bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
French Catholic Missionaries in Japan in the Bakumatsu and Early Meiji Periods
Authors: Lehmann Jean-Pierre
Published: November 2008

The legacy of the Portuguese Jesuits and Spanish mendicant orders in Japan in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was strongly felt both in Japan and in the Catholic Church. In Japan the alien religion had been suppressed in the early Edo period and throughout the decades of sakoku measures continued to be taken to ensure that Christianity would not re-emerge. In Europe, however, the determination of Christian missionaries to return to Japan persisted. Already in the seventeenth century, after the expulsion of the Iberian missionaries and at a time when the French Société des Missions Etrangères (established in 1658) had been granted by the papacy the exclusive right of missionary work in the Far East, on two occasions bishops of the Société were appointed Apostolic Vicars to Japan—even though, needless to say, they never set foot in the country. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Japan remained little more than a distant memory of the past and a distant hope for the future. Following the French Revolution, the end of the Napoleonic wars, the onset of the Bourbon Restoration and with increasing French naval activity in the Far East, however, the Société's interest in Japan revived.
From Plantation to Padi-field: The Origins of the Nineteenth Century Transformation of Java's Sugar Industry
Authors: Knight G. R.
Published: November 2008

Java's long-established sugar industry was transformed almost beyond recognition during the course of the nineteenth century. Under Dutch East India Company rule, which effectively lasted until the arrival on the island of Governor-General Daendels in 1808, sugar production had been organized almost exclusively by Chinese entrepreneurs, whose dozens of small sugar factories and plantations were scattered across the lowlands around Batavia (present day Jakarta). Their output played a subsidiary role in the prevailing pattern of colonial exploitation, was unable to compete in Europe with the production of West Indian sugar colonies and consequently found a sale, for the most part, only in other ‘protected’ Asian markets. During the nineteenth century, all this changed. First under government auspices—the so-called Cultivation System—and later under the direction of metropolitan-owned Sugar Corporations, the industry was transformed into a paradigm of colonial economic ‘development’. It was efficient, immensely profitable and productive (vast quantities of sugar were exported to the West), heavily capitalized and equipped with the best and most up-to-date machinery.
The Publisher's Go-Between: Kashihonya in the Meiji Period
Authors: Kornicki P. F.
Published: November 2008

The publisher is the bride's parents, the readers are the bridegroom, and the kashihonya is the go-between.
The Overseas Chinese and Late Ch'ing Economic Modernization
Authors: Ching-Hwang Yen
Published: November 2008

China's early economic modernization in the Late Ch'ing period has attracted a great deal of attention from economic historians who have been trying to find out causes for the failure of this attempt, and to measure the impact of Western imperialism. What they have generally ignored is the fact that China at that time was trying to break free from the growing foreign economic control, and to find an alternative to the foreign capital. The alternative was the overseas Chinese capital which, in the belief of the Ch'ing government, was capable of taking over the role of foreign capital in the economic modernization of China. This paper seeks to examine the measures taken by the Ch'ing government to attract overseas Chinese capital, and to analyse why the policy of using overseas Chinese capital failed.
Party Politics in Japan: The June 1980 Election
Authors: Quo F. Quei
Published: November 2008

For many reasons the June election was unusual. To begin with, it was the first time in twenty-seven years that a general election was called due to the passage of a ‘vote of non-confidence’ in the House of Commons.Moreover, it was a ‘double election’ as the regular triennial election of the House of Councillors was scheduled for the same time. Most uniquely, it was also the first time in Japan's electoral history that an incumbent Prime Minister died in office while in the course of the campaign. Finally, it was seen as the first serious opportunity for the combined opposition forces to terminate the uninterruped one-party rule of the Liberal Democratic Party (hereafter referred to as the LDP) since 1955. Results of the election and the subsequent choice of Suzuki Zenko as the Prime Minister surprised not only observers but also the ‘insiders’ ofJapanese politics. This paper attempts to: (1) elaborate on the background that led to the election; (2) illustrate and analyze the electoral facts; and (3) examine their implications for Japan's party politics in the 1980s.
The Demise of the Revenue Farm System in the Federated Malay States
Authors: Butcher John G.
Published: November 2008

Within the space of a few years a remarkable transformation took place in the taxation system of the Federated Malay States (FMS). Up until the early 1900s the British administration of these states relied, as had the sultans and chiefs from whom the British had taken control in the 1870s, on the revenue farm system for collecting many taxes. Most revenue farms were constituted according to the standard pattern found elsewhere in Southeast Asia at this time and in Europe up to the eighteenth century. The government granted a private contractor, the revenue farmer, the exclusive right to collect a certain tax in a specified area for a set number of years in return for a fixed rent, and the farmer kept for himself any money which he collected over and above what he owed the government in rent. A great variety of taxes were collected in this way. There were farms to collect the export duty on atap, firewood, timber, and rattan; most towns had market farms; and in Perak there was even a ‘farm of river turtle eggs’. But the most important farms were those which profited from what officials referred to as the ‘luxuries and vices’ of the immigrant Chinese community, particularly the workers who mined the tin which was the main source of wealth of these states.These farms were for the collection of the import duty on opium to be consume by Chinese in the mining districts of the interior, the sale of prepared opium (chandu) in coastal districts, the manufacture of spirits and the collection of the import duty on spirits, the right to run pawnshops, and the right to organize public gambling. Next to the export duty on tin, which the government collected itself, the income from these farms was the government's largest source of revenue. In the period 1890-94, 38.8 percent of the total revenue of the four states came from the export duty on tin and about 33 percent from the farms.2 But within the space of a few years the government abolished all the major farms, and by 1913 virtually none of the revenue of the FMS cam from revenue farms.
Life and Work in Colonial Cities: Harbour Workers in Java in the 1910s and 1920s
Authors: Ingleson John
Published: November 2008

Thestudy of Indonesian history is still very much in its infancy. There is as yet nothing like the breadth or depth of historical writing on Indonesia that there is on China or India, let alone on Europe or the United States. Nowhere is this more evident than in the dearth of urban history. Certainly, Indonesia was, and is, predominantly an agricultural society, but since the 1870s an increasing number of Indonesians have lived in towns and cities, earning their living from the urban economy. In the colonial period many worked in the Indies bureaucracy, while others formed a small but growing professional class of doctors, lawyers, engineers and teachers. From this group came most of the intellectual and organizational leadership of the nationalist movement. Through their writings and speeches we have a reasonably clear picture of their changing perceptions of the world and their struggle to work out what it meant to be an Indonesian in the last three decades of colonial rule.
The Dangers of Manichaeism
Authors: Kumar Dharma
Published: November 2008

If Indian history is not timeless, some parts of Indian historiography certainly seem to be. Habib's paper is a notable example, with its reverence for sacred texts, vigilant even of the order in which the great ones are mentioned, and its repetition in substantially unchanged form of arguments that have been made and answered several times already.

I have no stomach for this ancient battle, and do not propose to answer Habib point by point. But those new to the literature should be warned of some of the peculiarities of his style of controversy.
State Formation and Economy Reconsidered
Authors: Stein Burton
Published: November 2008

For too long, considerations of state formation in India have divided on the colonial threshold of history, and the British regime in the subcontinent has been treated as completely different from all prior states. The most important reason for this seems to be that the historiography of the British empire was created by those who ruled India; it was therefore a kind of trophy of domination. Other reasons include the vast and accessible corpus of records on the creation of the British colonial state, the recency of its emergence, and the foundational character of the colonial state for the independent states of the subcontinent. Continuity of the British colonial state with its predecessors is acknowledged only in the case of the Mughals owing, in part, to the prolonged process of separation of the Company's government from its Mughal imperial cover before the Mutiny. Thus, long after they had ceased as a governing regime, the Mughals were considered by contemporaries and subsequently by historians to be the old regime of India.
Indian Merchants and the Western Indian Ocean: The Early Seventeenth Century
Authors: Gupta Ashin Das
Published: November 2008

Researches in Indian economic history have stimulated curiosity about India's connections with the Indian Ocean area. Work done on European expansion in the non-European world has also contributed to the development of this area of enquiry. Recent writings on the Indian Ocean and the Indian maritime merchant have indicated important possibilities of further research. I shall first briefly consider some of these, and then pass on to an examination of a concrete historical problem where Indian economic history meets the history of European expansion and the two themes are held together by the Indian Ocean.
The Problem of Government Finance in British India: Taxation, Borrowing and the Allocation of Resources in the Inter-war Period
Authors: Charlesworth Neil
Published: November 2008

It isan axiom of India's economic history that government financial resources during the last half-century of the British period were inadequate. ‘The poverty of India was matched by the poverty of its government’ writes Dharma Kumar inThe Cambridge Economic Historyand she estimates that ‘except during the two wars of the twentieth century, the tax revenues amounted to a mere 5 to 7 per cent of the national income'. Raymond Goldsmith's assessment is of an even lower proportion realized by taxation and he further believes that the scanty share of government expenditure in national product declined after the first world war. In most of the historiography, this situation is seen as a notable shortcoming created by imperial rule, the inevitable product of the passivity of the ‘night-watchman state’. Reviewing financial policy in 1939, P. J. Thomas described its predominant characteristic as ‘conservatism’, marked by ‘extreme reluctance to venture on new experiments in raising revenue’, ‘the low burden of public debt’ and ‘inadequate expenditure on social services’.3 These features could have played an important role in constricting India's economic and social development, particularly in the inter-war period of the twentieth century. Financial weaknesses then may have undermined the 'new industrial policy' of the post-first world war era4 and in the 1930s superficially present a crucial contrast with Asia's other major industrializing power, Japan, where government appeared to stimulate the economy impressively by massive borrowing and expenditure.5
Regional Dependence and Rural Development in Central India: The Pivotal Role of Migrant Labour
Authors: Bates Crispin N.
Published: November 2008

The problem of regional underdevelopment, particularly in tribal India, has long been recognized and more than one political party has campaigned on this issue. The Indian constitution and state and central government development plans have included special clauses aimed at assisting those groups, the tribals or adivasis, who are most affected by the problem. Reports have been commissioned and investigations conducted, but rarely have these ended in constructive or relevant action. The work of anthropologists over a number of generations since the 1920s has perhaps done most to tell us of the real depth of the problem as it has affected central India. Foremost amongst them was W. V. Grigson, the aboriginal tribes enquiry officer of the government of the Central Provinces and Berar, whose 1944 report stands as the most comprehensive study available of the condition of the tribal peoples of this region at the end of the colonial period.
‘Some Rather Nebulous Capacity’: Lord Killearn's Appointment in Southeast Asia
Authors: Tarling Nicholas
Published: November 2008

In 1941–42 Japan destroyed the empire of the British in Southeast Asia. They were determined to return and, with the assistance of the US, they were able to do so in 1945. The plans they developed in preparation for their return were unrealistic. Rightly they took account of some of the weaknesses of their prewar régimes in Burma, in Malaya, in Borneo. But the policies they developed for dealing with them required an assumption of authority that, with their comparatively diminished power and their devastated economy, the British were unable to sustain in the immediate postwar years, and took too little account of the changes that had taken place since they left. They adjusted their policies with some success. Their essential aims were security and stability, the conditions for economic revival. The re-establishment of colonial régimes was one means to such ends: other means might have to serve. If Burma's leaving the Commonwealth promised stability more than attempts to keep it in, then that course could be accepted. If a Malayan Union seemed to promise division rather than consensus, greater weakness rather than greater strength, it must be replaced by Federation. The choices may still not have been right: Burma virtually collapsed; the Emergency began. But they were the only ways the British could perceive of achieving their aims in the circumstances in which they found themselves.
The Surface—Subsoil Form of Divided Ownership in Late Imperial China: Some Examples from the New Territories of Hong Kong
Authors: Palmer Michael J. E.
Published: November 2008

This paper is a study of certain aspects of land tenure in late imperial China. An extensive literature has evolved in recent years on the relationship between traditional forms of landholding and rural social structure in the irrigated rice-growing areas of southeastern and central China. In particular, the pronounced separation of‘rights to the surface’ (tianmianquan) and ‘rights to the subsoil’ (tiandiquan), which was common in many regions until its elimination as a result of the land reform campaigns of the People's Republic during the early 1950s, has attracted the interest of a growing number of sinological historians and anthropologists. I analyze here some of the principal characteristics of this traditional Chinese method of dividing property rights in land as they were found in the pre-British New Territories of Hong Kong. I also give consideration to those areas of the existing literature which seem especially relevant to my interpretation of the local manifestations of this extremely important feature of Chinese social life.
Buddhism, Socialism, and Protest in Prewar Japan: The Career of Seno'o Girō
Authors: Large Stephen S.
Published: November 2008

The interplay of religion and political protest is a familiar theme in Western studies of Japanese Christians who contributed significantly to the socialist movement in their country from the late Meiji period to World War II. Less well known is the fact that a minority of Japanese Buddhists likewise applied the ideals of their faith to political dissent in the movement. Their defiance of the State and the predominantly conservative Buddhist sects which generally supported Emperor, nation, and Empire in Asia constitutes in effect a modern Japanese Buddhist tradition of protest comparable in kind if not in scale to that found in Japanese Christianity. The purpose of the article in hand is to explore this tradition through a study of the Nichiren priest and Buddhist socialist, Seno'o Girō (1889–1961) whose career provides a striking illustration of the Buddhist dimensions of socialism in prewar Japan.
The Kurumbas of the Nilgiris: An Ethnographic Myth?
Authors: Bird Nurit
Published: November 2008

The paper is divided into three parts. In the first part I discuss ethnographic accounts from the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries which concern the tribal Kurumbas of the Nilgiri Hills in South India. In the second part I present a brief profile of the Naiken, one of the Kurumba sub-groups with whom I conducted anthropological fieldwork between September 1978 and October 1979. The name Naiken is used by the people themselves and their immediate neighbours. In the literature they are often referred to as Jenu Kurumbas. In the final part of the paper, I critically re-examine the literature in the light of my field material and experience. Prior to my work none of the Nilgiri Kurumba groups have been subjected to intensive anthropological studies, although there are references to them, and in particular to their rolevisà-visthe other Nilgiri tribes in numerous accounts, including such seminal works asThe Todaby W. H. R. Rivers (1906) and ‘Culture Change among the Nilgiri Tribes’ by Mandelbaum (1941). I suggest that the much-criticized early accounts by ‘amateur’ travellers, administrators, and planters may be more accurate than has been thought and perhaps even more revealing than the subsequent references up to the present offered by ‘professional’ anthropologists.
Scapegoat or Instigator of Japanese Aggression? Inoue Kiyoshi's Case against the Emperor
Authors: Sheldon Charles D.
Published: November 2008

