Gandhi's passive resistance campaigns in South Africa and his satyagraha agitation against the Rowlatt Bills in 1919 were conceived in wholly different circumstances; and the non-cooperation programme of 1920 was designed to meet conditions which were different again. To regard the non-cooperation movement simply as the logical consequence of the 1919 satyagraha and as the political application of Gandhi's ideology is to fail to appreciate just how experimental and uncertain Gandhi's politics were during this period.

Although they still differ considerably in their willingness to acknowledge it, specialists in the history of north-western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries CE are increasingly treating it as that of the emergence of a new civilization in what had previously been a peripheral region of the Mediterranean-based civilization of the classical west, rather than as a continuation or revival of that civilization itself. In this light Europe, or Latin Christendom as it saw itself, offers a number of striking resemblances to the developments which Lieberman discusses. The most dynamic regions of the new Europe—north-western France, Flanders and lowland England, north-eastern Spain, northern Italy, southern Italy and Sicily—were all peripheral, though in various senses, both to the long-defunct classical civilization and its direct successors, the Byzantine and Abbasid Empires, and to the transitional and much more loosely based ninth-and tenth-century empires of the Franks and Saxons (Ottonians). To this one might add that by the end of the twelfth century the remaining rimlands of the Eurasian continent in a purely geographical sense—Scandinavia, including Iceland, and still more the southern coast of the Baltic and the areas dominated by the rivers which drained into it—were developing very rapidly indeed.

The First China War of 1839–1842, commonly called the Opium War, has been and continues to be the subject of a considerable body of literature.

Ever since the discovery of China by Western nations the West has continually tried to gain access to China, and sometime even to understand her. Conversely, many Eastern nations who came within China's reach have preferred to keep her at arms length. This dichotomy continues today, although the East/West division is less clear. The People's Republic of China's sheer geographical size, its location in the heart of Asia, its huge population and thus its potential as an economic and miitary superpower instils fear in many. Will the PRC become a ‘responsible power’, an irresponsible hegemon, or collapse into political disorder and chaos? In anticipation of the coming changes in the PRC, the foreign policy of those nations concerned with the PRC has oscillated between engagement and containment of China.

The Banten Rebellion of 1750 has been described in two recent standard accounts in totally different ways. M. C. Ricklefs emphasizes the political conflicts between the ruler and the elite in court circles as a principal cause of the uprising, while J. Kathirithamby-Wells views this event as a consequence of the economic exploitation of an oppressed people. Why has this same event been depicted so differently?

The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change. By MUHAMMAD QASIM ZAMAN. Princeton, N.J. and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan. By OSKAR VERKAAIK. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult. By PNINA WERBNER. London: Hurst and Company.

The Irish in India present an interesting case. Arguably a colonized people, the colonies of the British Empire ironically afforded them employment and profit on a large scale. Although studies have been made of Irish administrators, it was Irish soldiers that were most numerous and it is the ‘stereotyped’ Irish soldier who represents his nation in depictions of the colonial military. This paper first summarizes the Irish military involvement in India. The reasons why men joined the army in large numbers and, in particular, why they sought service in India, are explored. The regimental culture into which they were absorbed is also examined. The representation of Irish soldiers in officers’ writings, both in fiction and popular media, is then discussed. The various aspects of the stereotype surrounding them are delineated, and the purposes of the colonial state served by their stereotypical representation are explained. Lastly, the reactions of Irish soldiers to their stereotype label are discussed. There were advantages to be gained from acting up to it, but it is argued also that soldiers found ways of rejecting bad or rebellious aspects of the stereotype and, by drawing on the ‘good’ or loyal aspects, helping to establish their own identity. Hence they manage to sustain and reconcile multiple national affiliations. Ultimately, however, the politics of Irish independence precipitates a crisis of identity which makes their position impossible. The paper concludes by considering the lives and memories of veterans of Indian service, and hence the afterlife of the Irish military identity beyond Irish independence.

The partition riots that erupted in Delhi following independence in 1947 resulted in the massacre of thousands of Muslims and the departure of roughly 300,000, leaving the remaining Muslim community seriously depleted, both numerically and politically. The article investigates the spatial aspect of Muslim minoritization in the city, namely their ghettoization, resulting from ongoing struggles over Muslim houses. It traces the gradual encroachment on the Muslim-majority neighbourhoods designated ‘Muslim zones’. An analysis of this dynamic reveals that, contrary to the prevalent assumption that Muslim zones were outside the jurisdiction of the Custodian of Evacuee Property, a great deal of the Custodian's intervention took place precisely in these areas. This investigation also reveals that, in addition to civic violence and the bureaucratic violence of the Custodian, a host of other factors played a significant role in determining the geography and intensity of encroachment—namely deep political divisions that cut across all levels of governance and policing, as well as socioeconomic class, informal economy, and corruption. This divided political, bureaucratic, and social landscape reflected the profound uncertainties underlying the process of decolonization, and sustained the violence that lingered on long after the partition riots had ended according to official narratives.

