Il n’existe pas, à proprement parler, une histoire des Français de l’étranger. La définition même de ce terme reste floue et connaît de nombreuses variantes selon les auteurs qui se sont penchés sur le sujet ; ces derniers sont d’ailleurs rarement des historiens. Autre constat, le concept de présence française recouvre une multitude de réalités. C’est un terme polysémique qui n’a pas encore reçu, chez les historiens du moins, de définition claire et précise. Pour explorer ces pistes, il a semblé que Hong Kong dans l’entre-deux-guerres était un terrain propice.C’est une parenthèse active sur un territoire aux influences multiples ; la colonie britannique est aux portes de la Chine, voisine de l’Indochine, et elle connaît des développements et des remous nombreux entre 1918 et1941.L’ambition de ce travail est d’assembler les différentes formes de la présence française, souvent étudiées individuellement dans d’autres cadres chronologiques ou géographiques, pour offrir un tableau complet de ce que signifie réellement ce terme et réfléchir aux concepts contemporains de Français de l’étranger et de culture tierce. Au regard des spécificités géographiques et politiques de Hong Kong dans l’entre-deux-guerres, en quoi peut-on dire que la colonie britannique joue un rôle particulier pour la France, et qu’à ce titre, elle est un observatoire privilégié de la vie des Français de l’étranger à cette époque ? Cette interrogation cache évidemment de multiples articulations car la présence française suppose l’existence d’une communauté vivante et hétérogène, mais aussi une implantation purement matérielle et parfois abstraite. / Strictly speaking, the History of French people abroad does not exist. The meaning of this term in itself is quite vague and there are lots of variations, depending on the scholars who may have flown over this subject; seldom are they historians. Another significant aspect is that the notion of French presence also covers many different realities. It is a polysemous term which, as yet, has never been given a clear and proper definition yet, at least among historians. In order to explore those tracks, using Hong Kong during interwar period as a search field was thought to be relevant.It is an active parenthesis on a territory animated by multiple influences; the British colony is on China’s doorstep, a neighbour of Indochina, and it has known quite a number of developments and upheavals between 1918and 1941.The purpose of this work is to gather different forms of the French presence, often studied separately and individuallyin other geographical and historic contexts, in order to offer a complete picture of what this concept really means. This is an opportunity to debate on the contemporary notions of fFrench people abroad and Third Culture. Because of the geographical and political specificities of Hong Kong during the interwar period, in what way can we consider that the British colony is playing a particular role for France in the area ? And, on this basis, how can it be considered a privileged observatory of the life of French people abroad at that time? Those questions are obviously hiding many others because French presences suppose the existence of a lively and heterogeneous community, but also a material and sometimes abstract implantation.

Dans ce mémoire, nous comparons l’expérience des Britanniques dans deux territoires qui intègrent l’empire britannique après la guerre de Sept Ans. Nous proposons une comparaison de deux régions du globe aux traits contrastés, le Canada et le Bengale, en posant la question : comment les Britanniques se renseignent-ils sur les populations de ces territoires récemment acquis? Notre étude s’inscrit dans plusieurs courants historiographiques qui proposent une relecture de l’histoire de la Grande-Bretagne et de ses colonies, ce qui est le sujet de notre premier chapitre. Dans le second, nous explorons l’après-conquête au Canada. Après avoir mené à bien leur conquête (en 1759-60), les Britanniques en viennent à vouloir administrer les populations qui y habitent. Pour cela, le gouvernement britannique implante un nouveau régime politique jugé adapté aux conditions canadiennes, sans s’encombrer d’une assemblée. Dans la vallée laurentienne, les administrateurs coloniaux doivent toutefois composer avec une population majoritairement d’origine française de confession catholique, ce qui les a menés à modifier le régime dix ans plus tard. Dans le troisième chapitre, nous nous intéressons à la présence britannique au Bengale après la bataille de Plassey de 1757. Dans cette région, c’est par l’entremise de l’East India Company (EIC) que les Britanniques acquièrent une influence