The political system of Cambodia is often—and not inaccurately—described as one of the most stable in Asia. Such description is apt to be justified by reference to the relative absence of upheaval and disturbance which have been the fate of several new Asian states. Surface indications of stability, however, can give rise to exaggerated assumptions about the institutionalized nature of a political system, in the sense that an induced pattern of political activity has jelled to make the system a going concern. The object of this article is to examine the distinguishing features of the Cambodian political system with a view to establishing whether surface appearance reflects an inner resilience or fundamental structural weakness.

In the 1950s Hong Kong was the centre of the Southeast Asian gold trade due to its traditional facilities as an entrepot. In the postwar period, however, this trade took place illegally, which distorted the direction of the trade. This article surveys the British attitude to the gold market in the immediate postwar period, using archival records from the British Treasury and the Bank of England. The changing pattern of the gold trade between the major centres of Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand is then described. The gold market offers an almost unique view of the pattern of smuggling trade in the region due to detailed reports in the local press and investigations at the time by the Bank of England.

More than one-third of the area of Britain's Indian empire and over one-quarter of its population were ruled by the Indian princes. But despite its size, princely India has largely remained the province of the pulp journalist to whom we owe our hackneyed view of the princes as a bizarre assortment of spendthrifts, torturers and voluptuaries. Recently, serious scholars have begun to publish material on the princes, but the focus has mainly been upon the more backward states.

The current article examines temple building and shifting monastic patronage in twentieth and twenty-first century Sri Lanka. Drawing heavily on fieldwork conducted in two separate upcountry villages over the past five years, the author argues that far from passively accepting the failings of local monastics, lay Buddhists are actively and directly involved in shaping their own religious experiences. In examining closely numerous conversations centered on temple construction, this article pays particular attention to how notions about ideal ritual performance, caste discrimination, and merit-making provide lay donors with the needed impetus for building new monastic institutions and, thus, establishing a choice of temple patronage where little or no such choice previously existed.

This article explores the role of Indian petitioning in the process of consolidating British power after the East India Company's military conquest of Bengal in the late eighteenth century. The presentation of written petitions (often termed ‘arzi in Persian) was a pervasive form of state-subject interaction in early modern South Asia that carried over, in modified forms, into the colonial era. The article examines the varied uses of petitioning as a technology of colonial state-formation that worked to establish the East India Company's headquarters in Calcutta as the political capital of Bengal and the Company as a sovereign source of authority and justice. It also shows how petitioning became a site of anxiety for both colonial rulers and Indian subjects, as British officials struggled to respond to a mass of Indian ‘complaints’ and to satisfy the expectations and norms of justice expressed by petitioners. It suggests that British rulers tried to defuse the perceived political threat of Indian petitioning by redirecting petitioners into the newly regulated spaces of an emergent colonial judiciary.

British observers of the nineteenth-century panchayat were convinced that it represented a judicial forum of great antiquity, in which petitioners were able to gain local and direct access to justice. They contrasted the panchayat favourably with the delays and frustrations that beset the eighteenth-century East India Company's attempts to channel all petitions through its own courts. This article examines the history of the pre-colonial panchayat in western India and its early modern predecessors. During the early modern centuries, a diverse array of state-level and local corporate bodies made up the landscape for the submission of petitions and the hearing of suits. Although many suits were local in nature, the process of hearing and adjudication itself gave these judicial spaces a significant ‘public’ dimension, and their forms of argumentation frequently invoked general principles of justice and moral order. From the early eighteenth century, the new form of the panchayat came to supersede these older corporate bodies and to reshape the forms of public that gathered around them. The Maratha state, based in Pune, sought firmer control over revenue and justice. State officials promoted the panchayat as a new type of judicial arena, weakening the local corporate institutions and tying them more closely to the Pune court.

