American military plans for a war with the British Empire, first discussed in 1919, have received varied treatment since their declassification. the most common theme among historians in their appraisals of WAR PLAN RED is that of an oddity. Lack of a detailed study of Anglo-American relations in the immediate post-First World War years makes a right understanding of the difficult relationship between the United States and Britain after the War problematic. As a result of divergent aims and policies, the United States and Great Britain did not find the diplomatic and social unity so many on both sides of the Atlantic aspired to during and immediately after the First World War. Instead, United States’ civil and military organizations came to see the British Empire as a fierce and potentially dangerous rival, worthy of suspicion, and planned accordingly. Less than a year after the end of the War, internal debates and notes discussed and circulated between the most influential members of the United States Government, coalesced around a premise that became the rationale for WAR PLAN RED. Ample evidence reveals that contrary to the common narrative of “Anglo-American” and “Atlanticist” historians of the past century, the First World War did …

Between 1960 and 1968 the United States conducted intensive psychological operations (PSYOP) in Vietnam. To date, no comprehensive study of the psychological war there has been conducted. This dissertation fills that void, describing the development of American PSYOP forces and their employment in Vietnam. By looking at the complex interplay of American, North Vietnamese, National Liberation Front (NLF) and South Vietnamese propaganda programs, a deeper understanding of these activities and the larger war emerges. The time period covered is important because it comprises the initial introduction of American PSYOP advisory forces and the transition to active participation in the war. It also allows enough time to determine the long-term effects of both the North Vietnamese/NLF and American/South Vietnamese programs. Ending with the 1968 Tet Offensive is fitting because it marks both a major change in the war and the establishment of the 4th Psychological Operations Group to manage the American PSYOP effort. This dissertation challenges the argument that the Northern/Viet Cong program was much more effective that the opposing one. Contrary to common perceptions, the North Vietnamese propaganda increasingly fell on deaf ears in the south by 1968. This study also provides support for understanding the Tet Offensive as a …

The Portuguese Expeditionary Force fought in the trenches of northern France from April 1917 to April 1918. on 9 April 1918 the sledgehammer blow of Operation Georgette fell upon the exhausted Portuguese troops. British accounts of the Portuguese Corps’ participation in combat on the Western Front are terse. Many are dismissive. in fact, Portuguese units experienced heavy combat and successfully held their ground against all attacks. Regarding Georgette, the standard British narrative holds that most of the Portuguese soldiers threw their weapons aside and ran. the account is incontrovertibly false. Most of the Portuguese combat troops held their ground against the German assault. This thesis details the history of the Portuguese Expeditionary Force.

Critical work on popular American women's fiction still has not reckoned adequately with the themes of interracialism present in these novels and with interracialism's bearing on the sentimental. This thesis considers an often overlooked body of women's popular sentimental fiction, published from 1860-1865, which is interested in themes of interracial romance or reproduction, in order to provide a fuller picture of the impact that the intersection of interracialism and sentimentalism has had on American identity. By examining the literary strategy of "miscegenated narration," or the heteroglossic cacophony of narrative voices and ideological viewpoints that interracialism produces in a narrative, I argue that the hegemonic ideologies of the sentimental romance are both "deterritorialized" and "reterritorialized," a conflicted impulse that characterizes both nineteenth-century sentimental, interracial romances and the broader project of critiquing the dominant national narrative that these novels undertake.

Post-civil war democratization is a critical element of building sustainable peace in the post-civil war states. At the same time, studies of democratic transition and survival suggest that the post-civil war environment is not hospitable to either the transition to or survival of democracy. The post-civil war environment is contentious. Former protagonists are fearful about their security and at the same time they want to protect their political and economic interests. The central argument of this study is that former rivals can agree to a transition toward democracy to the extent that a stable balance of power exists between the government and rebel groups, a balance that eliminates the sort of security dilemma that would encourage one or both to resume armed conflict. And the balance should ensure access to political power and economic resources. This study identifies factors that contribute to the establishment of such a balance of power between former protagonists and factors that affects its stability. These factors should affect the decision of former protagonists on whether or not they can achieve their political and economic interests if they agree to a transition toward democracy once civil war ends. Factors that are conducive to a transition toward …

