“Contested Childhoods” links together three major areas of historical inquiry: war and criminality, law and social change, and the law as it relates to children, in the first half of twentieth-century China. The founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 has eclipsed the historical significance of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government and the importance of its role during the wartime period. This study examines how the outbreak of China’s War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945) served as a crucial catalyst to the construction of ideas of criminality and its relation to children during the wartime period. It examines the different measures by which Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government (1928-1949) attempted to handle the rise in levels of criminality involving juveniles. The study analyses how an increase in criminality during the wartime period challenged how ideas on and about children and childhood were in understood within Chinese society. Moreover, it argues that wartime conditions served as a crucial catalyst prompted the construction of a new judicial and legal framework that was aimed at delineating the boundaries between childhood and adulthood during this period.

The dissertation examines the foundations of modern Arab national thought in nineteenth-century works of Buṭrus al Bustānī (1819-1883) and Aḥmad Fāris al Shidyāq (1804-1887) in which occurred an intersection of language-making practices and a national pedagogic project. It interrogates the centrality of language for Arab identity formation by deconstructing the metaphor "language is the mirror of the nation," an overarching slogan of the nineteenth century, as well as engaging with twentieth-century discussions of the Arab nation and its Nahḍa. The study seeks to challenge the conventional historiography of Arab thought by proposing a re-theorisation of the Arab Nahḍa as an Enlightenment-Modernity construct that constitutes the problematic of the Arab nation. The study investigates through literature and literary tropes the makings and interstices of the historical Arab Nation: the topography of its making. It covers a series of primary understudied sources: Bustānī's enunciative Nafīr Sūriyya pamphlets that he wrote in the wake of the 1860 civil wars of Mount Lebanon and Damascus: his translation of Robinson Crusoe, dictionary, and encyclopaedia. As well as Shidyāq's fictional autobiography, linguistic essays and treatise, and travel writings on Europe. The dissertation engages with these works to show how the 'Nahḍa' is a constituted by inherently contradictory and supplementary projects. It forms a moment of fracture in history and temporality – as does the Enlightenment in Europe – from which emerges a seemingly coherent national narrative.

Although by 1900, over 60% of the British missionary workforce in South Asia was female, women’s role in mission has often been overlooked. This thesis focuses upon women of the two leading Anglican societies – the high-Church Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the evangelical Church Missionary Society (CMS) – during a particularly underexplored and eventful period in mission history. It uses primary material from the archives of SPG at Rhodes House, Oxford, CMS at the University of Birmingham, St Stephen’s Community, Delhi, and the United Theological College, Bangalore, to extend previous research on the beginnings of women’s service in the late-nineteenth century, exploring the ways in which women missionaries responded to unprecedented upheaval in Britain, India, and the worldwide Anglican Communion in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. In so doing, it contributes to multiple overlapping historiographies: not simply to the history of Church and mission, but also to that of gender, the British Empire, Indian nationalism, and decolonisation. Women missionaries were products of the expansion of female education, professional opportunities, and philanthropic activity in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Britain. Their vocation was tested by living conditions in India, as well as by contradictory calls to marriage, career advancement, familial duties, or the Religious Life. Their educational, medical, and evangelistic work altered considerably between 1917 and 1950 owing to ‘Indianisation’ and ‘Diocesanisation,’ which sought to establish a self-governing ‘native’ Church. Women’s absorption in local affairs meant they were usually uninterested in imperial, nationalist, and Anglican politics, and sometimes became estranged from the home Church. Their service was far more than an attempt to ‘colonise’ Indian hearts and minds and propagate Western ideology. In reality, women missionaries’ engagement with India and Indians had a far more profound impact upon them than upon the Indians they came to serve.

