Nineteenth-century Europe Research Articles

Towards the New Paradigm of Existence, Human to Posthuman: Reflections on Subash Chandran’s A Preface to Man.

The term “Posthumanism” is a contemporary theoretical term put forward by researchers with disciplinary backgrounds in philosophy, science and technology and literary studies, for these groups, Posthumanism designates a series of breaks with foundational assumptions of modern Western culture. It claims to offer a new epistemology that is not anthropocentric and therefore not centred in Cartesian dualism. It seeks to undermine the traditional boundaries between the human, the animal, and the technological. The postmodern theorist Ihab Hassan coined the term and offered a seminal definition in an article entitled "Prometheus as Performer: Towards a Posthumanist Culture?". As its name suggests, a defining characteristic of Posthumanism is its rejection of the values held on top by the traditional Western Humanism. In the words of Rosi Braidotti, “From Protagoras’ assertion that it is “the measure of all things”, to Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, the privileging of the human instils a set of “mental, discursive and spiritual values” (13). This notion comes to form the basis for political policies of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. Man is understood as an “intrinsically moral” being, functioning as a kind of vessel for perfect rationality and reason. Armed with these tools, man is capable of a limitless expansion toward his own perfection, and entitled to claim, as his own, whatever objects or others he encounters along the way. This privileging of man as the centre of everything is what Posthumanism aims to attack. Hassan says that posthuman does not mean the literal end of man but the end of an image of man shaped by Descartes, Thomas More and Erasmus. Braidotti in her book The Posthuman outlines that with the rise of ideologies like Fascism and Communism, Humanism started its ascending in the 1960s and 70s. Both these former ideologies represent a significant break from European Humanism: Fascism promoted a “ruthless” departure from the Enlightenment reverence for human reason, while Communism advocated a “communitarian notion of humanist solidarity” (17).

The Man Who Crucified Himself: Readings of a Medical Case in Nineteenth-Century Europe by Maria Böhmer

Reviewed by: The Man Who Crucified Himself: Readings of a Medical Case in Nineteenth-Century Europe by Maria Böhmer Alexandra Bamji Maria Böhmer. The Man Who Crucified Himself: Readings of a Medical Case in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Clio Medica, vol. 97. Leiden: Brill, 2019. 313 pp. Ill. (978-90-04-35359-6). One morning in Venice in July 1805, a shoemaker was found hanging out of the window of his room, nailed to a wooden cross. Mattio Lovat was taken down by passersby and admitted to a hospital. He died a year later in a mental asylum. This book traces how Lovat's story became a widely cited case history in nineteenth-century Europe through close analyses of texts referring to Lovat that were published in Italian, French, German, and English. The publications and publication strategy of Cesare Ruggieri, a surgeon who treated Lovat, were central to the diffusion of the case. Ruggieri's narrative first appeared in Italian in 1806 as a twelve-page illustrated text within a compilation. An expanded French edition was published in the same year as a stand-alone text, a German translation in 1807, and another Italian edition in 1814. These narratives discussed Lovat's behavior before and after the events of July 1805, including his self-castration in 1802, another attempted self-crucifixion in 1803, and his refusal of food and "excessive" sunbathing while in the mental asylum of San Servolo. [End Page 527] In evaluating these texts, Böhmer explores connections with the tradition of observationes, arguing that observation was a cognitive endeavor for Ruggieri. The author then uses Stanley Fish's concept of "interpretative communities" to frame her analysis of various professional and popular readings of the case. Although she explicitly seeks to complicate national contexts as an analytical category (p. 19), the emphases of these readings varied in different geographical contexts. Böhmer finds that religious interpretations were prominent in German texts, connected to contemporary concerns with Schwärmerei or religious enthusiasts. These narratives explored whether Lovat was a false prophet in seeking to imitate Christ or the evangelist Matthew and used the case to promote an enlightened and rational understanding of religion. In France, the case contributed to developments in psychiatry, and the aliénistes used Lovat's case as an example of religious madness as they sought to classify mental disorders. In England, Lovat's case became embedded in popular discourse as an example in collections of eccentric lives. In Italy itself, Lovat's case was rarely discussed in the nineteenth century, but became established as a "famous suicide case" (p. 204) due to its inclusion in Alfredo Comandini's encyclopedia of Italian national history, published between 1907 and 1942. The book is clearly written and grounded in relevant scholarship throughout. Although largely a study of the trajectory of a single case history, it includes details of other intriguing cases, such as one published by the same surgeon about the genital ulcers of two sisters who allowed a poodle to lick them for sexual satisfaction. There are useful insights into the membership of medical societies and the role of the presentation and publication of case histories in their activity. The book's analysis of the categorization of religious madness in France is particularly rich and produces an argument of broader importance: that "once an interpretative community is influential enough and has established a certain reading of the case, this interpretation remains relatively stable and unquestioned" (p. 185). The scrutiny of the German translation is also fascinating. Julius Heinrich Gottlieb Schlegel, the translator, added footnotes at points in Ruggieri's narrative which spoke to his own interests, connecting Lovat to case histories on which he had published. As Böhmer explains, Schlegel used his translation and commentary both to "engage scientifically with Ruggieri" and "to display his specialist knowledge and expertise" (p. 110). All the same, while Böhmer engages with debates about publication and the professionalization of medicine, I would have liked more critical reflection on the idea of professionalism. There might also have been scope for more discussion of the implications of the author's analysis of Ruggieri's illustrations and their subsequent reproduction for...

