This dissertation argues that the Hudson’s Bay Company depot that was built at Norway House beginning in 1825 created economic opportunities that were sufficiently strong to draw Aboriginal people to the site in such numbers that, within a decade of its establishment, the post was the locus of a thriving community. This was in spite of the lack of any significant trade in furs, in spite of the absence of an existing Aboriginal community on which to expand and in spite of the very small number of Hudson’s Bay Company personnel assigned to the post on a permanent basis. Although economic factors were not the only reason for the development of Norway House as a community, these factors were almost certainly primus inter pares of the various influences in that development. This study also offers a new framework for the conception and construction of community based on documenting day-to-day activities that were themselves behavioural reflections of intentionality and choice. Interpretation of these behaviours is possible by combining a variety of approaches and methodologies, some qualitative and some quantitative. By closely counting and analyzing data in archival records that were collected by fur trade agents in the course of their normal duties, it is possible to measure the importance of various activities such as construction, fishing and hunting. With a clear understanding of what people were actually doing, it is possible to interpret their intentions in the absence of explicit documentary evidence.

This dissertation seeks to consider the colonial experiences of Britain in Ireland and India in a comparative context – to contrast their encounters with, and explorations of, early modern Ireland with the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Indian subcontinent. The early experience in Ireland helped shape the developing British belief in their own superiority, leading them to draw distinctions between themselves and other peoples. This laid the groundwork for later endeavours, notably in India. While separated by time and space, these British colonial experiences shared several important characteristics. Early modern Ireland provided the British with important guidelines and models for behaviour, many of which were later adopted in India. The manipulation of history in Ireland, the description of the Gaelic Irish in travel accounts and the application of the law as a tool of reform all provided valuable patterns for the ways in which the British structured their later empire in India.

This thesis considers the relationship between Germany’s South-West African colony and its British South African counterparts (the Cape Colony, Natal, Rhodesia and, after the second Anglo-Boer War, the Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal) between 1883 and 1915. The chapters consider the complex and fraught relationship, including the British Government’s surprise and the Cape Government’s dismay following Germany’s establishment of the colony: the German public’s pro-Boer stance juxtaposed against the German Government’s refusal to intervene during the second Anglo-Boer War; the Cape Government’s dilemmas over whether to aid German South-West Africa (GSWA) during Germany’s quasi-genocidal campaigns against the Herero and the Nama; efforts to cooperate with German South-West Africa despite labour competition during the period of the unification of South Africa; and the period after 1910, when the diplomatic relationship became an affair of the Union of South Africa, which simultaneously pursued protectionist policy for South African trade, and bilateral cooperation concerning the diamond industry, as well as security along the border between 1911 and 1914. Finally, I consider the impact of the outbreak of the First World War, which saw Germany and GSWA offer support for an Afrikaner Rebellion to draw Britain’s attention away Europe and install a friendly government in South Africa, while also offering the Union an opportunity to conquer GSWA as part of its sub-imperial ambitions. Among the enduring themes are the interplay between political, economic and military developments, including border disputes, illicit trade, labour competition, and armed incursions led by non-state actors. In conclusion, I argue that as the idea of a South African federation progressed, it was driven in part by geopolitical factors and the desire to counter German imperialism. The British Government endorsed a South African union in part to create a South Africa strong enough to fend off German geopolitical threats. / Thesis (PhD (History))--University of Pretoria, 2021. / Historical and Heritage Studies / PhD (History) / Unrestricted

No description available.

