The following two articles constitute the partial results of a project in comparative coordinated research in Southeast Asia. Prior to undertaking field research in Burma and Thailand in 1959–60, the authors developed a research design to ensure the collection of comparable data for description and analysis in the areas of social structure and economics. The original plan was modified in the field during an exchange of visits to the Burmese and Thai peasant communities eventually selected for study.

These papers throw a great deal of light upon the history of biography. There are a number of striking similarities between Chinese biography and that which developed in the Western world. These similarities, at least until recent times, do not seem to have resulted from any influence of one form upon the other, and thus they serve to illuminate the nature of the form itself. First of all, although the traditional Chinese view of the relation of the individual to society seems to have been quite different from that common in the West, the earliest motives in writing biography were essentially the same. Eulogy, for example—what Nivison calls the “paying of final respect to the dead”—seems to be a universal motive for writing biography. So also does the desire to use the life of a person to teach a lesson—the didactic motive which all three of these papers refer to and which dominated Western biography for centuries. The idea mentioned by Nivison of burying a brief biography along with departed worthies has its parallel in the tomb inscriptions of the Egyptian pharaohs.

Often the availability of new sources raises the need for reinvestigation of established historical events. This is true of the events that lead to the failure of the Far Eastern phase of railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman's proposed world-girdling transportation system, the most ambitious over-seas project ever envisioned by an American entrepreneur. In mid-October 1905, Harriman obtained tentative permission from the Japanese government for partial control of what he considered a vital link in the anticipated route—Japan's railroad in southern Manchuria. Two weeks later, to his bitter disappointment, the Tokyo authorities suspended the agreement, cancelling it in three months. Harriman's scheme in the Far East has been carefully studied by several writers, none of whom used the Japanese sources on the subject. To reinvestigate events in the light of these sources is logical; my attempt is to do so, and to suggest a possible reason for the failure of his plan in Japan that has not been considered in English-language literature.

On the night of May 2–3, 1935, 65,000 partially-armed peasants shattered the tranquility of the countryside surrounding Manila. Between sunset and sunrise dissident bands seized three communities and threatened ten others in Bulacan, Rizal, Laguna, and Cavite. Throughout the night confusion mounted. Hard-pressed Constabulary units from the provinces and Manila fought three engagements with Sakdalistas, picked up persistent reports of an impending attack on Manila, and heard recurrent and highly disturbing rumors that Japanese aircraft, equipped with arms and ammunition for the rebels, would fly over the trouble zone at dawn.

The Indian social reform movement in the nineteenth century, like the political reform movement, remained unorganized on an all-India basis until the 1880's. Local groups functioned throughout the country in many cases along similar lines, but without regular and specific knowledge of each other. Virtually the only effort for social reform well publicized throughout the country had been Vidyasagar's Widow Remarriage movement, which however was never nationally organized and which found local support only when a reformer felt inclined to press for it; the founder himself lost interest in the cause long before his death in 1891. Unlike the political reformers, the social reformers gave no evidence, so far as the present writer knows, of concern about the absence of a national organization to direct and stimulate their activities. If it had any strength, such an organization would, in fact, embarrass them into a unity of principles and methods for which, before 1880, they were quite unprepared.

The political development of India during the first half of the twentieth century was conditioned by constitutional reforms introduced by the British rulers, and by a vigorous agitation for national freedom. A constitution is a normative description of existing or intended relationships of political power; under the circumstances prevailing in India at that time, such a description was bound to be challenged again and again by an agitation for the revision of the status quo. In this way a peculiar relationship developed between constitutional reform and agitational advance. The constitutional reforms were designed to fulfill agitational demands on the one hand and to forestall more extreme demands on the other. Therefore they conformed to agitational patterns. In a similar way, the agitation was conditioned by the particular circumstances created by each constitutional reform; the constitution of the national movement itself, i.e., of the Indian National Congress, had to be adapted to the new situation whenever constitutional reforms were at stake. Finally when independence was achieved, an Indian Constituent Assembly adopted a constitution which closely resembled the previous constitutional structure introduced by British Acts of Parliament.