Showing papers in "Modern Asian Studies in 2009"
TL;DR: The authors discusses the perpetration of Orientalism in contemporary South Asian literature in English: no longer an Orientalism propagated by Occidentals, but ironically enough, by Orientals, albeit by diasporic Orientals.
Abstract: This article discusses the perpetration of Orientalism in the arena of contemporary South Asian literature in English: no longer an Orientalism propagated by Occidentals, but ironically enough, by Orientals, albeit by diasporic Orientals. This process, which is here termed as Re-Orientalism, dominates and, to a significant extent, distorts the representation of the Orient, seizing voice and platform, and once again consigning the Oriental within the Orient to a position of ‘The Other’. The article begins by analysing and establishing the dominant positionality of diasporic South Asian women writers relative to their non-diasporic counterparts in the genre, particularly within the last half decade. It then identifies three problems with the techniques employed by some diasporic authors which have exacerbated the detrimental effects of Re-Orientalism; the pre-occupation with producing writing which is recognisably within the South Asian genre, the problem of generalisation and totalisation, and the insidious nature of ‘truth claims’.
62 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a discussion explores the idea that hundi is more accurately described as an indigenous banking system endowed with a complex range of functions, but whose central purpose is trade.
Abstract: In contemporary times, Hundi has collected countless labels; the international press has spurned innumerable villainous descriptions, the bulk of which have helped to perpetuate a dense fog of notoriety. The critical problem lies in definition. As there is an incomplete understanding of hundi's form and remit, there is also a rather limited understanding of why the system persists, set against the backdrop of modern banking. In many ways the problem of definition presented legal and financial authorities of the early and late twentieth century with core issues which remain unresolved and problematic for authorities in the twenty-first century. By drawing on archival and other historical material pertaining to the system's usage amongst Indian merchants, this paper attempts to tackle much of the confusion and many misconceptions surrounding hundi. The discussion explores the idea that hundi is more accurately described as an indigenous banking system endowed with a complex range of functions, but whose central purpose is trade.
44 citations
TL;DR: The authors considers the creation of a "coolie" work-force for the Assam tea industry and the local dimensions of tea plantation enterprise and finds that the prominence of "imported" coolie workers has obscured the significance of various local groups as well as the tea industry's importance in the local imagination.
Abstract: This paper considers the creation of a ‘coolie’ work-force for the Assam tea industry and the local dimensions of tea plantation enterprise. While the industry has flourished through its use of migrant labour and export markets for tea, it has retained important connections with the locality. The Assam tea industry was a predominantly colonial enterprise manned by white British planters. It allowed participation, albeit in subordinate and dependent roles, by local peasants and gentry, though mainly based on the labour of migrant ‘coolies’ recruited on indentured contracts. The prominence of ‘imported’ coolie workers has obscured the significance of various local groups as well as the tea industry's importance in the local ‘imagination’. Despite the gradual development of nationalist antagonism towards the white ‘Planters' Raj’, tea enterprise retained a hallowed place for the Assamese middle classes, as tea workers continued as a racialized labouring class.
39 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors place the Mughal-Sufi relationship within a larger sixteenth century context, focusing on the strategies the early Mughals adopted to build their power in India.
Abstract: This essay places Mughal–Sufi relationship within a larger sixteenth century context, focusing on the strategies the early Mughals adopted to build their power in India. It reviews the positions of the two important sufi groups, the Indian Chishtis and the Central Asian Naqshbandis, juxtaposing the political benefits or the loss that the Mughals saw in their associations with them. While the Naqshbandi worldview and the legacy of the legendary Ubaid Allah Ahrar clashed with their vision of power, in the Chishti ideology, on the other hand, they found a strong support for themselves. The Chishtis then had an edge at the time of Akbar. But the Naqshbandis under Khwaja Baqi Billah (d. 1603) continued in their endeavour to reinstate their place in Mughal India. The paper thus provides a backdrop and makes a plea for re-evaluating the debate on the ideology and politics of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624).
