bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Export Cultivations in Nineteenth-century Java
Authors: Niel Robert Van
Published: November 2008

When in 1913 Count van Hogendorp edited the letters and papers of his ancestor Willem, who had served in Java as one of the secretaries of the Commissioner General Du Bus from 1825 to 1829, he characterized the early nineteenth century in Java as a time of ‘systems.’ His use of this word was not meant to be complimentary. Ancestor Willem had taken great pride in being the inspirational genius behind one such ‘system’; one, incidentally, which was not adopted.The characterization of the time seems to me particularly relevant as an opening wedge into the contents and theme of this paper, for all 'systems' relative to nineteenth-century Java had at their core the stimulation of export commodities derived from the agricultural process. A system, as I use the term here and as it was used by nineteenth-century policy planners, was an orderly andlogical arrangement of thoughts and objects into a complex .whole according to some scheme which drew its inspiration from fundamental economic and social principles. Such systems for Java were devised bypersons in positions of high authority either in Europe or in Java on the basis of what they had seen or heard about Java. Invariably the purpose of the system was to make the island of Java profitable to its European‘possessor’; the prevailing colonial theory holding that through treatyand conquest the European power had gained sovereign rights over the land and its people and should make use of them in accordance with its best judgment. Such judgment was embodied in a ‘system’ which hopefully provided benefits for both the possessor and the possessed.
The Indian Empire and Peasant Production of Opium in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Richards J. F.
Published: November 2008

IN the post-1857 decades of the nineteenth century, the British rulers of India controlled the vast territory and population of the Indian subcontinent (of the size and cultural diversity of Western Europe) under nearly ideal conditions of peace, stability and order. By this time as well, they could count on the active cooperation and loyalties of both old and new major indigenous elites in urban and rural India. The annual and decennial assessments of the ‘Moral and Material Progress of the Peoples of India’ recited to Parliament the areas in which appreciable progress had been made.On the material side, British policy makers in the latenineteenth century concentrated imperial or state resources in agricultural development. Their simultaneous, often conflicting, goals were soto improve the security and efficiency of food-crop production that they could eliminate or at the very least sharply diminish periodic drought-inspired dearth and famine mortality in the countryside. The other major goal was to develop substantial export crops—wheat, cotton,sugar, indigo, tea, coffee, opium, etc.—as income producers for thepeasant, the landlord and for the regime. To meet both objectives the Government of India directed its major resources into capital investment in public works: immense canal systems designed to improve andextend cultivation; railroads, to draw production from remote areas to the seacoast; breakwaters, warehousing, docks, navigational aids at the great port terminii to increase the speed and security and reduce the costof sea-borne exports. These public enterprises meshed with intricate structures of agency houses, export brokers, and commission agents,both British and Indian, who jointly penetrated to the most distant centers of cash crop production.
Rigidity of System Boundary among Major Chinese Dialect Groups in Nineteenth-Century Singapore: A Study of Inscription Data
Authors: Lau-Fong Mak
Published: November 2008

The study attempts to delineate the degree of system rigidity of three major dialect groups, namely, the Cantonese, the Hakkas and the Hokkiens. The principal source of data is derived from inscriptions collected by Chen and Tan (1972). The findings reveal that at the individual level the system boundary of the Hokkiens was more rigid than that of the Cantonese and the Hakkas. This confirms earlier observations made at the organizational level.

Earlier observations dictate that after 1854 the Cantonese and the Hakkas were, at the organizational level, not on good terms. This was, however, not the case at the individual level. We also found that the system boundary of religious organizations, i.e., temples and burial ground bodies, was least rigid.
Multiple Ethnicities in Malaysia: The Shifting Relevance of Alternative Chinese Categories
Authors: Strauch Judith
Published: November 2008

Ethnicity takes many forms, meets a variety of needs, and has a wide range of uses. No single case can provide material for an exhaustive analysis of the full complexity of the phenomenon, but all contribute pieces to the mosaic, illuminating that complexity. Analyses have been couched in terms of cultural definitions, of perceptual and cognitive categories, of social distance and solidarity of groups, of boundary definition and maintenance, of conflict and competition, of emergent versus conservative qualities of the phenomenon, and so forth—andallhold some validity, for ethnicity is multi-faceted. As A. L. Epstein points out, to define ethnicity exclusively in terms of only one of these many facets—whether its potential as a focus for political mobilization, its contribution to an individual's psychic comfort as a member of a group, or its cultural or linguistic attributes—‘is to confuse an aspect of the phenomenon with the phenomenon itself’ (1978:96).
Ch'ing Changing Images of the Overseas Chinese (1644–1912)
Authors: Ching-Hwang Yen
Published: November 2008