Imperial powers have employed a range of strategies to establish and then maintain control over foreign territories and communities. As deploying military forces from the home country is often costly – not to mention logistically stretching when long distances are involved – many imperial powers have used indigenous forces to extend control or protect influence in overseas territories. This study charts the extent to which Britain employed this method in its informal empire among the small states of Eastern Arabia: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the seven Trucial States (modern day UAE), and Oman before 1971. Resolved in the defence of its imperial lines of communication to India and the protection of mercantile shipping, Britain first organised and enforced a set of maritime truces with the local Arab coastal shaikhs of Eastern Arabia in order to maintain peace on the sea. Throughout the first part of the nineteenth century, the primary concern in the Gulf for the British, operating through the Government of India, was therefore the cessation of piracy and maritime warfare. Later, British interests were expanded to suppressing the activities of slave traders and arms traffickers. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, Britain also sought to exclude foreign powers from gaining a foothold in the area. It was during this time that the British government assumed full responsibility for the external relations of these shaikhdoms and that Britain conferred the status of ‘protected state’ upon them. Up to this point, when Britain needed to protect these interests or use force to compel local rulers to comply with its wishes, naval power usually sufficed. By the midpoint of the twentieth century, Britain’s interests in the area had swelled and migrated inland – first because of the establishment of air stations servicing the imperial route to India, then as a result of oil exploration and production. At the same time, growing international opposition to colonialism and a steady reduction in Britain’s ability to project military power overseas made it more and more difficult for Britain to discharge it security duties in the Gulf. So how did Britain bridge this gap? Studies of British security policy towards the Gulf have focused almost exclusively on Britain’s formal military architecture. Using India Office records and British Government archival documents, this study provides a reinterpretation of the means by which Britain sought to maintain order, protect its interests in the region and discharge its defence obligations. The records, it will be shown, point to a broad British policy before 1971 of enhancing the coercive instruments available to the local rulers. Rather than having to revert to using its own military forces, Britain wanted the Gulf rulers to acquire a monopoly over the use of force within their territories and to be in a stronger position to defend their own domains against cross-border raiders and covetous neighbours. This policy was not always successful; Britain was progressively drawn into the internal security affairs of a number of ITS protégés, especially after the Second World War. The security forces that emerged – armed police forces, gendarmeries and militaries – varied considerably, as did Britain’s involvement in their establishment and running. Nevertheless, taken as whole, a trend emerges between 1921 and 1971 of Britain pushing the Gulf states to take over more and more of the security burden. Indeed, at a time when its traditional sources of global power were fading, indigenous security forces were an important tool in Britain’s pursuit of its interests before its military withdrawal from the Gulf in December 1971. This aspect of Britain’s approach to security in the Gulf has largely been overlooked.

This thesis will examine the portrayal and reception of ‘novel’ technology as constructed spectacle in the military and popular coverage of the Abyssinian (1868) and Ashanti (1873-4) expeditions. It will be argued that new and ‘novel’ military technologies, such as the machine gun, Hale rocket, cartridge rifle, breach-loading cannon, telegraph, railway, and steam tractor, were made to serve symbolic roles in a technophile discourse that cast African expansion as part of a conquest of the natural world. There was a growing confidence in mid-Victorian Britain of the Empire’s dominant position in the world, focused particularly on technological development and embodied in exhibition culture. During the 1860s and ‘70s, this confidence was increasingly extended to the prospect of expansion into Africa, which involved a substantial development of the ‘idea’ of Africa in the British imagination. The public engagement with these two campaigns provides a window into this developing culture of imperial confidence in Britain, as well as the shifting and contested ideas of race, climate, and martial prowess. The expeditions also prompted significant changes to understandings of ‘small wars’, a concept incorporating several important pillars of Victorian culture. It will be demonstrated that discourses of technological superiority and scientific violence were generated in response to anxieties of the perceived dangers posed by the African interior. Accounts of the expeditions demonstrated a strong hope, desire to claim, and tendency to interpret that novel European technology could tame and subjugate the African climate, as well as African populations. This study contributes to debates over the popularity of imperialism in Victorian society. It ties the popularity of empire to the social history of technology, and argues that the Abyssinian and Ashanti expeditions enhanced perceptions of military capability and technological superiority in the Victorian imagination. The efficacy of European technology is not dismissed, but approached as a proximate cause of a shift in culture, termed ‘the technologisation of imperial rhetoric’.

