Chapter Four explores the politics of sectarianism and statecraft within the context of the triangular relationship among the Ottoman state, the Safavid state, and the Qizilbash communities situated between them. The chapter examines how the Ottoman state and its Qizilbash subjects devised diverse strategies to navigate their religious sensitivities, sociopolitical realities, and fiscal imperatives. A new set of questions is introduced to challenge the prevailing notion that the relationship between the “Sunni Ottoman” state and its “non-Sunni Qizilbash” subjects was inherently irreconcilable and characterized by continuous persecution of these supposedly powerless, defenseless religious nonconformists. It reveals the existence of a range of policies and approaches adopted by the Ottoman state, from providing financial support to establishing quid pro quo arrangements, from accommodating Qizilbash subjects to resorting to surveillance and heavy-handed suppression and persecution of the very same populations. The chapter emphasizes that the Ottoman Qizilbash, as significant powerholders during this period, exerted their influence not only through practices of conversion and reconversion but also through negotiation, migration, intervention, and at times rebellion.

The Irish parliament was abolished in 1800 and those who supported its abolition were then and thereafter known as unionists. The 1798 rebellion, organized by Irish republicans led by Wolfe Tone, incorporating Catholic and Protestant and partly supported by the French, had alarmed the British. Most Penal legislation was gone by 1792 but Catholics were still not allowed to stand for parliament. Daniel O’Connell challenged this with a campaign culminating in Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and his subsequent campaign to repeal the union continued this constitutional nationalism. Various administrative, legal and educational reforms in the 1830s dismantled Protestant privilege some more. Meanwhile, the population of the poorest continued to grow, surviving precariously on the potato, until over a million died in the Great Famine of 1845–1849, and another 900,000 panic-emigrated. The small and unsuccessful Young Ireland rebellion of 1848 expressed a physical force nationalism that O’Connell had disavowed, and kept the focus on Irish grievances.

By 1850, the Irish language was in serious decline all over the country.

This chapter provides a critical analysis of the material scope of NIAC and is divided into seven sections. The first explores the material concepts of NIAC pursuant to both CA3 and APII,  and explores how the drafters understood these  concept and how it has been interpreted in practice. Second, it examines the concept of NIAC contained in Additional Protocol II of 1977, looking at how its distinct identity emerged, as well as its specific material elements. The second section explores some of the legal and operational challenges that arise from the existence of two categories of NIAC, and in particular how the activation of APII can fragment the applicable legal regime, resulting in fluctuating levels of protection during NIAC. The fourth section undertakes a comparative analysis of the material scope and associated threshold of NIAC pursuant to the Tadić definition of NIAC (CA3) and that contained in APII, in order to identify areas of convergence and divergence. The fifth section explores how developments in both customary and conventional IHL applicable during NIAC have influenced its material scope and, in particular, the level of organization armed groups require in order to qualify as a Party to a NIAC. Following from the conclusions of sections four and five, the sixth section assesses the continued relevance of the distinction between CA3 and APII NIACs in practice.

Even with emancipation firmly in view as a goal of ending the civil war, Lincoln had to struggle against unsuccessful and even uncooperative generals and officers, and against public opinion which was inflamed by the sensational arrests of prominent anti-war democratic dissidents. Through 1863, his public utterances and writings were aimed at explaining the overall object of the war and justifying actions he had taken to pursue that object. Nevertheless, he was willing to listen to peace overtures, and even to meet with commissioners from the confederacy. But there were moments of discouragement, particularly when it seemed that he might not gain re-election to the presidency. Those fears were largely dispelled by the military successes of Ulysses s. Grant, and Lincoln was able to proceed to a triumphant conclusion of the military campaigns in 1865.

Abraham Lincoln entered onto the presidency even as the breakaway southern confederacy was in the process of detaching itself from the union. Lincoln undestood this as a defiance of the constitution and an undermining of democracy (as represented by the election of 1860) and he initiated war measures to suppress what he would recognize only as a rebellion. He was careful not to agitate public opposition by billing this suppression as an abolition campaign. Nevertheless, union forces met with repeated defeats, and Lincoln was frustrated by over-mighty generals who believed that they knew better than he what was at stake. This frustration nudged him further toward incorporating some form of abolition into his war plans.

The Revolution is often remembered in the public consciousness for doing away with censorship, yet the reality was somewhat different, especially when it came to remembering the decade of 1789–99. This chapter analyses how such representations across genres from ballet to fait historique were censored both laterally and bureaucratically from the calling of the Estates General in 1788 through to the coup of 18 Brumaire in November 1799, passing through cities like Nîmes, Brussels, Dijon, Tours, and Bordeaux, alongside Paris. After the initial relaxation of censorship in the early 1790s, it soon returned and there was a stark rise in bureaucratic censorship during the Directory. However, audiences, playwrights, and theatres throughout the Revolution were prepared to use the stage to reject the official view of political progress, at times leading to an overt rejection of the regime in place and bringing major cities to the brink of rebellion.