The judicial and summary punishment of whipping—absent from the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of 1860—was passed into law through Act No. VI of 1864. This legislation, tacked on as an appendage to the IPC, invested the judge with wider discretionary powers to administer violence across Indian society. In this case what emerged was an evolving attempt to enlarge the colonial state's capacity for quotidian violence, targeting certain bodies to reaffirm, manage, and police the social hierarchies upon which colonial sovereignty depended. In the context of a slow imperial movement away from the cast-iron distinctions that had been made between groups in the early nineteenth century—distinctions that had, among other things, supported a legally enforced system of slavery—new methods to mark the value of different bodies were created. The events of the 1850s, in particular the rebellion of 1857–1858, saw the re-emergence of the colonial idea that certain bodies could withstand violence, and that violence itself could be used to create economically productive colonial societies, in debates around penal law and punishment. This article will trace this history through formal legal restrictions and informal legal-cultural practices in relation to corporal punishment in colonial India. Over the course of the period under study, this legislation introduced into law what one official termed ‘the category of the “whippable”’.1 Charting the changing shape of this legal category along lines of race, gender, caste, class, and age, the article will argue that a logic of exceptionality, channelled here through the application of judicial violence, attempted to structure and manage Indian society in complicated ways.

North Korea is a unique regime that has not followed the ‘mono-transition’ path (economic reform under modified one-party rule) of other surviving communist regimes (China, Vietnam, Cuba) in the post-Cold War era. Debates over North Korea's unique features (reluctance in economic reform, absence of political modification, international troublemaking) have generated two contending interpretations. The mainstream interpretation attributes North Korea's uniqueness to its regime's highly rigid political system (‘monolithic leadership system’). For the alternative interpretation, structural pressures and political calculus have driven the monolithic regime towards economic reform (‘marketization from above’), making it more convergent with the ‘mono-transition’ regimes, at least in the economic aspect. In support of the latter interpretation, this article will delve further into three contentious issues that represent the most common doubts about the advance of marketization in North Korea. First, how can the regime reconcile marketization with the interests of its ‘core constituencies’? Second, since ‘crony socialism’ exists, how does it influence distribution and productive activity? Third, how does marketization advance in view of the persistence of monolithic rule? In so doing, it will show how the sources of economic reform (structural factors and political calculus) have enabled the marketization constraints to be overcome.

This paper attempts to see how a particular labour market (domestic service), a traditionally male domain, became segregated both by gender and age in the post-partition Indian state of West Bengal, and mainly in its capital city Calcutta. It argues that the downward trend in industrial job opportunities in post independent West Bengal, accompanied by the large scale immigration of men, women and children from bordering East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), led to a general decline in wage rate for those in domestic service. Poor refugee women, in their frantic search for a means of survival, gradually drove out the males of the host population who were engaged in domestic service in urban West Bengal by offering to work for a very low wage and often for no wage at all. As poor males from the neighbouring states of Bihar, Orissa and the United Provinces constituted historically a substantial section of Calcutta domestic workers, it was mainly this group who were replaced by refugee women. The second stage in the changing profile of domestic service since the 1970s in urban West Bengal was arguably set by migrating girl children from different parts of the state to Calcutta city in search of employment. This is probably why West Bengal had the highest girl children's work-participation rate in urban India in 2001.

This article will examine the relationship between Gandhi's two major intellectual developments in his last years: his insistence on political secularism (‘individualization of religion’) and his controversial religious experiments with brahmacarya (sleeping naked with his 17-year-old grandniece, Manubahen). Contrary to the prevalent interpretations, I will argue that Gandhi's political principle of secularism during the last years of his life entailed implicitly his radical religious belief, which he thought worth risking his life to present before the public. There was an intimate relationship between the concepts of brahmacarya, individuality (vyaktitva), and religion (dharm) that constituted his principle of secularism—these concepts were integrated by Gandhi in his distinct Hindu metaphysics of ātmā. Although Gandhi's ideas on ātmā were initially influenced by Śrīmad Rājcandra's Jainism, he later repudiated the latter's views and revised them by incorporating some ideas from Western Orientalists, including Sir John Woodroffe's tantric thought. Gandhi's concept of ātmā was considered to inhere with the cosmological spiritual power of śakti, ultimately identified with God (Īśvar, Brahm): this concept of ātmā was one of the fundamental components of Gandhi's eventual ideas of individuality and religion. Gandhi attempted to realize his ‘unique individuality’ (‘anokhuṃ vaktitva’) in his last religious experiments with brahmacarya, which were conducted contemporaneously to his increasing political valorization of secularism. Gandhi's secularism was virtually a political platform to universalize religion, paradoxical in that he meant to go beyond the impregnable hedge of privatization by making religion deeply individualized—that is to say, ātmā-centred.

This paper examines the maps of India published under the supervision of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) during the 1830s and 1840s. The Society was established in London in late 1826 to educate poor adults and the working classes in a variety of intellectual and practical subjects. It published an encyclopaedia, a magazine and a series of monographs, including a book on The Hindoos. But it also published, in instalments, an atlas that featured India in twelve sheets together with a detailed map of Calcutta. The maps were first issued in the 1830s and reissued a decade later. The India maps of the SDUK are the first multi-sheet maps that were sold explicitly for non-elite British audiences and, as such, are of great interest. Moreover, they were among the most detailed, well-drawn maps generally available, and were sometimes eagerly sought-after. A close examination of the maps – their symbols, names, regions and perspectives – reveals how the Company's Indian empire was depicted, described, taught and made ‘useful’ to the working classes.

This article explores the role of Jamia Millia Islamia—the National Muslim University—in the formation of a composite national identity in India around the time of partition. This institution, born under the dual influence of the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements, constituted for its members a ‘laboratory’ for the nation. Through their educational experiments and constructive work à la Gandhi, Jamia teachers and students sought to lay the ground for an independence that would be ‘meaningful’ not only for Muslims but for the entire nation. In so doing, Jamia members claimed the right for Muslims to be recognized as ‘unhyphenated Indians’, able to speak for the nation. This article thus discusses the efforts of Jamia members to promote an inclusive conception of ‘composite India’ of which Muslims were fully part. At the same time, it highlights the ambiguous attitude of government authorities vis-à-vis the institution. Despite Jamia members’ strong affinities with Congress leaders, notably Nehru, the school received little support from state authorities after independence. Paradoxically, Nehru's government preferred to turn towards another Muslim institution—Aligarh Muslim University—often considered the ‘cradle’ of ‘Muslim separatism’, in order to reach out to Muslim citizens and promote national integration. By exploring the motivations behind this paradoxical choice as well as the complex relations between Jamia and Nehru's government, this article highlights some of Nehru's own ambiguities towards the ‘Gandhian’ legacy as well as to Muslim representation in secular India.

The semi-colonial character of China during the treaty-port era brings into question the dichotomy between the colonizer and the colonized. China's foreign trade had an overall negative balance, and Great Britain, Japan, and the United States of America benefited from it. However, dozens of minor powers suffered a negative balance with China, despite the favourable conditions set in the treaty ports. This article examines the presence of Spain in China during the first decades of the twentieth century, focusing on trade, population, and issues of self-representation. Through a comparative analysis of the Sino-Spanish trade with that of other smaller powers in China, this article shows both the diversity of colonial formations in China and the existence of colonial relations that, although peripheral and complementary, pose a doubt on the adequacy, not only of the colonizer/colonized dichotomy, but also of the representation of colonialism in China.

The Tiger Balm Gardens or Haw Par Villa, built in the 1930s by overseas Chinese pharmaceuticals tycoon Aw Boon Haw, has been and remains a symbol of the positioning of Singapore's Chineseness. In the colonial era, it marked the success not only of one man but also of the Chinese migrant community. In the later period of nation-building, it was initially considered as a challenge to multiracialism and nationhood. However, as state policy shifted towards an ethnicized cultural identity as prompted by the rise of Asia as a major economic force, especially China, the Villa was renovated first into an orientalized theme park and then resuscitated as the repository of diasporic Chinese entrepreneurship. Amidst these state initiatives, the history of the Villa and its founder were sidelined.

Campsie: Presbytery of Glasgow, Synod of Glasgow and Ayr, County of Stirling. The Parish of Campsie measures eight English miles in length, and seven in breadth . . . . It is bounded on the North by the parish of Fintry; on the West by Strathblane and Baldernock; on the South by Calder and Kirkintilloch; and on the East by Kilsyth; forming a distinct commissariat along with Hamilton, stiled the commissariat of Hamilton and Campsie.

Kedgeree: A village and police station on the low lands near the mouth of the Hoogly, on the west bank and 68 miles below Calcutta. It was formerly well known as a usual anchorage of the larger Indiamen.

