This article examines the relationship between the late antique and medieval Dyothelete Chalcedonian community of the Middle East–commonly referred to as the Melkites or Rum–and surveys the evidence for the use of Syriac by these communities. Because Melkites have more commonly been associated with the use of Greek and Arabic, an argument is made that a number of factors–among them the Monothelete/Dyothelete split in the Middle Eastern Dyothelete church, liturgical Byzantinization, and the destruction of manuscripts–have distorted more recent understandings of the relationship of this church with the Syriac language and obscured the reality that a number of medieval Melkites used Syriac for Christian purposes.

This chapter charts soldiers’ journeys across the Western Front. Drawing on the concept of ‘place attachment’, it explains how men developed an emotional relationship with Belgium and France. Beginning with their arrival by boat, it narrates their experiences in ports, bases, and camps and from there through the countryside and towns to the frontlines. It follows this journey, investigating the processes by which English infantrymen explored and were exposed to the war zone. This allowed them to internalise and reconceptualise Belgium and France. Subtle psychological processes allowed men to familiarise the sights, sounds, and scents that they encountered. These were both conscious and unconscious products of both purposeful action and unconscious psychological mechanisms. Repeated exposure habituated soldiers to the sights, sounds, and scents that confronted them, even in the frontlines. Elsewhere, men made use of language to craft new narratives and to normalise the violence and death that surrounded them. They developed very personal relationships with landscapes, spaces, and places. The Western Front became the locus of important life experiences and memories and was littered with graves that represented personal and collective loss. The landscapes of Belgium and France became a metaphysical space as their features were increasingly associated with ideas of duty, German barbarity, and sacrifice.

This topic comprises Themes #3 and #4, whose central thrusts are, respectively, cheap military successes and paths to the same larger political end using civilian approaches – i.e., winning without major fighting (at least in a classic military sense). Although it does not capture the sum total of Sun Tzu’s Theme #3 thinking, a core part of that thinking focuses on extremes of both benefits and costs – reaping the former and avoiding the latter.

Post-First World War intellectual relief failed; violence against intellectuals and sites of learning proved to be a reality of modern warfare, as demonstrated by attacks on universities in the Spanish Civil War and the Sino-Japanese War, and the flight of intellectuals both within and from Europe after 1933. The symbolically rebuilt library at Louvain was destroyed again in 1940 during the Second World War. Meanwhile, the rise of totalitarianism showed that intellectuals were not bulwarks of democracy as post-war rhetoric had implied. The epilogue shows how post-First World War intellectual relief influenced the rescue of intellectuals fleeing Nazi persecution as well as the way in intellectual life was rebuilt following the Second World War, notably through the establishment of UNESCO. The reconstruction of intellectual life after the Great War continues to resonate in the twenty-first century.

The book opens with an exploration of the cultural violence of the First World War and sets this in wider historical and historiographical contexts. It explores three key themes which inform the monograph: cultural destruction, humanitarianism, and the role of the intellectual. While none of these themes began with the First World War, the conflict transformed them in significant ways. Cultural destruction was a key component in how the First World War was presented to belligerent and neutral populations and intellectual sites were particularly important in this process of cultural mobilization. The introduction argues that because cultural destruction was crucial to popular understandings of the war, its opposite, cultural and intellectual reconstruction, would in turn be an important part of the process of post-war stabilization.

This essay examines W.G. Sebald’s relationship to the region of his birth, the Allgäu and explores its significance for his literary work. In his stories, he refers several times to his region of origin, to places and memories there, making his Allgäu past on the one hand a point of repulsion and on the other a reservoir of themes and images from which he draws for his prose. In this way, his “Heimat” (homeland) becomes literarily charged in a way that makes Sebald’s literary writings both fascinating and revelatory in terms of their poetics.

The nature of the cosmos and its maintenance are central issues in Mesoamerican philosophy. The correlative metaphysical systems of Mesoamerica, with their focus on interdependence, transformation, and continual creation, rely on particular views about the nature of the world and its operation that are covered in this chapter. The chapter covers the development of key concepts connected to creation and change, as well as the particular ways these are developed in creation stories across Mesoamerica. Creation stories serve an important purpose in Mesoamerican thought. They should not be thought of as only myth grounding the overall tradition and system, but also as discussions of the nature of being, change, and continual creation.

Comparisons between low- and high-flux PDR conditions are discussed in relation to the Horsehead Nebula and the Orion Bar. Contrasting observations of selected species between the PDR margin and the inner dark cloud allow chemical modellers to test formation and destruction reaction networks against quite closely constrained physical conditions. The anomalous abundance of CH3CN is considered here in the Horsehead context in the presence of other nitrile COMs observed, as are comparisons of sulphur chemistry in the low- and high-flux cases and the latest ideas on the ISM sulphur reservoir.

Cebes’ challenge leads to what is typically called Socrates’ four “immortality arguments,” which structure the core of the dialogue. Despite this common label, Cebes’ challenge does not ask Socrates to show that the soul is immortal, and Socrates’ first three arguments do not claim to show immortality. Instead, Cebes challenges Socrates to address people’s fear that the soul disperses and so is destroyed when someone dies; not being destroyed upon death is, I argue, different from being immortal. After discussing Cebes’ challenge, the chapter turns to the cyclical argument, providing a new account of its basic structure. It is based on an agreement that does not require Socrates to say anything here about the nature of the soul. Nonetheless, the argument is important for aiming to show that a Pythagorean view is correct – reincarnation – by understanding death and rebirth as part of a much larger phenomenon: the coming to be and passing away of opposite things.

