bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Consolidating the Islamic Republic
Authors: Kamrava Mehran
Published: May 2023

Once the Islamic Republic accomplished the initial process of political institutionalization, it set out to consolidate itself. This consolidation was accomplished through a reign of terror and the elimination of enemies. At the same time that fear and terror reigned supreme in Iran, the emergent state was busy ensuring that only the "right" vision of the revolution prevailed and that alternative ideologies, those blueprints for action and outlines of the future, did not pollute the revolution's proper path. Efforts were made, therefore, to ensure that Khomenism, and all its jurisprudential and institutional accoutrements, were unchallenged. Once ideological orthodoxy was finally secured, the constitution was tweaked to accommodate the revolution's post-charismatic era, that inevitable period when Khomeini would no longer be around. The compound effects of these developments—terror and violence, the sidelining of ideological rivals, and revising the constitution—was the consolidation of the system.
Authoritarian Retrenchment
Authors: Kamrava Mehran
Published: May 2023

The presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, from 2005 to 2013, was a period of authoritarian retrenchment in Iran. Iran was subject to a populist president that became increasingly reliant on the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC). Ahamadinejad's contested re-election led to the emergence of the Green Movement. Khamenei initially supported the president, but the two had a falling out when Ahmadinejad proved too much of a maverick.
The Transition Period
Authors: Koch Lisa Langdon
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines nuclear decisions in Sweden, South Korea, and India. Opening with the start of the negotiations that would culminate in the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and ending with India’s peaceful nuclear explosion, the transition period (1965–1974) spans the years in which an international nuclear nonproliferation regime began. The increased difficulty of procuring unsafeguarded nuclear materials, equipment, and technology delayed progress and raised the costs of nuclear weapons pursuit, which affected decision-making. However, the nonproliferation regime was only in its initial stages during this period. In each of the three cases, significant program development and decision-making took place during the transition period. Each state faced serious security threats but did not wholly turn to nuclear weapons to counter those threats. Domestic experts that were able to exert influence on leaders attempted to portray the security environment in ways that would promote their nuclear program preferences but were not always successful.
Holding the Jalopy Together
Authors: Powers John
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines low-budget optical printers, rephotography devices that allowed experimental filmmakers to repeat, combine, or otherwise transform their images. It argues that experimental optical printing germinated from the material contours of the JK optical printer and other bricolaged tabletop devices that circulated within DIY tech culture. These printers nurtured practices and ideas that encompassed not only the specific operations of the device, but also a diversity of conceptual orientations to the image. This was a technology at once alchemical, bricolaged, physical, and hermetic. With the optical printer, filmmakers such as Pat O’Neill, Craig Baldwin, Michelle Citron, Phil Solomon, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Peter Rose, and Barbara Hammer constructed spatial and temporal paradoxes from fragments of images, excavated and interred personal and cultural histories, and explored the phenomenology of artist, image, and viewer.
Jihadi Politics
Authors: Hamming Tore
Published: May 2023

In February 2014, al-Qaida issued a statement that shocked the entire Jihadi movement. For the first time in its history, the group declared that a local affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq, was no longer part of al-Qaida. The renegade Iraqi group, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had expanded its operations to Syria, taking over the regional branch Jabhat al-Nusra; but in the process, the group had defied orders from al-Qaida's amir, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Islamic State's actions, and increasingly aggressive posture towards fellow Jihadis, eventually ignited a Jihadi civil war--a period defined by internal tensions that ultimately turned global. With devastating impact, this fitna left the Jihadi movement more polarized and fragmented than ever, seriously threatening its internal cohesion. Jihadi Politics is the first book to present an exhaustive account of conflict and infighting within the global Sunni Jihadi movement. Based on years of digital anthropology, hundreds of primary documents, and interviews with Jihadis, it offers an unprecedented glimpse into historic and current conflicts between and within Jihadi groups. This thorough examination of the years 2014–2019 opens the black box of Jihadism's internal affairs and offers a more nuanced understanding of the current state of Jihadism, with important insights into its future evolution.
Growing Apart
Authors: Remington Thomas F.
Published: May 2023

Economic inequality in the United States has grown significantly since the late 1970s. Globalization and technological change are not the full explanation, because inequality in the United States has risen much more than in any other high-income democracy. Many measures are used to estimate the amount of economic inequality in a society, including the Gini index and calculations of the shares of income or wealth owned by particular segments of the population. Recent methods based on tax and other administrative records at the household level show an extreme concentration of growth at the highest end of the distribution. Inequality matters in its own right. It worsens public health, reinforces political polarization, and lowers economic mobility. Economic inequality is also reinforcing inequality across places, creating poverty traps in some areas and widening the gap in living standards and opportunities across them.
Financialization, Rents, and Inequality
Authors: Remington Thomas F.
Published: May 2023

