This thesis examines usurpation in the Seleukid empire between the third and second centuries BCE. Since the title ‘usurper’ was attributed by ancient authors to defeated opponents of the Seleukid king, this study is essentially a study of constructed historical narratives. If usurpers are placed in their historical context, however, the histories of their claims to the diadem can be reconstructed. By analysing the literary and documentary evidence, chapters 2 and 3 assess the interaction between kings, usurpers and the groups within the kingdom (such as cities, dynasts and the army). More precisely, an investigation of usurpers’ strategies and the royal images they employed in their interactions with the groups within the kingdom is undertaken, and, wherever possible, the groups’ perception of and reaction to usurpers is examined. By focussing on usurpation, conclusions regarding the possibilities and limits of monarchic rule in the Seleukid kingdom, the kingship of the Seleukid rulers and the structure of the Seleukid empire can be drawn. This study argues that the Seleukid kings were in constant competition with other internal power holders, illustrating the precarious position of the Seleukid kings to sustain the monopoly of power in the empire. The dynamics between the Seleukid king and different power holders within the kingdom are demonstrated in chapter 4 in two case-studies on the Attalids of Pergamon and the Baktrian kings. Chapter 5 reviews the possibilities of usurping the diadem as well as Seleukid reaction to usurpers. The concluding section fundamentally challenges scholarship’s reassessments of the ‘strength’ of Seleukid kingdom. It is argued that it was a kingThis thesis examines usurpation in the Seleukid empire between the third and second centuries BCE. Since the title ‘usurper’ was attributed by ancient authors to defeated opponents of the Seleukid king, this study is essentially a study of constructed historical narratives. If usurpers are placed in their historical context, however, the histories of their claims to the diadem can be reconstructed. By analysing the literary and documentary evidence, chapters 2 and 3 assess the interaction between kings, usurpers and the groups within the kingdom (such as cities, dynasts and the army). More precisely, an investigation of usurpers’ strategies and the royal images they employed in their interactions with the groups within the kingdom is undertaken, and, wherever possible, the groups’ perception of and reaction to usurpers is examined. By focussing on usurpation, conclusions regarding the possibilities and limits of monarchic rule in the Seleukid kingdom, the kingship of the Seleukid rulers and the structure of the Seleukid empire can be drawn. This study argues that the Seleukid kings were in constant competition with other internal power holders, illustrating the precarious position of the Seleukid kings to sustain the monopoly of power in the empire. The dynamics between the Seleukid king and different power holders within the kingdom are demonstrated in chapter 4 in two case-studies on the Attalids of Pergamon and the Baktrian kings. Chapter 5 reviews the possibilities of usurping the diadem as well as Seleukid reaction to usurpers. The concluding section fundamentally challenges scholarship’s reassessments of the ‘strength’ of Seleukid kingdom. It is argued that it was a kingship without a strong dynasty and supporting aristocracy which formed the basis of a weak empire.ship without a strong dynasty and supporting aristocracy which formed the basis of a weak empire.

This study covers a period of a quarter of a century of Hungarian history, focusing on questions that affected the country's World War Two participation. It invokes the aid of value forming principles in order to reach conclusions. Its guiding principles relate to political theory affecting international relations.

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The dissertation is a comparative study of the government counter terrorism policies of the liberal democratic nations of Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It includes reference to the threat of terrorism as a modem phenomenon beginning in the period of the 1960s decade. While discussion centres on policies of response, attention is also given to policy measures which have developed as an outcome of those policies. The dissertation is comprised of five chapters. Chapter one is devoted to terrorism as a threat to national and international security and stability. The context describes problems associated with definition of terrorism, motivational aspects, the aims and strategies of terrorists, group infrastructure, and factors and implications of current and future importance. Chapter two is concerned with an examination of general policies of response adopted by the three subject nations. Discussion relates to characteristics of policy, the philosophy of the use of force, policy development, fundamental policies, and the translation of those policies into direct (active) and indirect (passive) measures. Chapter three provides a description of the decision-making and crisis-management machinery peculiar to Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom in regard to counter terrorism activity. Chapter four reviews a range of resources and capabilities available to those nations for response to the threat of terrorism. Specifically included are factors of policy, experience, infrastructure, law enforcement agencies, the armed forces, legislation, and the role of the media. Chapter five summarizes general comments on strengths and weaknesses of the policies and policy measures presented in the preceding chapters. Many of the salient points are contained in the observations put forward in chapter five, but some judgements must necessarily be left to a reading of individual chapters. In conjunction, chapter two includes a brief commentary on the Cycle of Activity involving the threat of terrorism and the mechanics of governmental reaction to that threat. Acting upon the Cycle is a spectrum of other factors,' termed the Envelope of Influences, which has. a significant effect upon all the components. The Envelope is a combination of such influences as environment, history, culture, precedent, ideas, pressure groups, et al, which must be taken into consideration when assessing policy and policy measures. Judgements of policy and policy measures (taking into account the Envelope) were based upon four principal aspects of governmental performance; 1. Perceptiveness; 2. Capacity to Adapt to New Challenges; 3- Practicality; and, 4* Adherence to Legal, Democratic, and Moral Principles. The context of chapter five, as well as that of chapters two, three, and four, reflects that approach.