Contexts of Reception: The Lotus Sūtra in Nineteenth-Century Europe and What They Overlooked

Buddhism arrived in the West as a topic of scholarly investigation, colonial occupation, missionary conquest, and popular fascination in nineteenth-century Europe. The Lotus Sūtra, now as then the most widely read and recited sutra in Southeast Asian Buddhism, was unheard of in the West until translated into French by Eugène Burnouf in 1837–1841. Not until 1884 did a second European-language translation appear, this time into English by Hendrik Kern. This paper analyzes the early reception of the Lotus Sūtra in the West in two stages: from Burnouf's translation up to the 1880s and then from Kern's translation into the twentieth century. In what ways and for what contextual reasons did Burnouf's responses to the Lotus Sūtra shape the subsequent reception of it in the West, to this day? How did a range of discourses characteristic of mid-nineteenth-century Europe come to privilege the Pali canon over the Sanskrit canon and therefore Theravada over Mahāyāna? How did the responses of Christian missionaries in East Asia to the Lotus Sūtra following Kern's translation in part reverse the critical Western response to one in which Buddhism came to be seen as potentially compatible with Christianity? Crucially, what features of the Lotus Sūtra did these responses fail to recognize and why? How has cultural context determined the historical series of receptions of the Lotus Sūtra, and how has this text absorbed and transformed its own history of receptions?

Separatism and Unionism in Nineteenth-Century Europe and America

Separatism and Unionism in Nineteenth-Century Europe and America

The Language of Distance: Itinerary Measures in Europe, before and after the Coming of the Railways. With Special Reference to the Distance-Hour (Wegstunde, uur gaans)

The introduction of the kilometer in nineteenth-century Europe, within a context of broader processes of standardization and capitalism and the proliferation of maps and railways, has been associated with the disembodiment, deindividuation and decontextualization of travel. This article offers a critique of this notion by examining the various meanings different units of distance had for travelers; to what extent these units were related to the body and the physical activity of travel; and whether these relations changed between the 1770s and 1910s. Focusing on texts of instruction and texts about travelers' own journeys, written in the Dutch, German, English and French languages, the article argues that a number of more embodied ways of describing distances survived alongside more standardized measures.

Editorial.

