Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Australian contact history'

This thesis is a study of constructions of home and nation in selected works by Patrick White, Peter Carey, Xavier Herbert and James Bardon. Drawing on the work of postcolonial theorists, it examines ways in which the selected texts engage with national mythologies in the imagining of the Australian nation. It notes the deployment of racial discourses informing constructions of national identity that work to marginalise Indigenous Australians and other cultural minority groups. The texts are arranged in thematic rather than chronological order. White’s treatment of the overland journey, and his representations of Aboriginality, discussed in Chapter One, are contrasted with Carey’s revisiting of the overland journey motif in Oscar and Lucinda in Chapter Two. Whereas White’s representations of Indigenous culture in Voss are static and essentialised, as is the case in Riders in the Chariot and A Fringe of Leaves, Carey’s representation of Australia’s contact history is characterised by a cultural hybridity. In White’s texts, Indigenous culture is depicted as an anachronism in the contemporary Australian nation, while in Carey’s, the words of the coloniser are appropriated and employed to subvert the ideological colonial paradigm. Carey’s use of heteroglossia is examined further in the analysis of Illywhacker in Chapter Three. Whereas Carey treats Australian types ironically in Illywhacker’s pet emporium, the protagonist of Xavier Herbert’s Poor Fellow My Country, Jeremy Delacy, is depicted as an expert on Australian types. The intertextuality between Herbert’s novel and the work of social Darwinist anthropologists in the 1930s and 1940s is discussed in Chapter Four, providing a historical context to appreciate a shift from modernist to postmodernist narrative strategies in Carey’s fiction. James Bardon’s fictional treatment of the Papunya Tula painting movement in Revolution by Night is seen to continue to frame Indigenous culture in a modernist grammar of representation through its portrayal of the work of Papunya Tula artists in the terms of ‘the fourth dimension’. Bardon’s novel is nevertheless a fascinating postcolonial engagement with Sturt’s architectural construction of landscape in his maps and journals, a discussion of which leads to Tony Birch’s analysis of the politics of name reclamation in contemporary tourism discourses.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2001.
Title from title screen (viewed Apr. 24, 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of History, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2001; thesis submitted 2000. Includes bibliography and of tables of cases. Also available in print form.

This dissertation uses the writings of sailors, traders, and diplomats, American missionaries, and Hawaiian chiefs, as well as anthropological theories and ethnographic insights about Hawaiian culture to examine the cultural milieu created by western sojourners in Hawaii, contestation over the interrelated issues of morality, sexuality, religion, economics, and politics that occurred with the arrival of American evangelists, and the ways in which Hawaiian chiefs and commoners negotiated a delicate and calculated path between the embattled imperialist forces in their islands. This study places Hawaiian experiences within the broader outlines of American social, religious, and expansionist history. It offers a distinctly new interpretation of imperial relations in Hawaii, one that others may choose to build upon. In the past two decades, scholars of postmodernism and subaltern studies have devised new approaches to examining western imperialism in Africa, India, and China. However, only a handful of scholarly works have focused on western imperialism in Hawaii. Following trends in colonial scholarship and anthropological theory, particularly the work of Marshall Sahlins, this study uses an ethnographic approach to explain how Hawaiians viewed the religious, social, political, and cultural changes that resulted from the presence of foreigners in their kingdom and their responses to the challenges of imperialism. As such, this dissertation is highly interdisciplinary and draws upon the secondary literature in anthropology, missiology, colonialism, and Native American history. The issue of Hawaiian sovereignty has received national attention in recent years. Most scholars date the loss of Hawaiian independence to the moment in 1893 when U.S. Marines helped dethrone Queen Lili'uokalani. In reality, the forces that led to the annexation of the islands to the United States began with Captain James Cook's 1778 arrival in Hawaii. By focusing on the complex relations between two polarized groups of foreigners---American missionaries and western traders, sailors, and diplomats---and Hawaiian chiefs and commoners, this study reveals how the combined effects of western economic, religious, cultural, and political imperialism, cultural disintegration, native factionalism, and chiefly miscalculation created the context for the loss of Hawaiian political and economic control after 1839, much earlier than previously asserted in the literature.

