This thesis is an investigation of elite normative masculinity in medieval Scotland. The attempts of medieval men to claim, enforce or deny personal obligations within homosocial relationships provide evidence of how aristocratic Scotsmen ought to have behaved. These obligations appear in documentary and literary sources and indicate the importance of the relationships associated with them. Charters and bonds of friendship, fealty, and indenture, and three fourteenth-century literary sources, the Liber Extravagans, Gesta Annalia, and The Bruce, provide evidence of normative expectations of men in medieval Scotland. These sources present a picture of an ideal man whose interactions with other men were governed by expectations of loyalty, honesty, bravery, wisdom, and valour. It is also apparent that while courtly chivalry was an influential normative source, its precepts were of secondary importance to the welfare and protection of one’s dependants. This study contributes to the growing body of work that emphasizes the importance of understanding manliness and male experiences as a gendered, constructed, and important force within society. / Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; Ontario Graduate Scholarship

Tevens proefschrift--Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2008. / Title from e-book title screen (viewed Mar. 16, 2009). Description based on print version record. Met lit.opg., reg.

This study of Ecuador under Gran Colombia comprises more than a catalogue of the obstacles underlying the failure of Simon Bolívar's experiment in statecraft. While the distinct nature of the regional and local problems of the southern departments add to that diagnosis, they also stand apart as factors in the formation of the Republic of Ecuador. The Liberator's determination to maintain the territorial integrity of the audiencia of Quito as a part of the viceroyalty of New Granada prevented the potential partitioning of that region between Peru and Colombia. Colombian military assistance enabled the fleeting Republic of Guayaquil to play a crucial role in the liberation of the audiencia. This ensured a patriotic legacy for Guayaquil compatible with that of Quito in the formation of Ecuadorian national identity. The special treatment accorded the Southern Departments by Bolívar's use of his extraordinary faculties and his later authority as dictator maintained the regional identity of Ecuador. The inability of the Colombian government to effectively respond to the local problems of the Southern Departments undermined the legitimacy of that regime. In contrast, the efficiency of the military administration imposed upon the departments by Bolívar enhanced his personal authority. Also, at the expense of Gran Colombia, the Liberator fostered an embryonic administrative centralism around the leadership of one of his most loyal officers, General Juan José Flores. The era of Ecuador under Gran Colombia witnessed the continuation of the colonial economic system beneath the superstructure of republican politics. In recognition of the distinct nature of southern society, Bolívar formally sanctioned that continuity, ultimately replacing the few liberal reforms attempted in the south with a return to colonial institutions. Within this framework the local elites of Quito, Guayaquil, and Cuenca remained secure in their society. Within the decade of its existence as part of Gran Columbia, Ecuador demonstrated its own dynamic elements, both local and regional in nature, that gradually coalesced to form an embryonic national identity. The emergence of the Republic of Ecuador in May 1830 was an affirmation of that historical development.

A note on terminology. Throughout, the term 'Holland' is used to apply only to the province of that name. Similarly, where 'Flanders' appears in the text it applies only to that province, although commonly used by contemporaries to designate the Netherlands as a whole. 'Dutch' is employed as a convenient shorthand for the inhabitants of the rebel provinces, but 'Belgian' has been avoided for the southern provinces because it implies a predetermined racial/ national division in the Netherlands. 'Spanish' is used generally to describe the government and the armed forces operating against the United Provinces even though, in the armed forces, Spaniards were themselves a small minority. This is justified by the commanding position held by the servants of Madrid during this period. Rather than adopt a slavish consistency with place names, we have employed forms familiar to English speakers, such as The Hague (Den Haag), Antwerp (Antwerpen), Flushing (Vlissingen). Elsewhere, the form familiar to the inhabitants has been employed (Mechlin for Malines, Liege for Luik). Dates are given according to the 'New Style' except where otherwise stated, or where it is unclear which style is being used.

The Napoleonic invasion of Iberia shattered the Spanish empire in 1808. The French emperor occupied Spain and forced Ferdinand VII to abdicate the throne. Once the war against the French began, most vassals also rejected the Spanish imperial government in Madrid that had recognized the change of dynasty. The implosion of the Crown severely tested the hierarchical, centralized, and interdependent nature of the empire. Historians of the Spanish Bourbon empire have rightly argued that the invasion catalyzed the emergence of the new nations from 1810 onward. Many of them, however, have failed to notice the concurrent and extraordinary efforts to reconstitute the empire--a critical history that contextualizes the decisions Spanish Americans faced in this tumultuous period. / History

The origins and development of a sense of Scottish national identity have long been a matter of critical importance for historians of medieval Scotland. Indeed, this was also the case for historians in medieval Scotland itself: this period saw the composition of a number of chronicles that sought to describe the history of Scotland and the Scottish people from their earliest origins until the chroniclers' own time. The dissertation explores ideas of national identity within two medieval Scottish chronicles, known today as Gesta Annalia I and Gesta Annalia II. Taken together, these two chronicles, one written before the Wars of Independence, the other after, can offer valuable insights into the development of the identity of the Scottish kingdom and its people, and the way in which this was affected by the Wars of Independence, providing evidence both of continuity and of contrast. This is of particular interest with respect to their portrayals of the role of the Scottish king and his relationship with the kingdom, given the way in which Robert I and his supporters later apparently attempted to shape the narrative of Scotland's past and the position of its king to their own ends. The dissertation therefore seeks to investigate how such issues of Scotland's identity are presented in Gesta Annalia I and Gesta Annalia II. The first section of the study discusses the construction of these texts. The second then looks at how terms such as 'Scotland' and 'Scot' are understood in the two chronicles, and the relationship between these ideas of the Scottish kingdom and the Scottish people. The third section examines the presentation of the crown, church and language in the chronicles, and the role of these elements in uniting the kingdom and fostering this sense of identity, arguing that the continuity of these ideas between the two texts suggests that many elements of Scotland's national identity were well-established by the later thirteenth century.

This work, the way its name suggests it, is intent on the theme of process of achievement of the Latin American states' independence of Spain and Portugal, and on situating of this process in the context of the events of this time in further world's parts, and mainly in the context of the policies of single powers which had, or could have, some interests in the said spaces. Likewise the name itself suggests, its chief interest is intent primarily on the period of the years 1815-1826. While in Europe the Napoleonic Wars had definitively ended, and a new order here was creating, according to principles of the Vienna Congress, and under the supervision of the Holy Alliance, Spanish America had gone through first phase of her own wars of liberation, and it could seem, on the beginning, the situation here was coming anew to profit of the Spanish monarchy, recuperating from the precedent years of the French rule and the war with French intruders. However, the struggle of independence of single Hispanic-American states was continuing, like the Portuguese Brazil reached for own independence of colonial metropolis as well. In the Spanish America's case, Spain, really isolated, despite the negative attitudes of the Holy Alliance's monarchical governments towards the development in her oversea possessions, and...

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished