This chapter tells the story of the how the Ottoman Empire and the Allies negotiated the blurred line between war and peace that existed from the signing of Sèvres to the Lausanne peace conference.

This chapter assesses in detail one of the most common uses of schemes in recent years, namely as a debt restructuring tool. The chapter deals with some important preliminary issues, such as the meaning of ‘creditor’ for scheme purposes and the division of creditors into classes. It compares the use of schemes as a debt restructuring device with other mechanisms including CVAs and administration and the new Part 26A restructuring plans. This chapter examines in detail the reforms brought about by the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 including the introduction of the restructuring moratorium and the Part 26A restructuring plan.

This chapter explores schemes used as an alternative to more traditional takeover offers. In particular, the chapter addresses how these schemes operate, how they differ from traditional takeover offers and why companies would choose a scheme over a traditional offer (and when a traditional offer will in fact be more useful). Crucially, it also compares and contrasts the amount of minority protection available to target shareholders in a scheme and in a traditional offer. It closes by exploring the question of whether takeovers should be allowed by way of a scheme of arrangement.

This chapter examines other examples of member schemes, including the use of holdco schemes to redomicile a corporate group, the use of schemes to reorganise corporate groups and the use of schemes in mergers and demergers.

Chapter four demonstrates how the post-WWII liberal vision of international law feeds into the ideology of the postcolonial ‘liberal’ state in the form of ‘individualism’, thereby dominating the discourse on minority protection. One direct implication of the dominance of liberal individualism in the postcolonial constitutional architecture of rights is the denial of protection for minority groups. The liberal human rights regime is designed to diffuse cultural groups into individual units, so as to facilitate their assimilation into a homogeneous national (read majoritarian) identity. This chapter explains how international law, with its liberal underpinning, shrinks the scope of the right to self-determination and thereby perpetuates the vulnerability of, or in some cases even leads to the extinction of, minority groups. In this connection, I also highlight the peculiar challenge that postcolonial states face in reconciling the diverging forces of ‘liberal individualism’ and majoritarian ‘ethno-nationalism’. The former emanates from the liberal international legal order, the latter from the nationalist discourse of allegiance, entitlement, and legitimacy. The issue of citizenship and statelessness is also discussed in this context. My arguments in this chapter are supported by in-depth case studies on the Rohingya and the CHT hill people.

Chapter two examines how postcolonial states respond to ethno-nationalism in general and minorities in particular. I argue that nationalist ruling elites conceive of the postcolonial state itself as an ‘ideology’, claiming that the unified national state, its liberal constitutional structure, and the developmental agenda will end the troublesome ethnic parochialism and, therefore, solve the problem of minorities. The ideological making of the postcolonial state not only obscures and glosses over the real reasons for the problem, but also shift attention to issues that help maintain asymmetric power relations. To substantiate this argument, I first explain John Thompson’s notion of ‘ideology’ as a set of ways in which ideas and meanings help create and sustain relations of domination. I then develop my argument that the ideology of the postcolonial state functions in three different forms: the postcolonial ‘national’, ‘liberal’, and ‘developmental’ state. Working through these three ideologies, the postcolonial state demands the submission of the minority cause to the greater ‘national’, ‘liberal’, and ‘developmental’ interests of the state, thereby legitimising the oppression of minorities. I demonstrate these ideological functions of the postcolonial state with historical examples: the discourse used in Indian Constituency Assembly debates to discuss minority rights.

This concluding chapter summarizes the book arguments and reflects on the legacies of the war, the problems at restoring business as usual after a long period of state of exception, and the difficulties of squaring sovereignty, national interests, humanity and human rights. The war and its aftermath profoundly changed the population structure of vast territories and generated a proliferation of migration control policies and new citizenship claims from those who had fought on the battlefront or suffered because of the war. It reshaped economic relationships and the balance of power and had a big impact on reorienting migration flows. The First World War marked a departure from the quest for the universalism of rights and a shift from individuals to collectivities defined in terms of identity, belonging, language, ethnicity, religion or class. Establishing the equation between aliens and dangerousness, the First World War consolidated the idea that policing borders, selecting those who can live in the territory of a country, expelling the unwanted, preventing them from entering, granting and stripping people of their citizenship were (and after the war continued to be) the main prerogatives of the sovereign state, which had the power to decide whom to accept, expel, grant asylum to, include, exclude and endow with rights.