Chapter 7 frames Kenyan attempts of archival retrieval as a matter of decolonization at the international, bilateral, and national levels. Importantly, it also draws attention to how the concealment of the “migrated archives” affected political activity not only within Kenya but also in England, as a country undergoing its own re-nationalization process at the end of empire. The process of recovering records from the UK provided the Kenyan Government a framework in which to invoke a sovereign and unified Kenyan polity as the rightful home for the “migrated archives,” while dissent over Kenyatta’s centralized authority grew within the country. Meanwhile, British engagement with the “migrated archives” throughout the 1970s and 1980s resulted in the consolidation of postcolonial archival secrecy with other European partners as evident in the voting blocs formed in the 1983 Vienna Convention on the Succession of States in Respect of State Property, Archives and Debts.

The so-called Holiness Code of Leviticus highlights the importance of ethical living if Israel is to be holy as God is holy. This chapter discusses the historical-critical arguments around the composition of the Holiness Code but focuses mainly on bridge Leviticus creates between the holiness of Israel’s tent and God’s tent. Ethical purity is as important as ritual purity in Leviticus and requires holiness in every aspect of Israel’s life.

This chapter explores the priestly theology of space within the tabernacle and how this expands to the holy land where Israel will dwell. The tabernacle and God’s abiding presence are the center of all holiness for the priestly authors. Only ordained priests may approach his holiness. The consecration of the altar is a high point in the theology of Leviticus and has an impact on its theology of the land and the Jubilee.

This chapter explores the economy of the later Roman Empire, with special emphasis on resource management, economic structures and regional variations. It highlights how land, labour and capital functioned within a largely agrarian system, with agriculture serving as the primary economic driver and tax base. The chapter examines diverse sources, including archaeological surveys, historical texts, coinage and environmental data. It analyses the effects of political instability, regional differentiation and resource distribution on economic trends. Case studies from North Gaul, Iberia, Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean reveal that economic activity was influenced by both local conditions and imperial policies. The study also incorporates ecological data, such as pollen analysis and lead pollution levels, to assess economic fluctuations. A central argument is that the later Roman economy was not a uniform system but a collection of interconnected regional economies. While political fragmentation led to economic contractions in some areas, others adapted through local specialisation and changing trade networks. This study thus challenges the view of economic collapse, instead emphasising resilience and adaptation, and calling for an interdisciplinary approach to better understand the complexities of late Roman economic life and its long-term transformations.

This chapter examines the crystallization of sociopolitical processes in Rwanda and Kivu during the 1950s, which would undergird political processes into the 1990s and later. Against the backdrop of post-Second World War developments, it is the second chapter of the book to focus on the scheme for “transplanting” Rwandan labor, with the foundation of the Mission d’Immigration des Banyarwanda (MIB) in 1948. Rather than focusing on migrants motivations, it shifts attention to the repercussions of this scheme for the local Hunde community in what was then the Belgian Congo.

After the Second World War, the colonial administration grew increasingly uneasy about the implications of the mass immigration to Kivu. Three key factors drove their concern: intensified land pressure due to colonial policies, elite conflicts exacerbated by these policies, and concerns about the legal status of Rwandan immigrants. These three key factors still define much of the contemporary conflicts in North Kivu and are intimately tied to vernacular “autochthony” discourses.

While the chapter challenges the notions of exclusively antagonistic interactions between “migrants” and “host communities”, it emphasizes that colonial interventions often came with devastating consequences, as Hunde saw themselves being turned into minorities on their own land. Belgian interventions contributed to the politicization of identity and belonging in the struggle for land access and authority. However, the precursors of current-day conflicts were not only the result of this immigration but also of a colonial system of land management that was never fundamentally challenged in the postcolonial period.

This chapter argues that an “infrastructural gaze” offers an important perspective on the persistence of colonial hierarchies in global finance. Thinking in terms of infrastructures helps us to understand the uneven geographies of colonial financial systems and how these have been reproduced over time. The chapter highlights two key infrastructural systems central to colonial financial systems: networks of bank branches and mortgageable land titles. Drawing primarily on examples from Kenya, the chapter shows how the uneven development of these infrastructures has conditioned the subsequent development of financial systems.

