This chapter probes the relation between realism and the georgic in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. The georgic is generally not associated with that period, and realism was allegedly on the decline. Yet, in focusing on an agricultural setting in rural Bengal, Lal Behari Day’s novel Govinda Samanta, or Bengal Peasant Life (1874) vivifies the connection between the two in ways that enhance both our understanding of the modes of colonial critique as well as the dispersed evolution of literary genres.

While researching and defining the plausibility or implausibility of something, the first thing to observe is it in itself. Then, we proceed to analyse it in comparison with other things. It can only be declared worth accepting if it proves better on both counts. From this perspective of research and investigation, we have completed the first phase of inquiry. We now need to undertake the second phase. In this phase of the study, we shall start by comparing Islam with other religions and then compare it with laws of the modern period to investigate how they relate to the Islamic norms. If they permit war, then the question is whether their objectives and methods [English term in text; Urdu manāhij] are better or worse than those of Islam. If they prohibit war, are the teachings of these schools in harmony with human nature, or do the teachings of Islam do that?

The importance of history in the emergence and evolution of varieties of English around the world cannot be overstated. From religious missionaries to colonial administrations, the particular mix of peoples, languages and cultures was central to the type of evolutionary trajectory English took. This chapter offers a historical account of the evolution of English in Cameroon under missionary, colonial (German, French and British) and postcolonial conditions. It identifies some of the crucial factors that enabled it to survive even when the territory was ruled by non-English colonisers like the Germans and the French. Using written documents produced during colonialism, the current chapter traces the impact of the colonial system on contemporary Cameroonian society and the variety of English spoken there with focus on processes of cultural conceptualisation and hybridised patterns of social interaction. This is done via the lenses of two recent theoretical frameworks, namely cognitive contact linguistics and postcolonial pragmatics. The chapter also identifies some distinctive structural features of contemporary Cameroon English, contrasting some of them to West African and East African Englishes.

In this chapter, we assess the international law regulation of the newest forms of submarines, underwater maritime autonomous vehicles (UMAVs) and ask what changes for States’ rights and duties when an autonomous vehicle operates uncrewed and underwater. A core issue has been whether UMAVs are ships or not and we address differences emerging for floats and gliders particularly. Whether uncrewed submarines are ships or not has implications for navigational rights and duties. We also consider questions emerging under the law of armed conflict and distinctions for autonomous maritime systems (such as mines and torpedos). While State-owned and operated UMAVs are a primary focus, we also consider the international laws applying to the use of UMAVs by terrorists or criminals seeking to smuggle goods. This chapter concludes Part II of the book and brings together the key questions that remain to be answered in regulating submarines in international law.

David LaRocca’s chapter resituates Emerson’s 1856 book English Traits within Emerson’s transatlanticism, as well as within his intellectual, cultural, and historical moment. In particular, it analyzes and contextualizes Emerson’s comments on race in English Traits in relation to the formation of British and American national mythologies. As LaRocca argues, in contrast to less generous critics, Emerson is indeed egalitarian, his philosophy of the fluidity of identity brings him to a stance against definite identity distinctions, and English Traits does not praise Saxon whiteness but poetico-sociologically investigates the nation of England. What is more, Emerson’s interest was, in part, personal. He made English Traits a public statement that justified questions about his family tree and, in a larger domain, the way that New England was formed and informed by England, even while he pursued a broader view of human history – of whatever vintage – as inseparable from natural history.

Chapter 1 starts by exploring the history of the term ‘settlement’. Having traced its emergence in the seventeenth century, the chapter investigates the making of the ‘settlement’ act of 1662. A study of parliamentary records uncovers the emergence of new legislation in the post-Restoration context and illuminates the final stages of the process when amendments were made that shaped the settlement legislation for centuries to come. Subsequent amendments are studied, leading to the introduction of new ‘settlement certificates’. The third section traces the spread of the ‘settlement’ system and its impact on both local administrations and the negotiating strategies of the poor – central issues pursued throughout the book. These explorations draw on records from two corners of England, Sussex in the south-east and Lancashire in the north-west. Additional sources are employed from metropolitan London and other localities.

This chapter looks at nineteenth-century visual arts with an ecological eye. The first section considers distance: the air, haze, clouds, and atmosphere in a painting. Next, closely observed detail in images, often influenced by John Ruskin’s beliefs, is related to the importance of close attentiveness, as well as to the global networks in the study and transport of plants. It then considers the use of visual material in publicizing environmental harms and in bringing home their emotional impact, as well as considering the long-term, as yet invisible effects of climate change on landscapes. Finally, it looks at the role of visual art in providing aesthetic escapism, whatever the realities of pollution and urbanization, as with James McNeill Whistler’s misty Thames views, or with nostalgic pastoral. All sections ask what environmental futures these images contain. The chapter highlights four images: John Constable’s View on the Stour Near Dedham (1823); Albert Goodwin’s A Sunset in the Manufacturing Districts (1884); Henry Warren, The Black Country Near Bilston (1869); and George Vicat Cole, At Arundel, Sussex (1887).

This chapter examines legal developments in submarine regulation taking into account the political context existing prior to World War II, including tensions in the Pacific with Japan’s aggression against China. Notably, States adopted the 1936 London Protocol on Submarine Warfare seeking to align requirements for submarines with obligations imposed on surface warships. Tensions in the 1930s also prompted Turkey to initiate a revision of the legal regime governing the Turkish Straits, leading to the Montreux Convention and the near complete prohibition of submarine passage in these waters. With the outbreak of World War II and unrestricted submarine warfare, questions emerged as to the viability of rules set out in the 1936 London Protocol. States also moved to revise laws of neutrality with more targeted consideration of submarines. The chapter thus reflects ongoing legal developments concerning navigational rights of submarines in territorial waters and the regulation of submarines during armed conflict.

Ethics, for Emerson, begins in perceiving the “wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world” such that ethics, in thinking and in living, is a matter of being “allied to all.” In this view, the “infinitude of the private man” – often yoked to the concept of “self-reliance” – names a metaphysical and ontological fact at the heart of Emerson’s ethics: human existence within a web of interconnections. This chapter draws widely from Emerson’s oeuvre to show how he unites “severe science with a poetic vision,” seeing and seeking to express how “Our life is consentaneous and far-related.” His work teaches us to see kinships between ethics, aesthetics, religion, science, and politics, and to consider ethics a practice of observing the intimacies in which we exist and in which the ethical question “How shall I live?” begins living in us.