History Commons^™

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 …

Frontier: Land, Architecture, And Abstraction, Jacob Boatman

Masters Theses

The abstraction of land is a colonial process by which physical land is transformed into a conceptual or symbolic entity. This transformation occurs through various economic, architectural, and cultural practices that imbue land with abstract values, meanings, and functions beyond its physicality. This includes the division of land into parcels for economic transactions, the design and construction of built environments that shape human interactions with the land, and the cultural narratives and representations that ascribe significance to particular landscapes. Through abstraction, colonial powers devalue indigenous perspectives and relationships to the land, reducing them to mere obstacles in the path of …

Reframing The Filipina As A Militant: The Ongoing Revolutionary History Of The Philippines, Nicole Reyes

Global Honors Theses

Filipino women make up half of Philippine society, and throughout Philippine history, their experiences have been significant in revealing and evaluating oppressive social structures in the Philippines. Militant Filipino women have been at the forefront of social and political movements. The history and influence of the women-led militant revolutionary group MAKIBAKA combat the gender and class structures of Philippine society identified by the National Democratic movement as the three fundamental problems of Filipino society: U.S. imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism, feudalism, as well as a fourth problem identified by the founder of MAKIBAKA Lorena Barros as a male authority. MAKIBAKA emerged from …

Spain's Vision Of Empire Through Conquest, Ideology, And Law In The Sixteenth Century, Penelope Yau-Wen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines how the process of exploration, discovery, conquest and colonization of the Americas by Spain developed along with a vision of empire that involved the formulation of political theories, laws and policies by the governing elites, while responding to the actions by the conquistadors on the field. Although events on both sides of the Atlantic were not necessarily coordinated, the interests of the Court and the conquistadors intersected and were justified through a discourse that had been shaped by Humanist intellectual currents.

The thesis intends to show how the Castilian imperial vision was an experiment that began to …

The Re-Radicalization Of King: Understanding Martin Luther King Jr's Radical Ideas And The Simplification Of His Legacy, Erika A. Jeanty

Senior Projects Spring 2024

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Contextualizing George Orwell: How Orwell's Life Experiences Influenced His Most Famous Novels, Jonah Ridgley

History and Political Science | Senior Theses

George Orwell is one of the most celebrated authors of the 20th century. His most famous novels, Animal Farm and 1984, serve as insightful commentaries on the horrors of totalitarianism. These two books have been studied extensively and incorporated into public and political discourse since his death in 1950. Contemporary right-wing and left-wing leaders and pundits both continue to reference the concepts and language in Orwell’s books to support their respective stances on various issues. Additionally, they have been presented to high schoolers and college students as simplified anti-communist novels or pro-capitalist propaganda during the Cold War. However, Orwell’s work …

The Incoherence Of Orientalists, Sarah Zaid Alafifi

Theses and Dissertations

Orientalism, the Western practice of fetishizing cultures, extends beyond mere misrepresentation of the “other;” it epitomizes the underlying structures of colonialism and imperialism, infiltrating everyday life and eroding the moral fabric of Islamic society.

This thesis analyzes colonial control through the exercise of political power and the production of knowledge, investigating key events related to Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign and the narratives of resistance that emerged in opposition to it.

Through the lens of this 18th-century expedition, the study examines how Western knowledge systematically contributed to the dismantling of Islamic systems of knowledge. Select phrases from Colonial-era printed proclamations are extracted …

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 …

Japanese Colonialism: Unraveling The Complex Historiography And Cultural Genocide In The Korean Peninsula, Madison Huckabay

History | Senior Theses

Upon the influence of western imperialism reaching East Asia, Japan began its own imperial conquests as it worked to establish itself as a world power alongside Russia and Western powers. After the first Sino-Japanese war between Qing China and Imperial Japan, China was forced to recognize independence to Korea, along with ceding the Taiwan, Pescadores and Liaodong territories to Japan as of 1895. While Japan initially claimed to promote Korea’s independence and nationalism, they officially ended up annexing Korea as of 1910. From the perspective of the western powers and historians, they were initially optimistic about Japan’s reform on Koreans. …