The Manchus inherited from the Ming Dynasty the images of the overseas Chinese as well as the policy towards them. The tarnished images of the overseas Chinese as ‘deserters’, ‘criminals’, and ‘potential traitors’ of the Ming were taken over by the early Ch'ing rulers. These images were soon transformed into new images of ‘political criminals’, ‘conspirators’ and ‘rebels’, for in the first four decades after the Manchu conquest of North China in 1644, the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia were directly involved in the resistance movement on the southeast coast of China. The leader of the movement, Cheng Ch'eng-kung (known in the West as Koxinga), seems to have enlisted the support of the overseas Chinese, particularly from Vietnam, Cambodia and Siam, for his resistance. It is claimed that Koxinga's naval power was partly drawn from Nanyang (Southeast Asia) shipping, and financed from the profits of the Nanyang trade. Of course those overseas Chinese who supported Koxinga made no apology for their involvement. They saw the Manchus as alien usurpers and as the oppressors of the Han Chinese, and the support for Koxinga's resistance movement was seen as an act of patriotism to save Han Chinese from the oppressive Manchu rule. The government countered the overseas Chinese involvement by introducing stringent laws against private overseas trade. In 1656 (13th year of the Emperor Shun-chih), a decree was proclaimed that‘….any traders who go overseas privately and trade or supply the rebels with provisions will be beheaded, and their goods confiscated.
The Japanese Protestants in Korea, Part One
Authors: Matsuo Takayoshi , Takiguchi S.
Published: November 2008

The Purpose of this essay is to portray the missionary activity which the Japan Congregational Church (Nihon Kumiai Kirisuto Kyōkai) undertook in Korea between the years 1911 and 1921, and the various criticisms raised against it from both inside and outside the Church (owing to limited space we shall treat only the period up to the 1st March Movement).In doing so we shall try to illustrate at least partially the general views which Japanese Protestants held about Korea at the time.
A Phase of Meiji Japan's Attitude toward China: The Case of Komura Jutarō
Authors: Okamoto Shumpei
Published: November 2008

William L. Langer, the eminent scholar of imperialism, has succinctly defined the nature of the Russo-Japanese War:

The Russo-Japanese War still remains the classic example of a conflict waged for purely imperialistic motives. There was no sentiment, no tradition involved. The Japanese and the Russians were equally disliked by the population of the territories which they desired to control. At bottom it was merely a question of which nation should victimize the moribund Korean and Chinese Empires.
Foreign Affairs (Yang-wu) Expertise in the Late Ch'ing: The Career of Chao Lieh-wen
Authors: Porter Jonathan
Published: November 2008

The capitulation of China to the Western powers' military, commercial, and diplomatic offensive by 1860 removed the immediate formal façade of resistance to improved Sino-western relations which the West had sought. Not so easily removed were the endemic institutional and cultural obstacles to China's understanding and effective handling of foreign affairs which accompanied these expanded relations. Increased involvement with the West, both at the capital and in the provinces, generated more complex problems and renewed suspicion which made a practical knowledge of the Western powers and their behavior all the more urgent. Yet in a society which had consistently underestimated and depreciated the importance of the West, the requisite knowledge of the Western world did not lie readily at hand, and specialists in foreign affairs were few. This article examines the career of one foreign affairs expert in this critical period. Its purpose is twofold: First, to illuminate the origins and quality of ‘foreign affairs’ expertise in China, broadly defined here as the understanding and dealing with the West (including the knowledge of foreign activities and policies in China, of characteristics of, and distinctions among, foreigners and foreign nations, and policies with respect to foreigners); and second (and closely related to the first), to examine the role and significance of the specialist in Chinese society.
Léon Roches—Diplomat Extraordinary in the Bakumatsu Era: An Assessment of His Personality and Policy
Authors: Lehmann Jean-Pierre
Published: November 2008

The majority of foreigners involved in the turbulent period marking Japan's early transformation to modernity have been relegated to the obscurity of archival research, only occasionally surfacing in specialist studies. One exception is Léon Roches, head of the French legation from 1864 to 1868; he enjoys a considerable degree of notoriety and controversy, with very few of even the most general works no modern Japanese history failing to mention him. The major reason no doubt is due to the policy Roches pursued and the role he is alleged to have played; although in fact the main line of his policy did not differ radically from that of his Western colleagues and his role had tended to be exaggerated.
Bushidō and the Samurai: Images in British Public Opinion, 1894—1914
Authors: Holmes Colin , Ion A. H.
Published: November 2008

I shall turn Japanese, for they at least can think, and be reticent! … I fail to see any Western people in a position to set the Japs an example in their diplomacy … their organization, their strategy, their virile qualities, their devotion and self control. Above all, their national capacity for self reliance, self-sacrifice and their silence, …
England, Portugal and the Estado da India c. 1500–1635
Authors: Scammell G. V.
Published: November 2008

