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open access

Fortification Renaissance: the Roman Origins of the Trace Italienne

Description: The Military Revolution thesis posited by Michael Roberts and expanded upon by Geoffrey Parker places the trace italienne style of fortification of the early modern period as something that is a novel creation, borne out of the minds of Renaissance geniuses. Research shows, however, that the key component of the trace italienne, the angled bastion, has its roots in Greek and Roman writing, and in extant constructions by Roman and Byzantine engineers. The angled bastion of the trace italienne … more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Vigus, Robert T.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Ho Chi Minh Trail and Operation Commando Hunt: the Failure of an Aerial Interdiction Campaign

Description: In November 1968, the United States 7th Air Force began a year-round bombing campaign of southeastern Laos to slow the infiltration of Vietnamese troops and supplies into South Vietnam. Despite the massive amount of bombs dropped, the campaigns of Operation Commando Hunt were unable to stop the Communists from sending men and materiel down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to support their operations in the south. This thesis seeks to show that President Lyndon Johnson's decision to stop bombing North Vi… more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Ha, Dong Nguyen
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Ruinous Pride: The Construction of the Scottish Military Identity, 1745-1918

Description: Following the failed Jacobite Rebellion of 1745-46 many Highlanders fought for the British Army in the Seven Years War and American Revolutionary War. Although these soldiers were primarily motivated by economic considerations, their experiences were romanticized after Waterloo and helped to create a new, unified Scottish martial identity. This militaristic narrative, reinforced throughout the nineteenth century, explains why Scots fought and died in disproportionately large numbers during the … more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Matheson, Calum Lister
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Beyond the Cabinet: Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Expansion of the National Security Adviser Position

Description: The argument illustrated in the thesis outlines Zbigniew Brzezinski’s ability to manipulate himself and his agenda to top priority as the national security advisor to President Carter. It further argues that Brzezinski deserves more blame for the failure of American foreign policy towards Iran; not President Carter. The sources include primary sources such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and President Jimmy Carter’s memoirs as well as information from President Carter’s library in Atlanta, Georgia. Seco… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: McLean, Erika
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

William's America: Royal Perspective and Centralization of the English Atlantic

Description: William III, Prince of Orange, ascended the throne of England after the English Glorious Revolution of 1688. The next year, the American colonists rebelled against colonial administrations in the name of their new king. This thesis examines William's perception of these rebellions and the impact his perception had on colonial structures following the Glorious Revolution. Identifying William's modus operandi—his habit of acceding to other's political choices for expediency until decisive action … more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Woodlock, Kylie Michelle
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Ethnogenesis and Captivity: Structuring Transatlantic Difference in the Early Republic, 1776-1823

Description: This study seeks to understand the development of early American ideas of race, religion, and gender as reflected in Indian and Barbary captivity narratives (tales of individuals taken captive by privateers in North Africa) and in plays that take American captives as their subject. Writers of both Indian and Barbary captivity narratives used racial and religious language – references to Indians and North Africans as demonic, physically monstrous, and animal – simultaneously to delineate Native… more
Date: August 2013
Creator: Siddiqi, M. Omar
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Cattle Capitol: Misrepresented Environments, Nineteenth Century Symbols of Power, and the Construction of the Texas State House, 1879-1888

Description: State officials, between 1882 and 1888, exchanged three million acres of Texas Panhandle property for construction of the monumental Capitol that continues to house Texas government today. The project and the land went to a Chicago syndicate led by men influential in business and politics. The red granite Austin State House is a recognizable symbol of Texas around the world. So too, the massive tract given in exchange for the building, what became the "fabulous" XIT Ranch, also has come to symb… more
Date: May 2011
Creator: Miller, Michael M.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Cultural Exchange: the Role of Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre’s 1923 and 1924 American Tours

Description: The following is a historical analysis on the Moscow Art Theatre’s (MAT) tours to the United States in 1923 and 1924, and the developments and changes that occurred in Russian and American theatre cultures as a result of those visits. Konstantin Stanislavsky, the MAT’s co-founder and director, developed the System as a new tool used to help train actors—it provided techniques employed to develop their craft and get into character. This would drastically change modern acting in Russia, the Unite… more
Date: August 2014
Creator: Brooks, Cassandra M.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Civil Liberties and National Unity: Reaction to the Sedition Act in the Southern States, 1798

Description: The traditional narrative of political party development in the United States of America during the latter half of the 1790s ascribes the decline in popularity of the Federalist Party in the Election of 1800 to that party's passage of controversial legislation, specifically the Sedition Act of 1798, prior to the election. Between the passage of the Sedition Act and the Election of 1800, however, the midterm elections of 1798-1799 transpired and resulted in a significant increase in Federalist p… more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Robinson, Sarah Elizabeth
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Revolution in Warfare? the Army of the Sambre and Meuse and the 1794 Fleurus Campaign

Description: During the War of the First Coalition, the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, commanded by Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, played the decisive role against Coalition forces in the Low Countries. Created in June 1794, the army defeated the Allies at the battle of Second Fleurus on 26 June 1794 and commenced the Coalition’s retreat to the Rhine River. At the end of the year, Jourdan led the army to winter quarters along the left bank of the Rhine and achieved France’s historically momentous “natural frontier… more
Date: August 2012
Creator: Hayworth, Jordan R.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Culture and Self-Representation in the Este Court: Ercole Strozzi's Funeral Elegy of Eleonora of Aragon, a Text, Translation, and Commentary.

