History Commons^™

“At Rest:” The Life And Death Of Private Edward Martin Roberts, Olivia Holland

Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Awards (WLURAs)

Private Edward Martin Roberts fought – and was wounded – in the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Less than three years later, Edward had died and was subsequently buried in London, Ontario’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Edward's headstone, however, is unique as many of the soldiers who were buried in London never served overseas. Beginning with his pre-war life, this biography attempts to trace Edward’s experiences before, during, and after the First World War. Edward’s life and military service connects to many broader historical and historiographical trends, such as contemporary demographics, source uncertainty, the Battle of Vimy Ridge, and medical developments during …

The Question Of Opium: Money, Morality And Japan’S Transimperial Participation In Opium Regulation, 1868 – 1925, Brian F. Gibb

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

‘The Opium Question’ was not a question, but rather it framed the issue of the under-regulated production, trade and consumption of opium in Asia throughout the nineteenth century. How did opium contribute to Japan’s imperial expansion? Furthermore, how did Japan learn from other imperial powers and use non-state epistemic knowledge to learn to expand its empire? Historians of drugs often use the term prohibition in relation to illicit drugs, when I argue that we should be discussing their regulation. Meiji Japan was faced with the issue of Chinese imperial subjects who were also dependent on opium. As part of the …

The Sino-Vietnamese War: How To Forget A Victory?, Kunji Wang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract

This thesis explores the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979 and its extended conflicts through the 1980s, focusing on the forgotten narratives and marginalized experiences of the war's veterans. It aims to uncover why this victory has been intentionally omitted from China's official historical narrative and to highlight the veterans' ongoing struggles in a rapidly transforming society.

This research combines oral histories, extensive fieldwork, and a review of both Chinese and non-Chinese scholarly works. By integrating diverse sources, the thesis challenges the official narrative and emphasizes the need for a more inclusive historical memory that acknowledges the sacrifices and experiences of …

Performing Masculinity: Calgary Men In The Great War, Andrew J. Hawkes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the masculinity of soldiers from Calgary during the Great War using a theoretical framework of hegemonic masculinity. The first chapter establishes a normative masculine standard in Calgary using local newspaper coverage of battalion departure parades. These events were rituals that celebrated militarized masculinity and reinforced the hegemonic ideal that existed across the British Empire in the early 20^th century. The second chapter assesses how masculinity was performed in letters during the war. Although men strove to embody the masculine ideal, their letters were not uniform endorsements of martial masculinity. The third chapter analyzes how hegemonic masculinity …

Listening To "Silence": Alternative Modes Of Communication In Korean And Korean American Women's Literature, Judy Joo-Ae Bae

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

South Korean feminist activity may be relatively unknown to many Western readers; however, a distinct form of feminist activism can be seen when considering alternative modes of communication that are not less than, simply different from “speech” or “voice” as forms of agency celebrated in the West. Alternative modes of communications such as silence, song, touch, and performance also speak important messages which can be heard when understood through local knowledges. In the three cases of South Korean and Korean American women’s fictions used in this dissertation, I unpack these alternative modes of communications used by the female protagonists through …

The Daring Muse Of Early Stuart Funeral Elegies, James Doelman

Brescia School of Humanities Publications

Funeral elegies of the early Stuart period are often marked by moments of “distraction” prompted by sorrow, and they venture into the realm of detraction as the poet turns against all that which lies beyond the dead figure who is at the heart of the elegy. While the funeral elegy in general was a copious and digressive form, exceptional deaths pressed elegists to stretch the usual rhetoric of grief and commemoration. This study offers a wide-ranging consideration of the period’s funeral elegies, in both manuscript and print, and by poets ranging from the canonical to the anonymous. It stands apart …

The Questionable Use Of Electors To Correct Voter Imbalances During The Early Presidential Elections, Marvin L. Simner

History Publications

During the drafting of the United States Constitution a major dilemma arose over how best to ensure that the smaller states (Delaware, Georgia, New Hampshire) had an equal voice with the larger states (Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia) when the time arrived to elect a chief executive officer for the country as a whole. The dilemma involved an issue that emerged when it became clear that, if left unresolved, the larger states could easily dominate the process though their use of electoral votes. Although a procedure had been proposed that would have properly addressed this issue, it was rejected in favor of …

