This chapter describes the complex twists and turns in the efforts to bring the war to an end in the 1980s. It shows that wars are easy to start and hard to end and that all wars must eventually end through a political act.

The Conclusion returns to the need for historians to recognize the topic of cowardice in combat in order to gain a fuller understanding of war. Recovering the complicated histories of the Fire Zouaves and the 2nd Texas further helps to disassemble the glorification of war-making.

Examines American relations with non-Protestant others within the Mediterranean, primarily Jews, Catholics, and Muslims. Pays particular attention to shipwrecks in Morocco.

Chapter 4 uses chronicles, hagiographies, ekphraseis and polemical treatises to discuss clerical hunting in Romanía. Prohibitions against clerical hunting had existed for Western men since Late Antiquity, but there is not enough evidence to suggest that Romanía followed the same pattern. In the Eastern Roman context, narratives of clerical hunting did not put the emphasis on differences between secular and religious men, and non-participation did not entail the loss of masculine capital. Rather, the focus was on human/animal interactions and the need to avoid overindulgence, and the emphasis was the same whether the person involved was an emperor or a cleric. The animals themselves also had an important role to play: they were not simply seen as prey to be dominated by the manly man but could act as co-creators of the skills necessary for the hunt, leaving their traces on their co-hunters’ subjectivity. At the same time, the malleability of Eastern Roman ideas about which animal lives were worth preserving allowed authors to strategically unify all men against the animal Other or to distinguish between different types of men, creating in the process hierarchies of masculinities.

Chapter 5 turns to the law in action and the politics of litigation involving adjudication and interpretations of the law. The chapter opens with an examination of the Council of the Indies’ initial judgment in September 1784 on the plaintiffs’ case. Based on a narrow reading of slave law and on pro-slavery policies, the ruling rejected the plaintiffs’ controversial claim to collective freedom and to the criteria of freedom presented by the plaintiffs’ brief but allowed hearings to determine ambiguous cases and stipulated the criteria to be utilized by colonial courts in those cases. The ruling gave way to a cascade of hearings and legal actions in lower-level colonial courts and to a conflict of interpretation over the imperial ruling. Ordinary enslaved and fugitive cobreros dispersed throughout the island became direct participants in the judicial arena at this point as they directly engaged in the politics of litigation for freedom in colonial courts. The chapter shows the way imperial and colonial authorities centralized and controlled judicial outcomes but also the room for maneuvering available in some cases.

This chapter describes the immediate aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion. Apart from the ongoing war in Cambodia, the immediate, violent response to the Vietnamese invasion was the February 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war.

How did devout followers of a saint respond when a dominant reform organisation deemed their beliefs and ritual practices as impure? Did they abandon all the ‘impure’ beliefs, or did they find ways to navigate the influence and power of the reformist ideology? In such circumstances, faith begins to operate through acts of concealment and secrecy, which become potent tools for managing societal and religious pressures. Some of these practices of concealment/secrecy among the Muslims of Mewat ran afoul of the puritanical Tablighi Jamaat, which discouraged the veneration of saints as bidat (innovation/heresy) and shirk (polytheism), considering them as antithetical to Islam. Concealment and secrecy practices represent a significant form of social knowledge that helps sustain social institutions and human relationships (Simmel 1906).

Fluidity across religious boundaries between ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Islam’ is not a new idea; it has been analysed in a large number of scholarly works (Amin 2016; Assayag 2004; Bigelow 2010; Flueckiger 2006; Gilmartin and Lawrence 2000; Gottschalk 2000; D. Khan 2004a; Mayaram 1997a). While these works effectively display the flexibility of religious boundaries, they fail to delve into the implications when reformist groups arise and promote the notion of a rigid, uniform and pure religious boundary. In Mewat, as in other parts of India, reformist groups strongly emphasised the segregation of religious communities based on their identities and ritual practices. However, little attention has been given to the phenomenon of resistance to, or passive negotiation with, these powerful reformist forces that oppose religious blending.

Many Meo and non-Meo Muslims, mostly women, still venerate these saints, although they conceal their devotion to evade the wrath of Meo men and other Tablighis. Their stories of concealment reveal intricate processes of contestation and accommodation between the Sufi and Tablighi Jamaat ideologies, the divergent beliefs of male and female in a family, and different dynamics of the relationships between the powerful and the powerless. To operate effectively, secrecy as a type of societal knowledge relies on three essential elements: individual actors who engage in concealment; an audience, from whom the secret is concealed; and a power structure that the secret undermines or challenges.

This chapter presents the political organisation and power dynamics during the reign of Kigeri Rwabugiri, the last king of precolonial Rwanda. At the end of the nineteenth century, European overrule, under the form of German colonisation and missionary activity, profoundly modified political dynamics.

The formulation of the persona of Laldas from a nirgu bhakti follower to a sagu saint and deity is central to the rise and success of the religious order. The complete conversion of Laldas into a ‘Hindu’ saint requires a profound restructuring of his identity. This undertaking involves assigning him a new role while simultaneously erasing or modifying his traditional religious image, which had been distinguished by a shared form of religiosity. The changes observed within the Laldas order also signify a deliberate undermining of the saint's religious teachings and principles. This subversion of Laldas's original teachings implies a shift towards a more homogeneous understanding of the order, where the liminal elements of his beliefs are now incorporated into the broader narrative of neo ‘Hinduism’.

This new imagery of Laldas has been achieved by first transforming the traditional shrines spatially and then constructing new temples in various parts of north India to practice anthropomorphic image worship. It is also an effort to achieve a new social construction of a religious space. In fact, spaces contested for ideological, economic and religious reasons generally reflect efforts to create new meanings for them in a changed context, leading to spatial transformations (Low 1996). Currently, the shrines of Laldas are examples of what Lefebvre (1991: 164–68) refers to as ‘dominated space’ and ‘appropriated space’. More importantly, the spatial changes at the religious shrines of Laldas signify ongoing efforts to transform the meanings of a traditional sacred space. This is being achieved by the process of what Low (1996, 2009) describes as ‘the social construction of space’. In this process, new symbolic meanings imbued with new religious significance of Laldas are created. Devotees’ social interactions, memories and daily use of the material setting effectively transform Laldas's traditional shrine spaces into new arenas of ritual scenes and actions, ultimately Hinduising what was once a shared/mixed sacred space.

Most of these changes are quite recent in origin and are undertaken by the financially rich Baniya community. Moreover, their socio-economic power and traditional devotional beliefs also contribute to these spatial and architectural transformations at the traditional shrines. In analysing the domination of Hindus at these traditional religious sites, the main attention is paid to the structure, control, and agency of followers, on one hand, and new religious discourses and practices surrounding these sacred spaces, on the other.

Discusses Livorno’s evolving trade with the US in West Indian imports and fish and how the Napoleonic Wars and First Barbary War impacted trade. Also discusses the American consul’s role in mitigating conflict within the American communtiy and between Americans and Italians.