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This research is concerned with the Ursuline Nuns of Quebec City, their Convent and school for girls founded in 1639, their boarding pupils, and embroidered textiles stitched by these young women. It focuses on the social and cultural convergence of French- and English-speaking boarders who attended the school during the British Colonial period of 1760-1867, a time in the Convent school's history when it moved from being a unilingual to a bilingual institution paralleling the shift in Quebec's history when the French colony became British. This study considers the interaction of French and English-speaking pupils with the nuns and with each other and their relationship to a collection of textile objects currently held by the Musee des Ursulines de Quebec. The objects selected for study provide examples of embroideries fashioned by pupils during the study period. Analysis of the practices surrounding the creation and use of these objects provides evidence of the convergence of French and English-speaking pupils within the confines of the school. The study also focuses on the impact of nuns and pupils with regard to the social and cultural convergence of the elite French and English speaking populations outside the cloister during the study period. An interdisciplinary methodology developed by the bringing together of diverse primary sources particularly analyses the relationship between the abovementioned practices, the curriculum taught at the school and biographical information attained through the development of a prosopographic database which establishes the eliteness of the pensionnaires. The surprising extent of the cultural duality and religious tolerance found within the school and seen within the objects sheds light on the impact which, as pupils and in maturity, these women may have had on the social and cultural convergence of Quebec's elite Society during the period. It was found that the relationship which the nuns had nurtured from within the cloister at the time of the Conquest and onward with the British Governor and his suite, was an especially significant part of this process. The study has revealed that elite women in British Colonial Quebec faced many challenges and that harmonious co-existence of English and French-speaking women within the small enclosed elite Society in the city was a necessity, not an option. The Ursuline nuns, their pupils and needlework all were shown to play a part in facilitating and encouraging that co-existence. How the Sisters achieved this complex task of supporting the cultural dualism that was at the heart of coexistence was clarified through the analysis of the education, needlework and other life skills provided to their pensionnaires by the Ursulines.

Populist conservatism brought new constituencies, issues and campaigning techniques to the American right, which helped it to become a dominant political force. However, the very nature of populist conservatism meant that it was less effective as a force for governing in the 1980s. Populist conservatives capitalised on the unease felt by certain groups, such as evangelical Christians, about ‘social issues’ such as abortion, but also foreign and economic policy. The populist conservative movement, including the ‘New Right’ political activists and the ‘religious right,’ tapped the discontent of working and lower middle class whites in particular in an attempt to build a new conservative majority. However, these constituencies sat uneasily with libertarian and ‘big business’ elements within the Republican Party. Interviews with populist conservative leaders and officials in the Carter and Reagan administrations have illuminated the often rather dry official records. That said, new collections in the Carter Library reveal the extent to which his administration ignored social conservatives and pushed a bold agenda in areas such as women’s and gay rights. Recently opened documents in the Reagan Library demonstrate that populist conservative leaders often worked with the administration whilst publicly urging it to take a more conservative stance. I was also fortunate to be granted access to some closed collections, such as those of Reagan’s pre-presidential office, which catalogue his strained relations with his erstwhile populist conservative allies. Finally, I have made use of the huge amount of political literature produced by populist conservatives. Of course, it has not been possible to conduct an exhaustive survey of populist conservative activity, due to both space constraints and the availability of evidence. A future study would cover issues such as busing, the campaign for a balanced budget amendment and the ‘Sagebrush Rebellion’.

This dissertation is a historical case study of the payment system designed, built, and operated by Visa International Services Association (VISA, hereafter “Visa”). The system is analyzed as a sociotechnical one, consisting of both social and technical elements that mutually constitute and shape one another. The historical narrative concentrates on the period of 1970 to 1984, which roughly corresponds to the tenure of the system’s founder and first CEO, Dee Ward Hock. It also focuses primarily upon the events that took place within the United States. After establishing a theoretical and historical context, I describe why and how the organization now known as Visa was formed. I then explain how the founder and his staff transformed the disintegrated, paper-based credit card systems of the 1960s into the unified, electronic value exchange system we know today. Special attention is paid throughout this narrative to the ways in which the technologies were shaped by political, legal, economic, and cultural forces, as well as the ways in which the system began to alter those social relations in return. In the final chapter, I offer three small extensions to the literature on payment systems, cooperative networks, and technology and culture.

The dissertation is a cultural and intellectual study of anticommunism in the United States before the Cold War. The thesis comprises two cases studies, one examining early efforts to uncover Soviet agents operating in the United States, the other looking at varieties of anticommunism in the city of Detroit, examined through print, radio, and in art and architecture. The first case study examines interwar efforts to expose Soviet espionage activities. In order to support the American policy of non-recognition towards Soviet Russia (before 1933), to attack the Roosevelt government for recognising Russia (after 1933), and to lobby for a substantial enlargement of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, anticommunists undertook a series of private efforts to expose Soviet espionage activities in America, almost all of which relied upon forged, libellous and sometimes defamatory material. The thesis looks at accusations made against progressive US Senators, and Russian Amtorg Trading Corporation and allegations regarding supposed Russian espionage networks operating in the United States. It addresses the impact these false claims had upon the anticommunist movement in the United States in the 1930s and beyond. The second case study, a social, cultural and intellectual examination of currents of anticommunist thought in Detroit in the interwar period, seeks to examine the interaction of conflicting interpretation of the Communist menace, in traditional venues for the advocacy of programmatic action (the press, the pulpit, and the political sphere), and in cultural venues, such as architecture, aesthetics, personal philosophy and social behaviour. Structured around an examination of the personal fiefdom set up by industrial Henry Ford after the then of the First World War, this section discuses currents of anticommunist thought in business, labour, and the churches, and argues that the depression encouraged a significant reformulation of anticommunism along largely national and liberal lines.

