Popular sovereignty requires a clearly defined and demarcated people. This chapter argues that the identity of the people in a liberal democracy is continually contested and renegotiated because any definition of the people in such a regime is endogenous to a specific political community which itself is ever-changing. As a result, liberal democracies renegotiate and redefine definitions of the people both formally, through laws governing citizenship, naturalization, and immigration, and informally, through redistributive policies and political rhetoric. This chapter illustrates this process of people-making by considering the claims for inclusion in “We the People” made by DREAMers and related efforts to remake definitions of “We the People” evidenced in the political rhetoric and policies of President Donald Trump.

One key question which arises under the Human Rights Act 1998 is whether there is a constitutional convention of political compliance with declarations of incompatibility. This chapter provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of all the political responses to declarations of incompatibility in the first two decades of the HRA. It concludes that there is significant evidence of a constitutional convention in statu nascendi. Though the convention does not preclude the government and legislature from rejecting a declaration of incompatibility in exceptional and rare circumstances, there is a conventional and normative expectation amongst the key political actors that they are under an obligation to comply with those declarations in the normal run of affairs.

During the Principate, the negotiation of the ruler’s intellectual authority emerged as a key strategy of political self-legitimisation. In the early fourth century, the definition of early Christian thinking as the perfect system of knowledge, which had been developed through dialogue and rivalry with the post-Hellenistic philosophical schools, encouraged the emperor Constantine to mobilise his allegiance to Christianity for competitive self-assertion: he upheld his conversion as an intellectual achievement with no imperial precedent. Modern reluctance to take ancient definitions of Christianity as philosophy at face value has obscured the force of this propagandistic argument. Yet its recovery is essential to understanding Julian’s philosophical response to the positioning of early Christianity as an authoritative system of knowledge and appreciating the strategies of self-legitimisation pursued by fourth-century bishops in conversation with the (Christian) philosopher-ruler. As the question of who holds authoritative knowledge was antagonised by religious disputes, the fourth-century socio-political and ideological transition was channelled into a ‘politics of interpretation’ in which leaders (imperial and episcopal) negotiated their status as intelligent decoders of providential signs scattered throughout literature, history, and the cosmos.

This book argued that the Brazilian antislavery mobilization proved to be a national social movement. The movement chose strategies according to a shifting balance of power, giving to the government´s tolerance or repression, the availability of allies, and the pro-slavery countermovement´s strength. This relational dynamic movement/state/countermovement forced abolitionists to favor successful demonstrations in the public space, field candidates for political institutions, and civil disobedience.Three mechanisms explain the geographical expansion and continuity of Brazilian abolitionism through two decades: the building up of national activism networks, portable activism styles (easily reproducible political performances) and political brokers (the key broker was André Rebouças). Brazilian abolitionists relied on a repertoire of former antislavery movements and adapted it to local political traditions. Givem the formal link between church and State in Brazil, abolitionists used secular rhetoric and theater as propaganda. In this sense, it was more modern than the somewhat religiously embedded Anglo-Saxon abolitionism. This study shows civil society mobilization was not a particular feature of Anglo-American abolitionism. Besides, it demonstrated the placement of national actors in a global network of activism, making a case for including Brazil in the transnational history of abolitionism.

Chapter 8, “South of the Clouds,” moves from the Mongolian steppe to Yunnan, the southwestern kingdom of the Prince of Liang, a Chinggisid noble and Great Yuan supporter. In the mid-thirteenth century, the Mongols conquered Yunnan, a previously independent kingdom (Nanzhao), as part of its broader war against the mighty Song dynasty in China. Mongol governance in Yunnan shaped power sharing among local elites in ways that influenced their response to Daidu’s fall in 1368, the Great Yuan’s diminished power, and the Ming court’s efforts to win recognition. This chapter charts Zhu Yuanzhang’s diplomatic and military offensives in Yunnan with particular attention to his attempts to turn local experience of Mongol rule to his advantage.

