Following the 1915 riots in Ceylon, a campaign for redress of grievances resulting from the colonial government's actions in suppressing the riots brought to prominence a new group of Western-educated, middleclass Ceylonese political leaders and led to the growth of the Ceylonese independence movement. The principal demand of the campaign, carried on in Ceylon and Britain, was for an inquiry by a Royal Commission into the government's handling of the riots. The agitation took the form of memorials, deputations, and lobbying intended to bring pressure on the Colonial Office to sanction an investigation. The campaign secured the support of many individuals and organizations in Britain and obtained the release of prisoners held for riot offenses and the exoneration of some prominent Ceylonese. However, the Colonial Office resisted the demand for an inquiry, which was strongly opposed by the colonial administration in Ceylon. Although unsuccessful in their immediate purpose, the Ceylonese spokesmen in the campaign gained experience in agitation and leadership and a zeal for political action. The nationalist movement of Ceylon, which had been dilettante, became focused and purposeful.

Our understanding of Cambodia/Kampuchea's immediate past is gradually being enlarged by recent works dealing with pre-1975 Cambodian society, the development and policies of the Communist Khmer Rouge, and local life during the beginning of the Vietnamese occupation. Research using a broad range of primary source material, including a growing number of interviews with refugees, provides a more detailed picture than previously available of the two successive Kampuchean regimes. There remains, however, a persistent problem in many writings: political/ideological biases that can lead to different perspectives on the Khmer Rouge and on Kampuchea under the Vietnamese.

Universal suffrage was enacted into law in Japan in 1925 under a coalition government formed the previous year by the two major parties, Kenseikai and Seiyūkai. The law abolished an existing tax qualification for voting, expanding the electorate from three million to twelve and one-half million adult males. The Kenseikai had endorsed universal suffrage in late 1919, after an internal debate which began about a year earlier. The Seiyūkai by contrast accepted universal suffrage only in 1924, after several years of expressly rejecting it. This article traces the stages whereby these parties became committed to the legislation, and also examines the reaction to the issue on the part of other elements which had at least a potential voice in this legislation: the nonparty cabinets which governed from 1922 to 1924, the privy council, the House of Peers, and the genro, or elder statesmen.

Timor, or Timur, is the eighth, numbering from Sumatra, in that long line of islands called the Sunda, which contains the more familiar islands of Java and Bali. Timor is connected by many smaller islands with the Sunda chain and with the islands of Flores and New Guinea, but such connections are lacking with the Australian continent to the south. The island is long and narrow, approximately 350 miles in length and 60 miles in average width.

It has often been claimed that the Dai Nihon shi is one of the towering monuments of traditional Japanese historiography, and it is indeed a work of rare scope: a general history of Japan in 397 kan, or chapters, dealing primarily with the affairs of the imperial dynasty from its legendary founding in 660 B.C. to the healing of Japan's only extended dynastic schism in 1392. The entire text is in literary Chinese, and the pattern of organization is that of the Chinese dynastic histories. The Dai Nihon shi was conceived by Tokugawa Mitsukuni (1628–1701), the second daimyo of the Mito han, and compiled by the Confucian retainers of Mitsukuni and his successors. Two large sections of chronological Main Annals and Biographies (approximately half of the finished book) were completed by 1715, but the rest remained unfinished at the time of the Meiji Restoration.

The reform movement led by Kʻang Yu-wei initiated a major change in the Chinese approach to international affairs by developing what can be considered to be a nationalistic foreign policy. It is important to examine this development because of the insight which an analysis of the reformers' attitude toward international relations can provide into the reform movement as a whole, as well as into the crucial era of the late 1890's. In addition, such an investigation is useful because it can further our understanding of traditional Chinese conceptions of foreign policy by illuminating their relationship to the new approach.

This has been an important year for the Association for Asian Studies. With a membership of over 4700 we have become by far the largest organization for foreign area studies in the U.S.—and probably in the world. This growth in size has brought with it new problems of organization and new responsibilities for leadership in our profession. So as not to lose touch with our membership, we have undergone a major reorganization with the adoption of our new Constitution. This provides for four area councils, through which leadership would be shared with a much larger number of elected officers, and greater individual initiative would be allowed in the development of studies in each area.

One of the historical generalizations one can make about politics in the past several hundred years is that an increasing proportion of the adult population is participating politically everywhere. A group which has gained the right to vote in recent times is women. Political scientists have paid relatively little attention to this largest minority in the world of politics. Women constitute more than one half of the total population in many parts of the world today, yet the differences in sex is treated along with other demographic variables and receives little specific attention by political scientists.

The prominence given to the British operations in Arakan during 1942–43 serves to remind us that the India-Buima coastal plain from Chitta-gong to Akyab and south to Ramree and Cheduba Islands was the scene of a difficult campaign during the First Anglo-Burmese War in 1824–25. In the current operations, as in the advance more than 100 years ago, the greatest difficulties are those of transport and supply. These are due to the fact that the entire region is highly malarious, deeply interlaced by a maze of tidal creeks and estuaries, and that it consists of a series of jungle clad parallel ridges and river valleys, which lie directly across the desired line of advance. In fact, except for the ridges, the area bears a striking resemblance to the Pearl River estuary between Canton and the sea.