The US financial sector has acquired immense market and political power. Its rents raise the incomes of executives and shareholders while depressing productive investment and wages in other sectors. The financial industry is to the American economy roughly what the natural resource sector is to Russia: a massive source of rents and inequality that blocks opportunities for broadly distributed economic growth. Although financial markets are essential to a market economy, beyond a given threshold their development can hamper productive activity and deepen economic inequality. The United States has passed that point as a result of a series of policy decisions deregulating finance and rewarding unproductive financial activity. The rents the industry has extracted from manipulating the policy environment have enabled its shareholders and executives to appropriate a growing share of national income for themselves.
Some Salient Approaches to Omissive and Commissive Moore-Paradoxical Assertion
Authors: Williams John N.
Published: May 2023

Chapter 4 surveys, in roughly historical order, the salient approaches to omissive and commissive Moore-paradoxical assertion that have been proposed since Wittgenstein, including proposals from Hintikka, Shoemaker, and Sorensen, among others. A complete account of Moore-paradoxical assertion should be able to deal with a number of puzzle cases that have emerged in the recent literature; these are summarized here.
The Evolutionary Ecology of Plant Disease
Authors: Gilbert Gregory , Parker Ingrid
Published: May 2023

Understanding the symbiosis between plants and pathogenic microbes is at the core of effective disease management for crops and managed forests. At the same time, plant–pathogen interactions comprise a wonderfully diverse set of ecological relationships that are powerful and yet so commonplace that they often go unnoticed. Ecologists and evolutionary biologists are increasingly exploring the terrain of plant disease ecology, investigating topics such as how pathogens shape diversity in plant communities, how features of plant–microbe interactions including host range and mutualism/antagonism evolve, and how biological invasions, climate change, and other agents of global change can drive disease emergence. Traditional training in ecology and evolutionary biology seldom provides structured exposure to plant pathology or microbiology, and training in plant pathology rarely offers depth in the theoretical frameworks of evolutionary ecology or includes examples from complex wild ecosystems. This novel text seeks to unite the research communities of plant ecology and plant pathology by bridging this gap using the framework of an advanced course on plant–microbe interactions and plant disease. It provides succinct and unified introductions to the organisms involved in plant disease interactions, introduces the key biological aspects of plant–pathogen interactions framed by ecological and evolutionary theory and illustrated by examples from both agriculture and wild ecosystems, and supplements conceptual content with short primers on field and lab techniques and analytical approaches used in contemporary studies in plant pathology and evolutionary ecology.
Poetic Manuscripts
Authors: Boffey Julia , Edwards A. S. G.
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines the various forms in which the manuscripts of fifteenth-century poetic texts were produced. It describes the rapidly expanding commercial markets for such texts initially as they circulated in London and subsequently regionally. It also examines other forms of poetic production in religious houses and households as well as those that appear in collections made for personal use. The emergence of the single-poem and single-author manuscript form is explored, as well as the continuing development of earlier forms such as the anthology and more miscellaneous compilation. The chapter concludes with discussion of the relationship between manuscript production and the newly emerging print culture.
Science and Information
Authors: Edwards A. S. G.
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines the range of forms of writings in verse designed to serve utilitarian or ‘practical’ needs. The variety of these forms demonstrates the diverse purposes for which such kinds of writings were employed. These purposes include the composition of charms, as well of poems on travel writing, on alchemy, on aspects of science and medicine, on gardening and arboriculture, in addition to larger verse compilations of more encyclopaedic kinds. This chapter also explores the extent to which the composition of verse compositions on these topics stands in contrast to the usually far more widely circulating fifteenth-century prose treatments of them.
Chronicle and History
Authors: Galloway Andrew
Published: May 2023

This chapter provides contexts to appreciate the poetic features as well as the historical and political perspectives of poetry. It also treats particular authors and specific political circumstances. The chapter considers poetry justifying the new Lancastrian regime, the distinctive verse chronicles from early fifteenth-century Scotland, as well the indirectly topical English ‘Digby lyrics’ and beginnings of a mythic view of Henry V, before considering the historical and political poetry of Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate, and the partisan poetry of the Wars of the Roses, when new, more nationally unifying uses for long historical poetry also emerged. The century’s final historical poetry by Blind Hary in Scotland, and John Skelton in early Tudor England, marks the final separation of verse from more overtly ‘factual’ English historical prose narrative.
Fictions of Britain
Authors: Byrne Aisling
Published: May 2023

A large proportion of fifteenth-century verse romances have come down to us with little information about their authors or readers, and they also tend survive in a small number of manuscripts. Since very few of these verse texts made it into print at an early point, their impact on the broader literary tradition was also rather limited. However, these poems offer distinctive and, sometimes, quite sophisticated approaches to Britain’s past. They are often closely engaged with the national, regional, and dynastic politics of fifteenth-century Britain. Some make links between the legendary past and the contemporary world and enlist figures like Arthur, Gawain, Lancelot, and Guy of Warwick in the service of a range of political interests. Verse romances also present idealistic solutions to conflict based on shared values of piety or courtesy.
Fictions of Christendom and Other Late Romances
Authors: Hardman Phillipa
Published: May 2023

