Amar Singh at twenty began writing on a daily basis. His diary extends over 44 years, from 1898 to 1942. Its last entry is dated 1 November 1942. He died that night. These days, the 89 quarto-size bound volumes averaging 800 manuscript pages can be found at Kanota Fort, ten miles east of Jaipur off the Agra road, where Mohan Singh, his nephew and heir, keeps them in glass-fronted Victorian cabinets in one of the several rooms Amar Singh called his library. In the essay that follows1 I try to show why and how Amar Singh, a diarist writing reflexively about himself, constructed a ‘self as other’ethnography of turn-of-the-century princely and British India. Through the medium of his diary he becomes a participant, an observer, an informant, a narrator, and an author. I set the stage for Amar Singhʼns self-as-other ethnography by examining the separation and alienation in anthropological discourse of self and other. Common to ethnography since Malinowskiʼns invented participant-observer field work, the separation was questioned, then challenged by postcolonial Indian and by postmodern Western anthropologists. I then show how Amar Singh, a self-conscious and critical ‘native’ self, constitutes the other in constituting himself. It is a story about how a native came to represent, speak for, and know himself.

In July 1894, the Japanese navy sank the British steamship Kowshing, leased by China to transport troops to Korea. Diplomatic negotiations over compensation for the loss of the ship persisted for the next decade. In insisting upon China's responsibility, the British Foreign Office forsook the judgments of international legal experts and demonstrated that its main goals were to support British commercial interests and to encourage the position of Japan in East Asia. The surprising denoument of the Kowshing incident was China's payment of damages for the ship in 1903.

In the late nineteenth century British expatriate enterprise enjoyed extraordinary success. A few large firms effectively dominated the external trading sector and the modern industrial economy of Eastern India. Based in Calcutta, these firms have been credited with the introduction into India not only of modern industry, but also of modern corporate organization. However, having reached a peak of dominance in the early 1900s, British enterprise seemed to lose its dynamism and became increasingly associated with the old and declining sectors of the Indian industrial and trading economy.

Early modern Siam is usually portrayed as a predominantly rural, peasant society. This picture is assumed from the worldwide trend of rural-to-urban transition, rather than from study of Siam itself. The available sources have a striking lack of any evidence on rural society. This article explores the possibility that this absence may reflect a real-world difference, not just perception. Unlike in temperate zones, enough food could be produced without dedicating the efforts of a majority of the population to agriculture. Rice could be grown by part-time ‘commuter’ agriculture, and other foods found by everyday hunting and gathering. Cultural preference based on the instinct for survival may have reinforced an affinity for urban residence. The scant data on Siam's demography suggest the majority of the population lived in urban places. Descriptions of the capital portray a commercial and industrial centre, capable of employing many in non-agricultural pursuits. The state systems for raising resources were tailored to an urban rather than a rural society. While the scarcity of data on early Siam makes any ‘proof’ impossible, the thesis that Siam was a predominantly urban society is worth exploring. From the early eighteenth century on, Siam was subject to a process of ‘ruralization’ that created the familiar peasant society that historians have projected back into the past.

This paper discusses the responses of The Netherlands Indies colonial government to the rise in urban unemployment in Java brought about by the 1930s Depression. At least one in six of the large European/Eurasian population in the colony, and an even larger proportion of urban Indonesian workers, became unemployed as a result of the Depression. The colonial government and the European community were greatly concerned that the growth of unemployment among Europeans would lead to destitution for many, ultimately forcing them into the native kampung1. They were also concerned about what they saw as the moral decay of local-born European/Eurasian youth who were unemployed in unprecedented numbers. Furthermore, the European community feared that the growth in unemployment among western-educated Indonesians in the towns and cities in Java would create a fertile recruitment ground for nationalist political parties leading to urban unrest. Fear of the kampung for destitute Europeans, and fear of urban unrest from unemployed western-educated Indonesians, shaped the colonial government's responses to urban unemployment. The impact of the Depression on both Indonesian and European unemployed in the towns and cities in Java triggered lengthy debates on the role of the state in the provision of social security.

This article focuses on the development of early modern consumerism in a part of the Middle East that historians of consumer culture are yet to fully explore. Making use of a wide variety of unexplored and underexplored original sources, the article contends that early modern consumer culture in Iran was grounded deeply in the ever-widening patterns of exchange and use that had developed slowly over the course of the previous centuries. The discussion below takes the growing popular interest in a few key psychoactive substances as a useful barometer of the dynamics of mass consumption, and chronicles how the slow and ever-expanding use of alcohol, opium, and cannabis (or a cannabis-like product) in the medieval period led to the popularity of coffee, tobacco, older drugs, and still other commodities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The aim here is to use the history of drug culture as an entry point to scrutinize the emergence of early modern consumerism among the elites and the non-elites in both urban and rural areas of the Middle East. In doing so, this article reconstructs the cultural and social history of recreational drugs prior to and during the early modern period, and elucidates the socio-economic context that helped bring about a ‘psychoactive revolution’ in the Safavid state (1501–1736).

