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The desire and need for historical representation in postmodernism are coupled with the self-reflexive acknowledgement of our inability to faithfully represent the past. This dissertation examines the ways in which certain historical events are represented in postmodern fiction. More specifically, it introduces the term ‘distortion’ to designate various ways that postmodern authors have attempted to convey traumatic and violent histories through intentional permutations of historical facts. In this study, I analyse six texts, representative works that present the multi-faceted nature of what I call ‘distorted’ historical fiction. Each text is devoted to one of three historical events: the Holocaust in Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow and Art Spiegelman’s Maus; the Chilean dictatorship in Diamela Eltit’s Lumpérica and Isabel Allende’s La Casa de los espíritus; and finally, the Algerian War of Independence in Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma and Mohammed Dib’s Qui se souvient de la mer. The analyses of each text are guided by three main questions: How is the depicted history distorted in the narrative? Why is the historical reality distorted? And lastly, what are the hermeneutical effects for the reader of engaging with the distorted historical text? I contend that these historical fictions apply various modes of distortion to create a specific and often peculiar effect on the reader. These include distortions of narrative form and voice, as well as distortions of temporality and space. I argue that the reader’s encounter with distorted historical fiction creates a peculiar hermeneutical effect of ‘defamiliarisation,’ which has affinities with Viktor Shklovsky’s use of the term and Bertolt Brecht’s ‘V-effekt.’ The sense of defamiliarisation creates a conflict in readers, in which their foreknowledge of a past event clashes with the event's distorted depiction. This conflict demands that the reader be responsible, implying that the reader should not be ‘swept away’ by the distorted narrative. Instead the responsible reader is encouraged to interact with the text, apply previous historical knowledge to correct said distortions, and through this interaction gain a greater intimacy with the past.

The desire and need for historical representation in postmodernism are coupled with the self-reflexive acknowledgement of our inability to faithfully represent the past. This dissertation examines the ways in which certain historical events are represented in postmodern fiction. More specifically, it introduces the term ‘distortion’ to designate various ways that postmodern authors have attempted to convey traumatic and violent histories through intentional permutations of historical facts. In this study, I analyse six texts, representative works that present the multi-faceted nature of what I call ‘distorted’ historical fiction. Each text is devoted to one of three historical events: the Holocaust in Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow and Art Spiegelman’s Maus; the Chilean dictatorship in Diamela Eltit’s Lumpérica and Isabel Allende’s La Casa de los espíritus; and finally, the Algerian War of Independence in Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma and Mohammed Dib’s Qui se souvient de la mer. The analyses of each text are guided by three main questions: How is the depicted history distorted in the narrative? Why is the historical reality distorted? And lastly, what are the hermeneutical effects for the reader of engaging with the distorted historical text? I contend that these historical fictions apply various modes of distortion to create a specific and often peculiar effect on the reader. These include distortions of narrative form and voice, as well as distortions of temporality and space. I argue that the reader’s encounter with distorted historical fiction creates a peculiar hermeneutical effect of ‘defamiliarisation,’ which has affinities with Viktor Shklovsky’s use of the term and Bertolt Brecht’s ‘V-effekt.’ The sense of defamiliarisation creates a conflict in readers, in which their foreknowledge of a past event clashes with the event's distorted depiction. This conflict demands that the reader be responsible, implying that the reader should not be ‘swept away’ by the distorted narrative. Instead the responsible reader is encouraged to interact with the text, apply previous historical knowledge to correct said distortions, and through this interaction gain a greater intimacy with the past.