The military revolt and widespread rebellion that overtook north India in 1857 was, arguably, the most significant challenge to the British Empire in the nineteenth century. Given the global historical significance of 1857, it is not surprising that the events of that year have been subjected to intense scrutiny by historians – especially as that fateful year began to loom large after 1900 as “India’s First War of Independence.” Historians have long noted that the first serious blood spilled in 1857 occurred in the military garrison town of Meerut, north of Delhi. And historians almost always point to the catalyzing role of local women – usually described as “prostitutes” – of the cantonment bazaar, who were said to have provided the spark that set the cantonment on fire. But who were these women? Surprisingly, despite 170 years of historiography, this question has not been asked till now. It is at the heart of the present study.

In an era steeped in national stereotypes that bled into slanders and hatred, the English were notorious in later medieval Europe for three things: drunkenness, bearing a tail and killing their kings. But it is with the implications of another alleged propensity – for waging wars of conquest that sought to turn neighbours into subjects – that this chapter is largely concerned. By the later Middle Ages, the bellicose reputation of England’s kings reverberated across Christendom. Jean Froissart (d. c. 1405), the chronicler of chivalry who visited the court of Edward III, noted that, because of their great conquests, the English were ‘always more inclined to war than peace’.

This chapter examines the relationship between the king and his ‘ordinary’ subjects and asks whether such a thing as ‘public opinion’ evolved over the period to play a role in politics. For medieval historians, ‘the public’ used to be synonymous with the nobility and gentry. They were the section of the population that had some formal role in governance and had time outside of the demands of labour to devote to political questions. However, recent scholarship has emphasised that most if not all people in later medieval England had access to texts, could hear them read aloud and discuss their contents. This has led to a reappraisal of the later medieval public, towards an expansionist view that includes people below the ranks of the gentry as politically aware and engaged.

In this chapter we apply the theoretical model we introduced earlier to the behaviour of leaders to find out what alarms them, and under what conditions they are able and willing to order repression. We do not argue that we can accurately predict and explain every act of violence and repression. But we show how it helps us understand empirical patterns of repression. This model can inform our assessment of when we are most likely to observe human rights violations. To explain how context shapes human rights violations, we concentrate on why political regimes influence leaders’ threat perceptions and why democracies have the best human rights records, and why they do not always guarantee the protection of everyone’s basic rights. We outline the influence of mass dissent and of socio-economic factors. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of how context shaped respect for human rights in six countries.

Chapter 5 concerns the politics of Satan’s rebellion, which it reads not topically but as a narrative challenge that Milton approached rather as a historical novelist would, inventing within parameters. Milton imagines a deeply hierarchical heaven, and the trouble starts, in Milton’s telling, when God deliberately alters the heavenly hierarchy by exalting his Son. The problem of heavenly hierarchy leads to the broader problem of obedience tests, biblical and Miltonic; and that problem leads to still broader questions of theodicy and Milton’s use of Scripture. The chapter’s argument supports the Empsonian view that the deepest difficulties in Paradise Lost are inherited ones.

This chapter focuses on an alleged rebellion by enslaved people in Jamaica in 1776. A broader global perspective on the American Revolution, one beyond the thirteen rebelling mainland colonies, underlines how freedom and unfreedom intertwined together in complicated, surprising, and sometimes horrific ways in 1776. The chapter argues that calls for liberty on the mainland tightened the noose of slavery in the Caribbean. In Jamaica, the American Revolution gave even more force to already powerful waves of racist fear and violence, making dismal slavery even grimmer. Enslaver anxieties centered on control of arms and violence against white women. Moreover, what happened in Jamaica affected the course and shape of the American Revolution. The events of 1776 in Jamaica also highlight that the Age of Revolutions was equally an age of racism and retrenchment as it was one of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

This chapter explores the relationship between the sharp rise in banditry, rebellion, and mixed crimes along the Qing Empire’s southern borders in the mid 1880s, and the responses of local administrators in Hong Kong and Canton to the challenges of extraditing fugitives. It traces the concurrent emergence of two contrasting discourses on justice: one framing justice as a system of legal protections against Qing law (prevalent across the Canton–Hong Kong border and increasingly within foreign concessions in treaty ports), and another asserting that foreign interference undermined the traditional justice system (notably along the Yangzi River and in missionary enclaves). This chapter argues that both discourses were strategically adopted by anti-Qing rebellions in the 1890s.

The development of institutionalised political participation is shown for nine of the most important early modern European states – or else those, such as Switzerland, that figure prominently in the history of democracy. The focus is on not only the ‘long’ seventeenth century and the ruptures it created but also the general continuities in essentially all early modern states: they all featured some mode of institutionalised central political participation, but it was always geared towards the participation of the top social elites only.