The Introduction establishes the scope, methods, and aims of the book and explores the treatment of the devil in contemporary scholarship on early Christian thought. This chapter also introduces the book’s interlocutors: Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Macrina the Younger and provides an account of ‘the Cappadocians’ as a group of apprentices in a workshop on spiritual warfare. The Introduction closes with an outline of the book’s argument.

This chapter presents a detailed empirical examination of functions adopted by African RIOs, based on original data. This descriptive evidence substantiates an observable implication of the theory: A critical mass of African leaders have supported the development of RIO structures necessary for stabilizing incumbents and organizing mutual aid. The chapter demonstrates that African RIOs grew more active across multiple policy domains with implications for leader survival, from peacekeeping and policing to countering coups and observing elections.

Sorkin’, The New York Times’ critic Michael Paulson observed in the runup to Lincoln Center's 2023 revival of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's Camelot (1960),

is not the first person to revise the musical … but his deft hand with witty fast paced dialogue and audience nostalgia for Camelot … has made the production one of the most anticipated productions on Broadway this year, with theater mavens eager to see how Sorkin puts his stamp on it.

While not exactly ‘theater mavens’, we and a handful of our medievalist friends gathered in Manhattan for a watch party and were indeed eager to see this Sorkin-stamped Camelot directed by Bartlett Sher.

The British Customs administration during the 1690s was in transformation. Staff numbers were on the rise, new regulations governed port business, and systematic coastal policing became part of Customs responsibilities. Rather than simply internal institutional developments, this transformation is intricately linked to broader trends of that decade. The reign of Mary II and William III witnessed profound changes in the nature of the English state. Such changes are typically identified in relation to constitutional developments, European power politics and fiscal-military policies. The manner of the pair's succession tipped the constitution towards a balanced course with the ascension of parliament and the birth of party politics. The revolution settlement also forced England to commit to continued engagement in continental and colonial theatres of war and European dynastic politics. The costs of such commitment in turn provoked domestic changes that are taken to signal the rise of the fiscal-military state, such as increasing volumes of economic legislation, newly formed or re-formed bodies of financial and fiscal organization and a growing civil and military administration. The revenue departments of Customs and Excise are usually considered to be at the heart of such changes. The Excise is in fact regarded as a model case of administrative reform firmly tending towards fiscal efficiency and modern bureaucracy. The Customs, on the other hand, have generally been seen to fall short of such standards both in terms of revenue returns and administrative efficiency.

In ‘Representing Rural England’, an experimental paper published in the journal Critical Inquiry in 2015, a landscape painting – a ‘conversation piece’ set in a particular place at a specific time – marked the point of departure for a discussion of representations of estate management and labour relations in eighteenth-century England. The opportunity to read Edward Haytley's ‘Extensive View from the Terrace at Sandleford Priory’ against the correspondence of Elizabeth Montagu was all the more exciting since the Montagus are the family represented in its foreground. Written by an economic historian trained in the Thompsonian tradition of ‘history from below’, that paper was far less interested in Elizabeth Montagu herself than in the harvest labourers depicted in the background of the painting, not least because even under the watchful, telescopic gaze of their employer and landlord, Edward Haytley's haymakers seem to be doing anything but work. The paper ranged widely over questions of labour and leisure, industriousness and idleness, and paternalism and protest, and even dared (despite the author's complete ignorance of artistic convention) to say something about patronage and genre. At the same time, however, the paper had very little to say about the management of the Montagu estates, and virtually nothing about the terms on which they were held or by whom they were farmed.

The invitation to contribute to this volume is, therefore, a welcome opportunity to revisit Elizabeth Montagu's landscapes, turning away from questions of representation towards those of social and economic practice.

This chapter explains the place and role of animals in the Roman economy, stressing their importance in livestock farming and food production in the countryside.

On Thursday 8 December 1639 Sir William Calley wrote from Burderop House in the parish of Chiseldon, Wiltshire, to Richard Harvey, steward to the courtier Endymion Porter in London, sending gifts from his country kitchen.

This simple piece of correspondence – one of a sequence of letters that spanned a dozen years – provides entry into a world of memories, connections, friendship, and service linking provincial England and the capital. It allows a glimpse of private traffic as otherwise invisible commoners like Thomas Smith the Marlborough waggoner carried letters and packages along the Great West Road between Wiltshire and the metropolis.

This chapter presents an overview of the diversity of archaeological and textual sources available for studying Egypt’s vast and fertile countryside, whose typology of settlements can also be understood from the papyrological and architectural remains. Three brief case studies provide tangible examples of typical characteristics of rural sites, as well as examples of the variety of settlements found in the countryside of Egypt.