History

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/9884

This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of History.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

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Teenage Feminists: High School Students and the Women's Movement in Ontario, 1968-1980
(University of Waterloo, 2025-06-24) Blair, Megan
This thesis examines the involvement of teenage girls in the upsurge of feminist activism between 1968 and 1980. Young women across Ontario engaged in feminism in a variety of ways; some joined high school women’s liberation groups in their communities or started their own feminist groups in their schools, while others reflected a more intimate and subtle feminism, challenging gender discrimination in their everyday lives. Using an age-focused analysis, this thesis argues that teenage girls partook in everyday feminism. Everyday feminism entails the recognition of discrimination and inequalities in intimate, everyday spaces, and the words, actions, and thoughts that challenged these inequalities. By broadening the definition of feminism beyond adult-oriented women’s groups and issues, this thesis captures the feminist actions of young women. Spaces and issues that mattered to young women such as school, sports, sex education, and fashion were all ways that teenage girls negotiated with discrimination and feminism. While young women sometimes collaborated with adults, at other times their efforts were more individualized, spontaneous, or collaborative with their peers. This thesis contributes to a more complex and varied history of feminism in Canada by taking seriously the issues that mattered to young women and recognizing the reality of their involvement in feminist action.
"I Could be Suborned with a Sardine": A Material Culture Study of Teresa of Ávila's Letters
(University of Waterloo, 2025-04-14) Zehr, Rachel
Early modern Carmelite reformer and mystic Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) maintained an extensive correspondence, which has received less scholarly attention than her major autobiographical and mystical works. Her letters reached a broad audience, from her brother and later her nephew in colonial Peru, to her advisor Jerónimo Gracián, to the prioresses of the convents she founded across Spain, to noble patrons and friends, and even to Philip II, King of Spain. Her preoccupation with material objects spanned this diverse range. This thesis applies a material culture study to the objects mentioned in Teresa’s letters, offering new insights into her experience of the fragility of human embodiment. It analyzes Teresa’s experience with medical remedies, religious textiles, food, and possessions, illuminating both Teresa’s anxiety with the vulnerability of the fragile human body as well as her respect and care for the condition of human embodiment. This attention to Teresa’s concern with embodied materiality nuances our understanding of how early modern nuns navigated the spiritual and material demands placed on them by monastic poverty.
Freaking Fans: An Oral History of Disability in Fan Spaces
(University of Waterloo, 2025-03-24) Vero, Eric; Milligan, Ian; Dolmage, Jay
This oral history, under the lens of critical access studies, provides case studies that illustrate the long and interconnected history of disability and fan communities. Through interviews of eight disabled fans from varying communities, I have discovered a key understudied theme in the shared history of disability and fandoms. I argue that a fan community is a relational space where fans share access with each other. To be a fan is to offer room in this shared space for people of similar body/minds. For disabled fans, their identity founded on lived experiences facilitates relationships or fosters barriers within these fan spaces, constituting “access.” Disability activism within fan spaces consists of disabled fans finding empowerment through creating inclusive spaces that further empower other disabled individuals who share in this space. Disabled fans seek inclusion through providing extra room in spaces for others that they see themselves in. In this way, relationships form and sustain fan spaces. Rather than conceiving of fandom as a textual relationship between fan and creator, I advocate for considering how fans construct their own spaces, their opening or closing of which reveals whom they identify with among their fan communities. This reveals a perceived hierarchy based in historical forces in fandom that excludes marginalized groups, not just the disabled community. However, “fannish” acts and practices of inclusion resist the exclusion present in fan spaces where historical forces such as ableism encourage fans to share space at the expense of the marginalized. This is a novel and useful paradigm to conceive of fan communities as inclusive and exclusive spaces, as it reveals the hidden lives of my interviewees who shared with me their practices of inclusion, accessibility, and access. This study is also activist for stressing the importance of joy and pleasure in the disabled experience to complement the more common disability narratives of marginalization and activist struggles.