35 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the Indias' political leadership's romantic engagement with the idea of developmental planning in post-colonial India between 1947 and 1960 and examines attempts, which were made to institutionalise the planning idea.
Abstract: This essay examines the Indias' political leadership's romantic engagement with the idea of developmental planning in post-colonial India between 1947 and 1960. It looks at the experience of planning in India between 1947 and 1960. It explores some of the early ideas about developmental planning and the setting up of the Planning Commission in March 1950. Although there was widespread acceptance of the need for planning there was little consensus on the kind of planning that was required, or how it should be carried out. This essay examines attempts, which were made to institutionalise the planning idea. It looks at the heady ascent of the Planning Commission as the pre-eminent economic decision-making body in Independent India and the debates and contentions that took place in the early years of its formation. It argues that the 1956 foreign exchange crisis marked a climactic moment for planning. Thereafter, as far as economic decision-making was concerned, the locus of power shifted from the Planning Commission to other governmental agencies and the developmental planning process itself came to be over-shadowed by pragmatic economic management pursued by official agencies. Thus, in overall terms, developmental planning failed to establish strong institutional foundations in independent India and, in all this, the experience of the 1950s was formative.
34 citations
TL;DR: The Modern Girl was central to a discourse of cosmopolitanism in colonial Malaysia in the interwar period as discussed by the authors, with a shared, multi-ethnic mode of belonging rooted in the globalist environment of the late colonial port city of Penang.
Abstract: In the 1920s and 1930s, the Modern Girl emerged in advertisements, cinema and public discourse all over the globe. While she was implicated in nationalist projects of social reform in post-war Britain and Japan, in multicultural, port-city environments such as Penang, the Modern Girl was central to a discourse of ‘cosmopolitanism’. Lively debates about the Modern Girl in Penang's English press wrestled with the tensions between cultural authenticity, diversity and modernity. Male and female readers of the Straits Echo , from different ethnic backgrounds, engaged with each other in a shared public space about issues ranging from education and politics to women's liberality and fashion. The Modern Girl thus represents a new way of looking at the history of colonial Malaysia in the interwar period: one not focused on ethnic nationalism and communalism, but on a shared, multi-ethnic mode of belonging rooted in the globalist environment of the late colonial port-city.
32 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the cases of dalit and dominant/upper caste members' elopement and marriage represent a high point in the ongoing conflictual relationship between them, as these are viewed as forms of dalinit assertion.
Abstract: In the post-colonial shifting of material, legal and ideological bases, some of the given patterns of relationships between individuals and caste groups have changed and weakened because of the introduction of new, parallel and alternative structures of relationships. This change has left the dominant caste groups feeling palpably insecure in relation to the dalits. While delineating this relationship, this article seeks to argue that the cases of dalit and dominant/upper caste members' elopement and marriage represent a high point in the ongoing conflictual relationship between them, as these are viewed as forms of dalit assertion. Although many caste groups and communities are involved in inter-caste marriages and associations that defy customary norms and caste practices and have no social acceptance, it is in relation to a dalit and non-dalit association or marriage that certain aspects, which impinge on wider issues, come to the surface more pronouncedly. For the dominant caste groups such associations remain the most viable and potent issues to garner a wider collective support, cutting across class/caste/community and age divides. These cases are selectively made a public spectacle by the dominant caste groups to settle wider issues at stake verging on contemporary political and economic interests.
31 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a little-studied event in South Asian history, the Battle for Raichur (1520), with a view to evaluating that battle's relevance both to the idea of the frontier and to that of the military revolution is explored.