This chapter argues that the implications of territorial disputes for individuals are seldom considered in the Court’s legal reasoning and proposes ways to do so. It first observes that the Court traditionally resolves territorial disputes with reference to a firm hierarchy of titles, few of which allow for the consideration of individuals. It then considers how the title of effectivités could potentially allow for the consideration of individuals and acknowledges that their rights and needs have been mentioned by the Court as an afterthought in certain judgments. It analyses the reasons for the Court’s approach and argues that the principle of equity could play a stronger role in allowing for the consideration of individuals in territorial disputes.

Reparations for grand corruption: applies a human rights framework based on the UN Basic Principles on Remedy and Reparations to thinking about reparations for grand corruption on a national level. Under restitution, covers social reuse of confiscated property, and land restitution. Compensation is broken down into categories of damages arising from different corrupt acts, with a focus on loss of opportunity damages. The chapter also considers satisfaction, measures of non-repetition, diffuse harms and issues of causation.

For all uses of biomass, it is of paramount importance that we not only have information about biomass availability and its usefulness for bioprocessing for making any kind of commodity or chemicals, but that we are also aware that the use of biomass for bioprocessing often competes with a growing need for food. This chapter gives an overview of the global need for food, the potential of biomass production, and an introduction to the carbon cycle. The reader is introduced to production and collection of biomasses from land use, biomass of the future from the ocean, and biomass by separation of organic waste. Usefulness and ease of using biomass are related to composition; therefore, methods to analyze biomass composition and quality are presented.

Nikki Hessell’s “Romantic Poetry and Constructions of Indigeneity” understands the Romantic racialization of Indigenous peoples as means of denying these groups sovereignty. The trope of the Indian in representative European texts is, by this reading, complicit with the “desire to own, define, and administer everything.” By reading Romantic poetry for its recurring tropes, however, we can also locate the Romantic tradition in the work of those generally excluded from conversations about Romanticism. Thus Hessell reads Romanticism in the works of Indigenous poets Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Ojibwe) and John Rollin Ridge (Cherokee). This is not merely a matter of expanding the Romantic canon; rather, by centering those whose presence in Romantic literature has generally been restricted to object of interest, Hessell shows that those who have been used as tropes are wielders of Romantic tropes in their own right.

Chapter 4 focuses on the meaning and deployment of the novel (and controversial) category of “natives” of a pueblo, widespread throughout the Spanish Atlantic world, to bolster the plaintiffs’ claims to freedom and other rights. The chapter explores both the Spanish and Indigenous traditions that informed the category of nativeness (naturaleza) used in the court briefs and examines their implications for a community of Afro descendant and other racially mixed subjects. The chapter compares the unconventional standing of El Cobre with that of the Indian pueblos of El Caney and Jiguaní in the island’s eastern region to explore the controversial claims to Indian ancestry.

Taking seriously other ways that languages can be understood is of significance for both practical and political reasons. If language revival or other applied projects need practical theories of language, they need to be drawn from concerned communities rather than imported from elsewhere. For many Indigenous people, language is deeply connected to land, or what is commonly known as Country in Australia, which can include not only earth, dwellings and place but also water, animals, wind and other beings. Language within these ways of thinking is not connected primarily to people but to land or Country. It is because these ways of thinking about language are so different from a consideration of language as structure, as object, as separate from people and the world, that many language revival projects have struggled. As long as Indigenous languages are thought of in terms of non-Indigenous ontologies, there will always be at best misunderstanding. On these grounds, Indigenous language activists have called for local control of language reclamation projects and the need to decolonize what is meant by language.

“The Black Body in Nature” considers writers who, in their critical and imaginative work, map the contours of an African American nature writing tradition. In this environmental canon, authors persistently attend to the violence associated with the outdoors, lurking in forests, woods, and other secluded areas.These geographies, while environmentally rich, can be threatening spaces, isolated and hostile.Yet, as the story of birder Christian Cooper attests, menacing areas needn’t always be sheltered, but are manifest in city streets, urban parks, and brightly lit neighborhoods. The African American environmental tradition is nuanced and, as such, the experience of danger and disenfranchisement is counterpointed by an equally strong and persistent affiliation with the natural world that offers, for some, a measure of relief from structural forms of oppression.Situated at the nexus of race and ecocritical thought, this chapter considers the complicated positionality of the Black body in nature through the lens of exile and belonging.