sur les pouvoirs locaux, ce qui leur permet d’administrer par l’intermédiaire des gouverneurs de l’Empire moghol (les nababs). Cependant, les différences culturelles étaient bien plus importantes qu’avec la population canadienne d’origine européenne. La population de l’Inde du nord de l’époque est majoritairement de confession hindoue ou musulmane, et emploie le perse comme langue administrative. Grâce à notre lecture de la correspondance officielle, entre les administrateurs coloniaux et le gouvernement métropolitain pour le Canada, et entre les agents de la compagnie et ses directeurs pour le Bengale, nous affirmons que dans les deux situations, les Britanniques tentent de se renseigner. Cependant, d’importantes différences de nature institutionnelle et culturelle singularisent les types d’information recherchés ainsi que les démarches de collecte de l’information. Les résultats de nos recherches convergent finalement en un point : la quête d’information passe par toute une gamme d’intermédiaires locaux. Dans le dernier chapitre, après avoir exploré les « ordres informationnels » mis en œuvre ou adaptés par les Britanniques dans les deux contextes coloniaux, l’étude s’intéresse à l’information coloniale telle qu’elle est reçue et mise en forme en métropole. À cette fin, les efforts des officiels et parlementaires pour se renseigner sur les conditions coloniales lors de l’ébauche de deux lois, l’Acte de Québec (1774) et le Regulating Act (1773) sont mis en lumière grâce à une lecture des débats parlementaires. Finalement, pour s’informer sur le Canada, les membres du gouvernement britannique misent beaucoup sur l’aide des administrateurs coloniaux ayant séjourné dans la colonie, alors que sur l’Inde ils s’appuient davantage sur une source documentaire, soit les livres de l’EIC, révélant ainsi un autre contraste entre les deux situations à l’étude. / This study compares methods of information gathering in two territories that became part of the British Empire after the Seven Years’ War. We bring these two extremely different regions into the same frame by asking: how did the British gather information about the populations of Canada and Bengal? Our study is part of several historiographical currents that offer a rereading of the history of Great Britain and its colonies, which is the subject of our first chapter. In the next chapter, we explore the post-conquest era in Canada. After the conquest of this territory (1759-1760), British authorities faced the task of administering the Canadian population. At first, they tried to implement a new governmental regime deemed suitable for the Canadian context. However, since the majority of the population they governed was of different religious denomination (Catholics) and of French origin, they had to modify the regime ten years later. In the third chapter, we look at the British presence in Bengal after the battle of Plassey in 1757. The British, through the East India Company, acquired a certain influence over local authorities, which allowed them to govern indirectly via the Mogul Empire’s governors, the nabobs. Nevertheless, cultural differences were much more significant than with the Canadian population of European origin: the Mogul Empire was a Muslim polity, with a Persian administration, and much of the population was Hindu. From our reading of the official correspondence, between the colonial administrators and the metropolitan government in the first case, and between the agents of the company and its directors in the second, we affirm that in both situations the British tried to gather more information. However, important institutional and cultural differences distinguish the types of information sought as well as the approaches to collecting information. The results of our research ultimately converge on one point: the search for information passed through a whole range of local intermediaries. In the last chapter, after having explored the “information order” implemented or adapted by the British in each colonial context, the study considers how colonial information was received and shaped by the metropolitan authorities. To this end, the efforts of officials and parliamentarians to learn about colonial conditions during the drafting of two laws, the Quebec Act (1774) and the Regulating Act (1773) are highlighted through a reading of the Parliamentary debates. Here also, many differences are visible. To become informed about Canada, British authorities relied heavily on the help of the colonial administrators who stayed in Canada after the regime change. However, in the Indian case, they depended mostly on documentary sources, namely the books of the EIC.

