In this paper I attempt to answer three main questions: the first, who has access to university education? the second, what are the changes in the spread of opportunities for university education between 1950 and 1967? and finally, what employment do university students expect to obtain? and briefly to examine the implications of the answers to these questions in the formulation of educational policy.

The revivalist movements which developed in so many Muslim communities at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries are well known to students of Islamic history. The Fulani jihād of Usuman dan Fodio, the Sanūsīyah movement in Libya, the rise of the Wahhābīs in Arabia, the reforms instituted among the Volga Tatars, the Mujāhidīn movement in Northern India and the Fara'idis of Bengal have all been the subject of study to a greater or lesser extent. Scholars have pointed out that movements which aimed initially at internal reform in a particular Muslim community often developed the added dimension of attack on what was conceived as an external, generally foreign, threat to that community, this being most clearly the case with the Wahhābīs and the Mujāhidīn. A contemporary movement which has features in common with all those mentioned above, that of the Padisr among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, has on the contrary received scant scholarly attention. This is all the more surprising since a European state—the Kingdom of the Netherlands—became involved in a war with the Minangkabau while the Padri movement was still in its full vigour; but although Dutch records and memoirs deal more than amply with this war, they have remained ignored for what they can tell us about the Padris themselves. This is not to deny that scholars who have attempted a brief characterization of the Padri movement have recognized that its complexity goes beyond the mere epithet ‘Islamic revivalism’, and the more perceptive have tried to link it to certain changes taking place within Minangkabau society, depicting the movement as ‘a social revolution’, ‘a coup d'étai’ or, by implication, as a revolt of the intellectuals. In the later stages of the movement, after European intervention had gathered momentum, a French scholar has characterized the war fought by the Padris as a ‘war of independence’.

This article expresses some dissatisfaction with the state of interpretation of economic and social trends in Japan during the Tokugawa period from 1603 to 1867. At one time there was a universal view that the Tokugawa economy was stagnant and characterized by extreme oppression of the peasantry. This view has been demolished by the writings of, for example, T. C. Smith, E. S. Crawcour, S. Hanley, Kozo Yamamura and C. D. Sheldon. Yet, it is argued here, much confusion remains after a close examination of these and other works. Crawcour and Yamamura have shown that the financial crisis at the end of the period is closely associated with a sharp deceleration of the spread of commercial transactions, but it is at least arguable that the picture of ‘a happy and prosperous peasantry’ (which is, apparently, derived from T. C. Smith's description of a dynamic, expanding economy in the eighteenth century, with steady growth in agricultural productivity and increased urbanization) has been overdrawn.

In the years 1856–60, Great Britain, France and China were involved in a war, which has been referred to by different names, depending, naturally enough, on the nationality of the historian. Scholars in China, almost without exception, call it the Second Opium War. Historians in England, however, usually prefer to call it the Second Anglo-Chinese War or even the Second China-foreign War. It has been given yet another name, the Arrow War. None of these names is, strictly speaking, entirely appropriate. To begin with, the war was not fought over the question of opium, although in many ways it was a continuation of the Opium War of less than two decades before. In the last analysis, it was a consequence of an ever-expanding British economy. Secondly, although it is true that Great Britain and China were the chiefcontenders, the title Anglo-Chinese War ignores the part played by France in the campaign. Then the name Second China-foreign War, apart from betraying the English desire to forget that part of their past, is misleading because it focuses attention on China herself rather than on British encroachment on that country. Finally, the Arrow incident was, like the burning of opium by Commissioner Lin, an immediate cause of the quarrel; but once London had decided to resort to arms, little further reference was made to it in British diplomatic documents. The name Arrow War is particularly irrelevant for the period after the scene of confrontation had changed from Canton to Tientsin and then Peking. On balance, however, the names Second Anglo-Chinese War and Arrow War seem preferable because they do not carry overtones of nationalist prejudice. The latter title has the additional merit of illustrating how, in the age of European expansion, a small diplomatic incident could be magnified to justify the use of force to press home demands unrelated to it. It reflects the fact that the receiving end—in this case China, and in particular her Imperial Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Yeh Ming-ch'en—tried throughout to argue the case over the specific casus belli, whereas for the British the whole affair was merely a pretext for wider demands to be made on China. Thus it seems more appropriate to call the conflict the Arrow War; and in order to examine its origins, the first step will be to analyse the documentary evidence related to the Arrow incident. Some papers in the Chinese language have only recently been made available to scholars in the Public Record Office. London, and these provide additional information for a re-investigation of the origins of the war.

The main aim of this paper is to trace the changes of syllabus of the Early Ch'ing Provincial Examination, while on the other hand, a rational approach is adopted to account for the changes. The Provincial Examination is chosen for discussion, mainly because its successful candidates (chü-jen) were eligible for office and because the Metropolitan Examination (hui-shih), a more advanced public examination which produced chin-shih, bore a close resemblance to it.

The period from 1937 to 1946, between the first and second elections to provincial legislatures held in British India under the 1935 Government of India Act, is one of great interest in Indo-Pakistani history. This was the period of ‘if only,’ the period in which it is still possible to imagine an unpartitioned South Asia.