In a time of great contest and confusion over the future of democracy as a governing principle, the example of Abraham Lincoln continues to provide encouragement and direction about democracy’s viability in the face of immense challenges. In The Political Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Allen Guelzo brings into one volume Lincoln’s most famous political documents and speeches from his earliest days as a political candidate under the banner of the Whig Party, to his election and service as the first anti-slavery Republican president, from 1861 to 1865, and the nation’s leader in the fiery trial of civil war. While many anthologies of Lincoln’s political documents routinely concentrate on his presidential years or only on his anti-slavery writings, Guelzo concentrates on documents from Lincoln’s earliest political activity as an Illinois state legislator in the 1830s up through his presidency. The result is an accessible resource for students, researchers, and general readers.

In a time of great contest and confusion over the future of democracy as a governing principle, the example of Abraham Lincoln continues to provide encouragement and direction about democracy’s viability in the face of immense challenges. In The Political Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Allen Guelzo brings into one volume Lincoln’s most famous political documents and speeches from his earliest days as a political candidate under the banner of the Whig Party, to his election and service as the first anti-slavery Republican president, from 1861 to 1865, and the nation’s leader in the fiery trial of civil war. While many anthologies of Lincoln’s political documents routinely concentrate on his presidential years or only on his anti-slavery writings, Guelzo concentrates on documents from Lincoln’s earliest political activity as an Illinois state legislator in the 1830s up through his presidency. The result is an accessible resource for students, researchers, and general readers.

Chapter 2 opens the study of free speech in a globally networked digital environment by clarifying the meaning of the term ‘constitution’. Under the heading of transnational constitutionalism, intense discussions have taken place in recent years about constitutional thinking that seeks to break free from statehood and formalism. The question of the constitutional subject is of great importance here. In the twenty-first century, nation-states are still the primary constitutional actors, as they have been since the revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The contemporary era has also witnessed the emergence of transnational corporations, which have developed into powerful players within a globalised economy. As telecom service providers, equipment manufacturers, or platform operators, they have a particularly significant influence on the conditions governing freedom of expression. According to Gunther Teubner, transnational corporations should be conceived of as constitutional subjects. But what does this mean on the theoretical and practical levels? How can factual developments on the Internet be related to processes of producing constitutional norms? How should the relationship between state-centred and societal constitutional legitimacy be conceptualised? These questions are addressed within the framework of transnational legal theory.

Analytic philosophy of religion is a vibrant area of inquiry, but it has generally focused on generic forms of theism or on Christianity. David Shatz here offers a new and fresh approach to the field in a wide-ranging and engaging introduction to the analytic philosophy of religion from the perspective of Judaism. Exploring classical Jewish texts about philosophical topics in light of the concepts and arguments at the heart of analytic philosophy, he demonstrates how each tradition illuminates the other, yielding a deeper understanding of both Jewish sources and general philosophical issues. Shatz also advances growing efforts to imagine Jewish philosophy not only as an engrossing, invaluable part of Jewish intellectual history but also as a creative, constructive enterprise that mines the methods and literature of contemporary philosophy. His book offers new pathways to think deeply about God, evil, morality, freedom, ethics, and religious diversity, among other topics.

United by their realistic approach to the study of democratic politics, Hans Kelsen and Joseph Schumpeter similarly sought to de-ideologise ‘classical’ accounts of popular sovereignty. Both developed an analytical framework to explain how modern democracy, based on parties and the electoral selection of representatives, functions and realises its ideals. Both emphasised that democracy lasts only if it successfully generates a ‘compromise’ between the contingent majority and the temporary minority (in the terminology for Kelsen) or if current majorities exercise ‘self-control’ (in the language of Schumpeter). However, neither explained the mechanisms that induce democratically elected majorities to limit themselves in the practice of governmental power. The chapter first charts the innovations introduced by Kelsen and Schumpeter into our understanding of democracy; then, it teases out their views on how majorities abstain from aggrandising their power beyond some limits. For both, such limits must be self-enforcing and observing them must constitute an equilibrium. Yet, a proper understanding of how this equilibrium emerges remains one of the greatest challenges for contemporary scholars of democracy. ‘Compromise’ or ‘self-restraint’ is almost definitionally a requisite of democratic politics, but it cannot be imposed from outside, and it cannot just follow from agreements about certain rules, unless those rules are self-enforcing. As the chapter explains, it must be in the best interest of the democratic rulers to stop monopolising power given the potential reactions of the opposition, and it must be in the best interest of the opposition to participate peacefully given that the incumbent stops. Despite the significant progress in the normative and empirical study of democracy over the past several decades, the greatest challenge faced by Kelsen and Schumpeter has not been completely resolved.

The Coda foregrounds the literary implications of the book’s argument by reflecting on the idea of the Indian Ocean as a comparative literary space. Through an example from Yvonne Owuor’s The Dragonfly Sea (2019), it illustrates a comparative practice wherein the historical, the geopolitical, and the literary come together. The mutual imbrication of the geopolitical and the literary in contemporary Afro-Asian fiction generates the Indian Ocean as a space of comparison where historical relationalities become legible within the exigencies of the present.

