The oppressive regime of Nicholas I witnessed the rise of the free-lance literati in Russia. Estranged from the state and divested of status in the official hierarchy, they turned their youthful energies and talents into intellectual pursuits. The generation of the “remarkable decade” represented the crowning point of this emancipatory development. While contrasting cultured Moscow before 1812 with that which he left in 1847, Herzen's heart throbbed with joy and satisfaction:

We have made tremendous strides forward. In those days there was a society of the discontented — that is, of those who have been left out, dismissed, or laid on the shelf; now there is a society of independent people.

At the present day the African hailing from a primitive society, who comes to live in the towns side by side with Africans of other tribal origins and with Europeans, is a familiar figure. This has resulted in the influencing by alien cultures of the African's traditional way of life and the formation of a new type of society governed by a complex set of rules to which the old traditional order affords little or no guide. It is only to be expected in the circumstances that difficulty will be experienced in reconciling African customary rules of behavior with the western-type law, and that also, where the two systems are being administered side by side, the Western system of law will tend to predominate due to its greater affinity to modern development. As will be shown, this tendency to replace native custom by Western law, as exemplified by the position in the past and present territories of British Africa, even where motivated by the best intentions, is at times dominated by an adherence to Western law patterns and by Western economic and social theories, which may be neither acceptable nor expedient in the present state of African development.

During World War II, Jacques Stern, a former French Minister of Colonies, wrote almost lyrically of the “patient labor of assimilation” by which France had been “consolidating the moral and material ties which bind together forty million continental Frenchmen and sixty million overseas Frenchmen, white and colored” in the French Empire. When the Brazzaville Conference met in 1944 under the auspices of the Free French government to consider the postwar future of that empire, its final resolution declared that the aims of the work of colonization which France is pursuing in her colonies exclude any idea of autonomy and any possibility of development outside the French empire bloc; the attainment of self-government in the colonies even in themost distant future must be excluded.

The title of the panel at which this paper was originally presented — “Nationalism and the Growth of States”, at the 1960 meeting of the American Historical Association in New York City — suggested a concern with nationalism as a political phenomenon. We were not speaking primarily about love of country, the cultivation of a national style or hatred of the foreigner, but about political convictions, attitudes or movements and their relation to the state. The dilemma of nineteenth-century Russian nationalism, so defined, consists in this — that it could only with difficulty, if at all, view the tsarist state as the embodiment of the national purpose, as the necessary instrument and expression of national goals and values, while the state, for its part, looked upon every autonomous expression of nationalism with fear and suspicion.

In “The Suggestiveness of Vestiges: Confucianism and Monarchy at the Last”, I wrote of the draining of the monarchical mystique in modern China. Vestigial monarchism, it seemed to me, was related to an equally vestigial Confucianism — really related, that is, not just parallel in some modern course of corrosion. The relation was the thing, a novel one of untroubled association (in a common, new ideology of “national spirit”), unpromising departure from what seemed, more and more, the devious, uncertain, tense partnership of pre-Western days. The loss of this ambivalence, this Confucian-monarchical attraction-repulsion, comprised the Chinese state's attrition. And if in its time that traditional state was a prodigiously hardy perennial, perhaps its vitality, in a truly Nietzschean sense, was the measure of its tolerance of tensions: their release was the bureaucratic monarchy's death.

The role of a political opposition has proved ambiguous in most newly independent nations. New governments rarely see the necessity for a regular opposition party nor do they always accept the idea of opposition as a normal feature of government. There are many reasons why this is so. Most new nations have come into being after a prolonged period of struggle with colonial authorities which has caused nationalist leaders to monopolize loyalties. Also, opposition groups having themselves been associated with nationalism at some stage of their existence, often have an anti-government reflex common to those whose political actions have been aimed at changing the fundamental character of a country rather than accepting well established rules of political life and working within them. Indeed, many opposition leaders in new nations regard the new government much as they did their colonial nredecessors, i.e. as basically illegitimate.

The period 1905–1912 saw a number of nearly simultaneous revolutions or mass movements in Asian countries, which may be considered as the first wave of a revolutionary movement which continues to rock Asia. The Chinese overthrow of the Manchu dynasty, the Young Turk victory, and the Indian mass movement of 1905–1909 are probably the best-known in a series of events which also embraced smaller Asian countries and groups. The main reasons for their simultaneity were probably: the electric effect of the Russo-Japanese War, a startling Asian victory over a Western Power; the Russian Revolution of 1905, an inspiring anti-autocratic struggle which temporarily took Russia away as a bulwark for conservative governments in Asia; the intensification of imperialist pressures on Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which brought Asian economic and political reactions; and, possibly, the beginnings of economic crisis, which were reflected in Asia. Among these the Russo-Japanese War perhaps deserves to be singled out as the immediate spark, igniting highly inflammatory material in Asia as it did in Russia itself. Not only was Asian pride, hitherto battered by a continuous stream of Western conquests, bolstered by this victory, but the fact that the only Asian constitutional power defeated the only major Western non-constitutional power strengthened the fight for constitutional government as the panacea for internal ills and the “secret” of Western strength.