Les débats économiques au 19e siècle, loin d’être l’apanage du monde universitaire, étaient aux États-Unis un des principaux objets de contentieux entre les partis politiques et ceux-ci trouvaient écho dans la sphère publique. Les journaux étaient alors le principal moyen de communiquer les opinions des différents partis. La présente étude vise à mettre en contexte et cerner la position des écrits du plus important économiste américain de son époque, Henry Charles Carey (1793-1879), reconnu comme tel par J.S. Mill et Karl Marx en leur temps, lors de la décennie de 1850 dans le journal le plus influent de cette période, le New York Tribune. Pour ce faire, il a fallu au préalable identifier les articles non signés de Carey dans le journal, ce qui n’avait auparavant jamais été fait. Au moment d’écrire dans le principal organe américain qui défendait la protection aux États-Unis afin d’industrialiser le pays, Carey était alors le représentant le plus prééminent du système américain d’économie. Ce dernier, fondé sur les écrits d’Alexander Hamilton, prônait l’industrialisation des États-Unis et l’intervention de l’État pour défendre le bien commun, s’opposant ainsi à l’école libérale anglaise basée sur les écrits d’Adam Smith. Conceptuellement, la pensée économique de Carey se situe dans la tradition des Autres Canon, basée sur la production et l’innovation. Ceci le mena à s’opposer avec vigueur tant au malthusianisme qu’à la division internationale du travail, justifiée théoriquement par la thèse de l’avantage comparatif de Ricardo. En effet, dans son analyse, la volonté exprimée au milieu du 19e siècle par l’Angleterre de devenir l’atelier du monde et de faire du reste des nations des producteurs de matières premières sous un régime de libre-échange n’était rien d’autre que la continuation de la politique coloniale par d’autres moyens. Pour Carey, la spécialisation dans l’exportation de matières premières, notamment défendue par les planteurs du Sud des États-Unis, loin d’être bénéfique au pays, était le sûr gage de la pauvreté comme les cas de l’Irlande et de l’Inde le démontraient. / During the19th century in the United States, economic debates, far from being limited to the academic world, were one of the main subjects of dispute among political parties, finding echo in the public sphere. At the time, newspapers were the primary way of circulating the opinions of the different political parties. The aim of the present study is to contextualize and understand the writings of Henry Charles Carey (1793-1879), the most important American economist of his age, recognized as such by J.S. Mill and Karl Marx, during the 1850s in the most influential newspaper of that period, the New York Tribune. To do so, it was first necessary to locate the unsigned articles written by Carey in this newspaper; something which to date had never been done. At the time that Carey wrote in this paper, the main American organ defending protection so as to industrialize the country, he was the most eminent representative of the American System of economy. Founded on the writings of Alexander Hamilton, it advocated industrialization and defend the role of the state to promote the general welfare and was thus opposed to the English liberal school based on Adam Smith’s writings. Conceptually, Carey’s economic thought followed the tradition of the Other Canon, based on production and innovation. This led him to vigorously oppose Malthusianism and the international division of labor, theoretically justified by Ricardo’s thesis of comparative advantage. Indeed, in his analysis, England’s desire to become the workshop of the world in the mid-19th century and to transform the rest of the world into producers of raw materials under a free-trade regime, was nothing more than the continuation of colonial policy by other means. For Carey, specialization in raw materials exports, notably supported by the southern planters in the United States, far from been beneficial to the country, was the surest path to poverty as demonstrated by the Irish and Indian cases.

This final thesis examines the influence of the British Empire on the spread of democracy over the world. The British Empire is not considered to be just the exploiter but mainly as an Empire, which enforced the free trade, freedom and building the democratic institutions in the world. Thesis compares the British Empire with other European colonial powers focusing on advantages of British government and on impact of this government on former colonies. In spite of the fact that democracy was not accepted in all former British colonies, the British Empire made a great contribution to the support and expansion of the democracy and freedom in the world.

