A number of methods of estimation are introduced, and are applied in the context of networks. Maximum likelihood estimation is applied to Bernoulli random graphs and to Erdős–Rényi mixture graphs. The EM algorithm, used later in fitting stochastic blockmodels, is also introduced. Both maximum likelihood and the (generalized) method of moments are used in the context of estimating the exponent of power law decay in degree distributions. Bayesian methods are presented, and the choice of prior discussed; they are applied to Erdős–Rényi mixture graphs and to their Poissonized variants. Further general methods introduced include Approximate Bayesian Computation, as well as Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, for which both the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm and the Gibbs sampler are presented. Some specific models are given special attention. In exponential random graph models, MCMC methods offer an approach, though convergence to equilibrium can be very slow. The estimation of latent space models is discussed both from a frequentist and from a Bayesian point of view. Estimating the underlying dimension of a random geometric graph is also touched upon.

INTRODUCTION

Alexander Drummond was an elderly man, aged eighty-one, living in the parish of Auchterarder in Perthshire. He was a healer with a large number of clients, including gentlemen and even ministers, and had a reputation for having practised healing for about fifty years. He charged money for healing, and was respected for his knowledge. He was transported to Edinburgh for investigation and trial. Numerous clients, in various localities throughout east-central Scotland, were questioned about his practices; the dossier edited here includes some correspondence about how ministers organised this investigation. The full minutes of Drummond's trial do not survive, but there is a list of assize members, and a summons to the assize. He was evidently tried and executed in 1629.

Most of the documents preserved in the dossier are records of this process of pre-trial interrogation. From 28 September 1628 until 8 July 1629, Drummond was questioned about his performance of healing and about his clients. He cured both physical and mental illness, and adults as well as children. He recited two charms that he used for healing, and the scribe carefully wrote down the words, placing the records in a middle position between written and oral. He also knew some words that he would not repeat during interrogation.

Otherwise, the clerk departed from Drummond's own way of describing his practice. The written record stated that he had long been suspected of witchcraft; he was suspected and challenged for sorcery and witchcraft; suspected of unlawful and supernatural healing, and devilish practice, and abusing his majesty's lieges; ‘ane witch and sorcerer’; ‘crymis of sorcerie witchcraft and divilish chearmingis’; ‘curing be diabolical and unlawful meanis’. The depositions are marked ‘Alexander Drummond Warlock’. The word ‘witchcraft’ was frequently used by the interrogators to describe how an unexpected illness came to afflict a person.

Early Life and Times

Rather than starting with Spain, let's start in the Americas, bringing the Indigenous peoples front and center to set the stage, as it were, for Las Casas's impact. The two, Christopher Columbus and Bartolomé de las Casas, were, dare we say it, both iconic figures of the age of exploration and conquest. Their deeds are seen heroic, on the one hand, and sometimes judged as tyrannical and thoughtless. On the other hand, neither was without his flaws. But their transit across the oceans and lands of both the Old World and the New World set the stage for one of the greatest moments in history, the bringing together of two worlds and cultures unknown to each other.

Let's be clear here. Before 1492 Europeans knew little or nothing of the existence of what we call the Western Hemisphere or the Americas. And the inhabitants of the Americas knew nothing of the European world nor, in fact, of Africa or Asia for that matter.

There actually may have been contacts between voyagers of both Asian and European/African origins, but they tended not to leave long-lasting impacts. The most famous of the modern ones was made by the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl across both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans in the middle of the twentieth century, testing his theories of contact between Polynesia and South America, and Europe/Africa and the Americas in the Atlantic and Caribbean worlds. Look up the voyages of Kon-Tiki for some great adventure reads spanning the Pacific worlds and the Ra II expedition which took him from the west coast of Africa to Barbados in the West Indies.

Introduction

In the decade following independence in West Africa, the challenges of nation-building spurred a new wave of nationalism, ethno-nationalism, economic competition, and political instability that increasingly undermined the historical legacy of Pan-Africanism. This chapter's central focus is the expulsion of Yoruba migrants, along with other foreign nationals, from Ghana in November/December 1969, which significantly redefined notions of citizenship.

