This chapter examines the historical development of the Spanish Inquisition in New Spain (Mexico), investigating its processes, targets, and ambitions. It surveys the first inquisition prosecutions there, which were carried out not by inquisitors per se, but by mendicant friars as well as the episcopal court. After King Philip II authorized an inquisition tribunal for New Spain in 1569, inquisitors quickly began to operate in Mexico City. At the same time, Spanish inquisitors in New Spain had no investigative or coercive powers over New Spain’s Indigenous populations, whose religious beliefs and practices were monitored by the episcopal legal jurisdiction. New Spain’s inquisitors prosecuted far fewer serious heretics than their counterparts in Spain itself, though the tribunal was interested in Portuguese conversos, especially when it was encountering financial difficulties.

Dehlvi’s 1914 memoir raises the possibility that the women of the Meerut were not bazaar prostitutes but “women whose men had been imprisoned” – “respectable” women, wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters. Building on this clue, this chapter asks who were these women, why were they at the cantonment, and how did they regard the British? For answers, this chapter turns to “family pension” records from the 1850s. What emerges are soldiers’ family relationships and, from the British point of view, their scandalous nature. British “Pension Paymasters” came to argue that many bereaved women receiving pensions were not what they claimed to be, namely, war widows. Official distrust of such women grew dramatically in the mid-1850s, largely based on a narrowing definition in the official mind of what constituted legitimate marriage. The result was the denial of pensions to these women and, not infrequently, their criminal prosecution, especially in the region of Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, whose marriages were deemed insufficiently legitimate. Pension fraud investigations also revealed, in the western reaches around Delhi, the Punjab, and Afghanistan, secondary marriages to younger women.

Chapter 2 illustrates the ideologies and worldviews of the South Korean right. I specifically analyze the processes through which liberal democracy became a core ideological principle for the South Korean right and the ways in which the concepts of liberal democracy and freedom have been used by them. Tracing narratives and counternarratives about liberal democracy over time, I argue that the core ideas of liberal democracy championed by the South Korean right – as a defense against communism, North Korea, and the radical left – have not changed substantively. While liberal democracy, as used by the right, was merely political rhetoric intended to disguise political repression and legitimize authoritarian rule in the period before democratization, liberal democracy is currently used in a democratized context as the opposite of direct and participatory democracy and left populism. The right’s idea of liberal democracy in South Korea, with its fixation on anticommunism and the glorification of former authoritarian leaders, fundamentally distorts the meaning of democracy.

On the eve of the first impeachment of Donald Trump in late 2018, constitutional law scholars Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz published an insightful book emphasizing the critically important role of impeachment in establishing checks on abuse of power in the presidency. The authors’ vision, much like that of the Framers, was that the threat of impeachment can stop the worst abuses by a president. For reasons we explore here, it has not always worked out that way. Nonetheless, the proper role of impeachment in the US constitutional framework, including what the House and Senate should do to carry out their responsibilities in an impeachment proceeding, is important to discuss here.

This chapter addresses the profound indebtedness of the Spanish Inquisition to its medieval predecessor. Both were grounded in the procedures and priorities of ancient Roman law. The text explains the concept of “heresy” within Christianity, as well as the ways in which medieval European rulers -- popes and monarchs -- worked together in an attempt to stamp out public, persistent, and intentional religious dissent. The essay charts the structural formation of the Spanish Inquisition after 1478, and examines the processes that were eventually standardized. It addresses questions of proof and legal discretion, as well as potential defense maneuvers by suspects. It raises the frequency of torture and describes more and less typical punishments, which Spanish inquisitors called “penances” in accordance with their overarching pastoral goals. Finally, this essay addresses the pivotal question of support for the Inquisition from below, namely, from ordinary Spaniards.

This chapter introduces the interrogation document and associated letters around which the book is based and summarises the structure of the book and the content of its chapters. Emphasises the European-wide context of the Huguenot network that is revealed as well as the circumstances of the French religious wars c. 1567–1571. Engages with the relevant historiographical themes, including studies of correspondence and communication, diplomacy, intelligence-gathering and espionage, and confessional and transnational connections. Addresses the sub-themes of truth and secrecy and how these provide the backdrop for the clandestine confessional activities to be explored, particularly through the participation of Huguenot ministers. Investigates what we are able to reconstruct about the man, Jean Tivinat, who was arrested for and interrogated about his role in carrying the correspondence and the circumstances of his incarceration at the château of Dieppe.

Since the nation’s founding in the late eighteenth century, it has experienced trying times, including a civil war, two world wars, a Cold War with the Soviet Union, acts of domestic and international terrorism, a decade-long economic collapse in the 1930s precipitated by a stock market crash and a global trade war, another economic collapse after the 2008 financial crisis, a violent attempt to overturn a presidential election, civil unrest precipitated by racial tension, anti-war protests, and protests against immigration policy. All of these events, as well as countless others, have required the nation to act quickly and decisively to respond to unprecedented circumstances.

Starting with President Yoon Suk-yeol’s sudden martial law declaration on December 3, 2024, the introductory chapter presents a puzzle: Why did Yoon’s action gain substantial support from the ruling People Power Party and many citizens, and why is Korean society witnessing large-scale reactionary movements that fervently support the antidemocratic president and martial law? What are the larger structural conditions that have produced the current outcome? Emphasizing the roles of the far right in shaping post-authoritarian South Korean politics, the chapter introduces who belongs to the South Korean right wing and what their characteristics are. By locating the South Korean case in a larger global perspective, the introduction demonstrates how the particular historical and geopolitical conditions of the Korean War, national division, and authoritarianism have shaped the right-wing politics of South Korea in ways that are distinctive from their Western counterparts. Putting the interactions between historical legacies, right-wing infrastructures, and political actors on the right at the center of the analysis, the chapter builds a theoretical framework for the book. Then, I describe the methodology adopted in the book and provide an overview of each chapter.

Cloth merchant arrested and interrogated in Dieppe in May 1570 for carrying clandestine Huguenot correspondence

This chapter introduces the central contextual and theoretical framework of this book. It provides a historical overview of the PRC’s development from the Mao era to the present, highlighting the formation and intensification of the urban-rural divide during a condensed period of urban-biased modernization. It then discusses how xiangchou is used and understood in this book within this developmental context as both a ‘structure of feeling’ and a form of affective governance. Literary and cultural analysis demonstrates how xiangchou can be understood akin to the nostalgic structure of feeling, whereas a discursive analysis of the term’s use in both state and academic discourses since the mid-2000s demonstrates its salience as both an emotionally affective and politically effective term. The language of xiangchou can blur the distinction between public and private desires, local and national imperatives, highlighting nodes of intersection between statecraft and the ordinary lives of citizens in villages like Heyang.