bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Confucian Patriotism and the Destruction of the Woosung Railway, 1877
Authors: Pong David
Published: November 2008

The slow growth of railways is undoubtedly one of the most astonishing features of the history of modernization in China. The Chinese government often gave as its reasons for opposition to railway development the fact that improved communications would facilitate foreign military expansion, that railways obstructed thefeng-shui, that mandarin and peasant alike were opposed to the railway, and that railways destroyed the livelihood of the common people. But, until recently, these explanations have never been given serious consideration, despite the fact that Ch'ing officials discussed railway-policy in these terms in a major debate in 1866–67. This is partly because historians have found it difficult to accept Chinese objections to railway development at their face-value, and partly because Chinese officials themselves, seeing that foreigners were unimpressed by Chinese arguments against railway construction, offered others which they thought would be more acceptable to the Western mind. This essay, however, tries to analyse Chinese objections as a coherent body of thought that might be said to xpress 'Confucian Patriotism'. It considers in detail the events surround-ing the destruction of the Woosung railway.
Buitenzorg in 1805: The Role of Money and Credit in a Colonial Frontier Society
Authors: Boomgaard Peter
Published: November 2008

By an edict of 15 February 1805 the Governor-General ordered the Chinese moneylenders from the town of Buitenzorg to report to the Commissioner of Native Affairs how much money the inhabitants of the Buitenzorg Regency owed them. Non-compliance with this order would result in cancellation of the debts. The Commissioner compiled a list, based on these reports, dated 30 June 1805. In 45 pages, consisting of 672 entries, the debtors of and debts to 26 Chinese are listed. The debtors and debts are listed under their creditor, the Chinese moneylender. The entries are probably given as they were reported by the Chinese themselves, although there is no logic in the ordering of the names. An ‘ideal’ entry yields the following data: name of moneylender, name of debtor, his place of residence, year that the debt was incurred, amount of money borrowed with sawahs (wet rice fields) as collateral, number of pétak (embanked ricefield) sawah, amount borrowed with buffaloes as a collateral, number of buffaloes, amount of cash borrowed (without securities), amount of credit for merchandise, amount of annual interest, number of years paid, number of years still to be paid.
Perspectives on the ‘Green Revolution’ in South Asia
Authors: Farmer B. H.
Published: November 2008

The choice of the word ‘perspective’ in the title of this lecture exploits the ambiguity to which the English language so happily lends itself. For the lecture will, on the one hand, look back over the valley of the years at the research project on technology and agrarian change in two rice-growing areas, one in Sri Lanka and the other in Tamil Nadu, which was organized from the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridgejust over ten years ago, remembering some of its findings (see Farmer, 1977) and discussing certain further changes that have taken place in the study area and elsewhere in South Asia in those ten years. The project, it should be said, was inter-disciplinary; involved both sample surveys and studies in depth; and can claim to have attained the fruitful relationship between disciplines and between techniques of field study that some have described as ‘hard to achieve’ (e.g., Hoben and Timberg, 1980).
Imperialism, Botany and Statistics in early Nineteenth-Century India: The Surveys of Francis Buchanan (1762–1829)
Authors: Vicziany Marika
Published: November 2008

Buchanan arrived in India in 1794 and left in 1815. He was employed by the East India Company for these twenty years in a number of capacities but he is chiefly remembered today for two surveys he conducted: the first of Mysore in 1800 and the second of Bengal in 1807–14. These surveys have long been used by historians, anthropologists and Indian politicians to depict the nature of Indian society in the early years of British rule. Recently economic historians, Bagchi in particular, have used the ‘statistical’ tables compiled by Buchanan as a data base against which later statistical evidence about the Indian economy is measured. Bagchi believes that by doing this he can furnish firm proof of the extent to which British rule was detrimental to the people of India in the nineteenth century.
Colonialism and Sanitary Medicine: The Development of Preventive Health Policy in the Punjab, 1860 to 1900
Authors: Hume John Chandler
Published: November 2008

The system of medicine known today variously as ‘international,’ ‘scientific,’ or ‘Western’ entered South Asia as early as the seventeenth century. For two centuries this system, known in India as allopathic medicine, coexisted with the medical traditions indigenous to South Asia. In 1835 the period of coexistence ended and the adherents of the allopathic tradition began to press claims that they, and only they, should be allowed to direct and staff the medical and health programs of the East India Company and, after 1858, the various Governments of South Asia. Allopathic medical men wished to decide the goal or goals of governmental medical efforts, who was to be allowed to participate in those efforts, and who was to be served by those programs. In short, allopathic medical men wanted control of the development of all facets of health policy in South Asia.
Urban Development and Death: Bombay City, 1870–1914
Authors: Klein Ira
Published: November 2008