Soho Story, Michelle A. Hamilton, Mackenzie Bodnar, Emma Bronsema, Emily Clink, Jessica Hugh, Niġel Klemenčič-Puglisevich,, Hannah Mantel, Emma Macdonald, Zahra Mcdoom, Paige Milner, Sarah Pointer, Avraham Shaver, Keely Shaw, Madeline Shaw, Danielle Sinopoli

History Publications

Formed by the London Community Foundation (LCF), the Vision SoHo Alliance is a partnership between six non-profit housing developers, which includes Chelsea Green Home Society, Homes Unlimited, Indwell, Residenza Affordable Housing, London Affordable Housing Foundation, and Zerin Development Corporation. Vision SoHo Alliance will create 650-unit apartments, of which 30-60% will be affordable units, in seven buildings on the former South Street Victoria Hospital property. Most buildings will be located on the block bounded by Waterloo, South, Colborne, and Hill streets. Another building will be constructed at the northeast corner of South and Colborne. Indwell purchased the former Faculty of Medicine …

The Impact Of The American Revolution On The Mackenzie Rebellion In Upper Canada, Marvin L. Simner

History Publications

No abstract provided.

A Further Evaluation Of The Carlisle Peace Commission’S Initiative, Marvin L. Simner

History Publications

No abstract provided.

Matthew Bullock, Blackface And Belonging: Anti-Black Racism In Eary 20th Century Ontario Press, Rachael Edwards

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In 1922 Matthew Bullock, a young Black North Carolinian was arrested in Hamilton, Ontario having fled the United States following the lynching of his teenage brother. His deportation and subsequent extradition cases received significant attention from the Canadian and American press. Historians Sarah-Jane Mathieu and John C. Weaver have discussed the case in the context of Black community formation and the development of the Canadians courts respectively. However, neither place significant focus on how the Ontario press covered the case. In this thesis, I argue that press and legal responses to Matthew Bullock were informed by a Canadian whiteness shaped …

The Sense Of Waste, Sean Sokolov

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis begins with the observation that waste is to an outsized degree subject to the modal verbs; we might say that waste gives way to the sense of waste. As a result, waste appears as an unusually animate–and animating–actant, producing in those who apprehend it the impulse to put that which is wasted to use. The introductory chapter establishes this fact and provides a brief overview of scholarly approaches to the study of waste, asserting that in order to transcend mere description of the phenomenon it is necessary to establish how waste as an actant entered into its present …

Lighting The Way Of The Learner: Towards A Social Virtue Epistemology In Aḥmad Al-Ṣaghīr’S The Faqīh’S Lantern, Amani Khelifa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis offers an original translation and analysis of a West African didactic poem in Islamic ethics and law, by the Mālikī-Ashʿarī Mauritanian scholar Aḥmad al-Ṣaghīr (d. 1272 AH/1856 CE) called The Faqīh’s Lantern (Miṣbāḥ al-Faqīh). In addition to the critical translation, I examine the poem thematically through the lens of social virtue epistemology. Chapter 1 sketches the background of the text and author, positioning the author historically as a product of a rich scholarly and pedagogical tradition while noting Mauritania’s contemporary place in the North American Muslim imagination. Chapter 2 is the translation of the text, making …

Clever Minds And Nimble Hands? Making Embroidery In Late Qing And Republican China, Lu Wang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The handiwork of embroidery signified gentry lady’s intelligence and refinement in late imperil China. Yet in late Qing and Republican China, embroidery was practised by a wide range of makers – gentry ladies, male professionals, home-based female workers, young students, and peasant women. Why was the exquisite art of embroidery able to be crafted by makers of a diverse backgrounds? My study explores various contexts and investigates the secrets for the maintenance of the technical virtuosity of different embroidery genres and argues that the making of embroidery in late Qing and Republican China was a constantly changing knowledge redistribution process …