The purpose of this study was to examine the primary reasons for the refusal of the United States to grant diplomatic recognition to the revolutionary government in Greece between 1821-1833. The generally accepted reason has been the Monroe Doctrine. This policy statement by James Monroe in 1823 seemed to preclude any form of diplomatic recognition of the provisional government in Greece by the United States because the Greek Revolution was a European affair. If the American government were to prevent intervention in the Western Hemisphere by the European powers, then certainly the United States should not interfere in an area of primary concern to the Holy Alliance.President Monroe's words in his annual message to Congress were a statement of existing American policy and the principles should not be ignored entirely. However, it is the thesis of this paper that the desire for a commercial treaty with the Ottoman Empire was more significant in the development of American policy toward the Greek War of Independence. The expansion of American trade and commerce were goals of a government that practiced commercial diplomacy. The government of the United States sought in this particular case more trade in the Eastern Mediterranean and the right to navigate the waters of the Black Sea. A treaty with the Ottoman Empire was the key to this goal.To prove this thesis it was necessary to demonstrate that the menace from European powers, or the Holy Alliance, was minimal because those powers were too divided to pose a credible deterrent to American diplomatic recognition of Greece. Chapter one is devoted to a discussion of the European diplomatic situation with particular emphasis on the collapse of the Congress System and the "Eastern Question". Both bore direct bearing on American decisions concerning the Greek Revolution.The next chapter attempts to demonstrate that the United States had direct and serious involvement in the Eastern Mediterranean. Since 1794 the United States had sought commercial advantages in the Levant, indeed, part of America's colonial legacy had been involvement in the Mediterranean trade. In addition to commerce, missionary activity, scholarly concern, and America's democratic heritage drew Americans to the Levant. By the time of the Greek Revolution the United States had bountiful interests in the Ottoman Empire. There were expectations of further advances in many quarters.The United States' response to the Greek Revolution between 1821-1833 is the subject of chapter three. America was divided between the philhellenes who advocated aid and recognition for Greece and those who did not wish to antagonize the Ottoman Empire and thereby lose commercial advantages in the Levant. This was the central issue in the debates on the Greek Question in the eighteenth Congress. Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, led the fight against the philhellene position so as not to jeopardize his secret attempts to secure a commercial treaty with the Ottoman Empire.The negotiations between representatives of the United States and Turkey, conducted in secret throughout the Greek Revolution, is the subject of chapter four. Only after the conclusion of the American-Turkish Treaty of Commerce did the United States grant diplomatic recognition to an already independent Greek nation. A commercial treaty with Turkey, a dying empire, in order to foster the expansion of American trade was the crucial determinant of American policy toward the Greek War of Independence.

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This thesis examines the context and causes of signal reform in the British Royal Navy during the American War of Independence. It argues that changes in the ethos of the officer corps before and during the American War of Independence led to a complex period of signal reform. The original system was tied to the General Printed Sailing and Fighting Instructions, more often referred to as the Fighting Instructions. For around a century (ca. 1690 to ca. 1790), the Royal Navy utilized the Fighting Instructions as its main system of communication. During the American War for Independence, however, some sea officers began to question the system and devise new methods of signaling. This change was brought on by changes within the officer corps. Among the changes were trends of centralization and the influence of Enlightenment ideals. Both of these shifts helped to inspire the signal reformers, while also creating the environment to sustain signal reforms. This thesis examines the signal reforms of the three principal signal reformers of the war: Richard Howe, Richard Kempenfelt, and George Rodney. / Master of Arts / This thesis examines the context and causes of signal reform in the British Royal Navy during the American War of Independence. It argues that changes in the ethos of the officer corps before and during the American War of Independence led to a complex period of signal reform. For nearly one hundred years, the navy utilized the same system of signaling to communicate between ships: the General Printed Sailing and Fighting Instructions, more commonly known as the Fighting Instructions. During the American War of Independence, some British sea officers began to question that system and propose alternate systems of their own design. Influenced by their lengthy naval experience, shifts in trends of centralization, and the influence of Enlightenment ideals, officers like Richard Howe, Richard Kempenfelt, and George Rodney experimented with new methods of signaling.