Historians, statesmen, administrators, nationalists and others have disagreed sharply about the impact of modernization in the era of Western domination. Did Western rule provide the tools for Indian progress but did economically medieval, ‘other-worldly’ Indians fail to maximize the benefits of modernization and even thwart advances? Conversely, did Western imperialism systematically impoverish India by making it a ‘satellite,’ freezing the subcontinent into a neo-feudal social pattern while sucking up its wealth? Finally, is a ‘new revisionist’ interpretation correct that India experienced real if undramatic economic growth during the Western era and that notions of exploitation or Indian suffering induced by development were myths? Interpretations expressing either the great success and benign innovations of Western rule, or its exploitiveness both appear flawed, according to Bombay's modernizing experience. Bombay underwent a great expansion of wealth and became the source of India's new factory textile production, the hub of a great newwork of trasport and trade, and the cosmopolitan abode of wealth Indian merchants, industrialist and professionals, whose affluence, modernity, industrializing activies and eventual nationalist orientation distinguished them from a supine or neo-feudal comprador class, cooperating with Western masters in exploiting ‘natives’ for a myrmidon's share of the profits. Alternatively, Bombay's prosperity did not flow down to the masses; its modernization was complex, dynamically helping to produce progress and wealth, but for some decades impoverishing and destroying many lives. In the half-century of rapid development preceding the first world war, the great majority of Bombay's populace, its ordinary working classes, experienced significant declines in living standards, worsening environmental conditions and escalating death-rates. Diminished real income and increased mortality among Bombay's ordinary inhabitants warn against extrapolating from rising indices of material production an optimistic conclusion about the general human condition in the city or in British India.
On Taking India into the Twenty-First Century (New Economic Policy in India)
Authors: Patel I. G.
Published: November 2008

On one of his many visits to India Kingsley Martin was once asked how he saw the prospects for Western Europe. His reply was that he was very optimistic as most of the leaders of Western Europe then were very old. If the transition from age to youth in national leadership is a sufficient basis for hope, we certainly have much to be grateful for in India. And our young Prime Minister has already struck a very responsive chord among large sections of Indian society by his promise of change. His mother had won the 1980 election on the promise of a ‘Government that works’. Mr Gandhi promised in 1984 a ‘Government that works faster’—thus heralding a promise of greater efficiency in general. When asked about the objective of his new Government, he used the now famous phrase that his objective was to take India into the twenty-first century. Taken at its face value, this was a rather vacuous phrase. It is not necessary for anyone to carry India, Atlas-like, into the twenty-first century. It would arrive at our doorstep in due course, as it will at everyone else's, and most probably without even a whimper.
‘God must be Liberated!’ A Hindu Liberation Movement in Ayodhya
Authors: van der Veer Peter
Published: November 2008

There seem to be at least two elusive concepts in the sociology of India: caste and communalism. On caste Eric Wolf makes the point eloquently: ‘The literature on the topic is labyrinthine, and the reader is not always sure there is light at the end of the tunnel’ (1982: 397). The sociological perspective on caste seems to be obscured by a great deal of confusion about the place of religious values and sentiments in Hindu society. According to Louis Dumont (1970: 6, 7), the primary object of the sociology of India should be a system of ideas and the approach that of a sociology of values. Since the religious ideology, on which the caste system is based in his view, seems to have been fixed already in the classical period of Indian civilization, caste becomes a static, a-historical phenomenon in Dumont's writing and in much of the debate originating from it (cf. Van der Veer 1985). The same may easily happen with that other most elusive concept of the sociology of India, communalism. Again Dumont can be our misleading guide here. He argues that ‘communalism is the affirmation of the religious community as a political group’ (1970: 90). In terms of their religious values and norms there is a lasting social heterogeneity of the Hindu and Muslim communities (95–8). This argument amounts to a ‘two-nation’ theory, based upon an a-historical sociology of values.
Religious Belief, Economic Interest and Social Policy: Temple Endowments in Sri Lanka during the Governorship of William Gregory, 1872–77
Authors: Rogers John D.
Published: November 2008

The social context of land endowed for the maintenance of temples in the Kandyan region of Sri Lanka has long been recognized by scholars as an important topic for historical and sociological research. Most historical writing on the subject is concerned with changes in government policy towards temple endowments after the imposition of British control in 1815. The first forty years of British rule have received more attention than any later period; consequently emphasis has been placed on the gradual of process British disengagement from the pre-colonial policy of close official involvement in the administration of temple land. This research has fruitfully illustrated tensions inherent to colonial rule in the early nineteenth century, especially the conflict between the religious beliefs of the colonizers and the desire to avoid unrest among non-Christians. However, little detailed research has been carried out on either official or popular attitudes towards temple endowments after the colonial government formally gave up its responsibility for their administration in the middle of the nineteenth century. As a result, the uneven and partial official movement towards a reassertion of government control in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is usually portrayed as official recognition of earlier mistakes concerning disestablishment. This view does not take into account the considerable economic importance of the endowments. Changing official attitudes towards religion, as well as internal developments within Buddhism, did indeed influence government policy, but changes in economic policy and in the control and use of land were also important.
A Right to Exist: Eunuchs and the State in Nineteenth-Century India
Authors: Preston Laurence W.
Published: November 2008

