To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Modern History ; British History.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Modern History ; British History'
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Modern History ; British History.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse dissertations / theses on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Guest, Elise. "Britannia's Lineage: The Development of British Identity in the Eighteenth Century." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/28640.
Full text
2
Harvey, Adrian Nicholas. "The evolution of modern British sporting culture 1793-1850." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.295786.
Full text
3
Hedges, Paul Michael. "A history and study of fulfilment theology in modern British thought." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683161.
Full text
4
Linstrum, Erik. "Making Minds Modern: The Politics of Psychology in the British Empire, 1898-1970." Thesis, Harvard University, 2012. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:10597.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation describes how innovations in the science of mind -- laboratory measurements, psychoanalysis, and mental testing -- changed the ideas and institutions of British imperialism. Psychology did not function as a tool of empire in any straightforward way: in many cases, the knowledge it generated called racial stereotypes into question, uncovered the traumatic effects of British rule, and drew unflattering contrasts between the hierarchical values of imperialism and an idealized vision of meritocracy. Psychology did, however, strengthen the authority of Western experts to intervene in other cultures. While they kept their distance from the political culture of officials and settlers, psychologists embraced a modernizing mission, arguing that knowledge of abilities and emotions could make colonized societies fairer and more efficient. The development projects which defined the postwar and postcolonial periods -- usually seen as the golden age of abstract, impersonal, "high modernist" planning -- relied in significant ways on the measurement and management of minds.History
5
Calderwood, Paul. "Freemasonry and the press in twentieth century Britain." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2010. http://research.gold.ac.uk/6394/.
Full textAbstract:
The following pages contain a study of the British media coverage of freemasonry in the twentieth century. They consider how and why the public image of freemasonry changed from that of a highly-respected elite organisation, at the centre of public life in 1900, to a position on the fringes, regarded by many with suspicion and disapproval in the 1990s. They focus on national newspapers only. This thesis describes how the press projected a positive message of the organisation for almost 40 years, based on a mass of news, which I believe - and show - emanated from the organisation itself (making it an unexpected pioneer in modern public relations practice). It concludes that the change of image and public regards which occurred during the twentieth century was due, mainly, to Masonic withdrawal from the public sphere. It considers - and finds wanting - the suggestion that this withdrawal was a response to Fascist persecution and it offers a number of additional explanations. Freemasonry's reluctance to engage with the media after 1939 powerfully assisted its critics, who grew in strength as a result of developments within the media and the churches. Within the media, greater competition spawned a more challenging form of journalism and accelerated the decline of deference. The rise of secularism and religious pluralism in Britain provided Christianity with increases competition and led some adherents to re-define freemasonry and treat it as a rival. "Conspiracy culture" remained strong throughout the period, rendering the secrecy of freemasonry a major handicap to public understanding. The history of freemasonry in twentieth century Britain is largely an unexplored field and, in examining the fraternity's media profile, this study also illuminates the organisation's collisions with nationalism, communism, and state welfare provision.
6
Berdine, Michael Denis. "The accidental tourist, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Islamic reform and the British invasion of Egypt in 1882." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/289705.
Full textAbstract:
The British invasion and occupation of Egypt in 1882 has long been a subject of interest for British Empire and Middle Eastern historians. This action by the Gladstone government is considered central to any discussion of the British in the Middle East and North Africa. As a result, its causes and major personalities have been examined in detail and discussed at length. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840-1922), however, has generally been overlooked, ignored, or dismissed as inconsequential by historians of these events. While words like "naive," "gadfly," "romantic" and other less charitable terms have been used by historians and others to characterize him, it is the contention of this paper that Blunt's attempts to mediate the crisis did have an impact on the course of events. Moreover, recent research, in particular that of Alexander Scholch in his Egypt for the Egyptians! The Socio-Political Crisis in Egypt 1878-82 , has shown that Blunt's The Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt: Being a Personal Narrative of Events is a generally reliable and accurate resource concerning what took place in Cairo and London in 1882. Furthermore, Blunt was the victim of a government coverup aided and abetted by a jingoist London press at the time. Thus, his cause was considered treasonous in some quarters and his integrity questioned. The subsequent publication of the memoirs of others involved in the events supported the government's story (and their own involvement) only added to the negative perception of Blunt. As a result, his attempts to bring about a peaceful resolution of the Egyptian crisis in 1882 have generally been ignored by historians and Blunt considered to be of little consequence in the outcome of the entire episode. This paper will show that this attitude towards Blunt is unwarranted and unjustified. Furthermore, his attempts to mediate the crisis were a factor in the British invasion and occupation of Egypt. Finally, it will show that omission of Blunt and his activities, as well as his Secret History as a source, in any discussion of the British invasion and occupation of Egypt in 1882 makes that work incomplete.
7
Strachey, Antonia. "The Princely States v British India : fiscal history, public policy and development in modern India." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4bceba59-198a-4be8-b405-b9448fd70126.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation examines how direct versus indirect rule shaped late colonial India through government finance. Fiscal policy has hitherto been overlooked in the literature on Indian economic history. This thesis considers how revenues were raised and spent in the Princely States compared with British India, and the welfare outcomes associated with these fiscal decisions. Part One examines the fiscal framework through the neglected public accounts. The key finding is that while the systems of taxation were broadly similar in both types of administration, patterns of public expenditure were dramatically different. The large Princely States spent more public revenue on social expenditure. This was made possible by lower proportionate expenditure on security and defence. Part one charts these trends empirically and unearths political and institutional reasons for the differences in fiscal policy between directly and indirectly ruled India. Part Two examines welfare. The study goes beyond previous anthropometric scholarship by assessing the impact of institutions and policies on biological living standards, deploying a new database of adult male heights in South India. Puzzlingly, heights were slightly lower in the Princely States, traditionally lauded for being more responsive to the needs of their populations, especially those of low status. The resolution to the conundrum is found in poorer initial conditions, and caste dynamics. Higher social expenditure and reduced height inequality occurred simultaneously in the States from the 1910s, suggesting policies directed at low status groups within the Princely States may have been successful. I also examine the consequences of Britain's policy of constructing an extensive rail network across the country. Importantly, the impact of railways differed by caste. Railways were good for High Caste groups, and bad for low status Dalit and Tribal groups. This suggests that railways served to reinforce the existing caste distinctions in access to resources and net nutrition.
8
Al-Mousawi, Hussa. "A history of Omani-British relations, with special reference to the period 1888-1920." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1990. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4350/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis has concentrated on one period of the historical relations which began over three centuries ago. Great Britain, or rather Englan~ during the 1620s when the Portuguese were still the lords of Muscat, was trying to explore the eastern coast of Oman. They made friends in the Masseera Island, but their relationship with the Portuguese was not a friendly one. They were welcome, indeed, by the local powers as rivals to the Portuguese in India and in Persia as well as in Oman. But despite the generosity of their help, they tried to strike a balance between the ambitions of the local powers and those of the Europeans. The English, for example, were reluctant to assist the Persian projects in Muscat against the Portuguese. In fact, if the Portuguese were expelled from there by the Persians, then it would be too difficult for the Omanis to occupy it. At the same time they offered evacuation for the wounded and the surrendered Portuguese garrison with their women and children. The English observed that, after all the people of South Persia and of Hunnuz, Arabs or Persians alike, revolted. against Shah Abbas and wanted. the Portuguese back, having discovered. them to be the lesser evil. English interest in Oman and the Persian Gulf during the seventeenth century seems to have been purely commercial. For example, during the sixteen thirties and forties stable relations with the Portuguese were maintained., partly no doubt a reflection of the marriage between their two royal families, but also because the English saw commercial value in establishing good relations with both the Omanis and the Portuguese. After the expulsion of the Portuguese, the English witnessed the establishment of the first known Omani sovereign in the modem world, and the establishment of an Omani Afro-Asian Empire. They established good relations with the Ya,aarribeh family; but for some reason they were reluctant to establish themselves in Muscat. Probably the Dutch were seen to be in a better position while the English were ~stracted. by civil war. But during the first half of the eighteenth century English policy seems to have changed, probably due to the struggle between various local and European powers which took the form of piratical activities on the seas, in which the Omani Ya,aaribeh took part. By the second half of the eighteenth century the English had witnessed the downfall of the Ya,aaribeh and Greater Oman, and the establishment of another dynasty in the interior of Oman under Albu Sa,eed with the Omani Coast in the Gulf ruled by EI-Qawaasem, highlighting the division of Oman. The English found it in their interest to support Ahmed bin Sa,eed in East Africa, against El-Mazaree,a, and to keep East Africa under the Yal-bu-Sa,eed rule. They found a mutual interest in challenging the Qawaasem of Rasel-khaymeh in the Gulf, and their allies the EI-Wahabyeen in Arabia., during the first half of the nineteenth century.
