The final chapters of the book discuss otherness experienced as a result of personal encounters with the outside world. The case studies from diverse geographical locations – North and South America, Spain, North Africa and China – illuminate the complex processes of defining, interacting with, and coming to an understanding of unfamiliar places and peoples, and grappling with linguistic and cultural barriers.

Encounters with foreign peoples, landscapes and cultures were most commonly brought about by travel. These meetings spurred comparisons and judgements of the other against oneself, confirming and questioning existing stereotypes and adding to the body of knowledge about the inhabitants of exotic parts of the world. Opportunities to travel beyond both the realm and the European continent became more numerous in early modern Sweden. In the 17th century Sweden expanded its international commerce and joined other European nations in the pursuit of profitable colonial trade. Individual seamen and adventurers joined foreign and later domestic trading companies, whose ships took them to Africa and Asia, bringing them face to face with the inhabitants of these continents. Narratives of these encounters – from mid-17th century account of Japan by Olof Erickson and descriptions of South Africa, the Middle East, India and South-east Asia by Nils Matsson Kiöping to numerous 18th-century reports of China written by the employees of the Swedish East India Company – bespoke vast differences and diversity of peoples and cultures and fed the imaginations of the readers back home.

In the 17th century, the politically and territorially ambitious Kingdom of Sweden started to formulate a plan for colonial expansion, following examples of other European nations. In 1624 the king authorized the foundation of the Swedish South Company. Its broadly-defined goals included trade, colonization and missionary work in Asia, Africa, America and the still hypothetical Terra Magellanica (Australia). A concrete result of this ambitious endeavour was the colony of New Sweden established along the Delaware river in north-eastern America.

Besides long-distance travel and colonial endeavours, envoys and embassies created important settings for the encounter with and observation of foreign peoples and cultures. One exotic destination for Swedish emissaries was the Ottoman court in Constantinople. Although geographically closer than Africa or the Far East, the city was no less colourful and “outlandish”, and it supplied a wealth of stories and depictions of eastern customs, Islam and civil life, as well as life at the royal court.

In April 1655 a ship that bore the name of one of the most important battles of the civil wars, the Naseby, was launched. Lorrenzo Paulucci, the Venetian Secretary to England, described the event:

He continued:

The diarist John Evelyn also viewed the newly launched Naseby, and wrote a well-known account of what he saw and thought of the ship, and what it stood for:

There is considerable irony in how much the size, ceremonial launching, and iconography of the Naseby resemble Charles I's Sovereign of the Seas: the figurehead of the later ship may even have been deliberately modelled on that of the Sovereign, which featured King Edgar trampling seven kings. It is also rather appropriate that, where Charles I harked back to a medieval predecessor, the Protector proclaimed himself. In 1639, despite a decade of governmental support and royal attention, Charles I's navy could not enforce the king's claim to sovereignty over his territorial waters, and the English fleet was a bystander as the Dutch and Spanish fought each other at the battle of the Downs.4 Yet in the space of fourteen war-torn years, between 1639 and 1653, the English navy had become the pre-eminent naval force in Europe, and a key pillar of the Commonwealth. By 1655 it was the strength and successes of the navy that kept the Dutch, French, and Spanish at bay.

The term bliaut appeared suddenly in costume history in 1874 with the publication of the third volume of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionnaire Raisonné du Mobilier Français. Not only did Viollet-le-Duc use the Old French term that we find in literary works dating from the twelfth through the early thirteenth centuries to discuss the sartorial practices of that age, but he also firmly identified the bliaut as the garment worn by the subjects of the statuary on the Royal Portal of Notre-Dame de Chartres. These statues, which are attenuated to fit on the narrow columns of the portal, depict Old Testament figures, both male and female, in elongated proportions. Their attire is depicted as highly ornamented and appears to fall into narrow elaborate pleats, even on garments worn under the outer gown; this pleating is primarily vertical, except for the pleats around some figures’ waists and wrists, where it runs laterally across the body. A year later Jules Quicherat repeated this identification in his Histoire du Costume en France. Both Viollet-le-Duc and Quicherat identified the dress seen in other statues and visual sources as bliauts, but it has been the association of the term with the Chartres statues that would become the best known and the most often repeated.

