bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Salem Riots, 1882. Judiciary versus Executive in the Mediation of a Communal Dispute
Authors: Suntharalingam R.
Published: November 2008

Studies on the origins of Hindu–Muslim riots in nineteenth-century India have rightly stressed the distinction between what Professor Norman Brown calls ‘the precipitating causes’ of conflict and the deepseated religio-cultural differences that have long kept these two communities apart. As Norman Brown says, the precipitating cause ‘might be a quarrel over ownership of a parcel of land and the right to erect a religious building on it, or the playing of music by a Hindu wedding procession as it passed a mosque where such a noise constituted sacrilege, or exaction of exorbitant rent or interest by a landlord or moneylender of one religious persuasion from a tenant or debtor of the other, or sacrifice of a cow by Muslims, or the clash of crowds when a Hindu and a Muslim festival coincided’.
Saya San and the Burmese Rebellion
Authors: Solomon Robert L.
Published: November 2008

This account of the Burmese Rebellion of 1930–1931, and the role of its leader, Saya San, emphasizes the importance of traditional elements in what is commonly regarded as a nationalist uprising. The apparently nationalistic symbols of the Rebellion had magical and protective functions that were not appreciated by the British at the time of the Rebellion. The importance of nationalism in Burma in the 1930s has been overestimated, while the strength and continuity of traditional appeals has been incompletely understood. A comparison of the tactics of U Ottama, a cosmopolitan revolutionary, with the less modern but more successful efforts of Saya San, suggests that the rural Burmese of 1930 were more responsive to symbolic appeals than to programmatic designs for reform. The Western-educated elite of Burma were at first surprised and perhaps embarrassed by the primitive uprising in the countryside, but they eventually embraced the Rebellion and its symbols. Thus the Saya San Rebellion was a key stage in the transition of Burmese nationalism; to the urban elite, it vividly demonstrated the survival of traditional values in the countryside, while proving that a peasant uprising could achieve only temporary success without specific and negotiable aims, which required modern political skills.
The British Raj and the 1915 Communal Riots in Ceylon
Authors: Fernando P. T. M.
Published: November 2008

In contrast to India, where communal affrays were ordinary incidents of life, there was little inter-communal hostility in Ceylon throughout British rule. The clash between the Sinhalese and the Muslims that occurred in May–June 1915 was the major exception to this general trend of peace and tranquillity2. Not only did the disturbance take the Ceylon government by surprise, it placed the Colonial Office in a quandary. In this paper it is proposed to examine the reactions of the Ceylon government and the Colonial Office to what was an unprecedented disturbance in the ‘senior colony of the new empire’3.
The Japanese Civil War (1868)—A British View
Authors: Daniels Gordon
Published: November 2008

In the late autumn of 1868 political events in Japan were no longer focused exclusively on Edo, Ōsaka and the lands of the south-western han; all of which could be easily visited by British sailors and diplomats. The Imperial armies had won important victories at Fushimi and Ueno but they had still not gained control of the whole of Japan. The last Shōgun had retired from the conifict but his supporters still mounted stubborn military resistance in Northern Honshū. At this stage it was important for Britain to know the state of this civil war and its likely outcome.
Hobson and Lenin in Johore: Colonial Office Policy towards British concessionaires and investors, 1818—1907
Authors: Sinclair Keith
Published: November 2008

In the opinions of J. A. Hobson and Lenin European imperial expansion during several decades following 1870 was caused by the need to export surplus capital, and aimed at expediting this process. Hobson saw this necessity as arising from over-production (or under-consumption), a curable defect of capitalism; Lenin as an inherent quality of ‘monopoly-capitalism’ which was directed principally by bankers and was heading for revolution.
Between Two Worlds: Gandhi's First Impressions of British Culture
Authors: Hay Stephen
Published: November 2008

The Gandhi the world knows was the Mahatma, the ‘great soul’ who led India's drive for independence from British domination, the prophet of non-violent revolution, and the practitioner of civil disobedience. The Gandhi the world does not know was the spindling lad from Kathiawad, so determined to see England that he defied his sub-caste's chief and cheerfully accepted outcasteing as the price of making the polluting voyage to an impure land. The Gandhi the world has forgotten was the shy young lawyer who sang ‘God save our gracious Queen’ as fervently as any other subject of Her Majesty Queen Victoria—even after suffering the bitterest insults and beatings in South Africa because of his brown skin and his loyalty to his Indian heritage. Mahatmas are made, not born, and the making of this Mahatma was a long and often painful process. We can add to our understanding of that process by piecing together hundreds of bits of information about the first eighteen years of Gandhi's life—information from his own writings and from the Indian environment which shaped his evolution from infancy to young manhood.
Gandhi in Retrospect
Authors: Spratt P.
Published: November 2008