The turn to prose romance together with the emergence of print production in the later fifteenth century coincided with a remarkable late flourishing of verse romance, particularly in two fields: heroic narratives of the defence of Christendom, and complex narratives of chivalric self-discovery and dynastic fulfilment. The fifteenth century saw a proliferation of texts dealing with the legendary history of Charlemagne and his encounters with Saracens in Europe. These fifteenth-century texts, revisiting inherited material, share the appeal of some long-established narrative memes, but also speak to a new interest in details of courtly life and manners. The same interplay of narrative tradition and cultural innovation can be seen in Sir Degrevant, an original insular narrative with traditional roots.
Occasional Poetry, Popular Poetry, and the Robin Hood Tradition
Authors: Phillips Helen
Published: May 2023

Occasional poetry includes compositions, often accompanying music and visual pageantry, for coronation feasts, royal entries, and other court and civic celebrations. Like poems on historical events, and dedicatory prefaces and envoys, their contexts often called forth deferential and politically astute content and rhetoric. Epitaphs, for the great and increasingly for the middle classes, and verse prophecies on political events, became more prominent literary forms than in earlier centuries. Recorded popular verses may sometimes capture everyday oral entertainment in streets, workplaces, home, and tavern, whether lullabies, Plough-Monday songs, love-songs, political rhymes, or drinking songs, but also poets’ reworking, imitation, or ventriloquism of such poetry. Modern studies of urban and parish institutions, gentry households, guilds, and the organization of their entertainments, dispel simplistic older notions of unsophisticated ‘folk’ poetry. Fifteenth-century popular poetry was poetry everybody knew.
Thomas Hoccleve
Authors: Langdell Sebastian
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines the poetry of Thomas Hoccleve. His poetic output ranges from advice-to-princes, to ars moriendi, Chaucerian ‘love’ poetry, proto-autobiography, and political verses. It is marked by an interest in formal experimentation. His longest work, the Regiment of Princes, is an advice-to-princes text for the future Henry V. His late work, the Series, witnesses his explorations in a proto-autobiographical mode, as well as his longest work of vernacular spirituality (‘Learn to Die’). This chapter explores the range of his corpus, and indicates how the writer fashions his Hoccleve persona, at times, into a devotional image for use by the spiritually inclined reader. It also explores Hoccleve’s relationship to heresy and orthodox reform during this period, including his poems on heretics like Sir John Oldcastle and John Badby.
William Dunbar
Authors: King Pamela M.
Published: May 2023

This chapter considers Dunbar’s role as court poet to James IV of Scotland, and one of the elite group of fifteenth and sixteenth-century Scottish ‘makars’, but one who overtly linked himself with Chaucer and Lydgate. Most of his poetry, which is set as much in the royal court and the Edinburgh streets as in dream worlds, was composed for the court milieu. Many of the poems are performative in essence, creating voices and circumstances that vividly draw on lived experience; some refer to real people, and some may be linked to actual performances. The chapter examines Dunbar’s courtly, religious and burlesque verse, exploring how his stylistic innovations encompass a full range of registers, and his lexical innovations deploy both the Scots of the Edinburgh streets and highly stylised experiments with aureation. The chapter also considers Dunbar’s position as a poet whose forms and preoccupations demonstrate the difficulties in drawing a hard line between the medieval and Renaissance literary and cultural worlds.
Transitions: After the Fifteenth Century
Authors: Griffiths Jane
Published: May 2023

This chapter considers the works of poets Gavin Douglas, Alexander Barclay, Stephen Hawes, and Robert Copland, placing them in the context of the political, cultural, religious, and technological changes of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It suggests that their works witness a variety of experiments with poetic form and voice in response to these changes. It argues that each engages with overlapping questions about how to formulate the position of the poet at court, the position of the poet in the text, and the potential of print to reshape the way the poet envisages both his work as writer and the physical manifestations of that work. It further demonstrates that their shared vernacular poetic heritage is central to their thinking about these questions.
King David, Innocent Blood, and Bloodguilt
Authors: Shepherd David J.
Published: May 2023

Of all the characters bequeathed to us by the Hebrew Bible, none is more compelling or complex than David. Divinely blessed, musically gifted, brave and eloquent, David’s famous slaying of Goliath also confirms that he is a redoubtable man of war. Yet, when his son Absalom rebels, David is dogged by the accusation than he will lose his kingdom because he is not merely a man of war, but a man of ‘bloods’— guilty of shedding innocent blood. In this book, this language of ‘innocent blood’ and ‘bloodguilt’ is traced for the first time throughout David’s story in the books of Samuel and 1 Kings. The theme emerges initially in Saul’s pursuit of David and resurfaces regularly during the rise of David and the fall of men like Nabal, Ishbosheth, Abner, and Saul. Innocent blood and bloodguilt also turn out to be central to David’s reign. This is seen in a surprising way in David’s killing of Uriah but also in the subsequent deaths of his sons, Amnon and Absalom, his general, Amasa, and even in David’s encounters with Shimei. The problem rears its head again when the innocent blood of the Gibeonites shed by Saul comes back to haunt David’s kingdom. Finally, the problem reappears when Solomon succeeds David and orchestrates the executions of Joab and Shimei, and the exile of Abiathar. Attending carefully to the text and drawing extensively on previous biblical scholarship, this book suggests that innocent blood is not only a pre-eminent concern of David, and his story in Samuel and 1 Kings, but also of those responsible for its final shape.
‘Innocent Blood’: 1 Sam 16–22
Authors: Shepherd David J.
Published: May 2023