The Forgetting Of Fire: An Archaeology Of Technics, Thomas A. Doerksen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation applies the methods of Bachelard and Foucault to key moments in the development of science. By analyzing the attitudes of four figures from four different centuries, it shows how epistemic attitudes have shifted from a participation in non-human, natural realities to a construction of human-centred technologies. The idea of an epistemic attitude is situated in reference to Foucault’s concept of the episteme and his method of archaeology; an attitude is the institutionally-situated and personally-enacted comportment of an epistemic agent toward an object of knowledge. This line of thought is pursued under the theme of elemental fire, which begins …

Backboards And Backlash: The Experiences Of Women's Intercollegiate Basketball Players Under Title Ix, 1975-1992, Meredyth Dwyer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Enacted as a provision of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, Title IX dramatically reshaped intercollegiate athletics opportunities for young women at American institutions of higher education. Yet, discrimination in intercollegiate athletics continued in the decades after the law went into effect. Using the oral history testimony of ten narrators, each a woman who played intercollegiate basketball between 1975 and 1992, this thesis explores the experiences of women’s basketball players in the first two decades after the passage of Title IX. Approaching the Title IX era through the lens of social history, this thesis asks two major questions: whether female …

Insatisfacción Y Tácticas De Oposición: Tres Novelas De Formación Femenina En América Latina (1870-1940), Andrea Angel Baquero

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Esta tesis estudia las novelas de formación femenina como un subgénero novelístico que se distancia del Bildungsroman en la noción de aprendizaje e integración social de las protagonistas. El auge de las novelas de formación femenina en América Latina transcurrió de forma conjunta con el posicionamiento de la mujer como escritora y la conquista de sus derechos políticos y civiles. Por lo cual, este trabajo parte de la hipótesis de que el surgimiento y posterior auge de las novelas de formación se dio de manera conjunta con la profesionalización de la labor escritural de las mujeres por una relación de …

“The Dignity Of Being Called Americans”: American Identity And Portrayals Of Canadians In The American Press, 1754-1812, Jonathan Bayer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation explores the ways that Canadians were portrayed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century American press and considers how those portrayals intersected with and reinforced the development of early American identity. Building on the concepts of “othering” as identified by Edward Said and “imagined communities” as identified by Benedict Anderson, I argue that American newspapers othered Canadians as a means of reinforcing cohesion within the early American imagined community. Many historians have explored the ways that early Americans othered their French, British, Indigenous, and Black neighbours in constructing their own unified American identity, but these studies have …

The 1900s Southwestern Ontario Sand Sucker Panic, Mary E. Baxter

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

During the early twentieth century, waterbed aggregate mining in the Great Lakes supplied sand and gravel for infrastructure development in the lakes’ shoreline communities. This thesis explores commercial dredging and its impacts at Lake Erie's Pelee Island and Point Pelee, and along the St. Clair River. The mostly transnational activity produced shoreline erosion that threatened agricultural operations, and sand suckers, the dredges that performed the mining, came to symbolize American capitalist exploitation in southwestern Ontario. Disputes arose over the extent of the erosion and affected relations between governments at all levels. Using government and business records, I argue that the …

Women And Medicine On The Gold Coast, 1880-1945, Michael Osei

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Prior to colonial rule and the imposition of western medicine and practices, several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa relied on traditional medicine to treat tropical diseases that ravaged the populace. Specialists in traditional medicine, both men and women, restored and preserved their patients' health through herbarium and spiritism. Like their male counterparts, female traditional medicine practitioners on the Gold Coast were highly respected by people for their knowledge and competence as their communities' primary healers and caregivers. This study, drawing on various primary and secondary sources, including oral traditions, colonial reports, medical journals, and historical accounts, argues that women played a …

Canada's Evergreen Playground: A History Of Snow In Vancouver, M Blake Butler

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The City of Vancouver is not as snowy as the rest of Canada; rain, not snow, is its defining weather feature. But snow is a common seasonal occurrence, having fallen there nearly every winter since the 1850s. This dissertation places snow at the centre of the City of Vancouver’s history. It demonstrates how cultural and natural factors influenced human experiences and relationships with snow on the coast between the 1850s and 2000s. Following Vancouver’s incorporation, commercial and civic boosters constructed – and settlers adopted – what I call an evergreen mentality. Snow was reconceptualized as a rare and infrequent phenomenon. …

3201g: London Cycle Link, Alec M. Gelz

Community Engaged Learning Final Projects

No abstract provided.