This study examines women's employment in Iran between 1979-1997, analysing the changing position of the Islamic state in reaction to economic circumstances and women's responses. In making this assessment the interaction between economic circumstances, the institutionalisation of gender inequality and also the responses of women are examined. This study demonstrates that economic forces and women's struggle for change undermined the Islamic state's gender relations. The Islamisation of state and society which followed the 1979 revolution involved an attempt by the Islamic state to seclude women within the home in accordance with the state's gender and employment policy and practices. The power of the state to transform gender relations, however, was constrained by the Iran - Iraq war, as the survival of many families depended on women's earnings. The end of the war with Iraq and the return of men to the workforce did not result in women's return to the home. Economic reconstruction and inflation increased women's participation in the workforce. This study demonstrates that in 1997, women's participation in the labour force, despite a rigid sexual division of labour imposed ideologically by the Islamic state is no less than it was in pre-1979. However, the state continued to strengthen patriarchal relationships within the home, employment and wider society, thus maintaining that women's participation in the workforce is by nature temporary and that ultimately a woman's place is in the home. Women of different classes and with different levels of religiosity responded to the economic circumstances and the state's gender ideology. Their participation in the political movements and their active role in the economy has raised gender consciousness. The result is an alliance between religious and secular women in urban areas who have demanded reforms and forced the Islamic state to return to the position of the reforms of pre-1979 in relation to women and the family, and women's education and employment.

In late imperial China the forensic examination of dead bodies in homicide cases was a sophisticated field of technical practice which developed through the collaboration of coroners, legal specialists, and literati-officials. After the fall of the Qing empire (1644-1911), successive governments of the Republican period (1912-1949) adopted the late imperial state's technologies of forensic examination in their attempts to institute a modern court system. This dissertation investigates the process through which modern police, coroners, legal officials, laboratory scientists, and urban publics debated, reimagined, and ultimately accepted this long-standing field of technical practice as a foundation for the modern Chinese state and its legal order. The first half of this dissertation examines the forensic practices of the Qing empire and the ways in which they were integrated into Republican statecraft after 1912. Chapters One and Two argue that the late imperial bureaucracy successfully implemented a centralized system of forensic examination that shaped the ways in which coroners and local officials throughout the empire inspected dead bodies, analyzed causes of death, and documented their findings. Relying on the wide distribution of minimal amounts of forensic knowledge and skill, this arrangement made possible high degrees of consistency in examination practices while facilitating central authorities' bureaucratic supervision over local forensic cases. While the "expertise" of individual coroners could become important under certain circumstances, it was not necessary for the legitimation of forensic evidence or knowledge in routine homicide cases. Rather, the bureaucracy expected that officials and coroners would simply follow official procedure, a way of legitimating inquest findings that could be used effectively across local jurisdictions despite uneven levels of forensic knowledge and skill among local officials and coroners. Chapters Three and Four turn to the important role that these forensic practices played in Republican Beijing for the dual projects of administering the city and constructing a modern court system. Through a case study of the forensic work of police, coroners, and judicial officials in the city and around north China, these chapters argue that by adopting the bureaucratized examination practices of the late imperial state, the Republican court system facilitated modern procurators' professional jurisdiction over a crucial area of the administration of justice while facilitating the integration of forensic evidence and judicial investigation. It is in this sense that coroners and their forensic practices came to play a crucial role in the emergence of a modern legal order. The second half of the dissertation explores the ways in which new conceptions and practices of scientific expertise were reconciled with the older, yet still authoritative, practices of late imperial forensics. Chapter Five explores the ways in which a new discourse of professional knowledge and expertise based on conceptual distinctions between "experience" and "theory" led to a complex reconceptualization of the epistemological status of late imperial forensic knowledge. While this new discourse served to legitimate new forms of forensic expertise based on scientific medicine, it also provided coroners and others invested in late imperial forensic practices with possibilities for reimagining older conceptions of knowledge in new, epistemologically authoritative ways. Chapters Six and Seven turn to the ways in which anatomic-pathological dissection and laboratory science were integrated into the forensic investigation of deaths in Republican judicial practice. Chapter Six argues that the implementation of forensic autopsies in Republican Shanghai and, to a lesser extent, Beijing did not in fact challenge judicial officials' and coroners' professional authority over