In the immediate post-Cold War period, as the security rationale for the U.S. embargo disappeared, the United States tightened rather than eased sanctions on Cuba. This dissertation focuses on the competition between Congress and the executive for control of policy towards Cuba, and the domestic interests which shaped policymaking and led to the passage of two major pieces of legislation fiercely resisted by U.S. allies. The dissertation begins with an analysis of U.S. policy towards Cuba in the summer of 1989, before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Five days of congressional hearings called by Representative George Crockett (D.Michigan) in his attempt to spark a reassessment of relations between the two countries form the basis for a review of policy over the preceding thirty years. The first chapter will also introduce the Cuban American National Foundation, the pre-eminent domestic interest group in U.S. policy towards Cuba in 1989-1996, and the U.S. campaign to have Cuba condemned for human rights violations at the United Nations Human Right Commission. The second chapter examines the policy debate in 1989-1992, focusing on the provision of information to Cubans, the intensification of economic sanctions, and the continuation of the human rights campaign. The third chapter analyses the role of migration from Cuba to the United States between 1959-1992, arguing the main objective of U.S. policy. Chapter four looks at continuity and change under the Clinton administration, and in particular at the administration’s handling of the rafter (migration) crisis of 1994 and the resulting agreements reached with the Cuban government. The primary focus of the fifth chapter will be the struggle between the executive and Congress over the Helms-Burton legislation, signed by Clinton in March 1996.

This dissertation analyses the development of slave laws in Louisiana from 1724 to 1834 and focuses on the factors that influenced the development of slave laws under French and Spanish colonial rule, and United States jurisdiction. This period represents the promulgation of the first slave code for French Louisiana during the frontier period when slavery was in its nascent stages, up to when Louisiana had already become one of the leaders in the consolidation of slavery in the South, at the very time abolitionists were adopting a more aggressive anti-slavery approach. Louisiana experienced important economic and social changes towards the end of the Spanish colonial period. These changes were in part responsible for the rebirth of slavery in the South. Socio-economic changes are used to illustrate that, while laws retain much of their heritage and foundation, they also respond to, and develop in accordance with other changes in the society. Louisiana’s civil law tradition, as opposed to English common law, has traditionally been used to characterise Louisiana’s slavery as benign and humane. My study seeks to refute this notion and concludes that any harshness in slave laws after 1803 was related more to the socio-economic development of territory, than to United States rule, and extension English common law. Chapter one examines the promulgation of the first slave law for the Louisiana territory and examines the changes that took place in French slave laws through a comparative analysis of the 1685 French Caribbean slave code with the 1724 Louisiana code noir. In a brief review, the general role of the catholic church in the development of slave laws in early French colonial Louisiana is examined. The second chapter examines the evolution of slave laws under Spanish colonial rule and the socio-economic conditions that brought about these changes. Chapter three traces the development of the law under the United States administration from 1803 to 1834 and examines the changes that took place from the time of the French and throughout Spanish rule. Protective laws and their role in Louisiana slave society are examined under the three regimes. This study deals specifically with the laws themselves as promulgated, and not with their practical administration.

The central concern of this thesis is to expose the underlying violence of the American Adam ideal, which emerged in mid-twentieth century America in response to a perceived crisis in masculinity. Chapter One scrutinises this ideal and provides a brief historical background to it. Further, it examines the perceived decline in mid-twentieth century masculinity and demonstrates how the Adamic ideal became advocated as a remedy to this feeling of decline. Chapter Two discusses the initial rebellion by young males, depicted in Red River (1948), The Wild One (1953), and Rebel Without a Cause (1955) to show how they became caught in a conflict between self-expression and juvenile delinquency. It also demonstrates how Norman Mailer in his essay "The White Negro" (1957) offers his hipster as a male paradigm, providing a fledgling example of the Adamic personality. Chapter Three examines how On the Road (1957) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) locate the hipster personality in Neal Cassady, and how they romanticise the American Adam as an ideal of masculine action. Chapter Four analyses how the Adamic ideal was a push factor for many young males who perceived Vietnam as a possible arena for the demonstration and vindication of their essentialised masculinity. Moreover, it demonstrates how Vietnam ultimately exposes the immaturity of subscribing to this ideal, and it highlights the discrepancy between romanticised heroics, and the realities of war. Chapter Five concludes the thesis by re-emphasising the inherent violence of the Adamic ideal discussed throughout. It anchors this analysis by looking at such diverse examples as the bombing campaign of Theodore Kaczynski (Unabomber); the 1959 murders of the Clutter family recorded in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood (1966); Charles Manson and his violent cult; the anti-social antics of the Hell's Angels; and the extremism of Paramilitary groups.

This thesis is a detailed historical reconstruction and analysis of official American attitudes and policies towards Indian non-alignment between 1947 and 1957, explaining policy development and change in the broader context of the Cold War. This case study highlights the shortcomings of certain popular images of the period, namely the bipolar model and the perception of the US as a powerful, persuasive state able to manipulate others, especially much weaker countries. After ten years of trying to persuade India to become an ally, Washington realised that not only was this impossible, but also not even in American interests. American policy-makers faced major problems with Indian non-alignment during this period. First, India's very public position on US-Soviet hostility as traditional great power rivalry undermined American attempts to establish and maintain the free world's unity. Second, whilst the Truman administration recognised the Cold War's complexities, Truman's bipolar rhetoric restricted US flexibility on policy regarding Indian non-alignment. Thus, the US adopted a negative stance on Indian foreign policy and tried to align India with the West and draw it into regional collective defence measures. However, as the Cold War developed Truman found India had a very useful role to play precisely because it was non-aligned, especially during the Korean War when India acted as a channel of communication between the US and the People's Republic of China. Eisenhower faced similar problems with India, especially regarding collective defence, and at first he was hostile towards Indian non-alignment. However, he decided that it was America's policy that had to change, not India's. Gradually he moved attitudes from intolerance to acceptance, realising that the US should take full advantage of non-alignment. By 1957 Eisenhower looked upon non-alignment as a constructive position in world politics, and as a result US-Indian relations entered a new, positive phase.

