provides an overview of the Chinese language and its many dialects and how they differ from other Asiatic languages (e.g., Japanese). The chapter then reviews the origins and evolution of the Chinese writing system. The chapter closes with an overview of the modern Chinese writing system and its conventions, including points of difference with other writing systems (e.g., alphabetic scripts like English) and examples of how words can be decomposed into characters, radicals, and strokes.

The ATLASGAL PDR survey is discussed with its high detection rates of chosen PDR tracers towards HII sources. While previous chemical modelling of specific sources shows that in a cold lower-density envelope the abundances of C2H and c-C3H2 vary little, subsequently during cloud collapse (with density increase, temperature rise, and the emergence of HII regions) from 105 yr on in the models the column density ratio increases steeply. The observed abundances of some high-column-density tracers (H13CO+ and HC15N) in the survey are almost constant over the range of H2 column densities, while others (HCO, CN, C2H and c-C3H2) fall as H2 increases. The HCO detections are confirmed as arising from clumps likely associated with PDRs, and higher HCO abundances are undoubtedly linked in the models to ongoing FUV chemistry.

The sweeping changes of the early 1960s gave rise to a new cycle of struggle across the North Atlantic. It was in this context that the United States escalated its involvement in Vietnam. At the forefront of the antiwar struggle were radicals who advanced a systemic critique, arguing that ending the war meant transforming the system that had created it in the first place. Believing that the system exceeded the borders of the United States, these American radicals internationalized the struggle by reaching out to antiwar activists across the globe. Radicals in Western Europe proved especially responsive to the call, with the French in particular insisting on the strategic value of internationalist coordination in the North Atlantic. French activists took a lead in not only uniting activists across borders but creating a new sense of radical internationalism centered around Vietnam. For their part, Vietnamese revolutionaries played a central role in facilitating this new internationalism. By 1967, tens of thousands of activists across North America and Western Europe had come together in a new radical international.

In early May, as the deputies from all three Estates came to Versailles for the scheduled opening of the Estates General they carried with them cahiers enjoining them to reform the constitution in broadly similar ways. One major matter that divided them was the question of how the deputies would meet and vote. Deputies from the Third Estate came determined to pursue common meetings of the three orders with matters decided by a vote by head. Noble and Clerical deputies were split on the issue, but a majority in both orders carried cahiers encouraging or requiring them to seek separate meetings and a vote by order. The electoral regulations sent out by the king in January had not settled which form would prevail. From the very first meeting of the Estates General, the orders entered into a prolonged stalemate as the Third Estate refused to conduct business without first verifying all deputy credentials in common in the main meeting hall and the Nobles insisted that credentials be verified separately by each order.

27 June had marked a triumph for those who supported a union of the orders. The stalemate finally broken, it was time to write a constitution and help the king repair his finances. Then, on 30 June, at the first full meeting of the united orders, scores of deputies protested against the activities of the National Assembly. To a man these deputies, all from the privileged orders, claimed that instructions from their constituents prohibited them meeting in common with the other orders or accepting a vote by head. They based their protests on the mandates they had received from their electors. Almost all of the deputies of 1789 had sworn an oath upon receiving the cahier of his electoral district to faithfully present the grievances contained within. In most cases, they had sworn an oath to obey certain commands their electors made on pain of being, at least in theory, disowned as a representative. This was the “binding” or “imperative” mandate.

The decree putting the goods of the Church at the disposal of the nation was a major act with far-reaching implications. As Barère announced in his newspaper, Le Point du jour, on 2 November the Assembly had definitively established itself as a tribunal before which all the institutions of society would be judged.1 It had become a truly constituent body, one that could rid France of useless or pernicious institutions and establish those necessary for the public good. The political struggles of summer 1789 had determined who would lead the effort to reform France. The first phase had been a struggle between the Third Estate and conservatives in the Noble and Clerical orders over who would lead the Estates General. The second phase was the struggle between the king and the National Assembly to see who would establish the new constitutional order. Louis XVI had failed to see through essential reforms under his leadership.

One of the most remarkable features of the early Revolution was the absence of direct communication between the Third Estate and Louis XVI. The king had given no instructions about how to regulate communication between himself and the orders. The matter devolved to the Keeper of the Seals, Charles Louis François de Paule de Barentin, who took it upon himself to act as the supervisor for everything related to the Estates General. He became the conduit through which communication between the orders and Louis passed. But Barentin was deeply hostile to the pretensions of the Third Estate, going back at least as far as the time of the Result of the King’s Council of State of 1788. Until mid July, Barentin managed communications to the benefit of the Noble order, generally refusing to find times for members of the Third Estate to meet with the king. During the stalemate, the deputies of the Third Estate had only been given one meeting with Louis and it was at the worst time possible, coming two days after the death of the king’s oldest son.