A Common but curious sight of the Indian bazaar is the hijḍā, the ‘eunuch’ of Indian English. Obviously transvestites, the hijḍās beg from merchants who quickly, under threat of obscene abuse, respond to the silent demands of such detested individuals. On occasion, especially festival days, they press their claims with boisterous and ribald singing and dancing. Popular Indian opinion would label the hijḍās as nothing more than male prostitutes. Yet at the same time, and hinting at a more complex social function, they are expected if unwanted visitors at wedding parties and birth celebrations where they demand their share of the general largesse. Seen solely as one element in the fabric of contemporary society, the life of a hijḍā is surely ‘an alternative social role … which cater[s] not only for the temperamental misfits but also for disavowed yet persistent needs of the community as a whole’. However, such characterizations are made without much investigation of the ‘alternative social role’. The vast Indian underworld—the low caste and outcaste; the beggars, touts, petty criminals, and prostitutes; and also the hijḍā—has been much neglected as a subject of serious scholarship.
Emancipation for Survival: Access to Land and Labour of Thandans in Kerala
Authors: Nieuwenhuys Olga
Published: November 2008

Landless labourers often cultivate relations of patronage as part of survival strategies even though such relations severely curtail the scope for their emancipationin the long run. In the past decennia, however, the possibilities to maintain relations of patronage or get into new ones have been dwindling fast (Breman 1974). New forms of dependency, such as political clientelism, have proven to be relevant to only a selected minority. To which strategies for survival does the mass of the landless take resort in this situation? Are these more conducive to their emancipation than patronage relations?
Asian Capital in the Age of European Domination: The Rise of the Bazaar, 1800–1914
Authors: Ray Rajat Kanta
Published: November 2008

There was a time when the economic confrontation between East and West was perceived as a confrontation between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. ‘East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,’—thus wrote J. H. Boeke, quoting Rudyard Kipling with warm approval. The notion has since been undermined by deeper explorations into the history of the Chinese and Indian merchant bankers, and the Jews of the Islamic world. Over large parts of Java, with which Boeke was most familiar, there was indeed a sharp contrast between the local communal economy and the sophisticated capitalism of the Dutch colonists. It appeared an inevitable process of history that the Dutch corporations should subjugate the petty Javanese communities of princes, peasants and pedlars. It was also taken for granted that the phenomenon was general and that European gesellschaft did not confront and conquer such petty gemeinschaften in Java alone. But when the individual studies of the Chinese, Indian and Islamic—Jewish long-distance trade and credit networks are seen in over-all perspective, the impression that emerges is one of confrontation, at the higher level, between two gesellschaften: one of European origin, the other Eastern. Nor does it appear to be the sort of outright collision that simply resulted in the latter being broken up and relegated to a corner. The idea nevertheless persists that the ‘bazaar economy’ of the East was a debased, fragmented and marginal sector absorbed and peripheralized within the capitalist world economy of the West.
Japan's Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944–45
Authors: Dũng Bùi Minh
Published: November 2008

A contemporary Hanoi newspaper, Viêt-Nam Tân Báo, reported on 28 April 1945: ‘Old men of 80 to 90 years of age that we talked with all told us that they had never before seen a famine as terrible as this one’. The Vietnamese starvation was described in a letter written in April 1945 by a foreign visitor named Vespy:

They roam in long, endless groups, comprising the whole family, the elderly, the children, men, women, all of whom are disfigured by poverty, skinny, shaky and almost naked, including young girls of adolescent age who should have been very shy. From time to time they stop to close the eyes of one of them who has collapsed and who would never be able to rise again or to take the piece of rag (I do not know what to call it exactly), that has covered the fallen victim. Looking at those human shadows who are uglier than the ugliest animals, seeing the shrunk corpses, with only a few straws covering them for both clothes and funeral cloth, at the side of the roads, one could feel that human life was so shameful.
Warrior, Peasant and Brahmin
Authors: Heesterman J. C.
Published: November 2008

It may be expected of the Kingsley Martin lecturer that he addresses a theme of topical relevance. This is as it should be, for the modern history of South Asia offers an exceptionally wideranging choice of themes for reflection and inquiry. It will, then, seem strangely inappropriate to go to the other end of the time scale, to the early beginnings of Indian civilization. It would be vain to try and advance an excuse for this turn-about — such excuses would be too easily tainted by special pleading. It is just the romantic lure of a world that was irredeemably lost long ago. Or was it? It may be nearer to us than we care to admit.
Assuaging the Sikhs: Government Responses to the Akali Movement, 1920–1925
Authors: Tan Tai Yong
Published: November 2008