Editorial Ruth Oldenziel The production of this issue coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic unfolding across the globe. The health crisis has focused our minds on what we as scholars could thankfully still do from home in an ICT-rich environment, while others could not. Front-line personnel in healthcare, along with warehouse, food-processing, and delivery employees made it possible for us to work in the safety of our homes: networking with and facilitating a global network of scholars. Crises like Covid-19 bring into focus what is usually hidden from view. The technological history of flawed utopias— futures where innovations like information age technologies promised to be the answer to all social ills—should remind us that any kind of innovation has unequal benefits. Airplanes making the world accessible for elites carry the virus; the Internet’s ability to share information in the widest possible fashion has been the conveyer belt of conspiracy theories, as well as the favorite tool of autocratic regimes to quell dissent. Technology is thus a two-edged sword. This issue comes to you at a time when the topic of racial inequality is occupying center stage in the public debate, as historic numbers of protesters take to the streets, beginning in the United States after the murder of George Floyd. The debate and the protests are now global: what does racial inequality mean in the context of colonial legacies? Technology is part of that story. In the United States, militarized police forces armed with assault weapons and ICT-technologies like body cameras enforce but bear witness to police brutality in new ways. Space technologies like remote sensing, GIS, and GPS paired with smartphones help farmers in India and the Sahel increase their crop yields, but governments also use these tools to kill their enemies with unprecedented precision. In nineteenth-century Europe, trains crossed borders, carried food, and helped emigrants escape pogroms and persecution; the reverse was also true: the train system became a cog in the killing machines of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Technologies can be tools to both maintain and undermine inequalities as social movements use them in unintended ways. Technology, though, is not just politics by other means, as scholars of technopolitics like Gabrielle Hecht, [End Page ix] Paul Edwards, and Anique Hommels argue. Technologies and political practices produce new forms of power and agency that shape a world of inequality in ways that are hard to “un-make.” As historians of technology, we are in a position to offer the much-needed reflection, context, and longterm perspectives on our contemporary challenges. As incoming editor, I extend an invitation to continue this debate within the journal’s pages. Finally, this issue also has been produced at a time of transition in editorial leadership. We are grateful for Suzanne Moon and her team’s excellent work over the past decade. After sixty years, the journal is still standing on the broad shoulders of Mel Kranzberg, whose expansive vision continues to inspire and whose large shoes subsequent editors have sought to fill. Moon has succeeded in broadening the journal’s geographical coverage, in creating a nurturing environment for emerging scholarship, and in devoting attention to early career scholars has generated a wealth of research articles. Under her guidance, T&C has doubled in size in terms of sheer scholarship production. In the early days, the journal averaged twenty-five research articles a year, while today T&C publishes close to fifty—a rich harvest indeed. Moon also took the lead in creating Technology’s Stories—the site that makes technology scholarship in a range of formats available to all without a paywall. We are indebted to her achievement in making the journal a place where scholars find a welcoming home for their scholarly work. Under her guidance, the journal represents a vibrant community of scholars with an ever expanding range of knowledge. It falls to us to protect what is precious about the journal, while looking forward as our publishing environment alters rapidly and requires new responses. One area demanding our attention is nurturing our community of readers. Reading habits are changing for several reasons. The exploding volume of scholarly work poses...

Napoleon – wojenne refleksje ze Świętej Heleny według relacji Emmanuela hrabiego de Las Cases

Celem artykułu jest przyjrzenie się ostatniemu etapowi życia Napoleona – pobytowi, wygnaniu na Wyspie Świętej Heleny. Szczególnie istotne są zapiski dotyczące prowadzonych przez Napoleona wojen i ich ocena z perspektywy czasu, a także miejsca i pozycji, w jakich się znalazł. W wyjątkowy sposób chciałem przyjrzeć się Memoriałowi ze Świętej Heleny Emmanuela hrabiego de Las Cases, który różni się od innych pamiętników napisanych przez tzw. ewangelistów ze Świętej Heleny, łączy bowiem charakter pamiętnika z dziennikiem. Był on też ogromnym sukcesem wydawniczym w dziewiętnastowiecznej Europie. Czytając go, mamy wrażenie, że przemawia sam Napoleon, a przez to zastanawiamy się jakby bezpośrednio nad refleksjami pokonanego i upokorzonego monarchy wygnanego na środek Oceanu Atlantyckiego przez rząd brytyjski, który jednak próbuje przekazać swoje przesłanie na kontynent europejski, kreując swój obraz. W zestawieniu z licznymi źródłami rysuje się niezwykle interesujący obraz postrzegania wojny – jej celów, skutków i przyczyn przez jedną z najwybitniejszych postaci w dziejach świata, jaką niewątpliwie był Napoleon.

Notas ecocríticas sobre A Dríade e outros contos arbóreos de Andersen

O ensaio apresenta o conto Dryaden / The Dryad de H. C. Andersen junto com referências a outros contos de fadas andersenianos, onde uma árvore tem um papel central dentro da narrativa. A partir de uma abordagem ecocrítica destaca-se a postura crítica do conto em relação ao triunfo da modernidade na Europa do século XIX.