9
McMurtry, Charlotte. "Witchcraft and Discourses of Identity and Alterity in Early Modern England, c. 1680-1760." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/40915.
Full textAbstract:
Witchcraft beliefs were a vital element of the social, religious, and political landscapes of England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. English society, buffeted by ongoing processes of social, economic, and religious change, was increasingly polarized along material, ideological, and intellectual lines, exacerbated by rising poverty and inequality, political factionalism, religious dissension, and the emergence of Enlightenment philosophical reasoning. The embeddedness of witchcraft and demonism in early modern English cosmologies and quotidian social relations meant that religious and existential anxieties, interpersonal disputes, and threats to local order, settled by customary self-regulatory methods at the local level or prosecuted in court, were often encompassed within the familiar language and popular discourses of witchcraft, social order, and difference. Using trial pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, and intellectual texts, this thesis examines the imbrications of these discourses and their collectively- determined meanings within the increasingly rationalized legal contexts and widening world of Augustan England, demonstrating the often deeply encoded ways in which early modern English men and women made sense of their own experiences and constituted and re-constituted their identities and affinities.
Disorderly by nature, an inversion of natural, religious, and social norms, witchcraft in the Christian intellectual tradition simultaneously threatened and preserved order. Just as light could not exist without dark, or good without evil, there could be no fixed state of order: its existence was determined, in part, by its antithesis. Such diacritical oppositions extended beyond the metaphysical and are legible in contemporary notions of social difference, including attitudes about the common and poorer sorts of people, patriarchal gender and sexual roles, and nascent racial ideologies. These attitudes, roles, and ideologies drew sharp distinctions between normative and transgressive appearances, behaviours, and beliefs. This thesis argues that they provided a blueprint for the discursive construction of identity categories, defined in part by alterity, and that intelligible in witchcraft discourses are these fears of and reactions to disruptive and disorderly difference, otherness, and deviance—reactions which could themselves become deeply disruptive. In exploring the intersections of poverty, gender, sexuality, and race within collective understandings of witchcraft in Augustan England, this thesis aims to contribute to our understandings of the complex and dynamic ways in which English men and women perceived themselves, their communities, and the world around them.
10
Irving, Sonja. "A comparative study of the perceptions of Austria-Hungary and Serbia in British newspapers during the July crisis of 1914." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/27592.
Full textAbstract:
This paper adopts a political and class-based approach to examine three different British newspapers, The Times of London, The Manchester Guardian, and The Daily Herald in terms of their treatment of Austria-Hungary and Serbia in the month prior to the First World War. It questions how a newspaper's particular bias affects the way it discusses a topic, disseminates news, and relates with its audience. It examines the influence a newspaper has on shaping public opinion concerning friendly and enemy nations in the lead up to a war. At the same time this paper also examines how a newspaper's class and political background determines the level of support the paper demonstrates for war or for pacifism.
11
Hilton, Austin W. B. "King Fred: How the British King Who Never Was Shaped the Modern Monarchy." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2016. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3064.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the British monarchy in the eighteenth century and how the philosophy of Frederick, Prince of Wales, helped to shape that monarchy. The early Hanoverians were seen with contempt by many of their subjects, often being ridiculed as ignorant outsiders. They helped matters none by their indifference to Britain, its people, or its culture. Prince Frederick, George II’s eldest son, however, changed all of this. His philosophy on kingship, influenced by Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke’s work, The Patriot King, helped to change the perception of the Hanoverian dynasty. When Prince Frederick died in 1751 before he could take the throne, it was left up to his son, Prince George, to carry out Frederick’s vision. As George III, he fulfilled the philosophy and became the embodiment of the patriot king. This resulted in a surge in popularity for the Hanoverians, solidifying their place on the British throne.
12
Mullen, Stephen Scott. "The Glasgow West India interest : integration, collaboration and exploitation in the British Atlantic World, 1776-1846." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6409/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis aims to illuminate the economic and social world of the Glasgow-West India merchants, planters and the temporary economic migrants who travelled across the Atlantic during the period, 1776-1846. The city of Glasgow and her satellite ports was the premier Scottish transatlantic hub with connections across the British Atlantic world. This thesis has focused on the period after the American War of Independence ended the city of Glasgow’s tobacco monopoly. Thus, the rise to prominence of the city’s West India elite is assessed as well as the social, political, financial and commercial networks that underpinned their rise. This thesis offers new insights on religious affiliations of the merchants of Glasgow and traces the exportation of Presbyterianism to Jamaica in 1814. This thesis has implications for other aspects of the incipient Scottish-Atlantic historiography. In particular it contributes to T.M. Devine’s recent view that Caribbean slavery made Scotia great. However, this thesis is deliberately placed into a British-Atlantic context. Although this research demonstrates how a distinctly Caledonian operation promoted the flow of capital to Scotland, the ‘Glasgow West India interest’ themselves were part of a wider international network which in turn dictates the scope of this thesis and the historiography with which it engages. Specifically, this body of research traces direct investments of capital by West India merchants into Scottish industry and land, thus providing qualified support for Eric Williams’ main thesis in Capitalism and Slavery. However, this work goes significantly beyond the work of Williams to trace the connections between commerce and banking institutions in Scotland and the plantations of the West Indies. This thesis has examined in some detail the political activities of the Glasgow West India Association from inception in 1807 up to 1834. The Association’s sophisticated operations at a national and regional level supported the exploitative activities of the Glasgow-West India elite. Indeed, this research demonstrates that the members of the Association collected the bulk of the compensation awarded to individuals resident in Glasgow on the emancipation of slavery in 1834. This thesis has adopted a transatlantic approach that connects Scotland and the West Indies. In particular, these connections are illuminated through the prism of the careers of the young Scotsmen who sojourned to Jamaica and Grenada in particular. This thesis suggests there were increasing levels of emigration to the West Indies in this period and the skilled and educated young men sought economic opportunities not available at home. By examining wealth repatriation in life and post-mortem property transmission strategies, this thesis offers a revision on the view that such young men struggled to repatriate colonial profits. This has implications for the work of Alan Karras and others. The transatlantic approach is developed in case study examinations of Glasgow-West India merchant houses. This connects Scottish banks, commerce and industry with the British Parliament and the planters of the West Indies. The world of Scottish planters, merchants and sojourners is now becoming increasingly well known. The life, wealth and legacy of the Glasgow West India elite traced here provide innovative insights into their living conditions and material culture. It is further argued that a West India career could propel even those of modest means into the British super-wealthy. Finally, this thesis recognises the contribution of enslaved peoples to the economic development of Scotland which will hopefully stimulate further research in a Scottish-Atlantic context.
13
Mahaffey, Corinne Lydia. "The fighting profession : the professionalization of the British Line Infantry Officer Corps, 1870-1902." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2558/.
Full textAbstract:
The following thesis is an examination of the professionalization of the British line infantry officer corps from 1870 to 1902. Beginning with a discussion of the extant theories of professionalization, it then looks at civil military relations and its relationship to the international situation in general. The deployment of the line infantry at home and abroad is then analysed. Finally, the organisational changes made to produce professional structures for education, remuneration and promotion are discussed.
14
Miller, Ian Robert. "A modern history of the stomach : gastric illness, medicine and British society c.1800-1950." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.505517.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis will detail a brief overview of the modern history of the stomach, analysing not only the responses of the medical community to its various conditions but also the wider socio-cultural aspects of the organ's illnesses in Britain throughout the broad period 1800-1950. In doing so, I also aim to address issues relevant to peptic ulcer epidemiology, adding complexity to existing models of the 'rise and fall' of the disease during the nineteenth and early-twentieth century. The thesis begins by revealing why and how the Victorians became obsessed with matters of digestion and the manner by which the maintenance of the health of the stomach became conceptualised as holding the potential to ensure overall bodily health. I shall investigate the numerous advice manuals on the topic intended to be read by physicians, surgeons and the general public, all of which, I shall suggest, prioritised the stomach as the most important of all of the major bodily organs amidst an increasing emphasis in the medical literature upon concepts of nervousness. By doing so, I aim to explore relationships perceived as existing between the stomach, the individual and industrial, civilised British society during the nineteenth-century. I shall then contrast these representations of the stomach with those provided by emergent forms of reductionist medicine. I shall assess the centrality of the stomach within laboratory medicine, assessing the role of ethically problematic experiments undertaken on dogs and monkeys, including sham-feeding and the production of stomach ulcers via acid injections in monkeys. I then relate this to the technologies that emerged and the transference of these onto the human, a process which I suggest accumulated in the use of the stomach tube to force-feed imprisoned Suffragette campaigners during the early decades of the twentieth century. Contemporaneously, abdominal surgery also offered highly reductionist models of the stomach's bodily role, which deprioritised its importance to the maintenance of general health. Notably, turn-of-the-century surgeons regularly attempted to remove the organ in the belief that the human could live healthily completely stomachless. Yet, I argue that they also partitioned the organ by providing more precise definitions of its medical conditions in any given part of the organ, forming a sharp contrast to the arguably more vague interpretations of the organ previously on offer. This allowed for diagnostic shifts that encouraged the recognition of problems such as duodenal ulcer. The thesis concludes by analysing the phenomena of 'air-raid ulcers' and 'dyspeptic soldiers' during the Second World War, a period when alarming numbers of British people, both in military and civilian settings, began to suffer from crippling gastric complaints. In doing so, I aim to assess the revival of patient-orientated concepts that characterised nineteenth-century constructions of gastric illness, although stressing that what was now emphasised was the role of the psychosomatic rather than somatopsychic.