This dissertation surveys the constitutional evolution of the Canadian governor general’s role between 1847 and 1878. It analyses incidents in the terms of five consecutive governors general—Elgin, Sir Edmund Head, Monch, Lisgar, and Dufferin—and explores how each interpreted his loosely-defined role. While Confederation in 1867 is usually seen as the watershed in Canadian constitutional history, its effect on the viceregal role was limited. The most profound change—the transition to responsible government—had already occurred in 1848. After 1848 it was understood that in internal matters the governor general would follow the advice of his Canadian ministers. Elgin played a key role in putting this new experiment in colonial policy into practice. The advent of self-government for Canada did not mean that the governor general became insignificant, however. The governor retained a role as guardian of the constitution, and the prerogative of refusal of assent to ministerial advice still existed, even if it was infrequently invoked. Elgin, Head, Monck and Dufferin all encountered situations in which at least some political observers believed such refusal would be warranted. In the event, only Head exercised this prerogative. In the formative years of Canadian party politics, the viceregal office afforded an opportunity to exercise informal leadership. Monck in particular played a much-underestimated role in helping to negotiate alliances among political antagonists. Lisgar, by far the most politically seasoned of the five incumbents, paradoxically presided over a stable ministry during his entire term of office. His comparative inactivity in the political realm has led historians to dismiss him as indolent. Lisgar was involved, however, in behind-the-scenes negotiations leading to the 1871 Treaty of Washington. Canadian disappointment over the terms of the treaty, combined with the absence of any archival collection detailing Lisgar’s activities, has unfairly cast Lisgar as a historical scapegoat. The study ends with the drafting of a permanent set of permanent set of Letters Patent and Instructions for the governor general in 1878, a constitutional milestone that has been largely overlooked in Canadian historiography. This initiative on the part of Canada’s Liberal minister of justice, Edward Blake, to more clearly spell out the limits of the governor general’s role was spurred in large measure by Dufferin’s intrusiveness. Throughout this formative period, the evolution of the viceregal role was influenced both by circumstance and the character of the individual office holders.

This thesis examines the relationship between J. Edgar Hoover and North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation directors and their career trajectories from 1937 to 1972 as a result of their public relations practices in high profile case investigations in the print media. Although researchers argue that leadership characteristics impact law enforcement executives' careers, an overlooked component is the relationship between directors' career trajectories and print media when reporting on high profile cases. This thesis examines the consequences of high profile case investigations in the print media and directors' career trajectories. Namely, J. Edgar Hoover and State Bureau of Investigation directors' career trajectories are examined to demonstrate how directors used the print media to prolong their tenure. This thesis argues that State Bureau of Investigation directors modeled their public relations style in the print media and high profile investigations after Hoover's in order to accomplish a positive career trajectory. This thesis also argues that career trajectory outcomes of State Bureau of Investigation directors who emulated Hoover's style of using the print media in high profile investigations were distinguished by prolonged career tenures. State Bureau of Investigation directors less efficacious in emulating Hoover's style were characterized with negative career trajectories. In order to better understand this career advancement outcome, the research problem is examined on the basis of a triangular relationship between Hoover's public relations practices, the State Bureau of Investigation's public relations practices that were modeled after Hoover, and print media's coverage of high profile case investigations from both agencies. This thesis concludes that there is a direct correlation between law enforcement directors' career advancements and their public relations practices related to print media coverage of high profile cases.

Ethiopia, seen as the most important nation in the Horn strategically, broke its ties with the United States in 1977 and formed an alliance with the Soviet Union. With the USSR already firmly ensconced in Ethiopia's neighbour, Somalia, the potential existed for an expansion of the communist sphere of influence. However, Jimmy Carter, determined to emphasise issues such as regionalism and human rights in his foreign policy rather than traditional Cold War and East-West concerns, ignored the Soviet presence in the Horn and condemned the government-sponsored violence in Ethiopia. He applied the same principles when the Somali leader, Mohammed Siad Barré, launched an attack on neighbouring Ethiopia, hoping to annex the Somali-inhabited Ogaden. Despite Soviet and Cuban support for Ethiopia, Carter insisted that the United States remain neutral, refused to support Somalia in its territorial quest, and called for a negotiated solution to the war. However, the early success enjoyed by the Carter administration in basing policy towards Ethiopia and Somalia on regionalism and human rights did not continue. From 1979, both the rhetoric and policies of the administration began to emphasise American national security within a Cold War perspective, with a corresponding deprioritisation of human rights and regionalism in policy formulation. The Ethiopian alliance with the Soviet Union became increasingly unacceptable, and by 1980 both military and economic aid had been terminated, and the American ambassador recalled. The administration also decided that an American military presence was necessary in the Horn to counter the presence of the USSR in Ethiopia. Having previously refused to form an alliance with Somalia because of Siad's violations of human rights and international law, in August 1980 the United States reached an agreement for the use of Somali military facilities in return for American aid. By the end of the Carter administration, the Horn of Africa had become a microcosm of the Cold War, with the Soviets and Cubans in Ethiopia and the Americans supporting Somalia. It appeared that national security concerns had taken precedence over issues of human rights, and globalism had triumphed over regionalism.