Since the war, some changes are discernible in Japanese attitudes towards the Emperor and the Imperial institution. When asked, those expressing support for the maintenance of the institution still comprise a stable and vast majority of the people (84 percent in 1973), but there has clearly been an increase in indifference, especially among the young. The other change is the recent emergence, after a long period of relative dormancy, of an emotional reaction on the part of a small minority against both the institution and the Emperor for their involvement in the per-1945 establishment. in the pre-1945 establishment. Bitter criticisms and attacks have dominated the intellectual journals and have spilled over into the mass media. There are strong emotional currents on both sides of the issue. One emotion, becoming more vocal, is iconoclastic; the other, not much represented in the mass media, is protective. In the immediate postwar period, the Emperor and the Imperial institution were associated in the minds of many Japanese, especially among those of left-wing persuasion, with repression, war and defeat. The problem of the ‘Emperor system,’ as the Communists called it, not yet decided by a new Constitution, became a political issue for a short period when Communists released from prison in 1945 mounted an attack on the Emperor as well as on the ‘Emperor system.’ But between 1946 and 1971, it was not of great importance as a political issue.
The Development and Death of Chinese Academic Sociology: A Chapter in the Sociology of Sociology
Authors: King Ambrose Yeo-Chi ,   with the collaboration Wang Tse-Sang
Published: November 2008

Although 1949 is not a magical year in Chinese history in the sense of marking a total break with the centuries-old traditions and culture, it is appropriate to say that 1949 is the year which symbolizes the end of Chinese sociology. In this paper we attempt to give a socio-historical account of the genesis, development, struggle and then death of sociology in China, covering a period of more than half a century. The first part of the paper will deal with the institutionalization of sociology as a transplanted Western flower in Chinese soil; the second part describes and analyses how Chinese sociology struggled for its legitimacy for survival under Chinese Communism and how the battle was lost.
The Utilitarianism of Dalhousie and the Material Improvement of India
Authors: Ghosh Suresh Chandra
Published: November 2008

In his final minute in March 1856, just on the eve of his departure from India, Lord Dalhousie, while reviewing the last eight years of his administration, describes the railways, electric telegraph and uniform postage which he introduced into India as the ‘three great engines of social improvement’. Posterity certainly knows how correct Dalhousie's description was, but under this prophetic utterance of Dalhousie flows a subtle current of philosophy which few scholars working on the Dalhousie era have been able to detect and interpret. That philosophy was the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and his faithful and able lieutenant, James Mill. In hisHistory of British India, which Mill undertook before 1808 and published in London in 1817, Mill had questioned the values of Indian society and suggested its reform on Benthamite principles. The key to progress in India, Mill also pointed out, lay in the introduction of Western science and knowledge. It is surprising that Daihousie, though a staunch Tory, subscribed to this view of Bentham and Mill about India and as a result ‘the natural alliance of the Scientific Benthamite administrator and the authoritative Tory gentlemen’ which ‘was never fully achieved in England’ was ‘achieved only in India’.
The Archetypal Identity of Laxmi in Sakhārām Binder
Authors: Limaye Mohan R.
Published: November 2008

It has long been accepted that in the imagination of man certain images occur again and again to represent the elements of existence. As an individual finds these images in the myths of his culture, he knows their symbolic meanings intuitively, although he may not be able to articulate those meanings. In literature, which is a play of two constructive principles, system and creativity, the presentation of these mythic images is very common. The images themselves serve as a semiotic system and their presentation, usually unconscious, in art is the creative principle. A study of such archetypal images contributes to the understanding of a piece of literature. In Sakhārām Binder, a Marathi play first produced in the spring of 1972, we see that Laxmi, one of its main characters, represents the archetypal figure of Sāvitri, the heroine of a mythical episode in the Hindu epic, the Mahābhārata.
The Much Maligned Empress Dowager: A Revisionist Study of the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi (1835–1908)
Authors: Chung Sue Fawn
Published: November 2008

