Thesis advisor: Dana Sajdi / The British physicians Dr. Alexander Russell M.D., FRS (c.1715 - 1768) and Dr. Patrick Russell M.D., FRS (1726/7 - 1805), both British Levant Company servants, wrote and published two editions in 1756 and 1794, respectively. These brothers resided in Aleppo, Syria, when it was a provincial capital of the Ottoman Empire and recorded their observations and empirical observations in a literary work that would later become the two editions of The Natural History of Aleppo. These editions are vital references for modern scholars concerned with Ottoman Syria, Levantine commercial activity and European presence, and the city of Aleppo. However, these very scholars ignore the significant fact that these two editions were written by two different individuals at two different points in history. Thus, this MA thesis aims to investigate the two editions and illustrate how the variations in these publications were the result of both coexisting and correlated processes that culminated in an eighteenth-century phenomenon of the transformation of British global presence from a commercial power to a modern empire. Various socio-economic, political, and cultural changes related to the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, and the growth of Western, especially British, global hegemony, resulted in a particular attitude towards what became constructed as the "Orient". This thesis examines the ways in which the interrelated processes of the rise of modern scientific disciplines, the quest for order, the emergence of the culture of collecting, and the new emphasis on the value of "useful knowledge" rendered the "Orient" a place to be ordered and studied, hence, to be controlled. The eighteenth century witnessed several decisive events that facilitated this phenomenon; with Britain's victory in the Seven Years' War (1756 - 1763), particularly at the Battle of Plassey (1757), Britain deviated from its previous position as a commercial power and emerged victorious as an imperial empire. The project attempts to demonstrate how the Russell Brothers' book on Aleppo represents a movement from the fascination with natural history, that is, the topography and botany of Aleppo (Alexander Russell's edition), to an attempt at a comprehensive study of a people, language, and culture (Patrick Russell's edition). The change in focus and tenor found in Patrick's edition represents a shift from natural history to ethnographic, a shift that is essentially Orientalist. Though the book is about the relatively marginal city of Aleppo, the shift between the two editions reflects not only the change of the character of British global dominance, which was, after the 1857 Indian Mutiny, officially colonial, but also the very national identity of Britain. This thesis, then, is a study of how Aleppo was conceived and reconceived through the prism of the change of British relationship to India from a commercial entanglement to imperial domination. The variations between the two editions, then, were a result of changing circumstances and consequent shifting attitudes. I not only attempt to illustrate Britain's transformation from a mercantile and commercial power to a colonial and imperial empire, but also how the variations of the Russell brothers' two editions, from a collection of observations to a scientific contribution to a body of specialized knowledge, were the direct results of the two authors' transformations from the botanist to the orientalist. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Thesis advisor: James Cronin / This dissertation argues that British officials attempted to use the legacies of British administrative and imperial structures embedded in twentieth century international institutions to define a new world role for Britain after the Second World War. This role, they determined, would be based in international, administrative, and technical experience and expertise. The concept of an international civil service, loyal to the aims of the international organization they served, was first proposed by British diplomats at the League of Nations and based in the British concept of a politically neutral civil service. After the Second World War, British officials hoped that the legacies of their earlier influence - including administrative structures, ideologies, and a large cadre of officials trained through the British civil service in international administrative and technical affairs - would allow them to remain influential in the administration of the new international organizations despite Britain’s diminished postwar status. They were initially successful in this endeavor, with high rates of representation across the ranks of the United Nations, particularly in social and economic fields. Over time, facing political opposition in the General Assembly over their remaining colonial holdings, British officials hoped that their support for the United Nations – particularly as embodied in their representation in the international civil service – might redeem their international image. However, British interests saw increased competition with those of the United States, Soviet Union, and the global South as the United Nations grew over the course of the 1950s and 1960s. Moreover, principles of equitable geographic representation in the international civil service meant that as membership in the United Nations grew, British representation declined. By the early 1970s, British officials abandoned their earlier hopes of maintaining an outsized role at the United Nations. Examined in this way, the international civil service served as a microcosm for Britain’s own standing in the world as well as one way that British officials actively attempted to manipulate that standing. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

