bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Kim Yuk (1580–1658) and the Taedongbŏp Reform
Authors: Choe Ching Young
Published: April 2006

This paper is a preliminary study of Kim Yuka, a seventeenth-century reformer and statesman, and his role in the introduction of the tribute tax reform in the two southern provinces of Ch'ungch'ŏng and Chŏlla. It is also intended as a case study of one aspect of the actual operation of seventeenth-century Yi government. Special attention is paid to the inter-relationship between the mode of operation of the Yi government and Kim Yuk's reform efforts.
Liu Ming-ch'uan and Modernization of Taiwan
Authors: Chu Samuel C.
Published: April 2006

In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, a number of Chinese officials acted as agents of modernization in their own regions of authority. The achievements of such men as Li Hung-chang and Chang Chih-tung are well known. The work of Liu Ming-ch'uan in Taiwan, however, has received little recognition outside his own country. After Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895, even Chinese scholars paid scant attention to Liu's work diere, but with die removal of the Nationalist government to the island in 1949, there has understandably been a renewed interest in him. Chinese studies of Liu, however, generally treat his seven-year administration of die island without distinguishing between his efforts along traditional lines and those which required innovations. This is, of course, a perfectly valid approach, but Liu can also be seen as a modernizer. Because diis paper is focused on die latter approach, it will take up only Liu's efforts at modernization.
Notes on Shipping and Trade in Japan and the Ryukyus
Authors: Crawcour Sydney
Published: April 2006

The fact that England, the home of the Industrial Revolution and modern economic growth, was also a leading shipping and trading nation, at one time prompted the notion that flourishing overseas trade and modern economic growth are somehow related. There are, of course, plenty of examples in European history of once flourishing trading nations which failed to industrialize. Spain, Portugal, the Hanseatic ports, and the Italian trading cities never became centres of industry. Moreover, such comparatively industrialized areas as Czechoslovakia and Prussia were not leading trading centres.
Constitutional Reforms versus National Agitation in India, 1900-1950
Authors: Rothermund Dietmar
Published: April 2006

The political development of India during the first half of the twentieth century was conditioned by constitutional reforms introduced by the British rulers, and by a vigorous agitation for national freedom. A constitution is a normative description of existing or intended relationships of political power; under the circumstances prevailing in India at that time, such a description was bound to be challenged again and again by an agitation for the revision of the status quo. In this way a peculiar relationship developed between constitutional reform and agitational advance. The constitutional reforms were designed to fulfill agitational demands on the one hand and to forestall more extreme demands on the other. Therefore they conformed to agitational patterns. In a similar way, the agitation was conditioned by the particular circumstances created by each constitutional reform; the constitution of the national movement itself, i.e., of the Indian National Congress, had to be adapted to the new situation whenever constitutional reforms were at stake. Finally when independence was achieved, an Indian Constituent Assembly adopted a constitution which closely resembled the previous constitutional structure introduced by British Acts of Parliament.
Migrations and the Settlement of Mindanao
Authors: Wernstedt Frederick L. , Simkins Paul D.
Published: April 2006

One of the more serious obstacles to economic progress and human betterment in many of the less developed countries is the dense settlement of the present cultivated land, coupled with a rapidly increasing population. In much of southern and eastern Asia where most of the good land has been occupied by relatively dense agricultural populations for centuries and where rapidly declining mortality has sharply increased the rate of population growth, heavy land pressure is both chronic and acute. A rapidly increasing population is particularly characteristic of the Philippines where crude birth rates have remained more or less stable at about 50 per thousand since 1900 and where death rates have dropped progressively and are now about 20 per thousand. The present rate of natural increase, approximately three per cent per year, is not only higher than in most Asian countries, but is also higher than in most countries of the world. If this rate of population growth continues unabated, and the evidence suggests that it is more likely to accelerate rather than diminish in the near future, the population of the Philippines will double well before the end of the present century.
Pattern in the Imagery of Jivanananda Das
Authors: Lago Mary M. , Gupta Tarun
Published: April 2006

Few contemporary poets writing in Bengali are more widely read than is Jivanananda Das. He is considered in many respects the most modern of Bengali poets, as well as the one most independent of the influence of Rabindranath Tagore. His orginality has even been considered eccentric, but another leading Bengali poet, Buddhadeva Bose, says this of him: “He is important because he has brought a new note to our poetry, a new tone of feeling, and has tuned our ears to a subtle melody drawn from apparently conventional patterns of verse, for, despite the metrical seductions of modern Bengali, he has confined himself throughout to a single metrical norm, and that the oldest. It is rather remarkable that, though metrically a hermit, he has yielded to the prose poem and made it as haunting as his verse.”
British Missionary Archives and the Asian Historian
Authors: Potts E. Daniel
Published: April 2006

The archives of various British missionary societies, whose representatives were scattered throughout large parts of Asia in the nineteenth century and earlier, contain many manuscripts of interest and are potentially useful to the historian and social scientist. With few exceptions, however, scholars have overlooked or ignored these collections: partly because they are not centrally located; partly because they often are inchoate or lack guides; and partly because their value has not been appreciated.
The Punjab Government and Communal Politics, 1870–1908
Authors: Barrier N. Gerald
Published: April 2006

One of the most controversial interpretations of recent Indian history is that the British governed the subcontinent through a strategy of divide and rule which led to Hindu-Muslim conflict and ultimately the 1947 partition. Divide et Impera has often been portrayed in vernacular tracts, Congress publications, and scholarly works as a fundamental cause of communal tension.