Clio, the Muse of History, has not been kind to the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi (1835–1908). Traditional Chinese historians always have been prejudiced against feminine influence in court. Moreover, historians have long relied upon the works of men such as K'ang Yu-wei (1858–1927) and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (1873–1929), the two leaders of the radical reform movement, and other pro-Emperor radical reformers, most notably Wang Chao (1859–1935), Yün Yü-ting (1863–1918), Lo Tun-jung (d. 1923), and Li Hsi-sheng, for their information about the workings of the Ch'ing court during the period 1898 to 1900. Since these men were opposed to the power and conservatism of the Empress Dowager, their prejudice is reflected in their writings about the court at that time. Many historians also have relied upon the works of Western writers such as J. O. P. Bland, Sir Edmund Backhouse, and Hosea B. Morse for their information about this period. In fact, Bland and Backhouse'sChina Under the Empress Dowageris the book which has shaped many of our present-day negative images of Tz'u-hsi. Recently the reliability of Sir Edmund Backhouse has been seriously challenged by Hugh Trevor-Roper in his excellent study,Hermit of Peking. There can be no doubt that Western writers drew their facts from exchanges with the writings by the Chinese radical reformers, from unreliable eunuchs, and from highly biased newspapers, such as theNorth China Herald(a pro-reform Western-oriented Shanghai newspaper) and theCh'ing-i pao[China Discussion], which was edited by Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and published in Yokohama.
Colonial Urbanism: The Development of Madras City in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Authors: Neild Susan M.
Published: November 2008

The colonial port cities of Asia have recently attracted renewed attention not only from students of European imperial expansion, but also from others concerned with urban growth and change. These cities, founded by Europeans or developed by them as central links in worldwide colonial political and economic networks, stood apart from precolonial urban centers. Their foreign origins or control, their coastal locations, their central positions within European colonial systems, their emphasis on commercial rather than ritual activities, and their ethnic and cultural heterogeneity are important features which distinguish them from most indigenous cities in Asia. Many possessed a dual social and spatial structure, furthermore, which contrasted with the more unitary and often ritualized order of the noncolonial centers. Products of a changing political world order, these colonial cities became recognized centers of change in their own societies.
Recongnizing India's Doctors: The Institutionalization of Medical Dependency, 1918–39
Authors: Jeffery Roger
Published: November 2008

In 1975 the British General Medical Council ceased to recognize Indian medical degrees as sufficient qualification for practice as a doctor in Britain. For several years previously the G.M.C. had refused to grant automatic recognition to the degrees of the new Indian medical colleges, and this had soured relationships between the G.M.C. and its Indian counterpart, the Medical Council of India. In retaliation for the British move, the M.C.I. ceased to recognize British medical degrees, and higher qualifications from Britain awarded after 1976 would not be accepted from candidates for promotion in medical colleges and other public sector jobs. This controversy was not as novel as recent commentators have supposed. Indian medical degrees had been refused recognition once before—in 1930—and the issue of G.M.C. recongnition had been at the heart of a dispute between the Indian medical colleges and the British medical authorities which had raged from the end of the First World War to the eve of the Second.
Britain and India between the Wars
Authors: Gallagher John , Seal Anil
Published: November 2008

In the nineteenth century, the British succeeded in deriving growing benefits from their Indian territories. With dominion firmly established, and the colonial connection beginning to take its modern shape, India came to fit less awkwardly with British economic interests. India now became Britain's best customer for her most important industry, a useful supplier of raw materials, a safe field for capital investment, a crucial element in her balance of payments and key to the multilateral system of settlements which sustained the continued expansion of her world trade.The pattern of trade and investment, which brought such signal benefits to Britain, depended upon dominion over India. Dominion had given Britain the levers of power to open up Indian markets to her trade,knock down the internal barriers to the free flow of her goods, and prevent the erection of external tariffs to protect the Indian product.Dominion enabled Britain to build, at Indian cost, a system of transport by rail and road which linked the ports, themselves the creation of British rule, to their hinterlands, and to tilt the advantage in favour ofher own nationals who dominated India's foreign trade; it helped to give British shipping, banking and insurance a virtual monopoly over the invisibles of Indian trade and it imposed upon India a currency and banking system which protected the ratio of sterling to the rupee. Butthese balance-sheets of imperialism do not reveal the full importance of the Raj to the British world system. Just as India's growing foreign tradehelped to push British influence into east and west Asia alike, so her growing military power underwrote that influence, whether formal or informal, in those regions. An oriental barracks, where half of Britain'sworld force was billeted free of charge, India was the battering ram of British power throughout the eastern arc of its expansion. Before the First World War, India seemed triumphantly to have justified the efforts of generations of empire-builders.
Indian Business and the Congress Provincial Governments 1937–39
Authors: Markovits Claude
Published: November 2008

The late 1930s saw a definite turn in political developments in India. Following the abandonment of Civil Disobedience in 1934, a prolonged period of internal peace helped the Congress, until then a broadly-based movement with a general commitment to fight foreign rule, evolve into a more organized party capable of aspiring to political dominance. In the process, its relations with different social forces took a more definite shape. While in the past the Congress had clung to the myth of an Indian society free of internal conflicts and united in opposition to the British, the growth of social conflicts in town and countryside forced it to take into account the competing aspirations of various groups.
Colonial Rule and the Internal Economy in Twentieth-century Madras
Authors: Baker Christopher
Published: November 2008

