This chapter closes the section on the complexities of colonial legislation and its enforcement with a focus on labour regulation across the Dutch Empire in the eighteenth century. Heijmans and Thiebaut build their analysis of the similarities and differences in labour legislation in Dutch colonial possessions administered by the VOC in the Indian Ocean and the WIC in the Atlantic. They fill a gap in the literature by taking an unprecedented comparative approach to the control of unfree labour across the very diverse areas included in the Dutch early modern empire. The chapter focuses on slavery as a relevant entry point into the strategies of labour control by the Dutch colonial administration at a global level. Based on locally issued by-laws compiled in ‘plakaatboeken’ from Batavia, Suriname and the Cape, Ceylon, the Guianas and Curaçao, this study shows how Dutch colonial governments regulated the behaviour and living conditions of enslaved people in their various settlements stretched over the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans in the eighteenth century. The authors demonstrate that in spite of local variations due to organisation and demography, all the colonies of the Dutch Empire spread across the globe relied on enslavement. By-laws and their limited enforcement everywhere were designed to maintain the status quo and to protect the property and prerogatives of the local dominant class, who shaped and used company law to their own advantage.

The compilation albums Now That’s What I Call Music! stand as both metaphor and evidence for a history of the 1980s imagined as a list, or montage. Seeing History as a compilation also suggests a way to understand historical evidence – illuminating the connected nature of cultural and economic contexts, of marketing, consumption, experience and memory. It is something of a cliché to describe Britain in the 1980s as a divided nation, embodied in Thatcher and exemplified by the often quoted phrase ‘there’s no such thing as society’. The introduction sets out a ‘perforated’ history in order to capture the connectivity alongside those divisions, whereby events, objects and themes are connected and can bleed into each other. The chapter sets out ten objects and concepts which can help us get to the places in between the divisions, where the different threads, themes, questions and tensions coalesce.

Anti-love drugs could easily be misused. They bring to mind disturbing parallels with sexual orientation conversion therapies and other attempts to coercively intervene in the biology of vulnerable minorities, such as LGBTQ children and adolescents. This chapter explores the dangers of making certain biotechnologies available under oppressive conditions or in societies characterized by widespread intolerance or injustice. It also questions the logic of the ‘born this way’ movement for LGBTQ rights, which is premised on the idea that sexual orientation is not a choice. If high-tech conversion therapies are ever developed that can in fact change sexual orientation, the intellectual foundation for the movement would collapse. The chapter therefore argues for the movement to be placed on stronger footing, and suggests how this might be done.

The book begins in 1933 in Milan, traditionally considered to be the birthdate and place of modern Italian graphic design. The historiographical canon is challenged, and a key premise of the book is set: professionalisation is an ongoing process of becoming and practices are in a constant state of formation and under continuous renegotiation. First, the introduction locates graphic design in Italian design history. It stresses the uneven state of the historiography and criticises its inward-looking attitude. Secondly, the introduction explains the book’s approach to design practice as a historically constructed and socially produced concept. It draws on existing literature within design history scholarship, sociology and the history of the professions. Thirdly, the introduction explains how the book fits with existing scholarship on modernism: it clarifies how it understands the term and how it seeks to complicate linear narratives and overcome a tendency towards the aesthetic perspective and a focus on design celebrities. Lastly, it suggests the book’s approach towards Italian Fascism and its attempt to explore the impact of Fascism on everyday life and practice. A brief consideration of primary sources precedes the chapter synopsis.

