This chapter introduces the main concepts required to discuss the methods presented in the rest of the book. Using simple algebraic examples containing a small parameter, the crucial difference between regularly and singularly perturbed problems is introduced. It is explained in which sense asymptotic expansions can approximate solutions of equations. Importantly, it is discussed what manipulation can or cannot always be done on these expansions. While regular perturbations are generally amenable to straightforward resolution, this is not so with singularly perturbed problems. The latter almost inevitably leads to the coexistence of slow and fast scales in the solutions being studied, the treatment of which requires the use of the techniques developed in subsequent chapters.

The Macedonian dynasty, wonderfully rooted in murder, having been renewed by violence as a peaceful, orderly, administration, a soldier-emperor is installed: Constantine IX, the main subject of the Chronographia, and its potential stumbling block. To deal with his own self-division towards Constantine, Psellos creates an elaborate structure of genres and disciplines – panegyric and history, rhetoric and philosophy – and conflicting roles for himself, to dramatize an odi et amo in which the comic and the tragic infuse each other in continuously changing ways. The effect is exhilating, shocking, and ingeniously balanced, as Psellos sets the failure of an indirect rule by a philosopher (Kaldellis) and his own moral degeneration against the expansive power of panegyric vested in this emperor. For good artistic reasons, Psellos omits the patriarch Keroularios and his attack on Psellos’ orthodoxy, projecting his own displacement onto a highly fictional portrayal of another character. The reign of Theodora, however, is vitiated by his repressed anger with Keroularios, ranting against his proxies in her government. The two reigns exemplify the work’s uneven quality.

From the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth, the Qing dynasty was the dominant power in East Asia. It waged numerous wars with its neighbours, both within the orbit of its tributary system and without. Coming from Manchuria and with their past tribal war tradition, the Manchus did not have an inherent expansion agenda when they conquered China. Use of force by the Qing dynasty in dealing with frontier crises was often case-specific. The Qing state constantly adjusted and revised its underpinning in justifying its decision to wage war or keep peace on or beyond its borders. In chronological order, this chapter delineates the evolution of Qing China’s normative system. It starts with the Manchus’ formative era in Manchuria, then focuses on the Qing dynasty’s empire-building endeavours and subsequent retreat from frontier activism in the early nineteenth century, and ends with a brief discussion of its last decades, during which the Qing dynasty’s doctrine and practice in managing its international affairs changed radically owing to intensified interactions with Western countries and the introduction of the Western international law.

From the founding of the Constitution, there has been a steady expansion of national power and an erosion of state powers. Notwithstanding the enumeration of its powers, Congress has enacted legislation impacting almost every aspect of American life. The Supreme Court has, with rare exceptions, accommodated the Congress’ intrusions on the powers of the state governments.

This key chapter opens with background assumptions (full employment is not assumed, the financial sector is key, and unemployment is an unnecessary evil) and then starts building a basic macro model based on the injection-leakages approach. It identifies physical investment spending as the key injection and then spends considerable time explaining the determinants of investment and the environment in which relevant decisions are made. This is perhaps the most complex part of the volume, but real-world data are referenced frequently in the hope that this makes the argument easier to follow. About halfway through the chapter, there is a shift in focus toward the financing of investment. This requires a discussion of banking and credit/money creation. The chapter ends with miscellanea regarding investment spending (including some specific observations from Kalecki and Mitchell).

Neoclassical economics – especially macro – is a mess. It has become irrelevant and divorced from the real world. Unfortunately, theory is important because it informs policy. This volume takes an alternate approach, one following the work of earlier Institutionalist and Post Keynesian pioneers.

The chapter opens with a quick review of the preceding theory and an outline of what one should expect to see in the real world if that theory is relevant. Several data points are selected as being the most significant, and the manner in which they fit on average over the entire period is demonstrated. These same data points are then repeated within each cycle as the chapter continues. Ten expansions and recessions are explained, including considerable detail as drawn from contemporary and later accounts. On occasion, there are side trips to related concepts such as shifting income distributions, the dramatic decline in the labor force participation ratio, secular stagnation, and the financialization of the economy.

Economics is ultimately about policy. To this point, the volume has laid out a theory that explains business cycles, inflation, monetary and fiscal policy, and the financial sector, and it has tested its predictions by comparing them to historical events. It has also referenced the major economic and social costs associated with both the business cycle and the general tendency of the economy to come to rest at less than full employment. Fortunately, there exists a policy that can address these: the Job Guarantee. The chapter (vetted by two preeminent scholars in the area: Pavlina Tcherneva and L. Randall Wray) goes into detail on the structure, strengths, weaknesses, and financing of such a program. It concludes that there is no doubt that we are suffering needlessly. Unemployment is an unnecessary evil, and we absolutely can afford to address emerging crises such as elder care, income maldistribution, and global climate change. Indeed, we cannot afford not to.