Throughout the colonial period, the government played a substantial role in structuring India's foreign trade and in moulding the economy of the great port cities and their immediate hinterlands. Once Company and government had started to prise themselves apart in the early nineteenth century, however, the colonial rulers adopted a very haughty attitude towards the working of the internal economy. The development of internal production and trade would of course be deeply affected by the imperial connection, but the colonial government refused to admit responsibility and was careful not to be drawn into active intervention. The transition from colonial rule to independence did not mark a sharp break between this era of laissez faire or minimal interference in the internal economy, and an era of 'development' or constructive intervention. Indeed, it is more likely that a reluctant slide into economic management during the latter part of the colonial period helped to speed the colonial rulers along their course of retreat; any attempt to tamper with the mechanisms of the internal economy opened up the colonial government to contradictory pressures and threatened to expose many of the weaker links in the mesh of colonial command.
Workers' Politics and the Mill Districts in Bombay between the Wars
Authors: Chandavarkar Rajnarayan
Published: November 2008

Between the wars, the development of a labour movement in Bombay reflected a growing polarization in social and political relations in the city. This period, which saw an intensification of social conflict, also witnessed changes in the character of industrial action. Until 1914, strikes in the cotton textile industry were largely confined to particular departments and mills; increasingly after the war, they were coordinated across the industry as a whole. Rising prices and unprecedented profits which accompanied the post-war boom led to the demand for higher wages supported by two general strikes. In the mid 1920s, as the industry's markets slumped, attempts to cut wages were once again strongly resisted. With a slight improvement in their fortunes in the later 1920s, the millowners introduced ‘rationalization’ schemes; for the workforce this meant more work, less wages and higher chances of unemployment. Between April 1928 and September 1929, two general strikes crippled the industry for about eleven months, and the extension of these schemes and a further round of wage cuts led to another strike wave in 1933-34. Apart from several one-day closures, eight general strikes occurred in the industry between 1919 and 1940. The impact of this militancy was felt not only in other occupations in Bombay but also in other industrial centres, such as Sholapur and Ahmedabad. As Bombay became the scene of militant working-class action in India, its labour movement, under communist leadership since 1928, acquired an explicitly political direction.
An Imperial Dilemma: The Reluctant Indianization of the Indian Political Service
Authors: Hogben W. Murray
Published: November 2008

One of the most difficult sets of questions for any imperial power or ruling group is if, when, and how to open the ranks of the imperial services to the imperialized. For a considerable period of time there may be logical enough reasons, related to imperial security and distrust of the conquered, for avoiding these questions altogether. However, sooner or later it becomes neccessary to win the collaboration of the losers, and then certain ‘liberalizing’, or just realistic tendencies begin to prevail. These are often inspired more by ‘home’ influences than by ‘out-post’ sentiment which tends to be more suspicious of its recent victims. Nevertheless, somewhere along the line a sometimes embarrassing precedent is made, and the integration or localization of the imperial civil and military services, and even of the executive, is undertaken. Usually the start is at the lowest levels, the clerks and soldiers, but later the upper or officer class also begins to lose its initial imperial or racial solidarity.
Maratha History as Polemic: Low Caste Ideology and Political Debate in Late Nineteenth-Century Western India
Authors: O'Hanlon Rosalind
Published: November 2008

A striking feature of Marathi vernacular literature towards the end of the nineteenth century lies in the sudden surge of interest in the Maratha warrior hero, Sivaji, and his feats of leadership in the great expansions of Maratha power that took place in the seventeenth century. Of all the work on Sivaji written at this time, the most familiar is probably Mahadev Govind Ranade'sRise of the Maratha Power, published in 1900, in English. Besides this, there appeared in the last three decades of the century an unusually large number of Marathi works celebrating Sivaji's exploits.
Economic Change and Agrarian Organization in ‘Dry’ South India 1890–1940: A Reinterpretation
Authors: Robert Bruce
Published: November 2008

Recent historiography of India has focused much needed attention on rural economy and society. The literature has dealt with a number of issues, such as merchants, credit, impact of communications, land-tenure (revenue), rural politics, rich peasants and general essays on the ‘agrarian structure’ of various regions of the sub-continent. In many of the studies a common theme emerges. It is suggested that with the establishment of an integrated market economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries rural wealth and power tended to concentrate in the hands of relatively few rich peasants or a rural elite. In the case of south India, the contention of increased rural stratification on these lines is most convincingly put forth by David Washbrook and Christopher Baker in a series of articles and books. The present analysis will concentrate on Washbrooks' writings in reference to the agrarian structure of the ‘dry’ districts. His works provide the most comprehensive and coherent statement of the ‘rural magnate’ interpretation of agrarian organization.
The Politics of Compromise: The Constitutionalist Party and the Electoral Reforms of 1922 in French Cochinchina
Authors: Tai Hue-Tam Ho
Published: November 2008