In this chapter, it is argued that Saul’s offer of his daughters to David suggests that if he can tempt David to fall in battle against his Philistine enemies, the problem of ‘bloods’ will be avoided for Saul. Jonathan’s own anxieties that Saul will succeed in killing David (1 Sam 19) confirm that Saul will not be protected from guilt by commissioning his own son or his servants to do what the Philistines fail to do. In warning his father, Jonathan suggests that blood (in this case, David’s) is deemed ‘innocent’ if it is shed without sufficient cause. While Saul appears to be persuaded of this, the immediate resumption of his efforts to eliminate David suggest otherwise and lead to the episode in which Ahimelech and the priests and people of Nob are slaughtered at Saul’s command. The Israelite servants’ refusal to do so themselves suggests that Saul has shed the Nobites’ blood without sufficient cause, whether because as priests they are somehow sacrosanct or because any wrong they have done has not been sufficient to warrant their deaths. That David, rather than Saul, admits indirect responsibility for these deaths offers further evidence of Saul’s increasing disinterest in the problem of innocent blood, and the first evidence of David’s anxiety regarding this problem.
‘Blood without Cause’: 1 Sam 23–26
Authors: Shepherd David J.
Published: May 2023

In this chapter, it is argued that in 1 Sam 24–26, David and the reader are brought to a fuller understanding of both the acuteness of the temptation to shed illegitimate blood and the threat which yielding to it will pose to David and his house. In 1 Sam 24, David and his men encounter Saul and his men in a cave near Adullam. While David is reminded of a prophecy that Saul has been delivered into his hand, he insists he will not raise his hand against ‘the LORD’s anointed’. When confronted with David’s restraint, Saul recognizes that this righteousness will ensure David receives his kingdom, but Saul also requests and receives assurances that his family will be spared when this happens. In 1 Sam 25, David is sorely tempted to annihilate Nabal’s house for a violation of the cultural norm of hospitality. Instead, when Nabal’s wife Abigail persuades David that to do so would lead to ‘bloods’ and dim his future prospects, David relents, crediting Nabal’s eventual death to the LORD’s retribution and taking Abigail as his wife. In chapter 26, David is offered a further temptation to kill Saul when a divine sleep descends on the king and David’s nephew Abishai offers to kill him. Taking Saul’s spear and his water jug instead of his life, David withdraws, reminding Saul of his restraint and Abner of his responsibility to protect Saul, though the reader also learns of David’s anxiety that shedding blood illegitimately will require his own blood to be shed.
‘Your Blood be on Your Head’: 1 Sam 27–2 Sam 1
Authors: Shepherd David J.
Published: May 2023

In this chapter, David’s behaviour whilst living amongst the Philistines is considered (1 Sam 27), along with the two accounts of the death of Saul (1 Sam 31 and 2 Sam 1). While some have considered David’s slaying of the men and women of various tribes (including Girgashites and Amalekites) whilst raiding in the Negev (1 Sam 27) as either pious (herem) or bloodthirsty, it is argued here that it is reported as exceptional and purely pragmatic. In the first account of the death of Saul (1 Sam 31), his armour-bearer’s reluctance to kill him is seen to reflect the sanctity of the king, while Saul’s taking of his own life reflects his ongoing disregard for illegitimate bloodshed. Finally, the peculiarly penetrative violence suffered by Saul invites comparison with the killing of Abimelech for shedding innocent blood, while the exposure of the Saulide remains is noted for future reference (2 Sam 21). In the second account of Saul’s death, David’s interrogation of the Amalekite who claims to have killed him suggests that, because he is a sojourner in Israel, David holds him responsible for raising his hand against the LORD’s anointed. As a result, David orders the Amalekite’s execution and invokes the illegitimately shed blood of Saul on the Amalekite’s own head.
‘His Blood at Your Hand’: 2 Sam 2–4
Authors: Shepherd David J.
Published: May 2023

In this chapter, the focus is on the killing of Saul’s general, Abner, and Saul’s son, Ishbosheth and David’s responses to these killings. It is argued that in the battle recounted in 2 Sam 2, Abner seeks to minimize loss of life, including that of Asahel, brother of Joab, who refuses to give up his pursuit of Abner and ends up killed by him. Abner’s fear that Joab will not forgive him for this is confirmed when Joab refuses to accept David’s peace-making with Abner and kills him in cold blood. David avows his own and his kingdom’s innocence of Abner’s blood for all time. He then, in the same breath, invokes Abner’s ‘bloods’ on not only Joab but his father’s house, including perpetual bloodshed. David then goes still further by explicitly invoking the LORD to repay the wicked, which must include the sons of Zeruiah. This seems to hint that such vows alone may not be sufficient to neutralize the threat of ‘bloods’ to David’s house, given his unwillingness to execute his nephew(s). Indeed, David’s worry that even execution may be inadequate to do so is suggested by his abandoning of the Beerothite brothers, Rechab and Baanah, to the birds and beasts, after executing them for assassinating Saul’s son, Ishbosheth. This episode illustrates David’s increasing agency in avenging illegitimate bloodshed. However, it also casts into high relief his failure to take similar action against his own kinsmen, the sons of Zeruiah, and the danger that this failure may pose to his own house.
‘The Sword Will Never Depart’: 2 Sam 5–12
Authors: Shepherd David J.
Published: May 2023

