The recent incursion of historians into the ‘history of the family’ raises a number of crucial problems from which anthropologists and sociologists seem to have shied away. Dealing with a topic new to the historical discipline, some of these historians have turned to anthropologists for theoretical inspiration. It will thus come as no surprise that what they have found and reproduced is the very conceptual discord so endemic in anthropological circles (see Laslett 1972 and Berkner 1975 for antithetical stances). This controversy, however, in one way represents only a minor aspect of the problem. Equally if not more important is the fact that the phenomena which fall under historical and sociological/anthropological investigation may not be the same after all. This is intrinsically related to their respective subject-matter and the type of evidence they have to rely upon.

The history of collective attitudes about death, a branch of the newhistory of mentalités, was until recently considered a speciality, or even acuriosity that was peculiarly French, or so at least, E. Le Roy Laduriewrote with reference to the work of Philippe Aries, Francois Lebrun and myself in his Territory of the Historian.

Lord Cromer, British Consul-General in Egypt and virtual ruler of the country, was fond of arguing that Egypt could never become a homogeneous, unitary nation state, like Britain or France. Because of its location astride the Suez Canal and at the meeting point of Africa and Asia, the country, Cromer believed, would always attract large foreign populations and would be of vital importance to foreign powers. Its institutions must take account of diverse interests and peoples. To be sure Cromer used this vision self-seekingly, denying Egyptian nationalists many of their demands for increased self-government. But he had to heed the foreigners in Egypt, for they had become an influential group in the nineteenth century. A booming economy, peace and political stability, uninterrupted except for the short-lived ‘Urābī revolt (1879–1882), the fashioning of European law courts, called the Mixed Tribunals, administering French law through foreign judges, and then the presence of British troops and administrators from 1882 onwards all conspired to make Egypt seem an attractive Middle Eastern country to British, French, Belgian, Italian, Greek, Armenian, and Syrian immigrants.

Cults of saints in traditional rural society or in European societies of thepast have been studied by scholars in various disciplines.1 But lessattention has been paid to such cults in modern urban settings, where theyare also an important part of ‘popular’ Catholicism, and an example of thecontinuing vigour of ‘popular’ or ‘folk’ culture in industrial society.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a new reform movement rose to challenge the nation's economic oligarchy. It drew its support from an expanding urban middle class and from influential intellectuals and publicists. The party that gave political voice to these interests was led by a popular leader no ted for his vague but alluring rhetoric. He made skillful use of the press and of his party machinery. He and his followers sought to control large economic interests (an important railroad regulation law was passed in 1907) and to democratize the machinery of government (a major electoral reform law was passed in 1912).

Discussion of the social aspects of industrialization in India has proceeded almost exclusively in terms of labor recruitment, factory conditions, and the development of trade unions. Although strikes have received detailed consideration, the industrial violence which formed a common and persistent feature of labor relations in colonial India has been largely ignored. Official reports of the period tended to play down the incidence of violence, not wishing to publicize the failings of government labor policies.' Or, where violence was acknowledged to have occurred, it was taken to indicate the immaturity and irresponsibility of Indian workers. Post-independence studies, drawing heavily on published official sources, have too readily equated labor history with a narrative of strikes, with union membership figures and labor legislation. A lingering Gandhian tradition has further influenced many Indian labor studies. Violence is regarded as too morally reprehensible and politically deviant to warrant serious analysis. Where admitted, it is attributed to communist politicians or other outside elements rather than to factors inherent within the labor situation.

The course of events leading up to 1947, when independence and partition came to the Indian subcontinent, has colored retrospectiveassessments of Hindu-Muslim relations in many perceptible ways.Polarities in religion and culture receive inordinate attention as theharbingers of the great divide yet to come, as do political developments asturning points in the eventual separate destinies of many Hindus and Muslims in South Asia.

Always have Indians identified themselves by their caste, by theirancestral village: “Our family were Khatris from the West Punjabcountryside.” “Murud, at one time a fairly prosperous village, is mynative place.” In the late nineteenth century, however, an important new process of forging group identities which transcended these local attributions came to characterize South Asian social history. This was in part prompted by the efforts of an alien British administration to identify the constituent units in Indian society. Drawing on European historical experience, the administrators applied the collective labels "Hindu" and "Muslim" to groups who were far from homogeneous communities.

The central question of this article is why the minority problem has remained under control in Israel but has led to an internal war in Northern Ireland. This question is explored within the analytic frame of the notion of a plural society.

One finds partition often mentioned but rarely discussed in any detail by authors of texts on world politics. Denned as the act of dividing into two or more units an area previously forming a single administrative entity, partition is firmly anchored in both the theory and practice of international statesmanship. Modern diplomatic history offers a classic illustration in the repeated partitioning of Poland in the late eighteenth century. More recent instances of territorial division are Ireland (1920), Germany and Korea (1945), India (1947) and Indochina (1954). Reinforcement for such political arrangements, moreover, derives from the teachings and insights of bargaining theory, negotiating strategies, crisis management and conflict resolution with their primary emphasis upon compromise. Partition is thus presented as being a traditional and accepted method for terminating disputes outstanding among nations without recourse to war.