This article deals with the Sino–Soviet conflict of 1925–26 over the Chinese Eastern Railway, with special attention given to its background and consequences. In 1924, the Chinese Eastern Railway became a joint venture between the Soviet Union and China, creating fresh friction between the joint Soviet and Chinese managers which culminated in general manager A.N. Ivanov's prohibition on transporting military cargoes and troops, and Ivanov's arrest by Manchurian warlord-general Zhang Zuolin. Some scholars and diplomatists have viewed Ivanov's prohibition and the simultaneous rebellion by Chinese general Guo Songling against Zhang as a Soviet attempt to replace Zhang with a more manageable warlord. But this article argues that although the prohibition—a typical instance of back-and-forth Soviet diplomacy—was a coincidence, it was primarily the result of Soviet ambassador Lev M. Karakhan's tough stance and his rash decision-making, undertaken without seeking advice from Moscow. Zhang's victory in the 1926 clash convinced the Chinese that they had the power to take repressive measures against the Soviet Union's citizens and institutions, which led to the Sino–Soviet conflict of 1929 and exacerbated Japanese alarm over the Soviet's increasing strength in the region. This was to be a factor in the takeover of Manchuria in 1931 by Japan's Guandong Army, which eventually led to global war. This article, therefore, deals with the origins of world-changing events and thus is interesting to Modern Asian Studies’ wider readership.

As a significant ‘moment’ in twentieth-century international diplomacy, the rise of post-colonial Afro-Asia at the Bandung Conference of 1955 is replete with symbolic meanings. This paper proposes a conceptual approach to understanding the symbolic dimension of international diplomacy, and does so by ruminating on the newly unearthed Indonesian material on the Bandung Conference. To this end, ‘diplomacy as theatre’ is introduced as an interpretive framework to re-cast the conference as a theatrical performance, in which actors performed on the stage to audiences. Focusing on the city of Bandung, this paper reconstructs some examples of the ‘performative’ dimensions of international diplomacy, and elaborates on the notion of ‘staging’ the city and the role played by the people of Bandung, including the significance of conference venues, as well as the impromptu creation of a ritual citation that contributed to an iconic ‘performative act’ during the conference. Sukarno, Nehru, Zhou Enlai and Nasser all understood the importance as performers in their role as new international statesmen, representing the esprit de corps of the newly emergent post-colonial world. In deconstructing the symbolic, it will become evident that the role played by Indonesia significantly influenced the underlying script of the diplomatic theatre which unfolded at Bandung.

Within a year of Indian independence, the Communist Party of India declared independence to be a false dawn and the whole Socialist bloc within the ruling Indian National Congress cut its ties with the national government. The speed with which the left disengaged from what had been a patriotic alliance under colonialism surprised many at the time and has perplexed historians ever since. Some have looked to the wider context of the Cold War to explain the onset of dissent within the Indian left. This paper points instead to the neglected domestic context, examining the lines of inclusion and exclusion that were drawn up in the process of the making of the new Indian constitution. Once in power, Congress leaders recalibrated their relationship with their former friends at the radical end of the political spectrum. Despite some of the well-known differences among leading Congress personalities, they spoke as one on industrial labour and the illegitimacy of strikes as a political weapon in the first year of national rule and declared advocates of class politics to be enemies of the Indian state. Congress thus attempted to sideline the Socialists and Communists and brand them as unacceptable in the new regime. This paper focuses on this first year of independence, emphasizing how rapidly the limits of Indian democracy were set in place.

In the past 20 years, Bangladeshi migration to Southern European countries has gained an increasing importance. Portugal is no exception, and today more than 4,500 Bangladeshis live in the country. One of the more interesting facets of this population, though, is their educational and economic profile. They come from what has been roughly summed up as the ‘new’ Bangladeshi ‘middle classes’. Their families are both rural and urban, have properties, and own businesses. Other members of their domestic units work in NGOs, and private and state owned companies. Simultaneously, they have considerable educational backgrounds, with college and university degrees, and most are fluent in English. But what was their motivation to come to Europe in the first place? And what does this tell us about the young Bangladeshi middle class? For these young Bangladeshi adults, it is through geographic mobility that one can earn enough economic capital to access the ‘modern’ and to progress in the life-course. By remaining in Bangladesh, their access to middle class status and adulthood is not guaranteed and thus migrating to Europe is seen as a possible avenue for achieving such dreams and expectations. The main argument in this paper is that migration—as a resource and a discoursive formation—is itself constitutive of this ‘middle class’.