This thesis is a comparative study of the West�s intellectual responses to the indigenous inhabitants of Australia and New Zealand from the period of first contact through until 1850. The thesis does not attempt a comprehensive history of the West�s encounters with Australasia nor does it attempt to discuss the role of the indigene within these encounters. The thesis does, however, discuss the formulation and expression of those intellectual traditions that informed the Western response to the Maori and Aborigine. Specifically, each chapter addresses a particular aspect of the West�s interaction with the indigenous peoples of Australasia in order demonstrate how the Western narratives of exploration, travel and settlement were informed by the wider discourse of colonialism. Amongst some of the themes addressed in the course of this thesis are: the ideal of the �Good Savage�, the shifting notion of a �Great Chain of Being�, the rise of natural history as a system for classifying human difference and the importance of ideas of savagery in framing the colonial response to the Maori and Aborigine were characterised by similarities and continuities as much as by the more commonly acknowledged differences and discontinuities.

This thesis has three objectives. Its primary objective is to examine, and critically evaluate, the theoretical accounts offered by Hans Kelsen and Joseph Raz to explain the temporal continuity and discontinuity of legal systems. In particular, it evaluates the explanatory power of those accounts by combining an abstract analysis of the accounts in principle and an evaluation based on systematically applying them to one concrete, historically circumstanced instance: the legal systems of British derivation in Australia between 1788 and 2001. The thesis thus tests each account’s factual fit: how adequately it corresponds to, accords with, and persuasively makes sense of, the facts – including complex social facts, attitudes and normative standards – for which it purports to offer an account. Second, the thesis aims to demonstrate, more generally, the utility of applying theoretical accounts to a particular historical instance to complement abstract analysis. Third, the thesis aims to advance the understanding of the evolution of Australian legal systems between 1788 and 2001. These three objectives are achieved through the critical exposition and reconstruction of the accounts, their development and enrichment where refinement is appropriate, their application to the specific context of Australia and their evaluation, individually and in comparison.

"Warriors and Wanderers: Making Race in the Tasman World, 1769-1840" is an exploration of the development of racial thought in Australia and New Zealand from the period of first contact between British and the respective indigenous peoples to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. It analyses four groups of primary documents: the journals and published manuscripts of James Cook's Pacific voyages; An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales by David Collins published in 1798; documents written by and about Samuel Marsden, colonial chaplain in New South Wales and the father of the first mission to New Zealand; and the Reports from the British House of Commons Select Committee into the Treatment of Aborigines in the British Empire from 1835 to 1837. This study employs a transnational methodology and explores the early imperial history of the two countries as a Tasman world of imperial activity. It argues that ideas of human difference and racial thought had important material effects for the indigenous peoples of the region, and were critical to the design of colonial projects and ongoing relationships with both Maori and Aboriginal people, influencing the countries; and their national historiographies, right up to the present day. Part 1 examines the journals of James Cook's three Pacific voyages, and the ideas about Maori and Aboriginal people which were developed out them. The journals and published books of Cook's Pacific voyages depicted Maori as a warrior race living in hierarchical communities, people who were physically akin to Europeans and keen to interact with the voyagers, and who were understood to change their landscape as well as to defend their land, people who, I argue, were depicted as sovereign owners of their land. In Australia encounter was completely different, characterised by Aboriginal people's strategic use of withdrawal and observation, and British descriptions can be characterised as an ethnology of absence, with skin colour dominating documentation of Aboriginal people in the Endeavour voyage journals. Aboriginal withdrawal from encounter with the British signified to Banks that Aboriginal people had no defensive capability. Assumptions of low population numbers and that Aboriginal people did not change their landscape exacerbated this idea, and culminated in the concept that Aboriginal people were not sovereign owners of their country. Part 2 examines debates informing the decision to colonise the east coast of Australia through the evidence of Joseph Banks and James Matra to the British Government Committee on Transportation. The idea that Aboriginal people would not resist settlement was a feature not only of this expert evidence but dominated representation of the Sydney Eora community in David Collins's An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, such that Aboriginal attacks on the settlement were not said to be resistance. A report of the kidnapping of two Muriwhenua Maori men by Norfolk Island colonial authorities was also included in Collins Account, relaying to a British audience a Maori view of their own communities while also opening up further British knowledge of the resources New Zealand offered the empire. The connection with Maori communities facilitated by British kidnapping and subsequent visits by Maori chiefs to New South Wales encouraged the New South Wales colonial chaplain Samuel Marsden to lobby for a New Zealand mission, which was established in 1814, as discussed in Part 3. Marsden was a tireless advocate for Maori civilisation and religious instruction, while he argued that Aboriginal people could not be converted to Christianity. Part 3 explores Marsden's colonial career in the Tasman world, arguing that his divergent actions in the two communities shaped racial thought about the two communities of the two countries. It explores the crucial role of the chaplain's connection to the Australian colony, especially through his significant holdings of land and his relationships with individual Aboriginal children who he raised in his home, to his depiction of Aboriginal people and his assessment of their capacity as human beings. Evidence from missionary experience in New Zealand was central to the divergent depictions of Tasman world indigenous people in the Buxton Committee Reports produced in 1836 and 1837, which are analysed in Part 4. The Buxton Committee placed their conclusions about Maori and Aboriginal people within the context of British imperial activity around the globe. While the Buxton Committee stressed that all peoples were owners of their land, in the Tasman world evidence suggested that Aboriginal people did not use land in a way that would confer practical ownership rights. And while the Buxton Committee believed that Australia's race relations were a failure of British benevolent imperialism, they did not feel that colonial expansion could, or should be, halted. Evidence from New Zealand stressed that Maori independence was threatened by those seen to be "inappropriate" British imperial agents who came via Australia, reinforcing a discourse of separation between Australia and New Zealand that Marsden had first initiated. While the Buxton Committee had not advocated the negotiation of treaties, the idea that Maori sovereignty was too fragile to be sustained justified the British decision to negotiate a treaty with Maori just three years after the Select Committee delivered its final Report.

The rise of the 21st Century Islamic extremist movement, which was mobilised by the al-Qaeda attacks of and responses to September 11, 2001, heralds a new period in the history of terrorism. The increased frequency and intensity of this type of terrorism affects every nation in the world, not least Australia. Rising to meet the challenges posed by terrorism is the field of terrorism studies, the field which aims at understanding, explaining, and countering terrorism. Despite the importance of the field, it has been beleaguered with criticisms since its inception as a response to the rise of international terrorism. These criticisms specifically aim at the field's lack of objectivity, abstraction, levels of research, and levels of analysis. These criticisms were the impetus behind the adoption of the methodology of this thesis, which offers the distinct ability to understand, explain, and forecast the way in which terrorists interact within covert cells. Through social network analysis, this thesis examines four terrorist cells that have operated in or against Australia. These cells are from the groups Hrvatsko Revolucionarno Bratstvo (Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood), Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth), Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure), and Jemaah Islamiyah (Islamic Community) and operated between 1963 and 2003. Essentially, this methodology attempts to discover, map, and analyse the interaction within the cells during the covert stage of their respective operations. Following this, the results are analysed through the traditional social network analysis frameworks to discover the internal dynamics of the cell and identify the critical nodes (leaders) within the cells. Destabilisation techniques are subsequently employed, targeting these critical nodes to establish the most effective disruption techniques from a counter-terrorism point of view. The major findings of this thesis are: (1) that cells with a focus on efficiency rather than covertness were more successful in completing their objectives (contrary to popular belief); and (2) betweenness centrality (control over the flow of communication) is a critical factor in identifying leaders within terrorist cells. The analysis also offered significant insight into how a Jemaah Islamiyah cell might operate effectively in Australia, as well as the importance of local contacts to terrorist operations and the significance of international counter-terrorism cooperation and coordination.

The rise of the 21st Century Islamic extremist movement, which was mobilised by the al-Qaeda attacks of and responses to September 11, 2001, heralds a new period in the history of terrorism. The increased frequency and intensity of this type of terrorism affects every nation in the world, not least Australia. Rising to meet the challenges posed by terrorism is the field of terrorism studies, the field which aims at understanding, explaining, and countering terrorism. Despite the importance of the field, it has been beleaguered with criticisms since its inception as a response to the rise of international terrorism. These criticisms specifically aim at the field's lack of objectivity, abstraction, levels of research, and levels of analysis. These criticisms were the impetus behind the adoption of the methodology of this thesis, which offers the distinct ability to understand, explain, and forecast the way in which terrorists interact within covert cells. Through social network analysis, this thesis examines four terrorist cells that have operated in or against Australia. These cells are from the groups Hrvatsko Revolucionarno Bratstvo (Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood), Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth), Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure), and Jemaah Islamiyah (Islamic Community) and operated between 1963 and 2003. Essentially, this methodology attempts to discover, map, and analyse the interaction within the cells during the covert stage of their respective operations. Following this, the results are analysed through the traditional social network analysis frameworks to discover the internal dynamics of the cell and identify the critical nodes (leaders) within the cells. Destabilisation techniques are subsequently employed, targeting these critical nodes to establish the most effective disruption techniques from a counter-terrorism point of view. The major findings of this thesis are: (1) that cells with a focus on efficiency rather than covertness were more successful in completing their objectives (contrary to popular belief); and (2) betweenness centrality (control over the flow of communication) is a critical factor in identifying leaders within terrorist cells. The analysis also offered significant insight into how a Jemaah Islamiyah cell might operate effectively in Australia, as well as the importance of local contacts to terrorist operations and the significance of international counter-terrorism cooperation and coordination.

This thesis is an examination of human rights and constitutional development in Tanzania Mainland. The colonial and post-colonial history is used to analyse the development of human rights struggles, as well as institutions such as the Bill of Rights in the recent development of multi-party democracy. The thesis intends to establish that in spite of global factors such as pressure for democratisation from international institutions, the achievement of the Bill of Rights in Tanzania Mainland is part of a wider rights struggle of the people of Tanzania. The effective legal and political implementation of specific rights such as the right to vote, freedom of association and assembly reflect the state of that struggle. The thesis further seeks to establish that while the government sponsored the enactment of the Bill of Rights in 1984 and the re-introduction of multi-partism in 1992, it has always preferred to exercise extreme control over the enjoyment of political rights. This has often involved curtailing the establishment and free operation of institutions of popular democracy. The thesis goes on to suggest that unless a democratic culture and civil society are restored in the country, the success of the rights struggles of the people will be far-fetched. Together with the above it is argued that the struggle for rights could be enhanced by working from what is provided as legal rights, all interested parties pushing for the expansion of the human rights field. This can only be attained if the majority of Tanzanians are made aware of the existence of such rights through legal literacy programs.

The objective of this thesis work is to establish the legal regulations of Internet service providers and establish that there is in fact a body of regulations in existence now for their regulation. While at this time there is feeling in the marketplace that there is insufficient legal regulation of Internet service providers, this thesis has uncovered an existing statutory regime of regulations and obligations. In addition to this existing statutory regime there is further emerging regulations and obligations currently in progress and it can be expected that it will continue to emerge with the industry emergency. Form a commercial perspective it has been shown that the telecommunications, information technology, communications and entertainment industries are converging with the Internet as a mutual channel for delivery of their existing services. This emergence of a merged industry places the Internet service provider in an interesting position from a regulatory perspective. The Internet service provider is in fact regulated not only by a number of legislative pieces, but also by a number oflegislative bodies. The term Internet service provider is not an easily defined term. The legal definition is found in the legislation based upon the commercial decisions that the Internet service provider makes, and the term itself is only used in the Broadcasting Services Act. The definition from a layperson point of view is less defined and in many instances does not contain significant correlation with the laypersons expectation of the definition of the term. The life span of the term Internet service provider is questionable. It is difficult to ascertain how long the term will be in common use with the rapid emergence of technology, and if it is still in common usage, if it will have the same meaning as it does at the time of this thesis.

While much has been written on the Australian film and television industry, little has been presented by actual producers, filmmakers and technicians of their time and experiences within that same industry. Similarly, with historical documentaries, it has been academics rather than filmmakers who have led the debate. This thesis addresses this shortcoming and bridges the gap between practitioner experience and intellectual discussion, synthesising the debate and providing an important contribution from a filmmaker-academic, in its own way unique and insightful. The thesis is presented in two voices. First, my voice, the voice of memoir and recollected experience of my screen adventures over 38 years within the Australian industry, mainly producing historical documentaries for the ABC and the SBS. This is represented in italics. The second half and the alternate chapters provide the industry framework in which I worked with particular emphasis on documentaries and how this evolved and developed over a 40-year period, from 1970 to 2010. Within these two voices are three layers against which this history is reviewed and presented. Forming the base of the pyramid is the broad Australian film industry made up of feature films, documentary, television drama, animation and other types and styles of production. Above this is the genre documentary within this broad industry, and making up the small top tip of the pyramid, the sub-genre of historical documentary. These form the vertical structure within which industry issues are discussed. Threading through it are the duel determinants of production: ‘the market’ and ‘funding’. Underpinning the industry is the involvement of government, both state and federal, forming the three dimensional matrix for the thesis. For over 100 years the Australian film industry has depended on government support through subsidy, funding mechanisms, development assistance, broadcast policy and legislative provisions. This thesis aims to weave together these industry layers, binding them with the determinants of the market and funding, and immersing them beneath layers of government legislation and policy to present a new view of the Australian film industry.

This work starts with a question: ‘what makes a place entangled’? Posing this question implies an understanding that places have qualities that are fruitfully understood in terms of the concept of ‘entanglement’. This thesis uses the term to express and explore the inextricably inter-woven temporal components of a place that emerge from stories of its history that were either direct accounts, traces in the patterned objects on the ground, or retrieved from archives. These qualities are interpreted as arising through interactions between people, objects and the physical and historical characteristics of a place through time. It is this relationship between interaction and entanglement that the thesis ‘has a good look around’, to use a key phrase used by Irrwanyere Aboriginal Corporation members. The threads implicated in the historical entanglement of particular places are traced. These are: experiences as an archaeologist and a historian in contemporary places of the western Simpson Desert, mediated by Irrwanyere Aboriginal Corporation members who speak for that country; direct stories of the place; texts generated by white explorers, surveyors, scientists, managers and tourists; the enduring presence of the creator Ancestors; and spatial patterns of material objects. Why is recognition of the processes that generate such entanglement important? It shifts attention. Focusing on their entangled character brings to the fore what are otherwise missing histories of Indigenous labour and concern. Importantly it also disallows unitary categories for places as being either ‘Aboriginal’ or ‘European’, ‘pre-historic’ or ‘colonial’; often assumed to be separate components of history. The challenge then is to track the interaction of these histories. The aim is to make the missing stories of western Simpson people in place available, in a way where the place of the story retains its specifics, but is simultaneously stretched into an expanded network of social and historical connections. Three inter-related themes that emerged as consequential in understanding the dynamics of people and place in the western Simpson Desert are developed. These are, firstly, cross-cultural interactions during intense and rapid change associated with the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line. Remembered as a technological and political achievement, an agent of modernity from 1872, an unintended outcome of its installation was the incision of a continuous ‘contact zone’ through the country and lives of the local Indigenous people. The thesis looks at how these large-scale processes of change played out locally in a particular place – the repeater station at Charlotte Waters. Secondly, the thesis looks at interactions of people and place through the lens of water. Water is vital, especially in the desert. What distinct expectations and understandings do different people bring to their relations with water, as revealed through their practices in relation to it? Thirdly, the thesis considers what makes and maintains connections between places. While the interactions explored in this work are specific to the particular places and region, the historical implications and the approach are applicable in any place.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Throughout the 1890s and early years of the twentieth century, the FitzGerald Brothers' Circus was the largest and most popular homegrown circus touring in Australasia. Their productions were at once fabulous and educational, parochial and cosmopolitan, political and sensual. The company's principals, Dan and Tom FitzGerald were astute showmen, sensitive to the shifting tastes of their public, and people of all ages and stations found something in their shows that appealed. Drawing on a diverse range of primary source material, this thesis examines the ways that a range of shows produced by the FitzGeralds articulated a variety of narratives, not all of which were congruent, concerning nation, identity, allegiance, and belonging, in Australasia at the turn of the twentieth century. As a history of a performance company, it traces the artisitic career of the circus from their emergence in 1888 to the company's dispersal in 1906. It brings forward and analyses many of the acts which the FitzGeralds promoted as their key attractions and in which they invested much of their identity. While the story of the FitzGeralds' Circus constitutes the primary narrative line of the thesis, a meta-narrative about events in the wider community, shifting political imperatives, and cultural change, also runs through the thesis as a strategy for annotating the circus shows and drawing out possible readings of them. This study investigates the dialogic relationship that developed between one particular circus and the contemporary society; it interrogates the extent to which that society, directly and indirectly, impacted on the cultural productions of the principal circus of the era and considers the meaning that were reflected back to the circus's public.

The developmental histories of Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan, and South Korea are examined through historical-structural analyses integrating elements from evolving Modernization, Dependency, and World-System perspectives. The notion that Latin American and East Asian industrialization can be understood in terms of monolithic 'development models' defined by contrasting economic policies is rejected. The view that Latin American development has been undermined by protectionist import-substituting industrialization programs while East Asian countries have implemented more effective 'free market' policies is a distortion of the long-term historical facts. The cases' developmental trajectories reflect their participation in competitive historically-conditioned socio-economic and political relations at the state, sub-state, and supra-state levels. Actors seeking to structure the flow of financial, technological, military, labor, and other resources in their favor construct institutions that link actors at the various levels, regulate their interactions, and establish the general parameters of developmental possibilities. State and their aparata are complemented at the sub-state level by classes' and status groups' political parties, unions, religious institutions, business associations, and other organizational resources. At the supra-state level developmental parameters are established by international organizations and regimes. The rise of the Latin American and East Asian NICs is better understood within the context of their long-term incorporation into a globalizing capitalist world-economy, the United States' ascent to world hegemony, the consolidation of competing socialist and capitalist political-economic blocs, and the end of the Cold War. The theories of development that have attempted to explain these transformations have necessarily been influenced by this social context
acase@tulane.edu

M.A.
This study approaches a special area of comparative literature in English which has not been researched in any great detail to date. Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm, first published in 1883, had an Australian counterpart in Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career, first published in 1901. Both novels stemmed from a deep-rooted discontent with Colonial society and, specifically, with the status of women in that society. Both these novelists were early Colonial writers whose works proved to be watersheds in the development of the literary output of their respective countries. Both novelists have a similar status in their respective literature, and their novels show many comparable attributes ...

This thesis makes a theoretical contribution to the analysis of successful political leadership. It argues that we should judge leaders operating in different historical contexts by different criteria. Historical context shapes the opportunities leaders have to achieve their goals, enabling some leaders to achieve more than others. Furthermore, in different historical contexts society demands different types of leadership. Therefore, taking account of historical context allows us to make a fair comparison of leaders when assessing their success and it allows us to encourage leaders to behave in ways that provide better results for their nations. The thesis derives its understanding of the relationship between historical context and political leadership from Stephen Skowronek's conceptualisation of the US Presidency and his four leadership types. It demonstrates that Skowronek's theory operates in Australia and other so-called Westminster countries. In particular, political time operates where the executive leader is the most creative agent of change within the political system, and where competing conservative and progressive political actors contest to control the direction of political change. Regardless of their political system, leaders are always in a contest with opponents and the interaction between these leaders and their oppositions is vital to their eventual success or failure. The thesis shows that oppositions can encourage the success of political leaders, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes in a positive and deliberate manner through engaging with leaders' ideas. The relationship between political leaders and oppositions can be complex but it must be examined closely in order to understand leaders' success or failure. The second half of the thesis focuses heavily on how political leaders can succeed and it creates four separate frameworks for analysing presidents and prime ministers. These frameworks take account of both material and interpretive realms of success. Naturally, leaders' concrete achievements are important but so is their interpretive success, in which they convince publics and political elites that their actions are successes and that they are successes as a result of leaders' actions. Political leaders' success comes in three forms: personal success, partisan regime success and normative success and these form the basis of the four frameworks of political success. The three forms of success are available to Skowronek's four leadership types to differing degrees and so the four leadership types are examined according to different criteria. The most important form of success is partisan regime success, as success of this form allows leaders' achievements to endure. Partisan regime success is the form that alters most among the different leadership types. The conclusion also examines the thesis' implications for how we understand political leadership and how we understand the broader operation of democratic politics. It argues that once we examine them in context, more leaders have been successful than is commonly supposed. Political leadership studies must pay more attention to historical context and come to understand leadership in relationship to the full range of social and political forces that act upon it.