15
Floe, Hilary Tyndall. "The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1965-1982) : exhibitions, spectatorship and social change." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8ecada55-921a-4e6f-a279-92fd2313d459.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the first seventeen years of the history of the Museum of Modern Art Oxford (MOMA), from its founding in 1965 until c. 1982. It is concerned with the changing relationships between the museum and its audience, focusing on those aspects of the museum's programming that shed light on its role as a public mediator of recent art. This provides a means to consider the underlying values and commitments that informed MOMA's emergence as a leading contemporary art institution. Chapter one examines the museum's relationship to utopian countercultures through the metaphor of the museum as 'garden'; chapter two considers the erstwhile 'permanent' collection and its connection to corporate patronage; chapter three investigates the parallel forces of institutional critique and institutionalization; and chapter four addresses didactic strains in the museum's representation of an emergent multiculturalism. Although dedicated to the history of a single regional gallery, the thematic structure of the thesis provides entry points into historical and theoretical issues of broader relevance. It is based on primary research in the previously neglected archive of what is now known as Modern Art Oxford, supplemented by interviews with artists and former staff members, and by close attention to British art periodicals and exhibition catalogues of the period. It is also informed by critical writings on museums and displays, and by artistic, social and museological histories, allowing the museum's activities to be situated within the cultural politics of these turbulent decades. The thesis suggests that institutional identity - as exemplified by the history of MOMA from 1965-1982 - is porous and discontinuous: the development of the museum over this period is animated by multiple and often contradictory ideals, continuously shaped by pragmatic considerations, and subject to a rich variety of subjective responses.
16
Butler, Stuart. "National prestige and in(ter)dependence : British space research policy, 1959-73." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2017. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/national-prestige-and-interdependence-british-space-research-policy-195973(9e35ac4e-8acd-43e0-b9dd-8e87f7def62b).html.
Full textAbstract:
From 1960-4 the British government embarked on two large-scale space research programmes to develop satellite launchers. After first being cancelled as a military project in 1960, the Blue Streak missile was converted into the first stage of a British-led European collaborative project to build a three stage satellite launcher (through the European Launcher Development Organisation - ELDO). Born out of the Black Knight warhead re-entry testing vehicle, the independent Black Arrow project aimed to launch small satellites for scientific experimentation. With European collaborations, American scientific knowledge, and an Australian testing site, decisions affecting British space research had wide reaching diplomatic as well as domestic consequences. However, by 1973, both of these programmes had been cancelled. By examining the complex formation of British policy on these two space research projects, I will identify the alliances of actors involved focusing on understanding the role of civil servants, and the domestic, economic, and foreign policy priorities which directed their policy-making. This thesis seeks to address two contradictions raised by British policy on space research, and historical analysis of this period. Firstly, if we accept that Britain was not in decline in this period, the how can the history of two projects which is dominated by their cancellation be explained? Secondly, how British governments could reconcile their policy towards ELDO (threatening to withdraw almost yearly from 1966-73) with their stated aim to accede to the European Communities and their repeated rhetoric that the increased potential for scientific and technological collaboration was a key benefit of British accession? In order to address these contradictions I focus on decisions and decision-makers within government. By tracking policy arguments and options to their very beginnings I show throughout this thesis the way in which individuals frame, shape and direct policy. This thesis provides new insights into the foreign and domestic policy priorities of the four governments in this period by tracking the balance of priorities in policy making in two major space research projects. Close examination of ELDO and Black Arrow highlights that their cancellation is not a symbol of British decline, but instead represent active choices by decision-makers to engage in new areas of research. This supports the work of historians challenging the idea that Britain was in decline in this period, and suggests that cancelled projects should be re-examined.
17
Milne-Walasek, Nicholas. "The History/Literature Problem in First World War Studies." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/35162.
Full textAbstract:
In a cultural context, the First World War has come to occupy an unusual existential point half-way between history and art. Modris Eksteins has described it as being “more a matter of art than of history;” Samuel Hynes calls it “a gap in history;” Paul Fussell has exclaimed “Oh what a literary war!” and placed it outside of the bounds of conventional history. The primary artistic mode through which the war continues to be encountered and remembered is that of literature—and yet the war is also a fact of history, an event, a happening. Because of this complex and often confounding mixture of history and literature, the joint roles of historiography and literary scholarship in understanding both the war and the literature it occasioned demand to be acknowledged. Novels, poems, and memoirs may be understood as engagements with and accounts of history as much as they may be understood as literary artifacts; the war and its culture have in turn generated an idiosyncratic poetics.
It has conventionally been argued that the dawn of the war's modern literary scholarship and historiography can be traced back to the late 1960s and early 1970s—a period which the cultural historian Jay Winter has described as the “Vietnam Generation” of scholarship. This period was marked by an emphatic turn away from the records of cultural elites and towards an oral history preserved and delivered by those who fought the war “on the ground,” so to speak. Adrian Gregory has affirmed this period's status as the originating point for the war's modern historiography, while James Campbell similarly has placed the origins of the war's literary scholarship around the same time.
I argue instead that this “turn” to the oral and the subaltern is in fact somewhat overstated, and that the fully recognizable origins of what we would consider a “modern” approach to the war can be found being developed both during the war and in its aftermath. Authors writing on the home front developed an effective language of “war writing” that then inspired the reaction of the “War Books Boom” of 1922-1939, and this boom in turn provided the tropes and concerns that have so animated modern scholarship. Through it all, from 1914 to the current era, there has been a consistent recognition of both the literariness of the war's history and the historiographical quality of its literature; this has helped shape an unbroken line of scholarship—and of literary production—from the war's earliest days to the present day.
18
Parrill, James Scott Jr. "Of an Uneasy Time That All is Not Well| Shifts in Perceptions of British Identity in the Postcolonial Era and the Punk and Postpunk Scenes 1976-1980s." Thesis, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10250017.
Full textAbstract:
The aim of this project is to explore throughout the course of the period between 1976 to 1986 the evolution of punk and postpunk music in Britain, and how patterns of change occurred over time through examining the music and historical events that inspired it through regional, gendered, and political lenses. The project involves the analysis of how musicians were able to transcend the socio-cultural constructs and prejudices of their region, class, or gender through the transformative nature of punk music and its subset, postpunk; both through performativity and the smashing of Britain’s preoccupation with the collective memory of Empire that was more representative of being romanticized than the actual historical reality. The project involves the use of song analysis, album covers, artwork, and videos to dissect how these brazen musical genres allowed marginalized new voices to be heard in postwar Britain as a whole.
19
Stoneman, Robert James. "The reformed British militia, c.1852-1908." Thesis, University of Kent, 2014. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/48735/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis aims to provide a comprehensive investigation of the reformed British militia between its reconstitution in 1852 and its abolition (and replacement by the Special Reserve) in 1908, addressing one of the major remaining gaps in our understanding of the auxiliary forces of this period. The post-1852 militia has generally been overshadowed by its eighteenth and early nineteenth century predecessor, and of the few major works that do examine the force after its reform, most do so as part of broader studies examining it from the point of view of the regular army, or as an epilogue to a much broader study of the militia of the earlier period, or the wider amateur military tradition as a whole. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to provide the first dedicated study of the reformed British militia in recent years. It will move beyond the limited ‘top-down’ approach characteristic of many works examining the wider Victorian army and instead tap into a more recent methodological trend which utilises a range of national and local archival material to examine the nuances of what remained a locally organised force. It will examine not just the role of the militia and the way in which it was organised, but also study the nature and composition of its officer corps, its rank and file, and will investigate areas which have been hitherto largely ignored such as the way discipline was maintained in what remained an amateur force. It will conclude with an examination of the militia’s unprecedented service during the South African War before going onto examine the process by which the militia was ultimately abolished and replaced by the Special Reserve (and ask whether or not this represented a moment of continuity, or an outright break with the past.) This study rejects the idea that during this period the militia largely became ‘an anachronistic auxiliary’ to the regular army. There can be no doubt that it became increasingly centralised under the control of the War Office and that it also provided a vital role as a source of both officers and men for the regular army. Yet by looking at a mix of both national and local archival material, a more nuanced picture emerges. Several units managed to retain a degree of organisational independence and a social distinctiveness from the wider army. Furthermore, many of the reforms which altered the organisation of the force had important benefits. Compared to the 1850s and 1860s, during which the newly reconstituted force was forced to yield to the exigencies of the regular army, the militia of the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s was arguably better trained, better equipped and quantitatively stronger than during the preceding decades.