One of the central challenges in modern British historiography is the reconciliation of narratives about the nature and meaning of the British Empire with older themes of class and hierarchy. The historiographical shift to empire and away from class since the 1980s and 1990s coincided with a fundamental shift in Britain's social structure and composition, which itself demands historical explanation. The history of the British honours system - an institution that has blended ideas of class hierarchy with meritocracy and service - can reveal much about social change in twentieth century Britain and its empire. Using a mixture of official and unofficial sources and organized chronologically, my dissertation charts the history of the honours system from the creation of the Order of the British Empire in 1917 to a major set of reforms at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. Honours were an active tool of policy and social distinction. Government decisions about who should receive honours and what honours they should receive reveal the importance of different kinds of service and the social class of the individual to be honored. Applied across the whole empire, the system had a double edge: it produced loyalty and kept different social groups in their place. The ever-presence of the institution means that it gives us a consistent benchmark across the twentieth century for what kinds of service was seen as most in need of recognition at different times by the state. The creation of the Order of the British Empire in 1917 opened up the honours system to non-elites, women and a much larger proportion of imperial subjects for the first time, and vastly expanded the number of people who received honours. I argue that change in the honours system during the twentieth century was not a simple matter of linear `democratization', as it is usually portrayed in the British media and by the modern British monarchy and government. Instead, it reflected different priorities at different times. In the empire, the state used honours to buy loyalty from subjects in exchange for social and cultural distinction; however, its symbolism was also appropriated positively and negatively by different groups to make political claims on or against the imperial state. Changes in who got what honours almost always had a specific purpose, and were often rapid. Initially conceived as a way of rewarding voluntary war work, in peacetime the Order of the British Empire was reworked to become an honour where the majority of awards went to paid central state servants. In the aftermath of the Second World War, in which government experts were well-rewarded with honours, politicians and bureaucrats made an effort to distribute honours more widely around the community. Teachers, health workers and other providers of local services benefitted from this change, as the honours system within Britain expanded almost in direct correlation to its shrinking global influence as the British Empire fragmented. At the end of the century, John Major's Conservative government made a deliberate decision to focus once again on voluntary service to the state. This uncontroversial shift in focus helped to bring together two of the functions of the modern British monarchy: its role since the nineteenth century as the official leader of the voluntary sector, and its function as the authenticator of public recognition through the honours system. This theoretically `classless' reform to the honours system reinforced existing divisions in British society by distinguishing between lower-ranked voluntary work and high-ranked professional, philanthropic and celebrity service. There was no clear-cut distinction between merit and hierarchy in the honours system. As a result, in periods of major social change in twentieth-century Britain, honours had an active role in reshaping social hierarchies in Britain and in parts of the empire/former empire. Honours obfuscated the meaning of distinction in modern Britain through the system's connection to the monarchy and its broad use as a political, imperial and social tool. A complicated and entangled combination of personality, status, merit, peer review and luck determined who received what honours. As a result, Britain's premier system for publicly recognizing service and distinguishing status could never fully differentiate between these two functions. In part this was because those who ran it did not desire to separate hierarchy from distinguished service, and because such separation was effectively impossible within existing frameworks. Citizens, subjects, interest groups and post-colonial governments used honours to challenge political and social structures, but it was difficult to break out of the fundamental framework in which honours gave distinction and status in exchange for a performance of loyalty to the Crown. The only escape was the complete rejection of the system, which was a rare choice except in certain parts of the former empire.

Between 1660 and 1720 the British American empire expanded to incorporate new settlements, new trade routes, and it occupied a growing place in the British export economy. This expansion created challenges in transoceanic navigation and understanding of local geography, particularly as ambitions to trade in new markets in Spanish America gained traction. Mariners, merchants, scientists and policymakers required useful knowledge to enable their voyages and imperial activities. To meet this growing demand, print artisans in London produced an increasing amount of printed geographical information in the form of maps, charts and geographical texts. Draftsmen, engravers and printers applied their skill and labour to produce 179 maps and charts of the British Americas, and these artisans in turn benefitted from the income supplied by consumers. The increasing valorisation of empiricism and eyewitness knowledge resulting from the 'scientific revolution' also informed the inclusion of useful and practical information on maps and charts, and publishers asserted their credentials in claims to accuracy and novelty. Crown-sponsored voyages, buccaneers and chartered companies supplied eyewitness information from the Spanish Pacific and Caribbean, although the quality of information varied depending on the voyage itineraries and priorities. The growth of this market for maps and charts of the Americas highlights how the economic and territorial exploitation inherent to British empire was partly enabled by artisans living thousands of miles from colonial spaces. It further demonstrates the pivotal role of empire in Britain's long-term economic growth, and highlights that useful knowledge was central not peripheral to early modern socio-economic development.

