bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hierarchy and Power in Pre-National Buddhist States
Authors: Vandergeest Peter
Published: November 2008

Since the Second World War, an important school of social science scholarship in Southeast Asia has explained pre-national social hierarchy in terms of religious cosmology, or religious beliefs in the ordering principles of merit and karma (Heine-Geldern, 1956; Geertz, 1980; Errington, 1989). With respect to Siam/Thailand, Tambiah (1970, 1976, 1984) exemplifies this approach in its strong form—he has attempted to explain all religious practices of the ‘Thais’ as expressions of Buddhist orthodoxy. For these writers, religious and cosmological meaning is fundamental, and subsumes the economic dimension. Their emphasis on cultural coherence contrasts with a second school of thought exemplified by Scott (1977, 1985) which focuses on slippage or difference between the ‘great traditions’ represented in Thailand by Buddhism, and little traditions of peasantries, based on local experience, pre-existing little traditions or the appropriation of past ‘great traditions’.
Islam, Other Factors and Malay Backwardness: Comments on an Argument
Authors: Wilder William
Published: November 2008

An anthropologist has recently remarked on an ‘orthodoxy’ of economic development that has grown up among some economists. The same writer continues with the observation that

there is also, among some economists, an orthodoxy of the relevant background factors in development. When the tools of economic analysis appear inadequate fully to deal with specific instances of economic change or economic stagnation, the psychology and attitudes of the people concerned are invoked, as is the inertia of indigenous institutions.
The Economic Retardation of the Malays—A Rejoinder
Authors: Parkinson Brien K.
Published: November 2008

There were two main reasons for writing my original article. The first was to show that man's economic environment is not the only variable (or set of variables) in economic development and that man does have some control over his own economic destiny. The second was to attempt a multi-disciplinary explanation of the Malays' economic retardation.
Continuity and Change in Asian Societies
Authors: Tinker Hugh
Published: November 2008

There is a Malay saying, ‘From the endless past to the endless future,’ and most of us will have our own memories of a timeless Asia: a shepherd boy calling to his flock, grain winnowed in the wind, women drawing water at the well, fishing craft returning on the evening tide, the boom of the temple gong. This is the ‘Unchanging East’ which provides the principal Western stereotype of Asia.
Bui Quang Chiêu and the Constitutionalist Party in French Cochinchina, 1917–30
Authors: Smith R. B.
Published: November 2008

The years 1916–17 were something of a turning-point in the development of Vietnamese nationalism. In Cochinchina an abortive attack on Saigon central prison in February 1916 was followed by a great many arrests and the virtual destruction, for the time being, of the network of secret societies which had grown up in many of the colony's provinces during the previous decade. Many members of such societies were brought before special military tribunals (justified by the fact that France was at war in Europe) and sentenced to death, exile, or long terms of imprisonment. In Annam another abortive plot, probably quite separate, was hatched at Huê in May 1916, involving the kidnapping of the boy-emperor Duy-Tân; but he was found by the French two years later, before a projected rising in the provinces of Quang-Nam and Quang-Ngai could get under way. The leader of the plot, Trân Cao Vân, was executed along with three others, and the deposed emperor was exiled to the island of Réunion.2 These events in Cochinchina and Annam brought to a halt, for a time at least, the activities of secret nationalist groups which, drawing their initial inspiration from Japan, had been increasing in strength since about 1905. In Tongking there were also secret associations, mostly acknowledging the leadership of Phan Bôi Châu who was then in exile at Canton, and strongly influenced by the revolutionary methods of Sun Yat-sen. But there also, their last important operation for several years occurred in September 1917, when Luong Ngoc Quyên escaped from prison at Thai-Nguyen and was able to control the town for a week, before being driven out and committing suicide.3 Phan Bôi Châu himself was arrested by the Chinese the following year.
The Crimean War in the Far East
Authors: Stephan John J.
Published: November 2008

The Crimean War (1854—56), as its name suggests, was fought mainly on and around a peninsula jutting out from the northern shores of the Black Sea. Names such as the Alma River, Balaclava, and Inkerman are generally conjured up at the mention of this costly conflict. Strategic planning and operations on both sides, however, were not confined to the Crimea and the Caucasus. Far from Sebastopol, hostilities between Russia and the allied powers of Britain and France erupted in the seas of Japan and Okhotsk, and in the North Pacific Ocean. Accorded relatively little attention at the time, almost forgotten today, this Far Eastern1 theatre of the war offers insights into the growing role of Europe in East Asia. Whereas in the Crimea, the Allies achieved a victory of sorts while making immense human sacrifices, in the Far East they failed in many of their objectives but without incurring a great loss of life. The tragi-comic nature of tactical operations in the Far East should not obscure the war's broader implications: (1) the advance of Russia into the Amur River basin and Maritime Provinces then part of the Chinese Empire; (2) the intensification of British anxieties regarding Russian penetration into Manchuria and Korea; (3) the growing role of Japan in international relations; and (4) the progress of cartographical knowledge through surveys conducted in response to the demands of war.
Astride the Straits of Johore: The British Presence and Commonwealth Rivalry in South-east Asia.
Authors: Leifer Michael
Published: November 2008