Between 1920 and his death in 1948 Gandhi was the dominant personality in Indian affairs and the most admired of the great world figures of the time. Twenty years later it is customary, and justified, to lament that in India, at least, little is now apparent of the enormous impression he created. His eclipse is of course due in large part to Nehru, but it is possible to assign more general causes.
Class, Community or Nation? Gandhi's Quest for a Popular Consensus in India
Authors: Kumar Ravinder
Published: November 2008

The historian who compares the disintegration of political societies like the Dual Monarchy of Austria and Hungary with the emergence of political societies like India is immediately struck by the different meanings which nationalism can assume in different contexts. The historian who carries out such a comparison would be justified in drawing the conclusion that nationalism in Europe in the nineteenth century was quite different from nationalism in India in the twentieth century. In the former instance, nationalism led to the breakdown of societies which embraced diverse ethnic, cultural and linguistic groups into relatively homogeneous communities; in the latter instance, it ostensibly led to the fusion of peoples who spoke different languages, who belonged to different cultures, and who subscribed to different traditions, into a single nation. The nationalists of Europe pointed with pride to the close ties of language, culture and race which held together the new States of Europe; the nationalists of India, however, pointed with equal pride to their achievement in forging peoples who were racially distinct from each other, and who subscribed to distinct historical traditions, into a single political community.
Gandhi: Ideology and Authority
Authors: Dalton Dennis
Published: November 2008

The purpose of this article is to analyse Gandhi's ideology and more particularly his understanding of authority. The first part will consider the main elements of Gandhi's ideology as they emerged during his nationalist experience, and their relationship to his style of leadership. The second part will turn to a comparative analysis of Gandhi and Rousseau, in an attempt to illuminate further implications of Gandhi's conception of authority.
Changing Patterns of Political Alignment in the General Elections to the United Provinces Legislative Assembly, 1937 and 1946
Authors: Reeves P. D.
Published: November 2008

This paper discusses some of the initial findings arising from research into the electoral system of the United Provinces in the period before Independence, that is, from about 1935 until 1947. I have chosen to give particular attention to the activities of political parties in the 1937 and 1946 elections to the lower house (or Legislative Assembly) of the provincial legislature.
Colonization as Planned Changed: The Korean Case
Authors: Chang Yunshik
Published: November 2008

With theKangwhatreaty in 1876 Korea ended its period of isolation and became exposed to foreign pressures. In 1906, after a period of turmoil in Asian international affairs, Korea was declared a Japanese protectorate, and in 1910 it became a colony of that country. Korea remained a Japanese possession until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. This essay is concerned with some of the economic and social changes that took place in Korea under Japanese rule. The first part of the paper discusses the reorganization of the traditional economy by changes in institutional control over it, and the second part describes the growth of the economy during these years.
English Free Traders and Indian Tariffs, 1874—96
Authors: Klein Ira
Published: November 2008

Indian tariff policies, historians of British India have stressed, illustrated an economic determinism in imperialism, in which Manchester blatantly served its self-interest in generating exploitative policies. Ironically, the influential work of John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, which indirectly qualified the idea of an imperialism that was solely economically motivated, has helped to produce a new view of British economic exploitation regarding Indian policy.
Rykūkyu's tribute-tax to Satsuma during the Tokugawa period
Authors: Sakihara Mitsugu
Published: November 2008

In 1609, Satsuma, at the southern tip of Kyūshū, conquered Okinawa (then called the Ryūkyū Kingdom). Throughout the subsequent Tokugawa period, Satsuma was said to have kept the Ryūkyūans in a state of virtual slavery by plundering the profits of the lucrative Sino-Ryūkyūan trade and imposing an excessively heavy tribute-tax on the native products. This exploitation of Ryūkyū's trade and native resources was reported to have been one of the important financial resources for Satsuma; and one that made possible Satsuma's vigorous political and military activities in the middle nineteenth century leading to the Meiji Restoration of 1868. In spite of such claims, no study of this topic has been made except those that have been strongly colored by the sympathies of the writer.
Press Freedom and the 26th Century Affair in Meiji Japan
Authors: Teters Barbara
Published: November 2008

For a little over twenty years the Meiji press demonstrated a remarkable degree of vitality, resilience, and strength of purpose in the face of severely repressive laws of which the most onerous and irksome were those authorizing the government to ban and suspend publications. When, in March 1897, the 26th Century Affair culminated in the passage of revised press laws eliminating that dreaded power, the new freedom was largely the product of leadership which came from the press itself, and particularly from that part of the press often characterized as ‘conservative’, ‘right-wing’, ‘nationalist’ or even ‘ultra-nationalist’.
The Vietnamese Élite of French Cochinchina, 1943
Authors: Smith R. B.
Published: November 2008