The liberation war was a watershed event in the history of Zimbabwe. According to the ZANU PF (Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front) ruling elites, an understanding of the common experiences of the people during the liberation war provides the best opportunity to mold a common national identity and consciousness. However, the representation of important historical events in a nation's history is problematic. At best events are manipulated for political purposes by the ruling elites, and at the worst they are distorted or exaggerated. In Zimbabwe, the representation of the ZAPU/ZIPRA and the ZANU/ZANLA as liberation movements in high school history textbooks during the armed struggle is a hot potato. This study critically examined and explored the contested "representational practices" of the ZAPU/ZIPRA and the ZANU/ZANLA as liberation movements during the Zimbabwean armed revolution. By means of qualitative content analysis, seven high school history textbooks from Zimbabwe were analyzed. Drawing from postcolonial perspectives and insights, particularly Fanon's concept of the pitfall of national consciousness, the study unveiled the way in which Zimbabwean high school textbooks portrayed the ZAPU/ZIPRA and the ZANU/ZANLA as very different liberation movements whose roles and contributions were unequal. High school textbooks depicted the ZANU/ZANLA as a …

This thesis describes the development of psychological operations capabilities, introduction of forces, and the employment in Vietnam during the period 1960-1965. The complex interplay of these activities is addressed, as well as the development of PSYOP doctrine and training in the period prior to the introduction of ground combat forces in 1965. The American PSYOP advisory effort supported the South Vietnamese at all levels, providing access to training, material support, and critical advice. In these areas the American effort was largely successful. Yet, instability in the wake of President Ngo Dinh Diem's overthrow created an impediment to the ability of psychological operations to change behaviors and positively affect the outcome.

In this project a theory of adaptive differential insurgency growth by the mechanism of repression driven contagion is put forth to explain variation in the membership and spatial expansion of insurgencies from 1981 to 1999. As an alternative to the dominant structural approaches in the civil war literature, Part 1 of the study proposes an interactive model of insurgency growth based on Most and Starr's opportunity and willingness framework. The findings suggest that state capacity, via its impact on state repressive behavior, plays an important gatekeeping function in selecting which minor insurgencies can grow into civil war, but contributes little to insurgency growth directly. In Part 2 of the study, I directly examine variation in insurgency membership and geographical expansion as a function of repression driven contagion. I find that repression increases the overall magnitude of insurgency activity within states, while at the same time reducing the density of insurgency activity in any one place. Despite an abundance of low intensity armed struggles against a highly diverse group of regimes around the world, I find an extremely strong and robust regularity: where repression is low - insurgencies don't grow.

General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck’s East African Campaign was a conventional war of movement. Lettow based his operations on the military principles deduced from his thorough German military education and oversea deployments to China and German South West Africa. Upon assignment to German East Africa, he sought to convert the colony’s protectorate force from a counterinsurgency force to a conventional military force. His conventional strategy succeeded early in the war, especially at the Battle of Tanga in October 1914. However, his strategy failed as the war in East Africa intensified. He suffered a calamitous defeat at the Battle of Mahiwa in November 1917, and the heavy losses forced Lettow to adopt the counterinsurgency tactics of the colonial protectorate force.

This dissertation is a study of the State of Maryland in the secession crisis of 1860-1861. Previous historians have emphasized economic, political, societal, and geographical considerations as the reasons Maryland remained loyal to the Union. However, not adequately considered is the manner in which Maryland understood and reacted to the secession of the Lower South. Historians have tended to portray Maryland's inaction as inevitable and reasonable. This study offers another reason for Maryland's inaction by placing the state in time and space, following where the sources lead, and allowing for contingency. No one in Maryland could have known that their state would not secede in 1860-61. Seeing the crisis through their eyes is instructive. It becomes clear that Maryland was a state on the brink of secession, but its resentment, suspicion, and anger toward the Lower South isolated it from the larger secession movement. Marylanders regarded the Lower South's rush to separate as precipitous, dangerous, and coercive to the Old Line State. A focus on a single state like Maryland allows a deeper, richer understanding of the dynamics, forces, and characteristics of the secession movement and the federal government's response to it. It cuts through the larger debates about the …