The dissertation offers a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between the civil rights and antiwar movements in the United States during the years 1965-1972. It seeks to explore two related themes - the varying response to the war within the civil rights movement, and the failure of the two movements to work together closely. The dissertation explains the differing responses of civil rights groups to the war by placing them within the context of 'organising experience'. 'On-the-ground' experience in the Deep South or in northern ghettos had a radicalising influence on civil rights workers, thus increasing the likelihood of cynicism about the war or outright opposition to it. This paradigm also helps to explain the reluctance of the national NAACP and others to take a stand on the war. Since Roy Wilkins et al had a much more positive experience of working with the Democratic Party and white liberals, they had little reason to alienate their allies by opposing the war. One advantage of this approach is that it adds nuance to the decision taken by moderate black leaders to not oppose the war, and rescues them from a historiography that has, on occasion, been too quick to condemn them as sell-outs. The numerous efforts at constructing peace and freedom coalitions are also analysed (such as the August 1965 Assembly of Unrepresented People and the 1967 convention of the National Conference for New Politics), and the problems encountered are documented and evaluated. Prominent among these are Black Power, white factionalism, and counterculturalism. The dissertation also examines the peace movement's attempts to attract black support, and the intense and intractable debate within the antiwar movement over whether to focus solely on ending the war, or encompass domestic issues as well. I demonstrate how the inability of the white-dominated peace movement to do little more than associate with the black struggle in a rhetorical way, undermined efforts at building genuine co-operation between the two movements. Moreover, this debate about 'multi-issuism' was invariably related to the factionalism that alienated black activists and made them reluctant to work with the peace movement at the organisational level.

Typically, historians have written about the US-PRC rapprochement of 1972 as a policy that was predicated on a geopolitical balance-of-power approach and conceived, developed, and executed during the first Nixon administration (1969-72). This dissertation examines the evolution and development of US China policy during the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and suggests that Nixon's two immediate predecessors laid significant foundations for rapprochement. Although no dramatic policy changes occurred between1961 and 1963, a significant process of debate and rethinking about the People's Republic of China did take place and the desirability and necessity of a China policy departure gained increased acceptance among US policymakers during the Kennedy administration. This continued during the Johnson administration and by 1966 "revisionist" officials had persuaded the President to authorise a series of rhetorical and small changes to US policy. At the same time, political figures in Congress, the business community, and public opinion poll data indicated that the administration's efforts to reduce Sino-American tensions had wide support. A large number of policy proposals to establish contact and communication were ready for implementation once the Chinese signalled their readiness to respond the American actions. At the beginning of 1969, the time appeared to be ripe for change in the US-PRC relationship as the Vietnam peace talks began and the Cultural Revolution was toned down. The chapters on Nixon focus on the important continuities between the policies developed in the Kennedy-Johnson years and those implemented by Nixon. They outline and analyse the steps that the United States and the PCR undertook during the transitional phase of Sino-American relations between 1969 and 1971, which climaxed in Henry Kissinger's secret flight to Beijing in July 1971. Thereafter, the dissertation explains and assesses the Nixon administration's aims and objectives of the Kissinger trip, the substance and implications of the Kissinger-Zhou conversations for the short- and long-term development of US China policy and US-PRC relations.

This thesis is about Newfoundland, Canada. It concerns the ways in which Newfoundland and its people have been authored by visiting strangers. The problem of authorship is situated within an ethnographic reflection on the politics of identity and resource management in rural Newfoundland. This politics is dominated the rhetoric of development and underdevelopment. According to this rhetoric, Newfoundland is backward, and the job of government is to facilitate the region’s progress. It is argued that the contemporary concern with Newfoundland’s progress may be considered as a form of writing. The issue is, then, not how Newfoundland came to be underdeveloped, but how Newfoundland came to be authored as underdeveloped. It is the exploration of the history of the writing of Newfoundland that forms the core of this thesis. This exploration is, in the Foucaudian sense, archaeological. Through a reading of travelogues published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an account is given of the ways in which visitors have created a knowledge of Newfoundland, and the epistemes of vision and representation that have constituted the possibility of that knowledge. This archaeology of the inscription of Newfoundland is organized into four sections, which are distinguished both chronologically and thematically. The first, concerns the expeditions of “scientific” explores of the late eighteenth century. Placing their accounts in the context of the emergence of empiricism and rationalism, it is shown that their visits represent a radically new approach to the authorship of Newfoundland, one which centred around the observing eye of enlightened traveller. The second discusses the writings of geologists who traversed Newfoundland in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The focus of this discussion is the aesthetics of time and how ideas of the primitive informed the envisioning of the landscape of Newfoundland. The third section examines how the idea of the wilderness was extended to the constitution of the Newfoundland “other” as a degraded European subject. Particular reference is made to the writings of missionaries and to their concern with the regulation of desire as a cultivation of the wilderness within. The fourth and final section addresses the authoring of Newfoundland from a nativist perspective in the later half of the nineteenth century.

Between 1939 and 1945 the Federal Bureau of Investigation, headed by J. Edgar Hoover, monitored the political activities of President Franklin Roosevelt's anti- interventionist foreign policy critics. Hoover, whose position as FBI director was tenuous within the left-of-center Roosevelt administration, catered to the president's political and policy interests to preserve his position and to expand FBI authority. In his pragmatic effort to service administration political goals, Hoover employed illegal wiretaps, informers, collected derogatory information, conducted investigations that had the potential to discredit the anti -interventionists, forwarded political intelligence to administration officials, and coordinated some activity with British intelligence. This all occurred within a crisis atmosphere created with the onset of the Second World War, and it was this political dynamic that permitted Hoover to successfully cultivate his relationship with President Roosevelt. In the process, the administration's otherwise legitimate foreign policy opposition was regarded as subversive and some anti -interventionists' civil liberties were violated through intensive FBI scrutiny of their political dissention. Moreover, the FBI's surveillance marks the origins of the FBI's role in the later national security state. Among those targets examined in this dissertation include Charles Lindbergh, the America First Committee, notable anti- interventionist senators and congressmen, the anti -interventionist press, and other prominent individuals who advocated American isolation from foreign war.

