This chapter reads twentieth-century Haitian fictions of the Haitian Revolution to address how the political uses of Haiti’s independence war have made it a difficult literary subject for Haitian writers. The political custom of using Haitian revolutionists to express partisan political aims is prevalent in Haiti, so much so that it is the socio-political context animating Haitian narratives of the Revolution. I read Marie Chauvet’s novel, Dance on the Volcano (1957); René Depestre’s Vodou epic, A Rainbow for the Christian West (1967); Évelyne Trouillot’s novel, The Infamous Rosalie (2003); and Jean-Claude Fignolé’s novel, Quiet Dawn (1990), fictional autobiography, I, Toussaint Louverture, with the Complicit Pen of the Author (2004), and novel, One Hour for Eternity (2008), and consider how each of these works addresses the exploitative uses of the Revolution in the prevailing political discourses of their time. I examine the painful intimacies of socio-political disunity presented in their writings, showing how creative treatment of the Revolution requires, at worst, questioning the Revolution’s success and, at best, resigning oneself to its unfinished nature.

This chapter considers the process by which an intelligence transfer of power took place in British India. This event ran parallel to, but was conducted in a very different manner and resulted in quite different outcomes from, the political decolonisation of South Asia. The chapter examines plans hatched by the British Security and Secret Intelligence Services to maintain an intelligence foothold in the subcontinent and unpicks how such schemes fostered a bitter and protracted struggle for bureaucratic power and influence between MI5 and MI6. It probes debates held at the highest levels within the British government over whether covert action should be undertaken in independent India, by whom, and to what purpose. It interrogates the efficacy of Indian agency in negotiating the security challenges confronted by an under-resourced post-colonial state, and that counterparts in the West (and the Eastern bloc) saw as a valuable Cold War prize.

This chapter analyses the impact of the 1810 Revolution and its aftermath in the making of Argentine literature. Political affairs fueled the circulation of locally produced printed matter. Patriot leaders engaged in writing, and memoirs, letters, speeches, proclamations, and newspaper articles soon became part of a new arena of public debates. This new print culture was also aimed at reaching lower-class audiences, crucial for the victory of the patriotic endeavor. Texts were often read aloud for those who were illiterate – the overwhelming majority of the population– and even published in translation in Indigenous languages. Thus, the Revolution generated a zone of encounter between the literate classes and the oral culture of plebeian sectors.  This zone of encounter, together with the revalorization of the gauchos, gave birth to a surprising cultural expression  called gauchesque poetry, the first literary genre of a distinctive local flavor. A rather peculiar type of literature, it was a written genre imitating the oral style of rural inhabitants. The plebeian voice thus acquired a central location in the nascent local letters, thus destabilizing the boundaries between social classes and their cultures. This transgression would have a lasting impact on Argentine literature.

Like all revolutionary processes, those that led to Latin American independence were highly volatile and experimental in nature. Often accompanied by extreme violence, even open warfare, the formation of the new Latin American states in the early nineteenth century required imagining new states, institutions, and laws. The need, often urgency, to transform colonial domains into various independent units frequently coincided with the desire to end (or at least modernize) the Ancien régime. Yet the wish to supersede the past did not guarantee rupture. Instead, it initiated a period of questioning more often than answering, of experimenting more often than finding solutions. After describing the context in which the independence took place, this chapter surveys some of the questions that had to be answered, mostly by identifying debates that required settling and the difficulties entailed in achieving this goal. It examines who had the power to declare independence, how to identify the territories that would become new polities, how the national territory and citizenship were defined, how new republican structures should be formed, and elections conducted, and the legal changes all these developments entailed.

This book is the result of a collective effort by a group of scholars from Latin America, Europe, and the USA, who together wished to write a legal history that would center on the common experiences of Latin American societies over a long period, which began before Europeans invaded the continent and continue to date. The aim was to identify a narrative that would observe common trends, manifest the dramatic shifts that had occurred throughout this period, and insert these findings into a wider perspective. This in turn would reveal that debates taking place in Latin America were often linked to discussions transpiring elsewhere, to which they both contributed and from which they received input and inspiration. Our first aim, therefore, is to craft a pan-Latin American narrative and insert it into a global perspective. Our second aim is to propose a new methodology that places at the center questions rather than answers, processes rather than results, and contexts rather than descriptions of solutions. We also want to demonstrate the multiple levels on which law operates and how deeply it is embedded in social, political, cultural, and economic processes.

This chapter presents an introduction to Australian constitutional law. This chapter begins by examining the various forms a Constitution can take and the purposes a Constitution may serve. This chapter also examines the process by which Australia achieved constitutional independence from the United Kingdom. This chapter considers the more conceptual questions of why the Australian Constitution was binding in 1901 and why the Australian Constitution is binding today. This chapter also considers a number of key principles underlying the Australian Constitution: the rule of law, federalism, responsible government, and parliamentary supremacy. This chapter concludes with a consideration of the place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australian constitutionalism.