In September 1963, with the formation of Malaysia, British military establishments situated on either side of the Johore Straits were brought within the compass of a single polity. Within less than two years the Malaysian union was put asunder and those military establishments were divided by national frontiers. Such a situation was viewed with displeasure by the British Government which had supported the establishment of Malaysia in part to avoid such a prospect. To add to the problem of dealing with two governments, there was the complicating factor of the unhappy relationship between them and with it the danger of Britain being caught up in the interplay of differences to the extent of prejudicing the value of her military presence.
Man and Nature in China
Authors: Murphey Rhoads
Published: November 2008

After nearly two decades of revolutionary rule in China, the break with the past which Communist direction has seemed to represent is increasingly being seen in a wider perspective. Few scholars would attempt to argue that the Communists have not brought a genuine revolution or that their ascendancy is merely the equivalent of a new dynasty. But as the character of the new order has become clearer with time and as an analysis both more detailed and less concerned with short-term matters has become possible, many scholars have been as much impressed by continuities with the pre-Communist past as by discontinuities. To take perhaps the clearest example, the current Chinese view of their relation to the rest of the world appears to represent little change from the traditional Sinocentric image. Ideological absolutism is also not new to China with Mao Tse-tung, nor is the conception of individual subsevience to public good, the unquestioned rightness of close social limits on individual actions. And contemporary China retains, for all its professed egalitarianism, a strongly elitist and hierarchial pattern.
A Japanese House of Councillors Election: Support Mobilization and Political Recruitment
Authors: Richardson Bradley M.
Published: November 2008

Research on the Japanese electoral process has quite legitimately focused on a broad range of topics. Elections in Japan have been studied from the perspective of national issues and evaluation of their popular appeal, description and analysis of voting behaviour patterns, and identification of the support mobilization efforts and campaign postures of individual candidates. Of the various kinds of electoral contests, those of the House of Representatives and local elections have received the greatest attention.
The Mahatma and Modern India
Authors: Brown Judith M.
Published: November 2008

Centenary celebrations of the birth of any prominent man attract assessments of his character, career and influence. Nothing could be more understandable, particularly in the case of M. K. Gandhi, who was by common consent one of the greatest leaders Asia has produced in an era of colonial nationalisms and decolonization, who in his own life time was called a saint and a machiavellian politician, and who has become in independent India both a national myth and an embarrassment. Accounts of the importance of Gandhi in modern India tend to fall into two main categories. There are those who dismiss him, often regretfully, as an idealist whose Utopian plans for a democracy of village commonwealths and a non-violent society have collapsed in the face of economic and political necessity and the machinations of unscrupulous politicians. In the words of Jayaprakash Narayan, ‘If you consider the political ideologies attaining in India today, you would find that somehow one who is called the Father of the Nation is completely missing from all of them’. Such pessimism assesses Gandhi as if he had been solely a dispenser of blue-prints for a brave new world, and fails to see him as a dynamic leader whose greatest influence flowed from the type of movement he led and the techniques he used, rather than from the peculiarly personal ideals he held. On the other hand, there are those who hail him as the Father of India and try to draw direct causal connexions between his ideals and many of the major changes which have occurred in India since 1947, particularly the official abolition of Untouchability and the institution ofpanchayat raj.But this is the perspective of the biographer. It underrates the complexities of politics and society and their interaction, and turns a blind eye to the innumerable cross currents which make up the main stream of Indian social and political activity.
Raja Gulab Singh's Role in the First Anglo-Sikh War
Authors: Singh Bawa Satinder
Published: November 2008

Sikh history has produced few men as controversial as Raja Gulab Singh of Jammu. His conduct, especially in the First Anglo-Sikh War of 1845–46, continues to evoke bitter argument. Whereas the debate at the end of the war pertained to the wisdom of creating the independent state of Kashmir, in more recent years it has centred around Gulab Singh's part in the conflict, which resulted in the partial dismemberment of the Sikh state. Two major evaluations have been made. A school of Panjab historians condemns the Jammu Raja's conduct as perfidious and brands him as a traitor. This conclusion is disputed by pro-Dogra historians who, while acknowledging his reluctance to become involved in the war, imply that he played an effective political role on behalf of the Sikhs which prevented the complete annexation of their state in 1846. Such widely differing assessments, often made without sufficient historical data and characterized by political or regional bias, have done little to produce a balanced understanding of this highly controversial affair. This paper tries to reconstruct and re-evaluate the Raja's role in the war.
Kisan Sabhas and Agrarian Revolt in the United Provinces 1920 to 1921
Authors: Crawley W. F.
Published: November 2008

