken as the focus of research, since it is known as the 'liberal hour', the period of great artistic and intellectual freedoms, during which Petrović directed four of his most significant films. Each of these four films is analysed in respective chapters, first by elaborating on the then current political background, and then by analysing the films’ narratives against it, and extrapolating thematic and stylistic motifs reflecting back on this background. Such exploration of art and politics has been undertaken with a view to emphasise consistent motifs in art works, not only to do with an artist’s personal interests, but also those that emerge as a result of imposing societal structures.

This thesis examines how sovereign lending, i.e. the practice of lending capital to sovereigns, has changed since the early nineteenth century. It tackles this question by investigating how lenders have thought about sovereigns for the past two centuries, focusing on the tools they have used to know and represent them. I argue that there was a critical shift in the early twentieth century in terms of the kinds of knowledge lenders deployed to know sovereigns. This shift differentiates the old sovereign lending from the new. In the old sovereign lending, merchant banking families such as the Rothschilds knew sovereigns through intensely personal relations based on gentility, whereas in the new sovereign lending, joint stock banks, credit rating agencies and international institutions largely came to know sovereigns through statistics. Though difficult to imagine nowadays, the description of sovereigns through quantifiable facts (the original definition of 'statistics') was revolutionary for early twentieth century lenders. Despite constituting the origins of sovereign credit ratings, this key shift has been overlooked in all major studies about sovereign debt. The new sovereign lending rose to prominence from the interwar period to the 1970s and now defines our world. The identification of this crucial shift is based on the development and application of the concept of forms of knowledge. Forms of knowledge refer to enduring ways of knowing and representing the constituent units of the international system used by international practitioners (e.g. diplomats, military strategists, financiers, and international lawyers). Examples of forms of knowledge include, but are not limited to, modern cartography, international treaties, statistics, gentility, and heraldry. The use of this concept is that it leads to a better understanding of how international practitioners and their practices undergo radical changes. In so doing, it provides a firmer empirical grasp on the question of how fundamental discontinuities arise in international relations.

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This thesis explores the continuous British interest in the American Civil War from the war’s end to the late twentieth century and the British utilisation of the conflict at home and in the Atlantic arena. Contributing to the limited, yet burgeoning literature on the subject, this study emphasises the independent agency of both the Civil War and its British interpreters. It thus rejects a simplistic depiction of British adoption of American culture and applies a more sophisticated methodology that accounts for the active, versatile and autonomous British use of complex foreign images. This enables a meaningful analysis of the Civil War’s place and role in modern British culture. The thesis examines the British fascination with the conflict as reflected in four facets: politics, military thought, academe and popular culture. Additionally, it takes a transatlantic perspective and explores how Britons’ view of the United States has influenced their understanding of the Civil War. This study thus provides a first comprehensive and coherent overview as well as a nuanced picture of the American conflict as it travelled across the Atlantic from a historically distanced perspective. The thesis reveals that the Civil War achieved unique prominence in British culture and that this British fascination with the war was part of a greater transatlantic encounter between an epic American affair and sophisticated British interpreters. Accordingly, the two main questions underpinning this study are ‘why were the British particularly interested in the Civil War?’ and, following directly on that path, ‘how did Britons use the war both at home and in the transatlantic sphere?’ Answering these questions further establishes the war’s prominence in British culture and explores the character of the British encounter with the conflict. In so doing, it contributes to our understanding of the Civil War’s global impact and casts another light on Anglo-American relations.

This study uses the ‘duchies' of Burgundy and Alemannia as case studies for an examination of the nature and causes of political change in the five decades after the death in 888 of the Emperor Charles the Fat ended the Carolingian monopoly on kingship in the Frankish realms. Existing narratives of this period posit discontinuity between the pre- and post-888 political worlds and define the status of dukes in opposition to royal power as the manifestation of either regional communal identity or self-centred aristocratic greed. Close examination of Burgundy and Alemannia indicates that such approaches are invalid, and that the fundaments of the Carolingian system persisted in the ideology and practice of politics after 888: a desire for the control over land and religious establishments, juxtaposed with a deep-seated belief in the centrality of the kingship to the political order. Dukedoms emerged in both regions not as a result of deep-rooted social forces but as short-term responses by magnates to crises at the centre. The perception that the dukedom was an essential form of political organization failed to take root in either territory prior to 940. Although the status of the dukedoms ultimately developed in different ways in the two kingdoms, it is suggested that the root causes of this are best sought in high politics itself.