Since the 5th century BCE Persia has played a significant part in representing the "Other" against which European identity has been constructed. What makes the case of Persia unique in this process of identity formation is the ambivalent attitude that Europe has shown in its imaginary about Persia. Persia is arguably the nation of "the Orient" most referred to in Early Modern European writings, frequently mentioned in various discourses of the Enlightenment including theology, literature, and political theory. What was the appeal of Persia to such a diverse intellectual population in Enlightenment Europe? How did intellectuals engage with the 'facts' about Persia? In what ways did utilizing Persia contribute to the development of modern European identities? In this volume, an international group of scholars with diverse academic backgrounds has tackled these and other questions related to the Enlightenment's engagement with Persia. In doing so, Persia and the Enlightenment questions reductionist assessments of Modern Europe's encounter with the Middle East, where a complex engagement is simplified to a confrontation between liberalism and Islam, or an exaggerated Orientalism. By carefully studying Persia in the Enlightenment narratives, this volume throws new light on the complexity of intercultural encounters and their impact on the shaping of collective identities.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book is a fascinating new examination of one of the most feared and efficient secret services the world has ever known, the Stasi.

The East German Stasi was a jewel among the communist secret services, the most trusted by its Russian mother organization the KGB, and even more efficient. In its attempt at total coverage of civil society, the Ministry for State Security came close to realizing the totalitarian ideal of a political police force. Based on research in archival files unlocked just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and available to few German and Western readers, this volume details the Communist Party s attempt to control all aspects of East German civil society, and sets out what is known of the regime s support for international terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s.

STASI will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, German politics and international relations."

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Unlike many existing books on toxicology that cover either toxicity of a particular substance or toxicity of chemicals on particular organ systems, Toxicological Risk Assessment of Chemicals: A Practical Guide lays out the principle activities of conducting a toxicological risk assessment, including international approaches and methods for the risk assessment of chemical substances. It illustrates each step in the process: hazard identification, a dose response assessment, and exposure assessment. The book also summarizes the basic concepts of interaction of chemicals in mixtures and discusses various approaches to testing such mixtures. Features: Addresses standards from all international regulatory agencies Presents the steps in risk assessment, including hazard identification, exposure assessment, and risk characterization Covers the assessment of multiple chemical exposures or chemical mixtures Contains data from both human and animal studies Explains the linearized multi-stage mathematical model widely used by the US EPA for characterizing

This book is a fascinating new examination of one of the most feared and efficient secret services the world has ever known, the Stasi.

The East German Stasi was a jewel among the communist secret services, the most trusted by its Russian mother organization the KGB, and even more efficient. In its attempt at a ~total coveragea (TM) of civil society, the Ministry for State Security came close to realizing the totalitarian ideal of a political police force. Based on research in archival files unlocked just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and available to few German and Western readers, this volume details the Communist Partya (TM)s attempt to control all aspects of East German civil society, and sets out what is known of the regimea (TM)s support for international terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s.

STASI will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, German politics and international relations.

The concept of heresy is deeply rooted in Christian European culture. The palpable increase in incidences of heresy in the Middle Ages may be said to directly relate to the Christianity's attempts to define orthodoxy and establish conformity at its centre, resulting in the sometimes forceful elimination of Christian sects. In the transition from medieval to early modern times, however, the perception of heresy underwent a profound transformation, ultimately leading to its decriminalization and the emergence of a pluralistic religious outlook. The essays in this volume offer readers a unique insight into this little-understood cultural shift. Half of the chapters investigate the manner in which the church and its attendant civil authorities defined and proscribed heresy, whilst the other half focus on the means by which early modern writers sought to supersede such definition and proscription. The result of these investigations is a multifaceted historical account of the construction and serial reconstruction of one of the key categories of European theological, juristic and political thought. The contributors explore the role of nationalism and linguistic identity in constructions of heresy, its analogies with treason and madness, the role of class and status in the responses to heresy. In doing so they provide fascinating insights into the roots of the historicization of heresy and the role of this historicization in the emergence of religious pluralism.

This is the first book to bring together studies of a wide variety of millenarians who were active in the 17th and 18th centuries in France, The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and eastern Europe. It provides much food for thought for students and teachers of early modern ideas, the history of philosophy and religion, and the making of the modern world. It opens up many avenues for further work.

The essays in this volume portray the debates concerning freedom of speech in eighteenth-century France and Britain as well as in Austria, Denmark, Russia, and Spain and its American territories. Representing the views of both moderate and radical eighteenth-century thinkers, these essays by eminent scholars discover that twenty-fi rst-century controversies regarding the extent of permissible speech have their origins in the eighteenth century. The economic integration of Europe and its offshoots over the past three centuries into a distinctive cultural product, the West, has given rise to a triumphant Enlightenment narrative of universalism and tolerance that masks these divisions and the disparate national contributions to freedom of speech and other liberal rights.

"Beyond the Persecuting Society" constructs a history of toleration from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century. There is a myth--easily shattered--that Western societies since the Enlightenment have been dedicated to the ideal of protecting the differences between individuals and groups, and another--too readily accepted--that before the rise of secularism in the modern period, intolerance and persecution held sway throughout Europe. In "Beyond the Persecuting Society" John Christian Laursen, Cary J. Nederman, and nine other scholars dismantle this second generalization. If intolerance and religious persecution have been at the root of some of the greatest suffering in human history, it is nevertheless the case that toleration was practiced and theorized in medieval and early modern Europe on a scale few have realized: Christians and Jews, the English, French, Germans, Dutch, Swiss, Italians, and Spanish had their proponents of and experiments with tolerance well before John Locke penned his famous Letter Concerning Toleration. Moving from Abelard to Aphra Behn, from the apology for the gentiles of the fourteenth-century Talmudic scholar, Menahem ben Solomon Ha-MeIiri, to the rejection of intolerance in the "New Israel" of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Beyond the Persecuting Society offers a detailed and decisive correction to a vision of the past as any less complex in its embrace and abhorrence of diversity than the present. In addition to the editors, contributors are Detlef Dering, Arlen Feldwick, Randolph C. Head, Marion Leathers Kuntz, Thomas F. Mayer, Constant J. Mews, Richard Popkin, Gary Remer, and H. Frank Way. ""Beyond the Persecuting Society" confronts the myth that there was no general conception or practice of religious toleration before the Enlightenment. . . . It is the great strength of this collection that the diversity and richness of the often tentative allowance for confessional pluralism can be documented at times when unity of faith was seen as no less necessary than unity of obedience."--"Albion" John Christian Laursen is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside, and author of "The Politics of Skepticism in the Ancients, Montaigne, Hume and Kant." Cary J. Nederman is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona and author of "Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua's "Defensor Pacis.""

John-Christian Luhrs gewinnt Erklarungsansatze fur das Agieren in hoher Marktturbulenz und konstruiert ein transdisziplinares konzeptionelles Raster, das er mit empirischen Erkenntnissen fullt."