Conservatives make five claims about why taxes in America should be cut, especially for corporations and the rich. They claim that taxes are too high, hurt the economy, encourage government waste, are unfair, and threaten Americans’ freedom. Their arguments are based on a set of economic ideas called neoliberalism that are much more a matter of fiction than fact. Yet these ideas have become taken-for-granted truths – myths – among conservatives. This chapter reviews the rise of neoliberalism, how it provided conservatives the intellectual foundation for their mythical claims about the benefits of tax cuts, how these myths affected tax policy in the United States, and how politicians have used these myths to justify cutting taxes. Popular as these ideas may have been among conservatives, they are often not supported by cross-national, historical, or public opinion poll data.

This chapter considers examples of State enforcement of international law, including in cases of war crimes and genocide. It then assesses collective enforcement under mechanisms provided for in the UN Charter, giving particular consideration to UN sanctions, including Australian law and policy approaches giving effect to sanctions, and peacekeeping.

This chapter discusses the development of Jewish synagogue architecture in Late Antiquity, tracing its evolution from the early centuries to the more monumental structures of the fourth to sixth centuries. Drawing on a range of sources, it explores how synagogue architecture varied across regions, reflecting local styles, communal preferences and interactions with surrounding Christian and pagan cultures. While early synagogues primarily functioned as spaces for Torah readings, later structures became more elaborate, incorporating decorative elements such as Jewish symbols (e.g. the menorah, Torah shrine and ritual objects) and even figural representations – challenging traditional assumptions about aniconism in Judaism. The chapter also addresses debates over synagogue chronology, arguing that established typologies, such as Galilean-type and Byzantine-type synagogues, require re-evaluation in the light of recent archaeological discoveries. It emphasises that synagogue architecture was shaped not only by religious traditions but also by broader social and political factors. The presence of monumental synagogues in Late Antiquity suggests that Jewish communities remained active and resilient even under Christian rule.

The conclusion operates around four questions. First, the appropriate extent and limitations of networks and who should set the boundaries. Self-evidently, the less well-known networks created by the most marginalized, particularly lower-class women of color and Indigenous people at the outer edges of empires and religious traditions, are still the most under-researched and the least understood. Second, how to critically evaluate the relationship between Christianity and empire in the early modern and modern world. Christian expansion and the rise of the European empires are inextricably linked; they are not always in synchronicity regarding objectives or consequences. Third, how did the various revolutions in communications, from the print to the digital revolutions, shape the content of nuclei, the nature and location of nodes that became most important, and the ways networks expanded? Finally, how helpful is it to think of religious traditions capable of transnational mobility in terms of a religious nucleus with a particular DNA core? What inner cores of ideas and practices enabled these disparate religious traditions to grow and thrive thousands of miles from their origins?

This chapter introduces the main themes and scope of the volume, including discussing the origin of the concept of ‘heresy’, as well as outlining what aspects of it will and will not form the focus of the following chapters. It then provides a summary of the division of the volume into two parts and the particular topics and case studies contained in each.

This chapter examines the crystallization of sociopolitical processes in Rwanda and Kivu during the 1950s, which would undergird political processes into the 1990s and later. Against the backdrop of post-Second World War developments, it is the second chapter of the book to focus on the scheme for “transplanting” Rwandan labor, with the foundation of the Mission d’Immigration des Banyarwanda (MIB) in 1948. Rather than focusing on migrants motivations, it shifts attention to the repercussions of this scheme for the local Hunde community in what was then the Belgian Congo.

After the Second World War, the colonial administration grew increasingly uneasy about the implications of the mass immigration to Kivu. Three key factors drove their concern: intensified land pressure due to colonial policies, elite conflicts exacerbated by these policies, and concerns about the legal status of Rwandan immigrants. These three key factors still define much of the contemporary conflicts in North Kivu and are intimately tied to vernacular “autochthony” discourses.

While the chapter challenges the notions of exclusively antagonistic interactions between “migrants” and “host communities”, it emphasizes that colonial interventions often came with devastating consequences, as Hunde saw themselves being turned into minorities on their own land. Belgian interventions contributed to the politicization of identity and belonging in the struggle for land access and authority. However, the precursors of current-day conflicts were not only the result of this immigration but also of a colonial system of land management that was never fundamentally challenged in the postcolonial period.