The editor of Das Leben Buddhas: Ein Chinesisches Holzschnitt Fragment [Book Reviews, JAS, XXVIII/4 (August 1969) 839–40] should have been Martin Gimm, not Grimm, on page 839 and on page 664 of the Contents.

The author of Bibliographie du Shintō et des sectes Shintōïstes [Book Reviews, JAS, XXIX/1 (November 1969) 171] should have been listed in the Contents (p. 2) as Herbert, not Hebert.

In may, 1942, The Far Eastern Quarterly published an article on Outstanding books on the Far East published in 1941. This article indicated twelve books of unusual value published during that year and gave comments on many others which for one reason or another seemed worthy of notice. Since Pearl Harbor, American interest in Asia and the Pacific has greatly increased and American publications about the Far East have become much more numerous. However, increase in quantity has not necessarily meant increase in quality. Many of those who might normally have produced reliable popular works or thorough research studies have been called on to do special war work and have had little time or opportunity for writing, while pseudo-experts and eye-witnesses without real background have burst into print. The layman who wishes to learn about Eastern Asia, as every American should and must, sorely needs a touchstone with which to tell gold from dross in the pile of recent publications on the Far East which confronts him. The editors of The Far Eastern Quarterly have therefore felt that an attempt to select the outstanding books published since the beginning of 1942 is decidedly in order.

Compared with the other countries of Southeast Asia, the Western-language historiography of Thailand is meagre indeed. Western sources have furthered scholarship considerably, but historical writing on Thailand will remain unbalanced until Thai materials have been fully exploited. Some beginning has been made on this work by both Thai and Western scholars, but as yet this is only a beginning.

Chinese studies (alias Sinology) and die disciplines came, in the final analysis, from the same parentage: the desire to know. They are intellectual twins which, nurtured in divergent circumstances and showing dissimilar traits, are thus “fraternal” rather than “identical”. Academe has always been nursery and playground for the disciplines. In the early days, those who served as Sinology's amahs were mostly non-academic people. Uncommitted to die established disciplines and frankly amateurish in approach, they all but bastardized Sinology in the eyes of the more strait-laced among the governesses of the disciplines. For a time, some of the latter were hardly aware of the underprivileged twin's existence.

The immediate purpose of this study is to describe an interesting and rather bizarre episode in nineteenth century Chinese-British relations. It concerns the so-called “Canton City Question” of the 1840's, and I hope to show that the traditional accounts of this incident may have been misleading and, in some cases, inaccurate.

Editor's Note

The following five papers, presented as a panel on March 22,1964, at the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Washington, D. C., are reproduced here at slightly greater length than in their original versions. The panel was organized by G. W. Skinner with the prior understanding that these somewhat longer versions would be prepared for publication in the Journal. The papers were, however, written independently of one another and have not been modified as a result of the discussion. It is clear that several of them use the term Sinology somewhat differently, but that in balance there is more agreement among the authors than might ideally have been planned in order to stimulate the kind of discussion and exchange which a panel implies. There was, however, vigorous discussion from the floor, of which the comments by Benjamin Schwartz, printed immediately following the papers in this issue, are a sample. We will publish in the November issue comments from two others, who will be able to base their remarks on the present printed papers. Others who may wish to send in comments for publication are invited to address them to the Editor.