On certain plausible views, if humanity were to unanimously decide to cause its own extinction, this would not be wrong, since there is no one whom this act would wrong. We argue this is incorrect. Causing human extinction would still wrong someone; namely, our forebears who sacrificed life, limb and livelihood for the good of posterity, and whose sacrifices would be made less morally worthwhile by this heinous act.

The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its 2010 Nagoya Protocol brought about a breakthrough in global policy making. They combined a concern for the environment with a commitment to resolving longstanding human injustices regarding access to, and use of biological resources. In particular, the traditional knowledge of indigenous communities was no longer going to be exploited without fair benefit sharing. Yet, for 25 years after the adoption of the CBD, there were no major benefit sharing agreements that led to significant funding streams for indigenous communities. This changed with the signing of the Rooibos Benefit Sharing Agreement in South Africa, described in this paper. As the authors report, the Rooibos Agreement is a superlative in two respects. It is the biggest benefit sharing agreement between industry and indigenous peoples to date. It is also the first industry-wide agreement to be formed in accordance with biodiversity legislation. This article is a co-production between traditional knowledge holders, the lawyer who represented their interests, the Co-Chair of the Nagoya Protocol negotiations, and an ethicist who analyzed the major challenges of this historic agreement. With no precedent in the benefit sharing world, the agreement stands as a concrete example of the ‘art of the possible.’ Although the rooibos case is unique in a number of aspects, the experience offers many transferable insights, including: patience; incrementalism; honesty; trust; genuine dialogue; strong legal support; a shared recognition that a fair, win-win deal is possible; government leadership; and unity amongst indigenous peoples. Such ingredients of success can apply well beyond southern Africa.

Borders and boundaries can represent old narratives, which often, however, cannot deal with new realities. Borders are inflexible, but reality is flexible and fluid. This is augmented in crisis situations. Multi-ethnicity and history run in parallel, as shared cultures often precede and transcend Westphalia and institutionally imposed borders. For cultures with roots in antiquity, top-down established borders appear to lack legitimacy, as these cultures place more emphasis on historical similarities and traditions of peoples. Thus, what is more important: cultural and historical commonalities or institutional top-down constructions? This article examines the impact of the prioritization of top-down ethno-religious homogeneity over lasting conflict resolution. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the article draws a number of hypotheses from the fields of conflict resolution, territoriality, and nation building and tests these hypotheses on the specific case of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange (CPE) between Greece and Turkey and the dual role of the Mediterranean as a security bridge or barrier. This article highlights a “how-not-to” scenario in conflict resolution and argues that efforts to form apparent homogeneous nation-states led to short-term, incomplete conflict termination with a lasting impact, while conflict resolution remained elusive.

The early-Tudor English government oversaw the rise of various centralised courts offering the king's subjects access to extraordinary justice in their private suits. One such new arena was the ‘Court of Requests’, an early equity or conscience court long overshadowed in histories of the period by the better-known courts of Star Chamber and Chancery. This article analyses the little-studied Requests archives to ask who sued there and when/why the court became associated with specifically poor men's causes. Focusing on the formative decade of ‘popularisation’ between 1515 and 1525, it finds that whilst litigants appear to have been largely from the lower sectors of society compared to their counterparts in the other conciliar courts, most petitioners opted for imprecise, rhetorical and non-static descriptions of their relative poverty – defined not just economically, but also in terms of age, property, and kin – in comparison to their opponents, appealing to the specific interpretation of conscience in Requests. The article thus scrutinises the methodologies we use for uncovering the demography of early-modern central courts, and has implications for understanding litigants' legal strategies, recorded identification as distinct from self-identification, and the theory and practice behind commonly-held ideals about the provision of royal justice for the ‘poor’.

The 1959 Antarctic Treaty made Antarctica the world’s first and only demilitarised continent, the world’s first denuclearised zone, and pioneered a comprehensive inspections system. This article explores Antarctic arms control as past precedent. It finds that the United States, which spearheaded the Antarctic Treaty negotiations, initially rationalised arms control in Antarctica as an isolated endeavour. Yet its potential elsewhere quickly appealed to various officials involved in the treaty negotiations and aligned with public perception. Subsequent initiatives for arms control took broad inspiration from the Antarctic Treaty, but regional differences limited specific adaptations.