This thesis studies Han Dynasty stone carved tombs in Central and Eastern China. These multi-chambered tombs were constructed from carved stone slabs, and were very popular among the Han people. However, such horizontal stone structures were entirely new, and were a result of outside stimuli rather than an independent development within China. The stone carved tombs were a result of imitating royal rock-cut tombs, while the rock-cut tombs were stimulated by foreign examples. Moreover, many details of stone carved tombs also had Western features. These exotic elements were incorporated to satisfy specific requirements of the Han people, and reflected the desire to assimilate exotica within Chinese traditions. Some details within stone carved tombs showed high level of stone working technologies with Western influences. But in general the level of stone construction of the Han period was relatively low. The methods of construction showed how unfamiliar the Western system was to the Han artisans. Han Dynasty stone carved tombs were hybrids of different techniques, including timber, brick and stone works. From these variations, Han people could choose certain types of tombs to satisfy their specific ritual and economic needs. Not only structures, but also pictorial decorations of stone carved tombs were innovations. The range of image motifs is quite limited. Similar motifs can be found in almost every tomb. Such similarities were partly due to the artisans, who worked in workshops and used repertoires for the carving of images. But these also suggest that the tombs were decorated for certain purposes with a given functional template. Together with different patterns of burial objects and their settings, such images formed a way through which the Han people gave meaning to the afterworld. After their heyday, stone carved tombs ceased being constructed in the Central Plains as the Han Empire collapsed. However, they set a model for later tombs. The idea of building horizontal stone chamber tombs spread to Han borderlands, and gradually went further east to the Korean Peninsula. The legacy and spread of the Chinese masonry tradition was closely related to the political circumstances of late Han and post-Han period. The spread of stone chamber tombs in Northeast Asia is presented as a part of a long history of interactions between different parts of Eurasia.

This dissertation pursues three overarching themes. The first of these is empirical: to illuminate the actual functioning of the property market in Delhi. After reconstructing the pattern of depression and boom from 1920-40, I argue that these cycles shaped the nature of participation in the market. During the depression of the 1920s many indigenous financial firms came to rely on property rentals and sales. Alongside these, a nascent sector concentrating primarily in real estate came into existence. Compared to planned state intervention, most of Delhi’s urban fabric was created by private construction. Analysis of the state’s relationship to the property market is the second aim of the work. The colonial state both embraced and was constrained by the commodification of land. Though it was the largest landowner in the city, it did not leverage this position. Rather than construction, the state was happier to act on the market indirectly. One means of indirect action concerned forms representations of urban land as commodity. Leases, advertisements and other documents were crucial for its circulation. The strength of the state in the property market derived from its role as enforcer and repository of representations of commodified space. A third aim is to study the forms of struggle engendered by urban property. Struggles over commodification of urban land, when they took collective forms, did not necessarily splinter along class lines. In fact, subsidised housing emerged out of caste, class and nationalist struggles. Conversely, the commodification of land was at issue in struggles that were not ostensibly about property. For instance, this dissertation tracks its salience for understanding communal conflicts over urban shrines. Taken together, the three themes constitute a picture of the city in which forms of capital accumulation – particularly those relating to space – cannot be ignored.

In much existing literature the incidence of sexual violence during Hindu-Muslim conflict has been attributed to the militant ideology of Hindu nationalism. This thesis interrogates this view. It first examines the ideological framework laid down by the founding ideologues of the Hindu nationalist movement with respect to sexual violence. I argue that a justification of sexual violence against Muslim women is at the core of their ideology. In order to examine how this ideology has contributed to the actual incidents, this thesis studies the episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence that occurred in 1969, 1985, 1992 and 2002 in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. An examination of these episodes shows that sexual violence against Muslim women, in both extreme and less extreme forms, were significantly motivated by Hindu nationalist ideology. However, in addition to this ideology, patriarchal ideas that serve to normalize sexual violence as ‘sex’ and sanction its infliction to maintain gendered hierarchies also motivated such crimes. Moreover, this thesis argues that the manifestation of Hindu nationalist and patriarchal motivations in acts of sexual violence was enabled by the breakdown of neighbourhood ties between Hindus and Muslims in 1969 and 2002. By contrast, during the 1985 and 1992 riots Hindus and Muslims strengthened neighbourhood ties despite extensive communal mobilization, which seems to have prevented the perpetration of extreme sexual violence against Muslim women. Thus, by providing a comprehensive analysis of the contribution of Hindu nationalist ideology, and arguing for the significance of the patriarchal ideas and neighbourhood ties in the infliction of sexual violence during conflict, this study contributes to and departs from the existing literature.