When Le Myre de Vilers arrived in Saigon in mid-1879 as the first civilian to be appointed governor of Cochinchina after nearly two decades of rule by admirals, he carried a letter of instructions in which the Minister of the Navy and Colonies, Admiral Jaureguiberry, outlined his mission: to endow the colony with the institutions of a civilian government and administration.In his instructions, Jaureguiberry noted the desirability of giving the Vietnamese a role in running the affairs of Cochinchina.
Indirect Rule in the British Empire: The Foundations of the Residency System in India (1764–1858)
Authors: Fisher Michael H.
Published: November 2008

The British Empire established itself and expanded largely through its incorporation of existing indigenous political structures. A single British Resident or Political Agent, controlling a regional state through ‘advice’ given to the local prince or chief, became the norm for much of the Empire. India's princely states, where from the mid-eighteenth century the British first employed and developed this system of indirect rule, stood as the conscious model for later imperial administrators and politicians who wished to extend the Empire without the economic and political costs of direct annexation. In dealing with Malaya, East and West Africa from the mid-nineteenth century onward, officials in the field and notables in London sought to justify imperial expansion and to establish indirect rule efficiently by drawing upon the Indian example.Thus, during a century of empirical learning from relations with India'sprincely states, the British established a body of theory and policies about indirect rule which then spread throughout the rest of the Empire.
The Poor Quality of Official Socio-Economic Statistics Relating to the Rural Tropical World: With Special Reference to South India
Authors: Hill Polly
Published: November 2008

My main concern in this article is with statistics relating to such basic matters as the sizes of farm-holdings, the output and yield of crops, household income and expenditure, occupational statistics, cattle ownership, the sizes of villages, etc.—though I shall also range more widely. While the distinct and professional field of demographic statistics is necessarily outside my scope, I shall criticize some features of the Karnataka population census.Although since 1953 most of my fieldwork has been undertaken in the West African countryside, I am obliged to take most of my examples of bad statistics from south India, since West African statistics, which were never abundant, are now scantier than ever. Throughout my discussion I take it for granted that the lack of reliable statistics gravely impairs our understanding of the working of tropical rural economies.
Multiple Images: Jute Mill Strikes of 1929 and 1937 Seen Through Other's Eyes
Authors: Goswami Omkar
Published: November 2008

The jute mills of Bengal had witnessed communal violence as well as bursts of working men's unrest even in the late nineteenth century. In the eyes of the employers, however, they were merely localized and disorganized flashes of protest, which could be typically nipped by the arrival of the Scottish mill manager and his entourage of Nepalidarwans. A quick arbitration by thesahibunder the peepul tree, liberally laced with pidgin Hindi abuse, was followed by the protector's judgment. Some would be happy with the verdict, others would remain aggrieved while thebara sahib, after a few words with the European assistant and the nativesirdar, would imperiously stride back to his office, acknowledging numerous salams on his way. With such powerfulma-baaps, the mills rarely felt the need to report what they considered were piffling matters to the local police or the district magistrate. Thus, in February 1886, the Indian Jute Mills' Association could rule that ‘all hands whose work stopped during the days the mills were closed [for short-time working] should cease to be paid for that time’ without the slightest fear of serious protest from the labouring people. And in the late 1920s, in spite of the Rowlattsatyagraha, the Khilafat and the non-cooperation movement, the Chairman of IJMA could note with great satisfaction that ‘for many years the jute mill industry has been more or less immune from industrial disputes’.
Politics, Trade and Communications in East Asia: Thoughts on Anglo-Russian Relations, 1861–1907
Authors: Nish Ian
Published: November 2008

As Britain saw it, trade was not the prime motivating force for Russian expansion in east Asia or, put another way, the Russian frontiersmen were not driven by the actual amount of their trade there or its future potentialities. While Russia was primarily concerned with the tea trade over land frontiers, Britain was concerned with the seaborne commerce of China. The customs revenue paid to China in the year 1894 worked out as follows:

Judging from the returns of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Organization, British ships carried 83.5% of China's total trade. But Britain's commercial dominance affected her political stance because she wanted to preserve China's stability for most of the second half of the nineteenth century. This was at the root of the political tensions between Britain and Russia which emerged in China after 1860 and especially those which derived from the spate of railway building which took place from 1890 onwards. It would be foolish to deny that intense rivalry did exist in the area from time to time or that detailed observations of the actions of the one were regularly conducted by the other—what we should now call ‘intelligence operations’. But what I shall suggest in this paper is that, despite all the admitted antagonism and suspicion between Britain and Russia in east Asia, Britain regularly made efforts to reach accommodations with Russia in north-east Asia.
Entrepreneurship in Colonial Korea: Kim Yôn-su
Authors: McNamara Dennis L.
Published: November 2008

