This chapter shows how QE has had material consequences for fiscal policy in the UK since 2009 and also leads to potential conflicts in times of QT. It looks to international precedent for lessons on how to manage these fiscal interactions.

This chapter and the following explore aspects of the making of the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle common stock, that is those annals substantially shared by all versions up to c.892. Many elements of the earliest stage of the writing and compilation of the annals remain obscure. The authors and their location(s) are unknown, and their sources only partially defined. The common stock ends c.892 and probably entered into circulation at about this time or soon after. These vernacular annals align in various ways with the Alfredian cultural and political project of the 880s and 890s, and some annals of these decades suggest court connections. Plummer believed in King Alfred's hands-on involvement in the creation of the Chronicle: ‘the idea was carried out under his direction and supervision, this I do most firmly believe’. There is, however, no evidence for Alfred's direct or even indirect involvement. Plummer's belief was challenged by Sir Frank Stenton, and most critics now employ caution concerning the connection between Alfred and the making of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The creators of the common stock annals were as much compilers as they were authors, drawing on a range of sources for historically remote events, as well as authoring new annals for more recent times. This chapter surveys the evidence available from the Chronicle itself for the common stock annals’ authorship, the sources used and the decision to shape the Chronicle as a continuously numbered sequence or years from AD 1.

For most of its history in the twentieth century African literature has been haunted by the question of modernity. This chapter presents modernity as the overdetermining condition of literature in both colonialism and postcolonial society, examines how modernity came to exert its influence in the institution of African literature by hiding behind the mask of tradition, and treats modernity as both the cause and a symptom of the crisis associated with decolonial projects. This chapter is on the strategies developed by African writers to narrate this crisis: What does it mean to consider modernity as the overdetermining condition of African literature when the original impetus for this tradition of writing was the recuperation of precolonial histories and experiences? The chapter pays particular attention to the variety of forms in which the figure of the modern was represented in works that were not explicitly about modernity, most prominently Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, Flora Nwapa’s Efuru, and Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine. These are novels where the referents are obviously precolonial while the ideas and the forms are about the nature and meaning of the modern.

Introduction: the transformer on Phiri Street

When thick black smoke billowed out from the electricity sub-station in Phiri Street every house was plunged into darkness. It was early evening in a July cold snap with temperatures set to dip below zero. Victor called a meeting. Standing in the street, the residents didn't need to discuss what had happened; too many houses and backyard tenants cooking and heating had overloaded the transformer. They quickly concluded that somebody needed to phone Eskom, the national generator and supplier of electricity. The next step was more difficult. Who was going to make the call? Those at the meeting melted away. Whoever rang would be asked their meter number. Their purchase of pre-paid electricity would be checked. This complication capsized the meeting. People went home to cold rooms and mute televisions. Victor couldn't ring, being in the same situation as those who had melted away. But not a man to give up he found a neighbour who had a legit receipt. He gave the call centre operator his neighbour's meter number the following morning. The operator came back with the observation that he was a “low payer.” The neighbour, it seemed, only bought the occasional coupon. Eskom would not dispatch anyone.

Fortunately, somebody knew somebody who worked for Eskom. Victor organised a collection and an Eskom team came out to replace the transformer. The electricians told those who stood around watching what everybody knew; the transformer was being overloaded.

Introduction

Religion and spirituality are part and parcel of all cultures of every human society. Religion gives humans and their societies shape and a sense of purpose. Religious culture entails the way of life of a particular people or community in connection with the divine. In Africa, religion and spirituality are important elements of the cultural fabric of the society. Notably, African peoples are notorious for their belief systems. As author John Mbiti once observed:

Whenever the African is, there is religion. He carries it to the fields where he is sowing seeds or harvesting a new crop; he takes it with him to the beer party or to attend a funeral ceremony; and if he is educated, he takes religion with him to the examination room at school or in the university; if he is a politician, he takes it to the house of parliament.

Spirituality in Africa was originally premised on beliefs and traditions associated with African Traditional Religion (ATR). The principles or tenets of African spirituality are essentially the same across various groups, notwithstanding the diversity of religious practices and beliefs connected to various indigenous religious organizations and denominations. African spirituality manifests itself in a variety of ways, including divination, ancestor veneration, nature worship, rites and ceremonies, observance of taboos and holy days, and more. The import of foreign religions – Christianity and Islam – into Africa following the success of Islamic Jihads and Christian proselytization in the region might have altered the prevailing religious dynamics in Africa; however, some of the tenets of African spirituality are still being observed in contemporary times, not only in limited fashion among the ATR-faithful, but also in different manners of expressions amongst African Christians and Muslims.