It is well-known that the French colonial theory of assimilation, even though it could never be carried out completely in practice, implied the development in French colonies of an indigenous élite of people prepared to accept both French culture and a (subordinate) role in the running of the colony. In French Cochinchina, this élite was especially important owing to the circumstances of the conquest, between 1860 and 1867, when most of the Vietnamese scholar-officials who had ruled the area previously, withdrew and refused to co-operate with the Europeans. The French had no choice but to create an élite of their own, and begin to educate it in French ways. The process has been discussed in detail in a recent study by Dr Milton E. Osborne, which takes the story of colonial rule in southern Viet-Nam down to about 1905.1 During the first four decades of the twentieth century, this élite continued to grow and develop, so that by the 1940s it had become the key element in Cochinchinese society so long as colonial rule might last. The purpose of the present article is to examine the composition and role of this elite about the end of the period in which France could take its presence in Indochina for granted.
Manpower Shortage and the End of Colonialism The Case of the Indian Civil Service
Authors: Potter David C.
Published: November 2008

Why did European countries abandon colonies after the Second World War? No acceptable theory exists to help us with this question—theory neither in the sense of conceptualizations which ‘map out the problem area and thus prepare the ground for its empirical investigation’, nor in the sense of a set of interconnected hypotheses about the specific reality of the end of colonialism which can be validated or refuted by empirical research. Lenin's classic work on imperialism develops powerful theoretical insights regarding the establishment, growth and nature of imperialism, but it does not refer directly to the end of the specific form of imperialism which concerns us here, namely colonialism, although one may infer from Lenin's work the very general proposition that imperialism disappears when capitalism is replaced by socialism. Imperialism as a consequence of capitalism is still with us today, yet colonies have been abandoned. Lenin's theory is not refuted, but at the same time it does not help us directly with an explanation for the end of colonialism.
The Chinese Repository and Western Literature on China 1800 to 1850
Authors: Malcolm Elizabeth L.
Published: November 2008

In the first decades of the nineteenth-century Western missionary activity, like the opium trade, was prohibited by the Chinese government. The Protestant missionaries, however, could not equal the independent opium traders in their evasion of the Chinese authorities. As well, they had to contend with the opposition of the British East India Company, which theoretically monopolized Anglo-Chinese commerce at Portuguese Macao.
Lokahitavadi and V. K. Chiplunkar: Spokesmen of Change in Nineteenth-Century Maharashtra
Authors: Apte Mahadev L.
Published: November 2008

Gopal Hari Deshmukh, popularly known by his pen name of Lokahitasvadi, and Vishnu Krishna Chiplunkar were two of the most prominent public figures in nineteenth-century Maharashtra. It is customary for both Indian and Western scholars to link them with literary and nationalist movements. Yet no effort has been made so far to assess their contribution by means of a survey of their work.
Urban Government under the Raj A Case Study of Municipal Administration in Nineteenth–Century South India
Authors: Leonard John G.
Published: November 2008

Until very recently, scholars of nineteenth-century India have tended to dismiss the role of urban government and politics as trivial or inconsequential. Most have reached their conclusions by studying the formation of policy in London or Delhi, using the private papers of high officials or reports prepared by the Government of India. A standard authority on British policy of this period states that local self-government ‘proved to be a tree which never took firm root. Local self-government never gained major significance in the political history of modern India.’ Local self-government failed, according to another scholar, because ‘… a rigid system of supervision was created, which ran from the smallest municipality up to the Secretary of State for India.’ In his opinion, this control and shortage of funds can be held responsible for the lack of development in ‘… the scope of public services, which were confined to the bare essentials.’ A dreary picture of petty quarreling in municipal government and stagnation in urban services prevails, alleviated only by the appearance of Lord Curzon as Viceroy in 1899 and his efforts to instill some ‘dynamic influence’ into local government. Although the policy of local self-government satisfied neither official aims nor nationalist aspirations, its importance for local politics and administration is now undergoing a major reassessment.
Urban Politics in the Local Kingdoms of India: A View from the Princely Capitals of Saurashtra under British Rule
Authors: Spodek Howard
Published: November 2008

