The expansion of Europe has been a much-discussed process. Unfortunately the publicists' and historians' interest has commonly been limited to surface aspects of power, to political, economic, and intellectual penetration. Yet a closer acquaintance reveals the existence of a yet deeper layer of hostile infiltration, a subtler and more subversive onslaught on native values and traditions. The “underground” portions of western expansion have hitherto rather escaped notice, let alone analysis, although among their victims their force was felt deeply if confusedly. Thus an anonymous journalist writing in Russia late in 1896 pointed to that melting away of native guideposts under the western impact when he lamented that “under the influence of historical conditions and progress many phenomena which distinguished Russian nationality are now changing and therefore prove no longer to be genuine and unchangeable…” No hallowed custom, no authority remained unimpaired, even though the surface structure of society and government was preserved and the sovereignty of the state untouched. The termites of western influence were eating away the substance and left only facades. And the invisible portion of western power, its ability to serve as a universal model, proved in the long run even more devastating than armies, battleships, or stocks and bonds.

This paper describes the landmarks of Western education in India, the content of this education, the nature of social and political changes which resulted or were furthered by this education, the groups that imparted and the groups that received this education, and finally it compares the Indian with the Chinese and to some extent with the Japanese experience.

As in all Asian countries, modernization in China was a result of Western impact. The year 1860 was a turning point in Chinese history. Prior to that year tradition reigned supreme, and all foreign nations were considered as distant uncivilized peoples whose best fortune lay in becoming vassals of the Middle Kingdom. A preliminary sign of change came in 1839–1842, when China suffered defeat in the Opium War with Great Britain. The defeat, humiliating as it was at the time, proved insufficient to shake China's inertia and was soon almost forgotten. The age of change had, however, arrived. Internal rebellion flashed up in the fifties. In addition, a new war with France and Britain started in 1856. In 1860, the emperor was a fugitive at Jehol; his summer palace was burned down by the invaders; a humiliating “unequal” treaty was concluded. The wound was too deep to be ignored, and the ground for reform was prepared.

The economic activities of Buddhist monasteries have frequently been noted. In regard to Tibetan Lamaist monasteries some writers have assumed that these activities indicate the “corruption” or “degeneration” of pure Buddhist ideals. On the other hand many have expressed wonder at the generosity with which Lamaist laymen will give, sometimes impoverishing themselves, to support their religion. Attention too seldom has been drawn to the means by which gifts are translated into religious merit for the donors, whether these be monks or laymen. It is the mechanism of translation that explains the universal economic success of Buddhist monasticism.

Professor Miller adds more information to help build up a knowledge of how Lamaist monasteries have functioned in the recent past. Such monasteries performed (and in some cases still perform) not only religious and social functions but political and economic ones. As regards their internal financial systems, they seem to have had similar organizations all of which varied somewhat according to local environments. But Professor Miller comments on one common thread: the uisa system, and appraises its significance for the original spread of Inner Asian monasticism, for the fluctuations in fortunes of individual monasteries, and for the economy as a whole.

The Tibetan term which is pronounced jisa and written spyi signifies literally terra commune or, like spyi, the principal or capital piece of land. The fact it is not to be found in the classical dictionaries of the Tibetan language, such as those of Sarat Chandra Das and Jäschke, seems to show that it is fairly recent. In these works the terms closest to it are spyi-tor and, better still, spyi-thog, which refer to a common fund or a common piece of property. These terms, too, appear to be relatively recent or at least exclusively Tibetan, for the dictionaries give no Sanskrit equivalent and they suggest that the terms belong solely to the dialects of Western Tibet. The Sanskrit terms corresponding to spyi would be sāmanyabhūmi and sādharanabhūmi in the first and most satisfactory sense, of common land, and agrabhūmi, murdhabhūmi and sirobhūmi in the second sense. But these do not occur in the dictionaries of classic Sanskrit, nor of Buddhist Sanskrit (Edgerton), nor of Pali. Nor were any equivalent expressions either developed in Chinese Buddhism or preserved through Chinese translations of Sanskrit terms. If any Indian or Chinese terms corresponding to the Tibetan spyi-sa existed, they obviously formed no part of the canonical or even of the paracanonical literary language of Indian or ancient Chinese Buddhism. It follows that if Indian or Chinese Buddhism had an institution resembling the Tibetan jisa, the Buddhist monks must have considered it to be foreign to their activities and in some way unworthy.

In turning from the monasticism of the East the historian is struck by the comparative complexity of the institutions of Western monasticism. Christian monasticism has taken many forms. At some periods and places it performed nearly all the organized work of the church, at other times it would appear as a very specialized vocation in isolation from society. In this sense, the monastery, as the church, has borrowed from and adapted to its needs a wide range of institutions at different stages of development in the history of the West. While the description of this structural complexity is a fascinating though immense problem in the sociology of religion into which we cannot enter here, there was a ‘monastic period’ in the history of western Christendom that warrants comparison with monasticism in the East. From the time of the breakup of the Roman Empire to the rise of the nation-state monastic institutions maintained a continuity unique in the history of western Christianity. Although only rarely the sole ecclesiastical institution, the monastery was in most regions of western Europe for a long time the dominant form of ecclesiastical organization. Accordingly, we can expect to find during this period something of a common monastic reaction to problems of economic organization.

Gordon Griffiths and George Nadel have shown convincingly that the Revolt of the Netherlands shows some resemblance to the four great revolutions—the English, American, French and Russian revolutions—that Crane Brinton analyzed and compared in his stimulating work The Anatomy of Revolution. Both authors have been perhaps too modest. The resemblances are even more striking than they suggested; the Dutch Revolt had some features in common with the other revolutions which did not receive sufficient consideration in Brinton's analysis

The two papers on Overseas Chinese (M. Topley, “The Emergence and Social Functions of Chinese Religious Associations in Singapore”, CSSH, and Tsien Tche-hao, “La vie sociale des Chinois à Madagascar”, CSSH, III no. 3) which have followed my own paper (“Immigrants and Associations: Chinese in Nineteenth-Century Singapore”, CSSH, III, no. 1) raise by implication a number of problems. I shall deal first with a few of the points suggested by Mrs. Topley's essay.

If historians, as some non-historians imagine, were occupied only with the detail of national past politics, they would have nothing to say to each other at an international conference. Yet leading historians have labored to create a permanent organization, the International Congress of Historical Sciences, which now holds regular quinquennial meetings with increasingly worldwide representation. At least twenty countries besides all European countries and the Soviet Union were represented at its eleventh meeting, held at Stockholm in August 1960.