UN peace operations have increasingly focused on the importance of “local ownership.” The logic is simple. For peace operations to succeed in helping war-torn states to create accountable, democratic institutions grounded in the rule of law, peace operations need to internalize democratic principles by making UN missions accountable to different domestic constituencies—crossing ethnic, religious, racial, social, and gender lines—within the war-torn country. As part of a special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay argues that while there is widespread consensus among UN member states and UN bureaucrats that local ownership is necessary, UN peace operations have faced significant obstacles to creating true local ownership. These obstacles include the UN's focus on host-government ownership; the challenge of creating trust with different domestic constituencies that represent diverse perspectives; the supply-driven nature of UN intervention; and the mismatch between the UN's ideal post-conflict state and the preferences of post-conflict societies. To make UN peace operations more responsive to post-conflict societies, UN staff often have to bend or break rules established only to hold them accountable to their member states.

Following the unsuccessful attempt to get a woman appointed as UN secretary-general in 2016 and the drop in women in senior posts in 2015, it appeared that gender equality at the UN was as distant as ever. Yet, gender equality within the Secretariat and UN system has been on the organization's agenda since 1970, with goals and target dates set for the level of women's participation and achievement. These have been met in some issue areas (for example, in so-called feminine portfolios) and organizations, but not others. As part of the special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay traces the evolution of efforts to increase the representation of women in the UN system and takes stock of their current representation therein, analyzing the data on the Secretariat and appointments to senior posts as well as in various operations and programs.

This article suggests that, during the 1820s and 1830s, Britain experienced a mirage moment. A greater volume of material was published on the mirage in scientific journals, treatises, travel literature and novels during these two decades than had occurred before in British history. The phenomenon was examined at the confluence of discussions about the cultural importance of illusions, the nature of the eye and the imperial project to investigate the extra-European natural world. Explanations of the mirage were put forward by such scientists and explorers as Sir David Brewster, William Wollaston and General Sir James Abbott. Their demystification paralleled the performance of unmasking scientific and magical secrets in the gallery shows of London during the period. The practice of seeing involved in viewing unfathomable phenomena whilst simultaneously considering their rational basis underwrote these different circumstances. I use this unusual mode of visuality to explore the ways the mirage and other illusions were viewed and understood in the 1820s and 1830s. Ultimately, this paper argues that the mirage exhibited the fallibility of the eyes as a tool for veridical perception in a marvellous and striking way, with consequences for the perceived trustworthiness of ocular knowledge in the period.

Two recent books consider the future of trade governance. Consent and Trade proposes reforms to trade agreements so that states can consent more freely to their terms. On Trade Justice defends reforms to the World Trade Organization, arguing that multilateralism is the foundation for a “new global deal” on trade. Each book describes trade's distinctive features and proposes a principle to regulate both trade and trade governance. Consent and Trade defends a principle of respect for state consent in trade agreements. On Trade Justice offers a theory of trade justice that requires nonexploitation. Consent and nonexploitation are important principles for economic exchanges. However, trade governance and trade itself are different forms of cooperation, with different agents and different interests at stake. Consent and nonexploitation are less compelling as principles for trade governance than for trade itself. Both books understate the conflict between their principles for trade governance and liberal justice.

As part of the special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay connects the past of the United Nations to its future from the perspective of the Global South. When the UN was created, most developing countries were colonies that played no role in writing the rules and designing the architecture of the post-1945 UN-centric global multilateral order. Today, countries in the Global South command a majority of the UN membership, but still mostly function as norm takers and are severely underrepresented in the UN Security Council—which functions as the geopolitical cockpit—and also in the senior ranks of the UN system, in the key posts in the Secretariat, and in the UN's funds and agencies. Gradually, however, these countries are using their numerical strength to give voice to their distinctive preferences, priorities, and values. This essay provides a broad-brush sketch of the changing nature of the North-South partnership on the UN's four overarching normative mandates of security, development, environment, and human rights. It includes a brief comment on the coronavirus pandemic within the framework of its main narrative of the continuing need for a UN-centric North-South partnership.

