PhDs
Mapping the Persian Gulf: Spatial perceptions and practices of the British agents in the region 1820-1930
Hatem Alshaikh-Mubarak | [email protected]
The Persian Gulf is a sea that is surrounded now by a number of countries: Iran on its Eastern side, Iraq from the North, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf Arab states in the East. Those are Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Oman. Those states along the west coast with Saudi constituted, since 1982, a political association, namely the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This political affinity, along with other shared characteristics and social ties have inspired observers to refer to them as a distinct unit.
However, this region’s map remains problematic in many respects. One prevalent issue today is the Persian/Arab contest over the identity of the Gulf and over certain territories on its coasts and to where they belong, but it is not the only problem. Boundaries, almost between all the countries, have been subjects of dispute in the past decades, where some cases have not been settled yet. Moreover, the states’ efforts in consolidating national identities over other sub-identities is a process that has not been settled yet. This situation may still allow for a verity of spatial imaginations of this space, which do not necessarily correlate with the boundaries of nation states.
Indeed, these issues and others are still subject of political dispute, but they have also
stimulated scholars, journalist, and activists to question and debate the origin of the current map. What is the original shape? How was this map formed? Are these boundaries artificial? What is the identity of this region in general, and of particular places within it? What does this region include and exclude? These are some questions addressed in this project.
Scholars offer a variety of view by focusing on different aspect. Among those are state-centred historians, imperial historians, and more recently, transnational historians.This project is not another attempt to redraw the shape of the region or to find how it was formed, but to uncover how it was spatially perceived, and how perceptions interacted with dynamic and complex physical realities during the period that witnessed the foundation of the current map. My focus is primarily on the perceptions of British agents in the region. The British were present since the eighteenth century. They approached the region firstly via India; their political influence was practiced evidently since around 1820. As the century passed, they consolidated their control and regarded the region a frontier for the Indian Raj to defend it against other imperial competitors. Historians of the Empire consider the Gulf region falling within the realm of the “Informal Empire”. On the other hand, officers of the War and Foreign Office, coming directly from London, also approached the region form another side, namely the Ottoman lands, in which they were stationed as diplomats, of military consuls. With the of the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Britain was the main power that dominated the region from Calcutta to Cairo.
Like elsewhere, their endeavour to dominate coincided with exploration and intelligence activities that included collecting data, mapping, surveying, and preparing and circulating historical and geographical materials in various forms. Officers, and possibly scholars, in Bombay Governing Council, Bombay Geographical Society, Persian Gulf Residency, and the Political and secret department in Calcutta produced substantial materials. Agents in the Ottoman side also engaged in information gathering to some extent, but the intelligence activities from this side were dramatically intensified during WWI, when civil and military officers became suddenly entangled with vast lands about which they knew very little.
Exploration efforts during this period took place prior to, and concurrently with negotiating and preparing treaties that define boundaries of territories around the region. The Anglo-Ottoman accord in 1913 seems to be the first attempt in this regard. It was followed by a number of key treaties between Britain and local rulers in the war aftermath period.
Hence, following academia’s turn to questions of space, the project looks through this variety of materials to uncover how space was perceived, classified, and identified, how these perceptions developed throughout the consecutive periods, and how they responded to, and reflected on physical realities until we reach the foundation of the modern modern map of the region. Investigation is undertaken to uncover the contrast in the macro view of the region between India and London, and also between the pre-War and War period, as imperial priorities dramatically changed. Another level of investigation is conducted to see how the region was internally divided into smaller entities.
The Visual Image of the Sturmabteilung in Nazi Propaganda, 1923-1945.
Jacob Berg | [email protected]
Jacob is a co-tutelle PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews and the University of New England, Australia. His research is focused on the investigation of radical paramilitary organisations and political parties in Germany from 1919-1945. In this context, his PhD thesis focuses particularly on the Sturmabteilung (SA) and their image in Nazi propaganda, which attempts to understand how the Nazis used propaganda to bolster their ideology, mythos and culture.
