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Why do some international actors who intervene militarily in civil wars continue their military engagement after the war has ended, while other actors end their intervention and withdraw all military forces at the conclusion of the war? What explains the continuation of outside military intervention from wartime to peacetime, and why might this dimension of military intervention vary across conflicts? In analyzing this puzzle, this study introduces a new theoretical concept: persistent intervention. Defined as the continuation of an external state’s military intervention in a civil war after the war ends, the concept of persistent intervention sheds light on the connections between wartime and peacetime, or the post-conflict period. Drawing on a new dataset on post-war interventions across the globe in countries experiencing civil wars that ended between 1957-2020, as well as detailed comparative case studies of four interventions from the Middle East and Africa, this dissertation finds the availability and access to political and economic gains of the intervention as the main driver of the decision to keep troops in peacetime. The domestic elites' desire to protect these predatory gains from the intervention leaves some interveners entangled in the civil war country, where leaving too soon might devalue and destabilize the investments. The primary factor undermining persistent interventions is found to be intervener domestic instability that disrupts this extractive mechanism. Findings also have implications for external involvement in peace agreements and peacekeeping operations. / Political Science

This study delves into the conflict landscape in the form of a case study of the Central African Republic, with a specific focus on the involvement of the private military company Wagner Group, framed within Mary Kaldor's theory of New Wars. The theory emphasises that since the 1990s wars have been carried out in the name of identity politics, are between the state and non-state actors, that violence is directed at civilians and that the global economy is a driving condition. These characteristics are generally true for the conflict in CAR. The Wagner Group's role remains largely unexplored within academic circles, necessitating a closer examination of its impact on conflict dynamics to better understand the broader implications for regional stability and global power dynamics. Since CAR became independent in 1960, CAR has been imprinted by armed conflict and widespread violence against civilians. In 2018 the government ceded parts of its monopoly on violence to the Wagner group through an agreement where the group protects the state in exchange for access to natural resources. The Wagner group's presence also contributes to increased regional conflict dynamics and can lead to increased violence and criminal activity.

This study seeks to illuminate the Swedish propaganda effort during the first years of Swedish participation in the Napoleonic wars, known as the Pomeranian War (1805-1807) in Swedish historiography. This is accomplished by analysing the reporting off the Swedish war effort in the official newspapers Stockholm Post-tidningar and Inrikes tidningar with a model of wartime propaganda previously put forward by Anna Maria Forssberg. The sources used, classified as “official Swedish war reporting”, are the published materials written either explicitly by official Swedish sources or other texts from an entirely Swedish perspective. A classification motivated by the heavy press regulations and state censorship of the late Gustavian era. The study covers the entirety of the period of Franco-Swedish warfare in northern Germany up to and including the evacuation of Swedish forces from Rügen in September 1807 but ends before the formal conclusion of peace in 1810. During this period several other important themes besides the fighting are covered in the official propaganda. These include a conflict with Prussia in 1806 and the Swedish alliances with Russia, Britain and, later, Prussia. The role of the image of the king in the authoritarian Gustavian political system and the way that the propaganda tries to paint a positive picture of Swedish military endeavours, mostly setbacks, with great emphasis on the preservation of military honour is also discussed.

As French Protestantism emerged in the 1550s, the young community needed charismatic leaders. The main impetus came from native pastors with strong links to Geneva. Antoine de Chandieu was a key figure amongst these men. His writings promoted the values of French Protestantism over three decades and provide insight into how this vulnerable community faced the challenges of the civil war years. This study uses Chandieu’s prose and verse writings to examine how French Protestants defined themselves from the 1550s to the 1590s. Chapter one looks at Chandieu’s life and career, placing his works in the context of the Wars of Religion. Chapter two examines the early structural development of the French Church and the attempt to establish a system independent of that in Geneva. Chapter three concentrates on the Conspiracy of Amboise, and the tension that developed between the political and religious concerns of the movement. Chapters four and five explore the ways in which Chandieu engaged with perceived threats from internal and external sources. Chapter six focuses on the shift towards meditative writing provoked by the Protestants’ losses during the later wars, whilst chapter seven highlights the continuing preoccupation with theological issues throughout Chandieu’s later years of exile. Chandieu’s career provides a personal experience of the French religious wars which underlines how French Protestantism tried to retain its independence. This became increasingly difficult as the wars progressed, and the movement consistently returned to the refuge of Genevan influence. Although his faith was never shaken, the sustained losses suffered by the Protestants caused Chandieu to abandon his hopes of a fully independent French Church, and to reflect deeply on the emotional torment that resulted from years of interconfessional strife. In his works we see the French church’s struggle to find a workable group identity in the face of civil war.