Viollet-le-Duc was innovative in that he sought out evidence for garment terms in Old French literary texts contemporary to the period, and Quicherat continued this practice. It is for this reason that the term bliaut emerges in such an abrupt manner in costume history. The term had not, and indeed could not have, made its way into earlier costume histories, simply because very few medieval manuscripts containing literary texts had been edited and published before the 1830s. The term bliaut had fallen into disuse and out of memory for all but etymologists and philologists, and it would be these scholars of old words and old texts who began the process of editing manuscripts for publication. For costume historians to cite literary sources before these editions existed, they would have had to read the texts of manuscripts, none of which were indexed, instead of consulting manuscripts simply to examine the illuminations. The illuminations themselves would have shed no light on garments of the twelfth century because the extant manuscripts of twelfth-century literature date to later centuries and therefore depict later clothing styles.

Investigating violent armed conflict and wars in Sudan has revealed that rural women, Darfuris in particular, were most affected; women became vulnerable victims of the atrocities of war, including gender-based violence that left women at the head of 70 per cent of households (El Hassan, 2008). This bitter experience undoubtedly makes them the most aspirant gender to stop war in favour of reconciliation and peace. Al-Hakkamat's tremendous contribution to inciting conflict, making war and creating dire situations that primarily affect women presupposes a pivotal need for their engagement in reconciliation and peace processes. However, they have been ordinarily dissociated from peace initiatives attempted in Darfur as we now going to explain.

WOMEN AND AL-HAKKAMAT IN PEACE AND RECONCILIATION

The people of Darfur, according to the prevailing culture in most African societies, have their own historical indigenous mechanisms for conflict resolution and resettlement of disputes locally referred to as Ajaweed (single: Ajwadi), which functions as a native arbitration court/council dealing with individual and tribal conflict. It is one of the lasting cultures that still prevails in Darfur.

The Ajaweed comprises a voluntary group of wise elderly men who are skilful, knowledgeable and well versed in various aspects of the society. They use their lifelong expertise and persuasive abilities to advocate instantly and to impartially resolve conflicts between tribes or among individuals that are brought to their attention. The council runs its activities through a meeting board called judiyah (traditional mediation). In their arbitrations, the judiyah is guided by the local customs and norms, known as ʾaʿrāf (conventions), or rākūbah (shelter). These conventions and customs have the Canon of Dali (Qanoon Dali) or Dali Code as a common legislative reference adopted during the Fur sultanate in which local customs are incorporated with the Islamic shari'a commandments (Mohamed and Badri, 2005, p. 52; Kamal El-Din, 2007, pp. 93–4).

During the colonial period (1921–33), the government introduced the so-called ‘government-sponsored judiyah’ as part of the newly introduced native administration system in which the Nazir, the Omda and the Sheikh were included as members. Despite this interference, by and large the Ajaweed retained its structure and mechanism, as the governmental presence was only nominal.

The aim of this chapter is to discuss aspects of the early modern colonial histories and encounters in present-day northern Sweden, with special focus on the Sami populations in the north. The colonial history of northern Sweden is a contested and in many ways controversial field of study, with connections to present-day conflicts over land and cultural rights. This history is also connected with the understanding of the relationships between “Swedish” and “Sami” history and identity, and in recent decades also with debates on the use of the concept of indigeneity in Sweden. There is a great need further to examine Swedish colonial policies and practices in Sápmi, and the responses of the indigenous Sami population, as well as the larger ideological and political contexts of Swedish colonial expansion in the north. It is important to recognize and engage with the question of how archaeology can contribute to a more complex understanding of colonial histories and encounters in Sápmi in the early modern period.

