In Byzantine and early Islamic Egypt, stratiōtai, symmachoi (arab. simāmika), apostolai, boukellarioi or beredarioi took over the function of messengers, collectors or guardians of the transport of taxes. This paper analyses the socio‐economic role of these intermediaries in the tax system of the early Islamic Empire and discusses a possible development from mere carriers to more independent players within this mechanism. At the beginning of Islamic rule, taxes in Egypt had been forwarded by armed messengers, possibly remnants of the Byzantine soldiers who safeguarded private estates. By the beginning of the eighth century we see more autonomous individuals who needed to be kept in check. Even though these agents may have only been small cogs in a larger machinery, they were functionally necessary for the effective operation of the entire economic, social and political system.

The Vietnam War was a significant turning point in modern Japanese history and the US–Japanese alliance. Though constitutional restrictions prevented Japan from sending troops, its government actively supported the US war effort politically, financially, and logistically, and US military bases in Japan were crucial to the US war effort. Japanese prime minister Satō Eisaku leveraged this support into a significant geopolitical goal: the return of the Ryukyu Islands, including Okinawa, which had been under US occupation since 1945. Wartime procurement demands for Japanese products and war materiel also allowed Japan to expand its economic ties with the United States, Vietnam, and other Asian countries, furthering the economic takeoff that had begun in the late 1950s. This sustained economic growth had contradictory and ironic consequences. On the one hand, it fostered intense tensions with the United States, which helped fuel far-reaching shifts to American economic policy (the so-called Nixon Shocks). On the other hand, it helped the Japanese government weather intense criticism from a large-scale antiwar movement, which emphasized grassroots citizen activism and sought to end Japan’s complicity in the war. The Vietnam War therefore initiated economic, diplomatic, and political shifts that would continue to shape Japan for decades.

This chapter situates the communist victory in the Second Indochina War in the broader context of Third World revolution during the 1970s. It argues that 1975 represented a high-water mark of secular revolutionary activity in the global Cold War, and that the following years witnessed the retreat of left-wing revolutionary politics in the Global South. The period that followed saw the rise of a new model of political organization among Third World revolutionaries that largely abandoned secular progressive ideologies in favor of appeals to ethnic and sectarian identities as the basis of armed revolution. If Vietnamese communist fighters represented the archetype of Third World Revolutionaries in the long 1960s, the Afghan Mujahideen would come to symbolize the revolutionaries of the 1980s.

This introductory chapter notes the expansion of interest in the history of popular science and its role in shaping the relationship between science and society. It outlines the elements needed to understand how science is popularized, including the work of both scientists and media figures. The chapter then shows how historians now interpret the rise of evolutionism, noting that Darwin’s theory of natural selection was at first challenged by rival views of how evolution works with very different implications for the ascent of life, not all compatible with the image of the ‘tree of life’. The application of these ideas to human origins and to ideologies based on social evolution is noted for its potential impact on how the theory was perceived. All of these positions need to be taken into account to understand how the topic was displayed to the wider public.