The similar assumptions, methodology, and sources upon which these assessments rest, however, have resulted in a clouding of key issues and a misreading of the historical record. The studies generally focus upon twentieth-century developments such as Hindu and Muslim political parties or communal riots and then project their findings backward to earlier periods. Because British attempts to play Hindu and Muslim against one another apparently intensified antagonism following the Morley-Minto reforms, it is argued that similar policies prior to 1900 helped create the initial estrangement between the two communities. Communal activities are admittedly easier to examine once Hindus and Muslims began to organize for elections and legislative proceedings, but preoccupation with formal competition and a concomitant simplistic explanation of the origins of communalism have postponed a much-needed investigation of the formative period in the nineteenth-century when British rule and changes within Indian society set the stage for subsequent communal organization.
The Taiwanese of Taipei
Authors: Marsh Robert M.
Published: April 2006

Students of Chinese society should devote more attention to urban Taiwan, for several reasons. First, whatever the relative significance of Taiwan and Communist China in the world, Taiwanese social life can at least be studied at first hand over a protracted period, and with relatively little interference. The events on the China mainland since 1950 are often described as “the most large scale experiment in social change in world history.” Yet these events cannot be studied in the way social scientists prefer to do their research. Moreover, the most dramatic social events do not necessarily make the most important sociological problems; important breakthroughs in any science often come from the study of very mundane phenomena. Second, Taiwan is now, with Japan, Singapore and Malayasia, the most industrialized and economically developed of Asian countries. Urban Taiwanese are strategically significant in this context. Since Taiwan as a whole is becoming ever more urbanized and industrialized, knowledge of social life in metropolitan Taiwan today may provide the best clues as to the patterns toward which Taiwan as a whole will tend in the future. Third, Japanese sources describe many aspects of social structure in urban Taiwan a half century or more ago, and thereby provide comparative data on change over time in urban Taiwan. Such data have been little utilized thus far.
The Politics of Order: “Anti-Non-Cooperation” in the United Provinces, 1921
Authors: Reeves Peter D.
Published: April 2006

The non-cooperation movement of 1920–1922 was a significant landmark in the development of nation-wide political activities by the Indian National Congress. At the same time, because it took place within very different regional contexts, the nature of the movement and the response which it provoked derived a good deal from regional ingredients. In the United Provinces (the present day Uttar Pradesh), an agricultural region with a largely rural population, it was the agrarian system which molded the character of the non-cooperation and “anti-non-cooperation” movements. Non-cooperation there coincided with unrest among the peasantry and, for a time at least, it assumed the appearance of a revolutionary upsurge. The British Government of the province, therefore, had to meet this revolutionary movement as well as the Congress-led political movement. The Government turned to the landed aristocracy, whose influence in the countryside it had depended upon in the past, to provide the basis for an anti-revolutionary front. Initially, then, the non-cooperation movement served to refurbish the province's traditional landlord-based political system. It went further, however; and at one stage it appeared likely that the moderate-nationalist politicians, usually critical of the government, would be prepared to ally themselves with both the government and the landlords because of their concern over the dangers of revolution within the province. “Anti-non-cooperation,” it seemed, might create a new use for traditional methods of political control, as well as the source of important new lines of political development in the province. It is the creation of this situation, and its working out within the framework of the Government's efforts to counter both revolution and disorder, which is traced here.
The Controversy over Li Hsiu-ch'eng: An Ill-Timed Centenary
Authors: Uhalley Stephen
Published: April 2006

The year 1964 marked the centenary of the suppression of the Taiping Revolution, China's largest-scale revolution up to that time, and of the death of one of its greatest heroes, the Taiping's Loyal Prince, Li Hsiu-chʻeng. The Taiping movement has ever since been held in respectful esteem by Chinese revolutionaries. Sun Yat-sen considered himself the “spiritual” successor to the leader of the defeated movement. The Communists too maintain a respectful sympathy for die Taipings, whom they regard more or less as important forerunners of their own revolution. This does not mean that Communist historians, when writing from a Marxist-disciplined perspective, fail to point out the revolutionary shortcomings of the Taipings. But, everything considered, the movement and its principal leaders remain objects of considerable historical respect.
A Catechism of Western Diplomacy: The Japanese and Hamilton Fish, 1872
Authors: Mayo Marlene J.
Published: April 2006

