Bạch Mã Hill Station was a French mountain resort, built on top of Bạch Mã Mountain in Central Vietnam between 1932 and 1945. Bạch Mã was one of seven similar sites in Indochina intended to provide a cool mountain retreat for the French expatriate population, in this case, of Huế. Hill stations throughout Asia became symbols of European colonialism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the postcolonial period, Bạch Mã continued to be represented in significant historical developments that have shaped Central Vietnam at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Through an examination of the archaeological fabric of the hill station in the context of the historical period in which it developed, this study addresses four issues related to colonial occupation and the postcolonial experience in Central Vietnam. The study examines the broader historical context that influenced Central Vietnam, and the development of Bạch Mã, in the first part of the twentieth century. The 1930s was a turning point for French colonialism in Indochina and for the Vietnamese nationalist movement. From 1940 to 1945, Indochina was occupied by the Japanese and was an important base for their war against the allies in the Pacific. The pro-Vichy colonial government of French Indochina was the only European administration retained under Japanese occupation in Southeast Asia during World War II. This study relates the character of Bạch Mã to the changing political environment in Indochina and suggests that hill stations represented more than a holiday retreat for the colonial elite.

The liberal concern for the individual consigns religion to the individual believer's private sphere of action and thus privatises religion. Studies of key liberal thinkers - Locke, Mill, Green, Hayek and Rawls - demonstrate that there is not one complete, cohesive and accepted exposition of liberal philosophy and, further, that there is no cohesive exposition of liberalism's response to religion and "Religion-State" relations. Social liberalism was a key influence on the shaping of the Constitution and polity of the Commonwealth of Australia at the start of the twentieth century. Social liberalism, combined with the political and religious culture of the time, meant that religious communities then had little concern for the protection of religious freedom. Neoliberalism became the dominant expression of liberalism through the last quarter of the twentieth century. Focussed on the individual and the market, and combined with secularisation, secularism, aggressive atheism and other social and political factors, neoliberalism reinforced the "buffered self" of the immanent world and remained distant from religious communities and their interests. Religious communities have found that recent governments have not only failed to engage with them but have also eroded their capacities and hampered their contributions to society. At the same time, government legislation has followed the liberal value of equalitarianism and increased the gap between polity and religious communities. Human rights laws, and agencies with a narrow focus on equality and individual rights, have further diminished the freedom of religious communities. As a result, the scope of religious freedom in twenty-first century Australia is considerably narrower than was the case at the start of the twentieth century. Also, it is clear that the nature of "Religion-State" relations is more complex today, and shaped by an increasing array of factors.

Timor-Leste, independent since May 2002, is a relatively young and financially poor country. Friendship Agreements between Australian and Timorese communities have been growing in popularity since the agreements first began in 2000. Although the Timorese have often been portrayed as the beneficiaries of these agreements, this is the first research project to collect and analyse Timorese perspectives about them. This thesis is a qualitative study that draws on elements of critical modernist, poststructuralist and postcolonial frameworks. Data for this study was collected from focus group interviews, individual interviews, documents and participant observation in a conference. Critical discourse analysis was used as the main analytical approach and the data was analysed through conceptual lenses derived from three relevant bodies of literature – friendship theories, studies of international municipal links, and the theory and practice of partnerships for development. This study finds that one of the major ways that Timorese conceptualise friendship is in terms of reciprocity. However, reciprocity is missing from the majority of written agreements and, according to the Timorese contribution discourses, it has been missing from the outcomes of the agreements as well. Although Friendship Agreements were set up to differ from Sister Cities, little difference was found between them (and other differently-named international municipal links) in the way that they have been conceptualised, in the sort of successes they have achieved and in the sort of challenges they face. Furthermore, the majority of written agreements fail to use the kind of language that is found in the literature concerning authentic and ideal North-South partnerships. However, the majority of Timorese that were interviewed want the Australian/Timorese community friendships to continue into an untimed future. Since Timorese communities are directly affected by the implementation of the Australian/Timorese Friendship Agreements, exploring Timorese perspectives about the agreements is, and will continue to be, important to ensure that Timorese views are understood, acknowledged, valued, respected, and incorporated into the way the agreements are conceptualised, implemented and evaluated. This will ensure that the agreements become a means of Timorese empowerment rather than Timorese disempowerment.

This thesis considers the early history of NSW through analyzing and comparing the leadership styles of the founding governor, Arthur Phillip, and his reluctant successor, Francis Grose. It aims to reassess entrenched historical views about the effectiveness and character of both men. I argue that for the period from 1786 to mid 1790, Phillip's style of personal and direct leadership, honed in the Royal Navy was well suited to the requirements of establishing a distant colony populated largely by convicts. He instituted a viable capital works programme, the health of all was excellent and he successfully established the rule of law. However, Phillip's leadership was overwhelmed by the arrival of over 3000 convicts from June 1790 to February 1792, posing challenges which, on many levels, Phillip failed to meet. Francis Grose, an experienced army officer and well trained in the skills of delegation, pursued quite different approaches to leadership. Although his administration has been widely criticized by historians, it will be shown that under his administration the colony nearly achieved self sufficiency and the health of the colonists improved dramatically. Where the colony waxed and waned under Phillip's personal leadership, Grose's ability to delegate to his officers caused radical and positive changes in the dynamics of the colony.

