This lecture intends to represent Russian research on Siberia during the period of Soviet isolation.

The subject of this lecture is ‘Inventing Democracy’. By ‘invention’, Professor Bourke does not mean spontaneously willed creation. Democracy was not the product of deliberate design. Nonetheless, it was brought about by processes of action and reaction – and it must therefore be understood as a human artefact. Consequently, although it is not the intended outcome of a clear plan, it is an invention insofar as it resulted from human struggle.

Chinese multilingual policy is given incrementally heavier weight as China exerts an increasing impact in the 21st century on the global economics, politics, and participation and governance. The focus of multilingual policy is shifting from that of enhancing the bilingual and trilingual literacy of ethnic minorities (mother tongue and Putonghua) to trilingual, even multilingual proficiency, of ethnic Han learners as a result of China’s continued implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative. This paper, drawing on a review of China’s multilingual education policies since 1949, discusses the challenges and prospects of multilingual development in China. By unpeeling China’s multilingual education policies over the past 60 years, the authors believe that a close examination of the gaps of language policy and practice is paramount to achieve mutlingualism and maintain linguistic diversity.

A discussion on multicultualism in Europe

The Difficulties of Inter-faith Marriage in Early Modern Europe (1500-1800):
after the Reformation, when Europeans became divided by faith, the issue arose whether people of different Christian faiths could marry. All the churches strongly disapproved and discouraged any interfaith – also known as ‘mixed’ – marriage. Nevertheless such marriages did occur, even between Protestants and Catholics. This lecture tells the story of a couple named Hendrick and Sara, who married despite many obstacles. They could not agree, though, on whether their newborn child should be baptized and raised in the father’s Catholic faith or the mother’s Calvinist one. The dispute that erupted in the year 1762 over how their baby should be baptized triggered violent conflict in the Dutch village of Vaals, where they lived, and surrounding areas of the Netherlands and Germany.

Recommended Readings
* Benjamin J. Kaplan, Cunegonde’s Kidnapping: A Story of Religious Conflict in the Age of Enlightenment. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2014
* Benjamin J. Kaplan, `Religious Encounters in the Borderlands of Early Modern Europe: The Case of Vaals’, Dutch Crossing 37/1 (March 2013): 4-19.
* Benjamin J. Kaplan, `Intimate Negotiations: Husbands and Wives of Opposing Faiths in Eighteenth-century Holland’, in Living with Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Scott Dixon and Dagmar Freist (Aldershot:: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 225-48
* Benjamin J. Kaplan, `“For They Will Turn Away Thy Sons”: The Practice and Perils of Mixed Marriage in the Dutch Golden Age’, in Piety and Family in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Steven Ozment, ed. by Benjamin J. Kaplan and Marc R. Forster (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 115-33.