In 1917, a small group of women, some of whom had just come out of purdah, began to meet regularly for Red Cross work in Birbhum, Bengal. Called upon by Saroj Nalini Dutt (1887–1925), a Bengali social reformer and early rural development activist, the members of the Birbhum Mahilā Samiti (Birbhum women's group) sewed garments and made dātuns (teeth-cleaning sticks) made from the neem tree as well as pacīsī boards (an Indian game) for Indian soldiers fighting in the First World War. Dutt, who was honoured for her activities after the war by the British Red Cross Society (BRCS), also sent a monthly consignment of sweets, condiments, and newspapers to soldiers serving in Mesopotamia. The Birbhum group, which normally focused its activities on the social and educational ‘progress’ of Bengali women, is only one of the many examples of Indian non-state humanitarian initiatives organised during the First World War. Given that these initiatives were embedded in the British imperial context and contributed to the empire's war effort, they are examples of a larger phenomenon that historians before me have labelled ‘imperial humanitarianism’.

Two decades later, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), the future prime minister of independent India, and by then, President of the Indian National Congress (INC), became involved in propagating and organising Indian nationalist humanitarian activities. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), Nehru swayed the Indian national movement to create its own humanitarian programme, which saw the collection of funds and food items in favour of Republican Spain.

Chapter 7 systematically re-examines Machiavelli’s beliefs about lo stato as they emerge in his early political writings and culminate in the first full statement of his theory in Il Principe. The architecture of that theory is clarified: it is an account of both free and unfree states, and it is shown to be articulated according to a theory of rhetorical definition which was instantly recognizable to his humanist contemporaries. The place of Machiavelli’s thinking about liberty and its absence in the princely state is then investigated, as is his account of state formation, which is demonstrably conducted in equally rhetorical terms, recurring not only to the concepts of form and material to describe how political bodies are artfully assembled and shaped, but also to rhetorical ideas about invention and disposition in Machiavelli’s view of the creative work involved in founding new states. The chapter identifies the evolving role of a theory of political obligation within Machiavelli’s account of the state, before culminating in an analysis of his understanding of Fortuna’s role in state matters and his rejection of the Senecan wisdom which elsewhere informed Renaissance thinking about the remedies for good and bad luck in human affairs.

Describes academic and other activities, 1933–36.

The first of two chapters describing Meade’s life and work at LSE, including the work which earned him a Nobel Prize.

As with the Left, the Conservative Party also began to look to charity for the delivery of social services. Following the enormous appeal of Band Aid and Live Aid, the Government turned to the voluntary sector to make up for the cuts to the social services budgets. However, it also hoped to embrace a compliant sector. Conservative MPs regularly complained to the Charity Commissioners about the political advocacy of the humanitarians and other poverty lobbyists. From the mid-1980s, this became a concerted campaign through neoconservative organisations such as Western Goals. The most successful was the International Freedom Foundation, an anti-communist libertarian group which triggered an investigation into Oxfam’s advocacy on apartheid. The Charity Commissioners concluded that Oxfam had overstepped its remit and publicly rebuked it in 1991, even though the end of apartheid was in sight. It later emerged that the IFF was a front organisation for the South African military. The racist politics of the region, which shaped so much humanitarian intervention, had returned to the UK to impact the regulation of all charities’ campaigning work.

Chapter 6 reconstructs the technology-specific legal contours of freedom of expression in the Internet age, presenting empirical evidence of the growing importance of technology for legal practice and regulation. Since data-processing technology is a prerequisite for free speech, the starting point is privacy law. An important distinction is made between data integrity and network integrity and the discussion on net neutrality and the open Internet is revisited. The case law of the ECtHR on Article 10 ECHR is also examined to see if there is a tendency to recognise an independent ‘right to transmit’. Moreover, the activities of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) can be seen to produce technology-related standards relevant to the freedom of expression. ICANN, which is responsible for routing data packets to their destination, controls the ‘master key’ to the entire global Internet and can thus influence the conditions under which freedom of communication is possible. Finally, the chapter addresses the technical standards for the Internet developed by the independent Internet Architecture Board and the Internet Engineering Task Force, which are also crucial for the freedom of expression.

Every 5 years, the World Congress of the Econometric Society brings together scholars from around the world. Leading scholars present state-of-the-art overviews of their areas of research, offering newcomers access to key research in economics. Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Twelfth World Congress consists of papers and commentaries presented at the Twelfth World Congress of the Econometric Society. This two-volume set includes surveys and interpretations of key developments in economics and econometrics, and discussions of future directions for a variety of topics, covering both theory and application. The first volume addresses such topics as contract theory, industrial organization, health and human capital, as well as racial justice, while the second volume includes theoretical and applied papers on climate change, time-series econometrics, and causal inference. These papers are invaluable for experienced economists seeking to broaden their knowledge or young economists new to the field.

Chapter 4 critically examines how the ECtHR has conceptualised the technological conditions of freedom of expression in its case law. The ECtHR’s practice only superficially acknowledges differences between the various technological media, treating technology as a ‘black box’ rather than analysing in depth the interactions between the technological medium and the process of receiving and transmitting information. While this may have been unproblematic in the age of the press and broadcasting, it needs to be revised now that the Internet is the leading medium, requiring a shift in perspective from legal doctrine to the social sciences. Correspondingly, this chapter reviews two leading approaches to the relationship between technology, society and law: the media theory of law and STS. The media theory of law provides a remarkable general explanation of how the historically dominant means of information dissemination influence the law, but takes an uncritical view of the technology involved and underestimates normative social structures in the digital environment. In contrast, the strength of STS lies in its use of detailed case studies involving complex interactions between society and materiality/technology via the concept of co-production, but offers a dissatisfactory treatment of the role of law.