This project explores the impact of the French Revolution on the creation and maintenance of states and alliances in the Western Mediterranean between 1789 and 1796. The radicalization of French foreign policy due to the Revolution destabilized the international dynamic of Europe, challenging the Old Regime conception of the state as existing within a balanced international system. France extricated itself from the former system, and in its place the statesmen of the Revolution proposed a vision of the state as an instrument for radicalization and the spread of republican ideas. This isolated France and resulted in the creation of the First Coalition, vaguely committed to defending international order and stability but made up of traditional rivals. However, neither the radical revolutionary conception of the state nor the Old Regime counter-revolutionary conception of the state survived contact with the Western Mediterranean. The inability of the British to establish an acceptable alternative to the French version of the state resulted in the alienation of their allies and laid the groundwork for the reentrance of the French into the international system by 1795. As the French once again began to take part in international statecraft, both the British and French reevaluated their place in relation to each other and in the international system, establishing preconditions for an increasingly stable conception of the state after 1796, especially through the efforts of Napoleon in Italy. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / March 27, 2015. / Corsica, French Revolution, Mediterranean, Napoleon, Statecraft / Includes bibliographical references. / Rafe Blaufarb, Professor Directing Dissertation; Aimee Boutin, University Representative; Jonathan Grant, Committee Member; Charles Upchurch, Committee Member; Laurie Wood, Committee Member; Darrin McMahon, Committee Member.

After the rapid expansion of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries, the eastern Mediterranean region was fairly homogenous in terms of economics. Muslims merchants dominated the region, which contained only minority populations of other religions, which had their own moderate levels of success in economic ventures. The advent of the Crusades in 1096 CE, however, disrupted trade and threatened Muslim control of these profitable trade routes. Suddenly, European Christians began living and trading in what had long been a Muslim dominated area. With their very presence, these merchants changed the way that trade was conducted within the Eastern Mediterranean and the physical landscape of the area. As larger numbers of European merchants travelled to the Crusader States, the economic landscape of the eastern Mediterranean began to evolve into its own subsystem within the larger Mediterranean context. Through their involvement in creating new trading networks, building up particular coastal trading cities, and redefining the very process of trade, the European and Middle Eastern merchants in the region created this new subsystem within the Mediterranean. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2013. / July 18, 2013. / Crusader States, Crusades, Medieval economics, Medieval Italy / Includes bibliographical references. / Peter Garretson, Professor Directing Thesis; Will Hanley, Committee Member; Adam Gaiser, Committee Member.

In the American political context African Americans have the greatest legacy because of their crusade for freedom and civil rights. Unlike Anglo-Americans, African Americans were barred from society for no other reason than their skin color, but their fight for freedom forced Americans to define themselves and how to protect their rights in a free society. The American system has been touted by historians such as Gordon Wood as being a radical departure from the British model of government. Barbara Clark Smith argued that the American Revolution was not a radical event because it failed to meet the egalitarian principles set forth by the revolutionary intellectuals. Wood's response was that the radical nature of the Revolution was not seen until well after the war and subsequent nation building, because those principles led to emancipation and universal suffrage. Smith's point is important to note because the immediacy created by the concept of "radical" was not met during the Revolutionary period. For the enslaved their lot in life had not changed with Treaty of Paris or the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution, previous to the passage of the 14th Amendment, did not provide a definition of citizenship. It was just assumed that an American citizen was a white male landowner. The reality of this situation was that racial discrimination caused many to turn their backs on egalitarianism for a racially bifurcated society. At this point, African Americans, free and enslaved, had to collectively speak out against this discrimination and remind Anglo-Americans of their egalitarian principles. The greatest legacy of Civil Rights Movement was that it forced America to abide by its altruistic principles. African Americans forced the definition of citizenship and created greater protections for American civil rights. This was not a process that started in the twentieth century; it began with the inception of the American Republic. In order to understand the true nature of society historians must look at the dispossessed to see the worst effects of society over time. In the Antebellum period enslaved and free blacks were those groups. The want of freedom is the simplest civil right. When enslaved African Americans went into the court system laws used to protect freedom had to be disfigured to protect bondage. With intent or not, every time a slave went into the court system they had to be given a minuscule amount of rights in order to participate in the trial. This was a challenge to the oppressive system. In a society that is governed by laws, enforcement in the courts should be autonomous enough to overcome social discrimination, but the law is a slow lumbering beast that has to wonder the dark woods of a fickle society before it can see the light of true autonomy. The Civil Rights Movement was significantly impacted by the court system because it controlled the impact of law on African Americans. The movement first had to get the courts to recognize them as human beings before they could continue the quest for freedom. This journey can be seen in the Florida Supreme Court. The battle between property and humanity raged on until after the Civil War and emancipation. Reconstruction created a new dialogue of African American freedom and citizenship. No longer did they have to suffer the courts' myopic view of them as property. Federal intervention allowed African Americans to exercise suffrage and participate in jury trials. After the threat of Federal intervention was removed by apathy and paternalistic adjudication in the U.S. Supreme Court, states began attacking African American rights and enacting segregationist laws. The Civil Rights Movement faced an all out assault in Florida with the removal of African Americans from the voter rolls and public conveyances. This trend towards a rigid society based on racial division was solidified with the Plessy decision. The courts for a short time were willing to view African Americans as first-class citizens, but inevitably reverted back to antebellum jurisprudence that saw blacks as having no rights they were bound to respect. For African Americans, their contribution to the historical lexicon has been the protection of rights set forth by the Constitution. They gave the Republic a road map explaining how to protect their rights in the courtroom and on the streets. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2013. / November 1, 2013. / African American, Antebellum, Civil Rights, Florida, Legal History, Supreme Court / Includes bibliographical references. / Maxine D. Jones, Professor Directing Dissertation; Maxine Montgomery, University Representative; Peter Garretson, Committee Member; James P. Jones, Committee Member; Joe M. Richardson, Committee Member.