The British nation is proud of having administered justice to oriental peoples with impartiality and integrity, conscious of the Roman example. These qualities were thought to have been lacking before the British period, and to the extent to which British standards are respected since British rule ceased that heritage is usually considered a ground for pride. Anthropologists have raised, indeed, some doubts. These would have astonished those who introduced British techniques during the critical periods. To them it was self-evident that the strides made in English constitutional history, for example that towards the “Rule of Law”, should redound to the advantage of dependent peoples; it was unthinkable that Britons should communicate less than they themselves had acquired. That they might be doing “harm“ thereby never occurred to them; and indeed it is far from established that they did. It is possible now, however, to take an objective view, and, without passing premature judgments, to observe closely what happened in a country where the process was uniquely difficult: and to see the immediate results of the process.

Cities have led high civilization for so long that one can scarcely imagine one without the other. Yet it is not easy to delimit their place in the creation of values and the organizing power to implement them that constitute a developing civilization. They can be described in innumerable ways, for as is true also of small towns and villages each city has a unique personality. The existing literature leans either to extreme particularity of detail or to an unconvincing generality. The two articles that follow are the first of a series in which common general questions will be brought to bear on the rise of different types of city in different societies and on the conditions under which they play particular creative and organizing roles. Since three recent books have attempted large-scale comparison along these lines our own series had best open with an attempt to review their contributions.

Advancement in the provincial bureaucracy of nineteenth-century China depended slightly more on the purchase of substantive posts (chüan shihkuana), particularly posts of the highest ranks purchasable, than on any other single factor yet analyzed. This finding is based on a sample of 1,047 officials, drawn from six different directories of provincial officials (T'ung-kuan lub); Shantung, 1778 and 1859; Hupei, 1831; Honan, 1837; Anhwei, 1871; and Hupei, 1879. Among these officials neither seniority nor family background, nor recruitment path nor age at receiving the chin-shih, was quite as decisive as purchase in facilitating ascent in the nine-rank hierarchy.

Emigration from the land that now constitutes the Lebanese republic has long historical roots going back to the time of the Phoenicians, and probably only the Irish rival the Lebanese in exporting themselves. One commonly associates these emigrants with trade, although emigrant scholars, writers, and publishers, such as Yūsuf Samān al-Samān (Assemani) in eighteenth-century Rome, Jurjī Zaydān in nineteenth-century Cairo, or Khalil Gibran (Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān) in twentieth-century New York, are by no means exceptions.

The diffusion of British institutions, ideas, and values and the spread of the English language and of British peoples are among the major events in modern history. The study of the effects of this diffusion in the New World, Africa, and Asia in shaping political institutions in these regions has attracted many scholars, but the systematic and analytic study of the British themselves and of the societies and cultures they built overseas in their African and Asian colonies has thus far been neglected, except in the memoir and travel literature.

1. The Classic Khmer and the Classic Maya civilizations had cult centers but not true cities. They both arose in areas which were regionally undifferentiated.

2. Easy transportation and heavy trade were lacking because of the areawide uniformity of crops and the difficult terrain. Consequently, urban centers were not and could not be supported.

3. Both areas did produce a surplus and therefore could support civilized life. The social orders of each were so set up that through religious sanctions this surplus, which included labor, could be utilized for the creation and support of huge cult centers. Such a kind of organization might be considered as unilateral (mechanical) in the Durkheimian sense.

4. In contrast, true cities arose in productive agricultural areas which were regionally specialized, with symbiotic interdependence of a Maussian nature. Trade and trade routes were highly developed so that commodity prices were sufficiently low to enable large groups of persons engaged in commerce to live together and yet make a profit on their activities. Internally specialized civilizations of this sort have been termed organic.

5. It is suggested that among the organic civilizations, the state may have had its origin in the regulation of trade; among the unilateral civilizations, in the compulsion of tribute and corvee labor.

That a similarity underlay local diversities of British society in India during the early 19th century is shown by Bernard S. Cohn's description of the British in Benares. A century ago, George F. Atkinson, in his Curry and Rice, observed:

Let me remind you that, while there are numerous races, each with a different creed, caste, and language, so there are customs and manners peculiar to each: and this variety is not confined to the natives; for the habits and customs of social life among the English in India likewise present their petty diversities; and the “Qui Hye” of Bengal, the “Mull” of Madras, and the “Duck” of Bombay, adhere to and defend their own customs with jealous warmth of feeling … but there are [some ways of life] such as are common to the whole of India.

