This dissertation examines the connections between global capitalism, modern medicine, and empire through a close study of Hoshi Pharmaceuticals during the interwar years. As one of the leading drug companies in East Asia at the time, Hoshi embodied Japan's imperial aspirations, rapid industrial development, and burgeoning consumer culture. The company attempted to control every part of its supply and distribution chain: it managed plantations in the mountains of Taiwan and Peru for growing coca and cinchona (the raw material for quinine) and contracted Turkish poppy farmers to supply raw opium for government-owned refineries in Taiwan. Hoshi also helped shape modern consumer culture in Japan and its colonies, and indeed, became an emblem for it. At its peak in the early 1920s, Hoshi had a network of chain stores across Asia that sold Hoshi-brand patent medicines, hygiene products, and household goods. In 1925, however, the company's fortunes turned for the worse when an opium trading violation raised suspicions of Hoshi as a front for the smuggling of narcotics through Manchuria and China. Although the company was a key supplier of medicines to Japan's military during World War Two, it could not financially recover from the fallout of the opium scandal. In 1952, the industrialist Otani Yonetaro seized control of the company from the Hoshi family. By tracing Hoshi's activities across Japan's expanding empire and beyond, this dissertation shows how private, transnational drug companies such as Hoshi played a vital role in manufacturing and selling Japan as a modern nation and empire. Like many other transnational corporations during the autarkic global climate of the interwar years, Hoshi constantly looked abroad to learn about, borrow, and translate technologies that were circulating across the globe to support the "business" of empire building. Hoshi Pharmaceuticals embodied the symbiotic connections between government and business interests; an ideology of cooperation where the "interests of capital and labor are one"; and adaptations of global, particularly American, technologies of management.

This dissertation explores the history of the counterrevolutionary tradition that characterizes political dissidents as licentious and failed subjects. From a contemporary vantage point shaped by the predominance of this tradition in post 2011 Egyptian counterrevolutionary propaganda, this study provides a genealogy of this tradition that reveals its anchoring in Western philosophical-ideological interventions that trace themselves back to the ancient Greeks, in Western counterrevolutionary rhetoric that harks back to the French Revolution and is consolidated in the attacks on the Paris Commune, and in their deployment in colonial, anti-colonial, and postcolonial settings. Moving across the Egyptian, European, and colonial histories of these ideological and political traditions, this study charts various licentious topographies (the crowd, the political organization, the Satanist cult, the Orient) in which bad subjects are ensconced in accordance with the dominant ideologies of the State since the 19th century, and examines the figures, motifs, and topoi which constitute these bad subjects. In providing a history of the bad subject, the dissertation intervenes in the discussions surrounding subjectivity by positing that in addition to identifying with certain notions, ideals, and ideal images, proper subjectivity is also constituted through identifying against the bad egos and bad imagoes that constitute the bad subject. Paying special attention to the gendering and especially the racializing of the latter, the study exposes the subjective trauma effected by the colonial imposition of this ideological mode of identification.

This dissertation focuses on two different though interconnected uses of the word concrete, both of which were central to a largely overlooked chapter of American history—the American colonization of the Philippines (1898-1945). Originally a logician’s term meaning “actual and solid,” the word concrete only came to refer to the building material in the mid-nineteenth century, a popular usage emerging co-incident with the industrial production of Portland cement—a material that American producers and promoters argued would enable the construction of an era of durable American greatness. The dawn of an American “concrete age”—an era otherwise referred to as the Progressive Era was also a time that saw the emergence of a language of “concrete” values; of actual, specific and measurable results. This period in history saw the apparent focus of American governance shift from the abstract and foundational principles of liberty towards more tangible values of investments and returns, i.e. on ‘development.’  This dissertation examines Daniel Burnham’s City Beautiful plan for Manila in addition to the construction of the colonial institutional and infrastructural projects (government buildings, ports, forts, bridges, roads, housing and prisons) through the analysis of five of concrete’s (and sometimes Portland cement’s) qualities; portability, stability, salubrity, strength, and plasticity. Through these examples I aim to demonstrate that concrete was not only a material used widely across America’s new possession in the Far East, but was also played a role in shaping new forms of global governance.

