The four books reviewed are different in discipline and approach and written for widely different audiences. They are, however, linked in their articulation as a contemporary response to the larger political situation in and around Afghanistan. Certain fundamental issues are raised that relate to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, for instance, will the Russians continue their advance to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean (as suggested by the proponents of the Great Game thesis)? An understanding of the current situation in Afghanistan will provide clues to the possible future outcome of the Russian invasion. On that outcome depends the present balance of world power. If the Russians reach the warm waters of the Gulf, they are ideally poised to threaten South Asia and the Middle East. An understanding of the situation in Afghanistan is thus of primary importance.

Between 1250 and 1850 the population of Southwest China increased from 3 to 20 million people. In this essay, the author delineates two periods of population growth—a small one from 1250 to 1600 and a large one from 1700 to 1850—and relates their spatial and temporal characteristics to agricultural production. His conclusions challenge the popular assumption that frontier populations in China grew because of improved agricultural techniques or increased arable land. In the Southwest, between 1250 and 1600, population doubled because of the government investment in agriculture, but, between 1700 and 1850, population quadrupled because of the development of local mining industry. In Qing China, as elsewhere in the early modern world, major increases in population were often a consequence of early industrialization.

Problems concerning the emergence and geographical diffusion of food production in East Asia have long interested archaeologists and historians. However, attempts to reconstruct the chronology and diffusion routes from the so-called nuclear zones of both North and South China through the Korean peninsula and Japan have been less than convincing. In North China, the crops involved were millet (Setaria italica) and kaoliang (Sorghum vulgare); in South China, rice (Oryza sativa japonica and indica).

Both the population and agricultural production of the Dongting Lake region in Hunan and Hubei provinces developed rapidly from the late Ming period through the mid-Qing period. During this period, the interests of local dike builders in clearing more land increasingly came into conflict with the efforts of Qing officials to prevent floods by supervising dike repairs and preventing overbuilding of dikes. Although local landowners accepted state subsidies to restore damaged dikes in the early Qing period, their power to resist state authority over water control increased through the eighteenth century. By the early nineteenth century, official prohibitions on dike building were ignored, and a series of disastrous floods occurred.

In reviewing Michael Loewe's Ways to Paradise: The Chinese Quest for Immortality, the author presents, on the basis of recent archeological discoveries at Ma-wang-tui, Ch'angsha, Hunan, and other places, the indigenous Chinese views of afterlife, contrary to the dominant modern theory that there was no “other world” in Chinese thought before the advent of Buddhism. Newly found silk paintings and wooden documents of the early Former Han. period show beyond doubt that the Chinese had long developed their own beliefs in a “Heaven” and an “Underworld” after death. The author also discusses the evolution of the early Chinese conception of souls, such as hun and p'o. The symbolic meanings of silk paintings and other burial-related objects are examined from the anthropological point of view.

Rice was first introduced from China 1122 B.C., but millet had already been grown there for many centuries.” When Hulbert (1906:15) wrote these words in the early years of this century, he presumably followed some written or oral tradition regarding Kija's (Chi-tzu), the legendary agnate of the last Shang king, bringing rice to Korea. It is interesting that there was a tradition that millet cultivation preceded rice, which came from northern China at approximately 1100 B.C. Seventy-five years after Hulbert recorded the tradition in English, archaeological research has demonstrated that millet did precede rice in Korea, and that the timing of the introduction of rice at the end of the Shang dynasty is probably too late rather than too early.

Since the mid-1970s, Korean archaeologists have turned their interests to sociocultural change in Korean prehistory rather than simply the analysis of stylistic variation of artifacts. Studies on subsistence patterns in both the Chŭlmun and Mumun periods have been greatly encouraged and aided by scientific excavations. As in many other areas of the world, plant domestication has not been thoroughly studied in Korea.

Competition over grain supplies produced conflict when the people controlling large stores of grain failed to sell or lend grain at prices and in quantities demanded by the people needing grain. These conflicts, known generally as food riots, took place within a general political economy of grain circulation that spanned a wide variety of local situations. A brief sketch of different types of grain circulation and forms of food rioting establishes the setting for case studies that show the range of possible food riot situations and official reactions to the problems posed by food riots. Materials from the case studies are then drawn on to address the general questions of why rioters acted as they did, why their actions became a common type of conflict in the Qing dynasty, and why food riots persisted through periods of political strength and weakness.

Western writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries found it plausible to refer to India and China in the same breath as if they were species of a single genus, employing concepts like “Oriental despotism” and “the Asiatic mode of production.” No more. Indeed, modern language and area studies have so impressed upon us the historical uniqueness of these two societies that only infrequently will scholars cite an idea or event in the one to illuminate the experience of the other. Nonetheless, there is much to be gained by making comparisons when they cast light on particular problems or reflect upon the methods of scholarship. I thus vault the Himalayas and discuss below some contrasts in the approaches taken and the results achieved when students of historical India and China have examined the problems of subsistence. The three fine papers by James Lee, Peter Perdue, and R. Bin Wong, and the stimulating introduction by Lillian M. Li provide the pegs for these brief comments.

K. C. Chang's Shang Civilization is an invaluable, encyclopaedic guide to the archaeology, anthropology, and culture of East Asia's first historical dynasty. After a summary of the book's scope and a sampling of its interpretations, the review discusses six of Chang's major themes: (1) the acceptance of the “longer” rather than “shorter” dynastic chronology; (2) the identification of Cheng-chou as a Shang capital; (3) the hypothesis that two major groups held royal power in alternate generations; (4) the extent to which the states surrounding the Shang enjoyed cultural and ethnic unity; (5) the existence of numerous walled towns; and (6) the relation between bronze tools and agricultural productivity.

Early Southeast Asia is an impressive collection of papers dealing with the archaeology, history, epigraphy, art history, and geography of early Southeast Asian states and their development. The high scholarship of individual contributions notwithstanding, the collection as a whole demonstrates that the past thirty years have seen relatively little progress in understanding this important aspect of the social and cultural history of the region. Archaeologists have made many important new discoveries but have been unable to bring them to bear within a historical synthesis; related disciplines have dealt with other types of evidence but also seem unable to translate them into a common language of cultural and social meaning.