In this chapter, David’s killing of Uriah and the divine response to it are explored. When David makes Uriah’s wife pregnant and cannot persuade him to sleep with her, he orders Joab to contrive Uriah’s death in battle with the Ammonites. Instead of David being angry at the collateral deaths of his servants required by Joab’s adjustment of the plan to kill Uriah, David callously and disingenuously dismisses these as the inevitable cost of warfare. When confronted by Nathan with a parable, David hears it as an indictment of Saul’s taking away of Michal from him. However, the oracle which follows makes clear that while David has successfully avoided ‘bloods’ per se by using the ‘sword’ of warfare with the Ammonites rather than his own sword to kill Uriah, his active contrivance of Uriah’s death has invited divine judgement. The LORD strikes down David’s son, promises to raise up evil from David’s own house, and also inflicts upon David’s house the curse of ‘the sword forever’ (2 Sam 12:10). To underline the message that innocent blood matters, even when ‘bloods’ have been avoided, the LORD promises David consequences strikingly similar to those David himself invoked upon Joab for killing Abner (2 Sam 3). Crucially, however, the LORD’s additional requirement that David’s child must die in his stead, suggests that because David has merely cursed Joab rather than executed him, David’s house still remains at risk from the unremedied ‘bloods’ of Abner.
‘Man of Blood’: 2 Sam 15–20
Authors: Shepherd David J.
Published: May 2023

In this chapter, 2 Sam 15–20 is examined with particular attention being paid to Absalom’s war against David, his death at the hands of Joab, as well as David’s encounters with Shimei and Joab’s killing of Amasa. Shimei’s cursing of David as he flees Absalom’s coup (2 Sam 16) is a reminder that innocent Saulide blood has not been forgotten. While David accepts his guilt, when he rejects Abishai’s offer to kill Shimei, it likely reflects David’s mounting fear that if another Saulide is killed under the illegitimate guise of war, further Saulide ‘bloods’ will fall upon David’s house. In taking up the fate of Absalom and his war, the narrative confirms the fulfilment of the curse of the devouring sword (18:6–8). At the same time, the peculiarities of Absalom’s killing and Joab’s desire for it to be reported to David suggest that David’s failure to kill or curse Joab reflects his recognition that Joab’s killing of Absalom has redeemed Amnon’s blood. When Abishai offers again to kill Shimei on David’s return, David insists that Shimei be spared, lest his killing now add to the Saulide ‘bloods’ incurred by David’s refusal to execute Joab for killing Abner. David’s replacement of Joab with Amasa seems intended to check the threat of further ‘bloods’. However, when David fails to take action after Joab kills Amasa, it confirms how little Joab has to fear from his rival or David himself and that David’s fears of further bloodguilt are fully justified.
‘The Bloodguilt of Saul’: 2 Sam 21–24
Authors: Shepherd David J.
Published: May 2023

In this chapter, the focus is on passages which return the reader to the days of David’s rise to power at Saul’s expense. First, Saul’s bloodthirstiness proves problematic for David when ‘bloods’ incurred by Saul’s illegitimate slaying of the Gibeonites causes a famine in David’s land. It is argued that the Gibeonites’ solution of impaling the seven Saulides as a means of expiating the ‘bloods’ is predictable given the penetrative violence associated with remedying ‘bloods’ in the killings of Absalom and almost certainly Rechab and Baanah. Moreover, the association of post-mortem exposure and potential predatory ravaging with remedying of ‘bloods’ in the latter two cases, seems to explain Rizpah’s protection of the slain Saulides’ remains. David responds to Rizpah’s care for her kinsmen and subversion of his efforts to expiate the ‘bloods’ by taking advantage of the memory of Saul and Jonathan’s impalement and post-mortem exposure in 1 Sam 31. His repatriation of their bones from Jabesh Gilead as a suitable expiatory substitute for the seven Saulides, allows David to both overcome Rizpah’s obstruction and underline his own allegiance to the house of Saul. Further allusions to that earlier period (2 Sam 22:21–25 and 23:14–17) also remind the reader that the future of David’s house depends not only on eliminating Saulide ‘bloods’, but also on avoiding killing more Saulides illegitimately.
‘Bring Back His Bloody Deeds’: 1 Kgs 1–2
Authors: Shepherd David J.
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines David’s efforts to persuade Solomon to eliminate existing ‘bloods’ and avoid adding to them in 1 Kgs 1–2. David emphasizes that Joab’s killing of Abner and Amasa has ‘set bloods of war in peace[-time]’ (1 Kgs 2:5). Because of this, Joab must not be allowed to die a peaceful death in old age (1 Kgs 2:6) lest this pre-empt the remedying of the ‘bloods’ Joab has incurred through his repeated misuse of war. Accordingly, after David dies, Solomon executes Joab, assuming that this will facilitate ‘peace from the LORD’ for him and his successors. It is also argued that Solomon’s exiling of Abiathar, and David’s instructions regarding Shimei and the sons of Barzillai reflect David and his son’s anxiety to avoid incurring further ‘bloods’. David’s earlier sparing of Shimei (2 Sam 19) is now attributed to his desire to avoid killing him under the guise of war. Thus, Solomon’s ‘wisdom’ is now required to eliminate Shimei in such a way that he is ‘not considered innocent’ (2:9), whilst ensuring that Solomon and David’s house remain so, by avoiding ‘bloods’. This transpires when Shimei is executed for failing to keep a vow made to Solomon. The narrator’s concluding affirmation that ‘the kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon’ (1 Kgs 2:46) invites the reader to share David and Solomon’s view that Solomon’s actions here have solved for the moment, the problem of illegitmate bloodshed which has so exercised David and the narrative from the beginning.
Conclusion
Authors: Shepherd David J.
Published: May 2023

