This paper revisits the intersection of the 19th and 20th century to bring into focus hitherto unused archival and diplomatic correspondence from the attempts to define and delimit a boundary between India and China. The theoretical point of departure for the paper is to discern how perception (knowledge, beliefs, and norms) relating to the boundary evolved over time to alter the meaning and construction of the material reality i.e. the boundary itself. In doing so it establishes how what each country deems today, as its ‘traditional customary boundary’ was not an unambiguous fixed one, but was mutable across different time periods. The political importance of the selection of these boundary lines did not lie in their being ‘true’, or in the claim being ‘real’ but in their being shared by a process of political selection, and then being reified in the respective countries.

Since their first publication in 1922, two Islamic inscriptions formed an essential basis of the early history of Islam in Champa. Recently, however, they have been shown to have originated, not from Southeast Asia, but from Tunisia. It is clear that either there was an error regarding their provenance, or it was deliberately falsified. The implications of this are discussed, and the remaining evidence of early Islamic presence in Champa is reassessed. It is suggested that there is now no good evidence of any Islamic presence there until after the sixteenth century. In relation to this issue, the maritime links between China and the Islamic world are examined, as also are other examples of possible falsification of history.

In the first part of the 13th century ce, Khubilai Khan's armies began their invasion of the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279). When they reached the Song capital Lin'anfu at Hangzhou City, Zhejiang province, at the beginning of 1276, the Song officials decided to flee south with the two Song child heirs to the throne. This article examines ancient records of the flight of the Song court with particular emphasis on the history of its famous Prime Minister Chen Yizhong. Archaeological evidence is further evaluated as it relates to Chen's exploits within China and in Southeast Asia.

This paper studies how Brajbhāṣā Vaishnava narratives describe the role the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb played in the displacement of Krishna images from the Braj heartland in the 1660s and 1670s. While contemporary discourse frequently suggests that the emperor was a villain persecuting beloved Hindu deities, who in turn are victims forcibly moved from their original homeland, the early-modern vernacular narratives we consider here perceive these peregrinations in rather more complex ways. This article foregrounds the case of the best-known dispersed Krishna image: Śrī Nāthajī, a deity of the Vallabha-Sampradāya, now residing in the Mewar area of Rajasthan. It analyses mostly the discourse of the Śrī Nāthajī kī Prākaṭya-Vārtā, or ‘The story of the Appearance of Śrī Nāthajī’, attributed to Vallabha's descendant, Harirāy. The sectarian logic presents Aurangzeb as an ardent, if uncouth, devotee and Śrī Nāthajī as an autonomous agent, not a victim, but rather a victor.

This article focuses on the relationship between property developers and architects in colonial Hong Kong in the 1920s to 1930s, identifying a successful collaboration within the architectural development company, the Crédit Foncier d'Extrême-Orient (CFEO). Benefiting from new plots of land made available on the Kowloon Peninsula and the opportunity to plan new neighbourhoods for both Western and Chinese clientele, the directors of CFEO negotiated with their in-house architects regarding land speculation and residential typology preferences while targeting the middle-class market. The company's demolished buildings left a crucial gap in the urban history of Hong Kong and China's treaty ports only recently uncovered through archival research by the author. Drawing upon in-depth primary data research and interviews with the architects’ descendants, this article probes into early twentieth-century residential development in Hong Kong, revealing how certain Western entrepreneurs and architects experimented with unique adaptations of architectural typologies suited to the local environment in the Chinese urban landscape.

If we were asked to recall a coastal city of early modern China, most of us would choose Shanghai, Canton, Xiamen, or Macau. These port cities became famous for facilitating trans-regional sea trade that linked the Qing Empire to the rest of the world. Attentive observers know that all of these cities are located on the Southeast China coast, by which we mean the coastal areas south of Shanghai. Taking Shanghai as the dividing line between the northeastern and southeastern coastlines, the port cities of the south are far more likely to be familiar to us than are those of the north. I consider this phenomenon (i.e. the focus on the coast of early modern China) to be a “Southeast China centrism.” And although we might all concede that some southeastern seaports were vital to transoceanic interactions, it is shortsighted to ignore the northern port cities and the role they played in connecting China with the maritime world. In this article I investigate the importance of Northeast China's port cities by focusing particular attention on the less familiar coastal seaport of Dengzhou. By detailing and examining the political and economic importance of this port city in the early modern period, I will show that Qing China's northeastern coast was no less important than the southeast. Even if China's northern port cities might not have been as economically vibrant as those in the south, we should not overlook their functions and histories. Indeed, they also attained unique patterns of political and economic development throughout the long eighteenth century.

Examining narratives about Sultan Singh, Udaipur's most prominent sagasji (divine, heroic guardian), this essay analyzes the narrative frame of contention between Sultan Singh's father, the Maharana (“Great King”) Raj Singh and the emperor Aurangzeb. It argues that the frame inevitably glorifies the Maharana and contrasts him with emperor, invariably represented as a worthy opponent, as it contextuales variant lore about the life and tragic death of the Maharana's heir apparent. In some accounts, Sultan Singh's demise is blamed on a plot devised by the emperor. This lore exalts both father and son while also demonstrating a pervasive anxiety about the danger inherent in power.

In the early 1830s and 1840s, a British colonial official by the name of Colonel James Low uncovered evidence for an early culture with Indic traits in a river system known as the Bujang Valley. On the west coast of the Thai-Malay peninsula, the Bujang Valley is today located in the Malaysian state of Kedah. However, it wasn't until just before World War II that excavations took place, conducted by H. G. Quaritch Wales and his wife Dorothy. Their discoveries and subsequent publications led to the first real attempts to explain the origins and extent of this civilisation and its place within the larger South and Southeast Asian world. In the intervening years between Quaritch Wales's excavations and the present day, considerably more research has taken place within the Bujang Valley, though this has not been without controversy. Recently claims and counter-claims regarding the antiquity of Hinduism and Buddhism at the site have arisen in some quarters within Malaysia. It therefore seems pertinent that this material be re-evaluated in light of new scholarship and discoveries as well as the prevailing paradigms of interactions between South and Southeast Asia. This paper presents an updated reading of this material and argues that the Bujang Valley should be seen as a cosmopolitan trading port with substantive evidence for the presence of Hinduism and Buddhism.

This article focuses on some representations of Aurangzeb in the Nath Yogi lore; their ambivalence appears as a signifier of the complex relationships the Nath Yogis had with Islam. Aurangzeb figures both as a powerful enemy and as a clumsy devotee, he is depicted more as a symbol than as an historical individual character.

This article argues for the value of looking past the emperor Aurangzeb, in seeking to understand how he has been portrayed. The eighteenth century Braj source from Punjab examined here portrays local debates and conflicts at the centre, and the Mughal state at the periphery, of the project of communitarian self-formation. Here, the emperor operates from the outside. Internal communitarian concerns, particularly regarding caste inclusion, dominate, linking the text in question to larger questions around caste and community that emerged in early modern South Asia in a range of contexts.