The proportion of the population living into old age has been increasing worldwide. For the first time in history, there are more older people than children under 5 years of age. The task for public health is to understand the relationships between ageing, health and the environment (physical, social and economic) in which people live, to promote healthy ageing and prevent the disability and subsequent dependency that is often associated with growing old.

This chapter examines the factors that lead to ageing populations and explores the health, social and economic consequences of the change in the population structure. It then goes on to outline strategies that can lead to healthy ageing and other public health actions that could help to manage the challenges posed – and the opportunities afforded – by the relative and absolute increase in the number of older people.

The two main political parties formed in the early 1940s, the Jamaica Labour Party and the People’s National Party, soon dominated electoral politics. Norman Manley and Alexander Bustamante were founder-leaders of these parties, both serving as prime minister. A West Indian Federation movement in the late 1950s and 1960s collapsed on the eve of Jamaican independence in 1962. Jamaica’s political development since independence has been beset by the seemingly intractable problems of operating a successful economy and combating deprivation, poverty, violence and drugs. Polarised political, economic and social policies dominated the 1970s, under Prime Ministers Michael Manley and Edward Seaga. Relative political stability returned to Jamaica with Prime Minister P J. Patterson between 1992 and 2006.

Poverty, neglect and crime are still extensive, but Jamaica has achieved many positive objectives since the Second World War. Educational opportunities have increased rapidly. The creative arts have made their local and international imprint in music, art, dance and literature. Jamaica has become a notable contributor to different sports. Comparing 2021 with 1945, Jamaica has assumed a greater position globally with diasporic migration creating strong networks between Jamaicans in Anglophone countries, sustained pride in independent nationhood and as a magnet for large flows of tourists.

The Conclusion embeds the monograph’s primary claims in the wider scholarly debates, namely Enlightenment and Independence in South America, analysing the vestiges and legacy of print publications across the Atlantic.

The aim of this chapter is to study the main political-military events of the struggle for independence in the Southern Cone, specifically in current Buenos Aires, Santiago and Lima. These three cities experienced both a profound political revolution, and a bloody civil war in the period 1808-1824. The fact that this revolution was also a military conflict in which a significant number of South Americans participated on both sides of the battlefield suggests that independence was not a struggle for national liberation. A second hypothesis proposes that independences were consummated in the early 1820s once the three fledgling countries declared their sovereignty not only in relation to Spain, but also to their neighbors. Those who once fought together against the Madrid authorities gradually distanced themselves from each other, which is why the “Americanist” projects (both of José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar) lost legitimacy as time went by. Understanding the loss of that legitimacy is key when analyzing the origins of the South American national states. Indeed, thinking about Argentina, Chile and Peru requires not taking their existence for granted.

This chapter offers an overview of the Luso-Brazilian World in the Age of Revolutions. It surveys key episodes culminating in the independence of Brazil, including the transfer of the Portuguese Court from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal and its long-term political implications, the creation of a Reino Unido (United Kingdom) from 1815 and the resistance that this reconfiguration of the Portuguese empire provoked. The chapter then traces the impact of the 1820 liberal revolution in Portugal, which sought not only to establish a constitutional monarchy, but to return the seat of the monarchy to the Peninsula. This effort to return to the status quo ex ante was rejected in Brazil and precipitated independence. Far from a denouement, however, Portugal and Brazil continued to influence each other’s political evolution in the aftermath of formal empire.

This chapter synthesizes the history of the monarchy in Brazil from the Portuguese court’s 1807 exile to Rio de Janeiro to the end of the Regency in 1840. It addresses the European threats to the Portuguese monarchy, its successes in Brazil, and its adaptation to the Atlantic revolutionary era. It focuses on the actions of two monarchs, João VI and Pedro, João’s heir in both the old Portuguese kingdom and the new Brazilian one, which Pedro made independent and transformed into the Empire of Brazil, in 1822. It goes on to discuss Pedro I’s struggle (1822-1831) for domination against the Brazilian elite, and the results, through the Regency (1831-1840) following Pedro I’s abdication. Of particular significance in all of this are international and social issues bound up with the continued expansion of African slavery and its Atlantic trade. In both the diplomacy between João VI and his crucial English allies, the abolition of that trade loomed large. It was central, too, in the struggles between Pedro I and his parliamentary opposition. Indeed, slavery’s maintenance as foundational to the economy, the society, and those who dominated both, as well as the state, is made clear in analyzing the monarchy’s politics during 1822-1840. Slavery affected the monarchy’s survival, transformation, and the nature of party formation and ideology in the constitutional monarchy that emerged by 1840.