This chapter concentrates on the painful zigzag course of Jewish emancipation during the first half of the nineteenth century. It begins with the Prussian legislation of 1812, with special emphasis on the attitude of the national-liberal movement in the various parts of Germany with regard to emancipation but also to other relevant issues of the time. It then tells of the emerging new kind of antisemitism at the time, beginning with Fichte’s ambivalence, through Wilhelm von Humboldt’s principled stand on equality and the outright antisemites, Fries and Rühs. The upheavals known as the Hep-Hep attacks on the Jews in 1819 are then briefly described, followed by quotes regarding ongoing integration in the following decades. Finally, the ambivalent situation of young Jewish scholars, who could now study at the best institutions, but were refused academic posts, is described through the biography of Eduard Gans and the changing fortunes of the young Heinrich Heine.

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) exists as a lonely island in a sea of corporate sugarcane. Standing at the gates of CIAT outside Palmira, Colombia, one absorbs the contrast between the research orientation of the CGIAR’s global food system model and the reality of corporate monoculture. This chapter situates CIAT’s history globally and locally. It introduces Colombian precursors, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Colombian Agricultural Program (1950–64), and the pivot to globally oriented international agricultural research centres in the 1960s. It contextualizes how CIAT came into existence amid broader Cold War and Green Revolution transitions. Just as scholars of the Colombian conflict have examined the effect of “deterritorialization” in the intensification of conflict, the chapter shows how the CGIAR network further internationalized and detached agricultural science from local contexts and applications. Paradoxically, despite the Green Revolution’s well-known Cold War geopolitical aspects, the creation of CIAT and CGIAR inadvertently contributed to the specific geographic, political, and economic conditions that fed armed conflict in Colombia.

I introduce the topic, theme, central argument of the study, and its setting in Gulf petro-monarchies. I discuss the relevant scholarly literature, especially as it concerns ways in which religion (and specifically, Islam) has been used by political actors to advance particular interests. I provide a detailed elaboration of the argument and its various parts, as well as the method of analysis and justification for the choice of cases. I then discuss the context and cases in greater detail, with attention to key features of the historical development of the petro-monarchies from their pre-oil contact with the British imperial power, the arrival of oil companies, the importation of labor, the definition of borders and emergence of “modern” states. I illustrate noteworthy structural peculiarities of each of the four states. Finally, I outline the architecture of the manuscript, with an overview of each chapter.

The Introduction gives a brief account of Bartolus’s life, explains the world of medieval law in which he worked, and then explains the political context of the northern and central Italian city republics for which he worked, and whose problems he sought to analyse. It explains that tyranny was Bartolus’s main preoccupation, even in the two treatises ostensibly concerned with other questions. It then presents the main arguments of his three political treatises and Bartolus’s main political theory in his academic legal commentaries, and describes the later influence of these treatises in European political theory. The Introduction also argues that Bartolus conceived of these three treatises as one composite treatment of tyranny.

In this chapter, the historiography of international law in East Asia is approached and critiqued as a tale of two centrisms, i.e. Sinocentrism and Eurocentrism. The historiography of international law in the region prior to the ‘encounter’ between East Asia and Europe has been largely Sinocentric. It is suggested that the traditional East Asian order be reinterpreted through the concept of ‘asymmetrical mutuality’ under which the regional actors of differentiated subjectivity were able to reconcile and manage their diverging interests through the crucial intermediary of diplomatic rituals. The historiography of the post-‘encounter’ period can be characterised as Eurocentric, being premised on the overwhelming positional superiority of Europe over East Asia. This traditional narrative is critically revisited (again) through the prism of ‘asymmetrical mutuality’. Despite Europe’s overwhelming dominance, East Asians articulated a wide variety of responses to the onset of a new normative discourse claiming universal validity, demonstrating their agency (if restricted). Critical engagement with Eurocentrism in the historiography of international law, one of the core questions of today’s historiography of international law, inevitably gives rise to the question of how to view universality. As a cautionary tale from this region, an attempt in interwar Japan to construct its own historiography of international law and relations by rejecting the universality articulated by the West (a ‘historiography of Sonderweg’) is investigated. By way of conclusion, it is suggested that the history of international law be reconceived as the fusing together of diverse normative voices through an intersubjective dialogue based on mutual recognition, rather than as the self-realisation of a certain universalistic normative discourse.

Until recently, Gaza attracted little attention in historical scholarship. This volume innovates by examining late Ottoman Gaza’s diverse society, its built environment, and its political dynamics. The introduction sets the stage to better understand the vital contexts impacting the role and status of Gaza as compared to other cities in the Eastern Mediterranean, provides analyses and new resources for the study of late Ottoman Gaza, and presents state-of-the-art methodology in urban history as applied to Gaza.