In this concluding chapter, the problem of innocent blood in David’s rise, reign, and succession is summarized before some final reflections are offered on the nature and pervasiveness of the theme. To these are added some tentative suggestions regarding how it relates to the wider history and who might be responsible for its presence in the David story. It is argued that ‘innocent blood’ is not to be understood categorically but is better interpreted as blood shed without sufficient cause and hence illegitimate or unauthorized bloodshed. It is suggested that various unwelcome consequences are understood to arise from this kind of behaviour, including but not limited to the incurring of guilt. Whether construed in terms of vengeance, redemption, or expiation, the remedying of unwarranted bloodshed in David’s story invariably involves the shedding of further blood. It is argued that the narrator sees the Davidic problem of ‘bloods’ as solved by Solomon’s actions in 1 Kings 2. However, his failure to endorse Solomon’s view that this will ensure ‘peace forever’ for David’s dynasty reflects both the curse of the sword forever, and a likely awareness that the problem of innocent blood recurs at the end of the history (2 Kgs 21, 24) and leads to the exile. This might suggest the hypothesis that those who attributed the violent fall of David’s dynasty to the problem of ‘innocent blood’ may have found and traced the beginning of this problem in David’s own story.
Ethical Cultivation
Authors: Fraser Chris
Published: May 2023

The chapter examines discussions of ethical cultivation, or how train or orient oneself to follow dào. It first treats texts that approach ethical development as a political project aimed at leading society to internalize the norms and practices of dào through collective training. It then considers texts that treat individual, personal cultivation. A key question is whether following dào is a matter of fulfilling one’s inherent nature or of reforming inherent inclinations. The chapter considers Xúnzǐ’s views, on which ethical development is a process of ‘endeavour’, in which we reform native tendencies and redirect our activity in approved ways. A contrasting stance holds that dào lies in allowing the natural environment to direct our activity. The chapter closes by considering a position from the Zhuāngzǐ that draws together elements of these two contrasting views.
Byzantium
Authors: Wickham Chris
Published: May 2023

The Byzantine Empire was a set of different economic regions, of which the most important were the Aegean and Marmara Seas, focussed on here. This was the core of the Byzantine state in every period, which was strong and wealthy; hence the size and economic importance of Constantinople (modern Istanbul). The Aegean never ceased to be important for production and exchange, but it became particularly active in the late eleventh century and throughout the twelfth, when towns in Greece such as Thessaloniki, Corinth, Thebes, and Chalkis became major centres for the production of cloth (linen and silk), wine, and glazed pottery. The Venetians came to be active in Aegean internal trade too, but did not dominate it. The underlying reason for the rapid late eleventh-century upturn probably lies in demographic growth, which is particularly clear in our documents for this region. Interestingly, even though sea shipping was so active inside this region, the Byzantines did not trade all that much outside the empire, except to Venice (a formerly Byzantine town), northern Syria, and a little to Egypt.
An Asymmetrical Approach to Kant’s Theory of Freedom
Authors: Vilhauer Benjamin
Published: May 2023

This chapter outlines a revisionary “justificatory asymmetry” reconstruction of Kant’s theory of freedom. Kant’s best view on the epistemology of transcendental freedom is that we can know it is possible that we have it (as the first Critique and Groundwork argue) but cannot know that we actually do (contra the second Critique). The Groundwork and the second Critique set out contradictory positions on this view’s implications. The Groundwork holds that possibility is sufficient to justify regarding and treating ourselves and others as free and morally responsible. The second Critique demands knowledge of actuality for this justification. The justificatory asymmetry reconstruction resolves this contradiction by distinguishing the contexts in which each position is true. Possibility suffices for the imputation of merit, but knowledge of actuality would be required to impute the sort of blame that could justify serious retributive harm. Since we lack such knowledge, such harm cannot be justified.
Bertha von Suttner
Authors: Nijman Janne E
Published: May 2023

