In western provinces inscriptions described Constantine as the son of deified Constantius I and a descendant of Maximian, his father-in-law. Dedications mapped Constantine’s expanding jurisdiction, from Gaul and Spain into Italy and North Africa, then into the Balkan provinces. In particular, cities in North Africa honored him with dedications and statues. One new title was “greatest”; but the use of the Christian chi-rho monogram was limited.

In this chapter it will be focused on the topic about why and how Béla Bartók’s music was an important compositional point of reference for Elizabeth Maconchy, especially for her string quartets. The reception of Bartók’s music signalled her interest in the ‘ultra modern’ music of her time, something which was hardly the norm. Maconchy absorbed Bartók’s tendency towards objectivity and constructivism (in the sense of a constructive compositional practice consisting of short and concise elements), which he developed around 1926, when he explicitly distanced himself from the conventions, style and diction of nineteenth-century music, claiming that his music became more simple and more contrapuntal. Maconchy followed exactly this path, as, especially in her string quartets, she developed the monothematic technique, imitation and variation, and the contrapuntal combination of linear parts – similar to a conversation – in which four voices repeatedly recite almost the same arguments.

Grounded in comparative politics, this chapter presents new theory in comparative political economy: First, it argues that, in the context of technological transition, a legal system that facilitates reassignment of property rights, making certain rights less secure, plays an important and under-theorized role in promoting economic development. It focuses on China’s technological transition from a rural, agricultural economy to an urban, industrial one to highlight the relationship between technology change, reassignment of land rights, and transformative economic growth. The chapter reinterprets England’s post–Glorious-Revolution reassignment of land rights, using enclosure, estate, turnpike, and other parliamentary acts, in light of China’s rise. It also identifies the problem of state misallocation of land resources in the Chinese case. Second, it argues that the authoritarian state also invests in the formal legal system in order to manage conflict over changes in land rights and to legitimate the state. It revisits England’s eighteenth-century use of law, including the Riot Act and Black Act, to contain protest over dispossession and compares it to China’s embrace of authoritarian legality to repress conflict. The chapter defines liberal and illiberal law in both form and content and locates the analysis in the context of the law-and-development movement.

The chapter investigates the persuasiveness of moral rhetoric, that is, effects on nonsupporters of the party. Based on insights from previous work, I develop theoretical expectations that suggest that moral rhetoric is unlikely to be persuasive, or make nonsupporters see the party more favorably. Previous studies on moral persuasion suggest moral-value alignment between a moral message and the recipient can make the message persuasive. Yet previous work on attitudinal bias suggest that moral rhetoric may be unpersuasive regardless of moral alignment and even further alienate nonsupporters with negative preexisting attitudes. I test the hypotheses using experiments in Britain. I find that moral rhetoric does not easily convince nonsupporters. However, moral rhetoric can be quite persuasive when the message is strong and the party has moral credibility. Under those conditions, moral rhetoric increases favorable attitudes, on average and among nonsupporters who prioritize the moral intuition in the message. There is no evidence that moral rhetoric further alienates hostile nonsupporters. The findings present a rather optimistic picture about the persuasiveness of moral rhetoric.

When colonial rule began in the mid-nineteenth century, India and Britain were both poor by modern standards, although Britain was somewhat richer. In 1947, when colonial rule ended, the gap between the two was gigantic. Britain was a sophisticated and wealthy economy where per capita income, health and education had improved dramatically, whereas India was still exceedingly poor on all these metrics. India’s economy changed over 200 years: it was far more engaged in international trade, a modern industrial sector had developed and railways criss-crossed the country. At the same time, productivity was low in all sectors of the economy, especially in agriculture. Life was precarious: as late as 1943, a devastating famine took millions of lives in Bengal, a horror that indicted colonial rule. We introduce the reader to this complex story of transformation without enrichment, briefly commenting on how each chapter fits in the narrative.

