Before London

The idea that London had pre-Roman origins is considered, but dismissed for the want of evidence from both within and around the city. The pre-settlement landscape and topography of the region is described, tracing the course and character of the Thames and London’s other rivers including the lost Walbrook. The pre-history of the London basin is summarized, and London’s place in the emerging political landscape of late Iron Age Britain reviewed. It is concluded that the area where Roman London was established lay on the border of earlier polities and that the Thames constituted a boundary zone and relative backwater. The sites of pre-Roman farmsteads within this landscape are identified and described, including important settlements at Bermondsey and Southwark that may have been occupied at the time of the Roman conquest. It is speculated that London gained its Roman name and identity from these pre-Roman farmsteads on the south bank of the river, making it a place of Kent. The city itself was a Roman creation, made possible by the political unification of southern Britain through the force of conquest.

The Nation-State and the Origins of Secondary Education in Argentina: The Case of the Colegio Nacional (National School)

This article focuses on the origins of secondary education in Argentina. Inparticular, it explores the possible relations between the modelling of educationalinstitutions intended for the formation of political elites and the fabrication of thenation-state. In Argentina, the creation of free, compulsory elementary educationwas preceded by the development of secondary education through the setting up ofthe colegio nacional. These schools were formed during the political unification ofthe national territory after domestic post-independence wars. Note the name givento these institutions: national schools. How did the nation and the state appear inthe organization of national schools? The article explores this question analyzingschool curricula and rectors’ reports during the configuration of the colegio nacionalbetween 1863 and 1890.Key words: curricula; configuration; national; territory; secondary schools.

The unity of Roman Italy

Further research (following Chapter 31) on anomalies in the supposed unity of Roman Italy shows the abundant (and mysteriously neglected) evidence, which does much to question the ‘standard view’ of the topic, as enshrined in Toynbee, ‘the political unification of the Peninsula by Rome…led eventually to the population of the whole Peninsula becoming uniform in language and culture’. We are talking about explicit evidence in authors of the late Republic and early Empire about ample and specific instances of regional diversity.

Spillover Effects From Next Generation EU

In July 2020, the European Commission announced its €750 billion package to revive the postpandemic European economy, Next Generation EU. The programme comprises a number of loans and grants that will be funded by taking out European debt. Although the rules on liability sharing for Next Generation EU prevent a significant mutualisation of the debt, European leaders have taken the long-recognised significant first step towards European financial and political unification that stands in stark contrast to the misguided austerity programmes during the European sovereign debt crisis.

The Risorgimento and the “Birth” of International Law in Italy

The Italian doctrine of international law developed in the mid-nineteenth century, mainly under the influence of the historical events that characterized the so-called Risorgimento, the political process leading to the political unification and formation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. Several scholars largely based their writings on the theory developed by Pasquale Stanislao Mancini, according to which the principle of nationality was the basis for legitimacy and international subjectivity, a theory clearly linked with the political afflatus of the period. This chapter addresses the Italian scholarship of international law during the Risorgimento period, through a series of authors originally so strictly-linked with Mancini’s theories to be qualified, even at the time, as the ‘Italian school of international law’. Such theories were therefore firmly anchored in the Risorgimento, its political ideals and its historical evolution exercising a very significant impact on the international law studies in Italy during those decades.

The Unification of Italy and International Law

This chapter analyses the legal implications of the Italian political unification occurred in 1861 as it emerges from the relevant—and not yet fully analysed—practice. The main objective is to ascertain whether the process of the Italian unification was realized within the empire of international law and, in the affirmative, to what extent the juridical categories of international law were used to achieve the objective of independence and to consolidate the new unitarian State in the international community. Thus, three issues are clearly relevant in this respect: the first concerns the conduct of the Kingdom of Sardinia in its relations with the pre-unitary States in the light of the norms of international law in force at the time of the facts; the second is the emergence of the principle of nationality and its consequences on the legal conceptions of the statehood; and, finally, the legal consequences of the alleged continuity between the Kingdom of Sardinia and the new Italian State.

The Construction of the International Law Discipline in Italy between the Mancinian and Positive Schools

This chapter reconstructs the evolution of international law studies between the aftermath of the political unification of Italy, when international law became a compulsory subject in the curriculum of the Departments of Law, and the last decades of the nineteenth century, when the positive law approach started to emerge. It provides an overview of the slow and tiring affirmation of the discipline’s specialism through dedicated chairs, the publication of early manuals, and scholars devoted to this subject, a process developed in the shadow of its influential tutelary deity: Pasquale Stanislao Mancini. This chapter thus offers another puzzle to current analysis aimed to reconstruct the phenomenon of the professionalization of international law in the nineteenth century, mainly explored in relation to other States.

Impact of Buddhism on Sri Lanka

This paper is a historical study of the mutual exchanges in the religious and cultural traditions, in the context of Buddhism between India and Sri Lanka. As a powerful medium of trans-acculturation, Buddhism enriched several countries especially of South and South-East Asia. Though Asoka used Buddhism as a unifying instrument of royal power, he was considered as the ruler par excellence who ruled as per dhamma and righteousness ensuring peace and harmony in the kingdom. He was emulated by several rulers in the Buddhist world including Sri Lanka. Royal patronage of the Buddhist Sangha in Sri Lanka was reciprocated by support for the institution of kingship. Kingship played an important role in the political unification of the country, whereas Buddhism provided the ground for ideological consolidation. The Indian impact is clearly visible in all aspects of Sri Lankan life and identity-religion (Buddhism), art architecture, literature, language. However the culture and civilization which developed in the island nation had its own distinctive variant despite retaining the Indian flavour.

The Hellenistic Koinon of the Lesbians

This chapter considers what kind of collective identity was fostered by the insular location of the Lesbian cities. It is usually assumed that the cities of Lesbos were particularly inclined to cooperate with one another because of their insular geography, and as a result the treaty refounding the Lesbian koinon from c.200 BC should be interpreted as evidence that the island’s cities were headed for political unification. Here it is instead argued that the cities of Lesbos kept the level of cooperation between themselves at a bare minimum and usually viewed Lesbian identity as something to compete over and claim exclusive ownership of rather than as a rationale for political cooperation. A reassessment of the treaty of the refounded koinon suggests that it attests a much more limited level of intra-island cooperation than has previously been assumed. Insofar as this is nevertheless a greater level of cooperation than we see in earlier and later periods, this reflects the dangerous and uncertain political context which engulfed many Greek cities in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Ptolemaic hegemony in the Aegean in the 200s BC.

Core-Periphery Relations in the Eurozone

We argue that the case for the existence of some deterministic force that condemns countries in the periphery to stay in the periphery indefinitely, is weak. Countries that are in the periphery today can become part of the core and vice versa. We also argue that the long run success of the Eurozone depends on a continuing process of political unification. Political unification is needed because the Eurozone has dramatically weakened the power and legitimacy of nation states without creating a nation at the European level. This is particularly true in the field of stabilization. The political willingness to go in this direction, however, is non-existent today. There is no willingness to provide a common insurance mechanism that would put taxpayers in one country at risk of having to transfer money to other countries. Under those conditions the sovereign bond markets in the Eurozone will continue to be prone to instability.