For centuries Europeans were fascinated by rumours and legends of the wealth and wonders of the Orient and by stories of the supposed existence there of realms free from all those tiresome taboos and restrictions that prevailed in the West. Long before the arrival of Vasco da Gama, renegades were serving the Mongols in Iran and Marco Polo had been in the entourage of the Grand Khan himself. The Portuguese pioneers were disconcerted to encounter in 1501 a certain Benvenuto de Abano who had spent the previous twenty-five years sailing the seas of Asia, and his contemporary, the Muslim Khoja Safar Salmâni, an erstwhile Genoese or Albanian. But this was nothing compared with the flow that followed western penetration of the maritime economy of the East, scattering European adventurers and outlaws throughout the Orient anywhere from the shores of the Persian Gulf to those of the Pacific Ocean. And very soon these hopefuls were joined by European pirates, some working from ports in their mother countries, some from the Caribbean and North America, and some from bases in the Indian Ocean, of which Madagascar was, according to taste, the most celebrated or the most notorious. Such men, frequently of remarkable skills and fearsome abilities, exercised a considerable influence on the maritime history of the East in the early modern centuries, and it is with the origins, aspirations and activities of these elusive—indeed often anonymous—but nevertheless highly significant figures that this paper is concerned.

A central problem in both the political and the intellectual history of Java is the disparity between the ideal of a unified state and the historical reality of fragmented power and authority, between the image and the reality of pre-colonial Javanese political history. An investigation of views held by literati of the kingdom of Mataram before the middle years of the eighteenth century can elucidate this problem. Turning from historical-political to religious literature in Javanese may help to resolve it.

The basic administrative unit in the Spanish Philippines was the pueblo or municipal township. The pueblo encompassed both settled and unsettled districts within its geographical boundaries. The town centre Known as the población was the largest single residential zone within the municipality but was surrounded by smaller satellite communities. Beyond these areas of settlement were the sparsely populated regions of swamp, forest, plain or mountain. Size varied enormously both in geographical extent and population density from a few hundred families clustered in a single village or barangay in frontier areas to many tens of thousands of persons spread over a number of settlements in the lowland provinces of Luzon and the central Visayas.2 The administrative boundaries of one pueblo, however, bordered upon another so that all areas under Spanish suzerainty fell within one or other of these municipalities.

Rapid growth among a few large firms distinguished the early years of cotton manufacture in South Korea. A review of expansion and concentration in the industry, and case studies of the T'aech'ang and Kyungbang firms, provide evidence of extensive structural support managed by the state, and also of favoured access to such support for the larger cotton mills. In contrast to earlier studies critical of the state role, I argue that the agencies and protectionist legislation of the state under Syngman Rhee played a productive, indeed decisive, role in promoting concentration and productivity among the early mills.

Wildlands have attracted the attention of national governments, not only for the natural resources they contain, but also as land available for settlement or as the home of marginalized populations, a potential source of disorder. Some countries have attempted to maintain control over wildlands and their resources by excluding people from them. The historical record of government policies towards wildlands in Late Imperial China Shows that wildlands had more symbolic and strategic value to the authorities than economic value. In this case, policies adopted an alternative strategy of filling the ‘strategic space’ represented by wildlands, bringing them more closely into the cultural and economic orbit of the centre by settlement–the policy of inclusion.

Pakistan is today moving toward a population crisis with two dimensions. The source of this crisis is both internal and external. Internally the country is experiencing one of the greatest population growths in the world, externally the conflict in Afghanistan has resulted in the world's greatest refugee migration. Together these two dimensions of population pressure have generated a potentially explosive condition.

This paper attempts to examine Śrīnivāsdās's Parīksāguru ‘Experience is the only teacher’ (1882) generally considered to be the first novel in Hindi,as a novel which draws its subject matter from the extravagant life-styles of the traditional Hindu elites, the rich Hindu bankers and traders, rather than from the peculiar traits of the middle class as is generally asscrted by Hindi scholars.

Following the adoption of 8 August resolution at Gowalia tank in Bombay, Indian masses rose to revolt, which became famous as the Quit India movement. It was a call for freedom. ‘Nothing less than freedom’, to quote Gandhi. Unlike the 1920–21 Non-cooperation and 1930–32 Civil Disobedience movements which were basically peaceful campaigns against the British rule in India, the Quit India movement was the ultimatum to the British for final withdrawal, a Gandhi-led un-Gandhian way of struggle since the Mahatma exhorted the people to take up arms in self-defence, and resort to armed resistance against a stronger and well-equipped aggressor.

Indian newspapers and academic journals assault their readers with stories of large-scale communal violence and of the communalization of India's political institutions. These stories are frequently accompanied by pious editorials which enact the well-known Indian ritual of paying lip-service to the concept of ‘secularism’. Secularism is one question on which intellectuals have made common cause with social workers and politicians, joining them in meetings and seminars, even participating in the peace marches which are commonly organized in the aftermath of communal riots. There have even been occasions in which individuals who are known to have been involved, directly or otherwise, in communal battles, have participated in these rites of secularism.