The literature of travel and of artisanal encounter testifies to the interconnectedness of the eighteenth-century knowledge economy. It also exposes to view a world of material consumption based on sophisticated markets in which fashion and taste were increasingly measured in pan-European, even trans-Atlantic terms. During the third and fourth quarters of the eighteenth century, Birmingham and the West Midlands became one of the prime sites in the western world for the production of useful knowledge. Eighteenth-century visitors to Birmingham were in agreement that James Keir, James Watt and Matthew Boulton possessed both a great deal of 'pure' scientific knowledge and an uncommon level of technical skill. Scientific knowledge, the possession of scientific instruments and a taste for scientific experimentation became signifiers of access to polite culture, a kind of behavioural language enabling enlightened gentlemen, to recognise one another across the length and breadth of Europe.

This chapter explores when shipmaster conduct triggers Flag State responsibility. While individual acts are not attributable to States, exceptions arise from special State-individual relationships. Influenced by the shipmaster’s traditional role as agent and navigator, the modern role includes a range of internationally codified duties. If stemming from Flag State obligations, the shipmaster fulfills them, supported by two ARSIWA exceptions to non-attributability: (1) when individuals act under State control; (2) when the State fails to prevent conduct. Flag State responsibility for shipmasters’ conduct evolves in rescue violations. It arises when States fail to ensure shipmasters assist persons in distress where reasonably possible without endangering lives onboard, or when rescued persons face treatment violating international refugee law, including human rights law. This chapter re-assesses Flag State responsibility by examining whether shipmasters’ conduct is attributable based on their humanity or presence onboard. It also evaluates when private conduct is attributable to the Flag State, based on (1) organ/agent status under ARSIWA and (2) the State’s due diligence in preventing unlawful acts. Attributability depends on vessel ownership, breached obligations, and the State’s role in prevention. The chapter expands ARSIWA attribution analysis to autonomous ship operations, where shipmasters are absent or replaced by decision-making artificial intelligence.

This chapter analyses how the Italian police confronted the many twists and turns characterising the final dramatic years of fascism. It examines how police personnel reacted to the breakdown in the machinery of the fascist state and the collapse of social cohesion in the scenario of the 'fascist war'. The chapter also examines how police personnel reacted to changes in regime in the dramatic situation of military occupation and civil conflict. Reflecting in part Benito Mussolini's alignment with Nazi policy but also the longer-standing anti-Semitic orientation of fascism, the Race Laws, decreed in September 1938, sanctioned the ostracism of Italian Jews from the Italian community. Police personnel faced far greater dilemmas in the wake of the Nazi occupation, which followed Marshal Pietro Badoglio's announcement on 8 September 1943 of Italy's surrender to the Anglo-American forces, and the founding of the Italian Social Republic.

European integration has numerous effects on key national institutions, national constitutions and national political personnel in all European Union member-states. In response to European integration, the venerated École nationale d'administration (ENA) has been partially relocated from Paris to Strasbourg. Because French Eurocrats were most often on détachement in Brussels, it was natural for them to be in touch with the French government and various interest groups on a regular basis. This chapter discusses Jacques Delors as a member of the more restricted group of French Commissioners in the Brussels bureaucracy. If in France constitutional reform led to a shortening of the president's term in office, in Finland constitutional reform had more far-reaching effects. The Finnish reform changed the relationships between central political institutions, the presidency, the government and the parliament, empowering government and parliament and disempowering the president.

The sale, twice, of a Medici cabinet ordered for an English estate introduces the modern idea of heritage, initiated by Edmund Burke. It covers Protestant narratives and customary laws, and concludes with Alasdair MacIntyre’s thesis about narrative and identity.

Beccaria’s tract did not kill the death penalty but made its legitimacy and morality the subject of intense debate. In Britain and America the history of abolitionism is in some important respects individual. Britain sported a ‘Bloody Code’ that at its peak encompassed over 200 capital crimes. Romilly led the charge against the ‘Bloody Code’ (from 1808) and cited (correctly and with approval) Beccaria. Spokesmen in Parliament for the retentionist Paley (post mortem) were much more numerous. In North America, the influence of Beccaria was initially strong, but the United States is a federal republic, and criminal justice is with the individual states. In a way clearly related to slavery and race, hard-line attitudes to the death penalty have prevailed, especially in the South. The influence of Beccaria has inevitably waned; that punishments have lost their role and ‘appeal’ and deterrent value as a spectacle is one factor in this. Ironically, the hard labour that he advocated has been saddled with the name of ‘penal servitude’, and is the only form of slavery recognized by the US Constitution.

