Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2006 Aug 15.

Abstract   This thesis examines the role of women who went as missionaries to China between the 1890’s and the 1930’s, with a special regard to the Swedish missionary Sally Nordling. I think it is interesting to find out more about their motives. What made these women choose to go far away from their homes in Europe to live and work for God?   I have noted that there is not much written about these women and I hope that this thesis will shed light on this part of history, and that I will be able to give my own personal reflections. Through analysing different biographies written about female missionaries that lived in China I hope to be able to answer my hypothesis that women through their religious conviction were able to escape their restricted lives. The main research question for this thesis is whether female missionaries were allowed to do similar work as men when going to China.

No description available.

No description available.

Digitization that has enabled instant access to vast numbers of archival, historical images, demands a new paradigm for the use of visual imagery in historical research. This thesis proposes a new form of historiography in the digital medium, an image-based narrative mode for authoring and reading history. I propose a digital model for conveying history through the visual record, as an alternative to the printed book. Unlike the quantitative “big data” approach to digital humanities, this research explores visuality itself. In a practice-led approach, the research addresses both aspects of historiography: (1) a method of historical representation; and (2) original historical work on a selected topic. The testbed for historiographic and narrative experiments which led to the model was my case study on the Boxer Uprising in China, c. 1900. While many written histories of the Boxer Uprising exist, I collected a large portion of its extensive visual record for the first time. Sources from around the world, in a variety of media, were assembled into a digital data set that reveals previously unexplored historical themes. A series of visual narratives built in the case study culminated in a proposed “Visual Narrative Field” model. In this model, meaning emerges in the patterns observed between images within a complex visual field. The model vertically integrates three narrative approaches in order to support alternating cognitive modes used to read texts and perceive images. Linear concentration is blended with the non-linear exploration of interactive forms. The model provides historians with a much-needed tool for authoring narrative through relationships between images in a scalable approach. Due to digitization, visual databases are easily assembled, and images are as easily reproduced as written text. The Visual Narrative Field model takes advantage of the characteristics of the newly-digitized visual record, providing a means of authoring visual narrative that can be comprehended without the use of extensive written text. The model thus creates an unprecedented image-based method for performing and presenting historical research.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This thesis compares the Western response to two radical challenges in eras considerably removed in time: the 1900-1901 Boxer rebellion in China and today's Islamic terror. It brings a much-needed historical perspective to bear in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary Western conceptualization of the al-Qaeda and Taliban threat as a "clash of civilizations." It demonstrates that the current struggle against Islamic fundamentalism is not an altogether new challenge to Western interest and values. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are in the end an expression of the same forces of resistance that also led to the origination of the Boxers in 19th century China. The cultural pressure that the West unavoidably developed by its imperialistic policy in the 19th and early 20th centuries was replaced by the penetration of the world with values, standards and symbols of the Western way of life and civilization in the course of globalization. The West ought to understand that the current terrorist threat is not "the next stage of history," as some scholars erroneously puts it, but a known historical phenomenon in a new form, for which neither the West nor other cultures bear the blame. / Major (GS), German Army

Austro-Hungarian Activities in China, 1894-1914 PhDr. Jan Kočvar My Ph.D. thesis evaluates Austro-Hungarian activities in China between 1894 and 1914, especially their political aspects. I would like to explain the nature of Austro-Hungarian contacts with China and their significance for the Dual Monarchy. The main source for my thesis was constituted by the materials in Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna. Austria-Hungary concluded diplomatic relations with China in 1869, but her position in China remained weak. After the Sino-Japanese War, the Far East became a focus of interest of the Great Powers, and in 1896 was appointed the first Austro-Hungarian Minister to China. During the Scramble for Concessions in late nineties, Austro-Hungarian navy conducted survey of Chinese littoral and contemplated an establishment of a naval base in China, but finally rejected this idea. Austro-Hungarian trade and other interests in China were too insignificant to justify such an action. The peak of Austro-Hungarian presence is connected with the Boxer Uprising of 1900. Austria-Hungary didn't contribute to its genesis. During the uprising, Austro-Hungarian sailors were fighting in besieged Legation Quarter in Beijing, as well as in the metropolitan province of Zhili. Thereafter, Austro-Hungarian diplomacy took...

No description available.