Until recently, the historical narrative of the SA has always been concluded in 1934 after the Röhm Putsch, where many ‘revolutionary’ SA leaders were murdered by the SS to appease the German army and more conservative segments of the German population. It had previously been thought that the SA simply faded into oblivion and lost all political influence and meaning. However, scholars like Daniel Siemens and Yves Müller have challenged this commonly held position and shown that the organisation not only continued but played an important role politically not only within the Reich, but also transnationally as the borders of the Reich expanded. But, what about the image of the SA? Did their revolutionary tropes and images continue? If so, how were they used?
Jacob’s thesis has a particular focus on the territorialization of different spaces, including the sporting field, classroom and public street. It is commonly understood that the SA, from as early as 1923, began marching on the streets as a form of occupation- laying claim over public space and actively seeking to territorialize this space. Once this territory was officially ‘conquered’ by the Nazis when the party came to power in 1933, the SA and its visual image was heavily used to Nazify Germany, redefining national spaces to fit into the National Socialist ideological view of a German homeland. In addition, with the expansion of national territory during the Second World War and its subsequent contraction from 1943, the image of the SA was used as a catalyst for motivating civilians to defend the territory of the Reich. What has become evident over the course of this thesis is that SA images and symbolism not only remained after the Röhm Putsch, but rather acted as an important part of the propaganda arsenal of the Nazi party up until the final days in 1945.
The multiple dimensions of twenty-first century italianità: examining affects in (post-)colonial Italian culture
Eleanor Crabtree | [email protected]
Eleanor is in the first year of her PhD under the supervision of Emma Bond. Her research examines cultural representations of post-colonial Italian identities through the lens of affect theory. She is particularly interested in the way in which the temporal and spatial implications of affect shed light on issues of trans-national memory.
The female connection. Mapping social networks in European travel, c.1770-1830
Sophie Drescher | [email protected]
What do we really know about travelling women, their roles, and the social spaces they occupied around 1800? This study traces European women travellers’ social networks on their journeys through Europe and beyond during the decades around 1800. The project will examine how women’s travel was planned and how itineraries developed along social and geographical lines, thereby creating transnational European networks. The project, however, is not designed exclusively as a gender-studies project that focuses on solely female authors. It aims to highlight connectivity of women travellers in relation to their male counterparts, as well as in connection to other female travellers and their networks.
Most studies on European travelling around 1800 assume rather standardised, stereotypical tours with few, recurrent destinations. Travel, and especially women’s travel, is therefore often studied as one-dimensional transfer from one place to another, or with a focus on cultural encounters, landscapes, and language. Historical research has neglected to trace travellers, especially women, systematically in order to map their journeys not only geographically but also socially. When female networking is addressed the focus is on stasis rather than motion. The numerous case studies on specific European regions provide a considerable basis of textual analysis for aspects of gender and genre but little has been done to research the spatial element. Studies focusing exclusively on women often miss the point of actually offering a meaningful perspective on gendered experiences. The spatial aspect deserves particular consideration in the analysis of women’s travel writing as travel is commonly considered in assumed opposition to the equally assumed female sphere of domesticity. Hence it is necessary to take an innovative approach to travel writing by using a transnational perspective on the spatial dynamics that will lead to more nuanced insights of travel, space, and gender.
This study is underpinned by the hypothesis that political and cultural developments in Europe around 1800 altered established travel routes and opened up new spaces across Europe, especially to the north and east, for travellers to explore. It is key to link the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as this time frame, with its political upheavals and cultural turmoil, meant travellers were caught in a rapidly changing social world. Research has neglected the impact of this crucial time period on travellers’ experiences of social and geographical space, especially with reference to women’s negotiations of ‘space’ and ‘sphere’ in changing European societies.
The project will provide an enhanced understanding of how women travelled, how travelling changed between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It will lead to a more nuanced understanding of planning processes, the use of letters of recommendation, the significance of family members and acquaintances, and the influence of the individual’s social network on the individual’s itinerary. By including travel narratives from more than one European region and covering more than one travel destination the study’s findings will offer a broad panorama of European women’s travel activities and be of interest to a broader, European, audience beyond strictly national historiography.
