In September 1687 the Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, finally achieved a goal he had sought for the past forty years: the conquest of the kingdom of Golconda. After an extended siege of the great fort of Golconda, treachery and a night escalade had finally given the Mughal ruler possession of the last center of resistance in the kingdom. Abul Hasan, the last Qutb Shah ruler, became a Mughal captive. Aurangzeb wasted little time in sending the former king off to captivity in Daulatabad fort. For approximately four months the conquering emperor remained in Hyderabad in order that he could personally direct the first steps toward assimilation of the new territories into the empire.

For Japan and Britain, 1934 was a year when naval policy was a major issue. During that year, decisions had to be made on the future of the Washington and London naval disarmament treaties, and, for both Tokyo and London, the political implications of the abrogation or renewal of these treaties were at least as important as the technical. The Japanese Government could not afford to renew the treaties, the British Government could not afford to see them go. In this situation, the feasibility of an Anglo-Japanese non-aggression pact, one of the purposes of which would be to check the demands of the Japanese navy, was seriously considered by the British.

A major transformation has occurred in rural China since reform policies were initiated in 1979. It has been particularly dramatic in the highly commercialized Pearl River delta region of the southern province of Guangdong, provenance of most North Americans of Chinese origin. The delta region has become firmly incorporated into the global economy and its external linkages, especially to Hong Kong, have been central in the process of change. The responses to reform in the areas of the delta dominated by an Overseas Chinese presence have been distinctive. Varied family economic strategies have arisen to meet the opportunities implicit in the new policies for rural reform in a region in which remittances from abroad are significant. There has also been the revival of complex kinship groupings (lineages) energized by Overseas Chinese communities, which have assumed important roles in regional economic development.

In the wake of their rapid advance into Southeast Asia after 8 December 1941, the Japanese began to implement a new monetary policy in the region to replace the long-established Western financial order that was being swept away. The purpose of this article is to discuss aspects of this monetary policy, in particular how it was carried out in regards to Thailand during the first year of the war, the period during which Thai–Japan wartime relations became established. In the wake of their rapid advance into Southeast Asia after 8 December 1941, the Japanese began to implement a new monetary policy in the region to replace the long-established Western financial order that was being swept away. The purpose of this article is to discuss aspects of this monetary policy, in particular how it was carried out in regards to Thailand during the first year of the war, the period during which Thai-Japan wartime relations became established. With the outbreak of war the most urgent need of the Japanese in their relations with Thailand was to convert that country into a suitable rear area for their campaign in Malaya and for the one upcoming against Burma. To this end the Japanese and Thai governments signedon 8 December an agreement permitting Japanese forces to pass through Thai territory to attack Malaya; but equally important the agreement also stipulated that Thailand would afford the Japanese forces all necessary convenience for their passage through Thailand. This stipulation was the key that opened the way for the Japanese to pursue their plans towards Thailand. By passage, of course, the Japanese did not simply mean the travel of their army through Thai territory to attack Malaya and later Burma (although superficially this is what was implied).

Networks of travel and trade have often been viewed as central to understanding interactions among Muslims across South and Southeast Asia. In this paper I suggest that we consider language and literature as an additional type of network, one that provided a powerful site of contact and exchange facilitated by, and drawing on, citation. I draw on textual sources written in Javanese, Malay, and Tamil between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries to argue that among Muslim communities in South and Southeast Asia, practices of reading, learning, translating, adapting, and transmitting contributed to the shaping of a cosmopolitan sphere that was both closely connected with the broader, universal Muslim community and rooted in local identities. I consider a series of ‘citation sites’ in an attempt to explore one among many modes of inter-Asian connections, highlighting how citations, simple or brief as they may often seem, are sites of shared memories, history, and narrative traditions and, in the case of Islamic literature, also sites of a common bond to a cosmopolitan and sanctified Arabic.

The history of the early modern Malay world has been told largely in terms of processes of Islamization, the rise and demise of states, European voyages of discovery, trade with China, India and Europe, and colonial conquest. With a few important exceptions, these studies underestimate, if not ignore, the role of transportation in the historical transformations of Southeast Asia. Just as Clive Ponting's (1992) well-known A green history of the world rewrites the world's history in ecological terms, this article aims to describe the political and economic history of Middle Sumatra in terms of transportation of goods and people. Hence this is a moving history.

This article examines the rise of dowry system in Janta, a West Bengali village in the Bankura district, where the dowry payments are a relatively new phenomenon. The oldest generation in Janta had experienced times when no demands for money or other gifts had been made during marriage arrangements, but since the 1950s huge dowry payments have become the central financial transactions in the region. In addition to oral history interviews on dowry practices, I draw from my research on the changes in caste, gender and class relationships in the village. I argue that the dowry payments do not merely represent economic considerations in a class conscious society, but that they reflect a rearticulation of both the tradition and market, of gender, ritual, and class identities, and that paying attention to the multiplicity and local variation of dowry practices provides a key to its understanding.

