Much of the book’s narrative is dedicated to trace the complex interactions between China and Europe since the sixteenth century, but how did these interactions affect Chinese cartographers and Chinese cartographic practice? The focus of this chapter moves to the perspective of Chinese cartographers, their attitudes and uses of world maps, as well as hybrid world maps created using Western techniques and Chinese elements. The chapter demonstrates that Sino-Western world maps prompted different responses, ranging from rejection to enthusiasm and adoption. Chinese cartographers incorporated elements from these maps, cited them in their own work. Beginning with the Qianlong period of the Qing, cartographers started working with Western cartographic techniques in producing new types of maps.

Chapter 5 probes the ICC’s track record over the past two decades. Specifically, I examine whether claims of anti-American bias hold up in light of the ICC’s history of investigations. I assess the degree, if any, of anti-American bias at the ICC with a statistical analysis. I start with a global sample of civilian killings that approximates the universe of situations the ICC might plausibly investigate. I then use geolocated data on all US foreign military bases to examine how the presence of American troops in a country affects the likelihood of the ICC launching an investigation. Contrary to the common narrative of anti-American bias, the estimated effects of US military bases are statistically indistinguishable from zero and substantively negligible. Simply put, there is no evidence that ICC investigations target America’s military.

This chapter analyses efforts within the United Nations to develop legal and normative frameworks for transnational corporations (TNCs) and human rights, beginning in the 1970s. It first considers the UN Code of Conduct for Transnational Corporations and explains why this initiative failed to materialise despite many years of negotiation. It then examines the Global Compact, which reflects emerging trends in legalisation through its emphasis on implementation, participation by non-state actors, and reliance on consensus-building and norm promotion. The chapter next reviews the rise and fall of the Draft Norms, before turning to the development of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This section highlights the innovative nature of Ruggie’s constructivist approach to generating new legal and social norms. A new treaty process, initiated in 2014, remains ongoing and suggests that traditional legalisation strategies continue to retain relevance in certain contexts.

During the nineteenth century sight became the primary means for discerning realities, and the (musical) body on visual display created intricate maps and modes of understanding. For viewers already steeped in then- theories of physiognomy and phrenology, iconographic materials revealed not only aspects of likeness, but also components of the inner, psychological self. When coupled with the era’s growing awareness of and excitement for celebrity, iconographic interpretations became even more formidable – and increasingly accessible. While modest in quantity, the Schumanns’ iconography played a crucial role in projecting and achieving their musical goals, revealing their careful engagement with the century’s social mores, musical ideals, and celebrity culture. Their visual artifacts spread across all kinds of mediums, especially those that were easily reproducible and readily available. Undeniably, their iconography secured and substantiated their reputation as a couple who had an ideal musical and marital partnership.

This chapter explores the evolution and techniques of corporate tax arbitrage, focusing on how multinational corporations (MNCs) exploit the structural features of the international tax regime. It traces the origins of the system to the 1928 League of Nations framework, which privileged source and residence taxation while neglecting valuation and the treatment of intangible assets. This omission, combined with the legal autonomy granted to subsidiaries within centrally coordinated multi-corporate enterprises, created enduring arbitrage opportunities. The chapter analyses how firms leverage intangible assets, ownership structures, and corporate residency rules to reallocate profits across jurisdictions, exploiting regulatory mismatches. It highlights the role of offshore financial centres (OFCs), intermediary subsidiaries, and hybrid instruments in enabling tax avoidance. Case studies – such as Apple’s use of stateless entities and Amazon’s transfer of losses via Luxembourg – illustrate how MNCs circumvent tax rules through entity design, subsidiary chaining, and strategic use of global value chains. Using new evidence from the CORPLINK study, the chapter estimates that although OFC intermediaries represent only 1.7 per cent of subsidiaries among the world’s top 100 non-financial firms, they control up to two-thirds of group revenues. Tax arbitrage is shown to be systemic, not exceptional, and embedded in contemporary corporate structures.

We start in this chapter arguing why quantum probability is a good candidate for modelling purposes in decision-making contexts. The quantum formalism, in this chapter, centres around the argument that such formalism can accommodate paradoxical outcomes in decision making. Quantum probability offers a response to those decision-making contexts where a consistent violation of the law of total probability occurs. Strong results have been obtained in decision-making applications and we go into some detail to discuss the so-called QQ equality and the Aumann theorem.

How did women concert artistes assess other women performers? This chapter focuses on Clara Schumann’s private writings about piano virtuosas between the 1830s and 1842. Schumann’s commentaries offer many fresh insights. She identifies an unexpectedly large number of women concert pianists active in German-speaking Europe and names those who helped younger female colleagues; she also shows that most virtuosas composed, and performed their works in public. Perhaps most strikingly, Schumann exposes a professional environment fraught with intrasexual pressures. Often invited to play at the same soirées, and compared to each other by hosts, promoters, and reviewers, women artistes regularly navigated gendered workplaces. These circumstances explain why Schumann portrayed most virtuosas as challengers. This chapter argues that the intrasexual negativity and internalized sexism that coloured Schumann’s writings reflect the gender imbalance in her working environment, as women tend to compete against each other when pursuing career advancement in male-dominated professions.

Chapter 2 juxtaposes the myth of proprietary authorship embodied in the legal idiom of ‘work’, ‘author’ and ‘originality’ with the realities of print production in late eighteenth-century Germany. I problematise the conventional view of the literary work as an intellectual creation of a personal author through a paratextual reading of Kant’s 1785 essay that reconstructs its underpinning historical processes and conditions. This analysis includes not only the epitextual background of the German Enlightenment and the role therein played by periodicals such as the Berlinische Monatsschrift, but also the peritextual features of catchwords, signature marks and front matter that appeared within and alongside Kant’s text. I argue that these paratexts lead us back to the print machinery of the German Enlightenment: a socio-technological assemblage of human actors interacting with technologies, which Kant and others sought to steer so as to address the problem of print saturation. The existence of such a machinery, one that preceded the authorial figure, perturbs copyright law’s attachment to original authorship. Insufficient to deal with the complexities of the book’s emergence, the terms and doctrines of copyright law tend to suppress the deep historicity of literary production.