In 1920, Sikhs in the Punjab started a campaign aimed at freeing their principal gurdwaras (temples) from the control of their hereditary incumbents. The campaign quickly gathered momentum, and, within a few months, it developed into a non-violent anti-government movement. Unlike the rather shortlived 1919 Disturbances and the Non-Cooperation-Khilafat movement in the Punjab, the Sikh agitation, which came to be known as the Akali movement, did not cease until 1925 and caused considerable concern to the Punjab authorities, as well as the Government of India. The Akali movement was not limited, as in past cases of anti-British agitation involving the Sikhs, to small groups of disaffected Sikhs, returned emigrants, or Congress sympathizers; at its height in 1922, the unrest encompassed the bulk of central Punjab's Jat Sikh peasantry, one of the most militarized sections of Punjabi society. The Sikh community's martial traditions, fostered by their religious doctrines and culture, had been kept alive during British rule by the recruitment policies of the Indian Army, where, in 1920, one in every fourteen adult male Sikhs in the Punjab was in service. This meant that the abiding allegiance of the Sikh community to the Raj was a matter of considerable importance, and their estrangement, especially that of the Jat Sikh peasantry, would adversely affect the Sikh regiments of the Indian Army. It also meant that if the community as a whole was provoked into open rebellion, British hold on the Punjab could well nigh prove untenable.
Growth of Non-agricultural Economic Activities in Java in the Middle Decades of the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Fernando M. R.
Published: November 2008

The indigenous population in Java, it is generally believed, remained by and large subsistence peasants under the colonial rule in the nineteenth century. It is argued that the Javanese could not participate in the estate plantation industry or ‘transform their general pattern of already intensive farming in an extensive direction, for they lacked capital, had no way to shuck off excess labor’. Their access to waste land to became restricted and consequently they sought refuge in the wet-rice cultivation which ‘soaked up almost the whole of the’ population in a process of ‘agricultural involution’, which ‘went on steadily’ during the nineteenthcentury.’ Thus Javanese were confined to the subsistence agriculture for their living because they had neither. capital nor opportunity to embark upon a path of economic development characterized by economic diversity.
Sir William Jones, Biblical Orientalism and Indian Scholarship
Authors: David Alun
Published: November 2008

For many students of late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century British intellectual and literary history, Sir William Jones (1746–94) has lately come to seem a figure of great significance for our understanding of the period. A notable if implicit claim for his importance is to be found in Jerome McGann's revisionist New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse (1993); A Hymn to Na'ra'yena (1785), Jones's translation from the Sanskrit, is symbolically placed as the anthology's first item. This essay will argue that Jones's Indian scholarship will be better understood in the light of its links with contemporary developments in biblical criticism.
Chief Merchants and the European Enclaves of Seventeenth-Century Coromandel
Authors: Brennig Joseph J.
Published: November 2008

European enclaves were a characteristic feature of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century European presence in Asia, serving as centers of trade and European society far beyond the frontiers of metropolitan Europe. Yet to consider them as phenomena belonging only to the history of European Asia would be a mistake. Despite the protection of fortifications and control of the sea, the enclaves could never be completely isolated from their hinterlands, for not only did they receive their trade goods from the interior, but the changing local political stituation frequently threatened their survival. Moreover, the enclaves themselves had their definite non-European character, a population of local merchants, artisans and laborers which outnumbered the Europeans. These resident Asians provided goods, services and often capital for European trade; they were, as Holden Furber has observed, partners in European enterprise.
Bureaucratic Capital and Chou Hsüeh-hsi in Late Ch'ing China
Authors: Chan Wellington K. K.
Published: November 2008

Bureaucratic capital—that is, capital accumulated through public office, or state revenue diverted by individual officials for capital investment— has had a long history in China since early Han times. This paper is concerned with the development of bureaucratic capital for ‘modern’ industry during the last forty years of the Ch'ing dynasty.
British Annexation of Sind in 1843: An Economic Perspective
Authors: Wong J. Y.
Published: November 2008

Generally speaking, there are two dominant schools of thought with regard to the British annexation of Sind in the Indian sub-continent in 1843. One takes the view that individuals on the spot make history. It was a harsh, bitter and frustrated soldier by the name of General Sir Charles Napier who was determined to seek glory and wealth for himself by annexing Sind. In this respect, the eminent historian and former Special Commissioner for Sind (1943–46), H. T. Lambrick, has put his case extremely well. The other school interprets the annexation in strategic terms, as part of a search for a defence system which would safeguard British India from the dangers of attack from the northwest. In about 600 pages, the distinguished historian M. E. Yapp has achieved his goal with remarkable success. Furthermore, Yapp has done so without discounting the first school of thought. Indeed, the two are not mutually exclusive. In this paper I wish to suggest that there is a third dimension, an economic one; and that the three are not mutually exclusive either. Indeed, all three appear to have different weights at different levels of the policy-making process.
The Colonial State and Constructions of Indian Identity: An Example on the Northeast Frontier in the 1880s
Authors: Robb Peter
Published: November 2008

