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Full-Text Articles in History

Map, Census, Museum: Imagining The Malaysian Nation-State And The Malay Identity, Jackson Rockett Jan 2023

Map, Census, Museum: Imagining The Malaysian Nation-State And The Malay Identity, Jackson Rockett

Honors Theses

Using historian Benedict Anderson's framework from his seminal text Imagined Communities of examining nation-building and identity construction through colonial artifacts, this thesis turns to maps, censuses, and museums to better understand the colonial and post-colonial imagining of the country that is now known as Malaysia. Reconciling with regional histories that predate the nation-state and defy the contemporary boundaries of territoriality, this thesis largely seeks to elucidate the contestation between colonially-imposed ideas of spatiality, categorization, and the reproduction of history with the modern Malaysian nation-state and the conflation of ethnicity with nationalism from which much of this contestation is derived from.


The Bittersweet Tooth: Understanding French Identity Through The Colonial Empire, Commodity Fetishism, And Pâtisserie, Clarisse D. Allehaut Jan 2022

The Bittersweet Tooth: Understanding French Identity Through The Colonial Empire, Commodity Fetishism, And Pâtisserie, Clarisse D. Allehaut

Honors Theses

This thesis argues that patisserie and the French relationship with dessert are a part of national identity. The historical context of patisserie runs parallel to the growth and power of the French colonial empire. Patisserie feels removed from the empire, and yet the two show how gastronomy, luxury, and exploitative power in the form of empire are components of French history and identity. Marx’s theory on commodity fetishism serves as the backbone for this argument. This theoretical idea supposes that value is an objective concept and society attributes importance and perceived meaning. Patisserie exemplifies commodity fetishism as a good with …


A Prosaic People? Literature, Propaganda, And National Identity In Second World War Britain, William L. Maines Jan 2022

A Prosaic People? Literature, Propaganda, And National Identity In Second World War Britain, William L. Maines

Honors Theses

During the early years of the Second World War, a typically unofficial and loose coalition of British newspapers, publishers, propagandists, and booksellers mobilized Britain’s imagined literary past and present as a part of the war effort. They defined the nation through its imagined literary proclivities— its penchant for literary production and consumption, and its “unique” attitude toward literary freedom— and in opposition to the literary tyranny of Nazi Germany. Marshaling the nation’s mythological literary heritage, they enlisted Shakespeare and Milton in the war effort, portraying them as temperate and civilian English heroes. While the rhetoric of “British bookishness” hardly went …


From Development To Desintegration: Elites And The Connectedness Of Mountain Communities In Western North Carolina From The Antebellum Period To The End Of The Civil War, Colin W. Hull Jan 2015

From Development To Desintegration: Elites And The Connectedness Of Mountain Communities In Western North Carolina From The Antebellum Period To The End Of The Civil War, Colin W. Hull

Honors Theses

This paper undertakes as study of western North Carolina and the connectedness of mountain communities as they developed and disintegrated over the course of the antebellum period and the American Civil War. The research and conclusions in this paper confront common stereotypes of Appalachia, which include individualism, backwardness, isolation, and unionism during the Civil War. These stereotypes and generalizations have been attributed to the region by early histories, outsider accounts, and popular representations and have led to a myth of an engrained mountain culture, embodying those stereotypes. Mountain communities were not stagnant and unchanged throughout the 19th century, but …


La Identidad De Los Carabineros De Chile: The Evolving Identity Of Chile's National Police Force And The 1973 Military Coup, Jeffrey O. Lamson Jan 2014

La Identidad De Los Carabineros De Chile: The Evolving Identity Of Chile's National Police Force And The 1973 Military Coup, Jeffrey O. Lamson

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the evolution of Los Carabineros de Chile, Chile's national police force, from their origins under Carlos Ibáñez in 1927 until their involvement in the 1973 military coup against President Salvador Allende. Various presidencies primarily used this corps during this period as a weapon against popular mobilization and thus influenced the development of the Carabineros' institutional identity. To explore how this identity evolved, this thesis examines primary sources, mostly in the form of newspapers found in the National Archives in Santiago, Chile, that illuminate the Carabineros' relations with the public. The knowledge of the Carabineros' institutional identity contributes …