The study of European capitalism since 1945 has revealed three key findings. First, Europe’s governance of capitalism has been marked by four main periods: : 1) embedded liberalism (1945–73); 2) global attempts at mixed capitalism (1973–92); 3) high neoliberalism (1992–2016); and 4) the return of community capitalism since 2016. Second, Europeans have invented an original system to reach compromise between both states and the three types of capitalist governance, thereby offering choice, far from the image of a neoliberal technocratic dictatorship. The European Union is a mix between the influence of many countries, including Germany, France, and Britain, in addition to Italy and many others. Third, the trinity points to three alternatives that were – and still are – present: the neoliberal free-trade area, the socio-environmental alternative and the challenge of the return of community capitalism, between protectionist tensions, Fortress Europe and the possible hollowing out of the European Union from the pressure of growing nationalism.

A targeted European welfare state emerged between 1950 and 1992, one that was referred to in the late 1980s as the ‘social flank to the internal market’. This chapter will begin with a chronological overview, including a first section on the slow development of this European social policy between 1945 and 1985, and a second one its heights under Jacques Delors (1985–1995). It will then proceed with a topical exploration of European measures in this area (protecting the weak, environmental policy, regional solidarity), before concluding with an analysis of the two most important alternatives that were later abandoned: planning, and comprehensive social and fiscal harmonisation. This relative weakness of social Europe can be explained by its late development, by the sheer difficulty of organising a transnational social movement, as well as by divisions among its supporters. Besides, Thatcher was a formidable obstacle, one that Delors sought to circumvent through greater use of qualified majority voting. Other important actors were European trade unions, gender and environmental activists, as well as members of the European Parliament.

The chapter investigates the mobilizing effect of moral rhetoric, that is, effects on party supporters. I theorize that moral rhetoric is likely to mobilize the party base, or those who identify with the party. This works by moral rhetoric priming the moral intuitions of supportive voters. Heightened moral intuitions activate their emotions, which in turn increase willingness to participate in politics. In particular, I focus on the mediating role of positive emotions, especially pride about one’s partisan preference. I test my argument using experimental and panel survey data from Britain. First, I show that moral rhetoric can increase positive emotions, especially pride. Second, I find that voters who held more positive emotions about their party before an election were more likely to politically participate during the election. Interestingly, analyses show that pride plays a big role for expressive participation, like displaying an election poster. Third, I investigate the entire argument using mediation analysis. The chapter shows that while moral rhetoric can mobilize the party base, the effects are rather limited. Moral rhetoric promotes expressive, cheap forms of participation.

In an exceptional phenomenon in world history, eleven European countries, among the richest in the world, freely decided to create a monetary union in 1992, doing so during a powerful neoliberal shift. How to explain this, and what connection is there between European monetary integration and neoliberalism? This chapter argues that monetary union cannot be reduced exclusively to its neoliberal dimension, as forging such a union was devised by European leaders before the neoliberal turn, and had numerous justifications including ones more consistent with the solidarity and the community governance of capitalism. While the literature on the history of the European Monetary Union is extensive, additional archival research conducted for this book has shed new light on two neglected factors: the importance of projects for monetary cooperation devised in the 1950s and 1960s within the framework of the EEC (before the neoliberal turn); and the crucial importance of concerted stimulus in 1978, followed by German balance of payment difficulties in 1980–1981, which explain the convergence towards stability-oriented policy.

Chapter 1 examines connections between abolition debates and legislation in Britain and the decisions of colonial administrations to amend, retain or abolish the death penalty in the 1950s and 1960s. The British government made only limited efforts to promote abolition across the Empire and readily accepted arguments made by governors, political and judicial appointees and elected lawmakers for retaining executions. The course of imperial abolition was consequently uneven in ways that reflected the diversity of colonial legal and penal cultures, crime control concerns, constitutional arrangements and political dynamics, and which saw racialized systems of colonial penal violence persist into the abolition era. Yet even in colonies where the death penalty was retained into the 1970s and beyond, death sentences were upheld in an increasingly narrow range of murder cases. In some jurisdictions, this shift predated British abolition and indicates a more pervasive and dispersed turn against capital punishment across the Empire than is captured in statute laws alone.

