This article argues that taking territory into account is essential to understand the change in the scale and nature of caste dominance in contemporary India. The demonstration is based on an analysis of the socio-spatial trajectories of the Kammas—a dominant caste from Coastal Andhra, where they continue to own most of the land, even though they have migrated in large numbers towards the interior and southern regions of the Indian peninsula, both to newly irrigated areas and to the cities. The key positions they occupy in the politics and economy of Andhra Pradesh confer upon them a hegemonic character. However, this hegemony is threatened by the growing resistance of Dalits to caste and class oppression, while Kamma cultural domination, long contested in Telangana, is now challenged by the formation of the new state.

In July 1997, when Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty, this former British colony became a new kind of place: a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In the several years leading up to the 1997 transition, a sudden outpouring of Mainland Chinese scholarship stressed how Hong Kong had been an inalienable part of China since ancient times. Until then, however, Hong Kong had rarely figured in Mainland Chinese scholarship. Indeed, Hong Kong suffered from what Michael Yahuda has called a “peculiar neglect”: administered by the British but claimed by China, it was “a kind of bureaucratic no-man's land.” Only one university in all of China had a research institute dedicated primarily to studying Hong Kong. As part of this new “Hong Kong studies” (Xianggangxue), in 1997 China's national television studio produced two multi-episodic documentaries on Hong Kong: “One Hundred Years of Hong Kong” (Xianggang bainian) and “Hong Kong Vicissitudes” (Xianggang cangsang). The studio also produced two shorter documentaries, “One Hundred Points about Hong Kong” (Xianggang baiti) and “The Story of Hong Kong” (Xianggang de gushi). The “Fragrant Harbor” that PRC historians had generally dismissed as an embarrassing anachronism in a predominantly postcolonial world suddenly found its way into millions of Mainland Chinese homes.

Wildlands have attracted the attention of national governments, not only for the natural resources they contain, but also as land available for settlement or as the home of marginalized populations, a potential source of disorder. Some countries have attempted to maintain control over wildlands and their resources by excluding people from them. The historical record of government policies towards wildlands in Late Imperial China Shows that wildlands had more symbolic and strategic value to the authorities than economic value. In this case, policies adopted an alternative strategy of filling the ‘strategic space’ represented by wildlands, bringing them more closely into the cultural and economic orbit of the centre by settlement–the policy of inclusion.

In January of 1853, the Lt Governor of the North-Western Provinces, James Thomason, inaugurated a new building in Banaras, situated perhaps halfway between the European cantonment and the ghats which line the sacred river Ganga. Designed in a high Gothic style by Major Kittoe, this was to be the new home of the Benares College, which incorporated one of the largest, and most symbolically important, Sanskrit departments of any British educational institution in north India. The building itself, which is now incorporated into Sampurnanand Sanskrit University, somewhat resembles a Christian church, for it is a long structure with high vaulted ceilings and a large stained glass window in the wall opposite the main entrance doors. Inscribed into the walls are verses in English and Hindi; one counsels that ‘the lips of truth shall be established forever, a lying tongue is but for a moment.’ Under this roof, it was intended that the knowledges of East and West would, in some sense, be united, for the College's Superintendent during the mid-nineteenth century, James Ballantyne, was pursuing a pedagogy which was intended to demonstrate to the learned Hindu elite that the truths of European philosophy and science, while constituting a significant advancement upon Hindu learning, might also be reached by way of the latter's sound, yet undeveloped, premises. As such, Thomason spoke to the audience present that day of the Benares College as a beacon in the midst of a waning brahmanical system, from which enlightenment would spread forth: ‘one instrument in the mighty change.’

This paper traces a set of interlinked Asianist networks through the activities of Mahendra Pratap, an Indian revolutionary exile who spent the majority of his life at various key anti-imperialist sites in Asia. Pratap envisioned a unified Asia free from colonial powers, but should be regarded as an anti-imperialist first and a nationalist second—he was convinced that India's independence would materialize naturally as a by-product of a federated Asia. Through forging strategic alliances in places as diverse as Moscow, Kabul, and Tokyo, he sought to achieve his goal of a united ‘Pan-Asia’. In his view, Pan-Asia would be the first step towards a world federation, in which all the continents would become provinces in a new world order. His thought was an intricate patchwork of internationalist ideas circulating in the opening decades of the twentieth century, and his travels and political activities are viewed in this context. Pratap's exploration of the relationship between the local, the regional, and the global, from an Asian perspective, was one of many ways in which Asian elites and non-elites challenged the legitimacy of the political order in the interwar years.

This paper was first presented by Academician Natsagdorj at the XIV International Congress of Orientalists at New Delhi in 1964. As it was presented in Russian, one of the internationally recognized languages at the conference, I have translated it here from the Russian text rather than the underlying Mongol original. The translation has been approved by the author.