This article deals with the activities of one Scottish family—the Lennox family of Campsie in Stirlingshire—in Asian trade during the closing decades of the eighteenth century. The growth of private trade by Europeans in Asia in this period, and of the Agency Houses that managed much of their activity, is well-known. However, the classic studies of this subject have relied largely on official records and have used these to address issues in the history of imperial expansion. Thus standard accounts have tended to concentrate on the political relations between private traders and the East India Company, and to see private trade in the eighteenth century mainly as the by-product of the corruption of Company power. Viewed from inside the private business networks that made this possible, the perspective is rather different.

In 1904, the British Indian government passed the Ancient Monuments Protection Act and, in doing so, radically enlarged the state's bureaucratic claim to structures defined, for the purposes of the Act, as monuments. The project of conserving the Hindu temple was beset by disagreements. The claims of the colonial state and local Hindu devotees were separated by different precepts about religiosity and alternate orders of aesthetics, time, and history. However, it is clear that there were also confluences: legislative authority could masquerade as custody of the antiquarian and, in practice, the secular veneration of material antiquity blurred with Hindu divinity. This paper combines an exploration of the principles of archaeological conservation, as they were formed in the European bourgeois imagination, and then traces their transfer, though imperial administration, to case-studies of specific temples. Of particular interest is the deployment of the Act by local administrations and the counter-challenges, appropriations, and manipulations of the same legislation. How were the aesthetic codes of conservation—and the legislation that sought to order and enforce their introduction—compromised by religious claims and practices?

The former princely state of Hunza (now part of Pakistan's Northern Areas District) commands one of the largest and most complex irrigation systems in the whole of the western Karakoram mountain range. Built during the 18th century, Hunza's hydraulic works contributed significantly to the emergence of this small Central Asian state. Few writers, however, have explored the role of irrigation in Hunza's political evolution. Müller-Stellrecht (1981:55) has made some passing observations about the economic importance of irrigation in her paper on traditional Hunzakut society, Kreutzmann (1988) has provided some historical facts concerning the building of the canals and the present-day water distribution system in Hunza, while the French geographer Charles (1985) presents a significant body of data on Hunza's hydraulic works, but entirely from a physical perspective. In this paper, which is based on ethnohistorical data gathered during field research in Hunza, in 1990 and 1991, I examine the role of irrigation in the process of state formation in Hunza.

Indian big business campaigned for economically nationalistic policies during the interwar period. Existing scholarship is sharply divided as to the reason for the same. One group of scholars claim that Indian big business as a class rose above its economic interests and actively joined and even led the anti-imperial nationalist movement during the period. The other group contests the above view and proposes that Indian big business was guided by business interests while rallying for economic nationalism. Significantly the interwar period is also marked by a growing antagonism between Indian big business and European commercial class apparently on racial lines, and they held diametrically opposite positions on most issues of commercial relevance. This development is cited as evidence in support of the former view. In this paper I present data of the European business collective of Kanpur, that exhibited almost identical positions as Indian big business, on several significant economic and political issues during the interwar period. From a detailed analysis of the nature of this collective (that had interests in cotton textiles, leather and sugar, amongst others) I have tried to re-configure the debate on the character of Indian big business during the interwar period.

Even after the Russo-Japanese War, Manchuria remained the powder keg of East Asia. In the war's aftermath, three empires, the Qing, the Russian and the Japanese, stationed their troops in Manchuria, in a struggle for military supremacy there. There has already been a considerable amount of research on these military activities. However, previous works have not discussed them from a triangular relationship. This paper contends that the history of modern East Asia cannot be understood until one examines the shift in the military balance in Manchuria from a triangular comparative point of view. The results of such examination show that, in Manchuria, each empire was unable to establish military domination alone, and therefore needed an alliance partner. During the Xinhai Revolution, the Russia-Japan ‘alliance’ wielded overwhelming military power against China. However, after the Russian Revolution in 1917, Japan renounced cooperation with a weakened Russia and built a new partnership with China to advance the Siberian intervention. The military triangle of Russia, China and Japan was unable to create a comprehensive regional security system in Manchuria because what was established was based on mutual distrust and fear.