Early Life and Times

Rather than starting with Spain, let's start in the Americas, bringing the Indigenous peoples front and center to set the stage, as it were, for Las Casas's impact. The two, Christopher Columbus and Bartolomé de las Casas, were, dare we say it, both iconic figures of the age of exploration and conquest. Their deeds are seen heroic, on the one hand, and sometimes judged as tyrannical and thoughtless. On the other hand, neither was without his flaws. But their transit across the oceans and lands of both the Old World and the New World set the stage for one of the greatest moments in history, the bringing together of two worlds and cultures unknown to each other.

Let's be clear here. Before 1492 Europeans knew little or nothing of the existence of what we call the Western Hemisphere or the Americas. And the inhabitants of the Americas knew nothing of the European world nor, in fact, of Africa or Asia for that matter.

There actually may have been contacts between voyagers of both Asian and European/African origins, but they tended not to leave long-lasting impacts. The most famous of the modern ones was made by the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl across both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans in the middle of the twentieth century, testing his theories of contact between Polynesia and South America, and Europe/Africa and the Americas in the Atlantic and Caribbean worlds. Look up the voyages of Kon-Tiki for some great adventure reads spanning the Pacific worlds and the Ra II expedition which took him from the west coast of Africa to Barbados in the West Indies.

Introduction

In the decade following independence in West Africa, the challenges of nation-building spurred a new wave of nationalism, ethno-nationalism, economic competition, and political instability that increasingly undermined the historical legacy of Pan-Africanism. This chapter's central focus is the expulsion of Yoruba migrants, along with other foreign nationals, from Ghana in November/December 1969, which significantly redefined notions of citizenship.

The 1969 Alien Compliance Order aimed to enforce the Deportation Act of 1957, granting authority to the Governor General, Prime Minister, or Head of State to expel individuals whose presence in Ghana was perceived as detrimental to the public good. Although the Act was initially applicable to non-Ghanaians only, it was later extended to include citizens who were considered political opponents. Many African migrants, including Yoruba, Syrians, and Lebanese, resided in Ghana without the required residence permits mandated by the law. According to the Ghana Nationality and Citizenship Act, Act 1 of 1957, a person could not be a citizen by birth unless one of their parents or grandparents was born in Ghana.

Citizenship Rights and Denial in a Post-Colonial Context

Due to their long-standing migration and settlement, some Yoruba families were eligible for Ghanaian citizenship. However, a significant number of Yoruba, along with other African small-scale traders, artisans, and farmers, resided in Ghana based on the advantages of trans-border mobility and sociocultural and historical relations that dated back to the pre-colonial era.

Berlioz wrote two articles about this occasion in the form of letters to the editor, rather than halfway down p. 1, the usual position for feuilletons. The first (22 August) told something of the project's history, the build-up to the unveiling, and the concert. This is the second article, sent from Königswinter. It concerns the event itself, in which not everything went as planned. Much of the funding came from Liszt and when, with four weeks to go, it was realized that there was no concert hall large enough to hold all those invited, he paid for one to be built. It was completed with two days to spare. Berlioz included a slightly altered version of this article in Les Soirées de l’orchestre (Second Epilogue); but I hope readers will understand my wish to include such a characteristic piece of writing.

To the editor of the Journal des débats [Armand Bertin]

Dear Sir

I come rather late to tell you again about the festival to inaugurate Beethoven's statue. But please allow me to return to the matter, after everything that's already been said in its favour, in order to mention Liszt's cantata which merits a more extended review on its own than I can offer today. I must also mention the many distinguished artists who are known in Paris only by name, and whom we should be so happy to see there.

I’m in a village whose calm and peace contrast strangely with the tumult that was still raging a few days ago in the cities round about. Koenigswinter is on the opposite bank of the Rhine to Bonn. Its peasantry is very proud of the glory that has redounded to it. Several old men claim to have known Beethoven in his youth.

According to an anonymous hagiographer, Cuthman (b. 681 C.E.), a littleknown saint of Sussex, worked as a shepherd in his youth and cared for his mother after his father died, ‘bustling about in the care and duty of ministering’ to her needs (satagebat denique in cura et officio ministrandi). Cuthman became father, brother, and servant as well as son to her, his hagiographer says, commending Cuthman's ‘loyalty to his mother’ (in matrem pietas). In time, poverty overtook them, and Cuthman's mother became paralyzed, requiring constant care. With their possessions gone and no other family to help, Cuthman went on the road, ‘[making] a wooden bed on which he placed his enfeebled mother’ (profecto ligneum lectum composuit in quo languidam collocauit), attaching ‘a wheel at the front’ (rote preambule adminiculo), and taking her with him as he traveled around looking for work. Supporting them by ‘transporting goods’ (opera subuectionis), Cuthman eventually stopped with his mother at Steyning, built a small home, and erected a church there, working on the construction while simultaneously caring for her.