The transition of activism in the late 1960s from a non-violent, citizenship-based appeal for Civil Rights to a Nationalist, potentially violent call for revolution, marked a shift to a more radical and confrontational politics of social change. Hidden in this history are the narratives of women’s participation which dramatically revise the current historical record in these ground-breaking social movements. During this period, women and men organised for social change, often around identity-based issues, and challenged the status quo. This work examines two organisations which emerged in the late sixties as vanguards of an era defined by the self-determined chants of ‘black and red power’, a time of social and political rebellion against the leaders of the waning Civil Rights movement and an increasingly repressive government. This thesis seeks to foreground the hitherto unknown involvement of women in male-identified organisations such as the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. It will highlight previously untold stories of key women activists in these two organisations. Not only will it demonstrate that women comprised a majority of the participants, but also that they performed all manner of functions ranging from high-level negotiations to meal preparation. Contemporary coverage of both organisations in the media obscured such involvement. The majority of the groups that defined themselves as revolutionary or radical were unable to deal with issues of gender inequality within their ranks. Many of these groups espoused a rhetorical philosophy of equality yet they were frequently unable to match such ideals in practice. This was certainly the case for the BPP and AIM. By equating liberation with manhood, women in these groups found themselves not only struggling for the cause but also competing with oppressive notions of masculinity. Women’s liberationists failed to offer any common cause, focusing on race-specific issues and advocating the separation of sexes which alienated women of color.

The dissertation attempts to identify the rationales behind the policy selections made by U.S. presidents in the early phases of their presidency and to identify common themes among those rationales. Specifically, the study attempts to identify the reasons behind the initial domestic policy choices of John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan during their transition periods and the first one hundred days of their administration. The four case studies are based upon materials drawn from the appropriate presidential libraries in the United States and interviews with administration participants. Each study approaches presidential choices in a similar manner, looking at presidential ideology, the political conditions of the incoming chief executive, political strategies, the structure of administration and mechanisms of programme design. The case studies also include specific policy studies over the transition and honeymoon periods to explain the motivations behind particular legislative proposals. The dissertation provides new interpretations of each president's early actions. Particularly, Nixon is shown to have had an initial domestic agenda before the announcement of welfare reform in August 1969, and Carter and his staff are revealed to have focused initially on a narrow domestic agenda in 1977. Overall, the dissertation concludes that presidents work within a framework set by institutional and policy contexts. Presidents plan how to pursue their goals within these contexts, setting a series of policy and non-policy goals which agglomerate into strategies. Presidential policy selections can only be understood when they are seen to be made within parameters set by these wider strategic decisions. The administrative process of policy planning then functions to reconcile strategy and public policy. Policy specialists and political strategists approach the policy-making process with differing needs, and together attempt to identify policy compromises suited to both of those sets of needs.

The focus of this thesis is America's reaction to the Cuban Revolution of 1959. It is argued that this took the form of a creative construction of an image of Cuba in the American mind. Using original sources it contextualises images of and attitudes towards the island in a number of historical settings. Taking the Newtonian metaphor of an apple falling to the ground. Americans during the nineteenth century saw Cuba as a subject to the pull of political gravitation. During the Spanish American War the spectre of the Cuban independence necessitated a new image: the island became an errant child. This image held until the 1959 Revolution. In the early years of the 1960s American policy makers constructed a new image. After discussing this, the thesis moves on to consider other responses to the Revolution through examining its impact on writers such as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The adoption of the Revolution by student radicals and advocates of black power is then explored. In spite of such commentator's suggestions that Cuba offered alternatives to contemporary American culture, by the close of the decade the dominant interpretation of the Cuban Revolution was fixed within a Cold War paradigm. The thesis concludes that this Cold War image has remained intact. Today America understands Cuba to be an island subject to a revolution betrayed, held within the grip of a communist and hence inherently evil regime. No accommodation is possible whilst Fidel Castro lives. The American image of Cuba remains frozen in the assumptions of the 1960s.

Throughout Jimmy Carter's presidency he was pulled in opposite directions between his idealism and the harsh reality of politics. The argument that will be presented throughout this dissertation is this conflict faced by Carter concerning NASA. Historians have neglected the Carter Administration's affairs with NASA because they believe nothing exciting or important happened. The Carter Administration is the only one in the Space Age that Americans have not been in space. I propose to show that, while it might not have been exciting, it was important what Carter did with NASA throughout his Administration. During the 1976 presidential campaign and early in his Administration several Carter advisors recommended that the Shuttle be postponed or even cancelled, but Carter continued his support for the Shuttle. Towards the end of his Administration it took a high level presidential meeting to put the full weight of his presidency behind completing the Shuttle. While Carter was not enthralled with manned space flight he was aware and very supportive of what NASA could do to expand knowledge outward by its robotic exploration of the universe. Several NASA projects, that he supported and started the funding, only came to fruition long after Carter left the White House such as the Hubble Telescope, the Jupiter Galileo project and the Venus Magellan project. Carter also strongly endorsed NASA projects for use on Earth such as communications, weather, environmental, and military satellites. He wanted NASA to meet the needs of the taxpayers who paid for it. He wanted to bring the space agency "back down to earth". This was a consistent theme throughout his Administration. Carter had good plans for NASA but left so many people disappointed who wanted great things from NASA but wound up only with good things.

