In this chapter we trace the progress of Rodó's ideas from his first published work to the point just before Ariel propelled him to international recognition in the Spanish-speaking world. The thesis being pursued is that Rodó's task at this stage was to identify the values that he expected from art, and that while he acknowledged these values in some predecessors, he found them generally lacking in his contemporaries. As he conveyed this judgement, he was implicitly laying down the foundations for Ariel and later work. We will consider Rodó's development in four roughly chronological sections: first, some preliminary incursions, both private and public, in the areas of criticism and Americanist ideology that became his future career; second, a selection of his work in the Revista Nacional de Literatura y Ciencias Sociales; third, his positioning vis-à-vis modernism in the first two volumes of La vida nueva (The new life); finally, his teaching at the University of Uruguay.

Rodó used the half-decade leading up to Ariel to absorb and evaluate current aesthetic ideas and to consolidate an Americanist project the seeds of which were already present in his childhood musings. By “americanismo” Rodó meant Latin Americanism, as the United States was to become a distinct and increasingly oppositional entity for him and other Latin American intellectuals after the Spanish–American War of 1898, when Spain lost its last colonies (Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines) to the northern giant.

We can get an inkling of the role Rodó was beginning to conceive for himself from a document written roughly at the mid-point between his childhood and his going public, namely the draft of a letter, dated 24 April 1889, to the editor of a newspaper or journal in Santiago de Chile. In it a seventeen-year-old Rodó appears to be responding to an invitation to send regular material: “Puede V. contarme en el número de sus colaboradores, […] aun cuando no puedo comprometerme a mandarle originales en determinados plazos, trataré de hacerlo con la mayor asiduidad.” (You can count me as one of your collaborators, […] even though I cannot commit myself to a fixed timetable, I will try to send you original material as assiduously as possible.)

Since independence, the government office of Sudan has been dominated by people who are affiliated to the northern part of the country. Those elites served as the right hand of the condominium rulers and then took over when the colonials left the country. They then established themselves as the ruling elites. In order to maintain power and serve their own vested interests, their political approach to ruling the country has become characterised by a system of governance and domestic politics based on racial discrimination: the assimilation of some and dissimilation of others.

This attitude has influenced polarisation among tribes and ethnic groups and created dire situations, especially in peripheral regions where tribes and ethnic groups have been transformed into vehicles for cementing the elites’ power and cultural hegemony. Conflicts have therefore erupted between tribes and ethnic groups, and the government has used this as an opportunity to further polarise people by interpreting these conflicts in ethnic and racial terms. This biased intervention by the government seems to have fuelled the zealous spirit of al-Hakkamat and heightened their ethnic consciousness, which has surpassed all considerations.

THE NATIONAL RULING ELITES

Following independence in 1956, national governments became dominated by the political elites who belonged to northern riverine Sudan and tended to share similar interests and attitudes towards other people in the country. The origination of these elites dates back to the colonial era when they cooperated, as individuals and as families, with the rulers and were able to reap the advantage of the privileged educational and training provisions that the colonial authority offered. Access to these opportunities, however, was not offered equally to all people and sections of society, but to certain people, regions, tribes and ethnic groups, in order to create a loyal clientele class, as well as an efficient clerical elite who could manage the administration office upon the colonials’ withdrawal. Subsequently, they dominated employment and acquired firm control of the economic resources. When they took over from the colonials, they continued with very much the same politics and policies as the colonials.

Thereafter, those elites came together through what could be described as the ‘reciprocal assimilation’ of elites, and firmly entrenched their position as a privileged class in the independent Sudan.

When the civil wars broke out in Britain, the realities of early modern war came as a shock to most of the population. It is true that the British military establishments were not entirely moribund, as historians once thought. Many Scottish, Irish, English, and Welsh soldiers served in continental armies throughout the early seventeenth century, and in the late 1630s and early 1640s returned to the Stuart kingdoms to lend their experience to the armies on all sides. Nevertheless, the majority of people living in the British Isles and Ireland had not seen warfare at first hand before it tore those islands apart.

Seafarers are an exception. The early modern sea was a dangerous place, and not just because of the natural perils that were proverbial. Seafaring was also a distinctly violent undertaking. Contemporary English ballads celebrated seamen's bravery not just because they faced storm and shipwreck, but because they could expect (and often experienced) attack by hostile ships, or indeed participated in such attacks themselves. Conflict was an ordinary and regular feature of maritime commerce, and often the two occurred concurrently: as N. A. M. Rodger has written, ‘Robbery under arms was a normal aspect of seaborne trade’ during medieval times, and in the early modern period too ‘there were few non-combatants at sea’. The maritime side of the British civil wars, therefore, has to be understood within this broader context of European seaborne warfare – warfare which, throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, underwent substantial and far-reaching changes. This chapter will introduce that context, looking first at the question of privateering and piracy, then the technological changes which occurred during this period and the contemporary debates over maritime sovereignty, before examining the growth in state navies which resulted from these interrelated factors.