Abstract: INTRODUCTION Frontiers may be understood as spatial counterparts to revolutions: the one denotes a perceived break in continuous territory, the other a perceived rupture in time. In recent decades, historians have written of a worldwide military, or ‘gunpowder’ revolution that took place in the centuries following the fourteenth. Such a notion has in turn prompted several lines of enquiry. Some have tried to locate the moment in time when this revolution occurred in particular regions. Others have sought to identify and compare the various effects that the advent, spread and use of gunpowder had in different socio-political environments across the planet. The present essay explores a little-studied event in South Asian history, the Battle for Raichur (1520), with a view to evaluating that battle's relevance both to the idea of the frontier and to that of the military revolution. The city of Raichur occupies the heart of an exceptionally fertile tract in India's Deccan plateau—the so-called ‘Raichur Doab’—which lies between the Tungabhadra and Krishna rivers (see Figure 1, Map). For several centuries before 1520, the Bahmani sultans to the north of the Doab and the kings of Vijayanagara to the south repeatedly fought over access to the Doab's economic resources. Control of the fortified city of Raichur figured in all of these struggles. The battle in question was also a prelude to the more famous Battle of Talikota (1565), a conflict that permanently reconfigured the geopolitics of the Deccan plateau.
30 citations
TL;DR: Richards' The Unending Frontier as discussed by the authors is a magisterial survey of the formation of a globally connected society in the early modern age, and it is a brilliant synthesis of environmental and political history, which will shape all future work on this period.
Abstract: INTRODUCTION John Richards' The Unending Frontier is a magisterial survey of the formation of a globally connected society in the early modern age. For Richards, the main forces creating a global society were ‘a critical conjuncture between two developments: the expansive dynamism of European early modern capitalist societies, and the shared evolutionary progress in human organization that appears to have reached a critical threshold across Eurasia, if not the entire world’. These two forces—markets and states—drove the increasingly intensive exploitation of natural resources around the globe, uniting continents, empires and traders in a tighter network of trade and administration. It is a brilliant synthesis of environmental and political history, which will shape all future work on this period. For Richards, frontiers are sites of penetration by outsiders seeking control over borders and productive natural resources. A relentless process of warfare, consolidation, investment and exploitation of nature leads over the long run to heavy resource usage, and often exhaustion, driving the conquerors to push farther into the hinterlands in search of further gains. Native peoples of the frontier borderlands, for the most part, are merely victims of the much more powerful organized states and trading companies around them. Although the nineteenth century is not the subject of this book, and the North American continent appears only in discussion of the fur trade, the ghost of Frederick J. Turner still hovers over Richards' work. It is now not a uniquely American story, but a global one, and it begins three centuries earlier. Still, the story of penetration of empty or underutilized lands and their increasingly intensive exploitation resonates with Turner’s original account.
29 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the extent to which during the 1950s campaigns to reform Muslim personal law (which received a boost thanks to the outcry against 1955 polygamous marriage of the then Prime Minister, Muhammad Ali Bogra) were linked with wider lobbying by female activists to secure for women their rights as Pakistani citizens alongside men.
Abstract: Debates on Islam, citizenship and women's rights have been closely interconnected in Pakistan, from the time of the state's creation in 1947 through to the present day. This article explores the extent to which during the 1950s campaigns to reform Muslim personal law (which received a boost thanks to the outcry against 1955 polygamous marriage of the then Prime Minister, Muhammad Ali Bogra) were linked with wider lobbying by female activists to secure for women their rights as Pakistani citizens alongside men. Through a close examination of the discussions that were conducted on the pages of English-language newspapers, such as Dawn and the Pakistan Times, it highlights in particular what female contributors thought about issues that were affecting the lives of women in Pakistan during its early, and often challenging, nation-building years.
27 citations
TL;DR: The Kyamkhanis were a small Indian Muslim community who flourished in northern Rajasthan from c. 1450 to 1730 as discussed by the authors, and their history was written in a local literary language, Braj Bhasa, rather than in the more cosmopolitan Persian that was widely used by Muslim elites.
