Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-210).

No description available.

Magister Artium - MA / Mandume has fought two colonial powers, Portugal and British-South Africa from the time he became king in 1911 to 1917. This thesis looked at the different ways in which Manume is remembered in Namibia and Angola after these countries had gained their independence from colonialism. His bravery in fighting the colonizers has awarded him hero status and he is considered a nationalist hero in both Namibia and Angola. However, he is memorialized differently in Namibia and Angola. The process of emembering Mandume in different ways is related to where his body and head are buried respectively. This is because there is a belief that his body was beheaded, and his head was buried in Windhoek while the rest of his body is buried in Angola. The monument that is alleged to host his head is claimed to belong to him to this day. However, this monument was erected for the fallen South African troops who died fighting him. The author argued that this belief was in response to the need to reclaim a monumental space to commemorate Mandume in the capital city. / South Africa

No description available.

This dissertation is about the formations of the king as knowledge of the political in early eighteenth-century Brahmaputra Valley, in present day northeast India. Here, I identify three areas as the sites of the political: courtly-monastic politics, pleasure, and law. Each chapter of the dissertation presents a contemporary iteration of the king that contributed to the understanding of the political in early eighteenth-century Brahmaputra Valley. In doing so, I propose an understanding of kingship founded in the person of the king. Drawing on expressive literature, epigraphs, and visual sources written in the first few decades of the eighteenth century in the court of the Tungkhungia kings of Brahmaputra Valley and the Vaiṣṇava monasteries in the region, I argue that the person (and the body) of the king was the site of the political in the courtly-monastic spaces. This understanding of a personalised kingship in the courtly-monastic spaces was in dialogue with transregional political imaginations of kingship, both imperial Mughal and subimperial Rajput of early modern South Asia. In the dissertation, I bring together sources in Assamese, Persian, Sanskrit, and Tai-Ahom towards revealing the ways in which a distinct local articulation of the king in areas of politics, pleasure, and law was located within translocal and transregional networks of learning stretching across the regions lying to the western and southern borders of the territories of the Tungkhungia kings. Through a conceptualisation of early eighteenth-century Brahmaputra Valley as a “contact zone” between Mughal-Rajput, Tai-Ahom, and Burmese cultural forms that clashed and grappled in the wake of Brahman arrival in the court of the Tungkhungia kings I historicise the multiple iterations of the king towards understanding the intellectual conditions that emerged as foundations of a new political imagination. Moving away from cultural histories of kingship in early modern South Asia where studies of cultural productions have remained the lens for analysis of kingship; in this dissertation I look at the formations of the king within specific areas of intellectual inquiry towards writing a history of the multiple iterations of the king, across institutions, in early eighteenth-century Brahmaputra Valley. The dissertation, thus, intervenes in the study of kingship in early modern South Asia and the World, demonstrating the centrality of the person of the king, in contemporary understandings of the political, rather than the “body politic” that is immutable and imperishable. The dissertation, thus, with its focus on early eighteenth-century Brahmaputra Valley, brings to light theories of the political emerging from the margins of imperial histories of early modern South Asia and the World.

Approximately three-quarters of the population in South Africa live in rural areas and are under the governance of traditional leadership, whose practice has been the source of controversy in the post-apartheid era. The institution of traditional leadership has been historically regarded as the main ruling system closest to and accepted by the people at grassroots level. The aim of this research is to investigate the role of traditional leaders in local government in the Vulindlela and Impendle areas, Pietermaritzburg. The objective is to present a historical overview of the role of traditional leaders and to analyse the role traditional leaders have to play in development. The research examines whether the tension between traditional leaders and municipal councillors hinder development to the masses in Vulindlela and Impendle areas. The methodology adopted for this study was a qualitative research approach, which was used to analyse the roles played by traditional leaders in rural local government development. The main findings of the study reveal that traditional leaders and authorities are essential political, social and economic structures for maintaining the socio-political order that is a prerequisite for rural development. Any endeavor to create a full democratic society in South Africa must utilize the intrinsic strengths of traditional leaders. The institution of traditional leaders should be transformed to move with the times. Many traditional leaders accept the role they have to play as part of the new order as well as the resulting challenge associated with the process of transformation. In principle, traditional authorities should not be drawn into party politics and their role should remain one of neutral leadership. Traditional authorities are seen in their communities as the institutional form of government closest to the people and therefore need to be preserved. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietemaritzburg, 2004.

Although the Liber Historiae Francorum is the only surviving contemporary chronicle which treats the fifty years spanning the turn of the seventh to the eighth century in Frankish Gaul, it has been generally mistrusted by students of the period. This thesis is an attempt to discover whether the reputation is just or whether the chronicle might yield new information about the later Merovingian age. In so doing it asks three questions: 1) Is the work's latest edition, which is now nearly 100 years old, still the best version of the text we can achieve? 2) How accurate is the LHF's description of events? 3) Does a study of the author and his attitudes yield any insight into the nature of late Merovingian politics and society? The study concludes that the edition is an accurate rendering of the surviving manuscripts and an adequate basis for study of the work. This is true despite the fact that the contents of one early manuscript, which was unknown to the work's editor, calls into question the currently held assumptions concerning order, date, and composition of the LHF's recensions. Although the chronicle does indeed contain many errors in its earlier parts, for the period from the 650's (LHF-43) to the end of the work, there are a surprising number of instances where its version of events is either as believable as or more probable than the currently accepted view. An analysis of the author and his attitudes outlines a picture of late Merovingian politics as conducted by factions of leading Neustrians, whom the chronicler calls the Franci, and who could find unity in the loyalty due the legitimate Merovingian king.

This study of the cultural activities of the Scottish court in the adult reign of King James V reveals a vibrant, sophisticated and confident outlook, which was more closely integrated with the developments of the northern-European Renaissance than has been apparent hitherto. James V utilised the limited resources at his disposal to good effect, and his cultural patronage propagated multi-layered images of royal power. Continuity with the traditions established by his Stewart forbears, especially his father, James IV, was stressed, particularly in the early years of his reign. However, the chivalric, imperial and humanist themes which were fashionable at the Valois, Habsburg and Tudor courts of the period, were also important and became more prominent at the Scottish court as the reign progressed. An initial examination of the daily life of the court focuses on the personnel, structure and organisation of the royal household and considers the itinerary and routine activities of the king, his family and his entourage. This allows the cultural patronage of the court to be placed in a social context, in which the role and status of women at the court are particularly highlighted. Subsequent chapters consider developments in the visual arts, music and religious observance, learning and literature, military technology, and pageantry and ceremonial. The architectural patronage of the court was particularly rich and encompassed buildings in the ornate High-Gothic style, which was pioneered in the Burgundian Netherlands, and a more restrained Italianate Classicism borrowed from the French court. Music also flourished at the Scottish court, where the French chanson and the Italian consort of viols could be heard alongside the florid, Anglo-Flemish, sacred polyphony of the chapel royal. Likewise, the literary life of the court included vivid (and sometimes bawdy) vernacular verse, scholarly translations of classical texts, neo-Latin humanist treatises, and one of the earliest known examples of a Scottish play. The king also spent heavily on developing an embryonic royal navy, royal artillery and a network of coastal and border fortifications, which incorporated the latest advances in military technology. The ceremonial highlights of the reign included two royal weddings, the lavish funerals of Queens Madeleine de Valois and Margaret Tudor, the coronation of Queen Mary of Lorraine as well as tournaments and rituals connected with the chivalric orders of the Garter, the Golden Fleece and St. Michael. In all of these areas the inspiration of the court of Francis I was particularly strong, since James V spent several years of his minority under the authority of a French Governor, married two French princesses and made a personal visit to the French court in 1536-37. However, men of English, Flemish and Italian origins served the king or visited his court and their influence can also be detected operating alongside the tastes and customs of the Scottish realm. Emerging defiantly from a long and turbulent minority, the adult James V managed to create an exuberant and cosmopolitan court in only fourteen years. His patronage was, of necessity, on a smaller scale than that of the Tudor and Valois kings but a detailed examination of the Scottish court at this period nevertheless reveals a cultural achievement of remarkable quality and diversity.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation sets out to trace the political history of part of what is now Natal in the period from the third quarter of the 18th century to the late 1820s. After briefly describing the nature of political organization in the region at the beginning of the period, it explains how, in the later 18th century, several large paramountcies emerged among the small-scale chiefdoms which had previously been in exclusive occupation of the area. It traces continuities between the conflicts which brought about the formation of these larger polities and the upheavals which, in the later 1810s and early 1820s, totally transformed the region's political landscape. It argues that the concept of the mfecane, which portrays these upheavals as a product of the violent expansion of the Zulu state, is based on colonial-made myths and is devoid of analytical usefulness. It shows that A.T. Bryant's supposedly authoritative account of the period of the upheavals is very largely plagiarized from two minor publications produced long before by Theophilus Shepstone. It goes on to propose an alternative account which demonstrates that the.Zulu state was simply one among a number of important political actors in the ThukelaMzimkhulu territories in the 1810s and 1820s. Though the Zulu were eventually able to establish domination of the region, they did not 'devastate' it, as conventionally they are supposed to have done, and were unable effectively to occupy more than a small part of it. The Zulu were still in the process of establishing a hold on the region when, in the mid-1820S, its political dynamics began to be transformed by the increasing involvement of British traders from Port Natal in the affairs of the Zulu state. By the end of the 1820s, cape-based commercial and political interests were beginning to contest Zulu hegemony in the region south of the Thukela, and a new era in its history was opening. / AC2017

No description available.