This chapter considers the evolution of English policy towards Ireland from the sixteenth century onwards. It argues how, at the beginning of the seventeenth century and the important reign of James VI and I, there was a renewed emphasis on religion, specifically Protestant evangelisation, as a key part of colonial projects, with Ireland part of wider trends in developing English imperialism. This resulted in policies of ‘converting and civilising’, with concepts of civility becoming inextricable with the Protestant religion. This was made visible in the planning and requirements of plantation schemes such as Ulster, which is contrasted with earlier schemes’ more lax religious requirements. The stress on religion, in turn, generated Irish Catholic resistance, which also drew on religious arguments, justifications and imagery in resisting the dispossession, displacement and loss of power that plantations represented. The Catholic clergy were crucial actors in articulating this religiously inflected opposition. The effect of both plantation and challenges to it was the increasing voicing of grievances, across a range of issues, in religious terms and through religious categories.

Violence against religious objects is the chief subject of this chapter. It considers Irish Catholic violence against the Protestant Bible, arguing that its status as a heretical object was central in explaining hostility and destruction; however, its anglicising power was also targeted, with implications touching language, the law, imperialism and more. Protestant iconoclasm also receives some attention, though the chapter notes its relative paucity in the sources; when it occurred however, it was a powerful statement against perceived idolatry, superstition and the believed inherent violence of Catholicism, especially the clergy. The chapter concludes with a reconsideration of massacre in light of iconoclasm and material violence, arguing that the body could be understood as a form of ‘sacred image’, and thus, interpersonal attacks must be viewed and understood as part of a continuum of violence against symbols of faith, giving a new perspective to long-running debates concerning massacre in the rebellion.

This chapter considers sacred space and the battles surrounding its possession, uses and understandings of the sacred more generally, including the wider significance of the landscape itself as a sacred space. Irish Catholic approaches were nuanced, such as the distinctions drawn between newly-built Protestant churches and older buildings that could be ‘re-catholicised’. The numerous rites and practices that this entailed are explored, showing that while notions of the holy and control of space were important to Irish Catholics, there was, nonetheless, great variety in how that was expressed. Spaces such as churches and churchyards are also examined as locations where both sacrality and ethnic tensions overlapped, with disputes surrounding burial showcasing Irish Catholic hostility to Protestants and Protestantism as heresy but also as foreign bodies contaminating Irish soil. The politics of church possession is another theme, which is shown to have explosive potential for intra-confessional conflict, as Irish Catholics debated and fought over the control of churches as a central demand of their cause, leading to conflict among themselves.

We were on opposite sides of the Brexit divide, perhaps the most divisive issue since 1945. Steve publicly campaigned hard to end the jurisdiction of EU law and institutions in the UK. Paul voted Remain but was much less concerned about the issues. Steve is sometimes lauded, but still widely hated for his efforts. Many of Paul’s colleagues were shocked that he didn’t care very much about an issue they saw as existential. We met on Zoom during Covid, when we shared similar concerns about the harms of lockdowns. The libertarian MP and the leftie academic didn’t expect the call to last very long. But we agreed on much more than we expected to – and we liked one another. We wrote against ‘vaccine passports’ in The Times. Paul was astonished by comments on the article, which were overwhelmingly about Steve’s work on Brexit, which had nothing to do with vaccine passports. Paul was attacked by several colleagues not only for disagreeing with lockdowns, but also for collaborating with a horrible Brexiteer.

Chapter 4 turns towards the role of women’s work in reproducing the household, focusing on the labour of relation-making in the neighbourhood as a means of creating economic networks through which material assistance can be sought. Commenting on anthropological literature that frames African contexts as ones of ‘mutuality’ and ‘obligation’, the chapter discusses the difficulty of finding assistance for aspirational projects (especially school fees) in an atomised neighbourhood where families compete for the prestige of economic advancement. It remarks upon the possibilities and limits of caring labour as a means through which women enter into economic relations of mutual support with others.

Although the United States was established with a distinctly Christian framework, over time the religious landscape has changed. American civil religion has adapted to make room for growing religious pluralism and the rise of secularism.

Chapter 5 discusses the custom of hat honour, a crucial marker of status in the early modern period, in which men took off their hats as a gesture of civility to social equals or deference to social superiors. The importance of hat honour is underlined by the Quaker challenge to it in the 1650s and 1660s. This was a refusal to observe the norms of civility, but also part of a radically unorthodox bodily habitus which provoked intense disquiet among the Quakers’ opponents as well as division among the Quakers themselves. The central focus of the chapter, however, is on hat honour in church. In the sixteenth century it was the custom for men to wear their hats in church, only removing them at certain points in the service in accordance with the biblical injunction to uncover their heads when ‘praying or prophesying’. But the 1604 Canons ordered that ‘no man shall cover his head in the church or chapel in the time of divine service’, effectively treating the church as a place apart where the normal rules of hat honour did not apply. This exposed an underlying disagreement over the nature of sacred space.

