In order to situate the women who worked in royal and aristocratic households in their proper context, the first chapter explores household composition, demonstrating similarities of servant arrangements at all levels of elite society even though household size varied at different status gradations. Over time, households of every status level grew, offering further career opportunities, especially since elite households became more welcoming to women in the late fourteenth century, even though throughout the Middle Ages they remained almost exclusively male domains. This chapter argues that female servants gained their positions through kinship and patronage opportunities that favored their placement and promotion. In investigating the qualities that employers desired in their servants, I contend that they chose attendants who demonstrated useful skills, good character, and pleasing appearance. This chapter reveals that turnover occurred due to death, retirement, marriage (which did not necessitate retirement), dismissal, or transition to different households, and seems to have been a frequent aspect of life for a lady-in-waiting, yet I also assert that a minority of attendants served their ladies for long durations, at least a decade or more.

Recent decades have been characterized by the growth of diverse religious movements among both Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians. The various haredi sects have grown rapidly and strive to be autonomous enclaves, religious nationalists have successfully colonized the West Bank, and the ‘repentance movement’ struck roots among Mizrachim. Mystical movements have also flourished and pilgrimages to saints’ tombs extensively practiced. These diverse movements interact and some young haredim also leave their enclaves to join secular society. Among Israeli Palestinians, the ‘religious turn’ has also been significant, and the Islamic Movement has grown in size and influence.

The Mughals tried their hand at empire building twice in early modern south Asia. The first attempt in the early sixteenth century was thwarted by a resurgence of Afghan power in north India. Following a brief hiatus, the second – and more successful – attempt ensued in the mid-sixteenth century under the rule of the third emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605). During the half-century of his rule, Mughal armies conquered most of north India and started expanding fur-ther towards the south, north-west and east. The war in the south consumed much of Mughal energy under his successors for the next hundred years and brought most of the Indian pen-insula under imperial control by the early eighteenth century. In contrast, several wars in the north-west and the east consumed many imperial resources without bringing much lasting ter-ritorial gain. The present chapter focuses on the evolving nature of strategy that went into the making of this vast empire. It discusses the ways in which imperial armies negotiated various types of adversary, the different motivations behind military expeditions, the methods of mili-tary planning and mobilisation, and finally the kind of political expansion all of this brought about. Reflecting on contemporary imperial texts that serve as our main historical sources today, it also seeks to understand their cultural politics as well as the nature of strategic objectives they fulfilled within the political milieu where they were written and circulated. The chapter especially seeks to understand the role of strategy both in the military success that Mughal armies met with in most of south Asia and in the multiple failures that they encountered, especially on its north-western and eastern frontiers. In the process, it shows how Mughal strategy was neither frozen in time nor isolated in its existence. Rather, the c hapter highlights the changing nature of Mughal strategy and how it constantly evolved through its interactions with diplomacy, warfare, ideology, environment, culture and resource mobilisation.

Hume endorsed the long-standing belief that our mental and physical faculties are more or less equal at birth until distinguished by education. He was not an egalitarian, however; there would always be rich and poor, and property rights trumped compassion for the poor. Nevertheless, Hume strongly opposed the ‘utility of poverty’ doctrine as a hindrance to economic growth. Hume sought to raise the standard of living of the lower classes and to expand the ‘middle station’ of merchants and manufacturers. In several of his essays, he identified policies for trade and taxes to achieve these ends. In Britain, it was clear to Hume that commerce and trade, particularly of cloth, had already enabled labourers to lift themselves out of poverty through the acquisition of skills, and that this upward path might continue indefinitely. Hume’s desire to reduce the inequality of income was motivated by utilitarian ends: a more prosperous labouring class would result in a happier nation, not only because of the larger basket of goods in the household but also because citizens would become more law-abiding and thus promote representative government and political stability. Global prosperity would ensue as other nations became trading partners.

Modern Hebrew was invented among Eastern European Jews as part of the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century nationalist development, and it became a cardinal feature of the Zionist Movement. Hebrew became the language of the small Jewish community in Palestine, and following 1948, immigrants to Israel were trained in the language. A thriving spoken and written Hebrew culture emerged. Hebrew is the language of Israeli pop music, and three genres – nationalist ballads, rock, and musica mizrachit – compete for popularity. Hebrew is challenged by the global power of English as a dominant language.

Chapter 9, Where and how to place (June 8 - June 13) the question of the placement of the government loan comes front and center. Since the second BIS loan to ANB is conditional upon the placement of the bond loan, the National Bank is increasingly under pressure and the money supply has increased as it has rediscounted for the Credit Anstalt. The CA has no more solid collateral and ANB is losing foreign exchange at an increasing rate. Meantime, Hungary is also suffering from capital flight and the nervousness over contagion and the psychology of the crisis is increasing. The conflicts between the Austrian government and the central banks increases and information is still very hard to come by, all of which contributes to the uncertainty of the situation.

The Forty-Years War in Afghanistan has defied many expectations. Approaching the war as a forty-year strategic interaction, this chapter illustrates the interdependence of the strategic practices – using, creating and controlling force – and show how practising strategy in one way influences the strategic interaction of the ensuing phase of the war. The war in Afghanistan can be divided into a Soviet phase, a civil war phase and a Western phase. During each of these phases of the war, the use of force varied across changing political ends as well as the flux of circumstance and opportunity. Actors sided with former enemies, loyalties shifted, but the fighting continued as generations of young, mainly Afghan men were introduced to the hardship of war. War as a constant companion to everyday Afghan life for the past four decades also illustrates the old strategic adage that it is easier to start a war than to end it.

The Serbian strategy of war crimes to achieve a new state project formed the core of the Yugoslav War. Neighbourhood adversaries also committed atrocities in response. International engagement and humanitarian concern had to find ways to oppose both the aims and the means of the Serbian project and, in a subsidiary way, the worst of the local adversaries’ actions. International operations were as far apart in character from those of the Serbian project as could be. In the end, the strategy of war crimes backfired, as it prompted significant engagement to stop the Serbian project and led to the creation of the Yugoslavia Tribunal, where many senior figures were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Chapter 4 discusses the attitudes and reactions of the public toward the topic of restitution, focusing on the role of the press and various political and social organizations who supported, opposed, or publicly discussed a complete and rapid restitution of Jewish property and restoration of their rights.

This chapter explores the reception of David Hume’s Essays in eighteenth-century Britain by linking computational methods of text reuse detection with more traditional approaches to the history of ideas. We find that many of Hume’s essays were frequently reprinted individually, in whole and in part, including in anthologies, grammars, style guides, and collections such as The Philosophical Dictionary, where editors often moulded for their readers what they took Hume’s message to be. As the century drew to a close, Hume’s essays were firmly integrated into the diverse landscape of eighteenth-century British literary culture. We reveal which essays underwent the most extensive reuse, carefully analysing them based on their respective collections and as individual titles. We find that, just because Hume ‘withdrew’ an essay from his collection, it did not necessarily mean it was withdrawn from the public eye. Several essays by Hume experienced evolving life cycles, and numerous authors incorporated his texts discreetly, some without explicitly acknowledging their use. Taking Hume’s essays as a whole, the range of topics and venues involved in the history of their eighteenth-century reuses is striking. Our story includes not only prominent political and economic thinkers, historians, philosophers, lawyers and clergy but also scores of hack writers, anonymous authors and a range of publishers, editors and compilers. The chapter demonstrates how a more comprehensive grasp of the reception of Hume’s Essays in eighteenth-century Britain accommodates all these facets.