European History Commons^™

The Great Heathen Failure: Why The Great Heathen Army Failed To Conquer The Whole Of Anglo-Saxon England, Ryan Macneill

Graduate Theses

In the year 865 CE, a coalition of Viking forces combined to form an army aimed at the conquest and settlement of England. Known as The Great Heathen Army, these Vikings managed to capture most of the territory that today constitutes England with the notable exception of the English kingdom of Wessex. And so, despite many successes, they failed to conquer all of English territory. Though these events, which transpired throughout the 860s and 870s, are well documented, the Viking perspective is rarely taken into account and there has yet to have been an argument that pinpoints how and why …

Incompetence And Obfuscation: Austria-Hungary’S Defeat In The Galician Campaign Of 1914, Samuel D’Amore

History & Classics Dissertations and Masters Theses

The 1931 Austrian film, Berge in Flammen, opens with the ringing of a church bell, signaling the beginning of the Great War. Upon hearing the bell’s toll, men immediately abandon their work and rush to the village center. Two men so enraptured by the bell suddenly leap up and abandon their horse mid shoeing. Men, still clad in their work aprons - one having dragged a calf along with him- begin to read the Kaiser’s “appeal to his people” posted upon the church wall. The enrapturing nature of the bell’s call even reached the film’s protagonist, Florian Dimai, high …

The Battle Of The Ourcq River, Earl Jacob Starbuck

Masters Theses

An account of the Battle of the Ourcq River, 28 July-6 August, 1918, World War One.

Film Review: The Impure: An Abolitionist Documentary Film Of The 19th Century Traffic In Jewish Women, Caroline Norma

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Population Movement And State Building: A Case Study Of Migratory Policies In Italy, Julia Pagnamenta

Student Theses

The current study examines Italian laws and policies around migratory movements since Italy first became a modern nation state in 1861 up until April 2019, when the research was concluded. This paper is a case study of Italian migratory policies. It first looks at the way Italy’s early efforts at nation building coincided with the mass emigration of its citizens, informing its policies on emigration and colonial expansion. The study then analyzes the way in which Italy developed a policy response to the growing immigrant and refugee population in the late 1980s following geo-political transformations in Europe. The evolution of …

Art And War: Republican Propaganda Of The Spanish Civil War, Jason Manrique

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis focuses on propaganda used by the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) to gain support for their cause and win the war. It focuses on three forms of media: cinema, posters and photography, and it is divided into an introduction, three separate chapters, and a conclusion. In them I provide a historical context on the II Republic and the Civil War and analyze the effectiveness of concrete artworks to propagate the Republican message.

The Family, Political Theory, And Ideology: A Comparative Study Of John Stuart Mill And Friedrich Engels, David M. Murray Jr.

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project is concerned with the development of the Christian family in Europe and how its sociological and historical characteristics informed the writings of John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Engels. The term “Christian family” refers to the dominant form of the family seen in Western Europe, namely the atomistic nuclear family. The sociological and ideological foundations of the family are explored to provide context for the writings of John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Engels that utilize the concept of the family for their political projects. Both wrote critically about the state of the family in their lifetimes, particularly in regard …

The Iconography Of The Gold And Silver Coinage Of Philip Ii Of Macedon And Alexander The Great, Nisha N. Ramracha

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The history of Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great has been tremendously studied through ancient sources and archaeology. One approach has been through numismatics: a comprehensive study of currency in the form of coins and additional media for transactions, trade, payment and otherwise. This form of research gives scholars an economic perspective on the lives and campaigns of these renowned Macedonian Argead kings through statistical calculations in the form of weights, di-axes, ascertaining inauguration dates as well as appraisal of metals such as gold, silver and bronze in ancient economies, and deducing the locations of mints and various …

"We Germans Fear God, And Nothing Else In The World!" Military Policy In Wilhelmine Germany, 1890-1914, Cavender Sutton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the Second Reich’s short life, military affairs were synonymous with those of the state. Indeed, it was the zeal and blood of Prussian soldiers that allowed the creation of a unified German empire. After solidifying itself as a major power, things grew more complicated as the Reich found itself increasingly surrounded by hostile rivals. To the west, French humiliation over their catastrophic defeat in 1870-71 continued to fester while, in the east, Russian sympathies for the new empire waned. The finalization of a Franco-Russian alliance in 1894 meant Germany faced formidable adversaries along her eastern and western borders. That …

Children Of A One-Eyed God: Impairment In The Myth And Memory Of Medieval Scandinavia, Michael David Lawson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using the lives of impaired individuals catalogued in the Íslendingasögur as a narrative framework, this study examines medieval Scandinavian social views regarding impairment from the ninth to the thirteenth century. Beginning with the myths and legends of the eddic poetry and prose of Iceland, it investigates impairment in Norse pre-Christian belief; demonstrating how myth and memory informed medieval conceptualizations of the body. This thesis counters scholarly assumptions that the impaired were universally marginalized across medieval Europe. It argues that bodily difference, in the Norse world, was only viewed as a limitation when it prevented an individual from fulfilling roles that …

Transported To Botany Bay : Class, National Identity, And The Literary Figure Of The Australian Convict, Dorice Williams Elliott

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Literary representations of British convicts exiled to Australia were the most likely way that the typical English reader would learn about the new colonies there. In Transported to Botany Bay, Dorice Williams Elliott examines how writers—from canonical ones such as Dickens and Trollope to others who were themselves convicts—used the figure of the felon exiled to Australia to construct class, race, and national identity as intertwined.