In January 1635 there arrived in Goa a delegation from the English East India Company. The affluent air and dignified behaviour of its members, not to mention the obviously well-gunned and well-equipped ships that had brought them, greatly impressed the Portuguese, according to the then viceroy, the redoubtable Conde de Linhares. After the solution of the usual niceties of protocol, and after the viceroy had expatiated on the iniquities of England's erstwhile allies, the Dutch, a truce was agreed. So ended something like half a century of war at sea as the English had pushed—and surprisingly slowly, considering their reputation in Europe—into Portugal's Asian preserves. The peace did not, as Linhares had hoped, lead to the downfall of the Dutch, who went on to inflict grievous blows on Portugal in east and west alike. Nor did it establish England and Portugal as ‘senores de tudo’.Nevertheless it opened an era of generally amicable relations between the two countries in Asia, and so forms a convenient point from which to survey their previous history, and to indicate what may be learned from English sources as to the condition and affairs of the Estado da India.
The British Model: Institutional Reform and Occupied Japan
Authors: Buckley Roger
Published: November 2008

They order these things differently in England. Such comment on the relevance of the British political and economic experience to postsurrender Japan has been overlooked by students ofthe occupation period. The explanation for this neglect appears to vary on national lines. Research interest into Britain's postwar foreign policy in east Asia has been limited until recently by the availability of government material, while American and later Japanese scholars following in their wake seem reluctant to recognize that in name and sometimes in reality the occupation was an allied venture, since this goes against the grain of American unilateralism. Where there has been note of allied contributions to the occupation the references have tended to be perfunctory. Two recent publications might be cited as representative of this trend among American historians. John Dower's voluminous work on Yoshida Shigeru has little on Yoshida's contacts with British occupation personnel despite frequent references to the premier's anglophilia. Justin Williams's version of the occupation is equally Americocentric. The author regards the Far Eastern Commission's role in Japan's enforced democratization as reactionary ‘because SCAP dealt with the real Japan and the FEC with an imaginary Japan. Long after SCAP became immersed in constructing the democratic Japan of the future, the FEC was still preoccupied with teaching a lesson to the Imperial Japan of old.’ As a challenging quotation useful for those setting examinations on the subject it may bear repetition but not a few British and Commonwealth diplomats might be forgiven for suggesting that the remark could be profitably reversed. The distance between the United States' image of Japan and the truth behind the rhetoric remained a persistent theme of despatches from the British mission in Tokyo (UKLIM) to the Foreign Office throughout this period.
Talaq-i-Tafwid and Stipulations in a Muslim Marriage Contract: Important Means of Protecting the Position of the South Asian Muslim Wife
Authors: Carroll Lucy
Published: November 2008

Muslim law confers supreme authority in marital relations on the husband, to such an extent that the husband can unilaterally and extra-judicially dissolve the matrimonial bond by pronouncement of the verbal formula of divorce (talaq). The wife's position may be to some extent protected by the fact that her deferred dower becomes payable to her upon termination of the marriage by divorce or the death of her husband. However, the dower may either have been set at a minimal amount or have been severely reduced by intervening years of inflation so as to provide neither an affective restraint on the husband's exercise of his power of talaq nor much real assistance to the wife after she has been divorced and turned out of her husband's house. On the other hand, if the dower is set at such an amount as to constitute a real restraint on her husband in regard to his exercise of talaq and the marriage breaks down, the husband may refuse to divorce the Wife by talaq (since by doing so he would incur liability for the dower debt) and may suggest that she agree to a divorce by mutual consent (Khul' or mubara' a). However, a concomitant of a divorce by mutual consent is some financial remuneratioin by the wife to the husband; usually the husband requires the wife to relinquish her rights to dower. The wife may thus easily be placed in position of having to buy her way out of an unhappy marriage.
Changing Planning Perspectives of Agricultural Development in Malaysia
Authors: Rudner Martin
Published: November 2008

Malaysia's planning organization has become the institutional centrepiece of that country's development effort. Indeed, Malaysia ranks as one of the non-Communist developing countries where planning is most highly institutionalized. Malaysian planning evolved as an effective policy mechanism for directing the authoritative allocation of public resources towards declared developmental objectives. Despite this attachment to national planning, Malaysia remains a staunchly market-oriented, open, and predominantly private enterprise economy. Nevertheless, as the role of planning expanded, private sector activity became increasingly subject to policy interventions predicated upon the politically-determined goals of development planning.
Subcommunal Participation and Leadership Cohesiveness of the Chinese in Nineteenth-Century Singapore
Authors: Fong Mak Lau
Published: November 2008

Using reproduced inscription data the present study examines two social facets of the Chinese in nineteenth-century Singapore. The first facet pertains to group participation (economic and social) and it was found that the average amount of donations made by the Hokkiens to their subcommunal organizations was much higher than that given by the Cantonese and Hakkas.