Spilling The Tea: A Comparative Analysis Of Development In Ex-British Colonies, Niamh L. Harrop

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The British Empire was the largest empire the world has ever seen, and as such, has significantly impacted many of the countries it formerly held as colonies. Imposing a Western style of governance would change the political operations of a nation and would fundamentally shift power dynamics within the country. Through a review of the existing literature on the subject, this thesis examines the effects that British imperial rule had on four different countries in both their social and economic development in the post-colonial era. Overall, the results indicate that Britain failed to set their colonies up for long-term development …

Counterinsurgency: An American Journey, Caleb Michael Herring

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

At the end of the American Civil War, the U.S. federal government found itself with new grand powers in its final victory over the Confederacy. The Union had survived the fires of war from 1861 to 1865, the bloodiest in American history. In the final days of the war, General Ulysses Grant described his purpose for several triumphal marches north with his Union armies: “The march of Sherman’s army from Atlanta to the sea and north to Goldsboro… It had an important bearing… of closing the war. As the army was seen marching on triumphantly, however, the minds of the …

Waqf In Transition: Tracing Local Institutional Change During The British Mandate In Palestine, Zachary Murray

Theses and Dissertations

The British Mandate’s actions of state-building in Palestine were informed by a Zionist-Western modernist envisioned past of Palestine. This state-building ideology was embedded within much of the bureaucracy of the Mandate’s system and infringed on numerous Palestinian institutions such as Waqf. Waqf was disenfranchised in particular through the implementation of urban development programs, like town planning and archaeological regimes, which sought to support the British-Zionist recasting of Palestine.

This thesis aims to show how the British’s ideology of Palestine informed the Mandate’s internal polices and actions which infringed on the rights of waqf. This was done through two axes of …

The Road To Total War - Anglo-German Rivalry, 1880-1914, Michael Coté

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This thesis is an analysis of the growing Anglo-German rivalry over the years between 1880 and 1914, leading up to the First World War. It discusses several aspects of the competition, from economic and strategic, to cultural and social, to political and diplomatic. The main argument is that the peacetime antagonism between Britain and Germany was as total as the war which it helped to bring about. The rivalry was ubiquitous, being reflected in all facets of society and geopolitical relations. It was unique in its rancorous quality and omnipresence on the global stage. It evolved over the period from …

Imperialism In The Caribbean: Us Policies Towards Cuba And Haiti From The 1950s To The 1970s, Glory Jones, Constance Chen, Sean Dempsey

Honors Thesis

Haiti and Cuba are two Caribbean islands which prove to be prominent particularly in revolutionary culture and discourse, despite the clear differences in present-day material conditions of the islands themselves. Alongside each of the islands’ need for regional partnerships and aid, their significance in revolutionary culture connected the two islands in a distinct way. This connection is one that was forged mostly in the time period from the 1950s to the1970s, when the Cuban Revolution began and gave way to many connections to the historic Haitian Revolution. Another major factor creating such solidarity during this time period, as well as …

‘Surest Guaranty Of Peace’: Rhetoric, Consumer Culture, And The Popularization Of American Naval Power, 1883 - 1909, Charles B. Harris

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project a cultural history of the U.S. Navy during an era of a major institutional and technological transformation. In it, I trace the ways that Gilded Age and Progressive Era naval advocates successfully pitched the idea of modernizing the U.S. Navy to the American people. These military promoters justified technological advancement as societal progress, arguing for a more pronounced presence for the United States on the world stage. Marketing experts then seized on the people’s increasing fascination with naval power to rekindle a sense of patriotism by sensationalizing militarism. Riding this wave of popularity and public awareness of naval …

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 …

Making The Mandates System, Benjamin Gladstone

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

After the First World War the international order was reorganized by the victorious powers, including the creation of the League of Nations, and under its supervision the mandates system. This system was designed to manage the colonies detached from the defeated Central Powers and to mitigate the worst effects of colonialism through international oversight and the imposition of conditions on the rule of these territories. This paper investigates the origins of this system, tracing it back through earlier precedents and discerning between different variations of colonialism practiced by different empires. This analysis shows that the mandates system was an Americanized …