This paper is a study of cultural interaction and diffusion in colonial Bombay. Focusing on Hebrew language instruction, it examines the encounter between India's little-known Bene Israel Jewish community and Protestant missionaries. Whilst eighteenth and nineteenth-century Cochin Jews were responsible for teaching the Bene Israel Jewish liturgy and forms of worship, the Bene Israel acquired Hebrew and Biblical knowledge primarily from nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Bene Israel community was a Konkan jati with limited knowledge of Judaism. However, by the end of the century the community had become an Indian-Jewish community roughly analogous to other Jewish communities. This paper explores how this transformation occurred, detailing the content, motivation, and means by which British and American missionaries and, to a lesser extent, Cochin Jews instructed the Bene Israel in Jewish knowledge. Through a critical examination of neglected English and Marathi sources, it reconstructs the Bene Israel perspective in these encounters and their attitude towards the Christian missionaries who laboured amongst them. It demonstrates that the Bene Israel were active participants and selective consumers in their interaction with the missionaries, taking what they wanted most from the encounter: knowledge of the Old Testament and the Hebrew language. Ultimately, the instruction the Bene Israel received from Protestant missionaries did not convert them to Christianity but strengthened and transformed their Judaism.

On June 4th 1931 the North China Daily News—the principal British owned English-language newspaper in Shanghai published a small report on page 12 headed ‘Alleged crime by foreigner: Shooting affair on the Nanking railway: Held by military authorities’ This went on to state a Russian had been arrested for the murder of two Chinese gendarmes on the 1st of June at 10pm. He had been challenged as a prelude to a search but had fired on them and escaped having fatally wounded two men. The following morning a ‘suspicious looking foreigner’ had been arrested in the vicinity and was still being held in custody. The source of this story was the previous day's Shenbao, the leading Shanghai Chinese newspaper which had picked up the story from the Suzhou press. The Russian's name was given as Xi si ke tuo qu luo—which might be transliterated as ‘Sea Scout’, for reasons which will become clear.

This article focuses on the Tawang and West Kameng districts of Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India, collectively known as Monyul. It was ruled by Tibet for three centuries before the 1914 McMahon Line boundary included it in India. Even after that, cross-border exchanges between Monyul and Tibet continued until the 1962 Sino-Indian war, following which border passages between the two were closed. Today, Monyul is a marginal region, geographically distant from centres of industry and education, and lacking in terms of infrastructure. This article traces Monyul's marginality not simply to the border war, but to spatial practices of the British colonial state, beginning with the mapping of the boundary in 1914. It shows how Monyul was constructed as a buffer, despite being within a delimited boundary, first, by excluding it from regular administration, and, secondly, by pushing back the older Tibetan administration, thereby, making it (what I call) a ‘zone of difference/indifference’. But the buffer project was subject to contestation, mostly from the Tibetan religious aristocracy, whose temporal hold over, and material interests in, Monyul were challenged by the latter's incorporation into colonial India.

In the aftermath of independence, obtained in 1948, the Burmese government launched a project to valorize and promote traditional medicine which comprised the institutionalization and standardization of the teaching, practice, and production of medicines. The government justified this project by asserting the importance of protecting and improving—in terms of both quality and accessibility—this precious national heritage. Having contributed to the maintenance of people's health for centuries, it was nevertheless under threat of vanishing because of the dominance of biomedicine and because traditionally it had been passed down through a plurality of lineages using an esoteric language. Although recognizing the official motivation behind this project, this article suggests that it was also motivated by the need to unify and ‘Burmanize’ the country in the name of nation-building. Indeed, constructing a medicine that could compete with biomedicine, if not overtake it, would help in marking the country's distance and autonomy vis-a-vis the West. Spreading a standardized medicine, largely based on the Burman tradition, across the country would help eliminate inter-ethnic differences as well as the esoteric elements inherent in traditional medicine that were perceived as a potential threat to the state's authority. While claiming to protect a national heritage, the state was in fact crafting a new heritage that complied with a specific image of the nation—a unified modern Buddhist nation—in order to help it attain its political goals. The article also discusses to what extent this project has been successful by examining the limits of its implementations and the response of healers and manufacturers.

In 1971 a war led to the creation of Bangladesh. Instantly three narratives sprang up: the war as a national triumph, the war as betrayal and shame, and the war as a glorious campaign. Today more layered interpretations are superseding these ‘first-generation narratives’. Taking the case of insurgents from neighbouring India who, against their will, became embroiled in the war, this article seeks to contribute to ‘second-generation narratives’ that challenge the historiographical apportioning of blame and the national/ethnic framing of the conflict. The article uses hitherto-unpublished photographs from private collections to demonstrate how the war for the liberation of Mizoram (India) and that for the liberation of Bangladesh became entangled. Jointly they produced a ‘war within a war’ that unsettles common assumptions about both these struggles.