This thesis examines the impact of the Narmada Dam Project on the socio-economic and cultural well-being of the displaced indigenous tribal people living in the state of Gujarat, India. The impact of relocation is discussed in terms of policy making, the institutional framework, human rights violations, and planning and execution. In order to analyze the impact of government policy and its implementation, elements studied include rehabilitation, resettlement, land alienation, education, health, security, basic amenities and gender issues. The study is based on a review of the official documentation together with the governments' policies, followed by an anthropological survey of the people concerned. Interviews were conducted with a sample of the affected families in the displaced communities living in their new villages, who had been settled there for some twenty years after their relocation. The researcher visited a sample of sixteen villages resettled as a consequence of the Narmada Dam and situated in the Vadodara district of Gujarat State during the period September 2010 to February 2011. She toured the villages and their facilities and interviewed affected people, government officials and NGO personnel, as well as organizing focus groups. The results of the field research show that rehabilitation and resettlement has not been provided adequately or according to the existing policy norms. The displaced tribal people are not satisfied with the compensation provided to them because it did not help them to improve or restore their pre-displacement status. On balance, the results of this study suggest that the planning and administration of the resettlement programme were both poor. Overall findings indicate that the uprooting of indigenous people from their homeland not only disrupts their way of life but also erodes and eventually destroys their social, cultural, religious and economic traditions. Based on the findings from Gujarat State, displaced people require a planned approach to rehabilitation in order to minimize their hardships in resettling. Accordingly, some suggested measures for systematic planned rehabilitation of displaced tribal people are outlined.

The impetus for this research comes from the ongoing community debate over the increasing number of Islamic schools being established in order to meet the needs of Australia's growing Muslim population. The thesis traces the history and development of Islamic schools in Australia in the last thirty years. It acknowledges some of the early difficulties that they faced but then seeks to explore the apparent contradiction between the growing demand for the schools and increased public opposition, in particular since the events of September 2001. In Australia this took the form of growing Islamophobia accentuated by the Australian values debate after 2003, and the portrayal of the Muslim community by the media as a monolithic entity tainted by radicalised militant Islam. The research carried out over several years, starting in 2004, seeks to fill a gap in the limited literature on the subject to date. While there has been growing research on what Muslims think about life in Australia and how the wider community perceives Islam, there has been very little work done on the Islamic schools which are currently attended by about 20% of young Muslims in Australia. This thesis is constructed around three central questions posed to staff and former students at the schools. The first looks at what is taught in the faith units and who teaches these subjects. Linked to this is the question of the extent to which an Islamic ethos pervades the 'hidden curriculum', that is the other subjects taught in the curriculum and the daily rhythm of school life. The second question considers the impact of the Australian values debate and whether staff and students agree with the charge that Muslim values are different from Australian values. This question also takes into account the frequently made accusation that the schools teach intolerance of other faiths as a central tenet of Islam. Finally the thesis seeks to respond to the allegation that the schools form ghettos that isolate the students from mainstream Australian society and thus function as agents of exclusion.

John Baxter Langley is a neglected but important figure in the history of nineteenth-century radicalism. From a respectable and religious upbringing he defied expectations of an ecclesiastical career and chose to study medicine. From this beginning he became active in adult education through the founding of the Blackburn Mechanics' Institute, the Manchester Athenaeum and through his own education lecturing. He was also a journalist, editor and owner of several newspapers. He was prominent in the National Reform League, opposed the Contagious Diseases Acts and oppressive Sabbath legislation, and did much to assist the Miners' Provident Society and the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. He campaigned for prison reform and for an end to public executions, and took a practical role in the provision of improved housing for working people in London. Among other causes, he condemned the Second Opium War, exposed British brutality in India and opposed cotton tariffs, and worked covertly for Lincoln's administration by spying on the progress of Confederate shipbuilding orders in England and Scotland. He aspired to a seat in parliament but stood aside to allow Gladstone to stand in the Greenwich constituency. It is his failure to become a 'parliamentary radical' that has seen him neglected and overlooked in historical accounts of the period.