The thesis attempts to trace the role of the state prevalent in American political discourse in shaping politics and legislation in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This has involved linking developments in American foreign policy with changes in political views of the state at home. The aim of my research has been to set political developments at the centre of American studies in this period by arguing that they had a profound effect upon broader American society and its views of the wider world. This helps to explain why the political ideology of social democracy, or the involvement of government as a provider of economic and social justice, declined in America after World War II in contrast in most other industrialised nations. I argue that while traditional American hostility to government generally weakened during the depression and war, the Cold War encouraged Americans generally to associate the state with totalitarianism. Politically-promoted conceptions of life in the USSR and Great Britain in particular were used both to reorient American political priorities away from social reform and to marginalise those who attempted to take further the more progressive aspects of the New Deal. The association of the state with inimical ideologies abroad, and the notion that America was a socially cohesive nation, in which all citizens were 'free' and 'equal', formed a political orthodoxy strengthened by developments in foreign affairs. The dissertation analyses key figures in both political parties, as well as key pressure groups, in the period 1946-1952. It also traces the development of public opinion over the same period, and attempts to show how the images of others nations at the heart of the Cold War lessened the prospects for European-style social democracy in the United States in the later twentieth century.

This study examines the turbulent American polity of the 1790s. Specifically, it analyses the electoral competition of the Federalist and Republican parties which dominated that polity between the inauguration of George Washington as president in 1789 and of Thomas Jefferson as president in 1801. Its chief concern is emphatically the Republican party and the politicisation and mobilisation strategies thereof. Over the course of its four chapters, each extensively subdivided to explore particular aspects and themes, it will argue that the key to the Republican party's success lay in the domain of language. By aggressively revivifying the conventional language of the American Revolution, and thereby mobilising its underlying ideological structures, the Republicans were able to construct a standardised, normative language of political action with transcended local variations in political culture and provided the foundations for a formidable, nationally-conscious electoral alliance. This language, thoroughly partisan by the late 1790s, could not be adequately met by an increasing anathematised Federalist administration. Indeed, a central element of that language was the stigmatisation of the incumbent administration as Anglophile, aristocratic, and monarchic. Two states, Pennsylvania and Virginia, conventionally regarded as evincing quite distinct political cultures during the eighteenth century, provide the evidential basis for the study's contention that a Republican-sponsored political language served to standardise political cognitions and (electoral) behaviour. In brief, the chapters will examine the structure and historical sources of Republican language, and the manner in which signification itself became an arena for political conflict (Chapter One); the central role of state legislatures as sources of local political cues in early national America, and their early absorption into the partisan conflict (Chapter Two); the pivotal role played by international relations, particularly as they concerned France and Great Britain, in sharpening partisan and rhetorical differences (Chapter Three); and, finally, the function of non-linguistic communicative forms in the Republican symbolic repertoire; certain groups, it will be argued, were to be excluded from an already potentially dangerous egalitarian discourse, whatever the symbolic form its articulation took (Chapter Four). Each chapter, while exploring diverse aspects of the political landscape on which Federalists and Republicans waged electoral war in the 1790s, will seek to maintain the central place of language in its topography.

This Ph.D. thesis examines United States political intelligence in regard to the regime of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlvai, the Shah of Iran, the accuracy of this intelligence, and it's influence on American policy from 1950-1979. Based on archival material, declassified documents, and interviews with relevant personalities, this thesis seeks to chronicle nearly three decades of intelligence analysis on the factors governing political stability in Iran, and establish the veracity of this analysis vis-à-vis the historical record. In the early 1950s, American intelligence operatives contributed to the overthrow of the nationalist government in Iran headed by Dr. Muhammad Musaddiq, and the restoration to a position of authority of the Shah. In its exploration of the motives behind the 1953 covert political intervention to unseat Musaddiq, the thesis finds that the Eisenhower administration acted out of a set of Cold War priorities that included the need to maintain cohesion in the Anglo-American special relationship and fears of Iranian neutrality. In doing so, the United States gained a pliant ally, but one who's power base was tenuous. By the end of the Eisenhower administration, intelligence analysts concluded that, in the absence of significant economic and political reform, the Shah's regime had become so unstable as to virtually guarantee revolutionarily change. Acting on a broad consensus among the intelligence community about the regime's weaknesses, the Kennedy administration sought to bolster the government with limited financial and political support while encouraging reform. American pressure on this front led the Shah, in 1963, to announce the "White Revolution", a six point program for reform designed to shift the monarch's base of support from the traditional ruling elite to the lower classes. While American policymakers viewed to program as a progressive step forward, intelligence analysts were included to view the reforms as ill-conceived and designed largely to consolidate power in the hands of the Shah.

This dissertation presents an analysis of the Somers mutiny of 1842 that goes beyond the simple narratives offered by previous studies of the cruise. The mutiny is examined within the context of contemporary American politics and social reform, particularly as they related to naval affairs. These emphases clarify the rationale behind the cruise of the Somers, and shed light upon the nature of her crew. The immediate physical environment of the brig is described in order to reveal the difficulties in its operation, and the destabilising effect that this had on both the functional and social worlds of the vessel. The social environment on board is further defined by examining the daily progress of the cruise with reference to antebellum naval life and practice. When so combined, these factors clarify the officers' perception of the mutiny threat, and go far to explain their actions throughout the crisis. Finally, the dissertation examines the controversy that arose after the Somers returned to the United States. In particular, the military courts convened to investigate the mutiny are subjected to critical analysis since they are fully part of the events that they purported to explain, and because their proceedings remain the primary source material for reconstructing the cruise it is necessary to identify their biases. To conclude, the societal lessons of the Somers mutiny are explored, and an alternative reading of the event is posed.

