In chapter 6, Guarantee at last? (May 26 - June 1), it becomes clear that even though the Austrian parliament passed a law authorizing the government to guarantee Credit Anstalt’s deposits, the struggle is far from over. It is difficult to get information from Credit Anstalt and nervousness about Germany and reparations grows as the Austrian crisis is also developing into a currency crisis. International bankers set up an International Creditors Committee, while the BIS and the Bank of England insist on controllers being associated with the Credit Anstalt and the Austrian National Bank (ANB). Norman confesses to have difficulty separating cause and effect and he grows impatient with the BIS and the ANB.

In most scholarly accounts, borders are portrayed simply as thin, jurisdictional lines; they define where one sovereignty ends and a new one begins. Recently, scholars have shown that borders are increasingly becoming wide and zonal – an important advance in our understanding. In this chapter, however, it is suggested that even these accounts are insufficient to change our paradigm as they still rely on the state/territory/border triad as their baseline and see contemporary changes as deviations from this norm. In other words, while such work can generate shifts in our understanding of borders, they nonetheless perpetuate the border’s naturalness. To redress this problem, this chapter begins by defining the “Westphalian” border as it is conventionally understood – distinguishing two features, borders-as-authority and borders-as-control. Second, it looks at the development of modern bordering to locate when this “Westphalian” border starts to take shape. The chapter concludes with a reconceptualization – referred to as the Accordion Model – which captures the conditional and oscillating relationship between states, territories, and borders. The hope is that by doing so, we might chip away at the hegemonic hold that the linear border – and the state/territory/borders triad – has on our political imaginaries

The development of Russian strategy over a near forty-year period from 1877 to 1914 was characterised by gradual movement towards the formation of modern military forces based on a massive army and developed industry. The foundation for this path was laid out by radical military reforms in the 1860–1870s.

The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 were fundamentally different from each other in many respects. The first was fought in a thoroughly studied theatre and against a well-known adversary, with whom Russia had fought regularly for approximately 200 years. The second was conducted in a remote and underexplored location against an enemy whose strength was severely underestimated. The land and naval forces involved in the two wars significantly differed as well.

Preparations for a large-scale European war have always remained the basis of strategic planning. An important milestone was the formation of the Russian-French alliance. A possible coalition war against Germany required the adoption of an offensive strategy from the onset of the possible conflict. The First World War was the final test that measured the effectiveness of the efforts undertaken by the Russian government since the period of military reforms.

Chapter 6 portrays two adolescent speakers of Chinese as a heritage language and their respective families.  Drawing upon interview data as well as face-to-face conversational data in everyday interactions, it situates the adolescents’ attitude toward the Chinese language in the contexts of talking about their respective families in terms of values, behavioral patterns, and accents, talking for their families as they interpret and translate from Chinese to English for their parents and polish their parents’ English in everyday social encounters, and talking with their families in digital communication across three generations. It explores second-generation immigrant children’s perceptions of their parents’ attitudes toward child rearing, college preparation, and career choices. It also investigates the impact of the parents’ triumphs and challenges in their immigration experience on the children’s language choices.

Hume’s ‘Of Eloquence’ – in which Hume implores English orators to imitate the sublime style of Demosthenes – has long puzzled readers, for two reasons. First, it is rare for Hume to present ancient examples as suitable for moderns to imitate, particularly where politics is concerned. Second, in the essay’s conclusion, Hume seems to backtrack by encouraging English speakers to give up on sublimity and introduce more order and method into their speeches instead, inviting the accusation of incoherence. In this chapter, I show how reading Hume’s essay through the lens of ancients and moderns is limiting and that a comparison between the political cultures of England and France was central to his analysis. For Hume, the lack of sublimity in Parliament was a specifically English problem with roots in the English national character. If the revival of classical eloquence that Hume desired looked unlikely to him, I argue, this was due less to the unsuitability of sublime speech to a modern society than to the peculiar place of Parliament in Britain’s mixed constitutional order. I also demonstrate that Hume’s closing call for more order and method in English speechmaking was consistent with his earlier endorsement of the sublime.

In chapter 15, Going off the gold standard? (July 14 - August 21) attention shifts to Great Britain and the weakness of sterling. As pressure on sterling increases, Norman fall sick with ’stress’ and he has to take leave of absence from the bank in late July, only to return after Britain has left gold on September 21, 1931. With Norman out of the picture, his deputy Ernest Harvey takes over as the Banque de France and the New York Fed arrange a $200 million credit to the Bank of England. Tensions arise between Harvey on the one hand and Clément Moret (Banque de France) and Harrison on the other, about the use of the credit. The weakening of sterling continues and in late August, Harry Siepmann writes an ominous note discussing the consequences of Great Britain leaving gold.

Chapter 7 investigates the nationalizations of property adopted by the communist regime during the crucial (formative) six years of its power (1945–1950) and their role in shaping the lives of Jewish individuals and communities, especially in relation to their emigration from Romania. It shows that many Jews feared and opposed the communist measures of nationalizing private and communal property and that many of them were victimized through these dispossession policies in a higher proportion than the majority gentile population.

Displacement owing to climate change is quickly outpacing conflict, political oppression, and other sociopolitical forces from which people flee the states in which they habitually reside. However, at present, most ongoing state-based programs to admit displaced persons explicitly address themselves to people displaced by conflict and human rights abuses. One notable exception is Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the US. Nationals of countries experiencing “natural disasters” can be designated for TPS while in the US. Recipients often renew these twelve- to eighteen-month visas for many years, meanwhile putting down roots in the US and forming mixed status families. Such relief is episodic, insofar as it treats natural disasters as discrete and unpredictable events, and discretionary, insofar as it depends on the judgment of the United States Attorney General. This chapter raises questions about whether such an approach is a good model for future programs that will be needed to support people seeking refuge from uninhabitable or inhospitable environments.

After the putsch that toppled the Antonescu regime in August 1944, Romania changed sides: It abandoned the Axis and joined the Allies. Even though the new transitional governments proceeded to build a democratic society, formally abolished the Romanianization legislation, and adopted the main restitution laws rather quickly (by the summer of 1945), restitution did not proceed smoothly in practice. A fair, rapid, complete, and permanent restitution of real estate, businesses and other rights did not take place. Restituting Romanianized Jewish property and repairing Holocaust injustices in the aftermath of the Antonescu regime proved to be a complicated process involving Jewish leaders and ordinary survivors, Jewish domestic and international organizations, individual gentile profiteers, Romania’s transitional governments, and political and social groups.