The Belgian historian Jos Van Ussel’s History of Sexual Repression inspired Michel Foucault to argue that the history of sexuality was not marked by silence but by a deafening discursive explosion. Following Foucault, many historians have sought to substantiate his influential claim by documenting the strong discursive preoccupation with same-sex eroticism in ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’ from the late nineteenth century onwards. The unstudied case of Belgium challenges both the geography and the chronology of this vestigial grand narrative. Unlike in larger neighboring countries (Britain, France, and Germany), which commonly get to tell the story of ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’ as a whole, Belgian intellectuals and policymakers barely broached the issue of homosexuality until the 1950s. Why this was the case, and how it complicates our understanding of queer history by breaking up the idea of a single and singular Europe from the inside out, is this book’s main subject. The Introduction also calls attention to the importance of silence and omission and to the role of religion in the history of (homo)sexualities.

In this chapter, I explore three female folk song collectors: Lucy Broadwood, Annes Geddes Gilchrist and Dorothy Marshall, and three women from whom they collected songs – to provide wider commentary on the contributions of women to the first English folk song revival and their marginalization. In doing so, I examine the role of women in the first folk song revival, feminist practices in the archive, and a growing resurgence of interest in women and folk music. By exploring three examples of collecting in the first folk song revival, I illuminate the women who operated in the margins of the folk music movement and have since been marginalized by its history. I contend that by paying closer attention to what is found in the margins of manuscripts and other archival material, it is possible to glean information on the singing tradition, and collection practices, of women in the first folk song revival.

The conclusion of this book considers the argument that is often brought out when considering the racist content of historic film or television as being ‘of the time’. It notes both the central planks of this argument, that Britain was widely racist in the past and this was broadly accepted, and what that means in the present, for our understanding of racism in twentieth-century Britain.

The introduction lays out the importance of critical race theory as a compelling analytical framework for historians of twentieth-century British history. It works first from an examination of everyday racism in Britain and the lack of attention to this in existing historiography, and then moves into the longer history of ‘not knowing’ racism that has characterized denials of racism in domestic twentieth-century Britain. The chapter notes critical race theory’s particular relevance for understanding Britain’s claims to racial tolerance in the twentieth century and the production of racialised screen content.

If the governor’s decision to wage war in Taranaki over Waitara in 1860 was heavy-handed and aggressive, the invasion of the Waikato launched by Sir George Grey in July 1863 amounted to a blatant lunge for power. Indeed – as a narrow victory of numbers – it presaged the takeover by settler New Zealand that deluged Māori. From the 1860s the scales of power tipped to the settler society. Within a generation, Māori shrank from being most of the population to a small minority. The amount of land in Māori ownership, already much diminished, halved between 1860 and 1891. But pockets of resistance nurtured a proud legacy that would recalibrate relations a century and more later.

Struggles for land have swirled around the Treaty of Waitangi ever since it was first signed, on 6 February 1840. An instrument unique less in its making than in what it has become, as a constitutional document and guarantee of indigenous rights, it met grand goals at minimal cost. Beforehand, on 30 January, Captain William Hobson, who had landed in the Bay of Islands the previous day, read three announcements at the Anglican Church in Kororāreka (Russell). The first extended the boundaries of New South Wales to include New Zealand, the second declared him lieutenant-governor, and the third established that land titles would derive from the Crown. To secure annexation to the British Empire by consent Hobson next drafted a treaty, as instructed by the Colonial Office.

Historians, academics and military officers have viewed the Malayan Emergency as an exemplar of how counterinsurgency warfare should be conducted. Numerous studies and authors dissected British operations in Malaya during and in the aftermath of the war in South Vietnam. They looked for parallels with Vietnam and why Vietnam failed while Malaya was a success. In recent years, some authors have compared the Emergency with British and American operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, British troops studied the Malayan insurgency of the 1950s before deploying to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in 2006. According to Australian historian Professor David Horner, the Confrontation with Indonesia was ‘one of the most successful applications of military force in a low-level conflict since the Second World War’ but has been largely ignored and has attracted a dearth of scholarly interest. This has been particularly evident in the role of the Australian forces generally, and especially the Australian Army’s intelligence services.

From 1945 to 1975, the Australian Army always served overseas as a junior partner in a coalition, usually as part of a British Commonwealth force. This was the case during the occupation of Japan and the Korean War and under British command in Malaya and Borneo. However, the Vietnam War highlighted several problems for the junior partner in an American-dominated alliance. Relations remained cordial throughout the war in South Vietnam, especially at the individual level. However, stress points soon emerged that had the potential to damage the relationship and adversely affect intelligence collection, analysis and sharing.