Inspired by E. P. Thompson's modelling of class as the contingent outcome of historical processes, this paper explores how autochthony and descent came to inform the boundaries of industrial workforces in the Indian steel towns of Jamshedpur and Rourkela. We suggest that if class is a historical object, then it relates to other forms of power and identity in ways that question the use of rigid analytic typologies. In the private sector Tata company town of Jamshedpur, an industrial working class was constructed during the late colonial period from labour migrants, whose employment became heritable within families. In the public sector Rourkela Steel Plant, founded in the mid-twentieth century, the politics of ethno regionalism coincided with state development policy to inform employment reservation for autochthons. Through a historical analysis of urbanization, migration and employment policy, we consider how elite workforces that bound themselves according to the principles of autochthony and descent were formed in the social laboratories of India's steel towns. We suggest that such processes demand a class concept that engages more subtly with the work of E. P. Thompson.

Korea under the Park regime (1961–1979) is known as a typical example of the East Asian developmental state. Many students of development, both economists and political scientists, have studied it, producing a substantial accumulation of knowledge. However, most writers have, in fact, focused on the policies and politics of the first half of the era. The second half was, politically, a notoriously authoritarian dictatorship, through which the regime strongly pushed its controversial heavy and chemical industrialization program. This program is frequently criticized for being based upon irrational industrial targeting that generated great inefficiency in the economy. The explanation for such irrational policy has been attributed to politics, or the authoritarian nature of the regime, which actually does not explain much.

There are two lemons in the larder of Modern China's history. Stalin's, dating from April 1927, is certainly the better known:

Chiang Kaishek is submitting to discipline. The Kuomintang is a bloc, a sort of revolutionary parliament, with the Right, the Left and the Communists. Why make a coup d'etat? Why drive away the Right when we have the majority and the Right listens to us?… Also, they have connections with the rich merchants and can raise money from them. So they have to be utilized to the end, squeezed out like a lemon, and then flung away.

The north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has the dubious distinction of being the heartland of communalism in India. The years between the two world wars, in particular, saw the most widespread and unprecedented outbreak of communal conflict in this state. One of the significant factors underlying this escalation of communal tensions was Hindu religious resurgence and a gradual, but radical, transformation in the nature of Hinduism. Hinduism became increasingly militant and martial in its public expression. Indeed, some of the roots of so-called ‘muscular Hinduism’ that characterizes Hindu nationalism of recent years can be traced back to the 1920s and '30s. The public face of Hinduism, from this period, appeared less and less to be that of devotion and religious worship and more and more that of aggressive chants and armed displays. The dominant image of Hinduism emerged to be one of very large crowds of people, wielding staffs, flags, swords and other arms, marching in processions during religious festivals. These festivals imparted an aura of triumphant and aggressive expansionism to Hinduism, which in turn, elicited counter Muslim reactions, and contributed to the aggravation of communal tension and violence. The spread of communalism in north India in this period was marked by another, equally significant, development. Communal conflicts came to be increasingly concentrated in urban centres and a section of the urban poor came to play a pivotal role in the upsurge of Hindu martial militancy.

This article analyses Sri Lanka's April 2010 parliamentary elections as they played out in the Muslim community on the east coast. The political work of elections, as the article shows, involves a lot more than the composition of government. Antagonism over group identities and boundaries are at centre stage. Elections force people to show their colours, which causes turbulence as they grapple with several, possibly contradictory, loyalties. The article argues that elections bring together different political storylines, rather than one master antagonism. It is the interaction between different narratives that paradoxically provides elections both with a sense of gravity and dignity, and with the lingering threat of rupture and disturbance.

British expansion in Sri Lanka was halted by the mountains in the centre of the island. The kings of Kandy guarded knowledge about topography and this led in part to the British army's defeat of 1803. Within the Kandyan kingdom, boundary books and verses provide evidence of a vibrant tradition of oral knowledge about the land, linked with piety and history. When the British took control of the interior in 1815 Governor Barnes urged the necessity of a road to Kandy in order to open up the hills. Surveys were vital to this road and surveying was posited as a rational and heroic science. However, the British continued to rely on local knowledge in planning public works; they surveyed ruined tanks in the north-central provinces. British expansion therefore witnessed both competition and cooperation between different orders of knowledge. There were multiple encounters between knowledge, empire and the land.

This paper evaluates in detail the policies adopted and the religious ideas held by the power elite of Pakistan during the years from 1947 to 1969. It has been argued that the religious worldview of the power elite was shaped by the discourse of Islamic modernism which allowed envisioning of a state in which (at least theoretically) democracy, rights of minorities, sovereignty of the parliament and flexibility of Islamic laws could be propagated as the guiding principles of the state. Also, by focusing on the life and ideas of Ghulam Ahmad Parvez and by disclosing the details of his close connivance with General Ayyub Khan during the 1960s, the paper will highlight the steps taken to institutionalize Islamic modernism in Pakistan.

