Magister Artium - MA / For an Island measuring merely 128 square kilometers, and in spite of its remote location in the mid-­South Atlantic, St. Helena “punches way above its weight in history”, earning and occupying a privileged place in British scholarship of its imperial thalassocratic age. However, prior to this period in which the Island was indispensible to British Empire formation, it had passed through the hands of at least two former European naval nations before it was eventually laid claim to and effectively colonised by the British. The Portuguese, who were the first to stumble upon the uninhabited Island in 1502 -­ naming it St. Helena in honour of Roman Emperor Constantine the Great’s mother -­ managed to keep its existence a closely guarded secret for over eight years. For nearly a century, the Island was reserved for exclusive use by the Portuguese as a port for recuperation, replenishing and re-­provisioning, which they usually visited on their homebound journey from trading (and conquering) in the East Indies. This Portuguese monopoly of use of the Island, however, ended during the last decade of the sixteenth century when other maritime nations, particularly Dutch and later English traders, became aware of and started frequenting the Island. The initial overlap period, constituting the first three decades of the seventeenth century when mostly the Dutch and Portuguese shared use of the Island, was cause for occasional hostile encounters between the two nations. Apparently, continued Dutch and English harassment of Portuguese (and Spanish) ships made visiting the Island untenable for the Portuguese who opted to avoid St. Helena and instead make use of a number of their other port ‘possessions’ along the West African coastline to replenish and repair their ships.

From Britain¡¦s point of view, the problems of security and defense in India subcontinent were far greater than those of the maintenance of law and order and imperial rule in the subcontinent itself. For Indian subcontinent, it was the pivot of British power in all of Asia. Furthermore, British possessed the maritime supremacy, the main threat came from the land, especially form the Northwest frontier. British strategy for the defense of India¡¦s land frontiers was based on the following three points: (1) to maintain firm military strength in the most vulnerable parts of the frontier, i.e., the Northwest frontier and Baluchistan, and to keep the tribes of this area pacified or under their control by ¡§divide and rule¡¨ tactics, for the purpose of consolidating integrity of the Northwest frontier and the security of India subcontinent; (2) to encourage the establishment of a string of buffer states all along the perimeter of the subcontinent and to maintain influence or friendly relations with them; and (3) to prevent any contiguous territory and states form coming under the control of a strong power, notably Russia, if necessary by forceful means. Although there are many historical and geographic constraints in South Asia defense considerations, the present defense strategy of India has to be designed to meet the new circumstances. Throughout the years of independence the main security concern of India has been defense over both land and sea problems. On land, India has to handle the relationship with Pakistan and protect the Northeast frontier against the threat from China. In the past, the Northwest frontier was an unified area, after the retreat of British power in 1947, the geographical and strategic unity of the India subcontinent was broken. Moreover, India has nearly a coastline of 7,000 km long, but India doesn¡¦t have the maritime supremacy, so that it should be compelled to deal with potential threat from India ocean.

This thesis examines and contextualises historically significant aspects of the ways in which David Roberts’ lucrative lithographic publication Egypt and Nubia (1846-49) represented the “Orient”. The analysis demonstrates that Roberts used tropes, particularly ruins and dispossessed figures, largely derived from a revised version of British picturesque landscape art, in order to depict Egypt as a developmentally poor state. By establishing how this imagery was interpreted in the context of the early Victorian British Empire, the thesis offers an elucidation of the connection between British imperial attitudes and the picturesque in Roberts’ work. The contemporary perception of Egypt and Nubia as a definitive representation of the state is argued to relate, not only to the utility of the picturesque as an “accurate” descriptive mode, despite its highly mediated nature, but also to the ways in which Britain responded to shifting political relationships with Egypt and the Ottoman Empire between 1830 and 1869. This political element of the research also suggests a more problematised reading of Robert’s work in relation to constructs of British imperialism and Edward Said’s theory of ‘Orientalism’, than has been provided by previous art historical accounts. A significant and innovative feature of the research is its focus on extensive analysis of textual descriptions of Egypt in early Victorian Britain and contemporary imperial historiography in relation to characteristics displayed in Roberts’ art. This offers a basis for a more specific, contextual understanding of Roberts’ work, as well as historically repositioning nineteenth-century British picturesque art practice and the visual culture of the early Victorian British Empire.