The state often enacts violence against marginalized groups by rendering them monstrous. The early eighteenth century saw early and stellar instances of this phenomenon in the way the British Empire pursued and executed pirates. These "golden age" pirates represented an extraordinary cross-section of marginalization politically, economically, socially, and otherwise, all of which threatened the political and social mores of Imperial Britain. In order to implement a policy and practice of pirate annihilation, British authorities constructed pirates as monstrous by racializing, dehumanizing, and emphasizing the supernatural quality of pirates. This study analyzes three eighteenth-century piracy trial transcripts--those of William Kidd, Stede Bonnet, and William Fly--in order to assess how lawyers and judges constructed pirates as monstrous so as to justify the massive and total violence inflicted on them as a class resulting in their complete destruction. In so doing, this study tracks rhetorical tactics and strategies still used by empires and the state today against marginalized peoples to an original historical source.

Cotutelle / Entre 1774 et 1815, la noblesse canadienne tente de stabiliser sa position sociale au sein d’une société canadienne désormais sous tutelle britannique. Pour cela, les nobles opèrent une redéfinition culturelle et sociale de leur idée de noblesse afin de s’adapter au nouveau régime. Grâce aux relations qui s’établissent entre les nobles restés dans l’Empire britannique, ceux l’ayant quitté et les nouvelles élites qui s’établissent dans la colonie au tournant du XIXe siècle, il est possible de mieux appréhender la façon dont la noblesse réinvestit son capital symbolique. L’étude des patrimoines matériels, sociaux et intellectuels ainsi que leurs modes de transmission permettent d’examiner les modalités d’adaptation de la communauté noble. Enfin, cette noblesse à cheval entre deux empires, dont les réseaux s’étendent sur de nombreux territoires, permet de mieux percevoir les évolutions qui s’opèrent à cette époque dans les sociétés coloniales et en particulier en Amérique du Nord et au Canada. En étudiant cinq familles emblématiques de la noblesse canadienne, cette thèse tente de répondre à la problématique et aux sous-questions suivantes : comment la noblesse francophone se renouvelle-t-elle et évolue-t-elle en tant que groupe social distinct au sein des élites impériales entre 1774 et 1815 ? Qui est noble ? Être un noble canadien après la Cession dans les empires français et britanniques, qu’est-ce que ça signifie ? Quelles sont les stratégies d’adaptation de la génération de la noblesse canadienne qui vit sa vie publique et adulte entre 1774 et 1815 ? Y a-t-il une « canadianisation » de la noblesse et, si oui, comment se caractérise-t-elle ? Les nobles canadiens s’adaptent-ils au nouveau régime ? Les élites influencent de façon importante la construction de la société dans laquelle elles évoluent : au XIXe siècle la société canadienne-française telle qu’on la connaît jusqu’au milieu du XXe siècle commence à se développer ; elle a en parti été mise en place par et pour les nobles canadiens. Ma recherche a donc pour but de trouver les mécanismes de reproduction des élites coloniales. C’est-à-dire de comprendre comment, en particulier, les nobles continuent à exister sous le Régime britannique. Mon hypothèse est que les nobles réussissent à trouver une forme d’équilibre entre le besoin de renouvellement qui découle du changement de régime et leur fidélité à des traditions présentées comme séculaires. Ce sont des « caméléons sociaux » qui existent à travers trois paradoxes : un imaginaire transnational dans une réalité juridique nationale ; un désir d’éternité couplé à un besoin d’évolution constant ; une culture de la distinction affirmée à l’intérieur de frontières poreuses. La thèse cherche encore à mieux comprendre comment se vit une identité transatlantique et coloniale, se détachant progressivement, mais jamais totalement des pairs de la « vieille Europe » et à travers la formation d’une identité américaine au sein des empires. Elle démontre également l’ambiguïté qui existe entre l’identité noble coloniale, qui pousse au détachement par rapport à la métropole, et l’identité élitaire, qui, au contraire, ramène les nobles canadiens vers l’Europe et les caractéristiques de son élite. / Between 1774 and 1815, Canadian nobility attempted to stabilize their social position within a Canadian society now under British reign. In that order, nobles operated a cultural and social redefinition of their idea of nobility to adapt to the new regime. Thanks to the relationships that nobles who remained in the British Empire developed with those who left it, and the new elites who settled in