The rapid expansion of European power throughout much of the world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was a matter of wonder at the time, just as its causes have remained a subject of contention ever since. To pious contemporaries it was simply the natural triumph of the True Faith over pagan and infidel. Hernán Cortés, the conqueror of Mexico, wrote of his ‘just war’ against the tyrant Aztec emperor and his people addicted to unspeakable practices. Freedom to navigate the Indian Ocean, maintained João de Barros, the chronicler of Portuguese triumphs, was properly denied by his compatriots to those ignorant of Christianity and Roman Law. More recently, subtler explanations have come into fashion. The penetration by Portugal (with about 1,500,000 inhabitants) of the maritime economy of Asia (sustaining populations of millions), and the destruction by Castile (with a population of about 7,500,000) of the Aztec empire, some 27,000,000 strong, were the victories of superior morale. Europeans, with their will to win, overcame the adherents of stoic, passive and pessimistic religions, or, as M. Chaunu unkindly puts it, quality triumphed over quantity.3 Equally all-embracing is the thesis that meat-eating Iberian warriors had a natural advantage over the troops of civilizations whose grain-based diets were deficient in protein, or that Europeans, with their superior technology-their firearms and their sailing ships mounting artillery— were the predestined winners in any conflict with the less technologically advanced.4 The aim of this paper is to suggest that such arguments have little to commend them, and that European success very largely came from the adept exploitation of conflicts and divisions in indigenous societies, and from the securing of indigenous aid. Such behaviour reflects the pragmatic approach of European commanders in the field, typified by Afonso de Albuquerque, the captor of Goa–future capital of the Estado da India–who there pressed into service all from local dancing girls and musicians to war elephants and mercenaries.5 But such proceedings also reflect the attitudes of an age highly conscious, through resurgent knowledge of the classics, of the virtues of statecraft, just as they reflect, of course, the willingness of some elements in non- European societies to come to terms, for a variety of reasons, with alien intruders.

To a general reading public the history of the European empires still seems to be virtually synonymous with their military power and with stories of battles in tropical climes; by contrast, academic historians of imperialism now show little interest in purely military history. Campaigns and battles were no doubt frequently the means by which European power came to be exerted over other parts of the world, but, especially from the early nineteenth century onwards, their outcome was generally predictable. If the Europeans were prepared to make adequate efforts, their ultimate success was not usually in doubt. Defeats occurred often enough at the hands of Africans or Asians, but where it seemed worthwhile to do so, at least until the Russo—Japanese War, these defeats were sooner or later avenged. Historians' debates have therefore tended to concentrate not on the means of expansion but on the motives for it: why Europeans should have wished to exert their power or why they should have been drawn into doing so in certain situations. Books on battles are left to decorate that somewhat improbable piece of furniture, the coffee table.

The main purpose of this brief article on the importance of the joint family in six villages in Anekal Taluk, Bangalore District, Karnataka State, is to recommend a simple statistical method of measuring the ‘incidence of jointness’ among the resident population; it also presents the results of my enquiry.

In the historiography of Indian nationalism the didactic impact of the West is generally recognized but seldom detailed. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the nature of Ireland's contribution to the development of an Indian national consciousness in the formative phase of political awakening. It is hoped to establish that while many of the ideals of civic freedom and patriotism were derived from continental sources, the immediate lessons of a country struggling to free itself from the British ‘colonial’ yoke were provided essentially by Ireland. In this context, the model that will be studied for its impact on the mind of India's first generation of political leaders, belongs to the Irish Home Rule movement launched in 1870 and welded by Charles Stewart Parnell into a powerful anti-imperial force.

On August 21st 1945 the viceroy announced that elections would be held that Winter to the Central and Provincial Legislative Assemblies. They were to precede the convention of a constitution-making body for British India. The Muslim League had to succeed in this crucial test if its popular support of its demand for Pakistan was to be credible. In particular it had to succeed in the Punjab as there could be no Pakistan without that province. But in the Punjab's last elections held in 1937 the League had fared disastrously. It had put forward a mere seven candidates for the 85 Muslim seats and only two had been successful. In the 1946 elections the League won 75 of the total Muslim seats. This improvement in its performance which had momentous implications for the future for the subcontinent requires explanation.