On the other hand, more Cantonese and Hakka people contributed to their subcommunal organizations. The interplay of differential economic status and organizational objectives is heuristic in explaining this discrepancy.

The second facet is about leadership cohesiveness of the respective subcommunal leaders, and it is derived from percentage of deviant donors which comprises mean percentage of non donors and of cross line donors. The findings show that the Hakka subcommunal leaders were least cohesive, while those of the Chang-Ch'uan Hokkiens most among the four dialect groups being studied. Differential exposure to secret society influence is given as an important explanatory factor. Nepotism prevailing at the leadership hierarchy is also suggested as a crucial factor.
The Pacific War Controversy in Britain: Sir Robert Craigie Versus The Foreign Office
Authors: Agbi S. Olu
Published: November 2008

Unlike the State Department Officials of the United States who were subjected by the Senate to postwar Congressional investigation in the Pearl-Harbor hearing, British Far Eastern policy-makers were saved such parliamentary ordeals. The loss of the whole British position in the Far-East at the hands of the Japanese between December 1941 and May 1942 was humiliating enough. It was, as Winston Churchill later claimed, ‘the worst disaster and the largest capitulation of British history’.
Studying a Colonial Economy—Without Perceiving Colonialism
Authors: Habib Irfan
Published: November 2008

From the size of India's population alone the economic history of India constitutes an important segment of the economic history of mankind. But with the middle of the eighteenth century, it assumed a further, special significance: subjugated by the first industrial nation of the world, it offered the classic case of the colonial remoulding of a pre-modern economy. Not surprisingly, the changing nature and consequences of this process and all its surrounding conditions have formed the constant theme of a long and continuing debate.
Models of Peasant Differentiation and Aspects of Agrarian Economy in Colonial India
Authors: Prakash Shri
Published: November 2008

Given their sheer numbers, it is hardly surprising that the fate of peasants during British Rule in India should have become a principal index for evaluating its successes and failures. Since the Raj was much more than another effete political superimposition on supposedly timeless villages, the question of agrarian growth or stagnation during its currency is intertwined with more general issues. In so far as colonialism meant a sizable expansion of trade to and from the rural areas, its impact on village social structure in India bears comparison with that of a modern market on peasantries in other parts of the world. Perhaps, the classic case of a peasantry coming face to face with a growing market happened in Russia between 1860 and 1930. The history of that period has generated conceptual discussion about the dynamics of peasant society. The possibility of some of those ideas shedding light on the situation in India has prompted Indo-Russian contrasts and comparisons in agrarian history on more than one occasion (Charlesworth: 1979; Stein: 1984). As a sequel to these writings the Russian debate is considered here briefly in order to suggest some ways in which it might be useful in the Indian context.
‘De-industrialization’, Industrialization and the Indian Economy, c. 1850–1947
Authors: Simmons Colin
Published: November 2008

The purpose of this short discussion paper is to raise some general questions concerning the current state of the historiography on the industrialization of pre-Independent India. Although triggered off by a close reading of Professor Morris's contribution to the recentCambridge Economic History of India, volume 2, it is not my intention to review the essay in a detailed and systematic manner; rather I seek to place it in the wider context of what is, in my view, the unsatisfactory state of our accumulated knowledge. The paper is organized in the following way. Section II contends that all too little is known about a seemingly crucial sector—a vacuity that is not confined to India alone among the Third World economies—and that this tends to distort accounts of the general functioning of the international economy. In Section III I try to pinpoint the major areas of weakness, and then go on to suggest the main reasons for this somewhat surprising situation. Finally, in Section IV, I argue that Morris's study reflects the problems I identify but does not take us further down the road towards their resolution.
Writing History Sideways: Lessons for Indian Economic Historians from Meiji Japan
Authors: Tomlinson B. R.
Published: November 2008

The history of economic growth and industrial development in Meiji Japan has long attracted the attention of economic historians of India, especially those who are concerned with the question of industrial development. There is as yet no consensus as to the message of any comparison between Japan and India, and the battlefield between different analyses of the Meiji economy has proved a useful source of pillage to dress up conflicting interpretations of the Indian economy in this and later periods.
Changing Land Use in Bihar, Punjab and Haryana, 1850–1970
Authors: Richards J. F. , Hagen James R. , Haynes Edward S.
Published: November 2008

