The thesis begins with a discussion of the literature on local working-class politics, which includes the work of labour historians, political geographers and locality-study writers. The latter have been especially keen to acknowledge the unique causal powers of the social formations of specific localities and to explore the implications of these for local political behaviour. Nonetheless, locality studies share with other approaches to local politics an interest in class to exclusion of other bases of social action, and a structuralism which denies human agency. The history of Poplar in the 1920s denies such explanatory logic. The Labour Party came to power in the borough in 1919. Yet although the class and economic structure of Poplar was very similar to that of the rest of east London, Poplar Labour Party was unique in the degree of its militancy. In order to explain this radicalism, the thesis turns away from structural analysis and towards cultural interpretation, exploring Poplar's politics in terms of local culture and civil society, focussing on five themes: the politics of class and of gender, the discourses of citizenship, the morality of the neighbourhoods and the religious faiths. The influence of these cultural 'communal sensibilities' on Poplar Labour Party are traced in order to stress the complexity and contingency of the relationship between a locality and its politics. That contingency is further emphasised in the conclusion, which describes the shift in Poplar Labour Party away from a left-wing and participatory form of politics and towards a right-wing and elitist mode as the 1920s progressed. It is concluded that both types of politics were closely linked to Poplar's culture and that, although local culture in all its complexity is vital for the understanding of local politics, there is no necessary relationship between a culture and the form of political expression it may take.

This thesis analyses the development of trade unionism and working class political organisations in Catalonia between 1897 and 1914. Our study of the labour movement has been put within the context of both the structure of Catalan industry, and the response of the state and employer associations to the challenge of labour. The beginnings of the industrial revolution in Catalonia can be traced to the first half of the nineteenth century, when there grew up an important factory -based cotton textile industry. However, Catalan industry was faced with a serious difficulty. Outside Catalonia the Spanish economy remained backward and agrarian based. Demand for capital goods and manufactures was, therefore, low. This handicap slowed the rate of growth, and held up the technological transformation of Catalan industry. None the less, Catalan workers were not unaffected by the advance of capitalist relations of production. In order to cut costs and increase productivity cotton textile industrialists tried to replace male by female labour. Furthermore, in metallurgy and the artisanal trades new machinery was introduced piecemeal, and efforts were made to transform apprenticeship into cheap labour. Strong working class opposition was mobilised against such schemes. However, Catalan unions were faced with state repression and employer intransigence. This made it difficult for the workers to form stable bureaucratic unions which could enter into collective bargaining with employers. This fact had important political implications. It has been argued that the trade union practice of the Socialists was geared to the existence of such federations. The difficulties faced in organising them, therefore, hindered Socialist penetration. Unions in Catalonia were often unstable, and social conflict in much of Catalan industry was severe. This, together with the unwillingness of the state to carry through a serious programme of social reforms, increased working class support for the anarchists and syndicalists, for both anarchists and syndicalists rejected conciliatory wage negotiations and state intervention, and instead favoured the use of direct action and the revolutionary General Strike. By 1914 the Catalan working class was still poorly organised. However, within the unions, it was the supporters of direct action who were in the strongest position. This provided a springboard for the rapid growth of the anarcho-syndicalist labour federation, the CNT, between 1916 and 1919. On the other hand, the inability of the Socialists to gain a strong union base in Catalonia also prevented them from becoming an important political force. As a result, left wing politics remained dominated by middle class led republican parties.

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This thesis is an exploration of the politics of urban transformation in the immediate post-war period of British history, between 1945 and 1970. It centres on the Labour Party and considers the relationship of the party’s socialist aims to modernity as a stimulus for radical urban policy, particularly in terms of housing. Whilst prior historical accounts of post-war urban change have tended to eschew ideology as a serious catalyst for the reconstruction of British cities, arguing instead that pragmatism and corruption were of greater consequence, this thesis contends that a modern, socialist utopian ideal was a defining feature of urban transformation undertaken by Labour at both a local and national level. Archival material from Labour and the broader left of British politics, published sociological studies from the period 1945-70 and my own oral history interviews with key figures from the period lead this investigation. A thorough analysis of Labour’s approach to key aspects of the urban environment enables this thesis to challenge existing understandings of post-war urban transformation as irrational or hard-headed. The thesis examines the relationship of Labour to the housing market, urban planning, understandings of community and the party’s sense of history and modernity. It asserts that rent control, slum clearance and tower blocks were indicative of a modern, socialist urban vision for Labour, proposing that the ‘modern moment’ in twentiethcentury British history be taken into greater consideration. As urban history acquires greater prominence in an age of increasing urbanisation, engagement with the rationale behind past urban transformation can make a significant contribution to the understanding of why particular urban policies become reality.

