This chapter introduces the main themes and arguments of the book. It opens by introducing the Church of God (Seventh Day) and its offshoots in the frontierlands of Gambella, and the preoccupation of Nuer Messianics with truth and biblical authenticity. It then discusses why and how exploring the ideas and practices of Nuer Messianics in the Ethiopia-South Sudan borderlands contributes to the study of religious mediation and to the literatures on African born-again Christianity, African Judaising movements, and spiritual life in Ethiopia and South Sudan.

Profiling as Policy

At the height of the Non-Cooperation movement in 1921, supporters of the Congress harassed six men – all of them labourers – trying to enter a toddy shop in Vellandivalasu, Salem district. The violence was enough to deter four of the men, who promptly turned away from the premises. However, Innasi Muthu and Sowariappan were determined to have their drink that day. Leaving the establishment later, Sowariappan was ‘garlanded and beaten with a shoe, and Innasi Muthu was garlanded and slapped on the cheeks’. The latter was reportedly so furious that he would have whipped out a knife in self-defence but for the number of assailants. Filtered through the perspective of colonial officials, this account noted that Innasi Muthu and Sowariappan were Dalit Christians and sympathised with the drinking public for the caste violence they had had to endure owing to Congress nationalism.

Excise records surfaced a distinctive administrative term towards the end of the nineteenth century: ‘the drinking public’. Akin to ‘the criminal tribes’, the term circulated through repeated usage, so much so that official correspondences often did not elaborate any further on the subject. As we have seen, drinkers came from every strata of society and drinking in public triggered a great deal of alarm. However, the drinking public meant something entirely different and very particular. Erected at the intersection of caste, class and gender identities, it referred to working-class men drawn from the lowest caste communities. In the Presidency of Fort St George, it also included tribal communities from the Nilgiris whom the state defined by their economic role as servants of the resident European community.

This chapter explores how effectively the energy-development nexus contributed to the coherence and consistency of the overall EU foreign policy. It suggests that energy sectors in developing countries and development policy in general have two key features in common: capacity building and sustainability. The chapter contributes to the burgeoning interest in the area by assessing the role of energy in Africa (subsistence, climate change and export potential). It looks in detail at the extant energy-development policy nexus within EU-ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) development strategies such as the Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES), and the role of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). In its market aspects, energy is a core shared competence, where the EU implements market mechanisms to encourage liberal trade and enhanced competition. The chapter concludes by considering the overall impact that development and energy security have upon the coherence and consistency of EU foreign policy.

The first decade of the 2000s was characterised by a number of important changes in the foreign aid policy of the European Union (EU). This chapter explores the potential trade-offs between donor coordination and recipient ownership in the EU aid relations with sub-Saharan Africa. It provides a concise discussion of the global agenda on aid effectiveness, focusing on the tensions between coordination and ownership. The chapter analyses the supranational programme managed by the European Commission within the context of the Cotonou Agreement. It pays attention to the degree of involvement of actors in the negotiations of two series of multi-annual development strategies. The chapter argues that the preoccupation of the EU (particularly the European Commission) with improving the quality of EU aid by emphasising donor coordination has fatally resulted in reduced ownership by African countries.

This chapter puts geography center-stage and recreates a fuller spatial picture of the multiracial character of Sancho’s eighteenth-century London, from the granular level of buildings and streets, to neighborhoods and regions in the city, to the capital’s myriad international connections. The portrait that emerges shows that, despite the fact Sancho was distinctive and remarkable, he was no island. He lived a London life intimately connected to numerous overlapping worlds. He was a shopkeeper in a consumer-orientated city economy; a participant in the “proto-democracy” pioneered in the heart of the Westminster “court” where urban development and political citizenship were newly entangled; a figure whose social connections were enabled by physically traversing the city’s spaces as well as corresponding from distance; and a husband and father whose familial ties shed light on the depth, diversity, and geographic range of the Black urban presence.

The Framers’ overarching theories for the control of faction included representation as a filter of popular passions, union, and an extended republic to limit the influence of factions by multiplying the number of distinct and competing interests, and divided sovereignty between the state and national governments. The theory of representation was familiar from their British heritage, but their theories of an extended republic and divided sovereignty between the national and state governments diverged from accepted political principles of the eighteenth century.

With the combined experience of an abuse of power by the British monarch and an absence of executive authority under the Articles of Confederation, the Framers faced the challenge of establishing an executive authority of effective, yet limited, powers. It was generally agreed that the role of the executive was limited to the execution of the laws enacted by Congress, but the number of executives, the manner of selection, and length of tenure in office were considered important to restraining factions.