The language of Bangladesh, West Bengal and parts of Tripura and Assam, Bengali is the sixth most spoken language in the world. A member of the Indo-Aryan family, with its origins in Sanskrit, it has over 230 million speakers. Published in 1825, this is the first volume of a revised three-part dictionary of Bengali, compiled by the Baptist missionary William Carey (1761–1834) during his time …
Published in 1812, this study of Malay in its written form was begun during William Marsden's service with the East India Company in Sumatra (1771–9). He continued his textual work in England upon his return, thus putting his practical knowledge into a solid scholarly frame. An expert in Asian languages and an outstanding Malay scholar in the English-speaking world, Marsden (1754–1836) was …
Orientalist and colonial administrator John Crawfurd (1783–1868) published this work in 1856. He went to Calcutta as an assistant surgeon in the East India Company, then moved into administration, accompanying political missions to Java, Bali and Celebes, and heading missions to Siam, Vietnam and Burma. Retiring to England in 1828, Crawfurd became a Fellow of the Royal Society and President o…
Thomas Falkner (1707–84), one-time pupil of both Richard Mead and Isaac Newton, was an English Jesuit missionary who lived for nearly forty years in South America until 1767, when he returned to England following the Jesuits' expulsion from Córdoba. Originally published in 1774 in the hope that it 'might be of some public utility, and might also afford some amusement to the curious', this is…
Sir Robert Hermann Schomburgk (1804–1865) was a German-born surveyor and traveller. In 1835–1839 he explored British Guiana for the Royal Geographical Society. In 1840 he was appointed to define its boundaries with Brazil, as Brazilian encroachments were wiping out native tribes. His report to the Colonial Office was published as A Description of British Guiana, Geographical and Statistical…
Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that the earth belongs to the living. His letter to James Madison is often quoted for the proposition that we should not be bound to the 'dead hand of the past', suggesting that the Constitution should instead be interpreted as a living, breathing document. Less well-known is Madison's response, in which he said the improvements made by the dead - including the U…
Heated debates about Muslim women's veiling practices have regularly attracted the attention of European policymakers over the last decade. The headscarf has been both vehemently contested by national and/or regional governments, political parties and public intellectuals and passionately defended by veil wearing women and their supporters. Systematically applying a comparative perspective, thi…