Cette thèse a pour objet la relation entre les Britanniques et les Hachémites depuis la Première Guerre mondiale, lorsque par la Révolte arabe, la famille du Chérif de La Mecque scelle son alliance avec la Grande-Bretagne, jusqu'à la révolution irakienne de 1958 qui renverse la monarchie hachémite dans ce pays. La relation anglo-hachémite est la coopération d'une puissance impériale avec une dynastie locale dont les membres sont cooptés par les Britanniques pour créer des régimes arabes favorables aux intérêts britanniques. Nous en proposons cependant une lecture originale en analysant l'influence des représentations culturelles sur la manière dont les Britanniques choisissent les Hachémites comme alliés puis coopèrent avec eux pendant plusieurs décennies. Les Hachémites correspondent aux critères raciaux et culturels qui fondent la vision britannique de ce qu'est l'identité arabe, en plus de jouir d'une légitimité religieuse grâce à leur ascendance et leur statut. En nous appuyant aussi bien sur les archives privées des responsables britanniques en poste auprès des Hachémites que sur les archives du gouvernement britannique, nous rendons compte de l'évolution du discours culturel des Britanniques sur les Hachémites en fonction du contexte politique. Les Britanniques jugent en effet la capacité de leurs alliés à incarner l'identité des pays qu'ils gouvernent tout en préservant les intérêts britanniques, et ce jusqu'au milieu des années 1950. Cette thèse entend ainsi illustrer le poids des représentations culturelles sur la manière dont les Britanniques choisissent et coopèrent avec les élites locales au sein de l'empire. / The object of this thesis is the relationship between the British and the Hashemites from the First World War, when the Arab revolt signaled the alliance between the sharif of Mecca's family and Great-Britain, to the 1958 Iraqi revolution which toppled the country's Hashemite monarchy. The relationship between Britain and the Hashemites was a cooperation between an imperial power and a local dynasty whose members were coopted by Britain to create Arab regimes friendly to British interests. However, the purpose of this thesis is to shed new light on this relationship by analysing the influence of cultural representations on the way the British chose the Hashemites as allies and cooperated with them for several decades afterwards. The Hashemites matched the racial and cultural criteria which formed the basis of the British vision of Arab identity, while this family also enjoyed a religious legitimacy derived from its ancestry and status. Through the use of both the private papers of the British officials who worked closely with the Hashemites and the archives of the British government, this thesis explores how the British cultural discourse on the Hashemites evolved according to the political context. The British judged their allies' capacity to embody the identity of the countries they ruled over while preserving British interests, all the way to the mid 1950's. This thesis thus intends to illustrate the influence of cultural representations on the way the British chose and cooperated with local elites in the empire.

S’inspirant des théories de « dégénérescence » avancées par Nordau et Spengler à la fin du XIXe et au début du XXe siècle, Lawrence pose l’hypothèse d’un déclin physique et moral des individus et des formes sociales collectives en Europe. Il se met donc en quête, à travers le voyage et sa narration, de possibilités de « régénération » que pourraient offrir les lieux et les cultures extra-européens. Ce faisant, il analyse la confrontation entre ses personnages voyageurs européens et l’altérité culturelle qu’ils découvrent, une altérité portée à la fois par les individus étrangers et les sociétés auxquelles ils appartiennent, les lieux et les forces sacrées qui peuplent ces derniers. Lawrence postule que la régénération, ou réanimation, du sujet européen dépend de la capacité du voyageur à se laisser altérer par la puissance étrangère. Chaque œuvre examine ainsi le processus d’altération que subit le sujet européen et qui dépend de divers facteurs, tels que la relation à la patrie, la finalité poursuivie à travers le voyage, la condition sociale, l’éducation, et le genre.L’œuvre lawrencienne s’intéresse en effet majoritairement à la réanimation du sujet féminin et la plupart de ses personnages voyageurs sont des voyageuses non-accompagnées, un choix singulier pour l’époque. Pourtant, Lawrence n’envisage pas d’auto-émancipation du sujet féminin, car sa réanimation n’est possible que grâce à la rencontre érotique avec un autre masculin, porteur d’un monde étranger.Lawrence expérimente toutefois avec diverses formes de régénération, individuelle et collective, politique et spirituelle, susceptibles de contribuer au renouveau de la civilisation occidentale. / Drawing on Nordau and Spengler’s theories of “degeneration” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Lawrence posits the idea of a physical and moral decline of both individuals and collective social forms in Europe. He therefore sets out, through his personal travels and travel narratives, on a quest for the “regenerative” possibilities which he believes non-European places and cultures may have to offer.His travel writings examine the encounter between his European characters and the cultural otherness they experience abroad in the form of foreign individuals and societies, places and the sacred powers that inhabit those places. Lawrence postulates that the “regeneration” or revitalisation of the European subject is determined by the traveller’s ability to let himself or herself be altered by the power of otherness. Each of his works thus analyses the process of alteration undergone by the European subject, which is affected by various factors such as the latter’s relationship to the home country and the end sought through travel, his social status, education and gender.Lawrence’s works are primarily concerned with the revitalisation of the female subject and most of his travelling characters are in fact unaccompanied female travellers – an uncommon choice at the time. Yet Lawrence does not contemplate the possibility of the female subject’s self-emancipation since her revitalisation can only be brought about by the erotic encounter with a male other endowed with the power of otherness.Lawrence nonetheless experiments with several types of regeneration – individual and collective, political and spiritual – which may contribute to the renewal of western civilisation.