Abstract: The Kyamkhanis were a small Indian Muslim community who flourished in northern Rajasthan from c. 1450 to 1730. This article examines memories of the Kyamkhani past recorded in a seventeenth-century history of the ruling lineage, as a case study of both the process of Islamic expansionism in South Asia and the self-identity of rural Muslim gentry. While celebrating the ancestor who had converted to Islam generations earlier, the Kyamkhanis also represented themselves as local warriors of the Rajput class, an affiliation that is considered exclusively Hindu in India today. Their history was written in a local literary language, Braj Bhasa, rather than in the more cosmopolitan Persian that was widely used by Muslim elites at the time. The Kyamkhanis of the early modern era thus negotiated multiple social and cultural spheres, simultaneously participating in the local/vernacular as well as global/cosmopolitan arenas.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the Persian literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries invested as it was in the projection of the court of the Delhi Sultans as the ‘sanctuary of Islam’, where the Muslim community was safe from the marauding infidel Mongols.
Abstract: The consolidation of the Delhi Sultanate coincided with the Mongol devastation of Transoxiana, Iran and Afghanistan This paper studies the Persian literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries invested as it was in the projection of the court of the Delhi Sultans as the ‘sanctuary of Islam’, where the Muslim community was safe from the marauding infidel Mongols The binaries on which the qualities of the accursed Mongols and the monolithic Muslim community were framed ignored the fact that a large number of Sultanate elites and monarchs were of Turkish/Mongol ethnicity or had a history of prior service in their armed contingents While drawing attention to the narrative strategies deployed by Sultanate chroniclers to obscure the humble frontier origins of its lords and masters, my paper also elaborates on steppe traditions and rituals prevalent in early-fourteenth-century Delhi All of these underlined the heterogeneity of Muslim Sultanate society and politics in the capital, a complexity that the Persian litterateurs were loath to acknowledge in their records
TL;DR: The Nizam-ul-Mulk (d. 1748) was a Mughal nobleman who founded the post-Mughal successor state of Hyderabad as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Nizam-ul-Mulk (d. 1748) was a Mughal nobleman who founded the post-Mughal successor state of Hyderabad. Engaging the Nizam's long and varied career, this essay re-evaluates the Nizam's decision to abandon the Mughal imperial system. In so doing, it highlights the ways in which the Nizam's story contrasts with that of founders of other post-Mughal successor states. This essay also seeks to explore Hyderabad's early history, the unique challenges faced by the new state, and the inventive ways in which it sought to overcome them. Ultimately, this essay aims to broaden and complicate our understanding of India's political history in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the minzu identification in Yunnan (1950s-1980s) and argue that classifications varied case by case, without any consistent or standard criteria.
Abstract: This essay examines the minzu identification in Yunnan (1950s–1980s). First of all, it will introduce the terms of ethnicity and minzu as used by the Chinese. It will then examine the minzu identification in Yunnan with a general overview, followed by a critique on the complexity of classification, which looks especially at the many previously ignored roles including local governments, ethnic groups, ethnic elites, ethnic masses and contingency in the process. The essay argues that classifications varied case by case, without any consistent or standard criteria. Furthermore, it also discusses the application of Soviet influence on the project, particularly the definition of four-common raised by Stalin. While arguing that there was little Soviet influence on the result of classification, the essay intends to historicize the project to illustrate the historical continuity and development in terms of ethnic and frontier managements between imperial and modern China.
TL;DR: This article argued that Bhagat Singh and his comrades became national heroes not after their murder of a police inspector in Lahore or after throwing bombs in the Legislative Assembly in New Delhi but during their practice of hunger strikes and non-violent civil disobedience within the walls of Lahore's prisons in 1929-30.
Abstract: Among anti-colonial nationalists, Bhagat Singh and M.K. Gandhi are seen to exemplify absolutely contrasting strategies of resistance. Bhagat Singh is regarded as a violent revolutionary whereas Gandhi is the embodiment of non-violence. This paper argues that Bhagat Singh and his comrades became national heroes not after their murder of a police inspector in Lahore or after throwing bombs in the Legislative Assembly in New Delhi but during their practice of hunger strikes and non-violent civil disobedience within the walls of Lahore's prisons in 1929–30. In fact there was plenty in common in the strategies of resistance employed by both Gandhi and Bhagat Singh. By labelling these revolutionaries ‘murderers’ and ‘terrorists’, the British sought to dismiss their non-violent demands for rights as ‘political prisoners’. The same labels were adopted by Gandhi and his followers. However, the quality of anti-colonial nationalism represented by Bhagat Singh was central to the resolution of many of the divisions that racked pre-partition Punjab.
