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Securitas. Debating Inviolability and Immunity in the Legal and Political Theory of Diplomacy, Thirteenth to Eighteenth Century. The essay examines the legal aspects of the transformation of the rules governing the protection of diplomatic agents from the ancient law of hospitality into treaties guaranteeing extraterritoriality. The transformation involved the shift of the derivation of these rules from natural to positive law around 1800. In material respects, it entailed the recasting of diplomatic agents catagorised as a specifically vulnerable group of professionals into a group of specially privileged representatives of sovereign states and their perceived interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Comparativ: Leipziger Beiträge zur Universalgeschichte und Vergleichenden Gesellschaftsforschung is the property of Leipziger Universitaetsverlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the ideologies informing the expansion of Japanese rule at c. 1900. The core feature discussed is the idea of tenka (天下; literally translated: all under heaven), constituting the group of ruled in terms of a universalist indigenat (kokumin 国民), which allowed its expansion beyond the Japanese archipelago at government discretion. The concept of the universalist indigenat, having been tied to the Confucian perception of the world as a well-ordered and change-absorbing entity, conflicted with the European concept of the nation as a particularistically conceived type of group, tied to the perception of the world as a dynamic and largely unruly entity. During the latter third of the nineteenth and the early years of the twentieth century, some Japanese intellectuals came to appreciate the dynamism enshrined in the European perception of the world and worked it into established universalism. The fusion produced a powerful ideology of colonial expansion targeted primarily at East and Southeast Asia as well as the South Pacific. By contrast, European military strategists and political theorists, unaware of the Japanese strategic conceptions, expected that solely Russia formed the target of Japanese military expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Comparativ: Leipziger Beiträge zur Universalgeschichte und Vergleichenden Gesellschaftsforschung is the property of Leipziger Universitaetsverlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article links the use of the concept of 'civilisation' with the nineteenth-century perception of the international system, for which the 'family of nations' was current as a technical term in international legal theory for the international legal community. Following the distinction between state sovereignty and subjecthood under international law, international legal theorists denied the latter to most states outside Europe and classed them as 'uncivilised', even though their governments had concluded treaties under international law with European and the us governments and had thereby been formally recognised as sovereigns. In many cases, these treaties were agreements concerning the establishment of 'Protectorates' as the paramount type of dependency under the control of a European or the us government. In this context, international law became the house law of the 'Family of Nations', which extended across the globe while denying access to it to many states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early medieval exegesis of the Pentecost account in the Acts of the Apostles emphasised the divine origin of the light that some early medieval theologists, specifically Hrabanus Maurus, believed to have descended upon the Apostles (or the congregation) and provided them with special powers. The following article links Hrabanus Maurus's exegetical work with early pictorial representations of Pentecost as well as medieval theories of action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criticizes the book 'Transformation of European Politics 1763-1848,' by Paul Schroeder. Approach of the book to international relations; Description of the systemic transformation of European international relations around 1800; Criticisms on Schroeder.

Despite the important role immunoglobulin G (IgG)-secreting plasma cells play in memory immune responses, the differentiation and homeostasis of these cells are not completely understood. Here, we studied the differentiation of human IgG-secreting cells ex vivo and in vitro, identifying these cells by the cellular affinity matrix technology. Several subpopulations of IgG-secreting cells were identified among the cells isolated from tonsils and bone marrow, particularly differing in the expression levels of CD9, CD19, and CD38. CD38 low IgG-secreting cells were present exclusively in the tonsils. A major fraction of these cells appeared to be early plasma cell precursors, as upon activation of B cells in vitro, IgG secretion preceded up-regulation of CD38, and on tonsillar sections, IgG-containing, CD38 low cells with a plasmacytoid phenotype were found in follicles, where plasma cell differentiation starts. A unitary phenotype of migratory peripheral blood IgG-secreting cells suggests that all bone marrow plasma cell populations share a common precursor cell. These data are compatible with a multistep model for plasma cell differentiation and imply that a common CD38 low IgG-secreting precursor gives rise to a diverse plasma cell compartment.