This portrait of Bertha von Suttner brings us to study sources traditionally not considered relevant within the scope of international legal history. That is, female diaries and a bestselling novel, Die Waffen Nieder! (1889), with a female protagonist. Not allowed access to the formal sessions of the 1899 and 1907 Hague Peace Conferences, Von Suttner resorted to a typical female practice to influence intellectual and political debates. As salonnière in the Hague during these Conferences, she created an informal social space for frank conversations among the small cosmopolitan elite of diplomats, journalists, and international legal experts to influence negotiations and to contribute to the ‘peace through law’ project. Locating international law in her novel and salon, this portrait connects loosely with a more socio-legal and materialist approach to international legal history. It shows Suttner held a rather well-developed—and at times fairly sceptical—outlook on international law.
Anna Julia Cooper
Authors: Gevers Christopher
Published: May 2023

Anna Julia Cooper lived a remarkable life. Born into slavery in 1858, Cooper was twenty-six at the time the 1885 Berlin Conference ‘formalized’ the colonization of Africa, participated in the first Pan-African Conference in London fifteen years after that, received her doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1925 (at the age of sixty-six) and lived to see the formal ‘decolonisation’ of most of Africa; dying a few months before the United States’ Civil Rights Act was passed. While Cooper is rightly celebrated as a Black feminist icon, an educator, a literary theorist, and a pioneer of Africana philosophy, less attention has been paid to her influence on (Black) Internationalism and, by extension, her (still) pioneering critiques of international law. This short essay will focus primary on two aspects of Cooper’s intellectual ouvre as they relate to international law, namely: ‘intersectionality’ and ‘racial capitalism’.
Ester Boserup
Authors: Mackenna Miriam Bak
Published: May 2023

This chapter presents a portrait of Danish economist Ester Boserup, whose work came to trigger a fundamental shift in international economic law and development. Positing the then radical idea that women made a significant economic contribution to both their households and the macro-economy, and were thus fundamental to national development, Boserup’s pioneering book Woman’s Role in Economic Development heralded the start of a reassessment of international economic legal frameworks and activities, including helping to inspire the UN Decade for Women (1976–1985), ultimately providing the foundation for the Women in Development (WID) framework, and four world conferences on women from 1975 to 1995. This portrait is thus a picture of an outsider, both in her chosen field—economics—and in international law—whose refusal to be bound by disciplinary dogma and professional restraints, came to have a profound impact on women’s lives.
Helvi Sipilä
Authors: Lintonen Raimo
Published: May 2023

Helvi Sipilä (1915–2009) was a Finnish lawyer, an advocate of women’s rights, whose achievements have remained largely unexplored. She held important positions in the UN as chair of the Commission on the Status of Women, its Rapporteur on family planning, and as chair of the Third Committee of the General Assembly. She took part in drafting of and steering the UN Declaration against Discrimination of Women, which later formed the basis for a legal convention, and solidified family planning as women’s right, expanding the reproductive rights of women. She became in 1972 the first female Assistant Secretary-General of the UN, and was in charge of the International Women’s Year conference in Mexico City in 1975. It was the first UN conference focusing on women, a turning point in enlarging and consolidating a broader international regime for women. Criticizing the dominance of the economistic approach in the UN, Sipilä advocated an international human and social order, based on a women-centric world view.
The Timing of Felice Morgenstern
Authors: Klabbers Jan
Published: May 2023

This brief chapter discusses the life and work of Felice Morgenstern, the first female Whewell scholar at Cambridge University, and for many years an international civil servant working at the International Labour Organization. The chapter’s main theme is that Morgenstern’s academic timing was somewhat ‘off’: she was often a little ahead of her time in the sort of questions she would ask herself, and the sort of topics she would broach. Nonetheless, she left a clear mark in the field of international organizations law, having been among the first to think of ‘legality’ in connection with international organizations, and having been among the first (very likely, the first) to scrutinize the relations between international organizations inter se.
Elisabeth Mann Borgese
Authors: Seck Sara
Published: May 2023

Elisabeth Mann Borgese is often referred to today as the ‘Mother of the Oceans’. She advocated for the inclusion of the principle of common heritage of mankind (CHM) in UNCLOS, and established the International Ocean Institute to enhance interdisciplinary dialogue and training on ocean law. She believed the CHM principle to be of fundamental importance for sustainable development and the evolving global world order. This belief was informed by her ecological relational worldview, and her commitment to the inclusion of developing countries. This portrait traces Mann Borgese’s early life, feminist writings, and relationships with non-human animals, together with her contributions to oceans law and governance, including as a professor at Dalhousie University where the portrait was written.
Thomas Baty in Japan
Authors: Murase Shinya
Published: May 2023

