This study is the first to explore the creation of the Tribunaux repressifs indigènes (Native repressive tribunals, TRIs), a novel jurisdiction of exception promulgated at the turn of the twentieth century in colonial Algeria. The TRIs were the product of several intersecting historical processes that took shape over the last quarter of the nineteenth century: first, this period witnessed intense settler security panics marked by genuine anxiety that Algeria might succumb to uncontrollable banditry and mass uprisings. During this same period, colonial “sciences” couched in burgeoning race theory intersected with juridical knowledge-production to form a new legal discourse on assimilation. The TRIs were advanced using this new grammar of race-bound legal relativism, reimagined as consistent with republican universalism. This ascendant juridical epistème dovetailed with debates over the both indeterminate and overdetermined nature of sovereignty in Algeria, whose land was juridically and administratively “Frenchified,” yet whose Muslim (by definition non-citizen) colonial subjects remained excluded from access to civil rights or protections. A doctrine of racialized exception was invented and codified in the unfolding of an impassioned juristic and public debate. The TRIs were legitimized—and endured—thanks to a doctrinal rationale applied retroactively: that for Muslim colonized subjects, exception was the rule.

Fear for the future of democracy in the 1930s and 1940s led university educators to redefine the purpose of general education as preparation for democratic citizenship. This mobilized social scientists to engage in curricular reform and experiment with progressive pedagogical practices in new general education courses. These courses have been overlooked in the scholarship on general education, which focuses on Great Books courses and educators’ efforts to create a common culture linked to Europe. Uncovering these courses demonstrates that general education was an important part of higher education’s commitment to democracy. Mid-twentieth-century social science general education was an innovative form of political education aimed at preparing independent-minded, engaged citizens with democratic values.

Amidst the post-war “economic miracle” (Wirtschaftswunder) in Germany, the government tapped into foreign labor resources, including Turkish “guest workers.” Over the years, Turkish immigrants and their descendants have remained central to societal discussions, particularly since Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rose to leadership in Turkey, garnering a devoted voter base among this demographic. Drawing on the concepts of emotional community, feeling rules, and emotion work, I trace how the affinity towards Erdoğan is, in part, fueled by conflicts arising from broader tensions between the German majority and the Turkish-origin community. For many, the allure of “Erdoğanism” lies in its provision of ethno-nationalist solidarity, offering a coping mechanism for enduring societal challenges, even after decades in Germany. Employing narrative analysis, this article delves into how the embrace of “Erdoğanism” appears to serve as a means to suppress feelings of national humiliation and evoke a hubristic sense of national pride.

In the late 1970s Iranian student activists in the United States worked to educate the American public on the history of the US-Iranian relationship and the long-term consequences in Iran of the 1953 CIA-sponsored coup that placed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the Iranian throne. The students directly challenged local and state governments to respect freedoms of speech, press, and assembly, and pushed President Jimmy Carter to keep his promise of injecting human rights into American foreign policy. Iranians studying in the US were not monolithic in thought, but they shared the common goal of liberating Iran from Pahlavi’s despotic rule and creating an Iran free of American intervention and Cold War geopolitics.

This research examines the continuity and changes in Igbo thoughts on leprosy by exploring Igbo cosmology and its relationship with Christian and colonial ideas about the disease. The perception of leprosy in precolonial Igboland reveals a shocking similarity with the later Judeo-Christian identity and the perception of leprosy that dominated the area during colonialism. It argues that colonial and Christian missionary ideas did not radically transform the perceptions of leprosy in south-eastern Nigeria. Instead, what happened was merely an adaptation and continuity of prevailing thoughts about the disease. Using oral evidence, archival materials and existing anthropological works on Igbo worldviews and cosmology, this research shows the changes in the colonial socio-cultural knowledge of leprosy. After careful analysis, it concludes that, while colonial medicine and the missionaries’ idea of leprosy healed leprosy sufferers and transformed their identity, most Igbo people continued conceptualizing the disease as an aberration and maintained the stigmatization of sufferers.

A Roman stylus tablet discovered at Vindolanda in 2014 preserves the partial text of a deed-of-sale for an enslaved person, only the second such document from Britain. This article presents the results of multiple techniques used to reveal the almost illegible text and proposes a restoration of the format of the document and its lost content, based on more complete examples from Italy and around the Empire. We examine the late first-century archaeological and historical context and suggest that the purchaser is probably the prefect Iulius Verecundus. We consider other possible evidence for the servi of the commanders at Vindolanda, for example in another hard-to-decipher stylus tablet which may be related to their travel. The deed-of-sale provides a new type of testimony for slavery at Vindolanda and adds to knowledge of enslavement in the Roman military.

The present article is a study of Ottoman military recruitment attempts of Circassians in the northwestern Caucasus. It examines the process of realizing a Circassian highlander army and the administration of the Anapa fortress during the time of two different fortress commanders. Focusing on the deeds of these two pashas regarding Circassian recruitment and their social background, this study highlights the Ottoman-Circassian relations and the dynamics of loyalty and pragmatism. Specifically, the role of provincial networks in ruling the border fortresses and regional politics in the Eastern Black Sea have been underlined within the context of the Russian-Ottoman rivalry over the Caucasus. Rebutting the importance of the origins of Ottoman officers for Ottoman borderland politics, this study argues that the contribution of provincial notables to the Ottoman civilizing mission and the Circassian army project in the early nineteenth century has been indispensable to the realization of Ottoman establishment in the Caucasus.