the colony, it is possible to better understand how Canadian nobility reinvested its symbolic capital. The study of material, social and intellectual heritages as well as transmission mode make possible to examine the modalities of adaptation of the noble community. Finally, this nobility straddling two empires, whose networks spanned many territories, allows us to better perceive the changes that took place at that time in colonial societies and, more specifically, in North America and Canada. By studying five emblematic families of the Canadian nobility, this thesis attempts to answer the following problematic and sub-questions: how the French-speaking nobility is renewing itself and evolving as a distinct social group within the imperial elites between 1774 and 1815? Who is noble? What does it mean to be a Canadian nobleman after the Conquest in both French and British Empires? What are the coping strategies of the generation of Canadian nobility who lived their public and adult life between 1774 and 1815? Is there a “Canadianization” of the nobility and, if so, how is it characterized? Are nanadian nobles adjusting to the new regime? The elites significantly influence the construction of the society in which they operate: in the 19th century French Canadian society as we know it until the middle of the 20th century began to develop; it was in part set up by, and for, Canadian nobility. My research therefore aims to find its reproduction mechanisms. That is, to understand how, in particular, nobles continued to exist under British rule. My hypothesis is that the nobility manages to find some kind of balance between the need for renewal that arises from regime change and its loyalty to traditions presented as secular. Noblemen and women are “social chameleons” that exist through three paradoxes: a transnational imaginary in a national legal reality; a desire for eternity coupled with a constant need for evolution; a culture of distinction asserted within porous borders. This thesis seeks to better understand how a transatlantic and colonial identity is experienced, separating itself gradually, but never completely from the peers of "old Europe" and through the formation of a North American identity within the empires. It also demonstrates the ambiguity that exists between the noble colonial identity, which encourages detachment from the metropolis, and the elite identity, which, on the contrary, brings the Canadian nobles back to Europe and the characteristics of its elite.

No description available.

This thesis will explore how writers of nineteenth-century Irish horror fiction, namely short stories and novels, used their works to express the social, cultural, and political events of the period. My thesis will employ a New Historicist approach to discuss the effects of colonialism on the writings, as well as archetypal criticism to analyse the mythic origins of the relevant metaphors. The structuralism of Tzvetan Todorov will be used to discuss the notion of the works' appeal as supernatural or possibly realistic works. The theory of Mikhail Bakhtin is used to discuss the writers' linguistic choices because such theory focuses on how language can lead to conflicts amongst social groups. The introduction is followed by Chapter One, "Ireland as England's Fantasy." This chapter discusses Ireland's literary stereotype as a fantasyland. The chapter also gives an overview of Ireland's history of occupation and then contrasts the bucolic, magical Ireland of fiction and the bleak social conditions of much of nineteenth-century Ireland. Chapter Two, "Mythic Origins", analyses the use of myth in nineteenth-century horror stories. The chapter discusses the merging of Christianity and Celtic myth; I then discuss the early Irish belief in evil spirits in myths that eventually inspired horror literature. Chapter Three, "Church versus Big House, Unionist versus Nationalist," analyses how the conflicts of Church/Irish Catholicism vs. Big House/Anglo-Irish landlordism, proBritish Unionist vs. pro-Irish Nationalist are manifested in the tales. In this chapter, I argue that many Anglo-Irish writers present stern anti-Catholic attitudes, while both Anglo-Irish and Catholic writers use the genre as political propaganda. Yet the authors tend to display Home Rule or anti-Home Rule attitudes rather than religious loyalties in their stories. The final chapter of the thesis, "A Heteroglossia of British and Irish Linguistic and Literary Forms," deals with the use of language and national literary styles in Irish literature of this period. I discuss Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia and its applications to the Irish novel; such a discussion because nineteenth-century Ireland was linguistically Balkanised, with Irish Gaelic, Hibemo-English, and British English all in use. This chapter is followed by a conclusion. / English / M. Lit. et Phil. (English)

