Contrary to the long-standing idea of a scientific failure in early modern China as compared to Europe, some recent work has emphasized the existence of a tradition of ‘evidential’ research in the natural sciences, antiquarianism, and geography, especially during the Sung, Ming, and Qing periods. This article seeks to develop this new perspective by offering a comparative history of the genres of travel writing and ethnography in early modern Europe and Ming/early Qing China. We argue that there were qualitative as well as quantitative differences in the way that these genres functioned in each cultural area. Even when we find apparent similarities, we note different chronological rhythms and a different position of these genres of travel writing within a wider cultural field—what we might term their ‘cultural relevance’. The specific nature of Chinese state imperialism—or, conversely, the particular nature of European overseas colonialism—played a role in determining the type of ethnographic approach that came to predominate in each cultural area. These parallels and differences suggest a fresh perspective on the cultural origins of the ‘great divergence’.

This article explores the ways in which the Arthasastra (The Science of Wealth or The Science of Power), an ancient text rediscovered in 1905, was interpreted by Indian politicians and commentators. It seeks to explain why the text's popularity changed so drastically over time, and why, despite the excitement about it in the first 20 years following its reappearance, it was largely ignored in the Gandhian and Nehruvian eras, until a striking revival of interest from the late 1980s onwards. It argues that these changes in the text's fortunes can be explained partly as a result of significant shifts in elite Indian political culture. It also suggests that we need to reassess our analysis of the fundamental fault-lines in Indian politics, questioning Chatterjee's and Nandy's argument on the centrality of tensions between Gandhian ‘indigenous’ thought and Nehruvian ‘Western’ modernity, and arguing for the importance of the conflict between a moral politics, endorsed by both Gandhi and Nehru, and a ‘pragmatic’ politics justified by the Arthasastra.

Scholars have long debated the impact of the British ‘rule of property’ on India. In our own day it has become common for historians to hold that the Raj's would-be regime of free capitalist property was frustrated by a pervasive divide between rhetoric and reality which derived from a fundamental lack of fit between English ideas and Indian land control practices. While seemingly novel, the contemporary emphasis on the theory-practice divide is rooted in an earlier ‘revisionist’ perspective among late-nineteenth-century colonial thinkers who argued that land control in the subcontinent derived from a uniquely Indian species of ‘proprietary’ (rather than genuinely propertied) right-holding. In this article, I critically examine the revisionist discourse of ‘proprietary right’ by situating it in a broader comparative perspective, both relative to earlier ideas about rendering property ‘absolute’ during the East India Company's rule and relative to the changing conception of the property right among legal thinkers in the central domains of the Anglo-common law world. In so doing, the article significantly revises our understanding of the relationship between property, law, and political economy in the subcontinent from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century.

Collins’ book presents a comprehensive, if necessarily concise, approach to the issue of the relations between Sanskrit—very broadly conceived, including various South Asian languages and writing systems—and Malay, equally broadly conceived, as his work contains forays into other Austronesian languages such as Tagalog, Batak, Rejang, and so on. Collins is not a Sanskrit specialist. Besides, in such a comprehensive and succinct work, covering so many fields, it is inevitable that the author will occasionally fall short here and there, although this in no way detracts from the value of his book. In particular, there is a complex interlocution that the author weaves throughout his text with his intended audience (see below for details). Collins has in fact made a name for himself in Malay linguistics, and perhaps his best known work (extant both in English and Indonesian translation) is Malay, World Language: A Short History. In the book reviewed here, Collins largely taps into over a quarter of a century of his own research and publications in English, Malay, and Indonesian, as well as a plethora of centuries-old colonial works related to Nusantara, originally published in Spanish, Dutch, English, French, and German (he can apparently read in all these languages, bar perhaps Spanish). It is a very informative and delightful work, and it should be translated into English and made more widely known.

This is the meaning of Negro History Week. It is not so much a Negro History Week as it is a History Week. We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice. There should be no indulgence in undue eulogy of the Negro. The case of the Negro is well taken care of when it is shown how he has influenced the development of civilization.1

This review article examines three monographs that make conspicuous contributions to our understanding of major earthquake disasters in Japan from the mid-nineteenth century through to 2011. They focus on different events and different time periods, and ask different questions, but raise a host of shared issues relating to the on-going importance of disaster in Japan's history over the long term. They cause us to consider how seismic disaster is explained, understood, interpreted, and actualized in people's lives, how the risks are factored in, and how people respond to both immediate crisis and longer term consequences. One recurrent issue in these volumes is the extent to which these large natural disasters have the capacity to change—and actually do change—the ways in which societies organize themselves. In some cases disaster may be perceived as opportunity, but the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that a desire to return to the previous ‘normality’ is a powerful impulse in people's responses to major natural disasters. The review also argues that the issue of trust lies at the core of both individual and collective responses. A lack of trust may be most conspicuous in attitudes to government and elites, but is also inherent in more everyday personal interactions and market transactions in the immediate aftermath of disaster.