Resource Wars in Transformation: The Cycle of Climate Change and Its Implications in the Twenty-First Century

Resource wars is in transformation. Or rather, has transformed. The rising conflicts over resources among competing groups has bedevilled world peace, thus making several interest groups, internationally and locally, to look into causations for resource wars. Resource wars is not new to us, it has a long history, as far back as the wandering band era. Then, people fought over resources to survive, even in the midst of plenteous agricultural forests and endless lakes. Further, the act of fighting over resources was anchored on survival of the fittest and the shift from communal living, and later in nineteenth century Europe, a show of supremacy and imperial power, a period of continental anarchy. However, this has changed dramatically. With the presence of a sophisticated global peacekeeping body, the United Nations, and other networks of similar organizations, resource wars has grown worst. It is in this situation that this study examines resource wars in the international system. It argues climate change and global warming has transformed wars over resources. It concluded that the shape and terrain in which humans relates with the environment and its effects afterwards will determine the core foreign-policy challenge in the coming years in this twenty-first century.

The Impact of Christianity and Cultural Traditions of Ao-Naga Tribe in Nagaland

The rise of ‘colonial modernity’ in the beginning of the 19th century initiated the process of change and transformation of the many traditions of northeast India. The ‘colonial modernity’ has been traditionally seen as an ideology in late nineteenth century Europeans institutionalized colonial domination in the name of missionary education, medical facilities, establishing infrastructure facilities etc,. for the colonial countries. They advocated ‘colonial modernity’ as a way of promoting good government. However, the concept of ‘modernity’ has been resisted and questioned in multiple forms by the local communities. In this context this paper is an attempt to assess the impact of Christianity on the cultural past of the Ao-Naga tribe of Nagaland. It can be argued that various socio-cultural traditions of the Ao-Nagas have been changed due to intervention of Christian Missionaries in Nagaland.

Agglomerate: Giving Value to Non-merchantable Coals in Nineteenth-century Europe

Valoriser les dechets, les commercialiser a toujours ete une preoccupation d’importance pour les entreprises minieres, et notamment les houilleres. Au milieu du XIXe siecle, dans l’ensemble de l’Europe occidentale, mais plus particulierement en France, une tendance lourde affecte les differentes exploitations qui tentent de mettre au point et d’utiliser des procedes qui permettent l’agglomeration des charbons de petits calibres, afin de pouvoir les ecouler aupres des compagnies de chemins de fer et de navigation. Le bassin stephanois et avec lui les exploitations du Centre et du Midi de la France s’engagent avec ardeur dans cette voie pour en faire une specialite remuneratrice. En definitive, une nouvelle coordination de l’activite productive doit s’imposer, qui repose sur une mecanisation precoce, intense, faisant apparaitre un contraste evident avec les travaux souterrains ou le pic domine toujours.

Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, by Hayden White

Abstract Hayden White’s 1973 Metahistory tossed the entire concept of historical science out the window, claiming that historians are fundamentally artists who imbue historical action with aesthetic and ethical purpose. The book urged historians to grapple with whether and how their writing creates rather than reflects reality. It also celebrated the ethics and art of history-writing and diminished historians’ empirical claims. There were two receptions of White’s work: the first, amply documented, was among intellectual historians and others in humanities’ disciplines, especially literary theory; the second took place within the mainstream of the discipline and has received little attention. This essay assesses how mainstream historians’ reception of Metahistory unfolded from the 1970s, and with what consequences. Historians focused on White’s purported conflation of language and reality and neglected his argument about how and why historians resist theory. In so doing, he demonstrated—and the reception of his work demonstrates in turn—that historians most effectively resist theory when they seem most to engage it.

RichardTogmanNationalizing Sex: Fertility, Fear, and PowerOxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 285 p.

This volume contains an interpretive synopsis of the population policies of national governments from the seventeenth century to the present. Separate chapters describe population policy in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe, nineteenth century Europe, Europe during the first half of the twentieth century, the developing world in the period between 1945 and 1980, the developing world in the period 1980 to the present, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the post-WWII period, and finally Europe and North America from 1980 to the present. The broad historical and geographic sweep sets this volume apart from most other past reviews of the population policies of nation states. The author selects five countries for extended treatment as case studies, each one considered in multiple historical periods (i.e. multiple chapters): China, France, Germany, India, and Russia. To provide a framework for evaluating population policies, the author identifies five “natalist discourses”: mercantilist, Malthusian, modernization, neo-mercantilist, and laissez-faire. These discourses range from strongly pro-natalist (mercantilist) to strongly anti-natalist (Malthusian). The author concludes that population policies typically are ineffective (and therefore wasteful), for the simple reason that reproductive age women and men resist the programs that implement the policies. This applies equally to, for example, the anti-natalist efforts in developing countries in the post-WWII decades and the pro-natalist efforts of European countries in recent decades. (The author does not cite prominent empirical evidence on the demographic impact of population policies and programs, including evidence published in this journal.) Exceptions to this generalization are the few instances of coercive programs instituted by strong states, most notably China's One Child Policy. The author wrestles with the puzzle of why ineffective population policies have been pursued in so many times and places. His explanation is that attachment to one or more of the “natalist discourses” has led to the mistaken belief that altering population growth rates will facilitate the attainment of political power and/or economic growth. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