During the twentieth century, Cable & Wireless was the world’s biggest and most important telegraphy company, employing large numbers of people in stations across the world. Its network of submarine cables and wireless routes circumnavigated the globe, connecting Britain with the Empire. This thesis examines the ways in which the British Empire and modernity shaped Cable & Wireless’ corporate identity in order to understand the historical geography of the relationships between Empire, state, and modernity. Additionally, it investigates the role of design in the Company’s engagement with the discourses of modernity and imperialism. Historical Geography has not paid sufficient attention to the role of companies, in particular technology companies, as institutions of imperialism and instruments of modernity. The study of businesses within Historical Geography is in its infancy, and this thesis will provide a major contribution to this developing field. This thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach that sits at the intersection of three main disciplines: Historical Geography, Design History and Business History. This thesis examines how Cable & Wireless’ identity was produced, transmitted and consumed. This thesis is based on detailed research in Cable &Wireless’ corporate archive at Porthcurno, examining a wide range of visual and textual sources. This pays particular attention to how the Company designed its corporate identity through maps, posters, ephemera, corporate magazines and exhibitions. Drawing upon the conceptualizations of the Empire as a network, it argues that Cable & Wireless’ identity was networked like its submarine cables with decision-making power, money and identity traversing this network. This thesis seeks to place both the company and the concept of corporate identity within a broader historical and artistic context, tracing the development of both the company’s institutional narrative and the corporate uses of visual technologies. No study has been conducted into the corporate identity and visual culture of Cable & Wireless. This thesis not only provides a new dimension to knowledge and understanding of the historical operations of Cable & Wireless, but also makes a substantive contribution to the wider fields of Historical Geography, Business History, Design History and the study of visual culture.

This thesis is about the organisation, character and change of labour relations in expanding capitalist wool farming in the Cape between 1860 and 1950. It is an attempt to analyse labour in wool farming within a transnational framework, based on an expansion of capital from core to periphery of the capitalist world-economy. Wool farming in peripheries like the Cape was part of capitalist production through the link to primarily the British textile industry. This relationship enabled wool farmers to invest in their farms in sheep, fences and windmills. They thereby became agents of capital expansion in the world-economy, which was a prerequisite for a capitalist expansion. Although wool production in the Cape was initially an imperial division of labour, that relation changed during the twentieth century as Britain’s leading role as textile producer was challenged by other capitalist core countries. Capitalism as a transnational production system, based on commodity chains from periphery to core, became the most crucial structure for wool farmers in the Cape, who could increase their exports. The thesis also shows that the pre-capitalist generational division of labour among black peasants, through which farmers acquired labour, especially shepherds, was both discarded and intensified. Shepherding was intensified along with fencing during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century due to threat from jackals and lack of sufficient water supplies. Those farmers who invested in technology in the form of jackal-proof fences and windmills managed to change production from herding to rotational grazing in camps, which meant that shepherds were replaced by camp walkers, who controlled fences instead of sheep. Those farmers who did not invest were forced to exploit the pre-capitalist relations more intensively and hire shepherds in order to be able to produce and sell wool to textile manufacturers in capitalist core areas. As the young adult males disappeared from farms to the mines, the role of children and youths as shepherds became increasingly important. By the 1940s almost all the shepherds were children or youths, but they were about to be made redundant, as the number of shepherds decreased during the 1930s and 1940s.