The Iwakura embassy's encounter with Hamilton Fish at the State Department in 1872 is far more than a quaint but insignificant episode in the relations between Japan and the United States and deserves resurrection from the footnotes of history. The two sides, much to the surprise of both, met in a long, drawn-out series of trying and painful interviews, stretching from mid-March to the end of July, to argue and then attempt to revise the terms of Japan's 1858 treaty of friendship and commerce with the United States. This confrontation marks the proper, though halting, beginning of the treaty revision movement in Meiji diplomatic history and also illustrates the Grant administration's policy, or more accurately, cluster of attitudes toward East Asia during the early period of post-Civil War expansionism.
Politics and Education in Nationalist China: The Case of the University Council, 1927–1928
Authors: Linden Allen B.
Published: April 2006

In 1927, Ts'ai Yüan-p'ei, one of China's eminent intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century, initiated a program to reform Chinese education. In June of that year, the leaders of the Kuomintang government in Nanking approved Ts'ai's recommendation that they establish a new organization, a University Council [ta-hsüeh yüan], in place of a Ministry of Education to direct educational affairs. A month later they appointed Ts'ai to the post of Chancellor of the University Council. In the first issue of the Bulletin of the University Council, Ts'ai accounted for the change. He stated: “Looking back over the past decade, one can see that the Ministry of Education, situated in the midst of the corrupt atmosphere of Peking, was infected by the government agencies around it. There were times when those who headed the Ministry knew nothing about scholarship and education. Those ministers took advantage of their position and put members of their personal cliques into office. Word of this has spread so that the title Ministry of Education is synonomous with corrupt officialdom. It is for this reason that the Nationalist Government has decided to abolish the title ‘Ministry of Education’ and adopted the title ‘University Council’ for the body which supervises scholarship and education.”
Tseng Kuo-fan in Peking, 1840–1852: His Ideas on Statecraft and Reform
Authors: Shen Han-Yin Chen
Published: April 2006

When the Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850, Tseng Kuo-fan (1811–1872) had been residing in Peking for more than a decade. He earned a distinguished scholarly reputation as a member of the Hanlin Academy, and between 1847 and 1852 he was a high official of the metropolitan administration; he was Acting Senior Vice-president of the Board of Civil Appointments when he left the capital in 1852. Particularly in the three years 1850–1852, his official duties gave him many opportunities to express himself on the urgent problems of his time. While Tseng's later career is well known and while studies have been done on his scholarship and philosophy, his early political ideas have so far not been analyzed in detail. Yet surely Tseng's views on government before he became involved in the campaigns against the Taiping Rebellion would have a bearing on his remarkable performance as military and administrative leader after he became so involved.
Ariyaand the Golden Book: A Millenarian Buddhist Sect Among the Karen
Authors: Stern Theodore
Published: April 2006

Millenarian movements provide a dramatic expression of discontent with the present order and an anticipation of its imminent and radical transformation. When they arise within a context of cultural confrontation, in which the limits of an indigenous culture are seen for the first time against the perspective of an advanced—and advancing—civilization, they may at times incorporate within their vision of the millenial condition some of the desirable aspects of that civilization. Indeed, under suitable circumstances movements that begin with chiliastic expectations may end by passing to major involvement with larger societies and the modern world. It is not a common condition, to be sure, and has recently been discounted. “Millenialism,” observes Bellah, “… could contribute only under very special conditions to social innovation, for it was usually a symptom of severe social pathology. Its consequences were often destructive, or the energies it released were quickly rechanneled into traditional forms….”
Introduction
Authors: Liu K. C.
Published: April 2006

Despite the rapid growth of Chinese historical studies in the United States, a crucial epoch in the background of modern China has for a long time received the attention of comparatively few scholars. I refer to the early and middle Ch'ing period-the two centuries before the Opium War that saw the consolidation and the heyday of the Manchu rule in China. In the nineteen thirties American sinology was fascinated by the period. It was then that Pritchard published his books on the early relations between England and China, and Goodrich his study of the literary inquisition under Ch'ien-lung; that the great biographical dictionary, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, was prepared; that Fairbank and Teng were working on the Ch'ing documents and on the tributary system, and Michael on early Manchu military and political organization.1 But the Pacific War and the events in China that followed focused scholarly interest on that country's more recent experience. While many took up the study of “modern China,” inquiry into the Ch'ing before the nineteenth century was continued by only a few. Only in the last twelve years have we again seen the appearance of major studies touching upon the China of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Ho's works on commercial capitalism, population, social mobility, and voluntary associations; books on the shen-shih, the bureaucracy, and local government by Chang, Hsiao, Marsh, and Ch'ü; an analysis of rural social structure by Skinner; writings by de Bary, Nivison, and Wilhelm on intellectual history.
The Expulsion of Ōkuma from the Government in 1881
Authors: Fraser Andrew
Published: April 2006

