The tardy and ineffectual response of China to the Western challenge remains one of the most significant problems confronting historians. This article attempts to shed light on one of the factors that appears to have contributed in some measure to the decline of the Chinese empire in the nineteenth century, viz., chʻing-i, or literati opinion. An initial section sketches the historical origins of chʻing-i. Then, I trace the influences that chʻing-i brought to bear on the process of policy formation during the early 1880's, when the Chinese empire fought a war with France in a vain attempt to save an imperial tributary from Western domination. Finally, I speculate upon the course the empire might have taken had not the throne—a term that here refers essentially to the Empress Dowager Tzʻu-hsi—had to tack and shift to meet the demands of chʻing-i.

The galaxy of non-indigenous elements confronting the student of Indonesian cultural history has often obscured the fact that, in order to elucidate a valid picture of their role and significance, these elements need to be studied in their own terms, in relation to their own environment and at specific synchronic levels, such levels being but points on the continuum of the historical process. Thus to consider Javanese culture exclusively as a linear (and corrupt) descendant of Indian culture on the one hand, or as perpetually conditioned by a hypothetical indigenous ur-society in the manner of Rassers on the other, leads to a dead end, and has stultified much otherwise useful and impressive research.

The Seventh Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), which was held between November 22 and December 16, 1926, principally to consider the Chinese question, met at a crucial period in the history of the Chinese Communist movement. During the previous summer, Chiang Kai-shek had launched his famous Northern Expedition against northern militarists and the legal government in Peking. His Communist allies had participated by arousing peasant discontent behind enemy lines and by infiltration of northern armies. It was now feared that the Communists might soon become the victims of their own success. Chiang had already given evidence of his displeasure of Communist activities. In March he had staged a “coup” against his Russian advisers and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but a reconciliation had been effected. In October Stalin had telegraphed instructions to the CCP directing them to restrain the peasant movement in order to avoid antagonizing the officer corps of the Kuomintang army, which was largely recruited from the landholding class.

Since World War II, the monopoly on Indonesian studies acquired by the Dutch as a consequence of the course of Western expansion has gradually been broken. The traditional barriers between geographical areas of study along the lines of their political frontiers are gone, and now the gap between continental and insular Southeast Asia may be bridged. This paper will demonstrate how data from the continental area may be used to solve a problem in the insular area.

Ce que dit le Professeur P. E. de Josselin de Jong d'après P. Arndt des conceptions des Ngad'a de Florès pourrait êtré applique presque mot pour mot aux Mnong Gar: “In the spirit world die deva, the spirits, keep buffaloes, just as men do on earth. These spirit buffaloes are each connected with a human being; and when a deva slaughters a buffalo in the spirit world, a man on earth must die.” Ces “spirit buffaloes” correspondent aux hêeng rpuh des Mnong Gar que j'ai traduit faute de mieux par “âmes-buffles.” Chaque fois qu'un sorcier (caak) ou un génie (yaang, ce qui correspond au deva du texte cité) capture une hêeng rpuh, I'homme qui correspond à celle-ci tombe malade, le sacrifice d'un animal—qui peut aller jusqu'à être un buffle—permettra de libérer le malade; lorsque les yaang immolent une “âme-buffle” l'homme qui lui correspond meurt. D'autre part on assimile la croissance sociale de l'homme à la croissance physique de son “âme-buffle;” et le terme même de kuang (que j'ai traduit en français par approximation par “puissant”) sert à désigner l'home puissant, celui qui a été capable d'immoler des buffles (signe suprême de la puissance, ou si i'on veut, de la richess, à condition de donner à ce mot sa connotation mnong: on n'accumule des biens que pour les engloutir dans de grands sacrifices), ce mot kuang désigne un animal adulte mâle, notamment dans rpuh kuang “grand buffle mâle” taille de l'âme buffle d'un homme puissant, d'un kuang. C'est dans ce sens, je crois, qu'il faut considérer le cas du cadavre cité par le Pr. de Josselin de Jong. Autre exemple de corrélation entre l'homme et le buffle: on sait que lorsqu'une épidémie a ravageé un village, les habitants de ce village l'abandonnent un temps, puis reconstruisent leurs maisons sur un autre rngool (emplacement de village). De même, après une grande Fête du Sol (Nyiit Döng) où la majorité des foyers a immolé un ou deux buffles les maisons du village doivent être démontées et reconstruites sur un autre rngool, car l'hécatombe de buffles produit le même effet que la mort de plusieurs hommes.

The Deccan Riots of 1875 highlight the social transformations brought about in rural Maharashtra in western India during the first five decades of British rule. The riots are of special interest to the social historian since they hinged upon relations between two important and well defined rural social groups, namely, the cultivators and the moneylenders. This paper will focus on the social changes which precipitated this conflict. I shall also attempt to link these changes with the social ideals and the political objectives which inspired the new rulers of Maharashtra and determined their administrative policy.

Few contemporary poets writing in Bengali are more widely read than is Jivanananda Das. He is considered in many respects the most modern of Bengali poets, as well as the one most independent of the influence of Rabindranath Tagore. His orginality has even been considered eccentric, but another leading Bengali poet, Buddhadeva Bose, says this of him: “He is important because he has brought a new note to our poetry, a new tone of feeling, and has tuned our ears to a subtle melody drawn from apparently conventional patterns of verse, for, despite the metrical seductions of modern Bengali, he has confined himself throughout to a single metrical norm, and that the oldest. It is rather remarkable that, though metrically a hermit, he has yielded to the prose poem and made it as haunting as his verse.”

Most periodization schemes of Chinese history would note the significance of a “great divide.” It may be placed before the T'ang period, considering from ethnological as well as cultural standpoints such factors as the first major influx of non-Han conquering groups, the march toward the sub-tropics, the penetration of Buddhism, and so forth. It may be placed much later, around 800 A. D. or after, roughly from the late T'ang to the early Sung, noting the general characteristics of the society and fundamental changes that shaped die political and socio-economic structures of subsequent centuries. Even the Marxist view or revisionist interpretations thereof would not dispute the importance of such changes.

I enter this controversy from a somewhat curious position: I began life as a psysical geographer, graduated in the high tradition of European Sinology, work in the field of economic history, and administer a department of languages and literatures. I suppose I might be said to have a foot firmly in each world, and to be qualified to make a plea for the unity of Chinese studies. Additionally, the circumstances of British university teaching force my colleagues and myself to face this problem continually, since our undergraduates specialize in Chinese studies to the exclusion of all else, and we are forced in our teaching to attempt a broad coverage of both the humanities and the social disciplines, to give our students a reasonably broad academic education oriented around China.

The archives of various British missionary societies, whose representatives were scattered throughout large parts of Asia in the nineteenth century and earlier, contain many manuscripts of interest and are potentially useful to the historian and social scientist. With few exceptions, however, scholars have overlooked or ignored these collections: partly because they are not centrally located; partly because they often are inchoate or lack guides; and partly because their value has not been appreciated.