bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Financial Aspects of Korea's Economic Growth under Japanese Rule
Authors: Kimura Mitsuhiko
Published: November 2008

Feeling strong pressure from Western Powers Japan abandoned her seclusion policy in 1854 and inaugurated serious efforts to modernize her society and economy after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. She, in turn, forced Korea who had been keeping the seclusion policy on her own to open the door in 1876. The feudal Korean government (the Yi Dynasty, 1392–1910) was impelled to embark on social and economic reforms by opening the door. Yet, after nearly thirty years’ struggle to make reforms and to secure the independence of the country, Korea was converted into a protectorate of Japan in 1905 and was officially annexed to her in 1910. The Japanese government recognized that the creation of modern monetary and banking systems in Korea was the precondition for trade expansion between the two countries (for Japan, rice imports on the one hand and textile exports on the other) and thus started its colonial rule over Korea by establishing a central bank, development banks and financial cooperatives. This paper aims at setting forth an analysis of a more or less unexplored field in the study of the economic history of Korea, that is, the financial aspects of her economic growth under Japanese rule. Particularly, emphasis will be placed on quantitative analysis of major financial variables represented by money, interest rates and bank credit. Before proceeding to the main subject, it may well serve to review some of the financial problems in the late Yi Dynasty period.
Congress—Raj Conflict and the Rise of the Muslim League in the Ministry Period, 1937–39
Authors: Chander Sunil
Published: November 2008

The Government of India Act of 1935 was a constitutional device meant to extend the Raj's political alliances in Indian society. The Congress Party, on the other hand, construed the Act as a new challenge to the demand for independence. The authorities discovered that the Congress ministers’ primary loyalties lay with the imperatives of the party and not with the constitutional arrangement. Concern on this account was heightened by the resurgence of ground-level Congress activism. The Congress strengthened and expanded its volunteer organization while it governed the provinces. If the formal party institutions were weakened by corruption and factionalism during the ministry period, its grass-roots cadres were revitalized and mobilized opinion against compromises with the Raj, strengthening the ministers’ hands in any major clashes with the authorities. The latter were disturbed by links between the Congress ministers and party activity hostile to the Raj, even though a certain convergence of Congress and British interests kept the experiment of provincial autonomy going. The official response to this situation consisted, at one level, of making expedient concessions.But the authorities explored an alternative possibility as well. The Muslim League, which emerged as a mass party after 1937, was not exactly an ally, but it offered the most powerful resistance to the possibility of total mobilization under the Congress.
Congress Confronts Communism: Thana District, 1945–47
Authors: Calman Leslie J.
Published: November 2008

From 1945 to 1947 the Communist Party led the impoverished Warli tribals of Bombay's Thana District in a movement for fair wages and freedom from forced labor and landlord violence. The immediate targets of the action were the local landed interests and moneylenders who dominated the region and held the tribals (known as ‘adivasis’) in virtual slavery. The longer range goal, however, was to build the Communist Party and challenge Congress dominance.
South Asian Muslims in Hong Kong: Creation of a ‘Local Boy’ Identity
Authors: Weiss Anita M.
Published: November 2008

South Asian Muslims migrating throughout the world usually establish tight-knit communities in which most of their socioeconomic and religious activities occur. The social organization of South Asian Muslims in Hong Kong is unique in that their separation and isolation into a cohesive ethnic group is a relatively recent phenomenon. Communal orientations have undergone substantial change over time, often paralleling the kinds of changes occuring in Hong Kong as a result of its relationship to the British Empire. This paper seeks to understand the characteristics of the early South Asian Muslim community in Hong Kong and contrast these with social themes which are found in the contemporary community so as to discover the principles underlying social cohesion and cultural identification within this group.
‘The Habitual Nobility of Being’: British Officers and the Social Construction of the Bengal Army in the Early Nineteenth Century
Authors: Peers Douglas M.
Published: November 2008

The ethnocentric and racialist overtones of the Victorian empire have long been acknowledged. Most work in this field has generally centred on the mid to late nineteenth century and, by emphasizing the intellectual and cultural currents in domestic society, has focused our attention on the metropole. This reveals only part of the equation; British attitudes towards the outside world arose from a complex matrix of ideas, assumptions and contacts that linked the metropole and colonial environments. In order to understand more fully British responses to non-European societies, and the impact these had on imperial developments, this paper will examine the Bengal army in the 1820s and demonstrate that it was during this period, and under this institution, that many of the assumptions were established under which the later Raj would operate. Of great importance were experiences in the Burma War (1824–26) and the simultaneous mutiny at Barrackpore which, by bringing to the surface doubts about the loyalty and reliability of the Bengal army, hastened a transition from an army modelled on caste lines to one that rested principally on race. This transformation from a caste-based army to an army of martial races was not fully completed, although the foundations were laid, in the years before the Indian Mutiny of 1857, largely because even those who rejected Bengal's dependence upon the highest castes could not bring themselves to argue for the recruitment of the lowest castes no matter what ‘race’ they were drawn from.
‘Bravest of the Brave’: Representations of ‘The Gurkha’ in British Military Writings
Authors: Caplan Lionel
Published: November 2008

