In September of 1810, with a sudden flash of violent rebellion (preceded by months and years of salon conspiracies), the white native-born provincial elite of New Spain began the protracted and painful process of winning political independence from Spain. Although by about 1816 much of the country had been pacified by royal arms, pockets of rebellion continued to smolder and flare throughout the following years. The birth of modern Mexico itself finally occurred in 1821, owing as much to fortuitous political circumstances in Spain as to the military and political manipulations of Agustin Iturbide, the Creole adventurer who consummated the country's independence and briefly became its emperor. Programmatic pronouncements by the Creole and mestizo leadership of the independence movement abound in the form of pamphlets, constitutions, decrees, short-lived newspapers, captured correspondence, etcetera, and provide us with a reasonably clear view into the complex ideologi- cal process of political separatism from Spain. At least in the early years of the independence struggle, however, the insurrectionary armies were manned not primarily by Mexican-born whites or racially mixed groups, but by Indian peasants from rural villages all over the central parts of the country.

These observations, which open a widely read essay on primitive religion, might with equal profit be applied to the comparative study of complex societies. They suggest an unusual descriptive project: to catalog the threats to social order in particular cultures in order to make revealing comparisons. They also imply that, armed with such a catalog, unusual meanings might be wrung out of recurrent disasters and common dilemmas. Such a project has not been ventured for South Asia, and I should like to begin with modern Bengal, but the embarassment arises that I am not confident I possess the “active principles” of Bengali culture. It is only by taking up acknowledged instances of “dangers,” “cataclysms,” and “disasters” that I expect to be able to reason back to ordering concepts and thus to complete the catalog. In the course of this short essay, however, only one specific calamity—the death of C. R. Das, a charismatic Indian politician—can be examined in detail. If I succeed in showing that this one calamity has a hitherto unrealized significance in modern Bengal, perhaps the reader will grant that the role of relatedcalamities in Bengal, and even in the whole of modern India, has not been insignificant.

In late 1932 and early 1933 a popular rising occurred in the region of Mewat in northern central India. Although this rebellion broke out in opposition to the political power of the princely states of Alwar and Bharatpur, as a peasant rebellion it spread over and was supported from areas of British India. It was not, pace Harold Laski, merely an instance of peasant rebellion in an area of indirect British rule. Popular protest in Mewat arose within the totality of an historical context made up as much of developments in British India as of features that were specific to areas of indirect rule. The ideological and social world of the rebellion was also constituted of elements common to British and princely India and to the local histories of the peasant community of the Meos who rose in rebellion. The context that we write about, therefore, is one of a multiplicity of different, yet interlocking, histories—legendary, secular, reformist, sectarian, legitimist, nationalist, rebellious, nativistic—all of which end, as it were, in a final denouement in the rising of 1933.

The Irish national revolution has been a long time dying. This is due in part to its artificial continuance in Northern Ireland and in part to the survival of its slogans, in fossilized form, as official symbols of the democratic regime in the Republic of Ireland. The main phase of the movement is, however, long over; even the ideological residue left by it is in an advanced state of decomposition, and Patrick Pearse and James Connolly have no intellectual heirs of any importance.

Nearly a quarter of a century has elapsed since the revolution in Cuba. Yet there is little consensus about its accomplishments. Evaluations of the effect of the sociopolitical transformation range from uncritical admiration to passionate criticism. It is surprising that no study has compared developments in postrevolutionary Cuba with developments during the same time period in the rest of Latin America, even though such a comparison would contribute to a better understanding of the extent to which the disruption has altered Cuban prospects for development.

Revolution, like war, is an historical phenomenon of great importance, and no scholar is likely to argue that revolutions have not had a significant influence on the history of nations and regions, even on the history of the entire world. Unlike war, however, revolution has no coherent chronological history, andthere are no studies of the phenomenon comparable to William McNeill's recent work The Pursuit of Power, or to Theodore Ropp's older but equally important War in the Modem World. Despite volumes written on the subject of revolution by historians, political scientists, sociologists, and others, one searches in vain for a comprehensive history.

The object of this article is to present the main findings of a study of the functional organisation of the house in postmedieval London. It will also discuss a formal approach to plan analysis that is considered to have wide application in the comparative study of domestic space.