As the Irish Free State came into being, Egypt too was declared independent. Whilst in Ireland, League membership was rapidly forthcoming, negotiations for Egypt’s accession were protracted, with Egypt acceding in 1937, the last member state to join the League. Chapter Five investigates why Egypt, which was never formally a colony of the British Empire and from 1922 deemed an independent state, was obstructed by Britain from joining the League for fifteen years. This chapter examines the contested relationship between the Egyptian nationalist Wafd party, that sought Egyptian independence, and Britain, that sought Egyptian acquiescence to a treaty of alliance. Egypt’s contested accession to the League reveals the risks that colonial membership to the League posed to British imperial policy, and how Britian could act as a gatekeeper for the accession of their colonies to the League. Finally, this chapter reveals how the actions of another imperial party, Italy, and its growing encroachment into North-East Africa would ultimately lead to a compromise that would see Egypt’s accession to the League.

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 explains the project to which the book is devoted: to develop a descriptive-explanatory theory of social change resulting from the struggle against domination and use it to develop a normative theory of social change, a theory that can identify when social change is morally progressive. The descriptive-explanatory dimension of my theory of social change wrought by the perpetual struggle between hierarchs and resisters is an account of how change occurs. It makes no judgments as to whether changes are progressive or otherwise. The normative dimension evaluates changes produced by the struggle, identifying some of them as morally progressive. This chapter has two goals: to clarify the nature of the descriptive-explanatory dimension of my theory and to defend its normative dimension against two assaults on the very idea of moral progress.

This chapter begins by explaining why understanding social change is of exceptional importance. The first reason is that humans are historical beings: To understand who and what we are now, it is necessary to know where we came from and that requires understanding the changes that have shaped the social environment that shapes us. The second reason is forward-looking: If we understand the processes and patterns of past social changes, we may be able to exert more control over future changes and perhaps even increase the probability that they will be progressive. Or at least we may be able to avoid the most regressive changes.

Some social changes are more important than others. Those I examine in this book are among the most important: changes in the concepts and norms we use to evaluate the unequal power relations that constitute hierarchies and changes in the institutions that embody and regulate hierarchies. I will explain how major changes in moral concepts, norms, and institutions are produced by the struggle between hierarchs and those who resist hierarchical power. That struggle is a contest for extremely high stakes. It is, among other things, a battle for freedom. So, there are two ways to look at this book: more generally, as a study of social change; and more specifically, as an examination of the nature of the struggle for liberation.

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 traces the development of Iranian Shi’ite revolutionary Ali Shariati in his conception of a nonviolent Islam encompassing humanist, existentialist, and socialist ethics in pursuit of an egalitarian ‘System of Abel’. This is in turn placed in tension with his valorisation of ‘alter-inflicted violence’ as a means to altruistic self-transcendence.

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 explains the tendency of revolutions to produce new forms of oppression rather than genuine liberation. It distinguished between Lockean and Hobbesian revolutionary conditions. In the former, the aspiring revolutionary leadership has institutional resources for solving the participation problem (how to get enough people to join the revolution) and the coordination problem (how to organize participation). Because they have access to relevant institutions and experience in operating within them, the aspiring revolutionary leadership can solve the participation and coordination problems in a relatively peaceful, noncoercive, consensual manner. In contrast, in Hobbesian conditions, where they lack access to institutions, the aspiring revolutionary leadership will typically have to resort to coercion to solve the participation and coordination problems. A particular kind of revolutionary ideology can help them achieve coercive solutions to those two problems. The features of this type of ideology that encourage coercive solutions to the participation and coordination problems are (1) framing the struggle against the regime as a Manichean contest between good and evil, a zero-sum, winner-take-all battle where the only options are victory or annihilation, (2) extreme deference to those the ideology identifies as the true leaders of the revolution, and (3) reliance on conspiracy theories that explain away failures of the leadership or other setbacks to the revolution. I then go on to identify the factors which, combined with reliance on this type of revolutionary ideology, make it highly likely that the new regime will be authoritarian, violent, and oppressive.

This chapter investigates the life and ideas of Syrian dissident thinker Jawdat Said, who attempts to balance an absolute moral obligation to bear witness with a systematic rejection of political compulsion through scriptural models from Abel to Bilal ibn Rabah.

Chapter 1 focuses on the revolution of 1688 in Britian, in which the ideal of liberty as independence was promised to the people as the cornerstone of a new constitution to replace James II’s allegedly despotic use of arbitrary power. After examining the Bill of Rights, in which the fundamental rights of the people are laid out, the chapter turns to consider the provenance of the underlying ideal of liberty as independence and its contrast with arbitrary power. One major source is shown to have been the discussion of civil liberty by the historians and moralists of ancient Rome, especially Cicero, Sallust, Livy and Tacitus. The influence of these sources on the development of early modern republicanism in England is traced, especially in the works of Milton and Harrington. The other major source was the discussion of the law of persons in the Digest of Roman law, in which a fundamental distinction was drawn between free persons and dependants, including slaves. The influence of this legal tradition, especially as filtered by Bracton into English common law, is traced in the strand of constitutional thinking that runs from Fortescue and Thomas Smith to Coke, Selden and their followers.

