The Massachusetts Bay Company and New England Company (1640–1684): Exportation, Revaluation and the Demise of Corporate Theocratic Governance

Returning to Massachusetts, this chapter focuses on communal responsibility and identity in decline of the MBC’s theocratic governance between 1640 and 1684. Firstly, this chapter investigates the transportation of political knowledge and ideas through corporate membership, assessing the role of individual MBC members such as Hugh Peters, Stephen Winthrop and Henry Vane Jr., in the formation of religious governance in England in the years surrounding the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The chapter also assesses the evolution of corporate evangelism in England and America, with the formation of the New England Company (NEC). It analyses several evangelical works including Roger Williams’s A Yet More Bloody and John Cotton’s The Bloudy Tenent, in order to understand the conflicted development of evangelism within the company, and how it became used to justify territorial expansion and further encroach on English and Native American religious and governmental identity and rights. The chapter concludes by offering an analysis of the downfall of the MBC, emphasising how models of governance strengthened and established out of corporate flexibility could, at the same time, be made brittle and weakened.

The Bu Qi Gui Inscription and Genesis of the Qin State

The aim of this paper is to define the institutional difference between the aristocratic lineage ruling the service fief of the Western Zhou era and the royal dynasty, reigning over the independent state of the Eastern Zhou era. Different approaches to the genesis of the Qin State are discussed in this paper: the archaeological approach and the “Zhou fiefdom” approach. The first one lacks data directly describing the political process. The problem of the second one is its being based practically on one written source that postdates the events described by 500 years. Therefore, to escape the failures of these methods, the author developed a specific approach that would both deal with political and institutional data on the one side while using data from different sources contemporary to the events in question. Data explicated from Bu Qi gui, Qin gong zhong and Guo ji zi Bai pan – three inscriptions on the bronze vessels dating between IX and VII centuries BC was scrutinized and compared. Two of them were cast by Qin rulers and the third describes the events leading to the creation of the Qin domain. Comparing information of these sources with the data from Sima Qian’s Shi ji allows to determine the precise moment of the Qin domain being transformed into the Qin State and show the institutional innovations that went along with this process. The interior political change of this time is described (i.e. the political crisis of royal inheritance) as well as the exterior change in Qin’s place inside the hierarchy of Zhou domains, particularly the changing relations between the Qin State and the domain of Xiao Guo. This clarified the place that the process of territorial expansion had in this transformation. As a hypothesis, the author built a model presenting the properties distinguishing a service fief and an independent state.

Assessment of Stability Level of Functioning and Development of Business Entities Within the System of Industrial Parks

The need to study the development of business entities in the context of individual categories of industrial parks is connected with different concepts of their development and territorial expansion. The suggested methodological approach to assessment of sustainability level of the business firms functioning in the system of industrial parks includes the following main stages: grouping of industrial parks and the selection of representatives of the groups; rating assessment of stability level of firms functioning in the system of industrial parks; grouping of businesses by the level of sustainability. The technique was tested on data from 150 industrial parks. The results of the implementation of the suggested approach show that more vulnerable positions are typical of businesses operating as part of industrial parks as “greenfield” companies. At the same time, the highest proportion of businesses with a low stability level is typical of developing parks, which indicates the need to expand the range of incentives for these businesses. The most stable cluster of entrepreneurs is business entities of developing parks such as “brownfield” companies. Entrepreneurs operating within developed parks as “brownfield” firms are characterized by a satisfactory level of sustainability. The proportion of entrepreneurial structures with a low stability level remains quite high, which indicates the need to adapt the development strategy of business entities in the system of such structures. The results obtained made it possible to identify the most vulnerable groups to risks, business entities and can be used to form a strategy for their sustainable development in the system of industrial parks.

Making and Unmaking Territories with Plants in the Riverine Peat Landscape of Central Kalimantan

Central Kalimantan, located on the Indonesian side of Borneo, has often been described as a state frontier area where rapid changes take place in legal and administrative regimes and in the rules that govern access and ownership to land and nature. Today, frontier development includes state and non-state actors that bring natural resource projects aimed at producing long-term effects by engaging local people in the commodification of nature. Local people adopt and abandon these projects at a rapid pace due to changing conditions, policies, and natural hazards. I will explore commodification in terms of territorial projects and the spatial and temporal reordering of human-nature relations within the landscapes of Central Kalimantan. Linked to the territorial expansion of trees and plants, commodification challenges local environmental practices and forms of sociality. The paper argues that the commodification of nature and the territorial aspects of this bring new layers of complications and thus have unexpected effects on the lives of local populations. Keywords: frontier, commodification, plants, landscape, state-making, Kalimantan