Magister Artium - MA / For an Island measuring merely 128 square kilometers, and in spite of its remote location in the mid-­South Atlantic, St. Helena “punches way above its weight in history”, earning and occupying a privileged place in British scholarship of its imperial thalassocratic age. However, prior to this period in which the Island was indispensible to British Empire formation, it had passed through the hands of at least two former European naval nations before it was eventually laid claim to and effectively colonised by the British. The Portuguese, who were the first to stumble upon the uninhabited Island in 1502 -­ naming it St. Helena in honour of Roman Emperor Constantine the Great’s mother -­ managed to keep its existence a closely guarded secret for over eight years. For nearly a century, the Island was reserved for exclusive use by the Portuguese as a port for recuperation, replenishing and re-­provisioning, which they usually visited on their homebound journey from trading (and conquering) in the East Indies. This Portuguese monopoly of use of the Island, however, ended during the last decade of the sixteenth century when other maritime nations, particularly Dutch and later English traders, became aware of and started frequenting the Island. The initial overlap period, constituting the first three decades of the seventeenth century when mostly the Dutch and Portuguese shared use of the Island, was cause for occasional hostile encounters between the two nations. Apparently, continued Dutch and English harassment of Portuguese (and Spanish) ships made visiting the Island untenable for the Portuguese who opted to avoid St. Helena and instead make use of a number of their other port ‘possessions’ along the West African coastline to replenish and repair their ships.

From Britain¡¦s point of view, the problems of security and defense in India subcontinent were far greater than those of the maintenance of law and order and imperial rule in the subcontinent itself. For Indian subcontinent, it was the pivot of British power in all of Asia. Furthermore, British possessed the maritime supremacy, the main threat came from the land, especially form the Northwest frontier. British strategy for the defense of India¡¦s land frontiers was based on the following three points: (1) to maintain firm military strength in the most vulnerable parts of the frontier, i.e., the Northwest frontier and Baluchistan, and to keep the tribes of this area pacified or under their control by ¡§divide and rule¡¨ tactics, for the purpose of consolidating integrity of the Northwest frontier and the security of India subcontinent; (2) to encourage the establishment of a string of buffer states all along the perimeter of the subcontinent and to maintain influence or friendly relations with them; and (3) to prevent any contiguous territory and states form coming under the control of a strong power, notably Russia, if necessary by forceful means. Although there are many historical and geographic constraints in South Asia defense considerations, the present defense strategy of India has to be designed to meet the new circumstances. Throughout the years of independence the main security concern of India has been defense over both land and sea problems. On land, India has to handle the relationship with Pakistan and protect the Northeast frontier against the threat from China. In the past, the Northwest frontier was an unified area, after the retreat of British power in 1947, the geographical and strategic unity of the India subcontinent was broken. Moreover, India has nearly a coastline of 7,000 km long, but India doesn¡¦t have the maritime supremacy, so that it should be compelled to deal with potential threat from India ocean.

This thesis examines and contextualises historically significant aspects of the ways in which David Roberts’ lucrative lithographic publication Egypt and Nubia (1846-49) represented the “Orient”. The analysis demonstrates that Roberts used tropes, particularly ruins and dispossessed figures, largely derived from a revised version of British picturesque landscape art, in order to depict Egypt as a developmentally poor state. By establishing how this imagery was interpreted in the context of the early Victorian British Empire, the thesis offers an elucidation of the connection between British imperial attitudes and the picturesque in Roberts’ work. The contemporary perception of Egypt and Nubia as a definitive representation of the state is argued to relate, not only to the utility of the picturesque as an “accurate” descriptive mode, despite its highly mediated nature, but also to the ways in which Britain responded to shifting political relationships with Egypt and the Ottoman Empire between 1830 and 1869. This political element of the research also suggests a more problematised reading of Robert’s work in relation to constructs of British imperialism and Edward Said’s theory of ‘Orientalism’, than has been provided by previous art historical accounts. A significant and innovative feature of the research is its focus on extensive analysis of textual descriptions of Egypt in early Victorian Britain and contemporary imperial historiography in relation to characteristics displayed in Roberts’ art. This offers a basis for a more specific, contextual understanding of Roberts’ work, as well as historically repositioning nineteenth-century British picturesque art practice and the visual culture of the early Victorian British Empire.

