After Aden came under British rule (1839) its Jewish community was reinforced by Jewish immigrants from inland Yemen and also from other Middle Eastern countries. Some of the Adeni Jews, most of them British subjects, entered the Indian-British commercial network and expanded it to East Africa, mainly to Ethiopia, founding commercial strongholds there. From the late nineteenth century, Jews coming from Yemen joined the existing Adeni settlements.

This paper compares the reasons for the emigration to Ethiopia of Adeni Jews and Yemeni Jews, and their economic and social status under Italian colonial regime (established in Eritrea in the 1880s). It discusses relations between these Jews, which it argues, were determined by the position of each group in the colonial hierarchy, and by the necessity of sustaining religious-communal life. Thus, in spite of their shared Yemeni origin and attendance at the same communal institutions, ethnicity and religion proved weaker than social and economic considerations, and the two groups cultivated a separate identity.

When historians explain the end of empires, they often follow a ‘decline and fall’ paradigm which owes its fame to Edward Gibbon's great book on the Roman Empire. Recent historians of Late Antiquity, however, have tended to doubt its validity. This article considers the reasons for the end of the Mongol Empire of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It examines the division of the empire into four khanates, the eventual collapse of each of which is then studied. It suggests that the khanates which retained more of their original nomadic ethos – the Golden Horde in the Pontic steppes and the Chaghatai Khanate in Central Asia – were able to survive longer than those – in the Ilkhanate in Persia and the Great Khanate in China and Mongolia – which had their centres in sedentary lands. It concludes that in all cases, ‘fall’ was the result of internal factors, about which there was nothing that was inevitable, and that there is little evidence of a long ‘decline’. Hence the ‘decline and fall’ paradigm does not seem to provide an adequate explanatory framework.

The Oeconomy of Human Life purports to be an English translation of an ancient Indian text found by a Chinese scholar in Lhasa. Almost certainly written by Robert Dodsley (1704–1764), the book became an eighteenth-century bestseller. This article discusses its place in the varied lineage of western images of Asia, beginning with Alexander the Great's encounter with a group of ‘naked philosophers’ in India. It argues that the key features of the Oeconomy are representative of the Enlightenment period, with at best tenuous links to Tibet, India and China. However, it also belongs to a much broader literary tradition with deep roots and unexpected contemporary resonances.

This article applies a synthetic approach of philological, religious, philosophical, and cultural studies to explore the original meaning of the terms dao 道 and de 德, two primary concepts in traditional Chinese intellectual history. Through an etymological analysis of the characters dao and de, and supported by both received and discovered texts and materials, this article demonstrates that dao originally represented the spirit of the Pole Star/High God and the movement of Heaven, and de, in relation to dao, originally represented the impartial virtue and power of Heaven. In terms of this new interpretation, the article further discusses the signification of dao and de in the Laozi to uncover the mystic aspects of the text.

This article examines over 200 years (1761–1963) of China's relations with the Central Asian tribal state of Hunza. Employing a territorial genealogical approach, this research explores how Hunza, not initially recognised during the high Qing as an inner dependency or vassal, was gradually re-conceptualised by the Qing court as a historical tributary protectorate, and then in the Republican and Nationalist eras became known as a ‘lost territory’ ripe for restoration. It will also argue that the tributary system is not a dynastic legacy that ceased to function after 1911; but rather, it was an instrument of political expediency that continued to be used in the post-imperial era. In a sense, this research offers a new thinking about the ‘tribute system’ which might really be a nineteenth and twentieth century reinterpretation of an older form of symbolically asymmetric interstate relations (common in one form or another throughout many parts of Asia); this reinterpretation was strongly informed by English-language terminology and formulations, including ‘suzerainty’ and the mistranslation of ‘gong’ as ‘tribute’ itself, and both Britain and China manipulated the terminology and claimed to further their respective territorial, diplomatic and strategic interests.

Fellows of the Society and guests. At each Anniversary General Meeting we commemorate the inauguration of the Society in 1823 and reaffirm our founders’ commitment to the encouragement of research and the dissemination of learning in relation to Asia. In his address at the first meeting, Henry Colebrooke declared that Britain owed a “debt of gratitude” to Asia and had a duty to repay its “obligation” by “promoting an interchange of benefits”. It was a time of vigorous British expansion in Asia; but it was also a time of woeful indifference in Britain to Asian societies and cultures. In those days universities did little to make good such neglect. Indeed, lamenting the ignorance of Asia in British public life, another founder-member of the Society, Sir George Staunton, would later emphasise its educational function. It was, he said “the province of the Royal Asiatic Society . . . to bring together into one focus those who are able to impart this knowledge, and those who are desirous to receive it”. Clearly the RAS was established to meet a national need, as were other learned societies of the same era, such as the Royal Astronomical Society formed three years earlier, the Zoological Society of London formed three years later and the Royal Geographical Society which came into being in 1830.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellows of the Society, I am honoured to present the Annual Report for 2008.

The year was characterised by two major developments.

The first of these relates to income from ongoing activities. In 2008 we, in the Society, were largely successful in developing our various sources of income and moving closer towards financial equilibrium from ongoing activities.