The legendary Gurkhas have inspired a considerable literature about their character, quality and exploits under British command. Some years ago, after I returned from fieldwork in an area of east Nepal inhabited by the Limbu people, many of whom had served in Gurkha regiments, I began to read some of this literature for background purposes. It struck me then, although not nearly so forcibly as it did later when I had read Edward Said (1978), and returned to the Gurkha material after a long absence, that these writings have a very distinctive character, constituting a particular mode of ‘orientalist’ discourse.
The Poverty of Education in the Malaysian Plantation Frontier
Authors: Ramachandran Selvakumaran
Published: November 2008

Traditionally plantations in Malaysia provide primary school education for the children of their workers as well as other basic needs. This element is normally part of the ‘package’ of welfare facilities offered to the residential work force on plantations. However, the conditions under which this educational scheme is usually implemented are far from satisfactory, in comparison with those of the population as a whole and the progress achieved in the democratization of education since independence. Thus the plantation workers’ children have become an educationally disadvantaged group, with the highest drop-out rates, lowest achievement levels, and attending the ‘poorest and smallest’ schools in the entire nation. Almost all these schools in plantations are ‘Tamil Schools’ in accordance with the majority residential work force — Indian Tamils who form the bulk of the labour force in plantations. Basically this paper will review the characteristics and the educational climate of these schools, along with other indicators of education such as enrolment rates, drop-out rates, and achievement rates.
The Role of Power Struggle and Economic Changes in the ‘Heshang phenomnon’ in China
Authors: Ma Shu-Yun
Published: November 2008

One of the most talked-about topics among Chinese intellectuals and Western China observers in the past few years has been the six-part television seriesHeshang(River Elegy). After its first broadcast in June 1988 through the national television network Zhongyang dianshitai (China Central Television, or CCTV in short), the film caused immediate shockwaves throughout China, marking the climax of the so-called ‘wenhua re’ (cultural fever). It was re-played through the CCTV in August, and some local stations aired it even more than twice. twice. Videotapes of the series have been circulating widely among overseas Chinese circles. Total number of viewers was reported to be over 400 million [Lee 1989]. The script appeared in various editions, and much attention has been paid to the ideological dimension of the film.
No Boats to China. The Dutch East India Company and the Changing Pattern of the China Sea Trade, 1635–1690
Authors: Blussé Leonard
Published: November 2008

By 1690 the Supreme Government of the Indies in Batavia agreed that, financially speaking, it was no longer wise to continue the direct trade between the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and China. It was argued that the vessels so far used for the China trade could be better deployed in the Indian Ocean.
Indigenous Knowledge and the Significance of South-West India for Portuguese and Dutch Constructions of Tropical Nature
Authors: Grove Richard
Published: November 2008

While the growing volume of new long distance oceanic trade which developed during the fifteenth century helped to stimulate an awareness of the wider world in Western Europe, it also had a much more specific enabling effect on the development of natural history and the status of science in the eyes of government. A rising interest in empirical fact-gathering and experimentation led to a growing enthusiasm for experimentation with new types of medical practice and new drugs. Apothecaries' gardens became established at the universities and were increasingly stocked with plants imported from distant lands. These gardens became the sites of the first attempts to classify plants on a global basis. The voyages of the first century and a half after the journeys of Henry the Navigator from 1415 onwards had already begun to transform the science of botany and to enlarge medical ambitions for the scope of pharmacology and natural history. The foundation of the new botanic gardens was, therefore, clearly connected with the early expansion of the European economic system and remained an accurate indicator, in a microcosm, of the expansion in European knowledge of the global environment. The origins of the gardens in medical practice meant that, as a knowledge of global nature was acquired, the Hippocratic agendas of medicine and medical practitioners continued to form the dominant basis of European constructions of the extra-European natural world.
Tod's Rajast'han and the Boundaries of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century India
Authors: Peabody Norbert
Published: November 2008

This essay concerns the labile boundary between the familiar and the exotic in an early nineteenth-century Orientalist text, entitledAnnals and Antiquities of Rajast'han, by James Tod. Written by the first British political agent to the western Rajput states, Tod'sRajast'han, particularly the several chapters he devoted to the so-called ‘feudal system’ of Rajasthan, remained implicated in colonial policy toward western India for over a century. By situating Tod'sRajast'hanin the specific circumstances in which it was written and then tracing the fate of that text against a historical background, this essay aims to restore an open-ended, historical sensibility to studies on Orientalism that most critics of Orientalist writing have ironically forfeited in their laudable efforts to restore history to the indigenous peoples who have been the objects of Orientalist discourse.
Crop Trends in the Central Provinces of India, 1861–1921
Authors: Harnetty Peter
Published: November 2008