Kim Yôn-su (pen name Sudang 1896–1979) was among the few widely successful Korean entrepreneurs during the years of Japanese colonial rule on the peninsula.1 He served as managing director and later as president (1935–1945) of the Kyôngsông Spinning Company (Kyôngsông Pangjik Chusik Hoesa), the largest of the Korean-owned industrial enterprises. He also founded, managed and owned the Samyang company, the largest indigenous agricultural company of the period.2 What distinguished Kim was not merely the extent of his investments and administrative responsibilities, but the continuity of indigenous ownership and management in his ventures despite strong Japanese dominance of the colonial Korean economy.
Order and Disorder in Colonial South India
Authors: Irschick Eugene F.
Published: November 2008

Recently, we have come to see that the perceptions which we had of the decay and destruction of India in the eighteenth century were more than anything else a product of British writing which sought consciously or unconsciously to magnify and color the changes which took place in the eighteenth century to enhance the magnitude of their own ‘achievements’ from then onwards. ‘achievements’ from then onwards. Secondly, we have come to see the interaction of British desires for political security on the one hand and a steady income from land and other taxes as producing a situation first of depression in the first half of the nineteenth century and later of gradual underdevelopment at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth. It is therefore possible now to understand the unwillingness of the British administration in India to engage in any large-scale developmental activity which would upset the political balance which the British had established early in their relationship with landed and mercantile groups in the area. In this essay, I should like to address the connection between British support for landed groups in the agrarian area outside of Madras on the one hand and the colonial ‘discovery’ and reinforcement of traditions on the other, to understand both the nature of colonial control strategies and the genesis of Indian revivalism.
The Communal Award of 1932 and its Implications in Bengal
Authors: Chakrabarty Bidyut
Published: November 2008

The debate over the separate and joint electorates as rival modes of election to the various representative institutions by the British began with the Simla deputation of 1906 and remained controversial until 1947. Not only was the issue controversial in pre-Independent India, but it also raises debates among contemporary historians and political scientists. For John Gallagher, the Communal Award was nothing but ‘a sign of [the] determination [of the British Government] to warp the Indian question towards electoral politics’. While looking into the operational aspect of the Award, Anil Seal, too, has affirmed that ‘by extending the electorate, the imperial croupier had summoned more players to his table’. Looking at the Award from the British point of view, both of them thus arrived at the same conclusions: (a) the Award introduced the native politicians to the sophisticated world of parliamentary politics; and (b) as a result of the new arrangement, as stipulated in the 1935 Act, politics now percolated down to the localities. The available evidence, however, does reveal that the Award and the constitutional rights guaranteed to Indians under the Act were the price the British paid for the continuity of the Indian Empire. What thus appears to be a calculated generous gesture was very much a political expedient. The surrender of power into Indian hands, though at the regional levels, was not welcomed by some senior officers who saw an eclipse of British authority in this endeavour.
India and the Anglo-Chinese Opium Agreements, 1907–14
Authors: Newman R. K.
Published: November 2008

The rise and significance of the opium trade from India to China are well understood by historians, but the trade's decline and disappearance have received very little attention. This article explores the motives which led Britain to agree to phase out its opium exports to China and the part which the government of India played in determining this policy.
Un Voyage de Goa à Ormuz en 1520
Authors: Aubin Jean
Published: November 2008

En prenant son service, le 25 janvier 1520, à bord du Santa Maria do Monte, dans le port de Goa, l'escrivão de cette nau portugaise, Cristóvāo Afonso, était porteur d'un registre de cent pages. Conservé aujourd'hui à l'Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, à Lisbonne, sous la cote Núcleo Antigo 609, ce Lyvro da receyta e despesa da nao Santa Maria do Monte em que vay por capitam e feytor Paris Corbinell pera Ormuz com arroz delRey nosso senhor pera s'entregar ao feytor e oficiaes da feytoria no dito Ormuz nous est parvenu dans un état incomplet. Le texte ne comporte que 27 feuilles écrites, avec la numérotation originale de I à 8, 11 à 16, 24 à 27, 36 à 42, 50 et 51. La perte est loin d'être aussi importante qu'il semblerait. II restait toujours dans les ‘cahiers’ (cadernos) de cette sorte un bon nombre de pages blanches. La comparaison entre les títulos du sommaire établi par l'écrivain au feuillet Iv et l'état présent du manuscrit permet de constater que manque seulement la liste de ce que le capitaine avait reçu au magasin d'Ormuz pour le voyage de retour (fol. 60: ‘As cousas que recebeo o capitam no almazem per'a nao te Goa’), que nous pouvons d'ailleurs connaître en partie par divers items d'autres títulos. Tout à la fin du cahier avaient été transcrits deux alvarás, fol. 97 ‘Alvara da demasya da carga’, et fol. 99 ‘O alvara da capitania de Paris Corbynell’.