TL;DR: In this article, the Aiyangar pattamars who specialised as couriers in pre-colonized southern India were analyzed. But the focus of the analysis was focused on modern times and, for earlier periods, has been confined almost entirely to Europe, the western European empires and those sectors of the world's political economy in which Europeans had a stake.
Abstract: Mundane knowledge of how information flows is essential for a proper understanding of large organisations and complex activities. It gives us valuable insights into the prevailing constraints of the era and the creative responses that enabled the demands of its cosmopolitan residents to be met. Though the sinews of communication have been a major topic of historical inquiry in recent decades, the focus has been decidedly uneven; much of the attention has been directed towards modern times and, for earlier periods, has been confined almost entirely to Europe, the western European empires and those sectors of the world's political economy in which Europeans had a stake. The rest of the world, in comparison, has been neglected, which may be seen clearly in the case of early modern India and the Middle East. This paper seeks to rectify the imbalance by offering a typology for making sense of how packages of low weight and high value were collected, transported and delivered over long distances within the region in the eighteenth century. While drawing on a wide range of sources, at the core of this analysis lies the correspondence of the headmen of a group—the Aiyangar pattamars—who specialised as couriers in pre-colonial southern India. Among the principal claims set forth are that there existed in this period two basic modes of private communication: in one, personal trust was paramount, in the other, the mode was effectively monopolised by recognised communities providing the necessary informational services within their cultural domain. These claims, if sustained, have major implications for current views on early modern India and the Middle East.
TL;DR: The role of the opium trade in integrating Sindh into the British imperial trading system, arguing that it was more effective in boosting Empire than in nurturing indigenous capitalism in India as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: This article looks at the political economy of opium smuggling in India in the first decades of the nineteenth century, in particular in relation to Sindh, one of the last independent polities in the subcontinent. After a description of the smuggling of 'Malwa' opium (grown in the princely states of Central India) into China-in defiance of the monopoly of the East India Company over 'Bengal' or 'Patna' opium, grown in Bihar-it considers the role of Indian merchants and capitalists in its emergence and development, and critiques the argument put forward in a recent book by Amar Farooqi that it represented both a form of 'subversion' and that it contributed decisively to capital accumulation in Western India. This article concludes by analysing the role of the opium trade in integrating Sindh into the British imperial trading system, arguing that it was more effective in boosting Empire than in nurturing indigenous capitalism in India.
TL;DR: The role of the University of Malaya in engineering a united Malayan nation was hampered by lingering colonial attitudes and ultimately frustrated by differences between Singapore and the Federation as mentioned in this paper, which culminated in the university's partition in January 1962.
Abstract: Like so many features of the British Empire, policy for colonial higher education was transformed during the Second World War. In 1945 the Asquith Commission established principles for its development, and in 1948 the Carr–Saunders report recommended the immediate establishment of a university in Malaya to prepare for self-government. This institution grew at a rate that surpassed expectations, but the aspirations of its founders were challenged by lack of resources, the mixed reactions of the Malayan people and the politics of decolonisation. The role of the University of Malaya in engineering a united Malayan nation was hampered by lingering colonial attitudes and ultimately frustrated by differences between Singapore and the Federation. These differences culminated in the university's partition in January 1962. In the end it was the politics of nation-building which moulded the university rather than the other way round.
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of Chinese revenue farmers in defining the borders of the various colonial territories and the states of Southeast Asia during the nineteenth century was examined, and it was shown that Chinese revenue farms were of considerable significance in giving substance to the formalistic pronouncements of remote diplomats and statesmen.
