A critical review of four recent works which examine the role of the United States in Southeast Asia; its policies, goals and interrelationships with the several successor states of French Indochina: Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Japan controlled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, longer than the United States ruled the Philippines, and sent more of its people to live in that colony. The pervasive impact of Japanese colonial rule helped insure a continuing Japanese influence in postwar Taiwan. “The dogs treated us better than the pigs,” was a common Formosan phrase heard by the writer in 1961–64 to denote the invidious comparison between Japanese and Nationalist Chinese rule. This article will discuss the trend of official relations between Japan and Nationalist China since their bilateral peace treaty in 1952; Japanese leadership views obtained through interviews with government, opposition, and bureaucratic specialists; and attitudes of public and various interest groups in Japan toward Formosa.

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.

There is a widely shared belief expressed in political literature that Japan is Russia's “traditional foe.” Japan's policy is very often pictured as a straight line of constant fighting against the “Russian bear” - much more so since that bear has been dyed red. Actually, however, the history of Russo-Japanese relations proves this assumption to be anything but correct.

In old Guntur District, as in other districts of South India, several different elite groups, arranged within a highly complex and segmented social order, were interlocked with corresponding elements of the political hierarchy. Each group was associated in one way or another with its own stratum in district government and, at times, with seeral different strata, from die Collector's Office at the top to the village at the bottom. Operating at its own level or in its own area of the district, each group was linked vertically with allied superior and subordinate groups and was often in conflict with another group of comparable and therefore competitive rank and function. Such a pattern of group relationships was further complicated by die fact that it was constantly changing. My purpose here is to look at the positions of diese elite groups in relation to each other and in relation to the administrative structure of one district, and to show how these groups behaved within a changing political system and how traditional processes of power continued under die “rule” of die East India Company.