Archaeologists and other scholars interested in exploring the early modern colonial history of Sápmi and northern Sweden, and its consequences and importance today, face many challenges concerning the connections between past and present, and the power relations involved in historical archaeology and the field of Sami archaeology. There are also many important issues concerning the roles and responsibilities of archaeology and archaeologists in Sápmi: for instance, in relation to current controversies concerning Sami indigenous land and cultural rights, which need to be considered and discussed by archaeologists working within this field.

Its location at the centre of the town meant that All Saints’ church was – and remains – cramped: hemmed in by other buildings, only the tower and north aisle are visible from a major thoroughfare. The body of the church measures no great length, possessing a nave of only five bays; given that the church has two aisles, its interior (disregarding the chancel momentarily) is not so far from being as broad as it is long. As a result, the church housed four side-altars arranged ‘across’ the church at the east end of its aisles and nave, all in addition to its high altar in the chancel. By the mid fifteenth century, the side-altars were dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the north (or Lady) aisle and to the Holy Rood in the south aisle (the latter being commonly referred to as the Rood altar in the Cross aisle); those on either side of the chancel arch and in front of the rood screen were dedicated to St Thomas on the north side, and to Sts John the Baptist, John the Evangelist and Dunstan on the south.

The church housed the Kalendars’ guild, a long-established fraternity which, by the later fifteenth century, served both the secular clergy and the laity of the town, and supported a prior and two priests. Their house jutted into the north aisle of All Saints’ church at first-floor level at the west end of the church, and here they kept the library stocked by Bishop Carpenter. Given that, from the 1430s, the parish incumbent resided in a house that similarly jutted into the south aisle of the church and, also, that the Halleways’ chantry priest had a chamber adjacent to the parish cemetery on the south side of the church, the presence of five full-time clergy effectively living and working in the parish church might, at first glance, seem to have been out of all proportion, both with the communicant population of the parish (numbering approximately 180) and also the small dimensions of the church itself.

The NUM co-op development experience took place in a specific historical context and was not without flaws or contradictions – many of which the previous chapters have laid bare. At one level, this limits the extent to which lessons from this experience can be generalised. Yet a number of the approaches taken were reproduced, particularly in the state-led co-op development strategies that followed in the postapartheid period.

In particular, co-ops were promoted as a strategy for job creation in poor and economically marginal areas of the country, with the job creation imperative driving ‘number of jobs created’ as the lead indicator of success (and the main criterion for funding). This in turn led to a pattern in which co-ops were established with an oversupply of labour relative to their productive base or to the absorptive capacity of their target markets, with decisions on what to produce often based on familiarity with a given product as a consumer rather than on prior experience of production or on any meaningful assessment of business viability. Membership was often based on externally driven selection processes rather than on self-selection or on the skills or experience required in the enterprise. The combined effect of these conditions set such co-ops up for failure, exacerbating all other challenges to viability, with ‘the melancholy uniformity’ of co-op collapse witnessed by Beatrice and Sydney Webb in the early 1900s evident – despite the significant effort and commitment often invested by members.

The reasons why worker co-ops might fail – particularly in the kinds of circumstances described – are not a great mystery. Surviving in competitive markets is challenging for any enterprise: all the more so when the process also involves reconfiguring internal relations of ownership and control – without much support or guidance.

Far less clear, however, is why worker co-ops that manage to surmount these considerable obstacles and to succeed should be at any risk of degenerating: with such degeneration posing a different kind of threat to the idea of co-ops as an alternative form of economic organisation.

The Wandering Jew

THE WANDERER HAS been a persistent artistic and literary motif across many centuries and cultures. Condemned to travel peripatetically across the landscape, or deprived of the shelter of a lasting home, he (or more rarely she) has tended to provoke, in the imaginations of more settled or sedentary populations, an ambivalent if not wholly negative response. On the one hand, wanderers arouse a sense of dread: fear of difference and the unknown, or anxiety about unstable borders. On the other hand, they afford a glimpse of alternative worlds and customs, giving rise to feelings of wonder or fascination. Occasionally those who have been displaced, whether forcibly or voluntarily, may also awaken in beholders a sense of pity or demands for charity. Cultural responses to, for instance, the refugee crises that have periodically erupted in recent history run the gamut from sympathy to horror. In projects such as The Last of England, which confront this imagery directly, Derek Jarman consequently found himself intervening in a tradition with a long and complex history.

