The introduction outlines the arguments of the book and places it in context of existing studies of the plebiscite and Sarah Wambaugh. The latter has only recently become a subject of inquiry, with only a handful of articles examining her career. Examining Wambaugh illuminates overlooked aspects of contemporary history and the new field of women’s international thought. The plebiscite, meanwhile, is normally studied from political science or legal perspectives. Although historical studies of individual plebiscites exist, the technique as a whole has not been studied historically. The history of the plebiscite complements studies of self-determination, with both having been constrained and ‘domesticated’ over time.

This chapter examines the applicability of the term “cosmopolitanism” to Indian Ocean contexts through the question of language, asking: How does one represent a multilingual past using the medium of historical fiction? It examines the use of multilingualism and translation in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (2008) and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise (1994), novels that draw on multilingual nineteenth-century sources to tell stories of cross-cultural encounters in the Indian Ocean. These novels use various textual strategies, such as direct inscription of multiple languages or indirect description of linguistic difference, to portray a multilingual Indian Ocean encounters. Closely examining these textual moments alongside the novels’ sources reveals the limits of liberal cosmopolitanisms constructed both within and through the texts. They articulate a politics of language that shapes cosmopolitan intercourse in the Indian Ocean, and in doing so, self-reflexively critique the Anglophone text as a medium of cosmopolitan exchange today.

This chapter demonstrates the importance of comparative analysis of the choice, placing and treatment of illustrations in the text. Here I list the eight surviving sets of the Lancelot-Grail made in the same cultural contexts. I analyse a pair of copies of the Estoire del saint Graal attributable to Metz in the late thirteenth/early fourteenth century, comparing them with MS Royal 14 E.III, the most fully illustrated surviving copy. Both Metz manuscripts show special interest in the end of the story and the tomb of King Lancelot, ancestor of Lancelot du Lac, and one of them shows particular interest in depictions of the Grail.  Perhaps it was commissioned by a member of the clergy or by a devout lay person. In this period we have few names of patrons or makers and conclusions must be based on what is in each manuscript and the pictorial choices made there.

Chapter 1 introduces realism and reference and provides an account of why these issues have been ignored in Jewish philosophy and theology. The second half of the chapter demonstrates that antitheoretical accounts have been dominant in the study of rabbinic theology and that a realist approach has significant historical and constructive advantages.

Chapter 9 examines the issue of whether and how foreign civil judgements against overseas-listed Chinese companies will be recognized and enforced in China. As overseas-listed Chinese companies usually have their main assets located in China, it is important that Chinese courts recognize and enforce foreign securities judgments. However, there are many difficulties in this area, which undermines the efficacy of the regulation of cross-border securities transactions. In quest of solutions, this chapter assesses the possibility of suing Chinese companies in the offshore financial centers where they are incorporated, finding that there would be similar issues with judgment enforcement in China. It also examines the viability of using arbitration as an alternative, arguing that arbitration may only supplement, rather than substitute, court litigation for resolving securities disputes.

A survey of the evidence for textile production and trade shows extensive market activities, supported by state enforcement of agreements. The most intrusive form of state intervention was the imposition of a monthly quota to be delivered by weavers, accounting for up to half of their production volume. This may have represented the transformation of an existing quota arrangement attested in New Kingdom Egypt. However, the cash-based Ptolemaic system, in which weavers were compensated and could substitute cash payments for their deliveries, had a different dynamic. The stable demand offered by the quotas offset some of the risk of production for the market by the weavers. This arrangement made the state into an oversized market player, but the textiles it collected were not sold through retail concessions but put to practical use or exported. In addition, weavers and other occupations were subject to taxation in cash, the state levied customs and sales taxes, and it derived revenues from flax cultivation and sheep husbandry, likewise without exercising exclusive control and using private contractors. Attempts at local monopolies were rather undertaken by professional associations.

