The British Empire is often traced back to the late sixteenth century and Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation, but Tudor monarchs had been eyeing expansion beyond Britain long before Drake. John Cabot, commissioned by Henry VII in the late fifteenth century, became the first European to step foot in the Americas in five centuries. Half a century later, adventurers like Richard Chancellor and Sir Hugh Willoughby sought a possible Northeast Passage to Asia, interacting with the Sami and Russians along the way. These expeditions and others like them, funded by the English monarchy and merchants, aimed to expand the kingdom’s economic base and help England find its place in the world. Although the Northeast Passage and Northwest Passage were not successfully charted during the European Age of Exploration, these Tudor explorers contributed to geographic, social, and cultural knowledge and laid the foundation of the largest empire in world history.

This thesis examines the changing perceptions of Vietnam’s landscape and the Vietnamese in the eyes of American troops throughout the Vietnam War. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Vietnamese were depicted as a people misguided by the French and in need of political mobilization by the American media and government. Following heavy investment and a rigged election in 1956, South Vietnam was painted as a beacon of democracy in Southeast Asia and an example of what American aid is capable of. As an increasing American military presence was being established in South Vietnam in the early 1960s, American troops were reminded by pocket books and other forms of American propaganda that South Vietnam was a land of dignity and respect. At first, troops were shocked by the beauty of the landscape and recalled that Vietnam did not look like a war-torn country at all. Yet as the land became increasingly devastated due to defoliant and numerous bombings, the perceptions of the Vietnamese took a turn for the worst; eventually being subhuman and deceptive. Vietnam’s landscape became perceived as a land of death where youth was expendable. However, less than a decade after the United States had pulled out of Vietnam, veterans and those affected by the war begin to return in mass numbers constituting the largest population of Americans in Vietnam. This resulted in Vietnam’s landscape, which was seen as a land trap-laden wasteland, being seen a place of healing with a beautiful people that Americans helped save.

Leonardo Bruni published one of his most widely copied translations, Xenophon's pro-monarchical Hiero, shortly before he penned his more famous original works, his Dialogues and Panegyric to the City of Florence. Scholars have traditionally focused on the political ideas present in these original treatises; yet, despite the centrality of political ideas to the Hiero, its temporal proximity to these works, and its enormous popularity (the work exists in 200 fifteenth-century manuscripts), scholars have neglected to offer a full assessment of Bruni's translation in the context of these works. Bruni's translation of Xenophon's Hiero fit into a debate in early fifteenth-century Florence about Julius Caesar and the Florentine poet Dante. The two major thinkers in the debate, Bruni and Coluccio Salutati, agreed that a distinction had to be made between kings and tyrants based on legal claim and quality of rule. The Hiero reinforced this assumption. The two men disagreed, however, about which category applied to Julius Caesar and what this meant for the reputation of Dante.

Humanism and ritual combined to establish a new foundation for the Florentine Republic in the fifteenth century. Leonardo Bruni’s History of the Florentine People was at the center of this new foundation. In 1428 and again in 1439, Bruni formally presented portions of his History to the Florentine government in the midst of crucial events in Florentine foreign affairs. For example, Bruni’s book presentation in 1428 occurred in the midst of rituals celebrating peace between Florence and Milan. During the celebration, a procession behind the sacred icon of Our Lady of Santa Maria Impruneta paused at the government palace. At that moment, Leonardo Bruni formally announced the peace, gave an oration, and presented a volume of his History to the Florentine governors. Following the presentation, trumpets sounded and the procession began anew. In this ritual, Bruni’s History became a key ritual object. On the most basic level, Bruni’s book served as a tangible, physical reminder of the peace for future rulers of the Florentine Republic. Yet, Bruni’s History provided much more than a material memento of a monumental moment. The content of the work created a Florence that was founded free and, after several battles against tyrannical oppressors, had once again become free. By creating a new foundation and history of Florence, the Florentines could add new authority and legitimacy to its dealings with the world outside its walls. This article will examine the rituals surrounding the presentation of Bruni’s work combined with a close literary analysis of the History itself. Through this investigation, the article will examine how and why the Florentines sought to refound their city in an official Latin history by establishing its independence from outside powers, particularly the Roman and Holy Roman Emperors.