Over recent years evidence has appeared in the literature on International Relations theory of a desire for a clearer specification of the collective actor. Discussion surrounding collective actors and their relationship to structure connects three important areas of scholarly debate about global politics: the question of the relative weight given to ideational and material considerations; the agent-structure problem; and, the levels of analysis question. Formerly, the easy assumption was made that states were the actors in global politics. This axiom served to restrict and define the field of International Relations, but was always more of an arbitrary decision than a rigorous conclusion. In more recent times a range of circumstances has caused scholars to question this simple schema. Other ways of dividing up the world have gained influence. ... This thesis will examine whether some useful resources for the task may be found outside International Relations. Potentially fruitful areas lie in the work on social reality led by John Searle, in sociological ontology, a good representative being Margaret Gilbert's work, and in evolutionary theory. Scholars have begun to apply ideas from these fields to International Relations. This thesis adds to that work. It emphasises the relationship of Searle's thinking to the workings of evolution, and seeks to apply this insight to global political ontology and to a particular, practical question of grand strategy, involving a challenge to the global system of states.

This thesis is a study of the reasons why Operation TORCH was chosen by the British and Americans to be their first large-scale combined military operation of the Second World War. This question has been studied by historians since 1945, with two distinct national views emerging from the works published about wartime Anglo-American strategy-making. In essence, each view considers that the strategy advocated by that particular nation was the best way to win the war. The British view is that Operation TORCH was the only sensible operation available in 1942, while the American view is that TORCH was a wasteful diversionary operation forced on the U.S. Army by the imperially-minded Prime Minister and his overly cautious military men, who seduced President Roosevelt into supporting the operation. Various reasons are put forward for TORCH being chosen, including the domestic political needs of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, a need for the British and Americans to provide assistance to their Soviet ally, British fear of a cross-Channel operation, Churchill's influence on Roosevelt in terms of making strategic decisions, and various others, all of which are discussed and evaluated in this study. This thesis considers evidence from the British and American sides, including archival documents, published diaries and letters, and memoirs, and produces a compromise between the two traditional views. This thesis argues that TORCH was chosen because both Churchill and Roosevelt wanted a significant military operation against Germany in 1942, in order to improve the Anglo-American military situation and provide much-needed assistance and support to the Soviet Union in its vital struggle with Germany, while also easing morale problems and the domestic political pressures placed on them in the difficult months after Pearl Harbor. Because Churchill and Roosevelt held dominant positions in their administrations, they were able to ensure that a 1942 operation occurred. TORCH was then chosen from a number of options as a militarily feasible operation acceptable to all British and American leaders, while also offering the Western Allies a number of military benefits.

The main thrust of this study is an in-depth comparative examination of the distinct and shared factors of civil wars in Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire. The scourge of civil conflict in these two countries had widespread implications for the stability of the West African sub-region as a whole. The first Liberian Civil War (1989-1996) spread like a bush fire to Sierra Leone (1991-2002), snowballed to Côte d'Ivoire (2002-2011), and turned back to Liberia with the Second Liberian Civil War (1999-2003) ending with the unceremonious exit from power of warlord cum President Charles Taylor who had been implicated in so much of the fighting across the region. These post-Cold War intra-state wars killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and created millions of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Masses of refugees crossing international borders created insecurity in neighbouring Guinea-Conakry but also impacted on Ghana, Nigeria, and Liberia through the refugee camps established there. Apart from the Anglophone/Francophone civil war comparison, the distinctive feature of this thesis is that it is firmly based on the views of Africans, many of whom were active participants, as to what were the most significant factors of the civil wars. Whilst it draws upon the growing theoretical literature on the factors of civil war, interviews in the field made it possible to interrogate the validity of these theories in the eyes of local stakeholders themselves. The focus was on two distinct types of theories: the psychological theories of conflict (Dollard et al, 1939; Davies 1962; Gurr 1970; Berkowitz 1989; Goor, Rupensinghe, and Scarcorne 1996) and a subset of the economic theories of civil war.

This thesis, 'Songlines of Learning: The Establishment of Shearwater The Mullumbimby Steiner School as a Centre of Place Conscious Education' is about the intersection of dual crises of people having lost their core capacity as place-makers and their relation to place in post-modern society. It examines the moment where (auto)biography and ethnography cross paths with educational theory and practice to derive potent alternatives, and employs an archaeology that leads back to the primordial and forward to new potential. The education of children is at the centre of this research because it provides the opportunity to examine how these all-important intersections occur, and how the living relation to place and place making can be recovered. In this sense the thesis is also a story about finding a new way of seeing, about finding or rediscovering identity in relationship to landscape, in this case to the Australian landscape.

The intention of this thesis is to test a recent hypothesis that there were three identifiable stages on the way to thoroughgoing professionalism in the copying of Christian texts in Greek in the period from early II AD to the end of IV AD. ... In light of the investigation, it is clear that the hypothesis of a three-stage development in the use of professional scribes in early Christian circles is untenable as too simplistic and, although the evidence that has been analysed here derives almost solely from Egypt, we may conclude that this was the situation everywhere in the Roman world for the copying of early Christian texts.