Generally speaking, there are two dominant schools of thought with regard to the British annexation of Sind in the Indian sub-continent in 1843. One takes the view that individuals on the spot make history. It was a harsh, bitter and frustrated soldier by the name of General Sir Charles Napier who was determined to seek glory and wealth for himself by annexing Sind. In this respect, the eminent historian and former Special Commissioner for Sind (1943–46), H. T. Lambrick, has put his case extremely well. The other school interprets the annexation in strategic terms, as part of a search for a defence system which would safeguard British India from the dangers of attack from the northwest. In about 600 pages, the distinguished historian M. E. Yapp has achieved his goal with remarkable success. Furthermore, Yapp has done so without discounting the first school of thought. Indeed, the two are not mutually exclusive. In this paper I wish to suggest that there is a third dimension, an economic one; and that the three are not mutually exclusive either. Indeed, all three appear to have different weights at different levels of the policy-making process.

This is an essay about the establishment and expanding roles of the colonial state in India, and their probable correlation with developments of Indian identity. As I have argued elsewhere, identities are always multiple, contingent and continuously constructed, so that traditions, also continually reinvented, are shared and reiterated practices and beliefs which reflect the collective memories of previous constructions. There is no analytical contradiction therefore between long-term civilizational continuities and emerging forms of ‘constructed’ identity. This paper is about a particular form of identity that is currently associated with concepts of public space and rights, and with the nation-state, or at least political and territorial units. For convenience I refer to it as ‘modern Indian identity’ because it has been defined and been growing in significance in the modern era; but no inference should be drawn that I consider it to be the only form in India.

When the concept of Western nationalism travelled to India in the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century it was carried by British officialdom and an increasingly mobile and articulate Indian élite that was educated in English and in the tradition of British society. Not only did it inspire the all-India nationalist movement, but it encouraged regional politics as well, mainly in ethnic and religious terms. Most of today's ethnic and religious movements in South Asia could be traced back to their antecedents before independence. Looking closer at the three major regional movements of pre-independence India, the Pathans, the Sikhs and the Tamils, one finds a striking similarity in patterns of mobilization, conflict and concept irrespective of their association with the national movement (Red Shirt movement of the Pathans, Sikh movement of the Akalis) or independent existence in opposition to Congress (non-Brahmin/Tamil movement)

The formation of the Dalit Panthers and the flourishing of Dalit literature in the 1970s saw the advent of a new connotation for the Marathi word ‘Dalit’. Chosen by the Mahar community leaders themselves, the title ‘Dalit’ was used by them to replace the titles of untouchable, Backward or Depressed Classes and Harijans, which had been coined by those outside the Dalit communities to describe the Mahar and Chambhar jatis. ‘Dalit’ identified those whose culture had been deliberately ‘broken’, ‘crushed to pieces’ or ‘ground down’ by the varna Hindu culture above them. As such, it contained an explicit repudiation of all the Hindu cultural norms of untouchability, varna structure and karma doctrine which varna Hindu society had imposed. The adoption of this new title was an affirmation of the Dalit community's struggle for cultural independence and separate identity. Yet this struggle for an independent cultural identity was not merely a cultural struggle of the 1970s, but one which stretched back almost a century to what, retrospectively, must be seen as the inception of Dalit literature and culture in the activities of the Anarya Dosh Pariharak Mandal and the first Dalit writings of Gopal Baba Valangkar in 1888. This article aims to recover this much-neglected early history of the Dalit communities of western India at the turn of the twentieth century. In particular, it examines how these early Dalit communities came to articulate an emergent Dalit cultural identity through the construction of a syncretic form of bhakti Hindu culture.

Nationalist activity in India between the years 1909 and 1916 has generally received an inadequate treatment from historians. It seems, quite simply, that this period is not sensational enough and historical accounts tend to skip from the excitement of the Swadeshi movement, the ‘Moderate’—‘Extremist’ split, the so-called ‘Extremist’ movement in general, and the Morley—Minto reforms of 1909 only to stop at the emergence of the Home Rule leagues or, even more likely, the serious political emergence of Gandhi after 1917. For example, despite writing of ‘continuities’ from 1885 to 1947, even Sumit Sarkar sees the nationalist movement expanding ‘in a succession of waves and troughs, the obvious high-points being 1905–1908, 1919–1922, 1928–1934, 1942 and 1945–46.’ Effectively, he is saying that the years from 1908 to 1919 were characterized by a ‘trough’ or lull.

The Chinese migrant's strong sense of attachment to the guxiang (native place) is well recognized, and literature on overseas Chinese generally proceeds on this assumption. There is, however, little discussion on the mechanisms which have bonded the migrant to the native place, either by helping him express his longing and concern for it, or by reminding him of his obligations as a native son. Family ties, ownership of land and business connections as well as pure sentimental attachment, so poignant in centuries of Chinese poetry, naturally make migrants feel concerned for its well-being and eager for its news. Overseas Chinese in most cases continue to communicate with the native place on an individual basis, for there are levels of activities where the scale and complexity are such that only organizational efforts would suffice. At the same time, an easily identifiable institution enables those at home to contact and rally more effectively its migrant fellow-regionals, when the need for spiritual or material help arises.

This article explores the origins and development of the Kuomintang (KMT, the Chinese Nationalist Party) party's enterprises in Taiwan. Because the KMT party's enterprises are categorized in the private sector in all the statistical data, we should be very careful when we discuss the contributions of private enterprise to economic growth in Taiwan.

This article aims to inspect the scale of the party's enterprises, the reasons why KMT runs its own enterprises, and what influence they exert on the economic growth and political democratization of Taiwan. Obviously, these questions are significant for further economic and political reforms in Mainland China.

Compared to missionaries like Timothy Richard (1845–1919) and Hudson Taylor (1832–1905), Dr Alexander Maclean Mackay is a name almost unknown in the annals of Christian evangelism in China. The personnel roster of the London Missionary Society, to which he initially belonged, did boast of such luminaries as Robert Morrison (1782–1834), a pioneering Protestant preacher in early nineteenth-century China and James Legge (1815–1897), a missionary turned Sinologist and Oxford don. But Mackay, as one of the Mission's numerous field workers, is not likely to be found in such distinguished company. In fact, his sojourn in China, in comparison, was relatively brief. It lasted not quite six years, from January 1891 to September 1896, when he died of cholera and was buried in China. In many ways, he was merely another missionary, one of the many men and women, Catholic and Protestant, who had toiled in China, then faded into oblivion, and have since eluded the eye of the historical researcher.