The 1969 Alien Compliance Order aimed to enforce the Deportation Act of 1957, granting authority to the Governor General, Prime Minister, or Head of State to expel individuals whose presence in Ghana was perceived as detrimental to the public good. Although the Act was initially applicable to non-Ghanaians only, it was later extended to include citizens who were considered political opponents. Many African migrants, including Yoruba, Syrians, and Lebanese, resided in Ghana without the required residence permits mandated by the law. According to the Ghana Nationality and Citizenship Act, Act 1 of 1957, a person could not be a citizen by birth unless one of their parents or grandparents was born in Ghana.

Citizenship Rights and Denial in a Post-Colonial Context

Due to their long-standing migration and settlement, some Yoruba families were eligible for Ghanaian citizenship. However, a significant number of Yoruba, along with other African small-scale traders, artisans, and farmers, resided in Ghana based on the advantages of trans-border mobility and sociocultural and historical relations that dated back to the pre-colonial era.

Berlioz wrote two articles about this occasion in the form of letters to the editor, rather than halfway down p. 1, the usual position for feuilletons. The first (22 August) told something of the project's history, the build-up to the unveiling, and the concert. This is the second article, sent from Königswinter. It concerns the event itself, in which not everything went as planned. Much of the funding came from Liszt and when, with four weeks to go, it was realized that there was no concert hall large enough to hold all those invited, he paid for one to be built. It was completed with two days to spare. Berlioz included a slightly altered version of this article in Les Soirées de l’orchestre (Second Epilogue); but I hope readers will understand my wish to include such a characteristic piece of writing.

To the editor of the Journal des débats [Armand Bertin]

Dear Sir

I come rather late to tell you again about the festival to inaugurate Beethoven's statue. But please allow me to return to the matter, after everything that's already been said in its favour, in order to mention Liszt's cantata which merits a more extended review on its own than I can offer today. I must also mention the many distinguished artists who are known in Paris only by name, and whom we should be so happy to see there.

I’m in a village whose calm and peace contrast strangely with the tumult that was still raging a few days ago in the cities round about. Koenigswinter is on the opposite bank of the Rhine to Bonn. Its peasantry is very proud of the glory that has redounded to it. Several old men claim to have known Beethoven in his youth.

INTRODUCTION

The initial prosecution of Helen Clark, the wife of a fisherman from Newhaven, occurred during years of intense witch-hunting in Scotland. A witchcraft panic took place during 1643 and 1644, in which 162 women and eleven men were accused. Clark's prosecution stalled in 1643, but was resumed in 1645. Her case contains many details of neighbourhood interactions and problems in a fishing community.

The documents related to Clark's case come from the court of justiciary in Edinburgh. The first one is a pre-trial document produced in the locality. The other documents were produced centrally once a decision to hold a trial had been made – though, as we shall see, there is no evidence that the trial was pursued to a conclusion. The presentation of the documents below follows a chronological line. Some undated documents have been placed in their most likely order.

On 16 October 1643, Clark was brought before the burgh of Newhaven and the kirk session of North Leith, combined local secular and religious authorities, suspected of witchcraft. She was said to have consulted with a woman called ‘Elspeth the spae wife’ twenty years previously, who had since been convicted for witchcraft and burned. Various neighbours, male and female, also told stories of quarrels and misfortune. There had been at least three attempts at reconciliation rituals. One of these, involving an ‘enchanted mackerel’, had been successful at the time. Another reconciliation, involving the sickness of James Bissett, was supported by neighbours, who collected a financial ‘contributione’ for him and sent Clark herself to deliver it – though Bissett died in the end.

The portion of the manuscript (Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Brogyntyn ii.1) that I discuss in this chapter, its first quire, differs from the rest of the codex in a number of important ways. With the exception of Scribe I's work at its very end, the quire's contents were contributed by a set of scribes absent from the rest of the manuscript, suggesting that it was produced outside the compiler's direct oversight and added as a distinct unit. This likelihood is supported by other codicological evidence. Quire 1 is the only quire in the manuscript originally comprised of ten folios, rather than eight, and it was written on larger sheets of parchment than its fellows; its margins are generally smaller or, in some cases, nonexistent, where trimming was necessary in order to make its dimensions match those of the rest of the codex. The quire also contains all of the manuscript's works that are wholly in Latin, and all of its tables and diagrams. Margaret Connolly observes that those particular textual and visual forms (including numerical tables, circular eclipse diagrams, and columnar explanatory rubrics) required scribes to write in a wider range of scripts than they might have otherwise, resulting in a visible diversity of handwriting that led Auvo Kurvinen, in 1953, to identify Quire 1 as the work of eight distinct scribes whose hands do not appear elsewhere in the miscellany. Connolly's reduction of those eight to only three (A, D, and H) still leaves us with a quire containing more variation in handwriting than other quires in the manuscript.

