Asian History Commons^™

Killing Within Communities: What Causes Collective Violence, How We Remember It, And Why It Matters, Laleh Ahmad

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis seeks to understand motivations for collective violence beyond the traditional explanations of ethnic hatred or racism. Often, historical scholarship focuses on ethnic hatred and racism, and elaborates on the processes by which those notions and hatreds came to be. Scholarship in the political science realm often gets past the hatred hypothesis but does not explore historical myths and legacy formation as they contribute to past and current violence. This thesis employs a case study approach to understand collective violence that is global and takes multiple cultures and religions into account. The case studies were chosen thematically, and each …

Trickle Down Nationalism: Interactions Between Liberal Nationalism And Colonialism In The Raj And Nigeria, Aaryaman Sheoran

CMC Senior Theses

The combination of nationalism and colonialism has remained understudied in academia, despite the important interaction between the two phenomena. European ideas bled over into their colonial empires and began to fill the power vacuum created by colonial enterprises. This study analyzes the impact of British colonialism on the development of national identity in British India and Nigeria.

British influences included large scale economic disruption, cultural reform through ‘westernizing’ the population and abolishing local customs, and creating a new set of institutions to replace traditional power centers. Inevitably, these factors created a nationalist surge across both the Raj and Nigeria, as …

Social Piracy In Colonial And Contemporary Southeast Asia, Miles T. Bird

CMC Senior Theses

According to the firsthand account of James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, it appears that piracy in the state of British Malaya in the mid-1800s was community-driven and egalitarian, led by the interests of heroic figures like the Malayan pirate Si Rahman. These heroic figures share traits with Eric Hobsbawm’s social bandit, and in this case may be ascribed as social pirates. In contrast, late 20^th-century and early 21^st-century pirates in the region operate in loosely structured, hierarchical groups beholden to transnational criminal syndicates. Evidence suggests that contemporary pirates do not form the egalitarian communities of their …