This foundational chapter explores the evolution and meaning of “security” in the African context. It explores how the meaning has changed from the colonial period through the immediate post-independence period to today. It introduces the reader to the concept of “human security” and explains why it is particularly relevant and useful in understanding and assessing 21st century African security challenges. It questions traditional, state-centric notions of security and shows how the traditional top-down approach to African security is inadequate in addressing modern-day security challenges.

Indigenous land rights in early colonial New Zealand, it is sometimes assumed, were afforded rather greater recognition than those in other countries colonized by the British. After all, in New Zealand Maori had the benefit of a bilingual treaty with the Crown, the Treaty of Waitangi, which (in both Maori and English texts) afforded them strong guarantees. One of the best-known judgments on indigenous land rights, R. v. Symonds, also dates from the colonial period. Only seven years after the signing of the Treaty, it was held in the Supreme Court of New Zealand that the Treaty had not in fact been necessary to protect Maori land rights. Paul McHugh argued convincingly some years ago that the doctrine of Aboriginal title had thus been successfully transferred to New Zealand: the common law presumed the continuity of indigenous property rights upon the Crown's assumption of territorial sovereignty.

This chapter examines the production and promotion of sacred space in the Middle English church foundation legend, The Book of the Foundation of St Bartholomew’s Church. The first half of the chapter explores the renewed relevance of the original twelfth-century Latin text, translated into Middle English during the restoration of St Bartholomew the Great, and shows how the text’s catalogue of miracles reinvigorates the sanctity of the church at an important moment in its history. The second half of the chapter examines the text’s representation of the foundation of the church and the characteristics of sanctity established by the miracles and by the text itself. Finally, the chapter shows how the text places St Bartholomew’s at the centre of a competitive map of Christendom in which the church is more than a match for its sacred neighbours, both in London and further afield.

This section presents an annotated critical edition of Empeños y desempeños , one of the ‘artículos de costumbres’, a type of satirical sketch that was popular in nineteenth-century Europe, by the Romantic journalist Mariano José de Larra (1809–37).

Land and its acquisition was at the heart of Australia's colonial history: land was the defining feature of settler colonialism. The Australian colonies had inherited the common-law doctrine of coverture, which could only restrict the free trade in land. There was always a tension within colonial liberalism between the social conservatism of the colonial vision of settlement and the capitalist imperative to commodify land, to promote a free and often speculative market. The free selection acts were quickly followed by conveyancing reforms, pioneered by the public servant R.R. Torrens in South Australia, which made land transactions cheaper and simpler for struggling smallholders and speculative subdividers alike. Yet the market in land for settlers was hampered by the limitations the law imposed on married women's economic agency, and on a married woman's capacity to buy and sell property.

This chapter reveals that Charlotte Bronte was deeply preoccupied with the movement of people and capital across global space, as well as with visions of restrictive local place. It moves on to focus upon Bronte's topical fascination with labour migration for single, middle-class women in the light of the friendship and correspondence with Mary Taylor, the model for Shirley's Rose Yorke, which informed Shirley's production and conception. Shirley returns to themes of female mobility, migration and work in subtler and more peripheral ways. Following Elizabeth Gaskell's defence of her friend's posthumous reputation in The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Bronte has frequently been associated with ideas of static and feminised local place, the dutiful daughter at home who, after death, haunted Haworth. The chapter seeks to restore critical attention to elements of mobility and global awareness within Bronte's writing.

By the time Operation Torch commenced, the Vichyite regimes across French North Africa had long since suppressed nationalist parties in all three Maghreb territories. In the two North African protectorates, Vichy's extension of the etat de siege martial law provisions enacted in 1939 allowed Resident Ministers Nogues and Esteva to employ military law to curb nationalist activity. Unable to influence events in Axis-occupied Tunisia, after Darlan's murder, the Free French reserved their most violent criticism for General Nogues. Whereas the Americans were the first to arrive in French North Africa, the British maintained an efficient economic infrastructure across West Africa. French vengeance upon the Muslim population of eastern Constantine was immediate and massive. Aside from its intrinsic importance as a dreadful landmark in the history of French Algeria, the Setif uprising perhaps exposed four issues of lasting historical significance.

This critical introduction lays out the intricacies of the historical context and provides an overview of Larra’s life and works, as well as a revised discussion of the concept of costumbrismo. It also pays attention to the ways in which Larra’s own life and works became an important icon for later generations of progressive Spaniards who embarked on further projects of critique and reform of traditional Spanish habits and institutions, and who saw in Larra an original critical voice preceding that of the modern intellectual.

This chapter examines the ways in which the legal ambiguities surfaced in the encounter between Indians and institutions in the United Kingdom. It demonstrates the willingness of British institutions to accept Indians as 'British subjects', and highlights the confusion that officials felt regarding this status, especially as it applied to Indians in the United Kingdom. The chapter also demonstrates the importance of class in determining Britishness at the legal level. The institutional approach to the status of Indians encouraged British officials to use the concept of imperial subjecthood in order to promote unity within the Empire. British subjecthood entitled Indian men who met the property qualifications to vote in elections and hold public office in the United Kingdom. Certificates of identity presented the ideal opportunity for Indians to continue in a centuries-old practice, the assertion of higher social status in potentially hostile political environments.

This chapter explores the historical development of the fear that informed the franchise arrangements of the 1910 Constitution. The question of an indigenous franchise had long been an issue central to politics in South Africa. The chapter traces a growing awareness of the vulnerability of white hegemony in a colony in which Whites were overwhelmingly outnumbered through a case study of Natal, the most British of the four South African colonies. It demonstrates the correlation between that fear and the restrictive franchise legislation for indigenous and other non-white inhabitants. The peculiarly settler-colonial context of the crucial relationship between the possession of property, particularly the acquisition of individual (and therefore alienable) tenure, and franchise rights remains central to the analysis. During the frontier phase of settler colonization settlers were anxious to secure life and property in the face of indigenous resistance to colonial expansion.