A Broken History: Examining the Events, Experiences, and Narratives of the High Arctic Relocations, 1950-2010
(University of Waterloo, 2025-01-24) Hossack, Sam; Lackenbauer, P. Whitney
In 1953, the Canadian government moved thirty-five Inuit from Inukjuak in Northern Québec to the High Arctic with promises of better hunting opportunities and the ability to return to their communities within two years if conditions were not to their liking. Two years later, twenty-nine additional Inuit were sent to join them. Since these High Arctic Relocations, government officials, lawyers, and academics have questioned the federal government’s motivations for and responses to the relocations, focusing on the question of whether the government was justified in undertaking an ill-fated humanitarian mission or if the government coerced Inuit into staking Canadian claims to the Arctic. This dissertation explores the legacy and ongoing influence of the relocations in Canadian history by tracing the documentary, experiential, and political narratives surrounding the High Arctic Relocations from the 1950s to the 2010s. This includes critically re-examining the archival evidence from the 1950s; analyzing Inuit testimony of experiences and contemporary storytelling about the relocations; and examining Inuit, government, and academic political narratives from the 1980s through the 2010s. By examining the narratives of the High Arctic Relocations and framing these narratives using the event, experiences, and memory of relocation over the course of seven decades, this study parses the evolving themes and foci as Inuit struggled to secure recognition and compensation for their suffering. This dissertation re-assesses the government’s motivations for relocating Inuit in the early 1950s and includes analysis of the complexities and limits of government decision-making. It also explores the effects of those decisions on Inuit relocatees through an examination of remembered experiences in the 1990s. Finally, this dissertation analyzes the academic and government framing of the narratives of relocation since the 1990s, investigating how these narratives affect contemporary perceptions of government actions. This dissertation demonstrates that the intentions of government officials in the 1950s (the event) and vigorous debate about the perceived motivations of government have superseded the outcomes (experience) of the relocations. This evolving discourse has produced generally-accepted conclusions in Canadian history about the alleged motivations for the relocations that find little grounding in the archival record but which have become a key part of the meta-narrative about state sovereignty, deceit, and coercion in the twentieth century Canadian Arctic.
The Soundtrack of Dissent: Analyzing the Cultural Polarization of 1960s America through Antiwar and Pro-War Protest Movements
(University of Waterloo, 2025-01-23) Trivino, Christine; Hunt, Andrew
The Vietnam War was a seminal event that perpetuated shifting notions of American culture in a period of significant societal transformation. Its influence extends far beyond the 1960s, providing a foundational context for the evolution of cultural and political discourse in subsequent decades. The cultural dimensions of the Vietnam War are frequently underexamined, despite the numerous cultural contributions that emerged in response to the conflict. Notably, music became a powerful tool for articulating dissent, shaping American society during the era, and mobilizing a generation of young people toward activism. This thesis examines the cultural conflicts in the 1960s and early 1970s, focusing particularly on their relationship to the Vietnam War. It examines both the antiwar and pro-war movements, analyzing their roles in shaping the broader cultural and ideological divisions of the era – a type of phenomenon that could properly be considered a precursor to the modern culture wars of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Through an in-depth examination of music, youth social movements, and the prevailing narratives of Vietnam War dissent, this study seeks to understand the underlying causes of these cultural tensions. It argues that the intensity of the conflict was fueled by widespread misunderstandings, mutual hostilities, and the era’s increasing openness to new social and political ideas. Understanding these factors is essential for comprehending the broader historical and ideological shifts of the era.
For the Common Man- Patrick J. Buchanan and Kevin P. Phillips: Populist Conservatives during the Ascendancy of the American Right
(University of Waterloo, 2025-01-21) Norton, Chase; Hunt, Andrew
This biographical history explores the careers of New Right conservative populists Patrick Buchanan and Kevin Phillips, tracing their shared political evolution with, and eventual divergence from, mainstream Republicanism. Placing their conservative populism in the wider political context of America’s transitions from liberalism to neoliberalism from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, both men expressed a politics that articulated the rise of the American right, and its divisions by the election of Bill Clinton. Using a myriad of published works from their literary careers, this project complicates the often-monolithic picture of conservatism’s rise in American politics. Starting with Phillips’ influential The Emerging Republican Majority (1969), both men envisioned a coming conservative electoral majority to usurp the dominance of Democratic liberalism. During the 1970s, both men thought such a majority was jeopardized in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the resulting ideological confusion of the decade, and what they perceived as the liberal bias of the nation’s media. Unsatisfied with the expressions of American conservatism in the 1980s, Phillips became a harsh critic of Ronald Reagan’s economic policies while Buchanan felt that Republicans had not moved right enough. By contextualizing America’s shifts in the post-World War II era with the country’s longer populist history, Phillips pivoted his image of the elite from a broad collection of liberal interests to Reagan’s business Republicans. Buchanan only emboldened his attacks on liberal elites and moderate Republicans he thought threatened the white working-class. In highlighting their trajectories, this project places populism as a political force that both bound together, and revealed contradictions in, the conservative movement that gained power in the 1980s. Broadly, their divergence from mainstream Republicanism represented the breaking of Reagan’s coalition of economic and social conservatives.