From words to numbers and maps. Transfers, networks and the transformations of statistical thinking in Britain, France and the German lands, c. 1780s-1840s
Adam Dunn | [email protected]
The aim of this project is to map the changes in the perception, methodology and use of statistics from the late eighteenth to the early-nineteenth century. The project seeks to establish how the concept of statistics shifted from a more descriptive series of statistical accounts, often related to travel, compiled by mainly amateur statisticians, to the more mathematically-driven, state-operated and professionalised, model of statistics prevalent in the nineteenth century, finally, leading to the introduction of statistical maps in the mid nineteenth century. While a good deal of research has gone into the development of statistics it has either been based nationally, or on the individual, with a heavy focus on the role of the state or nation-building or has missed this period of transition between c.1780s-1840s out altogether. No real work has been done beyond this point and not in any real detail. For instance, hardly any attention has been paid to the influences beyond the state mechanisms on statistics or how the individual or amateur played a role in the shift. Therefore, this project approaches the subject in a new light: a transnational perspective that seeks to follow individuals in an attempt to reconstruct connections and networks across borders (mainly Great Britain, the German lands and France), linking the later Enlightenment to the first decades of the nineteenth century.
This project intends to fill an important and neglected gap in research and in our understanding of the ‘statistical revolution’ around 1800, in two important ways: chronologically and spatially. First, the connection between the later Enlightenment (roughly starting around 1780s) to the mid nineteenth century has largely been neglected or has been studied under separate chronological categories (e.g. Enlightenment, Napoleonic France, post 1815). This is true for many topics, but equally for the history of statistics. Little to nothing is known about the transformation from a more amateur-based concept of statistics to the first one or two generations of a state-sponsored approach to statistics. Second, spatially speaking little is known for this period on the multiple cross-border activities of individuals, the transfer of knowledge and concepts such as statistics, and the underlying networks before we see a more organised and institutionalised approach from the 1830s and 1840s onward.
It is the underlying hypothesis of this project that Enlightenment networks fed into the emergence of statistical science and statistics as a governmental tool from the early nineteenth century onward.
Reconstructing Nationality: The Russophone Minority’s Relation with the Estonian State, 1991-2004
Samuel Kramer | [email protected]
This project seeks to explain how the Russian-speaking community in Estonia dealt with the socioeconomic and political changes that occurred after independence from the USSR. The Russophones enjoyed a privileged status as the Soviet “vanguard nationality” from 1940 to 1990. While some ethnic Russians lived in Estonia before Soviet rule began, most contemporary Russian-speakers trace their roots to Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and others who migrated to the Estonian SSR between the 1950s and 1980s for a better standard of living. The Russophones were central to the development of local industries such as shale mining. Moscow ensured the establishment of separate Russian-language schools and prioritised Russophones in local Communist Party leadership. After the Soviet Union’s end, the Russian-speakers found themselves a minority in a country focused on nurturing its Estonian identity.
The first decade of independence is the critical period for understanding Estonian-Russophone relations. Since the reconstituted Estonian state declared itself the 1920-1940 republic’s successor, it reintroduced or reformed interwar-era citizenship and education legislation. This meant that the Soviet-era migrants would not be considered for automatic residency, among other status changes. Those not automatically granted citizenship had to take an Estonian language proficiency test and pass a civics exam. Similarly, schooling increasingly consolidated around emphasis on the Estonian language. At the same time, market reforms meant that Eastern Estonia’s Russophone-heavy industries had to reorganise, leading to massive layoffs. Citizenship, economy, and education became focal points in the debate over Estonia’s future. The Centre Party in particular gained support from Russophones by promising to defend their language and autonomous education as well as forging a path to citizenship.
The disputes reached a head in 1993, when the eastern city of Narva organised a referendum on its autonomy within Estonia – a decision rejected by the Constitutional Court. While tensions have since subsided, debate continues around the Russian-language schools’ future and other community organisations’ status. The country’s policy differences have roots in the Second Republic’s turbulent foundation period.
