This chapter briefly surveys the history of research into human settlement in the Caucasus region and outlines the book’s theses. In doing so, it acknowledges the long-standing interest in the unique languages and topography of the Caucasus region. It also surveys Caucasus research before and after the fall of the Soviet Union. It further charts the impact of anthropological genetics on our understanding of human evolutionary history; and introduces the unanswered questions about Caucasus population history.

To litigate or not to litigate, that is the question any Chinese companies operating in the United States long enough must contemplate. For American companies, litigation is nothing but an unavoidable business risk and often a vital competition strategy, routinely dealt with by legal and managerial professionals applying monetarized cost–benefit analysis. Such analysis typically incorporates attorney fees and other litigation expenses, potential reputational damage, time and human resource consumption, and the present value of expected litigation gains or losses. By contrast, litigation in China carries complex social meanings and is often avoided to preserve long-term cooperative relationships or to signal desirable attributes to uninformed third parties. When lawsuits do occur, they are often handled by stakeholders without professional legal assistance. Disputants consider a wide range of material and nonmaterial interests that are shaped by both formal institutions undergoing significant transformation and complex, entrenched social norms governing dispute resolution. Chinese companies immersed in these two disparate institutional environments approach legal disputes in the United States.

This overview of Iceland’s medieval history is divided into three phases: firstly, from settlement in the ninth century to 1096−7, which marks the emergence of the Icelandic Church; secondly, from the appearance of Iceland’s earliest written historical sources to the ceding of independence to Norway in 1262/4; and finally, to the end of the fourteenth century. It shows how Iceland’s marginality to the rest of Europe, its lack of a centralized authority and the blurring of historicity and fiction in its most prominent texts have affected understanding of Icelandic history and problematized its historiography. The chapter begins with discussion of the two primary native sources, Ari Þorgilsson’s Islendingabók (The Book of Icelanders) and Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements), their accounts of settlement and conversion, and the value of archaeology as a source. The second phase details the growth of the church and monasteries as places of learning, and how the church’s increasing power led to clashes with the secular elite, resulting in the chaos and violence of the Sturlungaöld. The final phase concerns Iceland’s loss of independence, economic condition and relations with Norway.

The evolution of population and settlement in the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages has similarities and differences with the rest of Western Europe. The differences arise from the process of territorial expansion and feudal colonization developed by the Christian kingdoms against Al-Andalus. That also determined diverse situations among the Christian kingdoms and regional contrasts within them. This chapter explores the evolution of population between approximately 1000 and 1500. The introduction offers a preliminary reflection on the sources and their possibilities and limits. In the second section, the patterns of population change and migration are discussed. Despite some methodological issues, some population figures and their evolution are offered for each area. This shows an evolution in which the late medieval crisis and, above all, the Black Death had a great impact, although uneven in the different kingdoms and territories. The study of rural and urban settlements is addressed in the third section, relating its characteristics and evolution to the social and economic structure in the different areas. Finally, the fourth section studies the population weight and the characteristics of the following urban socio-professional sectors: workers, artisans and merchants.

The history of Egypt during the first centuries of Islam comes with a striking paradox. While Upper Egypt, from Fusṭāṭ to Aswan, has received much attention due to the numerous papyri from the region, the Delta is rarely attested in these documents. This is most probably linked to the region’s humid soil, which contributed to the progressive degradation of papyri. Indeed, other than a few private letters written in Alexandria, no papyri from this period have been found in the Delta. Despite this, the Delta occupied a central place in the imperial construction of Islam, especially during the Umayyad period (40/661–132/750): it linked the new capital, Fusṭāṭ, to the Mediterranean and its main cities, was the prime locus of Arab settlement from the second/eighth centuries and was a choice transit space to Syria-Palestine and Cyrenaica. Based on narratives by Egyptian Muslim writers and papyrological documents mentioning the Delta, we can sketch the history of the administrative and fiscal management of this space, to follow the process of tribal settlement in relationship with imperial policies and to analyse the latter’s consequences on the social situation in the Delta at the end of the Umayyad period and in the early Abbasid period.