This chapter portrays the multifaceted connections that shaped narratives of early modern Japanese–European encounters and colonial expansion in Southeast Asia. It achieves this by applying an entangled biography approach to Murakami’s knowledge networks, which integrated contemporary Japanese academia, foreign archives, and historical actors. An in-depth study of two ‘great men’ of the seventeenth century, Yamada Nagamasa and Sebastián Vizcaíno, illustrates the material and historiographical dimensions of myth-making and cultural diplomacy in the early twentieth century. The chapter finally evaluates the extent to which Murakami’s scholarship and his exposure to colonial sources contributed to the meta-narrative of early modern Japanese superiority.

What did it mean to have a national economy? The American Revolution provided the political space and the ideological impetus for institutional changes that over time fundamentally altered American economies. As policymakers developed ad hoc solutions to individual and governmental debt woes, they prompted resistance and counterresistance, and eventually created a national economy. This chapter begins with the economic possibilities and constraints created by the new Constitution in 1788 and what these meant for slavery, productivity, invention, and the development of capitalism. It explores how the expansion of land, slavery, and goods shaped the development of an integrated national economy, while also creating variation in how and for whom economic opportunities and limitations applied. Finally, because the national economy worked differently depending on where one lived, and whether one was male or female, Black, white, or brown, this chapter uses the lives of several individuals to understand its different aspects.

The emerging tribes of LPRIA in southern and eastern Britain had a long history of contact with the Roman world and were heavily influenced by Roman attitudes and actions because Rome saw all her neighbours as within her sphere of influence. Whether or not the British tribes still paid tribute, some of them had been subject to Roman control following the invasion of Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC (DBG V.22). This precedent meant, for the Roman emperors, that the island lay within their legitimate sphere of interest. This interest had already been shown by both Caligula (Suetonius, Caligula 44, 46) and Augustus (Dio 49.28, 2; 53.22, 5; 53.25, 2), who had contemplated and prepared for invasion. Such direct intervention following a long period of indirect contact had precedents, for the general pattern of Rome’s expansion saw her first taking an indirect interest, then a successively more active role before assuming absolute control. In the case of Britain this process was slow, since annexation had been delayed first by the civil wars, next by Augustus’ interests in Germany and elsewhere, then by Tiberius’ static frontier policy and finally by the troubles of Caligula. Notwithstanding this, the question should not be why Claudius invaded Britain, but why it had not happened earlier.

The strategy of the Mongol Empire underwent four basic phases. The first centered on the rise and creation of the Yeke Monggol Ulus (Great Mongol State/Nation) by Chinggis Khan and the Mongols’ irruption from the steppes. The second phase was the formulation of a coherent strategy of conquest during the reign of Ögödei Qa’an. While this was derived from the campaigns of Chinggis Khan, it sought to maximise the deployment of the empire’s military on multiple fronts while simultaneously not overextending the resources of the empire. This further evolved into a third phase during the reign of Möngke Qa’an, who, through a series of reforms, allowed the Mongols to marshal more resources. In doing so, the Mongol strategy altered as they no longer had concerns of overextending themselves. During Möngke’s reign, the Mongols truly became a juggernaut. The final phase of strategy came into formulation with the dissolution of the Mongol Empire after Möngke’s death in late 1259. As the empire split into rival states often embroiled in internecine conflict, each new state had to develop its own coherent strategy, but without the massive resources of a united empire. The Mongols conceived of pragmatic grand strategy that was viable, if not always successful, rather than simply theoretical plans.

This chapter addresses the three earliest constitutional lineages, in the USA, France and Poland. It shows how these constitutional forms were shaped by imperialism and how the intensification of military policies in the eighteenth century defined the patterns of citizenship that they developed. It also shows how, diversely, each constitutions established a polity with militarized features, so that the different between national and imperial rule was often slight. To explain this, it addresses Napoleonic constitutionalism in Fance and the tiered citizenship regimes that characterized the American Republic in the nineteenth century.

This chapter turns again to David Potter, who argued compellingly that American exceptionalism emerged neither from a practical, nonideological political genius nor a prevailing faith in an inherited ideology, but rather from the influence of widespread and enduring economic abundance on the American character. Potter’s People of Plenty argued that the broad availability of abundance became the nation’s single most defining characteristic. Potter’s argument proved especially convincing during the broadly shared prosperity of the post-World War II years. Yet Potter’s explanation never quite accounted for the enduring postbellum poverty of the American South that lingered long enough for President Franklin Roosevelt to label the South the “nation’s no. 1 economic problem” in 1938. Additionally, as the nation’s economic growth slowed significantly and inequality worsened since 1980, there are new reasons to question whether Potter’s argument can remain influential if growing economic inequality and the related class anger persists or worsens.

This chapter explains how international society emerged and was globalised. Its main purpose is to explore how the European sovereign states-system expanded across the globe to become the truly international order of sovereign states that we see today. The first part of the chapter examines how the expansion of the states-system came about and how it has been analysed. The second part provides a critical discussion of how the spread of the states-system has been understood in IR. It aims provoke thinking about the enduring Eurocentrism that continues to bedevil our theorising of international politics.