the forensic inspection of dead bodies. Chapter Seven examines the ways in which a new community of medico-legal scientists in 1930s Shanghai and Beijing attempted to extend their forensic expertise from the laboratory into local courtrooms. By tracing the itineraries of the physical evidence examined in the first medico-legal laboratories, this chapter shows that the local coroners who collected the evidence for testing played a crucial role in the establishment of legal medicine in China. Chapter Eight turns to the ways in which coroners themselves made use of modern science to legitimize their own, older forensic practices. By exploring the ways in which legal officials, coroners, and medico-legal scientists made use of popularized science in their attempts to update late imperial forensic practices, this chapter demonstrates that "science" had diverse meanings, could legitimate disparate forms of knowledge and expertise, and could support different professional causes - not simply that of professional legal medicine. Far from passive objects of forensic examination, the dead bodies that populate this dissertation are active agents: they challenged examiners with mysterious wounds, ambiguous anatomy, or the tendency to decay away along with the evidence. As sensational objects of media coverage or simply reminders of the unjustly dead, the cultural and social meanings of corpses influenced the actions of those who examined them, demonstrating in the process the dialogue that science always maintains with culture and society. By foregrounding the ways in which "experts" of all kinds engaged with the material challenges and legal and cultural meanings of the dead body, this study demonstrates the dynamic interrelatedness, or co-production, of experts and objects of expertise, of social power and natural knowledge, and of statecraft and science.

This dissertation studies premodern temple architecture, freestanding sculpted stones, and Tamil language inscriptions patronized by south Indian merchants in south India and China. Between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, Indian Ocean trade was at its apex, connecting populations on European and Asian continents through complex interlocking networks. Southern India's Tamil region, in particular, has been described as the fulcrum of the Indian Ocean circuit; however, knowledge of intra-Asian contact and exchange from this period has been derived mostly from Arabic and Chinese sources, which are abundant in comparison with the subcontinent's dearth of written history. My project redresses this lacuna by investigating the material culture of Tamil merchants, and aims to recover their history through visual evidence, authored by individuals who left few written traces of their voyages across the Indian Ocean. The arguments of my dissertation are based primarily on unpublished and unstudied monuments and inscriptions, weaving together threads from multiple disciplines--art history, literature, epigraphy, and social theory--and from across cultures, the interconnected region of the eastern Indian Ocean and the South China Seas, spanning the Sanskritic, Tamil, Malay, and Sinocentric realms. My dissertation challenges traditional narratives of Indian art history that have long attributed the majority of monumental architecture to royal patrons, focusing instead on the artistic production of cosmopolitan merchants who navigated both elite and non-elite realms of society. I argue that by constructing monuments throughout the Indian Ocean trade circuit, merchants with ties to southern India's Tamil region formulated a coherent group identity in the absence of a central authority. Similar impulses also are visible in merchants' literary production, illustrated through several newly translated panegyric texts, which preface mercantile donations appearing on temple walls in the modern states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. Moreover, my work analyzes the complex processes of translation visible in literary and material culture commissioned by merchants, resulting from inter-regional and intercultural encounters among artisans, patrons, and local communities. Rather than identifying a monolithic source for merchants' artistic innovations, in each chapter I demonstrate the multiple ways in which merchants employed visual codes from different social realms (courtly, mercantile, and agrarian) to create their built environments. In Chapter Four, I provide a detailed reconstruction and historical chronology of a late thirteenth century temple in Quanzhou, coastal Fujian Province, and southeastern China, which both echoes and transforms architectural forms of contemporaneous temples in India's Tamil region. Piecing together over 300 carvings discovered in the region in light of archaeological and art historical evidence, I develop a chronology of the temple's history, and propose that Ming forces destroyed the temple scarcely a century after its creation. In Chapter Three, I interpret stone temples patronized by the largest south Indian merchant association, the Ainnurruvar, as being integral to their self-fashioning in India and abroad. While the temples do not project a merchant identity per se, I show that they employ an artistic vocabulary deeply entrenched in the visual language of the Tamil region. Chapter Two looks at other forms through which merchants created a shared mercantile culture, including literary expressions and freestanding sculptural stones. These texts demonstrate that merchants engaged in both elite and non-elite artistic production. Chapter One analyzes the distribution, content, and context of Tamil merchant sponsored inscriptions within the Indian Ocean circuit, focusing on the modern regions of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh. An appendix offers new translations of important Tamil language mercantile inscriptions discovered throughout south India.