In 1881, the Japanese government was headed by a single President, Sanjō, assisted by two vice-presidents, Iwakura and Arisugawa. These men alone had direct access to the Emperor on state affairs. Beyond giving advice of their own, their principal task was to mediate in disputes between the councillors and to advise the Emperor on which was the stronger side when his decision was necessary to resolve a deadlock. Sanjō and Iwakura were court nobles with long ties with Satsuma and Chōshū, whose armies had fought and won the Restoration war of 1868–9, and whose leaders thereafter held the key posts in the council, the executive and the Armed Forces. While deeply conscious of their primary loyalty to the Emperor and anxious to prevent his domination by powerful factions, Sanjo and Iwakura in the last analysis, and with some regret, regarded Satsuma and Chōshū as the essential pillars of the new regime. Arisugawa was a Prince Imperial, who had been raised to the position of vice-president in 1880. He had been chairman of the legislative Genrōin that included several prominent members antipathetic to Satsuma and Chōshū dominance of the government. While Sanjō and Iwakura were basicallyagreed with the Sat-Chō leaders that Prussia provided the best model for a future constitution, Arisugawa as chairman of the Genrōin had presented the Emperor with a draft constitution in 1879 that drew heavily from the English model. It should be noted that there was therefore a possibility that Arisugawa would dissent from his presidential colleagues when the issue of the constitution was raised within the government in 1881.
Bibliographic Control of South Asian P.L. 480 Materials, an Automated Approach
Authors: Preibish André
Published: April 2006

Bibliographic control of South Asian P.L. 480 materials in local languages presents numerous problems in spite of the useful aids and services provided by the Library of Congress. In order to record in machine readable form entries for the items received, and to add them to the existing data bank a simple automated system was devised. It consists of sequential and alphabetical listings for each language and a subject index based on a thesaurus of descriptors, taking into account characteristic features of a given language. Instantaneous retrieval via the above-mentioned elements is assured. Furthermore the system provides data for subject content analysis of the collection by language.
An Unfinished Pyramid in the Field of Twentieth Century Chinese Studies
Authors: Hsieh Winston
Published: April 2006

Involving the efforts of over one hundred scholars for over fifteen years, the dictionary is now wrapped up in four giant volumes of more than one million printed words. Its publication not only fills a major void on the reference shelf of modern Chinese history but also thrusts upon scholarly attention many compelling issues by the collective presentation of the biographies of some six hundred Chinese leaders who were active in 1911–1949 in the fields of politics and the military as well as in business and banking, literature, the arts, the press and publishing, education, medicine, and religion. In response to the urgent need for Chinese Communist studies in mid-20th century America, the work covers the prominent figures in the People's Republic who appeared during the Republican (1912–49) period. The concern for contemporary development is also reflected in the omission of many important figures whose career had little relevance to the rise of the Chinese Communist state and in the emphasis on the military and politics. Many native Chinese writers contribute to the dictionary their intimate knowledge of the period as well as their biases, taboos, and myths. Since there is much room for improvement in terms of historical perceptiveness and scholarly balance, three proposals are given, aimed at adding the finishing touch to this monumental work.
The Chamber and the Consultation: Changing Forms of Princely Association in India
Authors: Richter William L. , Ramusack Barbara
Published: April 2006

The progressive shift of formerly subject peoples from political acquiescence to participatory citizenship has been the focus of numerous diverse studies of modernization in India and elsewhere. As modernization proceeds, such studies inform us, this transformation is reflected in new attitudes and new social relationships. At the same time, there is not a complete break with the past, but rather an adaptation of traditional structures and relationships to meet modern needs.
Weng Tung-ho jih-chi p'ai-yin-pen fu so-yin
Authors: Hsiao Kung-chuan
Published: April 2006

The Chinese Materials and Research Aids Center has rendered a valuable service to students of late Ch'ing Chinese history in publishing this typeset edition of Weng T'ung-ho's diary, based on the facsimile edition printed by the Shanghai Commercial Press in 1925. The Center has made this important source material easier to use in several ways. The text is punctuated and printed in standard type, a boon to scholars not accustomed to unpunctuated, cursive writing; interlinear marks are inserted throughout, rendering proper names readily identifiable; corresponding Western dates (years and months but not days) are given alongside the Chinese; pages are numbered consecutively throughout the five volumes. And further to enhance the usefulness of the typeset edition, an index to essential proper nouns, geographical and personal, is to form volume 6 which, unfortunately, is not available to this reviewer.
Theories Concerning the Skandhaka: An Appraisal
Authors: Prebish Charles S.
Published: April 2006