This is an essay about the establishment and expanding roles of the colonial state in India, and their probable correlation with developments of Indian identity. As I have argued elsewhere, identities are always multiple, contingent and continuously constructed, so that traditions, also continually reinvented, are shared and reiterated practices and beliefs which reflect the collective memories of previous constructions. There is no analytical contradiction therefore between long-term civilizational continuities and emerging forms of ‘constructed’ identity. This paper is about a particular form of identity that is currently associated with concepts of public space and rights, and with the nation-state, or at least political and territorial units. For convenience I refer to it as ‘modern Indian identity’ because it has been defined and been growing in significance in the modern era; but no inference should be drawn that I consider it to be the only form in India.
Dr Alexander Maclean Mackay: Profile of a China Medical Missionary
Authors: Kwong Luke S. K.
Published: November 2008

Compared to missionaries like Timothy Richard (1845–1919) and Hudson Taylor (1832–1905), Dr Alexander Maclean Mackay is a name almost unknown in the annals of Christian evangelism in China. The personnel roster of the London Missionary Society, to which he initially belonged, did boast of such luminaries as Robert Morrison (1782–1834), a pioneering Protestant preacher in early nineteenth-century China and James Legge (1815–1897), a missionary turned Sinologist and Oxford don. But Mackay, as one of the Mission's numerous field workers, is not likely to be found in such distinguished company. In fact, his sojourn in China, in comparison, was relatively brief. It lasted not quite six years, from January 1891 to September 1896, when he died of cholera and was buried in China. In many ways, he was merely another missionary, one of the many men and women, Catholic and Protestant, who had toiled in China, then faded into oblivion, and have since eluded the eye of the historical researcher.
An Emigrant Community in the Ssu-yi Area, Southeastern China, 1885–1949: A Study in Social Change
Authors: Woon Y. F.
Published: November 2008

With increasing income disparity between the developed and the developing nations of the world, there is an increasing tendency on the part of various governments of the Third World countries to export labour power among other commodities, with the hope of getting overseas remittances to improve their unfavourable balance of payment vis-à-vis the developed nations and/or to improve the economic well-being of the country as a whole. As well, some individual families and communities in dire straits are eager to send their members overseas not only to reduce the number of mouths to be fed but also to earn extra income to keep themselves from sinking too far below the poverty line.
Social Change and Social Control: College-Educated Punjabi Women 1913 to 1960
Authors: Maskiell Michelle
Published: November 2008

Kinnaird College alumnae who did not work often expressed regret for having been ‘just’ wives and mothers, and a feeling of not having lived up to expectations. In some cases, these women's parents planned for them to have professional careers, but more often, such women mentioned the expectations of their college teachers that alumnae would contribute to their society in some concrete way.Educated women, in short, left Kinnaird with a sense that their education implied obligations to society. Women with careers, whether or not they had married, were satisfied that they had ‘used’ their educations fittingly. Women without careers often expressed dissatisfaction, at least to a foreign observer, butat the same time, they justified their education by pointing with pride to the way they had reared their own children, recognizing that mothers are active transmitters of social identities within the family. Alumnae who remained in primarily domestic roles as wives and mothers frequently expanded their world to include non-domestic social work and other activities beyond their immediate kin group.
The Ithna Ashari Law of Intestate Succession: An Introduction to Shia Law Applicable in South Asia
Authors: Carroll Lucy
Published: November 2008

Perhaps the most striking and significant divergence between the Sunni and the Shi'i legal systems as a whole lies in their respective laws of inheritance. From a comparative standpoint the outstanding characteristic of the Shi'i law of inheritance is its refusal to afford any special place or privileged position to agnate relatives as such.…
The Vietnamese Monarchy under French Colonial Rule 1884–1945
Authors: Anh Nguyên Thê
Published: November 2008

In the epilogue to his memoirs, Bao-Dai, the last sovereign of the Nguyên Dynasty, wrote:

In ancient Vietnamese society, the social system is embodied in the person of the emperor, through whom everything religious is done, down to the lowest village level. But, if he sanctifies this act by prescribing or controlling it, he does not assume it. On the contrary, the Vietnamese ideal is that of a sovereign wise enough to reign without stirring, ‘with his hands hanging and his clothes loose…’.
University Admissions in Ceylon: Their Economic and Social Background and Employment Expectations
Authors: Uswatte-Aratchi G.
Published: November 2008

In this paper I attempt to answer three main questions: the first, who has access to university education? the second, what are the changes in the spread of opportunities for university education between 1950 and 1967? and finally, what employment do university students expect to obtain? and briefly to examine the implications of the answers to these questions in the formulation of educational policy.
Islamic Revivalism in Minangkabau at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Dobbin Christine
Published: November 2008