To create a complete picture of public opinion, I intend to use personal recollections, print media, and government documents. Personal recollections through survey responses will be contextualised though newspaper editorials and official publications. Text and statistics bolsters recorded memories. The decade’s changes and influence on modern Estonian politics are thereby covered from an individual as well as a sociopolitical perspective.
Architectural Diplomacy, Cultural Heritage, and Popular Reception of the Fascist Involvement at the International Expositions of 1933-1942.
James Fortuna | [email protected]
James Fortuna’s research interests lie in the cultural, diplomatic, and spatial history of twentieth-century Europe and the United States, with a particular focus on interwar design and its relationship to the construction of national identity. He is especially interested in instances of creative or ideological transfer between states and the spaces or places in which this might have occurred. He also explores the extent to which various interpretations of cultural heritage came to influence the reimagined built environments of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the New Deal USA.
His dissertation builds off these interests to consider the ways architectural form and urban design were deployed as tools of diplomacy at the five major international exhibitions held between 1933-42. Using a variety of source material ranging from diplomatic correspondence, minutes of planning meetings, architectural plans, popular press articles and ego documents, the project investigates potential links between the ambassadorial, domestic, and even imperial elements of state-sponsored design throughout the interwar period. To date, this project has been supported by the St Leonard’s College International Scholarship, the Banco Santander Research Mobility Award, the Association for the Study of Modern Italy (ASMI), and the Society for Historians of Foreign Relations (SHAFR).
The Italian Occupation of South-Eastern France, 1940-1943
The common perception of the Second World War in France is that the country was divided between the German occupiers in the north, while the collaborationist Vichy government ruled the south. Relatively little scholarly interest has focused on the much smaller Italian occupation zone in the south-east.
My research examines on this zone; how it was administrated, how the economy was run, to what extent collaboration and resistance movements featured in the zone, and how Franco-Italian relations developed during the three years of occupation, both at a governmental level and occupier-occupied relations. The project also focuses upon the differences between zones administrated by the Italians, specifically the larger portion of the country occupied by the Italians after Allied landings in North Africa, and that occupied initially, which was administered as annexed territories. To what extent were these areas “Italianised” and how successful was this process? Did sizeable Italian minorities in the region help or hinder these processes?
I also hope to be able to place the Italian occupation of France within a wider framework. How did this occupation compare with other Fascist occupations in the Balkans and Greece? How did the annexation of French territory compare to Alsace, occupied by Germany? To what degree did the Italian and German occupations differ more broadly and, inversely, what similarities can be drawn between the two?
Symphonic Beneficence: The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra during the First World War
Percy Leung | [email protected]
I began my PhD in Modern History at St Andrews in January 2017, under the supervision of Professor Frank Lorenz Müller, having received my BA in Combined Honours in Arts (History, Music, Politics & International Relations) from Durham University and my M.Phil in Music Studies from the University of Cambridge. I am deeply passionate about the relationship between music and politics. My undergraduate dissertation explores the contradictions and paradoxes of the Nazis’ cultural policies, whereas my masters’ dissertation is essentially a comparative analysis on the Soviet Union’s and the United States’ cultural policies on music in post-war occupied Germany between 1945 and 1947. It focuses on these two Cold War superpowers’ efforts in reconstructing the German musical life after the collapse of the Third Reich, as well as on their Denazification policies on German musicians.
There is a substantial body of research on various musical aspects of the First World War, including the social impact of war songs, popular music, military bands and musical
theatre, as well as the ways that the War brought about stylistic changes to modernist compositions. However, the role of classical music and symphony orchestras has remained under-explored (Sven Oliver Müller being the notable exception). I hope that my research can complement and further develop this body of literature on the War’s cultural history, and contribute to wider scholarly debates about the use of cultural icons as propaganda and as national rally points in the home-fronts of the First World War.
