As the title indicates this study is restricted to those Aboriginal tribes located in the North West region of Tasmania. This approach enables the regional character and diversity of Aboriginal communities to be brought into focus; it also facilitates an examination of the unique process of dispossession that took place in the North West region, an area totally under the control of the Van Diemen's Land Company (VDL Co). Issues dealing with entitlement to ownership and sovereignty will be established by an examination of the structure and function of traditional Aboriginal Societies in the region, as well as the occupation and use they made of their lands. Early contact history with the Europeans is examined to demonstrate that there was a real possibility of developing productive relationships with the indigenous inhabitants at the time the VDL Co. took up their land grants. The character of the VDL Co manager Edward Curr, his role in the development of the VDL Co and his harsh treatment of those under his authority, including the Aborigines is also an important area of study. While Company Directors were prepared to countenance the dispossession of the Aborigines and consequent destruction of their culture, Curr was content to preside over their physical destruction. This thesis will demonstrate that Edward Curr persistently ignored instructions from his Directors to the contrary and created, fostered and supported an ethos that encouraged the systematic eradication of the Aboriginal population on allocated Company lands. In 1834, after only eight years under the care of Curr's administration, less than one sixth of the original Aboriginal inhabitants had survived to be taken into exile by the Friendly Mission. Robinson's Friendly Mission provided the main physical contact between the North West Aborigines and Arthur's administration. Thus the activities of the Friendly Mission and its role in removing many of the Aborigines, by force in many cases, is detailed, as is their treatment and condition at the Wybalenna Establishment. The history of the North West Aboriginal tribes will continue by tracing the events and experiences that followed the exile to Flinders Island and Oyster Cove, concluding with the death in 1857 of the last survivor of the North West population. It will be established that the genocide perpetrated against these tribes, was initiated as part of local VDL Co policy, a process exacerbated through colonial administrative expediency and brought to completion by neglect. Finally, there is a brief review of the popular ideologies concerning race, current during the period under study and the extent to which these ideas moulded attitudes and policies relating to Aborigines both in the North West and in general.

'Rewriting postcolonial historical representations: The case of refugees in Zimbabwe's liberation war' focuses on the historicisation of the experiences of people who were refugees during Zimbabwe's liberation war, fought between 1966 and 1980. It uses the narratives of former refugees from Mutasa and Bulilima Districts as a way of capturing their histories of the war period. When Zimbabwe attained independence in 1980, the country embarked on a historicisation project that was ably supported by a memorialization one. The aim of these twin projects was to capture the experiences of people who had either participated in the war or had been affected by it. Whilst all the other key players in that war such as the political leadership, the war veterans, the former detainees and even the ordinary peasants' experiences have been captured in these projects, there has been an absolute silence on those of people who were refugees. The same also applies to the omission of the refugee's voice in the continued regeneration of such histories that has been taking place since the year 2000 in Zimbabwe. Using the central question that asks about the experiences of displacement in Zimbabwe's liberation war, the research argues that we can only understand the totality of that war, the interactions that took place and the identities it created if the refugee figure and voice are represented on the historical record.

This thesis sets out to examine the historical growth of Freemasonry at the Cape and its expansion eastwards and northwards. It covers the period from the beginnings of Freemasonry in Cape Town in 1772 until 1876 when English and Dutch branches of the Craft had become involved in the political issues of that time. In doing so it tries to examine the effect of social, economic and political events in South Africa on Dutch and English Freemasonry, making the somewhat bold claim that this masonic movement acted often as a mirror to these events. The study confines itself to the historical aspects of freemasonry and does not endeavour to portray esoteric changes that took place within the Craft. Specifically it details the start of Freemasonry on the continent of Africa by Abraham Chiron and the founding of the first lodge, De Goede Hoop, a Netherlandic lodge, its decline and resurgence during the Dutch, British and Batavian occupations and the beginnings of English Freemasonry under the final British occupation. From then it sets out the expansion and changes in organisation brought about by several masonic personalities, many of whom were leading figures in the society of their time.