Ngugi’s career as artist and critic has reflected the development of Kenyan history and also the emergence of postcolonial criticism. This chapter delineates four main stages in the development of the critical understanding of Ngugi’s works over the past sixty years, though these stages are neither wholly distinct, sequential or definitive. The first stage is that of Commonwealth literature, and was often of the life and works variety. The second stage is that of postcolonial studies with its expansive focus on cultural politics. Stage three emerged primarily from African and especially Kenyan critics often focused on questions of translation. It drew on insider cultural knowledge and sometimes recollections of intergenerational trauma. Stage four witnessed the globalisation of Ngugi studies, with critics often from the Global South bringing international perspectives. These developments in Ngugi critical studies over sixty years do not sidestep the fact that Ngugi himself as scholar and educator has been a formidable and insightful interpreter as well as possibly the very best critic of his own work.

THE MANUSCRIPT

This volume presents the second part of ‘William Porlond's Minute Book, Being an Account and Memorandum Book, compiled by William Porlond, clerk to the Brewers’ Company, 1418–40’. The entire manuscript is bound within one later cover of the nineteenth century or earlier. The book belongs to the Worshipful Company of Brewers of London, and it is currently lodged at the London Guildhall Library. This later part, consisting of folios 157–328, spans the years 1429–40. The first part, folios 1–156, covering the years 1418–25, was published by the London Record Society in 2024.

Records for the years 1425–9 are missing from this manuscript and the clerk's usual lists of income and expenditure are not found for those years. Pages may have been lost in Porlond's day, or subsequently. The book was rescued from the Great Fire of 1666, when Brewers’ Hall, as Porlond knew it, burnt down, and then Brewers’ Hall, as rebuilt in the seventeenth century, was destroyed during the Second World War on 29 December 1940. Another possibility to explain the missing years is that Porlond himself may have been ill or away from London. His name, however, is not on the Muster Rolls, so he was probably not abroad serving as a soldier. There seems to have been dissension within the craft and fraternity, so perhaps the usual records were simply not entered in this book for 1425–9. In 1429, when the records resume, the clerk refers to a troubled time, when ‘a great harm befell the craft’ and some who had been Masters were ‘wasted and dead’, and others were ‘voided out of London’ [1].

The next morning the two friends were sitting on the veranda, half an hour earlier than usual. On one side, the canvas curtains were half pulled back, while on the other, uncurtained side, a hammock hung, in which Lysinka was rocking back and forth.

She was immersed in a picture book and wasn't paying her usual attention to the conversation of the two ladies, which of course was all about the previous day's outing. But then came a pause in their talk, until Franziska suddenly and rather awkwardly asked, “Didn't you say that Madame Belmonti had written?”

“Yes.”

“And she wanted Lysinka back?”

“Yes.”

“And aren't you going to agree? To be honest, I think that Madame Belmonti is right, and that you’re stretching the holiday out more than is good for the child.”

Phemi laughed heartily, but then said, “Ah, Franzl, it's no use, you’ll have to say what you really mean. You won't convince me, really and seriously, that you’re worried about Lysinka's upbringing. I’d think you wanted to be rid of her, if I didn't know that on the contrary you’re almost as fond of her as Hannah. Come now, tell me the truth.”

