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Jewish settlement on the Radziwiłł estates in Lithuania grew rapidly from the end of the seventeenth century. The Great Northern War of 1702-1720 did not hit Jewish settlement particularly seriously and may even have encouraged its growth in the period of reconstruction. By 1764, the Jewish population on the family’s Lithuanian estates had reached some 20,000—almost 10 percent of the total Jewish population in the Grand Duchy. The dominant form of Jewish settlement was communities in the small agricultural towns, where they made up a large proportion of the population. Finally, by examining the Radziwiłłs’ legislation on the issue of Jewish settlement and comparing Radiziwiłł-run estates with others not administered by the family, it becomes evident that Jewish settlement grew and developed as a direct consequence of a conscious policy adopted by the Radziwiłłs and their administration.

This chapter explores the narrative function of the debates and correspondence associated with provincial governance around a particular problem: refugees. During the second half of the 19^th century, more than a hundred thousand refugees came to Ottoman Bulgaria because of Russian expansion to the Caucasus. A great majority of these refugees were Circassians. This wave was contemporaneous with other demographic movements: over ten thousand Bulgarian Christians who had left for Russia as part of a population exchange between Ottomans and Russians returned back and had to be re-settled, several thousand Muslim families left a recently independent Serbia for Ottoman Empire. The refugees came at a point of economic growth in Ottoman Bulgaria and many were settled in the Vidin County. By examining how the local agents problematised the refugee settlement process in provincial correspondence, this chapter analyses the parallels between provincial politics and the imperial transformation into a liberal-capitalist social formation, where a presumably autonomous market order determined the limits of governance. This perspective is essential in looking at the empire from the provincial level and challenges the presumed path of reforms as unidirectional from the imperial centre to the provinces.

This chapter describes how self-defense became a main concern for Jewish villages in the 1930s. Responding to the increasing outbreaks of conflict and growing competition with the country's Arabs, planners gave unanticipated preference to the kibbutz as the instrument for expanding settlement. For approximately twenty years, from the mid-1930s through the early 1950s, the kibbutz was the spearhead of Zionist settlement policy. After the establishment of the state when an army was available to defend borders, the moshav displaced the kibbutz, again becoming the preferred model. Thus, the colony of 100 families was shaped not only by religion, ideology, and economics but, eventually, also by compelling strategic and political considerations that evolved from the growing conflict with Palestine's Arab population.

This chapter introduces the book Australian Public Policy: Progressive Ideas in the Neoliberal Ascendancy. The chapter examines questions of the status of neoliberalism and social democracy in Australian politics and public policy, recent changes to the Australian policy settlement, and related issues of pragmatism, inertia and process in Australian politics and policy development. Trends and problems in major policy areas – education, economics, cultural and indigenous, social welfare, population, cities, housing and the environment – are examined highlighting the limits of mainstream approaches and the need for more creative and inclusive public and civic responses. Questions of the fragility of the Australian identity and the need for greater cohesion around core social and public values are addressed as issues at the centre of debate about a new progressive policy agenda. While the resilience of Australian society is noted, questions linger about how robust Australian institutions and conventions are in the face of new economic, social and environmental challenges.

This chapter examines the politics of American expansion into the Southwest, focusing on how some racist politicians promoted manifest destiny while others opposed expansion. The chapter first takes a look at Mexico's land policy and its attempt to design its settlement policies in a way that copied the United States. It shows how Mexico struggled to assert national authority over its states and territories, promoting a federated structure that empowered the states to control their own land policies. Many of those territories, in turn, committed themselves to land policies that were at odds with those of the central government. The chapter proceeds by discussing U.S. efforts to acquire territory from Latin America, including Cuba and the Dominican Republic, before concluding with an analysis of the politics of the battle to incorporate New Mexico Territory as a state.