Beginning in 1840, the acceptance of emancipation among liberals became more general, no doubt, but still remained deeply ambivalent. The chapter uses the example of Baden to show this fact and moves from there to the early stages of the 1848 Revolution, during which pogroms against Jews, first in the French provinces along the border with Germany and then within Germany itself, gradually spread across the country. Once again, the fate of the Jews represented the duality of the overall German situation. Meanwhile, efforts to formulate a new constitution at the Paulskirche did indeed grant full emancipation to the Jews, but soon suffered the fate of the rest of the liberal constitution, with the collapse of the revolution. The Prussian king refused to cooperate with the revolutionaries, but even more important for their final collapse was their own weakness vis-à-vis the forces of reaction and the inner split among them due to their inability to reconcile liberalism, democracy, and nationalism.

This chapter constructs a theory about the origins of inequality. Our model involves a continuum of sites that have differing productivities with respect to food. All sites are initially open, and free mobility of agents across sites tends to equalize the food incomes of the agents. However, an organized group that is large enough relative to the land area of a site can establish property rights over that site and keep other agents from entering. As climate or technology improves, population densities grow, and over time the best sites become closed. This generates insider–outsider inequality, where different groups have different standards of living depending on the productivities of their sites. Eventually insiders at the best sites find it profitable to hire outsiders to work on their land, either by paying them a wage or requiring them to pay land rent. This gives elite–commoner inequality, or stratification. Class positions become hereditary. Technical progress makes commoners worse off in the long run because as regional population rises, more sites are closed. The sites that remain open are the least desirable. These predictions are consistent with archaeological evidence from southwest Asia, Europe, Polynesia, and the Channel Islands of California.

Bagamoyo holds a central place in the history of the 1888 Coastal Rebellion as the site of the most violent and prolonged struggle of the entire episode. Examining events there, I consider two approaches which support spatial identity as an influential force: the organization of the uprising, in which the spatial attachments of the hinterland (Zaramo, Doe, and Kwere) and upcountry (Nyamwezi) peoples to the town play a role in influencing their solidarity with the townspeople; and how a framework that emphasizes the spatial origins of each group of rebels involved in the Bagamoyo uprising distinguishes between the different communities obfuscated by the broader category of Swahili society. Despite the far reaching presence of Swahili culture along the coastline, the Swahili were not simply interchangeable from one town to the next. I also investigate the level of violence used by the Germans along the coast to show how this was contingent on the local particularities of each place. Together these points highlight the need for considering the importance of place for explaining local behavior in the context of a widespread rebellion.

This chapter describes how, over the course of the fourth century, Christians took over the role that was traditionally ascribed to the pagan court philosopher, who was defined (at least in the public imagination) by his freedom of speech, disregard for wealth and social conventions, equanimity, and an uncompromising attitude towards political authority. It discusses biographies and histories from the fourth and fifth centuries AD, which recount the lives and deeds of pagan philosophers and Christian holy men. It also analyses one ceremonial speech delivered by the court philosopher Themistius to Emperor Constantius II, showing that a speech of praise could also be a vehicle for advice and criticism. The chapter focuses on the cultural construction, performance and narrative representation of two varieties of political parrhesia, to wit, ‘bold speech’ and ‘privileged access’, that were relevant to the pagan philosopher and later to the free-speaking bishop who followed in his footsteps.

This chapter studies the letters of Bishop Agobard of Lyon (d. 840), who was dismissed from the court of Louis the Pious in 822, after having delivered what appears to have been an inappropriate speech. It explores the ways in which Agobard adopted different voices of admonition and speaker positions to advise and criticise his emperor. This chapter mainly focusses on Agobard’s letters of admonition addressed to the emperor and his courtiers in the years during which he was shunned by the court. It addresses the question of whether Agobard was really an outsider, or merely styled himself as such in his letters to get his message across more effectively. A second question is the one that has informed every chapter of this book: that of the extent to which these letters can be situated in the framework of the rhetorical tradition of free speech.

This chapter investigates narrative representations of free speech in early Christian martyr acts written between c. 150 and the end of persecution in 313. It discusses both pagan and Christian models that inspired authors of early Christian martyr acts to represent the speech and behaviour of martyrs in a certain manner. One of the issues the authors addressed was how a Christian should behave when he or she stood trial before secular authorities, and what measure of frank speech was appropriate in this situation. Early Christian martyrs are often presented as respectful, polite and reticent towards authorities during interrogation. We also see a clear preference for plain speech over studied rhetoric. The chapter addresses the question of whether new interpretations of parrhesia that we find in these martyrdom narratives should be seen as indicative of a growing reluctance among Christians to criticise those in power, or as part of a process of acculturation.