During the Geometric period (ca. 900–700 BCE), the sociopolitical structure of Big Men became collaborative aristocratic rule. Most Geometric buildings had fieldstone foundations, mudbrick walls, and pitched thatch roofs, or, in the Cyclades and Crete, fieldstone walls and flat roofs. Larger dwellings were usually apsidal or rectangular, smaller dwellings often oval. In the eighth century, a large household could include separate buildings and areas inside an enclosure (Oropos, Eretria). By 700, multi-room rectangular houses with a courtyard appear (Zagora). Sanctuaries in settlements were usually open-air. Sanctuaries outside settlements proliferated in Late Geometric as sites of elite display and competition; rituals included animal sacrifice, communal feasting, and votive offerings. Monumental temples were built 725–700 at Eretria, Amarynthos, Naxos, Samos, Kalapodi, and Ano Mazaraki, all extra-urban except Eretria. Geometric burials were generally inhumations, though cremation was common in Athens/Attica. On pottery, angular geometric motifs replaced Protogeometric circular designs. Figured scenes (funerals, battles) appear in the mid-eighth century and possibly mythological scenes in the late eighth century. Greeks, probably Euboeans, borrowed the Phoenician alphabet ca. 800 BCE; early inscriptions were scratched on pottery, some in poetic meter. By ca. 700, many settlements had developed into the politically organized community called a polis.

This chapter historicises the current moment of transformation in international trade governance by examining the evolving boundaries of trade expertise and the shifting techniques of trade governance. It adopts a periodisation of post-Second World War international economic governance, starting with the ‘embedded liberal’ period, continuing with the ‘neoliberal period’, and concluding with the contemporary period of liberalism ‘in motion’ or kineo-liberalism. The chapter demonstrates how the boundaries of the expert field and the available governance techniques are deeply connected to the broader politics of trade governance, reflecting and sustaining larger shifts in convictions concerning the purposes and rationales of international trade governance. The current moment is characterised by instability, uncertainty, and contestation, leading to a denaturalisation of the boundaries of trade governance and a reinterpretation of its fundamental aspects.

This chapter examines the relationship between trade and sustainable development, including its developmental dimension. It argues that trade policy and international trade institutions must be integrated into broader international efforts to promote sustainable development. This requires an end to the siloed treatment of trade and other policy areas. It also requires a more holistic approach to international law-making, including greater cooperation among international organisations and a willingness to make trade-offs between competing goals. Finally, it requires a recognition of the different preferences of rich and poor countries and a willingness to address the power imbalances that exist in the global trading system.

Studies of imperial Chinese and Byzantine diplomacy conventionally assume that their diplomatic norms had indigenous origins that became models for neighbouring polities. This chapter questions this assumption by comparing the diplomatic traditions of empires of Sui and Tang China (581–907), Byzantium (395–1453), Sasanian Iran (224–651), Turkic polities, and smaller Eurasian states. Eurasia shared diplomatic protocols incorporating pageantry, status ranking, displays of obeisance to the ruler, gift exchange, and feasting. Visiting envoys enjoyed rights to safe passage that sometimes were violated during periods of interpolity tension. Peaceful relations were normally signalled when a greater power invested a lesser one as a vassal, and sometimes when two great powers negotiated and ratified written treaties. Diplomatic agreements were reinforced via marriage or fictive kinship relations between rulers, trade accords, and/or direct payments from one polity to another. This customary diplomatic tradition provided rulers with shared standards to negotiate agreements that protected their perceived strategic, political, economic and symbolic interests.

This chapter analyses the WTO’s institutional features, focusing on rule-making and dispute settlement. It describes the creation of the GATT and the shift to the WTO, analysing salient aspects of the WTO’s structure. It reviews how WTO institutions have operated, highlighting problematic features and identifying potential reforms. The WTO is widely viewed as a seriously flawed institution. Despite its goal of promoting liberalised trade, members have found it virtually impossible to conclude new agreements. The dispute settlement system, once viewed as its crown jewel, now lies in tatters. While many factors have contributed to the current situation, the multilateral trading system’s institutional architecture is deeply implicated.

This chapter foregrounds recent studies on race and religion as analytic categories in the study of the ancient world. Conventional scholarly analysis of the late-antique Mediterranean world often assumes that uses of the terms race and racism are anachronistic in studies of premodern societies. By contrast, religion is often taken for granted as an unproblematic category of analysis across both modern and premodern social contexts. More recently, critical studies of race and religion have illustrated the shortcomings in the basic assumptions that undergird the uses and disuses of terms like race, racism, religion, and ethnicity in studies of premodernity. Drawing on these recent works, this chapter demonstrates the entanglements between religious and racialised conceptions of group identities and hierarchies. Race and religion are conceptually intertwined to the extent that religious ideas have been instrumental in processes of racialisation and religious groups have been targets of racialisation. The chapter concludes with examples of how theories of environmental determinism and anti-Semitism manifest in Christian ideologies and imperial policies in late antiquity.