Perhaps the most enduring vagrant of all, in the European imagination, is the figure of the Wandering Jew. In its most basic form, this story hinges on an encounter between Christ and a man in Jerusalem. Bearing the cross to Calvary, Christ pauses momentarily to rest on the man's doorstep, but he is driven back with the cry “Walk faster!” “I am going,” Christ responds, “but you shall walk until I come again.” Affirming his return at some unspecified future date, Christ thus makes it known that his interlocutor, condemned until that time to incessant rambling, will pay a heavy price for his cruel gibe.

Biblical precursors to the story include the account of Cain's punishment in Genesis 4:10–15. After murdering his brother Abel, Cain is told that he will henceforth be “cursed,” rendered unable to cultivate the earth, and condemned to a lifetime of wandering; at the same time, God sets a mark upon Cain, which prevents him from being killed with impunity. The Cain narrative was subsequently taken up by medieval Christians to justify the treatment of Jews living within their midst. Stereotyped as Christ-killers and forced, in some regions, to wear distinguishing garb, Jews were banished from their home territories with increasing frequency from the late twelfth century onwards, culminating in a series of high-profile expulsions.

QUEEN CAROLINE UNLEASHED a crisis in 1820 that made it the hardest period of Liverpool's career. Having failed to secure terms from her, he faced the challenge of moving a bill to dissolve the royal marriage through a hostile parliament amidst popular outcry and a simmering quarrel with George IV. Scandal revived tensions from 1819 fueled by radical agitation amidst an economic downturn that had prompted the notorious Six Acts to check protest. Britain seemed at the edge of a revolutionary moment. Rather than the lurid imaginings of plebeian insurgency that satirists mocked as overwrought, the real threat involved the risk of a weak ministry being unable to hold authority amidst growing protest and a split within the elite. There lay the real parallel with France from 1789. Liverpool had seen for himself in Paris how failure to govern had thrown power to whoever dared seize it. Realizing that politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, he saw the need to assert lawful authority, but doing so required a confidence from king and parliament that often seemed in doubt. Even once the immediate crisis passed, prospects remained uncertain while George IV was at odds with his ministers. Liverpool had to weather an exceptional storm and its aftermath.

A successful close to the 1819 parliamentary session had strengthened Liverpool's hand, but the prince regent again pressed the question of a divorce. His demands the previous year for an inquiry into Princess Caroline's scandalous behavior had led the cabinet to acquiesce reluctantly in what became known as the Milan Commission. Since material hitherto gathered gave insufficient proof of adultery, Sir John Leach, the prince regent's legal advisor named vice-chancellor in January 1818, proposed sending agents to secure direct evidence. The cabinet only consented on the understanding they pledged no further action regardless of what transpired. Countenancing the step, Leach had told John Powell, the solicitor appointed to manage the inquiry, did not make it the cabinet's measure. He also made clear the aim to exclude Caroline from the throne and separate her from the prince. Even with Liverpool's guarded consent, the plan went further than the cabinet liked. Unable to dissuade the prince regent they tried to downplay the proceeding's official character which amounted to a distinction without a difference.

The previous chapter ended with the re-established Roman empire of western and central Europe having to learn how to cope with the prolonged attacks of Scandinavian sea-borne assailants, while the eastern Roman empire had recovered from its own darkest days to be able to confront more effectively than for many centuries the power of the Muslim rulers of the Middle East and North Africa. During the period comprising (roughly speaking) the ninth to eleventh centuries of the Christian era, a number of new features developed that make a study of military technology and engineering particularly fascinating. These included the appearance in the Byzantine empire of a number of treatises that provide evidence of what Byzantine commanders were expected to do. The historical accounts suggest that the texts were not abstract ideals, but offered practical guidance largely followed by the generations of successful generals who flourished particularly in the tenth century. Contemporary evidence also supports the case that in the world of the caliphs (a title to which there were three simultaneous claimants by the end of the tenth century), despite political turmoil, the wealth of the rulers contributed to continuity in the level of theoretical and practical knowledge and technical skill on which military rulers could draw.

