I Want to address myself to two points: why I think the study of China requires the study of its history, and why I think the proper practice of the historical profession in general requires some awareness of the history of China. I would argue that the study of change in time is the heart of the historical approach, and that for this reason, history's contribution to the study of China is intellectually legitimate and quite different from that of the more specialized disciplines; and conversely, that the general problems which historians find exciting are nowhere offered in such profuse and interesting combinations, with such abundant documentation, as in the history of China.

One of the most noteworthy incidents in the history of Japan's transition from a feudal regime to a modern state was the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877. The province of Satsuma is situated in the southernmost portion of the island of Kyushu, and Kagoshima is the capital city. The Daimyo of Satsuma was one of the most powerful and aggressive of the feudal lords ruling the country at the time Japan was opened to foreign intercourse. He and his warlike samurai took a leading part in the events which saw the decline of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the restoration of the Emperor.

The most serious threat to the Dutch monopoly of Japanese trade came from the English during the wars of Napoleon. As early as 1794 Holland was overrun by French forces, and French propaganda transformed the Dutch East Indies into a Batavian Republic allied to France. Grave complications immediately arose with Great Britain who was at war with France. The situation became even more acute when in 1801 Napoleon gave to Holland a new constitution and demanded a more enthusiastic cooperation with his policies.

The Chinese Communist movement stemmed from nationalism and assumed the left wing in the Chinese national revolution. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) was organized in the wake of the May Fourth Movement which had kindled a great fervor of patriotism, particularly among the intellectual youths. Only as nationalists first and Communists second, were the Communists willing to join the KMT (Kuomintang) as individuals in order to take an active part in the national revolution. In a span of five years, the KMT-CCP alliance had contributed to the consolidation of the revolutionary base in Kwangtung and the spread of revolution to the north. In the course of the national revolution, the CCP enjoyed a spectacular growth from a group of about 70 intellectuals in 1921, when the party was founded, to a mass party of over 50,000 members in 1927, when die Pei-fa (Northern Expedition) swept the whole of South China.

The upheavals of 1857 in India left a heightened conviction among the British rulers of what many had long believed, that the loyalty of their subjects could never be relied upon. Even after 1857 the British fear of sedition was stimulated at irregular intervals by such events as the Wahhabi trials of the eighteen sixties and the Kuka uprisings of 1869–72. British responses to nationalist challenges for decades to come were conditioned by the resulting insecurity, and nowhere was this more dramatically reinforced than in Bombay Presidency in the late eighteen seventies.

British rule in Maharashtra had been erected on the ruins of the Maratha confederation. The legacy of independent Hindu rule lived on after 1818, although civil disturbances in following years sometimes bore little relation to the change of rulers. Spasmodically from 1818 to 1857 a series of minor revolts broke out in the countryside and towns, all of which fell into traditional patterns. All were strictly local in scope, whether mutinies of sepoys against English officers or tribal and low-caste riots against village moneylenders.