The era between the close of the nineteenth century and the onset of the First World War witnessed a marked increase in radical agitation among Indian and Irish nationalists. The most outspoken political leaders of the day founded a series of widely circulated newspapers in India and Ireland, placing these editors in the enviable position of both reporting and creating the news. Nationalist journalists were in the vanguard of those pressing vocally for an independent India and Ireland, and together constituted an increasingly problematic contingent for the British Empire. The advanced-nationalist press in Ireland and the nationalist press in India took the lead in facilitating the exchange of provocative ideas—raising awareness of perceived imperial injustices, offering strategic advice, and cementing international solidarity. Irish and Indian press coverage of Britain’s imperial wars constituted one of the premier weapons in the nationalists’ arsenal, permitting them to build support for their ideology and forward their agenda in a manner both rapid and definitive. Directing their readers’ attention to conflicts overseas proved instructive in how the Empire dealt with those who resisted its policies, and also showcased how it conducted its affairs with its allies. As such, critical press coverage of the Boxer Rebellion, Boer War, Russo-Japanese War, and World War I bred disaffection for the Empire, while attempts by the Empire to suppress the critiques further alienated the public. This dissertation offers the first comparative analysis of the major nationalist press organs in India and Ireland, using the prism of war to illustrate the increasingly persuasive role of the press in promoting resistance to the Empire. It focuses on how the leading Indian and Irish editors not only fostered a nationalist agenda within their own countries, but also worked in concert to construct a global anti-imperialist platform. By highlighting the anti-imperial rhetoric of the nationalist press in India and Ireland and illuminating their strategies for attaining self-government, this study deepens understanding of the seeds of nationalism, making a contribution to comparative imperial scholarship, and demonstrating the power of the media to alter imperial dynamics and effect political change.

China has become a major contributor to world science today, with the largest number of qualified scientific publications in the world, a centralized government willing to sponsor the development of science, and pioneering scientists in all disciplines. Where did this scientific power emerge from historically and how did this history connect with the rest of the world? My dissertation suggests that comprehending the Sino-American intellectual exchange network since the early twentieth century is essential for us to grasp the development of science in modern China. It argues that a Sino-American intellectual exchange network through the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture (ie., the China Foundation) played a critical role in the development of modern scientific research and education from the 1920 to the 1940s. In the first half of the twentieth century, leading American intellectuals of the progressive era such as Teachers College’s educational scholar Paul Monroe and Columbia University’s prominent philosopher of pragmatism John Dewey frequently communicated with prominent Chinese intellectuals, many of whom were their former students in the United States. Such face-to-face interchanges across the Pacific ultimately influenced Chinese choices in shaping modern scientific education and research. The impact was generated primarily through the China Foundation. The China Foundation, financed by the second American remission of the Boxer Indemnity Funds, served as a sponsor of the development of scientific research, teaching and training in modern China. The trustees of the foundation, responsible for the custody and administration of the fund, included prominent Chinese intellectuals (most of whom had received western graduate training) such as Hu Shi (PhD, Columbia), Jiang Menglin (PhD, Teachers College), Zhang Boling (visiting fellow at Teachers College, 1917-1918), Ren Hongjun (H. C. Zen, MA, Columbia), Guo Bingwen (PhD, Teachers College), Ding Wenjiang (aka V. K. Ting, BA, University of Glasgow), Zhao Yuanren (aka Y. R. Chao, PhD, Harvard) as well as the American intellectuals and reformers Paul Monroe, John Dewey, Roger Sherman Greene and John Leighton Stuart. This dissertation researches the history of Sino-American intellectual exchanges in the China Foundation network, which were central to the establishment of science in modern China. It begins by tracing the cohort of leading Chinese intellectuals trained at American universities, who paved the way for its establishment. They invited leading American educators like John Dewey and Paul Monroe to China, and did the translation work that allowed for their reformist ideas of democracy, education and science to become popular in China. While the American intellectuals aspired to transmit a democratic education through introducing science, the Chinese intellectuals also developed their own rationales to pursue China’s scientific modernization. It also examines the political assumptions and tensions wound up in this Sino-American educational exchange network that illuminates the ways in which the intellectuals on both sides of the Pacific were mutually influenced by their intellectual exchanges. In asks the following questions: How did American intellectuals of the progressive era design and pursue a democratic vision for the Chinese scientific development, and what were their political assumptions undergirding the transmission of science? How did the Chinese intellectuals respond to the American knowledge of science, translate, and negotiate this transmission of science to China? What aspects of science did they absorb and incorporate for the Chinese national purposes? What ideas did they absorb from the United States, and what aspects did they deliberately eschew? In posing these questions, part of my goal is to shift the predominant narrative of transnational progressive era US intellectual history from “Atlantic Crossings” to a dense and constitutive set of exchanges of knowledge, ideas and practices of sciences across the Pacific.