"He shows signs of the Day influence": A Biographical Narrative Case Study of Heritage and Commemoration in the National Hockey League
(University of Waterloo, 2024-08-28) Jackson, Jonathon; Hunt, Andrew
Clarence “Hap” Day coached the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League from 1940 to 1950. During that time, he led his team to five Stanley Cup championships, almost always prevailing against opponents who were considered to be superior. He remains one of the most successful and influential coaches in NHL history. By any standard in the world of professional sports he would be considered a legend, yet although his team has established Legends Row, a permanent commemorative exhibit of bronze statues representing fourteen of its former members, Day was inexplicably not chosen to be part of it. This thesis is an examination of heritage and commemoration in the National Hockey League, constructed around a biographical narrative of Day. I explore his career as a player and as a coach, demonstrating that he was a dependable player who developed and successfully practised theories on how he believed the game should be played. As a coach, he achieved unprecedented success that merits proper acknowledgement and recognition of his importance to one of the NHL’s most historic franchises. Unfortunately, while commemoration is a public expression of heritage, it can be and is often manipulated because it is always someone’s specific interpretation of what happened, rather than a faithful recording of history. Whoever controls the past can therefore also control the present narrative and shape the future through their commemorative efforts, which allows them to decide what the public should know about a given topic. In the case of Hap Day, the Toronto Maple Leafs have decided that he is not worthy of further recognition. This thesis is a competing narrative that proves otherwise.
'Mr. Spiritualism' Maurice Barbanell and his Life as a Twentieth-Century Spiritualist Propagandist
(University of Waterloo, 2024-04-25) Richbell, Nicholas; Hunt, Andrew
This dissertation explores the life and career of Maurice Barbanell, British businessman, journalist, newspaper editor, medium, and long-time propagandist of Spiritualism. Spiritualism—a religion, a science, and a philosophy—is based around the belief, or knowledge, that the human soul survives death and that communications with discarnate spirits is possible. Barbanell spent sixty-one years sharing the wisdom and teachings of his spirit guide, Silver Birch. Born into a Jewish/Atheist family, Barbanell was scornful of Spiritualism until he attended his first séances in his late teenage years, and it was during his second séance that Silver Birch began communicating through him. This dissertation follows Maurice Barbanell from his humble beginnings in east London, to meeting his spirit guide for the first time, and the medium’s involvement with a group of séance sitters known as the ‘Hannen Swaffer home circle’. Barbanell’s impact on Spiritualism is discussed in relation to lectures he gave about Spiritualism across the United Kingdom as well as the leading spiritualist newspaper he founded. The movement has long endured criticisms and accusations of fraudulent mediumship and Maurice Barbanell’s many legal cases are explored in this dissertation, as he defended the religion he fervently supported. Further, Barbanell’s rapid rise as a Spiritualist leader came as people turned away from organized religion towards Spiritualism after the First World War, and this dissertation will continue to study the medium’s endeavors during and after the Second World War, a lesser studied period of Spiritualism. This dissertation studies in detail, for the first time, the contributions one man made to a movement that has ebbed and flowed in popularity, leading to him being called ‘Mr. Spiritualism’. Leading figures of Spiritualism came before him; however, this dissertation will argue that Maurice Barbanell was well-deserving of the moniker ‘Mr. Spiritualism’ as this dissertation clearly demonstrates his unwavering support and defense of Spiritualism.