Abstract: This article examines the role of Chinese revenue farmers in defining the borders of the various colonial territories and the states of Southeast Asia during the nineteenth century. Their significance has largely been neglected in writing on the formation of state boundaries. Nicholas Tarling notes, 'Between the late eighteenth and the early twentieth almost all southeast Asia was divided into colonies or protectorates held by the Western powers, and new boundaries were drawn with the object of avoiding conflict among them.'(Tarling, 2001:44). This paper argues that Chinese revenue farmers were of considerable significance in giving substance to the formalistic pronouncements of remote diplomats and statesmen.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the views of those who draw upon the resources of local maktabs and madrasas to provide their children with religious and, more specifically, Islamic instruction.
Abstract: When is a modern religious education also a modern democratic education? Drawing on research conducted in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (2003–2005), this question is addressed with reference to the views of those who draw upon the resources of local maktabs and madrasas to provide their children with religious and, more specifically, Islamic instruction. Within this group—a group that, I argue, constitutes a clear majority in Pakistan—concerns about religious and sectarian diversity are given special attention. Most parents, stressing the importance of religious unity, conformity, and consensus, believe it's better to ignore these differences ‘for the sake of the nation.’ For those with an interest in combining the terms of Islam, Islamic education, and democracy, however, I argue that these differences cannot be ignored; instead, they must be acknowledged and engaged.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine a fundamental premise of Anglo-Hindrian law on succession between 1860 and 1940, that kinship was emblematic of secular modes of living, to analyse its implications for the assertion of masculinity within ascetic orders in northern India.
Abstract: This paper examines a fundamental premise of Anglo-Hindu law on succession between 1860 and 1940, that kinship was emblematic of secular modes of living, to analyse its implications for the assertion of masculinity within ascetic orders in northern India. Legal discourses engaged with rights to succession within ascetic orders, by functioning on the assumption that the renunciatory life of ascetics was antithetical to sexuality and domesticity. This institutionalization of law, that defined asceticism and fixed ascetic masculinities within a legal frame, occurred with the consent of ascetic orders concerned with the ownership and distribution of property, even though sexuality and gender played a central role in shaping relationships within sacred spaces. Myriad ties embracing the language of kinship shaped ascetic orders. Bonds of sentiment and sexual attachment over-lapped with, sustained, and produced the bonds tying spiritual preceptors to their disciples. Relationships within ascetic families, consisting of men, their female companions, children and relatives, along with their attendant obligations were validated through rights of ownership and inheritance to property. Taking advantage of Anglo-Hindu law by the early twentieth century, ascetic orders sought to ‘purify’ their genealogies through the medium of property disputes fought in colonial courts. By manipulating the legal meanings ascribed to asceticism, masculinity and renunciation, these orders effaced unwanted members from their orders with varying degrees of success, especially women and children.
Abstract: Relying on three inter-Asian colonial debates from French Indochina, this paper attempts to widen our analytical approach to the study of colonialism in Indochina beyond the ‘colonizer’–‘colonized’ opposition by factoring in the relationships among the diverse Asian colonized living within the colonial state without downplaying the important role Western colonialism played in transforming those very relationships or being affected by them. The French Indochinese case is helpful, for it suggests that inter-Asian connections did anything vanish, but rather intensified because of the colonial experience. Numerous Lao, Khmer, Vietnamese and Chinese subject elites continued to engage each other and the French in fascinating and sometimes heated debates about the political, legal, cultural and economic place each group held in French Indochina – or did not want to hold. This directly affected how they came to interact with one another in new ways, essential to understanding the complexity of the colonial encounter at the time and can provide new insights into post-colonial and international history. Lastly, this wider approach to studying the colonial encounter allows us to view the French side of the colonial equation from a new vantage point.
TL;DR: In this paper, a comparison of resource access in 1997 and 2002 shows that over this period, Mengsong villagers lost access to forests, agricultural lands, pastures and mineral resources.
