The history of the Scottish East India Company of 1617 is a history of partnerships and rivalries within and between Scotland and England. The company was opposed by the merchants of the royal burghs in Scotland and by the East India Company, Muscovy Company, and Privy Council in England. At the same time, it was supported by the Scottish Privy Council and was able to recruit Dutch, English, and Scottish investors. The interactions between these groups were largely shaped by the union of the crowns, which saw James VI accede to the thrones of England and Ireland and move his court to London. Scotland was thus left with an absentee monarch, decreasing the access of Scottish merchants to the king while increasing the importance of court connections in acquiring that access. Regal union also created opportunities for Scots to become part of the London business world, which, in turn, could lead to backlash from English interests. Having developed in this context, the Scottish East India Company speaks to how James VI and I approached patronage and policy in his multiple kingdoms, how commercial rivalries developed in England and Scotland, and how trading companies played a role in constitutional developments in Stuart Britain.

This article asks how and why bells maintained their central place in political culture between 1660 and 1832, a question that can best be approached from the perspective of histories of the emotions and senses. Such a consideration of bells allows us to extend the concept of “emotives” to encompass material culture. Often believed to “speak,” bells were fundamental to a binary emotional regime: the joy and sorrow they expressed and created were essential to perceptions of deference, community, and national feeling. But they could also be inverted and used a form of resistance. For those outside the religious or political status quo, bells could instantiate forms of emotional suffering. Tracing the “listening public” of which bells were part demonstrates the importance of the freedom to hear in the eighteenth-century public sphere. In this context, the ascription of material and emotional agency to bells was a useful rhetorical tool. Its deployment in newspaper reports of ringing, which served to encourage certain ways of listening, points to the importance of both text and sound in creating a “listening public.” But this listening public was also marked by forms of emotional suffering and exclusion that trouble the place of practices of celebration in any nascent “English” or “British” identity.

Historical research acknowledges only cursorily the Catholic contribution to eugenics. Yet there is a substantial link between Catholic discourses on morality and the emergence of Italian eugenics. In this essay I argue that sexual normalisation was a key source of consensus. Masculine and patriarchal values strengthened the strategic collaboration between Fascist demographic policies, the Italian interpretation of eugenics, and Catholic doctrine. I draw on archival and printed material to show that the control of public morality and the support for reproduction met both Catholic and Fascist interests. In particular, I focus on the alliance between the State and the Catholic Church working against ‘the contraceptive mentality’. Mussolini wanted to stimulate religious sentiment as a basis for the fight against depopulation. The Catholic Church desired a set of laws against immorality, birth control and abortion. In this way, Fascism and the Catholic Church found a solid cultural agreement around restoring traditional mores, patriarchal values, and gender hierarchy.

This article focuses on the relationship between Alevis and the Turkish and German states. It does so by examining the Turkish Alevi Opening (2009–2010) and the German Islam Conference (2006–present), two unprecedented official platforms aimed at improving Alevis’ political participation. The study asks why such state-sponsored initiatives came into existence in Turkey and Germany, and why the German Islam Conference has proven more successful from the perspective of Alevis. It argues that even though the diffusion of EU norms and pressure from transnational advocacy networks have increased awareness regarding the Alevi issue, domestic factors have been more salient in the emergence and outcome of these initiatives in both countries.