Memórias póstumas da loucura mulata: as apropriações de Machado de Assis sob o corte patológico

Studies to identify possible relations between artistic creation and psychopathology (starting in nineteenth-century Europe) have influenced Brazilian thought on this topic. The objective of this article, from the perspective of the history of health sciences, is to analyze viewpoints throughout the twentieth century which considered the neurological and psychiatric diseases of Machado de Assis as fundamental to the development and content of his literary work. A theoretical and methodological reading based on Bakhtin found that many authors considered Machado de Assis's epilepsy to be the main reason behind his creativity, which allowed a review of the appropriation of different psychiatric theories in Brazil, as well as various theoretical concepts.

The Coming of the Celts, AD 1860: Celtic Nationalism in Ireland and Wales , by Caoimh�n De Barra (review)

The Coming of the Celts, AD 1860: Celtic Nationalism in Ireland and Wales, Caoimhín De Barra (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018), 372 pages. Caoimhín De Barra’s The Coming of the Celts is a well-considered examination of the often-ambivalent relationship between the respective promoters of Welsh and Irish language, literature and culture in the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. De Barra, a member of the History Faculty at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, sees the language movements in Wales and Ireland both as part of the general development of romantic bourgeois nationalism that flourished among smaller, or divided, nationalities in nineteenth-century Europe and also as an often-failed attempt to discover political and cultural commonalities between the two countries, and the other Celtic nations, commonalities that sometimes simply didn’t exist. There were two significant fault lines separating the Welsh and Irish language movements. The first was mutual unintelligibility between speakers of the two major divisions among the six modern Celtic languages, the Goidelic languages (Irish and Scottish Gaelic, descended from a high Medieval form of Irish – two languages that are mutually understandable) and the Brittonic languages (Welsh and Breton, descended from a Celtic language spoken in Wales and West Britain in late antiquity – languages that are unintelligible both to speakers of the Goidelic languages and to speakers of the two major Brittonic tongues). Two other Celtic languages, Cornish (a Brittonic language) and Manx (a Goidelic language), died out, primarily in the eighteenth century (with remnants of Manx surviving until a few generations ago), but these languages recently have been revived as sometimes precocious hobby-languages by scholars and enthusiasts, through the examination of historic texts. While older ‘Irish’ and ‘Welsh’ thus are the primary historic progenitors of their respective modern language groups, these two languages developed mostly in isolation from one another and thus proved poor vehicles for a unified ‘Celtic’ consciousness and collective cultural/political programmes. Such programmes preoccupied a relatively small number of Pan-Celtic supporters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but their goals usually were hazy and unrealisable – the product of collective undefined goodwill as much as anything. Also, five of the six modern Celtic nations had Studies • volume 108 • number 431 360 Autumn 2019: Book Reviews Studies_layout_AUTUMN-2019.indd 128 21/08/2019 09:14 English as a well-established first language by the period in question, which tended to isolate the Bretons, who often were among the more enthusiastic of the Pan-Celts. Finally, while the later Gaelic League in Ireland had a political and cultural programme that was decidedly Modernist and forwardlooking , attempting to update the Irish language in contemporary settings, the Scottish, Welsh and Breton Pan-Celts too often (to the Irish, at least) seemed preoccupied with a ‘Golden’ past and too concerned with externals like Druidical ceremonies and national costumes. A second point of division, one repeatedly alluded to by De Barra but never considered in sufficient depth, was religious. Welsh speakers during the time in question were largely evangelical Calvinistic Methodist dissenters, extremely suspicious of Roman Catholicism, while members of the Irish language movement were mostly (at least cultural) Catholics. This religious division led to suspicion and a certain cultural revulsion between the two groups, more often coming from the Welsh than the Irish side of things, which sometimes proved a difficulty in efforts at mutual programmatic development. Both ‘primordial’ languages, however, survived periods of significant religious change in the twentieth century, with the Welsh national conversion from Protestant evangelicalism to the increasingly secular socialism of the Labour Party; and the general Irish detachment from Catholicism after the clerical sexual-abuse crisis of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The development of the nationalist impulse in each of the four major Celtic nations during the last half of the nineteenthcentury went hand-in-hand with a movement toward pan-Celtic appreciation, if not unity, perhaps inspired by the example of Italian and German unification. This impulse, while recurring and popular on the surface, ultimately was a failure. While there might have been distant linguistic connections between the two primary Celtic-language groups somewhere on the continent...

