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Early astronomical records of comets, supernovae, novae, sunspots and aurorae from Far Eastern dynastic histories together with records from Babylonians cuneiform tablets are compiled and analysed. The present investigation gives new insight into the three following topics in current astronomy and astrophysics.(1) Halley's Comet Past orbits of Halley's Comet since 240 BC are studied in detail using mainly early Chinese observations. The date of perihelion passages are deduced for each return. The only gap in the Chinese records, for the return of 164 BC, is now filled by the discovery of two records on Babylonian tablets. This discovery improves the date of perihelion, which is established as within one week of Nov 16 in 164 BC. We are now confident that every return of Halley's Comet from 240 BC onwards has been recorded.(2) Supernovae and Novae A catalogue of historical supernovae and novae is compiled. Descriptions regarding the position of the eight well known supemovae SN 185, 386, 393, 1006, 1054, 1181, 1572 and 1604 are re-evaluated in term of recent studies. The spurious supernova SN 1408 is discussed in detail and found that there is insufficient evidence supporting a supernova interpretation. The positions of 26 well recorded historical novae are discussed in depth and their coordinates are deduced. (3) Solar Variability Catalogues of naked-eye sunspots and aurorae are compiled from Far Eastern sources. Analysis of these records suggests an average period of about 10 years for the basic solar cycle. Observational factors such as variation with the phases of the Moon are also discussed. A comparison of these data with other proxy indicators like (^14)C and (^10)Beshows a similar trend in the behaviour of the Sun over the last two thousand years.

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This work looks into Swaziland's political, economic, social and cultural relations with Britain (its former colonial master) and South Africa (its big and rich neighbour) in the period since Swaziland's Independence in 1968. The focus is on how Swaziland's relations with Britain and South Africa influence its socio-economic and political developments, and its internal and external security. As a micro-state, with a population of less than 0.7 million people, the assumption is made that Swaziland's progress and security can be reasonably assessed by examining its relations with the two powerful states with whom it has close links. This assumption arises from the fact that (i) Swaziland inherited political institutions from Britain, (ii) there were strong economic links (investments, trade, aid) between it and Britain at Independence and these ties continue today, (iii) there were, and still are, economic links in almost every aspect between Swaziland and South Africa at Independence and (iv) South Africa dominates the Southern Africa region - militarily and economically. The main arguments in the Thesis are (a) that the economic links between Swaziland and the two states provide economic growth for the former, thus helping to maintain stability, although South African domination threatens to undermine Swaziland's independence (b) that Swaziland has pursued a "tightrope policy" in Southern Africa, and that this regional strategy has, on the whole, succeeded in helping the country's survival; and (c) that the political system of Swaziland has an in-built tension in that the traditional institutions exist alongside modern ones and this is a threat to political stability.

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Thesis advisor: Julian Bourg / The social and cultural aftershocks of the end of French empire in Algeria reverberated throughout the former colony and metropole long after independence in 1962. This dissertation illustrates the process of decolonization between the start of the Algerian war in 1954 and the election of François Mitterrand to the presidency in 1981. Rather than “forgetting Algeria” after 1962, French administrators, social aid workers, and the public were constantly confronted by traces of empire, and especially by the presence of Algerian migrant workers and families on metropolitan soil. I trace the evolution of a group of private social aid associations that were created to help integrate newly arrived families in the colonial era, and that continued their work even after it ended. These social aid associations acted as mediating bodies between Algerians and the French welfare state. They offered services to a growing population of Algerian workers and families to help them become more at home in France. As the number of Algerian families grew in the post-independence era, the colonial modernizing mission justified social aid associations’ interventions to “emancipate” Algerian women through social aid and education. The “slow end to empire” demonstrated by the growth of social aid for Algerians even after they were no longer citizens highlights the importance of studying not just the empire and the colony in a single analytic field, but also the post-empire and the post-colony. Furthermore, this dissertation reveals the social logic behind increasingly restrictive immigration protocols toward Algerians. Historians have argued that colonial and ex-colonial subjects created the potential for France’s economic growth during the Thirty Glorious Years. It would not have been possible without access to this cheap labor. Though the availability of employment helped to pave the way for migration initially, family and worker migration far surpassed this threshold in the 1960s and 70s. The perceived inability of Algerian families to integrate, which had allowed for the growth of social aid also led to its downfall. Paradoxically, the failures of social aid associations justified contracting Algerian family migration in the 1970s. Attention to integration alongside immigration reveals how the perceived social burden of welcoming Algerian families also conditioned their ability to resettle there. Against the backdrop of a faltering global economy and disintegrating Franco-Algerian relations, support for the specialized social welfare network for Algerians began to collapse in the late 1970s. As a result, the network reoriented its services to the whole body of migrants arriving in France. This “universalizing” republican approach to welfare conceived of social aid as a structural problem without regard to nationality. This approach, I argue, served the purpose of helping the French forget their colonial past in the years immediately preceding its supposed “resurgence.” The winnowing of the specialized social welfare network provided support for this revival, but not because France had yet to reckon with its colonial past. Rather, the French administration had litigated this past since Algerian independence in the context of social aid for Algerian families. The powerful return of “neo-republicanism” in the 1980s thus occurred as a result of the long process of decolonization.

The cumulative likelihood of admission estimated for any given 'time-since-enrolment' depends on how we define membership of the population 'at-risk' and on how we handle right and left censored waiting times. As a result, published statistics will be biased because they assume that the waiting list is both stationary and closed and exclude all those not yet or never to be admitted. The cumulative likelihood of admission within three months was estimated using the Government Statistical Service method and compared with estimates which relaxed the assumption of stationarity and reflected variation in the numbers recruited to, and admitted from, the waiting list each quarter. The difference between the two estimates ranged from +5.5 to -9.1 percentage points among 11 Orthopaedic waiting lists in South Thames Region. In the absence of information on 'times-to-admission', exact 'times-since-enrolment' were extracted from Hospital Episode Statistics and assumed to be similarly distributed. In the absence of information on 'times-to-competing-event', the number of competing events falling in each waiting time category was estimated by differencing. A period lifetable was constructed using these approximations, census counts, counts of the number of new recruits and estimates of the number 'reset-to-zero' each quarter. The results support the view that the method used by the Government Statistical Service overestimates the cumulative likelihood of elective admission among those listed. The Government Statistical Service calculates the cumulative likelihood of admission within three months (range: 0.62-0.27) conditional on the fact of admission. Multiplying by the unconditional likelihood of being admitted (range: 0.93-0.31) estimates the cumulative likelihood of admission within three months among those listed (range: 0.55-0.12) and gives a rather different ranking of waiting list performance among 34 Orthopaedic waiting lists in South Thames Region.

"Industrial restructuring without parallel in recent British industrial history" is how the current Chairman of British Coal, Sir Robert Haslam, has described events in that industry. Since 1960 upwards of three quarters of a million jobs have gone in the deep coal mining industry alone. Numerous studies have analysed the underlying mechanisms behind the rapid decline of the nationalised coal industry, but hitherto little attention has been paid to the national linkage effects of that decline. This thesis is an attempt to analyse the consequences of industrial restructuring in coal mining on its UK engineering suppliers. In so doing, the thesis develops into much more than an empirical case study of industrial linkage and becomes a critical analysis of state capital-private capital relations. In particular, it focusses on the shifting boundaries of state ownership in the energy sector of the 'eighties. It considers what are the main processes involved and some of the consequences for those people and places most dependent on mining related jobs for their livelihoods.

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