I should like to pay my tribute to the memory of Kingsley Martin by calling in question a part of the conventional wisdom of what passes for comparative sociology. I hope I shall not appear unduly contentious in doing so. I should not like to speak badly of comparative sociology. At the same time, it has to be admitted that a truly comparative sociology exists less in the work that scholars actually do than in the ideals they profess. The principal obstacle to its growth is, in my opinion, neither lack of wit nor lack of words: it is prejudice.

India's military intervention in East Pakistan was an instance of the clear use of force for the achievement of limited political and security objectives. Indian policymakers' responses to the events in Pakistan were spread over a specific period of time and their decisions can be viewed in a series of distinct phases. The totality of actions involved diplomatic maneuvering in global, regional, and subcontinental geopolitical contexts. There were, in Indian perceptions, easily identified internal and external dimensions to the situation within East Pakistan such as to create potential threats to the Indian state, its territoriality, self-images, and international status in real and symbolic terms. The eventual settlement indicated a flexibility for action and achievement not ordinarily attributed to Indian capability.

This essay is the sequal to ‘The Missionary Activity of the Japan Congregational Church in Korea’. In the first part, I showed that the Congregational Church's missionary activity which started in 1911 was actually supported by the Government-General of Korea, and also mentioned a number of conscientious Christians such as Uchimura Kanzō and Kashiwagi Gien who not only opposed the Church's missionary activity in Korea but even went so far as to criticize the Japanese imperialist rule of Korea itself.

Education and assimilation were key components of Japanese colonial policy in Taiwan: assimilation of the island's native Taiwanese population (native islanders of Chinese ancestry) was an important goal; education was an instrument for attainment of this goal. When during their fifty years of rule (1895–1945) Taiwan's administrators altered their interpretation or definition of assimilation, they modified educational policies accordingly. From beginning to end of the Japanese period in Taiwan its government intended education for native islanders to be a major tool of its assimilation policy, which although a consistent policy was not a static one.

Financial chaos was the rule during China's warlord period from 1916 to 1928. The Central Government in Peking was often short of funds because the warlords who controlled the provinces refused to forward tax receipts to the capital. The effectiveness of the financial administrative machinery in each province varied greatly, and if careful accounts were kept by the provincial governments, they have not been made public. Most confusing of all was the assortment of currencies circulating in the provinces. A bewildering variety of coins and paper notes, generally issued by local banks and money-changing shops, were used in each province, though they would probably not be accepted at face value in the neighbouring province. In some areas foreign currency, such as Mexican silver dollars or Japanese gold yen notes, could also be found in the key market towns. So many currencies were in use that local chambers of commerce met daily to calculate the relative values of the currencies traded in their immediate area.

When in August 1933 the German Minister to China, Dr Oskar P. Trautmann, reported to Berlin, ‘daβ die Völkerbundsmelodie politisch hier ausgespielt hat’, he had jumped to a conclusion too soon. When two years later the Journal Round Table commented, ‘to-day the League of Nations is no longer a political factor in the Far East’, this assessment was vindicated by evidence of every description. The two years between had witnessed the peak and decline of the League of Nation's ‘technical co-operation’ with the National Government of China. This episode plays its part as one of the major accomplishments of the League during the dismal second decade of its existence. It figures, however, only marginally in the history of twentieth-century China. Western works on modern Chinese history tend to neglect it altogether, and the most comprehensive scholarly treatment of China's foreign relations during the Republican period does not even deem it worth a reference in passing. On the other hand, the one authoritative textbook on modern Chinese economic history published in the People's Republic of China devotes ample space to the denunciation of the League's Chinese enterprise.