Japanese interest in Hainan stemmed from the desire to emulate the success which they had achieved in Taiwan in an area further south which could offer a full range of tropical products for theuse of the Japanese economy. The naval importance of Hainan was also recognized, because it could dominate the South China Sea from the excellent harbour of San-ya ( Samah) Bay, and there were indications that the island was rich in minerals. The development of official Japanese interest in the island was largely the work of the governor-general's office in Taiwan. Thus in 1918 and 1919 an official from Taiwan called Kaku () was sent to Hainan to observe conditions under the title of special sales office head. In the 1920's the Taiwan government sponsored conferences o the South China Japanese consuls to discuss plans for the area, and in 1935 a conference was held production in the tropics, to coordinate research on the economy, production possibilities and culture of the tropical part of China.Meanwhile Chinese government interest in Hainan began to be aroused in the 1930's, culminating in the visit of T.V. Soong, one of the highest ministers of e Kuintang government, in 1936. Thereafter a rail route a west of the island was surveyed but no furthe progress was made. Private businessmen in the 1930's began to develop rubber plantations to join those set up with overseas Chinese capital in the 1910's,and there was a sharp rise in the area planted to sugar in 1936 as the price of sugar rose. Hence when war broke out between China and Japa,the possibilities for the development were just beginning to be explored.1

While the developments leading up to the signature of the Soviet—Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941 have received considerable attention from scholars, the antecedents of this pact, the discussions between Japan and Soviet Russia over non-aggression or neutrality agreements from the mid-1920s onwards, are less widely known. The most significant of the earlier initiatives came in December 1931, when Soviet Foreign Commissar, Maxim Litvinov, proposed a pact of non-aggression to the Japanese Foreign Minister designate, Yoshizawa Kenkichi. Subsequently, at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, a Soviet legal expert was to argue that the Japanese refusal to accept this proposal was proof of their aggressive plans for war on the Soviet Union.

In the years leading up to the outbreak of war in Europe in early September 1939 Japan had been busy tackling the commitments she had made in North China at first and then in the whole of China. Although war was not declared, Japan had been at war with China since July 1937. It was a war of attrition; both Japan and China claimed to be winning, yet neither could, on any occasion, see any prospect of a final and definite victory. So long as Japan's military operations were confined to the area of North China, the war was named the ‘North China Incident.’ It was called the ‘China Incident’ after her successive and more or less successful operations had spread to Central and South China. And when a war broke out in the Pacific in December 1941 the Sino-Japanese war became an inseparable part of the ‘Greater East Asia War’ (Dai-tōa sensō), a name rarely heard by now, since it soon gave way to the ‘Pacific War’ (Taiheiyō sensō) in the sense of Japan waging the war of the Ocean, or to the ‘Second World War’ in the global sense.

While China's response to Western imperialism during the closing years of the Ch'ing dynasty has been the subject of thoughtful and imaginative research, the history of China's frontiers during that period, by contrast, has received relatively little attention. This article attempts to survey briefly the impact which the transformation of Chinese politics, economics and society had on the frontier, Outer Mongolia in particular, and to examine the changes wrought by foreign imperialism and Chinese nationalism on the frontier policies of the Ch'ing government.

Until the evolution of paper, which is dated traditionally in A.D. 105, the majority of Chinese documents were probably written on boards or narrow strips of wood or bamboo; the use of silk was reserved for the preparation of de luxe copies of certain works, either for sacred or for profane purposes. However, it was only quite recently that actual examples of wooden documents from China were first brought to the attention of the scholastic world, as a result of two series of expedit ions to central Asia and northwestern China. First, Sir Aurel Stein's expeditions, at the be ginning of the century, brought back fragments of inscribed wood from the sites of Tun-huang; thi s was subsequently examined and the results published, by Chinese scholars such as Wang Kuo-wei, an European scholars such as Chavannes and Maspero. Secondly, the expeditions led by Sven Hedin s ome thirty years later found similar material in larger quantities, from the more easterly sites of Chü-yen (Edsen-gol). These texts were published by a number of scholars, beginning with L ao Kan,who was working in China in the extremely difficult conditions of the 1940s.1940s.Shortly afterwards, Japanese scholars were able to turn their attention to this material whose content, l ike thatof the strips from Tun-huang, was almost exclusively concerned with the civil and militar y administration of Han imperial officials, between about 100 B.C.and A.D. 100. In the early 1960 s Professor Mori Shikazo led a series of seminar meetings to study the material from Chii-yen, wh ich the present writer was fortunate and privileged to attend. The results of such meetings were published atthe time in a number of Japanese periodicals, and constituted a valuable contribution to the studyof the wooden material from China known to exist at that time.