20
Halbert, Jade. "'Marion Donaldson' and the business of British fashion, 1966-1999." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/8993/.
Full textAbstract:
From its establishment in 1966 until its closure in 1999 the Glaswegian fashion design and manufacturing company, ‘Marion Donaldson’, was one of the most successful independent fashion businesses in the United Kingdom. The longevity enjoyed by the company coincided with a period of intense social, political, and economic upheaval in the United Kingdom, the effects of which contributed to the decline and eventual deterioration of the domestic fashion industry by the end of the century. This thesis takes ‘Marion Donaldson’ as its central case study, and uses the history of the company as a lens through which to investigate how the British fashion industry operated in practice, and how individual businesses in that industry collaborated, adapted to change, and coped with the industry’s decline. Structured around what were the four key sectors of the domestic fashion industry – design, manufacturing, sales, and retailing – this thesis demonstrates the importance of small businesses, collaboration, and balance to the industry as it battled decline. By focusing on a Glasgow example, it adds to the existing scholarship on British fashion and business in the post-war period, and goes some way to offering a corrective to those studies that have focused only on London-centric histories. The history of women’s fashion in the twentieth century has been dominated by metropolitan studies of elite clothing, while the history of mass-produced women’s wear and its associated industries have been overlooked. This thesis redresses the balance in this respect through analysis of evidence from the ‘Marion Donaldson’ Collection and the oral testimony of Marion and David Donaldson, owners of the company. In addition to oral history, the thesis builds on current methodology used in dress and textile history, economic history and the history of business and enterprise culture, and applies it to the wider context of the British fashion industry using a combination of surviving artefacts and traditional documentary sources.
21
Hellström, Filip. "British, medical practitioners’ perspectives on dysentery 1740-1800." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Historiska institutionen, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-423028.
Full textAbstract:
This master thesis aims to show how a qualitative approach to early modern medical practitioners’ perspectives can provide a basis for a better understanding of the disease of dysentery. The focus is on: 1) How the disease of dysentery was described and how the challenge of dysentery was perceived. 2) What individual measure and commitments were taken for the patients and why. 3) How the cause of the disease was understood and explained. 4) How perspectives differed between physicians and surgeons.Of particular interest when it comes to the disease of dysentery is how the disease and its cause were perceived.Eleven texts written by mainly British medical practitioners from primary sources such as reports, logbooks and letters on dysentery written during the years 1740 - 1800 have been used for close readings and a qualitative analysis was performed on the collected data.The analysis showed (i) that medical practitioners expressed considerable interest in dysentery and in trying to understand it as a great suffering for individuals, for society and for humanity as a whole. (ii) Medical practitioners took treatment measures based on how they understood the cause of the disease outbreak. Either the dysentery was referred to internal causes, as sickness in organs, especially the organs that produced bodily fluids, or it was referred to external causes, as a sickness caused by heat, cold, weather, winds, air, climate, seasons, lunar position, etc. (iii) The cause of the disease was understood and explained both as an infection and as a pre-disposition for imbalances in body fluids. (iv) Both physicians and surgeons understood that the disease of dysentery was a global phenomenon and that the disease often was connected to the climate and weather. This standpoint was based on the fact that dysentery distinguished itself as an autumnal disease. Its eruption usually began with a few scattered cases in July, then increased in August and culminated in September. Theories about the disease, its causes and treatment did not differ significantly between physicians and surgeons. However, the views of different physicians did differ.The thematic map of understanding related to disease of dysentery, shows that medical practitioners’ knowledge, theories and ideas behind the medical practice of dysentery, have an ambiguity in the view of both the dysentery and the treatment of it. This was probably due to interpretation based both on observable causes of diseases, and on a more theoretical abstract meaning, where diseases to a greater extent was understood on the basis of symptoms and signs.It is suggested that regardless of the knowledge base of the individual medical practitioner, no one represented an independent knowledge base for their treatment of dysentery; rather they participated actively with each other in a mutually constitutive way in order to shape their understanding of the dysentery. This theses’ qualitative approach, allows dysentery patients and their medical practitioners via the texts of the medical practitioners, to offer very personal accounts of a highly contagious disease.
22
Chartrand, Alix Geneviève. "The evolution of British imperial perceptions in Ireland and India, c. 1650-1800." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2019. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/288788.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation explores the correlation between British colonial experiences in Ireland and India c. 1650 - 1800. While the traditional characterisation of Ireland as a settlement colony and India as primarily a mercantile colony would suggest diverse imperial encounters, a comparative analysis of the two shows significant similarities. Temporal and/or geographical distances notwithstanding, the study's thematic approach reveals recurring patterns regarding the relationships between colonisers and the colonised. The six chapters of this dissertation explore different elements of empire, concluding that comparable socio-political and agrarian principles were consistently implemented in both colonies. The first chapter explores history writing as a tool of historical appropriation and indigenous reconfiguration. The second looks at escalating legal responses to colonial violence and colonial jurisdiction's role in defining social norms; the third considers the evolving forms of punishment dealt to 'deviant' colonial subjects. The fourth chapter looks at similar processes of agrarian reconfiguration that revealed broader imperial attitudes towards landownership and the fifth one elaborates on the use of visual representations of empire as propaganda tools to shape public opinion. In the final chapter, selected experiences of the Irish in India illustrate examples of colonial subjects' collaboration in imperial expansion. By adopting a more heuristic and thematic approach to colonial experiences, this study adds to the growing literature that necessarily complicates the distinctions between metropole and periphery. It challenges the use of single points of reference which have routinely privileged the accounts and experiences of Britons in the scholarly analysis of cross-cultural and imperial interactions. Blending early modern and nineteenth-century experiences with regional and global history, the chapters address the history of emotions, law, material culture, economy, and politics to argue that processes of influence and transformation were indicative of a more layered and evolutionary development in response to colonial challenges. Such experimental approaches provide a more sustained understanding of the processes of continuity and change in Britain's imperial evolution.
23
Brown, Katie Lynn. "“The Bomber Will Always Get Through”: The Evolution of British Air Policy and Doctrine, 1914–1940." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1308260254.
Full text
24
Dodson, Danielle K. "Minding the Gap: Uncovering the Underground's Role in the Formation of Modern London, 1855-1945." UKnowledge, 2016. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/history_etds/40.
Full textAbstract:
My research examines how the London Underground – the first subway in the world - provided new public spaces and forms of mobility that redefined how Londoners interacted in, moved through, and imaged the city.
Perhaps nothing embodies the Underground’s iconic status in London quite as completely as the phrase, “Mind the Gap.” This phrase, which originally referred to the gap between the train and the platform at Embankment station on the Northern line, has since become an enduringly popular symbol of London in the minds of travelers and visitors. The fact that a behavioral command about how to move through Underground space has become synonymous with visiting London suggests the deep connections between spatial behaviors and identity in the modern city. People had to be taught how to “Mind the Gap” – and railway officials were never completely able to control the ways in which people used, traveled through, and imagined these spaces. Illuminating these tensions between railway technicians and ordinary passengers demonstrates how the Underground provided a new type of space in which men and women from different classes and backgrounds could assert claims to freedom of movement within the city.
Aside from the gap between station platforms and Underground trains, this cultural history of the Underground also reveals how Londoners negotiated and bridged other important gaps - between rich and poor, men and women, and concepts of what constituted being modern or backwards, progressive or dangerous - as they embraced this public space as a part of their everyday lives. My dissertation interweaves works of art and fiction, literary scholarship, and elements of geography and sociology into a cultural history of London’s transport. Though it was owned and operated by a series of private companies throughout the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the Underground offered a relatively affordable means of traversing the capitol for Londoners of all classes and backgrounds, and therefore the spaces of the Underground network (stations, platforms, and train cars) acted as public spaces where new ideas about democratic order in society were challenged and negotiated.
My dissertation will bring a new perspective to studies of urban history by using interactions within the Tube to demonstrate how modernity was experienced and given meaning through particular spatial practices. I argue that the Underground helped challenge and redefine urban identities in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, particularly for women.
