The objective of this thesis is to test and analyze the proposition of whether and to what extent natural resource interests have been fundamental in either causing, fueling or prolonging civil wars in Africa. The study focuses on examples from the Liberian (1989-96 and 1999-2003) and Sierra Leonean civil (1991-2002) to better understand the workings of armed rebellion and the role of natural resources. These two conflict situations were chosen because of their international/transnational contexts and because of the large number of actors involved in either their management or resolution- (UN, ECOWAS, NGOs, and other International Non-Governmental Organizations). More importantly both nations are resource rich. This study examines closely the relationship between the management of natural resources (with focus on lootable natural resources) and armed conflicts and makes policy recommendations aimed at reducing the risk of resource-related violent conflicts.

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In examining the relationships between space, text and history in the early modern period, this thesis reads sixteenth and seventeenth century texts in the context of the new geographies and the shifts in spatial awareness that accompany the arrival of the early modern period. In doing so, it also employs a 'spatialised' mode of criticism that, rather than privilege any one kind of text, seeks to view all texts alongside one another, within what Foucault calls the 'space of a dispersion'. This situates the thesis within a developing interest, in renaissance studies, both in early modern spatialities, as exemplified by the work of Richard Helgerson, John Gillies and others, and in postmodern approaches to the renaissance. It is the starting point of this thesis that space is produced, rather than a vacuum waiting to be filled by the actions and actors of history. It is also a contention of this thesis that this production of space takes place on a variety of fronts. It is neither limited to the visual or plastic arts, nor the result, solely, of changing economic and political situations. The texts covered include, therefore, plays as well as political pamphlets, poetry as well as maps, scientific treatises as well as portraits. It is organised around three successive 'moments' in sixteenth and seventeenth century England - Elizabethan imperialism reign following the defeat of the Armada, the union project of James VI and I, and the immediate aftermath of the English civil wars. Rather than being seen in a chronological narrative of cause and effect, these moments 'haunt' each other, living on beyond themselves, structuring the representation of space in new contexts. Understood as anachronism, this kind of effect is one result of using 'space' alongside 'history' as the horizon against which textual analysis is performed.

Large scale destruction and surfeit chaos that accompany civil wars have provided a platform to several insurgencies operating in the setting to compete in a struggle for increased power and territorial occupation against their depraved regimes and each other. It is during this power struggle that several insurgencies make a jump from a purely nationalistic agenda of the civil war to a larger religious goal by complying with jihadist organisations thriving in the region. Although the topic of civil war and religious radicalisation has been on the international agenda as well as the academic community for many years now, proselytizing and hijacking of national agenda of insurgencies by religious extremists is also of growing concern. Thus, this research will seek to find if jihadisation of insurgencies is a direct consequence of civil wars by using the Afghanistan and the Syrian Civil wars as case studies. The approach adopted here is to dwell into the factors behind the adoption of jihadist ideologies by insurgencies in war zones. These factors would then be applied to both the case studies. The paper will incorporate insights from previous qualitative studies conducted on geo-referenced terror, the role of religion, and ideologies in civil wars in the aforementioned countries to arrive at the...

Världen har genom historien formats och stöpts om av krig och konflikter. Dagens globala värld är inget undantag med inbördeskrig som ett ständigt återkommande fenomen. Våldsyttringar inom stater har sedan andra världskriget varit den största källan till konflikter och bidrar med flest antal offer. Inbördeskrig har drabbat en tredjedel av världens länder under 1900- talet och en femtedel har upplevt minst 10 år av inbördeskrig från 1960. Konflikter runt om i världen påverkar den internationella politiken och hur alla människor lever, och god kunskap om konflikters struktur är därmed ytterst viktig.  De flesta studier på området har behandlat s.k. inter-state wars, d.v.s. krig mellan stater. Studier rörande s.k. intra-state wars, konflikter mellan regeringsmakten i en stat och icke-statliga grupperingar, är dock inte lika vanliga. Under den senare delen av 1900-talet har inbördeskrig varit den form av konflikt som orsakat störst skada och lidande. 1996 publicerade David T. Mason och Patrick J. Fett artikeln ”How Civil Wars End: A Rational Choice Approach”. I artikeln undersöker författarna uppfattningen att det är svårare att fredsförhandla i inbördeskrig än i mellanstatliga krig. Detta då offer och förövare efter krigets slut fortsatt måste leva sida vid sida. I krig mellan stater drar parterna sig tillbaka till respektive territorier vilket gör att en eventuell fredsprocess anses relativt enklare att uppnå. Frågan är vilka faktorer som leder till fredssamtal alternativt till en seger för en av parterna?

Both African writers and literary critics have long used the ideology of "Négritude" and the political commitment it generated as the theoretical basis for their works. However, since independence in Africa, this common practice started to lose momentum due to a shift in the social and political realities. Furthermore, in recent decades, new generations of African writers have moved away from the "Négritude" movement's beliefs. Nevertheless, there are still some nostalgic writers and critics who cling to this historic movement that shaped African literature and thought for half a century. The above two trends paved the way for my starting hypothesis: is it still possible to evaluate what Abiola Irele calls the "African imagination" in the narrative, and especially novels, without the traditional criteria of political commitment and ideology? To answer this fundamental question, I define my analytical method as a "politiscopie." This neologism is formed in the image of the word "radioscopie." "Politiscopie" combines the stem for politics, "politi-," with the suffix "-scopie," from the Latin scopium (instrument for viewing) and the Greek skopein (to look at). And I define "politiscopie" as the analytical examination of political discourse in literary text. This examination is stripped of the conscious or unconscious analytical tendency that I call "l'humeur idéologique des critiques," or "the ideological mood of critics. "This dissertation is divided into two parts and an introduction, in which I define political discourse based on L'archéologie du savoir by Michel Foucault. The first part--chapters one and two--is a "politiscopical" examination, an examination of political discourse in African novels since 1990. I discuss the explicit and implicit political discourse present in the considered novels. In the second part--chapters three and four, I attempt to tease out the triangular relationship between Africa, the writer, and the relevant political realities. I investigate the political representation of Africa by the new generations of African writers, and then I look at the impact of distance on those writers to see whether the location of the authors--abroad or on the African continent--affects the way they treat African political debates.