This thesis aims to test the assumption that Progressive Era social reform was a product of "a generation" of reformers. It applies theoretical formulations advanced by socialists and historians, to a specific group of women progressive social reformers who have been characterised as a generation in a fashion common to the treatment of generations in the historiography on progressivism in general. The working hypothesis is that the concept of generation has no meaningful application to the period and has simply been used for rhetorical and literary effect by commentators within and following the Progressive Era. The methodology adopted consists of the following: the selection of a "prime generation candidate" i.e. a tight homogeneous grouping of reformers, of the same sex, roughly the same age, bound together by a dense interlocking network of agencies and institutions, and portrayed as members of a "progressive generation" by historians; the application to this group of generational criteria established by theorists: the subsequent examination of the limitations of the generational criteria to explain important aspects of the individual members' motivation, similarities, differences, decisions, preferences and actions. Chapter one surveys the use of the concept of "generation" by historians of the Progressive Era, and examines theoretical formulations of the concept of "generation" that have been advanced by social scientists and historians; the object being to establish that a "generational question" does indeed loom over Progressive Era social reform and over women's social reform in particular. In chapter two the sample of women social reformers to whom these theoretical formulations are to be applied is selected and the criteria on which the selection is made is justified.

This thesis examines the political economy of the initial development of the Argentine iron and steel industry between circa 1920 and 1952. It analyses the reasons for the failure of those initiatives and shows that the main impetus to establish the industry was provided by the Second World War, not the Great Depression. The thesis accounts for the adverse impact of domestic factors such as the predominance of military strategic demands over business considerations, inadequate national supplies of raw materials, output bottlenecks, demand constraints and the politics of the period which frustrated policy continuity. The unfavourable effects of the international conjuncture are also assessed. These include the role of the International Steel Cartel in inhibiting the growth of domestic iron and steel production through a web of controls prior to 1939, and wartime constraints and the US embargo which limited access to essential capital goods and technology thereby frustrating positive incentives for the development of heavy industry. For most of the period, Argentina was one of the few 'open' markets for iron and steel products. The depth of the market and its ability to sustain domestic production is assessed through three case-product studies: rails, construction materials and rural implements. The research shows that demand was associated with traditional economic sectors. Organisational structures also frustrated development. The thesis proves that the history of the sector was characterised by organisational instability: a small number of ephemeral firms specialised in the production of a small number of items. Attempts to foster efficiency through large-scale integrated industrialisation involving State and private capital in a mixed corporation failed because the project was tailored to security rather than market requirements.

This thesis examines seringais (rubber estates) on the Brazilian Amazon from the perspective of capitalist social relations of production in the period from the 1870 to 1930. It is divided into four parts. The first part introduces the subject. The second part considers the social relations of land property and the selective way of privatising land to argue that seringal is private property and that there was a free labour market. The third part discusses the engagement and the forms of controlling and disciplining labour. The fourth part focuses on profitability and capital accumulation by demonstrating that (a) the local investors had their own project of economic political changes, (b) this and a converging view on the use of natural resources constitute decisive elements in their decisions of re-investments. Rubber enterprises were usually run as partnerships and they invested mainly in the production of the Fina Hard Para kind, which was considered the best quality and commanded the highest price at that time, and in the diversification of economic activities. As this thesis demonstrates, the social relations of production in seringal are capitalist due to the following features: (a) they are organised to produce commodities for profit in order to ensure capital accumulation; (b) they are characterised by the command of capitalists over subordinated forms of free labour; (c) this command is based on the private ownership of the main means of rubber production. The specific features of the relations of production in seringais are basically twofold: (a) the employment of different forms of subordinate free labour, including waged and salaried, in which seringueiros (rubber tappers paid by results instead of by work time) were predominant and (b) the geomercantile privatisation and use of natural resources, involving a converging interaction with nature.

This thesis places the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, formed in 1942, within the context of the Anglo-American wartime 'special relationship' and examines the political, economic and security motives which lay at the heart of this unique collaboration. Promoted as means for rectifying the problems of a region of extreme need, the AACC only exposed and exacerbated the underlying antagonisms between Britain and the US over the economic and political structure of the world. Debates within the AACC over the role of the West Indian sugar industry, the regulation of tariffs and trade and the future of civil aviation mirrored wider rivalries between Britain and the US over the post-war world economy, the colonial world and their respective roles within a new economic order. What emerges is a picture of the AACC as a vehicle for maintaining the regional security interests of the US and for promoting its broader ambitions for the post-war world in the British territories of the Caribbean. For Britain, who resisted the collaboration, the AACC was part of the price which had to be paid for obtaining American friendship and material assistance in the war effort. The story of the AACC is significant not only for the light it shed upon the Anglo-American wartime relationship and how it exposed the antagonisms which lay so close to its surface, but also for the way it revealed the determination of the US to use the exigencies of war to impose its economic ideals upon Britain and of the tenacity of the Empire to defend even the smallest and least regarded of its possessions. The AACC was a battleground of conflicting British and American visions of a 'new' West Indies, a struggle that scarred the AACC from its inception and eventually led to its death as a truly Anglo-American enterprise.

In the sixteen century, New Granada (modern Colombia) attracted more European settlers than any region of Central America and, with the exception of Peru, more than any part of the mainland South America. This dissertation is the story of the first one hundred years of Spanish rule in the Province of Tunja in Colombia's Eastern Highlands, a period that in many ways was dominated by attempts to establish and maintain control over the region's most valuable resource, its people. And it is they who are the main subject of this work, how they responded and reacted to the various challenges and opportunities under Spanish rule, how their society changed, and how they helped influence the historical development of the province. It is a story of resistance and alliances, successes and failures, and change and continuity. As such, the main purpose of this study is to examine Tunja's Indian peoples as active participants in the evolution of colonial society, not simply as passive "objects" of colonial rule. It is based primarily on archival material from the Archivo General de Indians in Seville Spain, the Archivo General de la Nación in Santa Fe de Bogota, Colombia, and the Archivo Regional de Boyaca in Tunja, Colombia. The arrival of the Spaniards ushered in a series of fundamental changes to the inhabitants of Tunja. But for those who survived the steady onslaught of deadly diseases, the transformation of colonial society was a gradual process, and did not always follow along the path envisioned by Spanish officials, encomenderos or priests. Furthermore, it was a transformation in which the Indians themselves played an active, and one might argue, more significant role.