At the heart of this dissertation is a detailed analysis of the Sasun violence of 1893-1894. I used a variety of sources: consular reports (British, American, French, Russian, Italian); missionary material from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM); and Ottoman archival documents. My dissertation examines how different accounts of the violence were disseminated and censored in the years following the violence of 1894. My central argument is that State centralization and the efforts of the Ottoman State to maintain a monopoly of legitimate violence and legitimate narrative must be understood in order to explain both the violence in Sasun and the larger breakdown of communal relations between the inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire. To summarize by way of chapter headings and short descriptions: I first examine two sharply divergent explanations for what happened in the mountains of Sasun in August and September of 1894. The first narrative, maintained by scholars within Ottoman Studies, presents the violence in Sasun as the first major rebellion of Armenian nationalists against the State. The second narrative, held by many scholars in Armenian Studies, has presented the violence as the first major episode of Ottoman State mass violence against its Armenian populace. This difference in interpreting the violence of Sasun as either a massacre or a rebellion can be traced back to 1894. Although these narratives are based on very different primary documents and assumptions, they both analyze the events in Sasun in terms of a broader story of Armenian Nationalism and State opposition to that Nationalism. The scholars of Ottoman Studies who have delved into the question of what happened in Sasun in 1894 have relied primarily on one account, a report by Zeki Paşa, the commander of the Ottoman forces in the area. Scholars within Armenian Studies have used a more diverse set of sources to tell the story (memoirs, foreign consul accounts, and contemporary newspapers). The goal of this dissertation is to trace all of the available narratives of Sasun to their origins and to evaluate all of the evidence together. I conclude the first chapter with a different approach that places more weight on the longue durée history of the Ottoman State’s efforts to centralize its authority by gaining a monopoly of both legitimate force and legitimate narrative. In the second chapter I examine how three technologies (modern firearms, steamboats and telegraphs) were used to centralize Ottoman authority in the East. Through these technologies, the Ottoman State was able to first conquer and then, over the course of decades, entrench State rule in areas that had hitherto been autonomous. This centralization had some unintended effects as the new technologies dramatically changed local relations in Muş and Sasun. The spread of high-powered firearms from Europe, the availability of steam travel on the Black Sea and telegraphs dramatically changed local relations in Muş and Sasun. From the point of view of the inhabitants of Muş and Sasun, this period of centralization or reordering (Tanzimat) represented nothing less than a violent conquest by the State. As the local Emirs that traditionally ruled in plain of Muş were toppled, a new system of Warlord-Bureaucrats (assigned by the Ottoman Central Authority) grew in its place. For many, this new system simply meant that, increasingly, local resources were sent off to build palaces in Istanbul. One of the unintended consequences of these transformations was the creation of new forms of political identity as Armenian peasants from many areas began in Istanbul to identify their homeland as a geographically bounded place known as ‘Armenia.’ In the third chapter, I situate the beginning of the ‘Armenian issue’ as a struggle near Muş between Armenian peasants and their warlord Musa Bey. When peasants from Muş staged a protest against Musa Bey in Istanbul, the local struggle soon gained international attention. To undercut the charges of corruption, Abdülhamid II ordered Musa Bey to Istanbul to stand trial. When Musa Bey was acquitted in a highly irregular three-day trial, a group of young students at the Istanbul Medical School joined together with students from abroad to form the first branch of the Hunchak (Bell), a radical movement for Armenian political liberation. Back in Muş, the struggle between peasants and Warlord-Bureaucrats such as Musa Bey was a major factor in the creation of the Fedayi movement, a collection of Armenian self-defense groups who espoused Armenian political liberation. The combination of international attention, the formation of the Hunchak in Istanbul and the advent of the Fedayi in the Eastern provinces terrified the Ottoman State. Convinced that history was repeating itself, in the manner of the Bulgarian rebellion of 1876, the Ottoman State sanctioned greater repression of any dissent or sign of political organization within the Armenian communities of the East. Certain officials within the Ottoman Government benefited financially from this more authoritarian governance, and used the paranoia of the Ottoman center to enrich themselves. The result of all of this are the massacres in the Sasun mountains where Ottoman soldiers systematically murdered one to two thousand Armenian villagers, and burned their villages, over the course of three weeks in August to September of 