25
Wilson, Christopher William. "Mental illness and the British mandate in Palestine, 1920-1948." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2019. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/285965.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the ways in which the British mandate conceptualised, encountered, and sought to manage mental illness in Palestine between 1920 and 1948. The subject of mental illness has hitherto received partial consideration by historians interested in the Yishuv, who treat this period as formative for the Israeli mental health service. This thesis shifts the focus from European Jewish psychiatrists to the British mandate's engagements with mental illness, thus contributing to the well-developed literature on colonial psychiatry. Where this thesis departs from many of these institutionally-focussed histories of colonial psychiatry is in its source base; lacking hospital case files or articles in psychiatric journals, this thesis draws on an eclectic range of material from census reports and folklore research to petitions and prison records. In bringing together these strands of the story of psychiatry and mental illness, this thesis seeks to move beyond the continued emphasis in the historiography of Palestine on politics, nationalism, and state-building, and to develop our understanding of state and society by examining how they interacted in relation to the question of mental illness. This thesis thus widens the cast of historical actors from psychiatric experts alone to take in policemen, census officials, and families. In addition, this thesis seeks to situate Palestine within wider mandatory, British imperial, and global contexts, not to elide specificities, but to resist a persistent historiographical tendency to treat Palestine as exceptional. The first part traces the development of British mandatory conceptualisations of mental illness through the census of 1931 and then through a focus on specific causes of mental illness thought to be at work in Palestine. The second part examines two contexts in which the mandate was brought into contact with the mentally ill: the law and petitions. The final part of the thesis explores two distinct therapeutic regimes introduced in this period: patient work and somatic treatments.
26
Smyser, Katherine A. "To Serve the Interests of the Empire? British Experiences with Zionism, 1917-1925." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1339426202.
Full text
27
Hill, Simon. "British Imperialism, Liverpool, and the American Revolution, 1763-1783." Thesis, Liverpool John Moores University, 2015. http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/4350/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis draws upon evidence from over twenty archives in the UK and US. It uses the context of Liverpool, arguably the ‘second city of empire’ because of its extensive social, economic, and political networks overseas, to enhance knowledge of British imperialism during the American Revolutionary era (1763-1783).Part One analyses the ‘gentlemanly capitalist’ paradigm of P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins. In brief, this theory argues that the landed elite and financial-commercial services, concentrated upon the City of London, held sway over British imperial policy-making. This was chiefly because these interests were regarded as being ‘gentlemanly’, or socially acceptable, to the landed elite. In contrast, northern manufacturers were less influential in the imperial decision-making process. By working longer hours and being associated with labour unrest, industrialists were not perceived as being sufficiently gentlemanly by the ruling order. My dissertation tests this theory within the context of the late-eighteenth century. This is an original contribution to knowledge because most, although not all, studies of Cain and Hopkins focus upon later periods. Hanoverian Liverpool is an ideal test case because the town had a mixed economy. It contained a manufacturing base, served a wider industrial hinterland, and, because Liverpool was linked to the Atlantic empire, spawned a mercantile service sector community with interests in commerce and finance. This thesis generally supports Cain and Hopkins, but with some modifications. One of these is to view the late-eighteenth century as a period of emerging gentlemanly capitalism, referred to here as ‘proto-gentlemanly capitalism’. The fact that Liverpool merchants and the local landed elite were not yet fully socially integrated, is one of several reasons why the town lacked success in influencing imperial policy-making between 1763 and 1783.Warfare was synonymous with the Hanoverian empire. Therefore, Part Two expands our knowledge of the empire at home, or how the American War (1775-1783) impacted upon Liverpool economically, socially, and culturally. Previous histories of the economic impact of this conflict upon Liverpool concentrated upon overseas trade, and therefore stressed its negative consequences. However, this thesis looks at both overseas trade and domestic business. It paints a more nuanced picture, and, by using Liverpool as a case study, shows that the impact of warfare upon the UK economy produced mixed results. Finally, this thesis considers the socio-cultural impact of the war upon Liverpool. In the process, it demonstrates that military conflict affected both the northern and southern regions of Britain during the eighteenth century. Militarisation of the local community prompted discussions regarding the boundaries of national and local government. The War of Independence split opinion, thereby revealing divergent trends within British imperial ideology. Finally, on balance, the American War cultivated a ‘British’ national identity in the town (although there were still other identities present).
28
McDowall, Colin John. "Personalities, politics and power : the British Chiefs of Staff Committee in the Phoney War, 1939-1940." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2017. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/9094/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the Chiefs of Staff Committee’s (COS) decision-making and policy-making influence on Britain during the September 1939 to May 1940 period of the Second World War, commonly known as the Phoney War. To date, the actions of the COS during the Phoney War have come under little scrutiny. Historians have included only passing reference to the committee’s actions during the Winter War and the Norway Campaign, and have argued that its conduct was mired in error and misjudgement. As a consequence there is both confusion and debate over the COS’s contribution to Britain’s conduct in the Phoney War. This thesis contains the first systematic analysis of the influence of the COS on Britain’s course during the Phoney War and it advances the argument that the inadequacies of the committee had a major impact on the planning and conduct of the Phoney War. This study places the COS in the context of Britain’s wider decision-making and policy-making machinery during the Phoney War, where it was answerable to the War Cabinet and responsible for Britain’s defence. It argues that the COS was inadequate as a committee and that it failed to recognise its own limitations and to acknowledge the wisdom of its advisers. While on some occasions the COS provided good advice to the War Cabinet, it failed to press its opinions with sufficient force, particularly when the War Cabinet overlooked its recommendations. Individually, the Chiefs were dominated by both Churchill and Ironside, a factor which consistently undermined the COS’s effectiveness in policy-making and decision-making; Chiefs of Staff Newall and Pound were too easily influenced by Ironside and were insufficiently forceful in exerting their positions. This thesis also proposes that Britain’s organisation for the higher management of the war was weak and that this hindered the effectiveness of the COS; the committee structure during the period September 1939 to May 1940 was overly bureaucratic and this occupied too much of the COS’s time. It concludes that the COS demonstrated inadequacies as a decision-making and policy-making committee, however, while found to be wanting, there were mitigating factors which impinged upon its ability to perform. This thesis’s examination of the COS provides a better understanding of a little documented committee, which, although often overlooked, had a profound influence on Britain’s course during the Phoney War. Through archival research of the COS and War Cabinet papers this study will appraise the COS’s contribution to the unfolding of events between September 1939 and May 1940.
29
Fontenot, M. Christian-Gahn. "Empire, Imagined Nature, and the Great White Horizon| Polar Discourse, Transition, and the Sublime in Mid-Victorian and Modern Imperial British Culture." Thesis, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1592997.
Full textAbstract:
This project seeks to understand the relationship between discursive practices and the conceptions of nature, heroism, and masculinity found in Victorian and modern Imperial British culture. It does this by tracing two interwoven stories that materialized in the North and South Poles. The first being concerned with how polar landscape was perceived and created as Sublime by the discursive practices of explorers, authors, artists, and the press. The second being concerned with how polar discourse was used and influenced by British imperial rhetoric. In such a context, there was an opportunity for the British Empire to create a space that reclaimed and “proved” the unchanging presence of mid-Victorian Britishness. Even in its decline, the Empire was able to push forth the idea that modernism, war, and flux would not hold sway over the British spirit itself. Relying on expedition narratives, literary publications, paintings, and press coverage, this work highlights the importance (and fluidity) of intellectual concepts and their influence over the way that space was imagined by the British. Ultimately, the project seeks to lend insight into the significant connection between polar discourse and World War I discourse, showing how the mythological way of imagining the poles became a catalyst for imagining indescribable spaces of horror during the most destructive war in European history.
30
Wong, Alexander Tsiong. "Aspects of the kiss-poem 1450-1700 : the neo-Latin basium genre and its influence on early modern British verse." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708782.
Full text
31
Jones, Emily. "Constructing a conservative : the reception of Edmund Burke in British politics and culture, c. 1830-1914." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:06d5fb72-9272-4255-a2ae-51c31d89063b.
