Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Problematic Advocacy And Victorian Public Health In Gatherings From Graveyards By Dr. George A. Walker, Olivia Ladner

Honors Theses

This thesis focuses on the problematic advocacy of Dr. George A. Walker in his public health pamphlet, Gatherings from Graveyards. In his work, Walker calls for the removal of urban cemeteries from within London and other cities in Great Britain due to concerns about public health safety. He cites miasmatic theory as the reason for the spread of disease from rotting corpses and unkept cemeteries in the British metropolis. Though he blames Parliament for the state of urban cemeteries, he continuously cites poor communities and neighborhoods as the sole sources of disease and does not conduct investigations into the …

Building An Imperial World: Ideologies Of Imperialism And The Tariff Reform Movement In Britain, 1900-1914, Kevin Jennings Luginbill

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the imperial rhetoric and ideologies articulated during the tariff reform controversy in Edwardian Britain. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the British statesman Joseph Chamberlain organized a new movement, dubbed tariff reform, to enact a series of commercial policies that would integrate the British and colonial economies and, he argued, lay the foundation for the development of a unified imperial federation. Chamberlain’s proposals were controversial and divisive, resulting in years of political debate over the merits of tariff reform. While the tariff reform campaign has been studied in numerous histories, its imperial dimensions have been ignored …

Special Relationships: Anglo-American Latin America Policy And The Redefining Of National Security, 1969-1982, Benjamin Jared Pack

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

From 1969–82, the United States and Great Britain redefined national security in a distinctive way, separating the notion of national security from its traditional foundations in realist thought. The way the two powers come to define national security was the result of more than a century of historical interaction with Latin America and their own historical experience with ideology, imperialism, and colonialism. As such, the way the United States and Great Britain perceived their respective special relationships influenced the way they chose to intervene in matters of national security, particularly in Latin America’s Southern Cone countries of Chile and Argentina. …

‘The Healing Hand Laid On A Great Wound:’ The Elberfeld System And The Transformation Of Poverty In Germany, Britain, And The United States, Rebekah O'Zell Mcmillan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation employs a transnational analysis to focus on historical perceptions of poverty and the development of private and public welfare in the modern era. This research places the emergence of early poverty relief schemes within a broader transatlantic context by studying the relationships among social reformers in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. This work has two primary objectives. First, it focuses on the Elberfeld Poor Relief System a nineteenth and early twentieth century German innovation emphasizing local poor relief and community responsibility, which transformed poor relief into an efficient structure. Second, the Elberfeld System was instrumental in …

What Happened To Feminism?: A Comparative Study Of Feminism In Ireland And Great Britain From 1919-1939, Emily Uterhark

Masters Essays

No abstract provided.

Future And Past Anxieties : A Look At The Origins Of The British Welfare State Through Wwii, Emily Maanum

Honors Theses

The scope of this project focuses particularly on how members of Parliament and the media, specifically newspapers, understood the establishment of the welfare state. My use of the term “Britons” reflects political rhetoric used by MPs to illustrate unity within the public sphere and to shape the terms of debate. Their instrumentalist rhetoric was meant to unify the community, stop fascism and honor citizens. It is important to study the political rhetoric because these discussions within Parliament led to social policies and the eventual establishment of a welfare system. How MPs started early debates affected the structure of later debates …

The Forgotten Front: British Home Defence And The Invasion Scare Of 1914, Alexander Maavara

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Few issues have impacted the British people more than the historic fear or threat of invasion. From the Napoleonic Wars to the Second World War, the most “heroic” periods of British history have been those when the island faced possible invasion and destruction. This thesis seeks to address a gap in the history of Great Britain by examining the impact of Britons’ fear of invasion on British civil-military relations prior to and in the initial stages of the First World War. Following the 1911 Agadir Crisis, Britain’s defence establishment acknowledged the political and social influence that the fear of invasion …

“Patriotism Is Not Enough”: Edith Cavell’S Life And Death In Anglo-American Context, Erin B. Blackledge

Honors Theses

In October 1915, British nurse Edith Cavell was killed by the Germans for aiding in the illegal liberation of Allied soldiers. In the wake of her death, the British government created a propaganda firestorm to garner both domestic and foreign support for the war. In particular, the propaganda featuring Cavell was highly gendered and over the course of multiple generations has generated a diverse, and often polarized series of social and political responses in both Britain and the United States. Through the examination of government documents, newspapers, and popular culture, such as film and children’s novels, this thesis examines the …

