The Last Project of the Republic of Letters: Wilhelm von Humboldt's Global Linguistics.

The article discusses Prussian diplomat and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt, focusing on his study of languages in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, which resulted in his monograph on the history of the culture and language of Java and debates with leading Orientalist scholars. It argues that his global study of languages was one of the largest and last in the interdisciplinary European republic of letters in which scholars communicated despite differences in religion, politics, and language.