This paper looks at the problems faced by the Chinese silver-backed currencies in Manchuria during the period of Northern Expedition (1925–1928), the Chinese attempt to overcome these problems, and the reasons for its failure. Manchuria was a peculiar territory during the interwar period (1919–1939), where several currencies, backed by silver or gold, competed against one another. The Chinese silver banknote, first introduced at the turn of the twentieth century, was challenged by gold-backed Japanese yen issued by the Bank of Korea, and by the Russian ruble. This competition was set in the context of the struggle for political control over the area between China (the Qing Dynasty and its successor, the Chinese Republic), Russia (and its successor the Soviet Union), and the Japanese Empire, as well as the war between the southern Nationalists (Kuomintang) and the militarists (warlords) who controlled the Chinese central government in Beijing and Manchuria. This paper suggests that the difficult financial situation determined the course followed by the warlords, and that their failure was the result of the complex regional context, and the failures in their military strategy rather than of their fiscal policy.

This paper examines two linked cases of abortive Imperial expansion. The British invasion of Afghanistan and the Russian winter expedition to Khiva both took place in 1839, and both ended in disaster. These events were linked, not merely by coincidence, but by mutual reactions to intelligence received in Orenburg, St Petersburg, Calcutta, London, and Tehran. British and Russian officials shared similar fears about each other's ambitions in Central Asia, similar patterns of prejudice, arrogance and ignorance, and a similar sense of entitlement as the self-conscious agents of two ‘Great Powers’. By examining the decision-making process which preceded these twin cases of expansion, and the British and Russian attitudes to Central Asian rulers and informants, the paper provides not only a deeper understanding of what provoked these particular disasters, but also of the wider process of European imperial expansion in the early nineteenth century.

This paper examines the public debate that happened among Delhi's Sikh community following the formation of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh. The detail of this debate was expressed in the early eighteenth century Sikh text, Sri Gur Sobha. The Sri Gur Sobha explains how Delhi's Sikhs became divided into pro-Khalsa and anti-Khalsa factions, and how this conflict resulted in a campaign of persecution against Delhi's Khalsa Sikhs. In this paper I endeavour to analyse exactly why this dispute occurred and how it reflects wider political and socio-economic processes in early modern India and Sikh society. In addition, the paper will explore how the elite Khatri community consequently became an object of hatred in eighteenth century Khalsa Sikh literature.

Fascist Italy's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia and the League of Nations’ handling of the crisis resonated strongly in Nationalist China, where it recalled the League's failure to thwart Japan's claims to Manchuria in 1931. As these two crises unfolded, the League became a nexus around which Nationalist Party debates about the position of colonized and semi-colonized countries within the extant world order crystallized. Party adherents reflected on China's and Ethiopia's positions as independent nation states with limited territorial integrity or juridical autonomy, and assessed this situation in light of their respective League memberships. While party liberals continued to view the League as a flawed but worthwhile experiment in global governance, newly-emerged fascist activists within the party denounced it as an instrument for curtailing the sovereignty of weak nations. From these conflicting views of the League, it can be discerned how Nationalist disunity was partially grounded in disagreements over the nature and ideal structure of the global order, and how Chinese fascists agitated to escape from modern structures of imperialist domination while reiterating the latter's racial and civilizational exclusions.

The knowledge of indigo culture that developed on indigo plantations in colonial Bengal was remarkably cosmopolitan in its borrowings. The protean knowledge that was assembled in the first plantations in the Caribbean in the mid-seventeenth century had roots in various peasant traditions on the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere in the world. French naturalists committed this knowledge to texts, making them legible and portable whilst the needs of European empires ensured the perfection of this knowledge on separate continents even as it picked up heterogeneous forms at numerous sites. The heterogeneity of the knowledge attached to the practice of indigo manufacture was reproduced on the Indian subcontinent when indigo was reinvented as a colonial commodity. European planters generously drew on the texts describing indigo-making that were easily available, as the practice of dye making continued to evolve in the colonial locality. Some surviving peasant traditions of indigo culture on the subcontinent also impinged on the evolving knowledge. Thus multiple logics rather than the single colonial logic lay beneath the development of colonial indigo plantations in Bengal. An understanding of the process requires attention to the global genealogies of this knowledge system.