Histoire philosophique et politique des deux Indes, first published in 1770, was very successful in France and Europe. Its alleged author, Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, did not write it entirely but appealed to and was inspired by various authors. As a polemic and anticolonial essay, marked by the struggle against despotism, the Histoire philosophique illustrates how colonisation was viewed by some Enlightenment philosophers. It has received large scholarly attention, but my purpose is to confront what Raynal and his associates perceived of the management of French and English colonies to emphasise the differences and similarities in their thoughts. Raynal et al questioned Europeans’ motivations for settling in overseas territories and provided a political, economic and military picture of the colonies. Indeed, Raynal was one of the first critiques of imperialism and globalisation. The Histoire philosophique illustrates his negative views on colonialism and slavery, against many contemporary political economists. Raynal’s essay provides a coherent view of the distant colonies by stressing the involvement of their various agents – tradesmen, soldiers, farmers or missionaries – plus unfree labour forces. Using the comprehensive 1780 edition, this chapter questions three aspects of this study. The first is the role trading companies had in the distant colonies, and their economic activities there. It questions Raynal’s analysis of how the French and English Empires spread across Asia, the West Indies and North America. Finally, the imperial strategies of both empires in the process of colonising distant lands were marked by severe differences that Raynal puts forward, usually favouring English strategies.

This chapter examines the ideas of C. P. Snow (The Two Cultures), Richard Dawkins (genetic determinism), Craig Venter (‘creating’ life) and Denis Noble (principle of biological relativity). The theory of biological relativity says there is no hierarchy in biological systems and no level in its organisation that has precedence over any other level. This denial of a hierarchy is the denial of determinism, including, in particular, genetic determinism. From the perspective of the modern plagues, the principle insists that there is no single solution available to ending those plagues.

Concurrent with the top-down change already described, the Health Society requires bottom-up change in every community. Such change is required because the modern plagues spread through social networks that operate predominantly at the community level. The authors propose that the starting point for this change is through reconfiguring the NHS Health Check. Reconfiguration includes the introduction of Health Society professionals and Health Society Champions. Evaluation of the development of the Health Society should include a target for improved healthspan. Because this is an exercise in experimental epidemiology (not merely in today’s convention of observational epidemiology), a pilot Health Society should be tested. Suitable locations for this pilot (including Greater Manchester) are identified.

Chapters 5 and 6 are two sides of the same coin. Together they explore the relationships between the state, the government, the press and the people, and uni what could and could not be said, by whom, where and in which format. In 1985 retired scientific officer at MI5, Peter Wright, tried to supplement his pension by publishing his memoir, including his investigations into KGB infiltration of MI5 itself. The book was co-written/ghost written by Paul Greengrass and embroiled Wright, his publishers, the British press and government in a lengthy, expensive and embarrassing blood letting. Throughout the eighties, stories about spies proliferated in all their possible forms – in toys and boardgames, cartoons, films, documentary and the spy novel. The language of espionage is that of fiction; spies’ i stories are ‘legends’. The language used to describe Spycatcher, and the secret service more broadly, fed from fiction and entertainment. But Wright’s book raised some uncomfortable questions about changing Cold War relations. The government tried everything it could to stop Wright’s book being published, read and written or talked about. It was not the disclosures themselves that tipped the balance of secrecy, security and liberty. It was the government’s reaction to Wright that showed the British government’s ‘predilection for expediency and secrecy’. Beyond the UK, the ban, and the ban on publishing articles about the ban, draw faultiness through Britain’s global reach, past and present.

The British took control of the Cape of Good Hope in 1795, after over a century of occupation by the agents and settlers of the Dutch VOC. Originally, the VOC never considered the Cape to be more than a refreshment station to service ships on their way to and from the VOC empire in the East, but even a limited number of settlers sufficed to transform the neglected area into a contested space of imperial competition. This chapter challenges established perceptions considering this place as a negligible site of early modern colonisation, to highlight the processes and conflicts that led to the development of the region by an array of European imperial agents, all part of the history and make-up of the region’s history, memory and culture. The chapter addresses the inconsistencies of VOC rule in the management of wave after wave of immigrant settlers of Dutch and French origin intent on residing permanently in the area and making the best of limited agricultural opportunities. It demonstrates the impact of various stakeholders to the land, including indigenous people, who actively resisted settler expansion. It points to the importance of settler demands and settler autonomy in the stabilisation and expansion of European domination in the region, in spite of inconsistent and sometimes contradictory imperial policies of Dutch and British trading interests and companies. The latter viewed the Cape as a strategic location in the global competition for access to and domination over trading routes connecting Europe to the riches of Asia.