In the opening chapter of his study ofAgricultural Trends in India, 1891–1947, George Blyn explains the double significance of determining crop production trends in a society where agriculture is the largest single sector of the economy. Firstly, crop trends reveal the nature of changes in production and provide the basis for estimating changes in consumption. Secondly, since availability of crops for consumption depends not only on output but also on foreign trade, changes in cropping patterns provide a basis for estimating the pace and direction of commercialization of the economy. Blyn's study covers the fifty-six years before Indian independence and provides detailed analysis of such topics as aggregate crop trends for the eighteen crops that constituted most of India's agriculture. More recently, there have been a number of studies concerned with the agricultural history of nineteenth-century India. My own work is concerned with the social and economic history of the Central Provinces for the period 1861–1921. Within this broad subject an important specific topic is that of cropping patterns. This paper provides data on crop trends in this part of India for a period of fifty-four years from 1867 to 1921 and evaluates and analyzes this data. Its object is to establish the broad trends in cropping patterns and to shed some light on methods of agriculture in the Central Provinces in the later nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century. (Provincial data are given in Tables 1.1 and 1.2 at the end of the paper.)
Siraiki: A Language Movement in Pakistan
Authors: Shackle C.
Published: November 2008

It may be asserted with some assurance that the very name ‘Siraiki’ will be quite unfamiliar to most readers of this article. The well-known predilection of most South Asianists for working from English sources and their concentration upon the larger Indian scene, where such sources are so much more abundant than for Pakistan, may contribute to this unfamiliarity; but it is doubtless due principally to the quite recent introduction of the term on a general scale in its homeland. In simple terms, ‘Sirāikī’ is the language of the middle Indus valley, while the ‘Sirāikī movement’ that seeks to improve its standing is based in the central part of this region, the South-West Panjab, principally in its most important cities, Multan and Bahawalpur. This article sets out to inform a wider audience about the movement which is attempting to assert the language's separate identity and to secure for it increased official recognition.
The Romance of Revolution in Japanese Anarchism and Communism during the Taishō Period
Authors: Large Stephen S.
Published: November 2008

Much can be learned about the character of a political movement by examining the personal relations between its principal members as well as their political writings, speeches, and ‘formal’ activities in the movement. This is all the more the case if the movement is politically radical, for radical politics often generate a radical subculture which has as its chief function the moulding of an ideal revolutionary personality which will serve the movement in all of its vicissitudes and be a model for the type of citizen the movement wishes to create in society.
In Search of the Collective Self: How Ethnic Group Concepts were Cast through Conflict in Colonial India
Authors: Reetz Dietrich
Published: November 2008

When the concept of Western nationalism travelled to India in the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century it was carried by British officialdom and an increasingly mobile and articulate Indian élite that was educated in English and in the tradition of British society. Not only did it inspire the all-India nationalist movement, but it encouraged regional politics as well, mainly in ethnic and religious terms. Most of today's ethnic and religious movements in South Asia could be traced back to their antecedents before independence. Looking closer at the three major regional movements of pre-independence India, the Pathans, the Sikhs and the Tamils, one finds a striking similarity in patterns of mobilization, conflict and concept irrespective of their association with the national movement (Red Shirt movement of the Pathans, Sikh movement of the Akalis) or independent existence in opposition to Congress (non-Brahmin/Tamil movement)
The Changing Profile of the Summer Capital of British India: Simla 1864–1947
Authors: Kanwar Pamela
Published: November 2008

INDIAN hill stations have often been portrayed as islands of European settlement, providing colonists with a retreat, both from the heat and the native culture of the plains.British planners meant them to be English enclaves, but the image owes not a little to the innumerable references available in accounts written by the British in India. Hill stations, with their thickly wooded hills and swirling mist, afforded colonists an opportunity to build around themselves a replica of English life. The presence of European women in large numbers at hill stations enhanced the image. They, more than their men, tended to withdraw within the closed circle of European society. It was an endless succession of balls, archery, fetes, picnics and amateur theatre. Their diaries, letters and novels covering almost a century, hardly ever went beyond an account of the rounds of social engagements. The view has been perpetuated by fiction. Simla had its Rudyard Kipling, and that hill station was peopled by larger-than-life images created by the writer in the 1880s. But so vivid was the evocation that British visitors seemed to search for them in Simla even a quarter of a century later.
Fellow-regional Associations in the Ch'ing Dynasty: Organizations in Flux for Mobile People. A Preliminary Survey
Authors: Armentrout L. Eve
Published: November 2008

As had been the case throughout much of Chinese history, government during the Ch'ing dynasty (1644–1911) was largely in the hands of a civil bureaucracy staffed by the Confucian literati. Prevailing political thought held that moral suasion and commonly held ideals were in a large way responsible for keeping both the society and the body politic running smoothly. For this and other reasons, the court assigned a rather small number of bureaucrats to manage a truly vast population. In addition, it was commonly assumed by rulers and the ruled that China's was and should be primarily an agrarian society of self-sufficient peasants. The only orthodox avenue of social, even spatial, mobility was the Confucian examination system which led successful candidates into the bureaucracy. This view denigrated the importance of commerce, of technological advancement, of learning outside the Confucian classics; and it acted as a brake on social, political, and economic development.
Some Observations on Coalition Politics in Penang
Authors: Hock Chew Huat
Published: November 2008

Of the eleven states in West Malaysia, it may be said that Penang presents a somewhat different situation from the other ten in terms of demography, economics, geography and politics, to mention a few basic features. Situated in the northern part of the country, the state of Penang (which comprises the island and a narrow strip, Province Wellesley, on the mainland) does not exhibit the features of a typical Malay state—a Malay-majority population, a predominantly Malay agricultural economy and a Malay Mentri Besar (Chief Minister) leading a Malay-dominated State Assembly which governs the state for the sultan, the symbol of Malay political power. Instead it has a Chinese-majority population, an economic infrastructure based primarily on commerce and trade rather than agriculture and a Chinese Chief Minister leading a Chinese-dominated State Assembly.In contrast to the other Malay states, the central political role in Penang is played by the Chinese community. Whichever political party is aspiring to come to power in the state must have significant Chinese electoral support.Against the background of a Malay-dominated Federal Governmentstriving to ensure uniformity of political, cultural, linguistic and socio-economic goals, Penang poses a challenging situation.
The Sikhs, Congress, and the Unionists in British Punjab, 1937–1945
Authors: Oren Stephen
Published: November 2008

The period from 1937 to 1946, between the first and second elections to provincial legislatures held in British India under the 1935 Government of India Act, is one of great interest in Indo-Pakistani history. This was the period of ‘if only,’ the period in which it is still possible to imagine an unpartitioned South Asia.
Burlingame and the Inauguration of the Co-operative Policy
Authors: Kim S. S.
Published: November 2008

Of all the Western diplomatic personalities who served in Peking during the nineteenth century, Anson Burlingame was perhaps the most celebrated figure. He acted as the first American resident minister in Peking from 1861 to 1867. He also acted as the first ‘Chinese’ envoy to the Western courts from 1867 to 1870, when his untimely death at St Petersburg cut short his colourful diplomatic career. Viewed against this unusual background, it is not surprising that his diplomacy in and out of China became something of acause célèbreamong his contemporaries. With the passing of the events and men associated with his name, however, a new and deatched appraisal of the man and his diplomacy is in order. It is outside the scope of the present paper to treat his spectacular diplomatic mission on behalf of China in the Western capitals, better known as the burlingame Mission. This paper focuses instead on his role in the inauguration of the Co-operative Policy. In doing this, the apper attempts to shed some light on the origins of one of the most significant Western policies toward China.
Malay Reservations and Malay Land Ownership in Semenyih and Ulu Semenyih Mukims Selangor
Authors: Voon P. K.
Published: November 2008

Scant attention has been paid to the study of ownership of agricultural land in Peninsular Malaysia, and the dearth of research on this important topic is largely due to the lack of source materials and the difficulty of collecting such materials. A major source of information on land ownership is the land titles which are filed in the Registration of Titles Office (for lots of land exceeding 4 ha.) in the State capitals, and in the Land Office (for lots below 4 ha.) in the district capitals, and the potentiality of these records for geographic investigation has barely been tapped. The registration of land ownership in Peninsular Malaysia is based on the Torrens System which represents ‘a system of registration of transactions with interests in land whose declared object is, under Government authority, to establish and certify to the ownership of an absolute and indefeasible title to land and to simplify its transfer’. Under this system, land alienation involves cadastral surveys to delineate the boundaries of individual parcels of land, to each of which a non-recurring identification number is assigned. All details relating to the size, date of registration, land-use conditions, and transactions for each parcel of land are entered in the land registers.
Kataki-uchi: The Practice of Blood-Revenge in Pre-Modern Japan
Authors: Mills D. E.
Published: November 2008

Five years after the Meiji Restoration, on the seventh of the second month of 1873, the Japanese Government issued the following decree:

