History

Sixteenth century Asia represented a heavily contested political landscape with the establishment of the Safavid dynasty in Iran, the Uzbek Khanate at Bukhara and the Mughals in the Indo-Gangetic basin, alongside the existence of the two centuries old Ottoman Sultanate. A meticulous examination of the official correspondence between the respective heads of these states unravels the complex strands of their multilateral interactions. The Mughal response to the allegations by the Uzbeks regarding the heretical acts of Akbar in the final quarter of the sixteenth century, couched in diplomatic language by the ideologue Abū'l Fażl, raises certain problematics that constitute the subject of study here. Why was it necessary for Akbar to portray himself as a good Islamic ruler in order to establish his credibility? What were the politics of drafting missives and selecting envoys? What crucial role did the vocabulary of symbolism perform in negotiating the idea of Islam? Or were these engagements merely a façade beneath which Islam was subverted for political and material purposes? By addressing these questions, this paper attempts to complicate historical understandings of power contests of global significance in this period. It brings out the remarkable scribal skills of Abū'l Fażl that evince the astute diplomat in him. Simultaneously, an inquiry into the volatile relationship between religious ideology and statecraft highlights the tensions and dilem

The province of Gujarat, located on the western seaboard of the Indian subcontinent, has served as 'the maritime gateway to India' from the western Indian Ocean region since the 2nd century C.E. The Gulf of Cambay with its deeply indented coastline was dotted with numerous ports through which this century old trade was conducted, that brought tremendous wealth and prosperity to Gujarat. The discovery of an alternate route connecting Europe and Asia via the Cape of Good Hope by the Portuguese was followed by their appearance on the western coastal enclaves at the turn of the sixteenth century. The hitherto existing trading structures were now threatened and the traditional beneficiaries of this lucrative trade stood to lose out financially. By a close reading of the biography of Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515), this essay tries to locate the challenges before the Portuguese in the initial years of their enterprise in South Asia. Focussing on the western coast of the subcontinent, chiefly the port town of Surat, it demonstrates through the figure of its governor Malik Gopi, attempts to resist the Lusitanian onslaught through diplomatic means. Simultaneously, the paper also hints at the close connections that existed between maritime trade, political economy and state power in early modern South Asia. By analysing the strategies of defence adopted by Malik Gopi, I argue that diplomacy was an essential ingredient of statecraft during this period and also bring out its efficacy in negotiating volatile issues beyond the arena of armed conflict.

The Portuguese incursion into the western Indian Ocean in the early sixteenth century posed a severe threat to the overseas commercial interests of the polities located on its rims. The mercantilist nature of the Iberian enterprise dramatically transformed the hitherto peaceful maritime space into a heavily contested arena. This paper focusses on the western coastline of the Indian subcontinent — more specifically the Gulf of Cambay and its immediate hinterland — during the first half of the sixteenth century and traces the trajectories of interactions that the Portuguese governors had with the political establishments inland with regard to control over the coastal enclaves and the trade conducted from them. It does so through a close reading of two different sets of documents: the biography of Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515), the second Portuguese governor of India, which comprises, amongst other descriptions, of the protagonist's interactions with many of the Asian potentates with whom he came in contact; and the letters exchanged between Dom João de Castro, the governor of the Estado (1545-8) and Islam Shah Sur, the Afghan ruler of north India. By doing so the paper enquires into the challenges and difficulties that impinged the Portuguese attempts to secure a foothold on the coastal enclaves of Gujarat and Konkan and argues that diplomacy was instrumental in negotiating how relations of hegemony, dominance, subordination, subservience between contending polities were transacted and defined. In order to understand the complex dialectics that transpired such exchanges, it becomes imperative to appreciate the finer nuances of these multilateral interactions and the implicit subtleties contained in them. These official correspondences were discourses of power imbued with multiple layers of meanings: for instance, how (potential) foes perceived each other and the decisive role played by apprehensions and fear in shaping a state's diplomatic conduct. By addressing these themes, I intend to unravel the complex strands which constituted these transactions thereby complicating existing historical interpretations of diplomacy and power contestations in early modern South Asia.

With the rapid spread of Islam towards the east and the subsequent establishment of Indo-Islamic states in South Asia from the early thirteenth century, there followed steady waves of immigration from central and west Asia into the Indian subcontinent. This movement of people such as artists, scholars, warriors, statesmen, merchants and saints took place via both land-routes (across north-west India) and the Indian Ocean. The Iranians were arguably one of the major communities who left an indelible imprint on the history of the subcontinent. Historical scholarship has focussed on the role of these Iranians in aiding the process of political formations during the medieval period. The active policy of attracting human capital from Persia followed by the Bahmani Sultanate from the fifteenth century, that was taken up by their successors—the Niẓām Shāhīs of Ahmadnagar, the ‘Ādil Shāhīs of Bijapur and the Quṭb Shāhīs of Golconda—had significant repercussions. By a close reading of Indo-Persian court chronicles, this essay seeks to locate symbols of power and sustenance that enabled the migrant Iranian community to negotiate their identity within the heterogeneous political society of the Deccan. Their contest with the different sections of the ruling elite enables the scholar to engage with certain interesting problematics. How far did sectarian differences impact the dynamics of this contest? What were the means by which they articulated their identity in the foreign land? Of what relevance is their service in the capacity of diplomats and ambassadors, that facilitated communication between the polities of medieval South Asia and Safavid Iran, in this regard? By addressing these questions, this paper attempts to complicate existing historiographical understandings of the various facets of interactions that they fostered.

