The Bokoni settlement in Mpumalanga, South Africa is the largest known terraced site in Africa. The settlement consisted of intensively farmed terraced fields spanning 150 kilometres along the eastern escarpment. It flourished from around 1500 until the 1820s, after which it all but disappeared. This article first sets out to interpret the growing body of primarily archaeological Bokoni evidence from the perspective of economic history. Another, although secondary, goal of the article is to contribute to debates about the precolonial roots of African poverty. Accordingly, we outline the factors that may have facilitated the emergence of this region as a major food-producing area. We argue that Bokoni formed part of a decentralised social order that was built around the logic of production and was conducive to dynamic forms of accumulation. This decentralised, cooperative regional order was replaced in the early nineteenth century by a new order built around the logic of extraction and war. This new order militated against the development of decentralised intensive farming and emphasised instead the accumulation of military technology – most notably guns and the construction of military strongholds. As a result, the population of Bokoni plummeted and terraced farming fell into disuse in the region. These insights, we argue, call into question recent attempts to find the roots of African poverty in specific types of precolonial social arrangements.

This essay discusses some of the recent trends in the scholarship on Islam and Africa that contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the historical relationship between African Muslims and the global ecumene of believers. Rather than looking at the faith as an insular African phenomenon, this piece examines the links between Africans and the wider community of believers across space and time. Such an approach has important ramifications for our understanding of the dynamics of Islam. However, it also challenges many of the assumptions underpinning the geographic area studies paradigm that has dominated the academy since the Second World War. This essay suggests the adoption of a more fluid approach to scholarly inquiry that reimagines our largely continental attachment to regions in favor of a more intellectually agile methodology where the scope of inquiry is determined less by geographic boundaries and more by the questions we seek to answer.

In this article, I focus on the historiography of Islam in West Africa while also reflecting upon and assessing existing scholarship in the broader field of the study of Islam in Africa. My position as an anthropologist who conducts historical research informs my perspective in evaluating the current state of the field and my suggestions for directions in which I think future research might move in order to advance our understanding of Islam and Muslim societies and the history of religious life in Africa more generally.

In a number of recent publications, Douglas Portmore has defended consequentialism, largely on the basis of a maximizing view of practical rationality. I have criticized such maximizing views, arguing that we need to distinguish two independent dimensions of normative strength: justifying strength and requiring strength. I have also argued that this distinction helps to explain why we typically have so many rational options. Engaging with these arguments, Portmore has (a) developed his own novel maximization-friendly method of explaining the ubiquity of rational options, and (b) criticized one argument in favour of a substantive justifying/requiring distinction in the domain of practical rationality. The present article defends the justifying/requiring distinction, and criticizes Portmore's maximization-friendly strategy for explaining the ubiquity of rational options.

A recently-discovered financial balance sheet, accounting for the first four years’ transactions of the Hull Whale Fishery Company (1754–1757), adds detail to present knowledge of British Arctic whaling economics during the early years of the industry. This article summarises previously-known information on the Company and its four ships, and provides transcripts of the balance sheet covering the profits and losses of the early voyages. Based on tabulated details from the transcripts, and additional data from Customs records and muster rolls, it discusses ships, crews, voyages, catches and expenses, the products of oil and baleen, and the profits derived from them. It makes brief comparisons with similar data from Bristol and Exeter in the formative years of the industry, and draws attention to the key significance of the 40 shilling (£2) bounty during the early years.

In 1909, with two companions Swiss meteorologist Alfred de Quervain travelled to the Uummannaq area of west Greenland, to the same area investigated by Erich von Drygalski in 1892–1893. A major objective was to investigate the changes in the nearby outlet glaciers since Drygalski's visit. Man-hauling sledges, de Quervain and his companions also made a sortie into the interior of the ice cap, penetrating to a distance of about 100 km and to a height of about 1700 m. Having thus whetted his appetite, in1912 de Qervain mounted a further expedition aimed at making a crossing of the ice cap, only the second after that of Fridtjof Nansen in 1888, and along a trajectory significantly further north. De Quervain hoped to determine the shape and height of the ice cap along this trajectory. With three companions and using dog-sledges de Quervain set off from the Disko Bugt area of west Greenland and crossed the ice cap to the area of Ammassalik (now Tasiilaq) on the east coast. In 31 days on the ice the party travelled some 640 km, reaching a maximum altitude of 2510 m. A comprehensive range of scientific observations was effected en route. A support party of three men remained at the western edge of the ice cap for the summer to conduct meteorological and glaciological studies. Thereafter two of this group spent the winter of 1912–1913 at the Danish Arctic Station at Godhavn as guests of Morten Porsild to conduct aerological studies using pilot balloons and, to a lesser degree, captive balloons. All quotations in this paper are translated from the German by the author. This article is the first English-language account of de Quervain's expeditions.

A well-publicized study entitled ‘The Mismeasure of Morals’ (Bartels and Pizarro, 2011) purportedly provides evidence that utilitarian solutions to a particular class of moral dilemmas are endorsed primarily by individuals with psychopathic traits. According to the authors, these findings give researchers reason to refrain from classifying utilitarian judgements as morally optimal. This article is a two-part response to the study. The first part comprises concerns about the methodology used and the adequacy of the data for supporting the authors’ conclusions. The second part seeks to undermine the suggestion that if anti-social individuals are the ones most likely to endorse utilitarian solutions to the target dilemmas, we should be sceptical about those solutions. I argue that the character of individuals most likely to make a given moral judgement is an unreliable indicator of the quality of that judgement.

Perhaps the most influential passage on the rule of law in international law comes from chapter 13 of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. In the course of describing the miserable condition of mankind in the state of nature, Hobbes remarks to readers who might be skeptical that such a state ever existed that they need only look to international relations—the relations between independent states—to observe one:

The international rule of law is often seen as a centerpiece of the modern international order. It is routinely reaffirmed by governments, international organizations, scholars, and activists, who credit it with reducing the recourse to war, preserving human rights, and constraining (albeit imperfectly) the pursuit of state self-interests. It is commonly seen as supplanting coercion and power politics with a framework of mutual interests that is cemented by state consent.