This article examines intersections between sexuality, migration, and citizenship in the context of cross-border and cross-region marriage migration in Kutch, Gujarat, to underscore that women's mobility across borders is one site on which national cultural and political anxieties unfold. It argues that contemporary cross-region marriage migration must be located within the larger political economy of such marriages, and should take into account the historical trajectories of marriage migration in particular regions. To this end, it examines three instances of marriage migration in Kutch: the princely state's marriages with Sindh, nineteenth-century marriages between merchants from Kutch and women from Africa, and contemporary marriage migration into Kutch from Bengal. The article asks whether the relative evaluation of these marriages by the state can be viewed in relation to the settlement policies undertaken after partition, where borderlands were to be settled with those who were deemed loyal citizens. Finally, by historicizing marriage—as structure, but also aspirational category—it seeks to move away from the singularity of marriage as framed in the dominant sociological discourse on marriage in South Asia.

Recent years have brought a spate of serials centred on the theme of Urdu ghazal to the Indian television screens. The image of the ghazal in these serials is one of a kind of rhymed verse sung by courtesans in their ‘kothas’ (residence-cum-performance locales), under the appreciative eye of the poet, and often lustful eye of a decrepit zamindar whose purse is heavy but judgement is light. The singing is accompanied by some dancing, a few musical instruments being played by the courtesan's hangers-on, and unceasing rounds of liquor. The ambience in which the performance is enveloped is meant to convey what modern sensibilities would construe as decadence.

In the midst of Pol Pot's struggle for the control of the Cambodian Communist Party in the 1970s, the subject of the Party's history came to assume a crucial importance. In 1976, the date of the foundation of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) became so important an issue that veteran Party members who remembered that the Party had been founded at a date previous to that claimed by Pol Pot, were tortured and killed for that reason. History was rewritten to suit the interests of Pol Pot's faction and the political circumstances of the time. A particularly sensitive subject was the role played by the Vietnamese in the formation of the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party, the predecessor of the CPK in the 1950s. After the relations between the Vietnamese and Cambodian Parties turned sour in the mid-1970s, the CPK deleted all allusions to the Vietnamese role from its official Party History.

In 1922, a group of wealthy Parsis in Bombay founded an organization that they dubbed the Iran League. Originally designed to assist their fellow Zoroastrians in Iran, who had suffered from centuries of oppression, the League quickly expanded its objectives to include the promotion of broader Indo-Iranian cultural and economic relations. It became a major player in the flow of ideas, literature, business, and tourist traffic between the two countries. Parsi fervour for Iran stemmed from the brand of Iranian nationalism promoted by Reza Shah, which celebrated the country's Zoroastrian past. In response, the League's leaders argued that the Parsis of India could play a special role in the ‘regeneration’ of Iran under the shah's supposedly benign rule. By the 1930s, however, Parsis’ embrace of Iranian nationalism became a clear reflection of their deep concerns about Indian nationalist politics: they cast Iran as an idealized alternative to contemporary India, where the Indian National Congress had supposedly taken an ominously ‘anti-Parsi’ turn. The Iran League, therefore, was caught between two nationalisms. Worry about India's future even prompted some Parsis to argue that their community should ‘return’ to their ancestral homeland of Iran. The story of the Iran League thus demonstrates the complex position of minorities vis-à-vis the brands of nationalism in development during the interwar years. The Parsis, a wealthy but microscopic minority, responded to political anxieties at home by romanticizing a foreign country and taking part in a wholly foreign nationalist project.

Pakistan occupies an uncertain and paradoxical space in debates about secularism. On the one hand, the academic consensus (if there is any), traces a problematic history of secularism in Pakistan to its founding Muslim nationalist ideology, which purportedly predisposed the country towards the contemporary dominance of religion in social and political discourse. For some, the reconciliation of secularism with religious nationalism has been a doomed project; a country founded on religious nationalism could, in this view, offer no future other than its present of Talibans, Drone attacks and Islamist threats. But on the other hand, Pakistan has also been repeatedly held out as a critical site for the redemptive power of secularism in the Muslim world. The idea that religious nationalism and secularism could combine to provide a path for the creation of a specifically Muslim state on the Indian subcontinent is often traced to the rhetoric of Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. But debate among Muslim League leaders specifically on the relationship of religious nationalism with secularism—and indeed on the nature of the Pakistani state itself—was limited in the years before partition in 1947. Nevertheless, using aspects of Jinnah's rhetoric and holding out the promise of secularism's redemptive power, a military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, was able to secure international legitimacy and support for almost a decade.

This article, largely based on archival research, highlights two contradictory outcomes of colonial state formation in central Borneo. The first is characterized by territorial consolidation and efforts to neatly sedentarize peoples within each colonial territory, while the second is characterized by pacification that unwittingly liberalized the flows and movements of people and commodities transgressing colonial state boundaries. The 1924 Kapit Peacemaking Agreement in colonial Sarawak is often noted for its significance in bringing a final end to the practice of inter-ethnic headhunting, principally between the Iban of Sarawak and the Kenyah from Dutch Borneo. While it marked the successful outcome of a long phase of colonial pacification and territorial consolidation for both colonial states in Borneo, the agreement's outcome simultaneously highlights the contradictory inter-colonial motives and expectations regarding the resulting increase of cross-border flows of people and commodities. The presented case highlights challenges facing Dutch colonial state formation when attempts to subjugate and sedentarize riverine peoples, who were geographically tied to fluid commodity chains and flows, directly undermined the former's own efforts to establish authority in its borderland frontier.

