The Parisian Faubourg Saint Germain and perhaps the Rue de la Paix and the boulevards seemed the adequate measure of luxury to all of the snobs. The old colonial shell of the Latin American cities little approximated such scenery. The example of Baron de Haussmann and his destructive example strengthened the decision of the new bourgeoisies who wished to erase the past, and some cities began to transform their physiognomy: a sumptuous avenue, a park, a carriage promenade, a luxurious theater, modern architecture revealed that decision even when they were not always able to banish the ghost of the old city. But the bourgeoisies could nourish their illusions by facing one another in the sophisticated atmosphere of an exclusive club or a deluxe restaurant. There they anticipated the steps that would transmute “the great village” into a modern metropolis.

—José Luis Romero

How best might one address the relationship between trade and state building in early modern South Asia? The question is hardly a new one. To some, like Anand Ram ‘Mukhlis’ (d. 1751), a Khatri from northern India who, though not Muslim, had been educated in Persian letters and accounting (siyâgat), trade was more honourable and safer than statecraft or government. The fortunes of the nobility were fluctuating ones, and the means by which they had been accumulated were of a questionable legitimacy. Doubts of this sort did not of course prevent his Khatri brethren from entering into government service during the later Mughal period, and several of them can be counted among the a'yân (notables) of the reign of the Mughal, Muhammad Shah (1719–48) (Alam 1986:169–75). They maintained a tradition begun in the reign of Ak-bar with the famous Raja Todar Mal (d. 1589), also a Khatri from the Punjab.

The proprietors of Amman's publishing houses do a brisk trade in books about politics and religion. They have also, in recent years, begun to profit from the growing demand for “tribal literature.” This new market, which emerged in the late 1970s, expanded greatly in the 1980s. It includes folkloric monographs (al ʿAbbadi 1989; al-ʿUzayzi 1984), genealogical compendia (Abu Khusa 1989), Bedouin poetry (al-ʿUzayzi 1991), introductions to tribal law (Abu Hassan 1987; al-ʿAbbadi 1982), and studies which, combining elements of all these genres, are packaged as “historical” works (al-ʿAbbadi 1984, 1986). The advent of a popular literature about the Jordanian tribes written by and for local Bedouin has been hailed in Jordan's national press as a new form of “patriotism,” and the oral traditions now being adapted to print are thought to convey a uniquely Jordanian heritage.

Implicit in the hegemonic “civilizing” discourse of nineteenth-century British imperialism was the assumption that Great Britain was a model to be followed by backward societies. Included in the British characterisics to be emulated was the status of their women. In this article I turn this assumption on its head by arguing that the capital accumulation permitting the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain was furthered not only by primogeniture, as many scholars have correctly argued, but also by a marriage regime in which wives and widows had few rights to property, for husbands were usually sole owners of all marital property and had full testamentary freedom. This arrangement permitted property to concentrate in male hands. In contrast, the marriage system based on Portuguese and Brazilian law was one of full community property, which gave wives veto power in the sale or mortgaging of all real estate and assured widows rights of succession to one-half of the marital property. This system was combined with limited testamentary freedom and equally partible inheritance for both sons and daughters. I argue that, though it was more equitable than the British system, it worked against the accumulation of capital.

Economically the contradiction between town and country is an extremely antagonistic one both in capitalist society, where under the rule of the bourgeoisie the towns ruthlessly plunder the countryside, and in the Kuomingtang areas in China, where under the rule of foreign imperialism and the Chinese big compradore bourgeoisie the towns most rapaciously plunder the countryside. But in a socialist country and in our own revolutionary base areas, this antagonistic contraction has changed into one that is non-antagonistic; and when communist society is reached it will be abolished.

[Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) 1937:345]

Accounts of first contact in Papua New Guinea have aroused considerable interest over the years (Hides 1936; Leahy and Crain 1937; Nelson 1982; Connelly and Anderson 1987; Schieffelin and Crittenden 1991). No doubt, this has been in part because these accounts have an intrinsic drama and popular romantic appeal (intrepid explorers enter remote mountain valleys and discover vast populations of previously unknown tribes who had never seen white men before and believed they were supernatural beings). More recently, anthropologists and historians have begun examining these sorts of events to explore how historical and cultural forces unique or intrinsic to quite different societies become transformed when they come into contact with each other, a process, that Sahlins has termed the “structure of the conjuncture” (Sahlins 1980, 1985; Dening 1988). Accounts of the period immediately following first contact in Papua,1 during which Australian government officers extended political control over the newly discovered native Papuan tribesmen, however, are usually narratives of European (Australian) colonial history, with little sense of Papuan experience.

People are eating each other, came the message from southern Guangxi to Peking in the early summer of 1968, as the violent phase of the Cultural Revolution was drawing to a close. When militia reinforcements arrived in Wuxuan, parts of decomposing corpses still festooned the town center (Zheng 1993:2–3). No proper investigation was conducted, however, for this was a county in which order had already been imposed and the rebels had been crushed. Only in 1981–83, long after the Gang of Four had collapsed, was an investigation team sent into the county. It compiled a list of those eaten and a number of the ringleaders in cannibalism. Fifteen were jailed, and 130 Party members and cadres were disciplined. The Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region announced the expulsion from the Party of all who had eaten human flesh.1 But the regulations were withdrawn quickly for fear that the document would be slipped out to Hong Kong and reveal this episode of cannibalism to the world (Zheng 1993:52).

The relationship between social structure and the emergence of democracy has long intrigued social scientists. In an early statement of the modernization perspective on this topic, Lipset (1960) postulated that a strong association exists between the degree of socioeconomic development and democracy. As economic development rose, so did wealth, income, and education, but income inequality declined, resulting in a population of moderate upper and lower classes and an expanding middle class, all of which favored the development of democratic political institutions. Subsequent quantitative studies found that a strong correlation can indeed be demonstrated between socioeconomic development and democratic institutions (Bollen 1983; Bollen and Jackman 1985). Despite significant contributions, these studies have not paid sufficient attention to either social agency or the mechanism of democratization during transitional periods. This essay will examine both of these factors by focusing on the role played by entrepreneurs in ousting dictatorial regimes.

When anthropologists come to examine the role of Christian missionaries in the transformation of non-Western societies, as they have done increasingly over the past decade, they soon become deeply embroiled in debates about narrative. Most obvious and immediate are the written and published narratives in which missionaries report their activities, providing the single most important source of data. But the more fundamental issues lie beyond: They have to do with the role of narrative in the social transformation itself, and eventually with the place of narrative in the ethnographic account that anthropology sets itself to produce. In this essay, which arises from a larger project on the encounter of religions in nineteenth-century Yorubaland, the focus of the argument will move through several levels of narrative, but it will start and finish with an argument that demonstrates why narrative is so important for the achievement of a properly historical anthropology.