The Third Crusade left a significant imprint on the manuscript cultures of Western Europe connected to the crusading movement. Contemporaries copied, engaged with, and modified narratives about the Third Crusade and its context on a scale not seen since the First Crusade. Texts range from documentary sources, such as the desperate Hilferuf of Patriarch Eraclius as Saladin's army closed in on the city of Jerusalem and the papal response in the form of Audita tremendi, to longer-form narratives, such as the compilations known as the Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, which exists in several versions, and the Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris. Scribal activity took place from the time of the launch of the crusade in 1187–1188, during the campaign itself, and extended into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, encompassing the desire to record and understand events in the East as part of an overarching theological framework, to promote and engage with the crusading movement as a form of ‘scribal crusading’, and to commemorate and memorialise the crusade after its conclusion. In seeking to further these aims, authors and scribes not only transmitted texts but also took advantage of their plasticity in manuscript to interpolate new material, abridge them, and tailor them to local audiences.

This chapter explains the concept of reliance and reliance systems – the way in which human agency stems from collectively produced systems. It then links this understanding of reliance and agency to capabilities theory, and explains the contribution that reliance systems make to rendering capabilities theory more aware of the materiality of capabilities. The chapter then delves into the nature of reliance systems, focusing on separating the material and functional components of reliance systems. We explain the need to modify social contract theory in order to pursue a better politics of reliance systems, as opposed to other possible political avenues such as rights and deliberative democracy. The chapter ends by suggesting six principles for examining the morality of any given spatial contract.

The introduction lays out the basic intellectual framework of the book. It argues that human agency is derived from collectively produced reliance systems such as energy, transportation and water. These systems are governed by complex formal and informal agreements called spatial contracts, which differ depending on the system, geography and moment in history. These spatial contracts need to become the focal point of twenty-first-century politics.

This chapter focuses on building an analytical framework for understanding reliance systems and spatial contracts. It is based on the argument that we must begin with the system, and understand the politics from the system up, rather than from the politics down. The framework draws on systems thinking to establish how we can differentiate between different systems. It then uses this systems perspective to repurpose ideas from economics which are useful if focused on systems instead of commodities.

This chapter furthers the development of the analytical framework by focusing on the relationship between reliance systems and exploitation. It reworks Iris Marion Young’s five faces of oppression for use with reliance systems and the spatial contract. These five faces are exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence.

This chapter continues the work of building the analytical framework. Rather than pulling apart systems to appreciate their differences, as in Chapter 2, this chapter explains how systems must be seen together as human settlements. This settlements perspective illuminates two important sets of divisions that may hinder the development of healthier spatial contracts – the divide between urban and rural, and that between formal and informal.

This chapter summarizes the key contributions of the book. It highlights the way the text operates as three interlocking frameworks: an intellectual framework focused on an understanding of the relationship between collectively produced systems and human agency; a political framework which insists on the need for these systems to become the centre of politics; and an analytical framework which understands systems in context, with a focus on exploitation. It further demonstrates the utility of these frameworks by briefly analysing two current cases: the push for universal basic income globally, and the focus on the Green New Deal in the United States. The chapter also lists ten areas where future work is needed.