The Ill-Treatment Of Their Countrywoman: Liberated African Women, Violence, And Power In Tortola, 1807–1834, Arianna Browne

Master's Theses

In 1807, Parliament passed an Act to abolish the slave trade, leading to the Royal Navy’s campaign of policing international waters and seizing ships suspected of illegal trading. As the Royal Navy captured slave ships as prizes of war and condemned enslaved Africans to Vice-Admiralty courts, formerly enslaved Africans became “captured negroes” or “liberated Africans,” making the subjects in the British colonies. This work, which takes a microhistorical approach to investigate the everyday experiences of liberated Africans in Tortola during the early nineteenth century, focuses on the violent conditions of liberated African women, demonstrating that abolition consisted of violent contradictions …

Colonial Development: The Importance Of The Backcountry Frontier In The Protection And Preservation Of Lowcountry Power In Colonial South Carolina, 1730-1769, Dillon A. Naquin

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In general discussions and teachings about the American Colonies before the Revolution, South Carolina is often oversimplified. Students are presented with a picture portraying the beginnings of American slavery, with large, cash crop plantations being worked by enslaved Africans while the white owners of the enslaved reap the benefits and enjoy a life of relative ease and luxury in their plantation houses and in the city of Charleston. Even when this picture includes extreme measures the planter elite took to enjoy this lifestyle in the form of slave laws and punishments, the more indirect methods of suppression are often left …

"Tropics Are Tropics Wherever Found": Performing Empire In The Travel Writings Of Mary Kingsley And Mary Gaunt, Kate Wilson

History Honors Theses

Much of the scholarship regarding Mary Kingsley and Mary Gaunt has argued that these two women, in traveling to West Africa, disrupted patriarchal discourse and expanded opportunities for women. However, these arguments fail to grasp the ways in which their gender intersected with discourses of race, nationality, and empire. In reading that Mary Kingsley's Travels in West Africa and Mary Gaunt's Alone in West Africa were performances, rather than than statements of objective fact, one can better understand this intersectionality. Because readers do not know for sure whether anything these women said about West Africa was true, one must instead …

Examining The U.S. Wars On Vietnam, Laos, And Cambodia As The Production Of Neo-Colonialism, Aiden Gregg

University Honors Theses

I interrogate the colonial and neo-colonial histories of the U.S. wars on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos within the context of racialized and gendered labor accumulation, the production of difference through violence as a legitimation of colonial extraction, and ongoing neoliberal economic coercion. I examine genocide and ecocide as interdependent processes in the production of dependency and underdevelopment. I reject a common narrative of temporal and spatial disconnection which separates the wars from current economics and examine the violences which both produce and result from an economy based on growth.

Shock And Awe, Sectarianism, And Violence In Iraq Post-2003, Sarim Al-Rawi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The violence systematically deployed upon the prosperous nation of Iraq in 2003 was directly influenced by the Shock and Awe doctrine set forth by Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade in their 1996 book Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance. The experimental methods of warfare and violence outlined in the text describe methods for the systematic destruction of every major aspect of a nation and society, militarily, economically, and socially. In the wake of the US Invasion of Iraq, we saw the direct implementation of these methods by the occupation forces, setting off a brutal cycle of violence that …

La Conquista RetóRica: La AutolegitimacióN De HernáN CortéS Y Su JustificacióN Del Colonialismo EspañOl A TravéS De Las Cartas De RelacióN (1519 - 1526), Kent Shi

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Forgotten Opposition: Cal Poly Reactions To American Imperialism In The 1980s, Cooper Lock

Cal Poly's History: Student Research Reports

The Reagan Administration employed aggressive rhetoric in combating the supposed spread of communism in Latin America during the 1980s. The El Salvador ruling party’s fight against the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front became a hotspot for United States foreign aid and involvement. Extensive amounts of money poured into the region, inciting equally extensive disapproval and distrust from the American people. The reactions to these events at a national level have been extensively covered, whereas university students’ have been left relatively in the dark. This paper analyzes Cal Poly reactions and responses to United States foreign policy throughout the decade. …

