There is considerable anxiety about teaching Australian history in schools. In part, such concern reflects the so-called "History Wars", which have been played out in museums and national commemorations, as well as history syllabuses and textbooks. Such concern also reveals a professional and pedagogical debate over the state of the subject in schools. This thesis problematises history education as a site of contested collective memory and argues that concern over "teaching the nation" is intensified and augmented by an educational discourse of "the child" that shifts the debate over the past to the future.

No description available.

Tevens proefschrift--Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2008. / Title from e-book title screen (viewed Mar. 16, 2009). Description based on print version record. Met lit.opg., reg.

No description available.

This study of Ecuador under Gran Colombia comprises more than a catalogue of the obstacles underlying the failure of Simon Bolívar's experiment in statecraft. While the distinct nature of the regional and local problems of the southern departments add to that diagnosis, they also stand apart as factors in the formation of the Republic of Ecuador. The Liberator's determination to maintain the territorial integrity of the audiencia of Quito as a part of the viceroyalty of New Granada prevented the potential partitioning of that region between Peru and Colombia. Colombian military assistance enabled the fleeting Republic of Guayaquil to play a crucial role in the liberation of the audiencia. This ensured a patriotic legacy for Guayaquil compatible with that of Quito in the formation of Ecuadorian national identity. The special treatment accorded the Southern Departments by Bolívar's use of his extraordinary faculties and his later authority as dictator maintained the regional identity of Ecuador. The inability of the Colombian government to effectively respond to the local problems of the Southern Departments undermined the legitimacy of that regime. In contrast, the efficiency of the military administration imposed upon the departments by Bolívar enhanced his personal authority. Also, at the expense of Gran Colombia, the Liberator fostered an embryonic administrative centralism around the leadership of one of his most loyal officers, General Juan José Flores. The era of Ecuador under Gran Colombia witnessed the continuation of the colonial economic system beneath the superstructure of republican politics. In recognition of the distinct nature of southern society, Bolívar formally sanctioned that continuity, ultimately replacing the few liberal reforms attempted in the south with a return to colonial institutions. Within this framework the local elites of Quito, Guayaquil, and Cuenca remained secure in their society. Within the decade of its existence as part of Gran Columbia, Ecuador demonstrated its own dynamic elements, both local and regional in nature, that gradually coalesced to form an embryonic national identity. The emergence of the Republic of Ecuador in May 1830 was an affirmation of that historical development.

The thesis explores the development of Shakespeare’s political ideas, in particular his exploration of authority, and the legitimacy of resistance towards it, in the two English history tetralogies (as well as the self-contained history, King John), and examines the ways in which this protracted engagement with the question of kingship – and governance more generally – informs his turn to tragedy towards the end of the 1590s. The thesis argues that criticism has tended to downplay the importance of the first tetralogy in the Shakespeare canon (particularly the Henry VI plays), and as a corollary it has overlooked the important continuities that can be traced from Shakespeare’s earliest engagement with politics to his treatment of power in Julius Caesar and Hamlet. The thesis sees the history plays as essentially paradoxical and ambivalent. Shakespeare presents the past as both a shining example to which each succeeding generation must aspire, but also as a legacy which they are powerless to fulfil, while he treats the dynastic conflicts of the Houses of York and Lancaster as essentially intractable, with each new pretender to the throne – however legitimate his claim – undermined by a host of legal, moral, and pragmatic considerations. It is a central contention of the thesis that it was Shakespeare’s failure satisfactorily to resolve the intractable political conflicts of the first tetralogy which prompted him to confront a similar set of questions in King John, before returning to them yet again in the more highly acclaimed second tetralogy. The thesis concludes by arguing that far from representing a breach with his history plays, the tragedies are continuous with them. So rather than identifying the ‘origins’ of Hamlet either in Shakespeare’s reaction to the fall of Essex or the death of his son, Hammet, in 1596, it is more persuasive to see the play as arising from the debates and problems which were initially addressed in the first tetralogy.

The medium of printing has been persistently associated with Protestantism. As a result, a large body of French Catholic anti-Protestant material was to a large extent ignored. In contrast with Germany, there is evidence to suggest that French authors used printing effectively and aggressively to promote the Catholic cause. During the French Wars of Religion, French Catholics were far more innovative than they were given credit for: the German paradigm of a leaden-footed Catholic response to the Reformation was inappropriately applied to France. This is ironic given that it was the Catholic cause which ultimately prevailed. In seeking to explain why France remained a Catholic country, the French Catholic response must be taken into account. Catholic polemical works, and their portrayal of Protestants in print in particular, is the central focus of this work. The first chapter is devoted to a historiographical discussion of the problem of violence in the French Wars of Religion. The next two chapters are concerned with the comparison between Protestantism and medieval heresies, and particularly the recourse in polemic to the topos of the Albigensian Crusade. The next chapter addresses the use of cultural archetypes such as 'the world turned upside down' and the reversal of gender roles to deride the impact of the Reformation. The last two chapters are an attempt to assess the impact of the Catholic polemic on the Protestant culture and identity and on the emerging public opinion. Rather than confront the Reformation on its own terms, the Catholic reaction concentrated on discrediting the Protestant cause in the eyes of the Catholic majority. They had a considerable impact on their readership and on an illiterate audience (through the interaction between written and oral), and on the French Protestants' own self-perception and identity. This thesis aims to contribute to the ongoing debate over the nature of the French Wars of Religion, to explain why they were so violent and why they engaged the loyalties of such a large portion of the population. This study also provides an example of the successful defence of Catholicism developed independently and in advance of Tridentine reform which is of wider significance for the history of the Reformation in Europe.

In this thesis, a collective urban sector-consisting, in various different guises, of civic governments, urban merchants, and townspeople-is presented as a vital and distinctive component of later medieval English political society. The dynamics of this urban political sector are reconstructed through the use of a modified version of the 'urban systems' approach found in historical geography and economic history, positing that towns are defined by their evolving relationship with one another. Drawing from the municipal records of twenty-two towns, this thesis charts the composition of the later medieval English 'urban system' and the manner in which urban groups belonging to this 'system' participated in a broader national political sphere over four chronological periods-1413-35, 1435-50, 1450-61, and 1461-71. In 1413-35, the highly authoritative and institutionalised governments of Henry V and the child Henry VI fostered vertical relationships between the Crown and a variety of individual civic governments, leading both national and urban political actors to operate within a shared political culture, but not necessarily encouraging inter-urban political communication. This would change in the periods that followed, as the absence of strong royal authority after 1435 renewed the strength of lateral mercantile networks and facilitated the re-emergence of a semi-autonomous inter-urban political community, which saw little reason to participate in the civil wars of the early 1450s that now seemed divorced from its own interests. In the 1460s, however, the financially extractive policies of Edward IV once again gave civic governments and ordinary townspeople a greater stake in royal government, which was reflected in the high level of urban participation in the dynastic conflicts of 1469-71. The developments occurring in these four phases illustrate both the interdependence of urban and national politics in the later medieval period, and the mutability of their relationship with one another.

The Parisian Holy League, an insurgent movement in conflict with both royal government and the social elites, expounded, in spite of itself, a conservative, nobiliary social ideology. According to the pamphlets published by the League, the essence of nobility was virtue, and human society was organised in conformity with a divinely-ordained, hierarchical tripartite model. Nevertheless, in rejecting the racial ideas of certain noblemen, and in striving to apply the traditional nobiliary ideology, the Leaguers charged that ideology with a radical and anti-noble purport.

No description available.