Abstract: Abstract First authorised in 1987, local village elections in China have been much studied by China scholars to assess the emergence of democracy in the People's Republic. Elected village committees were to manage ‘local affairs’, including village lands, as a step towards local self-governance. In place of democracy, this article highlights access and control over natural resources in relation to a local village election first held in Mengsong village, Yunnan, in 2000. A comparison of resource access in 1997 and 2002 shows that over this period, Mengsong villagers lost access to forests, agricultural lands, pastures and mineral resources—‘local affairs’ that an elected committee might have managed. National and local events from 1998 to 2002 signalled a recalibration of people of high and low ‘quality’ (suzhi) in China, with Mengsong shifting cultivators emerging as ‘low quality’ people who threatened China's environment and economic development. These changes in status signified a dramatic shift in who was qualified to manage resources, run local affairs and contribute to China as it entered the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001. The discourse of ‘quality’ resulted in Akha farmers being blamed, and blaming themselves, for their own poverty and resource loss, deflecting attention from the political economic processes that caused their dispossession. Far from the emergence of democracy, the local village election in Mengsong entailed increased state control over people and resources, as China geared up for environmental protection and engagement with the global economy.
TL;DR: The debate about mui-tsai (meizai, female bondservants) in late nineteenth-century Hong Kong within changing conceptions of the colony's political, geographical and cultural position is discussed in this paper.
Abstract: This article frames the debate about mui-tsai (meizai, female bondservants) in late nineteenth-century Hong Kong within changing conceptions of the colony's political, geographical and cultural position. Whereas some colonial officials saw the mui-tsai system as a national shame that challenged Britain's commitment to ending slavery, others argued that it was an archaic custom that would eventually dissolve as China modernized. The debate also showed the rise of a class of Chinese elites who had accumulated enough power to defend the mui-tsai system as a time-honoured Chinese custom, even while acknowledging that in Hong Kong they lived beyond the boundaries of Chinese sovereignty. Challenging notions of the reach of the colonial state and showing how colonial policies often had unintended consequences, this debate also reveals the analytical and explanatory weakness of concepts such as ‘colonial discourse’ or ‘the colonial mind’.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore how Sri Lanka might fit into the theory of Eurasian history, and some problems with applying the notion of early modernity to Sri Lanka are disclosed.
Abstract: This paper explores how Sri Lanka might fit into Victor Lieberman's theory of Eurasian history. Lieberman's work to date has focused on the ‘protected rimlands’ which he sees as sharing the same historical path from a milieu of warring little kingdoms to increasingly large, solid states. But what happens in a land, such as Sri Lanka, which can be considered ‘protected’ before 1500, and ‘unprotected’ thereafter? Political integration and boundaries are first discussed, followed by ethnic and historical awareness before 1500. The third section sketches the chronological development of Buddhism before 1500, while the fourth considers the impact of the European interruption, and the fifth briefly looks at the results for 1600–1800. Along the way, some problems with applying the notion of ‘early modernity’ to Sri Lanka are disclosed.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined a scheme drawn up in the 1920s which saw the introduction of a much more liberal regime for convicts in Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, where convicts were granted access to land and encouraged to bring their families from the mainland.
Abstract: The paper attempts to understand the challenges and opportunities which the penal settlement at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands presented to colonial governments in twentieth-century India. To this end, the paper examines a scheme drawn up in the 1920s which saw the introduction of a much more liberal regime for convicts in Port Blair. Under these plans, convicts were granted access to land and encouraged to bring their families from the mainland. This research reveals that the policies which determined the history of the settlement in this period were defined by two tensions. First, there was a constant battle between the central authorities and provincial governments over the shape and purposes of the settlement. Second, there was a contradiction between the penal objectives of the colony and the larger strategies which aimed to develop the islands for the greater British empire.
TL;DR: This article examined shifts within Islamic life, ritual and practice in the town of Amroha in the United Provinces of India, during the eventful period of approximately 1860-1930.