During the years of independence India saw the development of a modern criminal underworld in the large cities. The country has its Chicago-style gangsters, ruffians and teddy boys who kill, rob and intimidate in the same manner as their opposite numbers in the West do. However, the largest section of India's criminal activities is still committed by the most traditional and the most romantic type of criminals, the age-old terrors of the countryside, the dacoits.

Throughout the history of economics the stranger everywhere appears as the trader, or the trader as stranger. As long as the economy is essentially selfsufficient, or products are exchanged within a spatially narrow group, it needs no middleman: a trader is required only for products that originate outside the group. Insofar as members do not leave the circle to buy these necessities — in which case they are the “strange” merchants in that outside territory — the trader must be a stranger … This position of the stranger stands out more sharply if he settles down in the place of his activity, instead of leaving it again: in innumerable cases even this is possible only if he can live by intermediate trade… This position of the stranger stands out more sharply if he settles down in the place of his activity, instead of leaving it again: in innumerable cases even this is possible only if he can live by intermediate trade… The stranger is by nature no “owner of the soil“ — soil not only in the physical but also in the figurative sense of a life-substance which is fixed, if not in a point in space, at least at an ideal point of the social environment. Although in more intimate relations he may develop all kinds of charm and significance, as long as he is considered a stranger in the eyes of the other, he is not an “owner of soil”… Another expression of this constellation lies in the objectivity of the stranger. He is not radically committed to the unique ingredients and peculiar tendencies of the group, and therefore approaches them with the specific attitude of “objectivity”. But objectivity does not imply passivity and detachment; it is a particular structure composed of distance and nearness, indifference and involvement … The freedom, however, which allows the stranger to experience and treat even his close relationships as though from a birds-eye view, contains many dangerous possibilities. In uprisings of all sorts, the party attacked has claimed, from the beginning of things, that provocation has come from the outside, from emissaries and instigators.

This essay will advance two interrelated hypotheses about the Latin American city. The first of them has to do with the role of the city in the settlement of the New World. The second suggests certain characteristics of the modern Latin American metropolis.

This essay has sought to bring out salient points that can throw light both upon the vexing problems of cultural transformation and on the related phenomena of economic growth. It has employed concepts that are relatively recent in the social sciences and that when synthesized provide the elements of a theory of social change. The five main concepts are: the city as a cross-cultural type; the functional urban hierarchy; the nodular regional structure; effective social, political-administrative and economic space; economic growth as being part of a more comprehensive process leading to successively higher levels of integration of the social system.

From the concept of the city as a cross-cultural type it follows that there are no fundamental distinctions between industrial and preindustrial cities, but both are sharply distinguished from communal village life. All cities have in common a way of life that is characterized by varying degrees of social heterogeneity and cultural vitality, and by inventiveness, creativity, rationality, and civic consciousness. From the fact that cities and the regions related to them may be seen as functionally differentiated and arranged in hieratic fashion it follows that the extent of urban influence will vary with (a) the stage of evolution reached by the hierarchy as a whole, and (b) the relative position of any given city within the hierarchy.

Economic growth has to be seen as part of a comprehensive process of cultural transformation. From the ruthless destruction of old social forms no aspect of society will be spared. It is the influences spreading outward from cities that accomplish both the disruption of the traditional social patterns and the reintegration of society around new fundamental values. The city acts as a coordinating, space-creating force, thus achieving the integration of the social order in its spatial dimensions. Intellectuals, administrators and entrepreneurs are the city's agents in this task. With their success in organizing the life of a society, both as a pattern of activities and as a pattern in space, the traditional notion of a city as a place having definite geographic limits will tend gradually to disappear. Just as Karl Mannheim speaks of fundamental democratization as one of the tendencies of our age, so one may speak of fundamental urbanization as the end-result of modern economic growth. With this, the former distinction between town and country will beblurred and will leave a thoroughly organized, impersonal, and functionally rational society to carry on.

In 1956 there were 16.3 million agricultural labour households in India, roughly one out of three for Indian agriculture as a whole. Their number has been rapidly increasing; in 1900 only 12 per cent of the agricultural population were landless labourers. It is tempting to see the creation of this huge landless class as yet another verification of a general theory of development which seems to apply to Japan and to much of South-East Asia, as well as to a great deal of Western experience. Such a theory would explain the growth of this class in terms of the weakening of village communities, the breaking down of traditional patterns of land tenure, the spreading of indebtedness and the consequent dispossession of the peasantry, and it would find the chief cause of these changes in the monetisation of the economy.

In this paper I shall attempt to consider how far the history of historiography can be treated as the history of the problems occasioned by men's awareness of the past in different societies, and of their attempts to deal with these problems. This kind of approach has not, so far as I know, been made before. That is to say, the history of historiography has not been approached as primarily a part of the history of social man's awareness of his past and his relations with it; and this is understandable enough, as the historical phenomena we call by the collective name of historiography have been by no means limited to the attempts made by historians and other thinkers to understand the past and its relationship to the present.