The non-cooperation movement dominated Indian politics in 1920 and 1921, and any account of the Kisan Sabhas or Cultivators Associations during those years is likely to lay less stress on their importance than on that of the wider political campaign. Linked by the name of Gandhi, the peasant movement was caught up in the whole campaign of the nationalist leaders against the government. Yet the background to the upsurge of agrarian radicalism in the United Provinces and Bihar shows that it was strongest in districts with particular tenurial and agrarian problems. Moreover, in these localities the radical leadership was independent of outside agencies, its links with wider political movements were tenuous and ambivalent, and it was little subject to external influence and control.
The British Foreign Office and the Siamese Malay States, 1890–97
Authors: Jeshurun Chandran
Published: November 2008

Although the Foreign Office was theoretically the department of state responsible for British relations with the Kingdom of Siam, it has for some time been recognized that the strategic interests of both the Indian Empire and the Straits Settlements and Protectorates in the Malay Peninsula necessitated the active participation of the India and Colonial Offices in policy making. The role of the Calcutta authorities and their superiors in Whitehall in the formulation of British official attitudes towards Siam in the latter part of the nineteenth century has yet to be made known. But much has been done, including several recent attempts, to evaluate the extent of Colonial Office interference in the Siamese Malay States before 1909. To some extent, the renewed interest in the broader metropolitan implications of the subject is characterized by a desire to investigate the character of British imperialism itself.
Tai Chi-t'ao, Sunism and Marxism During the May Fourth Movement in Shanghai
Authors: Mast Herman
Published: November 2008

By the Kuomintang's own standards, the 1911 Revolution was a failure. Sun Yat-sen's movement nevertheless succeeded in imparting an impressive revolutionary legacy to modern China. After 1915, many of the student malcontents whom the T'ung-meng-hui had radicalized in Japan rallied to the New Culture and May Fourth Movements, keeping the revolution alive. These young intellectuals served to alert hundreds of thousands of Chinese, as well as a new generation of college students, to the importance of democracy, mass welfare, and, above all, national integrity.
The struggle for sucession: rebels and loyalists in the Indian mutiny of 1857
Authors: Brodkin E. I.
Published: November 2008

In the summer of 1857 British power throughout much of northern India was suddenly and violently subverted. Yet in spite of the fact that the uprising has perhaps commanded more attention than any other single event in Indian history the debate over its nature and causes still rages and 1857 remains a sensitive and highly controversial issue.
Images of the village community: a study in Anglo-Indian Ideology
Authors: Dewey Clive
Published: November 2008

To a degree exceptional even in that age of historical recovery and sociological discovery, awareness of the village community was a creation of the later nineteenth century. With due allowance for the contribution of the German historical school, it was—within the English-speaking world—an Anglo-Indian creation. In England, save for a handful of ‘survivals’, the village community was a purely historical phenomenon, studied by historians; but in India it was an omnipresent reality, utilized by revenue officials in assessing and collecting the land revenue. From the efforts of these groups—historians and revenue officials—to comprehend substantially similar institutions two intellectual traditions derived. Originating in complete independence of one another, both traditions converged in the third quarter of the nineteenth century for a brief, intense, period of cross-fertilization—only to separate as totally again. What made their convergence possible was the rising popularity of evolution and ‘comparative method’—which insisted on the essential identity of the defunct English village community and the living Indian village, separate in space and time, but co-existent in the same phase of social evolution. Then disillusion with unilinear evolutionary schemes and the exhaustion of comparative method—its apparent inability to produce any fresh discovery—drove them apart.
Sun Yat-sen and the Japanese: 1914–16
Authors: Altman Albert A. , Schiffrin Harold Z.
Published: November 2008

The First World War changed the pattern of international relations in East Asia. What had previously been another arena for the European power struggle became the cockpit for two regional forces, Japanese expansionism and incipient Chinese nationalism. The confrontation between the two, which was to last for a quarter of a century, began as a most unequal contest. Great power rivalry had enabled China to balance off her enemies and to maintain her status as a sovereign entity. But with Europe distracted, China was helpless, and Japan had a unique opportunity to pursue an independent expansionist policy. Instead of cooperating with England and the other powers in order to get a fair share of the China spoils, after 1914 Japan could make her bid for the grand prize, exclusive access to China's resources. Thus the European powers’ pre-occupation with mutual slaughter exposed China to extreme danger, greater than that which she had faced during the heyday of classical imperialism.1But Japan was not alone in welcoming the European retreat. Japan’s opportunity was also Sun Yat-sen's opportunity.
The Myth of the Deccan Riots of 1875
Authors: Charlesworth Neil
Published: November 2008