'Gave His Life For The Empire': Memory, Memorials, And Identity In The British Empire After The First World War, Bryan Mcclure

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the construction of personal memorials after the First World War across the British Empire nations of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, to understand how individuals sought to make their own memorial to remember their loved one killed in the conflict. In comparison to other studies on the construction of national or other community memorials, this dissertation explores how individuals accepted or rejected dominant discourses in creating their own memorials that spoke to how they remembered the war. It is based on a large database of more than 2,000 private memorials to individuals that …

The Purpose Of The Electoral College: A Seemingly Endless Controversy, Marvin L. Simner

History Publications

Use of the Electoral College as the sole means for determining the outcome of a presidential election in the United States has come under repeated attack in recent years. The purpose of this article is to review the nature of the attack, the reason for the College as discussed by the Framers of the Constitution, its questionable early significance, and finally, a current proposal for altering its importance that appears to be gaining momentum.

Early-Stuart Funeral Elegies From Manuscript, James Doelman

Brescia School of Humanities Publications

This document is a collection of English funeral elegies from the years 1603 to 1640, which survive in manuscript but were not published, either in their own time or more recently. It served as the basis for James Doelman, The Daring Muse of the Early Stuart Funeral Elegy (Manchester University Press, 2021).

A Misguided Attempt To Populate Upper Canada With Loyalists After The American Revolution, Marvin L. Simner

History Publications

Following the American Revolution, and to achieve a more appropriate governing climate, the British Parliament issued the Constitutional Act of 1791 which created, out of a single province, “two separate Canadas, each having a representative government with an elected assembly of its own.” The French-speaking sector became known as Lower Canada while the English-speaking sector was called Upper Canada. [1] What became immediately apparent with this division of the province was the highly disproportionate population in the two distinct sectors, and the potential danger this posed for the security of the province as a whole. In Lower Canada, today known …

The History Of The Enigma Machine, Jenna Siobhan Parkinson

History Publications

The history of the Enigma machine begins with the invention of the rotor-based cipher machine in 1915. Various models for rotor-based cipher machines were developed somewhat simultaneously in different parts of the world. However, the first documented rotor machine was developed by Dutch naval officers in 1915. Nonetheless, the Enigma machine was officially invented following the end of World War I by Arthur Scherbius in 1918 (Faint, 2016).

Christian Mass Movements In South India And Some Of The Critical Factors That Changed The Face Of Christianity In India, Philip Joseph Mathew

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The main reason for Christian growth in India was not individual conversions but rather Christian mass movements (CMMs). Since the late 1700s, a series of independent CMMs among non-Christians and a mass reformation movement within the Suriani community have occurred in the southern end of India. These MMs culminated in a mass emancipation movement against caste-imposed segregation of Dalits in the late 1800s, an event of national significance. In the early 1900s, Pentecostalism evolved from these CMMs and transformed the religious landscape of Christianity in South India and later in India as a whole. The Thoma Christians were the early …

Canadian Prisoners Of The First World War: The Struggle For Resilience, Grace Peeters-Rosien

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the First World War, 3,500 Canadian soldiers were taken prisoner. Throughout their captivity, they endured intense humiliation, dehumanization, and abuse. Despite this, the men were able to remain resilient and even found ways to fight back. By using memoirs and letters written by the prisoners, this paper will analyze how these Canadians were determined to keep fighting. This paper will be using an analogy of a bank account to explain how close the prisoners came to breakdown, and how they continuously struggled to endure. Society and war had taught these men that prisoners were weak and cowardly, but they …

Unsung Equine Heroes: An Analysis Of Equine Care And Management During The Great War, Emma E. Kuiack

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the use of equines by the British Expeditionary Forces throughout the First World War, particularly examining various aspects of war equine care and management. It addresses the significance behind the use of these animals in the war before delving into the reality of how equines were cared for in terms of farrier work, skin care and management, feeding and watering, as well as psychological understandings of horses, donkeys, and mules. Through the implementation of various primary and secondary source materials, this thesis considers care mistakes that were made and the corrections that were enforced to alleviate injury …