Chapter 8 focuses on Machiavelli’s mature theory of the state in the Discorsi. It begins by drawing attention to the extent to which his theory continues to be mounted as an attack upon the prevalent pattern of neo-classical political discourse in the humanist writings of his predecessors, which had defined and explicated the civitas, the populus, and the res publica as forms of civil association. Their political arguments had been predicated upon a belief in natural human sociability. As in Il Principe, so in the Discorsi, Machiavelli’s theory of the state involves him in rejecting these philosophical presuppositions entirely and in supplying a new philosophical picture of the state as a body. After identifying some new challenges which now face Machiavelli in his account of ‘the free state’, this chapter shows how Machiavelli uses Book 1, chapter 2, to furnish two novel pieces of his theory. The first consists in a conjectural history of the state; the second articulates a genealogy of virtue. That Machiavelli’s explanation of the generation of a moral vocabulary among humans is ensconced within his account of the formation of the state is of lasting significance for our understanding of the architecture of his philosophy.

This chapter asks the first of three questions about aid projects: what happens when politics is made central to its work. Charitable humanitarianism usually promotes itself as operating outside of politics. In Southern Africa, the Clutton-Brocks practised a form of inter-racial cooperation with the politics very much left in. The Cold Comfort Farm experiment near Harare was an affront to white minority rule. Clutton-Brock was deported, and his chief collaborator, Didymus Mutasa, was imprisoned. It failed as a practical aid project. Yet the grassroots initiative inspired others to establish similar ventures elsewhere: at Nyafaru on the border with Mozambique; in Malawi; and, most significantly, in Ruvuma in Tanzania. The memoirs and biographies of many Zimbabwean political leaders mention Clutton-Brock and Cold Comfort Farm for not only alleviating poverty through cooperative self-help but also for placing the spotlight on the underlying causes of poverty: the racist legislation of the Rhodesian government, particularly in regard to land tenure and ownership.

The chapter explores the question of who is aid for through the development initiatives associated with the anti-apartheid, activist, Patrick van Rensburg: at Swaneng Hill School and the Serowe Brigades in Botswana. The charismatic van Rensburg pioneered a system of ‘Education with Production’ that made him a hero of the international aid community. His projects offered a vision of rural development that stood in defiance of the capitalism of South Africa and the global North. For the incredible numbers of volunteers supported by the humanitarian charities, van Rensburg’s initiatives were the formative moments of their lives. Van Rensburg was an inspirational presence, and the Brigades became the project through which western staff embarked on their own consciousness-raising about the problems facing the developing world. But for all the success of the Brigades in inspiring volunteers and donors, increasingly van Rensburg found himself at odds with the Botswana Government and he drifted gradually to a close alignment with the socialist, opposition political party. This clash of agendas – and frequently, of personalities – meant that the ultimate beneficiaries of aid were sometime forgotten amidst the competing agendas of donors, funders, volunteers and governments.

Chapter 7 builds on the work of Jewish theological realists by showing that new theories of reference can resolve numerous longstanding problems in Jewish theology and can refashion Jewish theology as a communicative and social practice with wide participation.

The first reliable accounts concerning King Arthur reached the Iberian peninsula in the twelfth century, but they did not become popular until the fourteenth century. From then on, the success of the texts was reflected in translations, retellings and imitations. The political particularities of the peninsula changed over time as the cultural references shifted from Al-Andalus to Castile: while in the early stages a classical tradition survived along with some Oriental influences from the Arabs, in the thirteenth century there was an increase in the French influence, which lasted into the fourteenth century and then gave way to the influence coming from Italy thanks to the expansion of the kingdom of Aragon in the Mediterranean. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Rodríguez de Montalvo’s Amadís de Gaula (1508) revived the model.

This chapter provides an overview of the proliferation of Arthurian texts produced in North America, from an 1807 pamphlet to the poetry, drama, children’s literature and prose fiction of the turn of the century. It situates the legend’s development in Canada and the United States in relation to the Arthurian revival in England, specifically Tennyson’s poetry. In doing so, it identifies some of the common stories adapted (the Grail quest, the love triangles) and the different approaches of Canadian and American authors, whether claiming continuity with, or separation from, the English tradition. The chapter ends with analysis of the American Arthurian novel with the most lasting influence: Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889).