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Shahrazād in transatlantic journeys: Moorish dancing entertainers beyond borders (1850–1912)

The routes of travel started from the margins of the empire towards metropolitan centres of nineteenth-century Europe and America included Moroccan women travellers as acrobats and dancing professional artists. They crossed the straits of Gibraltar and journeyed through the Atlantic to visit western countries. Moroccan women travellers took part in various Euro-American theatre performances and in circus shows as early as 1850 according to newspapers archives and passengers shipping lists. These Shahrazāds, whose names are now lost to us, moved freely in various western capital cities to entertain nineteenth-century western audiences. This article attempts to reexamine the forgotten experiences and itineraries of Moroccan non-canonical voices beyond borders. Their routes and experiences of travel have been decisive in the shaping of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean systems and in turning them into an intriguing space of social interactions and cultural connections. Curiously, nothing is left in the accounts of history about their itineraries, experiences and stories in western lands except for a few scattered indications in newspaper archives and in magazines. The contesting beginnings of Moroccan professional entertainers in western show business in the nineteenth century witnessed intricate artistic, discursive and cultural junctures. I argue that Moroccan professional performances evolved in Europe and in America within a complex context marked by the rise of a racial consciousness that sought to authenticate ethnic discourses of power and exclusion. The ethnic taxonomies and hierarchies governed by ethnographic and anthropological documentation fuelled up entertainment venues and popular theatrical performances and helped in developing a distinctive view about Self and Other paradigms.

The construction and deconstruction of national myths. A study of the transformation of Finnish history textbook narratives after World War II

ABSTRACTHistorical myths were essential tools of nation-building in nineteenth century Europe, including Finland. ‘Myths’ are vernacularly and trans-generationally fostered narratives of the past. A myth is born, when a community embraces a narrative as an integral element of its collective memory. In the Finnish case of nation-building, the core of collective memory consisted of the myths of a primordial ethnic home, the destiny of a nation-state, resilient people, a free peasantry and military valour. The longevity of myths is challenged by changes in politics and historiography. In Europe, the deconstruction of national myths took place after the Second World War, when nationalism lost its relevance to the communities and historians urged an objective and multiperspective approach to the past. De-ideologization and multiperspectivity were equally expected from school textbooks. The article ends up questioning the feasibility of the nation-state as the framework of presenting history.

Alternative sources of data for alternative histories of standardisation

What almost all accounts of standardisation histories have in common is a focus on printed, formal or literary texts from writing elites. While Haugen identified the written form of a language as “a significant and probably crucial requirement for a standard language” (Haugen in Am Anthropol 68:922–935, 1966a; Haugen, in: Bright (ed) Sociolinguistics, The Hague: Mouton, 1966b: 929; cf. also Haugen, in: Asher (ed) The encyclopedia of language and linguistics, Pergamon, Oxford, 1994: 4340), and while print certainly constitutes an important instrument for the dissemination of codified norms, it remains to be established what role hand-written texts played in standardisation processes. In nineteenth-century Europe, mass-literacy, which is generally seen as a precondition of standardisation processes, was only possible because large parts (or even the majority) of the population learnt to write (and read) hand-written texts. In the vast volume of private texts that were produced during the various wars and emigration waves of the nineteenth century, not only codified norms, but also (regional) norms of usage were widely transmitted. Private letters and diaries, in particular, have proved to be a valuable text source for the investigation of such norms and their diffusion (cf. Elspaß, in: Hernández-Campoy, Conde-Silvestre (eds) The handbook of historical sociolinguistics. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, 2012). With examples from a corpus of German emigrant letters, the present contribution will try to demonstrate that grammatical norms of usage which were literally not visible in printed texts at the time, but which are now considered standard, formed part of the standardisation process of German.

Regarding the Research and Translations of Buddhist Scripture by Nineteenth Century European Religious Studies Scholars: Using Max Müller as an Example

Regarding the Research and Translations of Buddhist Scripture by Nineteenth Century European Religious Studies Scholars: Using Max Müller as an Example