As a caretaker, Cuthman is unusual in that he was male and actually received credit for his work. Such recognition, even in the present day, is rarely granted to people who struggle to support their households while also caring for children and/or elderly and disabled family members.

The Early Years

With the call for certainty in a market pervaded by ambiguity, authenticity became the central value-defining quality and the connoisseur—the one individual capable of identifying a master's hand—became the central value-determining actor in the cultural field. Charles Reade recognized this inevitable development early on, but it was William Ebsworth Hill and his sons (the Hills) who leveraged the acknowledged authority of connoisseurs to such great effect. They gained access to the highest reaches of London musical society—concert halls, conservatories, publishing houses, exhibition venues, and auction houses—and their expertise brought them into direct contact with the principal actors overseeing these institutions, with whom they transacted business, served on committees, and attended concerts. The Hills had inherited an unusual set of circumstances: a monolithic classical music landscape in which the violin was firmly embedded, a buoyant market for musical instruments, an expanding and influential musical press, a thriving exhibition culture, a contemporary instrument- making scene dominated by emulation, an emerging sense of historical awareness, and with it a nostalgic craving for authenticity—which they parlayed into a prosperous business built on the violin as an objet d’art.

INTRODUCTION

The initial prosecution of Helen Clark, the wife of a fisherman from Newhaven, occurred during years of intense witch-hunting in Scotland. A witchcraft panic took place during 1643 and 1644, in which 162 women and eleven men were accused. Clark's prosecution stalled in 1643, but was resumed in 1645. Her case contains many details of neighbourhood interactions and problems in a fishing community.

The documents related to Clark's case come from the court of justiciary in Edinburgh. The first one is a pre-trial document produced in the locality. The other documents were produced centrally once a decision to hold a trial had been made – though, as we shall see, there is no evidence that the trial was pursued to a conclusion. The presentation of the documents below follows a chronological line. Some undated documents have been placed in their most likely order.

On 16 October 1643, Clark was brought before the burgh of Newhaven and the kirk session of North Leith, combined local secular and religious authorities, suspected of witchcraft. She was said to have consulted with a woman called ‘Elspeth the spae wife’ twenty years previously, who had since been convicted for witchcraft and burned. Various neighbours, male and female, also told stories of quarrels and misfortune. There had been at least three attempts at reconciliation rituals. One of these, involving an ‘enchanted mackerel’, had been successful at the time. Another reconciliation, involving the sickness of James Bissett, was supported by neighbours, who collected a financial ‘contributione’ for him and sent Clark herself to deliver it – though Bissett died in the end.

The portion of the manuscript (Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Brogyntyn ii.1) that I discuss in this chapter, its first quire, differs from the rest of the codex in a number of important ways. With the exception of Scribe I's work at its very end, the quire's contents were contributed by a set of scribes absent from the rest of the manuscript, suggesting that it was produced outside the compiler's direct oversight and added as a distinct unit. This likelihood is supported by other codicological evidence. Quire 1 is the only quire in the manuscript originally comprised of ten folios, rather than eight, and it was written on larger sheets of parchment than its fellows; its margins are generally smaller or, in some cases, nonexistent, where trimming was necessary in order to make its dimensions match those of the rest of the codex. The quire also contains all of the manuscript's works that are wholly in Latin, and all of its tables and diagrams. Margaret Connolly observes that those particular textual and visual forms (including numerical tables, circular eclipse diagrams, and columnar explanatory rubrics) required scribes to write in a wider range of scripts than they might have otherwise, resulting in a visible diversity of handwriting that led Auvo Kurvinen, in 1953, to identify Quire 1 as the work of eight distinct scribes whose hands do not appear elsewhere in the miscellany. Connolly's reduction of those eight to only three (A, D, and H) still leaves us with a quire containing more variation in handwriting than other quires in the manuscript.

Ngugi’s career as artist and critic has reflected the development of Kenyan history and also the emergence of postcolonial criticism. This chapter delineates four main stages in the development of the critical understanding of Ngugi’s works over the past sixty years, though these stages are neither wholly distinct, sequential or definitive. The first stage is that of Commonwealth literature, and was often of the life and works variety. The second stage is that of postcolonial studies with its expansive focus on cultural politics. Stage three emerged primarily from African and especially Kenyan critics often focused on questions of translation. It drew on insider cultural knowledge and sometimes recollections of intergenerational trauma. Stage four witnessed the globalisation of Ngugi studies, with critics often from the Global South bringing international perspectives. These developments in Ngugi critical studies over sixty years do not sidestep the fact that Ngugi himself as scholar and educator has been a formidable and insightful interpreter as well as possibly the very best critic of his own work.