Undivided colonial India experienced an accelerated rate of economic change in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Official policies and funds combined with private entrepreneurial energies and investment to intensify India's linkages with the world market in trade, industry, agriculture, and natural resource extraction. Slow, but in the long term steady, population expansion accompanied this trend. After 1947, economic development accelerated under five-year plans in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and transformed the earlier colonial economy. Population figures have similarly shot up since partition and independence. These two linked trends have accompanied steadily intensifying human intervention in the natural environment of the subcontinent over the same time. One effect, among others, has been dramatic alteration in land use and vegetation cover. Comparing Francis Buchanan's early nineteenth-century descriptions of the countryside in both north and south India with the appearance of these areas today suggests just how sweeping these changes have been. The landscape of today in virtually every Indian district is very different from that seen two hundred or even hundred years ago.
Orientalist Constructions of India
Authors: Inden Ronald
Published: November 2008

Now it is the interest of Spirit thatexternalconditions should becomeinternalones; that the natural and the spiritual world should be recognized in the subjective aspect belonging to intelligence; by which process the unity of subjectivity and (positive) Being generally—or the Idealism of Existence—is established. This Idealism, then, is found in India, but only as an Idealism of imagination, without distinct conceptions;—one which does indeed free existence from Beginning and Matter (liberates it from temporal limitations and gross materiality), but changes everything into the merely Imaginative; for although the latter appears interwoven with definite conceptions and Thought presents itself as an occasional concomitant, this happens only through accidental combination. Since, however, it is the abstract and absolute Thought itself that enters into these dreams as their material, we may say that Absolute Being is presented here as in the ecstatic state of a dreaming condition (Hegel,Philosophyof History, p. 139).
Defining Division: An Historical Overview of Jain Social Organization
Authors: Banks Marcus J.
Published: November 2008

This paper briefly charts the progress and findings of European scholars approaching the issues of caste and sect in the Jain community over the last two centuries. Other authors have already discussed the European interest in Jain textual and philosophical issues, and while I touch on these briefly, my main concern is to outline Jain social organization, with particular reference to Swetambar communities in the north.
Burma's Struggle for Independence: The Transfer of Power Thesis Re-examined
Authors: Tinker Hugh
Published: November 2008

On 3 May 1945, British—Indian forces landed in Rangoon. The Japanese had pulled out. The city was liberated. On 16 June there was a victory parade, though the final victory over Japan was still distant and most of their conquests were intact. Admiral Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander, took the salute while detachments representing the one million men under his command passed by in massed array. Famous regiments from Britain, India and Nepal; the Royal Navy; the Royal Air Force; men from the United States Air Force. It was an impressive sight, though the ceremony took place in pouring rain. Amongst them all was a somewhat ragged band representing the Burma National Army which, having been raised by the Japanese, had fought for three months alongside the British. Watching the parade from the central dais was a young man dressed in the uniform of a Japanese Major-General, though he also wore an arm-band with a conspicuous red star. The outfit was incongruously crowned by a pith sun-helmet—a topi. Probably most foreigners present assumed he was a Chinese officer. He was actually Bogyoke Aung San, commander of the BNA.
Muslims and Political Representation in Colonial India: The Making of Pakistan
Authors: Shaikh Farzana
Published: November 2008

One of the principal difficulties in arriving at a constitutional settlement in India during the 1940s stemmed from the inherent conflict between Congress's emphasis upon the principle of majority rule and fluid political alignments and the Muslim League's commitment to the Islamic conviction that numerical configurations were irrelevant to politics and that what mattered was the rigid ideological divide between Muslims and non-Muslims.
‘Exploitation’ in Peasant Societies: A Nepalese Example
Authors: Prindle Peter H.
Published: November 2008

The concept of exploitation as applied to the relationships between peasants and their ruling élite has frequently been utilized by anthropologists to distinguish peasants from other rural cultivators. This essay, based on a single peasant community of East Nepal, illustrates that exploitation occurs at many levels and that a peasantry's relationships with the larger society may not, in fact, be as unequal as the current literature asserts. It is suggested that many characteristics frequently ascribed to the exploitative capacities of the non-peasant élite may be attributed to the system of social stratification found among the peasants themselves and to the effects of a rapidly expanding population.
Some Reflections on the Town and Country in Mughal India
Authors: Chaudhuri K. N.
Published: November 2008