The Earliest Vinaya and the Beginnings of Buddhist Literature. By Erich Frauwallner. Volume VIII of Serie Orientate Roma. Edited by Giuseppe Tucci. Rome: Institute per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1956.
The Diffusion of Cotton Processing and Trade in the Kinai Region in Tokugawa Japan
Authors: Hauser William B.
Published: April 2006

The diffusion of cotton processing and trade were major features of the expansion of rural commerce and handicraft production in the Kinai region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Both were responses to demands for sources of non-agricultural employment in Japanese villages. They made available off-season by-employment for small farmers and offered new types of employment to those under-employed in agriculture. The expansion of rural participation in cotton processing and trade brought the villagers into conflict with urban merchants and artisans. This initially led to reinforcement of urban commercial prerogatives by the government and subsequently to legal confrontations between rural and urban merchant groups which in 1823 were decided in favor of the rural merchants. The role of the government shifted from protection of urban merchant interests to denial of their monopoly and monopoly rights and tacit support for the expansion of rural processing and trade.

Overall, the expansion of rural commerce and handicraft industry illustrate the economic and social changes which characterized the Kinai region during the Tokugawa period and the commercialization of the village economy. It also illustrates the inability of the Tokugawa bakuju to limit or direct the process of societal change.
Mao, Solomon and the Problem of Social Science: Two Views On Chinese Political Culture
Authors: Metzger Thomas A.
Published: April 2006

Richard A. Solomon's book, Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), suffers especially from a faulty approach to the political culture of traditional China. Neglecting documentary sources, Solomon fails to understand the role of legitimated protest in traditional China, and this failure in turn limits his understanding of how values have changed in China under Mao. His book, however, contains much interesting factual material about Chinese attitudes toward authority and about politics in the CPR.
The Administrative and Fiscal Reforms of Liu Ming-ch'uan in Taiwan, 1884–1891: Foundation for Self-strengthening
Authors: Speidel William M.
Published: April 2006

In 1871, aborigines in southern Taiwan killed fifty-four shipwrecked Ryukyuan fisherman. By 1874 this incident had grown into a major international crisis for the Ch'ing Court in Peking, because the Japanese had insisted on punishing the aborigines (through a military occupation of their territory) after the Chinese hesitated to do so. As a result of the negotiations with Japanese diplomats concerning this matter, the Court was made sharply aware of the need to intensify and extend the Chinese administration of Taiwan; to fail to do so would obviously tempt the Japanese and other foreigners to occupy and perhaps annex areas that were not governed or settled by the Chinese.
Circulation and the Historical Geography of Tamil Country
Authors: Stein Burton
Published: April 2006

Tamil country, in the southeastern portion of peninsular India, has been an identifiable cultural region for almost two millennia. Tamil literary productions dating from the early centuries of the Christian era to the present time speak of Tamilakam (the land, or the abode, of Tamils)—setting out its boundaries by reference to mountains, rivers, and the sea, but making few distinctions within this macroregion and not specifying what lay beyond it. This paper is an attempt at more precise definition of the nature and development of this cultural region and its changing structure, by means of consulting a variety of evidence and by using the concept of “circulation.”
A Linguistic-Literary Approach to Ch'ien Chung-shu's Novel Wei-ch'eng
Authors: Hu Dennis T.
Published: April 2006

Wei-ch'eng; (hereafter referred to by the translated title Fortress Besieged) by Ch'ien Chung-shu (1910?—) has been hailed as the most “carefully wrought novel in modern Chinese literature” and “perhaps also its greatest.” Despite such distinction, however, neither this work nor any other of Ch'ien's creative writings has been widely studied. This paper is an initial exploration directed at investigating the above claims from the linguistic and stylistic points of view. One focus is figurative language, of which there is a substantial amount in this novel: some 680 uses in 340 pages, one page having as many as nine. (Approximately seventy-four percent of these figurative uses are similes.) Though in the absence of norms it is difficult to make a relative statement, in absolute terms this is rich usage.
Civic Religion and National Community in Thailand
Authors: Reynolds Frank E.
Published: April 2006

In recent years a number of historians, political scientists, and sociologists have been searching for a better way of approaching the study of the religious ideas, sentiments, and symbols associated with the life of modern national communities. It has become increasingly evident that the older procedure of making a clear distinction between specifically religious communities and religion on the one hand, and the state and politics on the other, then analyzing the interaction between the two, is no longer sufficient. However, no widely accepted alternative way of viewing the problem has emerged.
Addenda and Corrigenda
Authors: Beal Edwin G. , Beal Janet F.
Published: April 2006

Addenda to the obituary and bibliography of Dr. Arthur W. Hummel, JAS, XXXV, 2, Feb 1976, pp. 265–76

1933 “China's Literary Heritage.” D. C. Libraries, v. 4, no. 2, Jan 1933: 23–29.