A Substantial body of literature argues persuasively that Indian towns were often founded by local political-military rulers to serve as fortress-headquarters. In order to enhance their personal prestige, improve the efficiency of their administration, and provide market facilities for their small kingdoms, the rulers later invited merchants, artisans, administrators, and professionals to the fortress capitals. These invited, non-landed groups then formed courts, markets, and temple establishments which were dependent on the ruler for protection in an often violent atmosphere. The headquarters towns have been seen as the geographical locus and political nexus, or hinge, at which village levels of polity were linked with regional or state levels of government in a predominantly agrarian society. The most explicit and sophisticated presentation of this ‘hinge’ view is in Richard Fox's ‘Rajput “Clans” and Rurban Settlements in Northern India.'
Princely Mysore before the Storm: The Statelevel Political System of India's Model State 1920—1936
Authors: Manor James
Published: November 2008

More than one-third of the area of Britain's Indian empire and over one-quarter of its population were ruled by the Indian princes. But despite its size, princely India has largely remained the province of the pulp journalist to whom we owe our hackneyed view of the princes as a bizarre assortment of spendthrifts, torturers and voluptuaries. Recently, serious scholars have begun to publish material on the princes, but the focus has mainly been upon the more backward states.
Mobilization in a Mass Movement: Congress ‘Propaganda’ in the United Provinces (India), 1930—34
Authors: Pandey G.
Published: November 2008

From 1919 to 1922 the Indian National Congress carried out its first country-wide programme of mass agitations against the British. For the next six or seven years the party concentrated on the electoral arena. By fits and starts, it also carried on a programme of so-called ‘constructive’ work among the mass of the people. This helped to maintain some of the popular contacts earlier established. Elections, and the bitter communal conflicts that were a feature of the mid-1920s, at least in the United Provinces (U.P.), forged other links.
The Hyderabad Karnatik, 1687—1707
Authors: Richards J. F.
Published: November 2008

In September 1687 the Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, finally achieved a goal he had sought for the past forty years: the conquest of the kingdom of Golconda. After an extended siege of the great fort of Golconda, treachery and a night escalade had finally given the Mughal ruler possession of the last center of resistance in the kingdom. Abul Hasan, the last Qutb Shah ruler, became a Mughal captive. Aurangzeb wasted little time in sending the former king off to captivity in Daulatabad fort. For approximately four months the conquering emperor remained in Hyderabad in order that he could personally direct the first steps toward assimilation of the new territories into the empire.
Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan's Contribution to the Development of Muslim Nationalism in India
Authors: Malik Hafeez
Published: November 2008

By a general consensus among historians, the modern age is characterized as the age of nationalism. Despite this general agreement, however, the phenomenon of Muslim nationalism in India, which finally fulfilled itself in establishing the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, has remained misunderstood. In the first decade after the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan was explained away in terms of the divide and rule policy of the British and/or the religious fanaticism of the Muslims. This was so because Indian nationalists of all descriptions had assumed that Indian nationalism was a single and unified movement working for the unity or homogeneity of Indian civilization.
The Parsi Panchayat in Bombay City in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Dobbin Christine
Published: November 2008

From the Middle Ages each of the great merchant castes and communities of Gujarat possessed its own guild (Mahajan) to regulate trade, and a Panchayat to regulate caste matters. The migration of members of these castes to the British city of Bombay in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries caused considerable disruption in the traditional methods of regulating caste affairs. In the Mofussil control over almost every aspect of mundane life had been exercised by the leading shets of the caste. In Bombay, however, the precedence of certain Mofussil villages and Mofussil families was no longer unequivocally recognized. Western-educated caste members began to demand in all areas of life ‘the inauguration of a new era, showing that opinion had taken the precedence of mere hereditary authority’. Even to those without Western education the proximity of the British law courts gave confidence in an appeal against traditional obedience. The fear of the interference of the courts on behalf of an excommunicated man limited the sanctions available to the caste shets to enforce their authority. All these factors circumscribed the power the caste heads could exercise through their traditional Panchayats, and by the middle of the nineteenth century it seemed that the cohesiveness of many castes and communities was breaking down. But there was another side to the coin. While the bonds of caste discipline and authority were being loosened, awareness of communal identity was being heightened by the competitiveness of urban life. Castes and communities became aware of the need to reorganize themselves in order to present a united front on questions affecting the community, and of the need to put caste funds to the best use to maximize the possibilities of secular achievement for the members of the community.
Imperialism and Nationalism in India
Authors: Seal Anil
Published: November 2008

Among the dominant themes of world history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been the imperialism of the west and the nationalism of its colonial subjects. Nowhere were these themes developed more spectacularly than in South Asia; its history quite naturally came to be viewed as a gigantic clash between these two large forces. The subject then was held together by a set of assumptions about the imperialism of the British and the reactions of the Indians against it. That imperialism, so it was thought, had engineered great effects on the territories where it ruled. Those who held the power could make the policy, and they could see that it became the practice. Sometimes that policy might be formulated ineptly or might fall on stony ground or even smash against the hard facts of colonial life. But for good or ill, imperial policy seemed to be the main force affecting colonial conditions. It emerged from an identifiable source, the official mind of Whitehall or the contrivances of pro-consuls; and so the study of policy-making made a framework for investigations into colonial history.
Patrons and Politics in Northern India
Authors: Bayly C. A.
Published: November 2008