The taking of human life is strictly prohibited by the law of the land, and the right to punish a murderer lies with the Government. However, since ancient times it has been customarily regarded as the duty of a son or younger brother to avenge the murder of his father or elder brother. While this is a natural expression of the deepest human feelings, it is ultimately a serious breach of the law on account of private enmity, a usurpation for private purposes of public authority, and cannot be treated as other than the crime of wilful slaughter. Furthermore, in extreme cases the undesirable situation often arises that one person wantonly and deliberately kills anothe in the name of revenge without regard for the rights and wrongs of the case or the justification for his act. This is to be deplored, and it is therefore decreed that vengeance shall be strictly prohibited. In future, should some close relative unfortunately be killed, the facts should be set out clearly an a complaint be laid before the authorities. Let it be plainly understood that anyone who ignores this injunction and adheres to the old customs, taking the law into his own hands to kill for revenge, will be subject to a penalty appropriate to his offence.
The Congress at the 1937 Elections in Madras
Authors: Baker Christopher
Published: November 2008

In February 1937, the Congress party in the Madras Presidency won 159 of 215 seats in the provincial Legislative Assembly at the first elections under provincial autonomy. It was the most convincing victory for the Congress in any province of British India, and neither the Madras Government nor the Congress leaders had expected it. In the two and a half years Congress rule that followed, their ministers made adept use of their powers. They cut land revenue and dismantled the procedure for revising the land revenue demand, thus appealing to the pocket of every landholder. They re-instated all the village officers who had been dismissed for aiding the Congress during Civil Disobedience, thus instructing the leaders of rural society where the source of power and influence now lay. They passed two measures to alleviate the burden of agricultural debt, and threatened to legislate in favour of the tenants inside the major landed estates. Meanwhile, for the first time, the Cogress established a network of committees throughout the province, and by 1939 this new machine had placed virtually every local government board under a Congress régime. The number of Congerss members in the Tamil and Andhra areas rose from 115,971 on the eve of the 1937 elections to 594,397 in 1938.
Socioeconomic Change in Villages of Manchuria During the Ch'ing and Republican Periods: Some Preliminary Findings
Authors: Myers Ramon H.
Published: November 2008

A Great deal has been written about the Chinese state, but we still know very little about the common people, particularly peasants. How did they live? How did they found their communities? How did their socioeconomic status and property rights change over time. During the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s, China's rural society and economy became the object of intense investigation by Chinese and foreign researchers. From this period dates our present, conventional wisdom of how rural communities were structured and had evolved since the nineteenth century.
The Roots of ‘Communal’ Violence in Rural Bengal
Authors: Bose Sugata
Published: November 2008

In 1947 the fabric of Bengali rural society woven together by a common language and a syncretist popular culture was torn asunder on lines of religion. During the final two decades of colonial rule in India the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Jamuna deltaic tracts of east Bengal increasingly became the scene of tension and violent conflict between a Muslim peasantry and a predominantly Hindu landed gentry. The conflict between rival élites in a plural society over government jobs and positions of vantage in the legislative arena has been a subject of scholarly studies in twentieth-century Bengal. Successive ‘legislative attacks’ of one status and interest group upon another have been carefully identified and documented, and their significance assessed. The inner dynamics of the struggle in the countryside and the periodic outbursts of ‘communal’ fury that rent rural Bengal during this period have not come under the same systematic investigation. Yet, without the agrarian dimension to the Hindu–Muslim problem in Bengal, the politics of separatism would in all likelihood have proved ineffectual and been washed away by the strong tide of a composite nationalism.
District Officers in Decline: The Erosion of British Authority in the Bombay Countryside, 1919 to 1947
Authors: Epstein Simon
Published: November 2008

The paradox of the authoritarian rule of the Indian Raj at the heart of Britain's liberal empire was one that ran continuously through the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperialism. Both as the unpaid arsenal of Eastern expansion and defence, and as the essential stop-gap to Britain's multilateral pattern of trade, India was the necessary if incongruous adjunct of Liberal England, supporting the doctrines of progress at home on the basis of the autocratic control of its British-born hierophants over the numberless ‘contented masses’ of the Indian countryside. The resulting contrast between the increasingly self-governing white dominions, and the Indian maverick upholding in chains the very fabric of the empire, was also reflected in the political thinking of the motherland itself, by way of the stresses and contradictions which the conditions of the Raj's existence served to create within the liberal framework of the Victorian intellectual world. At the core of the Victorian liberal empire stood the strictly paternalistic government of the Raj in India; at the centre of the ‘benevolent despotism’ that British rule in the subcontinent adopted stood the steel frame of the Indian Civil Service, ‘much more of a government corporation than of a purely civil service’ and the creator as much as the executor of British policy there.
Protestant Expansion and Chinese Views of the West
Authors: Barnett Suzanne Wilson
Published: November 2008