“Not a Question of Trust, but of Proof”: Malcolm Hay, A Chain of Error in Scottish History, and the History Wars of 1920s Scotland
(University of Waterloo, 2024-04-25) Bai, Elijah; Peers, Douglas
The publication of A Chain of Error in Scottish History by Malcolm Hay in 1927, which concerned anti-Catholic bias in Scottish historical literature sparked controversy in Britain and Ireland. Negative reviews posted in The Times Literary Supplement and Scottish Historical Review were met with anger not only from Roman Catholics in Britain, but also Protestants sympathetic to Hay. Existing literature situated the debate over the book’s publication primarily in terms of Catholic-Protestant sectarianism and historiographical methodology, but not its deeper societal causes. I utilised historical documents from the University of Aberdeen belonging to Malcolm Hay, such as newspaper clippings and correspondence, as well as research in digital archives, to better understand the controversy itself. I also supplemented this information with research into the social history of Europe to understand its historical context. I found that the controversy’s direct historiographical and sectarian causes were in turn rooted in the crisis liberal capitalism, which supported both Protestantism and a pro-Protestant school of history in Britain, faced after the First World War. In addition, I discovered that a single individual, James Houston Baxter, had written both controversial reviews, making the Protestants appear more anti-Hay than previously appeared. Finally, I compared the controversy to that of modern-day history wars, noting commonalities both in their origins and the manner they unfolded.
Stalin’s Last Comrade: Hanna Wolf and the “Karl Marx” Party College in the German Democratic Republic
(University of Waterloo, 2024-01-31) McKay, Jennifer; Bruce, Gary
For over thirty years, the Parteihochschule Karl Marx (PHS) was under the direction of the fervent Hanna Wolf, who oversaw the training of East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party (SED) functionaries. First appointed as Director in 1950, Wolf proved to be a tenacious and calculated leader who was not only able to remain in her position for over three decades, but who also wielded power as a female member of the SED. While many high-ranking women in the East German regime were either propped up due to the influence of a more powerful partner or their positions were deemed more suitable to women’s work, Wolf’s appointment at the PHS proved neither and she broke through the male-dominated party culture of the SED on her own merits. However, scholarship focusing on high-ranking women in the SED has been quite meagre and on the PHS itself, there is a modest but important literature. Therefore, this dissertation explores how Wolf’s political savviness, which included a myriad of personality traits, helped her successfully navigate the male dominated party culture of the SED. Such personality traits included being an “iron maiden,” proving to be cold and domineering with students and peers who did not follow the party line, or warm and friendly with those in positions of power. As a result of Wolf’s keen awareness of party politics, she was able to remain in her role as Director for thirty-three years, overseeing the training of close to 25,000 party functionaries that were sent out into the workforce and branches of the party apparatus armed with a very limited set of professional skills and only the knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, which ultimately helped stall technological advancements in the East German regime. Often referred to as “Wolf Canyon” or the “Red Monastery,” Wolf ruled over the PHS with an “iron fist” and proved to be a massive barrier when it came to changing the student curricula. As a veteran communist who first joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1930, then spent the 1930s and 1940s in the Soviet Union, Wolf was instilled with a vehement dedication to Stalinism which never faltered throughout the duration of her life and which she employed in her management of the PHS. Even during the 1950s, with Stalin’s death in 1953 and Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of the Soviet dictator in 1956, Wolf stayed true to her ideals and faced backlash from colleagues at the party school who started a campaign for her removal. During the 1960s, Wolf had to contend with Walter Ulbricht’s transition from an ideologue to a technocrat and his attempts to reform PHS student coursework from focusing primarily on ideology to more technical topics. However, by the 1970s, Wolf’s leadership remained unchallenged as Erich Honecker, who was also a dedicated hardliner, replaced Ulbricht as Party General Secretary in 1971, and the PHS continued to operate under Wolf’s dogmatic and dictatorial rule until her retirement in June 1983.
In Protection of No Woman: Consent, Illegitimacy, and Gender-Based Violence in Early Modern Somerset, 1600-1699
(University of Waterloo, 2024-01-29) MacAlpine, Rebecca-Ann Preston; Milligan, Ian
Over the course of the seventeenth century, 1298 women came before the Quarter Sessions to secure financial resources for the upkeep of their unborn children. These interactions with the legal system highlight the ways in which female experience did not always translate into the adjudication of their cases. The preoccupation of the court, which was to shift financial support away from the parish to the putative father, highlights that the lived experiences of women were secondary to the primary economic objective. The inability to fully engage with these experiences and adjudicate accordingly demonstrates the violating nature of these proceedings. Who did the court intend to protect through bastardy proceedings, and what was the marginalizing impact of these decisions? This dissertation explores the marginalizing processes embedded in the Quarter Session records of bastardy. Through the employment of a mixed methodological approach that engages both qualitative and quantitative strategies, this work shows that the Sessions were designed and implemented in a way that continued to marginalize unwed mothers for their failure to conform to socially accepted courting rituals. It also failed to account for the varied lived experiences of these women. As a result, the entire adjudicating process perpetuated institutionalized gender-based violence. The system was designed to not protect the well-being of mothers and their illegitimate children, but rather to protect the financial interests of the community at large, and reinforce gendered cultural expectations through a public shaming process. As a result, the processes ensured that women’s voices were present but silenced through the procedural mechanisms enacted in the Sessions and institutionalized gender-based violence enacted against unwed mothers in Somerset.