There can be few aspects of Indian studies more neglected than that of historical geography. Within this larger area of neglect, urban history occupies a special place. The indifference with which Indian historians have approached the urban heritage of the subcontinent is all the more difficult to understand because to contemporary European visitors, the merchants and other travellers, the towns and cities of Mughal India held a profound fascination. From the time of Tomé Pires and his highly perceptive Suma Oriental down to the end of the eighteenth century, stories of Indian travels and the accompanying descriptions of Mughal urban life continually entertained the popular literary audience. Not all of them understood or reported accurately what they saw. As the Scottish sea captain and country trader, Alexander Hamilton, who had an unrivalled knowledge of the sea ports and the coastal towns of India, pointed out with some candour, one great misfortune which attended the western travellers in India was their ignorance of the local languages. But the manifest contrast between the physical appearance of the European cities and those of Asia provoked some considerable and sensitive analysis of the nature of the urban processes in the two continents. Perhaps the most able and penetrating comments on the Mughal political, economic, and civic order came from the pen of the Dutch merchant, Francisco Pelsaert, and the French physician, François Bernier.
The Madrasa at Deoband: A Model for Religious Education in Modern India
Authors: Metcalf Barbara
Published: November 2008

A Recent conference of specialists on the study of Muslims in South Asia identified as one of the neglected areas of their field the study of traditional religious institutions in the modern period. Such institutions as the sufi orders, the religious schools, and the system of pious endowments have been treated, if at all, only in their relation to political developments. Thus the leading theological academy of modern India, the Dār ul-'Ulūm of Deoband, has been studied because many of its ulama played an important role in nationalist politics in India and opposed the foundation of Pakistan. That motive for study has seriously distorted the treatment of the nineteenth-century history of the school, endowing it with an anti-British and revolutionary character when, in fact, the school's concerns were totally a-political. An investigation of the early history of the school suggests many other significant historical themes, notably an important incipient trend toward a formal bureaucratization of the ulama and their institutions. Studies of religious institutions outside India such as Gilsenan's study of the Hamidiya Shadhiliya order in modern Egypt and Roff's study of the Majlis Ugama in Malaysia4 suggest that successful functioning in the modern period has required such a transformation in organizational structure. This article describes the organization of Deoband in its initial decades.
Political Culture and Development: Some Pervasive Themes in the Study of Indian Politics
Authors: Vanderbok William
Published: November 2008

One of the most common themes in the literature on political development is the assumption of an elite—mass gap based on differing educational, occupational, income and social class backgrounds. The saliency of such differences are presumed to be more important in developing than developed nations because of an overlay of Westernization to be found in the elite sectors and a strong traditional orientation among the masses, particularly the rural masses. Urban dwellers are often thought of as residing in a transitional limbo between the old and the new, between a disintegrating traditional self-identity and an emerging modern one.
An Institutional Shelter: The Court of Wards in Late Nineteenth-Century Bihar
Authors: Yang Anand A.
Published: November 2008

The late nineteenth century was a period of selective institution-building by the British in India. Government's efforts were directed primarily towards the development of a more effective control and communications infrastructure. The initial impetus for such changes in Bengal came during the energetic administration of Sir George Campbell, the Lieutenant Governor from 1871 to 1874. Under his auspices, attempts were made to extend the administrative machinery down to the sub-district levels by the creation of sub-deputy collectorships and the revitalization of such local officials askanungos(registrars),patwaris(village accountants) andchaukidars(village watchmen). Better connections to local society were also sought through institutions which linked government to its allies, such as municipal, local, and district boards, and the Court of Wards.
‘Technical Co–operation’ Between the League of Nations and China
Authors: Osterhammel Jürgen
Published: November 2008

When in August 1933 the German Minister to China, Dr Oskar P. Trautmann, reported to Berlin, ‘daβ die Völkerbundsmelodie politisch hier ausgespielt hat’, he had jumped to a conclusion too soon. When two years later the Journal Round Table commented, ‘to-day the League of Nations is no longer a political factor in the Far East’, this assessment was vindicated by evidence of every description. The two years between had witnessed the peak and decline of the League of Nation's ‘technical co-operation’ with the National Government of China. This episode plays its part as one of the major accomplishments of the League during the dismal second decade of its existence. It figures, however, only marginally in the history of twentieth-century China. Western works on modern Chinese history tend to neglect it altogether, and the most comprehensive scholarly treatment of China's foreign relations during the Republican period does not even deem it worth a reference in passing. On the other hand, the one authoritative textbook on modern Chinese economic history published in the People's Republic of China devotes ample space to the denunciation of the League's Chinese enterprise.
'An English Barrack in the Oriental Seas'? India in the Aftermath of the First World War
Authors: Jeffery Keith
Published: November 2008