Introduction

Many nations have transformed the financial status of their citizens through constant and effective investment in trade. Given the universal challenge of unequal resource distribution, the exchange of goods and services has become a necessity and a cultural staple in human society, cutting across time, culture, and geography. Sadly, despite the apparent relevance of trade to socioeconomic development and even human survival, Africa continues to lag in both intracontinental and global trade. According to a 2020 report, the share of intra- African trade of total trade across the continent in the period between 1984 and 2016 was only 12% – a relatively low figure compared to the levels seen on other continents. This is particularly striking given Africa's long history of intra-continental trade, which spans several millennia. Throughout much of this history, waterways served as one of the primary means of transportation. Water transportation mode uses canoes, boats, ships, and ferries to transport goods and services from one place to the other. African rivers served as vital conduits for trade and cross-cultural exchange, facilitating trade between various chiefdoms or kingdoms in pre-colonial Africa. With the advent of international trade networks (the trans-Saharan Trade and, later, the Atlantic Trade), rivers became instrumental in connecting the already existing trade networks with the international ones.

While the role of rivers in international trade is the focus of the next chapter of this book, this chapter critically examines their roles in intra- African trade from pre-modern times until the advent of colonialism.

THE MANUSCRIPT

This volume presents the second part of ‘William Porlond's Minute Book, Being an Account and Memorandum Book, compiled by William Porlond, clerk to the Brewers’ Company, 1418–40’. The entire manuscript is bound within one later cover of the nineteenth century or earlier. The book belongs to the Worshipful Company of Brewers of London, and it is currently lodged at the London Guildhall Library. This later part, consisting of folios 157–328, spans the years 1429–40. The first part, folios 1–156, covering the years 1418–25, was published by the London Record Society in 2024.

Records for the years 1425–9 are missing from this manuscript and the clerk's usual lists of income and expenditure are not found for those years. Pages may have been lost in Porlond's day, or subsequently. The book was rescued from the Great Fire of 1666, when Brewers’ Hall, as Porlond knew it, burnt down, and then Brewers’ Hall, as rebuilt in the seventeenth century, was destroyed during the Second World War on 29 December 1940. Another possibility to explain the missing years is that Porlond himself may have been ill or away from London. His name, however, is not on the Muster Rolls, so he was probably not abroad serving as a soldier. There seems to have been dissension within the craft and fraternity, so perhaps the usual records were simply not entered in this book for 1425–9. In 1429, when the records resume, the clerk refers to a troubled time, when ‘a great harm befell the craft’ and some who had been Masters were ‘wasted and dead’, and others were ‘voided out of London’ [1].

This chapter develops the theory of regional cooperation driven by mutual interest in stability and protection for heads of state. It also provides justifications for the theory’s top-down focus on the interests of heads of state within RIOs, which are often considered actors in their own right. The chapter contextualizes the book’s focus on leader survival, and presents the argument regarding why some heads of state turn to RIOs and co-members as part of their multipronged survival strategies. The chapter elaborates on the criteria of “good standing,” and the salience of good standing for RIO members. The chapter also considers alternative explanations and whether they generate similar predictions regarding regional cooperation. The chapter concludes with a discussion of observable implications and testable hypotheses derived from the theory, for which I provide evidence in the remainder of the book.

The next morning the two friends were sitting on the veranda, half an hour earlier than usual. On one side, the canvas curtains were half pulled back, while on the other, uncurtained side, a hammock hung, in which Lysinka was rocking back and forth.

She was immersed in a picture book and wasn't paying her usual attention to the conversation of the two ladies, which of course was all about the previous day's outing. But then came a pause in their talk, until Franziska suddenly and rather awkwardly asked, “Didn't you say that Madame Belmonti had written?”

“Yes.”

“And she wanted Lysinka back?”

“Yes.”

“And aren't you going to agree? To be honest, I think that Madame Belmonti is right, and that you’re stretching the holiday out more than is good for the child.”

Phemi laughed heartily, but then said, “Ah, Franzl, it's no use, you’ll have to say what you really mean. You won't convince me, really and seriously, that you’re worried about Lysinka's upbringing. I’d think you wanted to be rid of her, if I didn't know that on the contrary you’re almost as fond of her as Hannah. Come now, tell me the truth.”