A consideration of the four-year period that began with Richard Nixon’s ascension to the presidency of the United States in January 1969 and ended with signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973 raises several important questions about the Vietnam War. Could an agreement comparable to the 1973 deal have been secured earlier? If so, who bears responsibility for the delay? What was the impact of the antiwar movement on Nixon’s Vietnam policy? Was the war’s expansion into Laos and Cambodia necessary or criminal? Were the constraints on Nixon’s prosecution of the war evidence of the functioning of democracy or of the weakness of the American system, which jeopardized and discredited US foreign policy? Did international opposition to the war hinder Nixons efforts to achieve “peace with honor” and make full use of the US military to support his diplomatic initiatives? Or, on the contrary, did it prevent escalation and even greater bloodshed by denouncing the “immorality” of the conflict? In short, under what circumstances did the January 1973 peace agreement come about? Three major milestones marked Nixon’s relationship with Vietnam, the rest of Indochina, and Southeast Asia generally between 1969 and 1973. Although Nixon did not have a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam when he took office, he gradually put a strategy in place. In this respect, 1969 was a year of trial and error, of failure and deadlock. Certainly, important processes were underway, such as Vietnamization and secret negotiations, though the latter were, at the time, largely unproductive. Subsequently, Vietnamese communist policymakers would claim that in initiating the phased withdrawal of their forces in 1969, the Americans in fact weakened their bargaining position. Thus, by the turn of the new decade, the United States remained unable to achieve “peace with honor.” To overcome these aporias, Nixon, assisted by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, tried to move from the local to the global, transposing and adapting his strategy in the broader context of the opening up of China and détente with the Soviet Union, two initiatives that, in Kissingers words, restored Southeast Asia to its true scale: that of a “small peninsula at the end of a huge continent.” But this so-called triangular diplomacy still failed to end the war. Therefore, Nixon redoubled the military pressure on Hanoi in 1972 until reaching a peace agreement that failed to deliver the peace it promised. To what extent was all this a cowardly “decent interval” snatched by the United States, before the inevitable collapse of Saigon, Phnom Penh, and Vientiane? Or was it proof of a real and credible will to maintain the political status quo in the region?

New book series and magazines were founded in the 1870s and helped to publicize evolutionism. Many popular accounts focused on the ascent of life, still portraying it as a linear development toward humanity. They often used living rather than fossil species to characterize the main stages in the ascent, and stressed the parallel with the development of the embryo (the recapitulation theory). A few key fossils were discovered to boost the case for evolution, including the ancestry of the horse. Both Darwinians and the supporters of Herbert Spencer’s philosophy exploited the technique of the ‘evolutionary epic’ to make their case. But so did the promoters of rival explanations, including the Lamarckians and those who saw progress as the unfolding of a divine plan. Darwinism remained a source of controversy, and the opposition began to increase toward the end of the nineteenth century.

The standard trope is that evolution and religion are at war. Bishop Wilberforce against science professor Thomas Henry Huxley. John Thomas Scopes was prosecuted for teaching that humans evolved from apes. Many, however, welcomed evolution, bringing it into their religious world picture. This was particularly the case for those drawn to organicism, Henri Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin in France, and Alfred North Whitehead, founder of process theology/philosophy in America. Evolution, Darwinism in particular, was now seen as a stimulating challenge rather than as a dire threat.

This chapter examines the motivation of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) soldiers as derived from their personal ephemera, in particular unpublished documents collected directly from the battlefield by US forces and their allies. These frontline accounts in the Vietnamese language uncover hidden memories and offer important clues to understanding the diversified enlistment, combat, and sustaining motivations of the Northern-born regulars. Such organic memories contribute an unvarnished immediacy that can clarify the North Vietnamese fighters perceptions and experiences during the war. Employing individual memory and associated narratives as both source and subject fits into a fairly small genre, representing a very new field without an operating paradigm to amplify understanding of and fill gaps in the PAVN histories. This chapter, in contrast to many Vietnam War studies, explores how the PAVN was not invincible and how it was also a conscript rather than a volunteer army of combatants who shared feelings similar to homesick draftees wearing the US and other uniforms.

This chapter follows the creation, adoption, and impact of the numerous constitutions implemented in colonial Nigeria, ultimately pushing the region toward adopting a more federal system of government. This chapter will contain overviews of the five important constitutions created in the colonial period, while also exploring the factors which drove the colonial government to push the region toward federalism and the greater inclusion of native Nigerians. It will identify two primary periods of constitution-making, one before World War II and one after, pushed more vigorously by nationalist groups. Federalism, codified by Nigeria’s consecutive implementation of different constitutions, promoted regionalism, causing the growth of ethnic nationalism. Consequently, ruling groups benefiting from previous, more unitary systems, like Northern Nigeria’s emirs, and small minority ethnic groups fearing the influence of larger groups, opposed the growth of federalism. As Nigeria transitioned into an independent nation, it walked a fine line between an oppressive unitary system and a chaotic federal one. This balancing act defined its constitutions and political landscapes during Nigeria’s colonial period, and continues to do so today.