For many Hindu residents of the great cities of northern India in the mid-nineteenth century, the most powerful figures in the community were members of the wealthy families of indigenous bankers and traders which controlled credit and dispensed patronage for the religious life of their localities. Just as in the smallest bazaar great power lay in the hands of the petty moneylender, so in the cities which remained clusters of bazaars and residential blocs, the banking and trading oligarchies determined the limits of commercial activity with their credit notes, and helped to supply the community through their secondary trades in cloth, grain and sugar.
Municipal Government and Muslim Separatism in the United Provinces, 1883 to 1916
Authors: Robinson Francis
Published: November 2008

British rule cut down Muslim power in the United Provinces. Between 1868 and 1916, municipalities and councils acts tempered the rule of officials, many of whom were Muslims, with the rule of the people, few of whom were Muslims. Up to 1916, Muslims felt this loss of power most severely in the towns. But, because the municipalities were electorates for the provincial councils, this decline of Muslim power in the towns was reflected in the province as a whole. UP Muslims directed their politics towards compensating for this loss. They aimed for a protected share of power. This essay analyses the local origins of this Muslim demand.
Political Mobilization and Violence in Central Luzon (Philippines)
Authors: Van Den Muijzenberg Otto D.
Published: November 2008

Central Luzon is a fertile plain directly to the north of metropolitan Manila. This region, thoroughly colonized and densely populated, has been a centre of agrarian unrest for decades. In the forties and fifties Central Luzon formed the nucleus of a peasant movement which produced the strongest anti-Japanese guerilla-army in the whole Southeast Asia, the Hukbalahap (an abbreviation of Anti-Japanese People's Army) or in short Huks. The strength of this army came primarily from the fact that the struggle against the national enemy could be combined with the pre-war conflict between the peasants and the landowners.
The Advocacy of Malaysia—before 1961
Authors: Sopiee Mohamed Noordin
Published: November 2008

A FORMIDABLE consensus of academic opinion exists on the question of the formation of Malaysia. In its most commonly stated form, this consensus is manifested in an explanation which specifies a date—27 May 1961—and sees Malaysia as the outcome of the attempt to solve the ‘Singapore Problem’. The movement towards Malaysia is, with dull regularity, dated from the Tunku's almost casual, certainly very vague, reference to the need for a ‘closer understanding’ between Singapore, British North Borneo (Sabah), Brunei, and Sarawak, and for ‘a plan whereby these territories can be brought closer together in a political and economic association’ which he made in the course of a speech to the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of South-east Asia on 27 May 1961.
The Campaign for a Muslim University, 1898–1920
Authors: Minault Gail , Lelyveld David
Published: November 2008

The campaign to establish a Muslim University at Aligarh is a good example of the confluence of education and politics in modern India. The political motives involved were similar to those that lay behind the founding of the Mahomedan Anglo-Oriental College in 1875: a sense that English education was a prerequisite to enfranchisement. By the turn of the century, the stakes were higher and the interests involved had expanded in number and complexity. The Muslim University movement represented nothing less than an effort to create an all-India Muslim constituency and to carve out for it a decisive piece of political power. It was political both in its attempt to consolidate support to influence specific government policies, and also as a direct challange to British control of the educational access too power.
Population and Agriculture in Northern India, 1872—1921
Authors: Klein Ira
Published: November 2008

What were the relationships between agriculture, natural calamity, standards of living, and population growth in India? To what extent were Indian agriculturalists able to raise their standard of living in the nineteenth century under British rule? Why did population grow, or fail to expand, in particular regions and provinces at certain times? Historians have left these questions virtually untouched. Population growth has been at the center of the controversy about the impact of British rule. But only preliminary work has been done on the actual expansion of population, and hardly a page has been written on the economic and medical reasons for change.
Urdu Political Poetry during the Khilafat Movement
Authors: Minault Gail
Published: November 2008

The Khilafat movement, which took place among Indian Muslims immediately following the First World War, was so called because it was a political agitation designed to pressure the British government to preserve the defeated Ottoman Empire and its ruler, the Caliph of Islam. The Khilafat movement was also, more fundamentally, a campaign to unite Indian Muslims politically by means of religious and cultural symbols meaningful to all strata of the community. The movement gained added significance because it took place simultaneously, and cooperated fully, with Gandhi's first non-violent non-cooperation movement against British rule. Muslim and Hindu were thus engaged in parallel political activity: the broadening of national political participation from the élite to the mass through new techniques of organization and communication.
Harry Parkes and the ‘Arrow’ War in China
Authors: Wong J. Y.
Published: November 2008