In the early summer of 1875 agrarian rioting occurred in the Bombay Deccan. The disturbances began at Supa, a market village in Bhimthari taluka of Poona District, where on 12 May an unruly peasant mob attacked the houses and shops of the local Gujarati moneylenders. ‘The combustible elements were everywhere ready’1and the riots spread through the poor, eastern regions of Poona and Ahmednagar Districts. The riots were directed entirely at the village sowkars (moneylenders), to whom most of the peasant agriculturists of the area were indebted.
Vietnamiens et Minorités en Cochinchine Pendant la Période Coloniale
Authors: Brocheux P
Published: November 2008

L'histoire a légué au Vietnam méridional des particularités économiques, sociales et culturelles qui n'ont cessé de peser sur l'évolution de la nation vietnamienne.
The ‘Greater Indonesia’ Idea of Nationalism in Malaya and Indonesia
Authors: Mcintyre Angus
Published: November 2008

Nationalism postulates the existence of a people and declares its right to take over an old state organization or establish a new one. A nationalist movement attempts to do this in the name of the people so postulated. Usually, the leaders of such movements come from the centre, or more precisely, the large urban areas of the envisaged state.
Shanghai-Hangchow-Ningpo Railway Loan A Case Study of the Rights Recovery Movement
Authors: Chi Madeleine
Published: November 2008

During the first decade of the twentieth century, foreign residents in China observed a noticeable change in the temper of the Chinese people. It was more than a change in mood, but a wave of activities, a dynamic force aimed at the recovery of China's sovereign rights. The movement was so intense that Japanese diplomats in Peking called it the ‘rights recovery fever’. Sir Ernest Satow, British minister in China, remarked that the movement was a manifestation of ‘the consciousness of national solidarity, which is entirely a new phenomenon in China’.
Chinese Railways and the Townley Agreement of 1903
Authors: McLean D.
Published: November 2008

British financial interests in China, since 1895, had been closely linked with political and strategic considerations. As the political and financial rivalry between the European powers intensified, the link tightened, becoming increasingly essential for mutual preservation. European finance meant railways, mineral rights, arms, and support for the ailing Manchu Dynasty; it was clear to successive British governments that British political supremacy in China could not survive the passing of such important financial concessions into foreign hands. In 1898, with the international scramble for concessions at its peak, the leading representatives of British finance in China co-operated fully with the Foreign Office to gain the bulk of Chinese railway contracts and concessions. Such respectable British enterprises as the British and Chinese Corporation and the Pekin Syndicate received active diplomatic support at Peking and the encouragement of the Foreign Office in London. Short of actually negotiating financial contracts on behalf of private companies British diplomacy could do little more to improve the competitive standing of these leading British firms vis-à-vis their foreign rivals.
The Maharaja of Kolhapur and the Non-Brahmin Movement 1902-10
Authors: Copland Ian
Published: November 2008

The British Indian empire, like the empires before it, depended on a measure of collaboration with the ruled. But the raj's systems of collaboration were neither static nor uniform. In the decade after 1900 some of the Indian princes, and the Maharaja of Kolhapur in particular, worked closely with the British to stem the rising tide of militant nationalism. This essay attempts to uncover the reasons for this collaboration-reasons which suggest that collaboration was always a conditional bargain, reflecting the immediate interests of both sides.
The Satirical Verse of Akbar Ilāhābādī (1846–1921)
Authors: Russell Ralph , Islam Khurshidul
Published: November 2008

Akbar Ilāhābādī—Akbar of Allahabad— has been the victim of much injustice at the hands of scholars, both in the West and in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent that was his homeland. The reason is a simple one. Akbar's fame is based—and quite properly based—upon his humorous verse; and scholars tend to be rather solemn people who may enjoy reading humorous verse in the brief periods of recreation which they allow themselves, but to whom the thought simply does not occur that a man may express in humorous verse ideas just as significant, and basically just as serious, as, let us say, a man who writes a voluminous commentary on holy writ.
Tentative Steps for an Anglo-Japanese Rapprochement in 1934
Authors: Trotter Ann
Published: November 2008

For Japan and Britain, 1934 was a year when naval policy was a major issue. During that year, decisions had to be made on the future of the Washington and London naval disarmament treaties, and, for both Tokyo and London, the political implications of the abrogation or renewal of these treaties were at least as important as the technical. The Japanese Government could not afford to renew the treaties, the British Government could not afford to see them go. In this situation, the feasibility of an Anglo-Japanese non-aggression pact, one of the purposes of which would be to check the demands of the Japanese navy, was seriously considered by the British.
The ‘Great Game’ in the Pamirs and the Hindu-Kush: The British Conquest of Hunza and Nagar
Authors: Huttenback Robert A.
Published: November 2008