Confrontation with the British during the years 1839 to 1842 jolted the Chinese into a more realistic perception of the wider world. Before the Opium War, the Chinese took little notice of the world beyond the traditional Chinese realm; during the course of the war China's inadequate knowledge of overseas countries proved to be a strategic disadvantage. In the 1840s, knowledge of the wider world was important to China's defense against Western intrusion, and a handful of Chinese scholar-officials who shared this view engaged in the serious study of foreign nations. A small but influential group of Chinese set out to expand China's knowledge of the West; they did so in the belief that this was essential to China's survival. The comprehensive accounts put together by Wei Yüan(1794–1857) and Hsü Chi-yü(1795–1873) and shorter works by other authors suggest the importance of this new perspective in the decade after the Treaty of Nanking.
The limits of reformism: Wei Yüan's Reaction to Western Intrusion
Authors: Mitchell Peter M.
Published: November 2008

Three other articles in this issue of Modern Asian Studies endeavour to trace conceptual changes in the years surrounding the Opium War, and particularly those arising out of works appearing in Chinese on world geography and related Western knowledge. One such work, the Hai-kuo t'u-chih (Illustrated Gazetteer of Maritime Nations), has received mixed reviews since its original publication in 1844. Although read in its various editions by many late Ch'ing modernizers, it provoked sharp criticism on its suggested methods of handling foreign affairs and the outdatedness of its materials. Feng Kuei-fen (1809–74), for example, maintained that ‘only one sentence of Wei Yuan is correct: Learn the strong techniques of the barbarians in order to control them.’ Despite such criticism—generally less totally condemnatory than Feng's—this work not only influenced early modernizers in China but also proved popular among Japanese of the Bakumatsu period, illustrative of its importance in studies on initial East Asian reaction to Western in-trusion. The previous paper dealt with the Hai-kuo t'u-chih's perception of European imperialist expansion in South and South-east Asia. This paper will briefly analyze its significance in a different vein, namely through a more intensive examination of its place in the career and thought of its compiler, Wei Yüan (1794-1857). The acknowledgement that he was less typical than illustrative of his times must accompany the choice of Wei Yüan as a subject for study. A number of the scholargentry minority, he belonged to that even smaller group which rose above mediocrity by serious dedication to the political-intellectual roles traditionally accorded that class. He was specifically untypical in his combination of radical views on Confucian orthodoxy, intense concern for domestic administrative problems and finally relatively enlightened perspectives on the new Western presence in China. Though untypical, this very combination of unique qualities suggests Wei's significance. Tracing his relationship to domestic intellectual and political developments will provide a convenient approach to analyzing, again through this one individual example, the actual interplay between Western intrusion and conceptual change in mid-nineteenth-century China.
A Mid-nineteenth-century Discovery of the Non-Chinese World
Authors: Drake Fred W.
Published: November 2008

Four years after the publication of Wei Yuan's Hai-kuo t'u-chih, Hsu Chi-yü (1795–1873), while governor of Fukien, composed the preface to his ten-chüan history-geography of the non-Chinese world. A product of the immediate post-Opium War period, Hsu's Ying-huan chih-lueh (A short account of the maritime circuit, 1848) is another example of Chinese intellectual response to Western intrusion and the challenges of a new era. Indeed, while Hsu and Wei agreed on the fundamental necessity to learn more about the outside world in order to protect China, the tone of their books, the Ying-huan chih-lueh and the Hai-kuo t'u-chih, differed to such an extent that the former came to represent the views of Chinese ‘moderates’, while the latter did likewise for the ‘conservatives’.
Agricultural Trends in Bombay Presidency 1900–1920: The Illusion of Growth
Authors: Mishra Satish Chandra
Published: November 2008

The subject of agricultural growth is a matter of central importance in the evaluation of the impact of colonial rule on India. Given that the agricultural sector provided a very large share of total output and employment, movements in theper capitaagricultural output would be a good indicator of changes inper capitaincome. Despite the usual caveats made about the dangers of usingper capitaincome as a measure of welfare, a sustained fall in such income would imply a failure of state economic policy in a crucial respect.
Voices From The Kelantan Desa 1900–1940
Authors: Talib Shaharil
Published: November 2008

‘I am of course opposed to the driving out of the Malay, but would rather have the land occupied and planted with rubber than lying absolutely uncultivated as it had been’. J. S. Mason, British Adviser Kelantan, 21.7.1911.
The Jajmani System in North India: An Examination of its Logic and Status across Two Centuries
Authors: Commander Simon
Published: November 2008

As the universality of political economy has receded before the myriad instances of particular economic rationalities, it has become increasingly clear that most non-capitalist structures are organized around a multi-centric set of dynamics. In this regard one would expect to find that the economic as a category possesses less univocal clarity and its precise sense is only vouchsafed through a cognisance of the broader, integrating set of validating principles. This would be true as much in Mauss's analysis of the Gift as it would be in relation to the dynamics of a feudal economy. In the first instance the transactional medium and symbolic sense of the act contains within it the premises of an entire system, while in the second example the implied free-play of economic indices rests, in reality, on the intervention of extra-economic factors, in this case, the intervention of the seigneury. From the case of one transactional exchange to the dynamics of an entire system, common to both is the reallocation of the category ‘economic’ and its merger with criteria and principles of a wider and more diffuse nature.
Opium and the Indonesian Revolution
Authors: Cribb Robert
Published: November 2008