In my article entitled ‘TheArrowIncident: A Reappraisal’,1I recently analysed the existing documentary evidence relating to theArrowincident. But an investigation of this incident in itself does not reveal the process which transformed a small dispute into a war between Great Britain and China. In this article I shall attempt to study this crucial transformation. Such a study would amount to an examination of the role of Harry Parkes in British diplomacy in Canton immediately after the incident. Before embarking on this project, however, it might be useful to give a brief introduction to Parkes and his background.
Politics in Late Colonial Burma: The Case of U Saw
Authors: Taylor Robert H.
Published: November 2008

It has been assumed that the politicians and political organizations of late colonial Burma were mere shams behind which the real affairs of government were conducted by British governors and civil servants. It also has been assumed that what mass politics there was among the Burmese in the 1930s was dominated by nationalist youth, especially the Thakins, and monks who were untainted by contact and collaboration with the British and those Burmese who associated with them. Those members of the Burmese political élite who attempted to work in government and party politics during the last pre-war years, therefore, have been seen at best as mere reformers and at worst as callous opportunists.
The Indonesian Military and Economic Policy
Authors: Rudner Martin
Published: November 2008

Nothing foments institutional change so much as a sense of past institutional failure. The New Order that came into being as a result of the October 1965 assumption of power by the ABRI (Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia) inherited a crisis situation in economic policy. Decades of economic decay and capital dis-investment had brought the Indonesian economy to the brink of catastrophe. However, just as all revolutions are born in an ancien régime, so the heritage of the bygone Sukarno era left control of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy at the disposal of the state and thereby eased the institutional transformation.
Equity versus Ease in Indian Land Tax Policy
Authors: Toye J. F. J.
Published: November 2008

One of the central choices that confronts designers of direct taxes is that of the precise combination of equity and administrative ease. Both equity and administrative ease are normally accepted as desirable objectives in the design of taxes. But the objectives conflict with each other. Equity requires a tax sufficiently flexible to adjust the size of the tax payment to the individual taxpayer's ability to pay. Administrative simplicity, by contrast, requires a tax where the due payment can be quickly and simply calculated, and promptly and conveniently collected. Thus tax designers face the painful dilemma of being able to achieve improvements in equity only by increasing the difficulty of tax administration, or, alternatively, of being able to reduce these difficulties only by accepting additional inequities.
Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Perspectives: Barriers to Accommodation
Authors: Roberts Michael
Published: November 2008

It is widely recognized that the concepts of ‘state’ and ‘nation’ developed largely out of the history of Europe. In Western Europe the process of state-building preceded and assisted the process of nation-formation. In consequence, the concept of the nation that developed from this process focused on the political community as defined by the institutional and territorial framework. In the tradition of Rousseau, Abbé Sieyes could define a nation as ‘a body of associates living under one common law and represented by the same legislature’. In most lands of Western Europe these developments also produced the model of a single nationality nation or nation-state. In Central and Eastern Europe the process was different: ‘the nation was first defined as a cultural rather than a political entity’ and the underlying theoretical foundation was in the tradition of Herder rather than Rousseau Nevertheless, once nationhood had been achieved in these regions there was a tendency to approximate to the model associated with Western Europe. This was made all the easier in such states as Italy and Germany because the majority of their citizens were from one ethnic group; they, too, were single nationality nations. Whatever the dualisms and amalgams in Europe, the export model has been that associated with that of Western Europe—for the simple reason that the predominant colonizing powers were from this part of the Continent.
Imperial Impact on Rajputana: The Case of Alwar, 1775–1850
Authors: Haynes Edward S.
Published: November 2008

One of the functions of any imperial system is to stabilize the subordinate political structures over which it exercises suzerainty. Without such a role for the central authority, control of local politics becomes impossible and, without such centralization, the stability of the entire empire is threatened. This policy has often acted to support or maintain local socio-economic relationships which, in the absence of overarching centralization, would show greater instability and flux. The precise nature of these relations can best be seen in an examination of the interregnum period between the decline of one imperial power and the imposition of a new generation of centralized stability.
The Origins of the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852–53)
Authors: Pollak Oliver B.
Published: November 2008

