This thesis is a study of the Bengal Army from c. 1800 to c. 1870. Its central aim is to explain why the majority of the Bengal Army's native troops mutinied in 1857. It begins by comparing the pre-mutiny trends in the Bengal Army to those in its sister armies of Madras and Bombay: in particular the Bengal Army's changing pattern of recruitment, its growing list of professional grievances, the deteriorating relationship between its sepoys and their European officers, its relaxation of discipline and its sepoys' use of caste issues as a smokescreen for other grievances. Then it analyzes the events of 1857: the cartridge question, the conspiracy and the pattern of the mutiny itself. Finally it outlines the deliberations of the post-mutiny Peel Commission and the subsequent army reforms, and puts the Indian Mutiny in the context of the recent historiography of military revolts. Its conclusion is that the essential cause of mutiny in 1857 was not the defence of caste and religion, as is generally supposed, but service issues particular to the Bengal Army.

This study offers the first instalment of a general history of land acquisition in British India, c. 1894–1927. It advances eight principal theses: (i) that the first law of land acquisition was enacted in 1668, as part of a political settlement by the East India Company with the Portuguese landlords of Bombay island; (ii) that, to a remarkable degree, land acquisition law was shaped in the interest of the sterling railway companies; (iii) that the state habitually used land acquisition not so much to effect non- consensual transfers but to ‘launder’ titles free of encumbrances and other claims; (iv) that the primary beneficiaries of land acquisition were public bodies, the sterling railway companies, and elite private interests; (v) that the executive was hostile to legislative and judicial oversight of land acquisition, and successfully resisted or co-opted attempts to impose such oversight; (vi) that the courts were in any event content with the role they were assigned under the 1894 Act, and generally deferred to the executive in land acquisition cases; (vii) that the land-acquiring executive, although hostile to and unencumbered by meaningful legislative and judicial oversight, as a general rule displayed a legal fastidiousness; (viii) that, despite an appearance of impartiality, land acquisition bore the stain of imperialism. These theses are advanced in the course of explaining the failure of the forgotten Kelkar Bill (1927), an attempt by the Maharashtrian nationalist N. C. Kelkar (1872–1947) to enact far-reaching amendments to the Land Acquisition Act 1894. Kelkar’s fellow nationalists withheld their open support from the measure and thereby guaranteed its failure: a counterintuitive choice that, it is argued, exemplifies the tactical compromises of nationalism.

Recent studies of early Islamic Palestine have stressed the minimal impact of the Arab conquest on the Christian communities of the region. None, however, have sought to trace the trajectories of these communities beyond the eighth century. This thesis provides the first long-term study of the impact of the Arab conquest on monasticism and pilgrimage between 614 and 950. The study explores the changes to the physical landscape of monasteries and Christian cult sites, in terms of site abandonment and continuity, and situates these processes in the broader political and economic context of the Palestinian region between the seventh and tenth centuries. This thesis offers a systematic critique of current theories which view Palestinian monasticism and Christian pilgrimage as social entities dependent upon patronage from Byzantium and the early medieval west. Rather, it stresses the need for a more nuanced recognition of monastic communities and Christian cult sites as places closely interlinked with localised developments and the high degree of variation between communities in terms of patron economies and social transactions. This study demonstrates that these variances often provide the key to understanding the highly varied response of Palestinian monastic communities and Christian cult sites to early Muslim rule.

