There are many facets to the historical context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education in Australia, from the ways in which knowledge was transferred prior to invasion through to the deliberate withholding of information from all Australians. When we refer to Indigenous education in Australia, we must remember that this is both for and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This chapter therefore discusses the historical context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, beginning with how knowledge was transferred prior to invasion. Several ‘case studies’ – early evidence of First Nations children’s academic capabilities immediately following invasion – are cited in terms of the ‘grand experiment’, followed by reference to the inclusion/exclusion of Aboriginal children using the oft-quoted phrase ‘clean, clad and courteous’. The chapter then moves past the infamous exclusion of Aboriginal children to the formation of the National Aboriginal Education Committee, which so heavily influenced a change in the political landscape, to involvement in curriculum development, and discusses some of the strategies, plans and policies that have been put in place.

The Doctrine of Discovery, rooted in 15th-century papal bulls, entitled the European nations of Spain, Portugal and England and the Catholic Church to claim Indigenous lands globally, justifying settler-colonial expansion based on their presumed superiority. The British Crown used this doctrine to assert sovereignty over newly discovered territories and and engaged with Māori by signing the Treaty of Waitangi / Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Colonisation has had – and continues to have – severe and detrimental impacts on Indigenous peoples worldwide. This brief overview of the Doctrine of Discovery provides a starting point for an exploration of the events leading up to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi / Te Tiriti o Waitangi, its impacts on Māori, its relevance today, and what it means for health practitioners.

Cultural safety in midwifery is fundamentally about the practitioner. The consumer, or the recipient of care, must be empowered to determine whether they feel safe, shifting power dynamics in their favour. This chapter explores traditional Māori birthing practices, and it begins with a discussion about the legacy of Hine te iwaiwa, the female Māori deity of childbirth. It examines key concepts, legislation and events introduced from 1769 that highlight the cultural reality for Māori before, during and after the resettlement of Aotearoa. Turanga Kaupapa is explored as a cultural framework to guide best practice for midwives. Additionally, the chapter examines the critical role of midwives in ensuring culturally safe maternity care. Midwives must challenge institutional bias, advocate for Indigenous autonomy and uphold the Treaty of Waitangi / Te Tiriti o Waitangi in their practice. Reflection points encourage midwives to critically evaluate their knowledge and practice through a culturally safe lens, ensuring future maternity care remains responsive to the needs of hapū māma (pregnant women) Māori.

Gender identity, sexuality and sexual orientation are often not well understood, creating confusion, prejudice and ignorance among some populations. To change societal views, various individuals and groups have provided education and shared their own personal journeys about gender identity, sexuality and sexual orientation. Although there have been some positive changes for the LGBTTQIA+ population, there is still much to be done to change attitudes, beliefs and values to improve how those who identify as LGBTTQIA+ are accepted and valued within society.

How did colonialism affect the content and practice of Buddhist monastic law? This chapter answers this question from the perspective of colonial legal sources, considering the ‘practices of legal pluralism’ employed by British officials starting in the early 1800s. Drawing on colonial correspondence, court decisions, draft laws, government transcripts, and newspaper reports, I explain how and why the British concretised legal concepts, such as ‘ecclesiastical succession’, ‘Buddhist temporalities’ and ‘temple lands’, while also generating new bodies of law: a body of civil-court case law governing monks called Buddhist Ecclesiastical Law; and an influential ordinance regulating the use and administration of ‘Buddhist properties’, called the Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance. I show how colonial jurists mapped Buddhism onto particular spaces, issues and communities, such that Buddhism acquired, in law, English-style qualities of jurisdiction across three dimensions: territorial jurisdiction, subject-matter jurisdiction, and personal jurisdiction.

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.

A changed attitude to globalisation emerged out of the aura of crisis: now there was a growing trend to manage it. The Australasian colonies resolved to seize opportunities to develop new commodities for export and to manage the social outcomes by building an edifice of progressive liberal ‘state experiments’. Led by Premiers John Ballance (1891-3), Richard Seddon (1893-1906), and Sir Joseph Ward (1906-12) – two of whom were Irish-born and all of whom were immigrants – a series of Liberal governments from 1891 to 1912 set out to transform New Zealand into a democratic social laboratory. In doing so, they enacted an Australasian model of state development.

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.