The motivations for imperial advance have, over the years, caused considerable debate among historians. It has been thought by some that a law of the turbulent frontier forced the expansion of empire, for a region of order surrounded by an area of disorder had eventually, for its own protection, to conquer the area of turbulence. Thus, empires would inexorably advance their borders until they reached some great natural barrier or the frontiers of another stable power.
Daladali in Calcutta in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Mukherjee S. N.
Published: November 2008

In this paper I wish to illustrate the hypothesis that a necessary co-relate of stable social order is a system of controlled conflict. In other words, a social system depends for its cohesion on the existence of conflicts in smaller sub-systems, provided that the conflicts are conducted within an accepted convention. Hence faction-feuds in a social system are not necessarily evidence of fission in that system but may also be evidence of fusion. I wish to illustrate this theme, what Gluckman called ‘The peace in the feud’, from evidence from Calcutta in the nineteenth century.
Zamindars and Jotedars: a study of Rural Politics in Bengal
Authors: Rajat  , Ray Ratna
Published: November 2008

‘In England every piece of land is owned by someone—an individual, a public body, a company or perhaps by the crown. In India this is not so.’ Thus writes, in his unpublished reminiscences, a British ICS Officer who acquired experience of revenue work in the United Provinces and Bengal in the course of his career in India from 1915 to 1946.
The Last Thousand Years of Chinese History
Authors: Elvin Mark
Published: November 2008

It is immediately apparent to anyone who juxtaposes those two massive works of scholarship and patient investigation, Sudō Yoshiyuki'sHistory of Land Tenure Systems in China, which is mostly concerned with the Sung dynasty, and John Lossing Buck'sLand Utilization in China, which describes the early 1930s, that in the intervening thousand years the character of Chinese rural society changed, and changed radically.
The French Catholic Mission in China during the Opium War
Authors: Fay Peter W.
Published: November 2008

The First China War of 1839–1842, commonly called the Opium War, has been and continues to be the subject of a considerable body of literature.
Non-cooperation and Council Entry, 1919 to 1920
Authors: Gordon Richard
Published: November 2008

Gandhi's passive resistance campaigns in South Africa and his satyagraha agitation against the Rowlatt Bills in 1919 were conceived in wholly different circumstances; and the non-cooperation programme of 1920 was designed to meet conditions which were different again. To regard the non-cooperation movement simply as the logical consequence of the 1919 satyagraha and as the political application of Gandhi's ideology is to fail to appreciate just how experimental and uncertain Gandhi's politics were during this period.
Congress in Decline: Bengal, 1930 to 1939
Authors: Gallagher John
Published: November 2008

During the twenty years after the First World War, Indian politics were moulded by two main forces, each of which drew strength from the other. Important constitutional changes devolved a range of powers to Indians. But the British did not plan these reforms of 1919 and 1935 as stages by which they would quit India, bag and baggage, but rather as adjustments in the methods of keeping their Indian connection while retaining intact most of its fundamental advantages. At the centre of government in India, the powers of the Raj were increased; in the provinces more and more authority was entrusted to Indians. This system canalized much of Indian political action into the provinces. Moreover, by placing the new provincial administrations upon greatly widened electorates, it gave the Raj a further range of collaborators, selected now for their mastery of vote-gathering. The reforms of 1919 provoked another seminal development. By widening the functions of local government bodies in municipalities and the rural areas, which were to be chosen by the same voters who elected the new provincial councils, they linked the politics of the localities more closely to the politics of the province.
Confucian Patriotism and the Destruction of the Woosung Railway, 1877
Authors: Pong David
Published: November 2008

The slow growth of railways is undoubtedly one of the most astonishing features of the history of modernization in China. The Chinese government often gave as its reasons for opposition to railway development the fact that improved communications would facilitate foreign military expansion, that railways obstructed thefeng-shui, that mandarin and peasant alike were opposed to the railway, and that railways destroyed the livelihood of the common people. But, until recently, these explanations have never been given serious consideration, despite the fact that Ch'ing officials discussed railway-policy in these terms in a major debate in 1866–67. This is partly because historians have found it difficult to accept Chinese objections to railway development at their face-value, and partly because Chinese officials themselves, seeing that foreigners were unimpressed by Chinese arguments against railway construction, offered others which they thought would be more acceptable to the Western mind.
The District Magistrate Profession in the Early Republican Period: Occupational Recruitment, Training and Mobility
Authors: Wou Odoric Y. K.
Published: November 2008

The subject of magistrates, the local administrative leaders in the hsien, districts, is central to the study of Chinese government and society. The district has always been and still remains the basic administrative unit in China. Magistrates, the ‘offcials close to the people’, in the districts, are the chief administrators, who have always been singly responsible for the direct implementation of governmental policies at the local levels. Although several studies have been published on local administrators of the Ch'ing dynasty and the Communist period, district magistrates of the Republican era have been little studied.
The Punjab Boundary Force and the Problem of Order, August 1947
Authors: Jeffrey Robin
Published: November 2008