This chapter focuses on the first of the three cases that the book examines. The Dwesa-Cwebe case illuminates two aspects of the politics of chronic liminality. On the one hand, the Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Authority (ECPTA) is hamstrung or in a state of stasis as different arms of the state with oversight for the settlement agreement are themselves in a state of enduring confusion about the state's exercise of power over nature and people. There is liminality about property and about nature in relation to who owns the reserve and which arm of the state exercises authority over people who have de jure rights. There is the Land Commission, which has responsibility for the restitution of Dwesa-Cwebe to the original owners as of June 2001 as well as post-settlement support to ensure ‘success’. Then there is the Economic Development Department, which is supposed to provide the source of revenue for Dwesa-Cwebe communities to forgo the use of resources from the Nature Reserve for their livelihoods. Thirdly, there is Amathole District Municipality, which provides the governance oversight to people around Dwesa-Cwebe. Each of these state organs will be examined in relation to how they contribute to a state of chronic liminality. On the other hand, this chapter will examine the liminality amongst Dwesa-Cwebe populations who have been engaging in all forms of resistance against the state's exercise of power, from open protests to covert harvesting of resources, including protracted legal battles over rights and organised protest action. All these actions have left local populations without their rights, despite reclaiming their land legally, having neither access to resources nor revenue streams as promised in the settlement agreement of 2001. Ultimately, both the state and local people find themselves in an enduring liminal situation still on-going after two decades.

In an after-dinner speech at the 1966 AGM of the Catenian Association, guest of honour and newly appointed Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, David Cashman, light-heartedly urged this nearly sixty-year-old sodality to re-examine its aims and objectives in the post-Vatican II era: ‘The image of the Catenians as a section of the People of God dressed for dinner and dancing is not enough.’ The Bishop's intentionally provocative questioning of the role of this lay-led association for Catholic men came at a time of profound institutional change within the Catholic church and a reappreciation of the place of the laity as ‘active participants’ in the liturgy and a ‘pilgrim people of God’, with their own priestly role. Unsurprisingly, it elicited irritated reactions from the wider membership when reprinted in Catena, the Catenians’ long-running monthly journal. Letters from members outlined the various philanthropic activities in which they individually participated and rebuked the Catenian leadership for ‘improperly briefing the Bishop’.

Why poetic recitation?

There is a curious absence of symmetry between the English and German languages when it comes to the legacy of the Latin noun lingua. It has given to English the word language, but in German the main words derived from lingua are the substantive die Linguistik and its adjective linguistisch. In German, language is die Sprache, from the verb sprechen (from Old High German sprehhan), ‘to speak’, which in turn gives us the substantive das Sprechen, the speech. The explanation for this difference is simple: in German, the Latin etymology did not prevail. There should not be any reason to delve further into this linguistic rabbit hole and yet Sprache possesses a nuance that the English word language can hardly convey: Sprache is language understood as a spoken utterance, as voice. Or, to use a definition from 1828 found in one of the many treatises on Sprachunterricht published in the nineteenth century, ‘Sprache is, materially speaking, the structured, specific voice [bestimmte Stimme].’

I use this German lexical particularism as a way to signal a posture proper to the German language since the modern inception of its literature – that is to say, since Martin Luther, to whom the experience of language was defined as a communicative act of speech. In short, the etymology of die Sprache highlights this specific cultivation of German in Germanophone countries, what the Germanist Klaus Weimar has referred to as ‘die Oralisierung der Sprache’, the ‘oral realization of (spoken) language’. This context, propitious to an acoustic culture of language, triggered the blossoming of poetic recitation, the art of reading aloud for an audience, around the 1770s in the German-speaking areas of the Holy Roman Empire.

January 1942

German Listeners!

The news sounds unbelievable, but my source is good. In numerous Dutch-Jewish families, so I have been told, in Amsterdam and other cities, profound mourning reigns for sons who have died a gruesome death. Four hundred young Dutch Jews were brought to Germany to serve as objects of research on poison gas. The deadly efficiency of this chivalric and thoroughly German means of warfare, a true Siegfried weapon, has been demonstrated on the young subhumans. They are dead—having died for the “New Order” and the master race's ingenuity in waging war. At least they were good enough for that. After all, they were Jews.

I said: the story sounds unbelievable, and all over the world many will be simply unwilling to believe it. Powerful vestiges of that unwillingness to believe, by which we refugees from Germany have been so bitterly plagued all these years: of unwillingness to believe in the true nature of National Socialism, to consider it even humanly possible, are still to be found everywhere, even today: the inclination—not to say: the tendency, to see such stories as horrific fairy tales remains widespread, much to the enemy's advantage. They are, however, not mere stories, they are history. The Nazis consciously make history through all of their misdeeds, and the experimental gassing of four hundred young Jews is a conscious and demonstrative historic act, an instructive and exemplary expression of the essential character and ideology of the National Socialist revolution, which cannot be understood unless one conceives of the willingness to commit immoral acts as a revolutionary achievement.