Lucas Alamán (1792–1853) was a Mexican intellectual and statesman born in Guanajuato, where he witnessed the massacre of Spaniards during Miguel Hidalgo’s revolt in 1810, an event that would forever mark his conservative thinking. He studied at the Colegio de Minas in Mexico City, continuing his education in Freiburg and Göttingen. Alamán occupied several government positions, most importantly at the Ministry of Foreign Relations, until his death in 1853. He was the author of the Disertaciones sobre la historia de la República Mexicana, from which the editors have taken the current selections, and Historia de México desde los primeros movimientos que prepararon la Independencia en el año de 1808 hasta la época presente (1849–1852).

Francisco García Calderón (1883–1953) was one of the most prestigious Spanish American intellectuals during the first decades of the twentieth century, when he was considered “the best interpreter of the continent’s realities.” A Peruvian national, he was born in Valparaíso while his father (then provisional president of Peru) was held prisoner by the Chilean government following the negotiations that ended the War of the Pacific. The family returned to Peru in 1889, and settled in Lima, where García Calderón grew up. He studied philosophy and letters at the Universidad de San Marcos, graduating in 1903. He soon rose to prominence among a new generation of intellectuals, particularly when the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó wrote the prologue of his first book De litteris (1904). In 1906, he moved with his mother and siblings to Paris, where he spent the next four decades of his life. His book Les démocraties latines de l’Amérique was first published in French with a preface by the French president Raymond Poincaré, in 1912. While some fragments of the book appeared in Spanish in 1951, the full first Spanish version was published by the Biblioteca Ayacucho in Caracas in 1979.

Many types of antenatal stress, not only a diagnosed mental illness, can alter fetal development with a long-lasting effect on the child. There is an increased risk of many types of neurodevelopmental disorder in the child, as well as some physical problems such as asthma, although most children are not affected; the underlying biological mechanisms include alterations in the function of the placenta, the HPA axis and immune system, and epigenetic changes in the child; the impact may be even greater in lower- and middle-income countries, with added stresses due to poverty, food insecurity and high levels of domestic violence among other factors; the implications are that the mental well-being of all pregnant women should be considered and causes of stress addressed where possible. These stresses include the relationship with the partner, pregnancy-related anxiety, exposure to a disaster, or early childhood trauma.

Published studies examining medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) in perinatal women are thin on the ground. Keyword searches of research databases bring up titles such as ‘Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynaecology – a neglected field?’ However, whilst there is little research on this narrow topic, there is an extensive literature on MUS in other populations. This chapter draws mainly upon that literature and attempts to apply it to pregnancy and the puerperium in a way that will, it is hoped, prove clinically useful.

The Roman Empire was rooted in violent acts. The spread of Roman control over the provinces was a lengthy process, but one that fundamentally changed the nature of political relationships. Settlers extruded from Italy. Large amounts of wealth changed hands. Land tenure was reconfigured. The population was divided first into provinces, then into assize districts. Subject populations were registered, counted, and taxed. The process put immense amounts of strain on the internal structures of communities. Roman governors were tasked with administering this new political landscape, where their position was tenuous. They distrusted new local elites who, along with Roman settlers, were prone to take advantage of local people. These same people were also responsible for tax collection, which, along with keeping the peace, was the governor’s ultimate responsibility. This systemic tension opened a space for provincial legalism.

The study of Dirichlet series and their analytic properties lies at the heart of number theory, with deep connections to the distribution of primes and arithmetic invariants of number fields. A fundamental example is the L-series associated with Dirichlet characters, which generalizes the Riemann zeta function and play a crucial role in Dirichlet’s theorem on primes in arithmetic progressions. The behavior of these L-series at s = 1 is particularly significant, as shown in Dirichlet’s class number formula for quadratic fields, which links the value at s = 1 of a L-series to the class number via the Dedekind zeta function of a quadratic number field. Key to evaluating these L-series at s = 1 are Gauss sums, particularly the determination of the sign of the quadratic Gauss sum. We carry out this computation using the discrete Fourier transform following Ram Murty’s approach. This computation also yields another proof of quadratic reciprocity, formulated directly for the Jacobi symbol.

Andrés Molina Enríquez (1868–1940) was born in Jilotepec, Mexico. A lawyer and journalist, his work as a public notary made him familiar with land-related conflicts during the Porfiriato. He spent time in prison during the provisional government of Francisco León de la Barra (1911). A leading spokesman for agrarian reform, Molina considered it necessary to resort to authoritarian means to control the conflicting interests that pervaded Mexican society; hence his apparent support for Porfirio Díaz’s policies as well as the paternalistic approaches of revolutionary Mexico. He occupied several important technical government positions until his death in 1940. The current selection is taken from his Los grandes problemas nacionales, which was in turn based on his articles for the periodical El Tiempo. As is the case with many other intellectuals of the period, Molina’s analysis of social issues is laden with racial assumptions.

This book comes in two parts; the first, consisting of §§1–7, offers an informal axiomatic introduction to the basics of set theory, including a thorough discussion of the axiom of choice and some of its equivalents. The second part, consisting of §§8–14, is written at a somewhat more advanced level, and treats selected topics in transfinite algebra; that is, algebraic themes where the axiom of choice, in one form or another, is useful or even indispensable.

The conclusion functions as both a closing analysis and an epilogue, tracing how the semiotics of sacred kingship shaped political culture in New Spain from the War of the Spanish Succession through Independence. It argues that under the Bourbons, the sacred body of the monarch—linked to Christ, the Eucharist, and biblical prophecy—continued to serve as the conceptual glue binding subjects to empire. Although absolutism gradually displaced composite monarchy, sacred symbolism persisted, adapting to political reforms and crises. Even as skepticism deepened under Carlos III and during the expulsion of the Jesuits, messianic hopes re-emerged during the wars of Independence. That monarchy remained bound to the promise of salvation and order reveals the enduring hold sacred kingship exerted on both the imperial and postcolonial imagination.