Whilst reading agricultural economics for the postgraduate Diploma in Agricultural Science at Cambridge University, the author's attention was caught by two reports on recent developments in Indian agriculture. These were the ‘I.A.D.P. Third Report 1965–7’, and the ‘First Evaluation Study of the High Yielding Varieties Programme for 1967–8’. Although the information was generalized and the samples involved biased towards most successful areas, certain trends and conclusions emerged relating to the progress of innovation adoption in simple agricultural communities and the influences at work on the mechanism. Subsequent field work in north-west India provided firstly some of the detail lacked by the All-India statistics and, secondly, some insight into the problems faced by economically progressive districts of relevance to less developed ones.

In 1609, Satsuma, at the southern tip of Kyūshū, conquered Okinawa (then called the Ryūkyū Kingdom). Throughout the subsequent Tokugawa period, Satsuma was said to have kept the Ryūkyūans in a state of virtual slavery by plundering the profits of the lucrative Sino-Ryūkyūan trade and imposing an excessively heavy tribute-tax on the native products. This exploitation of Ryūkyū's trade and native resources was reported to have been one of the important financial resources for Satsuma; and one that made possible Satsuma's vigorous political and military activities in the middle nineteenth century leading to the Meiji Restoration of 1868. In spite of such claims, no study of this topic has been made except those that have been strongly colored by the sympathies of the writer.