The Cartographic Propositions of Raumforschung und Raumordnung, 1936-1955: from Territorial Expansion to Defeat and Division

This paper examines shifts in the design of, use of and rhetoric accompanying maps published in the periodical Raumforschung und Raumordnung from 1936 through 1955. In the discussion of these maps published prior to and during the Second World War, special attention is paid to the depiction of the German Empire, the incorporation of Austria into maps of the Third Reich, and cartographic portrayalsof Poland and other eastern European territory. Particularly in-depth investigation into articles and maps written and drawn by Reinhold Niemeyer and Rudolf Hoffmann is also undertaken here. In evaluating the maps published in Raumforschungund Raumordnung (RuR) after Germany’s defeat, this paper focuses on depictions of the new Federal Republic of Germany and the mapping of its relationship, geographically, to the German Democratic Republic. While the content of the maps published in RuR reflected the territorial reality of its German cartographers and authors – from violent expansionism to defeat, territorial diminution and a split into two distinct nation states –, this paper argues that many of the cartographic strategies employed in its pages remained relatively consistent over time.

Resilience through Adaptation: Innovations in Maasai Livelihood Strategies

This article examines strategies adopted by Maasai and other pastoralists in Kenya to adapt to climate change, population growth, land loss, decreasing livestock holdings and land degradation, aimed at achieving greater socio-economic resilience. Using case studies mostly from Narok County and reviewing the increasingly rich literature on pastoralism and conservation in East Africa, we show that pastoralists employ three main strategies to adapt their livelihood systems: intensification (changes in land use systems to increase productivity per hectare); extensification (through territorial expansion into unoccupied areas or territories of neighbouring communities in our cases); and diversification (the combination of pastoralism with other livelihood strategies, mainly farming, conservation, tourism, business and wage jobs, often through migration to small towns or urban centres). Maasai communities have been quick to adopt these strategies, individually or in combination, in order to overcome ecological and socio-economic stress and to pursue opportunities as they arise. Since these strategies are generally compatible with extensive pastoralism, this land use will continue to play a key role in sustaining the livelihoods of people living in semi-arid and arid rangelands. However, when intensification and diversification through the adoption of ranching and farming occur, the rangeland becomes fragmented, with severe impacts on wildlife. In such cases, incentives for sustaining conservation and wildlife tourism will need to increase to compensate land holders for foregoing these more intensive land uses, thus moving towards reconciliation of ecological sustainability and strengthened livelihoods. These findings are illuminated by Gunderson and Holling's (2002) panarchy model and its nested adaptive cycles, where resilience is achieved by providing for change through loosening and reorganising connections between elements in the system.

Conflict Dynamics between Two Neighbours: Looking Beyond Federalism

Ethiopia is a multicultural and multilingual country. The Oromo and Somali communities are found in the same linguistic community, that is, the Cushitic language. Historically, Somalis and Oromo have a long tradition of co-existence and strong socio-cultural interactions, as well as antagonistic relationships and intermittent conflicts. Traditionally, the major sources of conflict between the two communities were competition over scarce resources, territorial expansion, livestock raids and counter raids, kidnapping for marriage purposes and the revenge tradition. However, this time the conflict took a different nature, form and bigger scale causing devastation never seen in the history of communal conflict in the country. The study has utilised primary and secondary data collection and employed narration and content analysis to realise the objective of the paper. The findings of this study reveal that the causes of the Oromo–Somali conflict are complex and dynamic. This urges the need to carry out a deeper investigation beyond the federal arrangement. Thus, fundamental and triggering factors including the involvement of internal and external forces, the collapse of social norms and prevalence of moral anarchism, socio-economic issues, competing interests among public and military officials, poor leadership and governance system, competing interests over resources, aspects of local cultural institutions in regulating inter-ethnic relationships are identified in fuelling ethnic conflict in the studied area. Since the conflict in the region is much more complex than the dominant narrative of resource scarcity and ethnic politicisation, open democratic dialogue, genuine consultation and negotiation at a different level with various interest groups, stakeholders and community representatives, militant groups operating in the area is of paramount importance to ease the increasing ethnic tension and political crisis in order to build sustainable peace in the region.