Full textAbstract:
Between 1830 and 1914 in Britain a dramatic modification of the reputation of Edmund Burke (1730-97) occurred. Burke, an Irishman and Whig politician, is now most commonly known as the 'founder of modern conservatism' – an intellectual tradition which is also deeply connected to the identity of the British Conservative party. Indeed, the idea of 'Burkean conservatism’ – a political philosophy which upholds ‘the authority of tradition', the organic, historic conception of society, and the necessity of order, religion, and property – has been incredibly influential both in international academic analysis and in the wider political world. This is an intellectual construct of high significance, but its origins have not hitherto been understood: insofar as it has been considered at all, it has been typically seen as the work of Cold War American conservatives. In contrast, this thesis demonstrates that the transformation of Burke into the 'founder of conservatism' was in fact part of wider developments in British political, intellectual, and cultural history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing from a wide range of sources, including political texts, parliamentary speeches, histories, biographies, and educational curricula, this thesis provides a properly contextual history of political thought. It shows how and why Burke's reputation was transformed over a formative period of British history. In doing so, it bridges the significant gap between the history of political thought as conventionally understood and the history of the making of political traditions. The result is to show that, by 1914, Burke had been firmly established as a 'conservative' political philosopher and was admired and utilised by political Conservatives in Britain who identified themselves as his intellectual heirs. This was one essential component of a conscious re-working of 'C/conservatism', especially from the mid-1880s, which is still at work today.
32
Stiles, Emily. "Narrative, object, witness : the story of the Holocaust as told by the Imperial War Museum, London." Thesis, University of Winchester, 2016. http://repository.winchester.ac.uk/808/.
Full textAbstract:
On June 7, 2000, the Holocaust’s position as an official part of British history and memory became solidified with the opening of a permanent Holocaust exhibition within London’s Imperial War Museum. This important national museum embodies Britain's cultural memory of war, of which the Holocaust has become a central part. Situated within debates of museology and memory, this thesis offers a compelling case study on the performative role of the museum in the construction of an official Holocaust memory within Britain and its relationship to national identity. While the Holocaust has become a ‘moral touchstone’ of contemporary society it seems urgent we raise questions of not only why we remember the Holocaust, but what, exactly, it is we are remembering. The oft cited dictum to 'never forget' requires remembrance of the Holocaust to serve a purpose; so that events of Nazi Europe may never be repeated. This ambition has proven hollow, yet countries invest millions of pounds in official Holocaust remembrance, commemoration and education. What purpose does the Holocaust serve in twenty-first century Britain? Questions of Holocaust narrative, material culture and testimony dominate the study, underpinned through wider concepts of history, memory, identity and museology in a British context. Using the Imperial War Museum as a case study, this thesis presents a challenge to the place of the Holocaust within British memory of war and questions how this limiting framework affects the way the Holocaust is remembered and understood throughout British society more broadly. Each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of the Holocaust exhibition and its display. A history of the exhibition provides detail on how and why the Holocaust became a central theme for the Imperial War Museum, while a study of the photographic, object and testimony displays in each dedicated chapter draws conclusions on how the Holocaust is shaped within this specific context. The relationship between the exhibition displays and Holocaust education more broadly throughout Britain is explored in detail in the final chapter of the thesis. Beyond the Imperial War Museum, this study points towards the future of Holocaust memory in Britain with an aim to highlight a limited understanding of the wider context of Britain and the Holocaust within popular narratives. How Britain connects to Holocaust history and memory remains central to this research, but it also considers how Britain could connect in more meaningful ways beyond learning the 'lessons' of the Holocaust.
33
Johnson, R. M. "Networks of imperial tropical medicine : ideas and practices of health and hygiene in the British Empire, 1895-1914." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2009. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7fabecbf-d431-45db-924c-3644791c20d1.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis investigates several previously neglected networks of imperial tropical medicine (ITM) in Britain and its tropical colonies at the turn of the twentieth-century. It argues for the need to bring back the ‘imperial’ to the study of medicine in colonial localities; and, in doing so, redefines the ‘imperial’ in relation to tropical medicine during this period. To accomplish this, the first part of the thesis considers largely ignored popular networks of ITM, including the 1900 London Livingstone Exhibition; guidebooks and manuals for tropical travel, health and hygiene; and commodities such as Burroughs Wellcome & Co.’s (BWC) Tabloid brand medicine chests and tropical clothing. The second part of the thesis investigates important, but under researched professional networks of ITM, including the training and experiences of non-medical missionaries educated at Livingstone College, London and the London Missionary School of Medicine (LMSM); and the formation and reform of the West African Medical Staff (WAMS). All of the popular and professional networks discussed in this thesis were, for the most part, a response to the urgency generated by domestic and international high politics to ‘improve’ and ‘develop’ Britain’s tropical possessions. While representing a diversity of individuals and interests, one concern that they all shared was the supposed need to preserve Anglo-Saxon health in tropical climates. Such a disparate set of ‘agents of empire’, connected through a common interest, led to a complex set of ideas and practices of ITM, which were informed as much by the environment and climate, as new disciplines such as parasitology. This thesis also demonstrates that a significant fissure existed — within and outside the imperial state — between ideas of ITM and their practice. Ideas of ITM were often aggressively imperial in rhetoric but in practice they generally were not. Therefore, at the start of the twentieth-century ITM was not always working — directly — as a ‘tool of empire’. Nonetheless, this thesis demonstrates that the ‘imperial’ is still the most useful analytical category and organising principle for understanding Western medicine’s relationship to Britain’s tropical possessions during this period. By focusing on both the colony and the metropole, and the uneven power relationship that existed between them, it demonstrates that ideas and practices of medicine and hygiene intended for Britain’s tropical empire were neither colonial nor metropolitan, but imperial.
34
Walraven, Maarten. "The noisy city : people, streets and work in Germany and Britain, c. 1870-1910." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2014. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/the-noisy-city-people-streets-and-work-in-germany-and-britain-c-18701910(a0aad557-c4a6-4c85-9719-337dd1ace035).html.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis surveys the sounds of everyday street and work life to argue for a reassessment of the way historians have understood community, space, materiality and identity in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Germany and Britain. It will demonstrate that sound played an important role in the organisation of urban space and social order. Furthermore it will show how the historical subject as listener emphasises the volatility of identity, place-making and community. Sounds either defined a community through positive responses or created conflict where one group heard the sounds of another group as noise. Sound helps to define the social groups that this thesis focuses on, such as experts, intellectuals, local administrators, immigrants or factory labourers. The ephemeral nature of sound and the subjectivity of listening, however, also pull apart such neat definitions and reveal the fractures within each of these social groups. Throughout this thesis, differing reactions to everyday sounds in the conurbations of Manchester and Düsseldorf will demonstrate how communities sought to define themselves and their environments through the production and reception of sound. What emerges is a re-composition of everyday life in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century that challenges examinations of it based on images of class, sociability and culture. Düsseldorf and Manchester were substantial cities that grew during the period studied here and underwent similar processes of technological change that affected both the social order and the physical environment. This thesis demonstrates that the audibility of specific technologies, buildings and machines physically affected listeners, and that working classes, middle-class professionals and local administrators all created regimes of noise intent on controlling behaviour in streets and workplaces. One of the key tropes within studies of sound is that listening places the historical subject at the centre of their environment while seeing places them outside of it. Using this idea, this thesis will make an original contribution to a number of debates. First of all, sounds broke down visual boundaries between street and workplace and this dissertation examines how that changes historical notions of place and space. Secondly, this thesis establishes how sound exposes the lines of fracture and cohesion within and between social groups that historians of popular street culture have tried to emphasise through class relations. Thirdly, sound allows for a re-examination of the power structures in which factory labourers and immigrants worked and lived as it presents practices of listening and sound production that breathe new life into ‘histories from below’ and challenge the top-down approaches associated with governmentality. Finally, this thesis will challenge the notion of noise as unwanted sound, prevalent in the growing number of histories on urban noise by demonstrating the diversity of everyday and medical reactions to ‘noise’ and exploring the problem of ‘silence’ in negotiations of migrant and worker identity and the development of road technologies. Overall, this thesis will determine that the role of sound in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century complicates historical debates on the physical and social organisation of urban space. Different communities transformed their identities around shared listening practices and adapted their rhythms of everyday life to sounds that resonated between street and home, work and leisure.
35
Stevenson, Greg. "Ceramic design for modern living : an archaeology of British ceramics 1927-37." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683311.
Full text
36
Richardson, Dionna D. "Purloined Subjects: Race, Gender, and the Legacies of Colonial Surveillance in the British Caribbean." University of Akron / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1563610112030263.
Full text
37
Longson, Patrick Adam. "The rise of the German menace : imperial anxiety and British popular culture, 1896-1903." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5094/.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation argues that the idea of a German Menace was not simply a product of concerns about the defence of the British Isles, but rather it was born out of the mentality of British imperialism. Over the period 1896-1903, imperial antagonism between Germany and Britain, in various contexts around the globe, inspired the popular perception of the German Menace as a distinctly imperial threat. Where the established historiography locates the beginning of the Anglo-German rivalry within the development of the naval armaments race after 1904, this study traces the British fear of Germany much earlier and, crucially, much further away from the shores of the North Sea. The Dreadnought Race was a product of pre-existing anxieties; this thesis will explain the context of imperial anxiety out of which the coherent concept of the German Menace developed. It reveals how specific imperial crises informed British popular beliefs and how the stereotypes of German covetousness, autocracy and efficiency coalesced to form a powerful force in British society and politics that had reached its peak by 1903. By 1903 Germany was widely regarded as a menace to the British Empire.