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Purpose: To analyze the strategies that Elizabeth Kenny, an Australian nurse, used when trying to obtain medical endorsement for an innovation that was not based on knowledge of pathology, but was empirically demonstrated. Significance: When faced with the need to "Do the best you can with the symptoms presenting themselves," Kenny used keen observation to develop a new treatment for poliomyelitis in the early 1900s. Her innovation was to use hot packs to relieve muscle spasms in people with early symptoms of poliomyelitis when orthodox medical treatment included use of splints or casts to immobilize affected limbs. Method: Historical case analysis. Findings and Conclusions: Sister Kenny made bold assertions, obtained scientific validation, learned from experience, used publicity, and opposed resistance. Although some strategies were unsuccessful (and Kenny faced many obstacles) medical practice changed in a relatively short time. Immobilization of limbs was largely discontinued in the acute stage of the disease. Kenny persisted in caring for children who otherwise might have sustained deformities.

Bibliography: p. 202-206. / This study sets out to examine the order of categories and values, structuring men's thought and perception at a fundamental level although not systematically formulated, in terms of which the Transkeian magistrates viewed the African communities under their governance. It is thus an essay in colonial administration, but the critical focus has been narrowed and is centred primarily upon the ideas and assumptions the magistrates used in the business of administration to explain society, government and law. At the same time, a major concern of this work has been to place the particular problem with which it deals - the elucidation of magisterial ideas and attitudes - within a wider framework of contemporary social and political thought, to fit them into the matrix of Victorian culture as it conditioned and shaped the administrators' perceptions and responses touching the indigenous black population. A methodological pitfall opens here, of assimilating individual or local currents of ideas to more general patterns - the 'climate of opinion' or what Matthew Arnold called the 'main movement of mind' of the age; of trying to press disparate, multifarious and often carelessly formulated ideas and assumptions into a conceptual framework or theoretical construct that was independently arrived at and presented as given. The mode of procedure followed was one that allowed the source material to suggest broader patterns and larger perspectives according to which it could be most intelligibly and satisfyingly ordered; one also that wove together various logically independent concepts and general propositions, derived from general studies of the topic and period, and brought them to bear on the Transkeian situation. In this way it is hoped that the main features and contours of the magisterial mind have been rendered with as much precision of detail and emphasis as the demands of analytical depth and conceptual rigour would permit.

Bibliography: p. 178-192. / This dissertation uses the historical figure of Joao Albasini to explore some historiographical issues related to how people commemorate their past. Joao Albasini was a Portuguese trader who operated through the port of Delagoa Bay for a large part of the 19th Century. He was based in Portuguese East Africa in the1830's and early 1840's, and moved into what would become the Transvaal in the late 1840's, becoming a powerful political force in the region. This thesis looks at the strikingly different ways in which Albasini has been remembered by different individuals and groups. Part 1 deals with his South African family's memories of him, focusing in particular on the portrayal of Albasini in a celebration held in 1988 to commemorate the centenary of his death. This is compared with fragments of earlier family memories, in particular, with the testimony of his second daughter recorded in newspaper articles, letters and notes. This comparison is used to argue that the memories of Albasini are being shaped both by a changing social context, and by the influence of different literary genres. Part 2 looks at a doctoral thesis on Albasini written by J.B. de Vaal in the 1940's. This is placed in the context of a tradition of professional Afrikaner academic writing, which combined the conventions and claims of Rankean scientific history with the concerns of an Afrikaner Volksgeskiedenis, and which became powerful in a number of South African Universities in the early decades of this century. The text of de Vaal's thesis is examined in detail with a view to focusing on the extent to which it was shaped by this tradition. Part 3 looks at a group of oral histories collected from the former Gazankulu Homeland between 1979 and 1991, and focuses on the way in which a memory of Albasini has been used in the construction of the idea of a Tsonga/Shangaan ethnic group. One oral tradition is examined in detail, and used to argue for an approach to oral history that attempts to focus on the structure and commentary of oral history, instead of simply using it as a source of empirical fact.

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No description available.

Frederick Weld arrived in New Zealand early in 1884, an unassuming and shy twenty-year old with high hopes and modest assets. He left the colony two decades later, a well-regarded and prominent citizen whose reputation was regarded by imperial authorities as ample qualification for appointment to a colonial governorship. Following a successful term of office in Western Australia, he was promoted to Tasmania and thence to the Straits Settlements, from which post he retired in 1887. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how Weld’s colonial experience greatly influenced the nature of his administrations and to illustrate how his outlook gradually changed from one of a colonist to that of a servant of empire. / Images removed from thesis for copyright reasons.