Even as England’s supposedly ancient social structure was preserved and venerated as the “true” England, the transportation of some 168,000 convicts facilitated the birth of a new nation with more fluid class relations for …

Casualties Of War? Refining The Civilian-Military Dichotomy In World War I, Eric Grube

Madison Historical Review

Throughout the First World War, newspapers around the world mocked the British state for its lavish spending on captured German officers kept at Donington Hall, a refurbished English estate. Why was this camp such a controversial space of perceived decadence? I argue that its comforts seemed to linger from an earlier era, one in which military men exuded genteel civility as integral to their supposedly heroic service. The British state essentially enabled such treatment, and the public decried this space for sustaining the anachronism of aristocratic privilege in the face of a globalized total war. However, the German inmates expected …

Russia's Empress-Navigator: Transforming Modes Of Monarchy During The Reign Of Anna Ivanovna, 1730-40., Jacob S. Bell

Madison Historical Review

The eighteenth century was a markedly volatile period in the history of Russia, seeing its development and international emergence as a European-styled empire. In narratives of this time of change, historians tend to view the century in two parts: the reign of Peter I (r. 1682-1725), who purportedly spurned Russia into modernization, and Catherine II (r. 1762-96), the German princess-turned-empress who presided over the culmination of Russia’s transformation. Yet, dismissal of nearly forty years of Russia’s history does a severe disservice to the sovereigns and governments that molded and crafted the process of change. Specifically, Empress Anna Ivanovna (r. 1730-40) …

Strict Restraints: Abstinence's Gender Problems In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc

History Honors Papers

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure poses questions about sexual coercion and governmental corruption that resonate today. Recent scholarship has examined sexual abstinence in Measure for Measure in terms of its historical economic and religious context regarding Isabella. However, Angelo and the Duke, the play's other central characters, also make claims about the value of abstinence. I put these characters’ claims into dialogue with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and extensive scholarship on Shakespearean England. I argue that abstinence is the axis around which Measure’s main characters revolve, and that Measure locates these characters’ abstinences as competing performances of manhood and …

Mary Tudor: A Catholic Leader In A Protestant State, Braeden Glancy

Spring Presentation of Undergraduate Research

While Mary I faced many challenges during her reign, the most critical were her marriage to Philip of Spain, the attempted amalgamation of church and state through indoctrination of the Protestant clergy, and the rebellions and executions of Protestants in England which all culminated into denominational conflict throughout England.

Taxonomy And The History Of Science: A Critical Analysis Of Four Historic Publications, Christopher M. Rogers

KSU Journey Honors College Capstones and Theses

The history of taxonomy is not usually taught in modern biology classes, but it is necessary to understand the history of classification and science as a whole in order to better understand the processes of classification and thinking that are commonly taught at the college level. Through the exploration of the difficulties of publishing, Linnaeus' Species Plantarum, and three pre-Linnaean works from Pliny the Elder, Nehemiah Grew, and Rembert Dodoens, I have found that the history of the sciences has been largely distorted. The distortion appears to be of many factors, including the replacement of ideas, censorship from scholarly …

A Question Of G-D: Jewish Theology And Memoirs Of The Holocaust, Rebecca Mcclellan

Honors College Theses

The Holocaust, the systematic murder of the European Jews by the Germans, had massive impacts on the religious beliefs of those Jews who survived it. Nazi authorities and their accomplices stripped Jews away from their homes, their families, and everything they knew. Forced to work under inhumane conditions, many came to question the God they had followed and the religion they had practiced. This thesis investigates the memoirs of five Jewish survivors to analyze the impact the Holocaust had on their faith.

The Nineteenth Century British Workhouse: Mission Not Accomplished, Brenda Derin

Scholarly and Creative Works Conference (2015 - 2021)

ABSTRACT:

How to correct poverty in a society is extremely complex. In the nineteenth century, the British struggled to house, feed and care for the unemployed and destitute men, women and children created by the Industrial Revolution. Many in the upper classes considered poverty a moral failure, yet they had little impetus to end it. Poverty, as defined by an inability to provide for one’s needs due to a variety of factors, was seen as necessary, for without it there would be no motivation for the lower classes to work and provide a luxurious life for the wealthy.

Although some …

Economies Of Salvation In English Anchoritic Texts, 1100-1400, Joshua Edward Britt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the different ways medieval authors conceived of anchoritism and solitary life by focusing on three important phases of the movement which are represented by Wulfric of Haselbury, Christina of Markyate, and fourteenth-century mystics. It is grounded in the medieval English anchoritic literature that was produced by religious scholars between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. Initially, lacking a tradition of their own and a language to articulate the anchoritic experience, medieval hagiographers borrowed the desert imagery from the story of the early fathers who lived in the Syrian and Egyptian deserts, which they viewed as a place of …

A Tale Of Two Bonnies: Comparing “Lost Cause” Narratives And Post-War Memory From The American Civil War And The 1745 Jacobite Rebellion Through Art, William Robert Tharp

Student Scholar Showcase

In the cultures of Scotland after the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion and the American South after the Civil War, defeatist memories and art featured prominently in mythmaking and served as a focal point for many who wished to make political statements or critiques of current realities. In Scotland, romanticism revolving around “Bonnie Prince Charlie” and the Jacobites in 1745 lessened the burden of defeat for many. Contextualizing their loss within a broader historical framework, which stressed different features depending on the group’s purpose, some Scots utilized Jacobite memory as a potent political critique of Scotland’s place within Great Britain. Others, like …