Crania Japonica: Ethnographic Portraiture, Scientific Discourse, And The Fashioning Of Ainu/Japanese Colonial Identities, Jeffrey Braytenbah

Dissertations and Theses

Japan's colonial activities on the island of Hokkaido were instrumental to the creation of modern Japanese national identity. Within this construction, the indigenous Ainu people came to be seen in dialectical opposition to the 'modern' and 'civilized' identity that Japanese colonial actors fashioned for themselves. This process was articulated through travel literature, ethnographic portraiture, and discourse in scientific racism which racialized perceived divisions between the Ainu and Japanese and contributed to the unmaking of the Ainu homeland: Ainu Mosir. The resulting narrative was used to legitimize Japanese imperialism, transforming the Empire of Japan into the only non-Western member state …

The Scramble For Texas: European Diplomacy And Imperial Contest In The Republic Of Texas, 1835-1846, Penelope Lea Jacobus

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The story that this Dissertation analyses is the attempted European penetration of the North American borderlands during the independence of the Texas Republic. It will analyse how the independence of Texas ties into new forms of imperialism exercised by Europeans and U.S.-Americans during the first half of the nineteenth century, a time when shifting ideas about freedom and coercion, international law and rights, civilisation, nationhood, and trade redefined imperial possibilities. Imperialism in the nineteenth century had to be increasingly compatible with ideas of freedom and justice, such as free trade, free labour and the use of fair legal tenets in …

Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea: An Analysis Of The Consequences Of 20th Century American Imperialism And Nuclear Testing Upon The Marshall Islands And Its Inhabitants, Michelle Hahn

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This thesis could not have been accomplished without the support of my family, friends, and peers who have cheered me on the entire way throughout my tenure as a master’s student at Claremont Graduate University (CGU). I would especially like to thank my mother who has had the patience of a saint throughout this journey. At my lowest moments, she reminded me of my strengths as a scholar and encouraged me to keep going, even when I thought this thesis would fall apart. I love you very much, thank you for always being my cheerleader. This project has undergone several …

Traders And Troublemakers: Sovereignty In Southern Morocco At The End Of The 19th Century, Joseph Campbell Hilleary

Honors Projects

This thesis explores changes in and challenges to Moroccan political authority in the region of the Sous during the late nineteenth century. It attempts to show how the phenomenon of British informal empire created a crisis over Moroccan sovereignty that caused the sultan to both materially and discursively change the way he wielded power in southern Morocco. It further connects these changes and the narrative contestation that accompanied them to the construction of the Bilad al-Siba/Bilad al-Makhzan dichotomy found in Western academic literature on Morocco starting in the colonial period. It begins with an examination of letters between Sultan Hassan …

"Everybody Hates Us": Iraqi Women Resisting Imperialism, Repression, And Extremism (1990-Present), Thomas P. Rice

Honors Papers

This thesis investigates Iraqi women’s history since 1990. It argues that, in the past three decades, Iraqi women have not been silent victims of US imperialism, the repression of the Iraqi state, or ISIL’s extremism. Instead, they have resisted these forms of violence with visible agency, deploying tools of economic survival, political activism, creative writing, and armed resistance. Iraqi society underwent dramatic changes in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, and in each decade Iraqi women faced violence specific to that period. This thesis argues that Iraqi women’s resistance adapted to the changing circumstances of each decade, sometimes through slight shifts …

The Cosmological Empire Of Pliny The Elder: An Examination Of Political Themes In The Second Book Of The Historia Naturalis, Kevin Alan Mccormick

Dissertations and Theses

Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis, written in the 70s CE and perhaps left unfinished at its author's death in 79, is among the largest documents to have survived down to us from antiquity. It comprises some thirty-seven books on a breadth of topics about the natural world, and man's interaction with the world and marshalling of its resources. The work has often been referred to as the world's first encyclopedia. Recent scholarship has rescued Pliny's reputation from its degradation among the scholars of the early twentieth century, and modern scholars have approached the document via several analytical avenues, including …