This thesis’ original contribution to knowledge is to indicate the unique contribution of qasbah­‐based Urdu newspapers to the emergence of an Urdu public sphere in early 20^th century South Asia, using as a primary lens the Urdu newspaper Madīnah. In doing so, this thesis will shed light on debates relating to Muslim religious identity, urban life, social status, and gender reform. Madīnah newspaper was published in Bijnor qasbah in Bijnor district, UP, from 1912 onwards. By the early 20^th century, elite, literate qasbah dwellers increased their attachment to their ashrāf identity, even as the definition of that social status group was being transformed. The nature of ashrāf conceptions of the qasbah in the Urdu newspaper conversation sheds light onto the nature of the Urdu public sphere, complicating existing narrative explanations of UP Muslim identity transformations. In the 12 years that constitute the span of the study, international developments such as the Italo-­‐Turkish War, the Balkan Wars, and World War I, with domestic transformations in municipal policies and the activism of some Hindu groups motivated Muslims to redefine their place in early 20^th century society. At the same time, the early 20^th century saw the rising prominence of the qasbah as a centre of spiritual and cultural life among ashrāf Muslims. World War I and the non-­‐cooperation movement threatened the British Empire’s hold on South Asia. In the midst of these shifting sands stood the city of Bijnor, a backwoods qasbah in the district of the same name. Bijnor’s publication Madīnah provided a regional platform for scholars, laymen, and poets to discuss their place in the new order. As part of a network of literary publications exchanged between qasbahs in the first half of the twentieth century, Madīnah shaped and complicated gender boundaries, religious identity, social status, and political alliance, all in the service of the Muslim ummah, or community. This thesis places Madīnah in the context of the broader Urdu newspaper market and the incipient newspaper culture of qasbahs, which both reflected the broadened geographic horizon of the qasbatī ashrāf and placed a premium on the qasbah as a place set apart from the city. After laying this foundation, the thesis turns to the place of Islam in qasbah newspapers and Madīnah. Newspapers reflected a division among ashrāf regarding the centrality of Islam in elite culture, revealing an ideological division between the qasbah and major urban centres Delhi, Lucknow, and Calcutta. Madīnah and other newspapers sought to establish an indelible link between Islam and ashrāf identity, in contrast to some urban newspapers, which sought to lay the groundwork instead for a secular, nationalized Muslim identity. This thesis then turns to the expanding geographic horizons of Madīnah newspaper, both enabled by novel technology and neutralized as a threat by careful framing of international and trans-‐regional content. The subsequent chapter deals with Madīnah's Women’s Newspaper, which demonstrated a trend toward gender ventriloquism in reformist approaches to gender. Many articles penned ostensibly by women had male authors; Madīnah's articles expressed a complex set of reactions to intimate female experiences, including curiosity, fascination, and anxiety. Qasbah newspapers offer new avenues for insight into the tensions that characterized the Urdu public of the early 20^th century. This thesis highlights the character of qasbatī ashrāf's engagement with the broader literary conversation via newspapers during a time of dramatic social transformation, in the process contributing to the form of the Urdu public sphere.

This thesis is a study of the People’s Republic of China’s foreign economic policy towards Japan between 1949 and 1965. In particular, the thesis explores Chinese policy-makers’ ideas about Japan in the wake of the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945), and considers how those ideas shaped China’s foreign economic policy towards Japan between 1949 and 1965. To do so, the thesis employs a four-part ideas framework that examines Chinese policy-makers’ background, foreground, cognitive and normative ideas about Japan, and shows how the interaction between these four different idea types shaped China’s Japan policy between 1949 and 1965. Furthermore, the thesis draws on over 200 recently declassified Chinese-language archival records from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, as well as additional Chinese, Japanese, US and British archival sources. It argues that China’s experience of Japanese imperialism, industrialisation and war during the first half of the twentieth century deeply shaped Chinese ideas about Japan after 1949, though in ways that at first seem counterintuitive. Although Japan had waged a brutal war against China, Chinese policy-makers viewed Japan as an important source of industrial goods, technology and expertise, and a symbol of a modern, industrialised nation-state. However, China’s experience of Japanese imperialism and militaristic aggression often made it difficult to justify the policy of ‘trading with the enemy’. Ultimately, the thesis argues that China sought to expand economic ties with Japan after 1949 because Chinese policy-makers believed that doing so would assist China in becoming a modern and industrialised state, one that was strong enough to withstand foreign imperialism and restore its central position in the international system. Chinese conceptions of Japan thus help to explain how Japan became China’s largest trade partner by 1965, despite the bitter legacy of the War of Resistance and the Cold War divide between the two countries after 1949.

Concentrating on the time frame between the establishment of India's Constituent Assembly in 1946, and the passing of the Dowry Prevention Act in 1961, this thesis attempts to write an alternative history of India's transition to Independence, by applying the tools of feminist historiography to this crucial period of citizenship making, as a way of offering new perspectives on the nature, meaning and boundaries of citizenship in post-colonial India. It focuses on a cohort of nationalists and feminists who were leading members of two prominent women's organisations, the All India Women's Conference (AIWC) and the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW), documenting and analysing the voices and positions of this cohort in some of the key debates around nation building in Nehruvian India. It also traces and analyses the range of activities and struggles engaged in by these two women's organisations - as articulations and expressions of citizenship in practice. The intention in so doing is to address three key questions or areas of exploration. Firstly to analyse and document how gender relations and contemporary understandings of gender difference, both acted upon and were shaped by the emerging identity of the Indian as postcolonial citizen, and how this dynamic interaction was situated within a broader matrix of struggles and competing identities including those of minority rights. Secondly to analyse how the framework of postcolonial Indian citizenship has both created new possibilities for empowerment, but simultaneously set new limitations on how the Indian women's movement was able to imagine itself as a political constituency and the feminist agenda it was able to articulate and pursue. Thirdly to explore how applying a feminist historiography to the story of the construction of postcolonial Indian citizenship calls for the ability to think about the meaning and possibilities of citizenship in new and different ways, to challenge the very conceptual frameworks that define the term.

