The years 1997–1998 witnessed Britain's return of Hong Kong to China; the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan; and the much less publicized 500th anniversary of the arrival of the Portuguese in Asia. So were marked the beginnings and end of European empire in the East, and so, too, a new global distribution of power was recognized. The appearance on 20 May 1498 of a Portuguese fleet commanded by Vasco da Gama at Calicut (Kerala, S. India), combined with the penetration of the Caribbean six years earlier by a Spanish flotilla under Christopher Columbus were, it has often and eloquently been urged, the prelude to a fearful saga. In next to no time Europe was enriched, non-European populations and ecologies destroyed, indigenous states and economies overthrown, a peculiarly European violence introduced into lands previously innocent of such ways, and the yoke of European colonial rule and hegemony eventually imposed. In short, as India's Independence Day Pledge (1930) pithily put it, subjection to empire meant economic, political, cultural and spiritual ruin.

British rule in India probably was in the reformist van of colonial regimes, but by Independence relatively few among the Indian populace had benefited notably from Western ‘modernization’. Although praised lavishly by a past generation of English historians for equipping India for ‘rapid progress’ under ‘the rule of law’, British policies hardly represented exemplary social engineering or ‘transformed’ the prosperity, health, well being, education or career opportunities of most Indians. Early in its sway the British raj conceived of implanting on the subcontinent modes of development responsible for England's rapid progress and prosperity and the advance of its peoples. Why, then, was the success not greater of Western programs, and why did policies of economic development leave at mid-twentieth century a majority of Indians living below poverty levels drawn close to subsistence? Was Western ‘reformism’ materially exploitative, or promising but checked by the regime's major political disturbance, the ‘Mutiny’ or Revolt of 1857, or were British policies culturally suppressive, or is more complex analysis needed to comprehend the Western impact?

The aim of this paper is to use both anthropological and historical approaches to explore the distinctive nature of colonialism in French-ruled Indochina. From this interdisciplinary perspective, it seeks to contextualize a rich but little known series of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writings on Indochina's peoples and cultures. It notes particularly their emphasis on concepts of the community and of the transforming revolutionary event. And it argues that these writings' distinctive understandings of race, culture and polity profoundly affected the thought and action of Asians as well as Europeans, with these effects being felt both within and beyond the French empire.

‘Consulting literary sources is not as satisfactory as observation . . . If one wants to control the barbarian frontier area, one must judge the profitability of the land, and investigate the nature of its people.’

—Qian Shu

‘If one does not differentiate between their varieties, or know their customs, then one has not what it takes to appreciate their circumstances, and to govern them.’

—‘Miaoliao tushuo’

Few students of modern China would dispute that the Hundred Days Reform of 1898 ushered in a major nation-building effort that, despite false starts and setbacks, has continued to this day. Thus, history and policy converged when its centenary in 1998 was widely commemorated—20 years after reform was again proclaimed China's national agenda (1978). Beida, or Peking University, which traces its founding to the establishment of the Imperial College (Jingshi daxuetang) in 1898, celebrated not only the historical event but also its own evolution over the past century to become China's leading institution of higher learning. The Palace Museum, which stands on the grounds of the former Forbidden City, where much of the 1898 drama unfolded, commemorated with an exhibition of archival materials and historical artifacts. It lasted from June 11 to September 21, the original dates of the Hundred Days. Historians did not lag behind. In an outpour of publications, they explored the multifarious facets of the famous episode. China scholars elsewhere also took note of the centenary. Two panels at the 1998 meetings of the Association for Asian Studies in Washington, D.C., for example, presented papers that dealt with, if not exactly what transpired a century ago, issues somehow related to it.

A study of the impact of the 1930s World Depression on Southwest China intersects with two major controversies in modern Chinese economic history. First, there is still substantial disagreement over the severity of the impact of the Depression on China. The ‘traditional’ interpretation inside China has focused on the ‘bankruptcy’ of the economy in the 1930s (of which the Depression was one but not the only cause). While many aspects of the ‘bankruptcy’ and ‘stagnation’ theses have more recently been discarded or modified by Chinese scholars, recognition is still made of the gravity of the crisis of the 1930s: China's leading historian of its modern economy, Wu Chengming, writes in the third volume of the History of Chinese Capitalism: ‘The economic crisis of 1932–1935 was, with the exception of the wars of invasion launched by foreign countries, the single most severe blow to the Chinese economy’.

At the beginning of July 1997 Thailand was forced to allow the baht to fall 20% against the $US, triggering a financial crisis across Asia. This crisis toppled governments in the region and sent out a series of shock waves that threatened prosperity in the rest of the world. The main symptom of the crisis was a profound distrust in the currencies of developing countries in Asia which precipitated repeated devaluations in the ‘miracle’ economies of Indonesia, South Korea and Malaysia. One of the results of the Asian financial crisis is renewed interest in the monetary relations of the region, and in the mechanics of the transmission of currency instability between countries.