The news of the accident on the lake had left Franziska deeply shaken. But Josephine, by the time she left the room half an hour later, had succeeded in restoring the equilibrium in her mistress's mind, at least to the extent that the events she had recounted now seemed as if they had taken place in the last century, or far away in some land beyond the seas. In any case Franziska refused to let the incident disrupt her plan for the day, which read simply: letter to Countess Judith.

She had written to the countess as soon as she had arrived, though only a short note, which had neither expected a reply nor received one. It therefore was now truly incumbent on her to write.

“For several days now, my dear Countess, I have been meaning to follow my first note to you with a longer letter, but always found myself hindered in carrying out my intention.

“And today, a serious accident on our lake, in which the priest from Nagy-Foros lost his life—even the Eucharist sank into the waters—seemed likely to keep me from staying true to my intention, yet again. But I shall set aside the feelings arising from this, and write to you.

“I have now been at Arpa Castle for forty days, and this long and short amount of time lies behind me like a dream.

In the earliest Christian narratives, many saints worked with their hands. The apostles Peter, Andrew, James, and John worked on the water as fishermen (Mt 4:18–23, Mk 1:16–20). Paul made tents (Acts 18:3). Martha served food at her table (Lk 10:38–42, Jn 12:2). Apocryphal texts represented the Virgin as a highly skilled textile worker, spinning and weaving the embroidered linen and silk veil for the temple described in Exodus 26:1–12. According to The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Mary worked in wool (lanificio), praying before ‘she engaged in weaving’ (textrino se in opere occupabat). Christ himself was trained by Joseph, a carpenter (Mk 6:3, Mt 13:55), and performed miracles while helping his foster-father build wooden furniture:

In 2016 Dr Suzanne Paul drew my attention to a project on parchment species identifcation initiated in the Department of Archaeology, University of York. With the permission of Scott Mandelbrote, Fellow Librarian, Peterhouse, I selected Peterhouse, MSS 92 (large folio) and 181 (regular folio) for identifcation, the two manuscripts representing two diferent stages of the Fish Scribe's career. The work was carried out by Emma Nichols, CUL conservator and analysed by Sarah Fiddyment, Department of Archaeology, University of York. I am grateful to Fiddyment for permission to cite her report, which follows.

The part played by the concept of constituent power in prolonging, multiplying or magnifying the divisions in existence in France before and after 1789 has not been given much historical recognition.1 Between 1789 and 1792, however, it came to be used as a weapon in a number of concurrent conflicts centred on the consequences, whether actual or potential, of the disintegration of the French Empire and the growth of emigration from France. Through Sieyès, Ramsay’s concept of constituent power was given a status that was similar to, but less foundational than, Rousseau’s concept of a legislator. As Sieyès wrote in the draft Declaration of the Rights of Man that he presented to the National Assembly on 21 July 1789, constituent power was not required to constitute a nation or society but to constitute a government. This, initially, made its scope more limited than Rousseau’s concept of a legislator. Its focus on government also made it possible for Sieyès to circumvent the two apparently intractable problems that Rousseau had highlighted in his Social Contract. The first was how a sovereign, whose will was general, could elect a government, whose will was particular.

For the prisoners, there was, of course, always the idea of escape, but it was not as simple or easy a thing to achieve as many of the contemporary accounts by British escapees might seem to indicate. Though some British prisoner accounts tell of escapes from the fortresses by climbing out of windows or leaping down walls, most escapees were British officers who were on parole, a privilege not available to most American seamen. These officers were already outside the fortress, having permission to live in town, and were allowed to stroll or ride, even to hunt, outside of the town's perimeters. Many of these British officer escapees simply went out for a stroll one day and did not return. They also used ruses and hired carriages, wore costumes and obtained false papers, had paid tutors to teach them to speak French, all of which cost more money than the American seaman prisoner ever could have hoped to have.

Most importantly, for the British escapee, home was not all that far away; once he reached the coast, he needed only a fishing boat to take him out to the Royal Navy's blockading vessels and he would be free.

