The Introduction discusses why and how the Imperial Arsenal was central to the Ottoman reform efforts, highlighting its distinctive characteristics for analyzing the relationality of reform policies with modern capitalism. I offer a conceptual discussion of Ottoman Reform, understanding it as integral to the making of modernity in the global context of state formation and industrialization, and discussions on capitalism and modernity in dialogue with Ottoman and global historiographies of the long nineteenth century. It shows how class, migration, and coercion can be used as conceptual tools to bring new questions and insights into Ottoman modernization processes. It evaluates studies on modernity and Ottoman modernization, social and labor history, migration, (im)mobilities, and the history of the Ottoman navy and shipbuilding. The Introduction concludes with a methodological discussion on adopting the perspective of production relations and on the possibilities and challenges of studying the microhistory of a state worksite and elucidates how the book approached official documents and policies while investigating the working-class agency in the history of Ottoman Reform.

Chapter 4 first tackles the early reception of the concept of Weltliteratur in German criticism. I argue that these discussions, informed by the emergent economic and cultural nationalism of the 1830s-40s, offered a protectionist critique of free trade cosmopolitanism. Based on the conviction that untrammelled exchange assisted the exploitation of less developed trading partners, protectionists such as Friedrich List agitated for the temporary restriction of imports in support of domestic productive forces. Echoing these doctrines, world literature was associated with an overgrown translation industry that advanced the expansion of already hegemonic foreign literatures, wiping out demand for home-grown products in budding national markets. This combination of commercial self-protection and cultural self-defence was taken up in wider regions of East-Central Europe, especially in Hungary. The second part of the chapter discusses the shifting positions of world literature in Hungarian criticism between the 1840s and 1860s, as represented by the work of János Erdélyi and Hugó von Meltzl and their alternate strategies of self-assertion and self-expansion from a minor-marginal position.

This chapter examines how Boccaccio, like Petrarch, initially hampered by his father in pursuing a literary career, wove the issue of filial freedom into several of his vernacular works (Filocolo, Ameto, De amorosa visione, Decameron) and in his Latin encyclopedia, the Genealogy of the Pagan Gods. He deployed this theme to assert his “vocatio” (calling) by God to a literary life; launched it as a biographical trope in his Life and Character of Petrarch, influencing later biographies of Petrarch; and tied it to the fate of women, defending their right of marital choice and decrying forced monachization.

This chapter explores the writings of working-class female activists during and after the 1984–85 miners’ strike, highlighting the numerous books and pamphlets produced that combined autobiography, group histories, photographs, and poetry. These works were primarily published by radical publishers, reflecting a boom in community publishing in the 1970s and 1980s, which sparked interest in working-class history and the experiences of ‘ordinary’ people. The chapter investigates the writing and publication processes of these texts, as well as their intended audiences. It situates these works within a longer tradition of working-class autobiography and poetry, with roots dating back to the nineteenth century, often serving political purposes - such as the poetry inspired by the Chartist movement or the autobiographical accounts of the Women’s Co-operative Guild, like Maternity (1915) and Life As We Have Known It (1931).The chapter analyses the moral economy created by women’s strike literature, focusing on how personal narratives were used for political impact, even when the authors downplayed their political identities. It argues that through authentic expressions of personal experience and emotion, women sought to establish themselves as legitimate political actors, thus validating their political aspirations within the leftist discourse of the time.

This section present some final reflections from three artists and groups of artists who offer some thoughts on art and anti-racism and on their experiences with the CARLA project. There are contributions from Arissana Pataxó, an Indigenous Brazilian artist; Miriam Álvarez, Lorena Cañuqueo and Alejandra Egido, Mapuche and Afro-Cuban actors and directors behind the Argentine theatre companies Grupo de Teatro ‘El Katango’ and Teatro en Sepia; and Wilson Borja, an Afro-Colombian graphic artist.

Africa and Europe have had an economic partnership for decades, first around the notion of friendship, then, since the 2000s, around the idea of solidarity. Despite this moral rhetoric, Europe is sanctuarizing itself, cultivating an anti-migratory fantasy and working for a resolute control of African migration. This policy is formalized with the “readmission clause,” whereby certain African immigrants are being posed as unassimilable, undesirable and disposable because they are useless for the neoliberal productive order. Therefore, any flight from exploitation on the continent must be blocked. As this perspective has led to extensive violations and aroused criticism and opposition, this chapter proposes, no longer a hybrid ideology but care. By means of a reading of the history of ideas, we insist on the impasse of the perspective that rejects migration in the name of autochthony. We propose a utopia: to work for the access of all peoples to the general cycle of industrial civilizations; this will bring equality between peoples who will negotiate migrations, taking into account concrete forms of solidarity.

The ideal of equality has, for a long time, been the backbone of theories of justice, and while there is much current progress in the sufficientarian corner, we still need further systematic work on how to unfold coherent sufficientarian theory. This book has provided a new theory of sufficientarian justice. Over seven chapters, I have defended the thesis that the central obligation of distributive justice is to minimize deficiency from an absolute threshold, and that the appropriate interpretation of this absolute threshold is in fact a set of thresholds each substantiated within its own separate sphere of justice-relevant value. Once we understand the implications of this new theory of sufficientarian justice in detail, we should have little trouble in rejecting the value of distributive equality, or so I have argued.

This chapter interrogates the ‘solidarity turn’ (i.e. the increased prevalence of 'solidarity' in international legal discourse or practice) and the extent to which it truly marks a break from the ideas and practices that have characterized the neoliberal age which have shaped the international legal order and arguably led to an aggravation of the very crises solidarity is now called upon to tackle. It does so by using one of the oldest legal expressions of solidarity in international law, namely the law of collective security (CS), exploring its connections to neoliberal ideas. My argument is: (a) that neoliberals made the institutionalization of the market order the only means of securing peace; (b) that they envisaged CS as a system of international policing designed to spread and secure the international market; (c) that this neoliberal vision of CS played a role in shaping the duty of solidarity in the international law of CS; and (d) that existing critiques do not provide us with sufficient tools to challenge neoliberal (market) solidarity. The conclusion sounds a note of warning to the enthusiasm that has surrounded the adoption of solidarity in international law and calls for a renewed engagement with its ideological and material underpinnings.

This chapter analyses the literary, textual, and propaganda work of the two main British fascist organisations in the interwar period: the British Fascisti (1923–1935), founded by Rotha Lintorn-Orman, and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF, 1932–1940). The evolving styles, structures, and aesthetics in fascist publications reflect shifts in policy and strategy, often influenced by opposing political movements. Fascist literature was a strategic tool in a war of words and ideas, and as such was crucial for promoting fascist ideology. The chapter highlights the dissemination of fascist materials, including newspapers sold at events, manifestos for recruitment, and pamphlets on diverse topics. Songs, short stories, and poems aimed to mobilise and instruct, while public speeches were central to fascist rallies and demonstrations. The BUF trained its members, the Blackshirts, in public speaking, making speeches integral to their propaganda efforts; these speeches were later published, recorded, or filmed. This ‘gestural politics’ is exemplified by the BUF’s newspaper Action!, a title that symbolised the movement’s focus on public performance and outreach. Through these varied forms, the chapter shows how fascist propaganda intertwined literary efforts with political activism to influence British society.

One of the core arguments we have made in this monograph is that for regional trade agreements to effectively realise their prosperity agendas, greater attention must be paid to the institutions that can ensure the implementation of the newly created regional project. In this regard, this chapter explores such institutions and their necessity in regional trade agreements in the Global South. In the absence of a centralised authority to enforce international agreements, it is common for states to either rely on peer pressure to encourage enforcement of the agreements or delegate the authority to interpret and rule on compliance to a third-party adjudicating body. While the former might generally have a low success rate in terms of ensuring compliance, the latter might only be successful in ensuring a high rate of compliance if the third-party adjudicating body is sufficiently robust. Therefore, this chapter explores the promise that dispute settlement mechanisms hold for the effective implementation of various trade agreements in the Global South.