The mystical method of taḥqīq (‘realization’ or ‘verification’ of divine truth), as promoted by the Andalusian thinker Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), was central to the project of managing religious difference in the Mughal empire. The key architect of deploying taḥqīq for imperial purposes was emperor Akbar's senior minister, ideologue, and spiritual devotee, Abu al-Fazl. Specifically, I analyse how the concept of taḥqīq appears in Abu al-Fazl's 1587 preface to the Razmnāma (‘Book of War’), the first translation into Persian of the Sanskrit religious epic Mahābhārata. The Mughal Razmnāma was a monumental achievement, the foremost product of Akbar's push to translate non-Islamic religious works into Persian. In its elaborate preface, Abu al-Fazl clearly outlines that this translation was an exercise in taḥqīq, made possible by a sovereign who had achieved spiritual perfection, and he calls the Mughal empire a ‘Caliphate of Taḥqīq’. As such, this study bridges two scholarly conversations which have been previously distinct. One is the renewed focus in Islamic studies on Ibn ‘Arabi's ideas, specifically on taḥqīq in the late medieval and early modern periods across the Islamic world. The other is the recent interest in Mughal historiography on ṣulḥ-i kull (Total Peace). This article positions Ibn ‘Arabi's taḥqīq within an elite Persianate intellectual milieu that carried the concept to Mughal South Asia, and it demonstrates, through an analysis of the Razmnāma's preface, that taḥqīq was politicized by Abu al-Fazl and Akbar to develop the imperial policy of managing religious difference, which came to be known as ṣulḥ-i kull.

At the moment, India, with two Congress Parties, two Jana Sanghs, two Socialist Parties, two D.M.K.s, two Akali Dals and two Communist Parties (the third Communist Party—the C.P.M.L.—has been declared illegal after the present emergency), presents a picture with ‘splitism’ as the common denominator. The split in the Communist Party of India occurred at a time when the Communist movement all over the world was in disarray, showing polycentric trends on account of Sino-Soviet polemics. In addition to this, the Sino-Indian border war of 1962 also put serious strain on the party unity. Therefore, most of the studies that were undertaken on the C.P.I, split ascribed it either to the Sino-Soviet schism or to the Sino-Indian border war, or to both. However, an analysis of the authoritative pronouncements of two factions and an examination of their political resolutions indicate sharp differences on such issues as the character of the Congress Party, the nature of its government and the progressive and reactionary contents of its economic, home and foreign policy. The rightsts in the C.P.I, considered the national bourgeoisie Congress Party and its government as a progressive force and consequently advocated a policy of ‘Unity’ with it, in its fight against the parties of the Right reaction, such as the Jana Sangh, the Swatantra and the two variants of the Socialist Party.

This paper examines the history of ‘Hindi’1 as a modern Indian language in Bihar between 1850 and 1900. It looks beyond the North-Western Provinces, hitherto the focus of most studies of Hindi, and issues that were important here but not in Bihar like, for example, the ‘Hindi’-Urdu conflict. Instead, it looks at how the ways in which the history of ‘Hindi’ unfolded in Bihar and was distinct from that in other parts of North India. It demonstrates how the regional languages of Bihar were more crucial to the development of ‘Hindi’ in this region than standardized ‘Hindi’, at least until the early twentieth century. A prime focus in this paper is Sir George Abraham Grierson who postulated the theory of an independent ‘Bihari’ language and collected materials to support it. These materials reflect the continuing popularity of Bihari cultural traditions throughout the nineteenth century despite the avowed support for a standardized ‘Hindi’ by the colonial government and the intelligentsia of Bihar. They add a dimension to the historical development of ‘Hindi’ that was distinctive to Bihar. Focussing on this, this paper stresses the part played in the history of ‘Hindi’ by an agent whose voice was marginalized and later ignored or suppressed in canonical accounts of its development as a modern Indian language.

The Allied victory in 1945 ensured that a greater degree of freedom was guaranteed to individual Japanese by law. Since the end of the Occupation Japanese intellectuals, alert to any moves that they considered an infringement of the postwar constitution, have acted as watchdogs for the whole community. Ienaga Saburo, historian and political ideologist, is one such intellectual.

Confrontation with the British during the years 1839 to 1842 jolted the Chinese into a more realistic perception of the wider world. Before the Opium War, the Chinese took little notice of the world beyond the traditional Chinese realm; during the course of the war China's inadequate knowledge of overseas countries proved to be a strategic disadvantage. In the 1840s, knowledge of the wider world was important to China's defense against Western intrusion, and a handful of Chinese scholar-officials who shared this view engaged in the serious study of foreign nations. A small but influential group of Chinese set out to expand China's knowledge of the West; they did so in the belief that this was essential to China's survival. The comprehensive accounts put together by Wei Yüan (1794–1857) and Hsü Chi-yü (1795–1873) and shorter works by other authors suggest the importance of this new perspective in the decade after the Treaty of Nanking.

