A historical background of Saint Domingue within the wider context of the European colonization will be the focus of the second chapter, which frames the island originally known to the Taíno as Ayiti as a space of human commodification, death, and slave resistance since the first Africans arrived in 1503. Less than twenty years after arrival, enslaved Africans were constantly escaping, taking up residence with remaining Taíno in the mountains, and participating in organized revolts. These rebellions were reactions to the brutal treatment of Taíno and Africans in the encomienda labor system, the emergence of the slave plantation-based sugar economy and processes of racialization, and the exorbitant death rates of enslaved people. In examining the immediate social world of enslaved people, I look at their social lives and recreation, particularly cultural and spiritual creations, considering them as processes of enculturation that introduced new Africans to local idioms and modes of survival.

Certain universal and more or less perennial aspects of human perceptions of the night influence the representation of nightlife in ancient texts. But beyond the stereotypes, we may recognize tensions between conservative perceptions and a continually changing reality. In the Roman empire, we may observe certain recurring elements of a ‘nocturnal koine’, the result of general trends. The factors that shaped nightlife in the Roman empire include the diffusion of voluntary associations and their convivial activities, the donations of benefactors for nighttime activities (baths, gymnasia, public banquets), the prominent place of nocturnal rites in cults with a soteriological or initiatory aspect, and efforts to increase the safety in cities during the night. These factors should be considered within a broader context—that of the gradual and continuous colonization of the night with the activities of the day.

The myth of Trojan origins of the Romans was given new life in the middle of the first century BCE, with the rise to power of Caesar and Augustus. There was more than one way to negotiate the relationship between Greece and Rome that the myth implied. One way was to continue privileging Romulus and the old foundational legend by marginalizing the myth of Trojan origins along with the antagonism between Greece and Rome that it implied (Horace). Another way was to neutralize the antagonism by claiming that the Trojans were in fact of Greek descent ( Dionysius of Halicarnassus). But it was also possible, rather than avoiding the antagonism, to bring it to the fore by presenting the Trojans and, by implication, the Romans as superior to the Greeks (Vergil). Vergil’s solution suited best the new geopolitical reality and the imperial ambitions of Rome. This transpires not only from the Aeneid but also from those imperial Greek authors who recognized that the traditional narrative of the Trojan War did not suit any longer the world in which they lived. The revised Trojan myth they promulgated brought about a thorough revision of the Trojan tradition, which survived into the early modern period.

This chapter explores the question, using primarily epigraphic evidence, whether individual, localized Jewish communities, without any obvious connection to each other across the ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse Roman Empire, can be said to have had, or displayed, a “micro-identity” in addition to their non-local ethnic one, or whether this feature, if not entirely absent in some cases, was indeed overshadowed by their shared history and ethnic origins. The answer offered: in some cases, maybe.

The case of an African soldier who served with distinction in the Roman army and who retired to his highland home town prompts a consideration of the problems of identity and behavior as they were shaped by an empire with its own fiscal, administrative, and military categories and demands. The question considers the negotiated aspects of identity in which local attachments of language, kinship, and place were made to merge with the categories of name, military rank, language, and armed service imposed by an imperial regime. Rather than one element effacing the other, it is shown how they could coexist in a split sense of identity through many generations over the height of the empire. Perhaps more than is often imagined, it seems that the structure of the empire was itself bifurcated and capable of sustaining such split identities all the way down to the most localized levels of the imperial social order.

Talmudic literature, throughout all its chronological phases, relates to various Roman emperors. Nine emperors are mentioned explicitly by name, and among these are six who are especially notable, from three different periods. First, the period of the major Jewish revolts: Vespasian and Titus are mentioned for the War of the Destruction of the Temple, Trajan for the Diaspora revolts and Hadrian for the Bar Kochba Revolt. These are the “wicked” emperors of Talmudic literature, with Hadrian presented as the worst of all. Second, the golden age of relations between Judaea and Rome in the Severan period: “Antoninus,” usually identified with Caracalla, is presented as the “good” emperor par excellence. Finally, in the middle of the scale between the “wicked” and the “good” emperors we find Diocletian, the interesting emperor whose presence is strongly felt, as he was responsible for the development of the whole region.

