The Sarnyukta Gauḍa Sārasvata Brāhmaṇa [GSB] Parisad was founded in 1910 A by members of several historically related subcastes in western India. The association represented an attempt by men experiencing the insecurities of urban middle class life to obtain the presumed benefits of caste for themselves and their families through reintegration within a single structurally unified caste. They experimented also with the idea of caste as a means to mobilize rural kin and caste fellows in the quest for modernity. Although efforts to structurally amalgamate the subcastes through intermarriage and related ritual acts proved fruitless, the members of the Parisad did stimulate development of educational and economic institutions which supported their middle class aspirations. The problems of recruitment and the content of Parisad proceedings reveal considerable social and economic disparities among the GSB. This illustrates the inaccuracies of characterizing castes by reference only to those members who hold elite positions in public affairs. The Parisad ultimately atrophied after 1917 although its related institutions have survived. Though the structural unity of caste was not obtained, a sense of GSB corporate identity did develop which ascribed to all members the achievement-oriented virtues of adaptivity and excellence.

Many scholarly articles and some of a polemical nature have been written on the 1971 insurgency in Sri Lanka. Recent studies of this movement (Fernando 1972, Egan 1972, Kearney 1973, Arasaratnam 1972, Warnapala 1972) have helped us to understand some of the underlying political, social and economic causes of the uprising. These articles have dispelled early speculations regarding the social backgrounds of the insurgents, particularly by government apologists and theoreticians from the traditional left parties of Sri Lanka.

The early debate over the economic impact of European imperialism on the Afro-Asian world centered largely upon the roles played by the European rulers. Both pro- and anti-imperialist writers focused on the introduction and effects of European economic policies and institutions, on the alleged benefits or exploitation that resulted from official and private European economic enterprise, and on the implications of European colonial control for the future economic development of subject areas. In recent years historians and other social scientists, drawing on hitherto neglected sources and applying new techniques of analysis, have undertaken a thoroughgoing reappraisal of the economic effects of European imperialism. One product of this effort has been the increased attention given by scholars to the important roles played by non-Europeans in the economic transformation of colonized areas.

Shinran (1173–1262), the founder of the Shinshu sect of Pure Land, was the first major Buddhist leader in Japan who openly married and produced a family. Unlike the many monks who secretly married, for Shinran marriage was a landmark on what Alfred Bloom has called “the journey to self-acceptance,” and an experience that ultimately became a central feature of the doctrine of universal salvation he preached. Although he sought above all to bridge the gulf between priest and layman and specifically disclaimed any ambition to found a new sect, let alone a religious dynasty, Shinran had nevertheless created the possibility of religious succession based on the hereditary principle.

With these stirring lines Takekoshi Yosaburō opened the preface to the 1893 edition of his Shin Nihonshi {History of New Japan). It is difficult to imagine a more enthusiastic celebration of the Meiji Restoration than one likening it to the epochal founding of the Chou dynasty. Yet those who read beyond the confident affirmation of the preface soon encountered a rising note of anxiety, concern, even alarm in the pages that followed. For it was clear that however highly Takekoshi regarded the ideals of the “great revolution of the Restoration,” he also saw them in jeopardy. “Today,” he wrote, “slightly more than twenty years since the Restoration, the general public has begun to tread the path of unrighteousness. Ministers in power err in their policies, and those in opposition err in their views, and together both make pronouncements that give comfort only to themselves. That is why the author has taken up his brush in indignation to narrate a general outline of the changing times since the Restoration.” The revolution, in short, was a revolution betrayed, or at least unfulfilled.

The surviving private papers of Robert Hart, Inspector General of the Imperial Maritime Customs, 1863-1911, were deposited at Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1971. They have been studied in part by a few scholars, including the present writer. Most of Hart's papers, private and official, were destroyed in the Boxer Revolution, when his house and office were burned, but his private diary, in 77 volumes, was saved from the general destruction by a 4th Assistant (B) of the Customs who carried it from the house in a black tin chest. Apart from the diary, the papers consist of loose materials, some 120 packages of private letters and miscellaneous printed Customs reports for the period 1900 through 1908.