For the American seaman escapee, he would have to get to a port without detection and find an American vessel to take him home by a route that would avoid not only French harbour patrols but also the Royal Navy vessels, which could have impressed him. Nevertheless, between sixty and seventy American prisoners escaped, of whom just twenty-one may have successfully escaped the French Empire.

From 1803 to 1814, more than 1500 Americans were held as prisoners of war in France. Nearly all of them were merchant seamen. They were taken prisoner when the vessels on which they were working were captured at sea by French privateers or were shipwrecked on French shores. They were taken in to French ports, held in local jails, then marched to prison camps, or depots, in the interior, where they were held with and as if they were British prisoners of war, les prisonniers de guerre anglais.

France (like Britain) followed the custom of, when a vessel flying the flag of an enemy country was captured in time of war, the crew were to be treated as if they had the same nationality as the vessel's flag. Thus, these American seamen went to prisoner of war depots because they had taken work on a British merchant vessel which was then captured by the French. Additionally, during part of this time, Napoleon issued decrees targeting American shipping specifically, seizing American vessels in French ports or encouraging French privateers to capture them at sea. As France had no prison depot designated for Americans, the crews of those vessels were also sent to the depots used for British prisoners of war.

For the entirety of the period, the American Minister Plenipotentiary and consuls in France struggled to obtain their countrymen's release, on the grounds that the United States was neutral in Europe's wars and so, American citizens could not justifiably be held as prisoners of war.

Through a combination of archaeological and bioarchaeological methods, this chapter explores the variety of burial practices in the Roman countryside. A case study on the Vagnari Cemetery in southeast Italy illustrates current and future directions in bioarchaeological analyses at rural Roman cemeteries.

The widespread adoptions of the handwritten codex on the one hand and of the printing press on the other hand seem to dominate modern media histories.

Yet, between these two historical milestones, medieval scribes witnessed an explosion of different types of information technologies in many forms. While the codex became a dominant form of mediating knowledge in the European Middle Ages, the particular forms of books that exist from the period demonstrate a more nuanced media ecology. For example, abundant evidence survives to show that loosely-collected gatherings of booklets were just as widely used as bound codices. Similarly, there was no standard form for books, as they ranged in physical size, quality, and contents. Some are so massive that several people are required to move one, while others are little enough to fit into a satchel or even a small pocket; some are thin like modern-day notebooks, while others are nearly as thick as they are tall or wide.

Even more, the very forms of the contents of medieval books reveal much more about the media diversity of the Middle Ages. Medieval books contain countless different types of texts, glosses, images, charts, diagrams, infographics, and other types of information. The manuscripts held in Bristol libraries contain a similar diversity of manuscript media, which we may understand as varying expressions of medieval information technologies. These manuscripts therefore offer an opportunity to reflect upon how information is categorised, systematised, and organised – essential issues in understanding media across the many centuries of the longue duree.

Medieval theologians generally understood fear as morally ambiguous. Their ambivalence about fear's moral value stemmed from the Bible, which includes some passages celebrating holy fear, e.g. timor Domini sanctus permanens in saeculum saeculi (‘The fear of the Lord is holy, enduring for ever and ever’), and others suggesting fear's incompatibility with crucial virtues like caritas (‘love’), e.g. timor non est in caritate sed perfecta caritas foras mittit timorem (‘Fear is not in charity, but perfect charity casteth out fear’). In an effort to resolve the apparent inconsistency between such passages, patristic theologians like Augustine of Hippo distinguished between two types of fear of God (timor Dei): servile fear (timor servilis) of punishment, which is cast out by charity, and chaste fear (timor castus) of sundering one's soul from God through sin, which endures forever. Although they valued chaste fear above servile fear, they understood both as spiritually salutary, though servile fear must be cast out by love. During the High Middle Ages, scholastic theologians like Peter Lombard expanded this dichotomy into elaborate taxonomies of fear. These generally included natural fear (timor naturalis: an automatic and morally neutral fear that occurs when one is suddenly frightened or anticipates pain), as well as spiritually detrimental fears like human fear (timor humanus: excessive fear of bodily harm that discourages moral behaviour) and worldly fear (timor mundanus: fear of losing worldly goods that discourages moral behaviour), the last of which was angrily attributed to the propertied Church by John Wycliffe.