The Punjab Boundary Force, which represented the last incarnation of the old British Indian Army, had an operational existence of thirty-two days, from 1 August to 1 September 1947, inclusive. That it failed in its assignment ‘to safeguard the peace in the Punjab’ during the partition of India is evident from the transfer of populations and tens of thousands of deaths. However, the actions of the Force and the circumstances of its failure are of interest to those concerned with the partition process, and have not, it appears, been discussed in any detail.
The Economic Development of Malthusia
Authors: Robinson Austin
Published: November 2008

One hundred and seventy five years ago a shy young Fellow of Jesus College in this University asked a question which still remains just as relevant and just as urgent today. He asked, if I may paraphrase him in the language of today, whether economic development was possible, or whether it would be frustrated by the growth of population.
Colonialism and the Economic System of an Independent Burma
Authors: Fenichel Allen , Huff Gregg
Published: November 2008

IT is generally recognized that societies undergoing social and economic change are subject to uneven development. One aspect of this is the uneven development between what may be characterized as the three major sectors of society, viz. economic, government and military. Thus, although many countries have had the ‘common’ experience of being under colonial rule, the impact of colonialism on the three sectors varied. In other words, the transfer of skills to the sectors, in absolute and relative terms, differed depending on the colony in question.
The Earlier Industrialization of Hong Kong
Authors: Leeming Frank
Published: November 2008

It is usually thought that industry was very limited in Hong Kong until after 1947. Study of pre-war Chinese trade directories indicates, however, that industry was already well developed on the eve of the Japanese invasion. This represented partly a surge in industrial growth after 1937, and partly long-established industry rooted in the local community.
The Passing of Empire: The Mughal Case
Authors: Ali M. Athar
Published: November 2008

There have been numerous attempts to explain the fall of the Mughal Empire; and I truly feel great hesitation in adding myself to the long list of its exponents. To historians like Irvine and Sarkar, the decline could be explained in terms of a personal deterioration in the quality of the kings and their nobles. The harem influence grew—and women, for some strange unscientific reason, are always supposed to be a bad influence. The kings and nobles became more luxury loving, though no-one has yet established that the Mughals during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries enjoyed any less luxurious mode of living than their eighteenth-century successors. Sarkar, in his monumental History of Aurangzib, also elaborated upon the traditionally recognized factor, namely, Hindu–Muslim differences: Aurangzib's religious policy is thought to have provoked a Hindu Reaction that undid the unity that had been so laboriously built up by his predecessors.
Settlement and Migration Patterns in Afghanistan: A Tentative Statement
Authors: Dupree Louis
Published: November 2008

One must always bemoan the lack of adequate statistics when discussing population problems in Afghanistan.1Few nations in Asia, however, have adequate data-collecting procedures: only 9 of the 41 Asian nations, encompassing about 8 per cent of Asia's total population, according to a recent UNO survey.
Lyonnais Imperialism in the Far East 1900–1938
Authors: Laffey John F.
Published: November 2008

Influential citizens of the French city of Lyon embraced the cause of expansion during the nineteenth century. Religious zeal led to the founding of the Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi during the Restoration, and local Catholics continued to lend fervent support to overseas missionary endeavors. But even when the religious impulse towards expansion stood at its zenith, the Lyonnais did not overlook the more concrete advantages to be secured through the acquisition of Algeria and the opening of China to Western trade. Economic motivation took on far more importance during the second half of the century when the devastation of French sericulture by pebrine forced the magnates of the silk industry, the most important local industry and the only French industry dominant in the international market, to look elsewhere for new supplies of raw silk. The Far East, the world's greatest silk-producing region, became the focus of attention, and the Lyon Chamber of Commerce, the most effective local organization devoted to the cause of imperialism, supported the opening of Japan, called for the wringing of new concessions from China, and backed the acquisition and development of Indochina. Just as within the larger pattern of French municipal imperialism the business communities of Bordeaux and Marseille acquired vital stakes in West Africa and North Africa, so also Lyon's business community came to play a pivotal role in French undertakings in Eastern Asia where the Lyonnais soon pushed their activities beyond the confines of the all-important silk trade.
Congressional Legitimation of Municipal Reform in the Philippines, 1954–1960
Authors: Villanueva A. B.
Published: November 2008