During the last ninety years of British rule in India, the ‘Jewel of the Empire’ was, as Lord Salisbury remarked in 1882, easily regarded by many British imperialists as ‘an English barrack in the Oriental Seas from which we may draw any number of troops without paying for them’. In more prosaic terms India was seen as a permanent strategic reserve and the principal means by which British interests were secured throughout Asia, from Suez to Wei-hei-wei. As such, India was a central component in the British imperial system. The empire's matchless prestige, its wealth and apparent power all stemmed in large measure from India. In the second half of the nineteenth century the Raj, the East India trade and the Indian Army demonstrated a combination of power which Britain's imperial rivals might envy but never surpass. The central importance of India is illustrated by the Victorian conception of imperial defence, which was seen to depend on the twin pillars of naval supremacy and the defence of India. The only serious military commitment which British planners admitted before the turn of the century was the possibility of meeting a Russian invasion of India across the North West Frontier. This threat existed mostly in the minds of British generals. Britain and Russia came closest to war on the Frontier at the time of the Penjdeh incident in 1885, but even then the likelihood of a Russian expedition against India was hardly more than remote. Nevertheless, the threat of invasion was the principal rationale for the nature and size of the Army in India and this consideration guided Lord Kitchener's reforms of the Indian Army during his time as Commander-in-Chief from 1902 to 1909.
Alternative to Partition: Muslim Politics Between the Wars
Authors: Jalal Ayesha , Seal Anil
Published: November 2008

When the British came to power in India, it was certainly not in the face of the organized resistance of Islam. Yet the British Raj came to its end among political and social convulsions in which Hindus and Muslims cut each other's throats and large populations were shunted across the new frontiers of a sub-continent, now divided into two nations on the basis of religion. Events of such magnitude have encouraged historians to seek explanations of matching significance which may account for the growth of Muslim separatism. This article is concerned with the period of the nineteen-twenties and -thirties, before the onset of the end game when the communal quarrel burst out in deadly earnest. Explicit rival-ries between the communities tended to exist at two main levels, the level of organized politics at the top where Hindu and Muslim elites were rivals for influence with government and eventually for the control of government itself, and the level of mob violence in the streets. This article is concerned with organized politics at the top, although it does not deny the existence and importance of tensions at the base. Its main emphasis will be upon the provincial stage, in particular the Muslim majority province of the Punjab. In the period before 1919 the development of Muslim politics suggested that a specifically Muslim separatism orchestrated by the United Provinces had emerged upon the all-India stage. But the coming of the reforms reversed the situation of the preceding decades, and there was less incentive for Muslim politicians in the United Provinces to claim to be the spokesmen of Muslims in the nation.
Colonial Firms and the Decline of Colonialism in Eastern India 1914–47
Authors: Tomlinson B. R.
Published: November 2008

The spectacular decline of the expatriate business houses of eastern India in this century is one of the many underdeveloped areas of Indian economic history. The extent of the decline itself seems hard to exaggerate. In 1900 almost all the commanding heights of the colonial economy appeared to the dominated by expatriate and foreign firms, most of them British. Not only was the foreign trade of Bengal almost exclusively in their hands, but so was the industrial and banking structure. In addition, most historians of the period have stressed that the expatriate sector was able to dominate internal trade, operating in amonopsony position in regard to cash crop production and marketing and also, thanks to its contacts with government, the railways and the port trusts, to enjoy hegemonic powers that impeded the development of indigenous rivals. Thus, as A. K. Bagchi has stressed, 'social discrimination was complemented and supported by political, economic, administrative and financial arrangements which afforded European businessmen a substantial and systematic advantage over their Indian rivals in India.' The fate of the expatriate groups since 1950 has beenvery different. Many suffered considerable depredations during and after the second world war, losing important sectors of their business to Indian rivals, and even being bought out entirely by native enter-prise. Such expatriate interests as survived after Independence have generally failed to perform well. Their recent history has been agloomy one of a steady erosion of profitability and viability, so that most of those that still remain are now taken seriously only by a new generation of indigenous speculators and asset strippers.
Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India
Authors: Washbrook D. A.
Published: November 2008

Perhaps the most intransigent problem in the recent history of Indian society remains an adequate understanding of the processes of social change which took place under colonialism. As the continunig controversies within, as much as between, the traditions of modernization theory, Marxism, and the underdevelopment theory make plain, the Indian historical record is peculiarly difficult to grasp with conventional sociological concepts. In the study of Western European society, a focus on the evolution of legal ideas and institutions has proved a useful entry point to social history.The law may be seen to represent a set of general principles through which political authority and the state (however constituted) attempt to legitimize the social institutions and norms of conduct which they find valuable. As such, its history reflects the struggle in society to assume, control or resist this authority. Its study should help to reveal the nature of the forces involved in the struggle and to suggest the implications for social development of the way in which, at any one time, their struggle was resolved. The condition of the law may be seen to crystallize the condition of society. This, of course, could be said of any governing institution. But where the law becomes uniquely valuable is in that, because of its social function, the struggle around it is necessarily expressed in terms of general statements of principle rather than particular statements of private and discrete interest. At the most fundamental level, these principles demarcate the rules on which the contending parties seek to build their versions of society and provide useful clues to their wider, often undisclosed, positions.
Trade and Society in the Banda Islands in the Sixteenth Century
Authors: Villiers John
Published: November 2008