“Red coats and wild birds: military culture and ornithology across the nineteenth-century British Empire” investigates the intersections between British military culture and the practices and ideas of ornithology, with a particular focus on the British Mediterranean. Considering that British officers often occupied several imperial sites over the course of their military careers, to what extent did their movements shape their ornithological knowledge and identities at “home” and abroad? How did British military naturalists perceive different local cultures (with different attitudes to hunting, birds, field science, etc.) and different local natures (different sets of birds and environments)? How can trans-imperial careers be written using not only textual sources (for example, biographies and personal correspondence) but also traces of material culture? In answering these questions, I centre my work on the Mediterranean region as a “colonial sea” in the production of hybrid identities and cultural practices, and the mingling of people, ideas, commodities, and migratory birds. I focus on the life geographies of four military officers: Thomas Wright Blakiston, Andrew Leith Adams, L. Howard Lloyd Irby, and Philip Savile Grey Reid. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Mediterranean region emerged as a crucial site for the security of the British “empire route” to India and South Asia, especially with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Military stations served as trans-imperial sites, connecting Britain to India through the flow of military manpower, commodities, information, and bodily experiences across the empire. By using a “critical historical geopolitics of empire” to examine the material remnants of the “avian imperial archive,” I demonstrate how the practices and performances of British military field ornithology helped to: materialize the British Mediterranean as a moral “semi-tropical” place for the physical and cultural acclimatization of British officers en route to and from India; reinforce imperial presence in the region; and make “visible in new ways” the connectivity of North Africa to Europe through the geographical distribution of birds. I also highlight the ways in which the production of ornithological knowledge by army officers was entwined with forms of temperate martial masculinity. / Thesis (Ph.D, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-02 09:17:17.931

Despite the ubiquity of the First World War as a key moment in the development of New Zealand’s national identity in scholarship and public memory, key aspects remain under explored. This thesis addresses a particularly noticeable gap – the operation and contents of New Zealand’s official First World War propaganda campaign. Through this focus, this thesis particularly explores how such propaganda reflected New Zealand’s place within, and engagement with, the concept of the ‘British world’. Propaganda is an ideal window into the workings of the British world during the war, illustrating both the operation of the practical connections, and the ideological reflections of national, imperial, and ‘British’ identities in the British world. Therefore, New Zealand and Britain’s First World War propaganda demonstrates the nature of the British world, particularly through exploration of the ways that New Zealand’s official campaign connected to and interacted with Britain’s official wartime propaganda campaign. Specifically, the thesis argues that a gap existed between the rhetorical ‘British world’, as constructed in the content of New Zealand’s wartime propaganda, and the practical realities of how the British world operated and interacted during the war. While New Zealand was comfortable rhetorically identifying itself as ‘British’ and part of the British world, practical limitations of communication and interaction with Britain often inhibited this theoretical community. The concept of ‘Dominion perspective’ is crucial to this interpretation. New Zealand’s Dominion status was central to the operation of propaganda in and between New Zealand and Britain during the war, and to New Zealand’s identification of itself within its propaganda. This interpretation reflects a wider view of New Zealand’s experience of the British world. Though concepts of Dominion status and the British world were centrally important to New Zealand during the war, they were not unproblematic. These concepts were frequently reshaped both theoretically and practically. The First World War was crucial to this development, as the closer interaction and cooperation within the British world it demanded, laid bare both the practical shortcomings of the British world, and the contested nature of concepts of Dominion status and the British world itself. The operation of official wartime propaganda in the British world reflects this wider process, and its significance to New Zealand.

The history of colonialism is generally associated with the authoritarian regimes of the sixteenth century that expanded their reign for the purpose of material aggrandizement. Problems arise, however, when colonial regimes espouse explicit concern for the welfare of the subject population. Through a reading of British colonial discourse on India, as represented by the Economist newspaper, John Stuart Mill, George Campbell, and John William Kaye, I argue that market capitalism was seen as the means by which ‘backward’ Indian subjects would be ‘improved.’ But this ‘civilizing mission’ exposed Indian society to unprecedented violence as the British sought to enforce its conformity to a system of proprietorship and commercial production. To explain the paradox inherent to liberal colonialism I will employ the concept of biopolitics as developed by Michel Foucault. Biopolitics explains how the prioritization of ‘life’ leads, not to peaceful existence, but to efforts to eliminate elements of human activity deemed inimical to the reproduction of the species. In colonial India this took the form of adjudicating subjects’ ability to adapt to, and create, the circumstances for industry to flourish, showing that at its core, British rule in India represented an assault on the indeterminacy of life itself.