1949 Review of Antonio Sisto Rosso, Apostolic Legations to China of the Eighteenth Century. American Ecclesiastical Review, v. 121, no. 5, Nov. 1949: 428–430.

The writers of this obituary notice wish to thank Mr. Sharman B. Hummel, the second son of Dr. Arthur W. Hummel, for the loan of a remarkable series of tape recordings which he asked his father to make in 1968 for the benefit of his family. These tapes, together with others made in 1973 and 1974, were most helpful in the preparation of this account.
Naming the Reality of Chinese Criticism
Authors: Wang C. H.
Published: April 2006

The philosophical reflections on literary art produced in traditional China cannot be accurately described as literary criticism or literary theory. A scholar or writer set forth his ideas about the nature of literature in general, the value and function of imaginative writing in different genres, or the merits and flaws of specific works, but did not really criticize literature in the sense we do today, to evaluate it for those not trained to judge it. He did not claim such authority, and seldom supported his opinions with solid proofs or reasoned arguments, as literary critics are now expected to do. Having read through Ts'ao Chih's poetry, for example, Chung Hung could judge that it originated in the Kuo-feng, a class of Shih Ching poetry, and exclaim: “Alas, the status of Ts'ao Chih in literature is comparable to that of the Duke of Chou and Confucius in ethics!” but he could not expect his audience to agree with him automatically. He expressed his knowledge and taste, in other words, and the way of expressing them was so uniquely his own, so difficult for others to share, that it was what we may call a private revelation of his ideas. Chung Hung was, therefore, not offering any critical or theoretical defense of Ts'ao Chih's poetry, which does not need any promotion among the learned and does not mean anything to the uncultured. He expressed his personal enthusiasm for Ts'ao Chih's poetry, and so defined his taste and knowledge. He had added another dimension to his own personality, the dimension reflected in Ts'ao Chih's great poetry. He had, in other words, moved a step further toward the definition of his philosophy of life, which he could express in his comments and judgments on nature, on political and ethical institutions, and on literature as artistic rendition of life. What Chung Hung formulated was a private philosophy of literature; it was not literary criticism or theory in the modern sense.
The Imperial Crisis in the Deccan
Authors: Richards J. F
Published: April 2006

In recent years, historians associated with the school of Indo-Muslim history at Aligarh Muslim University have developed a persuasive, now widely accepted, view of imperial decline. Satish Chandra and M. Athar Ali have argued that a primary cause of the collapse of the Mughal empire in the early eighteenth century was the rise of intense factionalism among the Mughal nobility. Conflict within this imperial elite (i.e., the body of amirs or mansabdars holding ranks of 1000 zat or above) resulted from a rapid rise to nearly double the number of nobles during the latter portion of the reign of the Emperor Aurangzeb (1658–1707). This growth in the number of nobles was not matched by a corresponding increase in the resources available to pay them and their followers. Consequently, the system of alienation of the land-tax proceeds for salary payments (the jagir system) broke down simply because not enough lands could be found to meet a sharply enhanced demand.
Caste, Social Change, and the Social Scientist: A Note on the Ahistorical Approach to Indian Social History
Authors: Carroll Lucy
Published: April 2006

The disciplinary dissection of Indian studies has divided Indologists into diverse academic unions, each with its own in-group jargon, research interests, and intellectual traditions. It has also created discontinuities in the units of analysis selected by scholars of different disciplines, which create in turn discontinuities between contemporary and historical studies of Indian society. Thus historians have generally not focused on caste or caste associations, while a central referent of anthropologists has been precisely the caste (jati) unit. Partly this reflects a difference in levels of analysis, the historian taking a more encompassing perspective while the anthropologist in the course of his fieldwork concentrates on the grass-roots social world of village India. Partly it reflects the bias of the historical discipline in general toward formal institutions and. toward political, as opposed to social, change.
The First Succession Struggle of Koryŏ, in 945: A Reinterpretation
Authors: Kang H. W.
Published: April 2006

Confucian historians presented the first succession struggle (in 945) of the Koryŏ Dynasty as simply an abortive usurpation attempt by Wang Kyu (the influential father-in-law of King Hyejong [r. 943–945]), thwarted by the timely intervention of the king's two half-brothers, Princes Yo and So, with military backing from Wang Singnyom of the P'yongyang Regional Military Command (Tae-doho Pu). The traditional account depicted the princes as archetypal protectors who safeguarded the legitimacy of royal succession, thereby placing the responsibility for the bloody struggle solely on the alleged villain, Wang Kyu. Such a treatment was apparently derived from a politically motivated moralistic interpretation intended to impart a lesson to posterity in the tradition of Confucian historiography. In the traditional account, therefore, the issues typically advanced were those best fitted to orthodox Confucian themes: legitimacy in royal succession, and loyalty to the throne. Factors incompatible with these themes were suppressed or perforce left unexplained, resulting in an account containing inconsistencies and gaps, which—surprisingly—went unchallenged until modern times.
The People in History: Recent Trends in Japanese Historiography
Authors: Gluck Carol
Published: April 2006