This dissertation centers on an extensive project to promote cotton cultivation in France and Italy which took place during the rule of Napoleon I. While this episode has been largely forgotten today, I show that the Napoleonic experiments with cotton cultivation were closely linked to some of the most important trends in modern history. Industrialization of the European textile industry motivated Napoleon to seek a secure source of cotton supply within his territories, particularly as a means of enhancing French competitiveness against the factories of Great Britain. The development of specialized botany and agronomy made the objective of large-scale acclimatization seem feasible to leading figures in French and Italian scientific circles by the early nineteenth century. Finally, the unprecedented scale of the experiments with cotton cultivation which took place between 1807 and 1814 was made possible by the power of the centralized state apparatus created by the Napoleonic regime. Viewed from this perspective, Napoleon's acclimatization project cannot be dismissed as a grandiose and unrealistic scheme, but rather must be understood as product of industrial development, scientific specialization, and state centralization, forces which have since been recognized as crucial to the emergence of the modern world. My dissertation traces the impact of these trends through an examination of French and Italian interaction with cotton, discussing early interest in the plant and its fibers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the development of cotton cultivation in French colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, initial experiments with acclimatization between the 1740's and 1790's, the more extensive experiments of the Napoleonic era, and finally the French links to cotton cultivation between 1815 and 1865. Understanding the ways in which efforts to introduce cotton cultivation to the fields of France and Italy were fundamentally shaped by the leading factors of recent development provides above all an important reminder than even in the modern era it is not always possible to shape the natural environment to suit human purposes. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2013. / October 7, 2013. / Cotton Cultivation, Environmental History, French Caribbean, Industrialization, Napoleonic France, Napoleonic Italy / Includes bibliographical references. / Darrin McMahon, Professor Directing Dissertation; Adam Jolles, University Representative; Rafe Blaufarb, Committee Member; Frederick Davis, Committee Member; Edward Gray, Committee Member.

Critical numismatic discourse in eighteenth-century Spain helped create the nation's first national history inclusive of Spain's historical traditions. Historians often associate the development of the Spanish nation and national identity with the nineteenth century, but in doing so they have largely overlooked the preceding century. The eighteenth century, however, witnessed the development of state administrative and cultural institutions. At this time, the Bourbon monarchy patronized and protected the Royal Academy of History, whose patriotic historians collected the nation's historical artifacts and began writing a new "general history" of Spain. The collection and study of coins were central to the historical endeavors of the Academy. Despite being an important methodological tool in historical scholarship for hundreds of years, historians have largely overlooked numismatics in historiographical studies. Yet it is because of critical numismatic discourse that historians encountered Spain's diverse histories and accepted them as part of Spain's national historical narrative. The present study looks at numismatic discourse at the Royal Academy of History in eighteenth-century Spain and, using Spain's Moorish history as an example, argues that critical numismatic discourse helped create Spain's first national history inclusive of Spain's neglected and culturally diverse past. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2014. / October 3, 2014. / Enlightenment, Historiography, Nationalism, Numismatics, Orientalism, Spain / Includes bibliographical references. / Darrin M. McMahon, Professor Directing Dissertation; William Cloonan, Committee Member; Andrew Frank, Committee Member.