Chapter 6, “A Precarious Tale” explores the role of war, military men, and court drama in the early Ming’s rivalry with the Great Yuan. It also addresses the precarious nature of the early Ming court’s Chinggisid narrative. All contemporaries understood that military force was essential for political legitimacy. Field commanders defeated Great Yuan armies, conquered its lands, captured Chinggisid nobles, and seized key political emblems such as seals of state. Thus, military commanders also figured in the story that the early Ming court told of the Great Yuan.The Ming court widely disseminated news of high political theater, for instance the reception of Chinggisid nobles in Nanjing. However, both court drama and military commanders repeatedly disrupted the Ming court’s carefully scripted stories about inescapable Yuan defeat and inevitable Ming triumph. Commanders lost battles. Some were declared traitors. Political theater failed to go according to plan; on occasion it was dramatically undone by senior figures in the Ming court.

Chapter 9, “The Chinggisid Fold,” explores Zhu Yuanzhang’s correspondence with two other groups with deep ties to the Chinggisid imperial enterprise.The first were senior Great Yuan military commanders and Mongol nobles, primarily those based in today’s Liaoning and Jilin provinces to the northeast, the southern Mongolian steppe, and in Gansu and eastern Xinjiang.The second group consists of the Moghul khanate and the Timurid dynasty in Central Asia.Memory of Chinggis Khan and the institutional arrangements of the Mongol empire (including hereditary relations of leadership) were defining elements of both groups. This chapter argues that Zhu Yuanzhang worked hard to win the first group’s allegiance through a combination of military pressure, economic incentives, and argumentation. If he failed to sway the Great Khans and the Prince of Liang, the Ming founder did have some success among this critical group of Chinggisid supporters. Zhu Yuanzhang and his advisors invoked the Mongol empire’s inheritance in communications with the Timurid and Moghul polities. However, the early Ming court’s Chinggisid narrative was not compelling to them.

Chapter 7, “Letters to the Great Khan,” examines correspondences that Zhu Yuanzhang wrote to three successive Great Khans between 1368 and 1388. These missives examine Chinggis’ origins as a humble man of the people chosen by Heaven to unite the steppe and then subjugate much of Eurasia. They praise the glories of Qubilai, who united long-divided Chinese territory and ushered in a sparkling age of prosperity. They also chronicle the collapse of effective Yuan governance, which led to the rise of regional warlords, the spread of human suffering, and the disintegration of moral order. Perhaps most striking is the way Zhu Yuanzhang speaks as one ruler to another in these letters. He spends much time walking the Great Khans through the new reality of the day and their choices for the future. Zhu Yuanzhang’s correspondence did not alter the Great Khans’ views, but it does conform to what we know about the Ming founder’s insistence that people not merely obey his orders but also accept his views.

Chapter 5, “Telling Stories and Selling Rulership,” examines how Zhu Yuanzhang and his ministers created a story of the rise, glory, and irreversible fall of the Chinggisids for audiences at home. Primary audiences included not just educated Chinese men but also Mongols, Turks, Kitans, and Jurchens.Many felt a sense of loyalty to the Great Yuan. The early Ming court’s Chinggisid narrative highlighted such themes as the end of the Chinggisids’ allotted span of rule, Chinese renewal, the physical and political marginality of the post-1368 Yuan court, and the deficiencies of contemporary Chinggisid leadership. Emphasizing the superiority of Ming rulership, such a discursive strategy was intended to persuade contemporary audiences to forsake the Great Yuan and pledge loyalty to the Great Ming. Zhu Yuanzhang and his advisors worked hard to create a version of the past that served the needs of the present.

Moving beyond Ming territory and the Chinggisid world, Chapter 10 looks at how the early Ming court invoked the story of the Mongol empire in its relations with the kingdoms of Koryŏ, Japan, and the Great Việt (Đại Việt or most of the northern part of today’s Vietnam), which today are commonly lumped together as East Asia. The chapter reviews these three kingdoms’ markedly different experiences of the Mongol empire.It argues that the early Ming court tried, with uneven success, to exploit divergent memory of the Mongol empire to pursue pressing contemporary issues of diplomatic recognition, border populations, and coastal security. It also considers how the early Ming court gathered information on events in of Koryŏ, Japan, and the Great Việt, and how, on the basis of such intelligence, it tailored its Chinggisid narrative for different audiences.

This book explores how the world’s most powerful court told the story of history’s greatest empire. It traces how in the late fourteenth century the newly established Ming court (1368–1644) in China crafted a narrative of the fallen Mongol empire. The Ming court used this narrative to advance its military, political, and diplomatic objectives by shaping the perceptions and actions of audiences at home and abroad.