Privateers and pirates

The most important point to begin with is that maritime warfare was not only, or even primarily, carried out by state-owned navies during the early modern period. Indeed, Louis Sicking has argued that in any analysis of sea-power before 1650 a study of ‘naval force’ by itself is insufficient; drawing upon the Dutch term scheepsmacht, Sicking proposes instead the idea of ‘maritime potential’, representing the combination of naval and commercial shipping upon which a state could call.

Engaging al-Hakkamat Baggara women of Darfur in Sudan's civil wars has been instrumental, yet it needs to be seen in the context of armed conflict between tribes and ethnic groups in Darfur and the wider context of power and struggle in rural Africa more generally. This contesting against the central government has not been stimulated primarily by reasons of differences in culture, identity or religion, although along the way these have become rallying points. There is a lot of evidence to indicate that these conflicts have been induced by the struggle of people to secure livelihoods and political power within a context overwhelmed by conflicting and tense power relations. This context has been instigated by the state's administrative approach in managing tribal and ethnic groups in rural areas, where most of the population are in pastoralist and agropastoralist communities. Since the annexation of the Darfur sultanate into the condominium rule of Sudan in 1917, the state's rulers have consistently demonstrated an inability to manage fairly the affairs of these communities, which had been well organised and effectively managed in the past.

COLONIALISM AND POSTCOLONIALISM

As we have seen, to understand al-Hakkamat role it is of paramount importance to comprehend the history and administrative system of the Darfur sultanate (1445–1916) and how it succeeded in maintaining a relatively stable environment and coexistence among diverse tribes and ethnic groups. During the sultanate, tribes were administered through specifically allocated specific homelands, the Dars, where most of the tribes were allocated Dars and tribal chiefs entrusted with considerable autonomy and leverage to administer their own people and the land on behalf of the sultan. Yet these Dars were well connected to the central power of the sultanate and under its close supervision. In the aftermath of the sultanate conquest, first by the Anglo-Turkish (1874–81) and then by the condominium (1917–56) administrations, the sultan was killed and the sultanate hierarchy of satellite authorities (Sharati, Nuzzar, Omad, etc.) were weakened. The Dars and tribal authorities were left disconnected and detached administrative units deprived of a close patron who could earn or enforce their allegiance to the principles of the state and who would also come to their rescue if help was needed.

The parliamentary constitution of 1657 is well known for its offer of kingship; it is usually taken to mark the best opportunity of the 1650s to secure a lasting settlement by returning to the ‘known’ ways of the ancient constitution. While the issue of why Cromwell refused the Crown is a staple of historiographical debate, a number of recent studies have focused on why he was offered the Crown in the first place. The bifurcation of Cromwell's supporters into ‘military’ and ‘civilian’ groups and the emergence of a ‘kingship’ party during the second Protectorate Parliament are attributed to a growing weariness with the arbitrary nature of the regime. The Humble Petition and Advice offered the chance to escape the army's malign influence and reach a settlement acceptable to the nation at large.

This focus on factional manoeuvring has meant that the man at the centre of the debate is often overlooked. The caricature of a Machiavellian Cromwell scheming for the Crown is largely absent from recent studies thanks to a growing appreciation of the providential dimension of political thinking in the 1650s. Yet, there are few detailed examinations of what Cromwell actually wanted from settlement. This chapter contends that to understand Cromwell's aspirations one must look beyond the kingship issue and concentrate instead upon the scheme to restore bicameral parliaments.

As the first part of this chapter demonstrates, the proposed second chamber offered remedies to problems that had plagued Cromwell since the late 1640s. Indeed, there is reason to believe that Cromwell not only supported the return of bicameral parliaments but was also instrumental in bringing the scheme to fruition. The second half of this chapter offers a new perspective on the evolution of the parliamentary constitution of 1657 and those groups that supported and opposed it. It appears that those who backed the offer of kingship were less united over the proposal to revive a second chamber; few, if any, sought a straightforward restoration of the defunct House of Lords. Equally, those who opposed the proffered kingship were not against the idea of a nominated second chamber.