Abstract: This paper discusses shifts within Islamic life, ritual and practice in the town of Amroha in the United Provinces of India, during the eventful period of approximately 1860–1930. Based primarily upon Urdu writings produced about or by Muslim residents of the town during this period, it examines the ways in which wider religious reformist movements such as those associated with Aligarh, Deoband and Bareilly were received and experienced within nearby smaller, supposedly marginal urban settlements. The paper argues that broader currents of religious reform were not unquestioningly accepted in Amroha, but were often engaged in a constant process of dialogue and accommodation with local particularities. The first section introduces Amroha and its sharif Muslim population, focusing upon how the town's Islamic identity was defined and described. The second section examines a plethora of public religious rites and institutions emerging during this period, including madrasas and imambaras, discussing how these were used by eminent local families to reinforce distinctly local hierarchies and cultural particularities. A third section considers public debates in Amroha concerning the Aligarh movement, arguing that these debates enhanced local rivalries, especially those between Shia and Sunni Muslims. A final section interrogates the growing culture of religious disputation in the town, suggesting that such debate facilitated the negotiation of religious change in a transitory social environment.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine how the memory of the Marathi-speaking peoples first neglected and then adopted the story of the Vijayanagara empire that once dominated southern India, even though the two overlapped both spatially and chronologically.
Abstract: The past two decades have seen a dramatic renewal of interest in the subject of historical memory, its reproduction and transmission. But most studies have focused on the selection and construction of extant memories. This essay looks at missing memory as well. It seeks to broaden our understanding of memory by investigating the way in which historical memory significant to one historical tradition was slighted by another, even though the two overlapped both spatially and chronologically. It does this by an examination of how the memory of the Marathi-speaking peoples first neglected and then adopted the story of the Vijayanagara empire that once dominated southern India.
TL;DR: In the early Common Era (CE), Indian cotton goods are known to have reached the Indianized states in Xinjiang and may have been produced there, in Khotan and the neighbouring states, by the time that indigenous silk production was known to exist in India in the fourth and fifth centuries CE as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: India and China were the most important producers of textiles in the world prior to the industrial revolution However, whereas the Western historiography usually discusses Indian cotton and Chinese silk in connection with European imports, or with their sales in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East, cotton and silk were also exchanged between India and China Indeed, Indian cotton and Chinese silk were probably the principal manufactured goods exchanged between these civilizations Although Indian records are fragmentary, especially when compared with the voluminous Chinese sources, Indian cotton goods are known to have reached the Indianized states in Xinjiang in the early Common Era (CE), and may have been produced there, in Khotan and the neighbouring states, by the time that indigenous silk production was known to exist in India in the fourth and fifth centuries CE Yet, while in later centuries large amounts of cotton cloth were produced in China while indigenous centres of silk production developed in India, exchanges of the finest types of cotton and silk cloth continued, usually driven by cultural and social factors in each civilization
TL;DR: In this paper, Meiji Japan's policies towards the Ryukyus and the Taiwanese aboriginal territories in the early 1870s were analyzed and it was argued that the early Meiji period's policies were motivated by Japanese concerns over national security and prestige in a Western-dominated international environment but had no intention to secure Japan's independence and to aggrandise its national prestige by encroaching on China's territorial sovereignty.
Abstract: This article focuses on Meiji Japan's policies towards the Ryukyus and the Taiwanese aboriginal territories in the early 1870s. The Meiji Government incorporated the Ryukyus by abolishing the kingdom in 1872 and sent expeditionary forces to the Taiwanese aboriginal territories on the pretext of the massacre of the shipwrecked Ryukyuans by the aboriginal tribes in 1874. Many Japanese and non-Japanese historians have argued that Japan started aggression on China by annexing its tributary state and invading its territories. In this article, I contend that the Ryukyu–Taiwan policies in the early Meiji period grew out of Japanese concerns over national security and prestige in a Western-dominated international environment but had no intention to secure Japan's independence and to aggrandise its national prestige by encroaching on China's territorial sovereignty.