The purpose of this study is to shed light on an aspect of seventeenth century Anglo-Dutch relations that has hitherto been virtually neglected: the rivalry over the Banda Islands. I will point out how economic antagonism between England and the Dutch Republic, a topic that as a rule is mainly regarded in a European context, also erupted in the East-Indian sphere of expansion, even in remote areas such as Banda. Unlike in Europe, in Asia conflicting economic interests immediately and repeatedly resulted in open violence. This was stopped in 1619 by a treaty of cooperation that paradoxically enabled the Dutch to establish themselves even more firmly in these islands, and in the Indonesian Archipelago as a whole, in a way detrimental to the English.

Until 1971, when Alexander Woodside published his ground- breaking study, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, western scholarship on late traditional Vietnam was still locked within the narrow confines of French colonial understanding. Woodside's work, which drew extensively on Vietnamese historical sources, became an instant classic. So thoroughly did it dominate the field that two decades later it remains today the sole detailed discussion in English of the first half of the nineteenth century. Such is its stature that no-one has ever seriously questioned its findings, or challenged the author's vision of early nineteenth-century Vietnam. However, such a critique is long overdue. Despite the breadth of Woodside's scholarship, his conceptual framework assumes a continuity in Vietnamese history, culture, and politics from the Le to the early Nguyen that distorts the historical dynamic of the nineteenth cen tury, as well as contradicting some of his own evidence. His image of the nineteenth-century political elite provides a case in point. Like every scholar before or since, Woodside's conclusions about elite composition are extrapolated from the Sinic structures of its mandarinal organization, buttressed by anecdotal evidence and generalized impressions. But these are poor substitutes for quantification when enough readily-available biographical data exist to profile elite composition statistically. This article presents such an analysis. Its results contradict venerable French colonial views and Woodside's ideas alike; and do so in a way that suggests our present historical understanding of the late pre-colonial Vietnam needs serious revision.

A social problem in one country may often be held up as an example to others, but it is rare for it to bring forth an internationally coordinated response with a world-wide application. One of these rarities is the campaign against ‘hard’ drugs. While liquor laws differ widely from country to country, the modern system of laws against cocaine and the opiates have been established by international convention. These arrangements evolved out of the measures taken to help imperial China with its opium problem, which was regarded, at least in part, as a foreign responsibility arising out of the vast quantities of Indian opium which had been imported by foreigners into China throughout the nineteenth century, often in questionable circumstances. The behaviour of the opium merchants and their governments seemed all the more reprehensible because of the encouragement which it gave to the Chinese to break their own government's laws against opium smoking and poppy cultivation. The first International Opium Commission met in Shanghai in 1909 and passed a number of resolutions to help China; it also laid down principles of co-operation between producing and consuming countries which tended logically to expand in scope and force, leading to a global system of control of all narcotic substances, and to the institutionalization of these arrangements under the League and the United Nations.

One of the most neglected aspects of the history of Korea under Japanese colonial rule is the significant role of the drug trade during the colonial period. Korea emerged as a major producer of opium and narcotics in the 1920s, and in the 1930s became an important supplier to the opium monopoly created by the Japanese-sponsored Manchukuo regime. The latter development sparked an international controversy due to Manchukuo's unsavory reputation in connection with the illicit drug trade, and would later lead the International Military Tribunal for the Far East to identify Korea as the ‘principal source of opium and narcotics at the time of the Mukden Incident and for some time thereafter.’

Inspired by Japanese influences among others the late Qing period saw a great surge in the writing of fiction after 1900. The rate of growth was unprecedented in the history of Chinese literature. The great surge coincided with rapid socio-political changes that China underwent in the last fifteen years of the Qing Dynasty. At the psychological level, the humiliating defeat by Japan in 1895 gave rise to a feeling of urgency for reform among some progressively minded Chinese intellectuals. Those reformers came to view fiction as a powerful medium to further their reform causes and to arouse among the people the awareness of the changes they believed China most urgently required. Fiction was no longer considered as constituting insignificant and trivial writings. It was no longer the idle pastime of retired literati composed to entertain a small circle of their friends, or written by a discontented recluse to vent a personal grudge through a brush. The role of fiction came to be defined in relation to its utility as an influence on politics and society and its artistic quality was subordinated to such a definition.

After a decade in which the social science research environment in China has improved dramatically, a detailed mass of information is now becoming available on the impact of the changing economy on the social structure of the rural areas. Generalizations based on secondary sources and interviews with migrants to Hong Kong have given way to detailed case studies based on longer-term fieldwork. Much of this has so far centred in Guandong Province, fanning out to Sichuan, Shandong and even as far north as Hebei and Liaoning. The picture which is emerging is one of quite considerable local variation. As Whyte and Harrell have recently suggested, the changes over large parts of the country remain unmapped, and what we need is more case studies to fill in the gaps (Whyte, 1992; Harrell, 1992).

Despite the attention that has been given to the role of economic sanctions in Japan's decision to launch the Pacific war, Australia's decision to ban iron ore exports to Japan has been given little attention, even though this was one of the earliest economic sanctions imposed onimperial Japan in the 1930s. To a degree this neglect can be traced to a preoccupation with the actions and objectives of the great powers and a failure to consider the opportunities available to small nations to take significant initiatives. The following article traces the origins of the iron ore embargo back to 1934 when Essington Lewis, the Managing Director of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company Ltd (BHP), Australia's iron and steel monopoly, visited Japan and subsequently advocated the development of an Australian armaments industry to counter probable Japanese aggression in the Pacific. In Japan Lewis crossed paths with J. G. Latham, the Minister for External Affairs, who was leading the Australian government's Eastern Mission. Latham returned to Australia with conclusions that differed fundamentally from those of Lewis, who came up with a plan to take advantage of Japan's dependence on imports of iron ore and other iron products to finance investment in Australian armaments manufacturing. In explaining this outcome the article discusses interactions between a number of conflicts: between Latham and Lewis; between the British Treasury and the Foreign Office; and between the Japanese army and navy. In London the Treasury wanted to focus on the European theatre, while also holding down military spending in order to achieve balanced budgets. The Treasury believed that the way to best defend British commercial interests in Asia was to appease Japan. On the other hand, the Foreign Office was committed to the protection of British interests in the Far East by a more forceful diplomacy, although it was only willing to counten-ance behavior short of military action. Consistent with Latham's recommendations to his government, the emerging consensus in London was that while a settlement in China would help to safeguard British interests there, as long as the Japanese were bound up in their war in China they were less likely to attack British colonies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. In 1936 this orientation was challenged by a shift in the balance of power in Tokyo away from the army and in favor of the navy. Although priority continued to be placed on winning the war in China and guarding against an attack from the Soviet Union, now the navy's plan for southward expansion was given more careful consideration and credibility.

During an evening's conversation in September of 1989 in Hyderabad, two educated men: onea retired professor of economics, the other a civil servant whose avocation was lexicography, entered into a spirited and lengthy debate over the proper way of translating ‘fundamentalist’ into Urdu. The lexicographer argued that ‘bunyād-parast (lit: one who loves the basics)’ was the most accurate as it conveyed not only the English meaning, but also the reality of what a fundamentalist Muslim believed. In opposition, the economist held that ‘mullah-yī (lit: like a mullah)’ was culturally more correct. The ‘foundation’ implied by bunyad was not specifically religious. It could apply to the fundamentals of anything: grammar, for example. In addition, he argued that what fundamentalists really did was to dress, act and talk like mullahs. In a sense, both were correct, because each was struggling over the transfer of a notion alien to traditional Islam into the vocabulary of a living language through which Muslims interact.