Contrary to Westerners' long-maintained denial of fashion in Chinese dress, recent scholarship has provided convincing textual evidence of fashion in early modern China. Research into this fashion commentary has complicated our understanding of Chinese consumption history, yet we still know little about fashion design, production, or dissemination. By prioritising the textual over the visual or material, this history remains confined to the written source, rather than asking what objects might tell us of Qing fashions. Though many fashionable styles of dress survive in Western museums, these are rarely considered evidence of the Chinese fashion system. Instead museum scholarship remains influenced by twentieth-century interpretations of Chinese dress as art; dominated by dragon robes and auspicious symbols, oriented around the trope of the genteel Chinese seamstress. Within this art historical account, nineteenth-century women's dress has been characterized by decay and viewed with disdain. This thesis questions these assumptions through the study of a group of late Qing women's jackets featuring embroidered narrative scenes, arguing that in this style - regulated by market desires rather than imperial edict - fashion formed at the intersection of commerce and culture. Contrary to the prevailing production model in which the secluded gentlewoman embroidered her entire wardrobe, I position the jackets within the mid-Qing commercialization of handicrafts that created networks of urban guilds, commercial workshops and sub-contracted female workers. By drawing the contours of Suzhou's commercial networks - a region renowned for its embroidery - I demonstrate how popular culture permeated the late Qing fashion system, and explicate the appearance and conceptualization of the embroidered scenes through contemporary prints and performance. My exploration of how dramatic narrative was represented in female dress culture highlights embroidery's significance as a tool to reflect upon contemporary culture, a finding I support by recourse to representations of embroidery as act and object in Suzhou's vernacular ballads and dramas. Thus, these little-studied jackets not only evidence how fashionable dress articulated women's relationship with popular culture, but also how embroidery expressed contemporary concerns, allowing a re-appraisal of women's role as cultural consumers and producers.

Cette étude porte sur les productions iconographiques inspirées de la tradition huayan, l'une des principales écoles chinoises du bouddhisme mahāyāna, née de l’élaboration et de l'étude d’un texte, l’Avataṃsaka-sūtra (Huayan jing en chinois). L’analyse des œuvres se répartit en quatre chapitres. Le premier examine les premières figures du buddha sous sa forme dite de « buddha cosmique », c’est-à-dire dont les vêtements ou le corps, parfois l’auréole et la mandorle sont recouverts de figures plus petites qui se réfèrent au discours cosmologique du sūtra (et en particulier du Daśabhūmika-sūtra, un texte dédié à la méditation, autrefois indépendant et intégré ensuite dans l’Avataṃsaka-sūtra). Ces figures sculptées ou peintes, datant du Ve au IXe siècles, se trouvent principalement dans le Nord-Ouest de la Chine actuelle (Xinjiang et Gansu). Le second chapitre porte sur l’environnement imagier de ces buddhas du VIe au VIIe siècles et sur les premiers portraits sculptés de Vairocana, le buddha principal dans l’Avataṃsaka-sūtra. Ces images consacrées à la méditation furent réalisées dans le Shandong et le Henan actuels et marquées par l'influence d'autres écoles bouddhiques. Le troisième chapitre étudie le développement, sous l’influence du bouddhisme ésotérique, de nouveaux portraits de Vairocana et des bodhisattvas qui en émanent. Les rares exemples conservés se trouvent au Sichuan et datent principalement de la dynastie Song (XIe-XIIIe siècles). Le quatrième chapitre traite de différents types d'images mettant en scène ou combinant plusieurs figures. Tout d'abord, les représentations d’assemblées réalisées en peinture à Dunhuang (Gansu) sous la dynastie Tang (VIIIe-Xe siècles). Puis les images peintes ou imprimées, réalisées sous des Tang aux Song (VIIIe-XIIe siècles), qui illustrent le Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra, la dernière section de l’Avataṃsaka-sūtra qui narre l’histoire d’un jeune Indien parti en pèlerinage pour atteindre l’éveil. Sont enfin abordés les maṇḍala, représentations métaphysiques et symboliques de l’univers sous forme de diagrammes associés à des symboles bouddhiques et à une ou plusieurs divinités. / This study deals with the iconographic production inspired by the huayan tradition, one of the main Chinese schools of mahāyāna Buddhism born from the elaboration and study of a set of texts known as the Avataṃsaka-sūtra (Huayan jing in Chinese). The analysis of the artworksis organized into four chapters. The first one examines the first figures of the Buddha known as “cosmic Buddhas”, i.e. those whose clothes or body, or mandorla, are fully covered with smaller figures which refer to the cosmological discourse of the sūtra (particularlythat of the Daśabhūmika-sūtra, a text dedicated to meditation that was once a separate piece and was later included into the Avataṃsaka-sūtra). These sculpted or painted figures, dating from the 5th to the 9thcenturies, are mainly found in the Northwestern part of present-day China (Xinjiang and Gansu). The second chapter studies the iconographic environment of these Buddhas from the 6th to the 7th centuries as well as the first sculpted portraits of Vairocana, the main Buddha in the Avataṃsaka-sūtra. These images, which were used for meditation practices, were produced in what would be the present-day Shandong and Henan under the influence of other Buddhist schools. The third chapter studies the development of new portraits of Vairocana and his emanations as bodhisattvas under the influence of esoteric Buddhism.The only preserved examples are found in Sichuan and date from the Song dynasty (11th-12th centuries). The fourth chapter deals with various types of images which present or combine several figures. First, the painted representations of assemblies produced at Dunhuang (Gansu) during the Tang Dynasty (8th-10th centuries). Second, the painted or printed illustrations of the Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra, the last section of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra, which tells the story of a young Indian boy gone on a pilgrimage to attain enlightenment. These images were produced from the Tang to the Song dynasty (8th-13th centuries).