The empire established by Charlemagne was sub-divided into what would become France (ruled by Charles the Bald, 840–77) and Germany (ruled by Louis the German, 840–75), either side of a “middle kingdom” (under Lothair, who inherited the title of emperor, 840–55) originally stretching from the North Sea to Provence and encompassing northern and central Italy (subsequently divided again, with the northern parts absorbed by their eastern and western neighbours thirty years later). The Carolingian dynasties reigning in all of these territories gave way to new families, the Capetians from 987 in “France” and the Saxon dynasty from 919 in “Germany”. There were simultaneously major social changes, most rapid in “France” but spreading everywhere in time, commonly associated with the term “feudalism”.

One element of these new regimes was the disappearance of central authority: those who had formerly served Charlemagne as royal local officials (the counts) established their own dynasties and in turn created followings of local land-holders, who were sometimes only theoretically but sometimes also practically obliged to serve them.

After the failure of the Second Crusade, armed and unarmed pilgrims and small groups of crusaders continued to flow to the Holy Land, ‘demonstrating that although Christians had been demoralized by the failure of the Second Crusade and were not inspired to mount a major expedition, their faith and commitment to the Holy Land were not shaken’. To judge by the surviving records, this was not enough to inspire our lyric poets. For the next quarter of a century they had little to say about Palestine. However, the troubadours continued to be interested in the Reconquista; then by the 1170s and 1180s we catch a glimpse of activity in the crusader states and see two troubadours travel to Outremer on pilgrimage.

In the immediate aftermath of the crusade Marcabru's famous Vers del lavador turned attention back towards the via de Hispania. A decade later, in 1157–1158, Peire d'Alvernhe, defending the reputation of his oft-maligned predecessor, also writes in support of the Reconquista (BdT 323.7):

Probably addressed to King Sancho III of Castile, the song refers to the death of Sancho's father, Alfonso VII, and, probably, King Sancho VII ‘the Wise’ (1150–1194) of Navarre, who took advantage of Alfonso's death to enlarge the boundaries of his kingdom.

Rodó's biographers have commented on the remarkable photographs that we have of him as a child. In one, aged eighteen months, he looks serious and thoughtful, and the same expression appears in a second portrait at four and in a third at eleven. Petit Muñoz says of Rodó's earliest portrait that it is “un pasmoso anuncio del pensador” (an astonishing announcement of the thinker) (79), and Mario Benedetti notes “el mismo gesto severo” (the same severe countenance) in all of the childhood photographs, also echoing a French critic's comment about the general absence of smiles in his images (13). Such graveness of outlook found an outlet in Rodó's early writings.

We have reports of Rodó learning to read at home at an early age, taught at first by his elder sister Isabel. According to Salvá, his first writing exercise for school was on the topic of “Charity” (14); Petit Muñoz, who interviewed Rodó's class teacher Ángela Anselmi in old age, was told that this composition, by her best student ever, was “la más extraordinaria, quizás” (perhaps the most extraordinary) (104). Salvá also reports that this piece was followed by another, on Brazil, commissioned by his teachers for the occasion of a visit to the school by Quintino Bocayúva (a journalist and politician who was to play an important role in the republican process of his country); the dignitary was highly impressed (14). It is significant to note, therefore, that already in some of his earliest reflections Rodó expressed concerns that were to occupy him later: the theme of charity, which was to recur in much of his mature work and is central to Liberalismo y jacobinismo (1906); and that of Latin America as a set of interrelated identities. Rodó's writing in fact began even before he went to Elbio Fernández, although the school environment helped to consolidate it. We shall consider this early material in the following order: child journalism; an important private letter to the president; a notebook containing poems on metaphysics and religion; other intimate writings where religion mingles with guilt about sexuality.