The theoretical literature on public ownership suggests many reasons for anticipating poor performance by publicly-owned firms, especially the lack of incentives for managers in uncompetitive environments combined with the problems of political interference. Yet the performance of the nationalized British gas industry in the post- war period was very impressive, with high rates of growth of output and productivity and the successful development of new techniques and new markets. To resolve this puzzle, the key factors to be examined are government/industry relations and strategic management. A detailed analysis of the evolution of government policy towards the nationalized industries in general and gas in particular, including the provision of funds for investment, pricing policies, the extent and quality of monitoring of the industry's performance and energy policy, reveals that government policy in the case of gas was more benign than for many of the nationalized industries. Management strategy is investigated by means of a comparison of two Area Gas Boards, the South Western and the East Midlands. Quantitative indicators show that the East Midlands Board enjoyed rapid sales growth for much of this period, and made use of a wide range of techniques for manufacturing and supplying gas. The South Western Board's sales performance was among the weakest in the industry and it remained committed to out-moded techniques based on coal for a long time. Underlying differences in the market/technological environments faced by the two Boards provide a major part of the explanation of these variations in business performance. However, the strategies adopted by the Area Boards are also shown to be important. In contrast to much existing literature on nationalized industries the emphasis here is on the autonomy enjoyed by managers in many crucial aspects of decision-making, the surprising strength of competitive forces acting on the gas industry, regional diversity, and the reasonably benign role played by government.

Rape had an indelible effect on the American Revolutionary era. Using trial testimonies and depositions, newspapers, and literary sources, this thesis argues that there was a level of continuity between peacetime and wartime rape characterized by the assaulters’ modus operandi and rape’s ideological exploitation. Eighteenth-century Anglo-American society dictated that rape, or “carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly against her will,” was only a crime against virtuous white women. The gendered and racialized ways pre-revolutionary society identified and prosecuted rape influenced how rapists conducted their assaults. Women had to prove their sexual morality, that penile penetration and male ejaculation occurred, and that they sought help immediately after the assault to prosecute their attackers. During the war, rape became an important metaphor. Wartime publishers and propagandists used reports and victim testimonies as evidence of British immorality and to justify political independence. The rape of America subsumed individual atrocities. The nationalization of women’s sexual virtue continued into the new Republic. Artists and writers memorialized the Revolution through explicitly sexualized narratives and sentimental novels that emphasized female sexual morality. Women’s sexual virtue was linked with the stability of the Republic. This thesis utilizes a diverse historiography to highlight the intersectional correlations between rape and eighteenth-century patriarchal power in America. / Graduate / 2022-08-26

1 Abstract The thesis focuses on the involvement of Jiří Mařánek in the management of the Film Department of the Ministry of Information during the years 1945 - 1948. His ministe- rial engagement is related to the contemporary strengthening of the importance of literary preparation of the film and to the associated state dramaturgical supervision. Jiří Mařánek belongs to the circle of writers connected on one hand through their affiliation with the interwar avant-garde movements, on the other hand by their postwar involve- ment in the power apparatus that ended by the political and economic changes in the late forties and fifties. His professional fate speaks about the changes of cultural policy of the state, about the institutional development of the cinema and about the relations between literary and cinematic arts. It is a testimonial of what a successful professional career meant for a man of letters and what relationship it had to the cinema. We follow therefore a relatively brief but breakthrough episode of a writer and retired officer in the position of the Ministerial Counsellor, and we try to place its course and causes into a complex network of historical and social contexts and personal motivation. Focusing on this personality unburdened neither by a historical uniqueness, fundamental role of...