DRAMATIC EVENTS OVER the years after Liverpool's stroke eclipsed his public reputation. The political crisis ending with the 1832 Reform Act marked a watershed that set the terms on which he would be remembered. Conflicts over issues that had made Liverpool essential for holding a revived Tory party together ironically pushed him into the background even before he died. The split gave Whigs an opening they had lacked since 1783 as personal differences and policy disputes upset the parliamentary base of Liverpool's administration. Repealing the Test and Corporation Acts and then passing Catholic Emancipation also began a constitutional revolution that swept away the balanced constitution Liverpool had upheld through his long career. Instead, “parliamentary government” transferred powers over executive government formerly held by the Crown to ministers as members of a cabinet answerable to parliament, primarily the Commons. The shift made Liverpool seem a figure of a bygone age with scant relevance to politics from the 1830s. What had been pressing controversies – Walter Bagehot took Catholic Emancipation as an obvious case from 1856 – were no longer even political questions. Doubts about them seemed absurd to younger generations. Harriet Martineau revealingly described parliament in 1816 as closer to its predecessor a hundred years before than to her own readers in the 1840s. Liverpool became a relic of that much earlier world.

The way Liverpool quickly faded from view raises questions about both his legacy and the larger narrative that framed nineteenth-century British history. Brougham noted in retrospect that blame never fell directly upon Liverpool: “while others were the objects of alternate excretion and scorn, he was generally respected, never assailed.” A prime minister spared criticism marked a “singular spectacle” that Brougham attributed to Liverpool's mediocrity. Praise, like blame, fell to those seen as responsible while Liverpool merely oversaw their actions. “Respectable mediocrity,” Brougham dismissively observed, “offends nobody.” Spencer Walpole, who wrote a popular history of the decades after Waterloo, deemed Liverpool “respectable in everything,” but “eminent in nothing.”

JENKINSON's EARLY POLITICAL education continued through his studies at Christ Church. As that period closed, he began an apprenticeship in public life that continued through the 1790s. Travel took him to Continental Europe as the French Revolution unfolded. Seeing its violent upheaval at first hand had a lasting impact. Entering parliament gave Jenkinson the chance to apply his training in rhetoric and take a place among his father's political colleagues. Debate tested his mettle among established men by engaging questions that shaped his intellectual development. Jenkinson's first years in public life went beyond the standard cursus honorum among the English elite. Responsibilities as a promising junior MP on Pitt's side prepared him for higher office while lending a confidence apparent in his growing self-assertion. Jenkinson also gained experience beyond politics at Westminster as he returned to Europe and then commanded volunteer soldiers on policing duties in Scotland. Lessons from those experiences guided his later career.

A four-month visit to Paris from July through October 1789 marked the next step in Jenkinson's education. Confident of its cultural superiority and the tone it set, old regime France was the “middle kingdom” of Europe. Fluent command of French brought access to ruling circles across the Continent and opened a cosmopolitan world of ideas and the arts. Hawkesbury had encouraged his son to use his French to read history and criticism at Charterhouse. The grand tour gave young men something to do that encouraged cultivation between ending their formal education and settling into adult responsibilities. A rite of passage meant to shape an individual resolutely British but knowledgeable in classical antiquity, modern taste, and other European nations, it cultivated a disposition to see the world through the prism of classical ideas acquired by study that reinforced earlier stages of elite education. Despite the common preoccupation with sex, gambling, and drink – which Jenkinson avoided on both his ventures abroad – travel facilitated the acquisition of social graces and an education beyond what reading alone could provide.

Internationally, by the turn of the millennium, a paradigm shift was taking place within the small enterprise support sector that crystallised into what became known as the market development approach to business development services (BDS) – later absorbed into a wider approach characterised as ‘making markets work for the poor’. The paradigm was certainly a game-changer – which we could not ignore, because, despite some internal contestation, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) had become a leading proponent of the approach. As MDA was at the time receiving significant support from DFID for strategic services and for the Lesotho programme, we found ourselves directly in the line of fire in relation to these seismic shifts in donor strategy.

This chapter will explain this paradigm shift, in the terms that we were confronted with at the time. While the approach had deep flaws, the irony is that it opened our eyes to dynamics we had not analysed before and to insights we would not have had without the challenge function it performed. It certainly shifted the terrain of debate in the sector and there is no way now to close Pandora’s box: the small enterprise development sector will certainly never be the same. In some respects it is better for it: although not necessarily in the ways anticipated. Yet it remains hard to measure at what price.

In essence, until this time, donors were willing to support NGOs involved in small enterprise development to offer a range of services that supported the development of small enterprises. The most common focus of donor support was on training, but support also went, for example, to product development and to upgrading small enterprise competencies to enable their participation in value chains, in a context in which value-chain analysis was also on the rise. While donor support to such services was common, donors also strongly encouraged NGOs to develop strategies for cost recovery from the delivery of such services, to contribute to their organisational sustainability in anticipation that one day donor funding would come to an end. In this context, sustainability was mainly defined as the ability to become financially self-sufficient in some way.