Description: This dissertation presents a previously unedited text by one of the most distinguished- yet neglected-Latin writers of the Italian Renaissance, Ercole Strozzi (1471-1508), a poet and administrator in the court of Ferrara. Under the Este Dukes, Ferrara became a major center of literary and artistic patronage. The Latin literary output of the court, however, has received insufficient scholarly scrutiny. The text is a verse funeral elegy of Eleonora of Aragon (1450-1493), the first Duchess of Ferr… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Cassella, Dean Marcel
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Nathanael Greene and the Myth of the Valiant Few

Description: Nathan Greene is the Revolutionary Warfare general most associated with unconventional warfare. The historiography of the southern campaign of the revolution uniformly agrees he was a guerrilla leader. Best evidence shows, however, that Nathanael Greene was completely conventional -- that his strategy, operations, tactics, and logistics all strongly resembled that of Washington in the northern theater and of the British commanders against whom he fought in the south. By establishing that Gre… more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Smith, David R.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Fashioning Society in Eighteenth-century British Jamaica

Description: White women who inhabited the West Indies in the eighteenth century fascinated the metropole. In popular prints, novels, and serial publications, these women appeared to stray from “proper” British societal norms. Inhabiting a space dominated by a tropical climate and the presence of a large enslaved African population opened white women to censure. Almost from the moment of colonial encounter, they were perceived not as proper British women but as an imperial “other,” inhabiting a middle space… more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Northrop, Chloe Aubra
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Origins of Roman Infantry Equipment: Innovation and Celtic Influence

Description: The Romans were known for taking technology and advancements from other peoples they encountered and making them their own. This pattern holds true in military affairs; indeed, little of the Roman military was indigenously developed. This dissertation looks at the origins of the Roman's mainline weapons systems from the beginning of Roman Republic expansion in the fourth century BC to the abandonment of Western-style armaments in favor of Eastern style ones beginning in the late-third century A… more
Date: December 2019
Creator: Martin, Ian A.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Hungering for Independence: The Relationship between Food and Morale in the Continental Army, 1775-1783

Description: An adequate supply of the right kinds of foods is critical to an army's success on the march and on the battlefield. Good food supplies and a dire lack of provisions have profound effects on the regulation, confidence, esprit de corps, and physical state of an army. The American War of Independence (1775-1783) provides a challenging case study of this principle. The relationship between food and troop morale has been previously discussed as just one of many factors that contributed to the succe… more
Date: May 2016
Creator: Maxwell, Nancy Kouyoumjian
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Economic Mobility into the Planter Class in Texas, 1846-1860

Description: This study examines upward economic mobility into the planter class in Texas during the antebellum statehood period, 1846-1860. Using quantitative methods to analyze data from census and tax records, this study addresses several questions regarding the property owning experience of Texas planters. Did any of the 1860 planters, men or women, rise to that status from another class? If so, how many rose from small slaveholder or small planter origins, and how many advanced from plain folk origins?… more
Date: December 2011
Creator: Nelson, Robert Nicholas
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Conquering the Natural Frontier: French Expansion to the Rhine River During the War of the First Coalition, 1792-1797

Description: After conquering Belgium and the Rhineland in 1794, the French Army of the Sambre and Meuse faced severe logistical, disciplinary, and morale problems that signaled the erosion of its capabilities. The army’s degeneration resulted from a revolution in French foreign policy designed to conquer the natural frontiers, a policy often falsely portrayed as a diplomatic tradition of the French monarchy. In fact, the natural frontiers policy – expansion to the Rhine, the Pyrenees, and the Alps – emerge… more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Hayworth, Jordan R.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Collective Security and Coalition: British Grand Strategy, 1783-1797

Description: On 1 February 1793, the National Convention of Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands, expanding the list of France's enemies in the War of the First Coalition. Although British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger had predicted fifteen years of peace one year earlier, the French declaration of war initiated nearly a quarter century of war between Britain and France with only a brief respite during the Peace of Amiens. Britain entered the war amid both a nad… more
Date: May 2017
Creator: Jarrett, Nathaniel
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

"On the Precipice in the Dark": Maryland in the Secession Crisis, 1860-1861

Description: This dissertation is a study of the State of Maryland in the secession crisis of 1860-1861. Previous historians have emphasized economic, political, societal, and geographical considerations as the reasons Maryland remained loyal to the Union. However, not adequately considered is the manner in which Maryland understood and reacted to the secession of the Lower South. Historians have tended to portray Maryland's inaction as inevitable and reasonable. This study offers another reason for Mary… more
Date: May 2017
Creator: Hamilton, Matthew K.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Southern Attitudes Toward the West, 1783 to 1803

Description: This dissertation argues that the strong relationship that historians see between the South and West in the early 19th century, which allowed them to form what scholars have termed the Old South, had its origins in the twenty-year period after the American Revolution when a group of far-sighted southerners worked to form a political bond between the two regions. They did so by tirelessly defending the West and westerners against political and economic attacks, often from northerners but someti… more
Date: May 2011
Creator: Zemler, Jeffrey Allen
Partner: UNT Libraries
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