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U.S. public and private imperial interests confronted the problem of labor and labor power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as the U.S. empire expanded into Latin America and the Caribbean. The question of how to make an empire work spurred the creation of new labor regimes reliant on black West Indians who traveled to work in the Panama Canal Zone and on United Fruit Company (UFCO) banana plantations. Just as importantly, new labor regimes engendered new categories for troublesome laborers. One of these classifications, “tramp,” surfaced in the United States after the U.S. Civil War as a shorthand for vagrant, vagabond, and hobo. This thesis examines the so-called “tramp crisis” of the late nineteenth century to show how questions of labor invariably shaped problems of empire. As a category, the tramp moved outside of the United States where various U.S. foreign policymakers, writers, and business officials created the idea of the “tropical tramp” in U.S. imperial spaces. This label, tropical tramp, offers scholars a different starting point to analyze larger issues of whiteness, masculinity, sexuality, class, and the U.S. empire. By following discursive formations of the tramp and tropical tramp into Central and South America, this thesis argues that the figure of the tramp represented someone unbefitting the U.S. empire’s desired sociopolitical order.

This thesis is the first attempt to provide an assessment of Scottish-Jacobean foreign relations within a European context in the years before 1603. Moreover, it represents the only cohesive study of the events that formed the foundation of the diplomatic policies and practices of the first ruler of the Three Kingdoms. Whilst extensive research has been conducted on the British and English aspects of James VI & I's diplomatic activities, very little work has been done on James's foreign policies prior to his accession to the English throne. James VI ruled Scotland for almost twenty years before he took on the additional role of King of England and Ireland. It was in his homeland that James developed and refined his diplomatic skills, and built the relationships with foreign powers that would continue throughout his life. James's pre-1603 relationships with Denmark-Norway, France, Spain, the Papacy, the German and Italian states, the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces all influenced his later ‘British' policies, and it is only through a study such as this that their effects can be fully understood. Through its broad scope and unique perspective, this thesis not only contributes to Scottish historiography, but also strengthens and updates our understanding of Jacobean diplomacy. Furthermore, it adds to European perspectives of international politics by re-integrating Scotland into the narrative of late sixteenth century European diplomatic history.

The duality of the United States’ relationship with international criminal law and human rights atrocities is a fascinating theme that weaves through all of American history, but most distinctly demonstrates the contradictory nature of American foreign policy in the latter half of the 20th century. America is both protector of human rights and perpetrator of human rights atrocities, global police force and aggressor. The Cold War exacerbated the tensions caused by American military dominance. The international political and physical power of the American military allowed the United States to do as it pleased in the 20th century with few consequences, but that power also brought watchfulness from the global community and an expectation that the United States would intervene when rogue states or leaders committed crimes against humanity. The international legal community has expected the United States to act and illegally intervene in some situations, but to pursue policy changes peacefully through diplomatic channels on other occasions.

In a golden era for comic based media, this paper uses the hypothetical emergence of superheroes to analyze the assumptions and predictions of three international relations theories: realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Comics consistently reflect the real world, paralleling events and concepts discussed in foreign affairs dialogues. The thought experiment, and the comic genre itself, provides a vehicle for thinking broadly about the political and social ramifications of successful or failed problem solving, state interaction, and scientific advances.

While personal accounts and interpretive overviews have been written about the allied invasion and occupation of Italy during World War II, this study is the first to utilize recently published American Foreign Relations volumes dealing with the wartime conferences. Organized into five chapters, the study surveys allied conferences leading to the invasion of Italy, Italian political developments during occupation, and allied relief and rehabilitation efforts. The conclusions are that Churchill, while correct in .assessing Italy's strategic value, undermined his own policy through political meddling and a desire for revenge. In combination with Roosevelt, whose interest in Italy was political and at best marginal, Churchill needlessly delayed stabilization of Italian economic and political conditions.