This paper is about the small war that ended with the British conquest of Surat castle in 1759. This event brought about the establishment of English paramountcy in Surat, which, in turn, was the first step taken by the English on their way to empire along the Western coast of India. As such, the developments leading to the take-over of Surat castle represent a case study of some importance in the early rise of British power in India and the reasons behind it.

The Mughal literary culture has been noted for its notable achievements in poetry and a wide range of prose writings in Persian. In terms of profusion and variety of themes this literary output was also perhaps incomparable. The court's patronage has rightly been suggested as an important reason for this. This patronage, however, was not consistent throughout; much of the detail of its detour thus requires a closer scrutiny. The phenomenal rise of the language defies explanation in the first instance. The Mughals were Chaghtā'i Turks and we know that, unlike them, the other Turkic rulers outside of Iran, such as the Ottomans in Turkey and the Uzbeks in Central Asia, were not so enthusiastic about Persian. Indeed, in India also, Persian did not appear to hold such dominance at the courts of the early Mughals. In his memoir, Bābur (d. 1530), the founder of the Mughal empire in India, recounted the story of his exploits in Turkish. The Prince was a noted poet and writer of Turkish of his time, second only to ‘Alī Sheēr Nawā’ī (d. 1526). Turkish was the first language of his son and successor, Humāyūn (d. 1556), as well.

The Naning War, long dismissed by historians as a ‘little war’, was part of a more expansive drama in the history of the Malay world. The war expressed traditional modes of power-broking and opposition, as well as anticipated later political developments in Malaya. From the wider perspective of imperial history, this important but neglected episode of British expansion in the East merits a modern treatment. This article seeks to rectify deficiencies of existing histories of the Naning War by exploring the nature of indirect rule and formal control from the metropolis, and authority and conflict at the ‘periphery’. It sets the war both within the cultural context of Malay warfare, and within the regional context of indigenous resistance and Islamic protest against British incursions.

The story of the ‘opening’ of Korea presents us with a peculiar problem of its own. For, when Westerners arrived on the shores of Korea in the nineteenth century, they found a country that was shielded in the shadow of China. Korea, so it seemed to Westerners, would not open the country without Chinese approval, but China would not interfere in Korea on Western countries' behalf or, at times, even on her own behalf. And both Korea and China professed that they were acting according to the dictates of the traditional relationship which had bound the two countries for many centuries in peace and harmony. To Western observers this traditional Sino-Korean relationship seemed to offer nothing but a diplomatic cul-de-sac. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that Western diplomats concluded that this relationship was merely ceremonial and largely dismissed it as having little political consequence.

In recent years the issue of human rights in China has been in the international limelight, especially since the Beijing Massacre of 4 June 1989. It is, however, not a new issue in the history of modern and contemporary China. Earlier in the 1970s and 1980s, a movement for Chinese democracy and human rights was launched by dissidents, though with little success. Nor is it widely known that during the first years of the Nationalist rule there was a short-lived Human Rights Group (HRG) made up of a small number of Western-educated intellectuals.

It has long been noticed that there is a lack of comparative studies of the economies of China and India. Bardhan (1970) points out that, in numerous textbooks on comparative economic systems, the reader can hardly find any mention of a China-India comparative study, which should be a very important part of any discussion on comparative economic systems in the present world. One reason for this may be the unavailability and unreliability of data, particularly from China. This situation is now changing. A statement prepared by a Delhi-based China Study Group in 1988, clearly points out that ‘it has become possible to secure more reliable data on China, data that can be checked from various sources and collected through field observation’ (Bhattacharjea, Deshingkar, Deshpande, Gupta, Huang, Mohanty, Rao, Tan and Uberoi, 1988).