Keywords: migrant, community, diaspora, identity, Iranian, medieval Deccan, political Islam, maritime trade, power contestation, diplomacy

This article examines a dispute between the Mughal emperor Akbar and his foster brother Mirzā ʿ⁠Azīz Koka in the late sixteenth century through a study of two epistolary compositions (inshāʾ) – a royal mandate ( farmān) issued by Akbar and a petition (ʿ⁠arẓ-dāsht) from the mirzā in response. By focusing on the language of negotiation in these letters, I argue that epistolary practices were critical for reconfiguring kinship bonds, imperial service, and courtly disposition that were central to the rupture in fraternal and courtly relations. Letters served as the discursive site to reiterate norms of courtly comportment, register complaints against controversial actions, express emotions, and record reactions to exigent situations. Finally, the correspondence reveals the ways in which the complex dynamics of a court society were deeply intertwined with global power contestations and could have far-reaching implications on the imperial competition between early modern Islamic empires.

Keywords: farmān, ʿ⁠arẓ-dāsht, epistolary correspondence, imperial service, kinship

Reading Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688) as a creative intervention into philosophical debates about political obligation allows us to understand its critical contribution to the acute crisis confronting English subjects during the Glorious Revolution. Moving beyond previous scholarship that has debated Behn's political affiliations, this paper locates Oroonoko in the midst of ongoing conversations about the unstable character of sovereignty and political subjectivity. It argues that, rather than taking the fictions of sovereignty to a neat theoretical conclusion (à la Thomas Hobbes and John Milton), Behn uses the Atlantic stage to interrogate the epistemological and moral uncertainties that haunted all forms of political obligation. In doing so, she offers a model for how the female poet-playwright could navigate social and political unrest.

Exoribonuclease I from yeast is a 175 kDa protein that is responsible for the majority of cytoplasmic mRNA degradation. Alignment of the Xrn1p sequence with homologs from yeast as well as from higher eukaryotes suggests that the protein is composed of several domains: two acidic N-terminal domains which likely contain the exonuclease, a basic middle domain and a basic C-terminal domain. Deletion analysis demonstrated that the C-terminus is dispensable for most in vivo and in vitro functions but confers a dominant negative growth inhibition when expressed at high levels. This growth inhibition is not due to the exonuclease function of the protein. To identify specific residues responsible for in vivo function, a screen was carried out for non-complementing missense mutations. Fourteen single point mutations were identified that altered highly conserved amino acids within the first N-terminal domain of Xrn1p. All of the mutations reduced exonuclease activity measured in vivo and in vi...

At a meeting of the Aristotelian Society in 1924 London, the Scottish philosopher Sandy Lindsay summed up the state of debate over the meaning and utility of the concept of sovereignty. Lindsay (who was, among other things, an advisor to the early modern English historian Christopher Hill) wrote: "The theory of sovereignty is at the present moment the storm center of political theory. For one school it is the Ark of the Covenant. Sovereignty is for them 'inherent in the very conception of government.'" The other school, he described, perceived the idea of sovereignty very differently: it was "nothing but a stone of stumbling," and scholars should shove this "anachronistic theory out of the way." The "whole conception of sovereignty" was, in this school of thought, "nonsensical from beginning to end." 1 For those early twentieth-century British socialists, the problem lay in sovereignty's definition as being absolute and indivisible, while such absolutism and indivisibility was well known to be an aspiration rather than an ontological reality. A century later, few historians of Europe would advocate rejecting the term "sovereignty" outright. Instead, the scholars most likely to find the concept "a stone of stumbling" and "nonsensical" are those studying non-European polities and cross-cultural negotiations of political authority. 2 The question that Lindsay found so "mysterious"-"wherein does sovereignty lie"-continues to be a critical point of ongoing discussion, but the I would like to thank Vanderbilt University Special Collections and University Archives for purchasing research materials for this essay, and Library Assistant for Curation Philip Nagy for providing the image scans under pandemic constraints. I would also like to thank Mary Terrall and Hassoum Ceesay for reading early drafts, and

Public health literacy is an emerging concept necessary to understand and address the broad array of factors, such as climate change, globalization, and poverty, that influence the public's health. Whereas health literacy has traditionally been operationalized as an individual-level construct, public health literacy takes into account the complex social, ecologic, and systemic forces affecting health and well-being. However, public health literacy has not yet been fully articulated. This paper addresses this gap by outlining a broad, new definition of public health literacy. This definition was developed through an inductive analytic process conducted in 2007 by a multidisciplinary research team, and two expert-panel sessions were convened to assess the consensual validity of the emergent definition. Based on this process, public health literacy is defined as the degree to which individuals and groups can obtain, process, understand, evaluate, and act on information needed to make public health decisions that benefit the community. Three dimensions of public health literacy-conceptual foundations, critical skills, and civic orientation-and related competencies are also proposed. Public health literacy is distinct from individuallevel health literacy, and together, the two types of literacy form a more comprehensive model of health literacy. A five-part agenda is offered for future research and action aimed at increasing levels of public health literacy. (Am J Prev Med 2009;36(5):446 -451)