On 1 February 1793, the National Convention of Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands, expanding the list of France's enemies in the War of the First Coalition. Although British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger had predicted fifteen years of peace one year earlier, the French declaration of war initiated nearly a quarter century of war between Britain and France with only a brief respite during the Peace of Amiens. Britain entered the war amid both a nadir in British diplomacy and internal political divisions over the direction of British foreign policy. After becoming prime minister in 1783 in the aftermath of the War of American Independence, Pitt pursued financial and naval reform to recover British strength and cautious interventionism to end Britain's diplomatic isolation in Europe. He hoped to create a collective security system based on the principles of the territorial status quo, trade agreements, neutral rights, and resolution of diplomatic disputes through mediation - armed mediation if necessary. While his domestic measures largely met with success, Pitt's foreign policy suffered from a paucity of like-minded allies, contradictions between traditional hostility to France and emergent opposition to Russian expansion, Britain's limited ability to project power …

This thesis examines the progression from relatively peaceful relations between Alexandrians and Jews under the Ptolemies to the Diaspora Revolt under the Romans. A close analysis of the literature evidences that the transition from Ptolemaic to Roman Alexandria had critical effects on Jewish status in the Diaspora. One of the most far reaching consequences of the shift from the Ptolemies to Romans was forcing the Alexandrians to participate in the struggle for imperial patronage. Alexandrian involvement introduced a new element to the ongoing conflict among Egypt’s Jews and native Egyptians. The Alexandrian citizens consciously cut back privileges the Jews previously enjoyed under the Ptolemies and sought to block the Jews from advancing within the Roman system. Soon the Jews were confronted with rhetoric slandering their civility and culture. Faced with a choice, many Jews forsook Judaism and their traditions for more upwardly mobile life. After the outbreak of the First Jewish War Jewish life took a turn for the worse. Many Jews found themselves in a system that classified them according to their heritage and ancestry, limiting advancement even for apostates. With the resulting Jewish tax (fiscus Judaicus) Jews were becoming more economically and socially marginalized. The Alexandrian Jews were …

The Liberia Baptist Theological Seminary (LBTS), opened on March 4, 1976, exists to train men and women for Christian ministry. It offers four-year degree programs leading to bachelor of arts in theology, bachelor of arts in religious education, and bachelor of divinity. Three major periods characterized its growth and development. the first, from 1976 to 1989, was a period of growth and prosperity. the second, from 1990-2003, was a time of immense challenge for the seminary because of the Liberian Civil War. the final period, from 2003 to the present, shows the seminary attempting to re-position itself for the future as a premier Christian higher education institution in Liberia. One of the challenges remaining, however, is the lack of historical documentation on factors impacting the growth of the seminary. This historical case study research sought to provide a comprehensive overview of the LBTS within the context of theological higher education in Liberia and the Liberian Civil War. the four major purposes guiding this research were: 1. Historical—to document and evaluate the rise, survival, developments and achievements of LBTS; 2. Institutional—to gain insight into how the seminary operates; 3. to document the effects of the 13-year civil war on the seminary; …

"The Great Hanging" is a documentary film that tells the story of the largest extra-legal mass hanging in U.S. History. This story is told through stage play recital of "October Mourning" written by historian and professor Dr. Pat Ledbetter. Using the stage play as a vehicle, the film showcases cinematic re-enactments based in the events in Gainesville, Texas during October 1862. These events show how a small community became overwhelmed by the fog of war and delved into madness as the Civil War crept closer and closer to their doorstep.

