The main theme of this thesis is the precise role of the navy department in the struggle to maintain the Union. However, naval operations themselves are not within the scope of this thesis. To what degree did the navy department assist in the successful prosecution of the war? What problems were faced by Welles in the purchase, charter, and construction of naval vessels? What was the relationship between the department and Congress? What evidence of fraud and corruption existed?

This thesis is concerned with the development of a Fair Trade social movement in Britain between 1960 – 2000. It situates the analysis of Fair Trade within the context of historical debates about political consumption. It examines the role of the ethical consumer as a political activist and questions whether Fair Trade has led to a new understanding of the meaning of global citizenship. It is argued that contemporary questions about the limitations of Fair Trade as a model for international development should be grounded in an informed understanding of the intellectual and applied origins of the movement. Revisiting the origins of Fair Trade is not only an important academic exercise but provides the movement with an opportunity to reassess its core values. The intellectual origins of the movement are considered with reference to the nineteenth century thinkers and consumer campaigns. Although building on the politics of the past, the messages and organisational structure of Fair Trade represented a new and distinctly modern approach to campaigning more closely aligned with the ‘new social movements’ than traditional labour or consumer politics. The roles of the main actors are explored, including development non-governmental organisations, religious groups, consumer organisations, co-operatives and supermarkets. While acknowledging the consumer at the heart of the Fair Trade movement, it is argued that what is needed is a more nuanced approach to our understanding of ethical consumerism.

This thesis examines the British Commonwealth and Allied Naval forces operation on the west coast during the final two and a half years of the Korean War, particularly focused on their co-operation with the anti-Communist guerrillas. The purpose of this study is to present a more realistic picture of the United Nations (UN) naval forces operation in the west, which has been largely neglected, by analysing their activities in relation to the large number of irregular forces. This thesis shows that, even though it was often difficult and frustrating, working with the irregular groups was both strategically and operationally essential to the conduct of the war, and this naval-guerrilla relationship was of major importance during the latter part of the naval campaign. It concludes that, to the British Commonwealth Commanders and Allied Naval forces on the west coast, a large part of the relationship with the guerrillas during the Korean War could be explained as that involving a compelled co-operation with unreliable partners.

The thesis analyses US foreign policy toward Italy in the postwar period by considering the multi-faceted nature of the relationship between the countries. It looks at the motivations and challenges facing American visions of a stable anti-communist Italy, as well at the hopes and limitations facing Italian interlocutors in their interaction with the US hegemon. In analysing the overlaps and dissimilarities between policy toward the country and broader approaches in Europe, it explores how the Cold War shaped the US attitude toward Italy and how Italy influenced American conceptualisation of the Cold War. With particular focus on the attempt to bolster anti-communist groups before the first Italian national election in April 1948, it charts the emergence of a perception of success within the Truman Administration vis-à-vis the effectiveness of its efforts to prevent a communist ascension to power. Confident that they had shaped the election outcome, US officials considered intervention as an inaugural case of ‘Political Warfare,’ which was defined as the use of ‘all means short of war’ to achieve national objectives. Such perceptions were significant for how American officials considered events in Italy during the previous years, while it held important ramifications for the future, problematic, trajectory of US-Italian relations and ongoing American efforts to engage in organised Political Warfare.

My thesis explores language policy and practice in the history of the people of Gibraltar between 1940 and 1985. This period covers the wartime Evacuation and the Spanish border restrictions and closure, and it is also fundamental in the emergence of Gibraltarian identity and democratic rights. My contention is that these developments were facilitated by growing accessibility to the English language. From being largely the preserve of the colonial establishment and the elite, it emerged as pre-eminent in official use, the media and culture, and higher oral registers. This change was hastened by the Evacuation, which increased awareness of the need for English. The Clifford Report of 1944 reformed the whole education system and gave a central role to English. Clifford, Gibraltar’s Colonial Secretary, and indeed educationalists at the Colonial Office, proved themselves far more enlightened than their governing counterparts in Gibraltar. Their reform greatly contributed to political development in the following decades. With the Spanish border closure, the English language and the sense of attachment to Britain gained further consolidation, co-existing with the move away from overt colonialism. In my examination of language behaviour in Gibraltar, including bilingualism and the use of Spanish, interview material supplements written sources.

This thesis seeks to demonstrate that, during the post war and early Cold War years, the US Federal government, and in particular the Executive branch, was inspired to increase the role which it played in the US Education system. It also seeks to chart the methods it utilised in order to do so. One inspiration was the desire to direct the US education system towards a curriculum which better benefitted the nation’s Cold War effort, including placing a greater emphasis upon scientific education and training, more tightly regulating the discussion over democratic vs. communist ideologies in the classroom and the pursuit of a greater equalisation in opportunity for African American students. Further inspiration was provided by both the widespread expansion of centralised government programs and the increased importance of education to social progress witnessed across the world after the Second World War, and both President Truman’s own personal commitment to the equalisation of education opportunity, and the Democratic Party’s pursuit of black votes during the Truman Administration. This thesis charts the Executive and Judicial branches’ innovative and unorthodox usage of the powers available to them in order to garner greater influence over the education system, and assesses the varying rates of success of these programmes in order to demonstrate the significant and irrevocable shift in the relationship between the US Federal government and the US education system which occurred during the early Cold War.

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Numerous studies, books, and articles have been written on Britains retreat from its former empire in the 1960s. Journalists wrote about it at the time, many people who were involved wrote about it in the immediate years that followed, and historians have tried to put it all together. The issues of foreign policy at the strategic level and the military operations that took place in this period have been especially well covered. However, the question of military strategic alternatives in this important era of British foreign policy has been less studied. This dissertation discusses such high-profile projects as the TSR.2 and F.111, prospective VTOL aircraft and not least the CVA-01 fleet carrier, but most of all it focuses on the issue of military strategy. The rivalry between the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force was largely about the questions of carrier aviation versus land-based air power – and which strategic option would best answer the British need to maintain influence as the garrisons were being scaled down. The Royal Navy argued for replacement fleet carriers for their mobile seaborne strategy, while the Royal Air Force argued that land-based air power would be as effective and far less costly. By using this underlying strategic debate as the framework for understanding more specific debates on aircraft, ships and weapon systems, this dissertation aims to bring new light to our understanding of the dramatic restructuring and altered priorities these two military services saw during the 1960s. The story may be divided into three broad periods: From 1960 until mid 1963, it was a conceptual debate on ‘Carrier Task Forces’ and a concrete alternative ‘Island Strategy’. This ended in July 1963 with a Cabinet decision in favour of new fleet carriers. However, the Royal Air Force and the Treasury kept fighting this decision. Their continued resistance, together with the new Labour Government with Denis Healey as Secretary of State for Defence, changed the decision of 1963. The highpoint of the debate on carrier aviation and land-based air power came during 1965-66, ending with the decision of February 1966 to cancel the CVA-01 and gradually phase out the existing carrier fleet. Denis Healey then used the arguments for land-based air power as a rationale for the decision. The dissertation rounds off with a discussion of the planned phase-out of the existing carrier fleet. However, the story saw a different end than planned, as new strategic challenges in home waters came about and the evolving VTOL Harrier aircraft and the ‘through-deck cruisers’ gave new possibilities. This is a historical study of the British debate about maritime air power and strategic alternatives in the 1960s. However, the detailed story and arguments used for and against both alternatives should clearly have relevance to any conceptual debates on carrier and land-based air power.

This thesis reconstructs and explains the arms relationship that successive U.S. administrations developed with the Shah of Iran between 1950 and 1979. This relationship has generally been neglected in the extant literature leading to a series of omissions and distortions in the historical record. By detailing how and why Iran transitioned from a low order military aid recipient in the 1950s to America’s primary military credit customer in the late 1960s and 1970s, this thesis provides a detailed and original contribution to the understanding of a key Cold War episode. By drawing on extensive declassified archival records, the investigation demonstrates the not only the importance of the arms relationship but also how it reflected, and contributed to, the wider evolution of U.S.-­‐ Iranian relations from a position of Iranian client state dependency to a situation where the U.S. became heavily leveraged to the Shah for protection of the Gulf and beyond -­‐ until the policy met its disastrous end in 1979 as an antithetical regime took power in Iran.

This thesis examines the role of the Northern Department of the British Foreign Office and its perception of, and attitude towards, the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1953. In these formative years after World War II many assumptions and policies were shaped that proved decisive for years to come. The Northern Department of the Foreign Office was at the centre of British dealings with the Soviet Union after 1945 in an atmosphere of cooling diplomatic relations between both camps. Keeping channels of communications open in order to exploit every opportunity for negotiation and the settlement of post-war issues, officials built up an extensive expertise of Soviet domestic and foreign policy. Their focus on all aspects of Soviet life accessible to them, for example, Soviet domestic and international propaganda, revealed in their view a significant emerging future threat to British interests in Europe and worldwide. This view provided the basis of the analysis of new information and the assessment of the best possible policy options for the British government. The Northern Department tried to exploit those traits of Soviet policy that could persuade the USA and Western Europe to follow British foreign policy initiatives vis-à-vis the Soviet Union in the early Cold War while attempting to balance those weaknesses that could harm this effort. The focus of the Department often varied as a result of Soviet action. Some issues, like the Cominform were of momentary importance while other issues, like the Communist threat and the issue of Western European defence remained on the agenda for many years. A realistic approach to foreign policy allowed officials to exploit and counter-act those Soviet foreign policies seen as most threatening to Britain and those most likely to aid Britain’s recovery of her much desired world role. While the initial optimism after 1945 soon faded and consolidation on both sides was followed by confrontation, officials in London and the embassy in Moscow tried to maintain diplomatic relations to aid Western recovery efforts and support the new foreign policy doctrine of containment. When by the early 1950s entrenchment was speeding up in East and West, the Northern Department nevertheless utilised the available information to support British foreign policy worldwide as well as strengthen the domestic effort to explain the increasing international tension to the British people. Realism on the part of officials, and awareness of the information and options available to them meant that a Britain closely allied to the USA but one that continued to talk to the Kremlin was seen as the best way to achieve a continued world role for Britain and a safe Europe.