Both Moluccan cloves and Bandanese nutmeg and mace played an important, even crucial, part in the elaborate network of exchanges of commodities which for many centuries before the intervention of the Europeans had been the characteristic feature of inter-island trade in the Indonesian archipelago. From the early sixteenth century the Portuguese, and to a lesser extent the Spanish, added a new strand to this network, but even in the spice islands, the commercial domination of which was their chief goal, they did not seriously disrupt its traditional pattern. This was particularly so in the Banda Islands, which they soon discovered were markedly different from the Moluccas, not only by virtue of the different spices which they produced and in which they traded, but in the economic and political organization of their societies, in the manner in which they reacted to the European intervention and in the effect which that intervention had upon their commercial activities. Both acted as magnets to the Portuguese and Spanish, and later on the Dutch and English, drawn by the lure of great profits, as they had to Asian traders for many centuries before the arrival of the Europeans. But both presented rather different problems to those traders, Asian and European alike, once commercial relations had been established
The Pathology of the Indian Legal System
Authors: Mendelsohn Oliver
Published: November 2008

The Indian court system is by all accounts unusual. The proceedings are extraordinarily dilatory and comparatively expensive; a single issue is often fragmented into a multitude of court actions; execution of judgements is haphazard; the lawyers frequently seem both incompetent and unethical; false witness is commonplace; and the probity of judges is habitually suspect. Above all, the courts are often unable to bring about a settlement of the disputes that give rise to litigation. So great are these failings that the Indian judicial process can reasonably be seen as a ‘pathology’of a legal system.
The Press and Social Cohesion during a Period of Change: The Case of Early Meiji Japan
Authors: Altman Albert A.
Published: November 2008

Viewed from an historical, comparative perspective, the newspaper has proven itself an unusually adaptable tool of communication. It has served many masters: national states with different political ideologies; political parties of right, left and centre; economic interests of capital and labour; national movements and individuals. The contents of newspapers have been equally as varied, ranging from newspapers of record, newspapers offering their readers news of national and local politics, finance, and international affairs to those specializing in news of sex, crime, sport and scandal. Newspapers have differed, too, in their physical dimensions: some print enough in a single issue to fill a weighty book, others are no more than a single page of type.
Bureaucracy and Control in India's Great Landed Estates: The Raj Darbhanga of Bihar, 1879 to 1950
Authors: Henningham Stephen
Published: November 2008

In north India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries several great landed estates played a crucial part in the consolidation of imperial rule and in the support of the social and economic order. These estates have attracted considerable scholarly attention, but previous research has concentrated primarily on their relations with the colonial administraton and on their general intermediary role in north Indian society. The only study directly concerned with their internal affairs is Dr. P. J. Musgrave's ‘Landlords and Lords of the Land: Estate Management and Social Control in Uttar Pradesh 1860–1920’ (Modern Asian Studies, 6, 3 (1972), pp. 257–75), in which official sources are used as the basis for an account of the internal operations of the great estates in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. Hitherto the major obstacle to the examination of the administration of the great estates has been the absence of comprehensive estate records. Fortunately the extensive and well-organized archives of the Raj Darbhanga of Bihar recently have been opened to scholars. In this paper the Raj archives have been drawn upon to provide evidence for an account of the structure and operation of the administration of the Raj Darbhanga during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The paper argues that despite substantial difficulties the Raj Darbhanga effectively pursued its interests by means of a bureaucratic system of management and that therefore Dr Musgrave's conclusions concerning the limited power of the great landed estates need substantial qualification and correction.
The Sino-British Rapprochement, 1927–1931
Authors: Fung Edmund S. K.
Published: November 2008

The year 1927 marked the beginning of a new Anglo-Chinese relationship. The Northern Expedition had split the Nationalist camp into the Nanjing and the Wuhan régimes, both of which conducted a savage purge, one after the other, against the Communists. Especially the Nanjing régime, which ultimately triumphed over Wuhan, wrought a significant change in Guomindang foreign policy. In line with the purge against the Communists, and with the rise to power of the right wing and the military faction, the Guomindang abandoned mass movements and eschewed mob violence as far as possible as a means of achieving foreign policy objectives. Indeed, as it reviewed its position on anti-imperialism which had been an important element in the revolutionary movement during the period 1924–26, the Party reverted to a policy of international co-operation as an essential part of China's self-strengthening and reconstruction, and sought a peaceful solution to the decades-old question of treaty revision. This change is well illustrated by China's new relationship with Great Britain, which, in December 1926, had announced a new, conciliatory policy towards China after having for years been one of the chief targets of Chinese nationalism.