The Indonesian revolution was a costly affair. Not only was it accompanied by the extensive destruction of life and property, but the actual logistics of fighting a protracted revolution placed enormous financial demands on the new Indonesian Republic, founded on 17 August 1945, three days after the Japanese surrendered, at a time when the revolutionary government was decidedly ill-equipped to meet them. The Republic was unable to take over immediately all the revenue sources of the colonial government and faced major difficulties in rapidly building up an alternative taxation structure. Needing a ‘soft’ form of taxation which was easily collected and which did not fall too obtrusively on the shoulders of its citizens, it turned to opium. The sale of opium to addicts had been used by colonial governments in Southeast Asia as a source of revenue, although its importance had greatly declined in the twentieth century. The Republic, however, not only maintained the colonial distribution and sales network but expanded its use of opium to make the drug an important source of government revenue and, for a time, a major source of foreign exchange.
‘Communalism’ in Princely India: The Case of Hyderabad, 1930–1940
Authors: Copland Ian
Published: November 2008

The time has come when the communal holocaust must be confined to the Indian States, the time has come when both the Hindu and Muslim newspapers must be prevented from blowing communalism into British India. There was a time when our politicians like Gokhale rightly used to take pride in Indian States being free from communalism, which was a vice in British India.… But the table appears to have been turned.
The Japanese Annexation of Korea 1910: The Failure of East Asian Co-Prosperity
Authors: Lone Stewart
Published: November 2008

While Britain was amassing the largest empire ever seen, her policy makers continued to believe that economic ties were a far more effective means of control than costly and provocative military domination. Fortunately for British empire-builders, the peoples they encountered were frequently divided amongst themselves, and lacked confidence in their ability to challenge British domination. This was not entirely the case with Japan's attempts to establish hegemony over Korea following the Russo-Japanese war (1904–05). Although there were serious political and regional divisions within Korea, these were subordinated to broad hostility towards Japan. Japanese technological superiority was seen as a hand-me-down from the West, and Korea's elite, raised in the Chinese tradition, was largely dismissive of Japanese cultural attainments. Even financially, Japan remained a small player in the international market, dependent for her own overseas development on New York, London and Paris. To win Korean converts, Japan had to introduce rapid, visible improvement. One means to support this aim was the idea of Asian unity underJapanese leadership. Failing this, she could enforce her actions with a sizeable, but expensive, military and police presence. However, the rhetoric of Japanese—Korean unity could not be overstressed in view of the burgeoning Western fear of an Asian resurgence. Moreover, the concept of Japan and Korea stemming from one family was unconvincing given the historical enmity of the two peoples. Consequently, Japan sought to diminish native antipathy and retain international sympathy by emulating Britain's exaple of discreet civilian control in Egypt.
The Origins of the ‘Wang—Chiang Cooperation’ in 1932
Authors: Wai-Chor So
Published: November 2008

In January 1932 Wang Ching-wei and Chiang Kai-shek came to an agreement and formed a joint leadership in the Kuomintang (KMT) Government. The alliance between the two men lasted until December 1938 when Wang defected to the Japanese side during the Sino-Japanese War. Chinese historians often term this period as the era of ‘Wang-Chiang cooperation’ (Wang Chiang ho-tso). In fact, this was not the first time when these two men came to ally with each other in the party. The first time when Wang and Chiang formed a joint leadership was in August 1925 after the assassination of Liao Chung-k'ai. The death of Liao at that time had great repercussions throughout the party and both Wang and Chiang eventually emerged as the beneficiaries in the ensuing power struggle; for a time they jointly ruled the party. However, this alliance did not last long. The outbreak of the March Twentieth Incident in 1926 made Wang Ching-wei decide to let Chiang have his way and he later led a self-imposed exiled life in Europe. It was not until April 1927 when the KMT was seriously divided on the communist issue that Wang went back to China. Immediately after that was a split in the party with Wuhan and Nanking as the two rival centres, each of which claimed to be the legitimate Party Central. Wang and Chiang respectively became the leaders of these two Party Centrals.
Visions of Salvation: a Thai Buddhist Experience of Ecumenism
Authors: Gosling David
Published: November 2008