My doctoral research focuses on the social and political contributions to the German and British war efforts made, respectively, by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra during the First World War. I will investigate the value of classical music and its public performance in fostering national identity in war-time societies and how national leaderships developed specific ideas of how these two orchestras could relate to the war efforts. Furthermore, my study explores the ways that these two orchestras transformed classical music from a serious, elitist art-form to an offering located within popular mass culture, how these two orchestras’ activities and concerts during the First World War earned them prominence and recognition in society and contributed to their becoming two of the most prestigious cultural institutions in Germany and Britain respectively since 1919, as well as how the changing circumstances of the First World War affected the musical life and administration of both orchestras. It would also be fascinating to understand how the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and London Symphony Orchestra’s experience of and contribution to the First World War revealed about contrasts such as elite/popular, urban/rural, centre/periphery, male/female etc. within the German and British society under the conditions of near-total war.
The Exile of the Tudeh Party of Iran in Divided Germany, 1953-1979
Leonard Michael | [email protected]
Leonard Michael is a historian of South-West Asia focusing on transnational and intellectual history. His PhD project, commenced in 2019, is centred on the exile of the communist Tudeh Party of Iran in divided Germany between 1953 and 1979. He is especially interested in how the leadership of the Tudeh party, which was based in the East German city of Leipzig, interacted with members and sympathisers within the Iranian community in West Germany, and how this interaction shaped the transnational networks and activities of the party in Europe and beyond. His inquiry pays specific attention to the impact of the division of Germany on the exiles’ Trans-German relations and how the different socio-political conditions under which Iranians were living in both parts of the country affected their political activism.
Leonard has prepared for the doctoral stage during his masters at the University of St Andrews, which he finished with a dissertation on the historiographical agenda of Bizhan Jazani, a major theoretician of the Iranian New Left and the 1970s guerrilla movement of the country. In his bachelors dissertation, submitted to the University of Bamberg (Germany) in 2017, he analysed the first Persian translation of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf regarding its content, presentation and way of translation. In this context, he did not only draw on the German original and European translations but also on early Arabic versions of the text.
A Republic of Plants : Botanic Gardens in the end of the eighteenth century
Elena Romero Passerin-D’Entreves | [email protected]
My research project will examine several botanic gardens in Europe during the second half of the 18th Century. It will consider the gardens both as spaces and institutions, looking at their internal organisation and the way they interact with the world. By comparing two or three gardens of different countries, the project aims to give a nuanced image of the scientific Enlightenments and the development of botany across Europe.
The Habsburg Empire from the outside perspective. Experiences and encounters of nineteenth century travellers, ca. 1815-1914
Martin Schaller | [email protected]
As one entity the Habsburg Empire does neither belong to the ‘Western’ nor ‘Eastern’, neither to the ‘Central’ nor the ‘South-Eastern’ parts of Europe. The border lines of these constructed spaces run across the Empire. This study tries to engage with the different perceptions of these spaces which divide the Empire by focusing on how travellers depicted and encountered them. The aim is therefore to connect the concept of mental maps with a transnational perspective. In order to do so the study is based on a comparative approach as accounts published in different languages will constitute the main sources.
It is not at all clear where contemporary travellers detected the borders between ‘East’ and ‘West’, ‘Central’ or ‘South-East’. One important part of the study is therefore to examine where these spaces were located but also which features signified them. By additionally employing a long term perspective it is also possible to account for changes over time in these perceptions. Finally, the comparative approach allows for examining differences according to the travellers’ backgrounds.
Since the construction of different spaces has not lost its significance yet as the still existing East-West divide within Europe shows, I hope to contribute to a more thorough understanding of the mechanisms which shape their perceptions.
Narrating coming of age in Italian postcolonial women’s writings
Elisa Walker | [email protected]
Elisa Walker’s project examines how coming of age is narrated in Italian postcolonial women’s writings. The corpus encompasses authors who have all emigrated, chosen to write in Italian (the colonial language), and who appropriate established Western genres such as the Bildungsroman. The classical Bildungsroman is inherently conservative; its Eurocentric and androcentric worldview depends on static social values that nomadic women as outsiders inevitably disrupt. The hypothesis is that minority writers use the genre’s framework in order to critique the totalitarianism, racism and sexism that the marginalised heroine encounters. The formal and thematic othering of the genre raises questions about what new values, and new issues, such writers have introduced to the project of Bildung.
