History Commons^™

Your Country Needs You (And Also Your Resources) Britain And Her Colonies During And Shortly After Ww2, Anthony-Noel Cepe

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

No conflict has shaped the modern world more thoroughly than the Second World War. However, the retelling of this era, whether through mass media or more scholarly works such as books and journal articles, is one seen through a white, Eurocentric lens. This is strange; as the name implies, the Second World War was a truly global conflict, involving not only the major world powers at the time, but also their subjects. Great Britain was no exception; far from the popular image of it standing alone in the face of Nazi tyranny, the island nation drew vast amounts of men …

'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 …

Bloody Sunday: Death & Press, Joseph Gaffney

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project is a historical paper on Bloody Sunday, a day of violence in Dublin during the Irish War for Independence on November 21, 1920, analyzing primary and secondary sources centered on the subject to answer specific historiographical research questions. The primary objective of this research project is to understand the immediate social and political ramifications of Bloody Sunday in Ireland and England as reflected in the spread of information via the written press. The goal of the written analysis will be to answer a series of historical research questions. How were both the IRA’s killings and the subsequent reprisal …

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 …

The Political, The Personal, And The Personified: 18th Century British Political Caricature Art And The Formation Of The British Empire’S Identity, Sarah Johns

History Honors Papers

An image is often capable of communicating a number of things to a viewer, and political caricature in the eighteenth-century British metropole is one clear example of this. Political caricature became a useful tool for the wealthy—especially white men—to engage in discussions about the power of the British Empire as it continued to expand and grow in strength in comparison to other European Empires at the time. Even so, with the coming of the American conflict, things changed. No longer could these men be sure of what a British identity entailed. A family fractured, changing gender norms, evolving concepts of …

Caratacus, The Remembered Warrior: The Legacies Of Caratcaus In Roman Histories And The British Victorian Era, Isabella Kearney

Pomona Senior Theses

This study will explore the origins of the historical figure of Caratacus and analyze its reception in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. This work will begin by providing an overview of Caratacus’ context in the first century in Britannia. Then, looking at the reception of Caratacus, the study will chronologically analyze the portrayal of Caratacus in the ancient sources of Tacitus and Cassius Dio. As the first textual evidence of Caratacus, this will provide insights into Caratacus’ history and the origins of Caratacus’ transformation into an icon of Roman and British history. This work will then analyze the receptions of Caratacus …

Egyptian Pieces Of The Empire's Puzzle: Peasants, Women, And Students In British Official Documents Issued After The 1919 Revolution In Egypt, Jane Linhares

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Belonging To The Imperial Nation: Rethinking The History Of The First World War In Britain And Its Empire, Susan R. Grayzel

History Faculty Publications

In anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the First World War in 2014–18, the British government set aside funds for a range of commemorative activities. These included a number of “engagement centres” that aimed to bring together academics and local community members in addition to providing separate arts-related programming.1 The Imperial War Museum reworked its main First World War galleries, which opened with great fanfare at the centenary’s start. This denotes a kind of publicly sanctioned interest in a war that Britain had won, after all, but that popular memory had enshrined as something quite different, something that required …

"Ye Sons Of Mars": British Representations Of The Sudan Campaign In Print Culture, 1884–1899, Crystal E. Smith

Master's Theses

From 1884 to 1885 the British were first engaged with the Mahdist forces of Sudan in an effort to first rescue the inhabitants of Khartuom, and later to rescue the rescuer Charles “Chinese” Gordon. The affair played out both in Parliament and the newspapers as journalists became the cheerleaders for Empire. My thesis focuses on Britain’s 1884-1890 Sudan Campaign through print culture using political debates, journalism, literature, memoirs, and art. I show how the activism of the press and the romanticism of the larger media reinforced ideas about imperialism and the British role within the Empire at large.

Friend Or Foe? Martial Race Ideology And The Experience Of Highland Scottish And Irish Regiments In Mid-Victorian Conflicts, 1853-1870, Adam Spivey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines martial race ideology in the British Army during the mid-nineteenth century. A “martial race” was a group of people that the British considered to excel in the art of warfare due to biological and cultural characteristics. This thesis examines perceived “martial” natures or lack thereof of the Highland Scots and the Irish during this era. Central to this analysis are the Crimean War (1853-1856) and the Indian Mutiny of 1857 which provided opportunities for soldiers to display their “martial” qualities. The Crimean War was the first war where the daily newspapers covered every aspect of the war …

To Whom Does The Body Of The Dead Soldier Belong?: An Examination Of British Imperial Strategy And The Making And Meaning Of World War I Memorials, Hannah M. Jeruc

Lawrence University Honors Projects

In 1915, one year into World War I, Fabian Arthur Goulstone Ware founded the Imperial War Graves Commission, the official body responsible for locating, identifying and burying the dead British and Commonwealth soldiers. By the end of the war, the British had lost about one million troops, and for the next 20 years, the Commission would work diligently to create 970 cemeteries, 600,000 graves and 18 larger memorials to commemorate the British losses on the Western Front. However, the significance of the British WWI memorialization process is about more than the Empire's architectural achievements, but rather, the story the architecture …

"To Hold The World In Contempt": The British Empire, War, And The Irish And Indian Nationalist Press, 1899-1914, Susan A. Rosenkranz

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The era between the close of the nineteenth century and the onset of the First World War witnessed a marked increase in radical agitation among Indian and Irish nationalists. The most outspoken political leaders of the day founded a series of widely circulated newspapers in India and Ireland, placing these editors in the enviable position of both reporting and creating the news. Nationalist journalists were in the vanguard of those pressing vocally for an independent India and Ireland, and together constituted an increasingly problematic contingent for the British Empire. The advanced-nationalist press in Ireland and the nationalist press in India …

Contested Spaces In London: Exhibitionary Representations Of India, C. 1886-1951, Alayna Heinonen

Theses and Dissertations--History

Following the first world exhibition, the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, exhibitions became routine events across the West that merged both education and entertainment to forward political and economic goals. For the most part scholars have taken the frequency, popularity, and propagandistic efforts of exhibitions at face value, viewing them as successful reassertions of the imperial, industrial, and technological superiority of Western nation-states. Though offering valuable insights into the cultural technologies of imperial rule, these works miss the complexities of imperial projects within specific temporal and geographical contexts.

This manuscript traces the historical dynamics of India at exhibitions held …

Rule Britannia: Britain, Breadfruit, And The Birth Of Transoceanic Plant Transportation, Annabel Tudor

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

This paper examines the events that precipitated transoceanic plant transportation and British imperial expansion during the second half of the eighteenth century. Combined circumstances forced the British to explore transoceanic plant transportation to make colonies, especially those in the British West Indies, more self-sufficient. Hurricanes in the Caribbean destroyed ground crops vital for slaves and plantation operations, and fallout from a volcanic eruption in Iceland poisoned soil in Britain and northern Europe for years. Wars with France and America inhibited oceanic trade and trade routes. These circumstances fostered the British desire to control its own food supply and resulted in …

The Role Of The House Of Commons In The Quest For Empire : 1748-1756, Stephen E. Ford

Undergraduate Honors Theses

No abstract provided.