Kom Abou Bellou is located halfway between Cairo and Alexandria, two kilometres west of the current Rosetta branch of the Nile. Despite early interest in the site and its good general state of conservation, it has remained largely ignored. Work undertaken in 2013 at Kom Abou Bellou reassesses our knowledge of the territory. The space, which includes the city, is considered over the long-term chronology to facilitate an analysis of the city and its space from the point of view of its internal organisation, its functions and its relation with its natural, political and socio-economic environment. The site has been occupied from the Old Kingdom until at least the tenth century CE. Diachronic study makes it possible to highlight the phenomena of creation, modification and appropriation of this space, notably the displacement of the settlement according to the periods and the reuse of previously occupied spaces. These transitions provide many examples that allow us to observe changes in the urban system and, more broadly, data on the land use patterns and the perception of space. This chapter aims to present the first reflections on this matter, which will be expanded as the archaeological site and its documentation are studied.

This chapter covers the long story of migration and settlement in the borderlands of Germany and Poland. It explores the difference between migration and settlement, along with modern German history and Polish space, 1772–1871, and Flottwell. The argument for Poland as German colonial space is explored, alongside Max Sering’s early life. It also explores Alsace as borderland, Gustav Schmoller, and the Historical School. It covers Sering’s six month journey throughout North America and his subsequent analysis of homesteading and the settlement of the frontier. Sering’s discovery of the concept of inner colonization, Indigenous, Métis, and Removal vs Assimilation are all discussed.

This chapter sets out the basic structure of the book. Through the intellectual biography of Max Sering we will learn the history of the evolution of Germany’s relationship with Eastern Europe from 1871 to 1945. This chapter shows the connection between Max Sering’s journey to North America in 1883, the settlement he saw there on the western frontier, and how he returned to campaign for the same kind of program on Germany’s eastern frontier. The idea of “emptiness” or “fullness” in the colonial gaze, and the definition of “inner colonization” are explored, as is the historiography that links the American West to the German East. This book uses biography to tell the history of a nation.

The chapter sets out the material conditions and social structure of the hunter-gatherer era, emphasising the role of kinship, mobility, egalitarianism and trade. It sees the material and social structures as relatively stable then looks at the long transition between the hunter-gatherer era and the era of congolmerate, agrarian/pastoralist empires, emphasising climate change as the key to population growth, settlement, technological change, and the shift to agriculture. It notes the shift from biological to social evolution, and the link between settlement and a move away from egalitarian relations. Agriculture reinforces settlement rather than causing it.

The national epic takes very different forms across different cultural and historical contexts. At the beginning of twentieth-century Australian literary history stands the tragic narrative of a failed individual, in Henry Handel Richardson’s trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1917, 1925, 1929). In the mid-twentieth century, large-scale fictional narratives, also in the form of trilogies, were used by some realist writers to write epics of settlement. In the case of Eleanor Dark’s The Timeless Land trilogy (1941–53) the narrative is about the catastrophic contact between Aboriginal people and the invading white settlers, and the subsequent beginning of expansion across the continent. Written at the same period, however, are two trilogies of nation-founding that, like Richardson’s, are centred on later mining history: Katharine Susannah Prichard’s goldfields trilogy (The Roaring Nineties, 1946; Golden Miles, 1948; Winged Seeds, 1950) and Vance Palmer’s overlapping Golconda trilogy, begun at the same time as his national mythography, The Legend of the Nineties (Golconda, 1948; Seedtime, 1957; The Big Fellow, 1959). These trilogies are shaped by the history of mineral extraction in Australian-settler political, environmental and economic history. This chapter analyses the under-recognised meaning of mining in narratives of settlement and nation.

The Prologue gives an overview of historical knowledge about Norse settlements in Greenland. The purpose is to outline the factual backdrop against which we must evaluate the tales and legends about the vanished settlers. A short summary of the history of the settlements preserved in Icelandic sagas is provided. The sagas tell us south-eastern Greenland was settled as a westward relocation of Icelandic farmers, a migration first promoted by Erik the Red. It is of particular interest in this section of the book to unravel why the first colonisation of Greenland came to an end in the fifteenth century. Thus, the major current theories for the demise of the settlements are outlined and the scientific debates are explained and appraised. Although the mystery of when and why the Norse Greenlanders abandoned Greenland has never been conclusively resolved, a number of factors appear to have been important triggers, such as change towards a colder climate. Yet there is today a growing consensus in the scientific community that the Greenlanders’ inability to sell their walrus ivory led to the settlements becoming unsustainable.