"Bonds of Empire: The Politics of Penal Colonies in the Founding of America and Australia," is a transnational study of convict transportation, a method of exile typically accompanied by forced servitude that existed in Britain's early modern empire. It explores the advent of a penal-settlement imperial ideology which was intended to solve both the domestic problem of petty crime, while simultaneously allowing the English (and later British) government to establish a foothold in places to which free settlers would not immigrate. "Bonds of Empire" reveals that this imperial ideology was almost universally a failure. After free settlers became important components of British colonies in both America and Australia, convict transportation turned into a serious point of contention between colonial governments concerned with their own moral purity and reputation, and the British government which cared more about punishing offenders and deterring crime at home. Ultimately, this study argues that the inherent contradiction which existed between penal colonies and free settler colonies, made Britain's penal-settlement ideology untenable as a method of empire building. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2014. / October 10, 2014. / British Empire, Colonial America, Colonial Australia, Convict Transportation / Includes bibliographical references. / , ; Amanda Porterfield, University Representative; Charles Upchurch, Committee Member; Maxine Jones, Committee Member; James Jones, Committee Member.

The period from the early 17th century to the late 19th century was an era of protracted Christological controversy in the long history of the Ethiopian Church. The main subject of the debate was the meaning and relevance of the anointment of Christ by the Holy Spirit. The three rival groups that conducted the debate were called Qebatoč, Şäga Lejoč and Karoč. The names were originally polemical labels that represented the alleged Trinitarian and Christological heresies in the formulae of each group. This dissertation tries to reconstruct various aspects of the history of the controversy. The Ethiopian Church had always been closely associated with the ruling monarchy of the Christian kingdom. Therefore, this study will also try to analyze and explore the impact of the doctrinal debate in the Church's relation with the monarchy. The first section tries to situate the rivalry among the three groups within the context of the meaning of heresy and orthodoxy in the Ethiopian Church. The main argument advanced in this section is that, the dogmatic and liturgical orthodoxy of the Ethiopian Church, which follows the Alexandrian Orthodox tradition, has always been loosely defined. This enabled the Church to accommodate within itself rival groups with slightly different understanding and interpretation of its Alexandrian Orthodox tradition, without a serious threat to its orthodoxy. Given such institutional setup of the Church, it was the monarchy that played the decisive role in settling the issue of heresy and orthodoxy in dogmatic and liturgical controversies that broke out at various times in the long history of the Church. The main thesis of this dissertation is therefore that the debate among the three groups on the anointment of Christ should be viewed as a phase in the history of the existence of rival factions within the Ethiopian Church. This challenges the longstanding notion about the Ethiopian Church that it was a more or less monolithic institution with a doctrine set in stone. This dissertation will show that throughout the duration of the controversy, it was the monarchy that played the decisive role in determining the status of the rival groups. The monarchy did so, among other things, based on geographical considerations. Accordingly, in most cases, while the teaching of those groups with the largest number of vii followers in and around the royal center enjoyed recognition as orthodoxy, that of those in outlaying provinces suffered ban as heresy. Succeeding sections of the dissertation provide a narrative account of how the story of the controversy unfolded following the dynamic in church and state relation described above. Accordingly, from the outbreak of the controversy in the early 17th century to 1764 the Qebat and Şäga Lej teachings took turns enjoying the recognition of the royal court as orthodoxy. This was primarily a reflection of the fact that these two views drew most of their adherents from Bägémder and Gojjam, which were the core provinces of the Christian Kingdom at the time. Then, the long period of regionalism that lasted from the 1770s to 1855 allowed the adherents of Kara to claim the provinces of Tigray, what is today Southern Eritrea and Lasta as their strongholds. The emergence of Tigray as the center of the monarchy in the 1870s in turn paved the way for Kara to become the official doctrine of the Ethiopian Church since 1878. Exploring the teachings of the rival groups vis-à-vis Alexandrian Orthodoxy and the Chalcedonian Creed is the major theme of chapter five. The assessment shows that none of the three views had a serious deviation from Alexandrian Orthodoxy. This shows that, doctrinally speaking, the debate was essentially intra-Alexandrian. In other words, the representatives of the three groups formulated and propagated their teachings essentially in a bid to outmatch each other as the most diehard defenders of Alexandrian Orthodoxy. The issue is not however a matter of intricate doctrinal debate that only concerns the learned clergy. The last section of the dissertation illustrates this by recounting the case of a recent Qebat revival movement, which was led and organized by the laity, who openly admit their ignorance of the doctrinal issues at stake. Based on this and other historical evidences, this dissertation highlights the point that membership to the rival groups was an important element of popular religious identity. Finally, using the case of one monastery, the dissertation will conclude by showing that the controversy is far from over and could continue to be a source of major doctrinal crises in the Ethiopian Church. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2011. / March 17, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references. / Peter P. Garretson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Matthew Goff, University Representative; Edward Wynot, Committee Member; Jonathan Grant, Committee Member; Nicole Kelley, Committee Member.

