|
|
|
CONTENTS
|
VOLUME17• NUMBER 2 •
|
JUNE 2006
|
ARTICLES
| Homo sapiens Populates the Earth: A Provisional Synthesis, Privileging Linguistic Evidence |
|
PATRICK MANNING
|
115 |
|
Information on historical linguistics can make a substantial contribution to the understanding of early migrations of Homo sapiens within Africa and throughout the world. This essay summarizes the distribution of language groups around the world and applies basic techniques for analyzing the paths of migration associated with language evolution. The analysis relies on the approach of Joseph H. Greenberg to language classification, but it also reviews the continuing differences among linguists on the classification of languages and calls for more study to resolve those differences. The interpretation distinguishes between an initial human colonization of the tropics along Indian Ocean shores and a later occupation of temperate Eurasia and the Americas.
|
|
|
|
| Royal French Women in the Ottoman Sultans' Harem: The Political Uses of Fabricated Accounts from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-first Century |
|
CHRISTINE ISOM-VERHAAREN
|
159 |
|
The Ottoman sultans' harem has provided fertile ground for the invention of tales that have been incorporated into the historical tradition. The purported presence of royal French women in the harem has been used for political purposes since the sixteenth century. These tales fall into two groups: myths about a fictional fifteenth-century French princess and fantasies concerning Nakshidil, a nineteenth-century valide sultan who some authors claim was a relative of Napoleon's wife Josephine. The earlier myths explained the alliance between the Ottoman sultan and the king of France. Fables about Nakshidil have come to symbolize the oppression of women by Islam.
|
|
|
|
| American Missionaries and the Opium Trade in Nineteenth-Century China |
|
MICHAEL C. LAZICH
|
197 |
|
America's earliest missionaries to China in the mid-nineteenth century played a key role in the formulation of early Sino-American relations. This paper explores the changing influence missionaries had on American policy toward the opium trade as reflected in the provisions of the Treaty of Wangxia (1844) and the American Treaty of Tianjin (1858). As missionary attitudes toward the opium issue shifted in a subtle but significant manner in the years following the Opium War, so too did the official position of the American government as embodied in the provisions of these treaties and supplemental commercial agreements.
|
|
|
|
BOOK REVIEWS
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|