Brahmin identity and community—these are the essentials. Melody cannot be understood except by the notes and spaces that constitute it. So too with the group. To know it, we must understand individuals and their interactions. Failure to do this sacrifices accuracy for simplicity; realities get replaced with poor simulacra of themselves. Consider caste names; are they contested? A common assumption is that they are not.

During the period from late 1824 to 1826, a crisis in the Grand Canal system led to intense and sustained imperial involvement in chiangsu regional government. The collapse of the Yen-hsu retaining embankments on Hung-tse Lake in northern Chiangsu sparked the crisis and caused serious flooding in the Huai-yang region east of the Canal, which destroyed sections of the Canal at the critical Huai—Yellow River junction, and dissipated the lake's unsilted water reserves that were crucial to the crossing of government grain boats at the Huai—Yellow River junction on their annual northward journey to Pei-ching. As a result, the transport of strategic grain supplies destined for the capital was brought to a virtual standstill, precipitating a major government crisis that challenged the newly established Tao-kuang Emperor and indeed cast a shadow on the dynasty itself because of the intense

This article examines the historical role and legacy of the foreign establishment in China's temporary capital Chongqing during the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan and the Second World War. This extraordinary episode, lasting from 1938 to 1946, ushered in a new era for China's foreign diplomacy and laid the foundation for its rise to world-power status. Placing Chongqing at the very heart of this epochal chapter in modern Chinese history, this article describes the major events, trends, and actors that directly or indirectly were instrumental to China's wartime transformation from a partitioned, de facto colony to a first-rate global power with a permanent seat among the ‘Big Five’. Seventy years after the end of the Second World War, this article presents fresh perspectives on a near-forgotten episode of China's war experience. Moving beyond the traditional typecasting of ‘Chungking’ as a primitive backwater in China's remote hinterland, this article reappraises wartime Chongqing as a major international centre at the spearhead of global change and as an important cradle of the modern power that China is today.

Effective combat performance depends on the following: First, there must be a sound command structure capable of making rational decisions. Second, there must be efficient means of communication to transmit decisions through the chain of command and to give the commanders continuous control over their units. There must also be sufficient transportation to allow the units to execute their mission in a timely way. Third, there must be adequate quality and quantity of weapons and supplies commensurable with the given military mission. Fourth, there must be high-quality soldiers at all levels able to perform their duties competently. Finally, the entire military effort must be guided by clear and coherent strategic thinking.

Many years ago, the eminent historian Gordon A. Craig wrote: ‘One of the recurring themes in those books on the diplomatic pre-history of the Second World War which have come to us from the former enemy countries is the plight of the professional diplomat, whose training and knowledge convinced him that the policy of his government was leading straight to disaster but whose advice was seldom solicited and never followed.’ Craig went on to show that this pattern of ‘the neglect and abuse of the resources of expert diplomacy’ occurred in the democratic countries of the time. Professional Chinese diplomats (and intellectuals) fared little better than their counterparts, democratic or totalitarian, in the 1930s when their leader, Chiang Kai-shek, pursued a policy of appeasement toward Japan. Chiang's appeasement policy, or what some have referred to as a policy of accommodation or gradualism, has received much treatment from historians.

The weakest hold of the Indian National Congress in the colonial period was in the province of Punjab. The strength and domination of the National Unionist Party and the limited support and response afforded to the various nationalist movements highlight the weakness of the Congress especially in its southeast region, now known, after being carved out as a separate state on the 1st of November 1966, as Haryana.

It has frequently been asserted that the Chinese revolutionaries and the 1898 reformers, after making several unsuccessful attempts at cooperation, divided into enemy camps after the failure of their respective risings in 1900. This would suggest that by 1901, the lines between reform and revolution were clearly drawn. It has further been assumed that the decision not to cooperate was a result of the reformers' permanent rejection of the principle of seizing power in China through means of an armed uprising, and that all vestiges of sympathy for republicanism had by 1900 or soon afterwards been replaced by a decisive commitment to constitutional monarchy on the part of even the most radical reformers. Furthermore, although some evidence to the contrary has been pointed out, it has often been said that the reformers, both before and after 1900, looked down on Sun Yat-sen's well-known contacts with Christians, and his close association with secret societies. This implies that the reformers, themselves, were not interested in actively soliciting the support of Chinese Christians, and that apart from T'ang Ts'ai-ch'ang's 1900 involvement with the Ko-lao Hui, of which K'ang and Liang presumably either disapproved at the time, or came to oppose immediately after T'ang's failure, the reformers kept themselves free of secret society entanglements and operated on a higher plane. Finally, it has frequently been assumed that the secret societies themselves were practically devoid of any true, revolutionary spirit, and while at times anti-Manchu, were still ‘primitive rebels.’