The revivalist movements which developed in so many Muslim communities at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries are well known to students of Islamic history. The Fulanijihādof Usuman dan Fodio, the Sanūsīyah movement in Libya, the rise of the Wahhābīs in Arabia, the reforms instituted among the Volga Tatars, the Mujāhidīn movement in Northern India and the Fara'idis of Bengal have all been the subject of study to a greater or lesser extent. Scholars have pointed out that movements which aimed initially at internal reform in a particular Muslim community often developed the added dimension of attack on what was conceived as an external, generally foreign, threat to that community, this being most clearly the case with the Wahhābīs and the Mujāhidīn. A contemporary movement which has features in common with all those mentioned above, that of the Padisr among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, has on the contrary received scant scholarly attention. This is all the more surprising since a European state—the Kingdom of the Netherlands—became involved in a war with the Minangkabau while the Padri movement was still in its full vigour; but although Dutch records and memoirs deal more than amply with this war, they have remained ignored for what they can tell us about the Padris themselves. This is not to deny that scholars who have attempted a brief characterization of the Padri movement have recognized that its complexity goes beyond the mere epithet ‘Islamic revivalism’, and the more perceptive have tried to link it to certain changes taking place within Minangkabau society, depicting the movement as ‘a social revolution’, ‘a coup d'étai’or, by implication, as a revolt of the intellectuals. In the later stages of the movement, after European intervention had gathered momentum, a French scholar has characterized the war fought by the Padris as a ‘war of independence’.
The ‘Arrow’ Incident: A Reappraisal
Authors: Wong J. Y.
Published: November 2008

In the years 1856–60, Great Britain, France and China were involved in a war, which has been referred to by different names, depending, naturally enough, on the nationality of the historian. Scholars in China, almost without exception, call it the Second Opium War. Historians in England, however, usually prefer to call it the Second Anglo-Chinese War or even the Second China-foreign War. It has been given yet another name, the Arrow War. None of these names is, strictly speaking, entirely appropriate. To begin with, the war was not fought over the question of opium, although in many ways it was a continuation of the Opium War of less than two decades before. In the last analysis, it was a consequence of an ever-expanding British economy. Secondly, although it is true that Great Britain and China were the chiefcontenders, the title Anglo-Chinese War ignores the part played by France in the campaign. Then the name Second China-foreign War, apart from betraying the English desire to forget that part of their past, is misleading because it focuses attention on China herself rather than on British encroachment on that country. Finally, the Arrow incident was, like the burning of opium by Commissioner Lin, an immediate cause of the quarrel; but once London had decided to resort to arms, little further reference was made to it in British diplomatic documents. The name Arrow War is particularly irrelevant for the period after the scene of confrontation had changed from Canton to Tientsin and then Peking. On balance, however, the names Second Anglo-Chinese War and Arrow War seem preferable because they do not carry overtones of nationalist prejudice. The latter title has the additional merit of illustrating how, in the age of European expansion, a small diplomatic incident could be magnified to justify the use of force to press home demands unrelated to it. It reflects the fact that the receiving end—in this case China, and in particular her Imperial Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Yeh Ming-ch'en—tried throughout to argue the case over the specific casus belli, whereas for the British the whole affair was merely a pretext for wider demands to be made on China. Thus it seems more appropriate to call the conflict the Arrow War; and in order to examine its origins, the first step will be to analyse the documentary evidence related to the Arrow incident. Some papers in the Chinese language have only recently been made available to scholars in the Public Record Office. London, and these provide additional information for a re-investigation of the origins of the war.
Local Control in Indian Towns—the case of Allahabad 1880—1920
Authors: Bayly C. A.
Published: November 2008

In this paper I present some general suggestions about the changing patterns of non-official influence in northern Indian cities at the end of the nineteenth century. I have adduced a minimum of local detail. But that which appears is largely taken from the city of Allahabad in the east central Gangetic plain which I have studied in detail. An impressionistic view of material drawn from other parts of the United Provinces and east Punjab does, however, suggest that some of these conclusions are capable of much wider generalization, although within the context of varying urban societies and different periods of time.
Consultation and Control The United Provinces' government and its allies, 1860–1906
Authors: Robinson F. C. R.
Published: November 2008

In the United Provinces a few hundred Europeans ruled nearly fifty million Indians. So few were not able to hold down so many by force, they could rule only with the acquiescence and assistance of some of their subjects. Clearly the relationship between government and its allies was the crux of dominion. This essay examines that relationship. It shows who, between 1860 and 1906, government's allies were and how their support was won. It also touches upon the processes of economic, social and institutional change which constantly undermined this support and illustrates how government's techniques of political control developed in order to keep its old allies and to contain new opponents.
British Policy in the Reorganization Loan to China 1912–13
Authors: Chan K. C.
Published: November 2008