38
Jones, Benjamin Nicholas Farror. "British politics and the post-war development of human rights." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e680adc1-a3e9-4c7a-be6d-0f3b374fb209.
Full textAbstract:
In this thesis I explore the attitudes, arguments, and actions of British political elites in connection with the development of human rights law in Europe and the UK. I do this by examining British input into five key episodes for the development of European supranational rights and their incorporation into domestic legal orders (namely the drafting of the European Convention on Human Rights 1950, the drafting of the European Social Charter 1961, the acceptance of individual petition in 1966, the failed 1970s Bill of Rights debate, the passing of the Human Rights Act 1998, and recent developments such as the UK ‘opt-out’ to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the emergence of a new ‘British Bill of Rights’ debate). Casting light on British involvement in less examined periods in European rights development, I challenge existing, isolated, explanations for the more focal episodes (such as Simpson’s rational-choice post-colonial thesis for individual petition acceptance, and ideological accounts for New Labour’s post-1997 constitutional reform). Responding to the most recent literature in the area, central to my analysis is the question of how rights progress relates to inter-party conflict. By considering continuities and discontinuities in elite political discussion of rights I argue that while conflict is a significant underlying feature of every major episode of rights progress during the last sixty years, and is less evident in less progressive periods, other factors have had a greater influence over the form, timing, and extent of rights progress. Most significant amongst these is the constitutional ideological development of the Labour party and the critical connection between Labour’s elevation of the Convention within the UK constitutional space and revisionist shifts in party thinking.
39
MacDonald, Mary Jacqueline. "Silent shadows : supernumeraries in British court masques, 1594-1640." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2017. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7193/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis investigates the contribution and significance in performance of supernumeraries in British court masques, 1594-1640. The six selected masques include a variety of performance venues and authors, with offerings by an assortment of monarchs (and others). There is also a range of performance dates between 1594 and 1640, including: a Scottish court masque and an Elizabethan court masque, two Jacobean masques, and two Caroline court masques, which were performed for or with a variety of monarchs or their consorts. The thesis is driven by practice-based research in relation to the venue, staging, costumes, props, lighting, and blocking with a view to determine the contribution and significance of these performers. Whilst mute roles are the focus of the analysis, this does not include either musicians or the main masquers. The investigation suggests the non-speaking supernumeraries were significant roles in performance and offered a contribution to the genre.
40
Stein, Tristan. "The Mediterranean in the English Empire of Trade, 1660-1748." Thesis, Harvard University, 2012. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:10442.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation reintegrates the Mediterranean into the history of the development of the early modern British Empire. During the seventeenth century, the Mediterranean emerged as a distinct political, legal and commercial space within the wider currents of English expansion. The political and legal regimes of the sea shaped the evolution of the English presence there and the rulers of the Ottoman Empire, the North African regencies, and Italian states such as Tuscany and Genoa limited the expansion of English sovereignty. As a result, the sea offers a different perspective on the history of English expansion than that found in imperial histories set in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The development of the English presence in the Mediterranean highlights the relative weakness of the early modern English state and the extent to which other polities limited the expansion of its sovereign authority. However, this dissertation also aims to move beyond an imperial historiography that distinguishes the wider development of English trade and navigation from the growth of English empire. Through the latter half of the seventeenth century and first half of the eighteenth, the Crown's claims to jurisdiction over its subjects and their ships projected English authority into the Mediterranean. This dissertation examines how the English state extended its authority within a pluralistic maritime environment that lay largely beyond the reach of its claims to empire. By studying the jurisdictional contests that arose when the Crown’s claims to authority over its subjects and their ships collided with the sovereignty of Mediterranean polities, it shows how the intersection of diverse sovereign and legal authorities defined the organization of English trade and navigation. Moreover, as the English state extended its authority overseas during the early modern period, it called into question the location of sovereignty and jurisdictional authority in Mediterranean waters as well as in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. English expansion in the Mediterranean and the political evolution of the sea were part of a global process whereby states and empires sought to establish their authority over oceanic space and networks of trade.History
41
Thomas, Evan Benjamin. "Toward Early Modern Comics." The Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1502561240762248.
Full text
42
Foster, Clare Louise Elizabeth. "'A very British Greek play' : a critical investigation of the origins and tradition of Greek plays in Greek in England, 1880-1921." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708816.
Full text
43
Brown, G. D. ""Dig for bloody victory" : the British soldier's experience of trench warfare, 1939-45." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f1a577f9-c6df-46f4-b038-651b02469b6a.
Full textAbstract:
Most people’s perceptions of the Second World War leave little room for static, attritional fighting; instead, free-flowing manoeuvre warfare, such as Blitzkrieg, is seen as the norm. In reality, however, much of the terrain fought over in 1939-45 was unsuitable for such a war and, as a result, bloody attritional battles and trench fighting were common. Thus ordinary infantrymen spent the majority of their time at the front burrowing underground for protection. Although these trenches were never as fixed or elaborate as those on the Western Front a generation earlier, the men who served in Italy, Normandy, Holland and Germany, nonetheless shared an experience remarkably similar to that of their predecessors in Flanders, Picardy, Champagne and Artois. This is an area which has been largely neglected by scholars. While the first war produced a mountain of books on the experience of trench warfare, the same cannot be said of the second war. This thesis will attempt to fill that gap by providing a comprehensive analysis of static warfare in the Second World War from the point of view of British infantry morale. It draws widely on contemporary letters and diaries, psychiatric and medical reports and official documentation – not to mention personal narratives and accounts published after the war – and will attempt to interpret these sources in light of modern research and organise them into a logical framework. Ultimately it is hoped that this will provide fresh insight into a relatively under-researched area of twentieth century history.
44
McCann, Michael Charles 1959. "Occult Invention: The Rebirth of Rhetorical Heuresis in Early Modern British Literature from Chapman to Swift." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/12081.
Full textAbstract:
xiv, 234 p. : ill.The twentieth-century project of American rhetorician Kenneth Burke, grounded in a magic-based theory of language, reveals a path to the origins of what I am going to call occult invention. The occult, which I define as a symbol set of natural terms derived from supernatural terms, employs a method of heuresis based on a metaphor-like process I call analogic extension. Traditional invention fell from use shortly after the Liberal Arts reforms of Peter Ramus, around 1550. Occult invention emerged nearly simultaneously, when Early Modern British authors began using occult symbols as tropes in what I refer to as the Occult Mode. I use six of these authors--George Chapman, William Shakespeare, John Donne, Abraham Cowley, John Dryden, and Jonathan Swift--as examples of how occult invention arises. In appropriating occult symbolism, authors in the Occult Mode began using the invention methods of the occult arts of magic, alchemy, astrology, and cabala to derive new meanings, transform language, develop characters and plots, and reorient social perspectives. As we learn in tracking Burke's project, occult invention combines the principles of Aristotle's rhetoric and metaphysics with the techniques and principles of the occult arts. Occult invention fell from use around the end of the eighteenth century, but its rhetorical influence reemerged through the work of Burke. In this study I seek to contextualize and explicate some of the literary sources and rhetorical implications of occult invention as an emergent field for further research.
Committee in charge: Dianne Dugaw， Co-Chairperson； John T. Gage， Co-Chairperson； Kenneth Calhoon， Member； Steven Shankman， Member； Jeffrey Librett，Outside Member
45
Woods, Hannah Rose. "Anxiety and urban life in late Victorian and Edwardian culture, 1880-1914." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/274934.
Full textAbstract:
The thesis investigates anxieties about urban life in late Victorian and Edwardian culture, and examines emotional responses to urbanisation, industrialisation and modernity at this high point of urban growth and rural-urban migration: one that marked Britain’s decisive breakthrough to a largely and permanently urbanised society. During the period, earlier nineteenth-century tropes of the ‘shock’ of the city, and anxieties surrounding rapid early urbanisation and industrialisation, began to recede. But from the 1880s onwards, as life in industrial cities came to be regarded as the norm, new anxieties came to the fore: concerns that related to the very pervasiveness and inescapability of urban life. I argue that the historically unprecedented growth in the size of cities placed enormous strain upon conceptions of the individual in modern society: the impulse to conceive of mass urban society in the abstract was in constant tension with a new, modernistic awareness of the essential humanity of each individual. The research utilises insights from the recent ‘emotional turn’ within the humanities, which is more sensitive to psychological factors in cultural practices and social processes; and brings this historiographical turn to bear on attitudes towards the city. An emotional approach enables both a deeper and subtler exploration of high cultural responses, and the extension of the range of sources and actors beyond ‘ideas’ and ‘intellectuals’. The thesis integrates a wide range of sources: literature, art, the writings of urban planners and social commentators, medical writings, working-class autobiographical writing, and oral history transcripts. Such an approach reveals the common emotional impulses and shared structures of feeling behind a diverse range of responses to the urban environment, and provides a deeper understanding of contemporary emotional life. It thus illuminates the ways in which individuals, societies and culture react to the complexities of modernity, and provides insights into the relationship between social transformation and emotional experience.
