Previous scholarship on the end of indenture in the British Empire has asserted that a revived and reinvigorated humanitarian movement coincided with a series of public scandals over indenture and the increasingly vehement objections of the Indian and Chinese governments. Chapter 7 demonstrates how the model of the overseer-state prompts a very different perspective on the “second abolition.” This chapter argues that the expansion of the indenture system created the blueprint for its own undoing. It did so in three primary ways. First, it tied labor relations, labor immigration, and the moral and physical well-being of the indentured workforce indelibly to state agents and institutions of governance. Second, it entangled the operation of this labor governance in disparate regions of the empire, ensuring that issues arising in one region reverberated politically and economically throughout the system. And third, its own processes of recordkeeping, adjudication, inquiry, and oversight provided a channel along which the suffering and discontent of those under its yoke could be communicated to both the public and the highest levels of government.

The Cambridge History of the Papacy is organized to provide readers with a critical–historical survey of the structural development of the papacy as an institution and as an actor in Church history, and in world history. It is hard to imagine a sphere of human activity over the past two millennia that has not been influenced by, and influenced in turn by, papal action – be it in the domains of religious belief and practice; social, cultural, and political thought; art, science, medicine, ethics, diplomacy, and international relations. Four questions – each addressed throughout the three volumes of the present work – have framed that vision across vast chronological and geographical expanses: the pope’s centrality within the Catholic Church, the primacy of papal power as an instrument of governance, the papacy’s cultural influence in society and culture, and the implications of secularity for its place in the lives of believers and non-believers alike. Each question – and the search for answers – converges around the fundamental question of papal authority: its original claims; the ebbs and flows of its effective reach; and the numerous ways in which claims, and expressions of papal authority and supremacy, have been contested within the Catholic tradition, and from without.

The Cambridge History of the Papacy is organized to provide readers with a critical–historical survey of the structural development of the papacy as an institution and as an actor in Church history, and in world history. It is hard to imagine a sphere of human activity over the past two millennia that has not been influenced by, and influenced in turn by, papal action – be it in the domains of religious belief and practice; social, cultural, and political thought; art, science, medicine, ethics, diplomacy, and international relations. Four questions – each addressed throughout the three volumes of the present work – have framed that vision across vast chronological and geographical expanses: the pope’s centrality within the Catholic Church, the primacy of papal power as an instrument of governance, the papacy’s cultural influence in society and culture, and the implications of secularity for its place in the lives of believers and non-believers alike. Each question – and the search for answers – converges around the fundamental question of papal authority: its original claims; the ebbs and flows of its effective reach; and the numerous ways in which claims, and expressions of papal authority and supremacy, have been contested within the Catholic tradition, and from without.

The Cambridge History of the Papacy is organized to provide readers with a critical–historical survey of the structural development of the papacy as an institution and as an actor in Church history, and in world history. It is hard to imagine a sphere of human activity over the past two millennia that has not been influenced by, and influenced in turn by, papal action – be it in the domains of religious belief and practice; social, cultural, and political thought; art, science, medicine, ethics, diplomacy, and international relations. Four questions – each addressed throughout the three volumes of the present work – have framed that vision across vast chronological and geographical expanses: the pope’s centrality within the Catholic Church, the primacy of papal power as an instrument of governance, the papacy’s cultural influence in society and culture, and the implications of secularity for its place in the lives of believers and non-believers alike. Each question – and the search for answers – converges around the fundamental question of papal authority: its original claims; the ebbs and flows of its effective reach; and the numerous ways in which claims, and expressions of papal authority and supremacy, have been contested within the Catholic tradition, and from without.

This chapter lingers on the very notion of territory itself as a spatial imaginary, a literary trope, and a political crucible for competing ideas of sovereignty. In particular, it examines how territory, or perhaps more precisely, territoriality, did not simply work at the behest of US empire but also served as an essential spatial register for working alongside and even against US territorial annexation, occupation, and colonization. Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States asserted an understanding of sovereignty that foregrounded dominance over a territory and its inhabitants. At the broadest scale, territory denoted the sovereign’s property (the United States), and sovereignty denoted control over territory. Settler-colonial notions of sovereignty and territory conflicted with Indigenous understandings of sovereignty that often foreground responsibility to human and other-than-human relatives within a shared space or territory rather than possession of property. This chapter’s three sections, “Terra Nullius,” “Indian Territory,” and “Black Territories,” each take up a concept of territoriality that profoundly influenced US colonial expansion at the expense of other narratives of placemaking. Each section details how narratives of territoriality forcefully shaped US politics and culture while also describing competing notions of placemaking that disrupt these dominant narratives.

Putting things on public display is an ancient habit, which took off in the cities of the early modern world, not least Edo (today’s Tokyo), its largest. It was clear to Japanese observers of international exhibitions in the 1860s, however, that there was a categorical difference between them and the shows of Edo. This chapter uses their experience to specify the difference and to explain why they were able and eager to import the practice of exhibition to Japan. On the one hand, international exhibitions showed Japan to be at odds with the emerging world of industry and empire, not least given its sclerotic political constitution. On the other, by disaggregating its exhibits, they also revealed the archipelago to possess resources (e.g., silk) and abilities (especially craft), with value on the international market. The world of industry and empire, revealed at the exhibition, was a challenging, even threatening, one, but its more perceptive Japanese observers could see reasons for hope.

As the nineteenth turned into the twentieth century, Japan remained an enthusiastic participant at exhibitions overseas (Chicago 1893, Paris 1900, St Louis 1904, London 1910), showing off both its indigenous endowments (art and architecture, imperial history) and modern achievements (burgeoning industry, victorious military, and emergent empire). It was not able to prevent others supplying the more familiar Japan demanded by white audiences, who were interested in exoticism but dismissive of seeming mimicry. At home, too, the government was beginning to endorse, and cities to exploit, the use of exhibitions as much for municipal development as industrial promotion. This chapter examines in detail how Kyoto in 1895, Osaka in 1903, and Tokyo in 1907 used ‘industrial’ exhibitions to present themselves as tourist destination, industrial powerhouse, and metropolitan primate, respectively. To do it, exhibitions increasingly supplemented didactic exhibits with popular attractions, opening up a space where the press could use exhibitions as much for social commentary as economic report.

This chapter introduces the principal Roman authors and texts studied in this book and examines the relationship between the artes and the society and politics of the early Roman Empire. The development of the artes can be understood in terms of the “Romanization” of specialized knowledge, whereby the scientific and technical contents of the artes were suffused with the peculiar interests and prerogatives of Roman Empire. The chapter surveys several ways in which this process of Romanization was instantiated in the artes: by the refiguring of specialized knowledge in the artes as Imperial self-knowledge; by an expansive conception of Roman imperium as fueling the growth of scientific knowledge; by the mastering and elaboration of Greek specialized knowledge; by the fashioning of an ideal, elite Roman readership for the artes; and by technocratic approaches to the artes relating disciplinary knowledge to Roman Imperial government.