This thesis examines the commemoration of Indian soldiers who died during the First World War by the Imperial War Graves Commission, Britain's official government body overseeing all imperial commemoration efforts. For the soldiers of the Indian Army their war experience was split between the Western Front in Europe and Mesopotamia in modern-day Iraq. They were also far more ethnically, religiously, and lingually diverse than their British and Dominion counterparts. In order to examine how geography, religion, and the imperial relationship affected Britain's commemoration of India's war dead, this study uses the Commission's own records to recreate how the IWGC created its policies regarding Indian soldiers. The result shows that while the Commission made nearly every effort to respect India's war dead, the complexity of their backgrounds hampered these efforts and forced compromises to be made. The geography of the war also forced a clear definition between the memories of Indian soldiers who died in Europe and those who fell in Mesopotamia.

No abstract provided. / Thesis / Bachelor of Arts (BA)

The Philippine-American War has rarely been analyzed from the Filipino viewpoint. As a consequence, Filipino military activity is little known or misunderstood. This study aims to shed light on the Filipino side of the conflict. It does so by utilizing the Philippine Insurgent Records, which are the records of the Philippine government. More importantly, the thesis examines 300 years of Filipino history, starting with the Spanish conquest, in order to provide a framework for understanding Philippine military culture.

No description available.

This thesis is an exercise in military history and takes the form of an investigation into a notable late-nineteenth century blunder; the British Army’s failure to relieve Gordon at Khartoum. It seeks to lay bare operational realities which to date have been obfuscated by substantially successful acts of scapegoating and cover-up. Although political procrastination in Whitehall did not abate until August, the thesis contends that a timely operation of war would still have been possible, if only General Lord Wolseley had recognized that the campaign plan he had designed in April might not, some four months later, be fit for purpose. It proceeds to demonstrate that given revised constraints on time, a full-length Nile Expedition was no longer tenable. Alternative courses of action are also tested. Popular myth would have it that the relief expedition arrived at Khartoum only two days too late. The thesis contends that this is a contrivance propagated by Wolseley out of selfishly motivated concern for his place in history. Wolseley explained away the purportedly critical 48-hours by asserting that Colonel Sir Charles Wilson had unnecessarily stalled the campaign for two days. It was inferred that Wilson was professionally inept, lost his nerve and did not press far enough upriver to be certain that Khartoum had fallen. The thesis traces the course of the ‘Wilson Controversy’, analyses ‘Campaign Design’ and ‘Campaign Management’ in order to identify how and why the relief expedition went awry, and culminates in a closely reasoned adjudication on the validity of the allegations levelled against Wilson. The thesis concludes that the true extent of the British failure was in the order of 60 days; that the failure occurred at the operational level of war, not the tactical; and that accordingly culpability should properly be attributed to Wolseley.

<p> The last four decades of research regarding the late prehistoric American Southwest has produced abundant evidence for violence, warfare and cannibalism among the Ancestral Puebloan peoples. Most archaeologists attribute this rise in violence and subsequent abandonment of the Four Corners region to degrading environmental conditions. While ecological factors surely contributed, it is hard to accept that this alone led to the extreme mutilation of hundreds of human remains found throughout the Pueblo territory. It is proposed that increasing social complexity along with new ritual practices resulted in intense and violent attacks throughout the Pueblo expanse.</p>

No description available.

<p> This dissertation addresses how Victorian class hierarchy persisted on the frontier, and manifested in aspects of military life at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. Historians have argued that Victorian culture was omnipresent, but forts were located on the frontier, which was removed from the cultural core. While social status differences were a central aspect of Victorian culture, few studies have investigated how resilient class divisions were in differing landscapes. The U.S. western frontier was a landscape of conflict, and under the continual stress of potential violence, it is possible that Victorian social status differences weakened. While status differences in the military were primarily signaled through rank insignia and uniforms, this research focuses on subtle everyday inequalities, such as diet and pet dogs. Three independent lines of evidence from Fort Laramie, Wyoming (1849&ndash;1890) suggest that Victorian social status differences did persist despite the location. The Rustic Hotel (1876&ndash;1890), a private hotel at Fort Laramie, served standardized Victorian hotel dishes, which could be found in urban upper-class hotels. Within the military, the upper-class officers dined on the best cuts of beef, hunted prestige game birds, and supplemented their diet with sauger/walleye fish. Enlisted men consumed poorer cuts of beef, hunted smaller game mammals, and caught catfish. Officers also owned well-bred hunting dogs, which were integrated into the family. In contrast, a company of enlisted men frequently adopted a communal mongrel as a pet. This project increases our knowledge of the everyday life on the frontier and social relationships between officers and enlisted men in the U.S. Army. It also contributes to a larger understanding of Victorian culture class differences in frontier regions.</p>

This dissertation offers a history of napalm from its invention in 1942 at Harvard University to President Barack Obama's signature on 21 January 2008 of the first U.S. treaty to limit its use. It describes the incendiary weapon's creation through a partnership between government and academia; deployment in both Europe and the Pacific, culminating with the firebombing of Japan's major cities in 1945; extensive use during the Korean War, and many other conflicts; and transformation in public opinion from a marvel to a monster so horrible Pentagon commanders won't mention it, and commentators routinely cite it as an icon of savage cruelty. The history traces this change in public opinion to media coverage during the Vietnam War that raised awareness of the weapon's effects on civilians; protests against the war and the Dow Chemical Corporation that started in 1965 and defined the gel as barbaric; U.S. defeat in Vietnam; commentary by opinion makers after the war, especially Hollywood film-makers; the rise of a global popular culture linked by electronic media; changes in international law; and development of alternative weapons. The study concludes that napalm's story highlights the significance of worldwide communications and popular culture, the increased importance of civilian casualties in war, the important role social movements and international law play in the formulation of social norms, and the increasing power of global opinion to constrain national authorities.

No description available.