The Christian military operations against the Iberian Muslim kingdoms (10th -11th centuries) led to the development of walled urban centres inhabited by warriors. During the later Middle Ages, Iberian urban economies benefited from European and Mediterranean trade and a large numbers of slaves, first traded from the Eastern Mediterranean, and later from Africa. The imperial projects of Portugal and Spain had a major impact on big cities like Lisbon and Seville, especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The crisis of the seventeenth century and Spain’s decline in international politics facilitated that in the eighteenth century the inner cities became identified with rentier clergy and hidalgos lacking economic initiative, while the most dynamic urban development happened in port cities. Spain’s urban society was by then incapable of absorbing surplus rural populations, despite the positive effect of trade with colonies and the attractiveness of its growing cities.

Through an analysis of Jacob Ross’s 1999 story ‘Rum an Coke’, this chapter examines the role of rum in contemporary literature, both as an emblem of the Caribbean and a commodity historically connected to slavery and the plantation economy. As both noun and adjective, word and thing, rum is peculiarly open for language play characteristic of ‘the literary’ and productive for examining the silences and echoes of colonialism in everyday life. By tracking substitutions across commodities in the story—sugar, rum, Coca-Cola, and cocaine—the role of the United States and Europe becomes central to material conditions in contemporary Grenada. Stereotypes about alcohol and drug use deflect historicization of these conditions as legacies of colonization and enslavement in the Caribbean. Through this method, I suggest that reading commodities in historical perspective can frustrate colonialist interpretive circuits to reckon ethically with the past and speculate on postcolonial futures.

Central to all the cases studied in this book is a power struggle between business, workers and communities over rights, norms and resources. Business strategies erode community strength and divide communities and co-opt nationalist and development narratives. Business models reduce transparency and obfuscate their responsibility. Applying the fields of struggle lens, Chapter 5 explores the factors that enable some communities and workers to achieve remedy, however rare and minimal. As might be expected, success is driven by cohesion and solidarity within worker and community groups, as well as robust networks with sustained local and international networks of campaigners. Notably, the analysis also reveals that in the cases we examined where some remedy was achieved, elite business networks or key businesses in value chains espoused ethical and sustainable business norms, which were leveraged effectively by civil society networks to provide the basis for (albeit fragile) alliances between civil society and business networks against errant businesses harming communities and worker groups. Non-judicial mechanisms, as interventions in these struggles, were most helpful when they not only added their normative weight to the grievance but also reshaped the boundaries of the field to integrate and legitimate supportive allies.

This chapter examines the urban evolution of cities in the Eastern Mediterranean during Late Antiquity, focusing on their transformation from classical urban centres to more utilitarian and fortified settlements. It argues that rather than experiencing outright decline, cities in the East adapted to changing political, economic and religious realities. Archaeological evidence demonstrates a marked shift from monumental civic spaces to structures that emphasised military defence, religious identity and practical urban needs. The author discusses key aspects of urban change, including the gradual abandonment of traditional agoras, the decline of monumental temples and the repurposing of public buildings for Christian churches and administrative centres. The chapter also explores the impact of imperial policies on urban planning in reshaping cityscapes through large-scale church construction, fortification efforts and infrastructure projects. The increased militarisation of cities, with the establishment of fortified kastra and urban defences, is another major theme. Regional variations are examined, showing that while some cities, such as Constantinople and Thessaloniki, thrived under imperial patronage, others faced economic stagnation and contraction. The chapter concludes that while Late Antiquity brought profound transformations to urban life, cities in the East remained resilient, adapting to new social and political realities rather than simply collapsing.

After the Hannibalic war, the leading military role of consulars diminished, though it did not disappear. A significant number of consuls kept their imperium as proconsuls, but only a very small minority held the consulship again. A number of them held intermediate positions as military tribunes or military legates under the command of magistrates with imperium. Consulars played a leading role in international diplomacy and the organisation of newly conquered territories as members of senatorial embassies, especially in the Greek world. Ex-consuls were also common as heads of commissions in charge of implementing the agrarian policy promoted by the Senate during the second century BCE, both for the foundation of Roman and Latin colonies and for the individual distribution of land. The censorship became the coveted culmination of a political career for many consulars. The Senate was the arena in which consulars assumed a leading role in political debate. In contrast, their intervention in popular assemblies was rare. As in previous periods, many consulars were members of priestly colleges. While most of them entered the colleges (long) before they became consuls, others did so at an advanced age after their consulship.

In Chapter 5 we present the pitfall of using one’s research to prove a pre-held conviction. As a case study, we present historical diplomatic correspondence between representatives of China and the US in the time of colonialism. We argue that it is not productive to attempt to demonstrate how evil colonialism was, which is a frequent research goal in spite of the fact that the evil nature of colonialism is an accepted truth. Rather, we believe that it is more productive to look at exactly how the coloniser used language in order to coerce representatives of the colonised country to fulfil their demands.