This dissertation investigates three questions: First, what conditions make dissident collective action such as protest, revolt, rebellion, or civil war more likely to happen in a country? Second, what conditions make citizens more likely to join in dissident collective action? Third, does Internet use play a role in dissident collective action, and if so, why? I argue that motives and resources are necessary rather than sufficient conditions for dissident collective action. I develop an analytical framework integrating motives and resources. Specifically, I theorize that state repression is an important motive, and that civil society is critical in providing resources. Four statistical analyses are conducted to test the hypotheses. Using aggregate level data on countries over time, I find that civil war is more likely to occur in countries where both state repression and civil society are strong. Moreover, the effect of civil society on civil war onset increases as the repression level rises. at the individual level using 2008 Latin American Public Opinion Project surveys from 23 Latin American and Caribbean countries, I find individuals more likely to join in protest when they experience both more repression and greater civic engagement. Moreover, civic engagement’s effect on protest participation increases as …

The eighteenth century was a time of intense upheaval in France. The death of Louis XIV in 1715 and the subsequent reign of Louis XV saw the end of French political and martial hegemony on the continent. While French culture and language remained dominant in Europe, Louis XV's disinterested rule and military stagnation led to the disastrous defeat of the French army at the hands of Frederick the Great of Prussia in the Seven Years War (1756-1763). The battle of Rossbach marked the nadir of the French army in the Seven Years War. Frederick's army routed the French infantry that had bumbled its way into massed Prussian cavalry. Following the war, two reformist elements emerged in the army. Reformers within the government, chiefly Etienne François, duc de Choiseul, sought to rectify the army's poor performance and reconstitute France's military establishment. Outside the traditional army structure, military thinkers looked to military theory to reinvigorate the army from within and without. Foremost among the latter was a young officer named Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte de Guibert, whose 1772 Essai général de tactique quickly became the most celebrated work of theory in European military circles. The Essai provided a new military constitution for France, proposing wholesale …

Pat M. Neff was a product of his political place and time. Born in Texas in 1871, during Reconstruction, he matured and prospered while his native state did the same as it transitioned from Old South to New South. Neff spent most of his life in Waco, a town that combined New South Progressivism with religious conservatism. This duality was reflected in Neff's own personality. On moral or religious issues, he was conservative. On economic and social issues, he was Progressive. He thus was a typical Southern Progressive who de-emphasized social and political change in favor of economic development. For instance, as governor from 1921 to 1925, his work to develop and conserve Texas' water resources brought urbanization and industrialization that made the New South a reality in the state. Neff was a devout Baptist which influenced his politics and philosophy. He was president of Baylor University, a Baptist institution, for fifteen years after leaving the governor s office and he led the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in the 1940s. He combined Progressive and Christian values as he argued for the establishment of the United Nations and advocated forgiveness and brotherhood after World War II. The war's end marked the …

This study seeks to explore the role of peasant women in resistance to the antireligious campaigns during collectivization and analyze how the interplay of the state and resistors formed a new culture of religion in the countryside. I argue that while the state’s succeeded in controlling most of the public sphere, peasant women, engaging in subversive activities and exploiting the state’s ideology, succeeded in preserving a strong peasant adherence to religion prior to World War II. It was peasant women’s determination and adaptation that thwarted the party’s goal of nation-wide atheism.

Oran Milo Roberts was at the center of every important event in Texas between 1857 and 1883. He served on the state supreme court on three separate occasions, twice as chief justice. As president of the 1861 Secession Convention he was instrumental in leading Texas out of the Union. He then raised and commanded an infantry regiment in the Confederate Army. After the Civil War, Roberts was a delegate to the 1866 Constitutional Convention and was elected by the state legislature to the United States Senate, though Republicans in Congress refused to seat him. He served two terms as governor from 1879 to 1883. Despite being a major figure in Texas history, there are no published biographies of Roberts. This dissertation seeks to examine Roberts's place in Texas history and analyze the factors that drove him to seek power. It will also explore the major events in which he participated and determine his historical legacy to the state.

The formation of state borders is often told through the history of war and diplomacy. What is neglected is the tale of how borders of seemingly peaceful and long-extant places were set. In drawing Egypt’s borders, nineteenth-century cartographers were drawing upon a well of knowledge that stretched back into antiquity. Relying on the works of Greco-Roman writers and the Bible itself, cartographers and explorers used the authority of these works to make sense of unfamiliar lands, regardless of any current circumstances. The border with Palestine was determined through the usage of the Old Testament, while classical scholars like Herodotus and Ptolemy set the southern border at the Cataracts. The ancient cartography of Rome was overlaid upon the Egypt of Muhammad Ali. Given the increasing importance Egypt had to the burgeoning British Empire of the nineteenth century, how did this mesh with the influences informing cartographical representations of Egypt? This study argues that the imagined spaces created by Western cartographers informed the trajectory of Britain’s eventual conquest of Egypt. While receding as geopolitical concerns took hold, the classical and biblical influences were nonetheless part of a larger trend of Orientalism that colored the way Westerners interacted with and treated the people …

An adequate supply of the right kinds of foods is critical to an army's success on the march and on the battlefield. Good food supplies and a dire lack of provisions have profound effects on the regulation, confidence, esprit de corps, and physical state of an army. The American War of Independence (1775-1783) provides a challenging case study of this principle. The relationship between food and troop morale has been previously discussed as just one of many factors that contributed to the success of the Continental Army, but has not been fully explored as a single issue in its own right. I argue that despite the failures of three provisioning system adopted by the Continental Congress - the Commissariat, the state system of specific supplies, and the contract system - the army did keep up its morale and achieve the victory that resulted in independence from Great Britain. The evidence reveals that despite the poor provisioning, the American army was fed in the field for eight years thanks largely to its ability to forage for its food. This foraging system, if it can be called a system, was adequate to sustain morale and perseverance.

Employing a textual analysis within an auteur theory framework, this thesis examines Frederick Wiseman's films At Berkeley (2013), National Gallery (2014), and Ex Libris (2017) and the different ways in which they reflect on the theme of time. The National Gallery, University of California at Berkeley, and the New York Public Library all share a fundamental common purpose: the preservation and circulation of "truth" through time. Whether it be artistic, scientific, or historical truth, these institutions act as cultural and historical safe-keepers for future generations. Wiseman explores these themes related to time and truth by juxtaposing oppositional binary motifs such as time/timelessness, progress/repetition, and reality/fiction. These are also Wiseman's most self-reflexive films, acting as a reflection on his past filmmaking career as well as a meditation on the value these films might have for future generations. Finally, Wiseman's reflection on the nature of time through these films are connected to the ideas of French philosopher Henri Bergson.

This project interrogates how religious performance, either authentic or contrived, aids in the quest for freedom for oppressed peoples; how the rhetoric of the Enlightenment era pervades literatures delivered or written by Native Americans and African Americans; and how religious modes, such as evoking scripture, performing sacrifices, or relying upon providence, assist oppressed populations in their roles as early American authors and speakers. Even though the African American and Native American populations of early America before the eighteenth century were denied access to rights and freedom, they learned to manipulate these imposed constraints--renouncing the expectation that they should be subordinate and silent--to assert their independent bodies, voices, and spiritual identities through the use of literary expression. These performative strategies, such as self-fashioning, commanding language, destabilizing republican rhetoric, or revising narrative forms, become the tools used to present three significant strands of identity: the individual person, the racialized person, and the spiritual person. As each author resists the imposed restrictions of early American ideology and the resulting expectation of inferior behavior, he/she displays abilities within literature (oral and written forms) denied him/her by the political systems of the early republican and early national eras. Specifically, they each represent themselves in three …

Fantasies about warrior women circulated in many forms of writing in early modern England: travel narratives such as Sir Walter Ralegh's The Discoverie of Guiana (1595) portray Amazon encounters in the New World; poems like Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1596) depict women's skill with a spear; and the plays of Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and others stage the adventurous feats of women on the battlefield. In this dissertation, I analyze the social anxieties that emerge when warrior women threaten gender hierarchies in the patriarchal society of early modern England. The battlefield has traditionally been a site for men to prove their masculinity against other men, so when male characters find themselves submitting to a sword-wielding woman, they are forced to reimagine their own masculine identities as they become the objects acted upon by women. In their experience of subjectivity, these literary warrior women often allude to the historical Queen Elizabeth I, whose reign destabilized ideas about gender and power in the period. Negative evaluations of warrior women often indicate anxiety about Elizabeth as an Amazon-like queen. Thus, portrayals of warrior women often end with a celebration of patriarchal dominance once the male characters have successfully contained the threat of the …