This uninhibited book of Collingwood’s rounds off his contribution to philosophy in a fiercely personal style. Declaring his unbounded admiration for the Leviathan of Hobbes and following its fourfold structure, Collingwood offers a systematic account of man, society, civilization, and “barbarism” – the last being understood as active hostility towards civilization, or revolt against it. Collingwood’s thoughts on the meaning of “society” and “civility,” as well as on questions of peace and war, remain very much alive; of particular interest here are his distinction between “eristic” and “dialectical” approaches to disagreement, and his conception of a body politic as the scene of a “dialectical” relationship between social and non-social elements. Other discussions impose greater distance on a modern reader – among them his briskly affirmative treatment of the role of a “ruling class,” of our entry into a presumed “social contract,” and of the “intelligent exploitation of nature.”

Chapter Nine explores Rogers’ humor, which was the common denominator in his wide-ranging endeavors as a public figure . It argues that he was the heir of a homespun, cracker-box tradition of comic commentary dating back to Benjamin Franklin and continuing through Artemus Ward, Petroleum V. Nasby, Mr. Dooley, and Mark Twain. Rogers presented a comic persona composed of common sense, a puncturing of pretense and pomposity, and a head-shaking, chuckling exposure of the absurdities of modern values and traditional prejudices alike. He did not tell jokes but offered witty reflections on the conundrums of modern life, appearing as a rustic sage cracking wise at the local general store. Moreover, while Rogers took pains to present his humor as spontaneous, it was actually meticulously prepared. Ultimately, by joking about the tensions, incongruities, and dislocations of a rapidly modernizing society, he helped Americans come to terms with enormous changes affecting their lives. Their rapturous reception made Rogers the leading American humorist of early twentieth-century America.

This chapter surveys and critiques the three major viewpoints on the ethics of communication, which I label Civility, Victory, and Open-mindedness. For Civility, activism must be governed by a set of rules for respectful engagement. For Victory, the ends justify the means, and for the sake of one’s political goals, one may need to mislead audiences, dismiss opponents, and use ad hominem attacks. For Open-mindedness, it is violent and immoral to impose one’s views on others. I argue that all three perspectives have serious shortcomings, but that each voice expresses a valuable concern. People want their advocacy to be moral, effective, and nonviolent, but often feel like it is impossible to have all three.

Martin Luther King Jr. argues that means and ends must be commensurable. If one wants to bring about a more equitable society, one must do so by equitable means. This means-ends principle is reiterated in the writings of Gandhi and King, but it has often been treated as something mysterious. A pragmatic case can be made for it if we pay attention to the dynamics of communication. Gandhi and King argue for an approach to social conflict that combines compassion for the needs of their opponents with a resolute opposition to the injustices these opponents perpetrate. Respect and respectability without challenge and protest will not contribute to the development of a more equitable society. But neither will challenge and protest without respect and respectability. By attending to how nonviolent direct actionists combine these two pressures, I develop an alternative to the dominant perspectives in communication ethics, but one that shares their concerns for morality, effectiveness, and nonviolence.

Most people believe there are rules of civility that ought to govern our discourse in moral and political disagreements. These rules operate like the rules of just-war theory: easy to adhere to in theory, but in practice routinely abandoned by all parties for the sake of winning. Drawing on conflict theory and social psychology, I explain how social conflicts make it possible for people to break their own rules of engagement without recognizing that they are doing so. Indeed, the same public figures who speak of the need for civility and unity are often the ones most willing to resort to uncivil and intentionally divisive speech. In any “us versus them” conflict, the perceived necessity for “us” to prevail over “them” tends to outweigh other ethical considerations. The rules of civility, whatever their merits as an ethical theory, are largely ineffective at constraining immoral practices when the chips are down.

In appreciating the institutional perpetuity of war, while simultaneously acknowledging the historically informed, inherent limitations of attempts to bound its conduct by international law, this chapter introduces the three interrelated questions that serve as the organising themes of this volume: first, is there a historical continuity with legal protections in war being informed by notions of ‘civility’ and ‘barbarity’?; second, what is the relationship between the ideals and operational realities in international humanitarian law (IHL)?; and third, what are the limitations of international laws designed to restrain excess in war? Via a brief overview of the divergent evolutions of jus ad bellum and jus in bello law, this introductory chapter further explores the sub-themes present in this volume: universalism and its shortcomings; problems with punishing violations of IHL; and the degree to which modern laws of war legitimate activities that should otherwise be prohibited.