The dissertation seeks to address three sets of questions: Why have the United States and France become involved in the issue of the Armenian genocide several decades after the genocide? How and why do the American and French debates have different outcomes? What conclusions can be drawn from these differences? It examines how the unresolved conflict between the competing Turkish narrative of denial and the Armenian narrative affirming the reality of the genocide has led the Armenian diaspora and the Turkish state to influence political actors in the United States and France to support their arguments for and against the reality of the genocide. This thesis focuses on the debates in the United States in 2007 and 2010 on a Congressional Resolution to recognise the genocide. It also traces the progress of French legislation from French official recognition of the genocide in 2001 to the passage of legislation to criminalise denial of the Armenian genocide in 2012, ultimately ruled unconstitutional by the French Constitutional Council. The contribution to knowledge this thesis makes is to demonstrate that recognition of genocide is a political question that involves more than the perpetrators and victims. Just as genocide does not only involve these two actors, recognition of genocide also involves other states and societies. Just as bystander states have to think about what they do when a genocide is being perpetrated when it comes to recognition they have to evaluate what to do, particularly when they have been involved from the outset.

This thesis explores the relationship between revolution and fascism. While subjectivities produced by revolution are assumed to be inherently antifascist, through a sustained analysis of contemporary theories of revolution and the theory and praxis of Frantz Fanon, this thesis will argue that revolution's bio- politics, Prometheanism and accelerated temporality inevitably cause revolutionary projects to reproduce the very fascistic structures they intended to dismantle. This thesis will conclude with an analysis of zapatismo, the theoretical praxis of the zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. Arguing against reading zapatismo as a classic Marxist revolutionary system or Orientalizing it within anthropological terms, this thesis will demonstrate how zapatismo functions as what Felix Guattari terms a “metamodel”, and opens up a system of revolutionary change that is achieved through a practice of constant resistance. As it is used in this thesis, fascism is explicitly not limited to statist manifestations of totalitarian regimes, what will be termed “macro” fascisms. Rather fascism represents any form of domination of one group over another. This is explicitly not limited to totalitarian states, but also located within smaller social groups and individuals, what Deleuze and Guattari termed “microfascisms”. The term fascism is intended to have an affective response and through its use this thesis intends to illicit a critical reading that would make an internal diagnostic mechanism, a mechanism for movements to analyse the ways in which power operates within the movement, integral to all revolutionary projects.

After the collapse of communism in Romania, in December 1989, nationalism played an important role in the development of political life. This thesis proposes an explanation for why this has been the case. I identify the Greater Romania Party as the most representative nationalist political formation in post-communist Romania and examine it as my case-study. My analysis distinguishes the core aspects of the PRM's ideology and studies how its discourse is constructed. In doing so, I argue that the success of the party could only be explained by the fact that it employs a nationalist discourse that has been consistently and continuously used over a long period of time in Romania. I begin by engaging with the debates about nationalism in order to establish a theoretical framework, which in turn provides my analytical device to examine Romanian nationalist movements in three different political, social and cultural time frames. I use this analytical tool to identify a set of themes that characterise the nationalist discourse in all the periods I examine, and to show that these themes cut across chronological sequence, political purpose and social and cultural contexts. Alongside with the continuity of the nationalist discourse across time, I argue that authoritarian tradition and the conditions of the transition from communism in Romania are also factors that contribute to the persistence of nationalist tendencies in post-1989 Romanian politics. The analysis of the case-study draws on these findings and shows that the same core ideological elements used effectively in the past are exploited again, by the PRM, in yet another context, with the same degree of success. The thesis, therefore, aims to examine the most significant nationalist party in post-communist Romania, to explain the background in which it operates and to focus on the ideological tools it uses in order to rally the support of the electorate, by mapping out the particular type of nationalist discourse, which recurs in different historical political and social circumstances in Romania.