Migration from the countryside to urban provincial centres and capital cities is a major reason why rural communities in southeast Asia suffer extensively from acute poverty and ill health. In Thailand, as elsewhere, it is principally the young and able who move to the cities in search of jobs, and whose departure impoverishes even more their home communities. The Thai Sangha has traditionally accommodated this pattern of migration by providing educational opportunities for those who ordain at an early age, but in recent years a variety of schemes has enabled monks to learn secular skills which equip them to become ‘practitioners of development’ in their home regions. This training has gone hand in hand with attempts by leading scholar monks to reformulate Buddhist teaching to emphasize the importance of living in self-reliant communities which are alert to the most up-to-date scientific information available on health care and environmental protection.
The Invention of the ‘Jummas’: State Formation and Ethnicity in Southeastern Bangladesh
Authors: van Schendel Willem
Published: November 2008

This paper deals with socio-cultural innovation in the hills of southeastern Bangladesh. Outsiders have always been struck by the ethnic diversity of this area. The literature—written mainly by British civil servants, Bengali men of letters, and European anthropologists—presents a picture of twelve distinct ‘tribes’, all practising swidden or shifting agriculture, locally known asjhumcultivation. In addition, there are Bengali immigrants who do not engage in swidden cultivation.
Brotherhood of the Pure: The Poetics and Politics of Cultural Transgression
Authors: Oberoi Harjot
Published: November 2008

The spring month of Māgh heralds festivals, pilgrimages and popular rituals in the north Indian countryside. In 1872, the small village Bhaini, in Ludhiana district, was the scene of feverish activity. Participants in a millenarian community popularly known as Kukas had collected there in connection with the spring festivities on the 11 and 12 of January. They had, however, very little to celebrate. In the past four months nine of their numbers had been hanged by the colonial authorities on charges of attacking slaughter houses and killing butchers, others had been imprisoned, and many more were subjected to increasing surveillance and restrictions. British officials nervously shifted their views of the Kukas. Earlier seen as religious reformers within the Sikh tradition, they were now deemed to be political rebels. As those present felt heavily suspect in the eyes of the administration, the atmosphere at Bhaini must have been tense and unnerving.
The Office of Akhbār Nawīs: The Transition from Mughal to British Forms
Authors: Fisher Michael H.
Published: November 2008

The persistence and yet transformation of the office of akhbār nawīs (‘newswriter’) reflected fundamental aspects of the transition from the Mughal to the British Empires. The Mughals appointed akhbār nawīs to collect and transmit specific kinds of information. This office continued, albeit with new functions, through the decentralizing of political power that characterized eighteenth-century South Asia. The expansion fo hte English East India Company meant constant change in the essential nature of political relations, changes mirrored in this office. Indeed, the Company, and its political Residents, subordinated and redefined this office. Under the British Raj, the concept ‘akhbār nawīs’ stood transformed, like the nature of the information it conveyed.
Armed Incidents and Unpaid Bills: Anglo—Dutch Rivalry in the Banda Islands in the Seventeenth Century
Authors: Loth Vincent C.
Published: November 2008

The purpose of this study is to shed light on an aspect of seventeenth century Anglo-Dutch relations that has hitherto been virtually neglected: the rivalry over the Banda Islands. I will point out how economic antagonism between England and the Dutch Republic, a topic that as a rule is mainly regarded in a European context, also erupted in the East-Indian sphere of expansion, even in remote areas such as Banda. Unlike in Europe, in Asia conflicting economic interests immediately and repeatedly resulted in open violence. This was stopped in 1619 by a treaty of cooperation that paradoxically enabled the Dutch to establish themselves even more firmly in these islands, and in the Indonesian Archipelago as a whole, in a way detrimental to the English.
The Composition of the Nineteenth-Century Political Elite of Pre-Colonial Nguyen Vietnam (1802–1883)
Authors: Cooke Nola
Published: November 2008

Until 1971, when Alexander Woodside published his ground- breaking study, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, western scholarship on late traditional Vietnam was still locked within the narrow confines of French colonial understanding. Woodside's work, which drew extensively on Vietnamese historical sources, became an instant classic. So thoroughly did it dominate the field that two decades later it remains today the sole detailed discussion in English of the first half of the nineteenth century. Such is its stature that no-one has ever seriously questioned its findings, or challenged the author's vision of early nineteenth-century Vietnam. However, such a critique is long overdue. Despite the breadth of Woodside's scholarship, his conceptual framework assumes a continuity in Vietnamese history, culture, and politics from the Le to the early Nguyen that distorts the historical dynamic of the nineteenth cen tury, as well as contradicting some of his own evidence. His image of the nineteenth-century political elite provides a case in point. Like every scholar before or since, Woodside's conclusions about elite composition are extrapolated from the Sinic structures of its mandarinal organization, buttressed by anecdotal evidence and generalized impressions. But these are poor substitutes for quantification when enough readily-available biographical data exist to profile elite composition statistically. This article presents such an analysis. Its results contradict venerable French colonial views and Woodside's ideas alike; and do so in a way that suggests our present historical understanding of the late pre-colonial Vietnam needs serious revision.