Historical accounts of the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852–53) emphasize national bias, monocausality and eventsimmediatelypreceding the outbreak of hostilities. Asian historians find Europeans culpable. Governor-General Dalhousie ‘was an imperialist of the deepest dye, who longed to extend his Indian empire at the cost of the Burmese.’ The East India Company in its unquenchable ‘thirst for conquest’ coveted Burma. ‘There was a desire for war on the part of the British trading community in Burma … as it would permanently safeguard commercial interests in the country.’ Anglophile historians blame the Burmese. The ‘intransigence and xenophobia which radiated from the court of Ava… drove [Dalhousie] into war.’ Dalhousie himself blamed an unrestrained military officer whom he labeled the ‘combustible commodore.’ Despite imperial apologetics, critical Englishmen felt unease at the ‘double government's’ Blue Book coverup and sought with mixed success to disclose the ‘whole ugly truth.’
China's World's Fair of 1910: Lessons from a Forgotten Event
Authors: Godley Michael R.
Published: November 2008

From before the turn of the century, the great powers held large commercial, industrial and technological exhibitions to show off the fruits of progress and to give their citizens a glimpse of where civilization was headed. World fairs thus provided one window into the future. But it must be remembered that such events also constructed monuments to their own era—an age when jingoism and a paradoxical recognition of the shrinking nature of the globe coexisted before the road to war. In the final analysis, the grand exposition, with its curiosity about other peoples and nations and its faith nonetheless that mechanical invention would soon make everyone much the same, was a place where imperialists met in thinly disguised competition. How strange it must seem, then, to learn that the last Chinese dynasty, having just discovered the power of nationalism, attempted an international exposition of its own in the summer of 1910 at the same time that the ‘Festival of Empire Exhibition’ was booked into London's famed Crystal Palace.
Britain and the Emperor: The Foreign Office and Constitutional Reform in Japan, 1945–1946
Authors: Buckley Roger
Published: November 2008

British history on the occupation of Japan is largely a blank. Government publications on the Far East, political biographies, regimental histories and diplomats' memoires offer slim pickings. Historians interested in postwar Japan have tended to conclude from the apparent paucity of evidence that British influence on the conduct of the Allied occupation was negligible. Standard works on the period have repeated the conventional wisdom and then moved on. Those who were involved at a policy level rarely made any concentrated attempt to correct this picture. Cabinet ministers certainly did not spend any time confiding in their diaries and have not preserved private papers to indicate any particular fascination with the subject. Diplomats have been equally unforthcoming in print. Consequently, any research into British diplomacy and Japan before the opening of the British archives for 1945 and 1946 would have been an endless disappointment. The position has recently changed. Indeed, with a Thirty Year Rule also applying to the Japanese Diplomatic Record Office and with the material available at the Washington National Records Centre, there is suddenly an abundance of material.
Foreign Private Investment in India 1920–1950
Authors: Tomlinson B. R.
Published: November 2008

Overseas investment by developed nations in the less industrialized economies of Asia, Africa and Latin America is an important part of modern international economic history. Such investment has long been recognized as a potent force in integrating the international economy. It has also been placed at the heart of most theories of the expansion of European empires in the nineteenth century and it is seen as a major part of the ‘neo-colonialism’ that is widely thought to have characterized the world economic and political structure since 1945. This article will examine private foreign investment in India in the first half of the twentieth century, spanning the gap between the ‘imperial’ and the ‘neo-colonial’ epochs.
Captain Thomas Williamson of India
Authors: Edwards Owain
Published: November 2008

Thomas George Williamson, soldier, composer, music publisher and author, died in Paris in 1817. Though neither a great soldier nor particularly a significant creative writer, his attainments have qualified him for a short mention in various biographies and encyclopedias. None of these presents anything approaching an account of the whole man, however, because Williamson had a wide range of interests in which he invested his creative energies and he is known only from the standpoint of each of the subject specializations concerned without reference to the others. The present study was initiated by a commission to write an article on Williamson the composer for the new Grove's Dictionary of Music & Musicians, on whom in the previous edition three sentences had been devoted. Besides adding to a knowledge of his musical activities, source material has been brought together which could be of interest to historians and sociologists, not least in Asian studies. For Williamson's story has very much to do with the twenty years he lived in India before his return to England in 1798, both because this period was the career part of his life and on account of the wealth of experiences that it provided for him to draw upon later in his literary and musical compositions.
Development Policies and Patterns of Agrarian Dominance in the Malaysian Rubber Export Economy
Authors: Rudner Martin
Published: November 2008

