Ma Shouzhen (1548-1604) was a cultured courtesan who lived in the famous pleasure quarter along the Qinhuai River in Nanjing, the southern capital of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). She was talented in dance and music, painting and poetry, and surprisingly for her time, she was also a playwright. Although she was a celebrity of the prolific Nanjing cultural milieu and there is a good corpus of extant material by and about her, the particular contribution of Ma Shouzhen - her character and her work - have been marginalised, or even neglected, by the previous scholarship. This thesis is a cross-disciplinary study of Ma Shouzhen and is the first in-depth scholarly investigation into the entirety of her activities. It employs material and methods traditionally pertaining to the disciplines of sinology, history, art history, literary and drama studies. The thesis has a dual aim: first, to provide a nuanced understanding of the courtesan, her cultural production and social practice; second, to reclaim the agency and legacy of her character within the cultural milieu of late Ming Nanjing and beyond. These aims will be achieved through two main research objectives: (1) recovering and re-evaluating visual and written sources by and about the courtesan; (2) investigating those sources in order to comprehend her modes of self-representation and strategies of self-fashioning, analysed especially through the lens of gender. The main body of the thesis is composed of an introduction, five core chapters, and an epilogue; the chapters are structured so as to provide as complete a picture of Ma Shouzhen as possible. Chapter Two explores the space of the pleasure quarter, Ma’s biography and its entwinement within the complexities of the historical moment. Chapter Three focuses on her painting, Chapter Four considers her poetry, and Chapter Five explores her theatre practice; Chapter Six extends the investigation to focus on the construction of Ma’s historical character in later decades. In its content and aims, this thesis contributes to women’s and gender history, as well as to studies in visual culture and literature.

This thesis reviews the significance of the 1969 Japan-US Summit between Prime Minister Satii Eisaku and President Richard Nixon in light of official documents that have been disclosed in Japan since 2010 and in the United States since the 1990s. Based on newly available sources, this thesis shows that the 1969 Summit should be considered a Japanese-led initiative with two aims: firstly, to announce a deadline for Okinawa's return with all nuclear weapons removed; and secondly, to reform the Japan-US security treaty system without repeating the kind of outright revision concluded in 1960. The Japanese plan to reform the security treaty system involved simplifying the prior consultation formula by making a public commitment to the security of South Korea of sufficient strength that the United States would agree to the dissolution of the 1960 secret 'Korea Minute'. The Japanese Government achieved its first aim but only partially succeeded in its second. Whilst the return of Okinawa was announced, the status of US bases in Okinawa and mainland Japan continued to be governed by an elaborate web of agreements, public and secret, which damaged public confidence and hampered an improvement in relations between Japan and its neighbouring countries. This thesis shows that commonly held academic opinions about the 1969 Summit are incorrect. Firstly, there was no quid pro quo in which Japan linked its security to South Korea in exchange for Okinawa: both these outcomes were in fact Japanese objectives at the beginning of the summit preparations. Secondly, the success of the summit did not depend on 'backchannel' negotiations between Wakaizumi Kei and Henry Kissinger: it is likely that an announcement on Okinawa's reversion would have been achieved in 1969 even if preparations for the summit had been left to the Japanese Foreign Ministry and the US State Department. Word Limit: Approx. 98,000 words, excluding Bibliography

Anglo-Indians, a designation acquired in the 1911 Indian Census, had previously been known as Eurasians, East Indians, Indo-Britons and half-castes. ‘Anglo-Indian’ had previously denoted, and among some scholars continues to denote, Britons long resident in India. We will define Anglo-Indians as a particular mixed race Indo-European population arising out of the European trading and imperial presence in India, and one of several constructed categories by which transient Britons sought to demarcate racial difference within the Raj’s socio-racial hierarchy. Anglo-Indians were placed in an intermediary (and differentially remunerated) position between Indians and Domiciled Europeans (another category excluded from fully ‘white’ status), who in turn were placed below imported British superiors. The domiciled community (of Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans, treated as a single socio-economic class by Britons) were relied upon as loyal buttressing agents of British rule who could be deployed to help run the Raj’s strategically sensitive transport and communication infrastructure, and who were made as a term of their service to serve in auxiliary military forces which could help to ensure the internal security of the Raj and respond to strikes, civil disobedience or crises arising from international conflict. The thesis reveals how calls for Indianisation of state and railway employment by Indian nationalists in the assemblies inaugurated by the 1919 Government of India Act threatened, through opening up their reserved intermediary positions to competitive entry and examination by Indians, to undermine the economic base of domiciled employment. Anglo-Indian leaders responded with varying strategies. Foremost was the definition of Anglo-Indians as an Indian minority community which demanded political representation through successive phases of constitutional change and statutory safeguards for their existing employment. This study explores various strategies including: deployment of multiple identities; widespread racial passing by individuals and families; agricultural colonisation schemes; and calls for individual, familial or collective migration.

Castration has a long temporal and geographical span. Its origins are unclear, but likely lie in the Ancient Near East around the time of the Secondary Products Revolution and the increase in social complexity of proto-urban societies. Due to the unique social and gender roles created by castrates’ ambiguous sexual state, human castrates were used heavily in strongly hierarchical social structures such as imperial and religious institutions, and were often close to the ruler of an imperial society. This privileged position, though often occupied by slaves, gave castrates enormous power to affect governmental decisions. This often aroused the jealousy and hatred of intact elite males, who were not afforded as open access to the ruler and virulently condemned castrates in historical documents. These attitudes were passed down to the scholars and doctors who began to study castration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, affecting the manner in which castration was studied. Osteometric and anthropometric examinations of castrates were carried out during this period, but the two World Wars and a shift in focus meant that castrate bodies were not studied for nearly eighty years. Recent interest in gender and sexuality in the past has revived interest in castration as a topic, but few studies of castrate remains have occurred. As large numbers of castrates are referenced in historical documents, the lack of castrate skeletons may be due to a lack of recognition of the physical effects of castration on the skeleton. The synthesis and generation of methods for more accurate identification of castrate skeletons was undertaken and the results are presented here to improve the ability to identify castrate skeletons within the archaeological record.