In 1818 the West Africa Squadron was established as a permanent station of the British Royal Navy. Its first commander was Commodore Sir George R. Collier, a skilled veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and War of 1812. Collier and the West Africa Squadron were tasked with ending the illegal transatlantic slave trade, but after three years, the squadron had little to show for its efforts. This study argues that Collier was unable to meaningfully curtail the trade because of outside limitations on his capacity to operate effectively. These limitations included a lack of resources from the Admiralty; environmental conditions which frequently made operations impossible; legal limitations which often made it impossible to condemn known slavers or to inspect suspected traders; and strategic failures on the part of the Admiralty and Collier, in that the squadron targeted the symptoms of the slave trade (shippers) but not the sources of the trade. Despite extensive command experience and Collier's ideological commitment to ending the trade, from 1818 to 1821 the British were unable to overcome the highly decentralized, geographically diffuse traffic. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2014. / April 16, 2014. / Includes bibliographical references. / Rafe Blaufarb, Professor Directing Thesis; Edward Gray, Committee Member; Charles Upchurch, Committee Member; Kevin McCranie, Committee Member.

The outcomes of the military manpower policies of the major Western Powers of the Second World War, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States during the Second World War, form the basis for this study. Through an examination of the results achieved by these nations for the selection and assignment of infantry combat soldiers, the intent is to compare and contrast the manner and method by which these men were placed into small combat units and the effect on the development of unit cohesion as a result. The key comparison lies between the Anglo-American infantry and the German infantry, and sets out to illuminate the reasons for the German soldier's observed reputation for extraordinary tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds as the war progressed to its end. The conclusion reached here is that these observed German combat soldier traits were the result of the holistic application of a variety of organizational and manpower decisions. The most important of these was the quality of the conscripted individual assigned to a line infantry division for an infantry small unit. German focus on the quality of the combat soldier was the key contrast to the United States and British Army infantry. This was the basis for the German combat soldier's reputation for cohesive behavior and perseverance in combat in the experience of his primary adversaries. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2010. / April 5, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references. / Michael Creswell, Professor Directing Dissertation; Mark Souva, University Representative; Jonathan Grant, Committee Member; James P. Jones, Committee Member; Max Paul Friedman, Committee Member.

This work examines memory of the Battle of Waterloo. There have been hundreds of works on the Battle of Waterloo but what this work does is to examine how works in several genres change over time. The memory of Waterloo was not static but changed several times over and over again. The myth of Waterloo was created, challenged and renegotiated several times. What makes this project significant is that it is not a battle history of Waterloo but a history of the battle over the battle's significance in history. It combines several different approaches using biography, literary criticism, historiography, art and monuments to explore the history of the myths and memory of Waterloo. This interpretation combines those approaches in a new way to look at how cultural myths and legends about a battle can be made and challenged. It also examines the successes and failures of interpretations in making "the" History of a battle. It uses sources from the battlefield tourists and participants of different cultural events in addition to the primary historical figures involved. It is intentionally not a work of archival sources but of cultural ones. This project makes several points about the historical significance of the Battle of Waterloo. Wellington and Napoleon tried to shape the memory and history of the battle to their advantage. Others willingly helped Wellington and Napoleon make legends and myths of the battle like Henry Barker, Sir Walter Scott, Emmanuel Las Cases, and Gaspard Gourgaud. The memory of Waterloo was contested. Victor Hugo successfully challenged the myths and legends of the battle while Marshal Grouchy and William Siborne were not successful. Military theorist like Clausewitz and Jomini used the battle as a blueprint for future wars and a guide for understanding the essence of war in general. The myths and memories of the battle Waterloo were intertwined into the national identities of both Britain and France. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2013. / November 6, 2013. / Grouchy, Hugo, Memory, Napoleon, Tourism, Waterloo / Includes bibliographical references. / Rafe Blaufarb, Professor Directing Dissertation; Amiée Boutin, University Representative; James P. Jones, Committee Member; Michael Creswell, Committee Member; Jonathan Grant, Committee Member.