46
Brown, Ruth Katharine. "The rise of the leisure painter : artistic creativity within the experience of ordinary life in postwar Britain, c. 1945-2000." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4f9bec84-094e-4ec9-b36a-3b66e9330076.
Full textAbstract:
Since John Ruskin and William Morris's protestations against mass production in the nineteenth century, critics of mass consumption thought that it not only reduced the necessity, but also the desire, to make things for personal use and enjoyment. The history of leisure painting in art societies and adult education, and of the amateur artist’s consumption of art materials and self-help literature, shows that, on the contrary, affluence both inspired and facilitated a quest for self-actualisation amongst the rank and file. Creative activities such as drawing and painting served this quest at little financial cost to the individual. Following the Second World War, a significant increase in the take-up of leisure painting was encouraged by the state as part of the broader postwar settlement. The pursuit of personal wellbeing through creative activity was regarded as a public good, of benefit not only to individuals but also to the communities of which they were a part. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, state support for recreational pursuits such as leisure painting was pared back: in the shift from collectivist social democracy towards individualist market liberalism, personal enjoyment was recast as a private affair for which the consumer must pay. Painting continued to grow in popularity, supported by expanding consumer markets in self-help literature and affordable art materials. Yet while consumerism sustained the popularity of amateur art-making, the ways in which amateur artists participated in the arts changed. Personal creativity emerges here as an inherently social activity: the private experience of creativity is mediated and structured by society. Consumerism was not bad for personal creativity per se, but the replacement of a communitarian approach with a consumerist model restricted the breadth and reach of creative aspiration nurtured as part of the postwar settlement. By the end of the century, most amateurs were painting alone.
47
Steinberg, Jessica. "The Seven Deadly Sins of Prostitution: Perceptions of Prostitutes and Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century London." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/31879.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines perceptions of lower-class female prostitutes and prostitution in eighteenth-century London. It reveals that throughout the Hanoverian period perceptions of prostitution were shaped by sensibilities about morality, the social order, and sin. To explore attitudes towards prostitution in eighteenth-century London, this dissertation evaluates how governing elites, ecclesiastical authorities, contributors to the newspaper press, and popular commentators discussed prostitution. This dissertation engages with two main assumptions about prostitution in eighteenth-century London. First, it demonstrates that there is more continuity in perceptions of prostitution than historians have recognized; attitudes towards prostitutes did not shift from hostility to sympathy in a straight-forward manner. Second, this dissertation reveals that prostitution was regarded by Augustan and Hanoverian Londoners as a significant social problem because it embodied and encapsulated the seven deadly sins – lust, avarice, pride, envy, gluttony, sloth, and wrath. This thesis suggests that prostitutes’ excessive lust and avarice were not seen as disparate issues, but were often discussed together. Paradoxically, discussants recognized that financial considerations drove some women into prostitution, but these women were regarded as abnormally greedy and corrupt because they resorted to deceptive tactics. Pride and envy were associated with prostitution because Hanoverians believed some prostitutes bought extravagant clothes and cosmetics to conceal their lowly status and enhance their appearance to emulate elites. Hanoverians regarded these prostitutes with trepidation because they threatened to undermine their hierarchically ordered society. Prostitutes’ proclivities towards drunkenness and idleness were associated with gluttony and sloth. Commentators feared that drunken and idle prostitutes would encourage men to engage in these dissolute activities, leading to greater disorder. Wrath was closely associated with prostitution because of its association with violence. Although prostitutes were both the victims and perpetrators of assault, incidents in which prostitutes were assailants were reported more frequently, suggesting that Britons regarded prostitutes as disorderly, sinful criminals. Each chapter also brings attention to concerns regarding prostitutes’ lack of self-control and their apparent ability to cause men to lose self-control; how double standards of morality influenced discussions of prostitution; the consequences of prostitutes’ criminality and ability to deceive Londoners; and the various institutions, organizations, and suggestions proposed and established to reform prostitutes and eradicate sin from society.
48
Poueymirou, Margaux Lynn Rosa. "The sixth sense : synaesthesia and British aestheticism, 1860-1900." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/952.
Full textAbstract:
“The Sixth Sense: Synaesthesia and British Aestheticism 1860-1900” is an interdisciplinary examination of the emergence of synaesthesia conceptually and rhetorically within the ‘art for art’s sake’ movement in mid-to-late Victorian Britain. Chapter One investigates Swinburne’s focal role as both theorist and literary spokesman for the nascent British Aesthetic movement. I argue that Swinburne was the first to practice what Pater meant by ‘aesthetic criticism’ and that synaesthesia played a decisive role in ‘Aestheticising’ critical discourse. Chapter Two examines Whistler’s varied motivations for using synaesthetic metaphor, the way that synaesthesia informed his identity as an aesthete, and the way that critical reactions to his work played a formative role in linking synaesthesia with Aestheticism in the popular imagination of Victorian England. Chapter Three explores Pater’s methods and style as an ‘aesthetic critic.’ Even more than Swinburne, Pater blurred the distinction between criticism and creation. I use ‘synaesthesia’ to contextualise Pater’s theory of “Anders-streben” and to further contribute to our understanding of his infamous musical paradigm as a linguistic ideal, which governed his own approach to critical language. Chapter Four considers Wilde’s decadent redevelopment of synaesthetic metaphor. I use ‘synaesthesia’ to locate Wilde’s style and theory of style within the context of decadence; or, to put it another way, to locate decadence within the context of Wilde. Each chapter examines the highly nuanced claim that art should exist for its own sake and the ways in which artists in the mid-to-late Victorian period attempted to realise this desire on theoretical and rhetorical levels.
49
Glover, Victoria E. C. ""To Conceive With Child is the Earnest Desire if Not of All, Yet of Most Women": The Advancement of Prenatal Care and Childbirth in Early Modern England: 1500-1770." VCU Scholars Compass, 2018. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5694.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis analyzes medical manuals published in England between 1500 and 1770 to trace developing medical understandings and prescriptive approaches to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. While there have been plenty of books written regarding social and religious changes in the reproductive process during the early modern era, there is a dearth of scholarly work focusing on the medical changes which took place in obstetrics over this period. Early modern England was a time of great change in the field of obstetrics as physicians incorporated newly-discovered knowledge about the male and female body, new fields and tools, and new or revived methods into published obstetrical manuals. As men became more prominent in the birthing chamber, instructions in the manuals began to address these men as well. Overall these changes were brought about by changes in the medical field along with changes in culture and religion and the emergence of print culture and rising literacy rates.
50
Auger, Peter. "British responses to Du Bartas' Semaines, 1584-1641." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:be0f89c2-c2e4-482d-ac8f-e867985ff72e.
Full textAbstract:
The reception of the Huguenot poet Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas' Semaines (1578, 1584 et seq.) is an important episode in early modern literary history for understanding relations between Scottish, English and French literature, interactions between contemporary reading and writing practices, and developments in divine poetry. This thesis surveys translations (Part I), allusions and quotations in prose (Part II) and verse imitations (Part III) from the period when English translations of the Semaines were being printed in order to identify historical trends in how readers absorbed and adapted the poems. Early translations show that the Semaines quickly acquired political and diplomatic affiliations, particularly at the Jacobean Scottish Court, which persisted in subsequent decades (Chapter 1). William Scott's treatise The Model of Poesy (c. 1599) and translations indicate how attractive the Semaines' combination of humanist learning and sacred rhetoric was, but the poems' potential appeal was only realized once Josuah Sylvester's Devine Weeks (1605 et seq.) finally made the complete work available in English (Chapter 2). Different communities of readers developed in early modern England and Scotland once this edition became available (Chapter 3), and we can observe how individuals marked, copied out, quoted and appropriated passages from their copies of the poems in ways dependent on textual and authorial circumstances (Chapter 4). The Semaines, both in French and in Sylvester's translation, were used as a stylistic model in late-Elizabethan playtexts and Zachary Boyd's Zions Flowers (Chapter 5), and inspired Jacobean poems that help us to assess Du Bartas' influence on early modern poetry (Chapter 6). The great variety of responses to the Semaines demonstrates new ways that intertextuality was a constituent feature of vernacular religious literature that was being read and written in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain.