Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Imperialism in art'

Samuel Bourne (1834-1912), one of the most prestigious Victorian English commercial photographers to have worked in British India, is best known for his photographs of the Himalayas. Bourne's work features in general studies of photography of the period; his representations of the Indian landscape have been the object of studies and several exhibitions. Bourne was in India initially from 1863 to 1870 thereby establishing his career as a professional photographer. Soon after his arrival he started a business with the experienced photographer Charles Shepherd. Within a few years, the firm of Bourne & Shepherd became recognised as being a directing influence over British-Indian photography. The photographs were taken either in studio or on location, and included individual and group portraits of both the British and Indians, topographical images in which peoples were incidental, as well as a range of representations of Indian life, customs and types. These images were informed by, and in turn contributed to, an expanding body of photographic practice that mixed, to varying degrees, authenticity and aesthetic style. Whilst Bourne's work was significant and influential in the representation of Indian peoples, no substantial study has been undertaken until now. The aim of this thesis is to redress this imbalance. The central focus highlights the specific character of the images portraying Indian people. This specificity was determined by a combination of technical and 'authorial' factors, by the audience to which they were addressed — ranging from the general public in Britain to the family circle of wealthy Indians — by commercial considerations, and by current and evolving notions of authority, race and gender. The first two chapters seek to frame Bourne's work by first examining the political and cultural context of photography in India during the mid-nineteenth century, then by focusing on the context of the photographer's own production. The following three chapters are concerned with the study of the photographs themselves regarding what they depict and the questions they raise such as gender, racial identities and imperialism. The last chapter is an attempt to assess the significance of these photographs by comparing them with the work of Lala Deen Dayal, and highlighting different perspectives on Bourne's work regarding British India and Western societies. Placed in the context of the development of photography as a medium of record and representation, this thesis aims to show that Bourne's work is a significant historical source for understanding British cultural presence in post-Mutiny India.

According to Edward Said the Orient is a European construction that has arisen out of a need to describe the Western civilisation as culturally superior. This occurrence Said gives the label "Orientalism". Art historian Linda Nochlin takes Said’s theories further in The Imaginary Orient where she conveys the thesis that the pictorial Orientalism is an expression of an imperialistic ideology. John M. Mackenzie, on the other hand is of the opinion that the pictorial Orientalism rather is an expression of the Romantic movement. To understand the Orientalist art we have to consider the social and historical context in which the work was created. By trying to justify the Orientalists choice of motive Mackenzie takes the view of those who consider art history as a positive discipline. Nochlin on the other hand means that we instead of fortifying the art historical canon we ought to politicize it, which only is possible if we contemplate art history as a critical rather than a positive discipline.

This thesis addresses the nineteenth-century art collection of Donald Alexander Smith, Lord Strathcona (1820--1914), in relation to intersecting questions of imperialism, colonial relations, and cultural status. Both the formation of the collection and its dispersal are linked to a dialectic of cultural hegemony and national identity in nineteenth-century Canada. Smith came penniless to Montreal from Scotland in 1838, became the wealthiest man in Canada by the end of the century, and is known as Lord Strathcona after being raised to the peerage by Queen Victoria in 1897. My discussion of the rise and fall of Strathcona's collection is informed by postcolonial theory and its critical re-reading of imperialism. While British imperialism was the ideology that governed Strathcona's activities, Anthony Giddens's structuration theory is introduced to account for how personal agency remains operative within this dominant ideology.
Strathcona formed a significant collection of European paintings and Asian art, which was, however, largely dispersed by the institution charged with its care, thus reducing its significance. Krzysztof Pomian's concept of collectors as select individuals who mediate symbolic cultural power through semiotic constructs provides an important methodological anchor for an analysis of the collector and his collection, as does Carol Duncan's work on the motivation to collect art and to structure cultural identity through control of museums. As well, the princely model of collecting reveals the humanist values operative throughout the centuries by comparison of Strathcona to the Medici in terms of the deployment of spectacle.
This thesis makes use of primary source materials to compare Strathcona's collection to several of his peers in order to place him in his cultural milieu during a time in Canadian history when Montreal was a British enclave in a French province. Analysis of fragmented primary source inventories, catalogues, personal letters, and records held by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the National Archives of Canada, identification of paintings documented in the Notman photographs of 1914--1915, and my tracing of the public portraits of Strathcona by Robert Harris still on view in Montreal institutions allowed me to create useful inventories that previously did not exist.

The dissertation examines the production of knowledge and architecture through the German-sponsored construction of the Ottoman railway network, comprising four discrete projects: the railways of European Turkey, the Anatolian railways, the Baghdad railway and the Hejaz railway and its Palestinian tributaries. The German construction of the Ottoman railway network is an historic event that proffers the opportunity to critically reconsider the epistemological tenets of expertise in broader political, economic and cultural structures distinct from the normative creative processes that dominate the historiography of empires. The dissertation capitalizes on the ambiguous colonial nature of the German role in the architecture, engineering, and urbanism of the late Ottoman empire and situates it as a variegated and occasionally dialogic model of European cultural expansionism by way of a process identified here as ambiguous transmutation.

This thesis project examines the history, provenance, and contemporary treatment of a rare Imperial Edition of Frederick Sander’s print collection Reichenbachia, Orchids Illustrated and Described, a high-quality orchid compendium dating to the late-nineteenth century. A local philanthropist loaned the Imperial Edition Reichenbachia, number 86 of 100 to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in 2011 on a long-term basis as a promised donation. Research into the origins of this collection involves several disparate historical topics, including the Victorian period of “orchid mania,” imperialist business practices, and chromolithographic printmaking. Discussion of the transition of this collection into a museum art collection covers its consequent registration, conservation, and exhibition. Finally, this thesis project considers the advantages and disadvantages of managing an art collection at a botanical garden.

Two images of British India persist in the modern imagination: first, an eighteenth-century world of incipient multiculturalism, of sexual adventure amidst the hazy smoke of hookah pipes; and second, the grandiose imperialism of the Victorian Raj, its vast public buildings and stiff upper lip. No art historian has focused on the intervening decades, however, or considered how the earlier period transitioned into the later. In contrast, Art in India's 'Age of Reform' sets out to develop a distinct historical identity for the decades between the Charter Act of 1813 and the 1858 Government of India Act, arguing that the art produced during this period was implicated in the political process by which the conquests of a trading venture were legislated and 'reformed' to become the colonial possessions of the British Nation. Over two parts, each comprised of two chapters, two overlooked media are connected to 'reforms' that have traditionally been understood as atrophying artistic production in the subcontinent. Part I relates amateur practice to the reform of the Company's civil establishment, using an extensive archive associated with the celebrated amateur Sir Charles D'Oyly (1781-1845) and an art society that he established called the Behar School of Athens (est.1824). It argues that rather than citing the Company's increasing bureaucratisation as the cause of a decline in fine art patronage, it is crucial instead to recognise how amateur practice shaped this bureaucracy's collective identity and ethos. Part II connects the production and consumption of illustrated print culture to the demographic shifts that occurred as a result of the repeal of the Company's monopolistic privileges in 1813 and 1833, focusing specifically on several costume albums published by artists such as John Gantz (1772-1853) and Colesworthy Grant (1813-1880). In doing so, it reveals how print culture provided cultural capital to a transnational middle class developing across the early-Victorian Empire of free trade. Throughout each chapter, the gradual undermining of the East India Company's sovereignty by a centralising British State is framed as a prerequisite to the emergence of the nation-state as the fundamental category of modern social and political organisation. Art in India's 'Age of Reform' therefore seeks not only to uncover the work and biographies of several unstudied artists in nineteenth-century India, but reveals the significance of this overlooked art history to both the development of the modern British State, and the consequent demise of alternative forms of political corporation.

Denna uppsats undersöker musikvideon Apeshit, av The Carters, som spelades in på Louvren och hur den tar upp frågor om svart representation. Syftet med studien handlar om att bidra med kunskap om hur representation visualiseras samt dess effekter. En ytterligare ambition handlar om responsen videon fick, som bland annat resulterade i Louvrens guidade tur Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Louvre Hightlights. Studien har till syfte att analysera detta utifrån svart representation och demokratisering. Genom ett postkolonialt perspektiv med fokus på Stuart Halls kulturella hegemoni och Richard Dyers vithetsbegrepp har studien kunnat ge uttryck i dessa frågor om svart visuell representation. Som metod har uppsatsen använt sig av en formal- och kontextanalys för att uttolka musikvideons underliggande budskap. Studiens slutresultat belyser de medel som använts i musikvideon för att lyfta frågor som berör svart representation och rasism.

How and why was imperial power made visually and physically manifest in two similar, contemporaneous megastates - the Roman Principate and Qin-Han China? Framing the Chinese and Roman material within such a question breaks it free from the web of expectations and assumptions in which conventional scholarship almost always situates it. It also builds upon the limited but promising work recently undertaken to study these two empires together in a comparative context. The purpose of this thesis is not to discover similarities and differences for their own sake; but, by discovering similarities and differences, to learn about the nature of imperial authority and prestige in each state. The comparative method compels us to appreciate the contingent - and sometimes frankly curious - nature of visual and artefactual phenomena that have traditionally been taken for granted; and both challenges and empowers us to access higher tier explanations and narratives. Roman expressions of power in visual terms are more public, more historical- biographical, and more political, while Qin-Han images and objects related to imperial authority are generally more private, generic and ritual in their nature. The Roman material emphasizes the notional complicity of large groups of people - the imperial subjects who viewed, crafted and often commissioned these works - in maintaining and defining the emperor's power. If the Han emperor's power was the product of complicity, it was the complicity of a small group of family members and courtiers - and of Heaven. These contrasting sets of power relationships connect to a concerted thematic focus, in the case of Rome, on the individual of the princeps; that is, the individual personage and particular achievements - especially military achievements - of the emperor. This focus is almost always taken for granted in Roman studies, but contrasts profoundly with the thematic disposition of Han artefacts of power: these reflect a concentrated disinterest in imperial personality altogether, emphasizing instead the imperial position; that is, both the office of emperor and a cosmic centrality. While this thesis reveals some arresting contrasts, it also harnesses the dichotomous orientations of Roman and Chinese archaeology to reveal that the conventional understanding of much of this material can be misleading or problematic. Many of the differences in the ways such images are usually interpreted have as much to do with the idiosyncrasies and path dependency of two fields - in short as much to do with the modern viewer - as they do with the images themselves and the traditions that produced them.

This dissertation investigates the contradictions and similarities regarding the depictions of Afrikaner ancestry in two works by Charles Davidson Bell: The landing of Van Riebeeck, 1652 (1850) and Cattle boers' outspan (s.a.). The works were discussed and compared from a conventional perspective in order to establish the artworks' formal qualities, subject matter and thematic content This reading was extended by employing postcolonial theoretical principles in order to contextualise these two artworks within their Victorian ideological frameworks, social realities and authoring strategies. The extended comparative reading revealed a number of similarities and contradictions regarding the artist's depiction of Afrikaner ancestry in these two works. Postcolonial theory further facilitated a more comprehensive and dense reading of the chosen artworks, as well as of the artist's oeuvre.
Thesis (M.A. (History of Arts))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.

This thesis examines the relationship between the three artists' workshops Røde Mor (Red Mother), Folkets Ateljé (The People's Studio) and GRAS, who worked between 1968 and 1975 in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Røde Mor was from the outset an articulated Communist graphic workshop loosely organised around collective exhibitions. It developed into a highly productive and professionalised group of artists that made posters by commission for political and social movements. Its artists developed a familiar and popular artistic language characterised by imaginative realism and socialist imagery. Folkets Ateljé, which has never been studied before, was a close knit underground group which created quick and immediate responses to concurrent political issues. This group was founded on the example of Atelier Populaire in France and is strongly related to its practices. Within this comparative study it is the group that comes closest to collective practises around 1968 outside Scandinavia, namely the democratic assembly. The silkscreen workshop GRAS stemmed from the idea of economic and artistic freedom, although socially motivated and politically involved, the group never implemented any doctrine for participation. The aim of this transnational study is to reveal common denominators to the three groups' poster art as it was produced in connection with a Scandinavian experience of 1968. By ‘1968' it is meant the period from the late 1960s till the end of the 1970s. It examines the socio-political conditions under which the groups flourished and shows how these groups operated in conjunction with the political environment of 1968. The thesis explores the relationship between political movements and the collective art making process as it appeared in Scandinavia. To present a comprehensible picture of the impact of 1968 on these groups, their artworks, manifestos, and activities outside of the collective space have been discussed. The argument has presented itself that even though these groups had very similar ideological stances, their posters and techniques differ. This has impacted the artists involved to different degrees, yet made it possible to express the same political goals. It is suggested to be linked with the Scandinavian social democracies and common experience of the radicalisation that took place mostly in the aftermath of 1968 proper. By comparing these three groups' it has been uncovered that even with the same socio-political circumstances and ideological stance divergent styles did develop to embrace these issue.

This thesis examines the impact of Edward Said’s influential work Orientalism and its legacy in respect of contemporary reading and writing across cultures. It also questions the legitimacy of Said’s retrospective stereotyping of early examples of cross-cultural representation in literature as uncompromisingly “orientalist”. It is well known that the release of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978 was responsible for the rise of a range of cultural and critical theories from multiculturalism to postcolonialism. It was a study that not only polarized critics and forced scholars to re-examine orientalist archives, but persuaded creative writers to re-think their ethnographic positions when it came to the literary representations of cultures other than their own. Without detracting from the enormous impact of Said, this thesis isolates gaps and silences in Said that need correcting. Furthermore, there is an element of intransigence, an uncompromising refusal to fine-tune what is essentially a binary discourse of the West and its other in Said’s work, that encourages the continued interrogation of power relations but which, because of its very boldness, paradoxically disallows the extent to which the conflict of cultures indeed produced new, hybrid social and cultural formations. In an attempt to challenge the severity of Said’s claim that “every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric”, the thesis examines a number of different discursive contexts in which such a presumption is challenged. Thus while the second chapter discusses the ‘traditional’ profession-based orientalism of nineteenth-century E. G. Browne, the third considers the anti-imperialism of colonial administrator Leonard Woolf. The fourth chapter provides a reflection on the difficulties of diasporic “orientalism” through the works of Michael Ondaatje while chapter five demonstrates the effects of the dialogism used by Amitav Ghosh as a defence against “orientalism”. The thesis concludes with an examination of contemporary writing by Andrea Levy that appositely illustrates the legacy of Said’s influence. While the restrictive parameters of Said’s work make it difficult to mount a thorough-going critique of Said, this thesis shows that, indeed, it is within the restraints of these parameters and in the very discourse that Said employs that he traps himself. This study claims that even Said is susceptible to “orientalist” criticism in that he is as much an “orientalist” as those at whom he directs his polemic.

Nella presente tesi di dottorato mi propongo di mettere a fuoco le attività di tre pittori, che viaggiarono fra il Veneto e Augusta verso la metà del Cinquecento: Tiziano (c. 1488/1490-1576), Paris Bordone (1500-1571) e Lambert Sustris (c. 1515/1520 – c. 1584?). Nel primo capitolo esamino i due soggiorni di Tiziano (1548, 1550-1551), che fu invitato nella cittadina tedesca da Carlo V e dal principe Filippo e che pertanto si dedicò esclusivamente all’esecuzione delle pitture per la corte degli Asburgo. Nel secondo capitolo, invece, formulo qualche ipotesi sulle date dei soggiorni in Baviera e sulle attribuzioni delle opere a Paris Bordone e a Lambert Sustris. In Baviera entrambi i due pittori dipinsero per i collezionisti locali, come i Fugger e il cardinale di Augusta Otto Truchseß von Waldburg (1514-1573). Come vedremo nel secondo capitolo, ritengo probabile datare le loro visite ad Augusta fra il 1551 e il 1553 circa. Sarebbe ragionevole esaminare assieme le attività dei tre pittori nella città tedesca verso la metà del secolo, dato che Paris Bordone e Lambert Sustris vengono considerati di consueto come appartenenti all’entourage del maestro cadorino. L’obiettivo iniziale delle mie ricerche era quello dell’analisi dettagliata dell’attività dei tre pittori ad Augusta. Tuttavia, durante lo svolgimento delle ricerche, nelle mie considerazioni è diventato molto essenziale il tema della Controriforma e delle circostanze politiche in Germania meridionale dopo la guerra di Smalcalda (1546-1547). Mi auguro, dunque, di aver gettato nuova luce su alcuni problemi riguardanti i soggiorni dei suddetti artisti, tenendo particolarmente conto del contesto politico in Baviera nello stesso periodo.

of the images of World War II and of the Resistance, and the silent and hidden face revealed by many documentaries, in primis those of Francesco Pasinetti. The candidate’s subject of the research is the evolution of Italian documentary cinema from the ‘30’s to mid-40’s with a few partial references of the production of the ‘20’s. This is because a large part of the examined documents come from the Archives of the Luce Institute, which, from 1926-27, optimized the typologies of audio-visual products and communication strategies that this research, as well as a large part of the reference bibliography, has demonstrated to be almost unchanged over the considered years. The introduction underlines how, from the ‘30’s, the apparent absence of masters, as elsewhere were Flaherty, Grierson or Ivens, or of a unifying school, as a result gives a critic storiography’s skeptical position to the documentary production and the poor amount of studies over this subject. The following chapters deal with the movies in question. The films are analyzed, as can be foreseen, from a diachronic point of view, but, above all, by pointing out their different purposes or requests: from the cinema archives’ educational-informative documentaries to the most clearly propagandistic ones, even concerning war, made by Luce, and, starting from 1938, by Incom. A chapter of the thesis was devoted to the auteur documentaries, particularly Cines’ under the direction of Emilio Cecchi (we analyzed the films by lasetti, Bragaglia, Poggioli, Vergano, Barbaro, Perilli, Gabriellino D’Annunzio who wanted to discover, among other things, the locations of archeology and art): we tried to demonstrate the exceptionality of these materials and a few others, such as I cantieri dell’Adriatico by Umberto Barbaro or Il pianto delle zitelle by Giacomo Pozzi Bellini, in comparison with a remaining propagandistic production or a production in which Luce does not use the important names that it has. The second part of this chapter is devoted to the quality documentary and is related to the production of the so-called Fascist “left” (made up of young academics, a few of them already secretly anti-Fascists), whose battle, above all, during the first years of World War II, aims at affirming a realistic view that, abandoning the conventions and falsenesses of the old way to make a show, opens the gate to the popular world, to the Italian society like it is and not like the myths and the slogans of the regime in the contemporary propagandistic documents represent it. Particular attention was paid to the documentaries made in Northern Italy, from Gente di Chioggia by Basilio Franchina to Comacchio by Fernando Cerchio, and, above all, by Francesco Pasinetti, author to whom the greatest attention was devoted in this work and, in particular, to his relationships with the Fascist culture and the city of Venice of which he is the most detailed and inspired poet. The largest part of the examined documents is relevant to the newsreels and documentaries of the Institute Luce with a Venetian location to outline, not only the relationship between film and propaganda or film and poetical needs of a specific director, but the modes by which the cinema could interpret the Italian territory and, specifically, this region. A few important figures: 250 records (the word indicates the single references of the Archives and, therefore, can be used either for newsreels or documentaries or film libraries) from Belluno (meant as a chief town and province), 370 from Padova, 50 from Rovigo, 100 from Treviso, 960 from Venice, 290 from Verona, 120 from Vicenza. The analysis of such a rich group of materials allowed us to identify a series of recurrences (also deductable by numbers) in the objects and modes of the communication of newsreels and allowed to compare them with those of other regions or other forms of communication. This comparison was particularly interesting in the case of Venice, a city suspended between formalism and worldiness of the Luce newsreels, between the historical strength The candidate’s subject of the research is the evolution of Italian documentary cinema from the ‘30’s to mid-40’s with a few partial references of the production of the ‘20’s. This is because a large part of the examined documents come from the Archives of the Luce Institute, which, from 1926-27, optimized the typologies of audio-visual products and communication strategies that this research, as well as a large part of the reference bibliography, has demonstrated to be almost unchanged over the considered years. The introduction underlines how, from the ‘30’s, the apparent absence of masters, as elsewhere were Flaherty, Grierson or Ivens, or of a unifying school, as a result gives a critic storiography’s skeptical position to the documentary production and the poor amount of studies over this subject. The following chapters deal with the movies in question. The films are analyzed, as can be foreseen, from a diachronic point of view, but, above all, by pointing out their different purposes or requests: from the cinema archives’ educational-informative documentaries to the most clearly propagandistic ones, even concerning war, made by Luce, and, starting from 1938, by Incom. A chapter of the thesis was devoted to the auteur documentaries, particularly Cines’ under the direction of Emilio Cecchi (we analyzed the films by lasetti, Bragaglia, Poggioli, Vergano, Barbaro, Perilli, Gabriellino D’Annunzio who wanted to discover, among other things, the locations of archeology and art): we tried to demonstrate the exceptionality of these materials and a few others, such as I cantieri dell’Adriatico by Umberto Barbaro or Il pianto delle zitelle by Giacomo Pozzi Bellini, in comparison with a remaining propagandistic production or a production in which Luce does not use the important names that it has. The second part of this chapter is devoted to the quality documentary and is related to the production of the so-called Fascist “left” (made up of young academics, a few of them already secretly anti-Fascists), whose battle, above all, during the first years of World War II, aims at affirming a realistic view that, abandoning the conventions and falsenesses of the old way to make a show, opens the gate to the popular world, to the Italian society like it is and not like the myths and the slogans of the regime in the contemporary propagandistic documents represent it. Particular attention was paid to the documentaries made in Northern Italy, from Gente di Chioggia by Basilio Franchina to Comacchio by Fernando Cerchio, and, above all, by Francesco Pasinetti, author to whom the greatest attention was devoted in this work and, in particular, to his relationships with the Fascist culture and the city of Venice of which he is the most detailed and inspired poet. The largest part of the examined documents is relevant to the newsreels and documentaries of the Institute Luce with a Venetian location to outline, not only the relationship between film and propaganda or film and poetical needs of a specific director, but the modes by which the cinema could interpret the Italian territory and, specifically, this region. A few important figures: 250 records (the word indicates the single references of the Archives and, therefore, can be used either for newsreels or documentaries or film libraries) from Belluno (meant as a chief town and province), 370 from Padova, 50 from Rovigo, 100 from Treviso, 960 from Venice, 290 from Verona, 120 from Vicenza. The analysis of such a rich group of materials allowed us to identify a series of recurrences (also deductable by numbers) in the objects and modes of the communication of newsreels and allowed to compare them with those of other regions or other forms of communication. This comparison was particularly interesting in the case of Venice, a city suspended between formalism and worldiness of the Luce newsreels, between the historical strength of the images of World War II and of the Resistance, and the silent and hidden face revealed by many documentaries, in primis those of Francesco Pasinetti.
Il lavoro di ricerca del candidato ha come oggetto l’evoluzione del cinema documentario italiano dagli anni Trenta alla metà degli anni Quaranta, con alcune parziali incursioni nella produzione degli anni Venti. Questo perché parte consistente dei materiali esaminati provengono dall’Archivio dell’Istituto Luce che, proprio a partire dal 1926/27, mette a punto tipologie di prodotti audiovisivi e strategie comunicative che anche questa ricerca, al pari di buona parte della bibliografia di riferimento, ha dimostrato mantenersi sostanzialmente immutate nel corso degli anni presi in considerazione. Dalle pagine introduttive in cui si sottolinea come una, almeno apparente, assenza fin dagli anni Trenta di maestri come altrove sono Flaherty, Grierson o Ivens o di una scuola unificante si traduca in una posizione scettica della storiografia critica nei confronti della produzione documentaria e in una conseguente scarsità di studi in materia, si passa ai capitoli di analisi dei film in questione. Film analizzati prevedibilmente in prospettiva diacronica, ma soprattutto evidenziando le diverse finalità o istanze di cui essi si fanno carico: dai documentari educativo-informativi delle cinemateche a quelli più dichiaratamente propagandistici e di argomento bellico prodotti dal Luce e, a partire dal 1938, dalla Incom. Un capitolo della tesi è stato dedicato anche alle manifestazioni del documentario d’autore, in particolare di quello della Cines sotto la direzione di Emilio Cecchi (si sono analizzati film di Blasetti, Bragaglia, Poggioli, Vergano, Barbaro, Perilli, Gabriellino D’Annunzio che vanno alla scoperta, tra le altre realtà, di località d’archeologia e d’arte): si è tentata di dimostrare l’eccezionalità, di questi e di pochi altri materiali, come I cantieri dell’Adriatico di Umberto Barbaro o Il pianto delle zitelle di Giacomo Pozzi Bellini, ad una produzione per il resto prevalentemente propagandistica o nella quale il Luce, sebbene attivo, non impegna le grandi firme di cui pure dispone. Il secondo nucleo di questo capitolo dedicato al documentario di qualità è quello legato alla produzione della cosiddetta “sinistra” fascista (composta da giovani intellettuali, alcuni dei quali già segretamente antifascisti), la cui battaglia, soprattutto durante i primi anni del secondo conflitto mondiale, è finalizzata all’affermazione di una linea realistica che, uscendo dalle convenzioni e dalle falsità del vecchio modo di fare spettacolo, spalanchi le porte al mondo popolare, alla società italiana così come è e non come, nei coevi documentari di propaganda, la rappresentano i miti e gli slogan del regime. Con un’attenzione particolare ai documentari realizzati nel Nord Italia, da Gente di Chioggia di Basilio Franchina a Comacchio di Fernando Cerchio, passando soprattutto per la figura autoriale cui è stata dedicata maggiore attenzione in questo lavoro di ricerca: quella di Francesco Pasinetti, in particolare nelle sue relazioni con la cultura fascista e la città di Venezia, di cui risulta essere il più attento e ispirato cantore. La parte quantitativamente più consistente dei materiali esaminati è, però, quella relativa ai cinegiornali e documentari dell’Istituto Luce di ambientazione veneta per delineare non più, o non tanto, il rapporto tra pellicola e propaganda o pellicola ed istanze poetiche di un determinato regista, quanto piuttosto le modalità con cui la cineinformazione ha saputo leggere il territorio italiano, e questa regione in particolare. Qualche numero indicativo: 250 record (termine che indica le singole rispondenze dell’Archivio, quindi utilizzabile tanto per cinegiornali che per documentari o materiali di repertorio) per Belluno (inteso come capoluogo e provincia), 370 per Padova, 50 per Rovigo, 100 per Treviso, 960 per Venezia, 290 per Verona, 120 per Vicenza. L’analisi di un così significativo corpus di materiali ha consentito di identificare una serie di ricorrenze (rilevabili anche numericamente) negli oggetti e nelle modalità della comunicazione cinegiornalistica e ha permesso di raffrontarle con quelle di altre realtà regionali o di altre forme comunicative. Raffronto, questo, che si è rivelato particolarmente interessante nel caso di Venezia, città sospesa tra l’ufficialità e la mondanità dei cinegiornali Luce, la carica storica delle immagini della seconda guerra mondiale e della Resistenza e il volto silenzioso e nascosto svelato da molti documentari, in primis quelli di Francesco Pasinetti.

With the onset of the independence of the Pacific Island States, the role of the mass media and their developmental processes began to be examined. This was of particular interest due to the obvious lack of a sufficient native media infrastructure to meet the demands of an indigenous population who were being introduced to a new world sphere and system. The main problem of mass media development in the Pacific lies in the fact that the nations in this area are still relatively behind in the basic structures of media participation. They lack technological knowledge of the various forms of media, the basic training and skills, and, moreover, the monetary means to address such deficiencies in the media. The outcome of this circumstance has been that Pacific media have become increasingly dependent upon the Western, industrialized nations such as the USA, Australia and New Zealand. Such dependence on these foreign nations has given rise to the question of 'cultural imperialism'. The aforementioned countries have a large influence in the Pacific through the unequal relaying of communication and cultural products and in the ownership of mass media agencies. This history of foreign based, imported culture has manifested itself in increased urbanization, social disruption, and greater commodity dependence and consumerism in the Pacific. This study will therefore be an attempt to analyse the media development processes of the Pacific by using Fiji as a case study. The critical analysis will come from Wallerstein's World System perspective. Further, it will be shown how Fiji's historical, involvement in the 'capitalist world economy', and her history of racism in the political and communication aspects of her society have helped shape her present media system. The underlying premise of the argument, will be that these factors have not been beneficial to achieving mass media development based on self-sufficiency, nor on harmony between the ethnic groups of Fiji.

Time and history feature prominently in debates on imperialism in the humanities and literary scholarship, with contrasting positions taken up by different theorists. In this paper, I aim to scrutinize critically one such position that has come to dominate postcolonial scholarship, the position that advocates anti-historical temporal difference. This position, taken up and articulated by Dipesh Chakrabarty, states that the transition temporality of modern historical consciousness is derived from European culture and is imposed on and exported to the rest of the world, thus making it inherently a projection of European cultural imperialism (i.e., Eurocentrism). Following this position, many postcolonial theorists have interpreted key canonical texts along similar lines, that is, as challenging the transition time of modern historical consciousness and  as portraying time as non-transitional, cyclical, repetitive etc., in other words, highlighting temporal difference by showing the inadequacies of historical time and/or by portraying  traditional forms of temporal consciousness in the Third World. By focusing on one of these canonical texts, Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, I critically analyze and challenge this postcolonial reading of the novel as well as its more general theoretical positions and assumptions on two levels. Firstly, I question the assumption that transition and non-transition/cyclical/ repetitive time are externally related, the former being in the realm of modern historical consciousness and the latter outside of it. I argue that modern historical consciousness is better thought of as being constituted by the contradictory unity between transition and non-transition/repetitive temporality. Secondly, I question the assumption that Eurocentrism is ultimately a temporal relation. This assumption leads to theories that reify time as an a priori civilizational given and posit temporally deterministic arguments regarding imperialism. I argue instead that temporality has to be contextualized in social and power relations and the narratives that justify/mystify and challenge such relations. In questioning these assumptions, I propose a radically different interpretation of Armah’s novel: one that views the novel’s production of time as embracing (not going against) historical consciousness, thereby engaging imperialism as a primarily social and power relation (not a temporal one). Keywords: Eurocentrism; imperialism; postcolonial theory; historical time; temporal difference; temporal determinism; Dipesh Chakrabarty; Ayi Kwei Armah

My research examines the three interrelated concepts of crisis; new imperialisms, spatial-temporal fix and accumulation by dispossession (ABD) stemming from the work of David Harvey as a way to understand the contested history of the Pakistan Railways. For the first thirty odd years after Pakistan's inception in 1947, the railways, a state-owned institution, was the primary mode of transport for the public, cargo, and workers. Alongside basic infrastructure, the railways had a vast network of hospitals, schools, workers' colonies and an array of physical infrastructure connected to production, operations and other aspects of the economy. The systematic ransack and decline of the Pakistan Railways reached its peak in 2010. Despite several attempts throughout the 1990s by successive democratic and military-led governments backed by the IMF/World Bank in 2015, it was announced that Pakistan railways would be revived under the banner of the 46 billion dollar China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as part of the changing geopolitical context of growing regional connectivity and new Chinese imperialism. By examining the processes that underlie ABD, such as spatial-temporal fix, the following research shows that these processes not only reflect a shift of resources away from the public domain, but in Pakistan also entailed the transformation of the railways from a utilitarian welfare organization to an entity that facilitates looting, unbundling, and dispossession of shared resources and infrastructure.

The work starts from Polybius’ point about 202 B.C. being the moment when world-conquest became practical for Rome, and then analyze how the conflict with Carthage (i.e. 264 B.C. onwards) was fundamental in transforming the Roman State in various ways to reach this point. A particular emphasis is given to the institutional element, in order to take into account and unite in one place all those developments that took place both prior to and during the Hannibalic War (prorogation, institutional expansion, step-changes in military deployment, increasing flexibility, etc.) that clearly affected Rome’s expansionist policy. The goal of the work is to show that what really changed in 201 B.C. was not the “ambition to rule” in a general sense – as that was always present in Roman society – but the capability by the Romans to fulfil their ambitions, and that this awareness was reached thanks to the new military and political institutions developed especially during the Hannibalic war.

This dissertation traces imperialist ideology as it functions in the texts of two radical Liberal critics of imperialism, Leonard Woolf and E. M. Forster. In chapters two and three respectively, I read Woolf's autobiographical account Growing and his novel The Village in the Jungle to examine connections between "nonfictional" and "fictional" writing on colonialism. The autobiography's fictive texture compromises its claims to facticity and throws into relief the problematic nature of notions of truth and fact in colonialist epistemology and discursive systems.

Contemporary scholars of imperialism and colonialism studies have revealed how different imperial spaces were malleable, and they constantly shift through negotiations between diverse agencies. Whereas most existing studies investigate change of imperial space from the view of ‘metropolitan centre’, this thesis attempts to decentralise the dominant view of existing Japanese imperialism studies, and explores the Japanese imperial expansion with a particular focus on people’s subjectivities and agencies on the national border zone. The thesis particularly focuses on the border/boundary between the Yaeyama Archipelago of the Ryukyu Islands and colonial Taiwan. The first chapter explores the boundary between Yaeyama and Taiwan in representation and discourse after Yaeyama was annexed to Japan. I discuss how ‘Yaeyama’ came to appear as a historical subject in the Japanese colonial discourse, by distinguishing itself from the colonised subject as well as criticising the dominance of the main island of Okinawa. In critically examining the previous Yaeyama Studies, I suggest reconstructing Yaeyama’s history in the East Asian regional framework. The second chapter explores how civilians actively committed themselves to defining the national territory during the late nineteenth century. The chapter also aims to reconsider the dominant discourse of Okinawa’s modern history, which tends to focus on conflicts between the Japanese government and the former samurai class of Okinawa prefecture. Chapters 3 further discusses how people on the border zone constructed the boundary between Japan and Taiwan, but I argue that the border between Yaeyama and Taiwan did not only demarcate the ‘metropolitan nation’ and the ‘colony’, but also demarcated the ‘rural’ and the ‘urban’ areas. In other words, the third chapter considers how the national border had different implications to people on the border zone. I explore how new settlers dominated the newly emerging economy of Yaeyama and developed trade links with colonial Taiwan. Furthermore, I discuss how while Yaeyama native farmers were marginalised from the local economy and industry, they also crossed the border in a form of rural-urban migration. Chapters 5 and 6 examine Yaeyama migrants’ experiences in Taiwan. Firstly, I explore in what social and cultural conditions Yaeyama migrants lived and worked during the 1920s to the 1940s. I argue that the distinction between ‘Japanese’ and ‘Taiwanese’ was not instantly determined by the colonial authority, but continuously constructed and negotiated by social agents. In Chapter 6, I examine how Yaeyama migrants shaped their Japanese identity by distinguishing themselves from the colonised subjects. The southern border between the Inner Territory and the Outer Territories were constituted through the interaction between ensembles of practices in the local ‘place’ and the wider imperial networks and ‘space’. Yaeyama people’s experiences of constructing and crossing the boundary effectively demonstrates how the determination of the Japanese national border was incorporated into colonialism, and how Japanese colonialism was associated with the emergence of modernity in East Asia. With a particular focus on the border islands of Yaeyama, this thesis presents an alternative view to Japanese colonial history, East Asian social history as well as Okinawa’s modern history.

Questa tesi di laurea ha come argomento lo studio sulla circolazione delle monete romane imperiali, prodotte dalla zecca di Antiochia di Siria, all'interno delle province occidentali dell'impero, in un periodo compreso tra il III e il V secolo d.C. Dopo un'introduzione sulla storia della città di Antiochia e sull'attività della sua zecca nel periodo precedente a quello preso in considerazione, verranno esaminati i ritrovamenti monetali, suddivisi in due categorie (single finds e tesori), nell'area compresa tra l'Asia Minore occidentale e la Penisola Iberica, organizzando i ritrovamenti secondo il sistema dioclezianeo-costantiniano delle diocesi. L'obiettivo di questo studio è quello di analizzare la quantità e la tipologia di monete rinvenute all'interno delle varie diocesi, e anche di evidenziare quali possano essere i pattern di circolazione delle monete antiochene in aree così distanti dal luogo di produzione.

While literary critics heretofore have subordinated Conan Doyle to more "canonical" writers, the author argues that his writings enrich our understanding of the ways in which Victorians and Edwardians constructed their identity as imperialists and that we therefore cannot afford to overlook Conan Doyle's work.

Having reviewed an example of environmental degradation (the effect of gold mining related activities on the acquatic ecosystems in Te Tai Poutini) from varying Maori and Pakeha perspectives I have developed a framework to find combine these perspectives into a working analytical tool kit. The tool kit is intended to better define the problems to ensure that they take into account the widely differing views of Maori and Pakeha and is able to promote solutions that will be appropriate and safe for both Maori and Pakeha. I have sought to collect and present a comprehensive analysis of both perspectives. I have focussed more heavily however on the Maori paradigms as they are less well reported in the literature on environmental health and less influence on the way we seek to protect people from the negative effects of environmental degradation. This is despite the fact that as Maori are more likely to be exposed to environmental damage in that they are on average poorer and therefore have less choice about where they may live and are more likely to eat foods taken directly from the environment. I will also show that the damage to the Arahura is far more than physical and will show the concern of kaumatua and their psychological anguish they have felt over the damage to this most tapu river. For this reason I have chosen to present this thesis, in the form of a powhiri model. This model allows me to present different aspects of the problem from a Maori perspective including the views of kaumatua as well as recorded traditions. I have then followed these sections with a response from a Pakeha perspective. This includes reviewing the different underlying world, view as well as some attempt to review the damage in Pakeha terms by reviewing the literature and undertaking some tests to establish procedures for a more comprehensive testing of the enviroment that surrounds the Arahura. The thesis will conclude with a section summarising both strands of information and attempt to develop a framework for a health tool kit - he kete hauora. This kete will utilise Whare Tapa Wha as a way of placing the information in a context that can be presented in a reasonably coherent form. Finally I will make a number of recommendations that I called a place mat - he whariki. These recommendations are presented in a framework from Te Tiriti o Waitangi. This reflects the primacy of the Treaty when considering the ways in which Maori are to be protected by the Crown. These recommendations seek to respond to the principle barriers that are currently preventing local Maori from achieving a full sense of well being but, if implemented, these recommendations will ensure the protection of the health of all peoples of Te Tai Poutini.

Capitalism's success, according to Karl Marx, is based on continued development of new markets and products. As globalization shrinks the world marketplace, corporations are forced to seek both new customers and products to sell. Commodification is the process of transforming objects, ideas and even people into merchandise. The recent growth of the World Wide Web has caught the attention of the corporate world, and they are attempting to convert a free-share-based medium into a profit-based outlet. To be successful, they must change Web users' perception about the nature of the Web itself. This study asks the question: Is there mythic evidence of commodification on the World Wide Web? It examines how the World Wide Web is presented to readers of three national publications-Wired, Newsweek, and Business Week-from 1993 to 2000. It uses Barthes' two-tiered model of myths to examine the descriptors used to modify and describe the World Wide Web. The descriptors were clustered into 11 general categories, including connectivity, social, being, scene, consumption, revolution, tool, value, biology, arena, and other. Wired articles did not demonstrate a trend in categorical change from 1993 to 2000; the category of choice shifted back and forth between Revolution, Connectivity, Scene, and Being. Newsweek articles demonstrated an obvious directional shift. Connectivity is the dominant myth from 1994 to 1998, when the revolution category dominates. Similarly, Business Week follows the prevailing myth of connectivity from 1994 to 1997. From 1998 on, the competition-related categories of revolution and arena lead all categories. The study finds evidence of commodification on the World Wide Web, based on the trend in categories in Newsweek and Business Week that move from a foundational myth that presents a perception of cooperation in 1994 to one of competition in 1998 and later. The study recommends further in-depth research of the target publications, a review of articles in less-developed countries, and content analysis and ethnography online.

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 thesis is both an empirical history of white women in Queensland colonialism and a theoretical history of colonialism and imperialism in the late nineteenth century. It is a feminist history which seeks to fill the gap in our understanding of white women and 'race' in the contact zone in Queensland in the nineteenth century. At this level the thesis restores historical agency to women and reveals women's history as a powerful alternative to traditional colonial histories. It also positions this Queensland history within a global discourse of critical imperial histories that has emerged over the past decade, seeking to understand how British imperialism and Queensland colonialism shaped and informed each other in a two way process. The central themes of the thesis are 'race' and gender. I examine the ways in which white women deploy imperial ideologies of 'race' in the contact zone to position themselves as white women. 'Race' and gender are explored through the ways in which white women negotiated, in their writing, their relationships with Indigenous people and Pacific Islanders on the frontier and in the contact zone. The white women whose texts are examined in this thesis engaged with 'race' difference in their autobiographical accounts and these accounts, on many levels, allow us to rethink colonial history. I argue that colonialism is paradoxical and that white women experienced this colonial paradox in their daily lives and negotiated it in their writing. The white women whose writing is studied here were decent people with good intentions. They were simultaneously humanitarians (to differing degrees) and colonists. They were dependant for their livelihoods upon a violent colonisation and yet they were sympathetic to the Aboriginal people they interacted with. Often they were silenced in their opinions on the violence they witnessed. Writing was a means of navigating these contradictions. White women were in a relatively powerless position in the contact zone and there was little they could do to mitigate the violence that they saw. The tensions that resulted from living in the colonial paradox on frontiers and in the contact zone, of being a colonists and humanitarians, and of living in an uncontrollable existential situation is expressed in the writing of these women. This history offers us a more holistic understanding of the complexity of colonialism in Australia.

This thesis attempts to prove the significance of the relationship between the United States and Australia, and how their similar cultures and experiences assisted creating that shared bond throughout the twentieth century. Chapter 2 examines the effects of the Cold War on both the United States and Australia, as well as their growing relationship during that period. There is some backtracking chronologically in order to make connections to important historical legacies such as the ANZAC Legend and settlement on the periphery of their respective societies. Then the first half of chapter 3 delves into the Vietnam War by examining the interactions of the American support unit, the 11th Combat Aviation Battalion, a helicopter unit that includes transports and gunships. Afterwards, the latter half of chapter 3 examines the Australians' after-action reports to better understand their tactical and operational methods. Finally, chapter 4 provides an overview of Australian and American interactions between the advisers and the Vietnamese, as well as their attitudes towards the end of the war and the withdrawal from Vietnam. The conclusion summarizes the significance of the thesis by reemphasizing the significance of US-Australian interactions in the twentieth century and the importance of continued studies on this topic between US and Australian historians.

This thesis analyses a dialogue between the US ambassador to Zambia and two Zambian officials, regarding LGBT+ rights, following the sentencing of a same-sex couple by the Zambian high court. The theoretical framework utilizes postcolonial theory and a few of its concepts, namely cultural imperialism, and colonial discourses. To analyse the material, critical discourse analysis was conducted to examine if colonial discourse is present in the dialogue, and if so, how the discourses are used to reproduce or challenge the uneven power relationship between the West and Zambia. The thesis could conclude that discourses of cultural imperialism as well as colonial discourses were indeed present in the dialogue. The US ambassador reproduced the uneven power structure and the Zambian officials both reproduced as well as challenged it. The findings aim to contribute to the field of global LGBT+ advocacy, especially when conducted in a postcolonial context.

This thesis begins by examining the factors that have resulted in the dependent nature of Canada's political and economic structure, and proceeds to examine how this has contributed to the cultural amorphousness of English Canadian identity. The hegemonic authority of American and trans-national interests, established and maintained in the cultural sphere through the extensive monopoly of the distribution of cultural and media products, perpetuates the amorphousness of English Canadian culture through the appropriation of Canadian space by the international image industry. Such categorization of Canadian space reflects and perpetuates the imaginary representation of Canada within the dominant ideology as an indistinct and amorphous entity, and comes to usurp the materiality that constructs the lived identities of English Canadians.

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 of Egypt and the East. By examining the maps and the terminology employed by nineteenth century scholars on Egypt’s geography, a pattern emerges that highlights how much classical and biblical texts had on the Western imagination of Egypt as the modern terms eventually superseded them.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Philosophische Fakultät--Düsseldorf--Heinrich-Heine-Universität, 1998. Titre de soutenance : Formen deutschen Imperialismus von Bülow zu Bethmann Hollweg. Die portugiesischen Kolonien als Objekt des deutschen Imperialismus.
Bibliogr. p. 455-464. Index.

The dissertation traces the trope of the incomplete character in four twentieth-century cosmopolitan novels that reflect European colonialism in a global context. I argue that, by creating characters sharply aware of the insufficiency of the Self and thus constantly seeking the constitutive participation of the Other, the four authors E. M. Forster, Samuel Beckett, J. M. Coetzee, and Congwen Shen all dramatize the incomplete character as an agent of postcolonial resistance to Western humanism that, tending to enforce the divide between the Self and the Other, provided the epistemological basis for the emergence of European colonialism. For example, Fielding's good-willed aspiration to forge cross-cultural friendship in A Passage to India; Murphy's dogged search for recognition of his Irish identity in Murphy; Susan's unfailing compassion to restore Friday's lost speech in Foe; and Changshun Teng, the Chinese orange-grower's warm-hearted generosity toward his customers in Long River--all these textual occasions dramatize the incomplete character's anxiety over the Other's rejection that will impair the fullness of his or her being, rendering it solitary and empty. I relate this anxiety to the theory of "posthumanism" advanced by such thinkers as Marx, Bakhtin, Sartre, and Lacan; in their texts the humanist view of the individual as an autonomous constitution has undergone a transformation marked by the emphasis on locating selfhood not in the insular and static Self but in the mutable middle space connecting the Self and the Other.