Anglo-Free State relations between the wars still awaits a comprehensive study ... This is in par a reflection of the larger failure of British historians to work on Anglo-Irish history '" the Right has been ill at ease dealing with Britan's greatest failure, whilst the Left has found tropical climes more suited for the cultivation of its moral superiority. When R.F.Holland made this apposite comment, just over a decade ago, he may have been adding to the very problems he identified. Writing within the context of the 'Commonweath Alliance', he was joining a distinguished list of British and Irish historians who have sought to fiter inter-war Anglo-Free State relations through the mesh of Empire-Commonweath development. Beginning with A. Berredale Keith in the 1920s, this usage continued in either direct or indirect form (by way of particular institutions of Commonweath) from the 1930s to the 1970s through the works of W.K. Hancock, Nicholas Mansergh and D.W. Harkness, and was still finding favour with Brendan Sexton's study of the Irish Governor-Generalship system in the late 1980s.2 But herein a contradiction has developed: cumulative study of the unnatural origins and performance of the Free State as a Dominion has moved beyond questions of function to ask whether the Free State was in fact ever a Dominion at alL. 3 As such, there seems ever more need to step back from inter-Commonwealth study and refocus on the precise nature of the Free State's central relationship with Britan in this period. It is of course acknowledged that outwith the established zones of internal Irish and Empire-Imperial study there is no home or forum for one of the most enduring quandares of modern Europea history. Even if it is accepted that 'pure' Anglo-Irish history did not end in 1922, the weight of research based on the ten yeas prior, as against the ten yeas subsequent, suggests an easy acceptance, on both sides of the Irish Sea, and Atlantic, of the absolute value changes in that relationship. Studies covering the transition to independence, such as those of Joseph M. CUITan and Sheila Lawlot, have taen only tentative steps beyond 1922, and may indeed have epitomised an approach that subsequent Irish studies have done little to dispel; in the 1980s, major overviews by RF. Foster and J.J. Le have been notably reluctant to evaluate the quality of that new found freedom with continuing reference to Ireland's giant neighbour. Though Foster, and others, have noted that the main aim of the Free State in the 1920s was 'self-definition against Britan', the point is the extent to which Britan was wiling to allow the same. There has then been little impetus for direct Anglo-Free State inter-war study, and although the tide has begun to turn since the mid-1980's, notably through the achievements of Paul Canning, Deidre McMahon and, shortly before his death, Nicholas Mansergh6, it is probable that we are stil a long way short of being able to produce a comprehensive and coherent review of the period. Apar from the crucial Anglo/Irish-Anglo/Commonwealth dichotomy,there remains the political chasm dividing the Cosgrave years of the 1920s from those of de Valera's 1930s; indeed the overwhelming preoccupation with post-1931 confrontations has often, as in the case of McMahon's fine study, taen as its contrasting staing point the supposedly compliant 'pro-Treaty' years of 1922-31. It is hard to bridge this gulf when the little direct work on these earlier years, mostly concentrating on the two fundamenta issues of Boundar and financial settlement, has tended not to question this divide. Although Irish historians have turned an increasingly sympathetic eye on the internal politics and problems of these early yeas, the apathetic external image, in contrast to the later period, has been persistent. Nowhere has this negativity been more apparent than on the, also vita, topic of defence relations. For a subject that has been given more than adequate attention in terms of the 1921 Treaty negotiations and the Treaty Ports issue of the 1930s, the period in between has had little intensive coverage. In this regard the negative response of W.K.Hancock in 1937, stating that Cosgrave did not bother to question British defence imperatives, was stil being held some fifty yeas later by Paul Canning.7 Thus an enduring and importt image has emerged of defence relations re-enforcing the above divide, an image that has had to stand for the lack of new reseach. This does not mea that the image is necessarly an entirely false one, but it does mean that many of the supposed novelties of the de Valera yeas have been built on largely unknown foundations. The Treaty Ports issue is also vita to this thesis, but then so are other defence related matters which had an impact specific to the 1920s. In other words, the human and political context of how both countries, but the Irish government in paricular, coped with the immediate legacy of centuries of armed occupation, with the recent 1916-21 conflct, and with the smaller scale continuity of British occupation, was bound to cast old shadows over a new relationship. But how big were these shadows? It was on the basis of placing some detaled flesh on the skeleton of known (and unknown) policies and events that this thesis took shape. Frustrations and resentments could tae necessarily quieter forms than those which characterised the 1930s, and in the end be no less significant. If the first objective is then to make solid the continuity of defence affairs, it is appropriate to begin with a brief evaluation of the Treaty defence negotiations before tang a close look at British operations in the South in 1922 - the year when a reluctant Cosgrave was to inherit a situation where British forces were close to the development of civil war. Despite our growing knowledge of Britan's part in the progress of that war, there is stil a general perception that its forces became peripheral to events after the Truce of July 1921, and that its Army was, and had been, the only British Service involved in the struggle against armed republicanism.This is simply not the case, and it is to be wondered whether the proper absorption of Irish historians with the internal dynamics of the period, together with the authoritative quality of Charles Townshend's history of the 1919-21 British campaign, have not produced inhibitions to wider inquiry. 