Ely, Christopher

During the Korean War, POWs within UN POW camps participated in riots and mass-demonstrations, as anxieties over repatriation increased. Not all POWs who were against repatriation were against Communism and not all POWs who wanted repatriation were radical Communists. However, almost all Chinese and Koreans living in post-World War II East Asia during this period experienced increasing pressure to pick a side. The US, North Korea, South Korea, China, and Taiwan all manipulated the POWs’ fight over repatriation to support specific ideologies and legitimize new regimes. Regardless of whether a POW was ideologically motivated, the POW issue was definitely a direct result of the Cold War mentality which perpetuated the recent civil wars in China and Korea. Thus, the appalling level of POW violence in the UN camps revealed how the Cold War ideological struggle was deeply complicated by the lingering civil wars in China and the Korean peninsula.

During the Meiji era (1869-1912) a group of academics known as the National learning school helped create and then institute a civic religion known as State Shinto. This belief system took aspects of the folkway known as Shinto and modified it into a form of nationalism which centered on the figure of the Japanese Emperor. This Thesis examines the applications of State Shinto, how affected the lives of those living in Imperial Japan, and how State Shinto differs from its namesake.

The golden age of smuggling occurred in and around the British Isles in the 18th and 19th centuries. As a result of increases in regulations and taxes the government instituted to pay for a series of costly wars at the end of the 17th century, smuggling greatly increased. With the implementation of major punishments for smuggling, such as the death penalty, the smuggling trade grew more violent. Armed smugglers sought to achieve a balancing act between violent acts and public acceptance. In order to better understand how armed smugglers achieved this balance, this thesis will focus on the connections between armed smugglers and the British Public.

From 1967-1989 President Nicolae Ceausescu and the Securitate (the secret or political police) repressed the Romanian people through the use of classic propaganda techniques and a unique manipulation of Romania's own national and cultural history. Ceausescu did this in order to cement his hold on the Romanian people and to ensure that Communism remained the dominant ideology within the nation. This thesis argues that Ceausescu manipulated Romania's Latin heritage, cultural and historical icons, and the nation's national identity and history to sustain his regime. Ceausescu used these native sources and the state sponsored repression of the Securitate to give his regime the trappings of legitimacy and to cement his rule.

The European Union (EU) is a unique political/economic body in the world that has created a more integrated union of European states. Yet the structure of the EU remains under debate, as does the existence of the EU itself. Conflict about possible member states, such as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYRM) is especially contentious. By examining the FYRM‟s arduous process of gaining admission to the EU this thesis evaluates the effectiveness of the current EU foreign policy.

This thesis focuses on the popular and historical image of the Molly Maguires, an Irish-American terrorist labor group in the 1870s, and addresses the process of building a historical record about a particular issue. Since there is very little direct information about the Molly Maguires, we know about them through contemporaries, historians and fiction writers, who were often antagonistic to the Molly Maguires. The limitations of our knowledge on the Molly Maguire calls into question whether our picture of the Mollies can even be considered historical. Although current evidence belies efforts to create an accurate historical picture of the Molly Maguires, the development of the Molly Maguire image is a history in and of itself. The shifting image of the Molly Maguires reveals more about the social environment of the time period in which they were created than it does about the Molly Maguires themselves. This thesis explores a topic in the gray area between fact and fiction, demonstrating how historical knowledge can be as much a product of collective memory as empirical data.

Through examination of first contact between the British Empire and the Maori natives of New Zealand, as well as the failed treaty attempt between the two, I aim to
illustrate England’s role in the escalation of conflict between these two cultures.
Although at first glance it appears that the war was an eventual escalation of previous
tensions, I maintain that British officials in New Zealand had the resources and the
knowledge to prevent the New Zealand land war. They used this knowledge to speed up
the process of conquest. The British crown was trying to conquer the Maori through
ambiguous treaties; when these failed, they initiated a war, in order to warrant a military
presence in New Zealand and physically dominate the Maori.

This thesis examines three women who committed the unprecedented crime of attempting to assassinate a key male figure in three separate times and places. It involves the government’s and society’s reaction and implications about the role of gender in the violent deeds transforming society at times of revolutionary upheaval. The women examined are Charlotte Corday from eighteenth century France, Vera Zasulich from nineteenth century Russia, and Shi Jianqiao from twentieth century China. These women shared numerous qualities that, when combined, provided the women with the ability to see themselves as equals in the patriarchal societies in which they lived, allowing them to participate in the typically male dominated public sphere.

In this paper, I examine transgender and gay rights in contemporary Cuba. While there is much written historically on the topic of gay rights in the years just after the Revolution, very little has been written about the modern day, and even less which focuses on transgender rights and health issues. I examine Cuba’s state-run healthcare system as well as their state sexual education department, CENESEX. I argue that Cuba has evolved alongside changing global attitudes about sexual and gender diversity and has adapted their education and healthcare systems to match their change of heart. To do this, I first provide brief historical context beginning in pre-Columbian Cuba and ending with the victory of the Revolutionary Armed Forces in 1959. From there, I first examine LGBTI rights under the early days of the Revolution and finally move into the sudden change of heart which occurred in the last three decades.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), anarchist groups were able to exert a
significant influence in revolutionary politics through agricultural and industrial
collectivization, communes, militia resistance, and participation in government. Many
historians have explained anarchism through the lens of ideology, a doctrine based upon a
structure of authority. This thesis, however, explains anarchist power and unity during the
Spanish Civil War as a matter of identity, as a meaningful sense of self. Spanish
anarchists defined themselves through the process of negation – the act of defining who
you are by defining what you are not – by their opposition to authority, to religion, to
feudalism, to capitalism and fascism, to communism, and to anarchism. The anarchists
also affirmed who they were as individuals and as communities through three values:
yearning for absolute freedom, the capacity for absolute fraternity removed from
centralized authority, and absolute egalitarianism – the unreserved equality of all
individuals.