Hidden History: The Role Of Great Britain In The American Civil War As Told By Cultural Artifacts, Mary Griffiths

Dissertations and Theses

What do statues and songs tell us about the Civil War? If the monuments are in the United States – a marker on a battlefield for instance- it is easy to decipher the context and historical significance. Soldiers passed their time with song and their lyrics are preserved to this day, performed by both pop artists and living historians. But what if these cultural artifacts reside outside the United States? Why is there a statue of Abraham Lincoln in the city of Manchester? How does a monument dedicated to the martyrs at the Lune Street Riots on Preston, Lancashire relate …

Shaken, Not Stirred: Espionage, Fantasy, And British Masculinity During The Cold War, Anna Rikki Nelson

Master's Theses

This project seeks to define and explore the development of Cold War British masculinity and national identity in response to decolonization. Following World War II, Great Britain experienced a time of political and cultural rebuilding. This project argues that following World War II, Britain had to renegotiate gender and national identity within the context of decolonization, the rise of the welfare state, and Britain’s diminished role in global politics, and the tensions within gender and national identity were expressed in Britain’s interest in espionage narratives both real and fictionalized. British spy novels by Ian Fleming, Desmond Cory, and John Le …

The Ciné “Never Sets…”: British Cinema As A Transatlantic Cultural Commodity, 1927-1938, Karen E. Beasley

History Dissertations

This dissertation exemplifies how the application of a transatlantic commodity approach can broaden understanding of film as a mass medium, its business, and its cultural influences. By employing a more inclusive national cinema framework, this study is able to investigate sites of interaction between the British and Hollywood film industries as a two-way exchange as well as engage those sites at their peripheries, including those between the cultural product and its consumer throughout the broader Atlantic community. This dissertation focuses on the diversity of British audiences throughout a “British world” and the distribution and exhibition methods used to reach them. …

The War Of 1812: The Rise Of American Nationalism, Paul Hanseling

History Undergraduate Theses

On June 18, 1812, United States President, James Madison, signed a Declaration of War against Great Britain. What brought these two nations to such a dramatic impasse? Madison’s War Message to Congress gives some hint as to the American grievances: impressment of American sailors; unnecessary, “mock” blockades and disruption of American shipping; violations of American neutral rights; and incursions into American coastal waters.[1] By far, the most vocal point of contention was impressment, or the forcible enlistment of men in the navy. For their part, Great Britain viewed every measure disputed by Americans as a necessity as they waged …

Britain's Failed Attempt At Fascism : The British Union Of Fascists, Years 1933-1934, Katherine L. Collier

Honors Theses

This honors thesis examines how and why Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) tried to present itself as a viable political entity to mainstream British society in the years 1933- 1934. Though the BUF admired Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, this thesis argues that they sought to create their own distinctly British version of these Fascist movements. The BUF promised that Britain would again thrive, but only under strong fascist leadership which would provide an economic restructuring of government and a cohesive society, free from selfish individualism, decadence, and foreigners. The BUF promised to …

"Will The Sun Come Up In The Morning?" : The 1999-2000 Conflict Between Summerhill School And The British Department For Education And Employment, Emily Kerwin

Honors Theses

On March 23, 2000 a group of school children sat in the Royal Courts of Justice in London and voted to accept an agreement between Secretary of State for Education David Blunkett and their school, Summerhill School in Leiston, Suffolk. This vote ended a year-long fight to keep the school from closing. Carmen Cordwell, the chair of that meeting later remarked, "This is our charter for freedom. After 79 years, this is the first official recognition that A.S. Neill's philosophy of education provides an acceptable alternative to compulsory lessons and the tyranny of compulsory exams. With this one bound, we …

Representations Of Rebellion: Slavery In Jamaica, 1823-1831, Paul Brown

All Theses

This thesis examines slavery in Jamaica between 1824 and 1831, primarily through the lens of rebellion and rebellious conspiracy. This study is largely based on legal documents, namely the criminal trials of slaves produced after the discovery of conspiracy plots to rebel in 1824 and the outbreak of a large-scale slave insurrection in 1831. While previous historians have provided rich analyses of the origins and causes of slave rebellions, this study attempts to disentangle the various representations and ideas of rebellion among slaves and slaveholders in Jamaica, and their larger implications for slavery in the British West Indies. I suggest …

