This chapter explores the cultural reception of Pablo Neruda in China and Japan. Between 1949 and 1979, Neruda was among the most translated foreign writers in China, playing an essential role as a cultural diplomat for the Chinese government. In addition, he established a friendship with the poet Ai Qing (1910–1996), and their memory is still remembered through Ai Qing’s son Ai Weiwei (1957–), one of the most famous Chinese artists and activists today. Compared with his popularity in China, Neruda never received much critical attention in Japan. After World War II, the US occupation forced Japan to unwillingly become the centerpiece for America’s Cold War strategy in East Asia. Although the country never embraced communism as a significant political force, the essay argues that contemporary Japanese artists such as Taeko Tomiyama (1921–2021) and Nobu Takehisa (1940–) found inspiration in Neruda’s work regarding literature, art, politics, and nature in Latin America.

Written in February 2025, well after the completion of the monograph, the epilogue reflects on the fall of the Assad regime as a historic rupture while acknowledging the uncertainty of Syria’s post-revolutionary trajectory. While revolutionary ideals have been reaffirmed in historical narratives, their translation into governance, justice, and political inclusion remains unresolved. New actors now compete to define Syria’s future, shaping its ideological and institutional landscape. The chapter highlights how discursive battles over key political concepts – such as democracy, secularism, and governance – mirror a broader crisis of democracy, where increasingly questioned. It argues that the post-Assad moment has not ended Syria’s struggle for meaning but has transformed it into a contest over the principles that will shape the new order. The epilogue concludes that while something undeniably good has happened – the fall of a brutal dictatorship – the revolution’s aspirations remain incomplete. The task ahead is not to declare its success but to create the conditions in which its meaning continues to unfold.

The history of development and structure of various musical compositions and adaptations from 1969 onward of aspects of Pablo Neruda’s Canto general is examined in three exemplary cases: Aparcoa’s “musical poetic work,” first performed in 1970; the Canto general oratorio composed in 1972–80 by Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis; and the “Alturas” (“Heights of Macchu Picchu”) work by Los Jaivas, composed in 1980–81. These musical compositions and adaptations, as well as their performance, broaden out the ways in which new generations interpret and frame Neruda’s life and works. They are also aspects of Neruda’s “cultural afterlife,” while being new creations, as words, within the sphere of music.

Food security is a common term within the region, but its meaning is unclear. This chapter argues that the term is a means to demarcate the Gulf’s access to food from the rest of the region; it submits it as a form of biopolitics that rationalises circulation, access and consumption. It shows how food imports are central to economic growth and development and how this is managed by governments. It also argues that food security is a basis for political legitimacy and the identification of problem and solution is a performative act.

Chapter Five delves into one of the major aspects of the Ottoman response to Safavid actions and actors, in both ideological and practical realms: encouraging migration from Safavid lands. Examining numerous cases involving both well-known and lesser-known individuals and groups who were receptive to the Ottoman invitation, this chapter addresses two key questions. (1) To what extent and how did Istanbul and its agents actively strive to directly engage with Safavid subjects, especially as a response to ongoing Safavid propaganda within Ottoman territories and its resonance among local sympathizers? (2) To what extent did Safavid immigrants contribute to the evolution, articulation, and dissemination of an official narrative that increasingly leaned toward a pro-Sunni and anti-Qizilbash/Shiʿi/Safavid stance in the sixteenth century? From the perspective of the Ottoman state, communication with Safavid subjects counteracted the Safavid court’s efforts to garner sympathy and support for its ideological agenda in Ottoman territory. From the viewpoint of Safavid subjects, this communication represented a significant avenue by which they hoped to alleviate the political, religious, or financial challenges they faced under Safavid rule in Iran.

Chapter 9 reflects on the three major mechanisms of authoritarian resilience – ideas, institutions, and repression/cheating – in light of the current debate about the state of liberal democracy in Europe and the United States.

In the 1880s, there was a growing interest in duplicating the success of the Suez Canal in Central America. As the French under Ferdinand de Lesseps’ leadership championed the Panama Canal, the United States had its eyes set on constructing a canal through Nicaragua that beckoned as the answer to the U.S. maritime and naval ambitions. Espousing ideals of liberal nation-making, Nicaragua sought to annex the Reserve to the Republic in 1894 and fulfill its vision of unbroken sovereignty from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Yet the crisis was also an internal one within the Mosquito Kingdom, pitting reserve “Indians” against non-Reserve Miskitus and reviving again the question of racial legitimacy of the Mosquito Reserve government. This chapter delves into this thorny crisis – also known as the “incorporation” of the Mosquito Reserve – to illuminate the violence that lay behind the dream of the interoceanic Nicaragua Canal and to show the centrality of the canal to geopolitical identity – both of the Republic of Nicaragua and post-Civil War United States. In the end, this chapter argues, the pursuit of the Nicaragua Canal was predicated on the elimination of the Mosquito autonomous territory.