Practical Inclusion: Representing French-Canadians in the Army during the Second World War
(University of Waterloo, 2024-01-26) d'Eon, Ryan; Hayes, Geoffrey
This dissertation offers a thorough re-examination of the process and reasons for why French-Canadian representation in the Canadian Army increased during the Second World War. It argues that the army’s leadership endeavoured to increase French-Canadian representation because of a shortage of recruits for the expanding army to combat the growing Axis threat and to avoid conscription for overseas service. The Goforth Report in 1941 proposed solutions to increase representation and by 1942-1943, the number of French-speaking units, officers, French language manuals, French language training camps, trades, and advanced training centres increased considerably. During the 1944 reinforcement crisis, senior officers exhausted efforts to maintain Francophone army representation within the four French-speaking battalions prior to sending conscripts overseas. This thesis also argues that French-Canadians, especially when compared to those who joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), made an even more significant contribution to the strength of the wartime Canadian Army. Other studies in this thesis further explore the French-Canadian army experience. An examination of the Parliamentary debates and the Francophone press shows that most Francophone Members of Parliament (MPs) did not want to participate in another global war while the stance of the French language press was more complex. A random sample of courts martials of both French and English-speaking soldiers shows that the most common crimes were absence without leave (AWL) and desertion. Francophones faced harsher punishments as they were charged and convicted slightly more often of AWL and desertion and spent more time incarcerated for these two crimes. Both language groups also had significant differences to explain their offences. Finally, a study of Francophone soldiers and their Catholic faith shows that Catholicism both sustained and undermined French Canada’s relationship with the army.
Letters from the Boiler House: Conflict and Communication in a Second World War Canadian Internment Camp
(University of Waterloo, 2023-10-30) Wagenaar, Gillian; Bednarski, Steven
In March of 1941, two members of the Veterans Guard of Canada were court martialled for conduct “to the prejudice of good order and Military Discipline.” Their crime: passing letters, “illicit correspondence,” between a small group of “enemy alien” internees, known as the Musketeers, in an internment camp in rural Quebec, and a teenage girl named Winkie in Montreal. The case of Winkie Henson and the Musketeers shows the Canadian internment camp during the Second World War to be a complex, often liminal, space of connection and conflict. It illuminates the tension inherent between official regulation and human action, pitting the needs of civilians, Canadian or otherwise, against governing powers. It highlights the role of correspondence in a pre-internet world and shows how relationships could begin and end by pen and paper. In later reflections and representations of the case, it also shows the selective nature of memory and how our relationship with the past is shaped by both time and emotion. Most importantly, the story of illicit correspondence presents the internment camp and, more widely, the Canadian home front, as a space in which strict social boundaries became fluid and malleable in a wartime context, to both the benefit and cost of young romantic prospects, hopeful fathers, social elites, and supposed “enemy aliens.” In this, the case, told as a microhistory, adds further complexity to the view of Canadian internment camps as simultaneous spaces of oppression and opportunity for those within and beyond their barbed wire bounds.
“By Their Own Efforts”: First Nations Health Policy in Canada, 1940s-1970s
(University of Waterloo, 2023-09-20) Vorobej, Lucy; MacDougall, Heather
This dissertation explores the early years of Ottawa’s 20th century integration policy with a focus on the impact of settler-colonial power and priorities on First Nations’ access to Canadian health care systems under it. Using critical discourse analysis and the theoretical frameworks of Post-Colonialism and Critical Race Theory to read “along the grain of colonial common sense,” this study explores settler archives to examine the discourses, policies, and practices of settler political and bureaucratic leadership from the 1940s to the 1970s. I argue that Ottawa’s policy of integration, despite settler pronouncements of its break from the past, represented a profound continuity of settler desires for Indigenous erasure and White settler power. As a result, many settler politicians and department officials chose willful blindness to First Nations’ assertions of their Indigenous or treaty rights to health care—deemed to be threats to the status quo. In their place, settler leadership drew on racialized myths of First Nations landlessness and “a primitive unproductive” culture to claim exclusive sovereignty, to “justify” settler incursion, and to offer access to settler health care systems on settler terms. Ultimately, Ottawa’s approach produced a system of profound harm. It left Ottawa’s Indian Health Service unprioritized and underfunded, its mandate unwanted by provincial governments, and its policies the target of resistance from many First Nations individuals and communities. My dissertation joins with a rising number of health care historians who recognize that the history of settler-colonialism and systemic racism is a necessary addition to the history of health care in Canada. Specifically, my research will result in a richer understanding of how racialization continued to impact First Nations access to health care during a political period in Canadian history when overt racial discrimination was no longer sanctioned and details how settler efforts to develop policy in “First Nations best interests” operated largely to serve settler aims.
Fathers, Sons, and Hippies: Changes in American Blues in the 1960s and its Connection to the Counterculture
(University of Waterloo, 2023-09-05) Gingerich, Joel; Hunt, Andrew
This thesis examines the changing landscape of American blues music in the 1960s as well as the blues’ connection to the 1960s counterculture. This paper makes frequent use of oral histories from musicians and counterculture members. It also uses underground press publications to gauge the perceptions and opinions of the counterculture with respect to blues music. This project traces the journey of mid-century blues players from the Deep South up to northern industrial cities while arguing that commercialism and professionalism was a major part of their careers. This project then explores the younger generation of blues musicians (those born in the 1930s and early-1940s) as they developed relationships with the older generation of mid-century blues players. The younger generation, using a wide variety of influences, developed a new, energized subgenre of the blues during the 1960s. Older blues musicians in Chicago generously shared their music with younger musicians, both Black and White, while forming close, familial relationships with each other and sustaining the genre through the 1960s. Largely through the efforts of several notable blues artists, the genre became popular in White American circles. The mixed-race Paul Butterfield Blues Band largely increased the blues’ popularity with White people and the counterculture. While early-1960s White blues fans were largely members of the folk revival, valuing only acoustic Black country blues, the counterculture largely embraced the blues in all its forms by the late-1960s. Unlike the folk revivalists, the counterculture did not demand Black blues artists play folk-blues, and instead valued electric blues, albeit some problematic perceptions remained throughout the 1960s. The counterculture embraced blues music for many reasons. The genre was a basis for other popular genres like rock, it could be adapted and appropriated to fit countercultural views, and it was a method of rejecting the mainstream. The counterculture also developed a progressive blues cultural, using the blues to demonstrate solidarity with Black civil rights advocates. Blues musicians from Chicago found unprecedented popularity within the counterculture and greatly influenced countercultural musicians. Blues musicians likewise embraced the counterculture, adopting subversive lifestyles and incorporating countercultural motifs in their music by the mid-1960s. The paper concludes with a discussion of post-1960s blues, arguing against the myth that the blues stagnated and vanished since the end of the 1960s.
“The Art of Getting Drunk:” Martial Masculinity, Alcohol, and the British Army in the Canadas in the War of 1812
(University of Waterloo, 2023-02-14) Abbott, Jesse; Roberts, Julia
This thesis argues that alcohol consumption, both real and perceived, played a key role in the construction and negotiation of masculine identities within the British army in the Canadas during the early nineteenth century. Officers in particular proved their manliness and constructed their dual gentleman-officer identity not only by fighting well, but also by socializing and drinking well; by demonstrating what the famous moral essayist, Dr. Samuel Johnson, called “skill in inebriation,” or the “art of getting drunk.” An officer’s capability or skill in drinking with his fellow gentlemen-officers denoted manliness, while habitual or public drunkenness had the opposite effect. His polite consumption in both public and private social settings defined him as a gentleman, while his strong consumption on the battlefield fortified his constitution and facilitated his performance as a warrior. His heavy consumption with peers established his place within a hierarchy of manliness, and his condemnation of the propensity for drink and the drunken comportment of his perceived social inferiors established his position atop larger gendered, classed, and racialized hierarchies in colonial society. Officers constructed their own masculine identity in direct relation to those with whom they interacted, specifically enlisted soldiers (and NCOs), Indigenous allies, and American enemies, and these constructions were heavily informed by early nineteenth century perceptions of alcohol.
Another Life, Another World: The Spiritual Origins of Spaceflight
(University of Waterloo, 2023-01-26) Snopek, Ryan; Statiev, Alexander
This work reassesses the origins of the idea of humanity’s destiny in outer space, examining the development of popular enthusiasm about extraterrestrial life and reincarnation in Europe and America from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. It connects popular interest in the afterlife to transcendental and spiritualistic perceptions of outer space, which originated as mystical and theological ideas which over the course of the nineteenth century became increasingly secular and scientific. The result was a utopian view of humanity’s future on other planets, one which transformed from the spiritual to the physical and inspired early rocket pioneers to seriously theorise and advocate for spaceflight, leading to the ultimate achievement of this goal in the 1960s.
The Red Road to Victory: Soviet Combat Training 1917-1945
(University of Waterloo, 2023-01-20) Parkhomenko, Anton; Statiev, Alexander
This thesis provides a comprehensive account of early Soviet combat training and its associated attitudes from 1917 to 1945. From its inception in 1918 and throughout the evolution of Soviet military doctrine and practice, the Red Army paid insufficient attention to existing and growing deficiencies in military training. Due to a combination of Bolshevik ideology, leftover Imperial Russian influences, and unique historical circumstances, Soviet leaders – both deliberately and accidentally – embraced a military culture based on amateurism and dilettantism. The military leadership’s systemic oversights regarding combat training and military professionalism undermined the tactical combat capacity of the Soviet Armed Forces in the short and long term. While Joseph Stalin’s dictatorial policies had a negative impact on combat training during the 1930s, they merely exacerbated an existing crisis that began with the formation of the Soviet state in 1917. Despite periodic efforts to remedy this problem, military reformists largely failed to overcome the formidable institutional forces that continue to advance a harmful military culture on combat training to the present day. This study also provides valuable historical context to a similar crisis in combat training faced by the Russian Armed Forces during their ongoing invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Stand Fast for Peace & Freedom: A Study of Foreign Policy of the British Labour Party in Opposition 1931 to 1940
(University of Waterloo, 2022-11-21) Cater, Evan; Gorman, Daniel
This thesis examines the evolution of foreign policy within the British Labour Party during its years in opposition from 1931 to 1940. It argues that Labour policy was locked in a bitter divide between idealist and pragmatic forces who both sought a foreign policy which could effectively counter the spread of fascism. In 1933 Labour had a radical turn towards a policy of war resistance and abandoned hope in multilateralism after witnessing the failure of the World Disarmament Conference. Labour would undertake a long and difficult process of gradually shifting away from this radical turn first by trying to revive its faith in collective security through the League of Nations and later by accepting rearmament and a return to the traditional balance of power system. Labour policy reached a turning point in 1938 when it found an honourable cause to defend Czechoslovakian democracy from the reach of Adolf Hitler. It was able to galvanise cross-party support and generate significant public sympathy for its hostility to Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. This stand against the Prime Minister, while unsuccessful, laid the foundation for Labour to return to Government in 1940 during a period of national emergency. The lessons learned from these experiences allowed the Party to help shape the postwar world after it secured a majority Government in 1945.
Orphans and Vulnerable Children: An Analysis Surrounding Jamaica, 1800-1852 with Case Studies
(University of Waterloo, 2022-09-13) Amodeo, Allyson; Gorman, Dan
This article traces the experiences of orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) during the British slave trade between 1800-1852, while looking specifically at connections to Jamaica. The British set out to colonize, ‘civilize,’ and control Black parents, children, and bodies throughout Jamaica, as particularly shown through enslavement practices and governmental regulations implemented that impacted notions of safety, protection, and autonomy for Black families. Such practices and regulations changed and evolved as abolition, apprenticeship, and emancipation came into effect. Although the legal landscape was changing, the horrific systemic abuse against Black people remained the same. Yet, there is evidence that even within that broad system of British-implemented and enforced control, there were frequent moments of collective care, resistance, and bonds formed between both kin and fictive kin within Black communities. Although Empire, in general, tended to silence voices of the subaltern, and especially their children, this thesis explores the ways in which members of those communities shaped that control and fought to be heard.

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