This chapter examines the political economy of international trade policy, exploring the evolution of the international trading system from the GATT to the WTO. It analyses the fault lines between free trade and fair trade and winners and losers, and the role of labour market policies in addressing transition costs. It also discusses the challenges facing the WTO, including institutional dysfunction and an expanding mandate. It proposes potential solutions, such as plurilateral agreements and improved institutional arrangements, while emphasising the need for collaboration with other international agencies. The chapter concludes by stressing the urgency of recovering the aspirations of the post-war international order to address current global challenges.

This chapter surveys how contemporary White nationalist publications use ancient evidence to promote pseudoscientific theories of race that justify violence and oppression. Such interpretations do not distort ancient sources; challenging them requires challenging the modern assumption of the biological and genetic reality of race. In fact, the ancient evidence that White nationalist intellectuals cite reveals the pervasiveness in antiquity of attitudes towards human difference that can productively be understood as racial even after the pseudoscientific assumptions these interpreters impose on that evidence have been rejected. Furthermore, they prompt us to recognise the persistence of pseudoscientific understandings of race in many popular translations of ancient works and standard reference lexica, understandings that remain unchallenged and even unrecognised as long as the relevance of the categories of race and racism to the study of antiquity is denied.

The end of the Mycenaean palatial system around 1200 BC marked a turning point in the history of the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age, which brought about a fundamental transformation of the economic and social structures. The twelfth and the first half of the eleventh centuries BCE, i.e., the postpalatial period of LH IIIC and the Submycenaean period, were characterized by continuity and change. Life during this epoch was determined by rivalry and interaction between small-scale social groups, sometimes across long distances. The specialized arts and crafts controlled by the palaces had died out, while other sectors of the craft industry such as bronze-working and shipbuilding survived at a remarkably high level. Burial rites and ritual practices also continued in the tradition of the palatial era for three to four generations, while new trends emerged in other areas. The developments on the Greek mainland are illustrated by a regional survey. It shows that this transformative era also marks the transition to the Early Iron Age when Greek identities began to emerge.

Thes chapter argues that both Britons and South Asians made use of instruments such as treaties and a broader world of diplomatic paperwork to construct a framework for interstate legality in the eighteenth century. South Asian efforts to make and remake arrangements with British traders and government agencies constituted a source of inter-imperial legal forms. Inter-imperial treaties were not blunt instruments of European imperialism, but legal documents co-produced by South Asian bureaucrats. By emphasising the activism and political thought of South Asian actors in their pursuit of a new inter-imperial order, this chapter rethinks the focus on European actors as the architects of international law. Of course, multilingual and multipolar claim making did not impose a stable legal order in South Asia. Treaties were regularly abrogated and renegotiated. Nevertheless, such efforts to negotiate relationships among states and enshrine them punctuated and shaped the upheavals of the eighteenth century as well as the explosion of new projects of state building. Inter-imperial lawmaking emerged as a vital site for politics in the eighteenth century.

Indian history from 500 BC to AD 1000 is characterized by kingdoms and confederacies consolidating and expanding. This political landscape was theorized by ancient scholars as mandala, or ‘circles’ of kingdoms. Two areas brought these polities into contact: diplomacy and war. Indian legal tradition made rules of engagement for these areas. Diplomacy also required rules whereby diplomats were protected as they travelled to different kingdoms as representatives of their rulers. Economic imperatives necessitated long-distance trade not only between Indian polities, but also between India and other regions. Such trade required safe routes and a set of agreed laws governing such trade and traders. Early examples are set forth both in Kauṭilya’s treatise on governance called Arthaśāstra and in Indian treatises of the Dharmaśāstra genre. We set these normative works alongside some literary sources as well as documents preserved in inscriptional form. Beginning with a discussion of Dharmaśāstra as a form of transpolity legal ordering, the chapter proceeds to treat diplomacy, war, and trade as three areas of international law addressed in ancient India.

This chapter examines the complex relationship between international trade law and public health. While trade liberalisation can lower the cost of medical supplies and raise global standards of living, trade rules also constrain national public health measures and can facilitate trade in harmful products. The chapter analyses how the World Trade Organization (WTO) has addressed health-related trade restrictions, including disputes over tobacco, alcohol, and asbestos. It also explores the tension between intellectual property rights and access to essential medicines, as well as the impact of trade on healthcare supply chains, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. The chapter concludes by critiquing the WTO’s ‘exceptionalism’ framework for evaluating public health measures and arguing for a more integrated approach that prioritises both health and economic resilience.