From Bread And Jam To Woolton Pie: Food Rationing And Improved Nutrition In Wwii Great Britain, Jennifer G. Joyner

History Undergraduate Theses

The practice of controlling food supplies has existed since ancient times—driven by urbanization, the controls were of a protective nature, as the commercialization of food production and retailing led to opportunities for graft and corruption. Authorities, motivated by the belief in a “moral economy” that held the public good in higher esteem than market forces, attempted to curb these abuses with various controls. However, in Great Britain in the eighteenth century, rapid industrialization led to a new economic and political approach to governance: that the public was best served by free trade.

This premise meant that market demands now superseded …

Rent: Same-Sex Prostitution In Modern Britain, 1885-1957, Jonathan Coleman

Theses and Dissertations--History

Rent: Same-Sex Prostitution in Modern Britain, 1885-1957 chronicles the concept of “rent boys” and the men who purchased their services. This dissertation demonstrates how queer identity in Britain, until contemporary times, was largely regulated by class, in which middle-and-upper-class queer men often perceived of working-class bodies as fetishized consumer goods. The “rent boy” was an upper-class queer fantasy, and working-class men sometimes used this fantasy for their own agenda while others intentionally dismantled the “rent boy” trope, refusing to submit to upper-class expectations. This work also explains how the “rent boy” fantasy was eventually relegated to the periphery of queer …

The Surprising Role Of Legal Traditions In The Rise Of Abolitionism In Great Britain's Development, Robert Michael Buchsbaum Iii

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The abolition of British slavery in the 19th century raises the question of how the British achieved antislavery against colonial opposition. While historical theories have focused on economic, political and religious factors, no account of abolition is complete without a thorough investigation of the history of evolving British legal traditions. This thesis analyzed a number of British homeland court cases and antislavery laws. English legal traditions established principles of freedom long before abolition in Britain, and then upheld them in respect to blacks on British soil in the 18th century. On the other hand, these traditions exposed a void in …

The Quebec Act And The Demise Of Greater Britain, Trevor Michael Henson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examines how events in one part of the British Empire had unintended consequences in another part of the empire through the examination of a much neglected piece of eighteenth century British legislation, the Quebec Act and the relationship within Greater Britain between the metropole and the American colonies. This examination of the Quebec Act involves, in part, analyzing the evolving national identities within Greater Britain in the framework of the principles of the Glorious Revolution and anti-Catholicism. The Quebec Act brought to the fore the differences of identity within Greater Britain through different interpretations of the adaptability of …

Citizens Of The Empire: A Molding Of Victorian Childhood Identity, Christopher B. Gallagher

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The Victorian Era in Great Britain was a time period of dramatic change. The Industrial Revolution was altering the social and economic fabric of society. Socially, Victorians were confronted with new theories that challenged their religious beliefs. The British Isles were progressing steadily in creating a national identity. Finally, the existence of the British Empire made imperialism a factor that cannot be ignored. Yet, many historians have pointed out that the history of the British metropole itself is often disconnected from the political and cultural history of the Empire. It is within this conversation that this project seeks to find …

Britain’S Kitchen Front: British Perceptions Of The Food Situation And Women’S Attitudes During The Second World War (February 1942), Marissa Nicole Millhorn

History

No abstract provided.

Reinventing Britain: British National Identity And The European Economic Community, 1967-1975, James Meade Klingensmith Jr.