Filipino political leaders have been addressing themselves to the issue of municipal reform since the dawn of the twentieth century, but discussion of the issue never reached a high intensity until the then Institute of Public Administration of the University of the Philippines (established in 1954 under the aegis of American technical assistance) defined the issues more clearly. The thrust of this renewed enthusiasm in local government reform included greater local powers, lesser national supervision over local administrative activities, and lesser legislative meddling in municipal affairs. Being a highly centralized political system under which local and national officials (both elected and appointed) have created a civic culture consisting of national review of some local administrative decisions and local dependence upon congressional pork barrels for the financing of municipal projects, any advocacy of local autonomy had to come from the top of the Philippine political totem pole and any legitimation of municipal reform policy must take place in Congress.
The Partially Opened Door: Limitations on Economic Change in China in the 1860s
Authors: Brown Shannon R.
Published: November 2008

The economic impact of the West on China has long been a subject of debate among students of Chinese history. Despite numerous books and articles, however, a consensus has yet to emerge. Part of the reason for this, I believe, is that the more analytical contributions to the debate have been too sweeping in their historical coverage, while those with a more limited time perspective have been insufficiently rigorous in their analysis. The aim of this paper is to renew this debate, but to do so by a method that will, hopefully, avoid the pitfalls of the past. Specifically, I intend to employ an explicitly theoretical framework to examine the facts of a particular period—the 1860s. This decade is especially important since it immediately followed the expanded opening of China by the Treaty of Tientsin in 1860. The analytical framework employed—economic theory—is applicable to any period in modern Chinese history, but as the data examined are drawn mostly from the 1860s, my conclusions, strictly speaking, are applicable only to that decade. For reasons discussed below, however, I strongly believe these conclusions to be applicable to the entire period from 1860 to 1895.
Decentralization and Executive-Legislative Relations in the Philippines, 1961–1967
Authors: Villanueva A. B.
Published: November 2008

Although the framers of the Philippine constitutional convention of 1934–35 were careful not to establish an imperium in imperio (kingdom within a kingdom), the local government system which developed was not under absolute national control either. For in spite of the efforts made by several delegates to include in the national fundamental law a provision that would have guaranteed ‘a more autonomous framework of government for the provinces and municipalities,’ and the efforts of other delegates to leave the future of local governments to the national legislature, a unitary government was agreed upon in which local governments were subject to presidential supervision. In the course of time, presidential supervision evolved to mean two things: 1) the power of the Chief Executive to appoint local officials and to review local budgets and 2) the power of congress to create local units and to grant local powers. Thus, these two political branches of the national government were to play major roles in the re-emergence of the issue of local autonomy in the fifties and the issue of decentralization in the sixties. In more specific terms, the two political branches had different views of central-local relations, especially the approach to, and extent of, decentralization. Before we proceed to discuss executivelegislative controversy on the problems of decentralization, the concept of decentralization must be understood.
A Note on the ‘Twelve Mavals’ of Poona District
Authors: Raeside Ian
Published: November 2008

A maval is the generic name for one of the fertile river valleys which run east from the watershed of the Western Ghats in the Poona District of Maharashtra. They are called mavals only so long as they are fairly narrow and enclosed between the many spurs which run east from the summit crest of the Ghats and they end roughly at a line drawn north-south just short of Poona city itself, so that the whole belt of country west of Poona, about 25 miles wide and 70 miles from north to south is often called ‘the Maval’. The sub-district of Maval Taluka which lies north-west of Poona and through which run the main road and railway to Bombay, is only a small part of this area. It was in the Maval that Sivaji first established the power base which, after many vicissitudes, developed into the Maratha kingdom and the hardy mountain people who formed his guerrilla forces and raiding parties were known asmāvaḷe. The word probably derives from the Marathi verbmāvaḷaṇeṃ—‘to set, of the sun or any other heavenly body’, and so the Maval was originally just ‘the West’ if you happened to live in Poona. An alternative name for some of the higher and narrower valleys iskhor.
The Work of the Provisional Government of Vietnam, August–December 1945
Authors: Smith R. B.
Published: November 2008

The main outlines of the Vietnamese Revolution of 1945–46 are by now well enough known to Western scholars, through the writings of Philippe Devillers, B. B. Fall, K. C. Chen and J. T. McAlister. But the detailed history of Vietnam during that period remains to be written; in particular only very scant treatment has so far been accorded to the actual political record of the Viet-Minh Provisional Government, which was established in Hanoi by Ho Chi Minh on 28 August 1945 and which lasted until the formation of the Coalition Government (or Government of Union and Resistance) in February 1946.
The ‘Ulamā’ of British India and the Hijrat of 1920
Authors: Qureshi M. Naeem
Published: November 2008

In the summer of 1920, when the Khilāfat movement (1918–24) was at its height, thousands of British Indian Muslims, under severe emotional stress, began to emigrate to the neighbouring Muslim country of Afghanistan. Believing that British India was no longer safe for Islam they had sought refuge in the hijrat or voluntary withdrawal as the only course left open to them.
The Russian Stratification Debate and India
Authors: Charlesworth Neil
Published: November 2008