In a time of great contest and confusion over the future of democracy as a governing principle, the example of Abraham Lincoln continues to provide encouragement and direction about democracy’s viability in the face of immense challenges. In The Political Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Allen Guelzo brings into one volume Lincoln’s most famous political documents and speeches from his earliest days as a political candidate under the banner of the Whig Party, to his election and service as the first anti-slavery Republican president, from 1861 to 1865, and the nation’s leader in the fiery trial of civil war. While many anthologies of Lincoln’s political documents routinely concentrate on his presidential years or only on his anti-slavery writings, Guelzo concentrates on documents from Lincoln’s earliest political activity as an Illinois state legislator in the 1830s up through his presidency. The result is an accessible resource for students, researchers, and general readers.

The choice to confront racial injustice was available to the whole charitable humanitarian sector. In 1969, the World Council of Churches launched the Programme to Combat Racism. This attempted to mobilise the Churches against all forms of racism and was accompanied by a Special Fund to support those who ‘combat racism, rather than welfare organisations that alleviate the effects of racism.’ As an offshoot of the Council, Christian Aid was well placed to take up the cause. However, it and the other agencies did not do so during the 1970s, preferring to divert their radical energies towards liberation theology and the conscientisation movement emanating from Latin America rather than the Black Consciousness Movement in Southern Africa. Fearful of the regulations of the Charity Commissioners and the effects on fundraising among their more conservative supporters, the charities remained largely silent on race until the 1980s. Instead, they embraced the ‘basic needs’ agenda of the non-aligned movement and the New International Economic Order. It took the agencies beyond charity, but it also brought it closer to the agendas of the official development industry such as the World Bank.

This manifesto argues that education should incorporate philosophical exploration to help young people address existential questions and find meaning and purpose in their lives. The manifesto suggests that to understand the meaning of one’s life, one must consider personal existence and consciousness and the reality beyond the here and now. It proposes that education should provide a neutral forum for discussing these big questions, without bias towards any particular belief system, and incorporating both scientific and spiritual perspectives. By engaging in such philosophical discourse, young people can develop a clearer sense of self and purpose, fostering resilience, mental well-being and a commitment to values and moral behaviour. This can support them to survive and thrive through the opportunities and challenges of the future.

This chapter examines the discontinuous history of Chinese multinationals and their role in China’s evolving globalization. It highlights that China’s global engagement has been shaped by both market forces and geopolitical dynamics. The first wave, following the Opium Wars, saw Chinese firms competing unequally with Western multinationals, with growth ultimately limited by political forces. A resurgence occurred in the 1980s as China reengaged globally, leading to renewed overseas investment by Chinese firms. Currently, amid rising geopolitical tensions, Chinese multinationals are strategically reorienting investment from developed economies toward emerging markets. The chapter emphasizes the multifaceted impact of this globalization, but also a changing global landscape where politics and power are equally pivotal to understanding the trajectory of Chinese firms’ activities abroad.

This chapter considers the afterlives of slavery in the Indian Ocean through Mauritian writer Shenaz Patel’s Le silence des Chagos (2005), about the expulsion of the inhabitants of the Chagos archipelago from their islands in the wake of late twentieth-century Indian Ocean militarization. Images and narratives circulating in the global media often portray the suffering of Chagossians as a human rights violation, abstracting the event from the particular legacies of slavery, colonialism, and anti-Blackness that continue to weigh on the displaced community. By contrast, Le silence des Chagos tells the story of their expulsion by adapting Chagossians’ testimonies into a novelistic form. Patel’s testimonial fiction constructs a repository of images that enables a sensory and subjective experience of the past. As a composite of these images, the exilic consciousness uncovers Chagossians’ most recent experiences of exile as an extension of the racialized violence in the past. The novel remaps the Indian Ocean enabling a position to critique geopolitical networks of power in the region and identify convergences with Black diasporic accounts of Atlantic crossings.

Since ordinals will be key throught the book, we develop them from scratch, defining them as equivalence classes of well-orderings. We concentrate on the countable ordinals. We introduce basic ordinal operations like exponentiation.

This Companion volume presents the latest research on the history of multinationals and their impact on society and the environment. While often associated with large corporations like Ford or Coca-Cola, multinationals are defined not by size but by their ownership and control of assets in multiple countries. A key contribution of business history research has been to highlight the remarkable diversity in multinational strategies and organizational structures over time and to provide nuanced perspectives on the complex and often polarized debates surrounding their operations, showing how equally diverse and far-reaching are the impacts of multinationals. Understanding their historical role provides valuable insights for policymakers and stakeholders navigating today’s economic landscape.

This chapter examines the evolution of scholarship devoted to medieval Arthurian literature, concentrating on that in Old French, with occasional reference to Arthuriana in other languages. It begins with the rise of Romance philology and the publication of the first scholarly editions in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and traces trends in Arthurian studies down to the present day. The development of Arthurian scholarship mirrors that in other disciplines. While certain major scholars can be seen to guide and influence particular types of study, others produce work ‘outside of the box’ which contributes to the basis on which modern scholarship builds. The chapter also underlines the danger of reinventing the wheel if earlier studies are not taken into account. The study of medieval Arthurian literature at the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century is now seeking direction.