The Kingdom of Sicily, which belonged to the Kingdom of Aragon, was a challenging environment for Spanish inquisitors. The island was by default a space through which people, goods, and ideas circulated. It also amounted to a frontier zone in the eastern Mediterranean. Inquisitors in Sicily attempted to monitor the ports while attending to the numerous populations of foreigners which resided there; they also focused on the Catholic orthodoxy and morality of the Christian residents. This chapter explores the ways in which the inquisition tribunal on the island continuously came into conflict with other courts, institutions, and powers of the kingdom. It argues that Sicily’s inquisitors were significantly affected by their local environment. While the history of the Sicilian Inquisition demonstrates its ability to adapt to particular social and institutional contexts, as well as political situations, it also reveals resistance to the confessional society that the Inquisition represented and promoted.

In the Conclusion, I return to the relationship between Sturmy’s voyage and the other ships which crossed the seas in the late fifteenth century.

Abstract: This chapter explores the semantic and conceptual complexity of the state of nature, presenting thirteen different meanings of the term, showing how it functions as a myth, inflecting perennial human themes, and as a part of a social imaginary, conditioning lived experience. The chapter argues that understanding the importance of the state of nature in Western modernity requires an appreciation of each of these three dimensions.

For most of the period from the end of the Ancien Régime to 1818, there was a form of state censorship of the stage: a bureaucratic censorship process. This chapter stretches as far back as 1402 to understand the culminative measures that shaped a play’s path on the eve of the Revolution – in both Paris and the provinces – before analysing the numerous and, at times, conflicting Revolutionary orders relating theatre surveillance. It argues that the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (August 1789) transformed such censorship from a necessary part of the creative process to a coercive force. It also demonstrates that although the Revolution is remembered for the ‘freedom of the theatres’ with the law of 13 January 1791, bureaucratic censorship was swiftly reintroduced, and the process was expanded during the Revolutionary decade and solidified further under Napoleon and the Restoration.

This chapter focuses on the moment in which, and the means by which, Cambodia’s 1993 Constitution was made. I begin with an overview of the peace-building process, from the negotiation of the Paris Peace Accords to the arrival of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia to democratic elections and the formation of a coalition government. Then, I reflect on the growing literature that studies constitution-making processes, and particularly post-conflict constitution-making processes, to lay out some of the central considerations that are at play in processes like that which took place in Cambodia. Next, I provide a detailed account of how Cambodia’s constitution-making process proceeded. Rather than offering a comprehensive account of the process, however, I take a thematic approach, focusing on the roles of international actors, domestic elites, and, finally, public participation. In addition to there being a notable degree of ‘self-dealing’ and ‘deciding not to decide’ by political elites, I conclude, the constitution-making process was characterised by the international community’s ‘locking-in’ of formal commitments to liberal democracy and a ‘locking-out’ of public participation that prevented local voices from being heard by the constitution-makers themselves.

Cuba’s current economic struggles are due to a number of factors. These include an economic structure resulting from colonialism and neocolonialism and Cuba’s geopolitical alliance with the Soviet Union, which had mixed results in terms of economic performance. In the twenty-first century, there have been attempts in Cuba at market-oriented structural reforms, without a great deal of success. Thus far, these reforms have not shown major significant macroeconomic effects. However, it cannot plausibly be denied that Cuba’s post-1959 development strategy has been severely impacted by the system of unilateral economic sanctions imposed by the US. The US’s system of unilateral coercive economic sanctions disrupts Cuba’s international economic relations by making it expensive and risky for other countries to do business with the island and causing Cuba’s investment in infrastructure to perform below expectations. Sanctions create obstacles to accessing new technologies and foreign direct investment for key sectors of the Cuban economy, such as biotechnology and tourism, both of which are important elements of Cuba’s development strategy. Consequently, the US system of unilateral coercive measures affects Cuba’s overall economic health, has inflicted considerable damage to the Cuban population, and has interfered in many ways with the realization of Cuba’s development goals, violating the island nation’s right to development.

In ancient Greece and Rome, veiling practices were ordinary (part of daily life) and extraordinary (part of special ritual occasions). Women’s veils were versatile objects that were involved in the performance of status, piety, modesty, and beauty. Some men veiled in the act of sacrifice or to hide strong emotions of sorrow and anger.

Chapter 1 provides a detailed analysis of the interrogation document and what it reveals to us about, and as far as possible what can be verified regarding, Tivinat’s activities as a merchant and courier operating between France and England. The process of interrogation and the interests of the interrogator are also explored. In particular, examines Tivinat’s relationship with the household of the cardinal of Châtillon and identifies those to whom and from whom the letters were sent and the clandestine world in which these contacts were made. Other contemporary examples of similar interceptions are discussed to establish how typical or otherwise this case is and what they collectively tell us about the frequency and precarity of such communication. Above all, the necessity of identifying Tivinat’s supplier, Changy, is emphasised and undertaken at length, establishing that he was Hugues de Regnard, a Huguenot minister with well-established and widespread transnational connections with Calvinist church and noble leaders in several countries.

This chapter introduces two abstract logic programming languages, one based on first-order Horn clauses (fohc) and another on first-order hereditary Harrop formulas (fohh). It shows how these can be understood within the framework of uniform proofs in intuitionistic logic. The chapter discusses the limitations of these languages. It also explores the concept of focused proofs as a way to structure proof search. The chapter proves the completeness of focused proofs for a fragment of intuitionistic logic. Bibliographic notes provide references to related work in logic programming theory.

In this chapter, and setting aside various foundational moral entanglements, an argument will be offered for the protection of intellectual property based on individual self-interest and prudence. While consequences play a fundamental role, the argument and analysis discussed are not utilitarian in nature. In large part, this argument parallels considerations that arise in a prisoner’s dilemma game. A sketch of the salient features of prisoner’s dilemma games is provided along with an examination of how content creation, exclusion, and access can be modeled as a prisoner’s dilemma. In brief, allowing content to be unprotected in terms of free access will lead to a sub-optimal outcome where creation and innovation are suppressed. Finally, it will be argued that adopting the institutions of copyright, patent, and trade secret is one way we can avoid the sub-optimal results of playing an intellectual property prisoner’s dilemma.

On the day of his second inauguration, on January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order challenging the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause which grants United States citizenship to anyone who is born in the United States. This right of citizenship always has been considered as an automatic vesting of citizenship upon birth in the United States.