Transnational British and Italian Networks in Fascist Florence
Konstantin Wertelecki | [email protected]
This doctoral thesis is the first major project to analyse the British expatriate community in Florence and their relationship with the Italian community during Italy’s Fascist years (1922-1943). This thesis aims to determine the impact that this transnational network had upon the local, regional, and international sphere of British-Italian relations during this time of intense political change. Overall, this thesis hopes to demonstrate the importance of including the British community in Fascist Florentine history in order to fully understand the evolution of Florentine identity, politics, and society during this period.
Traditionally, scholarship on the networks forged between the British and Italian communities in Florence does not temporally extend beyond the First World War, due the great wealth of eighteenth and nineteenth primary literature. Yet, the interwar years serve as a unique historical turning point for study, as this period challenged the slowly forged cultural, political, and social relationship built between the British and Italians in Florence since the fifteenth century; political tension, surges in nationalism, and the construction and re-construction of identity in a city that German consul Gerhard Wolf described as the ‘most Anglophile of all Italian cities,’ forced questions of self-definition and identification in regard to the ‘English’, ‘Tuscans’, ‘Fascists’, and the hybridised, ‘Anglo-Florentines’.
In undertaking this piece of transnational historical research this, the study will demonstrate the crossing of political, cultural, and social borders in a local context via the analysis of networks of interaction and exchange between the English and Italians, as well as address and define the status of ‘Anglo-Florentines’ and their political connotations as transnational actors. Using QGIS mapping software, the study will map the spaces inhabited and frequented by Anglo-Florentines as transnational exchange points of culture, as well as identifying the various meeting points between expatriate British communities and the Fascist state, society, and institutions. Applied beyond the temporal and geographical limits of interwar Florence, this thesis evokes questions regarding the significance of alternative perspectives, namely that of expatriate communities. Often omitted from historical analyses, these communities and the legacies they left behind offer a fresh depiction and understanding of the people, politics, and places that surrounded them.
Surgeons at Sea: Naval Surgeons and the Construction of Medical Bias in the British and French Worlds, 1785-1815
Manon C Williams | [email protected]
Using naval medical records from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, my project examines how medical knowledge was constructed at sea among surgeons in the British and French navies. I will explore how naval surgeons’ institutional, professional, and personal experiences informed patient care and shaped medical practice. I am especially interested in the role of medical bias, including how patients were categorized based on preconceived or constructed notions of disease susceptibility. I will use a comparative approach to examine a collection of personal and professional medical journals written while journeying to and from various geographic locations around the world to compare the medical experience on board for different patient populations (e.g. convicts, seamen, officers, immigrants). This work is in conversation with scholarship on the professionalization and bureaucratization of military medicine and the influences of the military on modern, clinical medicine.
The Formation of the episcopalis audientia, from the Case of Paul of Samosata to the Theodosian Code, c. 260-438
Chao Xiao | [email protected]
I received my first PhD (Historical Theories and History of Historical Science) in the Fudan University and then I have been an associate professor at Guangxi Normal University in China. Now I am on the journey to seek my second PhD guided by Prof. Caroline Humfress and Dr. Konrad Lawson at the University of St. Andrews. The episcopalis audientia, which is also called the ‘bishop’s hearing’, originated from long-standing practices within Christian communities. The first documented practice is the case of Paul of Samosata, and thus is the starting point for this research. In this case, as is recorded in Eusebius’s Church History, the controversy provoked by Paul’s heretical thoughts gave rise to the presence of ad hoc councils of bishops attended by many bishops and church followers. A final Synod later decided Paul’s excommunication; however, the Church had to seek for the Roman emperor’s official recognition when the Synod’s decision concerning Paul could not be enforced.