John Williams är att betrakta som en av giganterna inom den amerikanska filmmusikkompositionen. Förutom filmmusik så har han komponerat ett flertal beställda solokonserter för betydande instrumentalister och orkestrar, däribland The Five Sacred Trees för fagott och symfoniorkester som är skriven för New York Philharmonics 150-års jubileum och denna orkesters solofagottist Judith LeClair. I detta examensarbete analyseras de första två satserna från ett motiviskt, strukturellt och i viss mån harmoniskt perspektiv, samt genomgås hur det kan påverka instuderingsprocessen och författarens interpretatoriska val. Referensmaterialet som används är främst en pianoreduktion av stycket, samt en doktorsavhandling gällande styckets pedagogiska användningsområden av John Michael Lopinto från 2004. Slutsatser efter analysen inkluderar bland annat att de två satserna i stora drag kontrasterar varandra, att konserten innehåller så pass många olika klangkaraktärer att det krävs extra arbete från solistens sida för att kunna framföra denna med endast piano, samt att John Williams kontinuerligt utvecklar motiv från tidigare verk och inkorporerar dem i konserten och har fortsatt att arbeta på detta vis även efter tillkomsten av denna konsert. Min förhoppning är att det här arbetet ökar min egen och omvärldens insikter om denna konsert, och ökar sannolikheten för att detta verk framförs i större utsträckning i framtiden. / <p>John Williams fagottkonsert, sats 1-2.</p><p>Medverkande: Gabriella Varga Karlsson, fagott</p><p>Georg Öquist, piano</p><p></p><p></p><p></p>

The name ‘Simonides’ has long been associated with the Persian Wars. More specifically, Simonides is famous in large part because of his commemoration of the Persian War dead in the form of epigrams. The purpose of this paper is to investigate a set of four of the most famous and most distinctively ‘Simonidean’ poems to the end of delineating their stylistic deviations from conventional epitaphic speech. This paper argues that the specific ways in which Simonides departs from the conventions of epigrammatic language serve to convey a distinctively democratic ethos. This ethos is clear in that Simonides’ epigrams privilege the mass efforts of the collective, and do not praise any particular individuals over another. Moreover, that these poems do not include the sort of identifying details that we would normally expect to find in epigrams anticipates a readership that is uniformly knowledgeable about the events of the Persian Wars. This represents another facet of the egalitarian ethos evident in this group of epigrams, as Simonides treats his readers as equally aware of the events of the Persian Wars. Thus, Simonides assumes a unified, panhellenic identity that characterizes both the subjects of his poems as well as his readers: they are all part of the same entity that defeated the Persians. Simultaneously, however, Simonides, or at the very least, the Simonidean name, achieves his own kleos as an individual poet through his distinctive commemorations of the Persian War dead. With these poems comes the emergence of a Simonidean poetic persona that renders the poet’s voice unique because of the way in which Simonides diverges from epigrammatic convention. The allotment of immortal kleos both to the anonymous, undifferentiated masses of Persian War dead and to the name ‘Simonides’ reflects two distinctive ideologies, the latter archaic and the former classical. My reading of these epigrams thus demonstrates how the commemoration of the Persian Wars is poised between two different eras and two different ideologies. / text

This dissertation presents data to support the continuity of warfare throughout the Maya lowlands, and adjacent regions. I discuss the current problems with the archaeology of warfare, the continuity of conflict beginning with the Late Preclassic through the Terminal Classic. Additionally, I emphasize the influence that Teotihuacan had during the Early Classic throughout Mesoamerica, while in some areas there is evidence of diplomatic and economic relations, there is also clear evidence of forced relations at other sites. Conflict is identified on the archaeological record through the heterarchical analysis of a variety of data encompassing defensive features, settlement patterns, epigraphy, iconography, and forensic data. I examine data from San Jose Mogote, Monte Alban, Montana, Izapa, Kaminaljuyu, and sites located within the northern, central, and southern lowlands. The primary goal is to present a cohesive series of war-related events per lowland zone, and chronological time period. Some of the primary questions deal with how land use, and economic trade relations transform political relations and alliances throughout time. Additionally, how do changes in political alliances affect trade routes? By recognizing the important role warfare played in the lowlands, we also recognize how these events affected the elites and their interaction with other polities, and most importantly how these events affected the commoner populace. In the process of investigating conflict throughout the Preclassic and the Classic periods, we can attempt to pinpoint continuities, political and economic changes, and the sociopolitical responses undertaken by polities in a time of war. / text

This thesis examines the role of national defence in British parliamentary politics between 1794 and 1812. It suggests that previous analyses of the late eighteenth-century political milieu insufficiently explore the impact of war on the structure of the state. Work by J.E. Cookson, Linda Colley, J.C.D. Clark, and Paul Langford depicts a decentralised state that had little direct involvement in developing a popular “British” patriotism. Here I argue that the threat of a potential French invasion during the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France provoked a drive for centralisation. Nearly all the defence measures enacted during the period gave the government a much greater degree of control over British manpower and resources. The readiness of successive governments to involve large sections of the nation in the war effort through military service, financial contributions, and appeals to the British “spirit”, resulted in a much more inclusive sense of citizenship in which questions of national participation and political franchise were unlinked. National identity was also affected, and the focus on military defence of the British Isles influenced political attitudes towards the regular army. By 1810, however, the nation was disillusioned by the lengthy struggle with France. The result of lingering political weakness was that attention shifted from national defence onto domestic corruption and venality. The aftermath of the Irish Act of Union, too, demonstrated the limits of attempts to centralise the policy of the whole United Kingdom. Significantly, however, the debates over the relationship between the centre and the localities in the 1830s and 1840s, and the response to a new French invasion threat in the 1850s and 1860s, revived themes addressed during the 1790s and 1800s. The political reaction to the invasion threats between 1794 and 1812 ultimately had more in common with a Victorian state bureaucracy than an eighteenth-century ancien régime.