As one long preoccupied with American foreign policy and its impact on Asia, particularly Southeast Asia, I should like to talk to you about a problem that has been with us for a rather long time but whose dimensions have in recent years become considerably more extensive. I refer to the great disparity in access to information pertinent to the formulation of foreign policy as between the executive branch of our government on the one hand and Congress along with the news media and the general public on the other. I am not here, of course, to speak in behalf of the AAS or its officers, but rather in accordance with my own personal convictions. But I shall be discussing a matter that I believe should especially command the concern of those of us who specialize in the study of modern and contemporary Asia, and I hope that my remarks will not be alien to the interests of the rest of you.

In some areas of the Philippines, three important and interrelated changes in the traditional pattern of local leadership recruitment and faction organization had been taking place for several decades. Notables from old leading families were being replaced in positions of leadership by upwardly mobile “new men” from more humble backgrounds. Professional politicians were emerging in the local arena. Local factions were being transformed from traditional family-centered organizations into specialized machines. These changes were most likely to occur in areas of comparatively high social mobilization and low concentration of landownership. Changes are explained primarily by the impact of increasingly intense national political competition in rural communities and growing mass participation. These changes represent a decline in the autonomy of local elites, as they were accompanied by the latters' growing reliance on central resources to maintain their machines. These changes and the forces behind them are well illustrated by the pattern of political change in the town of Taal, Batangas during this century, which is reported in great detail.

Political developments in Ceylon during the 1950's drew attention to the forward thrust of a social formation in the Sinhala districts which has been described variously as “the rural middle classes,” “the lower middle-class traditionalists,” a “new village leadership” and so on. The political antecedents of this “group” were not traced beyond the 1930's, though several writers recognized that it was part of a social category which existed in British times. In recent articles it has been argued that the political activities of individuals drawn from this social category date back to the late nineteenth century. Be that as it may, it is obviously of value to clarify the lines of differentiation between this middle-level social category and the indigenous elite placed hierarchically above them. The former can be described as a “sub-elite,” a “subordinate elite,” an “intermediate elite,” or a “local elite.” The latter can be described as a “macro-elite,” a “central elite” or a “national elite.” Though convenience dictates the choice of one of these combinations, a reference to the alternatives is necessary because each captures a facet which the other labels do not convey.

The death of Ellen McDonald Gumperz in the midst of her period of mature scholarship and professional recognition was a loss not only to John Gumperz, her family, children and friends, but to those working in the many areas her studies probed. Her last research touched two of her basic interests: the area of Maharashtra in India and the structure of nineteenth century modernization. A planned study of communications systems was frustrated by her illness and by the paucity of local records. However, she left a number of studies which reveal a fine analytical mind and a lucid writing style and which break new ground in examining structures and in using modern quantitative methods in Indian history.

Historians of India often write as if India, at the end of the nineteenth century, had only four cities: Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, and Poona. Several elements contribute to this perspective: Indian historians' own predominant interest in the development of nationalist politics in late nineteenth century India naturally leads them to concentrate on these four urban centers, the birthplaces of such politics1. But the structure of late nineteenth century politics in India itself mirrored more fundamental aspects of the administrative organization and social structure of the country. Administratively, the country was organized in a hierarchy of authorities of descending prestige and geographical scope, with authorities of greatest power centered in the three port cities, and authorities of least power, at the taluka and village levels in the hinterlands. This structure decisively established the political predominance of the port cities and assured a flow of potential recruits for government service and the white collar professions out of the countryside and into the Presidency headquarters towns. At the same time, India's status as a raw-materials exporting colony of an industrial mother country, and the increasing penetration of the world market economy, required that business and industry be increasingly concentrated in and about the port cities.

One day eight years ago

it was heard that they had taken him

to the dissecting room;

yesterday evening it was, in the darkness of the Phalgun night

when the fifth moon sank

his desire was to die.

His wife lay beside him, his child too;

he had love, and hopein the moonlightand then he saw

what spirit? Why did he wake from sleep?

Or perhaps sleep was a long time comingand now he lies

in sleep, in the dissecting room.

Perhaps he wanted this sleep.

Like a plague rat, face smeared with bloody foam,

neck twisted, in a lightless hole he sleeps now;

he will awake no more.

;He will awake no more

the thick pain of awakening

incessantlythe constant burden

he will bear no moreinto unprecedented darkness

as if beside his window

a few silences were come

like a camels neck.

The civil examination system in the Confucian state of Yi Dynasty Korea was an important channel of recruitment for government officials and the graduates of the civil examinations carried enormous power and prestige. The determination as to who participated in these examinations will shed more light on the nature of Yi society. Contrary to the prevailing belief that the civil examinations were open only to men of yangban birth and closed to the commoners, there is strong evidence suggesting commoners' participations in the examinations. Legally, there was no statutory restriction against commoners. The state educational system that trained the future examination candidates not only did not discriminate against commoners but even encouraged qualified commoners to enroll in schools. Moreover, certain social groups whose social status was clearly lower than that of commoners were also allowed in the examinations. There were also individual cases in which men of non-yangban origin rose through the civil examinations to become government officials, some holding high ranking posts. In view of such evidence, the notion that the yangban status was wholly hereditary is no longer tenable. Instead, what distinguished yangban from commoners was one's determination and commitment to pursue Confucian scholarship by enrolling in a Confucian school, for student status exempted him from burdensome military duty.

The diffusion of cotton processing and trade were major features of the expansion of rural commerce and handicraft production in the Kinai region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Both were responses to demands for sources of non-agricultural employment in Japanese villages. They made available off-season by-employment for small farmers and offered new types of employment to those under-employed in agriculture. The expansion of rural participation in cotton processing and trade brought the villagers into conflict with urban merchants and artisans. This initially led to reinforcement of urban commercial prerogatives by the government and subsequently to legal confrontations between rural and urban merchant groups which in 1823 were decided in favor of the rural merchants. The role of the government shifted from protection of urban merchant interests to denial of their monopoly and monopoly rights and tacit support for the expansion of rural processing and trade.

Overall, the expansion of rural commerce and handicraft industry illustrate the economic and social changes which characterized the Kinai region during the Tokugawa period and the commercialization of the village economy. It also illustrates the inability of the Tokugawa bakuju to limit or direct the process of societal change.

A two part review, by a sociologist, Reinhard Bendix, and a historian, H. Harootunian, evaluating W. G. Beasley's major book, The Meiji Restoration. The review deals with the book from the perspective of a comparativist in social structures and as a question, in contemporary historical consciousness.