Word: archipelagos
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Europe first encountered the Philippines in 1521, when Ferdinand Magellan claimed the archipelago for Spain?and ended up dead after a battle with local chieftain Lapu Lapu. Jessica Hagedorn's Dream Jungle starts with an excerpt from a contemporary account of Magellan's Philippine visit, which describes comely native women clad in nothing but thin strips of bark "before their privies," suggesting that conquest can be inspired as much by lust as God and king...
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, no supporter of the Chechen struggle, writes in 1973's The Gulag Archipelago that of all the people in the Soviet camps and in exile, the Chechens were from the "one nation which would not give in, would not acquire the mental habits of submission." The Chechens have lived up to that description. Unlike President Bush with Iraq, Putin can make sure Russians are not reminded of the Chechnya quagmire on a daily basis on TV. But silence is no solution. "I am here because it's the only job I know how to do," says Mikhail...
...RETIRED. Jaime Cardinal Sin, 75, Archbishop of Manila, whose call for Filipinos to defy former Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos started the People Power revolution of 1986; in Manila. In the predominantly Catholic archipelago, Sin wielded enormous influence on such issues as government support for birth control, which he opposes. But the height of his power came in 1986-and again in January 2001, when Sin encouraged a second such public demonstration, which forced President Joseph Estrada from office. The ailing Sin, who suffered a mild stroke this past March, cloaked determination with a puckish sense of humor, greeting visitors...
...sculptural relief of a jaunty schooner, its bow thrust upward by a swell, carved some 1,200 years ago at Borobudur, the magnificent Buddhist monument not far from Yogyakarta. Roaming across the Indonesian islands on a grant to study traditional ships, Beale had read that sailors from the Malay Archipelago regularly crossed the Indian Ocean, and even established colonies in East Africa, centuries before Borobudur was built. As he gazed at the sculpture, a great idea possessed him: this, he thought, was the very ship that the ancient Indonesians sailed to Africa. With the boldness and singular clarity of youth...
...Though largely unknown outside of the region, this was one of the first great achievements in marine exploration: centuries before anybody else engaged in regular long-distance voyages, mariners from the Malay Archipelago ruled the Indian Ocean. The Roman historian Pliny wrote in the first century A.D. about sailors arriving in Africa from the eastern sea on rafts, propelled not by sails but by "the spirit of man and human courage," carrying cinnamon and other spices...