“Red coats and wild birds: military culture and ornithology across the nineteenth-century British Empire” investigates the intersections between British military culture and the practices and ideas of ornithology, with a particular focus on the British Mediterranean. Considering that British officers often occupied several imperial sites over the course of their military careers, to what extent did their movements shape their ornithological knowledge and identities at “home” and abroad? How did British military naturalists perceive different local cultures (with different attitudes to hunting, birds, field science, etc.) and different local natures (different sets of birds and environments)? How can trans-imperial careers be written using not only textual sources (for example, biographies and personal correspondence) but also traces of material culture? In answering these questions, I centre my work on the Mediterranean region as a “colonial sea” in the production of hybrid identities and cultural practices, and the mingling of people, ideas, commodities, and migratory birds. I focus on the life geographies of four military officers: Thomas Wright Blakiston, Andrew Leith Adams, L. Howard Lloyd Irby, and Philip Savile Grey Reid. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Mediterranean region emerged as a crucial site for the security of the British “empire route” to India and South Asia, especially with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Military stations served as trans-imperial sites, connecting Britain to India through the flow of military manpower, commodities, information, and bodily experiences across the empire. By using a “critical historical geopolitics of empire” to examine the material remnants of the “avian imperial archive,” I demonstrate how the practices and performances of British military field ornithology helped to: materialize the British Mediterranean as a moral “semi-tropical” place for the physical and cultural acclimatization of British officers en route to and from India; reinforce imperial presence in the region; and make “visible in new ways” the connectivity of North Africa to Europe through the geographical distribution of birds. I also highlight the ways in which the production of ornithological knowledge by army officers was entwined with forms of temperate martial masculinity. / Thesis (Ph.D, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-02 09:17:17.931

Despite the ubiquity of the First World War as a key moment in the development of New Zealand’s national identity in scholarship and public memory, key aspects remain under explored. This thesis addresses a particularly noticeable gap – the operation and contents of New Zealand’s official First World War propaganda campaign. Through this focus, this thesis particularly explores how such propaganda reflected New Zealand’s place within, and engagement with, the concept of the ‘British world’. Propaganda is an ideal window into the workings of the British world during the war, illustrating both the operation of the practical connections, and the ideological reflections of national, imperial, and ‘British’ identities in the British world. Therefore, New Zealand and Britain’s First World War propaganda demonstrates the nature of the British world, particularly through exploration of the ways that New Zealand’s official campaign connected to and interacted with Britain’s official wartime propaganda campaign. Specifically, the thesis argues that a gap existed between the rhetorical ‘British world’, as constructed in the content of New Zealand’s wartime propaganda, and the practical realities of how the British world operated and interacted during the war. While New Zealand was comfortable rhetorically identifying itself as ‘British’ and part of the British world, practical limitations of communication and interaction with Britain often inhibited this theoretical community. The concept of ‘Dominion perspective’ is crucial to this interpretation. New Zealand’s Dominion status was central to the operation of propaganda in and between New Zealand and Britain during the war, and to New Zealand’s identification of itself within its propaganda. This interpretation reflects a wider view of New Zealand’s experience of the British world. Though concepts of Dominion status and the British world were centrally important to New Zealand during the war, they were not unproblematic. These concepts were frequently reshaped both theoretically and practically. The First World War was crucial to this development, as the closer interaction and cooperation within the British world it demanded, laid bare both the practical shortcomings of the British world, and the contested nature of concepts of Dominion status and the British world itself. The operation of official wartime propaganda in the British world reflects this wider process, and its significance to New Zealand.

The history of colonialism is generally associated with the authoritarian regimes of the sixteenth century that expanded their reign for the purpose of material aggrandizement. Problems arise, however, when colonial regimes espouse explicit concern for the welfare of the subject population. Through a reading of British colonial discourse on India, as represented by the Economist newspaper, John Stuart Mill, George Campbell, and John William Kaye, I argue that market capitalism was seen as the means by which ‘backward’ Indian subjects would be ‘improved.’ But this ‘civilizing mission’ exposed Indian society to unprecedented violence as the British sought to enforce its conformity to a system of proprietorship and commercial production. To explain the paradox inherent to liberal colonialism I will employ the concept of biopolitics as developed by Michel Foucault. Biopolitics explains how the prioritization of ‘life’ leads, not to peaceful existence, but to efforts to eliminate elements of human activity deemed inimical to the reproduction of the species. In colonial India this took the form of adjudicating subjects’ ability to adapt to, and create, the circumstances for industry to flourish, showing that at its core, British rule in India represented an assault on the indeterminacy of life itself.