SINCE Malaysian independence over two decades ago, rubber production there has undergone a significant and far-reaching structural transformation, in social as well as economic dimensions. This transformation represented the outcome of policy responses to changing world market conditions for the export of natural rubber, which coincided with a political transition to independence and parliamentary government. In its response, government policy since the mid-1950s released many of the earlier administrative constraints on the spread of new rubber planting. The ensuing entrepreneurial re-awakening led to large-scale re-planting and new planting with high-yielding rubber. This increasingly widespread wave of technological innovation was accompanied by the dissolution of marginal estate enterprises, which was more than offset by a parallel expansion of peasant participation in rubber cultivation. Productivity and therefore producer incomes generally tended to improve, notwithstanding cyclical fluctuations in world rubber prices. Yet, by the middle 1970s this policy trend favouring technological cumentrepreneurial innovation appears to have altered direction. Indeed,recent Malaysian rubber policy indicates that structural transformation has run its course, at least for present intents and purposes. As will be seen, the current policy goal has reverted to protecting the newly established economic and social order in the Malaysian rubber planting against further pressures for developmental change.
Partition Literature: A Study of Intiār Ḥusain
Authors: Memon Muhammad Umar
Published: November 2008

In an interview given in July 1974, Intiz̤ār Ḥusain, one of the most perceptive creative writers of Pakistan, had this to say about the experience of migration that was the direct outcome of the Partition of India in 1947:

A decade ago when I was talking about the experience of migration and the articles I wrote concerning it, I was in a state of great hope and optimism. It was then my feeling that in the process of the Partition we had sudenly, almost by accident, regained a lost, great experience—namely, the experience of migration, hijrat, which has a place all its own in the history of the Muslims—and that it will give us a lot. But today, after our political ups and downs, I find myself in a different mood. Now I feel that sometimes a great experience comes to be lost to a nation; often nations forget their history. I do not mean that a nation does, or has to, keep its history alive in its memory in every period. There also comes a time when a nation completely forgets its past. So, that experience, I mean the experience of migration, is unfortunately lost to us and on us. And the great expectation that we had of making something out of it at a creative level and of exploiting it in developing a new consciousness and sensibility—that bright expectation has now faded and gone.
New Directions in Thai Buddhism
Authors: Gosling David
Published: November 2008

S. J. Tambiah has drawn attention to two recent developments in Thai Buddhism which strike him as having a particularly seminal significance. The first is ‘the new politico-economic role of monks themselves as promoters of government-sponsored community development programmes’. The characteristics of this aspect of Thai Buddhism have been charted into the early seventies at least, by Tambiah, Suksamran and Ruth-Inge Heinze.
Elite Choices and Constitutional Guarantees of Local Autonomy in the Third World: The Case of the Philippines, 1971–1973
Authors: Villanueva A. B.
Published: November 2008

The second generation of constitutional elites who adopted the fundamental law of the Philippine Republic had hoped that through legislative discretion local governments would develop into strong and effective agents of the national government. This hope was dashed by the unwillingness of the legislative branch to make the local units less dependent on the central government and the meticulous way in which the President of the nation tried to control local officials instead of merely supervising them as the constitution provided. Against this background, the third generation of constitutional elites in the seventies felt that the constitutional compromise in the thirties between the historical view of localism and the legal theory of centralism in the form os presidential supervision over local governments was counter-productive. Accordingly, they considered a number of choices by which local autonomy could be clothed with constitutional protection. And so they wrote in the new Philippine constitution a mandate to the legislative branch to institutionalize the concept of local autonomy not only in form but in substance as well. They also modified Dillon's Rule, which used to govern national—local relations, by subjecting the legislative power to create or abolish local units to popular approval by placing a shotgun behind the door—the referendum. Elite decision to opt for this type of mandatory autonomy was not in response to mass demands, since the masses were uninformed about the local autonomy issue. Rather, it was due to elite perception of what they considered to be the public good which motivated them to take this bold and forward step towards local political development during the nation's crucial period of its existence.
Banking Firms in Nineteenth-Century Hyderabad Politics
Authors: Leonard Karen
Published: November 2008

The relationship between business and politics in preindustrial societies has seldom been clear from historical records. I have argued elsewhere that the major banking firms of Mughal India were central to the imperial system. These ‘great firms’ were not parasites, passively supportive of the state because it preserved the law and order necessary for trade; they were not self-contained caste communities interacting with the government through the leaders of panchayats or guilds. Their functions were as important to the government as those of its official treasurers, and their desertion of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century helped bring about its collapse.
The Soviet Threat to Afghanistan and India 1938–1940
Authors: Hauner Milan
Published: November 2008

From an Asian angle Afghanistan could easily be selected as the centre of the extra-European world. It lies at the crossroads of three different geographic regions, the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia, as much as it borders on three different cultural zones, the Islamic world, the Hindu culture, and the Chinese influence. From a political standpoint, until the Second World War, Afghanistan appeared as buffer state par excellence, sandwiched between two Great Powers, the Russian Empire protruding from the North-west of Central Asia, and the British Empire guarding the Indian glacis in the South-east.