The strategies of Louis XIV were shaped both by France’s position as one of the largest powers in Europe and by the Sun King’s domineering personality. After his succession to the French throne in 1661, Louis XIV gradually asserted control over his state, to launch a series of wars against his neighbours, particularly the disconnected Spanish Habsburg territories which encircled France. Commanding one of the largest standing armies in Europe, he used diplomatic and military intimidation to effect rapid conquests of smaller neighbouring states (1660s–1680s). His initial successes led to opposing coalitions which further blunted French advances. By the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1679), his hopes for short wars were dashed, and the rest of his reign would see attritional struggles on land and at sea. Each time Louis sought to expand his frontiers through force, more belligerents joined the anti-French coalition, expanding the number of contested theatres, and increasing the duration of each conflict. Louis’s early victories in the War of Devolution (1667–1668) and the Franco-Dutch War benefited from French numerical superiority, from strategic surprise, and from the capacity of great captains such as the marshals Turenne and Condé. By 1701 Louis’s strategy aimed defensively to retain Spanish territories he had seized in the name of his grandson. His wars were costly, but France provided Louis the resources to pass a larger kingdom on to his successor.

Chapter 2 is a history of the connection between wheat cultivation and the spread of slavery in areas of Dutch control, primarily focusing on Kings County (Brooklyn) and the Hudson Valley. This chapter pushes back against the “staple interpretation” of slavery, the idea that slavery flourished when and where it did primarily because of the advantages of geography and soil that allowed for cash crops such as tobacco and cotton. Historians have failed to explain why farmers who grew wheat would prefer slaves to short-term hired hands. The chapter argues that New York’s slave-owning farmers found slaves to be economically valuable in helping to solve the “peak-labor problem” – the difficulty of finding extra laborers during the busy wheat-harvest season in August. By ensuring a ready supply of enslaved laborers at hand, a wheat farmer could be more confident in planting more wheat, knowing that he would have sufficient labor to harvest it. From the first Dutch settlement in the 1620s until roughly 1820, eastern New York was a grain-producing region that focused first and foremost on raising wheat. In these years, it was also a society of slaveholders.

This chapter introduces some basic notions and theoretical background. First is a definitional description of Standard German, the language investigated in the book, followed by a review of the constituents of the prosodic hierarchy and the domains of phonological alternations and processes, as well as the recursive structure of the higher-level constituents, the ones at the interface with morphology, syntax and semantics. After that background-setting exposition, Optimality Theory (OT), the theoretical framework used in the book, is described minimally, for scholars not familiar with this approach. The chapter also contains a short description of the remainder of the book, as well as a survey of the conventions used. It ends with some remarks about what is not part of the book.

From the sixth to fourth centuries BCE, the Persian empire under the Teispid and Achaemenid dynasties ruled most of western Asia and neighbouring regions, from the Indus river to Egypt and the coasts of the Aegean Sea. Despite the sources’ disproportionate emphasis on the failures of military expeditions against the overseas Greeks, the Persians enjoyed a lengthy period of military success and overall stability due in part to their rulers’ skill in the formulation of strategy. In the initial conquests, Persia absorbed peer competitors such as Babylon and Egypt; most subsequent conflicts pitted the empire’s superior forces against localised rebellions. Persia’s control stretched to vital subject communities in frontier zones and they also projected influence over external allies and clients. Persian kings rarely campaigned in person after the early expansionist phase, but relied on an exemplary communication system to manage satraps and other delegates tasked with provincial and frontier operations. To carry out military objectives, they relied on networks of provincial recruitment, supported as necessary by elements of a standing army associated with the royal court. Persian military activities were augmented by diplomatic outreach, most notably in Persia’s Greek relations after the failed invasion of mainland Greece. Persia’s strategic capabilities remained formidable until they were caught off guard by the tactical superiority of Alexander’s Macedonian invaders.

Chapter 9 analyses the extent to which lawmakers have taken the peculiarities of e-evidence into account and highlights flaws in the resulting legal regime. It addresses the Belgian preservation of general data retention and the possibility to use unlawfully retained and/or accessed data. Next, it delves into the wide spectrum of duties for (internet) service providers to cooperate in criminal proceedings. It discusses the broad interpretation of the territorial scope of the Yahoo! and Skype case law from Belgian courts and its codification in subsequent legislation, including how voluntary cooperation with law enforcement remains important in practice. It briefly examines the legal framework for cross-border cooperation, often perceived as ineffective and needlessly time-consuming. Lastly, it sheds light on the potential impact of the EU e-Evidence Regulation, concluding that, under domestic legislation, a coherent, completely fundamental-rights-proof legal framework is still lacking. It shows Belgium’s support for a pan-EU regime and better international cooperation, provided its law enforcement can maintain the possibility of direct cooperation in a sufficiently effective way.

As the largest refugee-hosting country in the world, the case of Turkey represents a categorical example that manifests a varied set of legal and governing techniques to monitor millions of displaced people within a broad design of temporality and spatiality. At the intersection of Turkey’s contested gatekeeping role for Europe, an economic downturn, authoritarian rule, and the erosion of the rule of law, the multitude of displaced bodies becomes an instrument of population engineering characterized by remarkable flux. This chapter endeavors to dissect Turkey’s migration regime, revealing a complex legal precarity and temporal lacuna that are distinctly layered. This intricate legal and spatial/temporal architecture is routinely transcended, functioning as a self-failing mechanism aligning with the exigencies of the informal labor market and the prevailing political conjuncture. Consequently, it perpetually begets irregularity and arbitrariness. A set of governing technologies, at times paradoxical, transforms irregularized bodies into floating populations in cycles of (forced) movement.

Section 10.1 calls for work that strengthens the foundations for planning under uncertainty in three ways: communicating uncertainty, specifying planning problems, and enhancing the tractability of decision criteria. Among the many substantive problems that warrant study, Section 10.2 cites the immediate need for improved pandemic planning, whose salience society should appreciate following the recent global experience with COVID-19. Section 10.3 concludes with a personal perspective on an existential societal decision, making public a commentary that I wrote forty years ago but have not circulated until now.

Is the term “authoritarian commons” an oxymoron? No, it is not. It highlights the tension and interaction between homeowners and the authoritarian state. Total party-state control risks eroding party-state legitimacy simply through incompetence, whereas delegating service delivery to independent-minded middle-class residents can endanger party-state control. Overall homeowners appear to represent the best chance of democratizing urban governance in Chinese megacities. Homeowners’ associations have been a rare form through which Chinese citizens can get associated and have real elections recognized by law and respected by the government.