There have been numerous occasions throughout history where the exploitation of a single commodity has transformed the fortunes of institutions, communities and even nations that have sought to benefit from its control. Middle Eastern oil, rubber from the former Belgian Congo or gold in South America provide a few striking case studies. For the eastern Indonesian island of Timor, the long-term struggle for the control and trade of high quality white sandalwood (Santalum album L) holds this pre-eminent position. The history of Timor, for perhaps the last millennium, has been intimately linked to the shifting fortunes of sandalwood production and trade. Over the centuries, the attraction of sandalwood and the fine scented oil produced from its heartwood, has encouraged an extraordinary array of diverse trading interests that jostled and warred for influence and a share of the lucrative profits from its exploitation and sale across Asia. For indigenous Timorese too, participation in sandalwood politics frequently lay at the heart of endemic struggles for power and wealth. The capacity to exert control over sandalwood production and trade from the interior of the island was a direct measure of political authority and standing among rival Timorese indigenous domains. To control the production and trade in sandalwood was to control the polity, at least to the extent that the situation remained uncontested. The converse also held true; namely that the holders of effective political power within Timorese domains were well placed to monopolise available sandalwood stocks. Thus to a significant degree the fortunes of Timorese society are mirrored in the history of sandalwood politics.

Anxiety about the intemperance and misbehaviour of the European soldiery in nineteenth century India prompted a raft of regulations which not only imposed a punitive regime on those living and working in and around the cantonments, but prompted an extension of military space. This paper specifically examines the methods and levels of control—both of which existed and were attempted in and around the cantonment. These ranged from regulations enacted to order the physical space of the cantonment, to calls for a more direct control over the bodies of the soldiers themselves as well as the numerous others who occupied the land. Crucially for this argument, moral and medical concerns were of critical importance in moulding this ordering. However, as this paper argues, social and class perceptions of the men—and the fear of provoking their wrath—dictated what officers and officials felt was legally possible. The various ways in which the military and government imposed order on the cantonment (or attempted to do so) had serious implications for the shaping of the empire itself and European understanding of its inhabitants.

The continuities between the study of the West through Dutch in Tokugawa Japan and the program of modernization in the Meiji period seem self evident. The influence of Holland through Deshima became the focus of the life work of Itazawa Takeo and others well before the war, and it received detailed discussion from Charles Boxer in 1936. Nevertheless issues of the importance and influence of Tokugawa rangaku continue to be debated, and that debate greatly enriches our feel for Japanese society then and now.

The sirdar (also termed sardar and jobber in Indian historiography)—foreman, recruiter, at once a labour leader and an important intermediary figure for the employers of labour both in India and in the sugar colonies—is reassessed in this article. Tithankar Roy's thoughtful 2007 article looked at how the sirdars’ multiple roles represent an incorporation of traditional authority in a modern setting, giving rise to certain contradictions. In 2010 Samita Sen, conversely, developed Rajnarayan Chandavarkar's argument about the use of labour intermediaries in colonial India to reveal how, in the case of the Assam tea plantations, the nexus between contractors and sirdars belies the ‘benign’ role often accorded to the intermediary within narratives from the tea industry. This article provides examples from the overseas labour destinations in the Indian Ocean region, particularly Mauritius, to further develop and nuance the debate, through an assessment of the complexity of sirdari roles in the colonial Indian labour diaspora.

This paper is about a special category of guiqiao or ‘returned overseas Chinese’, in southern Fujian. Arriving in China from Bali, Indonesia in 1961, the people were settled in an overseas Chinese farm. The paper illustrates how the re-migrants coped with life in China and how they see themselves today. The returned overseas Chinese reterritorize their Indonesian and Balinese cultural life in China, and they, including the local-born children, speak Balinese and eat Indonesian food. Their experiences provide much food for thought on acculturation, migration and identity as well as on the idea of ‘homeland’.

The poet known to the Hindi literary world as ‘Bachchan’ was born as ‘Harivansh Rai’ in 1907 to an Allahabad Kāyasth family. His given name derived from a prescribed recitation of the Harivamśa Purāna that had broken his parents' much-lamented childlessness; the pandit's honorarium for the recitation was 1001 rupees, paid off in monthly instalments over the first ten years of the boy's childhood. The roman spelling of the name varies, the Sanskritic ‘Harivansh’ standing in contrast to the form ‘Harbans’ with which the author's Ph.D. thesis is signed. Such a distinction is not without significance, for underlying the author's cosmopolitan exterior lies an intimately provincial Allahabadi character more fully caught by the ‘Harbans’ spelling than its somehow sanitized, all-India tatsama equivalent. It is a feature that one longs in vain to recapture in English translation many a time, for example to resonate with the semi-tatsama phrase pūrab-pacchim, for ‘East and West’, so much more redolent of the vernacular scene than its Sanskritic parent pūrva-paścim. But in English, East is ‘East’ and West is ‘West’.