This thesis situates the emergence of German imperialist theory and praxis during the nineteenth century within the context of the ascendancy of German liberalism. It also contends that imperialism was an integral part of a liberal sense of German national identity. It is divided into an introduction, four parts and a set of conclusions. The introduction is a methodological and theoretical orientation. It offers an historiographical overview and places the thesis within the broader historiographical context. It also discusses the utility of post-colonial theory and various theories of nationalism and nation-building. Part One examines the emergence of expansionism within liberal circles prior to and during the period of 1848/ 49. It examines the consolidation of expansionist theory and political practice, particularly as exemplified in the Frankfurt National Assembly and the works of Friedrich List. Part Two examines the persistence of imperialist theorising and praxis in the post-revolutionary era. It scrutinises the role of liberal associations, civil society, the press and the private sector in maintaining expansionist energies up until the 1884 decision to establish state-protected colonies. Part Three focuses on the cultural transmission of imperialist values through the sciences, media and fiction. In examines in particular the role of geographical journals and societies and of the periodical Die Gartenlaube. Part Four discusses the post World War I era, and examines liberal attempts to revive German imperialism, within the context of a refusal to accept the Versailles settlement. It also delineates points of convergence and divergence between Nazi and liberal imperialisms. This is followed by a summation of the evidence and arguments, in which it is concluded that the liberal narration of German national identity was predicated both on the objectification of colonised lands and attempts to emulate and ultimately rival British imperial power.

Thesis (M.Th.(N.T.))-University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-86)

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 328-341). Also available on the Internet.

The topic of this thesis is the Chinese view of world order centered on the concept of Tianxia ( and #22825; and #19979; all-under-heaven). After an historical excursus on the origin of the Chinese imperial sociopolitical and philosophical system, the thesis explores the main characteristics of the early empires. Afterwards, the thesis attempts a comparison between the ancient Chinese empire and another ancient empire, the Roman Empire. The objective is to dig deeply within the political, administrative and legal roots of both empires, as they are the ancestors of two big civilizations: China and the West. Because of the great influence that these two antique political systems had on the current political arrangements of the two parts of the globe, the comparison should help detect the foundation of the systems and will allow to better understand the differences between them and the peculiarities of Chinas view of world order. Furthermore, the thesis analyzes the concept of Tianxia in post-1949 China, concentrating on the new applications of the concept, also drawing a comparison between political organization of imperial China in the past and the PRC (Peoples Republic of China) of our time. Lastly, the thesis explores how some scholars in todays China are reexamining, reframing, and re-advocating the ancient concept of Tianxia as Chinas new and alternative view of world order in the post-Cold War world.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pennsylvania State University, 2009. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. Thesis advisor: Robert Lougy.

This thesis considers the relationships between photography and geography in the wider context of British imperialism, c. 1840-1914. It distisses reproductions of sixty photographs. Chapter one situates this research within current theoretical debates concerning the histories of photography, geography and British imperialism. It also discusses the sources used, and provides a detailed outline of the thesis. Chapter two considers the photographic representation of landscape on geographical expeditions, particularly scientific expeditions in central Africa and the travels of commercial photographers in northern India. Chapter three focuses on the role of photography within military campaigns. A detailed discussion of the Abyssinian campaign (1867-8) reveals how photography and geography were associated in imperial campaigning. Chapter four traces the language and imagery of 'photographic-hunting'. A discussion of practices of hunting, exploration and conservation, particularly in Africa, shows how photography was a means of representing the imperial domination of the natural world. Chapter five explores the photographic survey and classification of 'racial types'. It situates the associated uses of photography in anthropology and geography within the context of Victorian scientific ideas on race, both within the empire and in Britain itself. Chapter six discusses the relationship between the representation of racial 'types' abroad and the social 'others' of Victorian London. It presents a case study of the work of the professional photographer John Thomson, placing his work in China and London in the context of his ethnological and geographical interests. Chapter seven explores Halford Mackinder's work with the Colonial Office Visual Instruction Committee, 1902-1911. It shows how photography was used to promote an imperial vision of geography, but raises also questions as to its ultimate impact. Chapter eight provides a conclusion which argues that photography was central to the construction of imaginative geographies of empire in the period 1840-1914 and suggests that, through photography, such geographies continue to be reproduced today