Honors Papers

The project of European integration has always threatened traditional conceptions of national identity and sovereignty in member states of the European Community (EC), later the European Union. This is especially true in Great Britain, which has had an ambivalent relationship with the rest of Europe. This thesis presents a comparative analysis of two key moments in Britain's relationship with Europe, and thus two key moments for British national identity: the 1967 debate over British membership in the European Community, and the 1975 public referendum over remaining in the Community in which Britons voted to remain inside the EC by a …

Deviant Desires: Gender Resistance In Romantic Friendships Between Women During The Late-Eighteenth And Early-Nineteenth Centuries In Britain, Sophie Jade Slater

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Romantic friendships between women in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries were common in British society. Young women were drawn to each other, often in romantic ways, in part because of the way in which the society was ordered. In this period, females generally socialized only with other females, from birth until marriage. Even after marriage the majority of women spent most of their time with other women. This deep intimacy between women was encouraged and accepted and is visible in correspondence between female friends. Although there is scholarly literature surrounding romantic friendships during this period, the way in which these …

For The Benefit Of Others: Harriet Martineau: Feminist, Abolitionist And Travel Writer, Laura J. Labovitz

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

One of the distinctive and remarkable traits of Harriet Martineau was her need to publish information that she believed would benefit society. Her publications - Illustrations of Political Economy (1832), Society in America (1837) and Retrospect of Western Travel (1838) - have the distinct characteristic of being published with the intent to inform and educate the British public. Scholars have focused on her later 1848 publication, Eastern Life: Present and Past, as her most important publication. Yet I will argue that it was her earlier works which set the stage for this later, better known book. Her travel to the …

On The Back Of The Army: A Comparative Study Of Romanization In Britain And Egypt, Renee Wiseman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Romanization is the process of understanding how Rome culturally expanded beyond military actions. This study seeks to compare how Romanization proceeded in the provinces of Britain and Egypt.

The Impact Of World War Ii On Women's Fashion In The United States And Britain, Meghann Mason

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

World War II (hereafter referred to as WWII) is a fascinating era in fashion, society, and politics. The fashion of the era was truly representative of the events happening in the world in a most visible way. This era made indelible marks on future designers and the science of fashion as the world knows it. Fashion and costume design were influenced and changed due to the many limitations presented and imposed by WWII. WWII represents a great marker of change socially, technologically, economically, and politically. While it affected the entire world, the main focus of this thesis will explore the …

British Perspective On The Colonial Rebellion, Kayla Smith

Honors Theses

Great Britain and her colonies began their disagreements leading up to the American Revolution over the idea of taxation and representation in Parliament. A new form of taxation came with the passage of Sugar Act in March, 1764. This form aimed at raising revenue to pay for part of the cost of Britain's colonial expenses in North America. All previous taxation on the colonies had only been used to regulate commerce. The British judged the colonists should be taxed to help pay for the cost of the French war that had been fought in their defense and protection. The previous …

Gender And Crime, 1815-1834, Julie C. Tatlock

Dissertations (1934 -)

The years between 1815 and 1834 marked a transition from the Age of Napoleon to the Age of Victoria. England experienced a period of civil strife and economic fluctuations. London was in the midst of industrialization and urban growth. These changes affected all classes of society and their effects impacted views of crime and justice. This study focuses on the Old Bailey, London's central court. Its intent is to look at this age of transition through the microcosm of criminal trials with a view toward gauging contemporary opinions on the nature of crime and assessing the impact of economic fluctuations …

"Ordinary Talents And Extraordinary Perseverance": The Life Of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, David Bruce

Dissertations (1934 -)

Born into a gentry family with roots in the Society of Friends, the evangelical social conscience of Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786-1845) was developed as he operated a brewery in Spitalfields, perhaps London's poorest parish. He was instrumental in raising funds for poor relief and establishing soup and bread kitchens there during the winter of 1816-1817. His interest and research on penal discipline brought him national prominence and led to a parliamentary seat which he held for nearly two decades. Buxton's association with noted activist William Wilberforce (1759-1833) led to his own involvement in the anti-slavery movement, a cause he fiercely …

The Reluctant Colonization Of The Falkland Islands, 1833-1851 : A Study Of British Imperialism In The Southwest Atlantic, Shannon Warnick

Master's Theses

After the Napoleonic Wars, British leaders increasingly objected to large burdensome formal annexations. Hence, when South American markets opened in the 1820s British leaders considered using nearby island bases to ward off regional rivals. Britain therefore occupied the Falkland Islands in 1833. Despite governing the world’s strongest industrial and naval power however, British leaders neglected the Falklands’ progress as a colony from 1833 to 1851. Dogmatic faith in “efficiency” and free trade in the 1840s led to modest commercial progress by largely unfettered private interests in the islands, but led to little improvement in defense or society. This study uses …