This chapter explores the diversity of experiences lived by women during the Vietnam War where they participated as politicians, soldiers, diplomats, covert agents, employees, and active civilian voices. The chapter focuses on the years 1954 to 1975 to illustrate the changing expectations and opportunities for women from the fall of the French colonial government through escalation. The chapter introduces the experiences of women across both the North and South to illustrate similarities and differences that occurred as a result of the large-scale American presence in South Vietnamese urban spaces. In particular, the study explores the lines between civilian and combatant. Through their active participation, women shaped foreign relations through their politics, labor, and interactions with leaders and servicemembers. The military and interpersonal violence of the conflict also had unique and lasting impacts on women. Overall, the chapter seeks to examine women’s roles within the context of the war to understand their influence on the conflict.

In the 1940s and early 1950s, the Cold War convention of containment, which undergirded American involvement in Vietnam, was broadly shared, internalized, at times even fostered, by the United States European allies. This consensus broke down by the 1960s, as successive US administrations saw themselves locked ever more rigidly into Cold War logic which seemed to require going to war to preserve a noncommunist South Vietnam. By contrast, the United States transatlantic allies and partners increasingly came to question the very rationale of US intervention. By the mid-1960s there was a remarkable consensus among government officials across Western Europe on the futility of the central objective of the American intervention in Vietnam of defending and stabilizing a noncommunist (South) Vietnam. European governments refused to send troops to Vietnam. However, West European governments differed considerably in the public attitude they displayed toward US involvement in Vietnam, ranging from France’s vocal opposition to strong if not limitless public support by the British and West German governments. Across Western Europe, the Vietnam War cut deeply into West European domestic politics, aggravated political and societal tensions and diminished the righteousness of the American cause.

This chapter explores the place and transformation of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (DDHC) in the subsequent history of France. It argues that the DDHC underwent a process of sacralization, through which it became the foundation of French civil religion. Already in the early twentieth century, the historian Albert Mathiez remarked on this process, drawing on Émile Durkheim’s sociological analysis. This chapter extends Mathiez’s analysis.

During the US War in Vietnam, diverse activists and organizations advanced a range arguments against US intervention in Vietnam. These organizations did not form a singular or united antiwar movement, however, and many histories have overlooked the contributions of activists who did not focus their efforts solely on ending the US war. Indeed, many activists challenged injustices on multiple fronts and created unique antiwar discourses as part of their social justice advocacy. They often linked their advocacy and constituents within the United States with US treatment of Vietnam and the Vietnamese. This chapter describes the diversity of antiwar rhetoric and activism in the 1960s and 1970s with the help of North Vietnam’s government, which fostered a people’s diplomacy with American citizens. In doing so, this chapter illustrates that many participants in antiwar advocacy saw their protests against US intervention in Vietnam as part of their larger fight to create a more just American society.

The chapter analyzes Hamas’s use of intelligence to conduct successful operations against Israel. The combination of intelligence gathering and clandestine activities, as described in the previous chapters, led to several high-quality operations against Israel. For example, in an attack in 2006, Hamas successfully abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit and was able to keep him hidden for years, despite Israel’s efforts to find and rescue him in the tiny Gaza Strip. In addition, Hamas created a “bank” of targets through its intelligence-gathering efforts. This structured list of vulnerable quality targets was used to focus rocket attacks against Israel and find locations for suicide attacks.

When, how, and why did the Vietnam War begin? Although its end is dated with great precision to April 30, 1975, there is no agreement as to when it began. The Vietnam War was an enormously complex conflict and even though any comprehensive reckoning of its causes must include the role of the United States, it did not begin as an “American War.” This volume presents the scholarship that has flourished since the 1990s to situate the war and its origins within longer chronologies and wider interpretative perspectives. The Vietnam War was a war for national liberation and an episode of major importance in the Global Cold War. Yet it was also a civil war, and civil warfare was a defining feature of the conflict from the outset. Understanding the Vietnamese and Indochinese origins of the Vietnam War is a critical first step toward reckoning with the history of this violent, costly, and multilayered war.