The Reorganisation Loan, or as many Chinese writers call the Grand Loan of the Second Year of the Republic of China (Min-erh ta chiehk'uan), arranged by the ‘Old Consortium’,1played a significant role in Chinese internal affairs in the early twentieth century. The loan has been condemned by Chinese historians, nationalist and communist alike, as one of the ugliest crimes committed by the imperialist powers in China because it enabled Yüan Shih-k'ai to defeat theKuo-min tangin the Second Revolution in 1913, and to rid China of all semblance of democracy up to the point in 1915 when he aspired to re-establish an empire and to occupy the dragon throne himself. Being unanimously labelled as ‘father of the warlords’, Yüan's autocratic practices and his sudden death in June 1916 have always been blamed for throwing China into the disastrous warlord period, in which the country was split into autonomous units, and in the subsequent decades experienced chaos, weakness, and humiliation.
The First Moplah Rebellion against British Rule in Malabar
Authors: Wood Conrad
Published: November 2008

The rebellion of the Muslim community of Malabar, the Moplahs, in 1921–22 is well known to scholars of Indian history. The violent but small-scale Moplah disturbances which were a recurring feature of the south Malabar interior between 1836 and 1919 have also received attention. The present writer has argued elsewhere that these ‘out breaks’ were attempts by rural Moplahs in the south Malabar taluks of Ernad and Walluvanad to curb the British-fortified power of the high-caste (mainly Brahmin and Nair) Hindu jenmis or ‘landlords’ by means of what were, in effect, ritual challenges to British rule. What is little realized is that defiance of British power by the Moplah agricultural population of interior south Malabar dates from the earliest period of the rule of the East India Company, the decade after the Muslim ruler of Mysore, Tippu Sultan, ceded the province in 1792.
To Reform China: Naitō Konan's Formative Years in the Meiji Press
Authors: Fogel Joshua A.
Published: November 2008

In the early decades of this century, Naitō Konan (1866–1934) became Japan's leading authority on Chinese history and contemporary Chinese affairs. His early education in Kangaku (Chinese studies) had emphasized the Neo-Confucian tradition of jitsugaku or the practical application of learning, a broad trend in Japan then and one subscribed to by Naitō's family. Thus, before his arrival in Tokyo in late 1887, Naitō was already deeply concerned with China. He also possessed a kind of Kangaku assumption that China and Japan were linked culturally, and by extension their contemporary fates before the West were linked. The jitsugaku underpinning to Naitō's thought spurred him to seek out solutions for China's ills (and Japan's) on the basis of his knowledge of the past.
Overseas Chinese Nationalism in Singapore and Malaya 1877–1912
Authors: Ching-Hwang Yen
Published: November 2008

Overseas Chinese political links with China have been a subject of interest for many years. Travellers, journalists, officials and scholars have constantly made speculation, assessments and predictions about the political loyalties of overseas Chinese, and their future in their host countries. Although the overseas Chinese share a common historical and cultural background, they live in different economic environments and political climates, and in different stages of transition. Their political loyalty is especially difficult to assess. It is not just moulded by cultural, economic and political environments; it is also affected by other, less predictable factors. The rise of nationalism in the overseas Chinese communities at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries was a major factor in shaping the political life of the overseas Chinese. Using Singapore and Malaya as case studies, this paper seeks to explain how and why overseas Chinese nationalism arose during this period.
The Emergence of an Indigenous Business Class in Maharashtra in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Divekar V. D.
Published: November 2008

The present paper is divided into three parts. Part I describes and analyses the emergence of an indigenous business class in Maharashtra, in western India, during the Peshwa times, and its position under early British rule. Part II discusses the dominance of Brahman savakars in the newly emerged business class. Part III presents an overview and states general observations relating to the subject.
‘The Omnipresent Bania:’ Rural Moneylenders in Nineteenth-Century Sind
Authors: Cheesman David
Published: November 2008

After revisiting Sind in 1876, Sir Richard Burton wrote, ‘The Hindu's reed-pen is a rod of iron and abjectly the unhappy Sindi trembles before it.’ By ‘Hindu,’ Burton meant the Hindu bania, the trader and moneylender, and by ‘Sindi’ he meant the Sindhi Muslim zamindar (landholder), the perennial debtor. The creditor tyrannized over the debtor, imposing ever harsher and more inequitable terms on him. What is interesting is that Burton scarcely appeared to recognize the Hindu banias as Sindhis at all; he wrote as if they were interlopers on the Sindhi scene. It was a colourful summary of the average British official's attitude towards debt. Twenty years later, Evan James, the Commissioner in Sind, quoted Burton's remark to lend support to his own argument that debt was an intolerable burden on Sindhi Muslims in general and the great zamindars in particular.
The Dynamics of Coercion in the Malaysian Political Process
Authors: Barraclough Simon
Published: November 2008