The spectre of the 1937 ‘Rape of Nanking’ continues to haunt China and Japan. Sixty years ago in Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) announced its definitive ‘judgement’ of what happened in Nanking. This judgement purported to be intractable. The legal process used to reach it produced a disputed picture instead. The resulting narrative confusion continues to inform how memory of Nanjing is shaped, used and contested. This paper explores the construction of ‘Rape of Nanking’ narratives at the IMTFE. By demonstrating the inherently contested nature of narratives produced by adversarial legal proceedings, it argues that using courts as a panacea for postwar restoration and as validators of traumatic narratives is both short-sighted and ineffective. The IMTFE exemplifies the inadequacy of trial-based post-conflict reconciliation. It is hoped that the lessons learned from Tokyo's limitations will benefit the ongoing quest for tenable models of international justice.

This article inquires into the cultural and political nexus of secular (stage) magic, modernity, and Orientalism at the turn of the twentieth century. It argues that these three arenas interacted in important and special ways to both shape and reflect the politics of knowledge of the period. In doing so, it draws attention to the ways in which secular magic has been overlooked as a historical phenomenon and highlights its utility in furthering our understanding of the great problematics of modernity and Orientalism; in particular, it suggests that magic actually provides an unusually vibrant and clear lens through which to view the politics of the Other and through which to explore issues of tradition and the modern.

Focusing on two historical cases—the ‘Indian Rope Trick’ challenge issued by the Magic Circle in the 1930s and the astonishing ‘duel’ between the ‘Chinese’ magicians Chung Ling Soo and Ching Ling Foo in 1905—this article considers the ways in which discourses of origination, popular ideas about esotericism and the ‘mystic East’, and questions of technical competence interacted and competed in the culture politics of the early twentieth century.

By examining the career of a woman agrarian entrepreneur in early nineteenth-century Gujarat, this article seeks to foreground the role of family firms specializing in the assessment, realization, and investment of land revenue. The article argues that such firms, which were commonly found service providers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, were deemed to be alienators of the loyalties and revenues that the East India Company state considered its due. They were allowed to persist on sufferance for a few decades but were phased out by the 1830s, an obliteration that has erased their role from the history of South Asian capitalism.

This paper investigates some key questions regarding the socio-cultural implications of a relatively understudied print media, the literary miscellany, its production and consumption in early twentieth century British Bengal. Through a study of Ramananda Chattopadhyay's Prabāsī, a major literary journal that set the trend of sacitra māsik patrikā or illustrated monthly magazine in Bāṅglā, its literary innovations and editorial interventions, this paper explores how periodical reading and the notions of aesthetics and culture that it cultivated became intimately tied up with questions of middle class identity and class differentiation. It shows how this pioneering sacitra patrikā came to command a literary and visual space that, by the time of the Swadeshi years, was conceived as co-extensive with the future sovereign nation. Problematizing notions of a quotidian practice like leisure-reading that had become integral to the lifestyles of an expanding middle class, this study shows how Prabāsī not only lent new meanings to ideas of sustained interest and participation in public life amongst its readers, but that it also represented a self-consciously, high-brow cultural sensitivity that the Bengali bhadralok were to claim and safeguard as their own.

This paper discusses the nature of local permutations of transnational Muslim networks in Thailand's southern Muslim-majority provinces and assesses their impact on creed, custom, and conflict in the region. More specifically, the paper interrogates the agenda and methods of idea and norm-propagation on the part of these agents and networks, and their evolving role, as well as the structures and conduits through which they operate and mobilize. In so doing, it finds a tremendously fluid and dynamic terrain in southern Thailand, where narratives, representations, and expressions of Islamic doctrine, legitimacy, and authority, are increasingly heavily contested within the Muslim community as a whole. In addition, the paper investigates the transnational dimensions of on-going violence in the southern provinces. Here, it argues that there is little by way of substantive evidence of any sustained penetration of the conflict in southern Thailand by external actors. No doubt, many have attempted to draw conclusions to the contrary, but their evidence and arguments, not to mention analytical methodology, are tenuous at best.

During the first decade of the twentieth century, foreign residents in China observed a noticeable change in the temper of the Chinese people. It was more than a change in mood, but a wave of activities, a dynamic force aimed at the recovery of China's sovereign rights. The movement was so intense that Japanese diplomats in Peking called it the ‘rights recovery fever’. Sir Ernest Satow, British minister in China, remarked that the movement was a manifestation of ‘the consciousness of national solidarity, which is entirely a new phenomenon in China’.

Economists and economic historians have not devoted much time or effort to the analysis of premodern economies. Most scholars have tended to concentrate on the United States and Western Europe during the twentieth century. While a few persons have examined the economic development of premodern Europe (1000–1700 a.d.), almost no one has chosen to write about economic organization in the countries of Asia and Africa before 1800.