In the 1960s a group of Japanese historians responded to the contemporary bureaucratic superstate by embarking on a search for a popular past. They began to reexamine Japan's modern experience from the point of view of the people, not the elite, and with special emphasis not on political events but on social forces and attitudes. They rejected Marxism and modernization theory as alien and limiting and sought instead an indigenous methodology that might better fit the Japanese case because it was derived from it. By choosing topics that suggested the importance of popular energies in the development of modern Japan, they endeavored to enlarge the canvas of social history by bringing the people into it as significant subjects of historical change. Their scholarly efforts have drawn the attention of Japanese within and without academic circles and, as this introductory critical essay suggests, may usefully draw that of Western readers as well.
Metzger's Predicament
Authors: Harootunian H. D.
Published: April 2006

Any discussion of Thomas Metzger's book, Escape from Predicament, must begin with an evaluation of its possible meanings, not exegetical arguments over his specific reading and selection of texts. Most exegeses are reduced to quibbling over the interpretation of texts and the decision to use certain writings over others. This is possible because of a mistaken belief that the whole—the thesis or argument—is reducible to its parts. Moreover, it is precisely because of a tacit agreement with the general argument that critics usually resort to the form of a commentary. But, it is important to note, the overall effect of such a mode is to confirm the study under examination in its broad outline. It is my intention to concentrate on some of the terms which made this book possible and gave it a specific orientation. Yet, in so doing, I should say at the outset that I will focus on three large areas of discussion: the construal of history and its function for the discourse on modernization; the problematik informing this construing; and the problem of reading texts.
The Transformation of Neo-Confucianism As Transformative Leverage
Authors: Ch'ien Edward T.
Published: April 2006

As Harry Harootunian has noted, Metzger's Escape from Predicament represents an attempt to transpose the Weberian project onto the Chinese scene, even though its announced aim is to challenge and provide an alternative to Weber's interpretation of Chinese religion. This project may be viewed as uniquely Weberian in terms of its specific formulation of the problematik of modernity and modernization, but it is not exclusively Weberian in terms of its belief in the centrality of a divided consciousness as the agent of change. Long before Weber postulated the thesis that Confucian China was stagnant because Confucianism was characterized by a complete absence of “tension … between ethical demand and human shortcoming” (The Religion of China, H. H. Gerth, trans. [New York: Macmillan, 1964], p. 235), Hegel had already concluded that China lay “still outside the World's History”; for, Hegel stated, “as the contrast between objective existence and subjective freedom of movement in it is still wanting, every change is excluded and the fixedness of a character which recurs perpetually takes the place of what we should call the truly historical” (The Philosophy of History, J. Sibree, trans. [New York: Dover, 1965], p. 116) In a sense, therefore, Metzger's work on “Neo-Confucianism and China's Evolving Political Culture” marks the latest phase in a continuing discourse on social evolution, which presupposes “uniformity” in the “fundamental causes” of change (Robert A. Nisbet, Social Change and History [New York: Oxford University Press, 1969], p. 182), and of which Hegel is a spokesman.
An Examination of Leadership Entry in Bengal Peasant Revolts, 1937–1947
Authors: Bhattacharyya Jnanabrata
Published: April 2006

Peasant movement studies based solely on economic and political data may miss important social and cultural elements in the constellation of forces that generate those movements. The process of leadership entry—that is, the legitimation of the outside organizers to the peasants—has seldom been a subject of systematic investigation. However, I suggest that examination of what makes peasants accept as leaders persons who are in many respects different from themselves may yield important insights into the nature of the problems of organizing peasants.
Women in the Ching-hua yüan: Emancipation toward a Confucian Ideal
Authors: Brandauer Frederick P.
Published: April 2006

The Ching-hua yüan, the work of vernacular fiction by Li ju-chen (ca. 1763–1830) shows remarkable diversity in both narrative content and purpose. Critics have observed that it is encyclopedic in scope, and suggested that it reflects the wide range of interests and activities prevalent among scholars in early nineteenth- century China. The author's intention has been variously interpreted as private entertainment, display of erudition, or social criticism.
Structural Sources of Popular Revolts and the Tōbaku Movement at the Time of the Meiji Restoration
Authors: Sugimoto Yoshio
Published: April 2006

Turbulent years before and after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 have been one of the most extensively written pages of Japanese history. Much work has been carried out on the revolutionary samurai and the aspiring merchants who implemented the upheaval. Curiously, however, revolts and rebellions which erupted at more popular levels, such as peasant uprisings and urban mass disturbances during this period, have drawn little scholarly attention. According to the literature survey of Irwin Scheiner, no work on Japanese peasant uprisings has been published English since Hugh Borton's study in 1938.
On Finding “Certaine Habitation” For South Asian History—A Review Symposium on A Historical Atlas of South Asia
Authors: Conlon Frank F.
Published: April 2006