Ethnoregionalism in Europe is a phenomenon usually studied in the context of Western Europe. Still, in Central and Eastern Europe, there are some social and political movements that can be categorized as ethnoregionalist. The phenomenon started to play a role even before the Great War and in the interwar period, but was suppressed during the times of socialist regimes. It resurfaced immediately after 1989 during the times of transformation of political systems to fully democratic systems when problems of decentralization, authority, and division of power became openly discussed. In this article, I compare two such movements in the context of their political potential. The Moravian-Silesian movement in the Czech Republic and the Silesian movement in Poland have both similarities and differences, but the article mostly focuses on the evolution of these movements.

This article examines historical positions regarding the question of the small nation-(state) of Albania remaining “in” the larger Ottoman supranational entity and “out” as independent nation-state during the late 19th and early 20th century. It does so mainly, but not only, through the language of political economy (wealth creation and redistribution) as articulated in the thoughts and deeds of three founding intellectual and political figures of the Albanian nation-(state): Ismail Qemali, Fan Noli, and Luigj Gurakuqi. While lacking a clear political-economic perspective for this emerging nation in the late Ottoman period, all the three figures maintained that as an independent, small nation-state, Albania could survive and perhaps thrive if its wealth and national economic development remained anchored within a larger political and economic space. More than Qemali, Gurakuqi, and Noli envisaged a greater state role in the country’s “national economy-building” process. But while Gurakuqi was more of a “nationalist” on wealth creation, Noli sought to pursue a more “radical,” redistributive path to national development.

This article analyses female labour in Spanish mines during the golden age of the sector in Spain between 1860 and 1936. Although they were a small percentage of total employment, women accounted for a significant share of the workforce in certain Spanish districts. On the one hand, the study quantifies work performed directly by women, who were mostly engaged in preparation and concentration of the minerals, as well as the extent of female child labour. This has been done by using official statistics, analysing the share of women employed for each type of mineral extracted, the mining area where this activity took place, and other variables. In the article, the authors seek to identify possible causes of such a heterogeneous distribution of female labour in the mining industry in Spain. This situation was common in the sector throughout the world. On the other hand, the article analyses attitudes of institutions, unions, and the like that limited employment opportunities for women in mining (banning them from performing underground tasks and other activities) and even proposed excluding them altogether, responding to workers’ demands in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We examine the objectives pursued by these institutions, which in some cases related to protection (physical and moral) of female workers but overall aimed mainly to preserve the social role of women (particularly reproduction) and exclude them from the workforce. The pressure on female workers was the most pronounced in the workplace. These factors gave rise to a global setback in female employment, especially among the youngest workers. Given this situation, the quantitative data used, together with information drawn from different sources, reveal that women resisted giving up these jobs, particularly in the districts with a larger share of female workers.

This short piece is designed to be a response to the article by Orit Malka.

The ‘making’ of fashion cannot merely refer to garment production and manufacturing. It is the prerequisite for a nation to actively participate on the global stage. To establish a ‘recognisable’ fashion image, a country must go far beyond the competition of a specialised garment and textile industry. Being recognised as the ‘author countries’ for fashion creation is part of a process in which the (re)negotiation of national hierarchies and roles are constantly at play. For a country or a city, expressing an instantly recognisable aesthetic has become an important corollary of the communication of political and economic strength. More than in the past centuries, fashion has been tasked with not only reflecting and representing social or individual needs, but also constructing ex novo territories in which old stereotypes and imaginary are creatively set free. This is because, unlike most production and commercial activities, fashion expresses an elaborate culture whose composition of symbols, ideologies and lifestyles (Crane 2004) can be drawn on. On the other hand, the accelerated production relocation in past decades has irrevocably changed the geography of fashion, as well as the rhetoric of the origin of national creativity. In particular, it leads one to wonder what happens when two or more players are engaged in the making of fashion. Specifically, what happens when Italy and China collaborate in transglobal fashion-making? How does one account for the national creativity that has sprung from the Sino-Italian co-creation? Drawing on accounts of Italian fashion and Chinese fashion, this article discusses the intricacy of Sino-Italian collaboration and the implications of such a fashion co-creation; it then reflects on transglobal fashion-making and proposes a framework for its examination.