Gandhian and Hindutva-inspired discourses around conversions to Christianity in India over-simplify the historical nexus of relations between missionaries, converts and the colonial state. Challenging the view that conversions were ever only about material gain, this paper draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with leprosy-affected people in South India to consider the role that conversion has also played in establishing alternative, often positively construed, identities for those who came to live in leprosy colonies from the mid twentieth century onwards. The paper draws out the distinctive values associated with a Christian identity in India, exploring local Christianities as sets of practices through which, for example, a positive sense of belonging might be established for those otherwise excluded, rather than being centred upon personal faith and theology per se. Biographical accounts are drawn upon to document and analyse some of the on-the-ground realities, and the different implications—depending on one's wider social positioning—of converting from Hinduism to Christianity in South India.

In 1989 India's political system underwent a process of profound change which affected the entire institutional setup of the country. Power was radically redistributed—it began to flow from the central government to the states, and from the Prime Minister's Office to the other institutions of the state. By analysing the severe institutional crisis which occurred during Mrs Gandhi's final term in office, this paper seeks to show how state institutions worked on the eve of such a redrawing of India's institutional setup. In addition, an effort is made to link the working of India's institutions to the configuration of the party system, thus stressing the importance of political dynamics in the functioning of parliamentary democracies.

From the end of the Great War to the onset of the Second World War, Great Britain and British India clashed over the Indian Army's role in imperial defence. Britain increasingly sought an imperial fighting force that it could deploy across the globe, but the government of India, limited by the growing independence movements, financial constraints, and—particularly—renewed tribal unrest on its North-West Frontier, refused to meet these demands. Attempts to reconcile Britain's and India's conflicting strategies made little headway until the late 1930s when compromise ultimately emerged with the establishment of the Expert Committee on the Defence of India 1938–39. While the Committee refuted India's traditional focus on the subcontinent's own security, importantly it recognized the necessity of British financial support for the Indian Army and the maintenance of a large local fighting force to prevent North-West Frontier unrest from disrupting imperial military planning at a time of global war.

This paper aims to provide a new perspective on the relationship between Nationalist Party (GMD) cadres and Chinese intellectuals. By studying the Central Politics School, a major GMD political training institute for professional party cadres, I hope to reassess the nature of the GMD one-party state and remind researchers of the difficult choices it faced between backing party-liners needed for the political struggle and accommodating depoliticized intellectuals needed for public administration. This paper will argue that GMD political impotence in competition with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was due less to an inadequate recruitment of capable experts than to the over-specialization of its well-trained cadres on technical tasks. In fact, the cadres from the Central Politics School generally resembled those considered to be ‘intellectuals’ at educational level and in ideology. This compels us to reconsider how to define ‘intellectuals’ and whether they were as uniformly alienated from the one-party state as most of the scholarly literature suggests.

In 1961 the seventh global cholera pandemic, El Tor cholera, broke out in Indonesia. Between 1962 and 1964, El Tor infected the southeast coastal areas of China. This pandemic occurred at a time of significant reorganization for both the rural medical and health systems and the people's communes following the failures of the Great Leap Forward. This paper explores how local governments led rural medical practitioners, health care workers, and villagers to participate in the campaign against the spread of El Tor cholera despite the readjustment and retrenchment of the people's communes as social, administrative, and political units. I argue that, during this period of flux, the local government strengthened its control over rural medical practitioners by institutionalizing their daily work practices and reducing their freedom of movement, whilst simultaneously providing incentives for health care workers to join the vaccination campaign. The people's communes and the household-registration system after 1961 put further restrictions on population mobility. This cellularization of village society greatly facilitated the vaccination, quarantine, and epidemic-reporting processes, and contributed to the formation of an epidemic-prevention system and eventually a response scheme for managing public health emergencies in rural China. This process reflected the complexity of the mutual interactions between the political and medical systems under socialism.

This review examines three major books on the history of Bombay. Historians of the city have tended to focus primarily on the period before 1930; this tendency has seriously limited our understanding of the dramatic transformations that have taken place in Bombay over the course of the twentieth century. Each of the studies reviewed here devotes considerable attention to developments since the 1920s. Collectively these works make a significant contribution to the appreciation of such matters as working-class politics, the changing character of workers’ neighbourhoods, land use, urban planning, and the ways the city has been imagined and experienced by its citizens. At the same time, these works all shift their analytic frameworks as they approach more contemporary periods and this restricts the authors' ability to assess fully the character of urban change. This paper calls upon historians to continue to apply the tools of social history, particularly its reliance on close microcosmic studies of particular places and groups over long periods of time, as they try to bridge the gap between the early twentieth century and the later twentieth century. At the same time, it suggests that historians need to consider Gyan Prakash's view of cities as ‘patched-up societies’ whose entirety cannot be understood through single, linear models of change.