The publication of A Historical Atlas of South Asia, edited by Joseph E. Schwartzberg, represents a major achievement of modern scholarship on South Asia. Its maps and text offer useful perspectives on important geographical and historical relationships in the subcontinent. The geographer, Rhoads Murphey, the archaeologist, Gregory L. Possehl, the economist, Morris D. Morris, and three historians, N. Gerald Barrier, Richard J. Cohen, and John F. Richards present a set of critical essays on the Atlas, emphasizing its many contributions in their fields of interest and identifying subject areas in which they wished there had been more extensive coverage. The symposium is edited and introduced by Frank F. Conlon.
Nocturnal Labors in the Light of Day
Authors: Dalby Michael
Published: April 2006

Devotees of operatic silliness will recall how Anna Russell, in her music hall routine explaining the convoluted plot of Wagner's Ring, prepares her audience for the reappearance of that disgusting dwarf Allllberic (“ten hours after the damned opera begins”), and leans forward conspiratorially to deliver her long-awaited line: “I'm not making this UP, you know!” And anyone who supposes that Edward W. Said, Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, is simply fabricating something in his book Orientalism; is taking oblique potshots at the academic establishment out of misdirected political dissatisfaction with the situation in the eastern Mediterranean; is presuming to speak of what he does not know professionally; is fulminating about a nastiness peculiar to Islamic studies; is attributing to innocent scholars the unlikely or unintended motive to control the object of their scholarship; or, finally, is saying nothing of relevance to practitioners of other disciplines or students of other areas—anyone who harbors such suspicions may wish to consider the manner and substance of the following two passages, chosen from among documents that I happen to have seen in the past several weeks:

In Japan we have no Nineveh or Babylon to disentomb, no Jerusalem to uncover of its superincumbent debris, in order to identify its ancient topography, no Ilium that was, to bring to light, after the oblivion of the ages, nor ancient ruins of any kind whatever to interest the antiquary.
The Moral or the Rational Peasant? Competing Hypotheses of Collective Action
Authors: Feeny David
Published: April 2006

The analytical and empirical foundations of the moral-economy and rationalchoice approaches to peasant behavior are critically examined. Normative decisionmaking models are compared to models that assume household utility maximization. Differences between collective and individual rationality are highlighted. The importance and implications of risk aversion are explored. The effect of the introduction of markets on the economic security of peasant producers is considered, and evidence from Southeast Asian economic history is used to test the implications of both approaches. The results serve to challenge and qualify the arguments put forth by the moral economists on both analytical and empirical grounds.
Indulgence and Abundance as Asian Peasant Values: A Bengali Case in Point
Authors: Greenough Paul R.
Published: April 2006

The author questions the assumptions of an “Asian school of scarcity and risk,” of which James C. Scott is the principal exponent, using Bengali peasant history as a case in point. He argues that it is more likely that the subsistence traditions of Bengal derive from locally generated values of abundance and indulgence than from a universal “moral economy” and suggests that detailed accounts of subsistence traditions in other parts of Asia will confound attempts to prove that European experience is a reliable guide to Asian practices.
Women in Recent Chinese Fiction—A Review Article
Authors: Daiyun Yue , Wakeman Carolyn
Published: April 2006

Women have assumed a prominent role in China's post–Cultural Revolutionary fiction, just as they did in the literature of the May Fourth period. Addressing issues that apply not just to women but by implication to society as a whole, writers like Zhang Jie and Zhang Xinxin experiment with new literary forms to describe the special problems that continue to afflict women: problems of male domination and discrimination and, in some ways more burdensome, problems of self-definition and self-fulfillment. Recognizing the obstacles to their equality, productivity, and happiness, they are somewhat disappointed and disillusioned about the new society in which they once fervently believed.
Rantau Pariaman: The World of Minangkabau Coastal Merchants in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Kato Tsuyoshi
Published: April 2006

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, European colonial powers established economic and political control over most of Southeast Asia. The entrenchment of colonialism affected the lives of coastal merchants as well as those of peasants in interior villages. Yet how indigenous coastal merchants responded to the new situation has been a relatively neglected question in studies of this region. Based on the autobiography of Muhammad Saleh, a self-made Minangkabau merchant, this paper details the world and distinctive outlook of Minangkabau coastal merchants, and how Saleh successfully responded to changing political and economic conditions in West Sumatra in the late nineteenth century. Far from being the story of a helpless native merchant at the mercy of the Dutch governing power and Chinese merchants, the life of Muhammad Saleh reveals the adaptability of a certain sector of the indigenous merchant class in the Dutch East Indies. It also reflects the profound changes taking place within the world of Minangkabau merchants.