Sir George Grey (1812-1898) served as Governor of South Australia, of New Zealand twice, and of the Cape Colony. This thesis explains his policy for the first time for a history of the political ideas of colonization. Grey introduced the policy of racial amalgamation to settler colonies after the 1837 Report of the Select Committee into Aboriginal Affairs, that had advised the policy of segregation as had been North American policy under Sir William Johnson. This thesis demonstrates that Grey was a Liberal Anglican who had adopted neo-Harringtonian thought, and who introduced Jeffersonian native policy into British native policy. He practised the strategic theory of Antoine-Henri Jomini, applying it to native policy. Grey captured the monarchical constitution of the empire for what had been a settler policy of dissent to the segregation of indigenes that dated back to Tudor Ireland and early Viginia. Grey's distinctive intellectual practices were ethnograpical research and speculation, for which he enjoyed an international reputation, and the constitutional design of settler colonies, an activity he came to totally identify with. The thesis concentrates on his first New Zealand governorship (1845-53) and upon the resumption of his second New Zealand governorship (1861-68) because it was in that colony he first fully practised his native policy and participated in constitutional design, and into which he brought about a crisis of indigenous amalgamation on the eve of the Waikato War in 1863, having introduced full responsible government.

L’objet de cette étude est d’identifier une constitution « britannique » distincte de la constitution anglaise. Si le langage commun tend trop souvent à confondre une partie pour le tout, l’Angleterre pour le Royaume-Uni, cet écueil n’épargne pas les juristes. La notion de constitution britannique vise précisément à rendre compte de la manière dont le droit constitutionnel a pu appréhender et saisir la tension fondamentale qui l’anime entre deux exigences en apparence contraires, l’unité et la diversité. Depuis les lois de dévolution adoptées à la fin du XXe siècle, l’Ecosse, le Pays de Galles et l’Irlande du Nord disposent d’institutions de gouvernement autonomes, soumises théoriquement à la souveraineté du Parlement de Westminster. Le corps de lois, règles et principes qui régissent cet arrangement institutionnel permettent d’identifier un cadre constitutionnel spécifiquement britannique. Mais celui-ci n’est pas pour autant né à la fin du XXe siècle. Il nous semble en effet que cette constitution britannique trouve ses sources et son origine dans les relations qui ont pu s’établir entre le Royaume-Uni et certaines de ses colonies dotées d’un statut particulier et d’un gouvernement autonome, les Dominions. C’est dans ce cadre historique et intellectuel qu’a pu apparaître une manière spécifiquement britannique d’organiser cette tension entre l’unité et la diversité. Celle-ci puise d’ailleurs dans les ressources propres du constitutionnalisme britannique, qui résulte d’un entrelacement ingénieux de règles et principes juridiques et de pratiques institutionnalisées, les conventions de la constitution. Cette rencontre entre le droit et les conventions dessine un droit constitutionnel original et peut-être fédéral. / This study aims at identifying a « British » constitution distinct from the English constitution. If popular language tends to confuse one part with the whole, England with the United Kingdom, so do jurists. The concept of a British constitution aims at capturing the way in which constitutional law may have grasped the fundamental tension between two seemingly antagonist ideas, unity and diversity. Since the devolution Acts have been enacted in the end of the XXth century, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland enjoy responsible government, under the asserted sovereignty of the Parliament of Westminster. The body of statutes, rules and principles that govern this institutional arrangement thus form a specifically British constitutional framework. But this framework was not necessarily born in the end of the XXth century. We intend to show that this British constitution can be traced back to the constitutional relations established between the United Kingdom and some of her colonies, the Dominions. It is within this historical and intellectual framework that may have appeared a specifically British way of dealing with this tension between unity and diversity. It seems to have resorted to the resources of British constitutionalism, which is produced by the ingenious imbrication of legal rules and principles and of institutionalized practices, i.e. the conventions of the Constitution. This confluence of law and conventions sketches a constitutional law that is both original and possibly federal.