La recherche porte sur l’écriture abondante de Hundertwasser et sa place dans le positionnement de cet acteur du renouveau artistique. On lui reconnaît une « œuvre-vie » singulière, puisque, visant à bouleverser la société, il a élargi son domaine, passant de la peinture à l’écologie, via l’architecture. Partant du contexte géohistorique, de l’arrière-plan pictural du début du XXème siècle, des théories des scientifiques et des « prophètes » allemands du XXème siècle ainsi que de l’émergence des mouvements écologistes, il s’agit d’étudier les nombreux poésies, récits, discours, manifestes, interventions dans les médias et commentaires, où Hundertwasser expose et développe ses convictions. L’objectif est de montrer que la dynamique créative de l’artiste s’enracine dans ses écrits. / The research focuses on the abundant writing of Hundertwasser and its place in the positioning of this actor of artistic renewal. He is recognized for his singular "work-life", since, aiming to upset society, he has expanded his field, from painting to ecology, via architecture. Starting from the geohistorical context, from the pictorial background of the beginning of the 20th century, the theories of 20th-century German scientists and "prophets" and the emergence of environmental movements, it is a question of studying the many poems, stories, speeches, manifestos, interventions in the media and comments, where Hundertwasser exposes and develops his convictions. The aim is to show that the creative dynamic of the artist is rooted in his writings.

橫亙百餘年之久的俄屬遠東黃禍論已成為某種或然性規律，不但是俄羅斯與中國兩國的兩難困境，更是彼此關係的潛在負面變數。 為此，本研究以理性主義初探當代黃禍何以復萌，繼而再以建構主義反向解構促使其復萌之俄中關係以及俄國內部中央與地方的互動，此雙重觀念結構之身份與利益的聯繫，以揭示黃禍恐懼的本質和深層原因，從而對其發展趨勢進行中長期預測，並由此對應推導命題：跨層次習得轉化，希冀藉此發展出超越時空範疇的一般性通則，而為觀念甚於物質再增添新的研究實例。 研究發現：黃禍論必須在國際面－俄中兩國間的身份認知得到協調，在國內面－俄國內部以及遠東區當地俄人和中國人之間也必須要趨近，黃禍疑懼才有可能消弭。然而，從黃禍的建構過程可知，俄中兩國的「世代友好，永不為敵」尚未真正到位，俄國內部促成黃禍的離心傾向也仍舊存在。各造屬性若未能調和，黃禍仍將持續地與其所依附存在的雙重結構交錯建構，而其成因亦可能經社會化代代相傳。但遠東區俄人在與中國人互動多年後，其若干特質及行為方面意外地逐漸與中國人趨同，此有可能補足俄國內部欠缺的自下而上建構作用。此外，世代交替亦為俄羅斯再起的希望，俄中兩國的差距若能弭平，黃禍自亦消弭於無形。