A striking feature of Marathi vernacular literature towards the end of the nineteenth century lies in the sudden surge of interest in the Maratha warrior hero, Sivaji, and his feats of leadership in the great expansions of Maratha power that took place in the seventeenth century. Of all the work on Sivaji written at this time, the most familiar is probably Mahadev Govind Ranade's Rise of the Maratha Power, published in 1900, in English. Besides this, there appeared in the last three decades of the century an unusually large number of Marathi works celebrating Sivaji's exploits.

In north India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries several great landed estates played a crucial part in the consolidation of imperial rule and in the support of the social and economic order. These estates have attracted considerable scholarly attention, but previous research has concentrated primarily on their relations with the colonial administraton and on their general intermediary role in north Indian society. The only study directly concerned with their internal affairs is Dr. P. J. Musgrave's ‘Landlords and Lords of the Land: Estate Management and Social Control in Uttar Pradesh 1860–1920’ (Modern Asian Studies, 6, 3 (1972), pp. 257–75), in which official sources are used as the basis for an account of the internal operations of the great estates in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. Hitherto the major obstacle to the examination of the administration of the great estates has been the absence of comprehensive estate records. Fortunately the extensive and well-organized archives of the Raj Darbhanga of Bihar recently have been opened to scholars. In this paper the Raj archives have been drawn upon to provide evidence for an account of the structure and operation of the administration of the Raj Darbhanga during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The paper argues that despite substantial difficulties the Raj Darbhanga effectively pursued its interests by means of a bureaucratic system of management and that therefore Dr Musgrave's conclusions concerning the limited power of the great landed estates need substantial qualification and correction.

Recent historiography of India has focused much needed attention on rural economy and society. The literature has dealt with a number of issues, such as merchants, credit, impact of communications, land-tenure (revenue), rural politics, rich peasants and general essays on the ‘agrarian structure’ of various regions of the sub-continent. In many of the studies a common theme emerges. It is suggested that with the establishment of an integrated market economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries rural wealth and power tended to concentrate in the hands of relatively few rich peasants or a rural elite. In the case of south India, the contention of increased rural stratification on these lines is most convincingly put forth by David Washbrook and Christopher Baker in a series of articles and books. The present analysis will concentrate on Washbrooks' writings in reference to the agrarian structure of the ‘dry’ districts. His works provide the most comprehensive and coherent statement of the ‘rural magnate’ interpretation of agrarian organization.

The year 1927 marked the beginning of a new Anglo-Chinese relationship. The Northern Expedition had split the Nationalist camp into the Nanjing and the Wuhan régimes, both of which conducted a savage purge, one after the other, against the Communists. Especially the Nanjing régime, which ultimately triumphed over Wuhan, wrought a significant change in Guomindang foreign policy. In line with the purge against the Communists, and with the rise to power of the right wing and the military faction, the Guomindang abandoned mass movements and eschewed mob violence as far as possible as a means of achieving foreign policy objectives. Indeed, as it reviewed its position on anti-imperialism which had been an important element in the revolutionary movement during the period 1924–26, the Party reverted to a policy of international co-operation as an essential part of China's self-strengthening and reconstruction, and sought a peaceful solution to the decades-old question of treaty revision. This change is well illustrated by China's new relationship with Great Britain, which, in December 1926, had announced a new, conciliatory policy towards China after having for years been one of the chief targets of Chinese nationalism.

To call Chinese nationals who have emigrated abroad ‘overseas Chinese’ seems very natural, especially since most joined together to form communities of fellow nationals outside of China. (It is not always appropriate to include the children and grandchildren of these emigrants, however.) The term implies a uniformity to the communities that Crissman made explicit in a model which proposed to tie them together and link them to cities in China.

Although it is under the rule and administration of the British, Hong Kong is geographically, socially, economically and politically linked with China. The part played by Hong Kong in the 1911 Revolution has been noted in a number of works, published or unpublished. This paper, however, proposes to examine the role of the Hong Kong educated Chinese in the modernization of China, limiting the study to those who had attended schools in Hong Kong before 1911 and their activities in China during the late Ch'ing and early republican years. During these decades, the English education afforded in the Anglo-Chinese schools in Hong Kong succeeded not only in turning out people who later became leading citizens of the local community but also in producing Western-educated young men who went to China to be engaged in the imperial service, participating directly or indirectly in the various reform programmes in China; while still a greater number, having received some English education in Hong Kong, were recruited into the various modern schools in China to receive training for new careers—modern diplomacy, warfare, engineering, medicine, as well as modern communication and transportation. A number, however, played leading roles in the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty and in the establishment of the Republic of China—among them Dr Sun Yat-sen , father of the Republic and its first President, and Wang Ch'ung-hui , its first Foreign Minister.