Dissertations and Theses
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Publication Treaty-Making, British Colonialism, and Indigenous Subjugation: A Comparative Study of New South Wales and Aotearoa New Zealand(2024) Wang, Anjie; Hart, EmmaUntil this day, the Indigenous community experienced the legacy of colonization. Yet, current research on British settler colonialism lacks an emphasis on how the treaty-making process consolidated the oppressive colonial power dynamics. By comparing the treatymaking approaches of the British Empire in New South Wales, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, my thesis explores how the absence and presence of treaties shaped complex and evolving relationships between Indigenous groups and colonial powers. It investigates the inconsistency of the British treaty making approach in settler-colonial territories by examining the abandonment of treaty-making in Australia in the 1780s and the reinstatement of treaty-making diplomacy in Aotearoa New Zealand between the 1830s to 1840. By narrating both the Indigenous and colonial perspectives on a transnational scale, it compares how first encounter and geopolitical factors contributed to a shift in colonial diplomatic strategies and the evolution of colonial expansion. It will also examine the legacy of the colonial era by comparing land and assimilation policies in the 19th and 20th centuries. Overall, it demonstrates that in the short term, the absence and presence of treatymaking subjugated Indigenous sovereignty and land rights both in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. However, treaty-making impacted the long-term reconciliation and decolonization framework. This research will contribute to a better understanding of the historical and ongoing impacts of colonialism on Indigenous communities in Oceania and potentially assist policymakers in developing reconciliation strategies.Publication Battle for Legitimacy: Understanding the Korean Community Dynamics Through the Korean American Association of Greater Philadelphia(2024) Song, Hyunwoo; Dickinson, FrederickIt has been nearly 60 years since the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 that started the immigration boom of Koreans to the United States. At the peak of this boom, 30,000 Korean immigrants came into the United States every year, which resulted in 1.9 million Korean Americans living in the United States today. Philadelphia is no exception. Since the 1960s, there has been an active Korean American community represented by the Korean American Association of Greater Philadelphia (KAAGP). This thesis adds to the growing field of Korean American studies by introducing a historian’s perspective on a field that has been dominated by anthropological and sociological studies. This thesis shows the challenges the Korean associations face to their legitimacy to represent the Korean community and how they retain it. Utilizing the internal documents of the KAAGP, the thesis shows three distinct periods of the organization’s history and how it fits into the history of the Korean community in Philadelphia. Following the development of the association, the thesis shows that the rhetorical device adopted by the association changes from a national and patriotic tone focused on the Korean identity to a practical one that focuses on the daily lives in the United States. This shift in ideological background for legitimacy manifests itself in the type of project the association undertakes, but also the challenges it faces as well. While the initial community was built on the shared culture and identity of being Koreans in the United States, this shifts as the necessity to gain access to the United States political system increases. At a time when Korean immigrants had limited access to electoral politics, the Korean community used the KAAGP to gain official recognition from the South Korean and American governments. This official recognition was practical for the community as it meant they had a direct line of communication to officials that were previously unavailable. It also showed their growing understanding of the importance of political representation in the United States. The work attempts to understand how the KAAGP retains its legitimacy to represent the Korean community over the years, but also to collect and document the primary sources of the Korean community.Publication A Province Divided: Land, Labor, and Water During the 1947 Partition of Punjab, India(2024) Xu, Plum; Sreenivasan, RamyaThis thesis critically examines memoranda and presentations made to the Punjab Boundary Commission, seeking to highlight claims over material and natural resources as means of reinterpreting the conditions underlying the catastrophic partition of British India in 1947. Partition historiography almost universally centers narratives on the apparent animosity between Hindus and Muslims or the movements of the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League. This thesis, however, turns its attention toward actors neglected by the scholarship. It examines the Punjab Unionist Party, as well as the representatives of minority ethno-religious organizations that presented before the Punjab Boundary Commission. This thesis seeks to illuminate concerns about land, labor, and water expressed during the proceedings of the Commission, as well as interpret the conspicuous absence of the Unionist Party from these proceedings. Furthermore, it will interrogate the institutional role of the Boundary Commission in fomenting the violence that followed Partition taking effect. Commission archival records form a critical base of sources, wherein submitted memoranda and hearing transcripts outline the arguments of various representative organizations over the division of Punjab. This thesis concludes that the Unionists found themselves deliberately excluded from appearing before the Commission. This exclusion appears to be motivated by the Unionists’ cross-communal political mobilization, which failed to fit within Partition’s stated aim of creating a physical ethno-religious division of India. Additionally, the arguments of organizations that did manage to reach the Commission persistently return to concerns over handling of land, labor, and water—a political paradigm the Unionists embodied—but these concerns were necessarily buried beneath the rhetoric of ethno-religious division. Ultimately, Punjabis found themselves subject to the machinations of wider nationalist organizations and a colonial state whose socio-political framework ran fundamentally counter to the province’s own predominant social structures. While the late colonial administration coated the Boundary Commission in the veneer of an attentive judicial body, the proceedings’ eventual outcomes for Punjabis proved to be exclusion and disempowerment.Publication Workers, Farmers, and Social Philosophers: The Rise of Socialist Activity in Colonial Punjab and North America, 1906-1926(2024) Malhotra, Sanya Dhar; Sreenivasan, Ramya; Breckman, WarrenMy project attempts to historically trace how socialist and revolutionary forms of politics arose in colonial Punjab from the period 1906-1926. The wave of migrant Punjabi laborers to the Pacific West Coast at the turn of the 20th century is crucial to analyzing the socioeconomic origins of diasporic nationalist politics. Agrarian unrest, collective labor coalitions, and Sikh values contributed to the poetic and martyr-centric ethos of the proto-socialist party Ghadar. The analysis of the formation and development of the Ghadar Party relies on historical work done at the Bancroft Library archives, specifically the South Asians in North America, 1899-1974 collection. As opposed to the prominent historiography situating the Ghadar party into the trend of anti-colonial cosmopolitanism, a more critical evaluation of the sources demonstrates how local conditions and mentalities shaped the production, reception, and distribution of Ghadar literature and activity. The radical methods utilized by the Ghadar Party to contest imperial barriers, citizenship, and the role of labor in society differentiated them from the contemporary pan-Indian political coalitions. These methods included socialist experimentation between intellectuals and workers and the militarization of organized action. A potential sphere for future research is the cultural integration and evolution of the Ghadar’s legacy in Punjab’s post-colonial political life.Publication Naked Natives: British Perceptions of Indigenous Nakedness and Sartorial Exchange in 17th Century North America(2024) Khan, Umme; Brown, KathleenThis thesis explores the encounter between English colonists and Native Americans through the lens of “nakedness” and sartorial interaction in the 17th century. This thesis examines the spectrum of portrayals created by the English of indigenous bodies and adornment, identifying the variances and contradictions in how the English developed their understanding of the Other. Sartorial interactions extended beyond the gaze as English colonists and Native groups engaged in cycles of trade. This thesis traces the development of sartorial exchange after the early period of encounter into an era marked by war. Conflicts discussed include the Anglo-Powhatan wars, Pequot War, and King Philip’s/Metacom’s War. Gifting and stripping are highlighted as forms of sartorial interaction during wartime. Stripping, in particular, emerged as the bodies of soldiers, interpreters, and captives navigated the North American landscape of battlefields. This thesis attempts to question the levels of cultural cross-dressing and sartorial diplomacy that resulted from these interactions, analyzing how clothing and appearance were connected to colonial power dynamics in this period.