Not all German historians have yet lost the tendency to view their history until the nineteenth century as a mere prologue to national unification and to regard only the Holy Roman Empire and its institutions as worthy of interest. It is therefore not surprising that to historians outside Germany the German principalities have often appeared as shadows flitting across the scene of imperial affairs. In particular, it is not sufficiently realized that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the German princes were confronting challenges similar to those met by the monarchs of western Europe, though on a smaller scale. The desire of the princes to unify their territories and to strengthen their control over them, as well as growing financial problems and an increasing burden of judicial and administrative tasks, all demanded more purposeful policies, modern methods of government, and organized institutions. These developments were remarkably similar in the major principalities, although they occurred earlier in some than in others. The Palatinate in the later fifteenth century was in many ways representative of other principalities, even though the Estates were not sufficiently developed to be an effective curb on the rulers, as they were elsewhere. The sources for the history of the Palatinate in this period have been scattered rather than lost, but there have been only a few studies of individual problems, and no survey of all aspects of its government. Although the Wittelsbachs in the Palatinate, together with the counts of Württemberg, were the first ruling house to put an end to the baneful partitions which afflicted nearly every dynasty in the Empire, the attempts of the electors palatine from the time of the Golden Bull until the sixteenth century to prevent partitions have been neglected by historians. The Golden Bull confirmed the exclusive right of the Rhenish Wittelsbachs to the electoral dignity, which was to descend by primogeniture and to be linked irrevocably with their principality, which was also to be inherited by primogeniture. These provisions were incorporated in several family treatises of the electors during the next fifty years, which also established a nucleus of inalienable lands as an irreducible core for the principality. The demands of the younger sons of King Rupert (the Elector Rupert III) and the recognised necessity of providing for them caused the principle of primogeniture to be broken at the first serious test, and a fourfold partition ensued in 1410. For the next century, however, the rulers of the electoral line sought with varying intensity of purpose - and despite the additional difficulties of minorities and regencies - to prevent further partition. This was the chief objective of the Arrogation of 1451-2, by which Frederick I (1449-76) became elector and sole ruler of the Palatinate in place of his minor nephew and ward, Philip, with specific reference to the Golden Bull and the family treatises of the fourteenth century. Similarly, Philip (1476-1508) on his succession recalled the grant of lands which Frederick had made to his own son. These two electors and their predecessors had also tried to reunite the lands partitioned in 1410; Frederick I conquered some of the territories of the counts palatine of Hosbach and Neumarkt in 1499. Younger sons of the electors were increasingly provided for during the fifteenth century by the acquisition of fat benefices and sees, instead of by grants of lands and revenues of the principality. Further family compacts of the sixteenth century averted new dangers of partition, so that a tradition of the invisibility of the Palatinate developed; as a result, even on the extinction of the main line, first one and then another cadet line succeeded to the entire inheritance in 1559 and 1685. The unity thus preserved was an indispensable basis for the territorial expansion which approximately doubled the revenues of the Palatinate between 1410 and 1500. Not only was the rule of expansion of the fourteenth century thus maintained, but many of the methods of expansion adopted in the previous century were continued and developed. The electors secured the inheritance of several leading noble families whose line came to an end, on occasion using champerty to achieve their aim, and purchased numerous lands of the higher nobility, who had fallen into debt as a result of the 'agrarian crisis'. Other territories were acquired in exchange for the electors' protection, as escheated fiefs, or by means of the administrative pressure exercised by the local officials of the Palatinate and the statements of customary rights which they obtained from the inhabitants of disputed areas. The growth of the territories was not haphazard, since the electors pursued a more determined policy of expansion in some directions than in others. They were especially anxious to remove enclaves, to control the strategic points and major highways within their lands, and to buttress their position on the frontiers with the see of Mains, in the vicinity of the imperial city of Weissenburg, and in Alsace and the Ortensu, of which they held the imperial protectorates. By intervening in the legal disputes and family affairs of the nobles in these areas, they obtained fractional shares and military advantages in many strategic castles. The expansion of the first half of the century had been mainly by means of purchase, but Frederick I made his greatest gains by conquests from the sees of Mains and Speyer, the count palatine of Zweibrücken, the margrave of Baden and other rulers. [Please consult the thesis file for the continuation of the abstract.]

This thesis attempts to provide an account of radical thought in Britain, 1760 to 1815, by way of a study of the tracts, pamphlets and articles of the major radical ideologues. It begins by examining the assumptions made by the radicals in respect of nature and human nature, material and moral progress, and liberty and equality. The differences revealed in relation to the basic assumptions are then analysed in the context of the major questions of politics, property and progress. On the issue of political liberty distinctions are made between mixed constitutionalist radicals and republicans, democratic or otherwise, and between those who adopted a "radical" as opposed to a "moderate" approach to voting rights. Special attention is given to Thomas Spence's and William Godwin's views on decentralization and democracy and to the radical case for an armed citizenry. Regarding property and progress a major distinction is drawn between agrarian and commercial radicals according to attitudes taken on the emergence and development of modern commercial society. The different versions of the agrarian alternative are considered and the reformist, communitarian and revolutionary approaches to agrarianism examined. In relation to commercial radicalism a distinction is drawn between Smithian and artisan approaches to the meaning of equality of opportunity and connected with a change in the social composition of the radical movement in the 1790s. A chapter is devoted to James Burgh who synthesized aspects of agrarianism and commercial radicalism. The final section of the thesis considers the alternatives proposed for the achievement of radical ends. A distinction is drawn between reformers and revolutionaries and two chapters given over to consideration of the special contributions of William Godwin and the young Coleridge. It is concluded that radical ideology is best understood as a synthesis of civic humanism and Lockean liberalism and that the class perceptions of particular radicals are important in understanding the different ways they develop the radical case.

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