In eighteenth-century England households were the places where families worked out the distribution of labour and financial support. They were also the places where siblings made sense of the hierarchies of their gender, birth order, and marital status in making claims for the equality they expected from one another. Authors of eighteenth-century prescriptive literature, wilfully ignoring the different property, financial, and educational resources invested in children, counselled parents to raise their children equally and siblings to treat one another equally. The Smith siblings' experience hints at the importance of birth order to sibling politics. Probate disputes between siblings offer an opportunity to see the mixture of gender, birth order, and marital status and their impact upon the financial and social health of households. Sibling conflict between the genders increased as women's and men's experiences more often paralleled one another and as debates over women's position grew heated.

This chapter examines representations of the Resistance in early post-war French crime fiction. It begins by setting out the main features of the resistance epic so prevalent in France in the late 1940s and early 1950s and how this ideal came to be embodied in the figure of the male resistance fighter. The chapter then examines narratives that contested such a vision of wartime heroism, focusing on the French roman noir. Finally, the chapter explores representations of resistance in the work of three French roman noir writers of this period, André Héléna, Léo Malet and Gilles Morris, all of whom presented resistance in a different light to the official discourse of national bravery and sacrifice. Their work reflects the mismatch between the Resistance as myth and the multiple histories and experiences of resisters as individuals.

Chapter Seven, the concluding chapter, ties the book’s themes together. It offers a series of reflections on the ethnographic method and older age by directly addressing this thematic strand that weaves throughout the volume. In particular, it considers the merits of ethnography, and the challenges ethnography presents, for grappling with everyday experiences, inter-generational assumptions and social interactions that forge the ageing self.

By the end of the nineteenth century, women had won the right to act as poor law guardians, an achievement hailed as an important milestone on the road to women's suffrage. Middle-class women had long been involved in poor law administration on an informal basis. Ann Magill's supporters on the Clogher board of guardians made frequent reference to the wider debate about women's rights. The poor law system catered predominantly for women, but was administered and staffed predominantly by men. Until the end of the nineteenth century, most boards of guardians employed workhouse inmates as infirmary nurses. The campaign for women poor law guardians was established and conducted as an adjunct to the women's suffrage movement. Aware of the politicised nature of Irish poor law elections, suffragists endeavoured to involve women of all political persuasions in the campaign to get women elected.

Subsea cables date to the 19th century with telegraphic use and have served various roles, including military. However, they rose to prominence in communications with the Internet’s creation in 1980s. Today, global telecommunications, the Internet, and financial and security systems rely on subsea cables, which handle about 97% of international communications. A new development enhances subsea cable technology by adding oceanographic sensors to collect ocean, environment, and climate data. These are called ‘SMART (Sensor Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications) cables. Adding monitoring to subsea cables is a cheap way to improve marine environmental understanding through data collection, transforming them into dual-purpose systems combining data gathering and telecommunications. This dual role raises legal questions—primarily whether SMART cables collecting marine data qualify as scientific research needing coastal State consent in certain maritime zones. The subsea cable industry is lukewarm on SMART cables, fearing coastal State laws may hinder operations which adds complication. Security concerns over subsea cables increases with geopolitical tensions and deliberate targeting, such as the October 2023 Baltic Connector incident. Adding new technology to an established one raises several issues. Though SMART cables offer strong scientific benefits for understanding the (marine) environment, caution is needed as legal hurdles arise.

Norman Simmons insists, 'railway modelling is the art of creating in miniature a working replica of a full-size railway.' As Martin Evans notes, model engineering is 'very closely allied to full-sized mechanical engineering, and the problems involved in the design of working models are similar to real practice. Viewed from outside the railway fancy all attempts to miniaturise the full-sized railway's machine ensemble may seem much of a piece; but within that fancy attempts split into three activities, each marked by its own aesthetic. Curly Lawrence identified two of these: toy trains and model engineering. Lying between these two, and by no means always comfortably, lies the third practice: railway modelling. Experienced workers always advise newcomers to moderate expertise. A model railway's Gestalt works best when different elements display common standards. Model railways' key artifice, low-voltage electric motors powering steam- or diesel-outline models, presuppose high-grade electrical competence.