In the conventional rhetoric of Japanese social criticism, factionalism is an endemic condition caused by the lingering heritage of feudalism. Much the same kind of charges familiar in the political arena are common to discussions regarding cliques within the Japanese academic world, although there is almost no detailed research directly on the latter subject in Western languages. The following attempts to explicate one outstanding prewar example of factional strife in Japan's most prestigious university, the case of the Department of Economics at Tokyo Imperial University. It has been chosen for three reasons: (1) the Economics faculty were among the most deeply involved intellectuals in the dramatic prewar struggles over academic freedom; (2) the charge of factionalism has been raised explicitly and repeatedly by participants as well as others; and (3) the issues over which the struggle raged as well as many of the personalities have continued to be of significance in Japanese politics and within the universities down to the present. Because of its significance, there is available far more information than is common on such intramural factionalism.

British history on the occupation of Japan is largely a blank. Government publications on the Far East, political biographies, regimental histories and diplomats' memoires offer slim pickings. Historians interested in postwar Japan have tended to conclude from the apparent paucity of evidence that British influence on the conduct of the Allied occupation was negligible. Standard works on the period have repeated the conventional wisdom and then moved on. Those who were involved at a policy level rarely made any concentrated attempt to correct this picture. Cabinet ministers certainly did not spend any time confiding in their diaries and have not preserved private papers to indicate any particular fascination with the subject. Diplomats have been equally unforthcoming in print. Consequently, any research into British diplomacy and Japan before the opening of the British archives for 1945 and 1946 would have been an endless disappointment. The position has recently changed. Indeed, with a Thirty Year Rule also applying to the Japanese Diplomatic Record Office and with the material available at the Washington National Records Centre, there is suddenly an abundance of material.

The main outlines of the Vietnamese Revolution of 1945–46 are by now well enough known to Western scholars, through the writings of Philippe Devillers, B. B. Fall, K. C. Chen and J. T. McAlister. But the detailed history of Vietnam during that period remains to be written; in particular only very scant treatment has so far been accorded to the actual political record of the Viet-Minh Provisional Government, which was established in Hanoi by Ho Chi Minh on 28 August 1945 and which lasted until the formation of the Coalition Government (or Government of Union and Resistance) in February 1946.

In 1972 a land reform programme based on the objectives of maximizing agricultural production and employment and reducing inequalities in wealth and income was initiated in Sri Lanka. It commenced with the enactment of the Land Reform Law, No. 1 of 1972 which imposed ceilings on private ownership of land and provided for the setting up of a Land Reform Commission (hereafter, LRC) vested with powers to acquire privately held land in excess of the ceilings. Three years later, the scope of the reform was extended through the Land Reform (Amendment) Law, No. 39 of 1975 under the provisions of which land held by public companies was nationalized. Both these laws provided for the payment of compensation to dispossessed owners.

With the passing of the Government of India Act of 1935, the history of Indian nationalism underwent a subtle change. Though not noticeable immediately after the introduction of the Act, the provincial elections, held under its provisions in 1937, and the results thereof, made this change more apparent and clear. The Indian National Congress secured a sweeping victory in five provinces and was in a position to form coalition ministries in two other provinces—a victory which revealed the efficiency and capability of the party so far as the election machine was concerned. It proved its claim of being a ‘National Party’. The Muslim-League, on the other hand, did not fare well at all, especially in the Muslim majority provinces of the Punjab and Bengal. Although it did better in the non-Muslim provinces, yet that was not enough to enable the League to boast of being the sole representative organization of the Muslims. The success of provincial parties like the Krishak Lok Party in Bengal and the Unionist Party in the Punjab showed that the Muslim electorates still thought in terms of ‘provincial’ or ‘local’ considerations, and were not moved so much by all-India issues. What was true of the League was also true of the Congress so far as the Muslims were concerned. The latter, too, was not able to capture Muslim seats in numbers adequate enough to demonstrate its popularity amongst Muslims.

Overseas investment by developed nations in the less industrialized economies of Asia, Africa and Latin America is an important part of modern international economic history. Such investment has long been recognized as a potent force in integrating the international economy. It has also been placed at the heart of most theories of the expansion of European empires in the nineteenth century and it is seen as a major part of the ‘neo-colonialism’ that is widely thought to have characterized the world economic and political structure since 1945. This article will examine private foreign investment in India in the first half of the twentieth century, spanning the gap between the ‘imperial’ and the ‘neo-colonial’ epochs.