This article provides qualitative case studies and applies citizenship theory to reveal the way in which being in receipt of a cash transfer can help local poor and excluded Dalits to understand what it means to be a citizen of Nepal's state. Cash transfers can contribute to an individual's subjective sense of inclusion and citizenship. Although Dalits encounter disparities and rights abuses when dealing with local government over their cash transfer entitlements, their responses reveal a sense of agency in the positive way in which they interpret their entitlements. Although they may be mistreated at the local level, they feel valued because the central ‘state’ recognizes their plight and identity. Cash transfers are understood by Dalits through the lens of social exclusion, patronage, and the hierarchical society in which they live. They are an effective way of reaching large numbers of formerly excluded citizens and indicate that the state now includes them. As such, they can contribute towards building an inclusive state.

Indian tariff policies, historians of British India have stressed, illustrated an economic determinism in imperialism, in which Manchester blatantly served its self-interest in generating exploitative policies. Ironically, the influential work of John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, which indirectly qualified the idea of an imperialism that was solely economically motivated, has helped to produce a new view of British economic exploitation regarding Indian policy.

This paper is directed first at identifying where and by whom military influences or topics manifested themselves in the periodical pressʼns coverage of India in the period up to the Indian Rebellion. How such manifestations changed over time, as well as the convergence of Anglo-Indian and British newspapers and magazines on Indian topics, will form an important component of this study. Stemming from these initial enquiries, I will further suggest that the model often employed to comprehend such representations —namely ‘orientalism’ —is, as it is often configured, too simplistic and reductionist to account for all the forces at work in the production of images of India. Instead, the mid-Victorian image of India was produced by a very fractured discourse. Racial stereotypes and affirmations of British superiority were certainly to the forefront, but these were frequently inflected by quite separate agendaʼns, such as the military's pursuit of political and professional status and influence, publishers’ search for profits, and the quest for suitable middle-class role models. Moreover, it was a discourse constrained by the dominant contemporary literary conventions and tropes, notably the historical romance in fiction and didacticism in history and biography. Yet there is one strand that runs through these various agendas and literary strategies and that is the one provided by the Indian army. India was by the third decade of the nineteenth-century as much a military as it was a commercial site. In 1850, the then reigning governor-general, Lord Dalhousie, was reminded by John Lawrence of this fact when the latter insisted that ‘public opinion is essentially military in India. Military views, feelings and interests are therefore paramount’.

The year 1927 marked the beginning of a new Anglo-Chinese relationship. The Northern Expedition had split the Nationalist camp into the Nanjing and the Wuhan régimes, both of which conducted a savage purge, one after the other, against the Communists. Especially the Nanjing régime, which ultimately triumphed over Wuhan, wrought a significant change in Guomindang foreign policy. In line with the purge against the Communists, and with the rise to power of the right wing and the military faction, the Guomindang abandoned mass movements and eschewed mob violence as far as possible as a means of achieving foreign policy objectives. Indeed, as it reviewed its position on anti-imperialism which had been an important element in the revolutionary movement during the period 1924–26, the Party reverted to a policy of international co-operation as an essential part of China's self-strengthening and reconstruction, and sought a peaceful solution to the decades-old question of treaty revision. This change is well illustrated by China's new relationship with Great Britain, which, in December 1926, had announced a new, conciliatory policy towards China after having for years been one of the chief targets of Chinese nationalism.

This paper describes certain features of the economy in an extreme mountain environment where two contrasted forms of traditional political organization have survived into the twentieth century. It attempts to show that these forms of organization not only have had implications for the agricultural economy in the past, but are now influencing economic behaviour in the face of new situations and opportunities.

Despite a growing interest by anthropologists in the process whereby peasants have been incorporated into a modern industrialized economy as ‘post-peasants’, ‘peasant-workers’, or ‘part-time farmers’, comparatively little research has focused upon the community level of social integration as an important facet of this process (see Barlett 1980: 553, 560–1). For the most part, this lack of concern can probably be attributed to the fact that much of the research devoted to post-peasants has been conducted in European societies where community-wide types of cooperation do not seem to have been particularly important with regard to the production strategies peasants followed in their adaptation to conditions of rapid sociocultural change since the second world war (see Holmes 1983; Symes 1972; Redclift 1973; Minge-Kalman 1978; Franklin 1969: 10–15, 225–33; Tamanoi 1983).

The present paper is divided into three parts. Part I describes and analyses the emergence of an indigenous business class in Maharashtra, in western India, during the Peshwa times, and its position under early British rule. Part II discusses the dominance of Brahman savakars in the newly emerged business class. Part III presents an overview and states general observations relating to the subject.