Trakl was the master of transfiguration and poetic enigma. His poetry uses a very specific number of colours (black, purple, blue), strikingly simple rhyme and – at times obstinate – repetition to unmatched effects. The expressive quality of his poetry never amounts to dogmatic expressionism but relates, and reflects, the deeper qualities of introspection. It tries to identify the very roots of expression in the troubled human existence. His poetry originated in feelings of guilt (often connected with the biographical fact that he had induced his sister to the misuse of drugs) and utter desolation. We have seen already that to him the self-destruction of occidental culture was a certainty years before the outbreak of World War One. This chapter discusses whether it can be argued that Trakl’s poetry reflects, to a certain extent, an anticipation of the horrors that became manifest and unbearable to him already in the very first weeks of this European tragedy with disastrous global implications.

This chapter situates the work of the German writer W. G. Sebald within Foucault’s paradigm of biopolitical war, which is torn between a concern with State racism and a concern with extinction. Sebald’s work is often considered in relation to World War II and the Holocaust, in other words, in relation to State racism. The chapter seeks to shift this frame of reference toward the Cold War and the reality of Mutually Assured Destruction, which are important concerns in Sebald’s oeuvre as well. This invites us to consider Sebald as an author engaged not only with State racism but also with what Foucault calls “the atomic situation.” Specifically, the chapter considers the use of lists in Sebald’s work not only as a memorial effort in response to the destruction of World War II but also as an effort to record all of life in anticipation of its disappearance. Finally, it shows that such a use of the list exceeds Sebald’s fiction and can be found in a range of related contemporary fiction and theory. Today, in the Anthropocene, the biopolitical war exceeds the issue of State racism and includes that of extinction, human and otherwise – including the extinction of literature itself.

Chapter 4 shows how Pseudo-Hegesippus participates in the common ancient Mediterranean historiographical discourse of national decline. In De Excidio 5.2, the author juxtaposes five biblical figures (Moses, Aaron, David, Joshua, Elisha) of the Hebrew past to the first-century Jews of his narrative in a way that exposes the relative lack of virtue, faith, and strength among the “latter-day Jews.”

This chapter explores the international legal protection offered to animals in occupied territory. Some rules of international humanitarian law protecting private and public property apply to animals as well. The legal framework is complemented by the domestic law in force prior to the occupation, and by international conventions on animal conservation that remain applicable during armed conflict. Nonetheless, animals in occupied territory are insufficiently protected. In order to strengthen legal protection, occupying powers should properly fulfil their duty to observe and apply local legislation such as animal welfare statutes. A non-anthropocentric approach based on animals’ needs, rather than on animals as property or as parts of the environment, would help to enhance the protection of animals in occupied territory.

This chapter explores the consequences of war for water security and insecurity. It maps out and analyses four main ways in which war matters for water: through infrastructure destruction; through population displacement; through the expropriation of resources and infrastructures; and through war’s profound if mostly indirect ramifications for state-building and development. Empirically, the chapter draws on evidence from across the divided environments considered in this book, including the ongoing wars in South Sudan, Syria and Lake Chad, the 2003–5 Darfur war, recent Israeli wars on Gaza and key historical conflagrations such as the 1948–9 Arab-Israeli war. The chapter argues through all of this that war is deeply contradictory, being simultaneously highly destructive and highly productive in its water security consequences. And it argues that this is likely to remain the case in an era of climate disruption: while, for some, war is likely is have sharply negative climate vulnerability consequences, it is nonetheless also the case, the chapter shows, that adaptive capacities are often founded on infrastructures and hierarchies of political violence.

Chapter 5 commences the book’s analysis of the operation of the most important investment treaty standards in armed conflict. It focuses on so-called war or armed conflict clauses. These provisions, present in many investment agreements, establish state obligations vis-à-vis investors who have suffered losses during armed conflict and other emergencies. Considering recent arbitral practice in the context of the so-called Arab Spring, the chapter gives guidance on how to understand these understudied clauses, their specific elements as well as their systematic function. While ‘basic’ armed conflict clauses establish a duty of non-discrimination in case the host state compensates other investors for losses suffered, ‘extended’ clauses give a standalone right to claim compensation for certain losses. These clauses convey such a right, among others, in case of requisitioning or unnecessary destruction at the hands of the state’s authorities or armed forces. The chapter shows how the general rules of attribution as well as the rules of international humanitarian law should crucially inform the application of these extended armed conflict clauses.

Chapter 6 closely analyses the operation of investment treaty clauses promising full protection and security. The chapter shows how armed conflict affects both dimensions of this standard significantly. It suggests that the duty to not cause unlawful harm to foreign investors and their invesments should be interpreted as a duty to comply with international humanitarian law standards when applied to the conduct of hostilities. This approach, deriving from the interaction of human rights with humanitarian rules, avoids normative inconsistencies. The due diligence obligation to protect foreign investors and their investments from third-party harm, on the other hand, should be understood as inherently sensitive to prevailing conditions. The state’s (constructed) knowledge of threats to foreign investments, its capacities and resources to counteract these threats, and the notion of reasonableness should guide the analysis under the due diligence standard. The latter element introduces a corrective balancing exercise, opening the way to factor in overriding military or humanitarian concerns.