By the 1960s, quite different societies were developing in the two halves of Berlin, one under capitalist auspices and the other under communism. With West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik in the early 1970s, a series of treaties resulted in recognition of the GDR and easing of travel restrictions from west to east. Under GDR leader Erich Honecker, the modernity of ‘actually existing socialism’ was expressed in an energetic housing development programme, significant public buildings, and some leeway for cultural experimentation; yet the secret police or Stasi continued to expand, and the physical apparatus of the Wall was further refined. Divergent identities between East and West were evident not only in differing political ideologies, social profiles, and degrees of freedom, consumerism, and material well-being, but also in patterns of historical memorialisation. In the 1980s the economic and environmental decline of the GDR became ever more visible. Growing unrest culminated in challenges to communist rule and the opening of the Wall on 9 November 1989, and led to German reunification in October 1990.

‘Every year Ireland becomes more and more Americanized’, or so the famed journalist W. T. Stead believed at the turn of the twentieth century. But what did people understand by ‘Americanisation’ and who was doing the Americanising? The term was not uncommon in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, used by a range of political figures, writers and commentators, typically with reference to mass migration. At the time of Stead’s comment nearly two million Irish-born people resided in the United States. Through their communications and return journeys to Ireland, emigrants became the primary image-makers of America in Ireland, making distinctive interventions in the development of political ideas and organisational models in Ireland. This chapter examines perceptions of the impact of the United States, and Irish America, on Irish politics and how different American influences were welcomed, withstood, filtered, and were in competition with each other in the period from the end of the Great Famine to the 1920s. They made significant contributions to different types of political activity in Ireland, but they were always entangled with a range of other transnational influences.

The introductory chapter is a brief recap on the history and origins of wind power, from windmills in ancient times to today’s multi-megawatt turbines. Energy security has arguably been the historic driver for wind power, and it was a primary source of mechanical power until the advent of the Industrial revolution when it was superceded by coal and oil. The first electricity generating wind turbines were built in the late nineteenth centry, and the technology was pursued most vigorously in Denmark, a country with limited energy reserves: the role of this country in creating the modern wind turbine is described. The worldwide energy crisis of the 1970s brought wind power into the frame internationally, and the pivotal role of legislation under President Carter in expanding the market for wind energy in the US and elsewhere is outlined. Since then the rationale for wind power has expanded to include climate change and the technology has grown exponentially in terms of global installation of wind power and the physical size of wind turbines. The chapter concludes by introducing some of the technological steps that have enabled this process, and which are detailed in subsequent chapters.

This edited volume arises from an important, even revolutionary, insight: both legal institutions and law itself are products of deliberate design decisions. By critiquing law’s design, legal designers open up the possibility of alternative approaches to problem-solving for individuals and communities. One strength of legal design as it stands today is its breadth, with relevance to every interaction with law and legal institutions. Legal design crosses boundaries of all sorts, from the international to the hyper-local, constitutional to regulatory law, and litigation to drafting. It even offers opportunities to envision entirely new models for mediating between individuals and society that do not rely on existing conceptions of the rule of law. The contributors to this pathbreaking, agenda-setting volume are the dreamers and doers of the legal design movement. Welcome to the revolution!

This chapter considers the Russian Symbolist movement as an alternative to the utilitarian-populist literary edifice in addressing the socio-political problems that confronted Russia at the turn of the twentieth century. The chapter traces the growth of the Symbolist movement over its two phases, beginning with the searching attempts of the first generation of Symbolists – especially Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, Zinaida Gippius, and Fedor Sologub – to turn a secular culture in the direction of spirituality and religion; and then the ambitious “theurgical” activist partnership of the second generation of Symbolists – Aleksandr Blok, Andrei Belyi, and Viacheslav Ivanov – who rose to prominence during the politically tumultuous age of the fin de siècle (the decade surrounding the revolution of 1905), an era galvanised by a pervasive sense of disorientation, groundlessness, experimentation, and apocalyptic presentiment.

Rebecca West’s novel of ideas, The Birds Fall Down, responds to the intense debate around capital punishment that took place in the UK after the Second World War. Partly motivated by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, which West attended as a journalist, this debate led to the introduction of the Criminal Justice Bill in 1947 and the establishment of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in 1949. Alongside other public intellectuals, West acted as an honorary member of the National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, founded in 1955. In such non-fictional works as Black Lamb, Grey Falcon and A Train of Powder, West reflects on the meaning of justice and the appropriateness of punishment for murder, assassination, and crimes against humanity. In The Birds Fall Down, she extends her reflections to the political utility of assassination and the wisdom required to pass judgment on crimes and criminals.

This chapter takes the philosopher Karl Leonhard Reinhold as a starting point to look at the ways in which critical philosophers sought to cast Kantianism as the heir to Protestantism. In his highly influential Letters on the Kantian Philosophy, Reinhold argues that the “first” Reformation of the sixteenth century was only a “preparation” for the current attempts to purify morality through philosophy. Situated in the context of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s accusation that contemporary philosophy led to atheism (the so-called pantheism controversy or Spinozastreit) it traces Reinhold’s evolution from a proponent of the Catholic Enlightenment to an energetic advocate for Kantian philosophy at the University of Jena. Concluding briefly with Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the chapter shows how the new language of Protestantism discussed in the previous chapters proved fruitful for advocates of the new philosophy.

This work is a history of ideas, not a history of science. It uses the past to answer the questions of whether the Darwinian Revolution comes from ideas already prevalent in Victoria society – or is it a work of rebellion? – and whether the Darwinian Revolution was truly revolutionary – or is this a mistaken judgment made by historians and others?