This dissertation aims to discover the hidden pattern and rationales behind China's South China Sea policies over the last one hundred years from the perspective of Chinese strategic culture. A historical-cultural approach is a powerful tool in uncovering deeper understandings of the Chinese way of policy making and strategy on issues such as the South China Sea. The key research questions include: first, is there any historical legitimacy in China's sovereignty claim over the South China Sea islands? Second, do Beijing's South China Sea policies in various periods have any regularity or pattern, and how did they serve China's grand strategies at the time? By utilizing extensive Chinese and English primary sources and other sources, this study conducts a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the South China Sea issue from the framework of Chinese strategic culture.

The entrance of the German Invasion of Poland and depiction thereof into modern historiographical conversations offers historians superior articulation of the creation of historical memory, mythos, and identity ‒ especially in wider terms of European Imperialism. By utilizing the current trends in gendering of empire, the use of auto-biography and life writing to understand felt realities and obfuscated truths, and the attempts by empire to queer and utilize labeled deviations to control and gain power over their colonized subjects, one is presented a better understanding of how the German Invasion of Poland fits into the story of empire and indigeneity. That story continues past the Third Reich however, as German propaganda in its various forms was accepted as truth after the Second World War, providing justification for and rationalizing post war political power structures of Western nations. As the threat of a cold war with the USSR loomed, many in the American military felt it necessary to accept and support German myths about their military prowess (and non-culpability for the Holocaust) and the inferiority of Slavic military forces. By analyzing not the myths themselves, but how they were created and propagated, historians can add to this historical conversation a case …

Previous researchers of Jewish history in the Roman Empire have imperfectly employed Greco-Roman sources to describe Roman perceptions of Jews and Judaism by relying on a handful of Greek and Latin written and visual components without attempting to quantify or comprehensively explore this abundant material. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, this dissertation analyzes the vast array of Greco-Roman written and visual sources about Jews and Judaism from the first century BCE to the end of the third century CE. While qualitative reviews of Greek and Latin texts help eliminate potential inconsistencies in the data, computational tools like text-mining analysis quantify the information into calculable results. The addition of visual source material into the framework helps further refine the quantified textual material. Reviews of this data reveal the general traits imperial leaders within the Roman Empire knew about the geography and history of Judaea, Jewish religious beliefs and cultural practices, and Jewish communities in general. Further reviews of the data note regional and, more importantly, temporal variations connecting them to changes both in imperial rule and Judaism. This process presents a more detailed and coherent conception of Roman knowledge of Jews and Judaism than scholars have previously recognized. In addition …

Far from the frontlines, the destiny of armies and generals has been considerably influenced by anonymous public servants working long hours behind a desk. On many occasions, these bureaucrats were the actual organizers of victory or the root cause of defeat. Count Pierre-Antoine Bruno Daru (1767-1829), Intendant Général de la Grande Armée, was one such man. The research concerns the critical nature of logistics and military administration in the performance of modern armies. It challenges the conventional view that the military commissariat was primarily responsible for the defeats of the armies of the First French Republic during the Revolutionary Wars. A professional bureaucracy was the response deployed by the French government to cope with the need to enlist, train, arm, equip, feed, shelter, pay, and control ever larger military forces. The solutions designed and applied by Pierre Daru and his colleagues, tested and improved by trial and error, became the foundation of modern military administration and, eventually, a model that was extended to contemporary, multinational corporations. Most accounts of the exploits of the late eighteenth-century French armies are devoted to describing their élan, maneuverability, and operational innovations. Yet, the fundamental distinction between the Revolutionary forces and their predecessors was scale. …