The epilogue begins with a brief overview of the ebb and flow of state power at the Sino-Vietnamese border since the mid-1970s onward, revealing the patterns of state-society relations at the border during the decade-long conflict between the two countries and the ensuing era of rapprochement and reform, when the two states had to be “rebuilt,” again collaboratively. It then discusses the broad themes this book illuminates. The interaction between the Chinese and Vietnamese states on a daily basis underlines the significance of the mundane aspect of the territorialization of state and inter-state relations. The story told in this book highlights the necessity to examine the impacts of revolutionary ideology and the global Cold War on Asia against the broader political changes that Asian societies underwent, as well as the striking continuities in the objectives and strategies of state building in the modern era.

This chapter examines how borderlands state building backfired against the background of aggressive collectivization movements in the two counries from 1958 to 1964. During agricultural collectivization, state building by the two communist states at the border became increasingly coercive. The border people nevertheless sought to take advantage of the porous international boundary to resist state incursion by voting with their feet, making the extension of state authority and its functions a highly contested process. The years from 1958 to the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964 witnessed a widening gap between what the two centralizing governments sought to achieve at their shared border and the capabilities of the state organs stationed on the ground to pursue the diplomatic and state-building tasks assigned to them by the political centers. The famine caused by the Great Leap Forward drove an increasing number of unauthorized border crossings. The Vietnamese communists, who initiated their own cooperative movement in 1958, perceived the emerging chaos in China as detrimental to the consolidation of the DRV state. This severely tested the ability of the Chinese and Vietnamese local officials to enforce their recently established border control institutions, making this a prominent bilateral issue.

In this treatise Bartolus applies the Aristotelian schema of constitutions to the city republics of his own day and argues that for the smallest such cities, such as Perugia, where Bartolus lived and worked, the most appropriate form of government is ‘government by the people’ or regimen ad populum. He argues that aristocracy is preferable in larger cities such as Venice and Florence, and then corrects Giles of Rome’s universal endorsement of monarchy as the best constitution by limiting it to much larger political organizations which hold sway over other peoples. He argues that where monarchy is appropriate at all, elective monarchy is superior to hereditary, and established by law for the Roman empire and for the church. Bartolus uses Roman constitutional development as presented in the Roman law to exemplify the different systems of rule brought into being by the growth in numbers and influence of a people. He casts his treatise in part as a lawyer’s version of the Aristotelian constitutional analysis made popular by the theologian Giles of Rome. The concept of the common good is central to Bartolus’s treatment.

Chapter 2 tells the story of the conversion of the kings of Kongo. Nzinka a Nkuwu (King João) was baptised in 1491 but later apostatised and was succeeded by his son, King Afonso, who established an enduring Catholic dynasty in west central Africa. After acknowledging the significance of religious diplomacy, the chapter shows how the realm of immanent power was the most critical factor in the Kongo case. A close reading of the evidence indicates that the Portuguese or their ruler may have been considered to have a special association with the realm of the ancestors, while baptism was received as an initiation granting unusual powers, particularly in battle. This helps explain King João’s apostasy and is most apparent in the miraculous interpretation of the military victory that brought Afonso to the throne in 1506. However, it is also argued that conversion may have helped Afonso solidify his control of the religious field, as expressed in the iconoclastic sweeps that happened at several points in 1480–1530. The theme of cultural appeal is illustrated by a more general importation of the Portuguese culture by elites. Afonso is presented as a visionary with ambitions for societal recreation.

The imposition of ‘civilising measures’ in the context of a policy of indirect rule included reinforcing the position of the king while at the same time weakening and eventually destroying his symbolic power base. This led to a dramatic shift of authority, as did the imposition of central rule to the entire country and the introduction of a uniform and ‘rational’ administration, even where the kingdom had no historical presence or legitimacy. Together with this extension of the central kingdom’s reach, the spreading of the Tutsi political monopoly, while Hutu had held political office in the past, greatly contributed to Hutu resentment.

Rice in West Africa is cultivated in different ecological, social, and agricultural settings. This chapter takes these diverse environments as the entry point for revisiting the history of the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) and of rice research and breeding in the region. Irrigated rice emerged as a major environment of focus in the colonial period, primarily serving rice schemes in the dry zone of former French colonies Mali, Senegal, and northern Ivory Coast. Colonial projects excluded the humid uplands, a prominent rice environment across the forested zones of West Africa. Decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s initially implied a focus on national environments, followed by a regrouping into three main environments when WARDA was established in 1970. WARDA’s strategy excluded the humid uplands until the 1990s, although experts, including CGIAR advisors, argued early on for the importance of the humid uplands as a major environment for research and improvement. The chapter contrasts these findings with standard historical accounts of WARDA that highlight technical breeding capacity, a perspective fitting its radical policy change and rebranding in the 2000s.