The Ottomans had a variety of ways of dealing with non-Muslim foreigners. In theory, Islamic law assumed a constant state of war between Muslim and non-Muslim rulers, but in practice, long-term peace arrangements were possible and even common. In terms of diplomacy, the Ottomans’ instruments and peacemaking procedures were similar to those of the West, the Turks likewise building on established customs and practices from the Byzantine period and beyond. The ahdnames were particularly important for international relations; originally unilateral documents, they evolved into more reciprocal instruments, only to become more unilateral again in the second half of the seventeenth century. In theory, peace with unbelievers should be temporary, but in practice, the duration of treaties concluded by the Ottomans reflected their assessment of the likelihood of hostilities resuming; in the case of countries that did not pose any military threat to the sultan’s domains, peace could even be concluded indefinitely. As long as both sides maintained the friendship between the two parties, there was no need to fear the Turks. The interconnected phenomena of slavery and privateering regularly put a strain on this friendship, as men, women and children on both sides were dragged off and sold as chattel. This loss of life and property sometimes led to international incidents, in which the Ottoman authorities made it clear that the basic Islamic parameters of peace could not be ignored with impunity.

The question of whether or not the sea can be owned or controlled has occupied the minds of many over the centuries. The discovery of America by Columbus made the questions of ownership of the sea and how regimes to govern the sea could be created and managed gain importance on a global scale. This chapter discusses the history of the law of the sea from the perspective of ‘Renaissance Europe’, focusing on the ‘battle of the books’ dominated by the publication of Mare Liberum (1609) by Hugo de Groot (Grotius) and John Selden’s Mare clausum (1635). It shows that the concept of the free sea was perfectly compatible with the adjacent or territorial sea both in legal practice and in principle. The idea of the free sea, defended and made explicit by Grotius, was not new but originated in Roman law and its medieval interpretations. Rather than the free sea, mare clausum was the new contribution of early modern thinking on the law of the sea. The concept of mare clausum had been shaped by the division of the world’s oceans between Spain and Portugal based on the papal bull Inter Caetera (1493) and the treaties of Tordesillas (1494) and Zaragoza (1529).

We consider some general properties of black holes and event horizons, of causality and topology. We define trapped surfaces, congruence, convergence, and show an example of a marginally trapped surface different than the event horizons. We prove the existence of an horizon for de Sitter spacetime, via its Penrose diagram. We then define Rindler spacetime, as the accelerated Minkowski spacetime, that gains an event horizon and mimics what happens for a black hole.

This chapter uses examples from different countries (Israel, Czech Republic, United States, Poland, South Korea, Benin, Greece, Belgium, Luxembourg, Nigeria, Guyana, Colombia, France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Guatemala, Moldova, Denmark, Australia, Ireland, India, Hungary, Slovakia), as well as US states (Michigan, Ohio, North Dakota, Arkansas, Nevada) to demonstrate the variety of amendment procedures which range from a simple majority to approval by multiple actors, by qualified majorities, by one or more referendums, or by multiple votes (sometimes with intervening elections). In addition, sometimes these rules may be combined or considered as alternatives. These procedures are not only extremely diverse but are also very significant as demonstrated by the fact that they become the object of political conflict among the relevant actors or are even modified by some of the actors in order to achieve their political goals.

The introduction presents the aims, methodology, genre, audience, and content of the book. My focus is on Tolkien’s literary ‘theory’, as informed by his own self-exegesis, that is, by Tolkien’s “experiment” and “observation” of his own literary work and experience as a writer. This explains my methodology, which is primarily inductive and exegetical, grounded as it is on a series of close readings of passages from Tolkien’s works. At the same time, Tolkien’s ‘theory’, however idiosyncratic, cannot be detached from the literary discourses of his age, nor from the traditions in which it is anchored. Despite its scope and specialism, the book is not only addressed to Tolkien readers and scholars, but also to the educated reader of English literature, who might have strong biases about the literary merits of Tolkien’s enterprise. In the book I will thus illustrate the depth and complexity of Tolkien’s literature by focusing on its meta-literary sophistication, that is, its self-reflexive focus on the nature and purpose of literature.