8 In any event, as the Admiralty was to play a central par in later defence relations it seems right to introduce, for the first time, the Royal Navy's importt role in the events of 1922. The point here is to establish that the actions and perceptions of both Services were to have repercussions for later attitudes. After these chapters, the following two aim to look at the cumulative legacy of British involvement and how both countries adjusted to the many unresolved questions thrown up by the Treaty and the unplanned contingencies of 1922. Retaining the theme that neither country could escape the past, nor trust to the future, chapter six returns to the physical and political impact made by the continuing presence of British forces in and around the three Treaty Ports, and along and across the Border. The final two chapters explore how all these factors helped determine the conditions for, and consequences of, one of the most damaging episodes of the later 1920s - the complete failure of the joint coasta defence review scheduled for December 1926.In all, the cumulative emphasis on the politics of defence may ilustrate what it was to be a small aspiring country that had little choice but to accept Britan's version of what was an inevitably close relationship, and to endure what Britan claimed as the benign strategic necessity of continued occupation.

Gilbert,Alan Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence Chicago:University of Chicago Press 392 pp.,$30.00, ISBN 978-0226293073 Publication Date: April 2012

This thesis examines the political, social and, in particular, military conditions that influenced the allegiance of the men and women of the political community of Lothian, that is to say those people with personal landholding, legal and military obligations whose services were crucial to the efficient administration of the sheriffdom and whose support was courted by kings and magnates alike. The key issue is the high degree of survival among these minor landed families. The upper strata of Scottish political society underwent considerable changes in the early to middle fourteenth century through the fortunes of war, in particular through the disinheritance of the Comyn family and their allies early in the reign of Robert I. Some families lost their Scottish properties, such as the Balliols and the Comyns. Others grew in stature; notably the Douglases and, in Lothian specifically, the Setons and the Lauders. Most landholders would probably have been content to retain their inheritances, and indeed, virtually all of the Lothian landed families of the late thirteenth century would seem to have managed to do just that. A high rate of success is not necessarily evidence that something is easily achieved; the retention of family properties was a complex business in wartime. In the period 1296-1314 the political community had to discharge their financial, legal and military burdens to the party currently in charge, but without permanently compromising themselves with the opposition, who might, after all, be in a position to exert lordship themselves at some point in the future. The military burdens are central to this thesis. Army service was a very obvious indication of allegiance. Given the nature of the normal practice of war in thirteenth and fourteenth century Europe, it is inevitable that this study examines the nature and incidence of armoured cavalry service in Lothian. The overwhelming majority of that service was performed by minor landholders. Records of their service in garrisons or their forfeiture as rebels provide us with a guide to the rate and incidence of defections from one party to another and therefore some guide to the degree to which a particular party was able to impose their lordship. The thesis explores the various challenges that faced the lesser landholders and more prosperous tenants and burgesses who lived through the Wars of Independence from the campaign of 1296 which ended the reign of King John and imposed the rule of Edward I, until 1341 when Edinburgh castle was recovered by the Scots from the forces of Edward III. It also questions the extent to which Edward III was able to impose his lordship in Lothian, considers the nature of the forces ranged against him and challenges the perception that only the outbreak of the Hundred Years War prevented the operational defeat of the Bruce party. The siege of Edinburgh castle in 1341 marked the end of the last attempt by an English medieval king to provide Lothian with a government. Naturally this would not have been abundantly apparent at the time; however subsequent English invasions, though they might attack Edinburgh, were not designed to bring about the conquest of Lothian. The political environment of Lothian landholders therefore differed substantially in 1296-41 compared to the century either side of the Wars of Independence in that the minor nobility faced difficult decisions which had to be made on assessments of the likely eventual success of the Balliol, Plantagenet and Bruce parties.