To debate about patterns of economic and social mobility within peasant societies is hardly a new game. In particular, our modern discussions are the heirs of a Russian heritage, inevitably mirroring, in some aspect, the great arguments about agrarian change which raged there between the late nineteenth century and collectivization. Two elements ensured for the Russian literature a special cogency and the potential for widespread application. Firstly, the mass of zemstvo statistics provided a more reliable empirical base to theoretical discussions than in any other equivalent society. Secondly, the debate over the peasantry was at the very forefront of the economic and political struggle over Russia's future. Russia between 1890 and 1930 was a society uniquely torn between the advanced and the less developed worlds, bouts of extensive, feverishly quick industrial growth coexisting with an agriculture where Malthusian crisis seemed inexorably to be gathering. The economic performance of the peasantry, three-quarters of the population, clearly provided the key to Russia's developmental fate. In addition, understanding agrarian society was crucial to the political battle for the country. If a large and powerful rich peasant class existed or, as Stolypin hoped, could be created, then the countryside's loyalty could be secured for a conservative régime. Alternatively, Lenin's interpretation of an impoverished, embittered majority within the peasantry seemed to promise a much sounder basis for political revolution than the support of the tiny Russian industrial proletariat. This immediate, practical importance of the Russian peasant debate sharpened the cut and thrust of the arguments.
Hierarchy and Resources: Peasant Stratification in late Nineteenth Century Bihar
Authors: Robb Peter
Published: November 2008

The rural history of modern India has been and is being written for the most part within the terms of that dictum of Louis Dumont, that ‘a certain hierarchy of ideas, things and people, is indispensable to social life’. Even the scholar who has most recently questioned the distributions of power between sections of the community in North India, arguing for inter-dependence of landlords, peasantry and traders, has still emphasized village controllers, and ‘momentum towards social differentiation’, ‘to produce groups of rich peasants, or rather to continue their existence’. The identity of such rich peasants remains obscure or at least specific to the region being studied; but obviously it would be very useful to have similar generalizations about social stratification in the study of modern Bihar. Hitherto the foundation at least of political histories there has been caste or caste groups, yet economic hierarchy, that related but more enigmatic pecking-order, is surely equally important. In this paper I seek a basis for making such generalizations. Grave difficulties stand in the way. My conclusion throws doubt on the applicability to Bihar of the idea of stable hierarchies, and suggests an alternative approach.
The Making of the ‘Symbol Emperor System’ in Postwar Japan
Authors: Titus David A.
Published: November 2008

The imperial institution's capacity for survival, despite the many transformations in Japanese society and politics over the past thirteen hundred years, has few parallels in the history of human institutions. In 1965 the Imperial Household Agency could legitimately claim that the structure for managing the palace even today, though changed several times, including the ‘epoch-making’ renovation of 1947, could be traced back to the Taihō Institutes of 701.
October 1976 and the Role of the Military in Thai Politics
Authors: Marks Thomas A.
Published: November 2008

Faced with the progression of events outlined above, it is small wonder that observers of the Thai political scene at times are a bit baffled as to precisely what is transpiring in the kingdom's continued search for a stable political future. Yet beneath the headlines and seemingly blatant military power grabbing lies a web of internal happenings which is not only in a sense predictable, but to which there is an order and a fitful progress towards some form of popular representation. That this is so will become clear in the course of this analysis dealing with the military role in politics since the coup of October 1976 ended Thailand's chaotic three-year democratic experiment and reinstated ‘uniformed power’.
Class and Christianity in South India:Indigenous Responses to Western Denominationalism
Authors: Caplan Lionel
Published: November 2008

Sociologists of western religion have devoted much time and effort to delineating the principal characteristics of the denomination. The discussion has emerged very largely from the distinction drawn in 1912 by Troeltsch between church and sect. The latter is represented as radical and egalitarian, at odds with the society of which it is a part, and demanding total commitment from its followers. By comparison, the former is hierarchic and conservative, at one with its social surroundings, and generally less concerned about the varying extent of members' adherence to the corporate body. There has ensued considerable discussion regarding the adequacy of this dichtomy, and a number of refinements and alternative schema have been proposed.
Legal and Informal Land Tenures in Thailand
Authors: Kemp Jeremy H.
Published: November 2008

All too often the study of land tenure in agrarian states is treated either as a dimension of economic organization or, with respect to its more specifically formal characteristics, as pertaining to the sphere of law. With both approaches there is the danger of ignoring or at least underplaying the fact that the formulation and regulation of tenural arrangements is an expression of the political order of society. Paradoxically, familiarity with this idea has tended to limit its appreciation. Awareness of the ‘classic’ and explicit example of feudalism and its place in grand social theory may well direct attention away from the detailed examination of more diffuse forms of the relation between land tenure and political structures. Such a lack of interest is readily observable in the case of Thailand where the history of the relationship is both unusual and highly significant for the analysis of contemporary social change.