Centenary celebrations of the birth of any prominent man attract assessments of his character, career and influence. Nothing could be more understandable, particularly in the case of M. K. Gandhi, who was by common consent one of the greatest leaders Asia has produced in an era of colonial nationalisms and decolonization, who in his own life time was called a saint and a machiavellian politician, and who has become in independent India both a national myth and an embarrassment. Accounts of the importance of Gandhi in modern India tend to fall into two main categories. There are those who dismiss him, often regretfully, as an idealist whose Utopian plans for a democracy of village commonwealths and a non-violent society have collapsed in the face of economic and political necessity and the machinations of unscrupulous politicians. In the words of Jayaprakash Narayan, ‘If you consider the political ideologies attaining in India today, you would find that somehow one who is called the Father of the Nation is completely missing from all of them’. Such pessimism assesses Gandhi as if he had been solely a dispenser of blue-prints for a brave new world, and fails to see him as a dynamic leader whose greatest influence flowed from the type of movement he led and the techniques he used, rather than from the peculiarly personal ideals he held. On the other hand, there are those who hail him as the Father of India and try to draw direct causal connexions between his ideals and many of the major changes which have occurred in India since 1947, particularly the official abolition of Untouchability and the institution of panchayat raj. But this is the perspective of the biographer. It underrates the complexities of politics and society and their interaction, and turns a blind eye to the innumerable cross currents which make up the main stream of Indian social and political activity.

This essay is the sequal to ‘The Missionary Activity of the Japan Congregational Church in Korea’. In the first part, I showed that the Congregational Church's missionary activity which started in 1911 was actually supported by the Government-General of Korea, and also mentioned a number of conscientious Christians such as Uchimura Kanzō and Kashiwagi Gien who not only opposed the Church's missionary activity in Korea but even went so far as to criticize the Japanese imperialist rule of Korea itself.

In January 1950, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to Liaquat Ali Khan, seeking a joint declaration of a No War Pact by the governments of India and Pakistan. The two prime ministers undertook a lengthy correspondence on this subject, spanning a year that saw rising levels of resentment and hostility between the two countries. Yet, as the inter-dominion correspondence on the No War declaration during this period shows, neither government was actually predisposed to take a belligerent position and critically engaged with the possibility of signing a declaration that renounced the use of war. As I hope to show through my discussion of the ‘No War Pact’ correspondence, relations between India and Pakistan were not necessarily confined to hostile exchanges, and both governments also repeatedly engaged with each other to attempt to find spaces of agreement and compromise. Although much of the existing literature on India–Pakistan relations characterizes it as locked in acrimony and conflict, which arose from the bitterness of partition, a closer scrutiny reveals a more nuanced picture. Attempts at cooperation and dialogue between the two governments—and the rationale for undertaking them—complicate our understanding of a relationship apparently limited to instinctive antagonism, and help in creating a more rounded picture of the India–Pakistan dynamic.

Contrary to the long-standing idea of a scientific failure in early modern China as compared to Europe, some recent work has emphasized the existence of a tradition of ‘evidential’ research in the natural sciences, antiquarianism, and geography, especially during the Sung, Ming, and Qing periods. This article seeks to develop this new perspective by offering a comparative history of the genres of travel writing and ethnography in early modern Europe and Ming/early Qing China. We argue that there were qualitative as well as quantitative differences in the way that these genres functioned in each cultural area. Even when we find apparent similarities, we note different chronological rhythms and a different position of these genres of travel writing within a wider cultural field—what we might term their ‘cultural relevance’. The specific nature of Chinese state imperialism—or, conversely, the particular nature of European overseas colonialism—played a role in determining the type of ethnographic approach that came to predominate in each cultural area. These parallels and differences suggest a fresh perspective on the cultural origins of the ‘great divergence’.

This article provides a commentary on a painting entitled Dancing Girls, Madras, c. 1805, by the Irish artist Thomas Hickey shown in an exhibition of privately owned works from East Anglia at the Fitzwilliam Museum, 18 May-1 August 1999, entitled, ‘In the Public Eye’ (Catalogue No. 95) fig. 1.

In the winter of 1945, the multinational Chinese Maritime Customs Service opened an inquiry into the cooperation of hundreds of its own employees with Japanese occupation forces in China. This was, as far as the historical record allows us to say, the most thorough investigation undertaken in China into collaboration during World War Two. This paper represents the first historical analysis of the Customs ‘Staff Investigation Committee.’ It argues that the investigation represented a new direction for the Customs Service in China. The investigation's underpinning rationale was that Customs staff, Chinese and foreign, served the Kuomintang government before any other notion of Chinese or Service interests—a dramatic change in direction for an organisation that had been emblematic of treaty-port China. The investigation thus offers historians an insight into the understudied final years of the Customs Service, into the late Republican government's efforts to deal with the legacy of imperialism, and into the extent and rationale of collaboration in Nationalist China.