A case study could exemplify part of the formation but was not sufficient to present a comprehensive and dynamic historical development. Thus, this research extends across the early formation of episcopalis audientia from 260 to 438, i.e., the period from the case till the Theodosian Code, and covers different aspects such as law, politics, religion, economy, and society. Most contemporary inquiries into episcopalis audientia focus on legal texts, but few have tried to dig into the historical contexts behind these legal texts. For example, in Antioch at the time of Paul of Samosata, there were three main influences, the Church, the Roman Empire, and the Kingdom of Palmyra. The extent of Palmyra’s involvement in the case of Paul deserves to be investigated, but related investigation has been insufficient.
The early formation of episcopalis audientia can be better understood by dint of comparison and contrast. There was a similar legal phenomenon called ChunQiu Adjudication in the Han Dynasty in ancient China (202 BC – 200 AD). This research also intends to exhibit the particularities of episcopalis audientia as well as its formation in the occident by comparing it with ChunQiu Adjudication in ancient China. For example, what are the similarities and differences between the Roman bishops who worked as judges and the Han Confucian judicial officers? Are the social functions of both similar to each other? What were the intentions of the Han emperors and the Roman emperors, respectively, when they employed ChunQiu Adjudication and episcopalis audientia? To what extent did they materialize their ambitions?
Through Pots and Pans: Culinary and Cultural Bonds Between China and Japan, 1868-1949
Zhentian Xie | [email protected]
From farm to dining table, this dissertation will emphasise the complex interplay of contested visions of food culture between many actors in the story. This dissertation will record this process and explore the driving forces behind it. To understand its development, this dissertation will focus on four stages: The early model of culinary exchanges in the Meiji era (1868-1912) and its earlier roots, the Inter-war exchanges during the Taisho period ‘Chinese fever’, the wartime exchanges in Japan’s utopian state experiment of occupied Manchukuo, and the collapse of culinary connections in the early post-war era. These four stages reveal different aspects of Pan-Asianist ideology on a broader cultural spectrum between China and Japan. That is, by the time of Japan’s defeat in 1945, regional unity in East Asia was not absolutely unrealistic in all aspects. Instead of conquest in war, the interlocking connections instead found their most promising development through gradual cultural exchanges and integration, or as one contemporary commentator put it, “through pots and pans.”
Hunting Whale and Making Knowledge. Dundee’s Globalisation through Trans-Maritime Whaling, 1750-1914
Matt Ylitalo | [email protected]
The project assesses how whaling in Dundee contributed to the history of maritime science, and to the city’s ‘global’ status, during the long nineteenth century. Research will investigate whalers’ networks and processes of knowledge accumulation and transference; the project will then examine the impact that this epistemic migration had on Dundee in comparison to other transatlantic whaling ports.
Many towns throughout coastal Scotland engaged in whaling in the nineteenth century.
On a transatlantic scale, ports such a New Bedford, Massachusetts and Sandefjord, Norway far outstripped Dundee in the magnitude of their whaling operations. Yet Dundee distinctly stands apart from other Scottish and transatlantic whaling communities. Most whaling communities followed an ephemeral pattern of existence, which consisted of hunting whales intensively for several decades, falling into decline and then realigning to more locally- or regionally-oriented commercial orbits. Dundee, however, defied this model both in duration and commercial scope.
This study asks how and why Dundee experienced global expansion and continuance rather than a momentary peak and decline between 1750 and 1914. It focuses in particular on the movement of knowledge between different groups: First Peoples, trans-maritime whaling communities, the people of Dundee, and scientists. Such transfers are not well understood, and the project consequently poses three questions: What were the pathways and networks by which Dundee-based whalers accrued knowledge and facilitated epistemic migrations between cultures and institutions? What did Dundee’s whaling industry contribute to the city’s rise and position as a Scottish, British, European and indeed global port town from the late eighteenth century onward? Finally, how did this differentiate Dundee from other leading transatlantic whaling ports such as New Bedford and Sandefjord?