The general focus of the study is a shanty town (población) on the outskirts of Santiago in Chile during the military regime of Augusto Pinochet. The military coup of 11th September 1973 was the beginning of seventeen years of repression and violence. The specific focus of the research is the development of resistance against Pinochet amongst the people (pobladores) of that shanty town. The research is based on a six year period in the población where the candidate, being also a Catholic priest, had unique access through his role to the social and cultural life of the people. The implications of this role in terms of retrospective anthropology are examined in detail. The experience is studied in terms of the developments of attitudes and behaviour within a particular group especially in their movement from tentative protest and the creative use of ambiguity, to the use of barricades as the focus for direct confrontation with the authorities. The passing beyond the barricade is explored in terms of the expansion of the people's capacity to develop political agency. The thesis is a case study of Liberation Theology and its role in the development of resistance to the military regime. The street becomes a central focus as space of protest. A comparison is made between the private space of the house as refuge and the public space of the street as place of conflict and danger. It is suggested that the barricade may be understood as a dynamic boundary being partly constituted by the bodies of the protesters themselves. It is also didactic, insofar as the re-appropriation of physical space - the streets, the bridge upon which the key barricade is built, and by extension the entire población, parallel the occupation of the internal space in the minds of the protesters. The transformations of meaning being etched into the 'landscape' were being correspondingly etched into the 'inscapes' of the imagination. If space can be taken as analogous to language and the movement of bodies through the población understood, therefore, as an articulation of an alternative discourse, then the boundary/barricade can be seen as the focus for such a counter-discourse against the attempt by Pinochet to militarise civilian life. Liberation theology and the Basic Christian Community are explored in terms of the development of the potential of resistance to the military regime. It is suggested that these functioned by legitimating new public discourses, promoting new styles of leadership and empowering individuals and organisations. Here politics becomes part of the road to 'salvation' and religion becomes politics by other means. Finally the question of popular education is addressed in the context of an invasion of the University by the pobladores. A project of popular education is explored in its attempt to go beyond the question of protest against the Regime to addressing how political power is operated through appropriation of discourse. Power and knowledge are intricately intertwined. The focus moves to consider political violence as being exercised not just in military might but also through institutional structures. The conclusion recapitulates the main themes in the context of wider aspects of anthropology.

This dissertation addresses Plutarco Elías Calles's government in the Mexican state of Sonora between 1915 and 1919, the years immediately following the period of most intense armed conflict in the Mexican revolution. Calles, the most astute and influential politician to emerge from the revolutionary struggle as well as the founder of the modern Mexican state, has been the most conspicuously ignored figure in the extensive historiography on the revolution. Until very recently it was generally accepted that Calles's political development began with his appointment in 1920 as Obregón's interior minister, and that from this office and later as president he pioneered corporatistic programs of agrarian reform and labour organization. Furthermore, revisionist historians have long characterized Calles as the principal influence in the betrayal of the supposedly more 'radical' and 'revolutionary' movements led by Villa and Zapata, who represented popular aspirations and a nationalistic response towards foreign capital finally redeemed by President Cárdenas in the late 1930s. My research, which in a narrative sense complements the wellknown work of the Mexican historian Héctor Aguilar Camín, suggests that the half decade of the callista state government in Sonora had a direct and important bearing on the future character of Mexican government and politics. Indeed, I have found Calles's governorship in Sonora to be a dry run for policies later implemented nationally. Calles pursued a programme which included the expansion of the public education system, substantial, often militarized agrarian reform, advanced labour reforms and the promotion of unions linked to the government, and the successful submission of large American firms to Mexican law; he expelled the Catholic clergy from the state and enforced the prohibition of alcohol and gambling.

This work examines the geographical origins and destinations in British America of the emigrants who left Scotland during the seventy year period from 1784 to the mid 1850's. It considers the factors which influenced their decision to emigrate and choice of settlement location. A decisive factor in the settlement decision of many Scots was the pull of family and community ties. Once early colonisers had established a foothold for themselves their compatriots often followed. Prince Edward Island acquired its strong links with Argyll because it had been settled by first-wave colonisers from Argyll and they in turn attracted successive waves of Argyll emigrants. The choice of destination by the earliest colonisers and their regional origins were therefore crucial determinants of the earliest regional links forged between the two countries. The British government's trade and defence interests were among the greatest influences determining where Scottish settlers would initially be drawn. For instance, the concentration of both Lowland and Highland Scots in the boundary areas of Upper and Lower Canada, close to the United States, is largely attributable to the government's policy of encouraging population growth for defensive purposes. The Renfrewshire/Lanarkshire domination of the Rideau valley military settlements reflects the pulling power of the first-wave settlers who were subsidised through the government's assisted passages scheme in 1815. Poverty was a factor in the large response from this one area and poverty also led thousands of Highlanders, when faced with destitution following the decline of the kelp industry in the 1820's, to opt for Cape Breton. However, here the cheapness of transport and the relative ease of squatting on wilderness land were probably more important driving forces than the hand of government. Proprietor and land company involvement was also instrumental in forging distinct regional links. The Sutherlander's enduring preference for Pictou, Nova Scotia has its roots in the early recruitment of Sutherland settlers by the land company with extensive acreages of wilderness to colonise in Nova Scotia.