This article offers a reading of nineteenth-century Roman Catholic theology through the sacred art produced by and for women religious. The practices and devotions that the article explores, however, are not those that drew from the institutional Church but rather from the legacies of mysticism, many of which were shaped in women’s religious communities. Scholars have proposed that mysticism was stripped of its intellectual legitimacy and relegated to the margins of theology by post-Enlightenment rationalism, thereby consigning female religious experience to the politically impotent private sphere. The article suggests, however, that, although the literature of women’s mysticism entered a period of decline from the end of the Counter-Reformation, an authoritative female tradition, expressed in visual and material culture, continued into the nineteenth century and beyond. The art that emerged from convents reflected the increasing visibility of women in the Roman Catholic Church and the burgeoning of folkloric devotional practices and iconography. This article considers two paintings as evidence that, by the nineteenth century, the aporias1 of Christian theology were consciously articulated by women religious though the art that they made: works which, in turn, shaped the creed and culture of the institutional Church. In so doing, the article contributes to the growing body of scholarship on the material culture of religion.

In its seventy-fifth year, the UN needs to reflect more seriously on its value in the current global scenario, the current flow of ideas, and the current flow of power that is prevalent in the world. It is important to recall that the UN was founded after World War II as a way of addressing conflict at the negotiating table rather than on the battlefield. Negotiating peace, attempting to provide some form of justice, and affirmation of human rights seemed to be the aspiration. It is within this context that women engaged in affirming their own special location in society and economy. However, over the years the UN has revealed its inability to fulfill these goals. Perhaps in the midst of all these failures, the only category of people that has drawn strength from the UN, but now has to leave it behind, are women. Scattered as they were across a world of distances, women of different cultures and classes found strength in numbers and, through the UN system and the conferences they convened, became a power of their own. As part of the special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay argues that today, however, women do not need and cannot have their aspirations be facilitated by the UN, because in their engagement with one another they have also recognized their differences. Being of similar gender does not necessarily overcome other oppressive differences.

St Alban’s English College in Valladolid, established at the height of the Catholic Reformation for the training of English secular clergy under the rule of Spanish Jesuits, underwent an alteration in its management after the expulsion of the religious order from Spain in 1767. As part of this process, numerous valuable archival records were produced which have not, thus far, been studied. This article analyses a portion of these documents: the surviving manuscript inventories of the library. It also considers the series of governmental orders issued by the Spanish authorities as part of the process of expulsion and examines how these orders shaped the production of the library inventories. It offers an overview of the contents of the catalogues, with descriptions of some of those specific book entries that make these inventories unique. The study of these archival documents provides insight into, and understanding of, a key moment in the College history: its shift from Spanish Jesuit control to an English secular one and the difficulties that the Spanish authorities faced because of this change in the College’s national identity.

This essay explores the possibility of universal values. Universal values do not exist as Platonic ideals nor do they exist in clearly defined lists of rules or laws. Rather, universal ethical claims are constructed through the actions of individual political leaders, scholars, and activists. This essay explores how such normative constructions take place. It uses an initiative undertaken by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime to further education around corruption as an example of how such universal values come into existence. The initiative focused on developing teaching materials for higher education. The essay focuses on two particular modules, both their content and the process by which they were written.

This article situates Edward Gresham's Astrostereon, or A Discourse of the Falling of the Planet (1603), a little-known English astronomical treatise, in the context of the cosmo-theological debate on the reconciliation of heliocentrism with the Bible, triggered by the publication of Nicholas Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. Covering the period from the appearance of the ‘First Account’ of Copernican views presented in Georg Joachim Rheticus's Narratio Prima (1540) to the composition of Astrostereon in 1603, this paper places Edward Gresham's commentary and exegesis against the background of the views expressed by his countrymen and the thinkers associated with the Wittenberg University – such as Philipp Melanchthon, Caspar Peucer, and Christoph Rothmann. Comparing the ways in which they employed certain biblical passages – either in favour of or against the Earth's mobility – the paper emphasizes Gresham's ingenious reading of the Hebrew version of the problematic excerpts, and his expansion of the accommodation principle.