1894. In the fourth chapter, I examine how the violence of Sasun was interpreted differently, for example, by the investigations of missionaries and consuls, and by the censorship regime of Abdülhamid II. The main goal here is to show that the Ottoman State relied almost exclusively on a single legitimist report written by Zeki Paşa. Zeki Paşa’s report became the measure of ‘truth’ within the Ottoman State. To retain a monopoly of legitimate narrative, the Ottoman State utilized various forms of censorship – from banning newspapers from abroad, to forbidding any independent discussion of Sasun in the Ottoman Press, and from preventing peasants from the area from travelling, and eventually banning all journalists from abroad. At the same time, news of the massacres spread through word of mouth, and rumors of the Sasun violence increased tensions throughout the Ottoman Empire. When news of the violence finally reached London through missionary networks in mid-November, it ignited a much larger debate about the British Government’s support (now understood by many as complicity) for the autocracy of Sultan Abdülhamid II. In the fifth chapter, I show how, within a year of the violence, two broad stories had coalesced. According to some, it was in Sasun where the Ottoman State first committed an organized massacre against its Armenian populace. According to other accounts, it was in Sasun where Armenian radicals first organized a full-fledged rebellion against the Ottoman State. Although these two stories were often interpreted in a myriad of different ways in Istanbul, London and Boston, the main ideas have been maintained until today in the fields of Ottoman Studies and Armenian Studies.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. / STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The central aims of this study are to analyze the sociological significance of Methodism as an initiator of social thought and action in the area of world peace, and to find what effect the position held by Methodism has had on the changing attitude toward war in the twentieth century. PROCEDURE The method of the dissertation is empirical, with an appeal to rational coherence as the means of interrelating the data. The criteria of social thought and action developed in Chapter One serve as the tool for making a qualitative analysis of the social programs of the churches. Chapter Two briefly traces the historical setting. In Chapter Three attention is given to the role taken by The Methodist Church, while Chapter Four deals with the part that Methodism has played in relation to national and international ecclesiastical organizations involved in the struggle for world peace. Summary The criteria cover six areas: (1) Range of Emotional Tone; (2) Range of Content; (3) Range of Responsibility; (4) Range of Community; (5) Range of Relevance; and (6) Range of Involvement. Each area is developed along a continuum in order to determine the degree of accuracy. In the early 1900's there was a great interest in isolationism and peace sentiment. Both these movements went into hibernation during World War I, only to return in the 1920's. The peace sentiment of the 1920's brought with it a concern with international affairs, which enabled the churches to maintain a universal theme in World War II and to preserve the harmony of the pacifist/non-pacifist camps. Following World War II the American people displayed a new concern for world affairs. The churches served as one of the causes for this change. This interest in world affairs was the by-product of the sect type tendencies found within some of the agencies of the major denominations and of the denominations' attempt to support a universalist religion. The uncompromising appeal to ethical ideals is apparent in such agencies of The Methodist Church as the Commission on World Peace, the Woman's Society of Christian Service and the Methodist Federation for Social Action. The attempt to educate Methodists concerning international affairs is evident in the work of the two Methodist Crusades for World Order and of the Board of Education. This desire to be informed and involved in the decision-making policies is seen in the work of the Department of International Goodwill and Justice of the Federal Council of Churches in America. The World Council of Churches has also sought peace through its attempt to mold world opinion and to express the consensus of its constituents. Conclusions 1. Methodism has been an initiator of social thought and action in world peace: by creating the first Board among the major denominations with the specific purpose of the achievement of world peace; by being the only major denomination to serve on the National Board of Civilian Service; by leading the Crusade for a New World Order to win acceptance for the United Nations; by educating for international understanding in the programs of the Church; and by providing leadership and at times direction to national and international organizations working for peace. 2. There has been a decided shift on the part of the churches in their degree of involvement in war. 3. The emphasis of a universalist religion was maintained throughout World War II and the post-war years. 4. The churches have become deeply involved in the responsibility to move from guiding principles to political propositions and to bring a Christian influence to bear on international events.