This essay explored the possibilities of Nineteen Eighty-Four being read as a critique of British colonialism in Kenya. The questions I have tried to answer are: What are the significant aspects found in Nineteen Eighty-Four that correlate to postcolonial literature? What are the significant parallels drawn between Orwell’s Airstrip One and the British colonial state in Kenya? In regards to similarities between Oceania and colonial Kenya, do they shed a new light on Nineteen Eighty-Four in terms of themes? I have tried to answer these questions by using the theory of postcolonialism, and reference literature from colonial Kenya. This ultimately led to many similarities made apparent between Nineteen Eighty-Four and colonial Kenya.

This thesis has used public and private archives, as well as newly discovered private papers, to provide new interpretations and new analytical insights regarding the early history of a British investment in Persia. This has given rise to broad questions regarding the interaction of economic and political power within the British empire and the interaction of foreign economic forces with domestic political forces in Persia. Within those overarching themes, the role of intermediation, the Anglo-Russian rivalry over Persia, British naval developments, differing legal cultures and Persian political developments have been examined in detail. Investigating the extent of official British intervention in the venture's affairs and the effects of the Persian Constitutional Revolution, in particular, have advanced the current understanding of the company's early history. In-depth archival research has thus allowed this thesis to demonstrate the shortcomings of the existing literature and provide the most complete account of the Persian oil venture's early developments to date.

Generations of historians have looked to Bengal, Bombay, and Madras to detect the emergence of the legal and administrative mechanisms that would underpin Britain’s nineteenth-century empire. Yet this focus on ‘British’ India overshadows the very different history of nearly half the Indian subcontinent, which was still ruled by nominally independent monarchs. This dissertation traces the increasingly asymmetrical relationships between the East India Company and neighbouring Indian kingdoms during a period of intensive British imperial expansion, from 1798 to 1818. In so doing, it sheds fresh light on the contested process through which the Company consolidated its political predominance over rival Indian powers, setting a precedent for indirect rule that would inform British policy in Southeast Asia and Africa for years to come. The relationship between the Company and Indian governments was mediated through the figure of the Resident, the Company’s political representative at Indian courts, and the Residents therefore lie at the heart of this dissertation. Given their geographical distance from British administrative centres and their immersion in Indian political culture, the Residents’ experiences can be used to chart the growing pains of an expanding, modernizing empire, and to elucidate the dynamics of cross-cultural interaction and exchange. Based on the letters and papers of the dozen Residents stationed at major Indian courts, this dissertation shows how practical and ideological divisions within the Company regarding the appropriate forms of imperial influence were exacerbated by mutual suspicions resulting from geographical distance and the blurring of personal and public interests in the diplomatic line. This process was further complicated and constrained by the Residents’ reliance on the social and cultural capital of Indian elites and administrators with interests of their own. The Company’s consolidation of political influence at Indian courts was fraught with problems, and the five thematic chapters reflect recurring points of conflict which thread their way through these formative years. These include: the fragility of information networks and the proliferation of rumours; questions about the use of force and the applicability of the law of nations outside Europe; controversies surrounding political pageantry and conspicuous consumption; ambivalent relationships between Residents and their Indian state secretaries; and the Residents’ embroilment in royal family feuds. Ultimately, this dissertation concludes that the imposition of imperial authority at Indian courts was far from smooth, consisting instead of a messy and protracted series of practical experiments based on many competing visions of the ideal forms of influence to be employed in India.

The colonization of British East Florida in 1763 did not occur in a vacuum. Colonizers formulated different settlement plans based on their experience in the colonies and the Atlantic world in general. The most obvious differentiation was in their choice of labor. Some men chose to base their settlements on slave labor. Others imported white laborers either as indentured servants or tenant farmers. Historians have looked at this differentiation in labor as an important element in the downfall of the colony, but the key question should be: why did each man choose the labor and settlement scheme he did? The answer to this question goes to the nature of the British Empire and the different ideas that developed in the center and peripheral areas of the imperial system. Based on a close analysis of correspondence, official records and petitions, this study examines four different men who were involved in colonizing early East Florida: Colonial governor James Grant, Atlantic merchant Richard Oswald, former member of parliament Denys Rolle, and Scottish physician Andrew Turnbull. Each man dealt with the problems of colonization in different ways. This study is about how each man dealt with the many different influences regarding colonization and labor.