Mary Gibson's travel story encapsulates the uncertainty and dislocation caused by departure from home. This chapter argues that despite migrants being unprepared for many experiences encountered during their passage, the transition enabled them to anticipate the many contrasts they would eventually confront at their destination. The migrants moving to the United States indicated that their accommodation sometimes failed to live up to the image proffered in glossy publicity tracts. Food was an especially intriguing aspect of the voyage for migrants. Shipping companies recognised the importance of provisions, with promotional material acclaiming the liner's benefits in the department. Memories of an assisted post-war passage to Australia resulted in British migrants structuring voyages along conflicting lines: luxury cruise versus nightmare at sea; seasickness versus romance. The novelty of the journey meant that some migrants penned captivating descriptions of their passage and recorded their daily activities for longevity.

This chapter examines the moment of surprise or denouement, when the 'glamorous' young woman was unveiled as a police constable and suggests that it was indicative of a wider anxiety within mainstream culture. It considers the tactics and strategies that shaped women's practices in undercover work. Women's actual involvement in covert surveillance involved a display of 'femininity' and, sometimes, the ability to 'dress' up' to become a spectacle or 'dress down' to guarantee obscurity. The chapter examines personal testimonies in order to consider women's individual experiences of plain-clothes observations, the narratives they themselves constructed, and the ways in which they negotiated the concealment of a police identity. Women were required to use their femininity, and their sexual attractiveness, to persuade, attract and obtain information. The chapter also considers the roles of women who were actually based in Criminal Investigations Department (CID), considering their interaction within one particular police culture.

This chapter examines the three years of the initial Revolution, the years of redefinition when the new literary culture emerged from experience and the developing ideological consensus. The pace, scale and depth of the early changes were so significant that they warrant detailed attention. The discussion argues that the first period stood clearly apart from the following three decades, concluding that 1961 was clearly the end of one phase and the start of another, because the first phase of uncertainty and unfocused enthusiasm was closed by the ending of the Literacy Campaign. Cuban Revolution; literary culture; ideological consensus; Literacy Campaign

The conclusion synthesises the book’s arguments, highlighting how marriage and migration serve as pivotal sites for examining the intersection of geopolitical and intimate projects. It reveals the complex relationship between national desire, family, marriage and race within China’s quest to realise the China Dream. The war in Ukraine further amplified these narratives, reinforcing the image of China as a rising force capable of stepping in where other nations falter. A relational approach to China’s interactions with the world, particularly through the lenses of gender and race, necessitates an exploration of the historical, geographical and normative dynamics that shape China’s self–other relations. Russia, in this context, serves as a critical node, connecting China to the racialised global order through its proximity, historical ties and shared geopolitical outlooks. The gendered and racialised dimensions of these processes highlight that national security and international relations are deeply intertwined with intimate relations.

The European Parliament is a dominated element in the evolving European political field. From 1979 to 1999, French electors have been choosing their representatives to the European Parliament directly and by proportional vote, with a 5 per cent threshold rule. The 1999 contingent of French Member of the European Parliament (MEPs) fits by and large the profile of their predecessors. The level of women's representation in the European Parliament varies from one European Union country to another. The poor representation of women in France's power elite has long been the subject of complaint, both in France and abroad. In France, entrance to the European Parliament is regulated by political party leadership that decides on the composition and order of election lists. Beginning in the 1980s, women's positions and opportunities in French politics have certainly changed for the better.

The character of the State of Nature that humanity sought to escape divided natural philosophers. There was a sharp reaction against the pessimism of Hobbes’s Leviathan and Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees. The end result of a long process was the development of the ethical theory of utilitarianism: ‘it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong’ (Bentham). The seed-bed of utilitarianism was the idea of utility; but utility is an empty vessel, with no fixed or clear definition. During the eighteenth century, happiness became its preferred content. The role of Hutcheson was key here: he coined the phrase (in 1725) that became the Benthamite slogan, and pioneered the application of mathematics to moral philosophy. Later thinkers, notably Helvétius, were less optimistic than Hutcheson, arguing that mankind was not by nature benevolent, but self-interested: it was thus incumbent on legislators to raise the sights of the citizenry to embrace the interests of the whole society. In this Beccaria followed the lead of Helvétius.

Christians faced the specific problem of reconciling capital punishment with the belief in the sanctity of human life. ‘God made man in his own image’ (Genesis). However the Church, from the time of Constantine, found it advantageous to ally itself with the State in order to forward and exploit its influence and authority. This alliance involved the Church in a cruel penal system: in fact, it introduced a new capital crime, heresy. Such disquiet as there was largely went underground. When dissent was expressed, Jesus was called up as an advocate for the cause, not as a missionary for penal reform (his Kingdom was not of this world), but because of his life, teaching, and vision of a New Age. Of our two Italian abolitionists, the devout Catholic Pelli repeatedly invoked the Christian God and the Sermon on the Mount. Earlier it was a Protestant, Sébastian Castellion, who caused a stir. Castellion campaigned fiercely against the criminalization of heresy, following the brutal execution of Michael Servetus, burned at the stake in 1553 in Calvin’s Geneva. Castellion, however, was striking a blow for freedom of belief rather than for the abolition of capital punishment as such.

Giuseppe Pelli never completed his dissertation against the death penalty, the first of its kind. He belonged to a small group of Catholics critical of their Church from within, but essentially conservative in their thinking and attitudes. Pelli’s research was heavily weighted toward the natural philosophers from Grotius on, and he exploited their knowledge of the ancient sources. Montesquieu apart, Pelli showed little interest in the Transalpine Enlightenment. He found in Montaigne a kindred spirit, a writer of conspicuous humanity who expressed his views without inhibition. As a loyal Catholic, Pelli’s basic argument against capital punishment was that it is inconsistent with Christianity. God is everywhere in Pelli’s work. Natural law is decisively God’s law, which could never have countenanced capital punishment imposed by human agencies. Pelli held back from direct attack on the powers-that-be, judicial and ecclesiastical. His diagnosis is Augustinian: the root of the problem is sin, to which the whole of humanity is susceptible. Pelli’s work is the best that devout, conservative Christianity could offer at this stage in history.

The British Labour Party’s response to the Israel/Arab conflict is traced in this chapter from 1947 until the early 1970s through the reflections of some of its leading figures and, in particular, of Richard Crossman. Crossman had an intense and lengthy involvement with the Israel/Palestine issue. He was a member of the 1947 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry that made a last ditch effort to try to resolve the conflict in Palestine. For Crossman as for many in the Labour Party, the establishment of Israel represented the promise of a social democratic development in the Middle East, that many on the left-wing of the labour movement believed would constitute a ‘third way’, transcending the rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union. His strong attachment to Israel led him to subscribe to many of the myths of Labour Zionism though towards the end of his life he expressed some criticism of Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza.