Showing papers in "Modern Asian Studies in 1997"

Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia

Abstract: The majority of Japanese even today believe that the politico-cultural universe of the Edo period was fundamentally determined by the closure of the country. They also think that the opening of Japan can be reduced to the development of exchanges with the West, following the birth of the Meiji regime. It is hard for them to imagine that Japan developed in relation with other Asian countries, since they are hardly used to appreciating Asian cultures.

Unsettled settlers : migrant workers and industrial capitalism in Calcutta

Abstract: In 188o, the area north of Calcutta was a 'jungle', an area with swamps and marshes and a few scattered villages. With the expansion of the jute industry, the area was rapidly transformed. Factories were set up, and large numbers of people came to the area in search of work. Until the late 1920s, the industry prospered and the population of the industrial area increased enormously, but since then employment growth has stagnated and the population has increased only moderately. At present, the industrial area still shows the features described in the reports at the beginning of this century: 'mill lines' crowded with migrant labourers, bad housing conditions, particularly in the private bastis, small houses with little ventilation and light, open drains, public bathing places. This paper is about labour migrants who came to the industrial area of Calcutta, in particular to the jute mill town Titagarh where I carried out field-work in 1991 and collected the life and work histories of eighty families. Even today, Titagarh is still predominantly inhabited by migrants, people from outside Bengal who have come to work in the jute and paper mills. Although gradually settling more permanently, many have remained migrants, and the regional languages are still spoken. 'Unsettled settlers' are migrants who came to the industrial areas, but have continued to maintain their rural connections, going back regularly during their working life and after retirement. I will argue that this pattern of circular migration was not enforced by employers' strategies or economic forces alone, but was determined by an interplay of economic, social and cultural forces. It is my contention that the historiography of labour in Bengal has ignored the perspectives of the people it describes, the motives of migrants, their hopes and aspirations. With my study I hope to add a perspective largely ignored in many studies in this field: people's decisions to migrate, and to return, and their choices on the labour market. People's actions cannot be understood without understand

The Colonial State and Constructions of Indian Identity: An Example on the Northeast Frontier in the 1880s

Abstract: 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.

Transcending East-West Dichotomies: State and Culture Formation in Six Ostensibly Disparate Areas

Abstract: Although the question has assumed at least two principal forms, most scholars who would compare the history of Europe and Asia have long been absorbed with a single query: Why was Asia different?

British Society in India under the East India Company

Abstract: The British in India have always fascinated their fellow countrymen. From the eighteenth century until the demise of the Raj innumerable publications described the way of life of white people in India for the delectation of a public at home. Post-colonial Britain evidently still retains a voracious appetite for anecdotes of the Raj and accounts of themores of what is often represented as a bizarre Anglo-Indian world. Beneath the welter of apparent triviality, historians are, however, finding issues of real significance.

Merciful father, impersonal state: Russian autocracy in comparative perspective

Abstract: Comparative analyses traditionally have done Russian history no favors. Invidious comparisons have situated Russia firmly in a context of backwardness relative to the West. The term ‘medieval’ customarily applies to Russia until the era of Peter the Great, that is, until the early eighteenth century, and even the least condemnatory scholars point out similarities between Muscovite Russia of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries and early medieval tribal formations of northern Europe. Along with ‘backwardness,’ comparative history has customarily found in Russia an example of extraordinarily oppressive autocratic despotism, while at the same time, and omewhat contradictorily, decrying the incompetence and rampant corruption of the central state apparatus. These and other unflattering comparative generalizations arose in the observations of Western travellers who recorded their impressions of Russia in the early modern period and have continued in the writings of scholars and journalists to this day.

The Urdu-English Controversy in Pakistan

Abstract: Pakistan is an ideologically inspired state and Urdu was a part of this ideology. During the development of Muslim separatism in British India it had become a symbol of Muslim identity and was the chief rival of Hindi, the symbol of Hindu identity (Brass, 1974: 119–81. Thus, after partition it was not surprising that the Muslim polemical and methodologically unreliable books. Some of them are, indeed, part of the pro-Urdu campaign by such official institutions as the National Language Authority, because of which they articulate only the official language policy (Kamran, 1992). Other books, especially by supporters of Urdu, invoke simplistic conspiracy theories for explaining the opposition to Urdu. One of them is that the elitist supporters of English have always conspired to protect it in their self-interest; the other that ethno-nationalists, supported by foreign governments, communists and anti-state agents, oppose Urdu (Abdullah, 1976; Barelvi 1987). While such assertions may be partly true, the defect of the publications is that no proof is offered in support of them.

The Urban Poor and Militant Hinduism in Early Twentieth-Century Uttar Pradesh

Abstract: 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.

The Politics of the Forest in Colonial Malaya

Abstract: The notion that tribal peoples are destructive of the forest environment is not a new one. The political struggles that fostered it are only just beginning to engage the attention of historians. This essay is a preliminary exploration of the experience of the indigenous minorities—the Orang Asli—of peninsular Malaysia during the period of colonial rule. It examines their relationship to the society outside the forest. The politics of the forest it addresses are not narrowly environmental. Indeed, what follows is based on the assumption that the relationship of the aborigines to their environment was transformed, not so much by the changing ecological conditions of the forest as the colonial economy expanded, but by the changing political circumstances of the frontier as the Orang Asli were drawn into a widening orbit of relations with external powers. ‘Orang Asli’ means literally ‘original people’. It is a polite term that took on a legal status from the 1950s. Before then, in common parlance, the aborigines were ‘Sakai‘—a derogatory term synonymous with ‘slave’. The term Orang Asli encompasses three basic types of communities: the Negritos, nomadic hunters and gatherers of the northern forests; the Senoi —whose two main subdivisions, the Temiar and the Semai, together make up the larger part of the Orang Asli population of the central highlands, following more settled forms of swidden agriculture; and the proto-Malays of the south, fishermen and cultivators with a more similar economy to neighbouring Malays.1 Their shared history has become an issue of great sensitivity in modern Malaysia, and Malaysian politicians have in recent years bitterly questioned the legitimacy of western criticism of the present circumstances of the Orang Asli. To explain why this is so, I want to examine the preoccupations of British administration during the period when it was trustee of the forests of the peninsula and directly responsible for the welfare of their inhabitants. Three themes dominate the discussion that follows.

‘Those Noble Exemplars of the True Military Tradition’; Constructions of the Indian Army in the Mid-Victorian Press

Abstract: This paper is directed first at identifying where and by whom military influences or topics manifested themselves in the periodical pressʼns coverage of India in the period up to the Indian Rebellion. How such manifestations changed over time, as well as the convergence of Anglo-Indian and British newspapers and magazines on Indian topics, will form an important component of this study. Stemming from these initial enquiries, I will further suggest that the model often employed to comprehend such representations —namely ‘orientalism’ —is, as it is often configured, too simplistic and reductionist to account for all the forces at work in the production of images of India. Instead, the mid-Victorian image of India was produced by a very fractured discourse. Racial stereotypes and affirmations of British superiority were certainly to the forefront, but these were frequently inflected by quite separate agendaʼns, such as the military's pursuit of political and professional status and influence, publishers’ search for profits, and the quest for suitable middle-class role models. Moreover, it was a discourse constrained by the dominant contemporary literary conventions and tropes, notably the historical romance in fiction and didacticism in history and biography. Yet there is one strand that runs through these various agendas and literary strategies and that is the one provided by the Indian army. India was by the third decade of the nineteenth-century as much a military as it was a commercial site. In 1850, the then reigning governor-general, Lord Dalhousie, was reminded by John Lawrence of this fact when the latter insisted that ‘public opinion is essentially military in India. Military views, feelings and interests are therefore paramount’.

‘National Essence’ vs ‘Science’: Chinese Native Physicians' Fight for Legitimacy, 1912–37

Abstract: The medical profession in modern China comprised two radically different schools—modern (Western) medicine and native medicine. The difference in philosophy, theory, and technique made a conflict between the two schools almost inevitable, and the conflict was intensified by the modernization process that was quickened during the Republican period. Western-trained or modern doctors advocated national salvation through science and denounced native medicine as superstitious, unscientific, and an impediment to the development of medical science in China. On the other hand, native medical practitioners insisted that what they learned and practiced was part of the national essence (guocui) and should be protected against the cultural invasion of imperialism (diguo zhuyi wenhua qinlue) including Western medicine. To be sure, both sides used such rhetoric to camouflage the business competition between them, but this rivalry and its implications did point to a profound cultural conflict between Chinese tradition and Western influence in China's modernization. It epitomized a burning issue of the day: whether or not China's modernization meant Westernization and whether a respectable position for China in the modern world was to be achieved through Westernization or preservation of what was regarded or claimed as national heritage.

Was Early Modern Japan Culturally Integrated

Abstract: In an earlier draft of his essay, Professor Lieberman quoted, with some bemusement, a remark by Edwin O. Reischauer that has flown from the text but stuck in memory. Japan during the Tokugawa era, observed E.O.R., achieved ‘a greater degree of cultural, intellectual, and ideological conformity … than any other country in the world … before the nineteenth century.’ The claim is remarkable—no less for its tone than for its unlikelihood (were we even remotely able to test it). Still, the claim is tantalizing, and versions of it, more hesitant, continue to resonate in the survey literature.

Xin Xi Guxiang: A Study of Regional Associations as a Bonding Mechanism in the Chinese Diaspora. The Hong Kong Experience

Abstract: 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.

Southeast Asia ‘Inside Out,’ 1300–1800: A Perspective from the Interior

Abstract: Despite the serious studies of the past century, the history of Mainland Southeast Asia is still poorly understood. This is not to say that we do not have numerous studies of particular countries and events in individual countries; but, despite the efforts of Victor Lieberman, Anthony Reid, and others, we still lack a comprehensive sense of the dynamics of the premodern history of long periods on a region-wide basis.

The Response to Rural Reform in an Overseas Chinese Area: Examples from Two Localities in the Western Pearl River Delta Region, South China1

Abstract: A major transformation has occurred in rural China since reform policies were initiated in 1979. It has been particularly dramatic in the highly commercialized Pearl River delta region of the southern province of Guangdong, provenance of most North Americans of Chinese origin. The delta region has become firmly incorporated into the global economy and its external linkages, especially to Hong Kong, have been central in the process of change. The responses to reform in the areas of the delta dominated by an Overseas Chinese presence have been distinctive. Varied family economic strategies have arisen to meet the opportunities implicit in the new policies for rural reform in a region in which remittances from abroad are significant. There has also been the revival of complex kinship groupings (lineages) energized by Overseas Chinese communities, which have assumed important roles in regional economic development.

The Birth of Europe as a Eurasian Phenomenon

Abstract: Although they still differ considerably in their willingness to acknowledge it, specialists in the history of north-western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries CE are increasingly treating it as that of the emergence of a new civilization in what had previously been a peripheral region of the Mediterranean-based civilization of the classical west, rather than as a continuation or revival of that civilization itself. In this light Europe, or Latin Christendom as it saw itself, offers a number of striking resemblances to the developments which Lieberman discusses. The most dynamic regions of the new Europe—north-western France, Flanders and lowland England, north-eastern Spain, northern Italy, southern Italy and Sicily—were all peripheral, though in various senses, both to the long-defunct classical civilization and its direct successors, the Byzantine and Abbasid Empires, and to the transitional and much more loosely based ninth-and tenth-century empires of the Franks and Saxons (Ottonians). To this one might add that by the end of the twelfth century the remaining rimlands of the Eurasian continent in a purely geographical sense—Scandinavia, including Iceland, and still more the southern coast of the Baltic and the areas dominated by the rivers which drained into it—were developing very rapidly indeed.

Early Dalit Literature and Culture in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Western India

Abstract: 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.

Education for National Efficiency: Constructive Nationalism in North India, 1909–1916

Abstract: 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.

Rewriting Cambodian History to ‘Adapt’ it to a New Political Context: The Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party's Historiography (1979–1991)

Abstract: In the midst of Pol Pot's struggle for the control of the Cambodian Communist Party in the 1970s, the subject of the Party's history came to assume a crucial importance. In 1976, the date of the foundation of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) became so important an issue that veteran Party members who remembered that the Party had been founded at a date previous to that claimed by Pol Pot, were tortured and killed for that reason. History was rewritten to suit the interests of Pol Pot's faction and the political circumstances of the time. A particularly sensitive subject was the role played by the Vietnamese in the formation of the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party, the predecessor of the CPK in the 1950s. After the relations between the Vietnamese and Cambodian Parties turned sour in the mid-1970s, the CPK deleted all allusions to the Vietnamese role from its official Party History.

State Building in Early-Modern Europe: the Case of France

Abstract: Between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, Western European political units shared with political units elsewhere in Eurasia both underlying structural factors—population trends, bullion influx, an increasingly integrated world economy—and challenges, above all the rising costs of military activity. Western Europe reacted in ways similar to other regions to the stresses of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries: greater territorial integration (most notably in France, England, and Spain), stepped-up efforts to establish cultural hegemony in given territorial units, higher levels of taxation, increased military spending and larger military forces, sharply more standardized institutions and administration.

Irrigation and the Rise of the State in Hunza: A Case for the Hydraulic Hypothesis'

Abstract: The former princely state of Hunza (now part of Pakistan's Northern Areas District) commands one of the largest and most complex irrigation systems in the whole of the western Karakoram mountain range. Built during the 18th century, Hunza's hydraulic works contributed significantly to the emergence of this small Central Asian state. Few writers, however, have explored the role of irrigation in Hunza's political evolution. Muller-Stellrecht (1981:55) has made some passing observations about the economic importance of irrigation in her paper on traditional Hunzakut society, Kreutzmann (1988) has provided some historical facts concerning the building of the canals and the present-day water distribution system in Hunza, while the French geographer Charles (1985) presents a significant body of data on Hunza's hydraulic works, but entirely from a physical perspective. In this paper, which is based on ethnohistorical data gathered during field research in Hunza, in 1990 and 1991, I examine the role of irrigation in the process of state formation in Hunza.

The KMT Party's Enterprises in Taiwan

Abstract: 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.

Gandhiji on the Central Vista: A Postcolonial Refiguring*

Abstract: Monuments, memorials and statues, so commonplace in squares and parks of late twentieth-century cities, have interesting histories and convey particular historiographies. In public arenas planned and maintained by state administrations, symbolic representations situated for the purpose of communicating messages to passersby, visitors, and residents often mark the state's attempt to control space, history and popular memory. By extension, changes in statuary or monumental architecture over time may reflect shifts in rulers and their representations of rule. As Hung (1991) demonstrates, the ‘war of monuments’ in Tiananmen Square reflected struggles for power and demands by those excluded from power for rights and access. The ‘statumania’ of post-revolutionary France personalized contests for power and representation (Agulhon 1985). On the other hand, monuments that remain fixed on landscapes can be variously interpreted over time, forming, as Young (1989:70) has noted, ‘a kind of screen across which the projected shadows of a world's preoccupations continue to flicker and dance.’

Literati Culture and Integration in Dai Viet, c. 1430–c. 1840

Abstract: The land of Dai Viet, whose political and cultural heartland lay in what is now northern Vietnam, followed patterns somewhat analogous to those posited in other Eurasian ‘rimland’ states. The fifteenth to nineteenth centuries saw administrative centralization, territorial expansion, population growth, economic elaboration, a greater emphasis on textuality and moral orthodoxy, and growing cultural standardization. In contrast to France and West European states, however, the Vietnamese achieved this integration less by refining patterns established during the prior ‘charter age’ (c. 900–1400 c.e.) than by adopting a radically new model, that of the contemporary Ming government in China.

Civilization on Loan: The Making of an Upstart Polity: Mataram and its Successors, 1600–1830

Abstract: This paper focuses on the south-central Javanese state of Mataram and its late seventeenth- and mid-eighteenth-century successors—Kartasura (1680–1746), and Surakarta (founded 1746) and Yogyakarta (founded 1749). It concentrates principally on the administrative, military and cultural trends of the period, looking at the ways in which Mataram and its heirs imported their cultural styles from the defeated east Javanese and pasisir (north-east coast) kingdoms, while developing a Spartan polity dominated by the exigencies of war and military expansion. The disastrous reign of Sultan Agung's successor, Sunan Amangkurat I (r. 1646–77), and the emergence of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as a major political force in Java led to the rapid eclipse of Mataram/Kartasura's military influence duringJava's ‘Eighty Years War’ (1675–1755) when the heritage of the great early Mataram rulers was squandered. This period of turmoil ended in the permanent division (paliyan) of south-central Java between the courts of Surakarta (Kasunanan, founded 1746, and Mangkunegaran, founded 1757) and Sultan Mangkubumi's new kingdom of Yogyakarta, which, in terms of its martial traditions, was the principal inheritor of the early Mataram polity. At the same time, the political authority of the courts continued to face challenges from regional power centres, not least the powerful administrators of Yogyakarta's eastern outlying provinces (mancanagara)based in Madiun and Maospati, and the networks of Islamic schools (pesantren) and tax-free religious villages (perdikan), which drew their strength both from court patronage and the piety of local communities.

The embourgeoisement of the Kerala farmer

Abstract: A new class is emerging in rural Kerala. Though it was christened a bourgeoisie by E. M. S. Namboodiripad, the chief minister of Kerala state during the two phases of land reform (1957-59 and 1967-69), it is not an extension of the modern industrial bourgeoisie into a rural society.' Rather it is a distinctly new social formation emerging from among the farmers. The opportunities for farmers to adopt bourgeois aspirations have been created by the particular form of Kerala's capitalism interacting with recent changes in localized agrarian society.2 The new class is capitalist. Their physical capital is in the form of land, both agricultural and residential. This capital has been used to raise money through both sale and loan to underwrite the costs of setting up off-farm income-earning by the parents and mature children. Their human capital is principally in the form of educated children whose training has diverted income away from expanding the farm enterprise. Fields have been converted from high labour demand crops to low labour crops, freeing up household members to attend school and follow off-farm income-earning opportunities. The farm, both as a home and as a production unit, has been turned into a base out of which family members operate rather than continuing as the focal point for the family's activities. These farm households are oriented away from the local community towards developments in the cities and elsewhere in India.

Self as Other: Amar Singh's Diary as Reflexive ‘Native’ Ethnography*

Abstract: 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.

British Annexation of Sind in 1843: An Economic Perspective

Abstract: 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.

The Writer's Truth: Representation of Identities in Indian Fiction

Abstract: 1947. Different generic models were used in an attempt to replace the 'inauthentic' historical accounts compiled by Europeans, featuring instead themes or motifs of writing that emphasized an assertion of a culture which was comparable, if not superior, to that of their European peers. Correspondingly, historiography and fiction-writing depicted national heroes, full of deeds of valour and bravery, engaged in wresting their 'nation' from the aggressor by an emphasis on indigenous themes. Models of writing structured around the earlier epics, the use of local dialects, the emphasis on ancient rituals and practices, all went into the making of a 'pure' tradition. This paper examines the construction of forms of historical consciousness in narratives or schools of narrative in some Indian fiction written in English. Treating historical fiction as the literary dimension of nationalist ideology, the study seeks to underscore what goes behind the rewriting of 'true' and 'authentic' histories. The analysis will consider, very generally, the genre of historical fiction depicting

Japan' in an English Mirror

Abstract: ‘The rise of Japan is surely one of the great epics of modern world history’. Yet it is not easy to obtain an overview of the development of Japanese civilization. Since the 1960s there has been an explosion of research which has overturned many of the older orthodoxies. The Cambridge History of Japan provides us with an unique chance to take stock. Here I will consider the four volumes covering the period from the twelfth to the later twentieth century.