This study traces the development of Tibetan 'treasure' texts and practices in contemporary times via the life-story and scriptural revelations of the Tibetan 'treasure revealer' (gter ston) Kun bzang bde chen gling pa (1928-2006). It examines how his revelations (gter ma) rooted in the historic spirituality of Tibet, continue and adapt into the twenty first century. The study is important in order to understand the ways this Asian religious concept develops and coalesces in North America. With the dramatic advances in communication through digital technology, it examines how gter ma texts and practices reach a modern audience. Also discussed are the implications of centuries old debates surrounding Buddhist lineage, transmission and ‘authenticity’ as well as concepts such as liberty, equality and authority. All of which are culture-specific constructions that differ radically when seen from a variety of perspectives. The main conclusion drawn from this research is that as a Western Vajrayāna ‘tradition’ emerges and intersects with older Tibetan forms, both must attempt to find a middle path between their differing applications and interpretations if they are to avoid drifting into an arena of extensive commercialisation, dilution and distortion.

The great drama of China has been the repeated attempts to bring under single control and preserve the unity of its vast territories, so varied ethnically, socially, and geographically. Han Chinese confidence in the integrity of their own identity has been lastingly unsettled by long periods of fragmentation into regional states, and even in times of political unity the heart-searching has continued: what went wrong? What lessons could be learned for the future? The Southern and Northern Dynasties’ era (317-589 AD) was the longest period of political fragmentation in the imperial era. Its political and social confusion gave rise to differences in later accounts of it. In the eleventh century, scholar-officials intensively debated the issue of imperial rule during this period. At stake was the integrity of the Han Chinese state. On one side were historians who accorded legitimacy to the barbarian dynasties of the north; on the other were those who favoured the southern Han Chinese-ruled dynasties. By the time Song’s power base transferred south in 1127, a strong sense of a Han Chinese identity had developed and pro-Southern opinion predominated. This study approaches the Southern and Northern Dynasties’s era indirectly. It examines it through the most prominent work of eleventh-century historiography, the keystone written history of early imperial China, Sima Guang’s 司馬光 Zi zhi tong jian 資治通鑑 – the main focus of this study. That text has played a central role in shaping later understanding of imperial China’s political traditions and, as a corollary, has contributed to the formation of a Han Chinese self-identity. Yet Sima Guang’s representation of China’s past, though well-researched and written, was inevitably coloured by personal political and social experiences, and by his current commitments – by spin, in fact. This study will argue that at the heart of Sima Guang’s representation of the Southern and Northern Dynasties was a concern for the political survival of the eleventh-century state under which he served. He needed to understand and explicate the political and moral lessons of the earlier period in order to present an imperial vision that would avoid its frailties. This study therefore investigates and demonstrates the previously unexplored extent to which contemporary political concerns informed Sima Guang’s account. By developing a reading of Zi zhi tong jian as an ideological and textual construct, and more than just a simple account of the past, this study affords insights into the composition of historical writing in imperial China, as well as the complexities of the political environment that spawned it. It shows that works of historiography like Zi zhi tong jian served a more nuanced function than later scholarship suggests, and it brings into focus important questions of historical and literary authority.

The Ordination Scroll of Empress Zhang (1493) in the San Diego Museum of Art, a highlight at the Taoism and the Arts of China exhibition in 2000, is an unusual object among surviving visual material from Ming dynasty China (1368 – 1644). At over twenty-seven metres long, the scroll contains meticulously painted images and a detailed inscription that records the Daoist ordination of Empress Zhang (1470 – 1541), consort of the Hongzhi emperor (r. 1488 – 1505) by the Orthodox Unity institution. The event it documents, which elevates the empress into the celestial realm, would be unknown to history if not for the survival of this scroll. This dissertation is an in-depth study of the Ordination Scroll that also considers its implications for understanding the activities of empresses and their representations during the Ming dynasty. The first three chapters of this dissertation closely examine the material, visual and textual aspects of the Ordination Scroll. The remaining two chapters situate the scroll within the broader activities of Ming empresses. A complete translation of the main inscription in the scroll is provided in the appendix.

When an ancient Near Eastern city was besieged and looted the statues and cultic appurtenances of the gods were often confiscated by the conquerors. Their loss was more than a heavy blow to the defeated people: the statue was the god‘s representation on earth and watched over and protected the city so his abandonment of his city was thought to have a lasting devastating effect. From the point of view of the conqueror the statue could be used not only as a tool of intimidation but for bribery and a crude form of diplomacy and as propaganda for his might and glory. In this thesis the history of the phenomenon of godnap is explored for the first time and there is also an investigation of related problems in religion and cultural history. At the outset a detailed investigation of the numinous character of an ancient Mesopotamian statue is given including an account of the ritual that imbued it with this divine quality. Special attention is given to Marduk of Babylon and the episodes in which even he found himself the victim of theft. The thesis includes an excursus on evocatio and parallels between Hittite and ancient Roman practices are drawn.