The project of modernity, how, when, and where it began and who produced it, continues to plague historians and sociologists alike. Writing in 1925 as she accepted her diploma for completion of the doctoral dissertation L’Attitude de la France à l’égard de l’esclavage pendant la révolution [Slavery and the French Revolutionists, 1788–1805], Anna Julia Cooper’s remarks instruct us to be constantly in search of self-defined expressions of humanity and development beyond the scope of the Western world. Cooper’s dissertation did just that in expanding study of the French Revolution to its imperial territories in the Caribbean – Saint-Domingue specifically – to make the case that without consideration of racial slavery in the colonies, the political and philosophical ideals propagated by the Declaration of the Rights on Man and the Citizen were woefully incomplete. That Cooper used water, currents, and the ocean to symbolize human movement toward new, liberated, modes of being is perhaps an irony, given that movement across the Atlantic Ocean was largely a voyage toward unfreedom for captive Africans. Still, even the lives of those who survived oceanic journeys and were enslaved in the Americas were not without alternate flows, bends, and radical turns that would alter the course of human history; the “currents” of which Cooper spoke were and are not linear.

Chapter 7 shows how diaspora activists’ interventions in the Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni Arab Spring were shaped by the relative degree of geopolitical support for the cause from their host-country governments and influential third parties, including states bordering the home-country, international institutions, and the media.

This chapter uses analysis of over 10,000 runaway slave advertisements in an in-depth look at marronnage through the lens of network building, identity formation, and race and solidarity work. Nearly half of the thousands of runaways described in the Les Affiches américaines advertisements fled within a small group of two or more people. Many were racially or ethnically homogeneous maroon groups that rallied around their collective identity, while groups composed of diverse ethnic backgrounds bridged their differences to forge an emerging racial solidarity. The chapter also explores the complex relationships between enslaved people, maroons and free people of color since absconders often had previous relationships with and sought refuge with people beyond their immediate plantation, highlighting the importance of social capital in finding success at marronnage.

Unlike in the West where the Roman municipal model was almost uniformly spread over the various provinces, Greek cities in the East during the Imperial period were very proud of their own centuries-old political traditions and consequently were reluctant to adopt Roman institutions. However, many cities celebrated the emperor as their ‘founder’ or were renamed after a Roman emperor, such as, for example, ‘Kaisareia’. Other cities deliberately chose pictures referring to Roman foundation practices to appear on their coins (e.g. the plowing scene) or took—formally or informally—the title of ‘koloneia’, normally reserved for communities which were part of the Roman State. This chapter aims at examining which cities were ready to comply with the Roman colonial model, why they did so, to what extent, and what the meaning of their claim for Roman origins was. It argues that the issue of the compliance of Greek cities with the Roman constitutional model of a colony was a way for them to negotiate their position within the Roman empire and was an aspect of cultural interaction.

This chapter similarly relies on analysis of the Les Affiches advertisements to examine the ways maroons reimagined their status and identity, took possession of forms of capital and raw materials that upheld and sustained plantations’ divisions of labor, adopted tactics of militancy, and reclaimed their time. The fugitive advertisements give some revelation into the minds of runaways by speculating the actions they took perhaps in minutes or days just before or after they fled. Rather than interpret these actions through the lens of enslavers’ foreshadowing of maroons’ movements for the purposes of surveillance and re-enslavement, this chapter employs subaltern analysis of maroon actions as linked to a broader sense of collective consciousness regarding freedom and liberation. Runaways exhibited more oppositional behaviors such as passing for free, appropriating material goods, bearing arms, and escaping for longer durations of time – leading to escalating grand marronnage before the Haitian Revolution.

The colonies and municipalities of Italy and the provinces were not merely representations of Roman traditions. How, then, can we understand the theologies of the cities? It is possible to do this through general theological discourse, since the local elites had received the same education as Romans. But there were certainly differences, albeit not apparent to us because of our lack of precise information about the local mythologies and deities. A study of the public gods of certain cities in Gallia Belgica and Germania Inferior allow us to discern certain factors that could be behind the theological rationale that was to emerge at the moment that local magistrates defined the religious obligations of the new city foundations. Two examples allow a glimpse into the inspiration for the creation of private divinities in Latin literature.

Chapter 5 describes differences in activists’ collective interventions for rebellion and relief. Moss demonstrates how diaspora movements adopted a common transnational repretoire of (1) broadcasting their allies’ plight to the outside world, (2) representing the cause to the media and policymakers, (3) brokering between allies, (4) remitting tangible and intangible resources homeward, and (5) volunteering in person on the front lines and along border zones. However, not all diaspora movements played a congruent role in the uprisings. While Libyans in the United States and Britain played what the author calls a "full-spectrum" role in the revolution for its duration, Syrians and Yemenis did not. The chapters to follow explain how and why.

The Introduction presents an overview of why diaspora mobilization matters, why the existing literature has not satisfactorily explained its causes and dynamics, and previews the author's key arguments. This chapter justifies the book's comparative framework and details the data collection strategies used to investigate the Arab Spring abroad.