The study of coercion and how it is applied within a political system is useful for a number of reasons. As a strategy of control and management it is in itself worthy of investigation. Moreover, an examination of how coercion is applied can tell us much about the nature of a particular polity. Indeed, as Weber emphasized, the state itself is distinguished from other political systems to the extent that it successfully upholds the claim to the legitimate application of force. The willingness of a regime to use coercion against opponents or dissidents, or to regulate the political participation of the ordinary citizenry, has a direct bearing upon such questions as human rights, democratic values, authoritarianism, and the degree of consensus within a given polity.
The Rationale of Korean Economic Nationalism Under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1922–1932: The Case of Cho Man-sik's Products Promotion Society
Authors: Wells K. M.
Published: November 2008

Economic nationalism may seem rather too grand a term for the contents of this paper. And indeed, I have not attempted any analysis of the economics of economic nationalism. My concern is with the nationalist element in the equation, in particular the basic perceptions of nationalists inside Korea who responded to the plight of their colonially oppressed nation. The question, ‘Is economic nationalism viable under colonial occupation?’ may be answered negatively in Korea's case. But one may equally assert that all nationalist movements and all economic action, of left or right, were not viable in Korea at this time. Even if a certain theory of the determinative role of economic superstructures is employed, I suspect this question of viability may generate only fruitless dispute over whether we strictly mean non-viability or simply failure. Hence I willingly leave the theoretical aspects of the case to those equipped to deal with them.
The Salt Trade in Ch'ing China
Authors: Chiang Tao-Chang
Published: November 2008

As a daily necessity for human life and also as a taxed commodity, salt has played an important part in the economic and political development of China. As salt is used regularly by all people, its annual consumption is largely predictable so that a tax on salt, as a disguised poll tax, provided the government with a reliable source of revenue. For this reason, it has drawn the special attention of statesmen and financiers throughout China's history. In terms of economic magnitude, the business of the production and marketing of salt was a major industry in agrarian China for centuries and the largest single economic undertaking in Ch'ing China (1644–1911). Control of salt and its financial gains frequently became the immediate objectives of revolutionaries, rebels, brigands, and other organized malcontents in China. The sources of salt supply in Ch'ing China were widespread. Several distinctive methods of production were employed in different areas. The distribution of salt involved all types of transportation available in traditional China. Its flow was well geared to the national, regional and local trade. This paper reconstructs the salt trade in Ch'ing China in its geographical context. It stresses five aspects: centers of production, state control, trade networks, means of transportation, and spatial structure of market areas.
Documents in Chinese from the Chinese Secretary's Office, British Legation, Peking, 1861–1939
Authors: Coates P. D.
Published: November 2008

In 1959 a collection of over twenty thousand Chinese-language documents, previously kept in the rambling Peking compound which had housed the British Legation (latterly, British Embassy) since 1861, was transmitted to the Public Record Office in London. It was given the class title Papers in the Chinese Language and the class number FO 682. The documents, some of which were rumoured to have been lying among the rafters of the Legation chapel, arrived in a state of confusion. Early attempts at listing reflected rather than resolved the confusion, but the documents are in fact far from being the trackless jumble sometimes supposed.
The Quasi-War in East Asia: Japan's Expedition to Taiwan and the Ryūkyū Controversy
Authors: Leung Edwin Pak-Wah
Published: November 2008

The 1870s witnessed mounting tension among East Asian countries. In 1874,. Japan sent an expeditionary force to Taiwan to punish the aborigines there who had, in 1871, killed fifty-four shipwrecked Ryūkyūans (Liu-ch'iuans). By doing so, according to many scholars today, Japan was able to claim retroactively that the Ryūkyūan castaways were legally Japanese subjects, thereby ending the Sino-Japanese dispute over the ambiguous political status of the Ryūkyū Islands (the Chūzan Kingdom of Ryūkyū paid tribute to both China and the Satsuma-han of Japan before the 18705).

This paper is a reappraisal of this episode of the ‘Quasi-war’ in East Asia. By going into the Chinese, Japanese, Ryūkyūan, and Western sources, it unfolds some unknown events which directly and indirectly led to the Japanese decision to send forces to Taiwan, as well as the Chinese reactions. The conclusion of this paper refutes the customary view which holds that China had in 1874 ‘renounced her claim over Ryūkyū and yielded to the Japanese claim she had earlier disputed.’ As this paper will show, neither Soejima Taneomi nor Ōkubo Toshimichi had succeeded in securing any Chinese endorsement of Japan's sovereign right over Ryūky¯. Nor did the Sino-Japanese Treaty of 1874, concerning the settlement of the Taiwan crisis, legally settle the Ryūkyū problem, since Ryūky¯ was never mentioned in the Treaty. As a result, the issue continued to trouble Peking and Tokyo in the years that immediately followed.