Thomas Baty (1869–1954) received law degrees both from Oxford and Cambridge, and served as Honorary Secretary of the International Law Association (ILA) between 1905 and 1916. He served as legal advisor to the Japanese Foreign Ministry between 1916 and 1941 and from 1952 to 1954. The ILA Japan Branch was established in 1920 by his suggestion. He had defended the Japanese position in her invasion of Manchuria, the North Eastern part of China, in 1931, for which he was denied to receive his passport by the British Government after the war. He had a double identity, a prolific and controversial writer on international law and also a feminist writer and commentator under the pseudonym of Irene Clyde. Under her name, he published two books on feminism, a novel, Beatrice the Sixteenth (1909) and a collection of essays, Eve’s Sour Apple (1934). Baty, as a transgender person, often expressed hostility to the distinction of sexes and believed that if feminist characters prevailed, the world would have been led to pacifism. Thus, it is important, from the international law perspective, to note that he tried to establish an intrinsic link between feminism and pacifism.
Helene Halperin-Ginsburg
Authors: Shestakova Ksenia
Published: May 2023

Recent centenaries of equal women’s rights to practice law, equal voting rights, and the 1917 Russian Revolutions revived scholars’ interest in the early twentieth century. Helene Halperin-Ginsburg, the first woman international legal scholar in Imperial Russia, was as an exponent of her epoch: her personal struggles and encounters with unjust legal practices and social problems, including criminal justice procedures, led to her activism. Her upbringing, and her life in a multinational and multireligious community, influenced her worldviews. Inclined to humanities, Halperin-Ginsburg experienced injustices of the Jewish Pale of Settlement policies, saw the impoverishment of the village after the abolition of serfdom, and established a self-help tradition capable of dealing with some social problems. It was therefore not surprising that her personal experience coupled with Marxist literature moved her towards law; when women’s lack of opportunity to pursue the legal profession hindered her own legal career, she became a feminist. Halperin-Ginsburg genuinely believed in local communities’ potential in solving social problems and the progressive forces of equal education, media, and, of course, law. She picked up social issues and turned them into her legal projects, including the ‘woman attorney’ campaign and international relations transformation after the First World War, despite the many setbacks she faced as a woman in international law.
Political Legitimacy
Authors: Peter Fabienne
Published: May 2023

This chapter introduces the key themes of the book. First, it addresses the question of what makes political decisions legitimate. Is it respect for the political will? Or are there other sources of political legitimacy? It then explains why political legitimacy is an important normative concern, distinct from other normative concerns. The final section of this chapter discusses the differences between a normative and a meta-normative approach to the study of political legitimacy. A normative approach focuses on the relation between the legitimacy of political decisions and other normative properties that a decision might have. For example, what is the relationship between justice and legitimacy? A meta-normative approach focuses on the sources of the normativity of legitimacy—the grounds of legitimacy.
Political Factualism
Authors: Peter Fabienne
Published: May 2023

In this chapter, I discuss fact-based conceptions of political legitimacy. On a political factualist account, whether there is a permission to make binding political decisions depends on the normative facts that obtain in a given situation. Political decisions are legitimate in virtue of being the right decisions—the decision warranted by the normative facts. Political factualism holds that political decisions can be legitimate independently of what the citizens believe or otherwise judge should be done. I argue that while factualism may be a viable prospect in some spheres of practical normativity—in relation to moral rightness, for example—the potential accessibility problem that is inherent to factualism creates a serious difficulty for a conception of political legitimacy grounded on normative facts.
Political Deliberation
Authors: Peter Fabienne
Published: May 2023

The first part of the book focused on the grounds of legitimate political decision-making. It remained mostly silent on the first-order normative question of how political decisions should be made. It’s time to rectify this and show what the epistemic accountability conception of political legitimacy implies for legitimate decision-making. One key feature of legitimate political decision-making, I argue in this chapter, is that it is embedded in well-ordered political deliberation. As I’ll explain, well-ordered political deliberation is subject to some norms. But why think that political legitimacy requires political deliberation, in the first place? I show that this follows from adopting a justificationist view of political legitimacy combined with a) rejecting factualism about political legitimacy (drawing on Chapter 3), and b) taking seriously the epistemic underdetermination problem for cognitive political authority (drawing on Chapter 4).
Nationalism, Sedition, and Mysticism
Authors: Figueira Dorothy M.
Published: May 2023

This chapter continues to show how the Gītā, unmoored from the language in which it was written or its exegetical tradition, could lend itself to multiple interpretations, becoming whatever the individual reader or translator wished to make of it. Translation theories were concocted to justify such transformative readings. Vivekananda read two Gītās: one interpreted at home and the other Gītā marketed in America. The American Gītā is curiously presented as a democratizing text for the consumerist and capitalist audience that he hoped to engage in interreligious dialogue. Tilak’s massive translation and commentary criticized traditional commentators (Rāmānuja, Śaṅkara, Jñānadeva, Madhva) and sought to correct their errors in his translation. He specifically promoted activism and social welfare as the focus of the Gītā. He called upon his fellow Indians to take up the kṣatriya’s role to further the nationalist cause. A deracinated Indian, such as Aurobindo, struggled with connecting with the text beyond its re-enculturated format. His commentary rejected the karmayoga reading and promoted spiritual uplift and a return to Aryan life. None of these Indian commentators sought to reform caste.