Ballads published during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum were a uniquely potent cultural medium. Ballad authors and publishers used the tools of format and genre, music, and available discourses to translate contentious topics into a form of entertainment. The addition of music to what would otherwise have been merely another form of cheap print allowed ballads to be incorporated into many parts of daily life, through oral networks as well as through print and literacy. Ballads and their music permeated all levels of society and therefore the ideas presented in ballads enjoyed a broad audience. Because any given ballad was subject to repeated performances, its meaning was recreated with each performance. Performances of ballads published in the 1640s and 1650s created a vision of an imaginary England of the past, and projected hope that this past would be restored in the future.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2008. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

This thesis consists of four chapters on economic performance and social conflicts in Chinese history. The first chapter examines the impact of a major tax reform on protests in the eighteenth century in China. The de jure effect of this reform was to increase the tax burden on the gentry and decrease the tax burden on commoners, yet the de facto effect is under debate. I combine multiple databases into an annual panel dataset from 1700 to 1750 and use detailed information on protest to identify income shocks and tax incidence. The regression results after controlling for provincial fixed effects and national shocks show that the tax reform increased local protests by 0.3 incidents per year, which equals to half a standard deviation before the reform started. Further examination suggests that the de facto effects of the reform hurt commoners rather than the gentry. First, it increased protests by commoners but had no effects on protests by the gentry. Second, provinces with more gentry landlords also had larger increases in the frequency of protests. These results support that the gentry managed to pass the increased tax burdens on to the commoners. This analysis provides quantitative evidence that links social standing and tax burdens in pre-modern society. The second chapter studies the effect of income shocks on different types of conflicts. I consider two types of conflicts: protests, such as grain crises, that requested actions by the government, and revolutionary activities that aimed to overthrow the central government. From 1902 to 1911, China experienced both types of conflicts. I use a detailed record of local conflicts to identify the causes and leaders of each conflict. Combining this information with exogenous price shocks from the international agricultural market, I find that negative income shocks coming from drops in the export price of tea and the increases in the import price of cotton tended to increase the overall frequency of conflicts in general and protests that requested actions from the government. However, the same negative income shocks sometimes reduced revolutionary activities, which was probably caused by the shortage of resources in organizing these activities. These finding suggest an ``income effect'' on conflicts, probably due to the resources needed to organize the activities. The third chapter examines the impact of civil wars on the local economy using newly documented information about civil wars across regions in early-twentieth century China. During this period, China was de facto divided into several regions. Each region was controlled by different warlords or political groups. Warlords fought with each other for a larger territory. I first quantitatively document the scale, timing, and location of these civil wars. Around sixty violent civil wars took place from 1911 to 1934 and 25% of the Chinese counties in my sample were involved in at least one battle. I then examine the impact of civil wars on local economic activities. I find that civil wars overall caused a small negative impact on international trade flows and a 12.1% drop in rural land values. When the results are separated into wars by political groups, the wars involving weak political groups led to 1.7% to 3.8% drop in international trade flows, while the ones by strong political groups had small positive impact on trade flows. Similarly, wars conducted by the powerful incumbent had no negative impact on land values, while the ones between the KMT and the CCP led to a 30% drop in land values. Combined with narrative evidence, the results suggest that incumbent or political groups might have protect trade or reduced harm to the local economy if they relied on tariff or land taxes to finance themselves. The fourth chapter examines the impact of World War I on the Chinese economy. The war largely increased the freight rates in international trade and decreased China's imports of manufactured products from the European countries. I combine data from multiple sources to quantify the development of China's industrial sector and changes in agricultural input prices during and after the war. The firm-level information from the textile industries shows that the textile firms expanded during the war, and the trend continued even after. Using John Buck's survey on land values and labor wages across China, I find that the growing industrial sector also raised agricultural input prices by increasing demand for raw cotton and rural laborers. However, the benefits were small and the impact was clustered around the ports.

Civil wars have become more prevalent in modern times and present unique challenges to conflict resolution. Third parties often intervene in civil wars attempting to insure that peace is imposed and will persist. However, the impact of third parties on intrastate conflicts remains incomplete. The civil conflict literature does not sufficiently distinguish how third parties promote peaceful outcomes during a peacekeeping operation and why a state remains stable after the peacekeepers leave. By examining data on third party interventions from 1946-2006 and individually examining the case of Sierra Leone, this research concludes that peacekeeping missions promoting transparency, credible information sharing, and strong signals of commitment present the best possibilities for peace during and after the mission. Analysis from empirical tests and case study support that peacekeeping missions are most effective when they allow for credible and reliable communication between domestic adversaries. Ultimately, third parties must promote a political solution between rebel and government factions in civil wars so that peaceful methods of dispute resolution are promoted in the absence of a third party preventing the recurrence of war.