Beginning in the late 1830s, a coalition of non-conformists, abolitionists, free traders, and disenchanted East India Company proprietors began to vocally challenge the exploitative policies of the colonial state in British India. Led by lecturer George Thompson, these reformers pursued a rhetorical strategy of associating groups who were converted into ‘mere tools’ by the Company abroad and the aristocracy at home. These monopolistic entities degraded Indian peasant cultivators, the British working classes, and princely sovereigns alike through forms of ‘virtual slavery’ that persisted in the post-Emancipation empire. In staging these protests, reformers ran up against an adversarial Board of Control and Court of Directors who obstructed their efforts to mobilize public opinion. Probing their agitation reveals the existence of a particularly combative strain of liberal imperialist thought that defied the political status quo.

This article provides an innovative anthropological analysis of youth activism in contemporary Thailand by examining its past and current manifestations through an unusual theoretical nexus—that between (cosmological) politics and kinship tropes. Against the backdrop of the Buddhist kingdom’s long-standing cult of the ‘Father-King’, the article focuses on the 2020 Thai democracy movement in relation to student demonstrations in the 1970s. It aims to explore the ambiguous permutations in the meanings of kinship that have marked Thai young people’s democratic engagement in a range of social fields—including friendship, siblinghood, and comradeship. Drawing upon archival material, oral histories of student revolts, and extended ethnography with today’s youth activists in a number of political sites—anti-government rallies, universities, and private homes—the article reveals how kin relationships, hierarchies, and affects are entangled in diverse political formations of youth dissent. Through a detailed reading of these complex entanglements, it shows how relationships of ‘equal friendship’ and ‘hierarchical siblinghood’ substantiate the symbolic grounds of Thai youth activism, as conflicting instantiations of ‘filial insubordination’ to monarchical parenthood. While youth activists advocate for an egalitarian, ‘friendship-based’ polity, explicitly questioning the democratic viability of Thailand’s Buddhist kin(g)ship, they are simultaneously caught up in (seemingly inescapable) hierarchical sibling relationships that validate the latter’s ontological legitimacy in practice, generating subtle tensions. It is argued that attention given to the varied cultural shapes of these tensions can make it possible to unearth the deep, kinship-based core of Thai social conflict that is concealed beneath public forms and straightforward political stances.

The role of skills has been eclipsed in the transition from an agrarian-craft economy rooted in hand-labour in small households to a modern political economy where productive work takes place outside the household, in offices and factories. Yet the ideological erasure of skilled work should not be confused with its actual disappearance. Precisely because such work was typically construed as private and unimportant, the embedded hierarchies and skills that shaped the handloom weaving industry in the North Indian province of United Provinces under colonial rule could escape systematic conversion to capitalist structures. Skill as human capital constituted the capitalist labour processes in the modern handloom industry, not as an abstract act, but as a historical experience. Handloom workers were reproduced, generationally, socially, and hierarchically, through the passing on of skilled labour within the unorganized informal sector of handloom weaving. Thus the stuff of community skills should move beyond its projection as either ‘endangered’ or ‘regressive’ to explore its access to capitalist structures and the exploitative networks that contain, transmit, and enable the production of skills.

When India gained independence in August 1947 the world watched with excitement as well as trepidation as to what would happen following this unique and major event. The political destiny of the world's largest democracy would lie in the hands of an infinitesimal portion of the population – the political executive. India's new institutions had new operators to act in new conditions. There were few precedents. Within this Westminster system, refounded in India with its emphasis on executive flexibility and ambiguity, the leading political figures often had conflicting opinions and interpretations as to their powers. The relationship between Nehru as Prime Minister and other leading political figures, such as Patel as deputy Prime Minister, Prasad as President, and their definitions of their roles, would forge a new India. This paper revisits those debates and ideas in the first decade following independence, which allow greater understanding of the workings and conventions of today's Indian executive.

The Great Qing Imperial Post Office was set up in 1896, soon after the First Sino-Japanese War. It provided the first national postal service for the general public in the whole of Chinese history, and was a symbol of China's increasing engagement with the rest of the globe. Much of the preparation for the launch was carried out by the high-ranking foreign staff of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, an influential institution established after the first Opium War.

With a mission to promote modernization and project Qing power, the Imperial Post Office was established with a centrally controlled set of unified methods and procedures, and its success was rooted in integration with the new railway network, a strategy at the heart of its ambitious plans for expansion. This article explores the history of this postal expansion through railways, the use of which allowed its creators to plan networks in an integrated way—from urban centres on the coasts and great rivers through to China's interior.

The British Empire's colonial possession of India for many decades of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century largely determined the Empire's economic and political pattern. Numerous books and articles on this subject have been written and still more speeches have been delivered, but the most clear-cut and all-round assessment of the significance for Britain of all-out exploitation of the Indian subcontinent and its population was given by Lord Curzon.

The memory of the foreign involvement in the Taiping war lasted long after the fall of the Taiping capital at Nanjing in 1864. The events were commemorated by various actors, Chinese and foreign, from the end of the war until the end of the treaty-port century in 1943 when the right to extraterritoriality was abrogated. This article explores the commemorations of the foreign role through three media: the issuing of medals to foreign fighters, the building of memorials to the foreign dead, and the writing of histories of the events. Across these media, different interest groups used the foreign interventions as a proxy for continuing debates about the role of foreigners in China and about China's place in the world. More broadly, the commemorations of the role of foreign fighters in the Taiping war is a case study in the transnational politics of memory. The memories of the war were contested or commemorated not just by states, but also by individuals and groups whose views often diverged from those of their government. By tracing how memories of the war were remembered and forgotten, we can trace the insecurities of different interest groups over time and their perceived power relative to each other.

This article explores the ambiguous role of coastal smuggling during the first decade and a half of Communist rule (1949–65). Fearing that the illicit flow of commodities siphoned critical revenues and undermined foreign policy, Communist China repurposed and expanded Nationalist China's war on smuggling while employing novel tactics of mobilization. Yet smuggling was not just a threat; it was also a lifeline that alleviated widespread material shortages and supplied the everyday needs of individuals and firms during the tumultuous transition to central planning. Businesses from ‘underground factories’ to state-owned enterprises relied on black markets to meet ambitious production targets and circumvent bottlenecks in official supply channels. Smuggling was thus more than just ‘corruption’ practised by officials—it was also a ‘creative accommodation’ employed by broad swaths of social actors coping with the enormous changes. This article argues that the nascent command economy and the vibrant underground economy existed symbiotically rather than antagonistically. Exploration into this complex relationship reveals many cross-border connections between Communist China and the capitalist world that both complemented and undermined domestic state consolidation.

This article examines the relationship between language shift and identity among diaspora Sindhis in India and Southeast Asia. It focuses on questions concerning how members of this community reproduce identity through language shift. The first part of the article describes identity and language shift among diaspora Sindhis in post-partition India. It argues that language shift facilitates the reproduction of core cultural modalities among diaspora Sindhis. The second part describes the history of diaspora Sindhis in Southeast Asia and analyses language shift. It contends that language shift enables diaspora Sindhis to suspend a connection between mother-tongue proficiency and identity. The article concludes by discussing how the diaspora Sindhi experience retunes the interval that conventionally connects language shift to cultural change.

This article considers Ambedkar's ideas about the implementation of democracy in India, in the context of the linguistic reorganization of provincial administrative boundaries. In doing so, it looks to emphasize the importance of territorial configurations to Dalit politics during this period and, in particular, the consequences of ‘provincialization’, which has received little attention within the existing literature. Rethinking space by redrawing administrative territory provided Ambedkar with one potential avenue through which to escape the strictures of Dalits’ minority status. In this vision, linguistic reorganization (and partition) were harbingers of greater democratization and potential palliatives to the threat of Hindu majority rule at the centre. In turn, however, Ambedkar simultaneously came to perceive the creation of these new administrative spaces as marking a new form of provincial majoritarianism, despite his best efforts to form alliances with those making such demands. In this sense, the article also seeks to address some of the shared processes behind linguistic reorganization and partition as two related forms of territorial redrawing. In the face of these demands, and the failures of both commensuration and coalition politics, Ambedkar turned to the idea of separate settlements for Dalits, whereby they might themselves come to constitute a majority. Whilst such a novel attempt at separation and resettlement was not ultimately realized, its emergence within Ambedkar's thought at this time points towards its significance in any history of caste and untouchability in twentieth-century South Asia.

‘[P]ower of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas…. The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.’ (John Maynard Keynes, 1964[1936], 383)

Landless labourers often cultivate relations of patronage as part of survival strategies even though such relations severely curtail the scope for their emancipationin the long run. In the past decennia, however, the possibilities to maintain relations of patronage or get into new ones have been dwindling fast (Breman 1974). New forms of dependency, such as political clientelism, have proven to be relevant to only a selected minority. To which strategies for survival does the mass of the landless take resort in this situation? Are these more conducive to their emancipation than patronage relations?

When the concept of Western nationalism travelled to India in the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century it was carried by British officialdom and an increasingly mobile and articulate Indian élite that was educated in English and in the tradition of British society. Not only did it inspire the all-India nationalist movement, but it encouraged regional politics as well, mainly in ethnic and religious terms. Most of today's ethnic and religious movements in South Asia could be traced back to their antecedents before independence. Looking closer at the three major regional movements of pre-independence India, the Pathans, the Sikhs and the Tamils, one finds a striking similarity in patterns of mobilization, conflict and concept irrespective of their association with the national movement (Red Shirt movement of the Pathans, Sikh movement of the Akalis) or independent existence in opposition to Congress (non-Brahmin/Tamil movement)